One Under (51 page)

‘But we don’t even know the guy’s dead, Paul.’

‘Exactly.’ Winter was beaming now. ‘My point exactly.’

 

It was late afternoon before Faraday was ready to interview Jenny Mitchell. He and Proctor had stayed at the house while she phoned for a friend to come round and look after the kids. Changed into jeans and a loose top, she explained that she’d volunteered her help on a police enquiry. There were yoghurts in the fridge, spaghetti hoops in the larder and oven chips in the deep freeze. If Andy turned up before she was back, he wasn’t to worry. Everything, she assured her friend, was under control.

At the Bridewell Faraday left Jenny with the Custody Sergeant. She wasn’t under arrest and at this stage didn’t need fingerprinting. Jenny’s appearance at the police station coincided with the arrival of a couple of Buckland slappers, detained in Commercial Road on shoplifting charges. They were both drunk, and both on first-name terms with one of the uniformed PCs charged with booking them in. Before Faraday left for Kingston Crescent, he glimpsed Jenny’s face as she watched the girls mugging for their favourite cop. This was a slice of Pompey life for which she was plainly unprepared, and Faraday began to wonder just how much of her husband’s work she’d really shared.

At Kingston Crescent Faraday sought out Martin Barrie. He briefed the Detective Superintendent on the day’s developments and explained why he intended to tackle the forthcoming interview himself. He and Tracy Barber had the best working knowledge of this particular line of enquiry. Jenny Mitchell had volunteered herself for interview and Faraday anticipated few problems in establishing her role in the events of the Sunday night. Billing evidence linked her to Duley earlier in the day. The tyre casts and footprints put them in the plantation by the railway line. CCTV had caught her return to Portsmouth in her mother’s car. En route, she’d found the time to phone home, presumably her husband. The question she had to answer couldn’t be more straightforward: what, exactly, had happened?

Barrie was intrigued. A gangland revenge killing seemed to have turned into some kind of bizarre suicide pact. Was that a fair assumption?

Faraday cautioned against easy conclusions. Nothing in
Coppice
, he said, had been straightforward. Even this late in the day, he had a sense that they might be in for a surprise.

Tracy Barber was waiting in Faraday’s office.

‘How’s she taking all this?’ she asked.

‘Surprisingly well. She’s probably thought of nothing else since the bloody man died and I just get the sense that she needs to get the whole thing over.’

‘Bloody man?’ Barber was amused.

They drove down to the Bridewell. On Faraday’s advice, Jenny had asked for legal representation. For some reason she was reluctant to phone her family solicitor so the Custody Sergeant had put a call in to Michelle Brinton.

Faraday found her in an office along the corridor. She was deep in the small ads section of the
News.

‘Duty again?’

‘’Fraid so.’ She folded the paper. ‘I’m after a mountain bike. Any ideas?’

Faraday shook his head. When he checked whether she’d yet had a chance to talk to Jenny, Michelle nodded.

‘Nice woman. Bit of a change after Karl bloody Ewart.’

‘She explained our interest?’

‘Yes.’ She held Faraday’s eyes for a moment or two. ‘Bit of a pickle, isn’t it?’

Jenny was waiting in the interview suite, her chair positioned to catch the late-afternoon sunshine flooding through the high window. She looked composed, her eyes closed, her arms folded. She might have been waiting to sit an exam, Faraday thought, pushing in through the door.

The preliminaries were over in minutes. Faraday cued the audio and video recorders, read the caution, introduced those present, and established the time. He and Tracy Barber sat on one side of the table, Michelle Brinton and Jenny on the other.

‘I want to take you back to the Sunday before last,’ Faraday began. ‘Sunday the tenth. Can we establish first that you knew Mark Duley well?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘How would you describe the relationship?’

‘We were lovers. Briefly.’

Faraday coaxed more details. Jenny began to falter. We’ve been through all this, she said, last time.

‘That’s right. But this is under caution, Mrs Mitchell. And that means we can use it in court.’

‘
Court?
’

Faraday pressed her again for more detail on her affair with Duley. He needed to know that Duley had become infatuated with this new woman in his life.

‘I prefer “obsessed”. He wanted all of me, all of the time. That’s why I knew it couldn’t go on.’

‘Did he accept that?’

‘No.’

‘How do you know?’

‘He phoned me. Endlessly. I’d tell him not to, beg him not to, but he never listened. It got very … ’ she frowned ‘ … difficult.’

‘For you?’ Faraday sensed something new here.

‘For us all. He was threatening to come to the house, cause a scene, have it out with my husband. He seemed to think I belonged to him, to Mark. He had no time for marriage. That was something else that was bourgeois.’

‘This was after he came back from Venezuela?’

‘Yes. He had money by now. There was no reason why we couldn’t go to Spain, just me and him. I kept pointing out I had kids but it didn’t seem to matter to him. This was bigger than kids, he’d say.’

‘This?’ It was Tracy Barber.

‘Us. The affair. What we had.’

‘Where did these conversations take place?’

‘On the phone … ’ She faltered. ‘ … Mainly.’

‘Where else?’

There was a moment or two of silence. Michelle glanced enquiringly at her client but Jenny shook her head. She seemed to have made some kind of inner decision. She’d do it herself. Her way.

‘At my mother’s place,’ she said at last.

‘You used to meet there before Mark went to Venezuela?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you still got together there afterwards?’

‘Yes. Not as much but … yes.’

‘And talked?’

‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘And made love sometimes.’

‘Why? If you didn’t want this thing to carry on?’

‘Because … ’ She shrugged. ‘Because my marriage wasn’t so great. Because I still fancied him, not just physically I suppose but in other ways too. He was a comfort. He knew what to say, which buttons to press. You could say I needed him.’

‘And he, you?’

‘Definitely.’

Barber made herself a note, then glanced at Faraday. Faraday wanted to establish the timeline here.

‘You told us a couple of days ago that you finished it with Mark after Venezuela,’ he said. ‘You’re now saying that’s not true?’

‘No, it was later.’

‘How much later?’

‘A couple of weeks, around the middle of June. I’d been trying to stop him phoning and by that time he’d started making threats. He’d shout, sometimes, really rant. I couldn’t bear that. It was completely irrational. He was like a child, a spoiled kid. He wanted total control. If he couldn’t have it his way, he’d make trouble.’

‘So you ended it?’

‘Yes.’

‘How?’

‘We were at the flat, my mum’s place. Andy wanted to take me to Paris. It was supposed to be a surprise but I knew he’d got these cheap tickets on the ferry because I’d found a copy of the offer he’d filled in, and then I poked round a bit more and I found the hotel booking. That was nice. I felt guilty as hell but it was still nice.’

‘So you ended it with Mark?’

‘I had to. There was just no way I could go off with Andy like that and just … ’ She shrugged. ‘ … Pretend. It had to end. I knew it did.’

‘So you told him? Mark?’

‘I did. I’d been to Salisbury Road that day. I still had the key to his room. I knew he wouldn’t be there because he was always in Buckland on a Wednesday morning. Some local history thing.’

‘And what did you do?’

‘The place was horrible, really, you know, smelly. I don’t think he’d changed the sheets for weeks. In fact I know he hadn’t. So I opened the window and tried to tidy up a bit and then I just went round picking up everything that was mine, little knick-knacks, presents I’d given him, the odd letter, a couple of books of poetry, some music, photos. I took it all. I wanted to draw a line. I wanted him to know it was well and truly over. He came back that afternoon, saw what I’d done.’

‘And?’

‘He went crazy - phoned me, just wouldn’t accept it. He said we were made for each other, that he couldn’t live without me, all that tosh. Then he said … ’ She swallowed hard, looked away.

‘Said what?’

‘He said I’d be the death of him.’

‘Did you believe him?’

‘No. That was typical Mark. He’d just crank it up and crank it up, totally over the top. As I think I said before, that can be a turn-on. After a while though it’s just … a pain in the arse. It’s the kid thing again. Maybe he was spoiled rotten as a child. Maybe that was it. Anyway, the point was he just wouldn’t accept it.’

‘Did you go to Paris?’

‘No, in the end Andy had to cancel. Something to do with work. To be honest, I was so strung out by then I was quite relieved.’

‘Strung out why?’

‘Because Mark was being such a bastard. He’d drop notes in during the day, sometimes in the middle of the night. Andy started wondering why it was always me who got up first.’

‘Did he ever come round and knock at the door? When you were both in?’

‘No, but it was worse than that in a way. He’d have left one of his middle-of-the-night notes, and I’d be down there in the morning, tearing it up, getting rid of it, and then I’d look out of the window in the front, and there he was, just across the close, looking at me. It was creepy, mad, horrible.’

‘And Andy?’ The question came from Barber. ‘Be honest.’

Jenny looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded. ‘He knew.’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Positive. Andy’s a cluey guy. He notices stuff. He’s no angel himself, and that had been a problem as well, but he knew something was up. You can sense it, can’t you? It’s an atmosphere. It’s the normal things you don’t do. You don’t touch anymore. You don’t laugh, joke around. I think even the kids were aware of it in the end.’

‘You’re telling me Andy had been having an affair as well?’

‘Earlier, yes.’

‘And you knew?’

‘I found out, yes.’

‘When?’

‘Round the end of last year. Just before Christmas. I came across a letter.’

‘From the woman?’

‘From Andy. He’d forgotten to post it. It was a long letter. There wasn’t much I didn’t know by the end of it.’

‘And?’

‘I confronted him, of course I did. That was the worst bit, really. He didn’t even bother to deny it. He just said yes. I asked him whether she mattered to him, and he said no. He said she was a great fuck and they laughed a lot but it wasn’t love so I wasn’t to get upset. That hurt too. I’d have settled for a great fuck and a few laughs, believe me.’

‘And then Mark Duley came along.’

‘Yes.’

‘After Christmas.’

‘Yes. Andy and I had the worst Christmas I can remember. It was like living in a tomb. It was horrible. Mark was exactly what I needed, exactly what every woman needed. I could have bottled him and made my fortune. Shame I didn’t, really. It might have saved everyone a great deal of trouble.’ She gestured round - the bars on the window, the video cameras bolted to the wall, the soft whirr of the audio cassettes.

Faraday sat back, reflective. The path to Sunday 10 July was slowly becoming clearer.

‘So Duley was a kind of punishment? For Andy stepping out of line? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Mark was a reward. For little me. For surviving. And I grabbed it, in both hands, believe me. Mark made it easy. I told myself it was a mind fuck. It was like a wising-up course but most of it happened to take place in bed. He was my teacher. He was doing me
good
. If life owed me anything, then it owed me Mark. He had loads of dope, good dope. He made me feel … ’ She frowned. ‘ …
me
again. I wasn’t just a mother. I wasn’t some disaster of a wife who didn’t know how to laugh anymore. I was getting it on, ideas-wise, and I was raunchy as hell.’ She turned to Barber. ‘You know what I mean? When you can’t get enough of pleasing someone? No wonder the poor man turned into a headcase. I shagged him witless.’

‘Until you stopped.’

‘Yes. And then, as I say, it got tricky.’

‘So
why
did you stop? If it had all been so great?’

‘Because I think I’d had enough. In fact I knew I’d had enough. And because there has to be more to a relationship in the end than … shagging.’

‘Mark didn’t accept you finishing it?’

‘Never.’

‘And you were worried about Andy?’

‘Yes. To begin with, I think Andy just turned a blind eye. Like it was my turn. But then it was obviously getting serious, whoever this guy was, and it was at that point that he started dropping hints about the kids.’

‘What kind of hints?’

‘Just casual stuff. Like how they needed a stable background, mum and dad, all that. Then he’d start coming home with all these stories about people he knew, couples who were calling it a day, and how their kids ended up in a real mess. He was sending a message, trying to frighten me.’

‘Trying to keep you?’

‘Yes. Trying to keep all of us really, all of us together. Then came the night of the fireworks on the Common, and Mark getting himself beaten up, all that, and to be honest I just lost it. I didn’t know what to do. I mean I’d screwed up big time,
truly
big time, and I was just … all over the place.’