‘You know there have been several letters, then?’
Gail’s eyes darted from Hannah to Linz. ‘Watch my lips, will you? I can’t help you.’
‘Can’t or won’t, Mrs Flint? I believe the person who sent us the tip-off also wrote to Kirsty Howe.’
‘Oh no, you don’t! You’re not blaming me for that stupid girl’s death.’
‘Why do you think she killed herself?’
‘
‘Sorry, they don’t do Latin at police college.’
Gail’s withering look suggested that this in itself explained the rise in crime. ‘I don’t care to speak ill of the dead.’
Hannah said coolly, ‘Try to overcome your finer feelings.’
‘Listen, then. The plain truth is, she was an ungainly lump who couldn’t keep a man. A waitress mooning after a man who was devoted to someone else. A shame, but she really didn’t have too much going for her.’
‘She was young,’ Linz said. ‘She had the whole of her life ahead of her.’
Gail hissed, ‘Try this, before you get too dewy-eyed. Her mother killed her father. Isn’t that reason enough?’
‘You’re forgetting that she gave her mother an alibi.’
‘Oh yes, the watertight alibi.’ Gail gave a scratchy laugh. ‘Tina, Kirsty and Sam, the three of them were supposed to be together, weren’t they? But they were telling fibs.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because while Tina was taking a scythe to her husband, I was in bed teaching Sam Howe a thing or two.’
‘So at the time of the murder, Sam wasn’t up the Hardknott Pass…’ Linz chortled as they turned into Tilberthwaite Avenue.
Hannah kept her eyes on the road and resisted the temptation to supply a punchline. ‘If Gail is telling the truth.’
‘Do you doubt it?’
‘Reluctant as I am to believe a word she says, the story hangs together. Gail didn’t want her latest peccadillo to wreck her marriage. Peter overlooked her sleeping with the father, but he might have drawn the line at her bedding the teenage son. The sprained ankle didn’t prevent her misbehaving with Sam, but with a little exaggeration it sufficed for an alibi. Quite right, she never left the cottage that day. Why would she want to?’
According to Gail, it was the one and only time she’d slept with Sam. It hadn’t exactly been a match made in Heaven. Just a bit of a laugh, really. The two of them had been flirting for a while. When he’d rung to commiserate over her sprained ankle and asked if she’d like him to kiss it better, she’d said it was the best offer she’d had in ages. Probably he fancied a slice of what his dad had been having, but Gail wasn’t bothered about his motives. She knew too much about men to entertain illusions. As a lover, the son didn’t compare to the father. Youth and virility were all very well, but no match for experience, in her book.
The three-way alibi was Tina’s idea. Neither Tina nor Kirsty knew what Sam had been up to and at first he refused to say. They panicked out of fear that his tense relationship with Warren might make him a suspect. Only later did it strike Gail that, just as Tina had persuaded Sam to lie about his whereabouts, so she might have inveigled Kirsty into shielding her from a murder charge.
‘Gail sent us the note about Tina, didn’t she?’
‘Racing certainty,’ Hannah said. ‘Not that we can prove it.’
‘God, she’s a bitch.’
All of a sudden, and against all logic, Hannah felt sympathy stabbing at her.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But a very unhappy bitch.’
Linz’s brow creased in disapproval — keen young DCs didn’t do sympathy. She’d learn. They drove on for a few minutes until Linz broke the silence.
‘On the radio this morning, the forecaster said that humidity levels have never been so high in this country. I’m sweating like a pig.’
‘They’ve promised a storm before the end of today.’
‘Can’t come a moment too soon, as far as I’m concerned. All right, ma’am, where do we go from here?’
‘To Old Sawrey. Time for another word with Tina Howe.’
‘Gail Flint?
If Hannah had accused her son of having had his wicked way with the late Myra Hindley, Tina Howe might have been more relaxed. Gail Flint? This was sleeping with the enemy.
‘The bastard told me she was a tourist from Sweden. Just passing through on her way to Scotland, that’s why she wasn’t around to back up his story. And you’re telling me it was that hatchet-tongued lush! A natural blonde, he said!’
Natural? At least a sense of irony must lurk beneath Sam’s sullen exterior. Hannah asked when he would be back and Tina spread her arms.
‘He’s supposed to be working, but he’s just as likely to be propping up some bar or having a leg-over with some scrubber in a caravan park. He doesn’t bother about keeping appointments. We’re trying to keep going as best we can after — what happened to poor Kirsty, but he isn’t helping. We’ve had loads of complaints, haven’t we, Peter?’
Peter Flint gave a nervous cough of assent. The four of them were in his office; this was his domain, but he’d hardly uttered a word since their arrival. His bony frame was squashed up in his chair and Hannah supposed this was how he’d managed to stay married to Gail for so many years. When the going got tough, he pretended to be invisible.
Tina shook her head. ‘There’s only one thing that lad seems to care about, and it isn’t his work, I can tell you. He takes after Warren, and he won’t pay attention to what I say any more. Just like his dad.’
‘We’ll talk to Sam later.’
Tina put her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands. ‘Go on, then. Who told you this?’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Howe, we can’t…’
‘Well, it wouldn’t be Sam, would it?’ Tina’s voice rose. ‘Not exactly something to boast about, having it off with Ms Nip and Tuck. It was her, wasn’t it? That reconstructed cow.’
‘You’ll appreciate the implications of the information we’ve received,’ Hannah said. ‘You and your children maintained that you were together when your husband was killed. If your son was — otherwise engaged — then the question is obvious. Were you with Kirsty at all?’
‘How do you think we managed to take the fucking photographs?’ Tina was almost screeching.
‘Photographs?’ Hannah shrugged. ‘Of course, in this day and age, all kinds of technological jiggery-pokery is possible. Isn’t that right, DC Waller?’
Linz nodded sagely. ‘Dead right, ma’am.’
‘For Christ’s sake, we were there! Up at the old Roman fort, on the Hardknott Pass, just as we said!’
Hannah felt a surge of triumph.
‘Who precisely was there?’
Tina swallowed. ‘OK, let’s just assume that Sam didn’t come along that day. What does it prove?’
‘You’re going to tell me you’re still protected by Kirsty’s statement, that she was with you all the time?’ Hannah turned to Linz. ‘Any thoughts?’
‘Trouble is, ma’am, Kirsty’s not here to corroborate the story any more.’
Tina said in a low voice, ‘My daughter died two days ago, Chief Inspector.’
‘I was there, Mrs Howe.’
A bitten-off laugh. ‘Yeah, I remember you puking your guts out.’
‘Tina!’ Peter Flint’s tone was despairing rather than authoritative. ‘I know you’re upset…’
Tina turned on him, crimson with anger. ‘That bloody old sow Gail, you’ve always let her walk all over you. All those years you were married, and now you’re paying through the nose for the privilege of divorcing her. You’ve let her get away with murder.’
Hannah said, ‘One thing is for sure, Mrs Howe. For years someone did just that. They got away with your husband’s murder.’
