“What about me?” said Daniels from the bed. “Will someone fucking untie me and let me go?”
Martina looked toward him anxiously, but Winsome ignored him and took her aside. She knew she should break the bad news to Daniels, but how do you tell a naked man tied to a bed by his mistress that his daughter has been murdered? She needed time to take in the situation, and it wouldn’t do any harm to put a few dents in his dignity along the way. “Care to tell me about your evening?” she said to Martina.
“Why?” Martina asked. “What is it?”
“Tell me about your evening first.”
Martina sat in the armchair by the window. “We had dinner at the Swan, near Settle, then we went to a club in Keighley. After that we came back to the hotel, and we’ve been here ever since.”
“What club?”
“The Governor’s.”
“Would they remember you? We can check, you know.”
“Probably the barman would,” she said. “Then there’s the taxi driver who brought us back here. And they’d remember us at the Swan, too. They weren’t very busy. But what are we supposed to have done?”
Winsome was more interested in the time after midnight, but any sort of an alibi for last night would be a help for Martina and Daniels. It would take at least an hour to drive from Skipton to Eastvale. “What time did you get back here?” she asked.
“About three o’clock.”
“No wonder you needed a lie-in,” said Winsome. “Long past bedtime. And you were together all that time?”
Daniels cursed and thrashed around on the bed. “That was the whole point of the exercise,” he said. “And this is police brutality. Untie me right now, you fucking black bitch.”
Winsome felt herself flush with anger and shame as she always did when someone insulted her that way. Then she calmed herself down, the way her mother had taught her.
“Can I get dressed now?” Martina asked, gesturing toward the bathroom.
Winsome nodded and looked at the naked man on the bed, the man who had just called her a black bitch. His daughter had been raped and murdered last night, and she had to tell him now. She couldn’t just leave him there and keep putting it off, much as she would like to.
Courses taught you only so much about dealing with unusual situations, and simulations even less. When it came right down to it, Winsome thought, there was no book to go by, only instinct. She wanted to hurt him, but she didn’t want to hurt him in the way she knew she was going to do. The image of Hayley Daniels lying there on the pile of leather like a fallen runner caused her breath to catch in her throat. Winsome took a deep breath. “I’m very sorry I have to tell you this, Mr. Daniels,” she said, “but I’m afraid it’s about your daughter.”
Daniels stopped struggling. “Hayley? What about her? What’s happened to her? Has there been an accident?”
“Sort of,” said Winsome. “I’m afraid she’s dead. It looks very much as if she was murdered.” There, it was said, the dreaded word that would change everything, and its weight filled the room and seemed to suck out all the air.
“Murdered?” Daniels shook his head. “But… she can’t be. It must be someone else.”
“I’m sorry, sir. There’s no mistake. She was carrying her driving license and an address book with her name in it.”
“Was she?… I mean, did he…?”
“I’d rather not say anything else until we get back to Eastvale,” Winsome said. “Your wife’s waiting for you there.”
Martina came out of the bathroom in time to hear this. She looked at Winsome. “Can I untie him now?” she asked.
Winsome nodded. Since she had told Daniels the news about Hayley, she had forgotten that he was still naked and tied to the bed. He seemed to have forgotten it, too. And somehow, humiliating Daniels didn’t matter anymore. She wasn’t a cruel person; she had simply wanted to quash his arrogance and hear an alibi from Martina before the two of them had time or reason to make anything up. In both these matters, she thought she had succeeded, but now she felt a little ashamed of herself.
Martina got to work on the scarves as Daniels just lay there, staring at the ceiling. Finally freed, he sat up and wrapped the bedsheet around himself and cried. Martina sat beside him, glum and flushed. She tried to touch him, but he flinched. He had curly dark hair, a Kirk Douglas cleft in his chin and sideburns reaching the line of his jaw. Perhaps he was the kind of man some white women liked to mother, Winsome thought, but he did less than nothing for her. He looked up at her through his tears like a penitent schoolboy. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That remark I made earlier… it was uncalled for. I…”
“I’m sorry, too,” said Winsome, “but untying you wasn’t my first priority. I needed to know why you were lying to your wife and where you were last night.” She pulled up a chair and sat down. “I’ve been trying to reach you all morning.”
Daniels got to his feet and pulled on his underpants and trousers. Then he put on a shirt and started tossing socks and underwear from the drawers into an overnight bag. “I must go,” he said. “I must get back to Donna.”
“Donna?” said Martina. “What about me? You told me you were going to leave her and get a divorce. We were going to get married.”
“Don’t be stupid. Didn’t you hear? I’ve got to get back to her.”
“But Geoff… What about us?”
“I’ll ring you,” Daniels said. “Go home. I’ll ring you.”
“When?”
“When? When I’ve buried my bloody daughter! Now bugger off, won’t you, you stupid cow. I don’t think I can stand the sight of you anymore.”
Sobbing, Martina picked up her bag, not bothering to go and pick up her toiletries from the bathroom, or anything she may have put in the wardrobe, and headed for the door. Winsome headed her off. “I need your name, address and phone number,” she said.
Martina glared over at Daniels. “Ask him, why don’t you?” She edged forward.
Winsome stood her ground. “I want you to tell me.”
Martina paused, then gave Winsome the information. Next she opened the wardrobe and took out a three-quarter-length suede jacket. “Mustn’t forget my birthday present,” she said to Daniels, then she was out of the door and off down the corridor.
Daniels stood with his grip in his hand. “All right,” he said. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
Winsome looked at him, shook her head slowly and led the way out.
Karen Drew’s body had been removed according to the coroner’s instructions, but the SOCOs were still clustered around the wheelchair at the cliff edge when Annie and Tommy Naylor got back after their visit to Mapston Hall.
The wind had died down a little, leaving a light tepid drizzle. The SOCOs had tented the area to protect it from the elements while they worked, collecting samples and bagging them for evidence. The surrounding area had been thoroughly searched in a grid pattern, yielding nothing of immediate interest, and no weapon had been found at the bottom of the cliff, or anywhere else. It could have drifted out to sea, or Mary, if she was the killer, could have taken it away with her.
Somehow or other, Annie thought, the mysterious Mary had slipped away into the morning and disappeared. She could be anywhere by now: anonymous in the London crowds, on a train to Edinburgh or Bristol. Had the murder been premeditated? If so, the odds were that she had worked out an escape route. If not, then she was working off her wits. But a stranger doesn’t just walk into a care home, ask to take out a specific patient and then slit her throat. She had said she was a friend, and whether that was true or not, there had to be some connection between this Mary and Karen Drew. To have any hope of finding Mary, they first had to discover as much as they could about Karen and the people she had known before her accident. It was best not to assume too much yet. While there were no signs of a struggle, it was also possible that Mary wasn’t the killer but had been another victim. What if Karen had been killed and Mary abducted, or killed and dumped in the sea, or somewhere else?