‘We just want to make sure we’ve got everything right,’ said Annie. ‘The boss is a real stickler about reports and that sort of thing.’
Robert Tindall came back in with a tray bearing a teapot, cups and saucers, milk and sugar. ‘Ah, darling, here you are,’ he said. ‘Feeling all right?’
‘A little better,’ said Maureen. ‘I think my rest helped.’
Her husband put down the tray and patted her arm. ‘Good. Good.’ He glanced at Annie. ‘I don’t suppose this will take long?’
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ Annie said. Gerry took out her notebook and pen.
Maureen Tindall peered at her wristwatch. ‘What time is our appointment with Dr Graveney, darling?’ she asked.
‘Not until half past four. We’ve got plenty of time.’
‘Only we mustn’t be late. We’ll have to set off in good time.’
‘We will, darling, we will.’
‘Dr Graveney?’ Annie said.
‘Outpatient care,’ said Robert Tindall. ‘Maureen is still rather very much in shock, as you may have noticed.’
‘A psychiatrist, then?’
‘Yes,’ said Tindall, through gritted teeth. ‘A specialist.’
He clearly didn’t appreciate Annie’s encroaching on their private affairs. Still, plenty of people were embarrassed about seeing shrinks. Annie had felt that way herself after her rape some years ago. In retrospect, though, she thought the visits had done her some good. They had at least speeded her reintegration back into some approximation of normal life. Had she been left to her own devices, she would probably still be wallowing in guilt, anger, anxiety, shame, alcohol and God only knows what else.
‘I’m afraid I still find it very difficult to accept the reality of what happened,’ Maureen said. ‘I find myself constantly dwelling on those moments in the churchyard, reliving them. My dearest Laura. I don’t sleep well. It always seems to be on my mind like those tunes you can’t get rid of sometimes, only much worse. Dr Graveney is trying to help me overcome all that. To make the pictures go away.’
Good luck with that, Annie thought. ‘Then I wish both of you every success. I can’t imagine how terrible it must be reliving events like that over and over.’
‘It’s not even so much the images,’ Maureen said, ‘but the feelings that go with them.’
‘I understand,’ said Annie. And she did. ‘I’m sorry if our visit causes you any more pain. There’s a just a few small things we’d like to go over. Not the event itself, you understand. Just background.’
‘But you’ve got the man, haven’t you?’ said Robert Tindall. ‘The one who did it. He shot himself, didn’t he?’
Annie noticed Maureen flinch at the word ‘shot’. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s all pretty well cut and dried. What we don’t have is any kind of motive. From all we’ve been told, Martin Edgeworth just wasn’t the kind of man to do what he did.’
‘Something must have pushed him over the edge,’ said Robert Tindall.
‘Exactly. That’s what we’re trying to find out. If he had some connection with anyone in the wedding party, for example. And if there was anyone else involved.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘Yes. There are one or two anomalies, and there’s a remote possibility that he had an accomplice.’
‘You must understand, we didn’t actually see anyone,’ said Robert.
‘Everything was too confusing,’ Maureen added. ‘We didn’t know what was happening.’
‘Of course,’ said Annie. ‘I’m just trying to find out whether you had any sense at all of there being more than one person up there.’
‘Well, the shots seemed to come rather fast,’ said Robert. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever been under fire in a battle situation, but I rather imagine that’s what it would feel like. So I suppose there could have been more than one. But surely your forensics people could tell you all about that?’
‘What about the other matter, his connection with the wedding party?’ Gerry asked. ‘What might have pushed him over the edge?’
Robert looked at her askance. ‘How could we possibly speculate on something like that?’
‘What DC Masterson means,’ Annie went on, ‘is whether there’s anything you can think of, anything at all, that might have given someone like Martin Edgeworth a reason to do what he did.’
‘But we knew nothing about this Martin Edgeworth,’ Robert protested. ‘And it seems to me there was no reason any sane person could grasp what he did.’
‘You mentioned predators earlier,’ Annie said. ‘Were you aware of anyone like that causing Laura problems?’
‘No. At least she never said anything. Anyway, she’d left that part of the business behind, the modelling.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Annie. ‘Is there anyone from Laura’s past who you think might wish to do her harm, even after a very long time?’
‘Revenge being a dish best eaten cold?’ said Robert.
‘Something like that.’ Annie noticed that Maureen Tindall seemed distracted. It could have been the Valium, or the general state of her nerves.
‘Mrs Tindall?’ Annie said. ‘Can you think of anything? Anyone?’
Maureen seemed to snap back from a long distance. ‘Who, me? No, no, of course not. No one.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ she snapped. ‘Laura was not the kind of person to go about making enemies.’
‘That’s not what I mean,’ Annie said. ‘And if I gave you the wrong impression, I apologise. I’m not saying she did anything wrong to attract the attention of someone like Martin Edgeworth. We don’t even profess to understand his motivation. But it could have been a simple thing that set him off. Someone who did what he did doesn’t exactly see the world in quite the same way as the rest of us.’
‘We’ve never heard of the man before,’ said Robert Tindall. ‘And Laura certainly never mentioned him.’
‘Would she have?’
‘We like to think she would have confided in us if something, or someone, was bothering her, yes.’
‘We do know that he seemed interested in the wedding,’ said Gerry. ‘He had newspaper clippings of the announcements. He put them in a scrapbook.’
Maureen took a handkerchief from her sleeve and put it to her mouth. ‘Why would he do something like that? That’s just sick.’
‘Good lord,’ said Robert. ‘So he was stalking Laura?’
‘Not necessarily. But he knew the details. It wasn’t a spontaneous assault. That’s what makes us think there could have been someone in particular in the wedding party he wanted to hurt, and hurt very badly, and he killed the others as a sort of smokescreen, to distract us from what he really intended. Naturally, we thought first of Laura and Ben, though Ben wasn’t killed immediately.’
Maureen shook her head. ‘It can’t be,’ she whispered. ‘It can’t be.’
Annie and Gerry exchanged glances. ‘Can’t be what?’ Gerry asked.
‘Wh — what you say it is. Something Laura did, or one of us did, or something he thinks we did. Obviously, I can’t speak for everyone else, but as far as Robert and I are concerned, that just sounds ridiculous.’
‘There are still so many things about all this we don’t understand,’ Annie said, ‘but that’s probably because we don’t have all the facts yet.’
‘Can’t you just let it be, now it’s over and he’s dead?’ said Maureen. ‘Let us be? We just want to get on with our lives. To heal.’