Chapter 58
FIFTY-EIGHT
She updated Matt after he got home. But he also had some news for her.
‘I’ve been asking round about Jamie. It turns out a couple of people I know in finance know him too, from way back.’
‘And?’ she prompted.
Matt shrugged. ‘The consensus is, he’s a great guy.
Likeable, sporty, a bit wild in his youth, but a solid family man now who you’d definitely go out for a beer with, if you found yourself in Washington.
But you were right – he got thrown out of the IMF for inappropriate behaviour.
Or, more accurately, comments. My informant put it down to strait-laced Americans not getting British banter, but apparently he described an intern as “gratifyingly slutty”, and she found out and complained.
It wasn’t the first time, either – after that complaint, a whole bunch of women started coming forward about what my contact called “colourful language”. ’
‘Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.’
‘There were complaints about him taking an overly hard line with juniors, too,’ Matt added.
‘Expecting them to get his lunch, bawling them out in front of the whole team, that kind of thing. Stuff that, a few years back, might have been acceptable alpha-male behaviour. But it seems he failed to realise that the world’s moved on. ’
That might explain the latent anger she sensed in him, Kate thought.
If Jamie believed he’d lost his high-flying, high-status job unjustly, and had decided to retreat to his childhood home to lick his wounds – the place where, in Liv’s words, he and his friends had once been like ‘a herd of young gods’ – it must have been galling, to say the least, to discover that Trade Cottage, too, had moved on, and he couldn’t just stroll back into his former life.
And to have her refusing to be charmed or bullied into giving him what he wanted, when it had also been a woman, a lowly intern, who’d triggered his disgrace at the IMF – perhaps that, too, helped to explain why the ownership of Trade Cottage had become such a totemic fight, one he was determined to win at all costs.
‘That all fits,’ she said, nodding. ‘I’m sure there’s a link between him and those human remains, too. I just don’t know what it is yet.’
‘But you’ll leave it to the police to deal with, yes?
’ Matt said gently. ‘I know it sounds awful to say it, but, in some ways, this is really good for us. If he is investigated over Martina’s death, it would completely alter the context around those Alzheimer’s claims, for example.
It feels as if the system might actually be on our side for once. ’
‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘The best thing all round is if the police nail him themselves.’
But that didn’t mean not doing all she could to give them a helping hand. After she’d got the children to bed, she took a mug of tea and some biscuits out to Sergeant Dickinson, still maintaining her lonely vigil in the police car.
‘Thanks,’ the policewoman said, winding down her window and accepting them gratefully.
‘Will you be here all night?’ Kate asked.
Sergeant Dickinson nodded. ‘They’re going to sieve through the mud tomorrow. After that, we should be out of your hair.’
‘Look,’ Kate said tentatively, ‘this may be none of my business, but that woman who was here earlier, with the flowers – her name’s Liv Hoggart. If it turns out it was Martina Boban they found, you might want to talk to her.’
She explained what Liv had said about Martina’s connection with Jamie and Guy Pelham.
‘Also,’ she added, ‘and again, none of my business, but . . . Would the forensic people have any way of knowing if she was pregnant when she died? Because, from what Liv was saying, that might have been a possibility, too.’
Sergeant Dickinson cocked an eye at her, and for a moment Kate thought she was going to be told off again for being nosey.
But the policewoman only said, ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but there’s going to be a presser first thing tomorrow anyway, to try to jog people’s memories.
It’s more than a possibility she was pregnant – it’s a near-certainty.
They found some forensic evidence with the body. ’