Everything Jenner said made absolute sense to Drake, but he knew that proving it without a confession, especially after so long, would present Sam with an almost impossible task. But there was one outstanding question.
“I can see where you’re going, but I’m missing one thing. Motive.”
“Blackmail.”
The single word confused Drake. “Walston was blackmailing Pearson?”
Jenner shook his head and drained off most of his glass. “Wrong. Barbara was blackmailing Walston.” He laughed. “You don’t know much about Barbara, do you?”
“I know she was stunningly attractive, and fond of dropping her knickers. That’s about it.”
“She and Rachel were the best of friends, and it was Rachel that told me all about Barbara and Marc Shawforth. He’s a control freak. He couldn’t control Barbara while he was down in London, but he had a bloody good try. The couple of hundred sovs a month he allowed her was never enough for a tart like that.”
Jenner drained his glass, raised his eyebrows, asking if Drake had wanted a refill. Drake refused, and the other man went to the bar for a fresh drink.
While he was gone, Drake sifted through the information he had just been given. He couldn’t yet see where Jenner was going. How would Barbara blackmail Walston? Legend had it that Mrs Walston already knew of his bedhopping, so there was no avenue for coercion there.
Jenner returned, drank the head of froth from his glass, and leaned on the table again. “About eight or nine years ago, not long after Walston first came to Landshaven to set up his business, we had a rumour that he funded it on drug money. Not beyond the bounds of possibility. He’d been living and working for some high-class IT outfit on the continent. Brussels or Hamburg or somewhere. I was head of CID at the time, and I looked into it. He blinded me with financial science. Him and his advisers. I referred it to Neville, told him that we needed the Fraud Squad to look at his money. A week later, Neville got back to me, saying there was no case to answer, and that was the end of it. I didn’t bother about it. You don’t, y’see? You can’t waste your time worrying about the ones that got away. So, let’s just imagine that the rumour was true. A few years down the line, Barbara Shawforth is shagging anything in trousers, and she jumps some bloke who knows about Walston’s past. He talks in bed, and suddenly, she’s on a winner. She pulls Walston, gets him into bed, and then says to him, ‘gimme a grand a month, and I’ll keep my mouth shut and my legs open’. Instead, he gives her what for with a baseball bat, and she can never tell anyone anything.”
It was attractive. Drake realised right away that it would be the perfect scenario.
“A couple of points, Jenner. He only ever had Barbara Shawforth once.”
“So he says. And she’s not here to argue with him, is she? For all we know, he could have been reaming her twice a week for six or seven months. All we really know, and we don’t even know whether it’s the truth, is that the day she was murdered was the first time they visited the Bellevue. And why? Because Walston had been there with Rachel the day before, and he ordered Pearson not to change the bed sheets. He knew there’d be traces of Rachel on them.” Jenner pressed his point more forcefully. “Think about the text message Rachel received telling her that Walston was bedding Barbara. It might have come from an unregistered number, but whoever sent it knew my ex-wife. He – or she – knew Rachel was a snapper, knew it would send her over the top.”
Drake found the idea appealing. “It makes a lot of sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s the truth. The police will have a way to go before I can prove any of it.”
Jenner relaxed. “I’m not gonna pretend I like you, but Rachel tells me that you come across as a decent bloke. You’re giving her the benefit of the doubt. If you can find anything to back up what I’m saying, then I’ll give your girlfriend a formal statement.”
Drake nodded. “All right, Jenner. Let’s leave it at that for the time being. I’ll keep you posted if I find anything.” He drained his glass and got to his feet. “By the way, Sam Feyer isn’t my girlfriend.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
I’ll see you back in jail forever for what you did to her, you murdering bitch.
The text message had infuriated Rachel to something near boiling point. And it could only be from one source: Marc bastard Shawforth.
It had been a fairly good day. After the interrogation with DCI Feyer and Paul Czarniak she’d had lunch with Hayley in the Duke of York, and when her lawyer went back to her office, Rachel called at the Job Centre from where she attended an interview – the second since her return to Landshaven – this time for the position of relief kiosk attendant at Iggy’s Amusements, one of the largest on the promenade. The woman in charge recognised her right away and turned her down on the spot.
By chance she bumped into John as he was making his way from The Trafalgar to The Fisherman’s Rest. They had a couple of drinks and she began to remember what had first attracted her to him. They went back to his hotel – the Esplanade, further along the seafront – for an afternoon snack, he sneaked her up to his room so they could ‘talk’ and inevitably they ended up in his bed.
And it was so satisfying. After four years with nothing to keep her company other than her fingertips, full sex sent her into orbit.
Afterwards, John tried once again to persuade her to join him in Middlesbrough, but she refused… letting him down gently this time, in view of their joint exercise.
“I won’t, John. Not yet. Not until I get my name cleared.”
He was annoyed. She could tell that, but she promised him that she would reconsider the moment the police proved her innocent. From there, she went on her way while he returned to the hotel bar.
A good day, with only the one black cloud – the news that her old service pistol had been used to kill Alex Walston.
And then came the text message. It was about seven o’clock when she received it, and she tried to ignore it. Hayley urged her to forget it but the words kept coming back to her.
I’ll see you back in jail forever for what you did to her, you murdering bitch.
At 8:45, still blazing mad and disregarding Hayley’s advice, she climbed onto a bus, determined to confront Shawforth.
Stanhead village lay a couple of miles outside Landshaven. A small, exclusive hamlet, where public transport was patchy and infrequent, and even though Hayley had loaned her money, the fare was an expense Rachel could ill afford. But drink only fuelled her determination, and it was time to bring the snotty MP to book for a crime which he could have committed, but was determined to lay at her door.
It was a few minutes past nine when she got off the bus in the village, and walked further on, until the last of the cottages had disappeared (along with the sidewalk) and the final 200 yards to the barred, white gates of Shawforth’s grand house.
The last bus back to Landshaven was at 9:45, which would get her back to the bus station at a few minutes past ten, but she would have to be quick or face a much further walk back to town, but the bloodlust burning within her would not give her any peace until she had put him in his place.
She reached between the lower bars, unhooked the gate, and pushed open the smaller half, marched through, and along to the front of the house. The paved drive turned across the front, and circled to the rear, where the car(s) were parked. She knew the place well from the days when she and Barbara were besties, and she had no need of the rear entrance. Instead she strode to the front door, and rang the bell.
It was the portly Stan Gregory, Shawforth’s general factotum, who eventually answered, and when he opened the door, partly silhouetted in the light from behind, he scowled down at her.
“What do you want?”
“I want to talk to the organ grinder, not the monkey. Get your boss out here.”
“Now listen—”
“Are you deaf or just daft? Get that dickhead out here now, before I deck you and go looking for him.”
“Wait there.”
&
nbsp; He deliberately closed the door on her, leaving her waiting in the damp night. To Rachel it seemed like many minutes passed and she was conscious of wanting to make that last bus back to Landshaven, but it was probably only a matter of a minute before the door opened again, and Shawforth stood framed in the light.
He was dressed in a pair of jogging pants and a loose-fitting shirt, the sleeves rolled back from his wrists.
“What the bloody hell are you doing here?” His tone was as dismissive of her as she was scornful of him. “Go away before I call the police.”
She held up her mobile. “Send me one more text like this, and I’ll be the one calling the cops. I never touched your fucking wife. I wouldn’t. Unlike you, she was a decent human being. She didn’t deserve what happened to her. If you carry on harassing me, I’ll see you in court.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now, clear off.”
“I’m talking about you murdering Barbara and trying to pin it on me, you prick. One of these days, Shawforth, the truth will come out, and I’ll be the one laughing while you go down for the rest of your life. Now leave me alone.”
With hindsight, a less inebriated Rachel would have anticipated his next move, but it took her completely by surprise when he lashed out with the flat of his hand, and struck her across the cheek.
It was the final straw. Did he really imagine she had spent fifteen years in the police service, and four years in the hostile environment of a women’s prison without learning how to look after herself?
She clenched her right fist, and threw it at him. It struck the side of his face with an audible thud, and Shawforth sank to the mosaic tiles of the porch.
He was stunned, his eyes wide with shock as he stared up at her, and she hovered over him.
“If you ever lay a finger on me again, you bastard, I’ll send you to join your slut wife six feet under.”
Shawforth was in terror of her next move, but she was satisfied with his reaction. She straightened up, turned, and marched away.
All the way to the gate, she kept one eye over her shoulder, watching for him or Gregory coming after her, but there was no sign of either of them.
Ten minutes later she stood at the bus stop in Stanhead village with a further twenty minutes to wait, and she kept a wary eye out for them, but once again, no one appeared.
Her cheek burned where he had slapped her, and as her anger subsided, she realised how poor her judgement had been. She should have taken the text message to the police. She should not have confronted him, she should not have assaulted him in that way, and she certainly should not have called her best friend a ‘slut’. Rightly or wrongly (and in her case it was the latter) she was the suspect, not him, and when he reported the issue to the police, as he undoubtedly would, she would be the one to face the music.
She climbed aboard the bus, showed her return ticket to the driver, and took a seat halfway along the aisle, on the left hand side, so as to hide the injury to her cheek. She need not have bothered. The bus would collect no other passengers all the way from Stanhead to Landshaven.
At exactly 9:45, the driver pulled away from the terminus, and Rachel knew what she had to do next.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Not long after she moved to Landshaven, Sam bought a recently built, semi-detached house, in the middle of a street of such places just off Fraisby Road.
It was fronted by a neatly trimmed lawn, had a carport to the left of the front door, in which her car was parked. It was a compact, two-bedroomed place perfect for a woman who lived alone and entertained only infrequently.
Carrying a bottle of supermarket red wine, Drake rang the doorbell a couple of minutes after half past seven, and Sam, clad in a pair of jeans and a dark blue, flouncy top, opened the door and let him in.
He, too, was dressed casually, as she had insisted, wearing jeans and a loose-fitting, short-sleeved shirt, topped by a gilet (expedient, he would say, because he needed the pocket space for his car keys, wallet, phone, etc.)
Inviting him to make himself comfortable in the front room, she poured beers and joined him. “The food will be about half an hour.”
The place was modestly furnished, but all the pieces had that air of newness about them. A comfortable, brown leather, three-seater settee faced a mock fireplace, and a matching recliner chair, stood alongside the fire. In the corner, beneath the window was a forty-inch, flatscreen television, which stared blankly out at them. Beneath it was a hard drive recorder, and a separate, DVD player. Behind Drake, stood a mahogany display unit, filled with photographs, most of them covering Sam’s twenty-year career in the police, but with family pictures of her brother, mother and father, but curiously – or maybe not so curious – none of her and her ex-husband. Alongside the unit, was a hi-fi setup, one of those which had been popular before the advent of MP3 players.
“I told Frank that I was taking the night off. Short of a major incident, he’s in charge. And I’ll tell you now, any discussion on Rachel Jenner, Alex Walston, Barbara Shawforth, the general crime levels in Landshaven is banned. I’m not gonna spend the evening talking shop.”
Drake gave her a mock round of applause. “Good girl. One of the problems of living with a parliamentarian is when the old man’s home, he does nothing but talk politics.” He sipped his beer. “It’ll be difficult to avoid the subject of the police. You’ve spent most of your working life on the thin blue line, and I lived with Becky for years.”
Sam settled into the recliner with her glass, flooded with tonic. “Recent problems aside, I’ve had an excellent career, and it’s partly thanks to you that I’m still doing it, but if things get much worse, I’ll give them my notice.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “And do what? Sam, if I cut your leg off, I’d find the word police stamped all the way through like a stick of Landshaven rock.”
She wagged a humorously disapproving finger at him. “You don’t know how much compensation they paid me. I could retire tomorrow and work as a private detective. Or even take the job at Sainsbury’s I threatened to take when I was in Peace Garden.” She, too, laughed. “Do you remember that?”
“I even offered to recommend you for the job.”
The conversation remained similarly light-hearted throughout a meal of melon starter followed by lamb cutlets with new potatoes and green vegetables, served in a red wine sauce, but Drake declined dessert while Sam indulged her appetite with a small dish of fruit cocktail and a single scoop of vanilla ice cream. Afterwards, she made coffee and they returned to the living room, where they continued to small talk, reminiscing over past adventures, some hair-raising, others amusing, yet others risqué.
And throughout the evening, Drake felt a barely suppressed anticipation, and he suspected Sam was going through the same emotion, judging by the way she laughed at some of his saucy tales.
He instinctively knew that she would not let him leave, but with the clock registering a quarter to ten, he put down his coffee cup, and rose. “Sam, it’s been absolutely wonderful, but it’s time I was making my way back to the hotel and let you get some sleep.”
She leapt to her feet, threw her arms around his neck, locked her lips on his and pressed him back to the settee. Working on automatic pilot, his right hand sought her left breast, and as the heat rose, she broke the kiss.
Her voice was not much more than a hoarse whisper. “You don’t get out of this house until you get out of me, and you don’t get out of me until I’ve had enough of you.”
***
Spent.
Wrapped in his powerful arms, Sam luxuriated in her memories of what had been one of her most satisfying experiences in many months.
During the time she spent at his father’s farmhouse in Howley, they had passed occasional nights together, but sex was perfunctory, not much more than a need to quell the libido. Oh, he satisfied her all right, and he took his own satisfaction, but every episode (and there were not many) was tainted with feelings of guilt
. He should not be enjoying a woman so soon after the brutal murder of his partner, and she should not be taking Becky’s place in his bed.
Tonight it was different. Tonight he had given – and taken – yielding to the full force of the urgent need for each other. He still grieved for Becky. He would do so for a long time to come, but he had moved past the stage of guilt (other than the inescapable feeling that he should have been there to protect her) and that slight loosening up of the reins, that increased freedom to indulge his body’s demands, coupled to her desperate need for release from the pressures of police work, produced a burning lust that carried them to an alternate universe, where all that mattered was their conjoined bodies, and the craving for orgasm which, when it came, was almost transcendental.
Soon, she knew, the urge would take them again, and she had no doubt that they would be carried off to that same semi-spiritual realm, but for now she was content to lay there, let her pounding heart settle, lie comfortably naked in his arms, her head resting on his breast, while he ran gentle fingertips up and down her back.
“How do you do that?”
He stirred. “Do what?”
“Every time we have sex, you blow my mind.”
He chuckled. “The first time we met, I told you I was incredibly fit and good-looking. What would you expect?”
With a laugh, Sam pulled herself up, until her face was above his, she kissed him on the lips. “I don’t know whether you’re up to what I expect. Not just more of the same, but better.”
He rolled her over onto her back, rose above her, pressed his hand to her thighs and separated them.
“Your wish is my—”
The trill of her phone cut him off.
Sam cursed. “I told Frank that short of world war three, I didn’t want to be disturbed.”
The Frame - from the author of the Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) series (A Feyer and Drake Mystery Book 2) Page 21