A couple of days later, Kate visited for the first time. She seemed ill at ease. She told Lilian she had some news. She was pregnant. Lilian was genuinely delighted for her. She was well aware that Kate and Charlie had wanted a child ever since their marriage eight years earlier. Repeated fertility treatments had failed. They had more or less given up.
The pregnancy was unexpected, and a wonderful surprise, said Kate.
‘The only thing is,’ she said. ‘Well, we’re going to need all the money we can get now we are having a child. We still have a hefty bill from the fertility clinic to pay. And the house needs serious attention. The damp problem is getting worse. So I’m afraid Charlie won’t be able to continue handling your case, Kate. He can only take properly paid work now. He doesn’t have any choice.’
She also explained to Lilian that her own work as a freelance journalist had very nearly dried up since the closure of Today newspaper, which had been by far her primary employer.
‘And I’m likely to be doing even less work after the baby is born,’ she said. ‘We’re really sorry, Lilian.’
Even though she had doubts about Charlie’s capabilities, Lilian found herself saddened and disappointed. After all, Charlie and Kate were the only real friends she had, and they had stood by her, and supported her in every way, even giving her a roof over her head. Now they were going to have the baby they had so longed for, and she was locked up in prison. She just hoped they would not drift out of her life entirely.
Nonetheless, she told Kate it was fine, that she totally understood. And she did too, in spite of her own increasing sense of desolation.
One thought occurred to her.
‘There’s the Hockney,’ she said. ‘You and Charlie could sell it. Then I could pay him properly.’
‘Lilian, how can we?’ Kate asked. ‘Kurt is the legal owner. Charlie’s a lawyer. We can’t go around flogging what is in effect a stolen painting. To be honest, we don’t even like having the thing in the house.’
Lilian knew that Kate was right. She shouldn’t have made the suggestion. But she did think it ironic, considering all that Kurt St John had taken from her, that she could now be seen as a thief on top of everything else.
‘You will keep it for me, though, won’t you?’ she pleaded. ‘Please. It’s all I have.’
Kate said that they would keep the painting for her, of course they would, even though Lilian could see that she really wasn’t happy about it.
‘And Charlie is going to do his absolute best to make sure you get a really good legal aid solicitor,’ Kate assured her as she took her leave.
Lilian wondered fleetingly if such a creature existed. In any case, several weeks passed and she heard nothing from Charlie. But Lilian found that she didn’t care. She had become convinced that going to appeal was pointless. And she made no effort herself to find a legal aid solicitor. The truth was that even the unlikely event of having her sentence either quashed or reduced interested her very little. After all she would still be imprisoned on the outside. Kurt was out there somewhere waiting for her. He had made that quite clear.
The final straw came in the form of a major News of the World exclusive.
‘“She nearly killed him, but Kurt St John still loves his wife and wants her back. ‘I will always want her back,’ he says”.’
The story, which also predictably made much of Lilian’s alleged sexual preferences, was presented as the heart-warming lament of a devoted husband. But Lilian was chilled to the core. She could not eat, she could not sleep.
Her surprisingly sympathetic cellmate arranged an appointment with the medical officer who prescribed a mild sedative, to be administered nightly by prison staff.
Lilian had sunk to the depths of despair. She did not believe she could be helped. She did not want to be helped. She hid the tiny pills under her tongue, only pretending to swallow, instead collecting the drugs which, having made the most minute incision, she concealed inside her mattress.
She had no idea how many of them she would need to kill herself. The only thing she knew for certain was just how much she wanted to die.
Thirty-Three
Vogel and Saslow were silent as they drove away from the hospital heading for Westward Ho! to once again try to interview Gill Quinn. For quite a while all Vogel could think about was the sheer horror of watching another human being die.
He was pretty sure Saslow felt much the same as him. It was just that she dealt with that sort of thing better. Indeed, Vogel suspected that most police officers dealt with it better than he did.
As it turned out the DCI didn’t have long to dwell on the death of Jason Patel, nor even its significance.
DI Peters called with news of yet more evidence against Gregory Quinn. Vogel considered the significance of the additional information for a moment or two. Then he turned to Saslow.
‘Change of plan, Dawn,’ he said. ‘I reckon the time has come to arrest young Quinn. The Patel shooting could still be a red herring as far as our first murder is concerned. At the very least we need the chance to eliminate Greg from our enquiries.’
‘Should we get backup?’ asked Saslow.
Vogel agreed that they should. He didn’t think Greg Quinn would resist arrest. But he was a big strong chap, and it could be somewhat embarrassing if he did. In addition, the presence of a couple of uniforms when making an arrest always added gravitas, Vogel reckoned. Not to mention a little extra intimidation.
Perkins, and the surveillance team detailed to keep watch on Quinn, had reported that he was one of several Durrants employees working on a house the company was renovating in the East-the-Water district of Bideford.
Vogel and Saslow turned off the old Barnstaple road into the narrow lane leading to the riverside property just as a patrol car, with its blue lights flashing and siren wailing, approached from the opposite direction.
As soon as the two vehicles pulled to a halt, Gregory Quinn, wearing work clothes including steel-capped boots and a hard hat, emerged from the house and walked towards them. He took off the hard hat and stood just back from the pavement, waiting. He was a picture of resigned dejection, not even remotely resembling the rather full-of-himself young man Vogel had first encountered. And he rather looked as if he had been expecting them.
Whether or not this was a further indication of guilt had yet to be learned, but Vogel considered that it might be.
‘You didn’t need an escort, Mr Vogel,’ said Quinn quietly.
Vogel ignored that. ‘Gregory Malcolm Quinn, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of your father, Thomas Albert Quinn,’ he said.
Then he recited the standard UK police caution.
‘You do not have to say anything. But it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence.’
Quinn held out both his hands before him, as if expecting to be handcuffed.
‘I don’t think we need cuffs, do we, Greg?’ Vogel enquired quietly.
Quinn shook his head. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘But you are making a big mistake, Mr Vogel, I can tell you that. I didn’t kill my father. I couldn’t do a thing like that.’
Vogel knew it was still possible that the young man was telling the truth. But the evidence was now beginning to stack against him.
He instructed the uniforms to take Quinn back to Barnstaple and put him through the custody procedure. He and Saslow followed in Saslow’s car. On the way he called Morag Docherty to tell her about Greg’s arrest.
‘We’ll be sending a team round now to search his flat, of course,’ he said. ‘You’ll need to keep Gill out of the way as much as possible. And we will want to talk to her again later, but first I have a question for you to ask her as soon as you can. Certainly before the search team arrive, when you would be more or less forced to tell her about Greg’s arrest. It would be good to get in before she knows. I’m going to text you the number of the phone she used to text her son on the afternoon of Thomas’ murder. I want you to ask her who the phone belonged to.’