Stop Dead (17 page)

Hannah complained about her exasperating daughter and Geraldine sipped her wine and made sympathetic noises. Hannah’s family life felt reassuringly normal, the kind of existence Geraldine had once envisaged for herself.

‘She’ll grow out of it,’ she assured her friend.

She felt herself unwinding.

‘But listen to me jabbering on,’ Hannah said at last. ‘What about you? How are you finding life in London?’

Geraldine considered. Ian had asked the same question. Both her friends spoke of London as though the capital was a foreign country, although it was less than two hours’ drive away. When the roads were quiet she could make the journey in just over an hour.

‘Well,’ she hesitated. ‘It’s not that different really, but it feels different. It’s hectic. Everyone seems busy, all the time, and everywhere feels crowded. People rush around all the time, with no time for anything, so it’s not what you’d call friendly – although I’m making friends on the force,’ she added quickly, noticing concern in Hannah’s face. ‘There’s a more obvious ethnic mix, and it takes longer to feel you belong because everyone’s so busy.’

‘I can’t say you’ve sold it to me yet.’

‘No, but I like it. It’s very exciting. There’s always something going on.’

Hannah poured another glass of wine, and Geraldine made up her mind to take the plunge.

‘There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ she said.

‘Well? Is it a man?’ Hannah grinned.

‘No, no, it’s more complicated than that. It’s hard to explain.’

‘You’re not ill are you?’ Hannah asked, putting her glass down and leaning forward, suddenly anxious.

‘No, no, nothing like that.’

‘You haven’t done anything – anything … ’ Hannah paused at a loss what to say.

‘It’s about my mother.’

‘Your
mother
?’

Hannah looked baffled. Geraldine’s mother had died nearly a year earlier.

Geraldine paused.

‘The thing is, the woman who brought me up, the mother you knew – she wasn’t my mother. Not really. Not at all, in fact.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I was adopted.’

‘Oh, I see.’

Hannah looked relieved, then frowned.

‘But why didn’t you tell me before? And why are you telling me this now?’

Geraldine explained she had only discovered the truth about her birth after her adoptive mother’s funeral.

‘I didn’t know anything about it until last year when the mother you knew died. It explains a lot. My sister being blonde while I’m so dark. She always looked like Mum; you could see the resemblance. I never looked like either of my parents, not really.’

‘You mean Celia wasn’t –?’

‘Celia was our mother’s biological daughter but after Celia was born there were complications and Mum couldn’t have any more children so they adopted a baby.’

‘You.’

‘Me.’

Hannah stared at her for a moment.

‘And they never told you?’ she asked at last.

Geraldine shook her head and tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice.

‘Celia knew. She says she thought Mum had told me and, to be fair, I suppose it wasn’t Celia’s place to tell – but my mother never breathed a word.’

Geraldine broke off, afraid she might become emotional.

‘Oh my God, you poor thing. So how did you find out?’

Briefly Geraldine told her how Celia had passed on the paperwork pertaining to her birth and adoption after their mother’s death.

‘So Celia really thought you knew.’

Hannah looked stricken for an instant then shrugged.

‘It doesn’t make any difference to anything though, does it? I mean, she was still your mother.’

‘But –’

‘And she was a wonderful woman.’

Reminded that Hannah had always liked her adoptive mother, Geraldine decided not to say anything about her unsuccessful attempts to persuade her case worker to reunite her with the birth mother who had refused all contact with the daughter she had abandoned at birth.

The conversation moved on and soon they were giggling over anecdotes from school.

‘Remember that geography teacher? What was her name?’

‘Miss Crackpot.’

They both laughed at the nickname.

‘She put me in detention for leaving the dining room eating a chicken nugget!’

‘And do you remember that chemistry test when we all just made up answers?’

‘Except Swotty Morgan.’

‘Oh my God, Swotty Morgan. I wonder what she’s doing now.’

‘Probably running the civil service.’

‘Or MI5.’

‘I heard she went off the rails at uni and now she’s a pole dancer.’

‘You’re kidding!’

Hannah laughed.

‘Well, she had the figure for it.’

They collapsed in giggles, like the school girls they had once been.

T
hat night Geraldine slept fitfully, and went into work early on Monday. Nick wasn’t in that morning so she had the office to herself but even that consolation palled after a couple of hours. She found herself struggling to concentrate, and wished she had lingered in bed longer, realising she could have done with another hour’s sleep. She wandered along to the canteen but didn’t recognise any of the other officers in there. Nostalgia for her old station hit her. In Kent she had known just about every officer on the force but London was very different.

A subdued Guy Barrett was escorted to the station. The constable who brought him in reported that he hadn’t appeared surprised when he opened the door and saw a uniformed policeman on the doorstep, and he had accompanied the constable to the waiting car without argument.

‘I think he was waiting for us.’

‘Come on then,’ Geraldine nodded at Sam. ‘Let’s see if he’s got anything to tell us.’

Secretly she was hoping it would be relatively easy to draw the truth out of a self-conscious twenty-three year old, but she didn’t say so out loud. She didn’t want to jinx the interview. In any case, Sam wasn’t very much older than twenty-three.

Guy watched in silence, apparently calm, as Geraldine set the interview in motion. He sat very still, his head held upright, as he waited. Quite remarkably good looking with a disarmingly ingenuous gaze and a square jaw line, he looked younger even than twenty-three. With the preliminaries out of the way, Geraldine began her questions.

‘You know Amy Henshaw?’

‘You know I do.’

‘Tell me about your relationship with her.’

‘I’m shagging her. Is that what you want me to say?’

Suddenly he flung his brawny forearms on the table, palms facing upwards in a gesture of submission.

‘Look, I know what this is all about. Someone knocked off Amy’s old man and you think it was me. Well, you can save us all a lot of hassle because I can tell you right now I never went anywhere near the guy, not since we did a job at his house a couple of years back. I had nothing to do with him.’

He scowled and leaned forward to rest his chin on his hands.

‘But I’m not going to give you a load of bullshit about how sorry I am he’s dead, because what happened to him was no worse than he deserved. Do you have any idea what he was like, how he treated Amy? I don’t suppose she told you he used to beat her up? Fucking bastard. If you want to know, I’m glad he’s dead. He didn’t deserve any better and that’s a fact.’

He leaned back in his seat with an air of finality.

Geraldine didn’t reply. Instead she put a photograph of Henshaw’s mutilated corpse in front of Guy and watched his reaction closely. He gaped, looking so startled that Geraldine was convinced he hadn’t known the details of the assault beforehand. She watched his eyes remain fixed to the image on the table.

‘Jesus!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘That’s sick.’

Geraldine sat forward.

‘You just told me you thought he deserved this.’

‘What the hell happened to him?’

Guy had turned very pale. He shook his head in disbelief and she saw his fingers trembling as he passed his hand over his lips. It seemed an extreme reaction from someone who hadn’t known the victim. It crossed Geraldine’s mind that he might be shocked not so much by the injuries Henshaw had suffered, as by the discovery of the extent of the killer’s brutality.

Guy raised his eyes and shook his head, defiant once more.

‘Of course he didn’t deserve to be beaten like that, no one does, but he was a bastard and I still say she’s better off without him.’

‘I wouldn’t say she’s better off exactly,’ Geraldine said carefully, with a sideways glance at Sam who was sitting beside her.

‘No,’ the sergeant agreed at once. ‘You can hardly call her better off now.’

‘What the hell are you talking about? Amy’s not on her own if that’s what you’re getting at. Far from it. Because I’m going to take care of her properly from now on.’

‘You’ll have your work cut out then.’

Sam smiled as though she was amused by his claim.

‘She strikes me as an expensive woman to maintain,’ Geraldine agreed. ‘With all those designer outfits and fabulous hair treatments – you didn’t think it was natural, did you? And I expect she’s used to having a personal trainer and a tennis coach and goodness knows what else besides. So how are you intending to take care of all that, exactly?’

A dark flush spread across Guy’s face and he looked down at his hands.

‘We’re going to share everything,’ he muttered. ‘We’ve talked about it. She says I won’t need to work any more but I’m not going to stop, if that’s what you think. I’m not that sort of a man. I pay my way. I won’t be living off her money.’

‘Living off
her
money?’ Geraldine raised her eyebrows. ‘I thought we were talking about Amy Henshaw?’

‘Of course I’m talking about Amy. Who else?’

‘But Amy Henshaw doesn’t have any money, does she?’

Geraldine turned to Sam.

‘Shall I tell him or will you? Only it strikes me that Amy Henshaw has been leading this poor boy on, making out she’s a wealthy woman in her own right.’

‘We share everything,’ he repeated, raising his voice fretfully. ‘You don’t understand, we don’t have any secrets. You’re just trying to wind me up.’

‘How’s this for a secret?’ Geraldine retorted sharply. ‘Not only does Amy Henshaw have no money, she also has a crippling mortgage on a very expensive property that’s now registered in her name. In fact, she’s mortgaged up to the hilt with no funds to pay up. Financially her husband’s death has left her in serious trouble. What’s the matter, Guy? Did she forget to discuss her financial difficulties with you?’

Guy sat without moving, staring at his lap. When he finally looked up, his brows were drawn low over eyes no longer candid.

‘I don’t believe a word of it.’

His lips twisted in a snarl as he spoke, and he seemed to be short of breath.

‘She would have told me. We don’t have any secrets. You’re lying.’

The news that Amy Henshaw hadn’t inherited a fortune was clearly a surprise to her young lover.

Seizing on the opportunity to take advantage of Guy’s momentary dismay, Geraldine sat forward. Her light-hearted tone had disappeared. Her eyes glued to his face, she spoke slowly and clearly.

‘Where were you last Sunday evening between eleven and one o’clock?’

There was a pause.

‘Think carefully before you answer, Mr Barrett.’

Guy nodded as though he had been expecting this question and understood its importance.

‘I was with Amy all night,’ he replied, pursing his lips primly, ‘and she’ll tell you the same, so don’t go thinking you can pin this murder on either of us.’

Although his voice was steady his eyes flicked round the room and he shifted awkwardly on his chair, his shoulders tensed.

Sensing his discomfort, Geraldine pressed him with a series of questions.

‘How can you be sure what she’s going to say? Did you discuss this together? Get your story straight?’

‘I know she’ll tell you we were there because it’s the truth.’

‘Where were you?’

‘She came round. We always met at my place because – well, I couldn’t go to hers in case her husband turned up unexpectedly. So we were at my flat from –’

He broke off, momentarily nonplussed.

‘Well, I can’t remember exactly when she turned up,’ he resumed lamely, ‘but it was early when she came over and she stayed all night.’

He paused, staring at the photograph of Henshaw which Geraldine had left on the table, as though he was unable to drag his eyes from it.

‘Look, I get it. Because I’m having an affair with Amy you think it must be me that killed her husband. That’ll be good for your targets, won’t it, a nice quick arrest and you’re done. Very clever. Only, I didn’t kill Patrick Henshaw. I never saw him again after we did his conservatory, and I never did – that – to him. So can I go now? None of this has got anything to do with me. You can’t just keep me here and I’ve got nothing more to say to you.’

Sitting back in his chair, arms folded across his chest, he pressed his lips firmly together as though to illustrate his decision to remain silent.

A
lthough she wasn’t convinced Guy had murdered Henshaw, Geraldine still shared Sam’s disappointment that he hadn’t caved in and confessed his guilt. She returned to her desk to tidy up. A wave of exhaustion swept through her as she sat down and slumped back in her chair, too tired to continue. She must have dozed off because she came to with a start, her head lolling uncomfortably to one side, her mind spinning with all the possibilities. She wondered if they had been right to dismiss Corless so readily. He might have killed Henshaw and then been bumped off in his turn, as an act of revenge. That depended on the second killer having known exactly how the first murder had been carried out, and copied it, which was unlikely. In any case, she had believed Corless’ claim that he couldn’t make a success of the restaurant without Henshaw. That gave him a vested interest in Henshaw remaining alive and healthy.

She stood up and stretched, stiff from sleeping in such an uncomfortable position. They were eight days into the investigation and not only were they no closer to finding out who had killed Henshaw, they now had a second victim on their hands. She knew she should be rereading early statements in the light of this new development, going over and over the same ground, but she felt an uncharacteristic sense of lethargy. Finally she went out to grab some lunch in a local cafe.