But he couldn’t do that.
So what the hell was he to do?
Annie and Gerry had skipped the cream tea and started out from Wool shortly after they had talked to the Sedgwicks, but not before Gerry had phoned the General Register Office and managed to persuade someone there to track down the birth details of Marjorie Sedgwick. They told her not to expect an answer until the following day as they were short-staffed. Now it was the following morning, and they were both tired. It had been a long journey back and a late night.
‘We didn’t dig deeply enough into Marnie’s background,’ Gerry said as she sat on the edge of Annie’s desk in the squad room, coffee in hand. ‘My mistake. I’m sorry. I should have found out what happened to her before we went to Dorset.’
Annie swivelled in her chair. ‘Not to worry too much,’ she said. ‘We hadn’t known her full name for very long. It’s still early days, and we’ve got more to work with now. It probably won’t make any difference in the long run. We’re not racing against time.’
‘I suppose the question we should ask ourselves is whether we still have a case to investigate now that the victim is dead.’
‘Good point,’ said Annie. ‘We’ll certainly have to scale down. The budget’s bound to be cut. But let’s carry on until we hear something from the AC. We can at least argue that we think the rape and Marnie’s suicide could be somehow connected with Blaydon’s murder.’
‘Fair enough,’ Gerry said. ‘And if Charlotte Westlake was more involved than she’s letting on, we may be on to something.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘We should find out what the registry has to tell us soon enough.’
‘Let’s not forget,’ Annie added, ‘there’s still a rapist walking free out there.’
‘Perhaps not,’ said Gerry. ‘I’ve been thinking. You know, maybe you were just being provocative the other day, suggesting that Charlotte Westlake might have killed Blaydon, but let me play devil’s advocate here and suggest that Blaydon was the rapist, and Charlotte was keeping quiet either out of fear or some sort of misplaced loyalty. Why have we never seriously considered Blaydon for the rape before?’
‘We did discuss it with Alan the other day,’ Annie said. ‘But we dismissed the idea. And it hasn’t been very long since we found the cards.’
‘Yes, but why? We never followed up. We never took it seriously. Maybe we dismissed it too soon?’
‘It was hard to follow up. Blaydon was already dead. And we had no clear image of the rapist from the SD card images.’
‘Fair enough,’ Gerry argued. ‘It’s blurry and vague. But the image in the recording is as likely to be him as just about anyone else. Same size, shape, and gender, at any rate. OK, maybe you can tell it’s not a giant or a hugely overweight person, but other than that... You couldn’t recognise your own father from it. Think about it.’
‘We just never thought of Blaydon as a rapist, did we?’ said Annie. ‘A crook, yes, a gangster or wannabe gangster, yes, maybe even a killer, but a rapist? Maybe you’re right and that was short-sighted of us.’
‘We had nothing concrete to link him with Marnie until you told me Timmy Kerrigan saw him talking to her at the party.’
‘True,’ said Annie, ‘but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.’
‘I think it does,’ Gerry said. ‘It’s the first time we’ve had any sort of evidence or witness statement linking Blaydon and Marnie together. Sure, she worked at his parties, at least a couple of them, at any rate, and he probably knew of her existence through Charlotte. But until you talked to Timmy Kerrigan, nobody reported having actually seen Blaydon and Marnie meeting and talking. Remember how Charlotte told us she was getting worried about how decadent the parties were becoming, how they were crossing boundaries of taste and morality? Perhaps we were seeing Blaydon in free fall, and that was where he landed. Rape. Take the boundaries away and you’re left with moral anarchy. What he wanted, he took. And maybe he wanted Marnie.’
‘You’re suggesting that he drugged Marnie’s drink and took her to the bedroom?’ said Annie.
‘Why not? It would have been easy for him. He was the boss. It was his house. He knew the layout. He had access to any room he wanted. All he had to do was get her alone for a while and give her a drugged drink. Apparently, he didn’t know about the minicam with the motion detector that Roberts had set up. Think about it. End of the evening. Marnie’s been working. She’s tired. Her parents said she was always too trusting. Blaydon was an old friend of Charlotte Westlake’s. Maybe Charlotte’s been protecting him?’
‘But she has no reason to do that. He was dead before we ever talked to her. She’d nothing to fear from him. I mean, why protect a dead man?’
Gerry shrugged. ‘I’m not saying it’s a perfect theory.’
‘OK,’ said Annie. ‘Let’s say we run with that for a while and see where it leads us. What happens next? Who killed Blaydon?’
‘Well, it wasn’t Marnie. She jumped off Durdle Door on 17 May and Blaydon and Roberts were killed on 22 May. The Albanians still look good for it, I’d say. The ballistics, the gutting. It’s their style. But who’s to say Blaydon wasn’t also the rapist and that his murder had nothing to do with the rape? We shouldn’t necessarily let one crime distract us from another.’
‘So maybe we could go back to my original screwball suggestion,’ said Annie. ‘That Charlotte Westlake murdered Blaydon. Let’s face it, she doesn’t have much of an alibi for 22 May. Organising some book award in Bradford? Really?’
‘What was her motive?’
‘Anger at what he did to Marnie? Female solidarity? After all, Marnie was her employee, not one of Tadić’s hookers.’
‘Still, that’s pushing it a bit as a motive, isn’t it?’
Annie laughed. ‘Like yours, it’s hardly a perfect theory. Maybe Roberts was the intended victim and Blaydon was collateral damage? Roberts could have been blackmailing Charlotte about something, and she uncovered his whole scheme, threatened to tell Blaydon. Maybe Roberts had a recording of her we didn’t find? Maybe because she took it when she killed them?’
‘Too many maybes,’ said Gerry. ‘We’re going around in circles here. It’s making me dizzy.’
‘It doesn’t mean we should stop searching, though, does it? Even though Marnie and Blaydon are dead. And I think we should definitely have a much closer look at Charlotte Westlake. We’ve interviewed her twice, and I don’t believe she’s been completely honest with us on either occasion.’
‘I’ll get on it.’ Gerry’s phone rang, and she grabbed the handset. She listened for a while and made some notes, then thanked the caller and put down the handset.
‘Come on, then, give,’ said Annie. ‘You’re like the cat that got the cream. What is it?’
‘Marnie’s father is listed as unknown,’ Gerry said, ‘but the mother’s name is Christine Pollard.’
‘No way!’ said Annie.
Gerry smiled. ‘Way.’ They high-fived.
‘Have you got an address?’
‘The parents in Halifax. That was nineteen years ago, mind you. I’ll talk to them if they’re still there, then maybe we can haul Mrs. Westlake in again. Arrest her this time. Suspicion of murder. The full works: caution, lawyer and all, if that’s what she wants.’
Annie rubbed her hands together. ‘Oh, goody,’ she said. ‘I’ll oil the rack and sharpen the thumbscrews.’