Deadly Stuff (16 page)

‘Well, pull it up,’ Trevor barked.

His sergeant did so and both men’s faces went tight with
excitement as they read it. ‘At last,’ Trevor hissed. ‘Finally, we’re getting somewhere. Right, let’s get the widow Raines back in. This time she has some real explaining to do.’

Jenny said nothing as she watched both men leave hurriedly. She sighed heavily, then got up and made her way back to the kitchen. She had the evening menu to prepare.

She wanted to start with a nice watercress and Stilton soup. Except her budget wouldn’t stretch to Stilton, so she’d sourced a locally produced blue cheese that was a fraction of the cost but would be, almost, equally delicious.

Now she needed to think of a good main course to go with it.

But, as she worked, her mind kept going back to Laura Raines and the two policemen. She knew what they were thinking of course – and she was almost sure that they were wrong.

It would be pointless trying to tell them that at this stage, though. She needed much more proof than mere theories, no matter how well they fitted with all the evidence.

She sighed, and decided she’d better get on with it. She’d already got a few odds and ends sorted out to add weight to her working hypothesis, but she was still a long way from producing anything like the proof needed to convince the police.

There was someone though who might just be able to help her out.

Leaving the kitchen and her menu only half-planned, the cook made her way to the same residential building where Dotty had found the mobile. She’d had the list of room numbers from Art, which showed where everyone was staying, but so far she’d avoided bearding anyone in their den, so to speak. Now she had no choice.

It was nearly lunchtime and, with a bit of luck, the conference-goers wouldn’t be at lectures or buying goods from the
tables that were set up in hall, so she might just catch him in.

She climbed to the second floor, passed a stuffed roe deer that had been deposited on the half-landing, and knocked on the second door on the right.

It opened after just a few moments, and Ian Glendower stared out at her.

‘Yes?’ he said sharply, his eyes narrowing on the cook.

Jenny smiled mildly. ‘Oh, hello, Mr Glendower, I don’t suppose you remember me? I’m Jenny Starling.’ She held out her hand firmly in the face of his continuing silence and forced him to shake it. ‘I’m the cook here. I wondered if I could just ask you something?’

Ian Glendower frowned. ‘What about?’ he asked suspiciously.

Jenny knew right there and then that she was going to have to be very careful now. ‘Well, actually, it’s about stuffing a tiger,’ she said, with a bright, warm smile.

Debbie Dawkins always enjoyed her lunch hour. It wasn’t that she particularly hated working at the department store, but doing two jobs meant that every free hour was especially precious to her.

Today, she was meeting up with her oldest pal Tracy at a little snack bar just off New Inn Hall Street that had a good reputation with vegetarians. Not that she was that way inclined herself, but it was Tracey’s latest fad, and she didn’t mind giving it a go.

The two friends had just ordered various salads, and were busy gossiping about the latest scandal to afflict an old school friend, when Tracey noticed that Debbie kept staring at someone over her shoulder.

Naturally, she turned around curiously, but saw no one that she knew. ‘What’s so fascinating behind me?’ Tracey, a round-faced girl with untidy blonde hair and widespaced brown eyes,
asked with a small grin. ‘Seen someone you fancy have you?’

‘That bloke over in the corner. Talking to the ash-blonde,’ Debbie said, her mouth going dry.

Quickly her friend checked him out and turned back, grinning. ‘Very nice. Bit out of your league though, girl, if you don’t mind my saying,’ Tracey said cheekily. ‘And that woman he’s with is wearing a couple of thousand quid in jewellery or I’m a monkey’s uncle. Think he’s her toy boy?’

‘No, that’s not it,’ Debbie hissed. ‘I think that might be him.’

‘Him? Who?’ Tracey said, then suddenly paled. ‘Oh. You mean
him?
Bloody hell, Debs, are you serious?’

Of course, Debbie had told her best friend all about the excitement at the college and, since it was all over the news, Tracey had been eager to get the full low down on the college killing. So she knew all about her friend seeing someone leave the murder site at around the time of the killing.

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ Debbie said, nervously, crumbling away at the bread roll on her side plate.

Tracey felt slightly sick. ‘Oh, Debs, are you sure?’ she leaned forward and reached a hand shakily over the table, stopping her friend from shredding the bread. ‘Act cool, yeah?’ she whispered nervously. ‘I don’t think he’s seen us or anything, so don’t worry. Are you sure it’s him though?’

‘No. How can I be sure, not a hundred per cent sure?’ Debbie said slowly. ‘But it looks awfully like him. I saw him mostly from the back, remember, and briefly, the side of his face, not head on, like now,’ she whispered back. ‘But it really looks like it could be him.’

The scout bit her lip. ‘Or am I just thinking it must be him because he’s the first man I’ve seen that fits? I mean, right sort of hair, right sort of build? I don’t know. Oh, Trace, what do you think I should do?’ she implored.

Tracey’s big brown eyes widened even more as she thought about it for a second or two. Then, ‘You ought to phone the
cops, I reckon,’ she whispered, so quietly that Debbie almost didn’t hear her. ‘You got the number of that cop who talked to you? Inspector what’s-his-name?’

‘Golder. No,’ Debbie whispered back. ‘But I’ll call the college, shall I? The switchboard in the lodge will be able to put me through to him. They’ve got an incident room there. You really think I should? What if it’s not him? I’ll feel such a prat, Trace.’

‘Yeah, but on the other hand, what if it is him?’ Tracey responded pragmatically. ‘I mean, they can’t fault you for it, can they, even if it turns out to be a false alarm? I mean, it would be an honest mistake, wouldn’t it?’

Debbie reluctantly phoned the college, and within a few minutes, she was talking to Peter Trent, and telling him where she was and what was happening.

Her friend listened, pale-faced but clearly excited, to her friend’s one-sided conversation.

‘Yes, Sergeant, it really looks like him. But I can’t say for sure. He’s sitting in the back of the café, and it’s a little dark in the corner … What? … Yes, he’s with a woman. Older, dressed really nice, a lady, with pale blonde hair … No, he hasn’t. I don’t think so anyway? Should me and my friend leave? … OK … Yes, we’ll wait outside. Right. Yes.’

She hung up and rose. ‘Come on, we’ve got to wait outside. They’re coming over,’ she whispered down at her friend, who shot up eagerly and grabbed her bag.

It was easily the most exciting lunch Tracey had ever had.

Peter Trent and Trevor Golder arrived about five minutes later. Debbie quickly described to the inspector where they had been sitting, and what the man was wearing, but already Peter Trent was looking through the window. When he walked back to Trevor, he said quietly, ‘The lady is Laura Raines, sir.’

Trevor nodded, thanked Debbie and told her that they
would be needing a formal statement later, but for now, she was free to get back to work. He watched the excitedly chattering, but slightly shaken girls, walk away, then turned to Trent.

‘Right then, let’s have them in,’ he said, with quiet satisfaction.

Laura Raines was the first to spot them, and Trevor saw her lean forward and quickly say something to her companion. A moment later, the man looked over at them, clearly going pale and looking alarmed. He saw Laura Raines reach out and put her hand over his and say something urgently.

The man nodded, but licked his lips nervously. When the two police officers arrived at their table, Laura smiled a shade grimly at them.

‘Inspector Golder. I take it you want to speak to me again?’ she asked, her chin coming up in definite challenge.

‘Yes, Mrs Raines. And this is Mr Jenks, I presume? Simon Jenks?’ Trevor said, not letting her get the upper hand. If she thought she could control this process, she needed to know better.

The handsome younger man seemed to flinch, but he managed to nod his head wordlessly.

‘In which case, sir, I really need to speak to you as well. Perhaps you could both come down to the St Aldate’s station with me?’ Trevor asked blandly.

Simon Jenks went even paler than ever and, when he rose, Trevor would have bet a month’s salary that his legs were shaking so hard they felt barely able to support him. He wasn’t surprised when the younger man actually reached out to steady himself against the back wall of the café as he stood up.

He also shot Laura Raines a quick look that Trevor found hard to place exactly. It had an element of pleading certainly. And fear, definitely. Also one of bafflement and, perhaps, a touch of uncertainty? It was as if he was looking to his lover to both save him, and yet, at the same time, he seemed to be
trying to understand exactly what it was that he needed to be saved from.

It boded well for an interesting interview ahead, but as they drove the short distance to St Aldate’s, Trevor wasn’t entirely sure that things were going to go quite how he expected them to. There was something about the pair of them that wasn’t quite right – that didn’t quite fit the pattern he was expecting.

And it worried him.

They separated them at St Aldate’s, with Peter Trent taking the widow to one interview room, whilst Trevor took the widow’s lover to another.

Simon Jenks followed the heavy-set slightly older man into the small room with a feeling of vague numbness, interlaced with rolling waves of nausea. He’d known this moment had to come, but he’d never expected it to come so soon. Or that he’d be taken from an inoffensive little café in the middle of the day, and abruptly thrust into an environment like this.

He looked around the brick room, with its dirty whitewash, high, barred windows and scuffed tiled floor, and it was as if he could almost hear a cell door clang shut. He forced himself to take a deep breath, and very happily accepted the wooden chair that the inspector indicated. He all but fell into it, glad to take the weight off his feet.

He felt curiously light-headed.

He had to force himself to remember what he and Laura had discussed. He had to make sure he got it right. But as he faced the bland-faced man in front of him, he wasn’t sure that that was the right thing to do. He wasn’t sure how much he could trust Laura, that was the trouble. Worse, he was assailed with the terrible, lemming-like compulsion to just tell this quiet, almost friendly-looking man everything that had happened and get it over and done with.

But disaster lay that way, didn’t it? Laura was right: innocent
people got sent down for things they didn’t do all the time. Telling the truth was no guarantee that you’d be safe.

Instead, he had to follow the plan.

He cleared his throat. ‘I think I should have a solicitor present,’ Simon Jenks said flatly.

Trevor felt his heart sink. That was the last thing he wanted, but he knew he had to tread carefully. ‘You are, entitled to have a solicitor present, sir,’ he said mildly, ‘but I must point out, that, as of this moment, you’re not being charged with anything. We simply want to ask you a few questions with a view to eliminating you from our enquiries.’

Simon took a shaky breath. Yes. That’s just what Laura had said they’d say. But it was all right for her. She had an alibi.

‘Even so, I think I would prefer to have someone with me who knows the ropes. I’ve never been questioned by the police before, and I realize I might be in a … well, in a rather precarious position. Not that I’ve done anything,’ he said, then abruptly stopped. No, he mustn’t let himself be cajoled into speaking. Laura had warned him about that as well.

Slowly, he leaned back in his chair. ‘I have a number that you can ring.’

Trevor smiled blandly. ‘A local number, is it, sir?’ he asked mildly.

Simon frowned then nodded slowly. ‘That’s right.’

‘Only, with you being from up north, I thought your solicitor might have to come down from Leeds or something, but if you already have someone local lined up … well, I think it’s splendid that you had the forethought to find someone else on the doorstep, so to speak.’

Simon paled even further. ‘Laura … Mrs Raines thought it was a good idea,’ he managed to say faintly.

Trevor nodded. Yes. He was beginning to understand now that in this relationship it was definitely the widow who was the driving force, and the one to be reckoned with. Still, it was
the lover-boy who’d been seen at the college leaving a dead body behind him. Trevor, although worried by the less-than-emphatic identification by Debbie Dawkins, was nevertheless sure that the man in front of him was the one with all the answers.

Now all he had to do was get them from him.

‘So, if you’d give me your solicitor’s details, we’ll get him down here, shall we?’ Trevor said with a brief smile. ‘I’m sure we’ll have a lot to talk about, so it’s best we get started. Right?’

In her interview room, Laura Raines had not asked for a solicitor. Indeed, Peter Trent had only basic questions for her, mainly confined to confirming that she knew the contents of her husband’s will, and repeating her movements on the day that her husband died.

Most of it was routine, and a question of playing for time whilst his boss got the chance to learn what Simon Jenks had to say for himself. Trent wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t felt that he’d drawn the short straw.

Whilst the sergeant was exercising patience, Jenny Starling was in hall, looking at a big black stuffed bear. Since Maurice’s opening speech, it had been left standing with its back to a wall, where it was periodically admired by the taxidermists. Even the scouts serving dinner had grown fond of it. The trolley that had wheeled it in had been put away somewhere, but, as Jenny met the brown glass-eyed stare, she nodded.