“So? Spain’s a civilised country. Our EU brothers and all that. Besides, I had a bit of business back home anyway, so—two birds. I pulled a few strings and hopped on the first cheap package jet out of Málaga. Rang you from Heathrow.”
“Why the big hurry?”
Allardice regarded him for a moment with that expressionless gaze he’d used to such effect during his years as a copper on a tough patch. “Because I warned ’em when they locked her up that she was one loopy bitch. They should have thrown away the key but she was clever. Clever enough for there to be an element of doubt about why she did it.”
“The amnesia plea you mean?”
“Amnesia my arse,” Allardice snorted. “She did it and she knows full well she did it. That was the best she could come up with to wriggle out of a cast iron murder charge. She attacked and killed Callum Perry and tried to get away with it. End of story.”
O’Neill paused. “She keeps bringing up the case she was working on at the time,” he said carefully. “I’ve been looking into the files. A dead prostitute. Remember that one too?”
“I may have gone soft around the middle old son but that doesn’t mean I’ve gone soft in the head. ’Course I remember. Jacks was just trying to make a name for herself—you know how they get. They watch too many TV shows and think it’s all about the geeks. It was just another hooker made a bad decision and paid the price for it. End of story. Jacks just couldn’t face being wrong.”
O’Neill frowned. “Did she even know Perry?”
Allardice took a long pull on his cigarette and shook his head as he exhaled. “Not as far as we could work out. He was just a barman up the East End. Jacks claimed he’d asked for a meet but we couldn’t find anything to support that. She said she didn’t know what he wanted and next thing he’s dead.” He gave a short laugh. “Difficult to claim it was an accident when she stabbed the poor bugger about eighteen times, so she comes up with all that crap about not being able to remember.”
“And you never found out what Perry might have known in relation to the case?” O’Neill asked. He fixed his former boss with a cool eye. “If this is going to come apart on me Frank, I’d like a heads up.”
“Not a sausage,” Allardice said firmly. “Whatever he knew—if there was anything for him to know in the first place—he took it with him. Kelly Jacks made sure of that.”
44
“You look . . . pensive,” Lytton said. He sat relaxed, draping an arm along the back of the empty chair alongside him.
“Wouldn’t you in my position?” Kelly asked. They were in the members’ bar at the top of the modern grandstand. Midweek with no event in progress the place was almost deserted and the view was stunning.
Directly beneath them were the private boxes with their slanted glass walls looking out over the track. The boxes were set slightly forwards of the grandstand seating to give unobstructed sight of the action. Here the privileged could go from expensive lunch to closeted luxury without ever having to mix it with the hoi polloi below.
Kelly glanced at the debris of an excellent meal which had yet to be cleared from the starched tablecloth and admitted, “If this is being on the run I could get to like it.”
Lytton smiled, then asked, “You really think you’ll get to the bottom of this when the police haven’t?”
“I don’t think they’re trying,” she said levelly. “It’s too tempting to go for the obvious explanation and forget the rest. And I worked for the police don’t forget. I was a crime-scene specialist for nearly ten years so I know the real cleanup rate not just the figures massaged for public consumption.”
He nodded and reached for his glass of imported lager. Kelly had started out on sparkling water and was now drinking tea. They sat in comfortable silence until he asked suddenly, “There was something in the news reports about you—from back then—I didn’t quite understand.” Only his raised eyebrow made it a question.
Kelly forced herself not to tense up. “And what was that?”
“Your nickname,” he said. “They said you were known as ‘the blood whisperer’. It’s not a term I’ve ever come across.”
She smiled. “I’m not surprised. It was more a bit of poetic licence than anything else.”
He gestured with his glass. “Go on.”
She took a moment to find the right words, neither too serious nor flippant. “Evidence speaks to me,” she said at last simply. “Maybe I learned how to listen better than most.”
“And what did Vee’s workspace have to say to you?”
“It tells me the kind of person she was.”
“Which is?”
Kelly hesitated again, choosing her words carefully. For all his apparent detachment he still referred to his wife—still thought of her—in the present tense.
“Organised,” she said, “maybe to the point of obsession. She seemed to write everything down more than once. There was a diary and a day-planner—both were filled in and kept up to date. So I would say . . . good on the details, neat, sharp, vain.”
“Vain?”
Again Kelly paused. How do I say that she doesn’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d ruin her good looks by putting the barrel of a gun into her mouth and blowing the back of her head off? Pills yes. Maybe even a hosepipe from the car exhaust. But a rifle? No.
“This suit as a backup for a start. Spare cosmetics and hosiery in her desk drawer,” she said instead. “Clearly she wasn’t the kind of woman who’d be happy being seen out with smudged lipstick or laddered tights.”
Lytton’s mouth twisted. “I’d say you’ve got her taped,” he said. “She never goes . . . never went anywhere without full make-up and her BlackBerry, like a shield and armour. She loved that thing—said the blue matched her eyes. I swear she’d even have it with her in the bath.”
He stopped suddenly aware of what he’d just said. Kelly stepped easily into the awkward moment.
“That would be the ultimate definition of multitasking,” she murmured. She lifted the lid of the teapot and gave the contents a swirl. “So where is it?”
“It’s . . .” His voice trailed off. “You know, I’ve no bloody idea,” he said at last, surprise in his voice. “I’ve already been through her study at home and it wasn’t there or at the apartment. And we didn’t find it in her desk today—not that she would leave it here. I’ve known her turn around practically at the front gates and drive back to town if she’d forgotten it.”
Kelly said nothing. Her mind had already jumped ahead but she realised that voicing her suspicion—that if the device wasn’t to be found somebody must have taken it—would bring an instant denial. This she had to leave him to work out for himself.