Vogel was mildly puzzled.
‘A few minutes later?’ he queried. ‘Didn’t you drop her at her door?’
‘Oh no. I dropped her just the other side of the playing fields at the back of St Anne’s Avenue. She certainly wouldn’t have wanted Thomas to see one of us with her...’
‘Would he have known who you were?’
‘I have no idea. Helen and I are quite well known locally. But in any case, Gill wouldn’t have wanted Thomas to see her with almost anyone she had met without his knowledge, indeed his permission.’
Vogel nodded.
‘However, you’re assuming she was unaware that her husband was already dead,’ he said.
‘I certainly am,’ Sadie Pearson affirmed. ‘But she wouldn’t have wanted any of her neighbours to see me, either. Just in case they recognized me. Don’t forget, her dealings with all of us here was a big secret. As with so many of our people. Helen and I don’t always agree with that, and certainly didn’t in Gill’s case. But that was how it was.’
Vogel turned to Helen again.
‘You said she had come to you in a hurry, in a panic, without any money, or credit cards, or her phone—’
‘Yes,’ Helen interrupted. ‘She told us Thomas had taken her phone again. He quite often did, especially if he was in a really bad mood, which was a not infrequent occurrence.’
‘I see. But, I was wondering, did you know if she had her house keys with her?’
‘No,’ said Helen. ‘I didn’t think about it actually.’
‘Neither did I,’ agreed Sadie. ‘But I kind of assumed she expected Thomas to be at home. It wasn’t a working day for either of them. She kept saying she wanted to stay here long enough to be sure he had calmed down.’
‘OK. What about Gill’s state of mind? How was she when you dropped her off?’
‘She was as all right as she could be,’ said Sadie. ‘Determined to go back to Thomas. In spite of everything. She was quite calm, Mr Vogel, if that’s what you’re asking.’
‘Partly yes. Did the two of you talk at all on the journey, or at the end of it?’
‘Not a lot. I told Gill to take care, and that we were always here for her. She could come to us any time. She said she knew that. But she had very little to say, really, which was pretty usual for her. Particularly when her initial panic had worn off. She got out of the car as soon as I pulled up and set off across the playing fields. She knew well enough that Helen and I thought it was high time she found a way of leaving Thomas. We were becoming more and more anxious about her safety. But, yet again, she wasn’t prepared to take that final step. I just turned the car around and drove back.’
‘You said she was calm. Was there anything about her behaviour which was in any way unusual or disturbing?’
‘No there wasn’t, chief inspector. And if you’re asking if she looked like a woman who was planning to go home and stab her husband to death, no, she most definitely did not. Thomas Quinn was the abuser in that relationship, Mr Vogel, not his wife. Gill Quinn is the gentlest of souls. She would be quite incapable of killing anyone.’
Meanwhile Gill and her son were settling into Greg’s home in Kipling Terrace, Westward Ho! a row of converted Victorian properties which in their entirety had once been the boarding school attended by Rudyard Kipling, author of The Jungle Book.
Gill had liked it when her son had rented a flat there. After all she was a schoolteacher. Her first love had always been English literature. And almost all her younger pupils were still fans of The Jungle Book. Kipling was now an otherwise unfashionable writer, with views largely regarded as inappropriate in the modern world, but Gill personally thought he had merely been a man of his time and was a vastly underrated author.
None of this was on her mind that Sunday morning. She had grabbed her son and held him close when she’d been taken to him at Barnstaple police station. She loved him so much. He was always so kind to her, and she knew him to be much more sensitive than he sometimes at first appeared.
For many years now, Greg had been her greatest solace in life. There was perhaps one other source of potential consolation, but Gill had always been unable to cope with any sort of romantic attachment outside her marriage. For a start, she had rather suspected that Thomas would kill her if she strayed. But in fact it was Thomas who had now been killed.
She had taken a shower, hoping to wash away not only any remaining spots of Thomas’ blood and the lurking taint of hospital and police station, but also the entire awful horror of the manner of his death.
It didn’t work, of course. But Greg had stopped at a chemist on the way to Westward Ho! and picked up the sedatives the police doctor had prescribed for her. Gill hoped that they would bring her sleep and hopefully block out the persistent images of her dead husband which were filling her head.
She did need help. Her somewhat hysterical outburst at the police station had been genuine enough. She really hadn’t known what she should say to the police, and had ended up feeling quite desperate. It was that which had turned her into a screaming, weeping wreck, as much as anything else. And she had certainly been in a state of some shock ever since it had all happened. But she had been pretty much aware of what was going on throughout. Apart perhaps from the time she’d been alone with the body of her husband after she had dialled 999. However, she had to admit, some of her unresponsiveness had been more a ploy to avoid answering unanswerable questions than anything else.
Greg had insisted she took over his bedroom. He had also lent her a T-shirt, which on her doubled as a rather baggy nightdress, and she felt clean and comfortable again. She hoped that rest would allow her to cope better, and had already climbed into Greg’s bed when he knocked and entered, carrying a cup of tea and some biscuits.
‘I thought you should try to eat and drink something, Mum,’ he said.
She thanked him and said that she would indeed try.
‘But I’m more interested in getting some sleep,’ she continued. ‘I’m about to take a couple of those pills.’
‘Right,’ said Greg.
He continued to stand by the bed staring at her. Saying nothing more. Gill was afraid he was about to burst into tears. They had barely spoken on the drive home or since their arrival at the flat. There was an unusual awkwardness between them. Gill supposed it was inevitable under the circumstances.
‘Look, Greg, we need to talk,’ she said suddenly. ‘I know that, and you know that. Maybe not now. But certainly later, when perhaps we will both feel better.’
‘Yes, I hope so,’ said Greg, a little obliquely. ‘And you will eat something, won’t you?’
Gill obediently ate half a biscuit, took a sip of tea, then swallowed two of her prescribed pills, washed down with a swig of water.
‘I’ll see you later, then,’ said Greg. ‘Sleep well.’
She watched him leave the room, shutting the door quietly, then allowed herself to sink into the pillows, hoping and praying for oblivion, at least temporarily.
Greg made his way into the sitting room, which offered sweeping views of the Atlantic Ocean out to Lundy Island and beyond, and stretched out on the sofa. He was aware of nothing beyond his own growing sense of anxiety and apprehension.
He couldn’t quite imagine how he and his mother were going to speak about anything. And he rather suspected it might be better for both of them if they didn’t. But they would, of course. He supposed that they had to.
He couldn’t be sorry that his father was dead. And he was pretty sure his mother wasn’t sorry either. But he was deeply sorry about the mess Thomas’ death had landed both him and his mother in.
From the moment he had received that call from the police telling him that his father had died in suspicious circumstances, and learned that Gill was at Barnstaple nick ‘helping us with our enquiries’, Greg had feared that she might be arrested. And then, once it became clear that he was also required to help with enquiries, and indeed was interviewed by that clever seeming DCI Vogel, he began to fear that he might be arrested instead. Or maybe as well as.