Chapter Twenty-One
“Someone’s coming for the Bentley today,” James said as he got dressed the following morning. “To pick it up. I’m selling it. We’ve done the paperwork; you only need to give him the key.”
“Why?”
“How often do I drive it? It’s just sitting there in the garage. It may as well go to someone who’ll appreciate it.”
As with the yacht, that didn’t sound like a James kind of sentiment.
“Alright,” I said. Did that mean he didn’t know I wasn’t going to be in? I had the police interview that morning, and I couldn’t make promises about what time I would be home. “I have to go out this morning.”
“Where?”
“To see my solicitor.”
James half smiled. “OK,” he said, uncharacteristically reasonable. “I’ll put them off until tomorrow. Are you in tomorrow?”
“Yes,” I said. Unless I was banged up. But the next day was a Mrs. Billings day anyway, so there was no need to further delay the removal of the Bentley; she could hand over the keys if necessary.
***
Forewarned is forearmed and I made myself some sandwiches and a flask of coffee for this second outing to the cop shop.
I’d been starving by the end of the last interview, and I find it hard to remember the lies I’ve told when I’m hungry.
I thought about a few Mr. Kiplings to round them off with, but there weren’t enough in the packet to share around four of us.
My solicitor—or should I call him James’s solicitor?—was already there. He had a file with my name written on it and was using correction fluid to cover up a doodle.
“Kids?” I said.
“They’re going to be in a lot of trouble,” Tarquin replied, with a smile that said they weren’t, although they should be. I felt a pang for children of mine who had never had the chance to make their presence felt through doodles.
DS Khan sat opposite us, tapping her fingers on the table. The whole gang was back, but hopefully this time not for so long.
“Morning, Daisy, thank you for coming, we just have a few more questions,” DS Khan said, and I noticed for the first time how wonky her mouth was. “Shouldn’t take up too much of your time,” she added, trying to lull me into a false sense of security.
I nodded as if I were falling for it and we began. The first things they wanted to ask me were the same questions as last time, all over again. But the story I had told was so ingrained in my memory by then that I told it as before, word for word. Then:
“We’ve had information from Lennie’s mobile provider, and it shows he was in or near your house on the night he went missing.”
Even though I’d known this was coming, I felt flustered. But Tarquin stepped in. “It shows his phone was in the area that night,” he said. “That’s not proof Lennie was. Or that he was in my client’s house or that he had any contact at all with my client.”
That was more like it! I’d been struck in the past by how little he intervened. I thought James might have told him to do that.
“But it’s a very high likelihood,” DS Khan said. “There are only fields for miles around.”
“Lots of public footpaths, though,” I said, although Lennie Green hadn’t looked like a man who walked many miles along country paths. “Are you asking James about this?” I asked them.
“We’re asking you at the moment,” Khan said. “Let us worry about who else we’re asking.”
Parker moved on. “That wallet we found belonged to Lennie Green. We had it tested for fingerprints. Yours were all over it.”
“I told you, I found it in a field.”
“But you also said that you gave it to Mr. Dixon and he said he’d hand it in to lost property.”
“So?”
“Doesn’t it seem strange that his fingerprints were nowhere to be found.”
“Not if he wiped them off.”
“You can’t wipe off one set without wiping another.”
Good point.
“I left it on the coffee table for him to pick up,” I said. “I didn’t see him pick it up, so I don’t know what he did next or why he would avoid getting his fingerprints on it.” Except I knew very well why he would do that. Under the table, I clenched my fists.
“There’s nothing you’ve said that means the wallet wasn’t found in exactly the way my client said it was,” Tarquin said, and the detectives decided to move on.
“You handed in an address book to your local police station a few days ago. Can you tell us about it, please, Daisy,” Parker said.
“It wasn’t me handing it in, it was Mrs. Billings, I was just giving her a lift down there.
She found it in James’s bedroom. I told her it wasn’t James’s because all the people in it were strangers, and we decided the best thing would be to hand it in.
You’d have to ask Mrs. B if you want to know any more. ”
“You know everyone Mr. Dixon knows, do you?” Parker asked.
“We’ve been married a long time. We know most of the same people.” By that I meant we both knew everyone in Upper Iffley.
“Do you know all his business clients?”
“I’ve met most of them,” I said, feeling a bit defensive. I’d been to a lot of networking dos, but it was probably fair to say James wheeled and dealed with a fair few I’d never even heard of.
“Did it occur to you that address book may just be a backup list for his clients in case the internet went down?”
I thought of the book and I thought of a million and one objections to that idea.
“It was full of postal addresses,” I said.
“If the internet goes down for a couple of hours, he’s not going to write to tell them that.
” Followed by, “There were blank spaces in it. James’s client list would fill that book and a hundred more,” and, “Have you checked the handwriting?”
To which Parker replied, “He likes to be prepared for a major internet collapse. It’s just one of many books, which are confidential, for obvious reasons. We will check the handwriting, but it’s so scrunched up in there, it’s going to be hard to make a valid comparison.”
Tarquin gave a little snort. “Don’t they have magnifying glasses?” he asked. Parker ignored him.
Whatever they believed or didn’t believe and could prove or could not prove, I realized the address book was not the bull’s-eye I had imagined. It was not as good as planting Lennie’s wallet on me.
***
All good things come to an end, and the next morning, Arty called in to tell me that they thought they had collected as many bones as they could and they were expecting to finish by the end of the week.
“They’ll probably be finding little bones around the village for years to come, though,” he added. Then, “We should set a date for my DIY day.”
“We should,” I agreed, although part of me wanted to keep it as something to look forward to in the future.
“It needs to be soon; my girlfriend and I are going traveling afterward. We decided just recently.”
A girlfriend! I don’t know if I kept the dismay off my face when he mentioned her.
And not only that, but they were leaving and he would not be around the grounds or coming to the kitchen to boil up.
He would not be in the area at all. There would be no chance of bumping into him on one of my rare outings to Upper Iffley or Tippington.
He’d be hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away. With his girlfriend.
I’d known the day would come and in truth the archaeologists had been here longer than I had anticipated, but it felt like the end of a happy stage in my life, the end of a time when there were moments I could forget about James, Lennie, and Mr. Newman for a while. And the DIY day now had a use-by date.
“Could you come on a Wednesday?” I asked, picking a day almost at random. Almost. There would be no James and no Mrs. Billings on a Wednesday.
“Next Wednesday?”
I nodded.
“What do you want me to do here?” he asked. That was a good question and one that I hadn’t given much thought to, but Arty didn’t wait for an answer. “As soon as we have a final date for the end of the dig, I’ll let you know, then we can go round and make a list.”
Then, he said, “I’ve been wearing the clothes you made all over the place. My girlfriend loves them as well. We wondered if you could make her one like the first one you made me, the red and yellow one.”
“Yes,” I said. “There’s loads of that material left. I’ll have to measure her. When can she come round?” They could have matching his and hers, I thought, with chagrin.
We arranged a visit for the following week, on a Mrs. Billings day, in case I needed help with the measuring.
I spent the rest of the day in a depression I kept telling myself to come out of.
After all, Arty was nearly two decades younger than me and I was a married woman.
He’d never suggested anything other than what we were doing, and I’d never expected anything different.
But it had been such a change from the time I spent with James.
There was more bad news when Mrs. Billings arrived.
“Polly Thrussell’s boy’s been let go from your place,” Mrs. Billings said, as I poured the tea. “Have you got any positions here?”
After a minute I realized that “Polly Thrussell” was Mrs. Thrussell from the teashop, but I couldn’t make head nor tail of the rest of it. “From my place?” I asked.
“Lord James’s business,” she said. “He’s let them all go. All the ones that were left, most of them had their marching orders a while ago. Young Oliver Thrussell was working there.”
“Oh dear,” I said. “I don’t think we’re taking on here at the moment.”
“She’s going to be disappointed. I said there was always something needed doing.”
After that, things felt slightly awkward, and it was a relief at the end of the morning to finally see Mrs. B climbing into Mr. B’s van.
As they drove away the implications of what she’d said settled on me: He’d let all his office staff go. The Bentley was gone and the two-hundred-thousand-pound watch was gone. Whatever next?
***
James said nothing about the redundancies when he got home, nor did he mention the skirt I was wearing, made from hand towels and created especially to provoke him. He didn’t even comment on the crispy shredded breaded duck I presented him with—a new find. He said nothing. Nothing at all.
So I asked him about the redundancies.