Witchmoor Edge (11 page)

"What was Sansom's uncle called?" Goss wanted
to know.

"No idea," Koswinski said offhandedly, his
confidence returning a little. "He just said Uncle Olu."

"Where did he live?"

"How the hell; should I know?" Koswinski said
belligerently. "I've told you all I know."

"Right son," said Hammond. "Your story fits
in with what we know, so I believe what you've told us is pretty
near the truth. I'll have the statement typed up from this
interview and once you've signed it you can go. I'm not promising
we won't want to ask any more questions later, though."

Koswinski let out a sigh of relief. He'd bent
the truth a bit here and there, but the story was more or less
true, as Hammond had said. About the other matter earlier in the
day, the police seemed ignorant and he wanted to keep it that
way.

* * *

Rosie O'Conner let Detective Inspector
Hampshire and Detective Sergeant Lucy Turner into a flat that had
been allowed to get untidy in the last week or so. Underneath it
was clean and showed signs of having been well decorated and nicely
furnished. Now there were unwashed coffee cups on the small table
by the sofa, along with old magazines and unopened post. The
wastepaper basket was overflowing, un-cleared dinner things
littered the table and ironing was piled high on two chairs. She
moved one stack of ironing to the table and invited Lucy and
Millicent to sit on the sofa.

Rosie herself was a red haired and freckled,
vaguely outdoor type, in her late twenties. Her face lacked
animation, her top was creased, her jeans dirty, and she looked
generally un-groomed and apathetic. Millicent had a distinct
impression that the change was fairly recent and wondered whether
the end of an affair with Hunter or the sacking was responsible, or
something else. Rosie didn't look at first sight like a potential
murderer, but was there a recognisable type? Perhaps a fiery temper
went with the red hair and Hunter had pushed her too far.

"You knew Simon Hunter, I believe?" said
Millicent blandly for openers.

"Yes."

"And you know he died last Saturday
night?"

"Yes," Rosie said again. "I didn't know until
my brother told me a detective was asking questions about his
murder though."

Straight to the point Millicent thought.
"Your brother?" she asked.

"He works at the same hospital as Simon's
wife."

"What does he do there?"

"He's a pharmacist."

Millicent wondered whether she knew Hunter
had died of a morphine overdose. Unless the woman had killed him
herself she almost certainly didn't know. Everyone on the enquiry
had been told to keep that fact confidential if they could, and
Gibbs wouldn't have said anything, though asking questions about
access to drugs would have given clues. Hampshire listened for any
sign of giveaway knowledge.

"How well did you know Hunter?" the detective
asked.

"Too well for my own good and not as well as
I thought I did," the woman answered obscurely, a little bitterly
but otherwise quite unemotionally.

"Would you mind explaining that," Millicent
said.

Rosie shrugged vaguely. "I met Simon a year
or so ago through work," she said. "He was a frequent visitor to
the bank's offices and when he asked me out to dinner I was
flattered. I didn't know he was married then."

"You were an IT specialist of some sort?"

"Yes. Team leader for a team of IT services
staff at the bank."

"Which bank is that?"

"Frankfurt-Manhatten," Rosie answered with a
sigh. "It's a merchant bank in Leeds."

"Doing what there, exactly?" Lucy
interposed.

"Seeing that there were no problems with
external or internal IT communications."

"Had you access to confidential information?"
Lucy asked.

Rosie hesitated, and Millicent could see what
Lucy was driving at.

"Access, yes," the red headed woman answered.
"I could theoretically monitor anybody's email, though I didn't do
that," She added hastily.

"Did Hunter ask you for information to do
with your work?" Hampshire asked.

"Sometimes." Rosie was silent for a while
then, just as Millicent was about to probe a bit further, added, "I
know now that all he wanted was the information. I suppose I should
have known then."

"You were dismissed from your job, I
believe," Millicent said, approaching the potentially damning part
of the interview casually.

"Yes."

"And that’s when he broke off the
affair?"

"Of course."

"Why were you dismissed?"

Rosie didn't answer Millicent's question for
even longer this time.

"Did Hunter have anything to do with that
too?" Millicent asked.

"What, and kill the goose that laid the
golden egg?" said Rosie, still without much animation, and without
visible rancour either. Then she added, "I suppose he was
responsible indirectly, though."

"I don't follow, "the detective said.

Rosie shrugged again. "I suppose you could
find out easily enough, even if I didn't tell you myself," she
said. "I'm not very proud of it."

Millicent waited and Rosie gave a sigh and
began.

"Simon offered me heroin and I indulged.
Don't tell me I shouldn't have, because I knew that then and I know
it even better now. I don't know why I accepted, but he was very
persuasive, very charming and very attractive. Before I knew it, I
was hooked. About six or eight months ago I decided to try and dry
out. I got my doctor to prescribe methadone and went for a stay in
a clinic. The bank agreed to keep me on after I came back, as long
as I didn't touch the stuff again. Simon was trying to get me
started again and he left a dose on my desk. They found it and I
got the sack."

Hunter seemed to have been a thoroughly
nasty, corrupt, cruel and violent individual, Millicent thought.
She felt rather sorry that it was her job to track down the
murderer.

"Who's your GP?" she asked.

"Doctor Leverett. Why?"

"I may want to verify your story with
him."

"Her."

"I beg your pardon?"

"The doctor is a woman," Rosie explained.
"Not that it make any difference. You can go to her if you like."
She had a bleak, defeated expression. "I can't stop you anyway,"
she added.

"What did you do last Saturday?" Hampshire
asked.

"A friend dragged me off on a cycle race,"
Rosie said. "I used to be a cycling fanatic before I met Simon.
Always off on road races every weekend in summer, Gloria thought it
would be good for me. Get me out of myself or something."

"You have a bicycle of your own?" Millicent
asked, thinking of the tyre tracks at the picnic site.

"Yes. I did have an expensive one just for
racing, but I got rid of that before I went into the clinic. I've
just the one now."

"What time did you set off?" Hampshire wanted
to know.

"We met about 9 at Bingley. The start was
9.15 and the race was supposed to end about 4 o'clock, but I gave
up about halfway through. It was a shortish road race, but I wasn't
fit after a year off, I suppose."

Lucy’s brain was just ticking over as she
listened to the woman. "What was the route?" she asked.

Good question, Millicent thought, and
listened to the reply with interest.

"Up through East Morton, then by the back
lanes to Burley Woodhead and Ilkley and back by way of Bolton Abbey
and Silsden."

That would have taken her right over the
other side of the moors at the time of Hunter's disappearance at
the picnic site, Millicent thought, assuming she had actually got
that far before giving up.

"Where did you drop out?" she asked.

"Ilkley," said Rosie. "I had lunch with
Gloria in a café in the town, then I caught the train back and
Gloria cycled on."

"What time was this?"

Rosie shrugged. One. One Thirty," she said.
"Who knows? Ask Gloria."

"DS Turner will take down details of the race
and of Gloria ...?"

"Gloria Cullen," said Rosie. "She lives on
the far side of Bradford, nearly in Pudsey."

Lucy noted down the address and phone number
and they got up to leave.

Outside, Millicent said, "I'd like you to
check out Gloria Cullen now. Concentrate on where the O'Connor
woman dropped out of the race and where she went. I want to know
whether she had time to have got back to the picnic site, so treat
the Cullen woman as giving her an alibi. Get details of the race
organisers and check whether she passed checkpoints and when. I
think I'll have Tony Gibbs go round and check her bike tyres
against the casts we took at the scene."

"Right," Lucy said. "You think she's another
suspect then?"

"Oh she's up there. First we go over her
alibi in detail, then we check with her former employers exactly
why she was fired and when. Finally, we check her bike tyres and
very carefully check out the doctor."

"Why?"

"That doctor has the same surname as
Shields's partner who was cheated by Hunter. It may be a
coincidence, but Leverett's an uncommon name."

"Hey," Lucy said, "This whole thing's running
away with us. First the mistreated wife is a nurse, so she could
have got the morphine. Second, there's Shields and Leverett, and it
could be that they had access to the drug from Leverett's wife or
sister or something, then there's the O'Connor woman with plenty of
motive and a brother with access to morphine and possible contact
through the GP, maybe related to another of Hunter's victims."

"Don't forget Knowles," Millicent reminded
her. "So far there's no evidence of method, except that his
sister's a nurse, but he had as much motive as any of them. More
maybe. Anyway, you take the car, I'm going to walk back along the
canal bank and think it all through. Then I'll see how Hammond and
Goss made out with Koswinski."

There was nobody around the canal towpath
that lunchtime, so Millicent enjoyed an unhurried peace as she
walked in the midday sunshine. The weather was still the gentle,
mild, sunlit day one associates with childhood memories of summer
in England, as it had been up on the moors at the stone ring the
previous Sunday. Though earth and air were dry and for a couple of
weeks there had been no more than the odd light shower it was not
yet a drought.

Millicent in her mind compared August in
Witchmoor to August in Seville and the airless shimmering heat that
rocked buildings, dried plants, cracked the earth and drove those
who could afford it to the relative cool of the coast. There was no
wonder that southern Spain closed down each day between one and
five and came alive at night.

It had been months since she'd even thought
of Spain, until this last week. Was it her age or something?
Probably not - it was more a facing up to her demons; to beginning
to control her visions and to search for a realistic purpose to her
life, rather than simply burying herself in her job. After almost
fifteen years of suspended animation, perhaps she was waking
up.

The slow chug-chug of a narrow boat broke
into Millicent's rather abstract thoughts and a gaily-painted
holiday barge slipped past, barely rippling the water or disturbing
her soul.

Opposite the burnt out shell of the
warehouse, Millicent stopped and became the detective again. In
what way was Hunter's body connected with the fire? To disguise the
morphine probably, but who had injected the morphine and dumped the
body? Who had made the timing device? Some of the story could be
guessed at, but where was the Porsche?

Some scaffolding had been erected around two
of the walls and there was a bulldozer there. There was no sign of
any workmen, but they would have gone for lunch. The thought
reminded Millicent that she was now rather hungry herself, so she
walked on towards the town centre cafes and the Witchmoor Edge
Police Head Quarters. On the whole, a café seemed more tempting
than the canteen, or the George and Dragon pub in the Market Square
did good food.

Chapter 8: Wednesday 15th August (pm)

Millicent read through Koswinski's statement
as a triumphant Hammond and Goss stood waiting. At length she said,
"That sounds like more or less the truth."

She drummed her fingers absently on the desk
for a moment or two, and then added, "Well done, I think you pulled
that off quite neatly. It doesn't tell us anything we hadn't
guessed, of course, but it confirms it. Well, no. It tells us
Sansom and Barker may still be alive. Tommy, check up on Uncle
Olu's address as soon as you can and we'll follow it up. However
..." she paused. "If it wasn't either Sansom or Barker who died in
the fire, who the hell was it? Did you sense anything held
back?"

Goss shook his head, but Hammond said, "I
think Koswinski may have been bending the truth a bit about his own
part in it all. I think kicking a tramp around is more his line
than the younger kids, especially as he was already in a foul mood
with the world, but I'd say the general drift of it all was true.
And ..." He hesitated.

Millicent looked quizzically, waiting for the
rest of the sentence.

"Oh, I don't know. I felt that there was
something more, but it seems complete and I didn't think he was
lying."

Millicent nodded. "The fire starting suddenly
with a bang or a boom ties in with the fire investigation branch's
belief that it started with a flammable agent and a timing device,"
she remarked. "But it certainly does nothing to explain the third
body."

"Koswinski said the fire was all along where
they'd found the body," Hammond observed. "That has to be the
connection between the fire and the morphine."

D.I. Hampshire slipped the statement into the
growing file. "This has been noted on the database, I take it," she
said. When Goss nodded again she continued, "Gail. Chase up the
autopsy report on the fire victim."