Married Lies (Reissue)

by Chris Collett

  The Kerrigan family lived in the heart of the Nansen Road estate in one of the larger council houses. Michael senior was in the garden tinkering with an ancient motorcycle when they got there. Even though it was a cool day, he wore jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, his tattooed arms oily and a grimy bandana tied around his forehead. Pushing fifty, he was rangy and strong; not a man you’d want to run into in a dark alley. Millie could understand why Pam had felt intimidated.

  But Kerrigan seemed unperturbed to see them. ‘Mr Glover,’ he said, evenly. ‘This is a rare pleasure. What can I do for you, sir?’ Though he’d lived in the city for three decades the Irish accent was as strong as any Millie had heard. He picked up a filthy cloth and wiped his hands on it.

  ‘I hear congratulations are in order, Michael,’ said Glover, pleasantly. ‘You’ve got a new addition to the family.’

  Kerrigan beamed with what seemed like genuine pride. ‘I’ve still got it in me,’ he boasted.

  ‘What did the social services think?’ Glover asked.

  Kerrigan’s face clouded. ‘They had no feckin’ business coming here, and that feckin’ nurse had no right to send them in the forst place.’

  ‘She was only doing her job,’ Glover reasoned. ‘Making sure that your wife’s got all the help she needs.’

  ‘I give her help enough. She doesn’t want anyone else interfering.’ Kerrigan’s fists hung loose at his sides, but they clenched and the knuckles whitened.

  ‘You seem upset about that,’ Glover observed.

  ‘They have no right to come sticking their noses in, the social. It’s only because of who we are.’

  ‘It still bothers you, doesn’t it?’

  Kerrigan’s eyes narrowed quizzically.

  ‘Is that why you’re giving Lucy Jarrett a hard time?’

  Kerrigan squinted at Glover uncertainly.

  ‘I heard that you caused a scene outside the health centre a couple of weeks ago,’ Glover continued, and the penny dropped.

  ‘Ah, well, she deserved it,’ said Kerrigan, petulantly.

  ‘Did she deserve the phone calls too?’ Millie interceded. ‘Have you been trying to give her a scare?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You bitch, I’m going to make you suffer. It’s not very imaginative, Michael.’

  Kerrigan directed his confusion at Glover. ‘What the hell is she talkin’ about?’

  ‘So you haven’t taken it upon yourself to make nuisance phone calls to Lucy Jarrett’s house?’ Glover said. ‘We’ve got a witness who can put you in the vicinity of Mrs Jarrett’s home about three weeks ago.’

  ‘How the feck—?’ Kerrigan seemed mystified. ‘I don’t even know where the woman lives.’

  ‘You know where she works, though. It would have been easy enough to follow her home,’ Glover pointed out.

  ‘Oh, and I can run at forty miles an hour now, can I? In case you hadn’t noticed, Mr Glover, I don’t have a car.’

  ‘It doesn’t mean you can’t find one when you need it. Our witness saw someone fitting your description, including the accent, who says you were at Hill Crest three weeks ago on a Thursday at about nine thirty a.m., asking where Lucy Jarrett lives.’

  ‘I’ve told you,’ Kerrigan insisted. ‘I don’t even know where that is.’

  ‘Let me refresh your memory then. It’s the estate off the Bristol Road, just down from the college.’

  Kerrigan thought for a moment. ‘Ah, I know the one. The big posh houses. Yeah, I was there. Can’t remember when it was though.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’ Glover asked.

  ‘Knocking doors,’ said Kerrigan. ‘Friend of mine came into a load of tarmac, so I was askin’ if anyone wanted their drive doin’. It was ages ago.’

  ‘Our witness says you were asking for Lucy Jarrett’s house.’

  ‘Well, your witness is wrong, Mr Glover. It wasn’t me he talked to. There was no one about, the place was like a bleedin’ ghost town, and anyway, I’m not anywhere at half nine in the morning. I don’t get up till after all the kids are off to school, maybe ten o’clock.’

  ‘Is there anyone who can back that up?’ Glover asked.

  ‘Do you mean is there anyone there in bed with me at that time? Now whatever would the wife think, Mr Glover?’

  ‘Have you got a computer, Mr Kerrigan?’ Millie asked.

  Kerrigan regarded her with suspicion. ‘Aye, the kiddies need it for their school work, but I know nothin’ about the thing.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Millie walked back to the car with Charlie Glover. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. ‘He’s admitted to being in that area.’

  ‘But not at that time of day,’ said Charlie. ‘And I can believe that. With his kind of lifestyle, I doubt very much that he’s up with the lark. And I don’t think he’s a vindictive man.’

  ‘But he is proud,’ Millie pointed out. ‘I can’t imagine he’d like what it would do to his reputation if it got around that social services had been in. You saw how tense he was about that.’

  ‘True,’ Glover conceded.

  ‘Do you think it’s worth a line-up?’

  ‘Trouble with that is that he’s admitted being on the estate. Your witness might well recognise him, but only because she’s seen him at a completely different time.’ Glover had a point. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t rule him out straightaway, but you’re going to need more than the circumstantial to bring him in.’

  * * *

  Still feeling unwell, Lucy Jarrett had left work early and arrived home late on Monday afternoon to find another package on the doorstep. She groaned inwardly. Mostly this was just becoming tiresome now. She picked up the long, narrow cardboard box, which was surprisingly lightweight, its label announcing that it had come from Guernsey. Taking it into the kitchen, she actually considered consigning it straight to the bin, but realised that Millie would probably want to see it. Then she remembered Alice, who had started out with her as a health visitor and had moved to the Channel Islands just a few months ago; it must be genuine after all. With some relief she snipped open the tape and lifted off the lid. She cried out, involuntarily. Inside were six roses, dried, withered and obscene like tiny skeletons, lying side by side in a miniature coffin. There was a sheet of paper wrapped around them which Lucy gingerly removed, and on it was one of her own wedding photos, her face obliterated by the frenzied scribble of a black marker pen. The typed caption underneath read: a flower that isn’t nurtured withers and dies. I’m going to make sure it happens to you. Happy Anniversary.

  Bright lights flashed behind Lucy’s eyes and she felt faint, bile rising suddenly in her throat again. Thank God for the downstairs cloakroom. When the retching had finished she threw cold water on her face and looked up into the mirror. Wither and die? It was already happening. Her skin was grey and her cheeks sunken. Lately she’d had to start wearing a belt with her favourite jeans, to keep them up. This week alone, three different people had asked her if she was all right. When she lifted the phone she was barely able to control the tremor in her hand.

  Millie had already left, so Lucy got through to her voicemail. The message was simple: ‘DC Khatoon, it’s Lucy Jarrett. Something else came today.’

  * * *

  Millie picked up the message first thing on Tuesday morning and went straight out to see Lucy. She looked unwell, as she had the day before. ‘Are you sure you’re not sickening for something?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Lucy said, wearily. ‘I do feel lousy and I’ve been sick again this morning.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘I’ve got a doctor’s appointment in an hour.’

  ‘You’re not—?’ Millie began, asking the obvious.

  ‘Oh God, no,’ Lucy was horrified. ‘Could you imagine? I think Will would kill me.’

  Millie wondered if she realised what she had just said. She followed Lucy through to the kitchen where the box lay on the table.

  ‘Where is Will?’ Millie asked.

  ‘They’re over in Lincoln
shire tonight, he’ll be back tomorrow. He called this morning. I think he’s forgiven me.’

  ‘For what? For being afraid and asking for help?’ Millie was incredulous. ‘You shouldn’t let him make you feel bad about that.’

  ‘I know. How did it go with Michael Kerrigan?’

  ‘Well, he has admitted to being here on the estate, though not at the time we were told. He said he was canvassing for work though, laying tarmac drives.’

  ‘Maybe he was.’ Lucy got up and went over to the kitchen drawer. She sorted through some leaflets. ‘I had this through the door a couple of weeks ago.’ She passed Millie a roughly printed leaflet offering just those services, complete with a mobile number. Taking out her phone, Millie tapped in the digits. It rang a few times, then the unmistakable voice of Michael Kerrigan cut in, inviting her to leave a message.

  ‘So, he has been around here. Perhaps he already knew which house was yours,’ Millie said. ‘But we’d need more evidence to bring him in. Did you mention to his wife that you weren’t planning children?’

  ‘I might have done — I really don’t remember. And what about these?’ Lucy pushed the box across to Mille. Just looking at it put a catch in her throat.

  Millie carefully lifted the lid. ‘What’s the anniversary?’ she asked, examining the ruined picture.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s too soon to be Will’s and mine. I’ve racked my brains but I can’t think of anything else.’

  ‘Who would have had access to your wedding photos?’

  ‘Lots of people,’ said Lucy. ‘We had them put online and when we sent out thank you cards for gifts we put the web address inside the card. Anyone who had that address could have accessed the photos and printed off what they wanted. I gave the address to a couple of other people who wanted to see them, too.’

  ‘Kerrigan’s wife?’ Millie asked.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t have given it to her. I hardly know her.’

  ‘I’ll need the name of the photographer, and a list of your wedding guests.’

  ‘I’ll get them for you.’ Moments later Lucy was back with a business card. ‘The list of wedding guests is saved in my email account, I’ll just need to print them off.’

  * * *

  When Millie returned to Granville Lane armed with the information Lucy had given her, CID was still pretty deserted. The first thing she did at her desk was to phone the wedding photographers. They couldn’t tell her there and then who had accessed Lucy Jarrett’s photographs but promised to find out and get back to her later in the day.

  Millie looked up and called a greeting as Tony Knox came in. Walking past her desk to get to his own, he stopped in his tracks. ‘What’ve you got there?’ he asked, looking at the flower box in its evidence bag.

  ‘Lucy Jarrett got sent them yesterday,’ Millie said. ‘Charming, aren’t they?’

  But Knox was just staring at them.

  ‘What is it?’

  Ignoring the question, Knox went over to his own desk and sorted through the mess of paper until he came up with a copy of Nina Silvero’s florist’s card. ‘Snap,’ he said, slapping it down next to Lucy Jarrett’s box. ‘Soon as the boss gets in we need to talk.’

  * * *

  Mariner spent the drive in to Granville Lane playing over in his head the fiasco at the weekend. Kat had stayed out until late again last night, and they had stepped carefully around each other once more at breakfast. Then, just as he was leaving she’d fixed him with those huge grey eyes and said: ‘I think I like to get my own place.’ His pathetic response had been a smile, at least he hoped that was how it had looked, and: ‘Sure, we’ll talk about it.’ And after that he’d escaped as fast as he could. She hated him, he thought — him and his assumptions.

  Millie would probably know what to do, but when he walked into CID, his DS and DC were clearly waiting for him with urgent issues of their own. Along with three strong coffees, he called them both into his office. Millie showed him the flowers that Lucy Jarrett had received. ‘Tony says we need to discuss these but won’t say why,’ she said.

  Taking the box in its evidence bag, Mariner turned it over in his hands. ‘Birmingham post mark,’ he said, to no one in particular. He glanced up at Millie. ‘We haven’t got Nina Silvero’s flowers, and Rachel never saw them, but from her description they sound identical . . .’

  ‘And this is definitely the same message.’ Knox held up the card and the picture for comparison.

  Mariner was still trying to absorb this development. ‘Christ, this is too close to be pure coincidence.’

  Millie gaped. ‘These cases are linked?’

  ‘How else do we explain it?’ said Knox.

  ‘I didn’t think much of it at the time,’ Mariner said. ‘It seemed almost incidental, but Rachel Hordern said her stepmother had some funny phone calls about this time last year, and then she received the flowers.’

  ‘Well, Lucy Jarrett has been getting the funny phone calls, and now she’s had the flowers.’ Millie paled. ‘God, does that mean someone’s planning for her to meet the same end as Nina Silvero?’

  ‘Let’s stay calm about this,’ Mariner said. ‘Even if they are, we might have a bit of time. For Nina Silvero there was a gap of a year between the flowers and her murder, though God alone knows what that means. But I’m not aware of anything else that links these two women.’ A glance at his sergeant and constable confirmed that neither were they. ‘We need to think about who we’ve got in the frame for each of these and try to find some kind of connection.’ Standing up, Mariner went over to the window and pushed it open a couple of inches. ‘Make yourselves comfortable, we may be here a while.’

  ‘We should get Charlie in on this too,’ Millie said, seeing Charlie Glover out in the bull pen, at his desk. ‘He’s got previous experience of one of my POIs.’

  ‘We could certainly do with the extra brain power,’ Mariner said, and summoned Glover into the meeting, explaining briefly where they were up to. Then he turned to Millie. ‘Talk us through what you’ve got so far.’

  Millie cleared her throat. ‘As you know, the main thing I’ve been investigating is nuisance phone calls, post and emails — and the possibility that someone might be following Lucy Jarrett. I still haven’t ruled out her husband. He remains the person with the most opportunity to set everything up, and if we acknowledge the possibility that he and Tess Maguire have got something going on, he’s also got the motive.’ She glanced up at Charlie. ‘We also have an Irish connection. About three weeks ago an Irishman was on Lucy’s estate asking where exactly she lived. Leigh Hawkins’ band is essentially Irish. But there’s only circumstantial evidence so far. We found nothing incriminating on Will’s computer. Max is trying to locate the source of all the spam emails Lucy has been getting, so that might tell us more. And Asheville police have put Will in the clear; he’s not known to them in relation to any criminal activity.’

  ‘Mr Squeaky Clean,’ Knox remarked.

  ‘That’s how it seems,’ Millie agreed.

  ‘And no connection with Nina Silvero that springs to mind,’ added Mariner. ‘I can’t think how their paths might have crossed. The women are different ages, live in different parts of the city, with different careers. I can’t imagine Nina Silvero being a big folk fan — I seem to remember her CD collection being mostly classical works, though we can easily check with Rachel.’

  ‘Rachel has a new baby, and Lucy’s a health visitor,’ Knox said. ‘Could it be professional?’

  Mariner shook his head. ‘The Horderns have lived in Somerset since before Harry was born.’

  ‘Also if Will’s motive is to get his hands on half of Lucy’s worldly goods, where does Nina Silvero come in?’ said Millie. ‘The only possibility might be that Nina knew what he was up to but given that there’s no evidence they even knew each other, that doesn’t stand up.’

  ‘What about the jealous friend?’ Mariner asked.

  Millie was doubtful. ‘No, I’m not sure about Julie-Ann. She w
as round the other night, and she and Lucy seemed pretty close.’

  ‘So who else have you got?’

  ‘Well, if the mysterious Irishman isn’t a band member, there’s also Michael Kerrigan.’

  Mariner leaned forward, suddenly interested. ‘I know that name,’ he said.

  ‘He’s on our books for past misdemeanours,’ Glover said. ‘I’ve had a couple of run-ins with him, and he didn’t take kindly to Lucy’s referral to social services. He admits to having been on Lucy’s estate looking for work resurfacing drives, but not at the time our witness says.’

  ‘Could she be mistaken?’ asked Mariner.

  ‘We’re talking weeks ago so yes, she could,’ Millie said.

  ‘Nina Silvero’s drive had been recently tarmacked,’ Mariner recalled. ‘It was still sticky.’

  ‘But what’s the motive, boss?’ Knox asked. ‘At a stretch I can see why Kerrigan might have had reason to be annoyed with Lucy Jarrett. And perhaps he did a new drive for Nina Silvero, but what possible motive could he have for such a malicious attack on her?’

  ‘Maybe she made some derogatory comment about travellers,’ Glover speculated. ‘He’s pretty touchy about stuff like that.’

  ‘He wouldn’t kill her for it though,’ Knox said.

  ‘I can’t see Nina Silvero inviting him into the house either,’ said Millie.

  ‘Or Kerrigan as a Chardonnay drinker, for that matter,’ Glover conceded.

  They sat in silence for a moment, thinking.

  ‘Okay, let’s approach this from another angle,’ said Mariner. ‘What have we got for Nina Silvero. Tony, can you run through it for us?’

  ‘Well, if we start with opportunity again, the most likely candidates are her stepdaughter Rachel and partner in the dance school, Susan Brady,’ Knox said. ‘They’re the ones who had most to gain from the will, and they’re the ones who would have had easiest access. We also know that Rachel quarrelled with her stepmother just a couple of weeks ago. She’s given us her version of events on the evening that Nina died; that she was on the phone to her mother when the unknown visitor arrived, but since no one seems to have seen this person, we only have Rachel’s word for it. Hordern and Brady could be in it together, with Brady carrying out the murder. They looked pretty tight at the funeral even though they’d denied having anything much to do with each other, and Brady is definitely someone Nina Silvero would have invited in.’