‘You wanted to know about Bex’s book — The Amber Tells.’ His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. ‘I haven’t found the manuscript yet . . . but in the meantime this turned up.’
‘What is it?’ Noakes asked baldly. Arty-farty types like Cartwright always took forever to get to the point.
‘The synopsis for the book.’
‘What’s one of them then?’
Chuffing hell, at this rate they’d still be chewing the cud with Cartwright in forty-eight hours.
‘It’s kind of like the idea for a novel . . . a summary.’
‘And something stood out, is that right, Mr Cartwright?’ Markham was ice-cool. No sign that he’d picked up the scent of their quarry.
‘Sort of.’
Noakes wanted to pin the teacher against the wall and shake it out of him.
‘Go on.’ The DI quelled his subordinate with a look.
‘I feel a bit daft now . . . It was just a metaphor . . .’
A metaphor! Noakes looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel. Before he could say anything, Markham swiftly interposed, ‘An image or a figure of speech, Mr Cartwright, is that what you mean? It rang a bell?’
‘Not with me exactly.’
The room was still. Expectant.
‘It was Azhar.’
‘Tariq Azhar?’
‘Yeah . . . I had the synopsis in my bag when I went down to the sports centre yesterday. He was down there too . . . unwinding after the wake. Just thought I’d show it to him . . . What with him being a therapist, I thought he might find it interesting.’
Now Kate Burton leaned forward. ‘And did he? Find it interesting?’
‘Yeah, as a matter of fact he did . . . Seemed to spook him a bit, though.’ Cartwright looked momentarily uncomfortable. ‘Maybe he was feeling emotional after Bex’s funeral and I shouldn’t have shown him . . .’
‘Did he say what spooked him?’ This was Doyle.
‘It was the image of PTSD being like a Jaffa orange or a big, red tumour inside someone.’
‘Why did that upset him?’
‘Well, not so much upset him . . . he just recognized it . . . Looked a bit taken aback. Apparently Jenni used exactly the same word-picture in a research paper. It was one of her favourites . . .’
‘Jenni Harte? The other therapist?’
‘That’s right, Inspector. Of course, I could’ve got it wrong.’ Cartwright sounded uncertain now. ‘Maybe Tariq was upset cos he thought it was plagiarism . . . That’s when writers borrow stuff from other writers . . . sort of stealing their ideas,’ he translated.
‘Oh aye.’ Noakes’s tone suggested that, where academics were concerned, anything was possible.
‘Or he could have wondered if Jenni was treating Bex on the QT without telling him . . . Anyway, he went dead quiet and said he had to dash.’ Cartwright looked troubled. ‘I was going to suggest a game of squash, but he just took off.’
They had got all they were going to get from the man. But it was enough.
‘Thank you very much, Mr Cartwright.’ The DI rose, extending a hand. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to hang on to that synopsis.’
‘No worries, Inspector.’ The young teacher had a sense of foreboding. ‘Look, has something else happened?’
‘You’ve been a great help, Mr Cartwright, I want you to remember that. Now DS Burton is going to arrange a car for you. I know the events of the last week have been draining.’
And somehow, before he quite knew it had happened, Cartwright was propelled from the office.
* * *
They sat in dead silence until Burton returned.
Markham met each of their eyes in turn.
‘Jayne Pickering and Jenni Harte,’ he said, almost caressingly.
‘Yeah, guv, but how?’
‘I have a theory about that.’
And drawing closer to his team, the DI proceeded to tell them what it was.
14. The Figure in the Carpet
When Markham had finished, the others just looked at him, dumbfounded.
Noakes was the first to find his voice.
‘Lemme get this straight.’ The DS tugged off his paisley tie (bizarrely patterned with strawberries) as though it was strangling him. ‘You’re saying Jayne Pickering killed Rebecca Shawcross cos she was jealous of her for copping off wi’ Leo Cartwright?’
‘Correct, Sergeant.’
‘And you reckon it was Jenni Harte who egged Pickering on . . . sicko mind games or summat . . . The two of ’em in it together.’
‘Right again, Sergeant.’
For once in his life, Noakes didn’t look overjoyed by the DI’s endorsement.
Kate Burton, by contrast, took up the baton with unconcealed eagerness. ‘So, boss . . . You think Rebecca Shawcross was having an affair with her therapist Jenni Harte.’ The conker-brown pageboy swung with the force of her enthusiasm. ‘But Rebecca didn’t take the affair seriously . . . was just stringing Jenni along for ideas she could use in her novel The Amber Tells. Even the title came from her therapy sessions with Jenni . . .’
‘Yes, Kate.’ Markham’s tone was sombre. ‘Rebecca Shawcross used people. Shirley Bolton was right about that. I doubt we’ll ever discover what it was in Rebecca’s past that made her a manipulator . . . but it was the only way she knew how to survive . . .’
‘She was bisexual, then . . .’ Noakes was clearly unhappy. As far as he was concerned, sexual flexibility had no place in the scheme of things.
For a moment, Markham experienced an overwhelming compassion for his truculent, red-faced number two. The world was spinning on its axis while George Noakes clung to the civilized certainties of an earlier era.
‘I would say she was at a crossroads, Sergeant. Experimenting . . . open to the full range of experience.’ Markham met his wingman’s
