‘I don’t know.’
‘Years. Must be.’
‘Must be.’
‘Yes. Well.’ She tapped her pen on the desk. ‘We don’t have to take all day about this. I’ll ask you the same questions I asked Danuta and Marysieńka. Then you can go.’
‘My answers won’t be the same.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I’ve been working for David privately. We had an arrangement.’
‘An arrangement?’
‘I didn’t tell the girls and I didn’t tell the agency, but yes. I worked for him and he was paying me direct.’
‘The girls said he cut their hours recently – changed their day?’
‘Yes, because I’d started working for him.’ Sally linked her hands on the table. ‘He didn’t need them.’
Zoë’s eyes went to the hands, to the little finger on the right, which was crooked. You had to know it was there – it was just the faintest deviation in the joint, making the finger turn in on itself. She dragged her eyes away, concentrated on her notes. It would be so easy to go back to that hand, back to the accident and the moment her life had changed. She tapped her biro harder on the desk. One, two, three. Snapped herself back to the interview. ‘When you say working, what were you doing exactly?’
‘He called me the housekeeper. I was cleaning, like before, but I was doing admin for him too. I’ve only done a few days so far.’
‘A few.’
‘Yes.’
‘Over how many days?’
Sally hesitated. ‘One. Just the one.’
‘One. You don’t seem sure about that.’
‘No, I am sure. Quite sure.’
‘What day was it?’
‘Last Tuesday. A week ago.’
‘Tuesday. You’re certain it was Tuesday?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you haven’t been back since?’
‘No.’
‘And you worked for his business?’
‘For the house. I was paying bills, hiring people to do jobs around the place.’
‘Lightpil House is huge. The gardens – he must have needed someone to maintain them?’
‘The gardeners come once a week. The Pultman brothers. They’re from Swindon.’
‘Pultman.’ Zoë noted it carefully. ‘And the pool man. He was from a company in Keynsham. Anyone else?’
‘Not that I can think of.’
‘Does David talk to you a lot?’
‘Not really.’
‘Not really? What does that mean?’
Sally picked at the label on the bottle. ‘Just means not a lot.’
Zoë’s attention wandered distractedly back to Sally’s hands. The faintly deformed finger. God, but the past was coming back in droves these days. Just like the snow outside the window in her dream. ‘So? Apart from today, the last time you were there was when?’
‘Last Tuesday. Like I said.’
‘You didn’t notice anything suspicious?’
Sally fiddled more with the label. ‘No. Not really.’
‘And he didn’t say anything about planning to go away?’
She shook her head.
‘You see,’ Zoë said, ‘everything in that house is telling me something’s happened to Mr Goldrab. Now, I’ll be honest, I’m floundering a bit. If he’s come to harm I’m stuck – because I don’t know where to start. So if you remember anything, anything at all – doesn’t matter how small or insignificant it is, just something that you can add to this – please say it because I—’
‘Jake,’ Sally said abruptly. ‘Jake.’
Zoë stopped writing. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘He turned up when I was there. David called him Jake the Peg.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Not very tall. His hair cut quite short. Maybe mixed race, I wasn’t quite sure.’
‘Drives a purple Shogun jeep?’
‘Yes. Do you know him?’
‘You could say that.’ She tipped her head on one side. ‘So, Sally. When Jake turned up, what exactly happened?’
‘It got nasty. There was an argument. Then he went.’
‘An argument? About what?’
‘Jake hadn’t been over for months – then he turned up and tried to use David’s gate code. I think that’s what it was about. I was in the office and they were in the hallway so I couldn’t hear it all. They were shouting for a while – then Jake left.’
‘He didn’t say he’d be back later in the week? No chance he could have come over again on Thursday to finish the argument?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t hear him say he would.’
‘We found a crossbow in the utility room. You saw that this morning, didn’t you – saw where we found it?’
Sally nodded.
‘You don’t know how it came to be in there, do you?’ She was monitoring Sally’s fingers. They were tearing at the label now. ‘Seems a strange place to put a crossbow. And then leave all your doors open and go out for a drive.’
‘It was always on the stand on the landing. I used to clean the case.’
‘You never saw him use it?’
‘No.’
‘And you haven’t been back to Lightpil since last Tuesday? And you weren’t there Thursday, for example? That was the last time anyone spoke to him.’
She shook her head. Wrapped her arms around herself as if someone had suddenly opened the window.
‘What’s making you nervous, Sally? Why the nerves?’
‘What?’
‘You’re shaking.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Yes, you are. You’re shaking like a leaf. And fidgeting.’
‘It’s been a shock.’
‘Goldrab going missing? The Lucozade’s supposed to help you with that. Isn’t it working?’
‘I didn’t expect to see you.’ She shivered, looked away again and hugged herself harder, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. ‘That’s all. Can I go now?’
Zoë didn’t speak for a moment or two. She twirled the pen thoughtfully. ‘I heard about the divorce,’ she said eventually. ‘Mum and Dad didn’t say, but you do hear things around this town, don’t you? I was sorry about it all.’
‘Yes. Well. That was a long time ago now.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, why did you leave?’
‘I didn’t leave. He left me.’
Zoë stopped twirling the pen. ‘He left you?’
‘Yes. More than a year and a half ago.’
She didn’t know what to say. She studied her sister – really studied her. An attractive woman coming up for middle age, but no stunning beauty. Her hair had lost the pure, lemony blonde streaks of childhood and was coarser now. The clothing under the tabard, though nice, was well-worn and threadbare. She was working as a cleaner – a cleaner and housekeeper for a pornographer. Julian had left her and she was bringing up Millie alone. Out of nowhere, an enormous, awful wave came up inside Zoë. An overwhelming urge to stand and hug her sister.
She coughed. Pushed her hair out of her eyes.
‘Right.’ She handed Sally the statement. ‘If you’d just put a signature there, you can go. Told you it wouldn’t take long, didn’t I?’
Chapter 10
When Sally had gone, Zoë sat staring into space. It was ten minutes before she shook herself, and began to think about Lorne and Goldrab again.
She started by doling out some tasks for her DCs. Then she leafed through her messages, checked her emails and put in a request to reclassify David Goldrab’s status as a misper. If he really was dead, the question remained: why? If he’d had a hand in Lorne’s death, could he have been killed because of it? In revenge? Lorne’s dad, maybe? Or had Goldrab known who Lorne’s killer was and died because he’d threatened to reveal what he knew? Or – and this was the eventuality she was struggling with – maybe Lorne’s connection to the porn industry really had stopped with the approach to Holden’s Agency and Goldrab’s disappearance was entirely unconnected. Either way she wouldn’t be completely at rest until she knew for sure he was dead – until she had seen his body on a slab in the mortuary, seen it cut down the middle the way Lorne’s had been. Perhaps then that jumpy thing in her would roll back a bit. Keep its peace.