‘He can’t have been happy,’ she continued, ‘when he heard Francis had barged into your house and threatened you. I mean, I’ve seen the recording — he isn’t physical or anything, but there’s that finger-pointing he does. You did feel threatened, you said.’
Pelham’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘You think Chris might have done something? Got mad and gone after Francis?’
‘What do you think, Stephanie?’
She drew in a breath and widened her eyes again, as if considering the possibility.
Clarke’s phone pinged and she lifted it to her eyeline. Agnew was on his way to Leith with Gamble and Leighton.
Said straight off he hasn’t done anything. We hadn’t even told him why we were there. Keeps mumbling about Rob Driscoll cracking up. Oh, and he wants a solicitor.
She tucked the phone into her pocket again.
‘I suppose he could have,’ Pelham was saying, drawing out each word.
‘If we bring him in for questioning, what do you think he’ll say?’
‘I’ve really no idea.’
‘He’s never hinted to you that anything happened between him and Francis?’
She shook her head slowly. Clarke had bent a little, hands on knees, so her face was at the same level as the woman in the chair.
‘There is another scenario, though, isn’t there?’ she said. ‘All that money coming to you unless it became public knowledge you had a lover. We’ve not dug back too far into Chris’s mobile phone history, but we will, and I’m betting your affair has been going on a while. Maybe you’re just more skilled at hiding that sort of thing than your husband was.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘If Francis Haggard knew about you and Chris, and if you suspected he was going to bring that knowledge into play... I mean, the way he pointed at you in the hall that day, as if letting you know — you’d either to persuade Cheryl to go back to him and drop the case, or he’d maybe speak to your husband, giving him some much-needed ammo. Now in that scenario, you’d be desperate for something to happen to Francis, wouldn’t you, anything that would shut him up? You’d maybe exaggerate what happened when he burst in here, in the hope of getting Chris Agnew’s blood up.’
‘Isn’t it Chris you should be asking, not me?’
‘He’s on his way to the station. Maybe I should put the two of you in a room together. As of now, he’s saying he didn’t do anything.’ Clarke paused. ‘And I’m inclined to believe him.’
‘What?’
Clarke straightened up and turned towards the window as if addressing her words to it rather than Stephanie Pelham. ‘There’s one scenario I’ve left out, but I think it bears airing. That pointed finger — yes, it was a warning, and one he knew needed no words, because it was personal... very personal. Say you’d had some sort of fling with Francis, say that’s the secret he was willing to expose. Now, if nobody except you and him knew, you couldn’t take that to your lover, couldn’t trust him to do something about it...’
‘That’s absurd. You must see you’re making no sense.’ Pelham had taken a grip of her phone and was squeezing the life from it. Her eyes were on Clarke, who was shaking her head.
‘Ever since I saw the footage, I’ve known there was something about it that I wasn’t getting, some history between the two of you. So no, Stephanie, I don’t think it’s absurd.’
The door flew open. Cheryl Haggard had obviously crept up the stairs and heard at least some of the conversation.
‘I knew it!’ she shrieked. ‘It was that night you were pissed and he drove you home — I could practically smell you on him when he came back! You bitch!’ She made a move towards her sister, who by now was up on her feet, but Esson got between the two women. ‘Then the night he died, you said you’d run out of wine,’ Cheryl went on. ‘You said for me to go back to sleep and you’d head to the late-night grocer’s.’
‘Cheryl, I swear to God...’
But with a roar from deep in her chest, Cheryl Haggard had turned and was stumbling down the stairs. The front door was flung open. A moment later came the sound of an engine starting.
‘She doesn’t know how to drive!’ her sister exclaimed as she followed Esson and Clarke down the staircase.
They got to the doorstep in time to see the yellow Porsche speed towards the still-open gates. Clarke opened the door of her Astra and told Esson to stay with Pelham. She hadn’t even reached the end of the driveway when she heard the sound of a sudden impact. Turning left, she saw the Porsche halfway across the T-junction. A white van had hit it side-on. Cheryl was wedged between the headrest and the airbag. The van driver and his workmate got out of their cab.
‘Bloody maniac,’ the driver complained, looking none the worse for wear. Cheryl meantime had raised a hand to her neck, groggy but conscious. The driver’s-side door had buckled, making it impossible to open. Clarke headed to the other side.
‘Better be insured,’ the van driver muttered.
Clarke opened the passenger door. There were glass crystals everywhere from the shattered window. She reached across, her first thought to drag Cheryl out of there, but then she reconsidered. Some things were best left to medical professionals. The driver’s workmate was already on his phone, requesting an ambulance.
‘Are you okay, Cheryl?’ Clarke asked. There was no blood, but then she wasn’t wearing a seat belt either.
‘I feel sick.’
‘Help’s on its way.’ Clarke’s eyes were on the debris again. It resembled nothing so much as a spillage of fake diamonds. But there was something else on the passenger-side floor, a scrunched ball of paper, three capitalised letters visible: TIL.
She reached down and took it between her thumb and forefinger, unfolding it and turning it the right way up. TILL’S CASINO was printed along the top. It was a receipt for a withdrawal from the casino’s cash machine. Date and time made it clear who it belonged to. She held onto it as she watched Stephanie Pelham come teetering down the slope, wine glass still in hand, Esson in her wake.
‘Oh my God! Is she...? Oh my God!’
‘Best leave her be until the paramedics arrive,’ Clarke said.
‘Won’t be long,’ the workmate said. His partner was already more interested in the damage to the front of his van.
‘Better be insured,’ Clarke heard him repeat under his breath while the workmate shook his head in what looked to Clarke a lot like an apology.
‘Get away from me,’ Cheryl Haggard was telling her sister, though the earlier venom had been drawn out of her. ‘I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘It was one time, Cher. One lousy stupid time.’
Esson saw the slip of paper Clarke was holding out towards her. She took it, and eventually turned it over, noting the words scrawled there in ballpoint pen. An address on Constitution Street. A time: 10 tonight. And an unsigned warning: Or else.
Clarke took a step towards her. ‘Walked to the house from the taxi. Scrambled over the gate. Left it where she’d see it. She knew then what she had to do.’
Stephanie Pelham turned towards them. Esson held up the withdrawal slip for her to see. The wine glass dropped to the roadway as Pelham screwed shut her eyes, as if hoping to block out what was to come. Her eyes were still closed as Siobhan Clarke began the process of placing her under arrest.
Clarke insisted that Christine Esson be in charge of taking Stephanie Pelham’s statement. In the interview room next door, Chris Agnew filled in most of the gaps. Fox and Tess Leighton had sat with him, Fox trying to cajole a few nuggets from him about the workings at Tynecastle. Cheryl would be kept in hospital overnight for observation — miraculously they’d found bed space for her. Clarke had asked Gina Hendry to go sit with her, and Hendry had been glad to help. She’d listened as Clarke had sketched out the story.