Witchmoor Edge (7 page)

Knowles seemed surprised. "A Saab," he said.
"Why?"

"There are three sets of tyre treads at the
picnic site where Hunter's car disappeared," Millicent explained.
"I just want forensic to check you car tyres for elimination
purposes."

"Did you say Hunter's car is missing?"
Knowles asked.

"At the moment," the inspector agreed. "The
car seems to have disappeared more completely than the man
did."

"Funny business, that," said Knowles. "Do you
know how he got into the canal?"

Millicent was wary. She didn't want to give
too much away to someone clearly on the list of suspects.

"He might have been intended for the fire,"
she said, "but how he got into the canal instead is an issue we're
still working on. I think I probably know who was involved now, but
I don't know why or how yet."

"Funny, that," Knowles said again and
shrugged the problem aside. "The Saab is at home with Mrs. Knowles,
as I said. I come into work on the Ilkley train from Guisley to
Foster Square. You have our address?"

Tommy had been writing notes of the interview
without comment. Now he nodded, thinking that Knowles might be less
co-operative if he had anything to hide.

"You suggested Mr. Shields might know this IT
woman's name," Inspector Hampshire said.

"Don't build up your hopes too much," Knowles
told her. "I said it's possible because Simon Hunter talked him
into a very bad deal on the basis of information he said came from
her. Sheldon Shields is a Canadian and not naive, but Simon took
him in and did the dirty on him."

"I think I'll speak with Shields in a few
minutes," Millicent said. "First I'd like to check through Hunter's
desk."

"He doesn't have a separate office," Knowles
remarked. "Nor does Shields. There's a private Client Interview
Room and you could speak to Shields there. I'll show you Hunter's
desk and cabinet as soon as you've had your drinks, but finish your
coffee first."

Hunter had a desk with locked drawers, a side
table on which there was a computer and a filing cabinet. Millicent
sent Tommy to ask about keys. He returned with a key ring of filing
cabinet keys.

"These are copies of the keys to every filing
cabinet in the place," he said. "Knowles has a full set of copies,
but not of desk keys."

"Well, there probably won't be anything
private in the cabinet then," Millicent said, taking the bunch of
keys. "He wouldn't keep anything important where Knowles could see
it any time."

While she was trying the various keys, Tommy
was looking at the desk drawers.

"These are the type of locks where a catch
just swivels up and hooks behind a pin on the wood just above the
drawer itself." Millicent glanced up as he was taking out a
penknife. "I think I may be able to push the lever back with the
blade," he added.

As Millicent flipped aimlessly through the
files, looking for she didn't quite know what, Tommy slipped the
knife blade into the gap above the desk drawers and eased back the
catches.

"Good job these are not meant to be top
security," he said and started to flip through the contents of the
drawers.

After a few seconds he stopped and stood
back, looking puzzled. "I'd say somebody has been through this
lot," he said.

Millicent turned. "What d'you mean?"

"There's absolutely nothing personal here at
all."

"Diary?"

"No."

"Address book?"

"No. But he might have an agenda programme on
the computer, with contact addresses on it, I suppose."

Millicent stood back and thought about it. "I think
we'll leave it," she said at last. "He may not have kept anything
personal at the office. We'd better check his work area at home. I
think I'll ask the fraud squad to take an quick glance over things
and see if they can see anything untoward."

"Shields next, then?" Tommy asked.

"I think so," Millicent answered.

* * *

Lucy Turner phoned Ellen Barnes before
calling. This was nothing to do with consideration for the finer
feelings of the witness, but she saw from the file that Barnes was
a nurse. 'Nurse' often meant even stranger shift patterns than a
police officer, and Lucy wanted to be sure Ellen was neither at
work nor asleep. She was neither. She was on late shift, leaving
home just after one, so DS Turner went round straight away.

The flat was on the third floor of a clean
and recently built block, which might have been built for private
sale. Lucy rang the door entry bell, was identified and the door
lock released by remote control. Secure if everyone was sensible
about letting strangers in, the detective thought, mounting the
stairs.

Ellen was holding the door open on a chain
and opened it as soon as Lucy showed her warrant card.

"Detective Sergeant Turner," Lucy said. "I'd
like to ask a few questions connected with events last
Saturday."

"Come in," Ellen said. "It's just that two
women need to be that extra bit careful."

DS Turner had been thinking that mid-morning
in a respectable sort of area with a security door and an advanced
warning that she was coming, Ellen seemed unduly cautious. She
followed the woman into a small but elegantly furnished living
room, with two large oil paintings on the wall. Both were of Ellen
herself, naked or nearly so, both originals and, though well
executed, both somehow a good amateur standard.

Ellen Barnes saw her looking at them. "That's
me, nearly twenty years ago," she said. Alice did them. "That's how
we met. I was a life model to eke out a student nurse salary and
she was taking the course."

On closer inspection, Lucy could tell that
Ellen was a good deal older than she had assumed at first glance.
She must be in her early forties at least, which made her older
than Shirley Hunter by between five and ten years. Did that make a
difference? Probably not.

"Alice," the detective said. "What's her
family name?"

"She's Alice Dent."

"You share the house with Alice?"

Ellen nodded. "We're buying it on a shared
equity scheme from a Housing Association," she said. "There's not
much scope for buying outright unless you have a substantial
salary."

DS Turner knew that very well, and had
several times been glad that Julia had landed an IT job
sufficiently high flying to pay most of a substantial mortgage.
Since both drove to work from some distance away, the relationship
was unknown to colleagues, not that Lucy cared that much. She
nodded.

"Okay," said Lucy, "As I explained, I'm part
of the team investigating the murder of Simon Hunter and, since you
apparently picked up Mrs. Hunter from Baildon Moors last Saturday
and spent the rest of the day and night with her, you are her
alibi. I want to check her story and get any other details I
can."

Ellen nodded and waited.

"When did Mrs. Hunter phone you?"

"I knew that's what you would ask first and
I'm really not sure. It was after one, but not long after. Can't
you get the time from the mobile phone company?"

"We'll sort out the exact time later," Lucy
said.

"What did Mrs. Hunter say over the
phone?"

"She was talking in a panic - really gabbling
gibberish at first. When I calmed her down a bit, I gathered she
and Simon had had a real row. She seems to have thought he was
going to kill her and had run off. When she crept back to the spot
both Simon and the car had gone."

"What were you doing when she phoned?"

"I was washing up after dinner, thinking
about going shopping."

"What did you do then?"

"I drove straight to the moors, where she
said she was. I told her to wait on the main road and she was there
when I arrived."

"Did you go to the picnic spot?" Lucy
asked.

"No. I just accepted Shirley's story - I
still think it's the truth - and drove up to where we arranged to
meet."

"And then?"

"I drove us back to the Morrison's
Supermarket in Bingley and we did some shopping, then we went home.
Alice was there by this time. The three of us sat and talked for a
while. Then we went out for a meal in a restaurant in Shipley. An
Indian place at the bottom end of Saltaire Road. After that we came
home again and Shirley stayed the night."

"Mrs. Hunter was with you all the time?"

"Yes."

"Have you proof of any of this?"

Ellen was silent for a time, thinking about
it. "Alice phoned and booked a table at The Last Days of the Raj,"
she said. "They would probably have a record of the booking."

"Anything else?" Lucy persisted.

"I've got the till slip from Morrison's, I
think. We have to be careful about keeping a record of what we
spend."

"That should show the time," the detective
observed.

At this point there was the sound of a key in
the door and Alice Dent let herself in. She was, perhaps, a shade
tall for a woman, wore an overall and no make up and was holding a
motorcycle helmet. She was somehow reminiscent of Millicent
Hampshire, in that she was about the same age and contrived to have
the same friendly competence about her, though Alice was perhaps a
touch more ... what? Defiant or defensive, Lucy thought. Was that a
general attitude to life or was it something more immediate?

"This is Sergeant ..." she turned to
Lucy.

"Detective Sergeant Turner," Lucy said.

"She was asking about Saturday," Ellen said.
"When Shirley rang me from Morton and things. "

"I had finished getting the main details
down," said the detective. "I was just going to ask how well you
knew Mrs. Hunter."

"She was a friend," said Alice, rather
heavily. "Just a friend."

There was an unmistakable emphasis in the
word friend.

"You know her at work as well?" Lucy said to
Ellen.

Alice frowned but didn't say anything.

"She's worked at the same hospital as me for
quite a while," Ellen said. "seven or eight years at least."

"You knew her before she met Simon
Hunter?"

"Yes."

"What was your opinion of him?"

Ellen paused, looking vacantly out of the
window. At last she said, "Its easy to be wise after the event, but
I really didn't like him very much from the very first. What's
more, he didn't like us and he was rude to Alice."

"In what way?"

"He made a pass at me once and Alice told him
we had a steady relationship. He called us a couple of Dikes and
said all Alice needed to cure her was a good screw with a half
decent bloke, but he couldn't think of one who'd be willing."

"I don't suppose your kind would think that
was much of an insult," Alice said, even more heavily.

There was a dangerous pause as DS Turner
looked up slowly and, while keeping her place with her finger,
closed her notebook as if to indicate an off the record remark,
said, "If I made assumption about your sexuality, I suspect you'd
be very quick to put me in my place, and rightly so. I'd appreciate
it if you would stop jumping to conclusions about mine."

There was a silence as Alice looked her over,
as if seeing her for the first time.

"I'm sorry," she said at last. "I just
assumed that life in the police force would make it impossible to
be anything but straight."

"It makes you bloody careful about
advertising that you're not, I'll say that," Lucy agreed. "My boss
has a pretty good idea that my partner's a woman - in fact, I'm
sure she knows, though I haven't told her - but she doesn't seem to
care All the same I'm very careful about who else knows."

"Okay," Ellen said, looking a little more
relaxed than she had, "Going back to what I was saying about Simon.
Before he married Shirley, I thought he was a smarmy toad and I
didn't like him, but it only took a few months after the marriage
to realise he was violent and nasty with a cruel streak. He often
physically mistreated Shirley - hit her and so on - Add to that he
seemed to take pleasure in humiliating her in public whenever he
could and he had a very bad temper if he didn't get his own way. He
was altogether unpleasant to be around."

"Could she have been driven to murder?" Lucy
asked.

"I'd have killed him after the first month,"
Alice said, "but I don't think she did, more fool her."

Lucy tapped her pencil against her notebook
reflectively and said, "My dad was a detective with Warwickshire
Police all his life and a Freemason too. He said that in all his
years in the force he'd only ever come across one guy who dropped
all kind of hints that he was a Mason. My dad said that he figured
that, if the bloke had to call on being a Mason, he must have
something to hide, so he gave him a much more thorough going
over."

"It's a bit different from being gay and him
being a Freemason though," Ellen said. "They've got secret
handshakes and things you can say."

"Baloney," Lucy replied. "You don't shake
hands with a suspect and we all understood each other without being
explicit, just because we wanted to understand."

"Now you know, however accidentally, that I'm
in a lesbian partnership too," She continued, "I'm going to have to
check out everything you say more carefully, just to offset my own
feelings and prove to myself I'm being fair. You understand?"

"I think so," Alice said. Ellen nodded.

"You've come in from work?" Lucy asked.

"When I'm on a job nearby and Ellen's on
lates, I come home for lunch," Alice said

"You ride a motor bike and Ellen drives a
car?"

"We have a car between us," Ellen said, "But
I use it for work, especially coming home late at night."

"Makes sense," Lucy observed. "Where do you
work?" she asked Alice.

"Wainright Simpkins, electrical
contractors."

"Right," Lucy said. "I'll check those times
and maybe talk to you again later. For now, I'll leave you to your
lunch."