Felicity shook her head. “But that was earlier. He came home about eight, had told me not to make dinner, and then got all cross because it wasn’t waiting for him. Told me I’d got the dates wrong. We had a bit of a row about it, even though I’d written it on the calendar. Seems silly now.”
She looked at the table, running her thumbnail along a groove in the grain of the oak surface. “I know it was that day. I’d given Polly a telling-off about the shopping she’d promised to do for me in Briarstone. I told Daddy he should go and have a talk with her, and he did. He went down to the cottage. It was raining by then and he was gone for about an hour. I was about to go down and find out where the hell he was when he came back. Said Polly had made him cheese on toast.”
She gave a small sound, half a laugh, half a sob.
Flora’s heart had started beating faster. Something wasn’t adding up. Why had he told her he was out? And he’d not mentioned going to the cottage. He’d not said he had been with Polly that night. Why would he lie, unless he was hiding something?
Flora put her hand over her mother’s. “Mum, I’ve really got to go out now. Can we talk about this another time?”
“Hmm? Oh, of course darling. Sorry to hold you up. I just needed—someone to talk to, I guess. Thank you for being so understanding.”
“That’s all right, Mum.” Flora got the waxed jacket for Felicity, then steered her gently toward the staircase.
“Flora dear, will you come over tonight and have dinner? Come and see if you think Daddy’s any different. Will you?”
“I’ll do my best,” Flora said.
At the front door, Flora said goodbye quickly, shutting the door almost in her mother’s face, not wishing to risk a meeting with Andy Hamilton, just in case he was still inside the flat downstairs.
11:12
It was nearing lunchtime by the time Lou made it to the hospital. She wasn’t supposed to be interviewing people, but everyone else was out, and besides, she fancied having a look at Brian herself.
While she’d been parking the car a text message had come through on her job phone from Jason.
Hope u don’t mind me texting work phone. This is my no in case u need anything today. Not busy. Jason
It felt as if there was a coded message in there somewhere. She thought about texting back straightaway, but there were more pressing things to attend to.
The hospital was busy with visitors—the WRVS shop buzzing with people buying bottles of Lucozade, newspapers, and magazines. The paracetamol she’d taken had finally started to kick in, although somewhere at the back of her head the headache lurked like a malevolent creature, waiting for an excuse to take over once again.
PC Yvonne Sanders, casually dressed in jeans and a fleece, was waiting for her near the reception desk. “Ma’am,” she said. “I’m sorry to be dressed like this, I was on a plainclothes job today.”
“Don’t worry,” Lou said. “I’m just glad I got hold of you. You got your PNB handy?”
Yvonne patted her bag. Her pocket notebook, or PNB, was what Lou needed more than anything else. If she was going to be talking to Brian, she wanted a careful note of everything he said.
“You were there when he had the heart attack, weren’t you?” Lou asked, as they eased their way through the throng and headed up the corridor toward Stuart Ward.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You did CPR on him?”
“Yes—well, we both did. Ian did a lot of it.”
“Good job,” Lou said. Short on officers, Lou had gone back through the case files to find someone who had a vague bearing on the case and who might actually be on duty—and had found Yvonne Sanders. Lou hoped she was a fast writer.
“Er—anything you want me to do, apart from writing up?”
“I know it’s a bit irregular, interviewing with a DCI,” Lou said. “I’d rather just get on and do it, though, while the ward’s quiet. So I’ll do the talking, you take notes, and type up a statement for me back at the nick, okay?”
“Of course.”
So much for preparing the evidence for the coroner. At this rate she would still be working until midnight to get things ready. Under her breath she muttered a fervent prayer to whatever god was listening for this trip not to be a waste of time.
Eventually they found Brian Fletcher-Norman in the dayroom, sitting up in an armchair, watching television. He was sporting a smart-looking pair of burgundy pajamas, covered with a dark green terry cloth bathrobe and some matching slippers. On the dayroom door a sign had been taped: PRIVATE MEETING IN PROGRESS.
“Hello. Brian, isn’t it?” Lou asked, offering him her hand.
“Yes.”
“I’m DCI Louisa Smith. You’ve got me today, I’m afraid.”
“A pleasure.”
“You might remember my colleague, PC Yvonne Sanders?”
Brian shook Yvonne’s hand but didn’t make the connection.
“PC Sanders was there when you were taken ill. I believe she saved your life, Brian.”
“Ah,” he said. “Thank you, my dear.”
Lou decided she could see the appeal. He might have been far too old for her, but he had a deep, resonant voice and a presence about him, even wearing pajamas and a bathrobe. Dark eyes in a tanned, surprisingly unlined face, and a good head of silver hair. He looked every inch the business executive.
She sat on a lower chair and pulled a low coffee table closer, treating him to a close-up view of the swell of her breasts under her black cashmere sweater. “You don’t mind if Yvonne takes notes, do you, Brian? We can ask you to check through them when we’re finished, and we can get a statement typed up for you. All right?”
“I’m sure it’s fine, my dear. I don’t need my solicitor or anything, do I?”
Lou pulled a face. “Lord, no. Not unless you’re planning to confess to something.” She gave him a smile and a wink, and watched him start to relax.
He used the remote control to turn off the television.
Lou glanced across at PC Sanders to make sure she was ready with her notebook and pen. Yvonne smiled back at her, keen.
“Now, when we spoke on the phone this morning you mentioned that you’d had some further recollections regarding the evening of your wife’s death. Would you mind going over exactly what it is you recall?”
Brian paused for a moment. “Where shall I start?”
Lou gave him an encouraging smile. “Start from when you got home from work. Was Barbara there?”
Brian nodded. “Yes, she was upstairs. I didn’t realize she was there at first. I assumed she must have been watching television because she didn’t answer when I called.”
“What time did you get home?”
He looked away before answering vaguely. “Eightish, maybe nine. I left town at gone seven, anyway.”
He looked as if he was concentrating hard, trying to bring the memory back. He’s a sly old goat, Lou thought. She was quite aware that he’d remembered all along. Was it because they’d had contact with Lorna Newman that he’d changed his story? Had she been in contact with Brian at the hospital?
“I poured myself a drink and sat down to read the paper. Barbara came downstairs much later. It must have been about eleven, twelve, and we had an argument.”
“What was the argument about?”
Brian sighed deeply. “Much the same as usual. I was late home from work, and so she accused me of having an affair. She said I smelled of women’s perfume; I said she smelled of gin. It got quite heated. She stormed off back upstairs; I heard her talking to somebody on the telephone, I don’t know who.”
“And why were you late home?”
Brian looked a little cross at this interruption. “Can’t remember,” he said vaguely. “It was work, nothing unusual.”
“I understood you were semiretired—is there still a call for you to be working late? That seems a little unfair.”
Brian shrugged. “Unfair or not, the work’s there. And, to be honest, Barbar
a wasn’t always that much fun to come home to. Miserable, most of the time.”
Lou thought of Barbara’s depression and recent attempt at suicide and suddenly felt rather sorry for her. “Sorry, I interrupted. Barbara was upstairs.”
“Yes. I finished my drink and went into the kitchen to wash up the glass. I checked on the gin—we keep the bottles in a cupboard in the kitchen—and found it was nearly finished. That was a pretty bad sign.”
“Did she drink every day?”
He shook his head. “Sometimes she’d go for several weeks without a drink. Those times were quite pleasant, really. I think they coincided with the times she was less depressed, less—low, I suppose you’d say. Also, I think she was aware that people thought she might be an alcoholic, and she was always trying to present everyone with evidence that she could manage without a drink, that she wasn’t a slave to it.” Brian looked Lou in the eye. “Her mother was an alcoholic, you know. Died of liver failure. And her father died of a heart attack at fifty, and he was also a man who liked a drink. So she was very aware of it.”
“So, lately, had she been particularly depressed?”
Brian nodded again. “We’ve been having rows fairly often. Usually we only ever argued when Barbara had had a drink or two—she’s too easygoing otherwise.”
“Was there any particular reason for it, that you were aware of?”
Brian looked wary for a moment, then shrugged. “I can’t think of anything in particular. In fact, I thought she’d been doing rather well. She’d been getting out more, playing golf with her friends. She’d started playing bridge again. Having tennis lessons three times a week at the country club—cost me an arm and a leg, that one, but she said she was determined to be fit by the summer.”
Lou thought it unlikely that Brian was unaware of Barbara’s infatuation with the tennis coach, but chose to let that one go. It could have been something as simple as it being a huge attack on his ego to admit that Barbara had chosen to go elsewhere. Doing it himself was no doubt just a bit of fun—for his wife to indulge was a different matter entirely.
She gave him an encouraging smile. “So, Barbara was upstairs and you were in the kitchen. Can you remember what happened next?”
“I went and had a bath. Fell asleep in the tub. I often do that if I’m late. Anyway, I’ve no idea what time it was when I got out again, but the water wasn’t cold, so it can’t have been hours. Barbara wasn’t downstairs, so I assumed she’d gone to bed. The bedroom door was shut.”
Lou watched him, eager for him to get on with the story, but waiting while he had a sip of water. Yvonne Sanders flexed her wrist.
“I went back downstairs to turn all the lights off and lock up. Then all of a sudden, Barbara came barreling into the hallway from the kitchen. I couldn’t work out where she’d been, but I suppose she must have come in through the back door. She was hysterical, shouting and yelling about something. I told her to calm down and tell me what was wrong. She pushed me back and I fell back onto the stairs. She kept saying, ‘It’s done now, I’ve done it now, it’s too late.’ Something like that. Over and over.”
“‘It’s done now, I’ve done it now, it’s too late’?” Lou repeated.
“Yes.”
Yvonne was scribbling fast. Lou hoped she was getting every single word of this. He’d already changed his story once, they needed to make sure he could be pinned down somehow.
“What do you think she meant by that?”
Brian shrugged. “At the time, I hadn’t a clue. She was pretty drunk, almost incoherent. Thinking about it now, of course, I’m wondering whether she’d been over the road to see Polly.”
“Do you have any idea what time this was?”
He shook his head. “Well, after twelve, I think.”
“Okay. So then what happened?”
“After she pushed me, I got up and went to bed. I told you, I don’t put up with that sort of behavior. Everyone has a breaking point, and that’s mine. I heard the door bang, but I thought that was her locking it—sometimes the front door doesn’t lock properly until you’ve given it a good bang.”
Something was being left out, Lou was sure of it. There was a tension in the air that hadn’t been there just five minutes ago.
“Did you not notice any blood on her hands, her clothes?” she asked.
“No. It was dark in the hallway because I’d already turned the lights off.”
“Before locking the front door?”
He shrugged, looked at her defiantly. “That’s just my regular routine.”
“So you went up to bed and you assumed she’d shut the front door and come up to bed herself?”
He nodded, seeming to relax again. “I didn’t hear anything else. If she hadn’t gone to bed she was probably passed out on the sofa. I was thinking I’d see her again the next morning, and she’d be right as rain.”
“You sleep in separate rooms?”
“Yes. Have done for years.”
“So when you woke up, you didn’t notice anything unusual?”
He shook his head again. “I’d just got up when there was a knock at the door. I was already feeling a bit unwell. My chest hurt—I thought it was from where she’d pushed me. Then when the police officers came in—you,” he said, smiling at Yvonne, “and the other chap—it was suddenly excruciating.”
A pause. “Go on,” she said.
“That’s all I remember,” he said with finality, sitting back in the chair and, to all intents and purposes, breathing a heavy sigh of relief.
Yvonne continued writing. Lou paused, to give Yvonne time to catch up and to give herself a moment to think. This version was a completely different story to the one he’d told immediately after the incident, before he’d had the heart attack. However poorly he was feeling, surely his memory wasn’t affected at that point. And in hospital, just a few days ago, acting like the whole thing was a blur. Surely you’d remember such a dramatic confrontation with your wife?
She looked up at last. “Thank you, Brian. I know this must have been very difficult for you. I appreciate your efforts.”
He gave her a wan smile, showing that he was prepared to battle through any adversity to make her happy. It just wasn’t right, though. Bits of it probably were. There were undoubtedly bits missing. And other bits that were complete fabrication.
For a start, the amnesia thing. Lou had had dealings with amnesia when she’d worked a stint in Traffic Division; amnesia was an occasional side effect of head trauma. Retrograde amnesia, usually caused by injury or disease, resulted in a chunk of memory being lost. Usually this would return after a period of time as the injury healed, but the process would be gradual, with bits of memory reemerging as fragments until they could be placed in context, eventually forming a complete picture once again. Sudden, wholesale return of memory like the one Brian seemed to have experienced was, as far as Lou was aware, rare. Of course, he’d not actually had a head injury, although there had been a period of unconsciousness, which could also be a factor.
“It’s great that your memory has come back,” Lou said, with a bright smile designed to deflect any suspicion. “It’s really helpful to us. Gives us a better picture of events.”
Brian did not seem to be at all suspicious. “Do you think she did it? Killed Polly?”
“It’s a bit too early to be coming to conclusions, Brian. But let’s just say I think what you’ve told me today has moved things forward a great deal.”
Lou gave the nod to Yvonne, who was flipping through the pages of her notebook. Lou made a display of gathering her jacket, distracting him. “Brian, does the name Lorna Newman mean anything to you?”
His face registered surprise, and Lou was about as certain as she could be that it was genuine. “Of course. She’s a friend of Barbara’s. A very old friend. They came to us in the summer—August, I think. Why do you ask?”
“She called the Incident Room. Saw the news about Barbara on the television, I believe. Just wanted to che
ck with you that she is who she says she is.”
Brian nodded with satisfaction. “Yes, she’s a game old bird, Lorna. No nonsense. Always liked that in a woman.”
So. His memory hadn’t been jogged by any contact with Lorna. And he didn’t view her contact with the police as any sort of threat. Did that mean he’d been telling the truth about that night, after all? Lou was confused. It wasn’t that the whole story was wrong—more that there were some parts that were muddled, out of place.
Of course the usual way that stories like this were untangled was through repeated interviewing, going over the same questions, the same story again and again until things changed, or until things started to make sense. Or until new information came to light that changed the perspective on the investigation. It didn’t mean he was somehow implicated in Polly’s death. It didn’t necessarily mean that he was lying.
At some point, of course, she would have to confront him about the affair with Polly. For the moment, though, she believed that he would just deny it further and accuse Taryn of lying to make him out to be a bad person. They needed some corroborative evidence, or at least firm proof that he’d lied about something else.
“Can I ask you to read through my notes,” Yvonne said, “and sign each page to say you agree with what I’ve written? I’ll type things up back at the office . . .”
Once he’d read through the notes and signed them, Lou held out her hand and found his handshake was now surprisingly warm, his grip firm. Overall, he had the appearance of a man for whom a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders.
“I’ll be in touch if anything else comes to light, of course.”
“Certainly. Thank you, Inspector.”
As much as she dearly wanted to correct him, part of Lou held back. It might disrupt the balance of their relationship if he suddenly saw her as a senior rank, even if that was the case. And this despite the fact that she’d given him her business card, which clearly stated her rank. If he wanted to persist in addressing her as “Inspector,” then there were other ways of tackling it.
“Call me Lou,” she said. “After all, I’ve been rather cheekily calling you Brian.”