Paul Isaac answered very stiffly. ‘Rebecca and I were married in 2000. If it’s got anything to do with you.’
‘I am expecting our first child,’ Rebecca said gently, putting her hand over her husband’s. ‘Paul and his first wife were divorced in the late 1990s.’
‘Thank you.’ Delia Shaw knew she’d lost a bit of face with her last question but now she’d alienated the Isaacs she felt that she should try to retrieve something more tangible from the interview even if it was in a misguided direction and distanced them still further from the truth. ‘Your mother’s house was obviously worth a lot of money.’
The Isaacs waited, looking vaguely affronted at the bluntness of the comment and a little wary.
WPC Shaw felt she was in pursuit. ‘What was the value of her estate when she died?’
It brought out the sting in both of them. Rebecca’s mouth tightened and she gave a swift, worried glance at her husband.
‘I can’t see what that’s got to do with your enquiry,’ Paul Isaac said stiffly.
WPC Shaw waited.
‘A little over two million in all.’
‘That’s a lot of money.’
Paul Isaac dipped his head.
Delia Shaw addressed her next question directly to him. ‘Your father?’
‘Died back in the 80s.’
‘What did he do for a living?’
The Isaacs exchanged a strained look and appeared even more uneasy. Rebecca Isaac started rubbing her fingers together with a soft, dry, rasping sound.
‘He was an undertaker,’ Paul Isaac said reluctantly.
PC Shaw was taken aback. She hadn’t expected this answer. She had a moment’s hesitation while she wondered what to do next. She didn’t want to go just yet. She felt she was on the verge of discovering something of potential significance. Perhaps she could still flush something useful out of this interview. She stood up, decision made. ‘Would it be an awful nuisance if I took a look at the rooms your mother inhabited?’
‘If you must,’ Paul Isaac said reluctantly and WPC Shaw knew now that any pretence of friendliness was over.
They wanted her to go.
The Isaacs had converted two large, sunny rooms on the ground floor into a sitting room with an electric adjustable bed in one corner and a walk-in shower and bathroom, everything made easy for the elderly lady. It was clean and had obviously been scrubbed and tidied since the old lady’s death, yet there was still that lingering scent of an elderly female. A little like fusty rose petals. Delia looked around for something which would give her a clue into the late Mrs Isaac’s character. She scanned the room and finally found it in the bookshelves. The late Mrs Isaac had been an avid reader of crime fiction. She found plenty of classics, Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie as well as a few surprises, Patricia Cornwell and Michael Connolly. A Val McDermid.
‘Thank you,’ she said, turning to see Paul Isaac had dropped his arm around his wife’s shoulder as though to comfort her. Both were looking upset. They didn’t like being in this room. Through affection? Grief? Was there something else? Guilt, perhaps? Or was she simply being a suspicious policewoman?
‘One last question,’ PC Shaw said, ‘and then I promise I’ll leave you in peace.’ She caught the relief in the dropping of their shoulder muscles and the release of tension in their faces. But they still braced themselves for this final query. ‘What do
It had not been the question they had feared and Paul Isaac answered easily enough. ‘I’m in the family business,’ he said. ‘I’m an undertaker too.’ He grinned. ‘Not the most glamorous of occupations but it’s recession proof. People are always dying and it provides us with a certain lifestyle.’ Again he and his wife exchanged glances.
WPC Shaw shook hands with them both and climbed back into her car, noting that they were watching her from the doorway. They stood until she had turned the corner out of their drive. Either they were being polite or were simply glad to see the Law off their property. It could be either. She felt an unaccountable twitching in her toes. At the back of her mind was the Sherlock Holmes story of the disappearance of tall Lady Frances Fairfax being buried alive in a coffin which had been designed for only one small, dead, old lady. The coffin had been too big. Then, as she turned onto the Bristol Road she almost laughed at herself. That would have meant a complete reversal of this situation. Not a body being secreted somewhere and found years later. Even she could work out that an
Bugger, she thought.
There was still the question of money, she pondered next, as she sped along the Aston Expressway towards the M6. The Isaacs had definitely been sensitive on that point. But again she was barking up the wrong tree. They might have swindled Inland Revenue, even polished off the elderly mother, but even if they had committed both crimes it wasn’t going to solve this case. They were investigating the death of someone right at the other end of life. An infant. Not a wealthy geriatric. All she’d really learned for definite was that the Isaacs were not short of money. And it was irrelevant. A red herring. Paul’s mother could have been worth the entire National Debt and his father Vlad the Impaler, even Anubis, Egyptian God of mummification. It still wouldn’t have had any bearing on this case. This was nothing to do with money or the Isaac’s profession or Mrs Isaac herself. It had been a wasted journey; she’d learned nothing to move the case nearer solution. But she reminded herself of DI Randall’s frequently uttered statement when an entire trail of investigation came to a blind ending. Nothing was ever really wasted.
Was it?
It was late in the morning, almost Thursday lunchtime, that after painstakingly sifting through the earth, guided by the dogs’ noses, that the crime scene team unearthed a bone, then another bone. Both very small. Tiny in fact. Painstakingly they brushed the soil away until they had a perfect set. It was a very small pile of bones and the mood of the men quickly changed from concentrating on the work to one of sombre anticipation. Almost acceptance. It had been what they had half expected to find.
WPC Shaw made her report to Alex Randall and he listened without comment until she’d finished. ‘You did well,’ he said. ‘It was a long shot but I agree with you. Get the report typed up and file it for now. It had to be done,’ he added kindly. ‘We have so little to go on in this case that we must explore all leads. Well done.’
He made a note that WPC Shaw might be suitable to move to the plain-clothes division if she could use initiative like this.
She’d barely gone when he received the call about the bones found in Bayston Hill.
Martha received his call at a little after four p.m., Alex’s voice sounding grave and a little upset.
‘We’ve found some bones,’ he said.
‘Where?’
‘Under the patio of the house in Bayston Hill, the house the Sedgewicks lived in before they moved to The Mount.’
Even Martha felt chilled.
‘It’s a very small pile of bones,’ he said. ‘I’m just waiting for clarification from the forensic team whether they’re human or not.’
‘What do you think, Alex?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘I’m no expert. In my opinion the head’s too small but if it had just been born, well…’
Microcephaly, Martha thought, with a shudder. Babies born with heads too tiny for life.
‘A small head doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t human,’ she said.
‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ Alex responded. ‘If they are the bones of another child it probably means that the Sedgewicks are implicated in something grim, something… well, even I can’t imagine. In any case we’re going to have to speak to them again.’ He paused, adding, ‘I wish you could be there when we interview them, Martha. Sometimes,’ he said, ‘I think you have an insight – well, an instinct – that we police just don’t have. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the medical training. But it’s impossible for you to be there,’ he added then fell silent. ‘Unless…’
