Fatal Legacy (19 page)

‘Sir! I gave my opinion as a professional officer, not as a woman.’ WPC Shah had flushed in her indignation. ‘I object to—’

‘Calm down. It wasn’t a sexist remark. It’s a fact that if you look at all our interviews, none of the women have a good word to say for Sally Wainwright-Smith, while all the men, without exception, admire and want to protect her.’

‘But her “poor brave little me” act is so obviously transparent.’

‘To you, maybe, but not to her husband, Colin, Jeremy Kemp, or even Sergeant Cooper, for that matter.’

‘Hang on, sir. I just gave you my immediate reaction – don’t lump me with the others. I hardly know her.’

Fenwick brushed aside Cooper’s discomfort with a small laugh. It was rare to see him uncertain and confused.

Cooper felt aggrieved; he didn’t welcome being challenged by the DCI in front of Shah.

‘So what did you make of her then, sir? I suppose you are immune to her charms.’

The laughter disappeared in an instant from Fenwick’s face.

‘Yes, I am. I don’t have a firm opinion yet, but I think she could be a cunning and potentially manipulative woman who finds lying too easy for us to trust her.

‘Now, Constable Shah, I want you to find the box the fruit and veg was delivered in yesterday, and see if you can trace where it came from. Ask Irene which markets were open yesterday that Sally would use. Cooper, you go and interview Julia Wainwright-McAdam. She and Colin were staying
overnight
. Check with Jenny whether Graham wore jewellery, and if
he did, ask her for a description. Then I want photographs of all the house guests last night, and of Graham Wainwright and Neil Yarrell. Oh, and go and see if SOCO has arrived. I want casts taken of those imprints under the tree.’

‘What’re you going to do with the photos, sir?’

‘I’m working on it, but they’ll come in handy, I know it. I’m going to take a walk in the grounds until you’ve finished. I’ll be at the car in half an hour.’

He needed time to think before the team briefing. He had to make it clear that this was a murder inquiry without overstating the evidence, or DI Blite would be straight on to the ACC before he could say ‘case closed’.

Sally stood at the double front door and watched the three police officers disappear down her long gravel drive. When she turned around, Alexander was standing behind her in the hall.

‘There you are! Are you OK?’

Sally nodded and went to lean against him.

‘You look terribly pale, Sally, and you’ve stopped eating properly again, haven’t you? I saw you at dinner last night.’ What he really wanted to say was that she had started drinking far too much, but he couldn’t think how to.

‘Don’t fuss, Alex, I’m fine. I’ll go and have some coffee to help me wake up.’ She noticed suddenly that he was dressed for the office.

‘You’re going to work? But it’s Saturday!’

‘Well, yes, unless you particularly want me to stay.’

She shook her head, unable to summon the energy or the guile to compete with his constant obsession with work.

‘No, it’s OK. You go. There was something I wanted to talk to you about, though. It’s quite urgent.’

She led him outside on to the gravel and around to where his car was parked in the bright spring sunshine. He opened the driver’s door and left it wide to allow cool air inside.

‘Graham’s death has made me think hard, darling, about things I normally try not to dwell on.’

Sally’s voice was soft and tired; she sounded worn down, even sad. Alexander squeezed her shoulder reassuringly, then gathered her slight body against his chest, holding her tight. He
kissed the top of her hair, relishing the feel of its softness against his cheek. She sighed and relaxed into him.

‘I’ve been thinking about death, how fate can suddenly change all our plans without warning. We need to be more prepared, and I hate to say it, but we have never done anything about drawing up our wills.’

To her surprise, her husband laughed.

‘Of course I have. As soon as we got married.’

‘But Jeremy …’ She stopped herself.

‘Oh, trust Kemp to be worrying you unnecessarily. I didn’t use him; I bought one of those do-it-yourself kits. There was no way I could afford his fees at the time.’

‘But a lot’s happened since then.’ She waved her arm at the house and grounds. ‘Shouldn’t you update it?’

‘I have done, several times, and it’s lodged safely at the bank so it won’t get lost. You have no need to worry, particularly now that Graham is dead. If I had died first, then our share would have reverted to him but, as it is, we now inherit from him. It was a condition of the old man’s will.’ He tilted her head up so that he could kiss her lightly. ‘I’ve made sure that you’ll be all right if anything happens to me, and nothing is going to happen to you. Now, I have to go. I’ll try to come home at lunch time to make sure you’re OK. Bye!’

Sally watched him drive away, the expression on her face changing from tiredness to fury as soon as he was out of sight. As she stalked back inside, she ripped three long shoots of flowering honeysuckle from the wall, one after another, and shredded them as she walked, scattering flower buds and leaves on the path.

Irene was still on her own in the kitchen. She had started clearing the debris, stacking plates into piles and separating the china, glass and silver, with a depressingly small amount going into the dishwasher. She’d forgotten about the mugs and biscuits on the old pine table, something she’d normally never do.

‘How dare you help yourself to my food!’

Irene straightened up from the dishwasher and turned to find Sally, white with anger, pointing a finger at the digestive packet.

‘Half the packet has gone! It hadn’t been started last night!’ Her tone of betrayal would have served equally well had she
been accusing Irene of an affair with her husband.

Irene blushed. She knew the rules; they’d been spelled out when Sally had arrived.

‘It was for the policemen, miss. They hadn’t had breakfast.’

Sally looked at the crumbs that still littered Irene’s black leggings and cardigan, and raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

‘Don’t compound your problems by lying to me, Irene. Never lie to me.’

Irene felt a chill at the back of her neck as she stared into Sally’s pale, slanted eyes. Part of her wanted to stick two fingers up and leave her right then to her house and the mess, but the woman scared her, and she was still owed her week’s wages. She decided in that moment that after she’d finished this week and picked up her pay, she would give in her notice. Until then she’d best keep her opinions to herself.

‘I am sorry, miss. You can take the cost out of my wages and I won’t do it again.’

Sally nodded once, checked the price on the wrapper and then deliberately took five biscuits and crammed them into her mouth, one after another, as Irene stared at her in open disbelief.

In the car on the way back to Harlden, Cooper summarised his interview with Julia.

‘Aunt Julia tolerates Alexander but detests his wife. She implied that old Alan Wainwright had an affair with Sally and that she seduced him into changing his will.’

‘Any proof?’

‘None. It’s just like before, when Graham Wainwright came to us with worries about his father’s death.’

‘And now Graham is dead too. That’s three influential and powerful men, all connected with that business, who have died in the last two months.’ Fenwick paused, obviously deep in thought. ‘Neither Sally nor Alexander’s alibi for the morning of Graham’s death is watertight. They both have motive, and Sally’s reactions last night were bizarre, to put it mildly. I’m going to have tails put on both of them; until we have further evidence to the contrary, they’re my prime suspects.’

Cooper regarded his boss with obvious concern.

‘That’s not going to be popular with the ACC, sir.’

‘Tell me about it! But since when have
I
won any popularity contests?’ He laughed with a confidence that Cooper could only envy. ‘Changing the subject, how’s DS Gould getting on with the loose ends on the Fish case?’

‘Under pressure. Brighton Division keep telling him that the case closed when Francis Fielding died, so they aren’t helping much at all. There’s a right SOB down there called Pink who seems to take great pleasure in being as unhelpful as possible.’

‘Well, the case isn’t closed in my mind. There was a suspiciously large amount of cash in Fielding’s flat with no obvious source, so we can’t rule out that he was paid to murder Arthur Fish.’

‘Conspiracy’s always hell to prove, and the ACC won’t like it.’

‘If these deaths are linked in some way, and if Alan Wainwright’s death was murder as well, then this is a very clever conspiracy.’

‘Clever and bold, to risk killing Graham within a week of Fish’s murder.’

‘Bold or desperate. If there’s a link, the person behind it has an appetite for risk that’s almost suicidal, yet they’re smart. Of all the people we have interviewed, does anyone fit that description?’

There was a silence, then Cooper spoke reluctantly.

‘Alexander’s brighter than he lets on.’

Shah chimed in, encouraged by Fenwick’s previous interest in her opinion:

‘So is Sally. I think she’s the sharper of the two, and we know very little about her.’

‘You’re both right. Cooper, we must talk to that private investigator Graham hired. And have the local police in Scotland search his house in case there’s any information there. We’ll need interviews with the staff, too.’

They drove on in silence until they reached Harlden High Street and the inevitable Saturday lunch time traffic jam.

Harlden had once been a quaint market town. Now, traffic waged a constant battle in a one-way system that had proved to be a planner’s delight and a motorist’s nightmare. Fenwick dropped Cooper and Shah off on one side of a dual carriageway opposite the station so that he could use the time it took him to crawl towards the car park to think. Strangely, he didn’t mind. Pieces of the case were beginning to come together into a vague picture. It wasn’t in focus yet, but a shape was emerging and he needed to give it the space to solidify.

The ideas had started when he attempted to fit Sally’s behaviour into a logical pattern. No matter how hard he tried, he could not make sense of her erratic mood swings. One minute she was hysterical, the next calm and in control. He decided to leave a message with a psychiatrist the force retained as an adviser, and was surprised when she returned his call immediately. He was negotiating an emergency set of traffic lights, a single lane caused by roadworks and a dysfunctional roundabout, yet remarkably he was still even-tempered when he responded to his mobile.

‘Fenwick.’

‘Andrew, it’s Claire Keating. You rang.’

‘Claire! Thanks for getting back to me. Have you got a few minutes? I have a case – well, a person involved in a case – that’s perplexing me, and I need your help.’

‘Go on, I’m intrigued.’ Claire had a voice like honey on a warm day and at that moment it radiated pleasure. Fenwick, though, was in no mood to notice it.

He explained his dilemma about Sally’s behaviour, expanding with examples and quotes from her statement. Claire listened
without interruption, and when he had finished, there was a long pause before she spoke.

‘What you are describing could be dysfunctional behaviour, or it could simply be the symptoms of acute stress or depression. Without meeting her, it’s hard to tell.’

‘But if it was dysfunctional behaviour, what would be causing it?’

‘Mental illness, abuse, personality disorder, or all three. The symptoms are quite vague, but from what you’ve said, they do sound a little extreme. However, that is a long way from suggesting any form of abnormality or social imbalance.’

‘Supposing for a moment that it is more than the result of stress, what might the root cause be?’

‘Andrew, I won’t base a diagnosis on a hypothesis, you know that.’

‘Please?’ He sounded so human and in need of help. There was an even longer pause, then:

‘I really can’t comment on this person Sally, but I can talk about previous experiences, just as long as you understand that this is off the record.’

‘Of course.’

‘Very well. In an extreme case, it’s my experience that violent mood swings, erratic behaviour, obsessions, delusions of grandeur followed by panic and feelings of paranoia could all be symptoms of manic depression, which is treatable with medication.’

‘She has pills the doctor has prescribed for depression.’

‘Not the same thing at all.’

‘Forget I said that. If it weren’t manic depression, what else could create the symptoms I’ve described?’

Fenwick had inched his way around the traffic system until he could see the gates to the station car park in the distance.

‘The degree of emotional insecurity that you’ve described has many causes, but a common one is some form of childhood trauma or abuse.’

Fenwick immediately thought of his own son and his terrible reaction to his mother’s illness, and went cold. He had only been four years old when he had witnessed her attempted suicide and Fenwick’s desperate efforts at resuscitation. Claire carried
on talking, oblivious to the change in his frame of reference.

‘A damaged individual can mature, even prosper. Sometimes they live and die without any visible sign of an earlier trauma affecting their lives. However, the latest thinking is that the likelihood of a normal adult life is increasingly rare.
Modern-day
life is extraordinarily intense. People are bombarded with information, opinions and arguments until reality becomes very subjective. Add to that an incomplete emotional development and a suppressed response to childhood trauma, and you can have a time-bomb in certain people who display an apparently well-adjusted personality that is barely sustainable. There are many people who live behind a carefully constructed façade, to all intents and purposes “normal”, whatever that means, but who are actually precariously balanced on a knife edge of control, waiting for life to push them over. It happens all the time, and we call it a mental breakdown. Most recover, but sometimes the psychosis is malignant and they become
chronically
ill. Andrew, can you hear me? Are you still there?’

‘Yes, bear with me, I’m just parking the car.’ Fenwick’s voice was faint, and he hoped that Claire would put it down to the physical distraction of manoeuvring the car. ‘Go on. Could such a person be dangerous?’

‘Normally no, only to themselves, but very occasionally the disturbance runs deeper and then matters are different. If there has been a serious trauma – for example the loss of a parent or sibling – left untreated and followed by, say, abuse of some sort, then you can end up with an explosive personality, capable of extreme reactions and unbound by any social conventions, but that’s very rare.’

He could barely bring himself to answer her, and when he eventually did so, his voice was a whisper.

‘Thanks, Claire, that’s been very helpful. I’ll call you again if anything more develops.’

‘No problem. Are you sure you’re OK? Look, call me again soon – you have my private number, so you can reach me any time; I’ll look forward to it.’

It was several moments before Fenwick could stop his hands shaking. He kept telling himself that it was
Sally
they had just been talking about, not Chris. Chris was a six-year-old kid with
a loving father who was determined that what had happened to his mother would never leave the indelible scars that Claire had just described. He swallowed hard and slowly made his way in to the briefing.