‘Knew what?’
‘That she was dead, of course. Dead, and completely out of sight where no one would find her. I couldn’t believe my luck.’
‘Your luck?’ shouted Frances.
The blood was roaring in her ears now. Reece’s face seemed to swim in and out of her vision, as if she was drunk. But she was stone cold sober. It was fury bubbling up inside her that made her feel intoxicated with rage.
Reece held up his hands placatingly.
‘It was the best way out. You’ve got to understand that. Our marriage was over. We were doing nothing but arguing, and she was getting violent. Annette had been on and on at me all the way to Lathkill Dale in the car, and all the way up the trail too. Do you know, we passed a walker coming the other way, and she smiled at him and said “hello”. Then, as soon as he was out of earshot, she started in on me again. It was intolerable. I couldn’t have stood any more, Frances. She was out of control. If it hadn’t been for this accident... well, it would have ended badly.’
‘Accident?’ hissed Frances. ‘You call that an accident?’
‘That’s what it was. I didn’t know the shaft was there. It should have been sealed up. It wasn’t my fault.’
‘She could have been saved,’ said Frances. ‘All you had to do was make a call.’
Reece shook his head. ‘There was no signal.’
‘What a pathetic excuse. You deliberately left her there to die.’
Now he’d begun to plead. ‘Frances, I might have made a wrong decision in the heat of the moment. It was an accident, really it was. But it seemed so... so neat, somehow. It was a solution to all our problems. Imagine if she’d been badly injured? She fell a long way. She might have been paralysed, brain damaged, left a cabbage in a wheelchair. It was much better that she was dead than that. So I had to leave her there.’
Frances stared at him, wondering if he actually believed what he was saying. He was so self-centred that he probably did. It was all about his own convenience. Even the death of his wife had been a stroke of good luck to avoid a messy divorce, or worse.
‘And afterwards?’
‘I knew you were coming that afternoon, Frances. So I made up the story about her going for a run. I took Taffy out myself and left him on the trail. I knew he would find his way back home. But then things began to go wrong...’
Frances sensed Lacey come up quietly to stand next to her. Lacey’s breathing was very shallow. She had that faint wheeze in her air passages that she suffered when she was stressed.
‘Oh, the murder charge must have been very inconvenient,’ said Frances.
‘I was terrified,’ said Reece, trying to make himself look small, like a helpless boy.
Frances sneered. That sort of thing didn’t work with her.
‘But then Evan had that sighting of Annette in Buxton,’ he said.
‘I always thought you seized on Dad’s story a bit too eagerly.’
‘Wouldn’t you? It was my only chance. I didn’t think it would have reached that stage. Not a murder charge, without a body.’
And then Reece smiled.
That was the final straw.
Naomi leaped up from her chair and ran at him, screaming. She raked her fingernails across his cheek and he lashed out with his fist, knocking her backwards. Frances ran forward to grab him, and Lacey was right there with her, pummelling at her father. In a second, Naomi jumped up again, blood spraying from a cut lip. Frances heard screaming that seemed to go on and on, but she could see nothing in the red haze that seemed to fill the room.
It felt like a long time before the haze cleared. Naomi had collapsed and was hanging her head towards the carpet. Lacey was kneeling over her father, who lay prone and still in a shaft of sunlight from the French windows.
When Lacey stood up, Frances saw a red stain spreading rapidly on his white shirt. And something else. A wooden handle protruding from his side, just below the ribs.
‘Is he...?’
And Lacey said: ‘Yes, Auntie. He’s dead.’
32
It was market day in Shirebrook. But the market traders were already packing up to go home, loading their unsold goods into a small fleet of Transit vans, while council workers began to dismantle the stalls.
DCI Alistair Mackenzie had bought himself a burger from a fast-food van. The smell of fried onions was turning Diane Fry’s stomach.
‘So that’s it,’ said Mackenzie through a mouth full of burger. ‘Job done.’
‘Krystian Zalewski was trying to prevent a street robbery,’ said Fry. ‘He came to the assistance of a woman who was struggling with two men. That was how he got stabbed.’
‘And the woman ran off when the attackers turned their attention to Zalewski.’
‘Nikki Frost, yes. She ran away as fast as she could and went home. I don’t suppose we can blame her for that. She had no idea what happened after she left. And she didn’t know Zalewski either. Even when she saw his photograph in the local paper, she didn’t recognise him. She only made the connection when someone pointed out the spot where he’d been attacked. It was then she realised he was her rescuer, and he was dead. I feel very sorry for her.’
Fry felt as though her last words were lost in the cacophony of diesel engines and steel tubes being thrown on to the back of a trailer. Mackenzie looked at her with an expression of dissatisfaction.
‘And how come Divisional CID got the suspects in custody before we did?’ he said.
Fry took a deep breath. She’d been asking herself the same question.
‘They just had a lucky break,’ she said. ‘It happens, sir.’
‘A body-worn camera?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Technology.’
‘And luck,’ repeated Fry. ‘It was just a coincidence.’
‘A coincidence? More of an inconvenience.’
‘I appreciate that, sir.’
‘Did you have any suspicion that it would turn out this way, Diane?’
‘No. It was a complete surprise to me,’ said Fry. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No need to apologise. They were circumstances out of your control. Out of anyone’s control.’
‘We’re on it now. A murder charge takes precedence.’
Mackenzie wiped his hands on a paper napkin and dropped it into a litter bin. A man on a mobility scooter buzzed past them, just missing Mackenzie’s toes. There seemed to be a lot of mobility scooters in Shirebrook. A lot of old people’s bungalows. A lot of England flags.
‘DS Fry...’ said Mackenzie.
‘Sir?’
‘Please try to make sure the next thing that happens is neither a coincidence, an inconvenience — or a surprise.’
‘Of course.’
‘So are we finished in Shirebrook? We’ve got the suspects locked up, we’ve got the statements we need. It’s just a matter of doing the paperwork and putting our case together for the CPS.’
‘There’s just one more job I want to do here,’ said Fry.
Mackenzie raised an eyebrow, but didn’t question her. ‘Do you need DC Callaghan?’
‘Not really.’
‘Well, keep him anyway, Diane. I’ll leave you to it. See you both back at St Ann’s.’
Fry watched him head back to his car. The stalls were almost gone now, the Transit vans had left. The marketplace would be empty and deserted again soon, just the way it had been when she first arrived in Shirebrook. Had anything changed in these last few days? It wasn’t very likely.