Poisoned Blue (Jamie Stanley Crime Scene Investigation Series Book 1) (8 page)

She waved the
card around in the air. “Two hours.” She walked out of the station.

Chapter Twelve

“Where is she?” Carl hissed.

It was two and
a quarter hours after she’d told them to meet her at the house in two hours.
People were starting to get restless.

“No idea,”
Danny replied.

“She’s coming
up the drive now,” Neil said. He was sitting on the sofa with Tanya. Greg and
Zoe were on the sofa opposite. Marion was perched on the arm of a chair, and
Polly was hovering in a corner.

“Sorry,
sorry,” she burst through the front door, her arms full of stuff.
“Underestimated how long it would take to get the results back.”

“Let me help
you,” Carl walked towards her.

“No, no, I’m
fine.”

“Could someone
tell me what’s going on?” Neil stood up. “Do you know who murdered my wife or
not? And who are they?” he pointed at Greg and Zoe.

Tanya dragged
him back down onto the sofa.

“Your wife’s
ex-husband and her daughter,” Greg said, happy to get one over on Neil for
once.

Neil opened
and shut his mouth a few times.

“Yes, yes I
do,” Jamie cut in before Neil could say anything. “Shall we run through the
case now then?” She put the stuff on a table at the side of the room, out of
everyone’s way. “We knew from the start what was used to kill Mrs Longacre.”

“Arsenic
Trioxide,” Danny said.

“But, we
didn’t know how it was used or who did it. Having neither of those facts made
this a very hard case to crack.”

“But you’ve
done it,” Neil said.

Carl shot him
a look, and he shut up.

“Yes, I have.
You see, there were several motives floating around all the time, but none of
them seemed like a big enough reason to kill. Marion had the opportunity but no
obvious motive. Miss Sparks almost lost her job because of Mrs Longacre, but we
immediately dismissed that as a motive to kill. Then we read Sara’s will.”

“Most murders
are about one of two things,” Carl said, “sex or money.”

“Or both,”
Danny added.

“Neil told us straight
away that Sara’s parents had been in a fatal car accident three months before
Sara’s death, but what we didn’t realise was just how much they’d left her.
Their house was worth over a million pounds and they’d left several hundred
thousand pounds in various bank accounts.”

“It didn’t
take a genius to work out that this would give the husband a massive motive to
kill,” Danny said.

“Except,”
Jamie continued, “the money had been left to charity, and something tells me
that you, Neil, already knew that.”

“Of course I
did, Sara was mad on giving to charity.”

Tanya looked
miffed.

“Mr Turner,
Greg, you were the last person to speak to Mrs Longacre,” Jamie turned her
attention to Greg.

“Yes, but as
far as I know, you can’t poison someone over the phone.” He held onto Zoe’s
hand. She was shaking.

“Correct. You
can’t. But who was to say you didn’t see Sara before she died. We only have
your word that the phone call was the last contact you had with her.”

“Look, are you
accusing me of murder or not? We’ve already been through all this.” Zoe
clutched his hand tighter.

“I am not
accusing you of murder.”

“Look, can you
hurry this up, we’ve got a flight to catch,” Tanya said.

“A flight,
yes. You’re meant to be moving into your new house in Argentina today with Neil, aren’t you? Even before Sara’s death, you and Neil were planning on
running away together. We got hold of your solicitors, they told us everything
and emailed us the details.”

“Do you have a
problem with that?”

“No, I’m not
here to judge. If you want to run off with a married man, that’s fine. It’s the
fact that you murdered Sara Longacre that concerns me.”

“What are you
talking about?” Tanya rolled her eyes and looked to Neil. “I didn’t do it.”

“Didn’t you?”
Jamie raised her eyebrows. “You see if it wasn’t for Alex finding your nurses
badge under the seat behind the waterfall, we may never have known. You even
got Neil to lie about your profession on the forms he filled in about you for
us.”

“You work at
many different hospitals, doing many different jobs. You have access to the
poison due to its medical use, treating acute promyelocytic leukaemia,” Carl
said, struggling to pronounce the name.

“Just because
I have access to the poison doesn’t mean I killed her.”

“You’re right,
but the week before Sara’s death you were working in her local pharmacy. Neil
told you she was suffering from indigestion and was going to the pharmacy that
day to ask for some advice. You already knew from reading her records that she
was pregnant and that you needed to find a way to get rid of her before she
told Neil.” Jamie stopped to take a breath.

“You stole the
poison from the hospital before your shift at the pharmacy,” Carl said.

“When Sara
told you that she was planning to tell Neil of her pregnancy the following week
at a spa weekend she’d booked for them you knew it was now or never. Her
telling Neil would ruin your plans of running away together because while Neil
was willing to leave his wife for you, he wouldn’t leave his unborn babies.”

“What exactly
are you trying to say? You have no proof of any of this.”

“Don’t I?
Because when I went to the pharmacy a couple of hours ago the man you worked
with that day was there.”

“He’s always
there.”

“He distinctly
remembers Sara, said he’d never forget such a beautiful woman. He remembers you
advising her to take Gaviscon and you went out the back and got her a bottle of
it. A bottle which earlier that day you’d contaminated with the poison.”

“Which is why
you were in the Longacre’s house earlier in the week. You were trying to destroy
the evidence, but you failed,” Danny said.

Jamie picked a
zip lock bag up from the table containing the bottle of Gaviscon. “I had the
liquid tested and guess what, it came back as having high levels of arsenic
trioxide in it. I also checked the outside of the bottle for fingerprints. Both
yours and Sara’s fingerprints were left on the bottle.”

“Sara didn’t
like taking medication, did she Neil?” Carl asked.

“No, never
took it if she could avoid it.”

“So she didn’t
take any for a couple of days. While she was waiting for Zoe to arrive, she
felt awful indigestion and decided to take some of the medicine in order to
make her day with Zoe more enjoyable. By the time Zoe got there, she was dead.
Tell me I’m wrong.”

Tanya stayed
silent.

“It wasn’t the
first time you’d tried to kill her though, was it?”

Tanya shook
her head, resigned to the fact that they knew everything and there wasn’t any
point denying it.

“You caused
that car crash. You knew Sara was going to be in the car so you rigged it up.
The problem was, by the time you realised she wasn’t actually in the car, it
was too late. You killed her parents, but you didn’t get her. What I want to
know is, why did you want to kill her back then?”

“Neil wanted
to break it off with me and “focus on his marriage again”,” Tanya said, making
quote marks with her fingers. “I had to get rid of her. I couldn’t lose him.”

“So you tried
again. Correct?”

Tanya nodded.

“Great. Danny,
Carl, take her back to the station and do the admin, will you?”

“I did it for
you,” Tanya said to Neil. “I wanted us to be together without that evil cow
ruining everything.”

“What about
me?” Neil asked, ignoring Tanya. “I provided false information.”

“Since you
have no previous offences, you’ll be fined. You’ll have to come back to the
station with me. Everyone else can go.” Jamie made Neil carry her stuff back to
the car and kept a close eye on him while she waited for everyone to leave the
house so she could lock up.

“I don’t think I’ll ever know how
you did that,” Danny clinked his glass of punch against Jamie’s.

“Well done,
sis,” Alex said.

“I couldn’t
have done it without all of you,” Jamie said. She took a sip of her punch and
felt a welcoming tingling at the back of her throat.

Carl was
surprisingly quiet.

“You alright?”
Danny asked.

“Yeah. I just
feel sorry for the guy. He lost his wife, two unborn children and lover in less
than a week.”

“He brought it
on himself,” Jamie said.

“I suppose.”

“You’re going
soft in your old age,” Danny said, punching him on the shoulder.

“Am not.” He
took a swig of his beer.

“Two cases
solved in one day,” Danny said. “A good day’s work. I think we all deserve
another glass of punch.”

“Two fish with
one rock,” Carl said.

“Birds.
Stone,” Danny said.

“What?”

“The saying’s
two birds with one stone.”

“No it’s not.”
Carl shook his head.

Danny smiled
and let the subject drop.

Music played,
the din of chattering surrounded them and the drinks continued to flow long
into the night. Jamie put her hands in her lap and smiled. Maybe this job won’t
be so bad after all, she thought.

If
you liked this, look out for the next book in the
Jamie Stanley Crime Scene
Investigation Series…

Deathly White

When a bride is stabbed to death
on her wedding day, DI Jamie Stanley and the team are called in. They
immediately pluck three suspects from the wedding party of over two hundred
guests. Why would anyone want to kill a bride on her wedding day?

Turn the page for a
preview of
Deathly White

Deathly White

Prologue

The hall was crowded. How had
they managed to invite so many people? From what he’d heard it had started off
as a small wedding of seventy-five. Now it looked more like a festival. The
music was hard to hear over the noise of the people, it gave him a headache,
but at least the reception part of the day was over. In a few minutes he could
slip out of the back without anyone noticing – there really was no reason for
him to stay; he’d known the bride once, a long time ago, but he barely knew the
groom.

“Honey, come
have a dance with me,” a girl held onto his arm.

“No thank
you.” He shrugged her off. He didn’t want to dance, he wanted to leave. And,
who was she anyway? Why were people always so overly friendly at weddings?

There wasn’t a
single face in the room that he knew. He recognised a few from the olden days
but there wasn’t anyone there he could call a friend, or even an acquaintance.

He thought
about saying goodbye before he left but then realised, no one had actually
noticed him arrive. Everyone appeared to be having a good time, and he didn’t
want to interrupt them.

The door closed
gently behind him. It wasn’t as noisy outside and the fresh air helped to clear
his head. It had been an odd day. He still didn’t know why he’d turned up.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d turned up because he’d been invited and
found it rude not to go when he didn’t have any other plans.

“Going so
early?”

He turned
round to face a man puffing on a cigarette.

“Not feeling
too great,” he said. It wasn’t completely untrue; he did still have a slight
headache.

“Safe journey
home,” the man said, stamping his cigarette out.

Now it was
just him and the night. He pulled his coat tighter around him. The light was
beginning to fade and a chill was settling into the air. The drive home wasn’t
a long one but the sooner he got started, the sooner he’d be home.

He drove
slowly along the narrow country roads, looking out for passing places in case
he met someone further along. These roads were a pain. Nine times out of ten,
when you met someone, one of you would have to reverse for ages before finally
finding a passing place. In the day time it was horrible but in this fading
light it was even worse.

Driving along
the narrow roads, he felt as though he was in a horror movie. Up ahead was what
was commonly known as Gibbet Hill. A gibbet still stood proudly at the top of
the hill. He shivered. How horrible it was to think that people had died mere
feet away from where he now drove.

He tried to
concentrate on the road, anything to stop him from looking up at that gibbet,
but of course he looked, he always did, just to check that there was no one up
there.

A flash of
white caught his attention. He slowed the car down to get a better look and
then stopped.

The light’s
playing tricks on me,
he thought. Quite often, he imagined someone hanging
from that gibbet. He’d even walked up there once just to make sure that there
was no one there.

He drove on a
little further. A gap in the hedge allowed him a better view. He stopped the
car once again and rubbed his eyes before looking back up.

I’m sure of
it,
he thought,
or else I’m going crazy.

The road
curved around the base of the hill and after driving a little further he found
a passing place where he’d be okay to park. A hole in the hedge was just big
enough for him to wriggle through.

Once halfway
up the hill he sat down. He didn’t need to go any further to know that his eyes
weren’t playing tricks on him.

“Police,” he
muttered into his mobile.

“Yes,” he said
when someone answered the phone. “My name is Bradley Stance. I’m at Gibbet
Hill. I was just driving back from my friend’s wedding and something on the
hill caught my attention.”

He nodded,
although the person on the other end of the phone couldn’t see him.

“Yes, it’s a
body,” he said. “I think it’s the bride.”