‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’ll do all three.’
I was still laughing when I checked my emails.
And there were two of interest. Big interest.
The first was from DCI Eastwood with Zoe Robertson’s medical records as an attachment.
Declan had said that Zoe suffered from psychosis, and Yvonne had told Kate that she had been initially hospitalised for schizophrenia, but her latest diagnosis, from the time of her most recent in-patient stay, was for BPD — borderline personality disorder. It was contained in a scanned letter from a Dr Alan Cazalet, consultant in psychiatry at University College Hospital, London.
I looked up BPD on the internet. In spite of its name, there was absolutely nothing borderline about it. It was a most serious condition characterised by long-term patterns of abnormal behaviour including difficult relationships with other people, inadequate sense of self, and unstable emotions. Sufferers frequently self-harmed and also regularly acted without any apparent concern for their own welfare.
Zoe had indeed been a troubled soul.
I searched back through the file for any triggers for her condition but, whereas the recent ten years of her medical history were covered in some detail, the older records were brief only to the point of providing just an illness title and a date, such as ‘Pertussis — May 1992’.
Whereas it was of some mild interest that Zoe had contracted whooping cough at age three and a half, there were no details of the severity of the infection or what treatment had been given.
Equally, her first admittance to a psychiatric hospital in February 2007 was recorded as just that, without clarification that she’d been sectioned, and certainly without any indication that it had been her father’s doing, as Yvonne had claimed. It made me think that only the bare facts of the pre-computer era had been transcribed onto the digital record, and maybe there were greater details to be found elsewhere.
I read through it all for a second time to ensure I hadn’t missed something, but there was nothing important that I didn’t already know.
However, the second email, the one from the Simpson White research team, was far more sensational.
Even though they had been unable to break into the online banking system, the wizards had somehow acquired a loan request from Peter to a finance company to buy a car. Attached to the application form were copies of three of the Robertsons’ joint-account bank statements from the previous autumn.
They weren’t so much the single smoking gun I’d been hoping for, more like a whole firing squad of them.
For all his lack of gainful employment, Peter Robertson was clearly no mug. He seemed to be making a good living from blackmailing his in-laws, all of them.
No wonder he hadn’t wanted to talk to me, even after the death of his wife. He probably had every intention of continuing the blackmail, and maybe upping the ante to cover murder.
But how was he doing it?
What was the hold he seemed to have over them all?
The bank statements clearly showed regular payments into his account not only from Oliver Chadwick but also from Ryan, Declan and Tony.
Not too much, of course. Just enough so that they would pay without squealing.
It was definitely time to put a thunderflash up their arses.
I went to see Oliver first but he was out.
‘Come on in,’ Maria said, opening the front door wide. ‘Oliver’s gone to see some foal or other at a stud farm out near Cheveley. He went some time ago. Probably won’t be much longer. Do you fancy a drink?’
She was already holding a glass of what I assumed was white wine.
‘Coffee would be nice,’ I said, stepping through the doorway.
She wrinkled her nose in distaste but led the way into the kitchen.
‘Help yourself,’ she said, waving at the kettle, and then poured herself a top-up from an open bottle of Chardonnay on the kitchen table.
I put the kettle on the Aga.
‘How about Ryan?’ I asked. ‘Is he about?’
‘No idea,’ she said. ‘I’m not his bloody keeper.’
There was clearly no love lost between them.
‘Why didn’t Ryan move in here when he took over the stables?’ I asked, spooning instant coffee into a cup.
‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ Maria said. ‘Oliver didn’t want to give up his stables. He wasn’t about to hand over his house as well.’
‘Then why did he give up the stables?’ I asked. ‘Ryan could surely have started up somewhere else. Like Declan did.’
‘Apparently, it was always accepted that Ryan would eventually take over the yard from Oliver. But no one expected it to be quite so soon. Ryan broke his knee badly in a fall at Newbury and was forced to stop riding when he was only thirty-six. Most flat jockeys go on much longer than that, some well into their fifties.’
I poured boiling water over the coffee, and took some milk from the fridge.
‘Surely Oliver could still have said no.’
‘He should have done,’ Maria said with feeling. ‘Ryan taking over has been a disaster. If we’re not careful we’ll lose the whole bloody lot.’
I marvelled at her ability to be so indiscreet. Probably something to do with the wine. But I wasn’t about to stop her just to spare her blushes.
‘How well did you know Zoe?’ I asked.
‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I knew of her, of course. Everyone round here knows of Zoe Chadwick. Silly little bitch. Given us nothing but grief even in death.’
‘It was hardly her fault she was murdered,’ I said.
‘No? Whose fault is it, then? She should have stayed in London.’
‘What were you doing on Sunday afternoon and evening?’
‘What’s this,’ Maria said with a hollow laugh. ‘The bloody Spanish Inquisition? You can’t think I had anything to do with it?’
Did I?
‘In that case you won’t mind telling me where you were.’
‘The police have already asked me that.’
‘So what did you tell them?’
‘The truth,’ she said. ‘I woke on Sunday morning with a migraine so I took some strong painkillers and stayed in bed all day with a cold compress on my head.’
I unkindly wondered if it had been a hangover rather than a migraine.
‘Didn’t you eat anything?’ I asked.
‘I can’t really remember. I know I was zonked out for most of the day. Those painkillers are pretty strong, especially when you wash them down with Chardonnay.’ She laughed and raised her glass towards me.
‘Didn’t Oliver come and see you at all?’
‘He brought me up some tomato soup for lunch.’
‘Anything else?’ I asked.
‘Anything else what?’ she asked belligerently. ‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ I said. ‘I just wondered if Oliver had spent any of the afternoon with you.’
‘Not that I can remember,’ she said. ‘I think he was catching up with EastEnders in the snug. He often does on Sunday afternoons. I could hear it coming up through the floorboards. He probably thought that, with me in bed, it was a good opportunity. I hate the damn programme. There are enough arguments and misery in my life already without having to watch more of it in a bloody soap opera.’
I looked at her. How sad, I thought.
‘How about during the evening?’ I asked.
‘More painkillers,’ she said. ‘First thing I knew Oliver was banging on the door shouting at me to get up because the stables were on fire.’
‘Was Oliver at home all evening?’
‘How the hell would I know? I was out of it.’ She smiled at me. ‘But you can’t possibly think that he’d burn down his own stables? Not with Prince of bloody Troy in there?’