As they walked down beige corridors Wesley asked whether it would be possible to have a word with Sunita. But Sturgeon said
that she hadn’t come in that morning. She had rung in sick. Wesley and Heffernan exchanged glances but said nothing.
Aaron Hunting was sitting in Sturgeon’s black leather executive chair, twisting it from side to side like a restless schoolboy.
He leaned forward eagerly when they walked in. ‘Well?’
Wesley cleared his throat. ‘We’ve had a look at the latest letter, Mr Hunting. I’d like to examine some of your stock, if
I may.’
Hunting waved his hand dismissively but Wesley could tell he was a worried man.
It was Keith Sturgeon who led the two men down to the supermarket. He stayed silent, his eyes darting from side to side anxiously
as he moved through the aisles as though he expected an ambush. When they reached the aisle near the back of the store where
jars of jam, marmalade and honey stood stacked in neat rows, Wesley stopped, put on a pair of plastic gloves and started to
examine each jar of honey, watched by Gerry Heffernan who never believed in getting his hands dirty if he could help it. Sturgeon
tried to assure them in a small, nervous voice that his staff had checked them already. But Wesley wasn’t taking any chances.
He examined the jars once, then again. And eventually he found what he was looking for. It was a small jar of organic lavender
honey produced in France – a luxury jar rather than the run-of-the-mill mass-produced stuff that graced most tables. The evidence
of tampering, impossible to spot on first inspection, was detectable only on very close examination. The plastic security
seal around the rim of the lid had been opened and resealed very skilfully with clear tape. A cursory inspection wouldn’t
have found it, especially if the searchers had the entire stock of the store to deal with. Wesley bore his finds, four jars
in all, back in a carrier bag to the office with a sinking heart. The fact
that he had found four fitted with the letter. If there had indeed been six contaminated jars, then two were already out there
somewhere … ready to kill.
Hunting’s face turned pale when Gerry Heffernan broke the news of what they’d found. He buried his face in his hands for a
few seconds, no longer the confident businessman, but a victim like so many other victims.
Wesley spoke practically, professionally. Someone had to keep a cool head. ‘I suggest that we put out an appeal on the local
TV news. We can ask anyone who bought this type of honey recently to return it to the store immediately,’ he said. ‘We can
just say they came from a faulty batch, a manufacturer’s recall. We don’t want to spread panic, do we?’
Hunting looked at him gratefully and nodded.
‘It might be too late already,’ Heffernan mumbled, unhelpfully in Wesley’s opinion.
‘We’ll just have to hope it isn’t. We can get someone to contact the TV studios in Plymouth and get them to put it on the
lunch-time bulletin.’
Hunting sat back and sighed. This was all they could do for now. Apart from keeping the store closed, a strategy that was
losing him money by the minute.
Wesley watched Hunting as he picked up a pen and began to turn it in his fingers. Now was as good a time as any to ask the
question that had been on his mind since he had stepped into the office. In his experience it was always best to ask a question
when it was least expected. ‘By the way, Mr Hunting, I’ve been meaning to ask you. Do you remember a girl called Helen Wilmer?
She used to work for Huntings back in the late 1980s. She was a student … worked at this store in the holidays.’
Hunting looked slightly confused. ‘I can’t be expected to remember everyone who ever worked here, Inspector. I don’t suppose
I ever met her. But the name’s familiar.’ He frowned. ‘Come to think of it, I do remember something about a student who used
to work for us going missing. Why do you ask?’
‘I just wondered if you remembered her.’
‘I remember her going missing.’ It was Keith Sturgeon who spoke. He was hovering unobtrusively in the corner of his own office,
half hidden by a large filing cabinet. ‘But I don’t remember much about her. We used to take on a lot of students in those
days.’
Hunting shrugged and looked Wesley in the eye. If Wesley were a betting man, he’d have gambled that both men were telling
the truth. Helen Wilmer meant nothing to them other than a half-remembered name connected with a disappearance many years
ago. But it had been worth a try.
Heffernan looked at his watch ostentatiously. There were things to do. The TV appeal to organise, the jars of honey to send
for analysis … not to mention finding the killers of the Reverend Shipborne and Helen Wilmer. Wesley caught his eye and gave
an imperceptible nod. There was nothing more to be done here. They’d send some uniforms to interview the staff again and view
the security footage. And hope that something turned up.
But as Keith Sturgeon showed them out of the empty store, Wesley couldn’t resist asking a final question.
‘Do you trust Sunita?’ he asked as the manager unlocked the staff entrance to let them out.
Sturgeon stopped what he was doing and looked alarmed. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do. Would you say she was loyal to Huntings?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
Somehow the manager of Huntings’ Morbay branch didn’t sound very convincing.
‘“The dregs of the people beg for thy mercy, o Lord. I Hammo, priest, set this down in the twenty-first year of the reign
of King Edward, the third of that name, and beg all Christian people, if any be left alive, to pray for the souls of those
cast into the pit in the church field. King Death has reigned over us and may God forgive Robert de Munerie
for bringing him to this place. I die now and confess my many sins. Have mercy upon us, o Lord, your miserable people.”’
Neil put his notebook down with a dramatic flourish.
Pam appeared not to be listening: she was sitting on the floor helping Michael to post brightly coloured shapes into a wooden
box.
‘Well?’ Neil prompted, vying for her attention. ‘What do you think?’
Michael posted his last shape – a triangle – and let out a triumphant chuckle.
‘What do you think?’ Neil repeated.
‘Are you sure it’s genuine?’
‘Yeah. What else could it be?’ He sounded as though her doubts had brought on the sulks.
‘It sounds as if the missing Robert de Munerie’s getting the blame. But if he brought the plague to the village then surely
he’d have been the first to die of it. So why is he missing? You’d think everyone would know exactly where he was … six feet
under.’
‘Graves were shallower in those days,’ Neil muttered pedantically. He thought for a moment. ‘That murder victim was buried
with a dagger bearing the de Munerie coat of arms. And it wasn’t the murder weapon … his head was bashed in.’
As Pam began to empty the box of shapes for Michael to have another go, the baby in her belly began to kick. She touched her
abdomen and smiled. ‘Shut up, Neil. You’re beginning to sound like Wesley.’
‘Am I?’ he replied before falling silent.
There was something else Wesley had wanted to do in Morbay but his mind was so full of swirling thoughts that he had temporarily
forgotten what it was. He fished his notebook out of his pocket and opened it, relieved to find that he had remembered to
write it down. ‘Check school for former pupil … Hobson ID.’ He swung the car out of
Huntings’ carpark and took the turning for the St Peters district of the town.
‘Where are we going?’ Heffernan asked.
‘Remember that boy Chris Hobson claimed he saw outside Belsham vicarage on the night of Shipborne’s murder? He said he’d seen
him at the school opposite St Peters church?’
‘Well?’
‘The school is bound to have copies of old class photos. I want to show some to Hobson, see if he recognises anyone.’
Heffernan looked unimpressed. ‘Waste of time, if you ask me.’
‘You think he was lying?’
Heffernan didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t trust Janet Powell … or perhaps he had been in the police force too long to take
a villain’s word for anything.
St Peters was the kind of area estate agents invariably describe as ‘highly desirable’. The roads of large Victorian villas
were lined with trees, their leaves turning brown and ready to fall onto the wide grass verges. At the centre of the district
was St Peters church, built out of sandstone in the nineteenth century to accommodate Morbay’s bourgeoisie; a place fit for
smug, upstanding citizens to worship in. Opposite the church stood St Peters School, a private establishment housed in what
was once the grand and vulgar home of one of Morbay’s most prominent businessmen … the owner of a large department store near
the promenade which had been taken over years ago by a national chain. Modern extensions, gymnasia and laboratories protruded
awkwardly from the main building, doubling its original size. Wesley swung the car into the drive and parked in a space marked
‘Visitors Only’.
It was plain from the start that St Peters School bore no relation to the wilder kind of inner-city comprehensive. It was
a well-ordered place full of boys in smart, striped blazers walking purposefully towards their classrooms
laden down with bags full of books. It rather reminded Wesley of his own schooldays when his parents had shelled out good
money to keep him and his sister well away from the tender mercies of London’s state secondary system. And as, many years
before that, Gerry Heffernan had passed the eleven-plus exam to a similar grammar school in Liverpool, both men felt rather
at home.
And it was because of this familiarity that they approached the headmaster’s study with some trepidation, but they found the
man within far from intimidating. In fact Mr Julian Harley, MA (Oxon), BEd, was a round, balding man with the harassed, anxious
manner of a man who knows that the school’s success, academic and financial, is down to him. When he asked them to sit down,
he sounded slightly nervous, as though he feared that some parent or pupil had made some serious allegation against the school
which warranted a police investigation. But when Wesley announced that all they wanted to do was to look at some old school
photographs, the man relaxed visibly.
Wesley knew what he was looking for. Sixth-form class photographs from the late 1980s and early 1990s. They were provided
with surprising efficiency by Mr Harley’s secretary, a young and curvaceous blonde who was, no doubt, the focus of a few adolescent
fantasies. Wesley put the photographs carefully in a folder, promising to return them as soon as they had finished with them.
‘We’d better get these pictures up to Hobson as soon as possible,’ Wesley said as they turned out of the school drive onto
the main road.
Heffernan knew Wesley was right. There was no sense in wasting time over anything to do with the Shipborne case. ‘Are we going
straight back, then?’
‘Yes, but there’s just one thing I want to do as we’re in Morbay. Have you got that list of Huntings employees handy?’
Heffernan grunted and reached onto the back seat for a file.
‘Look up Sunita’s address, will you? Sunita Choudray.’
‘You’re going to visit her?’ The chief inspector sounded surprised. ‘You don’t think she’s got anything to do with this business
at Huntings, do you? She’s the assistant manager.’
‘And she might have her own reasons for helping Keith Sturgeon to fall flat on his face.’
‘So she might be ambitious … but she wouldn’t go as far as killing anyone, surely.’
Wesley didn’t reply. When it was put like that, it did seem extremely unlikely. But there was no harm in checking Sunita out
while they were in the neighbourhood.
They found the house easily enough. It was a large pebble-dashed semi in a district not far from the school, a shabby but
respectable part of town. Nothing pretentious … and certainly nothing like the desirable St Peters. It was Wesley who rang
the plastic doorbell; Heffernan hung behind as if he were preparing for a quick getaway.
Wesley waited a few moments before pressing the bell a second time. He tried to peer through the frosted glass of the porch
but stepped back when he saw a dark shape approaching. Somebody was at home.
When the door opened Wesley and Heffernan stood there gaping at the man framed in the doorway. Even though Dr Choudray shared
the same surname as Sunita, somehow he had never connected the two.
It was Wesley who spoke first. ‘Dr Choudray. I … ’
‘If you’ve come about Edith Sommerby, I don’t think there’s any more I can tell you.’ The doctor sounded tired, as if being
bothered by the police again was the last thing he wanted. ‘Look, I’ve been on night duty and … ’
‘It’s not about Mrs Sommerby, Doctor. We’re looking for a Sunita Choudray and we were given this address.’
The doctor’s brown eyes widened in surprise and he scratched his head. ‘Sunita’s my sister. What do you want her for?’
‘Just a routine matter, Dr Choudray. We have reason to
believe that the botulism originated at the supermarket where your sister works and we’re just interviewing the staff again.
If we could have a quick word with her … ’ Wesley looked at the man expectantly. This tactic usually worked.
But the doctor was distracted before he could answer. A high-pitched voice from within the house, calling in some foreign
tongue, made him turn round. He called back and Wesley assumed he was speaking in some Indian language. Then came a man’s
voice, an old man, Wesley guessed. The doctor called out again, answering his question. Probably, Wesley thought, the unseen
pair were asking who was at the door.
Choudray turned back to the visitors. ‘My parents,’ he explained before taking a deep breath. ‘Look, Sunita’s not here. She
spent the night with a friend.’
‘She rang into work sick.’ Heffernan spoke for the first time, his eyes on Choudray’s face.
The doctor looked surprised. ‘Sorry, I can’t help you. I was on duty last night as I said, and when I got home this morning
my parents told me that she’d spent the night at a friend’s house … and before you ask, she didn’t say which friend it was.
That’s all I know.’