The Cold Hand of Malice (12 page)

‘Just put the stuff on the floor,’ Sally told him when she saw him hesitate. ‘It’s clean.’

He did so, and the two men sat down facing her. The room was warm, too warm for Paget’s liking. And humid. Steam rose from the clothes drying by the fire and, if Paget’s nose was anything to go by, there was a nappy that desperately needed changing.

But Sally Craig seemed not to notice. She drew the broad lapel of her housecoat discreetly over her breast, then looked expectantly from one to the other. ‘So what is it . . .?’ she began, only to wince and draw in her breath. ‘He’s teething,’ she explained as she pulled the baby’s mouth away from her breast. ‘Just watch it, you!’ she scolded, then smiled as the baby started to fuss and his little fingers clutched at her breast. She pulled him to her and he began to feed again.

She looked up. The unexpected smile had transformed her face; she was a pretty girl – and she
was
just a girl, thought Paget, barely out of her teens by the look of her. She looked tired, but there was a hint of apprehension in her eyes as well.

‘I take it someone told you we were coming?’ Paget said. ‘Would that be Mr Holbrook?’

‘That’s right,’ she said with a defiant tilt of the chin, ‘and he told me why. But what I don’t understand is what you want with Tim? He’s got nothing to do with what happened over there the other night when those robbers broke in, so why do you want to talk to him?’

Paget explained as he had done with Holbrook, but Sally Craig was shaking her head long before he had finished. ‘You’re wrong!’ she said emphatically, ‘and if you think you’re going to pin the murder of that bitch of a wife of his on Tim, you’ve got another think coming! Tim had nothing to do with it – not that he didn’t have good reason after the way she treated him. He worked all hours for that company, but did he get any thanks for it? No, he did not! He didn’t even get paid for it. I told him he should claim for all those extra hours he put in, but he won’t, though God knows we could use the money.’

Her eyes glistened, and defiant as she tried to sound, it was clear she was having trouble holding back the tears. ‘It’s a good thing I’ve still got my job, although what with babysitters and the price of everything going up in the shops, I don’t know how much longer we can keep going if Tim doesn’t find work soon.’

‘You work full-time?’ asked Paget. She nodded. ‘At Gosford’s Shoes in Russell Street. It’s not been easy, and having someone like you come round to accuse Tim of something he didn’t do doesn’t make life any easier, either.’

‘We’re not here to accuse Tim of anything,’ Paget told her. ‘But considering that Tim is alleged to have accosted Mrs Holbrook on more than one occasion, and threatened her on at least one of those occasions, we will be asking him to tell us where he was on the night she was killed. But perhaps you can tell us that Ms Craig. Last Wednesday evening?’

The question appeared to touch a nerve. ‘What I
can
tell you,’ Sally said heatedly, ‘is that he wouldn’t be anywhere near his uncle’s house, not after the way he’s been treated by him. Tim was out jogging. He goes out two or three nights a week because of the stress he’s under from losing his job, but he does a regular circuit, and I know that’s not the way he goes.’

‘Can you remember what time he left and what time he returned? Approximately?’

Sally looked off into the distance. ‘Wednesday,’ she said slowly. ‘He went out a bit after seven, same as usual, and came back around ten. I think the news had just started when he came in. Billy was fussing a lot, and didn’t settle down till well after nine, so, yes, it would be about ten when Tim came in.’

‘That’s a long time to be jogging,’ Tregalles observed. He was a swimmer, himself, but he’d done a bit of jogging in his time, although not recently – as Audrey was fond of reminding him. ‘Is he in training for something? A marathon, perhaps?’

‘No, it’s just that he likes to keep in shape, and as I said, it relieves the stress.’

‘And you say he goes out two or three nights a week?’

‘Pretty much every other night, yes.’

‘And he’s gone for something like three hours each time? That must be a bit hard on you, what with your job and the baby,’ Tregalles said sympathetically.

Sally blinked rapidly and looked away, then hoisted the child to her shoulder and began to rub his back. ‘I don’t mind as long as it helps him,’ she said. Her voice was muffled as she nuzzled the baby. ‘At least it’s better than when he was spending all of his time at work, till midnight sometimes. Not that they appreciated all the extra time he put in.’

‘Does he go with anyone?’ Paget asked. ‘When he’s jogging, I mean.’

Sally shook her head. ‘Tim likes to run alone. Says he can think more clearly out there on his own.’

‘So no one can actually confirm where he was that night?’

Sally Craig bristled at the implication. ‘I don’t see why anyone should have to,’ she said tightly, ‘but he has a regular circuit, and it doesn’t go anywhere near Pembroke Avenue, if that’s what you’re getting at. Anyway, I don’t know why you’re so dead keen on picking on Tim. What about the others over there at the lab? Have you asked any of them where they were? There are a good many there who won’t be sorry she’s gone.’

Sally frowned, and softened her tone as she said, ‘Not that I’m suggesting for a minute that she deserved to die in such a horrible manner, but she certainly had enemies. Tim will tell you. I mean, look what happened to Peggy Goodwin for a start.’

‘Peggy Goodwin?’ Paget echoed. The name was unfamiliar to him. ‘What happened to her?’

Sally grimaced as she eased the baby away from her breast and began to pat his back. ‘Pushed aside, wasn’t she?’ she said. ‘After all she’d done for Simon, keeping things running up front while he tinkered away in the back room with his toys. And then Miss Knowitall comes barging in to take over, and Peggy Goodwin is out in the cold.’

She flicked a strand of hair away from her eyes. ‘Funny the way things turned out, because Tim said Laura had some good ideas at first, and she did get them out of that dingy hole they used to work in. And she did bring in the customers, but Tim says they were mainly people she’d dealt with in her old job, so it wasn’t as if she had to exert herself, because the things that he and the others on the team were inventing would almost sell themselves once the customers got to see them.’

Tregalles stirred in his seat. ‘I thought it was Mr Holbrook who was the inventor,’ he said, but Sally shook her head. ‘That’s what everybody thinks. He’s even been written up in
Hi-Tech News,
and magazines like that, and Tim says he
was
good once, but he’s past it now. Tim says technology is changing and moving on so fast these days, that people like Simon are being left behind, and it’s really the younger people like Tim and the others who have the skills and the knowledge to keep up with things. I hate to say this about Tim’s uncle, because he has been good to Tim in the past, but he’s been riding on his reputation and other people’s coat-tails for years, now. Oh, they still use his name and his reputation, but Tim says he’s been more or less shoved into the background since Laura took over, and she’s running the firm now. See, that’s why she was so dead set against Tim,’ Sally continued earnestly. ‘It was because he could see what she was up to. He tried to warn his uncle, but he wouldn’t listen, because he was so besotted with her and wouldn’t have anything said against her.’

The baby burped loudly, spraying a mouthful of warm milk across his mother’s shoulder. A sickly, cloying smell filled the room. ‘Good boy, Billy,’ she said as she wiped the baby’s mouth and settled him to her breast again.

But it was too much for Paget. He looked at his watch, then rose to his feet and said, ‘I think that will be all for now, Ms Craig, and thank you for your time. No, please, don’t get up,’ he said quickly as Sally started to get to her feet. ‘We can see ourselves out.’

‘Got to anyway,’ she said. ‘Billy needs changing.’

And not before time, thought Paget as he moved toward the door. ‘But we still need to talk to Mr Bryce,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea when he might be home, or where we might find him?’

‘No idea. Honestly,’ she said with a vigorous shake of the head. ‘I really don’t know. Tim went out early and said he didn’t know when he’d be back. It’s my day off today, and I had hoped to see something of him myself, but with him out looking for a job every day, I hardly see anything of him at all. Not that I’m complaining, because I know it’s hard on him as well. As he says, with the economy in a downturn, it’s not easy finding another job even with all his qualifications. Tell you the truth,’ she ended, cuddling the baby to her, ‘I think we’ve seen more of the babysitter lately than we have of Tim. She comes in while I’m at work.’

Paget took out his card and offered it to her. ‘Ask him to ring me at this number when he does come back,’ he said.

‘Put it on the mantle,’ she told him. ‘I’ll tell Tim when he comes in, but it will be up to him whether he calls or not.’

Once outside, Paget took a deep breath and exhaled thankfully. ‘Pong getting to you in there, was it, boss?’ Tregalles asked guilelessly as they made their way to the car. ‘Granted it was a bit thick, but the kid was carrying a full load when we arrived, and we didn’t give her much choice. She could either feed him or change him, and he was hungry.

‘Couldn’t help feeing sorry for her, though,’ he continued as they got in the car. ‘She seems like a nice kid, but it sounds to me as if this Tim Bryce has her pretty well brainwashed into his way of thinking. What she was telling us about him and the company certainly didn’t fit with what we were told earlier today.

‘And I’d like to hear him explain this jogging lark several nights a week. I mean
three hours
or more in the kind of weather we’ve been having? I don’t buy it.’

‘I’m not sure she does, either,’ Paget said as he started the car. He rolled down the window and took several more deep breaths. The cloying odour was fading, but not fast enough for his liking. ‘I think she
wants
to believe him, but I think she’s having a hard time convincing herself. And you’re right; it should be interesting to hear what Bryce himself has to say about that.’

Eleven

Monday, March 9

Sergeant Ormside was there ahead of him as usual when Paget and Tregalles arrived at the same time. Seated at his desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, he held a steaming mug of coffee in both hands.

‘Waste of time looking at them,’ he said dolefully when Paget went straight to the whiteboards to see if anything new had been added since he’d looked at them the day before.

He and Grace had spent Sunday morning at home. Grace, who had been thinking about it throughout the winter, had finally taken the plunge and signed up for a beginner’s art class, so she had shut herself away to read the pre-course instructions and experiment with the paints she’d been told to buy.

Paget had spent most of the morning washing the two cars and cleaning out the garage, a job he’d been putting off for months on one pretext or another, and he was only too happy to stop when Grace suggested a run into Broadminster for lunch. ‘I have some shopping to do afterwards,’ she told him, ‘and some of the shops have their summer stock in already.’

‘Ah. Then you won’t want me along, will you?’ he said, ‘so perhaps you could drop me at the office and pick me up later? It’s appraisal time again, and I’m barely halfway through the reviews of Ormside’s people, and they have to go up to Alcott next week. So give me a couple of hours at least.’

Ormside had good people, so Paget didn’t find it hard to endorse the sergeant’s recommendations. The sergeant was of the old school, and was inclined to mark a little hard, but he was fair, and those who had worked for him for any length of time knew that and accepted it. Paget worked quickly, and was almost through when he opened the file on DC Molly Forsythe. He scanned the appraisal. Nothing unexpected there – except for the handwritten memo attached to it. Paget read it carefully, then glanced at the calendar. Not a problem, he decided; there were still a few days left. He set the folder aside, but he was still thinking about what the note said when Grace rang to say she was on her way to pick him up.

Grace arrived just after four, and the last thing he’d done before leaving was to check the notes on the whiteboards. There’d been nothing new then, and as Ormside had said, there was nothing new this morning.

‘What about Bryce?’ he asked sharply. ‘Any word from him?’

Ormside shook his head. He was about to say more, but was cut off by the ringing of his phone. He picked it up, then held up his hand to gain their attention and mouthed, ‘Forensic.’

They waited while the sergeant scribbled notes on a memo pad, then paused ‘You’re
quite
sure about that?’ he asked, pen poised above the pad. He listened for a moment longer, then said, ‘Right,’ and made another note. ‘Fax it to me right away, and thanks.’

‘Interesting,’ he said as he put the phone down. ‘They’ve examined the wood taken from the broken door jamb on Holbrook’s house, and they say the pry bar that was used could be the same instrument used in previous burglaries, but they couldn’t swear to it in court. Too much splintering of the wood to get a good impression.’

Tregalles snorted. ‘So what’s so interesting about that?’ Tregalles asked scornfully. ‘I could have told them
that
much myself.’

‘The interesting bit,’ Ormside said, ‘is that they found traces of blood – Mrs Holbrook’s blood – and hair embedded in the splintered wood on the door jamb. Which means . . .’

‘That the door was pried open
after
Laura Holbrook was killed,’ said Paget. ‘And
that
tells us that Laura Holbrook was the target, and the killer simply tried to make it look as though there had been a burglary. We know she had one enemy in Holbrook’s nephew,’ he continued, ‘and from what we’ve been told and what we’ve seen for ourselves, Susan Chase can’t be ruled out as a suspect. But there may be other reasons for wanting Laura Holbrook out of the way, so, Len, I want someone at the house to go through all her personal records, including anything on her computer that might give us a clue, and I want the same thing done at her office. We’ll need warrants, so I’ll square that with Mr Alcott before I leave. And I want you, Tregalles, to find Tim Bryce and bring him in for questioning. Meanwhile, I think it’s time for another chat with Simon Holbrook, and I think I’ll take Forsythe with me if that’s all right with you, Len?’