Left You Dead

91

As the door slammed behind Rebecca Watkins, the wake of her perfume hanging in the air, Roy Grace and Polly Sweeney looked at each other.

‘Nice lady,’ Polly said. ‘Not.’

‘Her junior work colleague confides in her about her marital difficulties, so she lends a sympathetic ear, then goes and shags the woman’s husband. What does that say about her?’

Polly looked bemused. ‘She’s just a kind and caring person who thought it would be the best way to help her colleague through her difficulties?’

‘My thoughts exactly. Very altruistic of her.’ Grace looked equally bemused. ‘You know what surprises me the most about human behaviour, Polly?’

She shook her head. ‘What?’

‘It’s that the older I get, the less anything surprises me. When I first joined the force, I met so many old sweats who were such cynical bastards — as my dad was. I vowed never to become like them, that I would always keep my faith in human decency. But that gets harder with every passing year. I’m turning into my dad.’

‘My dad had an expression — he used to say it often after a particularly trying day.’ Polly’s father had been a copper, too.

‘Which was?’

‘Don’t make excuses for shitty people. You can’t put a flower in an asshole and call it a vase.’

Grace laughed. And suddenly realized it felt like a long time since he had. ‘I’ll remember that one.’ Then, serious again, he said, ‘So, what’s your assessment of Rebecca Watkins?’

‘A proper ice maiden. What a bitch.’

‘Well said, but personally I wouldn’t be so polite.’

Polly raised her eyebrows. ‘She’s hiding something.’

‘For sure. The question is, what? She’s definitely lying to us, but her arrogance — confidence — is telling me she’s not done anything illegal here — not committed any crime.’

‘Such as murdering Eden?’

Grace nodded. ‘My reading of her is she’s defensive of Niall, which indicates she doesn’t think he’s committed any crime.’

‘What do you think, sir?’

Grace took a moment to reply. ‘Something’s been bothering me from the very start. When Sandy vanished, I was frantic with worry that something bad had happened to her. In those first hours and days I was in a complete state of panic, particularly when it became evident she really had gone and wasn’t just staying away overnight. I don’t get any sense of panic — or even caring — from Niall.’

‘You loved Sandy,’ Polly said. ‘Seems like a different situation with Niall.’

‘And with Eden, too? If we follow the money, we have a trail going back some months of her moving assets out of her husband’s reach. Why is that? To shield her assets against a divorce? Or to build up a war chest to fight any divorce proceedings? Or...?’ His voice tailed off.

‘Or?’ she prompted after some moments.

‘Did she have some other plan?’

‘Such as?’

‘I don’t know,’ Grace said. ‘As I’ve wondered all along, there might be something else going on here, all being not what it seems on the surface. I suspect our surveillance on Niall Paternoster might lead us to the answer. What I—’

His job phone rang.

Answering it, he heard a voice he recognized, DI Lawrence Thompson, Staff Officer to Cassian Pewe.

‘Sir,’ he said, respectfully, ‘the ACC would like to see you as soon as convenient in his office.’

Grace quickly checked the calendar on his computer. ‘I can be there in fifteen,’ he said.

‘Thank you, sir. I will inform him.’

And stick your phone up his jacksie while you’re at it, Grace thought irreverently. He knew that Lawrence Thompson shared his views on Pewe. Not many employees of Sussex Police who’d ever encountered the man didn’t.