Death at Rainbow Cottage by Jo Allen (book club books txt) 📗

‘Whatever the reason, the key thing isn’t whether you hug or not. It’s whether your hug is welcome and how you respond if it isn’t.’

No-one else had seen anything, either. That was the problem. The checkpoint on the A66 the previous day, a week on from the murder, had yielded nothing but shaken heads from those who’d been crawling along in slow traffic on the day of the incident. So maybe, after all, there had been nothing for Claud to see.

That being the case, where had the second set of tyre tracks come from and how had Len Pierce’s killer made their escape? By way of the river? It would be no great challenge for a strong swimmer but a risky one for anyone else. Tammy’s CSI team had checked the riverside path and there had been no signs that anyone had been there, but a smart operator would know how to leave as little evidence as possible behind.

‘Any thoughts?’ Claud demanded of his audience. ‘That little scenario Natalie and I acted out. How did you read the body language? Was she happy with that hug or not?’

‘Waste of bloody time,’ someone muttered behind Jude.

He shifted in his seat. A tap at the door attracted everyone’s attention and Faye Scanlon’s best scowl. The door opened, letting a welcome breath of fresh air into the crowded room, and Ashleigh peered round it. ‘Sorry to interrupt. I need to speak to Jude. Urgently.’

He pushed back his chair. ‘Wish I’d thought of getting someone to do that,’ someone else muttered, indiscreetly, as he stepped towards the door and out into the corridor.

‘Has something come up?’ He closed the door behind him.

‘Yes.’ Ashleigh turned and began walking back down the corridor, as if to imply that whatever it was was, indeed, urgent. ‘A man just walked into the police station at Hunter Lane. He says he met Len Pierce in the farm lane last Sunday and that Len was alive when he left him. I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.’

‘Damn right.’ It was a lot later than he’d hoped, but the lead had come. ‘Do we know any more?’

‘Only his name. He’s called Giles Butler. According to the duty officer he’s sitting there with a cup of coffee, waiting patiently for someone to come and talk to him.’ Her smile indicated that her relief at the breakthrough matched his. ‘At least it gets you out of that workshop.’

Something in her expression — some slight reservation — implied there was something she was holding back from him. ‘It was shaping up to be interesting.’

‘Some of us could do with a reminder about sensitivity.’

He could hardly disagree, and shook his head at her as he ducked into his office and grabbed his jacket and bag. ‘We’ll get down there straight away.’

‘You don’t want to take Doddsy?’

‘No. One of us had better endure Claud’s presentation, for form’s sake.’ He stifled a smile. Ashleigh was by far the most skilled interviewer on his team ‘You’ve got an innocent face and the bad guys all fall for it. I’ll play bad cop to your good cop.’

‘If he’s turned himself in, hopefully we won’t need to play games,’ she said. ‘Shall I drive?’

*

In the half an hour it took the two detectives to turn up at the police station, the courage Giles had struggled so hard to muster seeped away. Someone had found him a cup of coffee and settled him in an interview room and there, in the relatively pleasant surroundings of such a functional space, Giles reduced himself to a helpless specimen, a lost soul. Everything was against him. He’d been with Len. He hadn’t presented himself the second he’d learned it was murder. He was a respectable man who kept secrets.

He pulled himself up on that last point, refusing to feel guilty about that, at least. Everyone kept secrets.

‘Dr Butler. I’m DCI Satterthwaite. This is Detective Sergeant O’Halloran. We’re working on the Pierce case.’ The detective was brisk and business-like, hiding his character behind the neutrality of a sharp suit and a crisp white shirt. There was something vaguely attractive about him and Giles, who had taken a long while to acknowledge that it was normal to find men attractive, shivered a little at the thought of how he’d allowed obedience to his parents’ traditionalism to lead him into trouble. There was nothing wrong with being gay, he reminded himself, as if there was a chance there might be. It was judging himself by other people’s standards that was wrong. That, and lying about it.

He scrambled to his feet, shook the man’s hand and then turned to the woman. She was anything but neutral, all vibrant personality the way Janice had been when he first dated her and Gracie still so obviously was, voluptuous and sparkling. She looked as if she was fighting back a permanent smile and despite the sombreness of the situation she did smile, briefly, when she shook his hand.

‘Giles Butler.’ Sweat gleamed in his palms. They would take that as a sign of guilt, and they must find his carefully-tended image preposterous — pink and plump and tweedy, a countryman from a 1920s seaside postcard, with a thatch of hair that was just too glossily brown not to have had some kind of help from a bottle. Maybe that was why the sergeant was smiling. If you were to cast a country doctor in a stage farce, surely you would cast him. That was all he was — a character living out a lie, but in a murder inquiry not a farce.

The three of them sat down. The chief inspector laid down a pad in front of him and clicked a silver ballpoint pen into action, his hand poised over the pad.

‘We’ll just take a witness statement at this stage,’