‘But,’ asked Jude, ‘did Amos Green have information about his dealings with Fit The Build that you would rather never came out into the open?’
‘Well, I suppose there was some stuff that could have been harmful to the company’s image at the time but, as I said, Fit The Build was very quickly wound up.’
Carole’s eyes were still fixed on his face. ‘So did Amos Green have information about the running of Fit The Build that could still cause you trouble if he spilled the beans?’
‘I’m sure if he ever did want to make the information public, my lawyers could have sorted out some deal agreeable to both parties.’
‘Paid him off, you mean?’
Kent Warboys shrugged. ‘I don’t like the expression, but yes, I’m sure something could have been sorted out.’
‘But the question is,’ said Jude, ‘did Amos Green ever threaten to blackmail you?’
‘Never.’
‘He didn’t approach you recently?’
‘No.’
‘Not at any time round the third of October last year?’
‘Absolutely not. I haven’t seen anything of Amos Green from the time he resigned from the Kingston planning committee. Hadn’t thought about him, either, until I saw his photo on the television news and heard his body had been found here in Fethering.’
He sounded convincing, but then again, whatever his agenda, Kent Warboys was the kind of man who would always make himself sound convincing.
‘Going back to that third of October weekend …’ said Carole.
‘Yes?’
She gestured towards the garden. ‘Your boat down there, the rubber dinghy, was used on the evening of that Saturday.’
‘Huh,’ he said bitterly. ‘You can’t do anything unseen in a place like Fethering. Always some old biddy watching out.’
Neither Carole nor Jude chose to identify the ‘old biddy’ in question.
‘There is not definite proof,’ Carole went on, ‘but it seems quite likely that your rubber dinghy was used to dispose of Amos Green’s body at sea.’
Now their words were getting too close to accusation. ‘I have no idea if that’s what happened or not. She just asked if she could borrow the dinghy and I said yes. She didn’t tell me what she wanted it for.’
‘So you didn’t help. You didn’t row the boat out or—?’
‘I didn’t touch the dinghy that evening. I just gave her permission to use it. I knew she was in a terrible state emotionally, and when it’s someone to whom you’ve been really close, well …’
There was a sound from downstairs of the front door opening and Sara’s voice called out, ‘Car’s absolutely filled to the gunwales, Kent. Could you come and give me a hand unloading it?’
The architect put his finger to his lips. ‘Don’t mention anything we’ve talked about to Sara.’
‘I think perhaps we should,’ said Carole.
THIRTY
Sara still had the mobile number on her contacts list from the time when she had been working at Polly’s Cake Shop. It was answered rather blearily on the fourth ring.
And without argument a meeting was agreed. Carole and Jude got back into the Renault and retraced their route eastwards along the A27.
The area certainly lived up to its ‘manky’ description. Brighton is famous for its splendid seafront, the Regency Pavilion and the trendy chaos of the Lanes; but there’s another side to the town, a warren of dilapidated houses, whose boards of non-matching bell-pushes signify transient multi-occupancy.
Rosalie Achter was subdued as she let them in. It was a one-bedroom flat with a door leading off presumably to a bathroom. There was no separate kitchen. A basin, a kettle and a Calor Gas ring supplied her cooking needs. An empty and a half-full bottle of vodka stood beside them. The bed was a mattress on the floor with a sleeping bag on top, scrumpled as if its occupant had only just emerged. The whole place looked very studenty, in marked contrast to the impersonal tidiness of the flat over Polly’s Cake Shop.
There were no pleasantries, no offers of drinks. Picking up from the conversation she’d had on the phone, Jude said, ‘Your mother gave you an alibi for the whole of Saturday the third of October.’
‘Oh, what did she say I was doing?’
‘Spending the Sabbath with her at your grandmother’s house.’
‘Huh, the day you catch me doing that … Still, my mother is trying to help me for once, so perhaps I should be grateful for that.’
‘If you weren’t in Brighton that day,’ asked Carole, ‘then where were you?’
‘I was actually here in the flat most of the day. Wish I’d stayed, given how things turned out, rather than going to Fethering.’
‘And what made you go to Fethering?’
‘A phone call. From Amos Green.’
‘Had you spoken to him before?’
‘No. I didn’t recognize the name. But then he explained who he was.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He told me that he was trying to contact my mother, because they had been very close at one time. And he was in the Fethering area and he thought it’d be nice for them to meet up again “for old time’s sake”.’
‘But he hadn’t managed to contact her?’
‘No. When she spends the Shabbat with Granny, she keeps her mobile phone switched off.’
‘And then …?’ Carole prompted.
‘And then he started boasting about how close he’d been to my mother. He said they’d had an affair more than twenty years ago, but when she was already married to my father. And then they’d re-met in Fethering … eleven years later. And because my mother claimed she was in love with Amos, she told my father she wanted a divorce. Amos Green was the cause of my parents splitting up. But then he didn’t stay around and he was the cause of my mother becoming so bitter and destructive. Amos Green was the cause of her breaking up any chance I had of keeping a relationship with my father.’
‘Hudson Vale?’ asked Jude.
‘Of course Hudson Vale! So virtually everything that has been screwed up in my life has been caused by Amos Green.’
‘So what did you do?’ asked Carole quietly.
‘I fixed to meet him at Polly’s Cake Shop after closing time. And before I left here I got a gun.’
‘How on earth did you do that? It’s not easy just to pick up a gun.’
‘It’s easy if you’ve got the kind of friends I have in Brighton.’ She spoke with a degree of pride; the pride of a middle-class girl who had reacted against the values of her upbringing. ‘There are a couple of guys I used to hang around with who’re very into the drug scene here.’
‘Gang members?’
‘You bet. No problem for one of them to lay their hands on a gun. He owed me a favour, anyway.’
‘So,’ asked Carole, ‘you went to Fethering with the firm intention of killing Amos Green?’
‘Yes,’ the girl replied coolly. ‘He had to pay for all the evil he had caused. But for him, my mother and father wouldn’t have divorced. I’d still have a proper relationship with the father I love.’
Jude was tempted to say that that father loved her too, but didn’t think it was quite the moment.
‘So you duly met Amos Green at Polly’s?’
‘Yes. After everyone else had gone home.’
Carole and Jude exchanged looks. That had been a miscalculation on Rosalie’s part, but again it wasn’t the right moment to raise the matter.
‘And when you met …?’
‘I took him into the store room. I don’t know why. Maybe I thought shooting him in there would make less mess.’
‘And did you talk to him?’
‘There wasn’t much to say. I shot him through the temple. I was amazed how little blood there was.’
‘Did you deliberately shoot him through the temple so that it could look like suicide?’ asked Carole.