Picking up on this, Batchelor pressed her. ‘Does he sometimes not return home?’
Staring back at them, as if realizing, albeit late in the day, that they might actually be allies, she replied, ‘Lately he’s become very strange. I don’t know what’s got into him. If you want to know the truth.’
‘We very much want to know the truth,’ Grace replied. ‘What can you tell us?’
‘I think he’s having an affair.’ As the dog barked again she yanked hard on his collar. ‘That’s what I think.’ Then as she leaned closer, Grace smelled alcohol on her breath and saw the blaze of anger in her eyes. ‘Whoever she is, she’s welcome to him. Good luck to her. She clearly sees something in him I don’t — and you want to know something? It can’t be the size of his weeny, that’s for sure.’ She raised her free hand in the air and made a curling motion with her index finger.
41
Saturday 23 April
‘I think I’d have an affair, too, if I was married to that witch,’ Roy Grace said as they climbed back into the car.
‘Or shag the dog, which is prettier,’ Batchelor said.
‘You’re a happily married man, Guy, right?’
‘Yes.’ Batchelor gave him an odd look.
‘How much would you spend on a birthday present for your wife?’
‘I dunno. I usually buy Lena a few things, you know — one big present, a piece of jewellery or something, and some smaller bits and pieces. A hundred quid, maybe a bit more. Hundred and fifty. Why?’
‘Me too — that’s sort of what I would spend. Maybe a bit more if it was a significant birthday. Seymour Darling bought a car — or thought he had — as a surprise for his wife. Two thousand eight hundred pounds — seems a lot, don’t you think? Especially when you look at their very modest house — and the state of their relationship.’
‘Are you saying it’s dodgy money? Is he drug dealing?’
‘How about guilt money?’
‘Guilt money?’
‘A man who’s been unfaithful will often buy an expensive present for his wife, out of guilt.’
Batchelor gave him a strange look. ‘I trust you’re not talking from experience, boss? Tut tut tut, and you a newlywed!’
Grace smiled. ‘Thanks for your faith in my integrity!’
The DI raised a placatory hand, also grinning. ‘No offence meant.’
‘None taken. Affairs have never been my thing — unlike, it seems, my late ex-wife.’
‘She had affairs? Sandy? You’re serious?’
‘She was kind enough to tell me in her suicide note. Not information I particularly wanted or needed to know.’
‘Shit, I’m sorry.’
Grace shrugged. ‘Maybe I was more of a rubbish husband than I ever realized.’
Batchelor was silent for some moments, then he said, ‘Don’t ever think that. If that’s what she did, then she was the one in the wrong.’
‘You’re lucky — I don’t know you two well, but it seems to me that you and Lena are very solid. She’s a lovely lady.’
‘She is, I’m very lucky.’
‘You are. I’ve been a reluctant confidant to quite a few officers over the years, who’ve told me about their tangled love lives. That’s how I know about the gifts.’
‘I see where you’re coming from with Darling.’
Grace nodded. ‘Wracked with guilt over his affair, perhaps he decided to buy his wife her dream car, to compensate. He paid the money over — money he could barely afford — and either Lorna Belling stole it, tucking him up, or as seems more likely to be the case, he’s been the victim of online fraud. Either way, he’s angry at her, blames her, wants his money back. So he calls her forty-seven times and makes ten visits to her flat. What does that sound like to you?’
‘Someone’s anger escalating to danger point.’
‘Precisely. The report you have on the cell site puts Darling outside Lorna Belling’s flat on ten separate occasions in the past week, as well as on the night of her death. The most recent was last night — two days after her death. We know that killers have a habit of returning to their crime scene and observing.’
‘Yes.’
‘One hypothesis I have is that he went into the flat, had a confrontation with her, raped and killed her. If there’s a DNA match with him and the semen found in her that would be pretty strong evidence.’
‘I like your hypothesis, boss.’
‘So, Plan B?’
‘Plan B?’
Grace explained it to him.
As soon as he had finished, the DI punched a series of numbers into his phone before going hands-free. Moments later, as they drove away, it was answered.
‘Julian Raven, Digital Forensics.’
‘Julian, it’s Guy Batchelor. That phone number you gave me earlier, for Seymour Darling?’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘I need the current triangulation on it. Can you get on to your O2 phone company contacts and find its current whereabouts?’
‘I’ll do what I can, sir. It may take a while, because it’s the weekend.’
‘Fine. Call me when you have it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
42
Saturday 23 April
A few hours later, shortly before 7 p.m., Roy Grace sat in the passenger seat, as Guy Batchelor drove down Hove Street towards the seafront. They stopped at the red traffic lights, Batchelor indicating left. When the lights went green he turned, past the front of Vallance Mansions. Across the road from them was a cyclist heading west, a jogger heading east, towards Brighton, and a small man standing still in the shadows close to a street light.
‘That might be him,’ Batchelor said, making another left into Vallance Gardens, an upmarket street of elegant red-brick Victorian villas and one white art deco house. They looked for anyone else standing still, but saw only a man striding along with a small dog on a lead. At the top, Batchelor made a left, taking them back to Hove Street, and another left back down to the traffic lights at the seafront junction.
The man they had both clocked previously, diagonally across Kingsway, was still standing motionless, barely visible.
Then Grace hit the dial button on his phone, calling the number he had entered earlier.
Both detectives, holding their breath, watched the man suddenly bring the phone to his ear.
‘Seymour Darling?’ Grace asked.
‘Who is this?’
He ended the call, slipped out of the car and, dodging through Kingsway traffic, crossed the road, trying to look unobtrusive. As he reached the pavement on the far side he saw the man, still holding his phone to his ear.
Grace walked towards him, trying to look casual, like any Hove resident out for an evening stroll. He saw the man hold up his phone, looking at the display.
Showing his warrant card, Roy Grace said, ‘Seymour Darling?’
The man grunted. ‘No.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Freddie Man.’
‘Freddie Man? OK, what’s your date of birth?’
‘Er — erm — it’s — March 2nd — 1966.’
‘So, Freddie Man, what’s your star sign?’
‘Star sign?’
‘Yes, what’s your star sign?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I’m curious — I’m interested in people’s star signs.’
For a moment he looked bewildered, then he said, ‘It — it’s Taurus — I think.’
‘You think?’
Early on, when Grace had been a probationer on the beat, at the start of his career, and frequently had to stop suspicious people on the streets, he had memorized all the star sign dates. Everyone knew their star sign. It was always a reliable, quick test to find out if someone was lying to him by giving a false identity and date of birth.