Left You Dead

85

Entering the porch, Roy Grace pressed the doorbell — one of the modern ones, a Nest, with a built-in video. Even the chimes they could hear faintly sounded expensive. He half expected a butler to open the door.

A dog yapped. Followed by a man’s voice calling out, ‘Kiko! Kiko!’

Moments later the door opened a crack, then wider. A lean man in his mid-forties with an equine face, a dishevelled mop of thinning fair hair covering the front of his head, stood there. He was dressed in a T-shirt, running shorts and trainers, and clutching one of the smallest dogs Grace had ever seen — it was barely larger than a rat — to his sweaty chest. Despite his clear recent exertions, the man smelled of cologne. Staring at them without an ounce of welcome in his expression, he said flatly, ‘Yes?’

‘Mr Ned Watkins?’ Grace asked and held up his warrant card, as did his colleague. ‘Detective Superintendent Grace and Investigating Officer Sweeney of Surrey and Sussex Major Crime Team.’

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘We would like to speak to your wife, Rebecca. Is she home?’ Grace said.

The dog, its eyes like wet marbles, was sizing them up.

‘What about?’ he asked.

‘Is your wife home?’ Grace repeated politely.

He hesitated then said, ‘She is, yes.’

‘We’d like to speak to her,’ Grace said.

‘Would you like to tell me what this is about?’ Ned Watkins said insistently.

‘It concerns a work colleague of hers, sir.’

‘The woman who’s gone missing?’

‘That’s correct, sir.’

He opened the door wider and stepped aside, ushering them in, still clutching the dog. Then he called out, quite stiffly, Grace noted, with no affection in his voice, ‘Becky!’

From somewhere in the house a voice, equally lacking in affection, called back, ‘Yes?’

‘It’s people from Sussex Police wanting to speak to you.’ Then he closed the door and set the dog down. It glared at Grace and Polly, yapped a couple of times, then scurried off, disappearing into a doorway.

‘OK!’ the voice called out. ‘Just on a call, be there in a sec.’

Ned Watkins looked at them both. ‘I’m just back from a run. Going to take a shower — I’ll leave you to it.’

‘Thank you, sir, we’re sorry to intrude.’

Without replying, Watkins walked down the hall and disappeared up the ornate, curved staircase at the far end.

The hall had a crisp, modern and arty feel. A polished oak floor with a black-and-white patterned runner carpet; abstract art on the grey walls; a chaise longue that looked like a giant lobster with its back hollowed out. Weird, Grace thought. Not something he’d want greeting him when he arrived home.

A woman appeared through the same doorway the dog had run into. She was barefoot, with razor-cut bleached blonde hair, dressed in stylish gym kit.

No mistaking her, Grace thought, glancing at Polly out of the corner of his eye. He recognized her instantly from the photographs Mark Taylor had sent through. An attractive, slim woman in her mid-thirties, she looked more like a model or an actress than someone who worked in a rather more mundane IT position in the insurance world.

She approached them, followed by the dog.

‘Good evening?’ she said, polite but unsmiling. Her voice had a faint accent. Normally good at regional accents, Roy Grace could not immediately place hers. A Midlands accent she was trying to suppress, perhaps.

‘Mrs Rebecca Watkins?’ Grace asked, again displaying his warrant card. He repeated his and Polly’s credentials. ‘We’d like to have a word with you — is there somewhere we can talk privately?’ Then, lowering his tone, he added, ‘Discreetly?’

A shadow flitted across her face. ‘What do you mean by that?’ She looked for a moment at Polly, a tad too closely. ‘Didn’t I see you at my office earlier this week?’

‘Yes,’ Polly said. Then, lowering her voice, ‘We’d like to talk to you about your whereabouts this afternoon, Mrs Watkins.’

She jumped. It was as if she’d just stuck a finger into an electrical socket.

There was a faint hiss and whirr from upstairs — the sound of a shower running, Grace thought. ‘If it’s not convenient here, perhaps you could accompany us to Police HQ?’

‘Here’s fine,’ she said stiffly. She indicated a door on their left, opened it, led them through and closed it behind her.

The detectives entered a lounge, bizarrely decorated in vivid colours. There was a life-size model tiger, a silver giraffe head on one wall and some very strange modern art on the others, as well as a white baby grand piano.

Rebecca Watkins gestured them to one of two curved blue sofas facing a glass coffee table, inside which — and Grace didn’t care to look at them too much — was an assortment of preserved spiders and beetles. She then closed the door firmly, ensuring it clicked shut.

Grace looked at the piano. ‘Do you play?’ he asked, trying to break the ice and to get a reading from her face.

‘My husband,’ she said dismissively, as if it were an affliction rather than a talent. She sat down opposite them, bolt upright, crossing her legs and then her arms.

Defensive pose, Grace noted.

‘Who’s the entomologist?’ Polly asked.

The woman threw a casual glance down at the table. ‘Oh, that’s my husband, too. Not my thing at all. Critters, yech!’ She shuddered.

Grace wondered, curious, if she didn’t like the insects why she allowed it to be a centrepiece of their living room. She didn’t look like a pushover to him.

‘So, officers, I must ask, do you know Bill Warner — he’s a cousin of mine?’

Grace nodded. ‘Yes, one of the best police officers I’ve ever had the privilege to work with.’

‘Lovely man.’

‘He is,’ Grace said. Then, lowering his voice a few octaves, he said, ‘Mrs Watkins, could you tell us your movements over the past four hours? As I said, if you would prefer to talk somewhere more discreetly we could go to Police HQ?’

She locked eyes with him fleetingly. ‘Why would I need to talk somewhere discreet? I’ve nothing to hide.’

‘OK,’ Grace said and glanced at his watch. It was 7.02 p.m. ‘If you could please tell us your movements since 3 p.m. today?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve been attending an IT seminar in Hastings for the past two days, which finished at lunchtime. There was no point going to the office — I work up at Croydon, as you know — so I took the afternoon off and went to Waitrose in Brighton to do my weekly shop. Then I came home, unpacked everything and began preparing our evening meal.’

Grace, focused on her eyes, asked, ‘You work for the Mutual Occidental Insurance Company?’

‘I do, yes. Your friend here knows this, I saw her there this week.’

‘With Mrs Eden Paternoster?’

‘Correct, yes.’

‘Did you go anywhere else during this time, this afternoon, Mrs Watkins?’

She shook her head. ‘No, like I said, I was here preparing supper.’

‘And your husband would be able to confirm that?’ Polly said.

Both detectives saw the hesitation in her face. ‘He only came home at about 6 p.m. and then went straight out for a run.’

‘What time did you go to Waitrose this afternoon?’ Grace asked.

‘I don’t know — around 3 p.m.’

‘And how long were you in the store?’

‘Half an hour — maybe forty minutes.’

‘Then you came back home?’ he continued.

The hesitation again. ‘Yes.’

‘The CCTV in the Waitrose store would be able to confirm the time you arrived and left,’ Grace said. ‘Are you sure you came straight back home?’

‘Yes, of course, I had stuff that needed to go into the freezer. What is this about?’

Grace reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a series of photographs, which he laid, facing her, on the coffee table. She was good, he thought, with sneaking admiration, she barely twitched a muscle. She just looked at them, completely dispassionately.

‘You can see in the first photograph a black-and-white Range Rover Evoque, the licence plate is the same as the one parked on your driveway. Is that your vehicle, Mrs Watkins?’

‘Yes.’ Still defiant.

‘And is that you in the other photographs?’

‘Yes.’

‘These were taken at approximately 5.30 p.m. today in the car park at Devil’s Dyke. You say you were at home all afternoon, after returning from Waitrose, that’s correct, is it?’

‘Obviously not,’ she said. ‘I forgot about that bit.’

Grace glanced at Polly. ‘We’re not here to make any moral judgements, Mrs Watkins. We are investigating the disappearance of Mrs Eden Paternoster, the wife of the man in these photographs with you. We believe she may have been murdered. You and Mrs Paternoster are work colleagues — you are her line manager, if I understand correctly.’

‘You do.’

‘Are you aware that Niall Paternoster, her husband, is a prime suspect in our murder enquiry?’

‘It’s been all over the news,’ she retorted. ‘It was front page on the Argus yesterday and headlined on Radio Sussex and BBC television. But if you think Niall was responsible, you are very wrong. He’s a sweet man who wouldn’t harm anyone.’

There was a knock on the door. Polly immediately leaned forward and grabbed the photographs, just as it opened.

Ned Watkins peered in. He shot a ‘still here?’ look at the detectives, then addressed his wife coldly again. ‘Off to poker — everything OK?’

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m going to my kick-boxing class shortly.’

‘See you,’ he said.

‘See you,’ she replied stiffly.

As he closed the door, the lack of affection between the two hung in the air like the vapour from dry ice.

‘Mrs Watkins,’ Grace asked, ‘where were you last Sunday, September the first, around 5.30 p.m.?’

‘I took our dog, Kiko, for a walk on the Dyke.’

‘Is that all?’ Grace persisted.

Outside they heard the roar of a high-powered engine starting, followed by what seemed to the officers to be several unnecessarily loud revs, as if Ned Watkins was signalling some displeasure. Then came a squeal of tyres and the vroom of the McLaren, they presumed, roaring off at speed.

Seemingly ignoring the sound, Rebecca Watkins gave Grace a long, hard stare. ‘I’m guessing you know the answer to that. So, before I say anything else, am I a suspect — is that what this is about? Should I have my solicitor present?’

Both detectives shook their heads. ‘No, you are not a suspect,’ Grace answered. ‘Not at this moment.’

‘Meaning?’ she rounded on him.

‘If you were a suspect, we would have arrested you,’ Grace said. ‘We are aware that you appear to be in some form of relationship with Niall Paternoster, who is a person of interest to us. The purpose of coming to see you is to be able to eliminate you from our enquiries.’

‘Or implicate me?’

Roy Grace stared levelly at her. ‘We need to make sure you didn’t help Niall Paternoster murder his wife, Eden, and dispose of her body.’

‘That’s absolutely ridiculous!’ she replied.

‘Then you have nothing to worry about. We would like you to come to the Police HQ in Lewes tomorrow morning to be interviewed as you are an important witness. What time would be convenient?’

‘I’m in a meeting at work all tomorrow morning — it’s the monthly appraisals of my team, we’re having to do them on a Saturday.’

‘Fine,’ Grace said. ‘What about tomorrow afternoon?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve meetings booked all afternoon.’

Grace stared back at her. ‘Would you prefer us to arrest you on suspicion of conspiracy to murder?’

There was a long, silent stand-off. Then she said compliantly, ‘Would 9 a.m. work?’

Grace glanced at Polly, who nodded. ‘OK, 9 a.m. If you go to reception at the front entrance of the Police HQ in Lewes, they’ll have a car park space reserved for you.’

‘You don’t seriously think I have anything to do with Niall’s wife’s disappearance, do you?’

‘So long as you don’t, Mrs Watkins,’ Grace said, ‘then you have nothing to worry about.’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Then I’m afraid I have to be off, I don’t want to be late for my class.’