Arnold’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s going on, Caroline? What’s this about?’
‘Do you remember her name? The suspect.’
‘Can’t say I do, no,’ Arnold answered with a long exhalation of breath.
‘Amie Murray, her name was. She’s now Amie Tanner.’
‘They married?’
‘Oh yes. She works at the company owned by Martin Forbes, the man whose body was found under the viaduct. She and Martin had a massive row a couple of days before he died. According to colleagues, there were suspicions that something had been going on. Gavin Tanner, previously her alibi and now her husband, provided yet another alibi for her. That was dodgy enough to start alarm bells ringing, but then we found these.’
Caroline passed her phone across the desk. She’d taken photos of the emails Gavin Tanner had sent to Martin Forbes. As he read them, Arnold’s face dropped.
‘This is definitely his email address?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you brought him in?’
‘In the process of.’
Arnold sat back in his chair and rubbed his head. ‘Christ. Why did those stupid old buggers always think they knew best? “This is the way it’s always been done, lad. Never did us any harm.” Jesus Christ. Worked out fine for them, didn’t it? Course it did. Gave them an easy ride. But it’s not them who’s got to clear up their mess years later.’
‘I’ve got to say, sir, this could get worse. We could be opening up a whole can of worms, here. Who’s to say Alf Tanner wasn’t bent from the start? Who knows what else he’d been up to?’
‘Well I wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ Arnold said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘Alf Tanner’s been dead seven years.’
36
Gavin Tanner cut a steely figure as Caroline and Dexter sat opposite him in the interview room. In that moment, she could see where Amie had learnt her arrogance. They made quite the team. Always had, it seemed.
It was usually the case that bolshie suspects were reined in by their solicitors, if the solicitor wasn’t the bolshie one to begin with. In this case, though, Gavin Tanner’s brief looked like a man who’d just had his pants pulled down in front of the class.
‘Okay, are you happy to get started?’ Caroline asked them as a matter of courtesy, before initiating the recording.
‘Gavin, can you talk us through your movements on the night Martin Forbes died, please?’
Gavin looked up at the ceiling and sighed, his arms crossed over his chest. ‘We’ve been through this. Many times.’
‘This is your first interview, Gavin.’
‘But you haven’t stopped hassling my wife, have you? She’s told you every single time she was at home with me all evening, so where do you suppose I was?’
‘That’s what I’m asking you, Gavin.’
Gavin stared, almost glared, at Caroline. ‘I. Was. At. Home.’
‘All evening?’
‘Yes. All evening.’
‘Any witnesses other than your wife?’
‘Yeah, we had a mariachi band in for the night. Fancied a bit of light entertainment. How many bloody witnesses do you think I’ve got? The kids were in bed, it was just us.’
‘So you didn’t leave the house at all? Even for a few minutes?’
Gavin leaned forward. ‘What part of “all evening” didn’t you understand?’
‘Did you know Martin Forbes personally?’
It seemed to take a moment for Gavin to adjust to the shift in questioning. ‘No. No, I didn’t. He was Amie’s boss. That’s about all I knew of him.’
‘Ever meet him?’
‘Once or twice, briefly, if I popped by the office or had to pick Amie up from work or some event.’
‘Did you get on?’
‘We barely knew each other. I can’t say I liked him or disliked him.’
‘So you hadn’t had any recent contact with Martin?’
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, how many times do you want to ask me the same bloody question in different ways? Do you think I’m just going to suddenly “slip up” and give you the opposite answer? It’s ridiculous.’
‘Are you an angry man by nature, Gavin?’ Caroline asked.
Dexter had to force himself to cover his smile, hoping Tanner and his solicitor hadn’t noticed it. It was one of Caroline’s ‘cornering’ questions for suspects: one which had no right answer. Saying yes would potentially incriminate them, and anything else would force them to calm down and moderate their behaviour.
‘You’d be angry if you were in my situation. You’ve been harassing my wife constantly, and now me.’
‘With respect, being asked to attend a police interview isn’t harassment. Nor is us interviewing you under caution. But I understand it must be quite frustrating. Especially considering your past history.’
Tanner’s eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘You had a similar experience about fifteen years ago, didn’t you?’ Caroline asked, flicking through her papers as if she’d only read a brief mention of it and wasn’t fully appraised of the facts. ‘Ah, yes. Here we are. Your wife — friend, as she was then — was questioned in connection with the suspicious death of a man she’d been in a relationship with. You were her alibi.’
‘With respect, Detectives,’ the solicitor asked, shuffling in his chair like a child saying his first lines in a school play, ‘do you have anything other than coincidence?’
‘Oh yes,’ Caroline answered, smiling. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll come to that. Can you talk us through what happened on the night Russell Speakman died, Gavin?’
Gavin let out a belly laugh. ‘What? No, of course I bloody can’t. I can barely tell you what I did three weeks ago, never mind fifteen years ago. It was a non-event.’
‘You were the alibi for a woman suspected of murder. She wasn’t charged, partially because of your alibi. Partially.’
‘What’s that meant to mean?’
‘We’ll come to it, I’m sure. Shall I read the statement you gave to the police at the time?’
Tanner leaned back in his chair and folded his arms again. ‘Yeah, go on. Why not. I could do with a snooze.’
‘Don’t relax too much. It’s short. But then again it didn’t need to be any longer, did it? “Amie Murray arrived at my house a few minutes after two o’clock p.m. She
