‘Did she say anything about going? Leave a note?’
He shook his head. ‘Only knew she’d gone when I saw she’d taken a suitcase and clothes and things were missing.’
If she’d packed a suitcase, it definitely suggested that she’d gone to meet Ingles, not the other way round. That would be good news for DCI Carter.
‘Has she left anything behind?’
‘Oh God, yes, most of her gear. I guess she took sort of what would do for a few days. You want to see?’
Fleming followed him through to the bedroom. It had a grubby cream carpet and a divan bed with a fake leather headboard. The only other furniture was bedside tables and a couple of chairs; there were built-in wardrobes down one side with a section in the middle acting as a dressing-table.
On it was a muddle of bottles and jars, and sticky rings which showed where others had once stood. Fleming’s eyebrows rose as she examined them. You didn’t buy large bottles of Patou’s Joy – one of the world’s most expensive perfumes – on a barmaid’s wages, and the rest of the cosmetics also came from the most expensive ranges.
It was the same story when she opened the wardrobe: good designer labels were mixed in with Top Shop and Florence and Fred cheap ’n’ cheerful stuff. There were empty clothes hangers too, but one hanger still held an Armani jacket – proof positive, surely, that Davina/Natasha had intended to return. What woman would abandon an Armani jacket?
She opened the drawer below the dressing-table which held underwear – La Perla as well as standard M&S knickers. It didn’t look as if she had taken a lot with her – enough, perhaps, for a week or a long weekend, as Jeff had said. She shifted them with her hand and noticed, on the bottom, a page from a newspaper folded so that it showed a small item, circled in red ink.
Fleming pointed. ‘Do you know what this is?’
Brewer peered over her shoulder. ‘No. She wasn’t much for reading newspapers, Natasha.’
‘Did she get many letters? Did someone send her this?’
‘Never got any letters since she moved in, far as I know.’
Looking closer, Fleming saw with interest that it was a page torn from the
Galloway Globe
, her own local paper. It dated from last October and the encircled article was headed ‘Rogue lawyer freed’: it gave the briefest of accounts of the robbery and assault at the Yacht Club but beyond that said only that Keith Ingles had been released on licence. Had Davina asked someone to warn her when he came out of prison, someone who at the time at least, had known where she was?
‘Have you touched this?’ she asked, and when he said no, dug in her shoulder bag for one of the plastic evidence bags she always carried, and a pair of tweezers. She picked it up carefully, tucked it in and put it away.
‘Does she have any papers anywhere? Passport – that sort of thing?’
He shook his head. ‘Never saw any.’
‘There was nothing at all on her when we found her. Presumably she had a handbag, but we haven’t located it. Would you know what it looked like?’
Wordlessly he indicated a shelf at the top of the wardrobe where there were more than a dozen bags of varying size and colour including some even Marjory recognized as seriously expensive. ‘She changed bags all the time. I wouldn’t know what’s missing.’
The only lead he could give her was the name of one of the other barmaids. ‘Natasha and Jax used to go for a girls’ night out together every week. Maybe Natasha talked to her, like girls do.’
‘Will she be in the bar today? My sergeant’s there now.’
‘No. Day off. But I can give you her mobile number – can’t remember the address but I don’t think it’s far from here.’
Fleming scribbled it down. ‘Are you at work yourself today?’
‘No. Took the week off – just in case.’
She smiled. ‘So at least you have the rest of the week to relax.’
As if the word were a trigger, the young man’s shoulders sagged. ‘I suppose so,’ he said dully. ‘I just feel shattered. Can’t take it in, know what I mean? It’s kind of like some sort of weird dream, like she might come walking in any minute. But . . .’ He hesitated. ‘What’s going to happen – to her, I mean?’
‘You would like us to notify you when the body’s to be released? We have no record of next-of-kin.’
‘Yes. Yes, I would.’ His eyes had filled again. ‘I wouldn’t want her to be – you know – just left there. You see, I really loved her. Whoever she is, whatever she’s done.’
From the sound of things, he was a lot more than she deserved. ‘We’ll do that, then,’ Fleming said gently. ‘There’s just one more thing. Can you think of anything that might have prompted her suddenly to do this?’
He didn’t say anything for a moment, and when he did speak it was as if the admission was physically painful. ‘Yes, suppose I do, really. I just didn’t want to admit it, even to myself.
‘You see, my gran left me a bit of money. Not a lot, just a few thousands. But Natasha wanted to do things – expensive things – like we took a holiday cruise in the Caribbean, and another time we went to Bali. And, well, the money was running out.’
‘And her clothes and so on didn’t come cheap either.’ Fleming felt very sorry for him.
‘Oh no, she paid for all that sort of stuff out of her wages,’ he said naively. ‘But when I told her we couldn’t go on living that way any more, she went sort of cold and angry, like it was my fault.’
As Fleming left, he said, ‘I know she made a fool of me. But you know what? I’d do it all over again, even now.’
If ever there was a woman asking to get herself murdered, it was Davina/Natasha. But it wasn’t this poor innocent who had done it.
And the man who, it seemed, had? As she went down the stairs, Fleming glanced at her watch. They’d be questioning him now – Allan and, no doubt, Kingsley. She regretted bitterly that she could not be there for the crucial six hours of questioning before they had to charge or release him.
She knew what Allan would want. Allan would want a confession, a nice neat confession followed by a guilty plea. That was what they all wanted, after all, but Fleming liked to hear what they had to say first, even if she then with painstaking ruthlessness tore the story apart until they cracked and admitted it didn’t stand up. Allan didn’t care, just so long as they signed at the foot of the page.
She was never sure about his methods either. Since the advent of meticulously recorded interviews, you couldn’t use a rubber hosepipe on your suspects, but it was surprising what pressure a powerful and aggressive man could bring to bear in the confines of an interview room. The point sometimes came when a man would put his name to anything, just to get the questioning to stop. And she didn’t trust Kingsley to restrain him.
Jon had worked closely with her, but somehow he had never wholly accepted her principles. Law courts might be purely and simply about proof: on the basis of the evidence presented, you were guilty or not guilty, though she had always believed the verdicts of ‘Proven’ or ‘Not Proven’ gave a more accurate picture of the process. As a police officer, you could see it as your job simply to find evidence that would satisfy a court, but if you didn’t also believe it was to find out the truth and deliver justice as best you could, sooner or later grave injustice would be done. Kingsley believed in the quick fix.
Fleming had little doubt that Ingles was guilty, but she wanted even that small doubt removed and she was far from sure that Allan’s questioning would do it. But he’d been on his way to the interview room when she spoke to him and there was nothing she could do about it.
Oh yes there was! She got out her mobile and scrolled to the Kirkluce HQ number. ‘Get me DC Tansy Kerr. As a matter of urgency.’
Keith Ingles was waiting in the interview room, sitting at the table with his head bent over his clasped hands. He looked up as the two officers came in, giving them a veiled look from hooded blue eyes. He had an outdoor complexion, weather-beaten rather than tanned, and there were deep lines about his mouth. With his greying hair he looked considerably older than forty-three, the age given on the charge sheet.
Jon Kingsley went to fiddle with the recording machinery while Greg Allan sat down on one of the two chairs opposite, leaning back and crossing his legs in a pantomime of assurance.
‘Well, well, well,’ he drawled, ‘some old lags just can’t keep away, can they? Looking forward to meeting up with the boys again?’
Ingles lowered his head again, saying nothing, then jumped in shock as Allan brought both hands flat down on the table with his full force.
‘I asked you a question!’ he roared. ‘When I ask you a question, you answer! Got that? Now, when I ask you a question, what do you do?’
‘I have the right to remain silent . . .’ The response hung in the air, but the man who could have said it had done time and had learned the futility of that sort of response. Ingles licked his lips. ‘Answer.’ He had a slight lisp, a sort of thickening of the ‘s’ sound.
‘ “Answer,
sarge
.” ’
The old bully’s trick. ‘Answer, sarge.’
‘That’s better. Now, what was the question again? Oh yes, looking forward to another spell inside?’
‘No . . . no, sarge.’
Allan leaned back again, beaming. ‘Now, that’s what I like to see. Co-operation. DC Kingsley likes that too, don’t you, Jon?’
‘Yes –
sarge!
’ Kingsley said cheekily and they both laughed.
‘Right.’ Allan turned back to Ingles. ‘Now. We’re just going to turn on the tapes and do the formalities. Then you’re going to tell us about how you murdered Davina Watt.’
Struggling for composure, Ingles said, ‘Would it make any difference if I said I didn’t?’
Allan pulled a face. ‘Means it would all take longer, that’s all. Waste of everyone’s time. Give us a confession and we can be out of here in half an hour. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
There was no reply from Ingles, and Allan raised his voice. ‘I said, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, sarge.’
‘That’s better. OK, Jon, get us started.’
Kingsley recited time and names, adding that the subject had been cautioned and informed of his rights, and Allan began.
‘Keith Ingles has stated his intention of making a confession.’
Ingles sat up in his chair. ‘I didn’t!’ he protested. ‘I said no such thing.’
Very coolly, Kingsley said, ‘You expressed your wish to do it and be finished.’
‘I – I didn’t! You asked me – I can’t remember exactly what you asked me.’
‘DS Allan asked you if you wanted to make a confession and you agreed. Do you mean you now wish to change your mind?’
‘Yes – no – I mean, I never said that.’ Sweat was beginning to appear on Ingles’s forehead.
‘Sweating already!’ Allan said with marked enjoyment. ‘You’re going to have to do better than that. It usually takes a lot longer to break someone down. So let’s cut the cackle. How did you kill her?’
Ingles shut his eyes and drew a deep breath, then another. Allan gave Kingsley a hopeful glance and they waited in silence. But when the man spoke again, it wasn’t what they were looking for.
He seemed to have pulled himself together. ‘I wish to state that I did not at any time suggest that I wished to make a confession. I am innocent, and I am now aware that these officers are trying to coerce me into making a false confession.’
Kingsley stiffened. Allan’s doughy face turned bright red. ‘Are you accusing us—?’ he began, but Kingsley cut in.
‘There must have been some sort of misunderstanding. DS Allan and I were both of the opinion that you had expressed your intention of making a confession. However, we are applying no coercion and the last thing any of us wants is a false statement.
‘But it may help you to decide that truth is in your best interests if I tell you that there is forensic evidence proving your guilt.’
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘Oh no?’ Allan sneered. ‘So how come her blood’s been found on a tarpaulin at your house? And that won’t be all, believe me, once these boys get going. But for starters, maybe you’d like to explain how it got there? She cut her knee, maybe, so you wrapped her up in a tarpaulin to make it better? Tell that to the jury – they always like a bit of a laugh.
‘Come on, Ingles, you’re wasting my time.’
Kingsley leaned across the table. ‘Shall I tell you what happened? She did the dirty on you over the money you stole from the Yacht Club. Then she turns up again, wanting more. You’ve still got quite a bit of cash tucked away somewhere, haven’t you – you must have! You were a solicitor, you’d a house, a car.
‘What did she do, Keith? Did she come wheedling round you, sweet-talking you, thinking you’d fall for it all over again? But she’d got you wrong, hadn’t she? You hated her, because she wouldn’t lie for you when you’d done it all for her. Can’t say I blame you. It’s a natural reaction.