‘Pretty much, yes.’
‘Well, perhaps he just can’t at the moment,’ said Morag, truthfully enough. There seemed little doubt that Gill and her son were very close, the PC reflected, and she wondered what relevance that might prove to have as the investigation into Thomas Quinn’s murder progressed.
‘Maybe.’ Gill looked thoughtful. ‘So what is it you want to ask me then?’
That question from Gill confirmed, of course, that Docherty had been correct in guessing that she had been eavesdropping on her conversation with Vogel. The PC didn’t think that her side of the conversation would have given much away, but clearly it had aroused a suspicion in Gill Quinn that something was happening which affected not only her but also her son.
Morag had suspected for quite a while that Gill’s state of shock wasn’t really as extreme as the impression she’d attempted to impart. Now the PC was becoming pretty sure of that. Or, at least, that Gill had recovered considerably more than she was letting on.
‘I need to ask you whose phone you used when you sent Greg a text message on Saturday afternoon?’ Docherty queried.
‘Do you indeed?’ countered Gill. ‘Well, I’m not answering any of your questions until you answer mine. Something’s going on with my son. Where is he? That’s what I want to know for a start.’
Docherty wondered whether she could risk lying again. But she was an experienced officer. She knew well enough that lies usually landed coppers in hot water. Her earlier fib had been oblique and almost certainly explicable. Another would be far too dangerous. But she made one more attempt to first get the other woman to tell her whose phone she had used.
However Gill Quinn was intransigent.
‘You’ll get nothing from me until you tell me where my son is,’ she insisted, shaking her head ferociously.
‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ said Docherty. ‘But if you would just cooperate with me...’
‘Well that’s a giveaway, isn’t it?’ Gill snapped. ‘Greg’s been arrested, hasn’t he?’
The search team was on its way. Docherty would in any case then have to tell Gill where her son was, in order to explain their presence and that no search warrant was required. She certainly suspected, in the light of her new sharp demeanour, that Gill would ask for one.
‘Yes, you’re quite right,’ agreed the PC, a tad reluctantly. ‘Greg has been arrested and is currently being interviewed at Barnstaple police station.’
‘As I thought,’ retorted Gill sharply. ‘And I will answer your question now. I actually don’t know whose phone I used.’
Not that again, thought Morag. Vogel had warned her of this, nonetheless it was annoying.
‘Look Gill,’ said Morag, putting on her most conciliatory voice. ‘If you want to help yourself and also help Greg, I really suggest that you cooperate...’
‘It isn’t a question of not cooperating,’ the other woman interrupted. ‘I am cooperating. I have told you I don’t know whose phone I used, and that’s the truth.’
‘Would you mind explaining that.’
‘Certainly, dear.’
My goodness, thought Docherty, Gill Quinn had made some recovery. What was with the ‘dear’, all of a sudden? She sounded condescending. And even, perhaps, a tad superior. Docherty feared she hadn’t handled this well. She waited in silence for Gill to continue.
‘I don’t know whose phone I used because it belonged to somebody I met in the street,’ said Gill Quinn. ‘I needed some fresh air. I left Helen’s House just to go for a walk around the town and look at the shops. Anything to try to clear my head. When I started to think straight again, I remembered that I’d arranged to meet Greg at Morrisons that morning. I knew he’d be worried sick about me, so I approached a stranger, a woman I’d never seen in my life before as far as I’m aware, and asked her if I could borrow her phone to send my son a text. I told her I’d inadvertently left my own phone at home. That was true, of course, except that it wasn’t inadvertent.’
Gill chuckled, in a bitter sort of way.
Docherty thought about the CCTV in wide use throughout Bideford town centre.
‘Where were you when you used this woman’s phone?’ she asked.
‘I have absolutely no idea,’ Gill replied quickly. ‘I have very little idea where I was all afternoon, as a matter of fact, or what I was doing.’
‘But you’re quite sure now that you left Helen’s House, are you?’
‘Oh yes, for at least a couple of hours. Probably more. Maybe three hours or so.’
‘Do you know what time you left the House?’
‘Well, I didn’t take any real notice of the time. But let’s see... We’d had lunch. A while before, I think. I expect I left about two. Something like that.’
‘And when you said you walked around the town, do I assume you meant Bideford?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘But how did you get to Bideford. I understand you didn’t have your car. You had no money. You didn’t have your wallet.’
‘I suppose I walked.’
‘It’s a fair walk.’
‘I’m a good walker. But maybe I didn’t go to Bideford. Maybe I just walked around Northam, or into Appledore. I really don’t know. You saw the state I was in on Saturday.’
Morag had seen, all right. And, perhaps unfairly, she was beginning to wonder if even then at least some of Gill Quinn’s state of shock had been an act.
‘That was after your husband had been killed, and we’d just found you covered in blood sitting with his dead body,’ she pointed out.
‘Yes. I was pretty shaken before that, though. You know what he did to me.’
‘All right, but why did you go back to the House?’ asked Docherty.
‘I don’t understand, why wouldn’t I?’
‘Well, you reported your husband’s death at six-forty-something. If you stayed out for three hours or so you couldn’t have been back at the House for long before you left again to go home. It doesn’t make much sense, does it?’
‘I hadn’t made up my mind what to do when I returned to the House. My head was all over the place.’
‘Then what made you decide that you wanted to go home, after all?’
‘Who knows? I always did go back in the end. The alternative was to admit that I was a victim. And I’ve never been able to admit that, you see. Even though I was, of course.’
Docherty was further surprised by Gill’s lucidity, and more than ever convinced that the other woman now knew exactly what she was doing and saying.
‘Gill, you must realize that what you have just told me suggests that Helen Harris, Sadie, and the other women residents at the House, have all lied to the police, in order to give you an alibi.’
‘Oh no, dear, Helen and Sadie would never lie. Not to anyone, and certainly not to the police. I’m sure they were just mistaken. As for the other women, I expect they just didn’t realize I’d gone out. It’s not a prison there, you know.’
‘I realize that, Gill,’ said Docherty. ‘But I would like to ask you if you realize that you have just totally destroyed your own alibi?’
‘Oh yes, I do realize that,’ agreed Gill.
‘And the timescale you have given me means that you almost certainly would have had time, even on foot, to return to your home in St Anne’s Avenue, kill the man who had abused you for so long, and then return to Helen’s House, albeit apparently without anyone there realizing you had left. Do you agree that is so?’
‘Oh yes, dear,’ Gill Quinn agreed. ‘I had motive and opportunity. Isn’t that what you say in the police force? But I didn’t kill Thomas, of course. Neither, I can assure you, did my son. And you won’t be able to prove that either of us did.’
Thirty-Four