‘I’d rather that than have you stand at my door for the neighbours to admire.’
The house was a semi-detached villa, built in the second half of the twentieth century. The living room was comfortably, rather than lavishly, furnished. Looking around, Mackenzie guessed that the enormous plasma television set, mounted like a mirror on a wall, was easily the most expensive item on view.
‘You’re late,’ the former Mrs Starr said abruptly.
Mackenzie smiled at her, amused by her petulance. ‘Come again?’
‘It’s taken you three days to get here. I’d have thought I’d have been first on your list for a visit.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you: we had other priorities. But now we are here, I might as well ask you straight out, did you kill your former husband, Mrs Philips?’
‘That’s better,’ she exclaimed sarcastically. ‘No, I did not.’
‘Where were you on Friday night?’
‘At the bingo, down in Meadowbank.’
‘Alone?’
‘No. I was with my friends Morven and Izzy.’
‘Till when?’
‘Till it finished; after that we got a taxi back here and had a drink. They left after midnight. Ask them; you can have their addresses if you like.’
‘What about Mr Philips?’
The woman gave a snorting laugh. ‘Do you mean, did he kill Gary? He’s never even met him. It’d have been some trick if he did, too. Les is a lorry driver: he was in Lisbon on Friday.’
‘You were fairly quick off your mark phoning the lawyer, though, to see if you were still in the will.’
‘Ollie told you that, did he? Why the hell shouldn’t I? Gary was casual about these things . . . not that he’ll have left much behind him. He had to remortgage to give me my share when we split up, and he only had that one poky wee betting shop.’
‘How did you feel about your ex, Mrs Philips?’ asked Wilding.
‘I didn’t feel anything about him. He was never bad to me, just never particularly good to me either.’
‘How long were you married?’
‘Twelve years: we were together for a year or two before that, and we just sort of drifted into it. We got divorced four years ago.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was as tight as a fish’s ring, if you want to know the truth. What’s the point in living in a big expensive house and dressing like a tramp? I stood it for long enough; I told him how I felt but he never listened, so eventually I walked out.’
‘Did you know Mr Philips at that point?’
‘No. I met him a year after the divorce; like I said, he doesn’t know Gary at all.’
‘How much did you get out of it?’
‘Two hundred and eighty thousand. My lawyer did a good job: he got me half the value of the house, the furniture and the shop, plus maintenance. The deal was so good that I worried for a while that he’d go out of business and the alimony would dry up. To tell you the truth, I don’t know how he did it.’
‘We do,’ said Mackenzie, noting her instant curiosity.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mr Starr had other business interests beside the shop.’
Kitty Philips looked incredulous. ‘Who? Gary? Pull the other one, pal. Gary was a gambler, pure and simple; that’s all he knew. I used to tell him that when he had a good run he should put the money into something different, like a pub, or more shops, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘So all the time you were married, he never had any other source of income?’
‘No, and I’m pretty sure I’d have known. He’d bring home cash occasionally and put it in the home safe. I never knew the combination, but I could see what he was putting in and it wasn’t that much, a few hundred at a time, and not so often that it would ever amount to a fortune. I used to reckon that he was skimming the tax man, and I’m pretty sure I was right.’
‘How about his associates? Did you know many of them?’
‘You’ve probably met them all yourself by now, unless there are folk he’s got to know since I left. Gary didn’t make friends easily. In fact, Gary didn’t make friends, period.’
‘Who was closest to him?’ asked Wilding. ‘Oliver Poole?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. He saw Ollie only when he needed to; they might have had the odd pint, but that was all. He never came to the house, and we only ever went to his once, to a party about ten years ago. If you ask me to guess, from the people I met in and around the shop, I’d say that Eddie Charnwood was the closest thing he had to a pal.’
‘Not Smith?’
Mrs Philips laughed. ‘Big Ming? Gary described him as a lackey once, and that’s as good a description as any. He paid him next to bugger all, I know that; minimum wage. I don’t know how he survived. No, Eddie Charnwood was as close as anybody got. In fact we even got a Christmas card from him and his wife the year before I left. Her name was Sorry. I remember laughing at it; there was I feeling sorry for myself, and she was called that.’
‘Takes all sorts,’ Mackenzie murmured. ‘You don’t seem sorry for yourself now, Mrs Philips,’ he went on, his voice hardening with every word. ‘You were married to the guy for twelve years, and now he’s dead, tied up and butchered like a veal calf.’ He glanced around the room. ‘Yet I don’t see any signs of mourning around here. Did nobody care about the poor bastard?’
For a moment Wilding thought that Kitty Philips would live up to her name and lash out at the chief inspector like a cat, raking her claws across his face. He moved, ready to step between them, but she controlled herself, although her face was twisted with sudden anger.
‘What do you know?’ she shouted. ‘You flash supercilious bastard, what do you know? Do you think I should be dressed in black from head to foot? No fucking chance, and do you know why not? Because if I did, Gary would be up there,’ she pointed at the floor, her finger stabbing, ‘or down there, more like, laughing at me. The man didn’t have any love in him; he never showed it and he rejected it whenever it was shown to him. Once, just once, I said to him that I’d like to have kids. He looked at me as if I was crazy, then he said, “And what exactly would be in that for me?”
‘He wasn’t inhuman, I’m not saying that, but he wasn’t able to have normal relationships. There was nobody in his life that wasn’t of use to him. He never gave anything willingly, he only took it. He might have left everything to his mother, but he had no time for her when he was alive. He never visited her, and when she got old he let the social-services people look after her.
‘Do you know the main reason I left him? It wasn’t just about money; look, if I really needed it I used to take it and that was that. No, it was because I took a look at myself one day, at the number of people I had in my life, and at the way I treated them, and I realised that he was making me like him. And I left him, before it was too late.’
She paused in her tirade to reach out and poke Mackenzie in the chest, hard enough for him to flinch. ‘So, mister, don’t you look down your nose at me, just because I’m not sitting in that chair crying into my hankie. It’s awful that Gary died the way he did, but the fact is the world won’t be a sadder place without him.’ She glared at the chief inspector. ‘And you know what? I look at you, and I see a bit of him in there. Now go on, the pair of you. I’ve got nothing more to tell you and I’ve got to get ready for work.’
Mackenzie might have stood his ground, but Wilding took the lead. ‘Thanks, Mrs Philips,’ he said. ‘If there’s anything else we need I’ll call you.’ He nodded to the chief inspector and headed for the door. ‘What the hell was all that about?’ he asked, as they reached the car.
‘Search me. She really blew off steam, didn’t she?’
‘I don’t mean her, sir, I mean you. Why did you rattle her cage like that?’
‘Because I chose to, Sergeant. She annoyed me, so I had a pop at her, just to shake her up, just to get under her skin. And you know what, Ray? You’re annoying me too. I’ve had just about as much of this constant questioning of my methods as I’m going to take.’
Wilding looked at him coolly. ‘Very good, sir,’ he said, as he opened the driver’s door.
Mackenzie was fastening his seat-belt when his mobile sounded. He scowled and reached for it. ‘DCI,’ he
