sympathetic stranger who’s prepared to listen. I think Rose Shepherd was so scared of giving away clues about herself that talking to people was too much of a risk. So she avoided it. Simple as that. A bit like a recovered alcoholic avoids taking the first drink. It’s not the one drink that’s the problem — it’s what he knows it will lead to.’
Fry began to pace the room again. ‘OK. So what was she hiding?’
‘Well, that,’ said Cooper, ‘I don’t know. I can’t imagine what it’s like to be so alone, to cut yourself off from everyone that way. How could anyone do that?’
‘Why are you asking
Cooper raised an eyebrow at her tone and looked around the room. ‘Apart from Gavin, there’s no one else here, Diane.’
Fry was silent for a while, staring down at the floor. ‘This is getting us nowhere. Instead of all these what ifs, we need to start finding some answers.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ said Murfin. ‘So when do we start?’
‘Gavin — ’
‘Sorry.’
‘Well, I know one thing,’ said Cooper. ‘It’s difficult to see a connection between the fire and the shooting. And now Simon Nichols — how does he fit in? I suppose if he didn’t die until Tuesday, he could have been involved in both incidents.’
‘Hold on,’ said Fry. ‘So far as we can tell, there were nearly twenty-four hours between the two. In Rose Shepherd’s case, the medical examiner gave us a pretty wide range for time of death — between thirty and forty hours. But let’s get this straight — the Foxlow shooting came first. It’s just that the victim wasn’t discovered until after the fire.’
‘Maybe Lindsay Mullen was in the wrong place at the wrong time, then. She must somehow have got a look at Nichols, or whoever was watching Rose Shepherd. A good enough look to be able to identify him later.’
‘So he decided to take her out before she could give anyone a description?’
Cooper nodded. ‘Before she even knew that Miss Shepherd had been killed. The body wasn’t discovered until Monday afternoon.’
‘Somebody wasn’t taking any chances, were they?’
‘It’s because they’re — ’
‘Yes, I know. Professionals,’ said Fry. ‘That’s another factor against Nichols. If he wasn’t a professional himself, he had the right contacts.’
‘Well, we’ll have to wait for the PM results before we know more about Nichols.’
Fry stared at the ceiling for a few moments. ‘You know, you were right — the Shepherd enquiry is becoming a big distraction for me. I should be focusing on the arson.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Cooper.
‘Well, there
‘Perhaps not that much easier, if you want to make it look like an accident.’
‘An accident?’ Fry tapped the Rose Shepherd file. ‘That doesn’t sound like the Foxlow suspect, does it? There was certainly no attempt to make Miss Shepherd’s death look like an accident. Quite the opposite — it was done openly and audaciously, like some kind of warning: “Look, we can get to anyone, anywhere.”’
‘Ye-es,’ said Cooper.
Fry looked at him sharply. ‘I take it you’ve formed a different opinion, Ben?’
‘Well, just because there was that difference it doesn’t necessarily follow that they weren’t connected, does it? Our suspects might have had some reason for wanting to make the fire look accidental, but not the shooting of Rose Shepherd.’
‘What reason?’
Cooper shook his head. ‘I don’t know …’
‘No. But what we do know at the moment is that Rose Shepherd had connections with a Bulgarian criminal, who’s also been found dead. We don’t have any more information on Nikolov until we get PM results and the intelligence files from Sofia.’
‘You almost make that sound like a good thing, Diane.’
‘Well, it means I can focus on the Darwin Street fire for a while. Unrelated, or not.’
A few minutes later, Fry finished reading the postmortem reports on the Mullen family for the second time. She put the report aside, then recalled what Mrs van Doon had said about the victims being confused and disorientated by the inhalation of smoke.
She picked up the phone and rang Scientific Support. Wayne Abbott, one of her favourite people.
‘Wayne, you know you said the fingerprints in the house at Darwin Street all belonged to members of the family?’
‘Yes?’
‘Which members of the family did you mean specifically?’
‘Hold on …’ She heard the rustling of paper as he found the right file. ‘Here we go. Well, as you might expect, there were prints from the householders everywhere — that’s Mr Brian Mullen and Mrs Lindsay Mullen. And the children, of course. They were easy to differentiate because of their size.’
‘OK.’
‘Right. Those prints were mostly from the relatively undamaged parts of the house, you understand.’
‘Like the kitchen?’
‘Exactly. I mention that because we lifted a couple of prints belonging to the grandmother, Mrs Moira Lowther. We asked all the family to give their prints for elimination purposes, of course. But hers were only in the kitchen. Nice, smooth surfaces for us to dust, you see. We found none from her husband, though. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. There was so much damage in the sitting room — ’
‘Anyone else on the list?’
‘Yes, the dead woman’s brother, Mr John Lowther.’
‘Where were his prints?’
‘Oh, kitchen, bathroom, sitting room. Some of his were on the children’s toys that we salvaged. I expect he used to spend some time playing uncle with the kids, don’t you think?’
‘Yes,’ said Fry. ‘That’s probably it.’
The engaged sign was showing on the door of Interview One. Inside, John Lowther seemed to be sweating. Damp patches had appeared under his armpits, and his glasses were slipping on his nose. He looked like a man caught performing some shameful act. Yet all he was doing was sitting in a police interview room, waiting for the questions.
With Cooper sitting in to observe, Fry began by asking Lowther to confirm his name, age and address. Then she looked at him, momentarily unsure how to approach the interview, to get him talking.
‘I gather your address is an apartment, sir?’
‘Yes, it’s a new development in Matlock. They converted an old will, I mean mill. It’s rather nice.’
‘I see. Do you own the apartment, Mr Lowther?’
‘It’s a nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine-year lease. With nine hundred and ninety-seven years left to run. Less two years, you see. But it’s no loss.’
Fry frowned. ‘Right. And you’re an actuary by profession?’
‘- confession? Yes, I have very intensive experience in the field.’
‘Do you?’
‘I worked in Leeds, in West Yorkshire, for three years. But I left that job a year ago.’
‘So you’re not employed at the moment?’
He smiled. ‘You might say I’m resting. There’s not so much work for actuaries around these ports.’
‘I see.’
Fry had never felt so unsure of anyone before. She could hear herself saying ‘I see’ too much, a clear indication to anyone listening that she hardly understood a thing that Lowther was saying. Did he recognize that, too? Was it a deliberate ploy on his part to disrupt her interview technique? If so, it was very subtle. But it was
