‘I was with my wife on Friday night.’
‘Ah, the old wife alibi. Suspicious but difficult to disprove.’
‘You ask Linda. She’ll tell you.’
‘She might. Unfortunately for you, she might be in clink herself by the time your case comes to court. We know all about her involvement in the procurement of minors for prostitution and worse. We’ll be delighted to put her away. That won’t make her a very reliable witness for you, though, will it?’
‘I didn’t kill Dominic O’Connor. I’m not worried what you do.’
‘Ah, the joys of a clear conscience! But it must be a long time since you knew anything about that, Mr Coleman. Best thing you could do about this second murder is admit it and put in a plea for mercy, I should think. The court might appreciate your honesty if you did that, but I wouldn’t rely on it. We’ll leave you to think about it. Lot of time for thought in here, I expect.’
It was a relief to move through the old prison entrance and out into the bright sunlight of the May day. They were well on the way back to Brunton when Clyde Northcott, who was driving, said, ‘You gave him a fair going over in there.’
‘Yes. Quite enjoyed it. I don’t feel any obligations towards scum like Coleman. Or his wife, for that matter; you can’t get lower than pushing kids from care homes into prostitution and making them victims of gang rape.’
‘Peter Coleman won’t come out for a long time. We’ve got a safe case on the murder of James O’Connor.’
‘Yes.’ Peach looked away thoughtfully over the moors as they slid by on his left. ‘He didn’t kill Dominic O’Connor, though, did he? We’ve got a whole new can of worms to deal with there.’
ELEVEN
The widow of the elder O’Connor brother was coping well with his death. It was a week now since James had died. Sarah had coped with the pressures of sympathy from those around her and those at a distance. She had composed a standard letter of thanks for the messages of condolence which had poured in from England and Ireland — Jim’s death at Claughton Towers had been too dramatic and well-publicised for people to miss it.
The most difficult thing for her to handle had been her daughter’s grief. Clare had been the person in the world hit hardest by Jim’s killing. She had been close to her father as she grew up, in the way that daughters are. He had been away from home a lot when she was young, but he had been able to indulge her when he appeared, in the manner which was customary for doting dads.
Clare had taken Jim’s death hard and the fact that she was an intelligent girl had made it more difficult for her mother. Her daughter had seen through Sarah’s conventional protestations of grief, been sceptical about the prayers and the trappings of religion behind which she had tried to retreat. ‘You didn’t feel like I did about Dad. I’m sure you had your reasons. But, Mum, don’t pretend you’re devastated by this when you aren’t. That would make it much worse for me to bear.’
They’d had an uneasy weekend, but Clare had gone back to university now. No doubt she would find her consolation with the thin and pimply youth who had been with her at Claughton Towers on that fatal Monday night. Jim had been baffled by what his daughter saw in that tongue-tied youth who was in so many ways still a boy; he’d been unable to divine what it was that attracted Clare. Probably the lad was good in bed; Sarah certainly hoped he was. She hoped he would provide consolation and diversion for Clare, rather than allowing her thoughts to dwell on the mother who seemed so little affected by her husband’s death.
No one knew the full story of their marriage and she had every intention of keeping it that way. These things were private and it was much better for all concerned if they stayed private. It was the same with grief. Sarah had a greater grief than Clare thought she had for Jim. But her mourning for him was for times long gone and what might have been, not for the man he had been at his death. Her task now was to keep control of herself until the world resumed its normal rhythms.
She decided on Tuesday morning that she would tidy the bathroom and remove all Jim’s stuff from it. It had to be done and she needed a task to occupy her. She took the waste bin with her and began to pitch male toiletries into it. She had scarcely begun when the phone rang. For the last few days, she’d been letting it ring and waiting until the evening to listen to whatever messages people left. But normal service must be resumed at some time. She went into the bedroom and picked up the receiver there.
An impassive female voice told her that Detective Chief Inspector Peach would like to speak to her as soon as possible. She told the woman that he should come to the house now. Best get it over with, she told herself as she put the phone down. But she could feel the pulse in her temple beginning to race.
The post-mortem and forensics reports on Dominic O’Connor didn’t offer the CID team anything they hadn’t expected.
He had died quickly, throttled within seconds by means of a cable thrown round his neck, almost certainly from behind him as he sat at his desk. The victim had lifted his hands in an attempt to drag the cable from his neck, but had not reached as far as his attacker, for there was nothing useful found on his hands or beneath his fingernails. The death weapon was available but uninformative. Forensics had already examined the cable which had been embedded in the corpse’s neck and found it to be the sort of electrical cable attached to millions of household machines around the country. The assailant had probably brought it with him, but even if he hadn’t the five-feet length applied would have been readily available on appliances within the house.
The report pointed out that the criminal could possibly have been a woman; the victim appeared to have been taken by surprise, in which case no great physical strength would have been required. The ends of the cable bore signs of being twisted hard and fast between someone’s hands, but there was nothing useful in the way of fingerprints: the attacker had almost certainly worn gloves.
In the hours after O’Connor’s death, the door of the room which had been his office had been shut, as had the large, south-facing window. The room temperature had varied from near-freezing overnight to almost ninety degrees Fahrenheit as the sun had poured through that window before the body was discovered on Saturday afternoon. Therefore any deductions from the progress of rigor mortis must necessarily be highly tentative, which made the establishment of a time of death very difficult.
However, analysis of stomach contents indicated that a substantial cold meal of sandwiches, fruit and fruit cake had been consumed some two hours before death. An almost empty flask of coffee had been found in the bottom drawer of the desk. O’Connor had died more than twenty — and anything up to thirty — hours before he was discovered at 16.07 by DCI Peach and DS Northcott. Establishing the time when he had last eaten would pinpoint the time of death.
Forensics had found fibres on the corpse’s person which were from someone else’s clothing, as well as hairs which were quite certainly from someone else’s head. These might of course have no connection with the murder. A locked drawer contained personal letters which had been fingerprinted by forensics and had now been passed to the man in charge of the investigation.
Peach and Northcott immediately found one of these very relevant.
Peach thought Sarah O’Connor looked rather more upset than she’d been six days earlier, when they’d interviewed her about the murder of her husband. Her face was composed but very white beneath the shining black hair; her dark eyes glittered deep in their sockets. She looked as if she had not slept well. There was nothing necessarily significant in that. Shock can be delayed as well as immediate.