‘Your husband will have carried material from home, from you,’ Janine explained. ‘It’s just standard procedure. We can take them when we leave.’
Lesley sat down, folded her arms across herself.
‘How long had you been married to Matthew?’ Janine saw the tears start in her eyes and heard the choked sob. ‘I’m sorry, Lesley. I realise how intrusive some of the questions might seem but we have to ask them.’
Lesley nodded, wiped at her eyes and sniffed. ‘Nine years. I gave up college to marry him.’
‘And how would you describe your relationship?’
Janine heard the chatter of magpies from outside, loud in the quiet intense atmosphere of the room. Lesley Tulley struggled to speak.
‘I’m sorry,’ Janine apologised again. ‘We’re nearly finished.’
‘He was a good man,’ her voice trembled.
‘Nine years is a fair while,’ said Richard. ‘There must have been some ups and downs?’
‘We were fine, happy,’ she broke down. ‘I loved him, I loved him so much.’
Janine swallowed hard, moved by the woman’s plight but determined to remain unruffled – at least on the outside.
Janine stretched, eased the seat-belt round and clipped it shut. ‘We need to have another look later.’ Before she could turn the engine on a loud, rendition of The Birdie Song chirruped electronically through the car.
Both Janine and Richard waited, each assuming it was the other’s phone.
‘Oh, God!’ Janine scrabbled for hers. ‘Kids!’ she hissed. They were always messing about changing her ringtone.
She listened while a triumphant Butchers related his news.
‘Yes!’ She turned to Richard, her eyes alight. ‘Butchers. We’ve an eyewitness. Saw a lad running from the scene. Time’s good and the description fits Ferdie Gibson.’
‘We could go for a line-up?’
‘Let’s see whether Ferdie will come in tomorrow afternoon?’
‘He’ll probably tell us where to stick it.’
‘Might see it as a chance to get us off his back?’ She said. ‘Who knows how a mind like that works. Probably does shifts.’ She spoke back into the phone. ‘Butchers, see if the afternoon would suit Mr Vincent?’
‘He’s not a well man, boss.’
‘Well, tell them to treat him like cut glass. Don’t want him pegging out before he gets to the station.’
‘Nearly there,’ Jade encouraged her mam. Who had gone all quiet again and was walking so slowly.
‘I know where we’re going, Jade,’ she snapped.
Jade said nothing. She was thirsty and she wanted a drink of fizzy. Sometimes Nana didn’t have any and Jade had water or tea, dead milky with three spoons of sugar. They turned into Nana’s street and Jade darted ahead. She could run really fast, nearly as fast as Carice who was the fastest in her year. She ran all the way to Nana’s, seventy-six.
‘Like the trombones’ Nana always said. It was from a song about a band. Not a pop band, a band like the Boy’s Brigade one that sometimes went down the road. All dressed in blue and playing things and kids at the back with no uniforms marching anyway.
She knocked on the door then pushed. Nana left the latch off when they were coming, in case she didn’t hear them.
‘Nana,’ Jade called.
‘Hello,’ her voice sang out from the back. Jade found her in the kitchen. Jade sniffed, there was something in the oven.
Nana beamed, held out her arms and gave her a hug. She smelt of cigarettes and mints and baking. ‘How’s my little jewel?’
‘Thirsty.’
‘I’ve no pop but there’s Lemon Barley or water. Where’s yer mam?’
‘Coming. Lemon Barley.’
‘You know where everything is.’ Nana let her do it.
Jade pulled herself up to reach across the sink for the bottle. Heard Mam come in. ‘It’s freezing out there.’ Scrape of the chair across the floor. Jade wondered what was in the oven. Pies? Or belly pork and Yorkshire puddings? Or maybe hot pot? She poured some cordial in the glass.
‘I’nt it awful,’ Nana said to Mam, ‘that murder, that Mr Tulley. They showed your allotments, on the news. They haven’t caught anybody yet, then?’
Jade’s belly flipped over. She turned on the tap, the water burst out fast, sprayed all over.
‘Steady on, Jade,’ shouted Nana.
‘Bleedin’ ‘ell,’ her mam jumped up and yanked off the tap. She thrust a tea towel with kangaroos on at Jade. ‘Now wipe it up.’
‘Someone must have seen something,’ Nana continued.
Jade rubbed at the water on the floor.
‘Broad daylight, they reckon. You’d better make her play inside till they’ve caught ‘em.’
‘She’s not allowed out the back, anyway,’ Mam said, ‘she knows she’s not to go down there.’
Jade thought hard for something to tell Nana, anything, about school or telly but her brain was empty
‘Have you had the police round?’
‘No.’
‘You think they’d ask you, wouldn’t you?’
‘What?’
‘If you saw anything. View you’ve got. What’s the matter with you, you on them tablets again?’
Silence. Jade kept wiping. Sniffing noise. Mam kicking off again. If Nana was right and the police came round, what would she say? She couldn’t tell them. She closed her eyes and prayed. Please God, please don’t let them ask me. I’ll be good, I’ll never, ever go there again and I’ll give all my money to the poor people. Please God, please.
Richard Mayne studied the chits of paper again and checked them off against the list he’d made. The car-park ticket and store receipts displayed the time so he could fix her parking the car at 9.22 but the first purchase was in Selfridges at 10.37. A gap of over an hour. Undermining her alibi.
While it might be improbable that Lesley Tulley had interrupted her shopping spree to carve up her husband, it was not impossible. Further investigation was required.
Janine was multi-tasking: trying to keep up with some of the mountain of paperwork that any case generated, eating her lunch and dictating notes for memos.
‘And let the Press know we’re going for an appeal at eleven tomorrow, Monday.’
Someone knocked on her door and she paused the machine. ‘Yes?’
Richard came in but, before she had chance to find out what he wanted, her mobile rang out. She snatched it up, cringing at the tune.
‘Janine? Pete. Eleanor’s making out that she doesn’t eat fish. We’ve done it specially.’
‘No, she doesn’t,’ she told him blankly.
‘You said she was vegetarian.’
‘She is vegetarian,’ Janine gritted her teeth. ‘Fish is not a vegetable, Pete.’ What planet was he on?
‘That’s ridiculous – you’d think we’d made her raw T-bone steak the way she’s carrying on…’
She was not going to get dragged into this. ‘Just deal with it, Pete.’ She pressed end call, rolled her eyes.
‘Richard?’
‘Mrs Tulley’s receipts. Patchy. She didn’t buy anything till after half-ten.’
‘What about the parking ticket?’
‘Twenty past nine, fits in with what she said.’
Janine considered. It would be best to be thorough at this stage even if it meant using up some precious time. ‘Get that verified, CCTV’
She cleared the remains of her lunch into a wrapper, rolled it into a ball. ‘I’m going to get some petrol.’ She chucked the ball expertly into the bin and grinned at Richard.
She struggled with her coat, the sleeve was tangled. He gave her a hand. The attention was nice. If she hadn’t been pregnant, recently separated, if she’d been looking for someone… the thought made her blush, stupid! She moved to the door, hesitated with her hand on the doorknob.
‘The clothes you saw, in the Tulleys’ washing machine?’
He nodded.
‘We need to ask her about those, as well.’