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“Do you know why Rowley’s first wife left?”

Bridget Locke smiled grimly. “After the scene you’ve just witnessed, do you need to ask?”

“Maybe not.” There was a silence, broken only by the gulls and the soft swooshing of the sea, before Carole asked what was, for her, a daringly personal question. “Do you think you will go back to him?”

“I don’t know.” There was a weary shake of the head. “At the moment I’m so seething with fury that…I won’t make a quick decision. There is still something there, you know. There’s a side of Rowley that very few people ever see. He can be quite enchanting.”

I’ll have to take your word for that, thought Carole. And again she asked herself the perennial question: why do bright, intelligent women stay with such unsatisfactory men? But then she thought of the alternative, the divorce she and David had shared. And wondered whether that was actually a much better solution.

“I was wondering…” Bridget went on, “you spent most of yesterday driving Nathan back from Treboddick…”

“Yes.”

“Did he say anything to you…you know, anything that made you think differently about who might have killed Kyra Bartos?”

“Not really. I mean, he told me and Jude what he’d done that night…which sounded pretty convincing to us…though whether it’ll convince the police…”

“As I say, the police are being much more sensitive than I’d ever have expected. They very definitely want to question Nathan, but I didn’t get the impression that they regard him as a major suspect.”

“Good. Well, the one thing he did mention was that that night, while he was in the salon with Kyra…he thought he heard someone trying to get in through the back gate.”

“The murderer?”

“Possibly. Whoever it was couldn’t have got in then…but maybe came back later.”

“Hmm…” Bridget Locke swept her hands slowly through her long blonde hair and looked thoughtful. “There was one thing that Nathan said to me, just now, at the police station…which I thought was interesting…”

“What was that?”

“He said that there were a dozen red roses in the back room at the salon the night Kyra Bartos died.”

“Yes, I saw them. Part of Nathan’s romantic set dressing, imagine. Which, given the circumstances, is pretty sad.”

“No.”

“What?” Carole looked curiously at the woman.

“Nathan said the red roses had nothing to do with him. They were there when he arrived.”

“Didn’t he ask Kyra if they were hers?”

“Apparently not. He assumed they were something to do with the salon’s owner…Connie, is it?”

“Yes. Did he say whether he had told the police about seeing the red roses?”

“I asked him and he said he hadn’t. I got the impression they’d been asking more about where he’d been for the past three weeks, and in the next session they’re going to get on to the night Kyra Bartos died. But I thought the red roses were interesting.”

“Certainly. And one assumes that the police took them away from the salon as evidence?”

“I would think so, Carole. What were they then – a love token for somebody?”

“Perhaps.”

“So,” said Bridget Locke, “the two obvious questions are: who brought them to the salon? And who for?”

* * *

So far as Carole was concerned, the answers to those questions were very straightforward. As soon as she got back to High Tor, she fed Gulliver, hardly noticing what she was doing. Her mind was racing.

She could only think of one candidate as the bearer of red roses for Kyra. Apart from Nathan, there was another man who had fancied her. Or at least come on to her. Maybe the girl hadn’t been so immune to his attractions as she pretended.

Carole found the card and dialled his mobile number. Martin Rutherford answered immediately. She identified herself, and reminded him that he’d asked her to get in touch if she found out anything more about the murder.

“Well, I have found out something.” She told him about the red roses, and the fact that they hadn’t been brought to the salon by Nathan Locke.

“Ah. Maybe we should talk…?”

“Just what I was going to suggest.”

She looked at her watch. Just before five. Jude would surely be back soon. Maybe they’d have to delay their debriefing meeting at the Crown and Anchor. If she made an appointment to meet Martin somewhere at seven, they could both confront him. But that wasn’t going to be possible. Martin wanted to meet earlier. “The salon closes at six, and I have, er, other commitments for the evening.”

“So you’re there now?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll be right over.”

“Very well.” He sounded resigned to whatever the interview might bring.

After she’d put the phone down, Carole contemplated ringing Jude’s mobile. But no, she didn’t want to interrupt her neighbour’s meeting with the elusive Joe Bartos.

Besides, once again Carole felt that charge of doing something on her own. She’d find the truth and present it to Jude, neatly gift-wrapped. She’d show she was no slouch in this investigation business.

Thirty-Five

“Did boy say anything?” asked Jiri Bartos. “Yesterday you drive long time with him. Did he say anything about Krystina?”

“He said that he loved her.”

The old man snorted dismissively. “What boys of that age know about love?”

“I think they probably know quite a lot. They find it all very confusing, but they do know the strength of their own feelings.”

“Love often dangerous. Many murders committed for love.”

Wally Grenston, who had been silently topping up Jiri Bartos’s glass throughout their conversation, moved forward again with the Becherovka bottle poised. The old man waved it away. “No. Slivovitz.”

Wally nodded, returned to the drinks cupboard and produced a bottle of the famous Jelinek Plum Brandy. He poured some into a new glass, and handed it across.

“Not cold?”

“I’m sorry. It very rarely gets drunk.”

“Huh. Wife not like?”

Wally didn’t argue. He had long since reconciled himself to his henpecked image. With a nervous look around the room, he was no doubt anticipating trouble ahead, from his wife. It was surprising how much of a fug one man’s chain-smoking could produce. And Mim’s obsessively produced tea lay untouched. Wally Grenston might be in for a difficult evening.

And yet there was something about him that was relaxed, as if sitting drinking in a haze of smoke felt natural to him. It probably echoed previous evenings that Wally had sat with Joseph and other compatriots. Jude had the feeling that, if she wasn’t there, the two men would be speaking Czech.

Jiri Bartos once again focused his bright blue eyes on her. “Tell me more about boy. What he say he do night Krystina died?”

Jude replied accurately, but not completely. She recounted the timing of Nathan’s arrival at and departure from the salon, but she didn’t detail his unsuccessful love-making with Kyra.

“Huh. And boy not see anyone else around salon?”

“No. He thought he heard someone coming through the back gate at one point, but he didn’t see anyone.”

“Who could that be?”

“Well, putting on one side the explanation that it could just have been a burglar who was trying to break in…there might be an argument for thinking that the visitor was someone who could get into the salon by the back door…in other words someone who had keys.” Jiri Bartos did not challenge her logic. “So that would mean Connie Rutherford herself or the other stylist Theo or – ”

“Not Connie. She not go out that evening.”

“How do you know?”