"We've still got Sheringham in the frame as a suspect, but without any supporting evidence that puts him in possession of the materials it took to make the incendiary device, that's all he'll ever be. Plus, though he accepts that the call to the girl was made from his phone, he maintains someone else nicked it and made it."
"And that," Steele interjected, 'could only have happened during the staff party."
"Right; that gives us a list, if we leave in the partners, of one hundred and thirty-seven males, one hundred and nineteen, if we take them out. Take away Sheringham and we've got a hundred and eighteen."
"But were they all there?"
"I've asked Mr. Candela that; he checked and told me that eleven staff members were out of town on business last Friday evening. So we've got a hundred and seven men potentially in the frame. After the incident on Saturday we interviewed all the staff members who were there, and all eighteen partners. Of the staff people we spoke to, twenty-three of them were males, not counting Sheringham."
"But can we rule out the possibility that the bomb was triggered from outside the building?"
"No, but if we take this further, we go there second. I'd say we must concentrate on the people who were actually inside the room. Even at that, though, Stevie, if we're going to be thorough and not rule out people on grounds of importance, we've got a list of forty-one. I've got all their statements sorted out for us to go through in detail, but I've had a quick shuftie through them, and nothing jumped out at me.
None of them even mentioned Andrea, so how will anyone have spotted someone less noticeable?"
Steele nodded. "I take your point. I don't expect to get anything from the statements either, but they're all we've got. We can't get search warrants for forty-one people, forty-one bloody lawyers at that.
And we can't exactly ask all of them to talk to Andrea on a mobile phone and say "Hello, dear, this is God". It's a nice idea," he chuckled, 'and it might even be good therapy for Andrea, but it's not on. No, George, I agree with you. We'll probably have to go through these statements again, and maybe even re-interview a few people, but it's all just to show the bosses that we haven't stopped trying. This investigation is stalled, stuck, stone cold."
Regan sighed. "Still, best get on with it, and keep Dan Pringle happy." He reached for a pile of statements on his desk. "Do you want to split these down the middle?" He glanced at the inspector, and saw that he was staring ahead at nothing, with a frown on his face.
"Stevie?"
"What? Oh sorry, George. I was away for a minute, thinking of something Andrea said to me at lunch, and what it might mean." His eyes narrowed as he looked at his colleague. "What if our getting bogged down in this was the whole idea?"
Fifty
Bob Skinner had often wondered exactly what a soccer mom was. As he looked at Alice Bierhoff across her comfortable, well-furnished living room, he began to understand. She was a classically pretty woman, and had an outdoor look about her, well scrubbed and with an all-embracing enthusiasm shining from her eyes, and a smile permanently on her face.
There were pictures of her son Byron all over the room, in various stages of growth, from infancy to twelve; understanding moved a step closer for Skinner when he saw that the most recent showed him in his football kit… as is true of most Scots, soccer was an alien term to him. There were no photographs of Mr. Bierhoff. They must have been removed, Bob guessed, after the stockbroker shocked the neighbourhood by moving in with a cheerleader from a college basketball team.
Eddie Brady was still seething quietly at his presence, but Dekker had stood firm. Skinner had been included on the interview, with Brady and Sergeant Madigan; he had been introduced simply as a colleague from another agency. Bizarrely, Alice Bierhoff's bland nod and smile at the description had made the image of Johnny Rotten flash before his eyes, as he looked at her, the chorus of the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant' ran through his brain.
He stood by the window as she served tea to the two Erie detectives. He had declined; he had drunk enough American tea in his time.
"So you're chief of detectives, Mr. Brady?" Alice twinkled as she sat opposite them. "I guess I'm honoured. What can I do for you?"
Brady sipped his tea, and gave a short, spluttering cough. "Sergeant Madigan and I," he began, when he had recovered, 'would like to go over a couple of points in the statement you gave our colleagues, after Mr. Neidholm's death."
"His murder, you mean?" she exclaimed.
"I suppose, although technically we haven't yet ruled out suicide."
"Ron?" she exclaimed. "Kill himself? You have to be kidding."
"Like I said, it's a theoretical possibility, that's all."
"I should think so, "Alice chuckled. "But what about my deposition?
It was all true, every word of it. I saw Sarah Grace and Ron necking at his front door, and later when I drove past I saw her through his window. She was smiling, like in a, you know, contented… to be polite… way, and she was putting on her bra, although she didn't seem to be in too much of a hurry about it."
"You must have driven past pretty slowly," said Madigan, with an apparently amiable smile.
Mrs. Bierhoff missed the point. "I always do. I never exceed the speed limit in the neighbourhood… or anywhere, for that matter," she added hurriedly. "But of course, having seen what I saw earlier, I was naturally curious when I drove back."
"Are you sure Dr. Grace didn't see you?" asked Brady.
"Absolutely. From the look on her face she was only seeing one thing.
Poor Ron," she sighed, a finger going to her eyelashes, wiping away a non-existent tear. "He was a bit of a legend at school and at college, you know. All the girls were jealous of Sarah, when she landed him, and we were so surprised when she dumped him."
"Are they still jealous?" asked Madigan.
"We've all moved on since then," said Alice, in a tone that was almost matronly. "It's Sarah's husband I feel sorry for, having been in the same position myself. I was out of town when it happened, but I heard about him collapsing at the funeral. Next thing, almost as soon as the poor man's recovered and gone back to his job in Scotland, she's making whoopee with her old boyfriend. The poor man." She paused, and gasped, as a thought came to her. "Hey, you don't think it could have been him killed Ron, do you?"
I wish, thought Skinner, by the window.
"Absolutely not," said Brady. "Chief Skinner was in Scotland when it happened. To get back to your deposition, Mrs. Bierhoff," he continued, hurriedly, 'we'd like to add to it by asking you who you might have told about what you saw?"
"But that was in my statement. I told Babs Walker; I mean I felt that I had to. She's Sarah's best friend, and always has been. I thought that she might be able to talk some sense into her, or at least, to tell her to be more discreet. When you get down to it, I suppose, you can hardly blame her. Ron is such a stud, and Sarah's husband's quite a bit older than she is, but still… poor man."
Watching Brady, Skinner could see that the back of his neck had gone red. "I suppose Babs maybe told Ian," Alice went on, 'although that might have been awkward."
"Why?" asked Madigan.
"Because he was there before Ron of course," she said. "Ian and Sarah were close all through school, and then when they got to college … before he ever took up with Babs, of course… they got even closer, as close as you can get in fact. Sarah left Ian for Ron. He put a brave face on it at the time, but I could tell the poor boy was hurting. So maybe it wouldn't have been the kindest thing for Babs to tell him they were back together again."