The Order of Things (28 page)

‘I need a favour,’ she said. ‘Which is why I wanted to meet.’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s a woman called Kelly Willmott. I think you probably know her.’

‘Kelly?’ Michala’s eyes were wide. ‘You knew Kelly?’

‘Yes.’

‘How well?’

‘Very well.’

‘She never mentioned you.’

‘I’m sure she didn’t.’

‘You’re a kitesurfer?’

‘No way. I was a friend. In the end we had a big row. It was horrible. But before that we were very close.’

Michala nodded. Lizzie could see she was trying to absorb the news. Then she looked up. ‘You know what happened to her?’

‘I know she was lost at sea. That’s pretty much it. I was living away last year. I only got back a couple of months ago.’

Michala glanced at her watch. She said her train was due in ten minutes but there’d be another one.

‘You want me to tell you the way it was?’ she said. ‘At the end?’

Suttle and Luke Golding drove across to Middlemoor to conference with Nandy and Houghton before starting the next interview with Alois Bentner. Suttle listed points in Bentner’s account that
Buzzard
needed to check: was it true that he was intending to buy the property on Uist? Were negotiations in hand? And if so, were there any indications that both Bentner and Harriet Reilly were actively preparing to turn their backs on their careers and journey north with the new baby?

Houghton left the office to talk to the D/S in charge of Outside Enquiries. She had the name of the estate agent in the Western Isles and she’d raise another action to dispatch
Buzzard
DCs to the Hadley Centre and to Reilly’s Exeter practice. The ticking of the PACE clock would be driving the next twenty-four hours. Before Suttle and Golding tackled the challenge phase of the interviews with Bentner, they needed every shred of evidence they could muster.

Houghton had briefed Nandy on Suttle’s use of the leads raised by his ex-wife. Now the Det-Supt wanted an explanation.

‘I haven’t really got one, sir. Losing our daughter has changed her. And so has success. She’s wealthy now. She’s become a bit of a star. There are bits of her I don’t recognise any more.’

To Suttle’s surprise, Nandy didn’t contest the point. Instead he wanted to know why she’d got herself involved with
Buzzard
in the first place. This, Suttle knew, was delicate territory.

‘She runs a website, sir. It’s always been a bit of a dream, and now she has the money to make it happen.’

‘What sort of website?’ This was news to Nandy.

‘It’s an investigative thing. She looks for local stories. Dirt, basically. Then starts digging.’

‘You mean interfering.’

‘Yes, sir. But she was the one who took us to Maguire and Russell.’

‘Which went nowhere.’

‘Sure. But we didn’t know that at the time.’

‘That’s irrelevant, son. The real question is this: what the fuck is she up to? Getting in our way? In my book that’s perverting the course of justice.’

‘To be fair, sir—’

‘To be fair, bollocks. There are procedures here. If she wants to become an informant, then she has to be registered, she has to be handled. You know that.’

‘That’s not her way.’

‘Too fucking bad. You’re still on talking terms?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then phone her. Get her back in line. Tell her she either behaves herself or she’s on a nicking. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good.’

Nandy was beginning to calm down. It was a question, he said, of aligning Lizzie’s interests with those of the investigation.
Buzzard
would obviously welcome any help on offer, but it had to be done properly. Otherwise they’d end up with a pile of evidence that would never make it to court.

‘And another thing, son, while we’re talking of her interests.’

‘Sir?’

‘Might they include you?’

Michala and Lizzie were on their second coffee. Michala was talking about Kelly Willmott. She said they’d met last year at a barbecue in Exmouth. Gemma had contacts at the sailing club where the party was taking place and insisted on Michala coming along. A brilliant evening in late spring, she said. Home-made burgers and good beer, and dancing on the sandbank once the tide had gone out.

‘And Kelly?’

‘She was the centre of everything. She’d just come back from some championship where she’d won a medal, and she was wearing it around her neck. She was a wild woman. She danced like a native. Gemma loved that.’

Afterwards, she said, they’d all gone back to Lympstone. Drunk, Kelly had stayed the night. Within weeks she and Michala had become lovers.

‘Gemma didn’t mind?’

‘Not at all. She loves having people around her. She says it makes her feel alive.’

‘You mean the right people.’

‘Of course. That’s why I asked her to invite you over. And I was right. She likes you very much.’

‘That’s good to know.’ Lizzie ducked her head and did her best to mask a smile. Was this woman some kind of pimp? Scouring East Devon for offerings to lay at Gemma Caton’s door?

She nudged the conversation back to last year. Did Kelly move in?

‘Yes, more or less. Then she got ill. After that she was with us all the time.’

‘Ill?’

‘Skin cancer. She had a little mole on her ankle. It was a tiny thing at first. She showed me when it started to bleed. I told her that she should get herself checked out but she was always too busy. By the time she finally got to the doctor it was too late.’

The melanoma, she said, had spread. First to her lymph nodes, then to her liver. She lost weight. Thin didn’t suit her. Then, always tired, she started sleeping a lot. Michala watched the life draining out of her and knew something had to be done.

‘Kelly agreed. She had no choice. She was in pain most of the time and her doctor was talking about getting her into a hospice when things got really bad. She hated the thought. She didn’t want that and she didn’t want the pain either. She knew that her life was over but she wanted to leave it on her own terms.’

On her own terms
. Lizzie nodded. She sensed exactly where this story was heading. First Jeff Okenek’s gay lover. Then Julia Woodman. Then Betty Russell. And now Exmouth’s kitesurfing queen. Lizzie had never met her, had never even heard of her, but there was no way Michala would ever know that.

‘Kelly was always a fighter,’ Lizzie said softly. ‘I can imagine exactly the way it must have been.’

‘It was terrible. She was such a beautiful person. She was so strong, so full of life.’ Michala’s eyes were glassy. Lizzie reached for her hand.

‘Where was Gemma in all this?’

‘She was away a lot. She does lecture tours. But we talked on the phone every day. She knew Alois really well. His partner was a GP – Harriet Reilly.’

‘This was the woman who was murdered?’ Lizzie did her best to feign ignorance.

‘Yes.’ Michala flinched slightly. ‘That was horrible too.’

She’d been to see Alois, Michala said. They’d talked a couple of times over the garden wall and she took the chance to explain about Kelly.

‘Alois was really good, really kind.’ She was staring out of the window. ‘He said there were ways you could plan to end your life. Good ways. Ways without pain.’

‘And Harriet would make that possible?’

‘Yes. She came round one night and sat with Kelly. I was there too. Harriet took lots of notes and in the end she agreed to help Kelly die.’

‘How?’

‘With an injection. No pain. Just a drifting away. Kelly was really pleased, really grateful. She wanted it to happen while she was still able to enjoy life. Does that sound strange?’

‘Not at all. Kelly was always like that. She needed to be in charge.’

‘She did. You’re right. But there was a problem.’

Harriet, she said, insisted that Kelly would have to be buried. Michala never understood why, but it seemed to be a legal thing. Either way, Kelly couldn’t bear the thought of ending up in a grave. She had a fear of being in the darkness with the silence and the worms. She wanted to be cremated. She wanted her ashes scattered on the estuary.

‘Sunset on one of those cloudless winter days.’ Michala was smiling now. ‘She’d worked it all out. She couldn’t predict the weather but she’d looked at the tide tables and come up with a list of dates. It had to be a big tide. And it had to be going out. A big tide and maybe some wind as well.’

‘But Harriet said no?’

‘Exactly.’ Michala nodded. ‘She said it was burial or nothing. Kelly was hurt. And then she was angry.’

‘With Harriet?’

‘With everything. The cancer. The doctors. God. But especially Harriet. It was like she’d spoiled Kelly’s party. You only get one chance to die. That woman could have made it so sweet.’

Lizzie said she understood. She could hear the bitterness in Michala’s voice. Harriet Reilly had made enemies of these women. Not just Kelly but Michala too.

She asked what had happened next. By now, said Michala, it was December. Kelly had been working in the kite shop down on Exmouth marina, but even this was getting beyond her. Then one morning she woke up with a smile on her face.

‘It was a week before Christmas,’ Michala said. ‘For once she’d had a good night. No pain. No nightmares. No sweats. She asked me to come with her down to Exmouth. We put her kite and all the other stuff in her car. She said she’d checked the forecast and the wind was perfect. Then she asked me to leave her alone for a couple of minutes.’

‘Why?’

‘It turned out she wanted to write me a note. I didn’t find it until the weekend.’

‘But did you know what she was doing? Why you were both going down there?’

‘I think I’d guessed.’

‘And?’

‘I didn’t try and argue her out of it. A diagnosis like that? I’d probably do the same thing.’

She said they didn’t get down to the beach until early afternoon. It was a beautiful sunny day and there was just enough wind for her to cope with.

‘I helped her blow the kite wing up. She was pretty weak by now but she told me she’d saved up the strength for this one last trip. That was the word she used. Trip. She’d borrowed a weight belt from a diver friend and she made me fit it around her waist. In a way it was a cruel thing to do, but I knew it was what she wanted. We hugged and kissed there on the beach, and then she was in the water, sorting out the rig.’

‘You never saw her again?’

‘Only in the distance. Smaller and smaller. Then she was gone.’

Gone.

Lizzie sat back, trying to imagine the scene on the beach. The winter sun beginning to dip towards the horizon. The long tongues of bubbly white spume reaching up the beach. And way out on the horizon a single sail. There were worse ways to go, she thought.

‘And afterwards?’

‘I waited until it got dark. After a while I phoned the police and pretended we had a date for a drink and that Kelly had never turned up.’

‘You’d discussed all this? With Kelly?’

‘Yes. She told me what to do on the beach. They never found her, of course. Which is exactly what she wanted.’

‘She just sank? And then drowned?’

‘Yes. She told me it would be painless. In December the water’s so cold. She said she’d end up with the fishes. They were welcome to what was left of her.’

‘And the letter?’

‘I found it in the bedroom. She said she loved me. She said she’d wanted my face to be the last thing she saw on earth before she drifted away, and she blamed Harriet for that never happening. Saying goodbye on the beach was close but it wasn’t the same.’

Michala was crying now, the tears pouring down her face. Lizzie found a tissue and passed it across. Michala ducked her head and blew her nose. Then her fingertips found the tattoo above the pulse point on the thinness of her wrist.

‘There was two hundred pounds with the letter,’ she said. ‘I gave some to the diver for the belt and spent the rest on this.’

‘The wind horse? Peace? Harmony?’

‘Sure.’ Michala sniffed. ‘And a prayer for a good death.’

Thirty-One

T
UESDAY, 17
J
UNE 2014, 16.07

Suttle launched the next interview with the knife retrieved from Bentner’s bedroom. It was a Kitchen Devil with a black handle and a serrated blade. Bentner studied it through the clear polythene evidence bag, balanced it in his hand, then tried a sawing motion back and forth. Suttle wondered what he was thinking, but Bentner’s face gave nothing away.

‘This is yours, Mr Bentner?’

‘I have one, certainly.’

‘We couldn’t find one like it in the kitchen.’

‘Then it must be mine.’

‘Good. Because it probably has your fingerprints on it.’

Suttle briefly explained the fingerprints the SOC team had retrieved from all over the house. They were on the knife too, and the assumption was that they belonged to Bentner. He’d only been fingerprinted a couple of hours ago down in the Custody Centre, and these prints had yet to be forensically matched against the prints from the house and the knife, but either way Bentner seemed unmoved.

‘It’s my knife,’ he said. ‘I use it daily. I cook. I chop. I carve. No wonder my prints are all over it. If you’re asking me whether I used this on Harriet, the answer has to be no.’

Suttle made a note. Golding asked him about his next-door neighbour. How well did he know Gemma Caton?

‘Well. Like you say, we’re neighbours. I’m lucky in that respect. She’s an intelligent woman. We have similar interests. She’s an anthropologist. I’m assuming you know that. Anthropologists are keepers of the ancient wisdom. From where people like me sit, that can be interesting.’

Keepers of the ancient wisdom
. Suttle, thinking of Lizzie, wanted to know more.

‘Gemma has built a career on the study of Native American tribes on the Pacific Northwest coast. She’s published a number of papers plus a book. It’s a fine book. If you want to know where the madness comes from, you should read it.’

‘The madness?’

‘Ours. The Indians Gemma studied were self-sufficient. They lived off the pelt of the planet. They put back what they took out. They maintained a balance. All that’s gone. This was a culture, a way of life, based on hunger, on improvisation and on the kind of in-tuneness that’s gone. These people were never greedy. They had respect.’