‘Not the details.’
‘That’s Christine, isn’t it? I’ll tell you that she received the usual payments, plus a full year’s salary. And all she had to do was to sign a confidentiality agreement that she wouldn’t reveal the truth of what she had taken, what she had done. The woman was consorting with a murdered man, a man who sold himself, having sex with him in the hotel. She did well out of it.’
‘And you?’
‘I’ve got three months before I receive a similar deal.’
‘Why not now?’
‘Two people in management leaving at the same time raises suspicion. One only causes gossip.’
‘Will they honour their side of the bargain?’
‘They will. I’ve got it in writing.’
‘You forced Christine to sleep with you?’
‘Force? A strong word, if you don’t mind me saying,’ Marshall said. It was clear that he was feeling increasingly comfortable with the situation.
Though he didn’t like him, Larry could see that the man might be telling the truth. Christine Mason was hardly the best character witness; yet the perception that she was the most truthful was based on the fact that she was attractive, Marshall was not.
‘Are you saying it was mutual?’ Wendy asked.
‘Not totally, not that I forced her either. Christine is not the saint that you want to portray her as. She was embezzling money before I found out, and she easily took on board my suggestion. I may be disreputable, according to her, but I’m not the villain of the piece here.’
‘Mr Marshall, you are, and you know it. But you’re right, Christine is no saint. But how about Nancy Bartlett?’ Wendy said. ‘What’s your story?’
‘There is no story. I have money, enough to see me out. Check me out if you want, but you’ll not find any dirt against me.’
‘But you met with Colin Young not long before he died. You must be regarded as suspect.’
‘I liked him, but that was all.’
Larry and Wendy left the two not-so-young lovers in their love nest and left the flat. Another unexpected element to the murder investigation.
Chapter 27
It was Gwen Hislop who phoned Isaac, not on account of her sister, but because of the visit to her house by Terry Hislop. Her sister had mentioned it once before to Wendy, but then there had been no significance attached to it. But now, Christine Mason’s sister, as well as being her lawyer, was saying that there was more to it.
Isaac, alone in the office and glad of the opportunity to get out, visited the woman at her house.
‘Terry has been here,’ Gwen said. Old news to Isaac, but he decided not to mention that Homicide knew of Terry Hislop being in London.
‘You’ve asked me here,’ Isaac said. There was no cup of tea, no chat about the weather and life in general, nothing that transformed Gwen Hislop from hard and severe to soft and agreeable. She was, he decided, the sort of woman who would have no trouble finding a man to keep her company, but from what the department had found out and from what her sister had said, she had been on her own since her marriage to Terry. And that was a long time ago, more than twenty years.
‘He’s been twice. The first time he was disagreeable, yet I let him into the house. He wanted to reflect on good times in the past.’
‘And you?’
‘I indulged him with his fantasies.’
‘Are you saying that there were no good times?’
‘Not that I can remember, and certainly not after my dear sister,’ sarcastically said, Isaac noted, ‘told me that she had been screwing him behind my back.’
‘I thought you were friends again.’ Isaac had to admit that she had a colourful manner in the way she spoke, and she was articulate, her choice of words entertaining.
‘Not friends, sisters.’
‘Does Christine know all of this?’
‘We’re not talking at this time. She left here and went back to her house, and good riddance to her. It’s a good job I don’t have a dog, or she would have taken it as well.’
‘The parting was acrimonious?’
‘You could say that. No doubt you and your officers think she’s a lovely person, liberal with her favours, but basically, harmless and agreeable?’
‘To some extent. But we’re not naive. She committed a criminal act, but we’re not charging her, no proof. And, as you say, “liberal with her favours”.’
‘Forget about her for the moment,’ Gwen said. ‘A coffee.’
Wendy would have said it was the Isaac charm, softening the hardest heart. ‘That’d be fine,’ he said.
‘The second time,’ Gwen Hislop said after she had returned with two cups, ‘Terry had been drinking. I didn’t want to let him in, but he stuck his shoe in the door as I tried to close it.’
‘Did he harm you?’
‘No.’
‘In the past?’
‘Statute of limitations on that far back. Let’s focus on his last visit.’
‘He’s in your house, he’s drunk, he’s angry.’
‘Not drunk, just a little unsteady on his feet. It used to be a joke in our courting days, how I could down four pints of beer and still walk a straight line and he’d be struggling to stand up.’
‘He’s not committed a criminal act by visiting you, then?’
‘He frightened me, but no. I’d say he’d drunk two to three pints, enough to think we were still married, and I was there for him.’
‘Amorous advances?’
‘He thought they were, I didn’t. I don’t need a lecher pawing me, not now.’
‘You live alone,’ Isaac said.
‘I’ve just become used to my own company. I’m not a man hater, not anything really. Terry was enough for
