by Jo Allen
*
Randolph Flett wasn’t what he had expected. A man who took on Max Sumner in business and beat him, even if he were ultimately defeated, should have been a man of strength and aggression. A man who seduced his rival’s wife from under his nose should have given off more than a whiff of testosterone. But Randolph Flett, sitting quietly at the table with a uniformed police officer keeping him company and a polystyrene cup of coffee for sustenance, was anything but threatening. True, he was a big man, but his broad shoulders were hunched forwards over the coffee cup in a gesture of submission, and his red bearded chin dipped into his chest.
Jude’s first thought, as he strode into the room with Ashleigh in his wake, was that Flett might be physically capable of carrying a boy, drugged or otherwise, from Howtown to Burnbanks.
‘Mr Flett. Good morning. I’m DCI Satterthwaite and this is DS O’Halloran. We have some questions to ask you.’ He looked around. ‘You don’t have a solicitor?’
Flett got to his feet and held out a large hand, for all the world as if this were a social get together. His handshake was weak. ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector. Good morning, Sergeant. I was offered a solicitor. I declined the offer.’
Jude flicked on the recorder. ‘Are you quite sure? This is a serious matter. I would encourage you to get some kind of legal representation. We can wait, if you have a solicitor who you’d like to call, or we can—’
‘I have no need of a solicitor. I’ve done nothing wrong and so no harm will come to me. Nature is just and I expect her to deal with me fairly.’
The uniformed constable’s eyebrows shot up. Jude, understanding exactly how he felt but keeping himself under control, merely indicated to him to step outside and, in turning, saw Ashleigh’s lips twitch in amusement. This wasn’t starting well. ‘You can change your mind at any point.’ He pulled up a chair, then rattled through the required information on names, time and location before he could begin the interview. ‘You’ve been told why you’re here?’
‘I’ve been told that I’m to be questioned in connection with the murder of Dawn Sumner and her boy.’ Flett’s fingers twitched in the only show of emotion he seemed capable of. ‘Of course, I’m innocent.’ He raised his eyes and looked at Ashleigh then Jude, and his gaze was cool, empty and impassive, like a mural of a face in primary colours on a brick wall.
‘Then I think you’ll agree that natural justice doesn’t always play out in favour of the innocent.’ It was no wonder Max Sumner held him in such contempt. Jude disliked the man on sight. ‘Unless you think that Mrs Sumner and Greg are somehow to blame for what happened to them.’
‘Mr Flett.’ Ashleigh, thank God, had more sense than he did, and was able to harness it in a more practical way. There were some suspects who needed the bad cop to get them to talk. Flett, sitting like a statue and treating Jude to his stonewall stare, wasn’t one of them. He would bat back aggression all day long.
‘I’m sure you’ll be able to help us,’ she said, challenging his reticence with her brightest stare. ‘I’m sure you’re prepared to answer questions honestly. It’ll help everybody. And justice will be served. We can work together on that.’
Flett nodded at that, and Jude sat back a little. He’d never have thought to take that line, and he couldn’t have carried it off if he had. Whether it would work was a different matter.
‘Go on, Sergeant. You can ask.’
‘Why don’t you start by telling us about your relationship with Dawn Sumner?’
‘I doubt if I can tell you anything you don’t know. Dawn was my wife. I loved her very much.’ His expression became thoughtful. ‘If you knew Dawn, you’d understand that.’
‘I did know her. I met her after her son died, and it was obvious to me that she was a good person.’
‘Dawn was full of love. She loved everybody. She was kind to everyone, saw the best in them. Everyone who knew her, loved her. We met at university and we were married young, but that didn’t matter. While I was married to her, I tried to make her happy.’
‘I’m sure you did.’ For a moment, Jude thought Ashleigh was going to do what she’d done with Dawn and take Flett’s hands, but she didn’t.
‘For a time I worked hard to give her everything she wanted, and even things she didn’t want.’ Flett’s story came out as a monotone, like a practised confession drawn from him by torture. ‘In those days I thought that material things were what counted. Looking back, I see that I drove myself too hard. The money became the most important thing. I struggled. I suffered from mental health issues and was too proud to get help. It was a mad time, a time when I was possessed by greed and vanity. I struggled to cope and despite Dawn’s efforts to help me I was too angry with everyone. Eventually, I lashed out at the world. I hit her.’
‘Once?’
You saw this too often, but the cause was no justification for the action. Jude fought to conceal his feelings, grateful that Ashleigh, at least, managed to rustle up some sympathy.
‘Just once. Once was enough. I’d made the woman I loved afraid of me. She met and married my former business partner, and, although they struggled financially, she was happy with him. Of course I resented it and, three years ago, karma paid me a visit. Max Sumner drove me into bankruptcy and took over my business, and I saw Dawn become happy and comfortable on the proceeds of the business I’d built up, thinking it would make her happy with me. Some call it irony, but I know it was karma.’ He shook his head. ‘Karma visits us all, eventually, Sergeant.’
Or justice, Jude thought. One or the other would get you in the end, and he knew which one his money was on. He intervened. ‘What happened after that takeover, Mr Flett?’
‘I had the mental breakdown I’d been fighting against all that time. But with that breakdown came a revelation. I became a Buddhist and through that I found internal peace. Money doesn’t matter to me any longer. Like all Buddhists, I take my comfort from the Three Refuges of my faith – the Buddha, the fully enlightened one. The Dharma, his teachings. And the Sangha, those teachers who have gone before. Three has always been my lucky number.’ He bowed his head for a moment, then reached for his coffee. ‘So you see, Sergeant, I didn’t kill Dawn Sumner or her innocent child. I have nothing to gain from it and it’s against my religion. If anything, my current situation is a punishment for my crimes.’ And he sat back and smiled.
‘But it isn’t against your principles to see a married woman without the knowledge of her husband?’ Jude leaned forward now, to join in. ‘You don’t deny that you were seeing her?’
‘My vows to Dawn were until death parted us. I still regard her as my wife.’
‘Even though she was married to another man – and loved him?’
‘I’ve told you. Dawn was full of love. She gave her husband all the love he needed and yet she had plenty to spare for others. And she never stopped loving me.’
Dawn had been wearing a wedding ring when she was found but it wasn’t the one Max had given her. That had been on the bedside table at the Windermere house.
‘So the two of you were having an affair?’ Ashleigh took over.
Flett turned his glazed stare on her. ‘I never regarded our marriage as over, and I don’t believe she did.’
‘You were seeing her all that time?’
‘Not often. But whenever I was in Liverpool, I would try and see Dawn. Yes. And if I knew she was in Windermere we would meet.’
‘Did you ever meet her son?’
‘When Greg was younger, she’d bring him with her if we met in public.’
‘And when did you last see her?’
Flett stopped to think about that. ‘It was about three weeks ago. I met her in Liverpool. We were always careful when we communicated. I’d send her letters, pretending they were from an old school friend.’
‘Did you ever send her text messages?’
‘When I wasn’t able to write to her, for whatever reason. But that was rare.’
‘When was the last time
you texted her?’
He shrugged. ‘A few weeks ago. Texts are easily traceable, Sergeant. Max would have gone mad with her, and she’d already married one violent man. Do you think I’m so stupid as to put the woman I love in harm’s way?’
Jude wasn’t the only one to see through the veneer. Ashleigh leaned forward. ‘And yet, Mr Flett, you were prepared to have an affair with her, knowing that by so doing you might put her at risk?’
He didn’t like that, drawing a long, furious breath and turning on her. ‘I think karma will visit you, Sergeant, one day soon. If you judge others on their morality, you need to be clear on your own.’
‘I’m not judging you at all. I understand that you loved her. You must have done, if you were prepared to take the risk that affair involved.’
‘It was Dawn who chose to take that risk. I warned her. But she still came to me.’
He was lying. Ashleigh knew it, too; Jude could tell by the suppressed sigh, by the picking at that curl, by the way she looked away from Flett and out of the window before looking back. And it was clear, too, that, however peaceful he had become or claimed to have become, Randolph Flett was at bottom a man with a single minded mission and that mission had been focussed on Dawn Sumner.
But if he had killed her – why had he done it?
‘It’s so obvious that you loved her.’ Ashleigh was cajoling him now. ‘Can you tell us something else, something that might help clear you? Where have you been over the last two weeks?’
‘That’s easy.’ Yes, he definitely relaxed. From here, at least, he was on comfortable ground, a man who regarded facts as more faithful friends than emotions. ‘I’ve been on a retreat.’
‘A retreat?’
‘Yes. My misdemeanours haven’t left me with much, but I have a cottage. Every year I spend a fortnight there, alone. I contemplate my life. I contemplate the Dharma. I seek enlightenment. I speak to no one. I tell no one where I’m going. I live off simple food, I walk for hours at a time in the hills. I contemplate life and I contemplate eternity. I completed my retreat yesterday and felt ready to return to the world.’
‘Where is your cottage? Near here?’
‘Very near. It’s in Swindale.’
Jude jumped up and opened the door to the interview room. ‘Constable. Could you rustle me up a map of Haweswater and Shap?’ Coming back in, he sat down again. ‘That’s very interesting. You were there for two whole weeks?’
‘I never left the dale, Chief Inspector, although I walked in it every day for hours. And when I left the cottage early this morning to drive home, I discovered that my car was missing. I walked down towards Rosgill and reported it stolen at the first place I came to.’
‘Can you prove you were there the whole time?’
‘I don’t believe I can. You’ll have to take me on trust.’
‘It isn’t my job to take people on trust. Let me reiterate. We’re investigating the murders of two people, one of them a child and one of them a woman you profess to love. By refusing to co-operate with this investigation, even if you’re innocent as you say you are, you’re contributing to allowing the guilty person – or persons – to get away. Does that square with your conscience?’
That blank stare turned against him once more. ‘My conscience is clear. If I’m punished for this, it’ll be in place of any justice I may previously have escaped.’
Ashleigh poured herself a glass of water as the constable tapped on the door and handed in an Ordnance Survey map. She’d kept her tone friendly, but Jude could sense her frustration.
He unfolded the map and spread it out on the table. ‘Okay. Perhaps to start with you’d like to show me where exactly this cottage is.’
‘Surely.’ The man – slightly short-sighted, it appeared – leaned forward, placing a long thin finger on the map, moving it up and down. ‘Here.’
That was miles from anywhere. ‘Could anyone have seen you, there?’
‘I was meditating.’ Flett stroked his beard with his forefinger. ‘I consciously avoided other people. I left my phone in the car. I saw no one and spoke to no one, and I feel much the better for it.’
‘Where did you park your car?’
‘Here, at the bottom of the track. I walked with my bags a mile up to the house, and I walked a mile back. I took the bare minimum with me. I never saw the car from the day I arrived and I didn’t look for it. Because I always thought that this was an honest part of the country.’
‘And where did you meet Dawn when you were here?’ Ashleigh leaned forward, chin on hands, elbows on the table as Flett’s finger flipped away from Swindale and on to the other side of the map.
‘Here.’ He jabbed a finger down on Low Wood.
‘When did you last see her, and where?’
‘A few weeks ago, in Liverpool. I last saw her here one weekend at Easter.’
‘Would it surprise you to know that this was the place where Dawn Sumner’s body was found?’ Astonishingly, Ashleigh had allowed herself to get angry. Jude suppressed a smile. It might not be professional, but she was in there fighting for the dead woman.
He dipped his head. ‘I grieve for Dawn.’
‘And that your car was spotted on CCTV leaving Windermere on the night of her murder?’
He flinched.
‘And that your car was also spotted in Howtown, here.’ She jabbed her finger down on the map. ‘Just a short walk, for someone like you, from where Greg Sumner’s body was found?’
‘Fate clearly sees fit to punish me for other people’s misdeeds.’
‘Other people’s misdeeds? Doesn’t it occur to you that you’re actually facilitating other people’s misdeeds? That if you’re innocent, and you allow yourself to become the victim of a miscarriage of justice for some unknown sin you think you may have committed in a past life, then you allow the perpetrator of these two crimes to go free?’
‘Justice is a natural concept, not a social one, Sergeant. And I have my own soul to think about, not other people’s.’
‘Okay.’ Jude had had enough. If the man had managed to rile Ashleigh, then there was no more to be gained from the process, and he was better getting out of there before he lost his temper. ‘I think we’ll end this interview here. We can resume it a little later. In the meantime, I really do advise you to find a solicitor and I’m sure he or she will recommend that you co-operate with us, for your own good.’
‘I’ve said everything I have to say. I won’t be saying any more.’
‘One last question. Why did you pay someone to hire a camper van to drive up to Burnbanks on Sunday and to deliver a wooden box there?’
Flett stared back at them, his face blank. And he smiled, and shook his head.
28
‘I’m going to have him charged.’ Jude stalked along the corridor, his brows knitted in fury. ‘The bastard. Who does he think he is? I’ve come across some weird people in my time but never someone like that.’
Ashleigh, walking beside him, struggled to keep up. ‘Jude. Stop and think for a moment. There’s something very wrong in this.’
‘Too right, there is.’ Jude flung open the door to the incident room and indicated to Doddsy to come over and join them at the table next to his desk.
The inspector jumped to his feet immediately, ending the phone call in which he was engaged, and came across. ‘Any success?’
‘No. I’ve interviewed some reluctant suspects in my time, but I’ve never met one as sanctimonious as that. All that bloody spiritual claptrap. Natural justice? Give me strength!’
‘Lots of people believe in what you think is spiritual claptrap, Jude.’ Doddsy’s voice was full of gentle reproach. ‘I do, for one.’
‘Yes, and Ashleigh does too.’ His eyes were on her and there was warmth in them. ‘But the two of you at least manage to channel it into something practical. And as for his customised version of Buddhism, the kindest thing I can say about it is that it’s confused.’
‘Religion is something a lo
t of people make up as they go along.’ Ashleigh gave him an agonised look. Throughout the interview, she’d sensed the line his thoughts were taking, and now he’d made his mind up.
‘As is the spiritual nonsense you prattled on to Dawn Sumner about. It’s mostly harmless. But that man has something to hide. His story is full of holes.’
‘He wasn’t at all like I expected.’ Ashleigh tapped her fingers on the table. And he wasn’t. Though she’d tried her hardest to get through to him, he’d batted everything back at her when she’d offered him chances to save himself. He was a deeply unpleasant man, a powerful and manipulative one, but at bottom there was a twisted nobility about him that confounded her. Randolph Flett’s spiritualism might be misguided – but he was prepared to suffer for it.
‘He’s a liar.’ Jude, in frustration, clenched his fist and crashed it on the table. ‘Doddsy. I want him charged. I need you to—’
‘Jude.’ Ashleigh folded her hands in front of her, just as her former headmistress used to do when she needed to assert her authority, and raised her voice. ‘You can’t.’
‘Why not? The evidence is all there. He’s been identified as the man who paid a couple to drive a camper van up to Burnbanks that sent us chasing after a red herring and wasted a huge amount of time and effort. His car was at Howtown, the only place where Greg’s killer could realistically have gone when he left Burnbanks after setting the fire. He knew the boy. His car was seen going towards the place where his mistress was found murdered – a place he admits to having previously gone to meet her. He admits he was in the area at the time both murders were committed and the best he can offer us in the way of an alibi is that he didn’t see anyone. For two weeks? And the car. We’ll ask him about the car when I can bring myself to speak to him again, but you know how that looks.’
‘Yes. That’s how it looks.’ Ashleigh got up and crossed to the map, circling Flett’s cottage. The locations were close together and the web between them made sense. The distance between the cottage and the abandoned car was little more than that between Burnbanks and Howtown. ‘He could have abandoned the car in the lake and then taken off up over the hill. It isn’t far. The weather was good. We know he’s more than capable of covering that distance in that terrain, probably in less than a couple of hours, and he knows the area.’