‘Would he wear shorts even at this time of year?’ Dexter asked.
‘Yes. All the time. He comes home drenched in sweat whatever the weather.’
‘And what time does he usually get home?’ Caroline asked.
‘Well, that depends. He’s got a five kilometre route that goes out the other side of the village, round the back of the salvage yard and back in again. Then there’s a ten kilometre one that goes up to Glaston, across to Morcott and back round. And more often than not he’ll stop off at the George and Dragon on the way home.’
‘Okay. So how long are we talking?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. If he does his short route then half an hour, maybe a bit more. If he does the full route and stops at the pub, who knows? I’m usually in bed by then.’
‘And what time did you go to bed last night?’
‘I really don’t know. About eight, I think. I had a migraine coming on, and I realised he’d probably stopped off at the pub, so I left a note on the kitchen table. It happens quite a lot. He usually sleeps in the spare room so he doesn’t disturb me.’
‘I see. So you wouldn’t necessarily have noticed he wasn’t home until the next morning?’
‘No, that’s right. I got up this morning and thought he’d left for work early, but the door to the spare room was still open and the bed was perfectly made. He never leaves it like that, so I knew he hadn’t slept in it.’
‘So what did you do then?’
‘I called him, but his phone was still on the side in the dining room, so I knew he hadn’t come back after his run. He always leaves it there when he goes out running. He’s got one of those fancy fitness watch things that tracks his times, heart rate and all that, then puts it all on his phone when he gets home. That’s when I started to get worried, so I went out for a drive round his usual routes in case he’d been hit by a car or something, but I couldn’t see him. So I phoned the police.’
‘Okay. Thank you. Of course, we’ll need to do a formal identification, but the description you’ve given us does match that of the body that was discovered this morning. It might be sensible to prepare yourself for the likelihood that the body is Martin.’
Sandra Forbes seemed to freeze in her seat, staring off into space. ‘What… How?’ she finally croaked.
‘We’re not sure yet, but we think he was hit round the head. It’s possible that was what caused his death, but we’ll have to wait for the post-mortem to confirm that.’
Sandra’s eyes didn’t leave the wall on the other side of the room. ‘But it’s so cold out there. It’s freezing.’
Caroline nodded slowly. ‘It’s possible the cold might have played some part, particularly if Martin lost consciousness after the blow to the head. But as I say, we’ll know soon what happened.’
‘I can’t… I can’t identify him. I… I can’t.’
‘It’s okay. If you don’t feel comfortable with a physical identification, there are plenty of other ways we can do it. We can have an officer take Martin’s hairbrush or toothbrush and we can match DNA from there.’
‘But he… he needs it.’
Caroline and Dexter exchanged a look, a silent agreement between them that this conversation was going to require more specialist intervention.
6
They left Sandra Forbes in the capable hands of a trained Family Liaison Officer and uniformed constables, who would be able to carry out the administrative work of seizing Martin’s hairbrush and toothbrush as evidence, as well as sensitively searching the home for anything else which might prove useful.
Having been shown photographs of Martin and compared those to the body found under Welland Viaduct, they were in no doubt that the body was his, and in their eyes a DNA match would be a mere formality. As a result, they’d informed Sandra that the body was overwhelmingly likely to be that of her husband.
As far as Caroline was concerned, this was a murder case. The blow to the back of Martin Forbes’s head was substantial, and wasn’t something he could’ve inflicted on himself. When that was coupled with strangulation and the possibility that Martin had died elsewhere and been moved underneath the viaduct after his death, all signs pointed towards murder.
Before they left, they’d managed to ascertain that Sandra didn’t know of any arguments or enemies, or anyone who might want Martin dead. By all accounts he’d been a man who largely kept himself to himself, and wasn’t the sort of person to fall out with people unnecessarily.
They’d established that Martin was the owner of a graphic design company based in Uppingham, and knew that by now the working day would’ve started in earnest, the rest of the employees naturally wondering where their boss had got to. In any case, their focus now turned to looking for suspects, motives and evidence, and it was clear they weren’t going to get much more out of Sandra Forbes at the moment.
A little under ten minutes after leaving the Forbes house, they arrived outside the premises of Allure Design, the company Martin owned and ran, on the outskirts of Uppingham. Caroline pressed the buzzer on the outside of the door, and a few seconds later a voice answered.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Detective Inspector Hills and Detective Sergeant Antoine from Rutland Police. Can we come in, please?’
‘Erm, well, I’m not sure. The boss isn’t in and I don’t want to…’
‘No-one’s in trouble,’ Caroline said. ‘We just have something we need to speak to you about.’
There was a short click, then a buzz as the door unlocked and Dexter pulled it open, before they both stepped inside. A thirty-something woman greeted them a few moments later.
‘Sorry. Bit of a weird morning,’ she said. ‘I’m Monique. Operations
