Chapter Fourteen
“What did James say?” I asked, my voice high as I felt myself starting to panic. James had helped me dispose of the body. James had got rid of the car. It was all his idea. After that, James couldn’t have said I ran Lennie over because James was implicated. And what had he said about Mr. Newman?
“You tell us,” said DS Khan.
“Well, I wasn’t there, I don’t know what he said to you,” I pointed out, trying to buy myself thinking time.
It worked. I had a revelation. A recalling, actually—finally all those hours watching crime dramas had paid off—I remembered an episode of The Bill in which the police lied to get the culprit to confess.
This must be what they were doing now. Maybe DS Khan had even seen the same episode.
I smiled. “I don’t believe he said anything to you,” I said. “Apart from maybe ‘what were you doing in our graveyard yesterday?’” I folded my arms and sat back, victorious.
And I was victorious. They tried, for quite some time, with different angles, different questions, different allegations, insistent that James had thrown me under a bus, but I had them licked.
I stuck to my story: I only met Lennie once, at the party, I didn’t see him afterward.
Although, really, that was what caused the problem: I didn’t see him.
I told it the first time, I told it a second time, I told it a third time.
I told it over and over and over. I could have told it in my sleep.
I kept it simple. I didn’t add any embellishments or introduce any other characters who might have tied me up in knots at a later date.
I was something of a natural at this. And every time DS Khan said, “That’s not what James said,” or “James says you know something about it,” I told her she was lying.
She didn’t seem to like that much and she stuck to her story as well, until I started to wonder if she really was telling the truth.
What had James said? Was he being interviewed too?
He’d said he was going to phone them when he got to work, but he’d seemed free as a bird when I called him about a solicitor.
It had been midmorning before the police arrived at Langley Hall—was that long enough for them to have interviewed James first?
Had he had to wait for his brief? Was it this same one? Was James also covered in glitter?
And if they had interviewed James, had he told them everything straightaway? That wouldn’t take long but didn’t sound at all like the James I’d come to know and want to murder.
On the balance of probabilities, Khan was lying, but I didn’t feel that in my heart.
Next, Khan leaned forward, looked at her laptop, and tapped a few keys. She turned the screen to face us. “Can you explain why you were driving like a nun on your departure from the party, Daisy?”
And Tarquin and I watched CCTV footage of me driving the car away from Margery’s house, doing about five miles per hour in a thirty zone.
For a moment, I felt panic begin, but I was getting good at this now and after a couple of seconds, I calmed myself down and thought clearly.
Should I ask for a few minutes with my solicitor, or would that assure them that they were onto something?
Should I just own up to having had a drink?
After all, I was borderline for the drink drive limit and sailing close to the wind was not evidence of a hit-and-run, and they couldn’t breathalyze me now.
Should I just say “no comment,” or would that, again, convince them that they were right? Then I had a better idea.
“I was wearing stilettos,” I said. “They’re not the best thing for driving in. I should have taken more sensible shoes. The heel got caught and I couldn’t control the pedals properly. I was going to stop and sort it out, but then it came free, so I just carried on.”
“There you go, simple as that,” Tarquin said, his work done for him.
We went through three comfort breaks, four small, bitter coffees, and one stale sandwich that I couldn’t finish. My eyes began to droop, my solicitor seemed to be counting the tiles on the ceiling, and once, when I called DS Khan a liar, I swear I saw DC Parker snigger.
Then Khan changed the subject. “We’ve had the postmortem results for Douglas—Doug—Newman today. Drowning.”
That sent a new shot of adrenaline rushing through me. Due to the relative recentness of the incident, I hadn’t given so much thought to what I would say about him, but drowning as a cause of death sounded hopeful, accidental.
“Is there anything you’d like to tell us?” Khan asked.
I shook my head, promising myself I’d say no more than that, and Tarquin said, “He probably lost his footing and fell in. He might have had a drink or hit his head. Why are you asking my client about it?”
“Because as well as water in his lungs, he had a number of blows to the head, made by a blunt object.”
I wondered what James had said about that, but I didn’t want to poke the hornet’s nest. Tarquin did that for me.
“What did Mr. Dixon tell you?”
“We haven’t asked him yet,” Parker said. “We’ve only just had the results. Daisy, do you want to go first?”
I shook my head again. “I don’t know anything about it. If James says differently, he’s lying.”
And on we went for a little while, in the same vein as with Lennie, until Tarquin said that we weren’t achieving anything, that I was obviously tired, and that sleep deprivation was a form of torture. DS Khan conceded the point and ended the session. I was allowed to leave.
My first instinct, as DC Parker saw us off the premises, was to get away as quickly as I could without saying another word. Then I found I had another instinct. I paused at the door and said:
“Ask James about his falling out with Mr. Newman.”
“Ask him what?” Parker said.
I frowned; they weren’t meant to ask me more questions after that, but I rose to the challenge.
“There was bad blood between James and Mr. Newman,” I said.
Then I left, as fast as my legs would carry me without actually running, my solicitor hot on my heels. I felt slightly shaken by my own daring with the information about Mr. N, and I wanted to get away before they hauled me back for more questions.
“That’s quite some nerve you have,” Tarquin said as we walked out into the twilight. “Anyone would think you were a hardened criminal.” That seemed like something of a backhanded compliment, but it hadn’t been hard-nosed coolness, it had been blind panic.
Then he gave me his business card; he thought we were going to be meeting again. Before we parted, he apologized once more about the glitter. “My kids are out of control,” he said.
***
James was waiting for me when I got back. I would have found it more comforting to have arrived home to Mrs. Billings, but her shift was over hours ago and James had bought fish and chips, even though it wasn’t a Friday, and he got me a decent-sized portion for once.
He was surprised at how sparkly I was but not at the fact that I’d been interviewed by the police. “Stands to reason,” he said. “They have a body; we have a graveyard.”
I put my fish and chips in the microwave and thought that it was probably for the best that James was here and Mrs. B wasn’t because, once again, I was thinking that a problem shared is a problem halved and was feeling the urge to unburden myself to her, which I surely would have regretted the next morning.
“What did the police want to know?” James asked me.
“I told them…” And I repeated the story I had told the police for what I hoped would be the last time. “They tried a really dodgy tactic, though,” I said and turned to look at him. “They kept saying that you said I ran Lennie over.”
He didn’t look surprised at that.
***
I found myself preoccupied the next day with thoughts of the police, what James might have told them, and why and how he could have done it without implicating himself.
The most optimistic scenario I could come up with was that James was a very intelligent man, maybe he hadn’t said anything incriminating, but he already knew the police lied to trick you into confessing and that was why he wasn’t surprised.
Maybe it was exactly what he was expecting.
I was pretty sure he didn’t know that from watching TV, but there must be loads of other ways someone could come by that information.
Maybe one of his clients was a CID officer, maybe one was a solicitor.
Maybe even the same solicitor who had sat silently in the interview room with me for hours and hours on end. Maybe, maybe, maybe…
If I wanted to stay on this side of a prison door, the first thing to do would be to get a new solicitor, one with no connections to my husband.
I googled “Legal Aid,” hoping it would point me in the right direction.
What I found was a quagmire of vagaries, but a running theme seemed to be that they would take into account my income—zero—along with that of my spouse—zillions.
If I wanted a solicitor who was independent of James, and I very much did, I would have to pay for it myself.
I had about ￡400 in the account James paid my allowance into.
That might get me an hour or two with a decent solicitor, but I’d probably be better off using it to flee the country. I wondered how far I’d get.
I searched on the name Tarquin Noble. I hadn’t forgotten that I should be careful about my search history, but it seemed a reasonable thing to google the person to whom I was entrusting my freedom, especially since I had had no say in that matter.
I found him to be a respectable lawyer in a reputable practice. That didn’t tell me much, although I wasn’t expecting him to post up there that he would help you get your wife sent down for your own crimes, should the need occur. For more useful information, I looked for him on social media.