by Ford, P. F.
‘Good morning, Mrs Rowntree,’ said Slater, with a broad smile, as he entered the interview room alongside Norman. ‘Thank you so much for coming down to see us.’
‘I don’t seem to have had much choice,’ she hissed.
‘That’s right,’ said Slater, settling into his seat opposite her. ‘You don’t have any choice.’
He looked at her, but said nothing. She glared malevolently back at him.
‘Let’s get something clear, right from the start,’ he said. ‘This isn’t some game we’re playing here. We’re conducting a murder inquiry, and so far you’ve been evasive, and downright hostile, towards myself and my fellow officers. At the very least we shall almost certainly be charging you with obstructing our enquiries, but I think it’s likely we’ll be charging you with something a lot more serious, don’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, uncertainly.
‘You’re sure about that, are you?
She didn’t answer, preferring to study her nails instead.
Norman reached down under his seat and produced a carrier bag which he placed on the table. He pulled the knife block from the bag and placed it on the table in front of her.
‘D’you recognise this?’ he asked her.
‘It’s a knife block,’ she said. ‘Anyone can see that.’
‘Have you ever bought one like this?’
‘No. I don’t buy cheap tat like that. I wouldn’t give it house room.’
‘What about buying it to give to someone else?’ he persisted.
‘I’ve never bought one of those in my life,’ she said, adamantly. ‘I wouldn’t know where to find one.’
‘Well let me help you out there,’ said Norman. ‘There’s only one place you can get them around here, and that’s the market in town.’
‘I never shop there,’ she said. ‘You never know what you’re buying in places like that. I prefer to buy quality goods.’
‘Oh, really? Did you know you have a double walking around town?’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she asked, wearily. ‘Is this why I’m here? So you can ask me where I do my shopping? Do you really think this is proper use of your time? And how on earth can it be relevant to your inquiry?’
‘You know damned well why it’s relevant, Celia,’ said Norman. ‘It’s relevant because Diana was killed with a knife from a knife block just like this one. A knife block that you bought from the market about ten days ago.’
Celia Rowntree went very quiet, and her face seemed to turn a ghostly shade of white.
‘The guy in the market sells very few of these,’ said Norman. ‘So he tends to remember who he sells them to. He remembered you because he thought you were nice looking, and because he didn’t think you were the type to buy something so cheap. As a result, he was able to describe you perfectly. He also picked your photo out.’
‘He must have been mistaken.’ Her fingers tapped nervously on the top of the table.
‘I should warn you there’s CCTV overlooking the entrance to the market,’ said Slater.
At the mention of CCTV, she seemed to slump in her seat, almost as if the stuffing had been removed from inside her.
‘I bought it as a present for a friend,’ she muttered.
‘Not much of a friend,’ said Norman. ‘Or do you buy “cheap tat you wouldn’t give house room” for all your friends?’
She looked around the room wildly, as if she hoped someone would appear and whisk her away.
‘So who is this friend?’ asked Slater. ‘Maybe they can confirm you gave them the knife block.’
‘Err, I don’t remember. I didn’t give it to them. It was just too tacky.’
‘So you went to the market you never go to, to buy a knife block you wouldn’t give house room to, to give to a friend you can’t remember. Have I got that right?’ asked Norman.
‘Yes. No,’ she said, and then she began to cry, quietly.
‘No. That’s not right is it, Celia?’ said Norman, gently. ‘You see you’ve been lying to us all along, haven’t you? We think you bought the knife block as part of a plan to kill Diana Woods and frame Bruce Rossiter for her murder. We think you planted the mobile phone we found in his desk, and you removed the CCTV disc that shows who used the company runabout the day Diana was killed.’
She continued to cry quietly, her head in her hands.
‘We could charge you with her murder, right now, Celia,’ said Slater. ‘But we don’t think you were the murderer. That was someone else. You were just the accomplice. Are we right?’
At last she looked up at him, snot and tears dripping from her face. She shook her head.
‘You don’t understand,’ she whined. ‘You just don’t understand.’
‘But we want to understand,’ said Slater. ‘We want to help you.’
‘Let’s take a break for ten minutes, Celia,’ said Norman. ‘I’ll go and get you a cup of tea while you get yourself together. Then maybe you’d better tell us all about it. Okay?’
She nodded slowly, then slumped forward onto the desk and began to sob quietly.
Chapter 22
‘Good evening, Mrs Rossiter. So nice of you to join us,’ said Slater, back in the same interview room, a few hours later.
‘What am I doing here?’ she demanded. ‘You’ve already arrested my husband for Diana’s murder. What more do you want from me?’
‘I’m afraid we have one or two things we don’t quite understand,’ said Slater. ‘As Mr Rossiter’s wife, we think you might be able to help us.’
‘Was it really necessary to send a couple of goons?’ she asked, bitterly.
‘We find people tend to get here much quicker when we do that.’ Norman smiled genially. ‘We wouldn’t want anyone getting lost on the way here, now would we?’
‘And there are men crawling all over my house. Again.’
‘That’s what a search warrant allows us to do. But don’t worry, they’ll lock up when they’ve finished.’
She glowered at the two of them, but said nothing. They had thought she was likely to be a much tougher nut to crack than Celia Rowntree, and it looked as if they were going to be proved right.
‘Does your husband ever go to the supermarket to do food shopping?’ asked Norman.
‘Hah!’ She laughed. ‘The fat pig doesn’t even know where the supermarket is. If it was left to him to put food in the cupboards we’d starve.’
‘So he doesn’t shop in supermarkets?’ asked Slater.
‘Never.’
‘So you do all the supermarket shopping?’ asked Norman.
‘Yes,’ she snapped impatiently. ‘There isn’t anyone else, is there?’
‘So, were you in the supermarket on the Sunday before Diana died?’
‘God. I don’t remember.’ She sighed. ‘Does it really matter?’
‘Yes, it does matter, so I’ll tell you,’ said Norman. ‘You were there. We have your till receipt.’
‘So why ask me if you already know? Anyway, what’s this got to do with Diana’s death?’
‘Less than five minutes after you checked out, someone paid for some condoms using your husband’s credit card,’ said Norman.
‘And what’s that got to do with me?’ she asked. ‘If I’d bought condoms they would have been on my till receipt.’
‘We believe you paid for those condoms, separately, at one of the self-serve check outs.’
‘And why would I do that?’
‘Because, that way, no one would notice you were using your husband’s credit card.’ Norman smiled, triumphantly.
‘I didn’t-’ she began.
‘I should tell you something, before you carry on lying,’ interrupted Slater. ‘One of our team is a mother of three. She spends a lot of time in the supermarket. She’s also one smart cookie who notices all sorts of things. It’s because of her that we know there are CCTV cameras on the self-serve tills.’
Angela Rossiter glared at h
im.
‘And it’s against the law to buy condoms, is it?’ she snapped.
‘Not as far as I know,’ said Norman. ‘But I’m curious to know why you paid for them with your husband’s credit card.’
‘Because they’re for his use, of course. Why the hell should I pay for them? I stopped having sex with him years ago.’
‘So why would he need them?’ asked Slater.
‘Why do you think?’ she said, looking at him as though he were stupid. ‘I might not want him grunting and snorting all over me, but it seems there are some women who aren’t quite so fussy. I don’t want to find he’s fathered a child on our bloody doorstep again, do I?’
‘Do you think he could, then?’ asked Slater. ‘Father a child?’
‘Didn’t they teach any sex education at your school?’ she mocked. ‘My God, what world do you live in?’
‘Oh we did sex education, Angela,’ said Slater. ‘In fact it was one of my favourite subjects. But I always thought if a man had a vasectomy it meant he couldn’t father children. Isn’t that the whole point of it?’
Angela looked confused.
Norman tutted.
‘Oh, my, my, you didn’t know, did you? I knew you and old Brucie probably weren’t the best communicators, but boy, things must be really bad between you if he had an operation like that and you didn’t even know.’
‘And they say romance is dead,’ said Slater. ‘Why on earth do you keep your marriage going if it’s got that bad? Can it ever be worth it?’
‘You wouldn’t understand.’ She sniffed. ‘I have my position to consider.’
‘Some people will do anything for money, I guess,’ said Norman.
‘Even frame their husband for murder,’ added Slater.
Angela looked at him, enquiringly.
‘We had Celia Rowntree in here earlier today,’ he said. ‘As a matter of fact she’s still here, finding out what it’s like inside one of our cells.’
Angela had jerked her head at the mention of Celia.
‘You see, Celia’s not as tough as you,’ said Norman. ‘So it didn’t take long for us to expose the lies in her story. After that she became a lot more co-operative. So you might want to stop and consider whether you should continue with the lies, or do us all a favour and start telling the truth.’
‘What did she tell you?’ she hissed. ‘It’s all a pack of lies.’
‘Is it?’ said Slater. ‘Well, it all seems to make sense to us, and it fits in very nicely with what we already know. But we want to make sure we get it right, so perhaps you’d better tell us your side of the story.’
‘There is no story.’ She sat back and folded her arms.
‘You said you didn’t want him to father a child on your doorstep again,’ said Slater. ‘What did you mean by that?’
‘What did you think I meant? I’m sure Celia told you. He’s always been cock happy, but she was the first one he actually got pregnant. He had to pay for her to have an abortion so her husband wouldn’t find out. They might have got away with it, but she nearly died under the anaesthetic. There was no way they could keep that from her husband. He was gone within the week, and Celia’s never been the same since. That was nearly ten years ago now.’
‘So how come you didn’t kick your husband out?’
‘What? Give up my lifestyle? No way,’ she said, with a wicked grin. ‘I can make him suffer much more by staying and spending all his money. I made a deal with him. He couldn’t ever touch me again, and he couldn’t ever do it on our doorstep again.’
‘But he has been doing it on your doorstep, hasn’t he,’ said Norman.
‘With that cheap tart of a PA.’
‘And you thought he might get her pregnant, too,’ said Slater.
‘I thought he was taking precautions. I didn’t know he’d had a vasectomy.’
‘But that’s why the condoms were such a big mistake, Angela. If you hadn’t bought them we might have been convinced your husband was guilty, but we knew that didn’t add up, and it made us ask questions.’
‘So you knew all about him and Diana,’ said Norman. ‘That’s a very good motive for wanting her dead. And both you and Celia have good reason for wanting to frame your husband. But did you have to murder Diana Woods as part of your plan. Couldn’t you have found another way that didn’t involve murder?’
‘Oh, but me and Celia didn’t murder anyone,’ she said with a smile. ‘What do you take us for? All we did was try to frame my husband. That was all we set out to do, and we very nearly succeeded.’
‘But didn’t you drive the Rochester’s runabout to Diana’s that day?’ asked Slater. ‘Didn’t you stab her in the back with a knife from the knife block you took with you?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, smiling. ‘I was at home cooking my husband’s dinner. We were having dinner at the time she was killed. My husband told you that several times, but you wouldn’t believe him.’
Slater and Norman hadn’t been expecting this. If Angela Rossiter hadn’t killed Diana Woods, who had? They’d been convinced Celia wasn’t capable, but maybe they’d got that wrong. They were so sure it was Angela they hadn’t even asked Celia if she had an alibi.
‘We’ll still charge you with conspiracy to murder,’ said Norman, trying to regain the high ground.
‘But what did I do, that would prove to a jury that I was guilty?’ she asked, sweetly.
‘I think we’ll adjourn this interview, now,’ said Slater. ‘You can go and try one of our deluxe rooms for a while, Angela.’
She smiled her acceptance of his offer, but didn’t say a word as she was led off to a cell.
‘What the hell happened there?’ Slater asked Norman. ‘She’s as good as admitted she’s involved, but she denies murder.’
‘Whether she actually did the stabbing, or not, she knows exactly what happened. She’s laughing at us.’
‘She knows we have a huge gap in our story, and we should have known it, too. We thought we had it all worked out, but we didn’t think this through properly. Rossiter gave her an alibi right from the start. How could she be stabbing Diana if she was at home cooking his dinner?
‘Now I’m not even sure we can make the conspiracy charge stick. All we can prove is Celia went shopping in the company van, bought a cheap knife block and left it in the van. And she admits that much. It’s not exactly cut and dried, is it?’
‘We know Angela took the van out on the afternoon Diana died,’ said Norman. ‘But we can’t prove it, because the CCTV evidence is missing, and the only witness we have insists she saw a man driving the van and not a woman.’
‘And it’s the same with the mobile phones.’ Slater sighed, unhappily. ‘We know how they got where we found them, but we can’t prove it.’
‘A good lawyer would argue there’s more than enough doubt,’ agreed Norman. ‘Unless the search team find something, we’re in trouble.’
‘What are we missing, Norm?’ asked Slater. ‘There has to be something.’
‘I guess we’re gonna have to go over it all again,’ Norman said, shaking his head. ‘And we need to be quick. Right now we’re holding three suspects and the clock’s ticking. In fact, one of those isn’t even a suspect anymore.’
‘We’d better order a takeaway,’ said Slater, grimly. ‘This is going to be a long night.’
Chapter 23
It was just after nine o’clock the next morning when Slater made his way into the incident room. He looked jaded, as though he’d been up all night, but he managed to look pretty pleased with himself, too.
‘I’ve just had a call from Wales,’ said Jolly. ‘They said to tell you your prisoner has been taken into custody and would you like to go and collect him.’
‘That must have been a shock for him,’ said Slater, smiling. ‘I bet he thought he’d got away with it.’
‘But I thought he was innocent and Angela Rossiter and Celia Rowntree were the guilty ones?’
‘That’s what we we
re supposed to think,’ said Slater. ‘But they knew we couldn’t prove it because they both had alibis. Being stupid coppers, unable to find our own arses with both hands, we were supposed to give up at that point.’
‘They got that wrong, then.’
‘Instead of giving up we pulled an all-nighter. And so did Ian Becks. We might still be scratching our heads if it wasn’t for him.’
‘Where’s Norm?’ Jolly asked. ‘Having a lie in?’
‘He’s just called me,’ said Slater. ‘He’s on his way back from Newbury as we speak.’
‘Come on then. Tell me the story.’
‘It was Becksy who broke it. They found a pair of gloves in a bag of rubbish in the Rossiter’s garage. When he got the gloves back here he found traces of blood which proved to be Diana’s. We figured there would be DNA evidence on the inside of the gloves proving they were Angela Rossiter’s, but we were wrong. The DNA was from Ian Woods.
‘At around the same time, Norm found Angela Rossiter had Ian Woods’ phone number. She also had his email address. She has a smartphone so it was quite easy to access her email account where we found some very interesting messages.’
‘Didn’t he tell us he hardly knew her?’ asked Jolly.
‘Going by the messages, I’d say he knew her rather well,’ said Slater. ‘Very well, in fact.’
‘Was he getting his own back on Rossiter, or did he genuinely like her?’
‘That’s a question we shall be asking him when he gets here,’ said Slater.
‘But what does he gain from killing her?’ said Jolly. ‘He doesn’t seem to need the money, and if it was revenge, why wait until now? Why not do it sooner?’
‘Perhaps it was Angela’s idea and not his. Either way, they came up with quite an ingenious plan to get rid of Diana and frame Rossiter.’
‘So what’s Norm doing in Newbury?’
‘It was bad work on our part, but we never checked out Susie Brennan’s story about Woods being at her house. She told us her neighbour could vouch for her story, but we didn’t follow that up. Norm’s just done that. The neighbour confirms Woods was at Susie’s house around three o’clock, but then she left to do the school run. She got back at four, and Woods had already left.