Snapshot

62

‘Is he still at the detention centre?’ Challis asked.

Lottie Mead shook her head. ‘Probably at home,’ she said. ‘Charlie’s generally home by six.’

‘Does he know you’re here?’

‘No! And you mustn’t tell him, not until he’s locked up!’

They were in the victim suite because the interview rooms were being used and they couldn’t question a potential witness amid the files and wall displays of the incident room. Challis was leaning against the wall in his habitual pose, Ellen was perched on the edge of a straightbacked chair, and Lottie Mead sat jittery and scowling at one end of the room’s ugly sofa.

Ellen reached out and touched the other woman’s knee reassuringly. ‘You’re safe here, Mrs Mead.’

Lottie Mead, wearing jeans, boots and an expensive costly-looking jacket, stared glumly at her feet, then up. Challis studied her, recalling the civic function at which she’d given nothing away but allowed Charlie to do all the talking. She had narrow features, tightly compressed, as if she’d never revealed many emotions and was unused to it now. ‘You don’t know what he’s like. You got shot because of him,’ she said, and made as if to touch Ellen.

Challis watched and listened. Lottie’s South African accent was strong: she’s Afrikaner South African, he guessed, not English, poorly educated, unconfident around powerful people. She looked demoralised, and he wondered if Charlie Mead had kept her subjugated. Yet she must have found a spark of courage and will, enough to seek help from Janine McQuarrie-who typically had given her poor advice and false courage.

‘Why didn’t you contact us sooner? Another woman died.’

‘I was scared.’

‘Scared,’ Challis said flatly.

‘Hal,’ Ellen said warningly.

‘Really scared,’ Lottie Mead said, looking at the floor again. ‘I thought he’d find out and kill me.’ Her cheeks were damp when she raised her head. ‘But at the same time, he’s so arrogant he believes I’m too scared to cross him.’

Challis’s mind was racing, imagining this woman’s life with Mead, a man who ruled her thoughts and actions. ‘Tell us again about Janine McQuarrie. Your name’s not on her client list.’

‘I used my maiden name. Charlotte Strydom.’

Challis looked. The name was there. He found the case notes and leafed through them. ‘You started seeing her only a few weeks ago.’

‘Yes.’

The notes were typically cryptic and dashed off: abbreviations, simple words and phrases followed by question marks, virtually unreadable handwriting. ‘What sort of counselling were you seeking from her?’

‘My marriage was unhappy.’

As he often did with interview subjects, Challis let scoffing and doubt rule his features. He waited. Lottie Mead said, ‘Charlie’s being sent to manage a prison in Canada. I want to stay here.’

Challis continued to stare at her, wondering where this was going. Lottie Mead shifted about on the sofa. ‘I was scared.’

‘Scared of how he’d react if you said you didn’t want to go with him?’

Mead’s wife looked astounded that Challis could be so naive. ‘Scared he’d kill me.’

‘Kill you,’ said Challis disbelievingly. It wouldn’t be the first time that someone had used a major investigation to make false accusations against a spouse.

‘You don’t know what he’s like! He has to get his own way. He hates to be crossed. It was bad enough that I was seeing Janine, but telling him I wouldn’t be going to Canada with him, well, he’s not the kind of man to take it lying down.’ She paused. ‘He’d make it look like an accident.’

Challis and Ellen exchanged doubtful glances. ‘So you saw Janine McQuarrie for advice. Did you tell her of your specific fears concerning your husband?’

‘Some.’

‘Some. Did she tell you to leave him?’

‘Yes.’

Challis watched Lottie Mead for a moment. The next question was obvious: ‘Did Mrs McQuarrie then confront your husband?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you ask her to?’

‘God no! That would be a death wish.’

Challis nodded. Janine had acted true to form. But would a reasonable man respond by hiring a hitman to kill her? Would an treasonable man, for that matter? So far, all that he and Ellen had was another situation similar to Raymond Lowry’s, and there were bound to be still others.

‘So you think he killed Janine because you’d gone to her and she’d confronted him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he say or do anything to you?’

‘He hit me.’

‘Is that all?’

‘He told me to stop seeing Janine.’

‘And did you?’

Lottie Mead sneered a little. She was an unappealing woman. ‘You don’t know my husband. Of course I did, and she was dead a few days later.’

‘Did he tell you he was going to have her killed?’

‘He didn’t have to. He didn’t care what I thought or knew. He knows I’m scared of him.’

‘Yet you had the courage to see Janine, and now you’ve come to us.’

Lottie Mead shrugged. Ellen leaned into the gap between them. ‘We need more, Mrs Mead. You’re not making a strong case.’ She paused. ‘Forgive me for asking this, but have you and your husband been attending sex parties?’

Lottie Mead straightened in shock, which became outrage. ‘How dare you. Certainly not.’

‘Janine McQuarrie and Tessa Kane were murdered by the same man-you say under orders from your husband. The only thing we can find that links both women is the sex-party scene.’

‘No, absolutely not,’ said Lottie Mead, shaking her head violently. ‘Charlie had them shot, but not because of that!

‘What, then?’ said Challis. ‘Spit it out, for God’s sake.’

Lottie flushed. She examined her bony hands sulkily. ‘They both knew things-’ she muttered ‘-or Charlie thought they did.’ She looked up. ‘Don’t you see? I went to Janine to talk about my feelings, Charlie thought I went to her to talk about facts. That’s why he killed her. And Tessa Kane.’

‘What facts?’

Lottie Mead was absorbed with her hands again. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘I think it does,’ said Ellen harshly. ‘We will talk to your husband eventually-we’ll have to-but we’ve also talked to other husbands just like him, who’d been challenged by Mrs McQuarrie. What makes your husband so special?’

Lottie Mead remained stubbornly uncommunicative, and Challis, watching her closely, realised that she was more calculating than bewildered or afraid, as though she had things to hide. The murder of Tessa Kane suddenly made sense. He remembered her file on the Meads-there had been many gaps and question marks. Had she uncovered information that she’d not yet recorded?

‘Tessa Kane was writing a story on you and your husband,’ he said. ‘Is there something you’re not telling us?’

Lottie Mead was glumly mute. They waited, watching her. The little bar fridge switched on and whirred softly. The room seemed cloying suddenly. ‘It happened a long time ago, in South Africa.’

They gazed at her without expression. ‘The apartheid era,’ she said eventually.

‘And?’

‘Me and Charlie worked for the government.’

She explained haltingly. It was a story of the interrogation, torture and summary execution of black leaders, for which her husband had displayed a certain proficiency. He’d almost been outed during the hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but friends had covered up for him. ‘It was a long time ago, everyone’s changed now, but he didn’t want it made public’

‘What was your role back then?’

‘I was in a different department,’ said Lottie Mead, not meeting their gaze.

‘Did you tell Janine McQuarrie about your husband’s past?’

‘I can’t remember.’

Challis was tiring of her evasions. ‘Did you tell Tessa Kane?’

‘No, I wouldn’t let her in the door.’

‘Did Ms Kane challenge your husband?’

‘She might have done. He doesn’t tell me anything,’ Lottie said. She paused. ‘Are you going to arrest him?’

‘We’ll talk to him,’ said Challis cautiously.

‘He’ll get away with it, he always does.’

‘We know the identities of the killers. Do the names Trevor Vyner and Nathan Gent mean anything to you?’

‘I’ve never heard of them, but Charlie was in charge of a prison before this. He would have met all types, including killers for hire.’

‘We can check,’ Challis said. He passed her photographs of Vyner and Gent. ‘You might not know the names, but do you know the faces?’

She froze over Vyner’s photograph. ‘He was at the house this afternoon, looking for Charlie!’ Her eyes danced, excited and alarmed. ‘He looked angry.’

‘What did you tell him?’

Lottie Mead put her hand to her mouth, appalled with herself. ‘I told him to come back at six!’