Small Town Secrets (Some Very English Murders Book 2) (16 page)

“Now then!” said Cath, grinning as Penny let her in. “I’ve
got biscuits.”

“Brilliant, you can come in, then. How are things?” Penny
kicked the vacuum cleaner to one side. It could wait. In fact, housework could
always
wait.

“Not so bad.” They wandered into the kitchen and Cath made
a big fuss of Kali, who lapped up the attention like the big daft dog that she
was. “How is the dogs’ home calendar coming along?”

“Oh my goodness. That is the least of my worries right
now,” Penny said ruefully. She grabbed for the biscuits. “I’ve got the layout
to do and it shouldn’t take me long but there aren’t enough decent photos up on
the shared album yet. And I already know there are going to be so many
arguments about which shots get chosen. I know some of the camera club guys
will want their fancy, arty shots to go in, but we’ve got to think of
saleability. The general public wants to buy cute pictures, not sophisticated.”

“What,” Cath said, “I can’t be both sophisticated
and
cute?”

“Nope. Sorry. Mm, would you like one of your own biscuits?”

“So kind. Anyway. I didn’t just come here to ruin your
diet.”

“I’m not on a diet,” Penny said. “Why? Do you think I should
be? I don’t believe in them. Eat less and move more, that’s it. Everything else
is a marketing scam.”

Cath laughed and patted her belly. She was short, which
accented her roundness, but she was fit and strong with it, and didn’t care.
“Oh, shut up. No, have another biscuit. I’ve got news about Warren.”

“Tell me!” Penny urged.

They took seats at the table, and Cath launched into her
explanation. “Right. So we’ve been through all of Warren’s stuff now, at his
home and on his computer. It takes ages because it’s all got to be carefully
logged and catalogued. We thought he only had two phones – a works one, from
the head office of the company that owns the mini-market, and a personal one.
But then we found another.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“Exactly. It was just a cheap, throwaway, pay-as-you-go
type with a SIM he’d bought from any old shop, unregistered, and unlocked.”

“What did he use that phone for?” Penny asked.

“We’re not sure. There is very little data on it. There are
no stored numbers or names, and it’s not been used very much at all. As far as
we can tell, it’s never even made or received a call.”

“How long had he had it?”

“A while. But he has sent text messages from it,” Cath
said. “And they sound awfully like threats.”

“Warren? Threats? Were they to a woman? To Clarissa, maybe?
Did Taz tell you what she found out about her?”

“Yes, and it was fascinating. It certainly puts Clarissa in
the picture a bit more. All we’ve got, though, are the text messages, which say
things like ‘I know what you are doing’. But we don’t know who they are to.”

“Can’t you trace it?”

“Yes, but they are to another unregistered, unknown,
unlocked pay-as-you-go phone.” Cath tapped her nails on the table in
frustration.

“Can you be totally sure that the phone was Warren’s?”
Penny asked.

“As sure as we can be. So, no, there is still some doubt. It’s
being fingerprinted right now. And it was hidden in his bedside cabinet. If it
isn’t his, that then raises the question of who it actually belongs to, and why
it’s there.”

Penny said, “It could be the murderer’s.”

“Yes, but they would have had to have planted it there,
before or after the killing. Doing it afterwards is unlikely. And why do it
before? It doesn’t make sense. We’re trying to trace the purchase of the phone
and whose account was used to do the top-up of credit. That should remove a lot
of the doubt.”

Penny rubbed her eyes. “Well, I’ve got some stuff to share
with you, too.”

“About Clarissa?”

“Nope. Actually it’s about Lee, and one of your other
investigations …”

As they finished the packet of biscuits, much to the
disgust of Kali who received nothing but stray crumbs, Penny told Cath all
about her night time escapades in Lincoln. Cath made some notes on her notepad.

“He’s an idiot,” she said. “He means well, but what a
doofus. I’ll check out the details about Kelly’s arrest. I don’t recall
anything about it, but it must have been four or five years ago.”

“It’s worth pursuing, isn’t it?”

“Oh, definitely.”

That made Penny feel better about her jaunt. If it had revealed
some information then it had been justified. “So,” she said. “Let’s look at our
list of suspects.” She pulled out a blank sheet of paper from a drawing pad. “I
still think Eric is on there,” she said, writing his name at the top.

“Why? He’s a funny old stick but it looks like it was
family pressure that was making him act so irrationally.”

“Did you talk to his wife?”

“Ah yes.” Cath looked pensive. “She confessed that she was
having an affair, and that Eric’s controlling nature was driving her away. And
she was fully aware that their daughter was being used as a tool to try and
keep the wife at home.”

Penny doodled some circles. “Horrible, manipulative man. I
still don’t like him.”

“We can’t lock up everyone we don’t like.”

“Drew said much the same. What a shame.” Penny drew a faint
line through Eric’s name. “Okay. He’s on the edge, now, then. Clarissa? She’s a
definite.”

“Absolutely,” Cath said. “She was making those awful videos
and posting them up. If he found out, he could have threatened to expose her.”

“By using that phone,” Penny said thoughtfully. She wrote
Clarissa’s name in block capital letters.

“Who else? Lee, do you think?” Cath said.

“Given the history between them, yes. If you can find out
more about the incident with his daughter, that will help. Also, Blue,” Penny
added.

“What’s his motive?”

“I don’t know. But he disliked Warren even more than Lee
did, and he wasn’t afraid to show it. I don’t like Blue, either.”

“Is this just a list of people you don’t like?”

“No,” Penny protested. “In spite of it all, I don’t mind
Lee really. But yeah, the rest of them, I can’t stand any of them.”

Cath sat back and folded her arms as she looked at the
list. “You’ll have to take Blue off the list.”

“No. There’s something there that’s bugging me. Intuition,
or whatever. Maybe it’s Lee and Blue in it together. Remember that Warren was
found in a remote place, and strangled with something like a camera strap. That
points to Lee, Blue or Eric more than Clarissa, doesn’t it?”

Cath sucked her teeth. “It does. We’ll check out his photos
and his background a bit, then.”

“Good. Great! I’m sure he’s hiding something,” Penny said.
“Everyone else has had a reason to hate or dislike Warren and they’ve all
admitted it, in the end. But not Blue… so what is his history with Warren?”

“Come up to the police station,” said Cath on the phone,
the following day. “We need your eyes on some photos.”

When Penny arrived at the public entrance, the usual desk
sergeant was shaking his head already, as he talked with Cath who was waiting
for her in the lobby.

“I surely qualify for my own pass card now,” Penny joked as
Cath swiped her card through the reader and punched in a code. The desk
sergeant shouted, “No!” through the clear plastic security screen as Cath led
her down the shabby corridor.

“Ignore him,” Cath said. “But, he’s right. No. You can’t
have your own pass.”

“I’m just asking.”

Cath laughed and led her into a dingy interview room,
similar to the one she’d met the Inspector in. There was a small table in the
middle, a few plastic chairs around the table, and some multi-lingual posters
on the walls advising people they could grass up their mates anonymously for a
cash reward. Taz was sitting primly on one of the chairs, and she had spread
out some photos on the table. She grinned widely when she saw Penny.

“How’s it going? Online, I mean. Not, you know, real life
stuff.”

“Fine, and thank you again for all that advice,” Penny
said. “I might even make a video blog … uh, vlog? … myself and monetise it.”

“That’s exciting! How?”

“I’m firmly in the planning stage,” she said airily. She
had no idea. “Oh – I know that house.” She peered over the photographs. They
were badly printed on cheap office paper, and somewhat smeary. “It’s an old
one, though, because Drew hasn’t put the pole up.”

“What?” Taz said. “Who, where?”

Cath laughed and tapped the photo that Penny was referring
to. “I recognised it too. It’s Reg Bailey’s house.”

“Who is Reg Bailey?” Taz asked.

“Blue Bailey’s dad.”

“Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it?” Taz said. “It’s
reasonable that the son would have photos of his dad’s house stored in his
files. I’ve got random photos of things more tenuously connected than that.
Like, my lunch. In fact I’ve got lots of photos of my lunch.”

Cath leaned over the table, resting her palms on it. “Yes,
and that’s what Blue argued earlier this morning when we called him in for some
questioning. He said that as it was the family home, of course he had some
snaps of it.”

Taz looked again at the photograph. “There’s something you
two know that I don’t,” she said. “Not fair. What am I missing?”

“Just the fact that Reg and his son do not get on,” Cath
said. “And as far as I can tell, in spite of living in the same town, they
haven’t actually spoken to one another for years.”

Penny nodded. “Reg is old-school. He only respects people
who work, and if you get your hands dirty when you’re working then you are the
cream of the crop. The problem is, his son Blue – or John, his real name –
doesn’t work. He spouts a lot of nonsense about the government and stuff, but
he’s not a proper agitator like Ed in the Ramblers’ group. Ed gets up and does
stuff, he protests against things and writes letters and everything. But Blue
is full of noise and wind. He’s the bar-room jury.”

“And another thing,” Cath said. “We have had Blue in here
before. We spoke to him about the harassment that his father was experiencing.
It was routine; we were talking to everyone. And he really wasn’t bothered. He
literally could not care less. I looked over the transcripts again last night,
and he was mostly off-hand and sometimes unpleasant.”

All three of them stared at the grubby prints. Penny picked
them up and leafed through them.

“I just printed a selection,” Taz said.

“Nothing else here jumps out at me. Lots of urbex-type
stuff. He is a good photographer,” Penny said.

“We were looking for any that showed the location that
Warren was killed,” Cath said, “but we found nothing.”

“What about in Warren’s photos?” Penny asked.

“What, of the place he was killed? We still haven’t found
his camera,” Cath explained. “It could be destroyed and long gone by now. And
we … sorry, Taz … thought of Instagram and whether he could have taken photos
and uploaded them instantly, from where he was, before he was killed. But he
didn’t seem to do that. He was one of those methodical photographers who take
the shot, go home, edit them, and put up only the best. He stores everything
else though. There are honestly thousands on his various hard drives.”

“I bet he had a good cataloguing system, didn’t he?”

“He did,” said Taz. “I was really impressed. He was a man
who understood back-ups.”

Penny chewed her lip. “Can we see if there are any images
that are similar to these that Blue took?”

“I’ll go and check.” Taz stood up, but when Penny got up as
well, Cath waved her back down.

“Sorry. We’ll wait here, but you can’t follow Taz.”

“Huh.” Penny slumped into her chair again. “Secret police
stuff.”

“I’ll be as quick as I can. That might be ages, though,”
she said ruefully as she disappeared through another door.

* * * *

Penny leafed through the pile of photos, until Cath could
hold her words in no longer.

“Okay! So you might have been right about Blue. There, I
said it.”

Penny dropped the sheet of paper she was pretending to
study, and beamed in smug pride. “It’s why you asked me to be involved, isn’t
it? For my superior sense of intuition.”

“No, that’s totally
not
why we asked you, actually.
We asked you because everyone in the town talks to you. All you’re supposed to
do is relay what people have said.”

Penny shrugged. “Well, my advanced and searing insight is a
wonderful bonus for you, then.”

Cath glared at her for a moment.

Penny smiled back.

“Oh, you’re impossible,” Cath said. “Speaking of
impossible, have you seen Drew lately? Or are you actually doing the online
dating?”

“I haven’t replied to any of the messages,” Penny said.
“But Drew and I went out for a meal a few days ago, and it was lovely. I think
I got carried away about the whole thing, you know?”

“No, I don’t know.”

“Well, I just got daft about it all, because he hadn’t been
in touch, and I blew it all up in my head to mean something really serious.”

Cath spluttered with laughter. “You’ve taken this
recovering your lost youth thing a bit too much to heart! That’s
teenager-style, that is.”

“I know.” Penny drooped, feeling slightly ashamed.

“Well, it all sounds fine now.”

“It is, yes.” Thinking about the reason she had come to Upper
Glenfield made Penny think of those she’d left behind in London, and she
realised with a start that she hadn’t called Francine like she had meant to.

“What’s up?” Cath said.

“Oh – nothing. Just that, you remember that woman who came
to see me? An old friend from London? Francine?”

“Yes. Is she all right?”

“I don’t know. I can’t get hold of her.”

“Is that unusual?”