The Order of Things (16 page)

‘The guy on the left is Dean Russell. He’s in the Powder Monkey in Exmouth on his third pint. Table under the TV. All yours … with my compliments. XXX PS The other guy’s gone.’

Suttle was still sitting down.
Golding had circled the office and was reading the text over Suttle’s shoulder.

‘Who sent that?’

Suttle didn’t answer. He was trying to work out how Lizzie could have got a photo like this. Had she been following Dean? Had he been living somewhere else?

‘You think it’s kosher, skip?’ Golding asked. ‘Or are we getting dicked around?’

‘Good question.’ Suttle was scrolling through his directory. Seconds later he was talking to a mate in the Exmouth CID room.

‘Kenny? There’s a guy called Dean in the Powder Monkey. Table by the telly.’

‘Would that be Dean Russell?’

‘It would. Do us a favour? Nip down and nick him?’

‘What for? Just give us a clue.’

‘Conspiracy to murder.’

‘Murder?’ Kenny was laughing. ‘You’re telling me he’s become a
serious
criminal?’

Suttle said nothing. The conversation over, he glanced up to find Golding still gazing at the phone.

Dean Russell was arrested eighteen minutes later and driven to Exmouth police station. Suttle relayed the news to Houghton, who was back in the MIR. A surprised if pleased Nandy ordered Russell to be taken to Torquay police station and booked into the Custody Suite. He wanted separate interview teams for Russell and Tania Maguire, and he needed Suttle to brief the detectives dealing with each. The booking-in procedures, plus disclosure sessions with attending solicitors, would push the interviews into the afternoon. He suggested Suttle find himself a suit from somewhere;
Buzzard
had no room for orange trackie bottoms.

Eighteen

T
HURSDAY, 12
J
UNE 2014, 11.53

Lizzie left the Powder Monkey and retrieved her Audi from the town centre car park. The sight of two uniformed officers escorting an outraged Dean Russell from the pub had seriously impressed her, not least because without her input the arrest would never have happened. As a working journalist she’d often been struck by the similarity between her job and Jimmy’s. Same mindset. Same determination to check out every lead. Same reluctance ever to take life at face value. Do the job properly, she thought, and you might as well be carrying a warrant card.

She was about to take the road back to Exeter when she had second thoughts. She’d never seen Jimmy’s new home. Maybe now was the time to check it out. She had the address from her mother, who still forwarded Jimmy’s stray mail from time to time.

The Beacon turned out to be a long terrace of tall Regency houses straddling the bluff overlooking Exmouth seafront. She drove slowly up the hill, looking for a parking space, finding one almost opposite Shelley House. Jimmy’s flat was number 3. She peered up at the white stucco frontage, at the big windows, at the once-grand entrance, trying to imagine the view across the estuary towards the distant smudge of Torbay. No wonder Jimmy preferred this to the gloom of Chantry Cottage. After the living death of Colaton Raleigh, where their marriage had finally collapsed, it must have felt deeply liberating to be suddenly in a working town again: kids, chatter, busy pubs, decent restaurants, proper shops. She got out of the car and gazed up at the third-floor window.
I could almost live here myself
, she thought.

The front door opened, and a young woman stepped out wrestling a buggy down the flight of steps to the pavement. The rain had gone now and the wind was stiffening from the south-west. Racing clouds. Broken sunshine. Sudden bubbles of warmth. Nice. The woman parked the buggy and went back into the house, returning moments later with a baby. Lizzie judged it to be one, maybe one and a half, suddenly realising that this must be the Polish girl who lived in the flat above Jimmy’s. It was her partner, a huge guy called Tadeusz, who’d saved Jimmy’s life last year when he’d been ambushed by a prime suspect determined to settle a debt or two.

The woman was having trouble with the buggy, trying to open it while juggling the baby from arm to arm. Lizzie crossed the road and offered to help. The mother was pretty, a big open face, jeans and T-shirt, good English. Lizzie held the baby while she set up the buggy. The baby gazed up at her as Lizzie rocked it in her arms.

‘What’s Polish for “You’re beautiful”?’ she asked.

‘You know we’re from Poland?’ The girl was staring at her, surprised.

‘I do, yes.’ Lizzie nodded up at the third-floor flat. ‘I’m Jimmy’s wife. My name’s Lizzie.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. We’re not together, of course. You’d know that.’

The girl said nothing. She took the baby and strapped it into the buggy. Then she stood upright again and extended a hand.

‘My name’s Klaudia,’ she said.

‘And the baby?’

‘Kasia.’ She smiled. ‘Jimmy’s a good man, a good friend. Kasia loves him. They take her for walks at the weekend sometimes. To give us a little time together.’

‘They?’

‘Jimmy …’ she laughed and then touched Lizzie lightly on the arm, a gesture of apology ‘… and his girlfriend.’

‘Sure.’ Lizzie returned the smile. ‘You’re going for a walk now?’

‘Yes. Not long, but yes.’

‘Mind if I come?’

‘Of course.’ Klaudia bumped the buggy off the pavement and pointed towards a path beyond the greensward. ‘The beach is down there.’

Golding drove Suttle back to Exmouth to pick up his Impreza. He pressed Suttle again on the source of the information that had taken them to Tania Maguire, but Suttle didn’t budge. Old media contact. Solid as a rock. Wanted to return a favour.

‘Call it karma,’ he said to Golding. ‘Call it what you like. Either way it’s turning out just fine.’

‘You think they did Reilly?’

‘I think they’ve got a lot of questions to answer.’

Back in Chapel Road Suttle stepped out of the car. He’d pick up a suit at home and then drive straight back to the MIR. It was just gone midday. Houghton had called the interview teams dealing with Russell and Maguire for a full brief at two o’clock. She wanted Suttle and Golding in Torquay to monitor the interview with Russell. Based on what little she knew, her money was on Russell to break first.

Golding nodded and drove on down the road. Suttle walked to his Impreza, passing number 49. The SOC van was still parked outside and there was a uniformed officer on the door, but so far he’d heard no word from the CSM. He was tempted to look in but knew that time was tight.

On the Beacon he parked at the back and limped slowly up the stairs. His leg had stiffened now and the throbbing was worse. Getting out of the trackie bottoms was awkward, and he had to sit on the bed to shake them off. He doused his face in the bathroom, avoiding the mirror, and then sorted himself another suit. In the big living room, knotting his tie, he paused for a moment by the window. Nailing Russell so quickly had been a big win, but the implications made him feel deeply uncomfortable. He’d never liked being in debt to anyone, least of all his estranged wife.

He thought about last night, about the texts she’d sent since, about the weird YouTube clip with the piano concerto, about the photo of Dean Russell in the pub. He knew he had to get a statement from the witness Lizzie had cornered, Frances Bevan. He knew he had to regularise the file, tidy up the audit trail, try somehow to airbrush Lizzie out of the inquiry. And he knew as well that no way could any of this ever get back to Oona. Last night had been a huge mistake. It would never happen again. He wanted to wind his life back twenty-four hours and start all over. What a twat.

He gazed out at the view then became aware of two figures bumping a buggy across the grass towards the house. One of them was Klaudia from upstairs. The other was Lizzie. She was looking up at him, framed in the window. She was waving.

He checked his watch: 12.26. He headed for the door, took the stairs faster than his leg wanted to allow him.

Lizzie met him on the pavement. ‘How bad is it?’ She was looking at his leg.

‘It’s OK. It’s fine.’

‘It didn’t look that way.’

‘When?’

‘When they put you in the ambulance.’

‘You were there?’

‘Yeah. How else would I have ended up in the pub?’

Of course she was there
, Suttle thought. Russell must have turned up afterwards, cruised on by, led her straight to the Powder Monkey.

He tried to shoot Klaudia a smile. ‘Give us a moment?’

He took Lizzie by the arm and walked her down the pavement.

‘This is getting out of control,’ he said.

‘Do I hear the words thank you?’

‘You do. Of course you do. But I need a favour.’

‘Another one?’

‘Don’t fuck about. This Frances Bevan, where does she live?’

‘You don’t believe the stuff I gave you?’

‘I have to statement her. You know that.’

‘Of course. She lives in Lympstone.’

‘House? Street? Number?’

Lizzie looked away. She was smiling. ‘The scene of the crime,’ she said. ‘The place where it happened. Bentner’s place.’

‘What about it?’

‘I’d like the address.’

‘Why would you want that?’

‘None of your business.’

‘You can find it yourself. He’s in the phone book.’

‘So is Frances Bevan.’

‘Wrong. I just checked. This is urgent, Lizzie. I haven’t got much fucking time.’

‘Sure.’ The smile was wider. ‘It’s a small village. Do the reporter thing. Ask around.’

He held her gaze for a long moment. In spite of everything he had a sneaking regard for this new woman in his life. The leather jacket, he thought. And the sheer height of the ceiling above them when she’d straddled him last night.

‘The terrace on the Strand,’ he said. ‘End house. Number 4.’

‘Thank you.’ She reached up and kissed him on the lips. ‘Number 35 Edinburgh Crescent. Give her my regards.’

Suttle was at Lympstone within ten minutes. He knocked three times on Frances Bevan’s door and was on the point of giving up when it finally opened. She examined his warrant card with visible misgivings and finally let him in. He explained that he was a friend of Ms Hodson’s as well as a policeman, and the mention of Lizzie’s name warmed the atmosphere a degree or two. She’d been thinking a great deal about the conversation she’d had with the young lady and on reflection she rather thought she’d said too much. Would any of this ever get back to Betty?

The question startled Suttle.

‘I was under the impression that Betty was dead.’

‘She is. But that’s not the point. One has an obligation to the dead as well as to the living. I’d like to think we’ll stay friends.’

Suttle assured her this was more than possible. He led her briskly through the headlines he’d plucked from Lizzie’s account of their conversation: how much Betty had been suffering, how she’d got in touch with Harriet Reilly, how she’d been abandoned by her only child, and how she’d changed her will before Harriet brought her suffering to an end. The account filled a page and a half. Suttle left the statement undated, and with a degree of obvious reluctance Frances signed it.

Back in the Impreza Suttle checked his watch: 13.35. He’d make the briefing meet with the interview teams. Just.

Parking in Lympstone was a nightmare. Lizzie finally settled for a vehicle bay at the halt that served as a station and walked back down the hill to the village centre. Past the pub, a lane took her down to the slip that gave access to the tiny harbour.

It was high tide, the water lapping against the footings of the riverside houses. Gulls and terns soared on the strengthening wind, and the hills across the estuary were mottled with the racing clouds. Dinghies and bigger yachts bobbed at their moorings, and further out, beyond the buoyed channel, she could just make out five stick figures in a rowing quad, sculling downstream on the first of the ebb. The splash of the red hull against the brownness of the water told her that the quad had come from Exmouth.
That was me once
, she thought.

She turned to study the terrace of houses that looked out across the water. Bentner’s was the one at the end. Next door a line of coloured flags stirred in the wind, reds and yellows and blues. There was no way she could access the properties from here at high tide and so she walked back, skirting the water. There was no sign of any kind of police presence at Bentner’s property, and she imagined the SOC team would have gone by now. It was a small house, and a couple of days should have been ample time to give it the full treatment. The front door badly needed a coat of paint.

She rang the bell. Waited. Rang it again. Stooped to the letter box, pushing it open. At once she could smell the chemicals the SOC guys had used. She called Bentner’s name, just in case. She had no idea what made this man tick, but disappearing from the face of the earth for nearly a week had won her respect. Maybe he’d come back under cover of darkness. Maybe, even now, he was upstairs in bed, a fugitive in the one place no one would ever bother looking.

Nothing. She stepped back, wondering about the next-door neighbour. These were old houses, probably thrown up for fishermen. The sound insulation would be rubbish. She knocked on the door. Knocked a second time. Again no response. The letter box was bigger, wider, deeper. She pushed it open and peered inside. The hall was dark but the light through the letter-box slot fell on a pile of letters scattered on the rug inside the door. Dr Gemma Caton, BA, MA, PhD. Two of the letters came from the University of Exeter.

‘Where you to?’ Rough voice. Male. Very Devon.

Lizzie stood up, shading her eyes against the sun. He was in his fifties, maybe older, stooped, nut-brown face, greying stubble. Dark blue beanie, jeans and a baggy old sweater. Splashes of white paint on the jeans and a hole in the sweater where an elbow had gone through. A riverside life fraying at the edges.

‘I’m a reporter,’ Lizzie said. ‘Maybe you can help?’

‘Yeah, and maybe I can’t. What gives you the right to poke around other people’s business?’