Chapter Thirty-Two
JEN DIDN’T GET TO THE POLICE station despite her best intentions. Venn had banned her from coming to work.
‘The doctor said you weren’t fit. You have to stay at home. There are rules. Protocols. No argument.’
In the end he and his constable came to her house instead, with Ross carrying boxes of pizza and cans of beer.
Venn was clutching a fancy takeaway coffee because he’d have to drive home at the end of the night.
Vicki Robb wasn’t there, though. She was still at her desk.
Jen thought the woman had some sort of social anxiety.
She always found an excuse to avoid work nights out.
Or perhaps she just preferred to keep her work and her social lives very separate.
Because it was Friday, Ben was at a sleepover at his friend’s place.
They’d be drinking beer too, of course, or worse, and staring at a screen.
She worried about that, the glazed eyes, the grunting when she tried to distract him, but in the end, she’d decided that at least there’d be two of them there tonight. The boy would have some human contact.
They sat outside in her garden as the shadows lengthened, and she switched on the fairy lights. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and the delicate cream flowers gleamed in the shadow.
‘So, Karen Kinzalow just turned up at the station?’ She was astonished.
It was the last thing she’d been expecting.
‘And you let her go?’ They all had the Kinzalows down as their prime suspects, and Karen had given them a pretty good motive.
If some loser gave one of her kids brain damage, she’d struggle not to kill them.
‘I think I believed her,’ Venn said. ‘And besides, I don’t have enough to charge her. I don’t know about the husband, though. We know he confronted Lottie at the music festival. He’s a more likely suspect and I’m seeing him early tomorrow morning.’
‘Yeah, right. But you know you’re an easy touch!’ She’d had a beer on top of the painkillers and could feel the inhibitions slipping away. ‘Someone plays the sympathy card, and you believe them.’
Though, Jen thought, that wasn’t really true. The boss had been the only person to see through the killer during their last investigation at Greystone.
Venn only smiled. ‘They have a flight to Washington booked for Monday. I need to talk to Geoff, but it’s possible that they just want to get home to their daughter. If they’d run away straight after the murders, we’d never have suspected them at all.’
‘I guess.’ Jen supposed he had a point. She turned her attention to Ross. ‘Great interview with Daniel!’
‘Thanks.’ That was all he said, but she could tell he was pleased. Thrilled. It felt weird that her compliment had so much effect on him.
Next door her neighbour was playing the piano. He was an older guy with a love of jazz and highly patterned shirts. He’d left his kitchen door open and the sound, smooth as silk, slipped into the garden, over the wall, and wrapped itself around them.
Venn had finished his coffee. Jen had brought out a bin bag for the rubbish and he carefully put the takeaway cup in that.
Usually, he brought his own re-usable mug, and it occurred to her that he must be anxious to have forgotten it, despite the apparent confidence that all would be well and that the Kinzalows wouldn’t abscond once again.
‘I’m taking some time out tomorrow afternoon and evening,’ he said.
It felt like an announcement, more portentous, Jen decided, than it deserved. It must be important. She was curious. ‘Oh?’
‘Something I need to do with Jonathan.’
‘Cool.’ Ross sounded glad. Maybe he saw that as a chance to prove himself again.
‘I’ll just be at the end of a phone,’ Jen said. ‘The team can get me whenever they need anything.’
‘Great.’
There was a sudden silence as the music came to an end.
Jen thought her neighbour would be pouring himself a glass of red wine.
Sometimes, he shouted over the fence and asked if she wanted to join him.
Her garden was prettier than his and they’d usually sit there, and he’d tell her stories of his life, the clubs he’d played all over the world, the musicians he’d met.
If he hadn’t been so much older than her, with a wrinkled neck and wild grey hair, she might have fancied him.
‘We don’t have many suspects left then, do we?
’ That was Ross. He always seemed in a hurry, impatient, his life running to a beat that nobody else could hear.
‘If we’re dismissing the Kinzalows as possibilities.
And Vicki has confirmed Daniel’s story about parking in the National Trust car park at Baggy Point. ’
‘We’re not dismissing the Kinzalows altogether.’ Jen thought Matthew sounded a bit defensive.
‘Apart from them,’ Ross said, ‘we’ve got the couple who run the Fisherman’s Arms and the family at the farm.’
‘At a stretch, they might all have a motive for killing Lottie.’ Jen had been thinking about this all afternoon. ‘Now we know that she stooped to actual blackmail.’
‘I wonder if she would have gone even further with her threat to badmouth the Hoopers’ business.
’ Matthew was talking slowly, and Jen had to strain to hear him, even now that there was no sound of the piano.
‘I’m not sure that she would. It’s almost like the games she was playing with the girls.
She was challenging Mag Hooper to stand up to her. ’
‘Sad, Daniel called her,’ Ross said.
‘It sounds as if she was seriously screwed up.’ Really, Jen thought, her kids were doing okay in comparison.
She couldn’t be that bad a mother. The year before, she’d been haunted by the idea that she’d like to give motherhood another go.
She had longed to hold a baby in her arms again.
That longing came back suddenly, sharp and intense.
Next time, she thought, she might do it well.
The music started again. Venn said he should go because he had to be up early in the morning. Jen thought he might say more about where he was going the following day, but he never talked much about his personal life, so she didn’t really expect him to.
‘I went to Maurice Braddick’s funeral.’ He was on his feet, with the black plastic bin bag already in his hand, insisting that he’d dispose of it at home. Jen couldn’t imagine Robbie, her ex, ever being that thoughtful.
‘Oh, of course.’ Jen had completely forgotten about the funeral. ‘I’m glad one of us was there. How was it?’
He thought for a moment. ‘Instructive,’ he said.
They heard the boss walk out through the house, and the front door being carefully shut.
Jen expected Ross to follow him, but he handed her another beer and took one for himself. They each took a swig from the can.
‘What do you think the boss meant by instructive?’ Ross waited until the house was quiet before asking the question.
It was quite dark now, and the sky was full of stars. Jen shrugged. Her brain was blurry, and she almost wished that Ross would leave so she could get to bed. The great thing about takeaway pizza was that there was no washing-up to do, and Venn had taken all the boxes and napkins.
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Sure.’ Jen thought it would be something about promotion. Ross had always been ambitious, and her bit of praise could have set him off. She yawned in the hope that he’d take the hint that she needed her bed.
‘How long did it take you to get pregnant?’
‘Not long enough!’ The words flew out before she’d really considered the answer.
And it was true. They’d been married for a few months, but they hadn’t really started trying when Ella came along.
One pissed and romantic evening, and Jen was knocked up.
Then Ella had been such a good baby, quiet and undemanding, that soon afterwards, Robbie had decided he needed a boy.
Someone to go to the match with him. A mini-me.
She hadn’t been sure then, had already started getting anxious about the way the man treated her.
His temper. His need to be in charge. But she’d persuaded herself that a baby might soften him again, especially if she could give him the boy that he wanted.
Now, she thought, What the fuck! How could I ever have thought that way?
She remembered the anxiety she’d felt at the scan, Robbie sitting beside her, holding her hand so tight that it hurt, her wondering what he’d do if the baby turned out to be another girl.
Would he make a scene with the midwife, as if it were the professional’s fault?
Or sulk in silence and take it out on her when they got home?
When he’d found out that the child she was carrying was a boy, he’d let out a cheer.
It was as if he was in the Kop and Liverpool had just scored a goal.
But Ben hadn’t turned out to be any sort of Robbie mini-me.
He’d hated sport. Possibly because his father had started throwing balls at him when he could hardly walk.
Ben was dreamy and not very academic. Ella had been able to escape into her books.
Ben had just seemed perpetually confused by his father’s moodiness.
Ross finished his beer. And dragged her attention back to the present.
‘Only Mel and me, we’ve been trying for about six months and nothing’s happened.’
He sounded distraught and she realized she should have taken more time to consider her response.
‘That’s no time at all,’ she said. ‘I know couples who’ve waited much longer than that.’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I expect you’re right. Well, I’d best get off. No need to get up.’
So, she was left there, her arm in plaster, alone and looking up at the stars.
She waited for a moment in the hope that the guy next door might shout over the fence.
After all, some company would be okay, some talk that wasn’t about murder, but he’d stopped playing and his house was dark, so she went inside and to bed.