‘You’re super excited to see Hans again because we never spend any time with dogs?’
Rex hung his head.
‘Morning, Albert,’ hallooed Victor, crossing the street to get to them.
‘Good morning, Victor and Hans. Rex is ever so pleased to see Hans again. I think they must have hit it off last night.
Rex said something rude.
‘Just taking him for a walk?’ Victor asked conversationally.
‘Yes. He is used to getting some exercise between his breakfast and mine.’
‘I’m just on my way to the station to see if I can’t speak with Kate or get a message to her.’
‘Oh, ah, hold on a moment.’ Victor’s announcement reminded Albert to check his phone for messages. Randall promised to do what he could last night, which might mean the information Albert wanted was already in an email waiting to be read. That Victor hadn’t already had a call from her might mean the message was yet to be passed, or wasn’t going to be passed, or even that Kate didn’t want to speak with anyone.
Albert got his phone out but a swift patting down of his pockets revealed his reading glasses were back at the pub on his nightstand. ‘I don’t have my reading glasses,’ he explained, holding the phone out for Victor to see the screen. ‘Can you see an email from Randall?’
Victor scrutinised the list of emails, spotting one with randallsmith in the email address third from the top. ‘Yes. Do you want me to read it?’
‘Yes, please.’
Victor took the offered phone so he could operate it and read the email aloud.
‘Dad, I do hope you are not poking your nose in again. I read about that business in Stilton, you know. The murder victim you asked about was garrotted with a piece of rope. As you know, this throws ambiguity on the gender of the killer.’
Victor looked up from the phone. ‘What does he mean by ambiguity?’
‘Statistically, some methods of murder are favoured by one gender or the other. It’s not a hard rule and would never be used to argue a case, but if it were strangulation, the case is that many women do not have the strength to overpower a man and hold a choke on for long enough. A woman could easily use a garrotte though, coming from behind to cut off air to the lungs and blood to the brain.’
‘Right.’ It was all Victor could think of to say in response to the clinical explanation. He brought his eyes back to the screen.
‘The victim was found outside of a village called Llandinam in Wales.’
Victor tore his eyes from the screen again. ‘Wales? What on Earth was Joel doing in Wales?’
Albert of course had no idea, but it was an intriguing question. The man had gone to a pub on his way home and was found dead the following day a hundred and something miles away in a different country. That the information surprised Victor also meant his sister had chosen to not share what she knew with him.
‘Does he have any family that way who he might want to visit?’ Albert hazarded a guess.
Victor didn’t know. ‘I don’t think so, but I would have to check to be sure.’ Once again, he went back to the screen.
‘The coroner’s report listed post-mortem injuries congruent with having been thrown from a moving car - it looks like the killers just dropped him at the side of the road without slowing down. There’s not a lot else to tell you other than they have a woman in custody. She has motive and opportunity. She also has a record. If I were a betting man, I’d say they had the right person.’
Victor’s voice trailed off as he finished reading, the final line the absolute opposite of what he wanted to hear, and he could feel Albert’s gaze boring into the side of his head.
‘What is her record for?’ Albert enquired, wishing he’d thought to ask about her history a little sooner.
‘GBH,’ Victor replied quietly and glumly, using the standard abbreviation of Grievous Bodily Harm. As a former police officer, Albert knew that to be accused or convicted of GBH, a person had to cause sufficient harm to a person to permanently disfigure them or break bones. A single drop of blood that falls outside of the body can be classed as GBH and a weapon does not need to be used, only the intent to do harm has to be proven. ‘She was …’ he was about to say she was innocent, but that wasn’t strictly true. ‘It was an accident. She didn’t mean to hurt the other girl.’
‘Tell me,’ sighed Albert, wondering if he ought to drop the whole thing and head to York early.
‘It was her eighteenth birthday. There’s not a lot around here for the youngsters to get excited about so she headed into Cambridge with a bunch of her friends. They had drinks and went to a club and such. Then she got into a fight. It would have been nothing, just a bad memory at the end of a good night out, but they were on some stairs and the girl fell. The police came and the other girl’s friends all said Kate shoved her. I don’t know if she did or not. Kate always denied it, but she went to jail for three months anyway and will always have a record. That’s not going to help her, is it?’
Albert pursed his lips. ‘No. It will not.’ Homewrecker, fiddling the books, criminal record for violent assault, and now accused of murder. Was he on a fool’s errand or not? He’d seen her eyes when they came to arrest her and that was all he was using to justify his desire to help. Could
