‘My staff prefer me to speak in public for them. I am happy with their quality. Perhaps I should emphasise again that I have directed this whole operation and suggested the various strategies which have proved fruitful.’ Tucker held up his hand as further questions were mooted. ‘I cannot of course give any of the details of this hunt. That might jeopardise the success of future operations. But I have confidence in my team — as much confidence, I venture to suggest, as they have in me.’
There were more audible mutters of derision at this, so that the television presenter drew things to an abrupt close. Chief Superintendent Tucker insisted on having the last word. He said rhetorically to the audience he imagined beyond the cameras, ‘I say again rejoice. Rejoice that our streets are safer today for the absence of the man who killed James O’Connor. Rejoice in the achievements of efficient policing!’
He jutted his jaw in his practised Churchillian mode until he was quite sure that cameras and microphones had been switched off.
He had wiped off his make-up and was getting into his car when the young policewoman approached him. ‘Message from DCI Peach, sir,’ she said impassively. ‘Apparently another Mr O’Connor has now been murdered. Name of Dominic.’
It took some time to establish the whereabouts of Dominic O’Connor’s wife. Eventually the police managed to contact her cleaner, whose number Clyde Northcott had found on a pad in the house. She told them that Mrs O’Connor had been planning to stay the weekend with her sister in Settle, forty miles to the north of her home.
Normally a junior female officer would have been dispatched to break the news of the death to the newly widowed woman. On this occasion, Percy Peach asked his wife to go. ‘Take Brendan Murphy with you, if you can get hold of him. I want someone as experienced as you to be there when she gets the news. I want you to see how she reacts, whether she gives any indication that she was expecting to hear this. After all, she may have arranged to be conveniently away at the time of her husband’s death.’
Percy didn’t voice the thought that he had been worried about Lucy ever since Linda Coleman had uttered her threats about her involvement in the child prostitution investigation. He knew he would get short shrift for trying to protect her. Perhaps he did not care to admit his fears even to himself.
For her part, Lucy Peach was happy to be involved on even the periphery of a murder investigation. She ascertained by a phone call that Ros O’Connor was indeed staying at her sister’s house, then collected DC Murphy and drove swiftly north towards Settle and the Yorkshire Dales. The house she sought proved to be a modest semi-detached on the edge of the small town. This was the residence of the youngest of Mrs O’Connor’s three sisters. There were children playing in the rear garden, which shrilled with happy sounds that were wholly out of kilter with Lucy’s grim police mission here.
They separated Ros O’Connor from this happy family environment and isolated her in the quiet front room of the house, shutting the door tight against that very different world beyond it. They had a little difficulty getting the lady to sit down, because she was anxious to have their news without even the slightest delay. At their insistence, she sat on the edge of the armchair and looked from one to the other of her visitors. ‘Two plain-clothes officers. This must be important.’
Lucy sat down opposite her, not more than six feet from the small, concerned face. ‘It is. And it isn’t good news, I’m afraid.’
‘Is it Dominic? What’s happened to him?’
‘It is Mr O’Connor, yes. And I’m afraid we are the bearers of very bad tidings.’
The blue eyes seemed to grow larger as she took this in. The noise of the children’s voices behind the house seemed agonising in this instant of silence. The woman perched tensely on the edge of the armchair said quietly, ‘Dominic’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘I’m afraid he is, yes.’ Lucy should have said that an unidentified male had been found dead in this woman’s house, that nothing could be certain until identification had been confirmed, but reality cut through the formal phrases, when the facts were as stark as this.
It was an important part of the work of Brendan Murphy and Lucy Peach to study this woman and her reactions at this moment of revelation. The only unusual element in her reaction which they would report is that she did not seem unduly surprised by the news. Even that did not necessarily mean much, because shock affects people in so many different ways.
Ros O’Connor was in jeans and a light blue short-sleeved shirt. The smear of sand across the front of this seemed suddenly poignant as she lurched from noisy play with her niece and nephew to the news of death. She was slightly built; she was also very pretty, in the small-featured way which Lucy Peach, whose charms were more opulent and less subtle, always envied. This woman had a clear skin and good features; her face had the attraction and innocence of a kitten. A strand of fair hair escaped from the order around it and trembled a little over her left temple. Her air had an odd combination of control and vulnerability. She said with a strange calmness, ‘Where did this happen?’
Lucy said reluctantly, ‘He was found at your own house.’ That always made things worse. It might seem out of proportion, but it was always worse for people when abnormal death, whether it be suicide or murder or manslaughter, took place in the family home. For most people, it tarnished the place where it had happened for the rest of their lives. Lucy knew that and tried to make this death as peripheral as possible. ‘He was found right at the back of the building, in the rearmost room on the ground floor.’
‘That’s his office. That’s where he worked. How was he killed?’
She was accepting immediately that he had been murdered, they noticed. They had come with the news of his death and she had assumed that someone had killed him. Lucy said, ‘We are not able to disclose the details yet.’
‘But someone came to our house and killed him.’ Ros O’Connor settled back a little into the armchair and nodded twice. ‘I told him he needed to be more careful.’
Brendan Murphy made a note, then said gently, ‘Why was that, Mrs O’Connor?’
She shook her head gently from side to side, seemingly more in response to her own thoughts than to the DC’s question. ‘Dominic moved in dangerous circles, you know. He needed to be careful. When was he killed?’
‘We’re not certain of that yet. There will need to be a post-mortem examination.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course there will. And I’ll find out how he died, eventually.’
Lucy wanted to ask her about these dangerous circles in which she said her husband had moved. But this wasn’t the time. Percy and his team would follow that up in due course. And in due course they would determine just how innocent this calm but bewildered-looking woman was. ‘When did you come to your sister’s house, Mrs O’Connor?’
The widow did not at first appreciate the significance of the question. ‘Yesterday. Yesterday afternoon. Dominic was working late yesterday. It seemed a good chance for me to see Jane and the children.’ She stopped abruptly, looking at DS Peach in consternation. ‘You want to know whether I could have killed Dominic, don’t you? When did he die?’
‘As I said, we don’t know that yet. And this is merely routine, Mrs O’Connor. We check the movements of all the people who were close to any death which is not straightforward.’
‘Not straightforward. You mean murder, don’t you? So why not use the word?’