‘You’d better come in then.’
She led the two officers into the hall.
‘Wynne, get yourself down here,’ she shouted up the stairs. ‘It’s the police.’
An anxious looking man quickly appeared on the landing. His thinning grey hair was tousled and his eyes were red-rimmed. But at least he was fully clothed, in clean ironed jeans and a plaid shirt, and he looked considerably less dishevelled than his wife. However, he was clearly upset and uneasy.
He didn’t give Vogel or Saslow time to speak, immediately asking, ‘Have you come about Gillian? Is she all right? Where is she now? Is she still at the police station? I want to see her. Is she hurt? I want to help...’
‘Mr Quinn, we are investigating the murder of Gillian Quinn’s husband,’ Vogel recited sternly. ‘I am DCI David Vogel. DS Saslow and I are here to ask you some questions, and we are not able at this stage to give you information concerning Mrs Quinn, nor indeed anyone who might be helping us with our enquiries.’
Wynne Williams looked vaguely bewildered. ‘I just want to help,’ he repeated. There was the merest hint of Welsh lilt in his voice. His eyes were gentle and intelligent. He had a pleasant open face. He looked like a schoolteacher, and Vogel could easily believe that he was normally a good headmaster.
But none of this matched with the petulance of the angry outburst, presumably from him, which Vogel and Saslow had just overheard.
‘Good, so perhaps we could sit down somewhere and talk properly?’ Vogel suggested.
The other man nodded his head in a distracted manner, glancing uneasily at his wife who had so far remained silent, but had been looking on disapprovingly.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, get on with it, Wynne,’ she snapped.
And she made no attempt to follow when Wynne led Vogel and Saslow into a comfortable, if rather old fashioned, kitchen at the back of the house. There were chintzy soft furnishings, and orange coloured pine units, reminiscent of the previous century, lined the walls. A large orange pine table stood in the middle of the room.
Williams gestured for the two officers to sit at the table. He seemed about to join them, before remembering the niceties of hospitality that would probably come naturally to him in less stressful circumstances.
‘Would you like a cup of something?’ he enquired.
Vogel immediately answered in the negative for both himself and Saslow. He had just had a cup of coffee at the incident room, and he wanted to press on as quickly as possible. A busy afternoon and evening lay ahead.
Williams sat, his body language more than a little awkward, rubbing his hands together nervously in front of him.
‘I’d like to start by asking you your whereabouts yesterday afternoon,’ Vogel began.
Williams looked alarmed. ‘You want to know my whereabouts?’ he queried. ‘Me? I mean why? You don’t think—’
‘Just routine, sir,’ Vogel interrupted.
‘Oh yes, of course. OK. I was here, all day. We have a new curriculum for next term which needed sorting out. People think schoolteachers only work part-time. We actually work longer hours than almost anyone. And if you’re the head, well, it never stops really—’
‘I’m sure you’re right, sir,’ interrupted Vogel. ‘Can anyone vouch for that?’
‘Well, my wife, of course. Marjorie. She went shopping in the morning, Sainsbury’s, I think, but she was here the rest of the day.’
‘Thank you, sir. Now can you tell me how long you have known the Quinns?’
‘I’ve known Gillian for about seven years,’ responded Williams. ‘Since she came to Elm Tree. She trained to be a teacher as a young woman but abandoned her career to bring up her son, only returning when she felt he was old enough to look after himself. Like quite a lot of women do. I was appointed headmaster a couple of years later, and a couple of years after that the position of deputy head became vacant, so I appointed Gill. She’s a very good teacher, you know. Excellent. A good organizer too. And everybody loves her. The children. The other teachers. Everybody. It would be terrible if all this spoiled things for her, you know. Terrible. She could still have quite a career...’
Williams let the sentence tail off. Vogel wondered if he’d eventually started to listen to what he was saying. He studied the man wordlessly for a few moments.
‘Mr Williams, Thomas Quinn has been murdered,’ he said eventually. ‘As you are well aware. And, as you would expect in such circumstances, his wife is helping us with our enquiries. She is one of a number of people doing so, yourself included, but, as the wife of the violently deceased, she is very much a person of interest to us. I do hope you understand that this is likely to overshadow all other considerations and anything else in her life until this investigation is completed.’
Williams looked suitable chastened. ‘Yes. Of course. I didn’t mean to suggest...’
‘Mr Williams, you just spoke at length about Gill Quinn, but you have not yet mentioned the dead man at all. Surely you must have known him too, didn’t you?’
‘Not really, no. I hardly ever met him.’
‘Gill, or Gillian, as you call her, was your deputy. I would have thought you would have crossed paths with him on a number of occasions over the years, at events at the school for example. Is that not the case?’
‘Well, I met him obviously. But not often. He very rarely came with Gillian to anything at the school. He had his own work. I don’t think he was interested in hers.’
‘I see. Did you not socialize at all? You and your wife, maybe, with the two of them?’
‘Socialize? With Thomas Quinn? No. Definitely not.’
Williams’ voice changed slightly, becoming sharper, verging on the aggressive.
‘Was there any particular reason for that?’ asked Vogel conversationally.
Williams opened his mouth to answer, then shut it again. Vogel waited.
‘Yes there bloody well was a reason,’ Williams blurted out suddenly, as if no longer able to contain himself.
‘I couldn’t stand the man. He was a cruel manipulative bastard. He made Gillian’s life a total misery. He was a control freak. She had no freedom at all. And he hurt her too.’
‘How do you know all this?’ asked Vogel.
‘It was obvious,’ Williams replied. ‘Well, I thought it was obvious. She tried to hide it from me. But she couldn’t in the end, though she just told me that she and Thomas were having some problems which started after their boy had left home, and she was sure they would sort it out. Greg never got on with his father, apparently, and I don’t blame him. And Gillian was clearly very unhappy in her marriage, whatever she said. Some days when she came to work you could see that she’d been crying. But it wasn’t until last year that I found out he was actually violent towards her. It would have been just after the school reopened following the first lockdown, she stumbled coming through a door and I heard her cry out. She grasped her side as if she was in pain. She said it was nothing, that she twisted herself getting out of her car, but I just kept on at her. Eventually she admitted that Thomas had hit her, several times, and hurt her quite badly. I was horrified. I told her she should do something about it. That I would help her. She should see an expert, maybe report him to the police. We had become quite close by then, you see...’
The kitchen door suddenly burst open. In stormed Mrs Williams. Still wearing her grubby dressing gown and slippers. She was carrying a glass of what appeared to be red wine in her right hand. Vogel’s first impression had been correct, then. She was drinking, all right. And clearly no longer had any intention of remaining silent.
‘Close, close?’ yelled Marjorie Williams, who was probably somewhat more drunk than she had been earlier. Her words were now quite definitely slurred.
‘I should say close! Why don’t you tell the truth, you snivelling coward. You were fucking the bitch. In your office I shouldn’t be surprised. Up against the wall probably...’