A Dog's Life (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 4) (25 page)

Joy closed the phone then her eyes and breathed out a couple of deep breaths. She made a decision and went back into the station to find Romney.

***

18

‘There you are,’ said Romney. ‘Have you phoned Mrs Allen yet to let her know she can have her mutt back?’

‘Just about to,’ said Marsh.

‘Don’t. Come into my office.’

He was grave and solemn and Joy decided she’d hear him out before asking if she could leave early to visit her sick mother.

‘Do you remember what Maurice said killed the dog?’

Marsh looked strangely at him and sincerely hoped he wasn’t about to start on about rabies again. ‘He said it was an overdose.’

‘Of what? Do you remember exactly?’

‘He mentioned Benzodiazepines, Temazepam, I think. Why are you asking, sir?’

‘Look at this.’ Romney put the pathologist’s report regarding Stephanie Lather before her and pointed at what he wanted her to read. He walked back behind his desk and sat down to give her a minute.’

When she next looked up she was frowning.

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Romney.

‘It doesn’t necessarily mean anything,’ said Marsh.

‘I know. It could be a coincidence. But you should know by now that police detectives don’t like coincidences.’

‘So we need to check to see if Stephanie Lather was taking sleeping pills. That stuff is only available on prescription. I can find out who her GP was and make some enquiries.’

‘There’s something else that’s been scratching away at the back of my mind – the forensic report on Rachael Sparrow mentions a high number of dog hairs on her clothing. As you heard, the Sparrows don’t have a dog. He said something about her having an unreasonable fear of them.’ Romney put his hands together on the desktop. ‘We have an odd coincidence, a victim with a dog phobia covered in dog hair, and a murder and a suicide that make no sense to anyone. In my book that adds up to reason for further investigation.’

‘Of whom?’

‘I don’t know, yet.’ What Romney wasn’t going to share with his junior officer was that he had suddenly become quite anxious regarding Boudicca’s intentions over his previous day trip. He had started to feel as though it might have been better all round if Chloe
had
given him rabies. At least it could have given some credibility, some justifiable reason for his actions. The way things had turned out, he could see that perhaps he was not currently being cast in a very good light. His sixth sense for trouble also gave him to understand that maybe he had some brewing with the station commander and that anything he could conjure up to divert it would be worth exploring.

In tune with his thoughts, the phone on his desk rang. He snatched it up and wished he hadn’t.

‘Inspector, I’m still waiting for your report regarding events of yesterday afternoon. When can I expect to see it?’

Romney covered the mouthpiece with his hand and said to Marsh, ‘Top priority: find out if Stephanie Lather was in receipt of prescription sleeping pills and then find someone who can tell us what kind of dog hair it was on Rachael Sparrow’s clothing.’ He waved her away. ‘And shut the door on your way out.’ He waited until the door was firmly closed before saying, ‘Sorry, ma’am, had someone in the office. I’m not sure if I shared this with you last night or not – I was a bit groggy from the antibiotics they put me on in the hospital for that dog bite I got at the Dover Marina Hotel in the line of duty. There was another reason that I needed the corpse of the dog. I have good reason to suspect that there might be more to the deaths of Rachael Sparrow and Stephanie Lather than meets the eye.’

There was a chilly silence before Boudicca said, ‘Such as?’

‘I don’t know enough yet, ma’am, to be specific and what I do know probably wouldn’t make much sense to you. I need to make some further enquiries to be on the safe side.’

‘Then make them, Inspector Romney. Make them and keep me informed.’ She hung up.

Romney took no encouragement from her tone. He felt that he had only engineered a stay of, if not execution, then something rather unpleasant. Bob Falkner would have been more sympathetic, more understanding.

He carefully cradled the receiver, wondering whether he’d just done something rather clever or something incredibly stupid. He spent the next five minutes going over every aspect of his thinking and how it related chronologically to what he’d just told Boudicca. He could find no obvious glaring flaw and allowed something resembling a satisfied smirk to touch one corner of his mouth. He felt he could argue that the sleeping pill connection was enough to warrant further investigation and an examination of the dead dog and this in turn would deflect some of the attention from the true cause of his outing. The only strand of his reasoning that would need some attention was how he’d known the dog had died of a sleeping pill overdose until it had been examined? He’d worry about that when the time came and if he still had to.

*

Joy left to do as she was told. She checked her watch. It shouldn’t take her long to find out what she’d been asked to and then she’d talk to him about pushing off early. She’d just tell him the truth. She couldn’t imagine he’d say no. She was her mother after all.

At her desk she checked her email inbox while she waited on the phone to speak to Stephanie Lather’s GP. True to his word, Mr Sparrow had forwarded all of the emails that had been exchanged between Stephanie Lather and Rachael Sparrow. Twenty of them dating back over the last month were queued up in Marsh’s inbox.

When she’d finally tracked down Stephanie Lather’s doctor’s practice, spoken to a real person who had proved unsurprisingly uncooperative, she checked the time again, made a decision, got herself a coffee and settled in for some prying.

The emails began with the usual tedious news of daily life. Each mentioned their children a good deal. It soon became clear that Stephanie Lather had no partner. She was looking, but writing and success and her kids were taking up all her time. Half way through her snooping, Joy was getting a feel for the relationship between the sisters. She believed she felt something of the sadness and regret of the wasted years. Stephanie’s ex-husband, or anything to do with their rift, was not mentioned.

There was the odd reference to the upcoming event in Dover. As the date of the book launch neared, details were finalised. Excitements voiced and shared. Joy found the email where Stephanie suggested that Rachael dress in a matching trouser suit and again, as a woman, it puzzled Joy.

In the eighteenth email, a communication sent three days before the event at the Dover Marina Hotel, Joy finally found something to interest her professionally. She couldn’t say why she felt it might be important. It was something different from the rest of their predictable chatter. It concerned someone else and Joy believed it would be something her DI might be interested in looking at. She finished the twentieth to make sure there was nothing else and went in search of him.

‘I’ve finished going through the emails that Mr Sparrow forwarded on to me.’

‘Anything interesting?’ said Romney. He hadn’t taken his eyes off his paperwork.

‘Maybe.’ Now he did. ‘You want to come and see it for yourself?’

He shook his head. ‘Tell me first and I’ll decide whether it’s worth me getting up for.’ He indicated one of the chairs the other side of his desk. Joy sat.

‘It’s all there as the husband said: Stephanie suggesting that Rachael gets the same outfit as her, even offering to pay for it. She said it would be fun. I still find that odd.’

‘Is that it?’ said Romney. ‘I’m glad I decided to stay put.’

‘No, it’s not. Less than a week before the event, Stephanie sent an email to Rachael with something of a personal bombshell in it. Mrs Allen had, apparently, made an attempt to seduce Stephanie in her office.’

Romney raised his eyebrows at that. ‘And?’

‘And nothing. Stephanie, apparently, had turned her down flat. Mrs Allen had become all apologetic and said that there had been a misunderstanding and that seemed to be the end of it. The girls were having a good laugh about it.’

‘Were they, now?’ Romney reclined and with his elbows on his armrests bounced the tips of his fingers together in thought. ‘As a woman and a police detective what are your feelings regarding the relationship between the sisters?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Do you get a sense of genuine sisterly affection or was Stephanie maybe rubbing her sister’s nose in her success? That sort of feeling.’

‘Nothing like that. I didn’t sense a hidden agenda, no nasty undercurrents. Nothing ambiguously spiteful. They come across as how sisters should be with each other.’ As Joy said this she was reminded of the lack of relationship worthy of the name with her own flesh and blood and she felt a dip in spirit.

Romney seemed not to sense it. ‘Any news yet on whether Stephanie was getting regular prescription drugs?’

‘They won’t tell me anything on the phone, of course. I’ve made an appointment to drive up and speak to her GP tomorrow. I’m hoping I can get her to just deny or confirm it without endangering her Hippocratic Oath.’

‘Maybe we can find out quicker than that. Save you a trip.’

‘How?’

‘Boudicca has a soft spot for you; ask her to help out. She actually has her uses. Flatter her a bit. I’m sure she’ll be only too happy to help.’

Marsh raised one eyebrow at him for that but he declined to take it further. Instead he said, ‘Mrs Allen is starting to interest me.’

‘In what way, sir?’

‘In a purely professional way. I told you before, I don’t like coincidences. They make me uncomfortable and suspicious.’

‘Are you suggesting she might have had something to do with one of the deaths? Actually she’d have to have been involved in both if she was involved in one and they’d both be murder.’ Marsh was making no attempt to hide her dubious feelings about that idea.

‘Why not?’ said Romney, a little stubbornly.

‘Motive? Opportunity?’

‘Keep an open mind, Sergeant. Remember? If I haven’t encouraged you to do that in your time here, I have failed in my duty as your DI.’ Marsh struggled to remember a time when he’d sounded more ridiculous. ‘Being a good copper is all about revisiting intelligence, taking fresh looks at the evidence. Above all, a good detective develops a nose for when something’s not right,’ he said and with that he turned his attention back to his paperwork either signalling that she should push off or because he didn’t have the nerve to look into her eyes when he was being such a knob.

*

After a quick call to see if Superintendent Vine was in and could give her a minute, Joy made her way up to her office. Her step was heavy with reluctance but she was only doing what she was told. She’d half hoped that the station commander would be out or otherwise engaged. She was neither. Looking up from her desk and spying Joy speaking with her gatekeeper, she called out that Joy should come in and sit down.

As Joy did this Superintendent Vine removed her glasses and arranged a smile for her subordinate. ‘What can I do for you, Joy? No problems in CID?’ she said, almost hopefully it seemed to Marsh.

‘No, ma’am. Not that I’m aware of anyway,’ she added, feeling she needed to cover herself and then feeling cross with herself for it.

A hint of disappointment scudded across the freckled features but the smile remained fixed and encouraging. Vine waited.

‘DI Romney suggested that you might be able to assist CID with something, ma’am.’

‘Did he now? DI Romney seems to think that rather often.’ Marsh was naturally oblivious to Vine’s references and it showed on her face. ‘What I mean is that Detective Inspector Romney has asked for my help a couple of times already this week. Was he so reliant on my predecessor, I wonder?’

‘I’ve no idea, ma’am.’

‘What is it, then?’

‘Stephanie Lather. We need to know whether she was receiving prescription drugs for insomnia. I have tracked down her GP but she is, naturally, reluctant to discuss her patient’s medical history with me. I have an appointment to drive up and see her tomorrow. I’m hoping that she can just confirm whether she was prescribing Temazepam to Stephanie or not. I think I can get her to do that. DI Romney is keen to know sooner rather than later. He said that you’d shown willingness to help and that if you were to make the request I might be saved a journey and he might be saved the wait.’

‘Why did he send you to ask, do you think?’ said Vine.

Marsh was surprised and a little uncomfortable. ‘I can’t say, ma’am. Delegation, I suppose. He’s busy.’ Marsh noted that Vine didn’t look convinced.

‘How’s everything else going down there?’ said Vine, changing the subject to something that Marsh had feared she might take the opportunity to raise.

‘As far as I’m aware, ma’am, everything is going well.’

Vine looked both troubled and concerned. ‘I have to say, between ourselves, Joy, that I’m finding some of DI Romney’s methods and decisions quite disquieting. You haven’t forgotten our little chat, have you?’