‘You want a Stella?’ she said.
‘You think that might help?’
‘Yeah, I do.’ She offered him a weary smile and tried to reach for him across the table. He shook his head and withdrew his hand.
She explained about meeting Pendrick, about how helpful he’d been with the rowing, how attractive he’d seemed, and how supportive.
‘With the rowing, you mean?’
‘With everything. I was in a bad place, Jimmy. And he seemed to understand.’
‘Yeah, I bet he did. But you happen to be my wife.’
‘He didn’t know that.’
‘Maybe not. But you did.’
‘I was Lizzie Borden. That’s who you wanted me to be.’
‘Makes no difference. I trusted you. I thought I knew you.’
‘Then you’d have known how unhappy I was. How this house. .’ She tailed off. They’d been this way too often. There was nothing left to say.
‘You went to this place Trezillion?’
‘Yes. He drove me there.’
‘When?’
‘On Saturday. I lied to you, Jimmy. We’d sorted the club compound by lunchtime. Then we drove out.’
‘You and Pendrick.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And?’
‘It was lovely.’
‘What was lovely?’
‘The cove. The dunes. Being there with him. Everything.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Nothing. Except we talked.’
‘He didn’t try and come on to you?’
‘Not at all. He was very sweet.’
‘You sound disappointed.’
‘I was.’
‘You mean that? You were fucking disappointed?’
‘I told you. I was crazy. Out of my tree. I didn’t know what I was doing.’
‘But you’d have. .?’
‘Yeah. I would. Definitely.’
Suttle nodded, said nothing. Then he half-turned at the table and stared out into the darkness. I’ve hurt him, Lizzie told herself. I’ve really hurt him.
‘The scar?’
‘We were comparing accidents. His was a surfing thing. Mine you know about. It was just conversation.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘No.’
‘I have your word on that?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘But you would have done if you’d had the chance?’
‘Yes.’
She reached for him again. She wanted to tell him that fucking wouldn’t have mattered. That the truly unforgivable thing was going all that way in the first place. A conversation that intimate, that natural, was the worst possible kind of betrayal. She wondered about trying to put this into words but knew it would only hurt him more. No relationship, she thought, could survive that kind of honesty.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘It’s important you know that.’
Suttle nodded. His face was a mask. She heard the click of the fridge door opening. He popped a can of Stella and tipped it to his lips.
Lizzie told him about the landline. Suttle listened without comment. More Stella.
‘Is that why he had the wire cutters?’ he asked at last.
‘Yeah.’ She felt cold again. She began to shiver. ‘That man’s so damaged, Jimmy. And I never realised.’
Eleven
WEDNESDAY, 20 APRIL 2011
Tash Donovan and Milo Symons were arrested at dawn. Uniforms took them to separate police stations in Exeter and Torbay. They were booked in by the respective Custody Sergeants and provided with legal representation. Tash Donovan chose a solicitor she’d met at festival last summer. Milo Symons was happy with the duty brief.
Scenes of Crime, meanwhile, went into the mobile home at Tusker Farm. Within the hour they’d unearthed the Jacobson debit card, the associated ATM slips, a decent cache of cannabis resin and just under a thousand pounds in cash. The latter had been stuffed into a Co-op plastic bag and hidden under the mattress, a hidey-hole the CSI thought quaintly retro. By close of play the previous evening, Donovan and Symons had got the credit balance in the Jacobson account down to a shade over £93K.
Houghton chaired a meet of the Constantine inner circle at eight. The PACE clock would give the interview teams twenty-four hours before she’d have to apply to a uniformed superintendent for a twelve-hour extension. Under the circumstances she thought that wouldn’t be necessary. The Scenes of Crime team had failed to locate Kinsey’s laptop but they’d discovered two keys in the glovebox of Donovan’s car. The team had the keys seized from Kinsey’s flat and — subject to trying the new set in the apartment door — they were confident they had a match.
Houghton had asked Suttle to oversee and coordinate the two interviews. He’d already briefed the Tactical Interview Advisers working with each of the teams and agreed a strategy. Open account first, rapidly followed by the challenge phase. In Suttle’s view there was no way either Donovan or Symons could survive the coming hours in the interview suite. They had both the motivation and the opportunity to return to the flat and consign Kinsey to oblivion. It was, he quietly confirmed to Houghton, a definite stone-bonker.
The eight o’clock meet was brief. At the end the interview teams departed to their respective police stations. Solicitors were due at the custody centres at nine o’clock. Disclosure and client meetings would occupy the next hour or so. By lunchtime, with a fair wind, Constantine might be close to a result.
Suttle was about to leave when Houghton called him back.
‘You look tired, Jimmy.’
Suttle shot her a look, then nodded.
‘Rough night, boss,’ he muttered, heading for the door.
Both interview teams called a break at midday. Suttle had judged Symons the likelier to break first and had chosen to spend the morning at the Heavitree nick in Exeter. He was able to monitor proceedings via a video link from an adjoining room in the interview suite and had watched Symons explaining the events of Saturday night. His account exactly mirrored the story he’d told Suttle the first time they’d met in the mobile home: they’d won their race, they’d all had a drink or two, they’d walked across to Kinsey’s apartment for a takeaway curry, and then they’d gone home. Only next day, when the detective guy arrived at Tusker Farm, did he realise anything had happened to Kinsey.
The two D/Cs on the interview team, both experienced, pressed him on a couple of points of detail and then tabled the evidence seized from Tusker Farm. Watching Symons on the video link, Suttle had the impression this moment came as no surprise. Symons admitted at once that they’d been to the ATM in Exmouth. Tash, he explained, needed the money to buy her mum a birthday present. She still had the card from collecting the takeaway and she definitely meant to pay Kinsey back when she next saw him. One of the D/Cs asked whether they’d got a receipt with the money and Symons said yes.
‘How much money was in the account?’
‘A lot.’
‘How much?’
‘Over a hundred thousand pounds.’
‘Did that surprise you?’
‘Of course it did. We knew Kinsey was minted but that’s a huge amount of money to keep in an account like that.’
‘Was your partner surprised?’
‘Yes. She thought it was crazy too.’
‘And did you intend to make more withdrawals?’
‘Of course not. I just told you. We thought Kinsey was still alive. We knew we’d have to give the £200 back.’
‘That’s a lot of money for a birthday present.’
‘That’s what I thought, but Tash is like that. Always over the top. You get used to it in the end.’
The interview continued. The news that Kinsey was dead, admitted Symons, had changed everything. He’d phoned Tash in Yeovil and told her. She still had the card.
‘Did she tell you she was going to make another withdrawal?’
‘No.’
‘When you found out, were you surprised?’
‘Not really.’ A tiny hesitation.
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because Tash just gets an idea and goes for it. I was worried, to be honest. I thought there was no way we wouldn’t get found out.’