‘It usually comes after Saturday.’
‘I don’t believe I mentioned that we think Mr Hadfield disappeared on Saturday.’
‘You didn’t,’ said Randall, smirking again. ‘But I remember the day I last spoke with him. It was Saturday. A week last Saturday. I’m sure his telephone records will confirm that.’
‘Oh, they do,’ said Annie. ‘They just don’t tell us what you talked about. You mentioned golf on Sunday.’
‘Yes. We arranged to play. A foursome. We had the round booked at my club.’
‘And that would be, sir?’ Gerry asked.
‘Lyndgarth’, Randall said, in a tone that was clearly meant to impress her.
‘Did Mr Hadfield turn up?’ asked Annie.
‘Well, no, as a matter of fact, he didn’t.’
‘Did he phone to apologise or explain his absence?’
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘Got another member to make up the foursome.’
‘Weren’t you worried?’
‘Why should I be?’
‘Well, you’d talked to your friend three times the day before about a round of golf the following day, and he didn’t show up. I mean, I’d be a bit worried, wouldn’t you DC Masterson?’
‘I would, ma’am,’ said Gerry.
‘Did he say he was ill when you talked on Saturday?’ Annie pressed on. ‘Did he sound depressed or anything?’
‘No. Of course not. We’re grown men. Busy men. Things come up that need urgent attention. Are you now trying to suggest that Larry committed suicide, with all your talk of depression?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Annie. ‘But it’s a theory. I was simply wondering if there was anything in his tone or in what he said to you on Saturday that caused you to think he might have a reason for not turning up for a prearranged golf game the following day. That’s all.’
‘No, there wasn’t.’
‘Do you know where he was when you phoned him?’
‘At home. He said he was working. What does it matter?’
‘Did he like playing golf?’ Gerry asked.
‘Of course he liked playing golf.’
‘Did you phone him to ask what was wrong?’ Annie asked. ‘On Sunday?’
‘I... er... no, I didn’t.’
‘May I ask why not?
‘You may, but I’m afraid I can’t really tell you. And I’m not hiding anything. Don’t read anything into it. There just wasn’t any particular reason. I suppose it never crossed my mind that something might be wrong.’
‘Why would it?’ Annie agreed. ‘If Mr Hadfield was in good health.’ She glanced at Gerry, who put her notebook away. ‘We should go now, DC Masterson, and leave Mr Randall to his important business.’
Randall didn’t accompany them to the door, but Gerry turned around before they left, ‘Sorry to do a Columbo on you, sir,’ she said, ‘but I’m curious about the third time you rang Mr Hadfield. That was at eleven twenty-six on Saturday night, and you got no answer. It seems very late to be calling someone, especially if you can’t remember why. Was that normal?’
‘Well, I’d hardly say it was abnormal. Not everyone clocks off at five, you know.’
‘You didn’t think he might have gone to bed?’
‘I can’t say I thought about it much at all.’
‘Bye, Mr Randall,’ said Annie, taking Gerry’s elbow. ‘And thanks for your time. We’ll be seeing you.’
Before the bewildered doctor could respond, Annie ushered Gerry out. ‘You bloody minx,’ she said with a grin as they walked down the drive to the car. ‘Like to tell me what you think you were up to back there? Better still. Tell me over a drink. After all, it’ll be five when we get back to Eastvale. Clocking-off time.’ They laughed as Annie started the car.
Banks hadn’t been expecting to spend his afternoon tramping across damp grass, so his choice of footwear could have been better. Fortunately, the ground wasn’t too waterlogged, and the paths they occasionally found were either cinder or gravel.
‘No chance of any trace evidence surviving out in the open after so long,’ said Blackstone. ‘The team’s done their best, but there’s nothing so far. Just a lot of rubbish from inside the bothy to sort through. As you can see, it’s not actually that far off the B road, so someone could easily have pulled into a lay-by, dragged Sarah, or chased her to the bothy and killed her, or killed her first and then carried her body there. It’s not a busy road, so it could have been done almost anytime, but common sense suggests it was probably after dark. And we think she was killed inside the bothy. The doc says there’d have been quite a lot of blood from a head wound, and that matches what we found there.’
‘If she was killed in the bothy,’ said Banks, ‘then surely there must be prints? His and hers?’
‘We’re still working on it, but the surfaces are hardly ideal. Rough-hewn stone and rotten old wood.’
‘Fair enough.’
The small stone bothy, basically a free shelter for anyone who needed it, stood just off the path and was surrounded by crime-scene tape. The body had been taken away, of course, but a constable stood on guard and a couple of CSI officers were still going over the place, which was just an empty shell with a dirt floor and no windows. You’d have to be pretty desperate for shelter if you were willing to spend a night there, Banks thought. Still, there were dozens of these places all over the north; you saw them on walks and from roads, all in various states of disrepair. They had once been used for storage or shelter by groundsmen or gardeners on the large estates, now divided up into smaller farms. Most of them were uninhabitable, with missing roof slabs, doors or caved-in walls, and this one was no exception.
The area on the floor where the body had lain was marked out, and the CSIs told them to avoid the spots where little flags had been placed. Banks was content to stand in the doorway and look in, not wanting to disturb anything. It smelled of urine and rotten vegetation. What a place to die, he thought, trying to imagine the poor girl’s last thoughts and impressions. Had she fought desperately for her life? Had she not even seen the end coming? Had she perhaps been drugged first? Why had she gone to such a place, and with whom? And how did she know Adrienne Munro?
Tired of staring into the gloom and learning nothing, Banks turned back to the path and took a deep breath of fresh air. Blackstone stood with his hands in his pockets, kicking at stones. ‘So what do you think?’ he asked.
‘I think you were right to call me. If it really was the same killer, this gives us two goes at him.’
‘I thought you said Adrienne Munro committed suicide?’
‘Maybe it was just meant to appear that way. She died from asphyxiation after an overdose of sleeping pills. Maybe that was an accident. It’s possible that Sarah Chen was also drugged but didn’t die of asphyxiation, that she had to be killed some other way. I don’t know, Ken. I’ve no idea what, or who, we’re dealing with. Any connection between this Sarah Chen and drugs?’
‘Not according to anyone we talked to, though I know that doesn’t necessarily mean much. The drugs squad have no intelligence on her. She wasn’t a known dealer, if that’s what you’re getting at. From what I’ve heard, I’d guess she might have been a casual user, but not the hard stuff, I don’t think. We’ll find out more at the PM, of course. I’ll also get onto the pathologist about taking special pains over toxicology, considering the Adrienne Munro link.’ Blackstone glanced at his watch. ‘Why don’t you come to the team meeting with me now? You can put your case to our DCS.’
‘What? With me smelling of beer?’
‘That’s all right,’ said Blackstone. ‘You’re from North Yorkshire. They’ll be expecting it.’
‘It wasn’t a strategy,’ Gerry said over drinks in the Queen’s Arms a short while later. ‘I just started throwing things in, you know, to see how he’d react, then he really pissed me off.’