by Anita Waller
Sue reached across the table and took Kat’s hand. ‘Then I’m pleased for you, Kat, I really am. I wasn’t even sure you would want to see me, but you’re exactly the same as when I first met you. Now, are we going to have a dessert?’
And the subject of Leon was effectively avoided.
Chapter Thirty-Two
‘So you’re telling me that I have a day off and Leon’s mother turns up? And out of the blue?’ Doris’s worry showed in her voice.
‘She did, but everything seemed amicable.’ Mouse tried to soothe her nan’s fears. ‘I think she’s here to finally meet Martha, and maybe lay some ghosts to rest. She seemed really nice.’
‘Huh. Ruth Ellis seemed really nice. They hung her.’
‘Oh, Nan.’
‘Don’t “oh Nan” me. You know I’m right. And why has she come without telling anyone?’
‘She says she didn’t want to put anybody out, she booked a hotel and a car, and she’s free to do whatever she wants without having to check with anybody.’
‘Exactly. And I bet she wants to see where her bloody son died; she’ll have Kat taking her there.’
‘Don’t swear, Nan.’ Mouse tried to hold in the laughter.
There was a growl down the phone. ‘You can bet your sweet life I’ll be in tomorrow. I want to see this woman for myself. What’s she like?’
‘Elegant. And quite beautiful, certainly doesn’t look as though she’s in her sixties, but she must be. I liked her.’
‘But you liked Anthony Jackson, so that doesn’t fill me with confidence that you like Sue Rowe. This is bad, Mouse, I can feel it.’
‘Nan, stop worrying. Kat can handle herself, she’s a big girl. And she’s got Carl. I’m going to have my cheese sandwich. That’s the substitute for the posh lunch Sue invited me to, then do another hour here before going upstairs. I’ll transfer the phone line to me, in case anybody desperately wants us.’
‘You’re saying she invited you as well? Why didn’t you go? You could have protected our Kat and Martha!’
‘Nan, they don’t need protecting. Sue is Martha’s nan, she’s not going to hurt her. Or Kat.’
There was silence for a moment, then Doris said, ‘Okay, see you tomorrow.’
Mouse disconnected, feeling the icicles coming down the line. She’d not known her nan to be like this before, even at the height of her own troubles with the Anthony Jackson murder. She shrugged it off, hoping she was right to do so.
Connection was closed by the time Kat drove everybody back to the office, so Sue headed towards her car after promising to ring Kat the next morning.
The invitation Kat extended for Sue to eat with them that evening was declined; the long flight had wiped her out so she was intent on having an early night.
Kat gave her a kiss. ‘It’s lovely to see you, Sue, honestly. I’ll keep myself available as much as I can for the week that you’re here so that Martha really gets to know you, and maybe you can have her all to yourself towards the end of the week, take her out for the day or something. Once she’s comfortable around you, she’ll be fine.’
‘That would be lovely.’ Sue smiled. She stroked Martha’s cheek. ‘She’s so beautiful, a baby to be proud of.’
Sue put the car into drive, and waved as she pulled away.
Kat turned and walked back to her own car, then drove home. It had been an unsettling day; she had got on really well with her ex mother-in-law, but an unease had been present all the time. Maybe they would have to talk about Leon sooner rather than later, get the subject out of the way.
They hadn’t even mentioned Alan’s death on the day they had buried Leon in Canada. She cursed herself – that should have been a priority, letting Sue know how much she had cared for Alan.
She reached home and took the flowers out of the boot that she had planned on putting on Craig Adams’ grave, but how could she have explained to Sue that Craig was possibly the first of Leon’s murder victims; she couldn’t.
Carl wasn’t home, and she sat on the floor with Martha, playing with toys. Martha was crawling, but in a weird fashion where most of her weight was on one knee. It made Kat laugh out loud, but Martha continued to practice, taking no notice of her insensitive mummy.
Kat bathed Martha, gave her a last bottle and put her to bed. Then she rang her mum.
It was obvious from the stilted conversation that Enid didn’t know what to say, until in the end, Kat said goodnight, and told Enid she would ring the following day.
Tessa and Hannah went home around five, but took work with them. They had made lists of people who had any sort of link, no matter how minor, with Orla, and took the compilations to work out their strategy for the reinterviews.
They worked until late in the night, each fuelled by a bottle of wine. But both had a comprehensive plan that they hoped would show up something, no matter how tiny, that they hadn’t picked up on first time around.
Sue arrived at Connection before eleven and was disappointed to see that Martha wasn’t there.
Kat smiled at the downcast look on Sue’s face. ‘She rarely comes into work with me. Mum and Dad have her most days at the moment, but when she starts walking she will be going to creche during the day. I can’t expect them to devote their retirement to bringing up a child, it wouldn’t be fair. Anyway, can I introduce you to Nan, also known as Doris Lester. She’s Mouse’s nan, but I’ve adopted her as mine. We couldn’t manage without her.’
Sue stepped forward, hand outstretched. ‘Pleased to meet you, Doris. Kat has mentioned you when we’ve chatted on the phone.’
Doris smiled and hoped that it didn’t show on her face that it was forced. The girls always told her that some of the things she said and did weren’t reflected in her eyes and on her face. Doris shook the hand offered, but then felt guilty. She knew she was judging this woman unfairly; Leon had turned out to be evil, but not because of her.
‘I was sorry to hear of the death of your husband, Sue,’ she said. ‘I’m a widow myself, and that feeling of emptiness can last for a long time.’
‘It’s one of the reasons I decided to come here.’ Sue sat down on the seat across from Doris. ‘His death wasn’t unexpected. He was suffering heart failure, needed a triple bypass, but his health meant he couldn’t have the operation. We knew he didn’t have long, so I got him a wheelchair and we enjoyed our last few months going out for long walks, seeing friends and suchlike. I think burying Leon was too much for him, but he went peacefully, having an afternoon nap. It felt strange travelling alone to get here, because I’ve never gone through an airport on my own before, but I did it.’
‘I can’t remember the last time I went to an airport,’ Kat said. ‘I think it’s time I had a holiday, somewhere very warm.’
‘It’s cold in Canada at the moment, but you’ll be welcome in the summer, you’ll get a tan then.’
Doris felt a little easier the more they chatted, and recognised she had judged Sue unfairly. This woman must have gone through hell, knowing Leon was a killer, a drug dealer and everything else the law would have thrown at him if they had taken him alive; but they didn’t. Dying by a police bullet had been his end, and Sue had had to cope with that as well, followed by the death of her husband.
Kat decided to finish for the day and take Sue up to see her mum and dad, along with Martha. She hoped that Sue would still be with her when she went home, and would meet Carl.
It was important that Sue met Carl; Kat felt that her ex mother-in-law had to know that Martha would be loved and cared for by her new father.
Hannah and Tessa closeted themselves in Tessa’s office and compared lists. Hannah added Lucie Davison’s name, the only one that was extra on Tessa’s record to her own.
They planned the route they would take so that they could interview everybody, alongside the people who had actually provided alibis for them. It was going to be a long few days, no doubt about that.
They decided Andy Harrison had to be the starting point. It meant
a trip to Manchester to speak with his boss and work colleagues; his alibi had been confirmed over the phone the first time around, but they knew that everything had to be face to face, and nothing could be missed. But first they had to see Andy himself.
He wasn’t happy to see the two women at the door, but he let them into the lounge and sat down. There was no offer of a drink; Tessa and Hannah realised he was in a bad mood, which became worse when he realised they were once more checking his whereabouts on the night of Orla’s murder.
‘How many more times do I have to tell you I was in my office? I left around six, came home to my wife, nipped out for five minutes to pick up a bottle of wine to have with our meal, then went to bed. Had sex, if you must know. We thought Orla was safely with Emily in Hope, because the silly girl wouldn’t wait for me to come home to take her. As far as we know, she went straight from work, to walk along the main road. I wasn’t here, it takes a good hour to get here from Manchester at that time of night, as you well know, and all of my colleagues will vouch for me.’
‘Where’s your wife, Andy?’
‘Asleep. She hasn’t woken yet. It seems she can’t face the world at the moment.’
‘We’d like to see her.’
‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, and stormed upstairs. He really was in a bad mood.
Marnie’s hair was all over the place, and her eyes barely open.
Andy helped her to sit and asked if she wanted a coffee. She nodded without speaking.
‘Marnie,’ Tessa said gently, ‘when Andy arrived home the night that Orla was killed, what was he wearing?’
‘His pale grey suit,’ she said, after some thought.
‘Was it wet? Muddy?’
‘No, it had specks of rain on the shoulders from him running in here from the car, but that was all. Why?’
‘We’re trying to rule him out once and for all,’ Tessa said. ‘He had no mud on him?’
‘No.’ Marnie was sounding more awake. ‘No, he didn’t. I would have noticed, because Andy is always smart. It’s why I noticed the spattering of rain on his shoulders, he’s usually impeccably dressed. He definitely wasn’t covered in mud from murdering my daughter and throwing her in a river in full spate. For fuck’s sake…’ And she burst into tears.
Andy came back in with a coffee for his wife and glared at them. ‘Happy now? Please leave. If you want me again, I’ll come to you. You only have to ring. I don’t want you here upsetting Marnie any more. Spare our feelings a little bit, for God’s sake. We’ve just lost our daughter.’
They stood and Tessa said a quiet, ‘Thank you for your time,’ before leaving.
She and Hannah reached the car without speaking, climbed in and sat back, sighing.
‘That went well, didn’t it?’ Hannah said, and turned the ignition key.
‘Drive, Hannah, drive,’ Tessa said, knowing that Andy Harrison was no more guilty than she was. She felt she had always known that, she was simply creating a stereotypical perpetrator – the stepdad always did it.
‘Let’s get Manchester over with,’ she said, ‘and cross Andy Harrison off our list. We both know he didn’t do it, don’t we.’
‘Never thought he did, but we have to follow everything. He was really pissed off with us, wasn’t he?’
‘A little.’
‘From my angle,’ Hannah said, ‘it was a helluva lot.’
Chapter Thirty-Three
‘When Andy told us he was getting married we all made a joke of it, said it was because his bride had such a beautiful bridesmaid, and we made all the old jokes about stepfathers and stepdaughters, but everybody could see how he felt about Marnie.’ Dan Egerton, Andy’s boss, shook his head. ‘He was a man who enjoyed his own company, didn’t mix with the others unless he didn’t have a choice – I’m thinking things like the Christmas do, and the team building stuff we occasionally have – so when he met Marnie and they became inseparable, it was a bit of a shock to us all. But, DI Marsden, he’s no killer. I don’t know many men who are too decent for their own good, but Andy is. He’d recently joined our company when his divorce came through, but he’d kept it to himself. He only told me because he’d made his sister his next of kin, instead of his wife. He said his wife had found somebody new, somebody who didn’t work all the hours under the sun.’
‘And he still works long hours?’ Tessa asked.
‘He does, but he leaves here by six every night. Never earlier, but he likes to be home between seven and half past. He doesn’t intend losing this wife to too many hours at work. Of course, he hasn’t been in work since his stepdaughter died.’
‘So, on the night his stepdaughter was killed, he left at his usual time?’
‘He did. It was the day after that he did the unthinkable – he walked out of a crucial meeting around four o’clock, and shot off home. That was when Marnie rang him to tell him Orla was missing.’
Hannah was taking notes, but she was aware they were repeated words of their first telephone contact with his work colleagues. She waited until Tessa stood, and then she followed. They thanked Dan Egerton, and asked for directions to Andy’s desk. It seemed he had a corner in the open-plan area, only Egerton had an office and secretary of his own.
It was a large room, and they spent time talking with all the men and women, but each told them the same story – Andy was a devoted family man, left at the same time every night, and appeared to live only for his wife and stepdaughter.
Once back in the car, Tessa and Hannah paused for a few minutes to discuss what they had heard. The consensus of opinion was that Andy Harrison should be scrubbed from the suspect list, his alibi would never be broken in a million years. He simply didn’t have time to kill Orla French, not even when he nipped out for the bottle of wine.
Hannah started the car. ‘Where to now, boss?’
‘We’ll call it a day but I think our next stop has to be Reverend Barksworth, don’t you? Then we’ll see if Emily is at home, and hopefully Paul. That will take care of tomorrow. At least we’ve got the Manchester bit out of the way. The rest of the interviews are fairly local to Castleton.’
‘Except for the bishop,’ Hannah reminded her with a grin.
‘I think we can give him a miss. There must have been other clergy there who can vouch for Steve’s attendance, and confirm his arrival and departure. He’s another one I know didn’t kill her, but that can’t influence us. We have to get this exactly right, Hannah, and to be honest, if it means interviewing a bishop, then so be it.’ Tessa paused. ‘I’d rather not, that’s all. We had it confirmed by one vicar, but we need more than that.’
‘You scared of the bishop?’
‘Of course not. I’m scared of doing the wrong thing, not knowing the workings of the church and stuff like that, but I’m not afraid of the office. After we’ve completed our checks on this one, the rest will be a piece of cake.’
‘Yeah, you hope.’ Hannah laughed. ‘Somebody’s lying, don’t forget. And we’ve no idea who the hell it is.’
Sue was cuddling Martha before the baby was whisked away to her bedroom when Carl walked in the front door. He hung up his coat, and entered the lounge.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘I take it you’re Sue.’ He bent down to kiss her cheek in greeting and then kissed the top of Martha’s head while he was in the vicinity, and because he liked to kiss Martha’s head. ‘You obviously have the magic touch, she’s almost asleep.’
Sue smiled at Carl. ‘Kat’s in the kitchen putting something in the oven. I got to cuddle this little charmer. It’s lovely to meet you, Carl. Kat’s told me lots about you.’
Carl looked at her, and thought what a beautiful woman she was. No wonder Leon had had such dark good looks. ‘I’ll always take care of them both, you know,’ he said. ‘You’ll never need to worry about that.’
She dipped her head in acknowledgement. ‘I know. Carl, there must be no awkwardness about this. Kat and Leon are no more, and I fully appreciate she’s moving on with her life.
Leon was a complex man, evil in many ways, but he loved Kat and she loved him. He destroyed that, not Kat. I wish much happiness for both of you, and I’ll look forward to my invitation to your wedding.’
‘I’ll post it personally.’ He smiled. ‘Are you okay with Martha, or should I take her up to bed?’
Sue looked down at her granddaughter. ‘Oh, let’s leave her ten minutes more, shall we? Go and help Kat, I’ll be fine with the little one.’
Doris was pretty much like Martha. Eyes almost closed, her drink of choice almost empty. The main difference was her beverage was a nice little Châteauneuf du Pape. Doris hadn’t the energy to top up the glass so remained relaxed, her book sliding off her knee. The fire was sending out many degrees of heat, and despite the hiccup of Ewan Barker, she felt at peace.
The letterbox rattled and she ignored it. She didn’t want yet another leaflet from a Chinese takeaway in Matlock; she rather thought it might be a cold meal by the time it arrived at her home. The book dropped on the floor and she left it. Her eyes closed, and didn’t open again for an hour.
When they did, they settled on the clock, and she knew she’d have difficulty falling asleep when she went to bed. Maybe another glass of wine would help… She picked up the almost empty one and stood, heading for the kitchen.
To get to the bottle of wine meant traversing the hall and she saw a white envelope on the mat. Not quite the end of November yet Christmas cards seemed to be arriving. She bent to pick it up and continued towards the bottle of wine.
She poured a generous glass, then opened the fridge door, contemplating its contents. Nothing exotic. She sighed. It was starting to resemble Mouse’s fridge. A big shop was clearly called for, but in the meantime Doris would settle for cheese and biscuits for her supper snack.