‘Yes, which means Marisha lied to me about him going back to Jamaica,’ Anna remarked.
‘It also means that when Samuel was decorating, Josh obviously had no idea he was his real father.’
Anna looked at him and sat beside him with her hands on her knees, waiting to hear what he was going to say next. She felt almost childlike compared to him as he had such authority and intuition and she knew he was slowly piecing together the most complicated jigsaw puzzle she had ever worked on.
‘Okay, Anna, here we go. I would say that Samuel is the common denominator. Because of the decorating he would have had keys for both Josh and Esme’s flats. Also, he stayed at his sister Marisha’s, who just happened to lie to you about his movements and hid money in the freezer.’
‘Oh, my God, do you think Samuel killed his own son?’ she gasped.
‘If he did, it could only be for the money, but even then he’d have to know the safe code, or somehow force Josh to open it so he could get the gun.’
She sighed, shaking her head. ‘But it doesn’t make sense, does it? I can’t see Marisha being involved in murder either, not knowingly.’ Once again it seemed to be one step forward, two steps back.
‘Wait a minute, think about all the birth and marriage certificates Samuel Peters ordered.’
‘What about them?
‘There all connected to Gloria, her bigamous marriages and Arum the son she abandoned. The certificates expose her as a liar and a fraud. There can be only one reason Samuel wanted them,’ Blane said.
Anna hesitated as she looked at him and in unison they both exclaimed, ‘BLACKMAIL!’ followed by a high five.
They were on a real high, as they realized that if Samuel, and possibly Marisha, were blackmailing Gloria they needed to dig deeper and find further evidence to prove it. It was clear from the request for a copy of Donna’s Jamaican birth certificate that Samuel had discovered that she was Gloria’s daughter.
Blane lay down on the floor, his elbows behind his head, and began to do some slow sit-ups, explaining that due to an old back injury, sitting in one position for too long caused the muscle to tighten up so he needed to stretch. But it didn’t prevent him from speculating that if Samuel was blackmailing Gloria he must have made contact with her either physically or by phone. Anna suggested that whilst decorating Josh’s flat Samuel could have seen something that linked Gloria to Donna, maybe even a photograph. Blane arched his back up from the floor to stretch it further, wondering if Samuel could maybe have got Gloria’s details from an address book at the flat.
At this idea, Anna immediately sent Joan an e-mail asking her to get a record of calls made from Marisha’s house and mobile phones from August 2012 through to the end of the year, and to see if Gloria’s house phone was called from Marisha’s.
Then the reaction set in; after the buoyant elation they now became subdued, having hit a wall with the lack of evidence to show blackmail had actually taken place. Anna reckoned that if they were right, Gloria would not have reported any threats to the police as she had too much to lose by way of her standing in the world of high society. They both agreed that she might have paid Samuel and hence the forty thousand in the freezer. However, that didn’t explain why the money from the safe ended up at Esme’s flat.
Anna downloaded the Word file of Barolli and Dewar’s interview with Marisha. Blane came over to sit beside her and she snuggled up to him as they read through the interview notes. Anna told him that at the time of the interview Barolli suspected Marisha had been drinking or taking drugs, and once Anna had finished the document she commented it was obvious Marisha was a liar and drunk, and was therefore not reliable.
‘Maybe, but Marisha must be involved in some way as she’s lied to you about Samuel. She knows something,’ Blane said, checking the wine bottle, which was empty.
‘Probably where Samuel is, as she hasn’t reported him missing. And the money in her freezer explains all the new electrical equipment she had at her flat,’ Anna added, while opening the file containing the Charity Ball photographs in order to see if Gloria was missing from the pictures taken between ten p.m. and midnight.
Blane picked up their glasses and headed towards the kitchen area, pausing to wonder if there was something more than just alcohol that had caused Marisha’s behaviour during the interview. As he reached for a bottle of Pinot Noir from the wine rack, Anna asked him what he meant. As he found two clean glasses and filled them with red wine he reminded her of the case of the care worker in the old people’s home who was poisoning the residents with atropine.
‘The agent who compiled the report used a mnemonic to describe the symptoms of an atropine overdose: hot as a hare, blind as a bat, dry as a bone, red as a beet, and mad as a hatter,’ he said as he handed Anna her glass.
Sipping the new wine, Anna asked him what the connection was.
‘Everything Barolli has written about Marisha’s behaviour fits with atropine poisoning – dilated pupils, Marisha complained of being hot, but shivering and not sweating, difficulty focusing and thirsty. It can cause a red skin rash, difficult to see on a black person, but Barolli said she scratched her arm so much she drew blood. Also makes you dizzy and hallucinate, thus the reference to mad as a hatter.’
Anna took in what he had just said, gasped and jumped up.
‘It’s just an observation, I might be wrong,’ Blane said, taking a sip of wine.
‘Oh, my God, Barolli thought it was the chicken!’ Anna exclaimed.
‘Barolli thought what was a chicken?’ Blane asked, confused.
‘No, he was really ill after we’d been to see Marisha. He thought it was the chicken from a takeaway,’ Anna said. She paused and tapped the table, trying to remember how Barolli had described his symptoms, then looked up.
‘Barolli said his heart was palpitating, the room was spinning and everything was a psychedelic blur. Also, his temperature hit the roof but he wasn’t sweating.’
She took a long sip of her wine, and had to sit down as the realization of what had actually happened dawned on her.
‘My God, we were at Marisha’s flat. She made us a coffee and asked if we wanted some spiced rum in it. Barolli said yes and Marisha went to pour some in his cup. I made a comment about not drinking on duty, but as Marisha pulled the bottle away some rum went into Barolli’s coffee.’
Blane was surprised. ‘She was going to poison you both?’
‘I remember she said she didn’t drink and it was Samuel’s rum. I don’t think she realized there was poison in the bottle – she’d have to be totally mad to try and kill two police officers in her own home, let alone knowingly drink some herself the day she came into the police station.’
‘Can you remember if it was a full bottle?’ Blane asked.
‘Just over half full, I think – does it matter?’
‘The thing is, if the whole bottle was originally laced with atropine, then who drank the other half?’ Blane queried, swirling his wine round in the glass.
‘Samuel? But surely he would have dropped down dead at the flat,’ Anna remarked.
He explained to Anna that atropine could be a bit like alcohol in how quickly it could affect you, depending on age, body weight, whether you’d eaten and so on. Therefore, it was possible that Samuel, like Marisha, had drunk some, left the house and it had gradually worked into his system and he could have dropped down dead in the street somewhere.
Anna was straight on the phone to Joan, asking her to inform the hospital that Marisha might be suffering from atropine poisoning. Joan said she’d get right on to it and Anna told her to call back when she’d spoken with the medical staff.
‘If Samuel dropped dead in the street, and it could have been a heart attack brought on by consuming atropine,’ Anna said, ‘then his death would be treated as non-suspicious and there wouldn’t have been a full forensic post mortem.’