“Oh, fuck,” interrupted Tompkins, no longer appearing at all cheery.
Karen smiled grimly. “Oh, fuck, is dead bloody right, Chris,” she said. “Mac has to be our number-one suspect and I don’t like it any more than I know any of you will.”
She paused, aware that they were all quietening down now, growing thoughtful, which was exactly what she wanted. She was after as much thinking as she could get. She wanted to jerk their brains into action every bit as much as her own.
“Right,” she said. “We need to get to Poole and check out for ourselves what’s happened. Chris, I want you and Ron with me on that.” She nodded towards Smiley. “You came before, you know the set-up, and you, too, Phil.” She waved one hand at Cooper who had been resolutely keeping an extremely low profile. “And we’ll take two cars.”
As she said that she was aware of somebody giggling but she wasn’t able to identify who it was. In any case, she was in no position to do anything about it. Instead she headed for the door, but she didn’t shut it before overhearing a whispered: “And no guesses who’s riding with who,” again from someone unidentifiable, followed by a louder: “Fuck off, wanker,” from Cooper.
Outside in the corridor she leaned briefly against the wall. “Damn,” she muttered to herself. She’d already had quite enough to worry about even before the discovery of Richard Marshall’s body. Her affair with Cooper was now an open secret. And she didn’t know what to do about it. She couldn’t give him up. She just couldn’t. And yet she feared that she was courting disaster by continuing with such a potentially dangerous relationship.
She travelled with Cooper in his car, which was exactly what everybody expected her to do. But she couldn’t help herself.
“No point in disappointing the troops,” said Phil with a grin as he opened the passenger door for her. She grinned back. Just the prospect of being alone with him in his car for the best part of three hours made her feel warm inside. At least he seemed not quite as troubled by the part he had played in Marshall’s conviction being overturned as he had a while ago. She suspected that knowing that Marshall was dead had made him feel better, even if he was concerned, like her, about who had killed the man.
He drove with one hand on the wheel, and the other, for most of the time, on her knee. It was companionable. It was easy. That was how it was between them. As if they were joined at the hip. She glanced at him as they made their way out of Torquay and headed towards Exeter. He seemed to feel her eyes on him and turned and smiled. She loved him. She really loved him. And she knew he felt the same. How could she walk away from him?
She was indulging herself, just enjoying the feel of being with him, relishing his company, when their brief few minutes of peace were shattered by the insistent ring of her mobile phone. She answered promptly. This was not a time when she could expect peace.
“Sergeant Craig Brown, Inverness,” said a distinctly Scottish voice. “I have some information for you concerning Mr. Sean MacDonald.”
“Yes?” Karen could not stop an anxious note creeping into her voice. She really was fond of MacDonald, and there was something about the Scots policeman’s words which made her think she wasn’t going to like what he was about to tell her.
“We have so far been unable to contact Mr. MacDonald,” continued Sergeant Brown. “But we have talked to neighbours who said that they last saw him three days ago loading a suitcase into his car and nobody seems to have seen or heard from him since.”
“I see.” Karen had been right. This was not what she wanted to hear.
“There’s more,” said Sergeant Brown. “On the grounds that he is being sought in connection with a murder enquiry we gained a warrant to enter Mr. MacDonald’s home. It seems that he must somehow or other have managed to acquire a gun. We found empty ammunition packets in the dustbin, of the type that would contain bullets for a 45-calibre handgun. We are still searching the house but so far have not found the gun itself. I’m afraid, Detective Superintendent Meadows, that it seems reasonable to assume that Sean MacDonald took the gun with him wherever he may have gone to.”
“I see,” said Karen again. She wasn’t surprised. Mac was an old military man. She had suspected he might still have contacts who could supply him with hardware if necessary.
She ended the call and briefly told Cooper the news, then she called back to Torquay Police Station.
“Get on to Dorset and tell them MacDonald is now definitely the number-one suspect,” she instructed. “And put out an alert nationwide. I want him found, and I want him found fast.”
As she ended the call she turned to Cooper.
“Oh, shit,” she said. “I really don’t want to put Sean MacDonald in jail.”
The crime scene had been more or less dealt with by the time they got to Poole. Richard Marshall’s body was on its way to the morgue in the nearby hospital for a post-mortem. The scenes-of-crime officers had already done their stuff.
The officer in charge, Detective Inspector Gordon Crawley, reported fully to Karen.
“Marshall was shot point-blank in the forehead,” he said. “Classic entry-and-exit scenario. Small hole in the front of his head and the back of it damned near blown off. We found the bullet lodged in the plaster of the wall just behind the spot where Marshall would have been standing.” Crawley gestured with one hand to an indentation in the cream-painted wall. “One of our guys is a bit of a weapons expert. Was able to tell right away that the bullet was from a 45-calibre handgun, a Browning or something like that.”
Karen looked around the hallway of the small neat apartment and through open doors to the bedroom, living room and kitchen beyond. Nothing seemed out of place. But then Marshall had been a very organized man, you had to be organized to get away with what he had got away with for so long.
“There’s no sign of a struggle at all,” Crawley continued, as if reading her mind. “It looks as if chummy opened his front door and got it straight in the head, of which there is not a lot left, as you will see if you stay on for the post-mortem tomorrow.”
Karen winced. Partly at the news that it was a 45-calibre handgun that had been used, the same specification as the ammunition found in Sean MacDonald’s house, and partly at the thought of attending an autopsy on a body with most of its head blown off. She had done it before. She had learned long ago to toughen up and deal with such gory situations. That did not mean, though, that she liked it.
At the same time the thought occurred to her that she would be able to stay overnight with Cooper, and they didn’t get many opportunities to spend the whole night together.
Then she promptly gave herself a mental telling-off. This was too serious a matter to allow herself to start thinking about her sex life. And she suddenly remembered that nobody had mentioned Jennifer Roth at any stage.
“She’s not here anymore,” explained Crawley. “She and Marshall lost their jobs at the marina when he was first arrested, but of course he owned this flat. And he would have made enough money from that newspaper article to keep everything going, I imagine.”
He glanced towards Karen as if looking for confirmation. She nodded briefly.
“We understand Jennifer — or Janine, I suppose I should say — recently took off to London looking for work,” Crawley continued. “She may even have lined up a job to go to. Certainly she’s not been seen around here for weeks, not since quite soon after the appeal, in fact. But we’re on the case, ma’am, I can assure you.”
Karen then gave Tompkins and Smiley instructions to cooperate with the Dorset police in their search for Jennifer and anything else that they could help with which might speed up the investigation.