‘What time did you arrive?’ Caroline asked.
‘Just before seven. Ten to, I think.’
‘And how long did you stay?’
‘Until half past. It was obvious then he wasn’t going to turn up and had just pussied out of it.’
‘Did you stay in your car the whole time?’
‘God yes. It was cold and drizzling. I stayed inside with the heaters on.’
Caroline and Dexter exchanged a look. ‘And did you see anyone else around?’ Caroline said.
‘No-one. A couple of cars drove past on the road, but no-one stopped. No-one on foot either, but that was hardly surprising.’
It was always a risk to change the line of questioning at a time like this, but Caroline wanted to see how he’d react. ‘Did you suspect there might be something more to the relationship between Amie and Martin?’ she asked. ‘That maybe it wasn’t just unwanted attention, but that perhaps something had been going on between them?’
Gavin’s jaw tensed. That told Caroline all she needed to know. ‘No,’ he said. ‘She’s not like that. She’s not that sort of woman.’
‘Okay. Back to Monday night. What happened when you realised Martin hadn’t turned up? Did you try to call him?’
Gavin shook his head. ‘No. I don’t have a number for him. I only had his personal email address because he’d sent some jokey forwarding thing to Amie a while back and she’d forwarded it on to me. But I did email him to call him a coward.’
Caroline and Dexter looked at each other again. ‘When was this?’ she asked.
Gavin shrugged. ‘Around that time. Half seven-ish. Just before I left Seaton and came home. I was bloody fuming that he’d got me all the way out there, left me sitting in a sodding car park for over half an hour and not bothered turning up.’
Caroline jotted a note in her book, in deliberate view of Dexter. Make sure they check G’s sent items.
‘Did you definitely send that to Martin’s email address?’
‘Of course I did. Who else would I send it to?’
‘I was just wondering, because we didn’t find it in Martin’s inbox. It’s a bit strange that he’d delete that email but not the others, isn’t it?’
Gavin shrugged again. ‘I dunno. I can’t answer that for him, can I? All I know is I replied to the existing thread, so there’s no way it went anywhere else.’
Caroline tried to formulate her thoughts, but found she was struggling. It all seemed so clear, but at the same time completely the opposite. The evidence seemed to be growing, and there was definitely something suspicious about Gavin’s behaviour. But she was doubtful there was enough for a charge. An extension awaiting further evidence and results from forensics, yes. But she was also cautious about putting too much stock in one suspect. She’d made that mistake before.
‘So let’s get things straight,’ she said. ‘You suspect that Martin has been trying it on with your wife. You tell him you want to meet and talk to him. You don’t say why. You arrange to meet under the viaduct on Monday evening. You claim he never turned up and that you sent him an email calling him a coward for not turning up, but just a few hours later his body is found at that exact spot. You lied to us when you said you hadn’t left the house that evening. You lied when you said you hadn’t been in recent contact with Martin Forbes. And you lied when you said you didn’t kill him, didn’t you Gavin?’
‘No! I didn’t kill him. And I don’t know who did, either.’ He leaned forward, his elbows on the table. A mark of deliberate sincerity, whether acted or true. ‘Look at this from my point of view. I arranged to meet the guy, he didn’t turn up, then his body’s found right where I’d been. How do you think that looks from here? I know exactly how it looks from your side of things. So yeah, of course I didn’t bloody tell you I’d driven down there to meet him. And of course I didn’t tell you about the emails.’
Caroline scoffed. ‘Did you think we wouldn’t find out?’
‘No! I don’t know. I just… I don’t know. I thought maybe by then you’d have found who actually killed him. I guess part of me thought you’d have no real reason to suspect me because I didn’t do it, so there was no way I was just going to phone up and tell you all this, was there? And then when you started sniffing round, there was nothing I could do but hang on and hope you found whoever did it first. Jesus Christ, I’ve got kids. A family. A job. I’m not about to kill some bloke because he fancies my wife. I mean, come on. You’ve seen her. He’s not the first guy to try it on with her. Not by a long shot. Just think about it. This doesn’t make any sense.’
‘Not in isolation, no. But you’ve already protected Amie once, haven’t you? You were her alibi when Russell Speakman died.’
‘Of course I bloody was. I was with her! What else did you expect me to say? And of course I protect her. She’s my wife. But I don’t go murdering every bloke who looks at her, for crying out loud. What do you think I am?’
Caroline looked at Gavin, desperately trying to work out the answer to that question for herself.
40
After the interview, Caroline and Dexter sat down in her office and tried to process the fallout.
‘It’s bizarre,’ she said. ‘It’s almost like there are two instincts there. There’s the one that says of course he did it, he’s lied about being at the scene until we proved otherwise, he lied about not even leaving the house, he lied about not being in contact with Martin,
