office, a specially trained police officer.’
‘We’ve all done the course,’ confirmed Cori.
‘And I’ll need to speak to Esther beforehand to ensure she’s fit to be subjected to interrogation. This won’t be before tomorrow morning, Inspector.’
He nodded his assent.
‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s been a very busy day.’
As their hostess also rose to excuse herself, so their host showed the three guests to the door; Grey asking,
‘So, is it usual for Esther to decide things for herself, like when she visits her mother?’
‘She’s an unusually determined girl when she wants to be,’ answered Janice with what Grey sensed might be a hint of past exasperation.
‘We encourage her to follow through on her convictions,’ reiterated her foster-father.
Janice continued on her earlier theme, ‘Technically speaking, it’s our decision whether we allow a child to speak to the police or not; but in my experience, however we try to protect them, it does little good for our children not to face up to whatever trouble they’ve gotten themselves into.’
‘I’m not sure she’s in an trouble.’
‘Oh no, I’m speaking more generally; though this case does feel rather different.’
At the door Jeff Wheelwright made arrangements for Janice to call them in the morning, then wished his guests good afternoon. Grey checked his watch: it was just after three.
Alone with the detectives, Janice apologised, adding,
‘You know, I really don’t recall the father’s name without the file in front of me.’
‘And how much of the file will we be allowed to see?’
‘How much will you need? Well, it will be easiest to do so when you come over for the interview tomorrow. You know, he treated Maisie very badly. Psychologically more then physically. She hardly went out for years. It isn’t going to be easy for her coming back to town, even with her brother.’
Janice allowed herself a small smile before they left for their respective cars, she off and away in her pastel- shaded hatchback before Cori and Grey even had their seatbelts on.
Chapter 16 — The Man from the Ministry
The Sergeant and Inspector sat silently in the car on the Wheelwright’s driveway. Not the brightest afternoon, Grey looked out at the darkening sky through the windscreen,
‘Another broken family then, another wife leaving her husband.’
‘And neither sounding like they had much choice in the matter.’ Cori paused before firing the ignition, adding, ‘You know, boss, these family histories are beginning to mingle in my mind. I’m having trouble keeping them apart.’
Grey felt it too: like ivy winding ‘round a tree trunk matters Night were becoming indistinguishable from matters Mars,
‘So, which one of us is going to say it first?’
Yet she was as reticent, ‘I fear once said it might he hard to un-say it; and if we’re wrong…’
‘Oh God, let’s just have it out in the open: our problem is that we need a bad man to play Maisie’s husband, and Patrick Mars steps too easily into that void.’
‘Then we can’t allow ourselves to think it, can we, sir.’ She was chastising herself as much as him. ‘We’ve no proof and it’s all too neat.’
‘Neat?’ he shot back in vexation. ‘It’s a tangled mess — even if Mars had a first marriage to Maisie, then where would we start?’
‘Then I suppose,’ she said as soothingly as possible, ‘that we draw a whole new family tree, and we start from scratch.’
He calmed down, ‘Well, at least until we have the name of Esther’s father then all this is supposition; though hopefully that’s what Janice has just scooted off so quickly to look up for us. Meanwhile, we have the problem of just what Esther saw.’
Though as the pair changed focus, this new question offered no easier answers, Cori surmising,
‘If we believe that Esther really didn’t see the body or anything of the murder, then something else must have spooked her at the Cedars on Monday…’
‘…and enough for her to travel all the way to her mother’s without telling a soul.’
‘The “secret” she mentioned in the text message to her friend Stacie?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Then that’s interesting in itself, don’t you think, sir?’
‘Go on.’
‘Well I remember what I was like at that age. There’s things you tell your best mate that you wouldn’t ever tell your parents; let alone, I’d imagine, a parent you’re in the process of rebuilding your relationship with.’
‘So it’s something only her real mother would know?’
‘Maybe just a family member, as it sounds like Esther doesn’t have any others she could talk to. She had her best friend, her foster family, her social worker all here in town, yet she chose to tell the person she knew who lived furthest away.’
But it was Grey who spoke for both of them when he said,
‘Then it’s a shame we’re not going to find out what her “secret” was until tomorrow at the earliest — that’s if Janice sees Esther fit for interview.’ And after what that girl had been through, neither of the detectives would have blamed Janice for thinking not; but Cori couldn’t leave it there, despite her own earlier calls for caution,
‘You know sir, if the families are linked then it’s obvious what her “secret” was…”
Yet Grey merely placed his head back square against the headrest and faced forward, as if restraining himself from answering, as if saying to himself and so to them both that without the proof then this was a road along which he would go no further.
Back at the station things were also moving apace, Sarah greeting them before they were barely through the door:
‘Boss. The Super wants to see us all now you’re back.’
‘Okay, we’ll go up in a minute. What have you got for us?’
‘As you know, the DVLA have all his details,’ she reiterated: ‘Patrick Mars, forty-five, and resident at the address on Mansard Lane since registering with them in the Nineties — he’d gotten his licence in the forces, it looks like. Now, I got back to the teaching union: you remember they weren’t certain that the record of a Stella Mars at the Tudor Oak Independent School was Stella Dunbar under another name? Well, now we know that it is, they looked back further for us and corroborated that before then she did work at the Southney School under that name; as did Samuel Mars. The earliest records are at a different address though, so it looks like the couple moved to Mansard Lane some time in their marriage.’
‘So, Mars is still living at his parents’ house. He must have lived there almost his whole life; apart from the Navy, of course.’
Cori mused, ‘So, Stella could have tracked him down much more easily than he could her.’
‘What year did he register in the DVLA?’ asked Grey of Sarah.
‘Nineteen ninety-three.’
‘And he joined the Navy when he was seventeen, he told us, which would have been…’
‘He was born in Sixty-seven, so… Eighty-four.’
‘So he served for nine years. That’s about a military term, isn’t it? When did Stella inherit that flat?’
Cori went through her notebook, ‘Eighty-eight.’
‘Then how’s this for a hypothesis: Stella inherits her aunt’s flat: cosy, secluded, in the town she still loves and had long-fought for on the Council, which even after her not-very-pleasant sounding marriage breaks down she still can’t bear to go further away than to the outskirts of. Now she’ll have read in the paper years ago, might even have been contacted by the solicitors about, the death of her husband — she knows he’s out of the way. So, she risks a
