‘Are you still in touch with her?’ she asked, tilting her head. ‘I saw her photo in the paper — she’s quite lovely.’
He sensed her quickening interest and smiled tightly. ‘No, we’re not in touch. Not since the court case back in March. Whenever we meet there seems to be death and mayhem. I think she’d rather not invite any more in.’
‘Ah, but you wish she would, don’t you?’
‘Have you been discussing me with Mariam?’ he accused.
She bit her lip. ‘Guilty,’ she said. ‘But you can’t blame me. I’ve had nothing but builders and very dull paying guests to talk to for the past three months, since Roger’s been abroad. I’m dying of boredom and your backstory is delicious.’ She leaned back, scooping her wine up again and biting her lip theatrically. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sure it’s all been very traumatic for you and here’s me treating it like first class entertainment. Which it is, of course. I know… I’m very shallow.’
Lucas chuckled, shaking his head. There weren’t many people who could persuade him to talk about his recent experiences with Kate Sparrow, but Grace might be one of them. ‘I would like to see Kate again,’ he admitted. ‘But I think there’s just too much trauma going on there. She doesn’t want to hear from me, and I don’t blame her.’
‘She doesn’t want to hear from you?’ Grace rested her chin on her manicured hand and narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Darling boy — I find that very hard to believe.
6
It was clear from the start that DS Helen Stuart did not want to hear from her.
Kate took a deep breath. ‘I’m DI Kate Sparrow, from Wiltshire Police,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ came back a cool voice. ‘So they tell me. You’re about two hundred miles off your patch, aren’t you?’
‘True,’ said Kate, sitting on the edge of the sofa and waving Francis away into his room. Having her younger brother balefully staring at her really wasn’t helping. This was sensitive stuff; she could imagine how she would feel if some copper from another county phoned up out of the blue and questioned her policing. ‘Helen, I’ll level with you — I’m up at the Buntin’s Holiday Village for a long weekend with some friends. Martin Riley was one of them. I just heard this afternoon that he was found dead in the pool complex here, last week.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ said DS Stuart, not thawing one iota.
‘Thank you. Um… I wondered if I could just… run something past you?’ said Kate.
There was silence at the other end of the call, but she could make out the tapping of a keyboard and got the distinct impression her cross-boundary colleague was multitasking. She bit down on her annoyance. Getting snippy would not help.
‘I gather Martin was found, with his throat cut, in the pool — fully clothed. And that he’d left a suicide note in his chalet — is that correct?’
‘That’s correct,’ said the DS. ‘What’s your point, DI Sparrow? I’ve got a lot of work to get on with here.’
‘I’m just finding it a little hard to understand,’ said Kate, carefully swerving the word ‘believe’.
‘Oh?’ The DS couldn’t have sounded less interested. The keys rattled on and she called out a muffled thank you to a colleague before returning her scant attention to Kate. ‘Why’s that then?’
‘I suppose I’m struggling with why a man who wanted to end his life would write his suicide note, dress up for the evening, and then go and slit his throat in a pool, where he knew a party of kids would be trooping through less than an hour later.’
‘Depressed people do mad things,’ said DS Stuart.
‘What did the suicide note say?’ asked Kate — a pretty hopeless shot.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what it said,’ said DS Stuart.
‘You will?’
‘Sure. Just turn up at Beccles Coroner’s Court in two weeks. You can hear it from the public gallery.’
Kate took in a steadying breath. ‘DS Stuart,’ she said. ‘I’m not trying to tell you your job, but—’
‘Oh, aren’t you?’ came the reply. ‘Because it sounds very much like that’s where you’re heading, Inspector. Suicide. That’s what it was. The graphologist has confirmed the handwriting was Riley’s and his prints and DNA were all over it. The knife had his traces on it, too. The angle of the wound was consistent with self-harm. No sign of a struggle. No shadowy murderer captured on CCTV. I know it’s hard to accept when it’s someone you know, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred, a suicide is just a suicide. As I said, I’m sorry for your loss.’
The line went dead.
‘That went well then,’ said Francis, back in the room, arms folded and face full of I told you so.
‘Snarky cow,’ muttered Kate.
‘You think she didn’t do her job?’ he asked.
Kate considered. ‘I think she did as little of her job as was strictly necessary.’
‘But… could she be right?’
Kate realised he’d been listening in. The DS’s voice had carried sharply out of her iPhone.
Kate shrugged. ‘Yes, of course she could be right. It’s just that…’
‘People never see it coming,’ said Francis. ‘And like you said, you didn’t know him that well. All kinds of stuff could have been going on in his life. Stuff he couldn’t cope with.’
Kate took a long breath. She knew Francis was right. She was seeing murder everywhere these days. In her line of work there was a tendency towards this anyway, but after the last six months, when she’d been involved way too up close and personal with some nasty killers, it was probably not surprising. She let the breath out and nodded. ‘You’re right. I’m obsessing.’ She checked her watch. ‘We need to get ready to meet the Magnificent Sev… I mean… my old mates. I’m going to have a shower, OK?’
‘Good’, said Francis, brightly. ‘We came up here to have some fun. Let’s see if we can do that, eh?’
In the shower, she washed away some of the
