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

back, unclipped the buttons at his cuffs and pushed his shirt sleeves back up to his elbows. ‘Can we just confirm that? You’re telling me you were in King Street when Gracie’s body was found.’

‘Yes.’

‘But not in the churchyard.’

‘I never went into the churchyard.’

‘And is there anyone you can think of who might have seen you, and be able to confirm exactly where you were at that time?’

Giles licked dry lips. ‘No.’

‘Okay. Another question. In your walk along King Street did you notice any bags outside any of the charity shops?’

He shot a despairing look at Colleen, who returned it and then focussed her attention back on the chief inspector. ‘I think there were some outside the shop on the corner of the square.’

‘Okay. Open?’

He closed his eyes and tried to remember. ‘One of them was torn, I think. I think.’

‘Another question. Do you smoke?’

‘No.’

‘And do you ever carry matches? A lighter?’

Giles felt a net tightening round him. They’d already have picked up the car, Janice’s, that he’d taken to drive up to Penrith. They’d know. ‘My wife smokes. She keeps a lighter and cigarettes in her car.’

‘Thank you.’ He flung a look at his sergeant and then turned back. ‘Okay. I’ll run through this again and you can tell me if I’m wrong. Because it isn’t looking very good for you, is it?’

*

Giles Butler looked like a man on the edge. The very edge. But of what? A confession or a breakdown? Jude allowed him a moment of silence in which to think, if he was guilty, about admitting everything. Surely the evidence against him was convincing. Even Colleen Murphy, doing her job with skilled but silent determination, looked as if she knew that Giles’s was a lost cause.

Damn. A tap at the door broke the silence, and the tension within the room snapped like an overstretched elastic band as all four turned towards the sound. Giles’s shoulders slumped and the breath he’d been holding slipped out.

Ashleigh jumped up, flicking the door open and stepping outside. The voices in the corridor were tense, but he couldn’t make out the words. He waited.

She half-opened the door. ‘Jude. Can you spare me a minute?’

‘If someone needs you, Chief Inspector, perhaps we can halt the interview to allow my client a break.’

‘Of course.’ He got up and stepped out into the corridor where Doddsy stood with his hands in his pockets and a troubled expression on his face. So it was serious. ‘What’s happened now?’

‘History repeating itself,’ said Doddsy, nodding his head in the general direction of the town, ‘only backwards. We’ve found a knife, covered in blood and wrapped in a coat. In a bin on Fell Lane. Whoever it was hadn’t set fire to it, though. They probably didn’t want to draw any attention to themselves.’

Jude froze. Behind him in the interview room Giles might be in a state of panic but this changed everything. ‘Fresh blood?’

‘Relatively. A dog walker found it.’ Dog walkers always seemed to find the bad things. ‘Whoever shoved it in there must have been in a hurry and hadn’t wrapped it up properly. Our man was putting the poo bag in the bin, and the dog got all excited over it, and he looked in and saw the blade. Fortunately he had enough sense to dial 999 and not touch anything.’

‘No body?’

‘No sign of one so far. I needn’t tell you the Super is doing her nut over it, and I’ve got everybody out combing the area. Because it’s the same MO as Gracie Pepper and nearly the same as Len Pierce, so I’ll be astonished — astonished — if we don’t find another body somewhere nearby.’

‘But Giles—’ Ashleigh rolled her eyes back towards the interview room. ‘We had him on the ropes in there. Len was putting pressure on him to come clean to his wife. He knew Gracie. And he was in King Street when she died. He admits it.’

Jude stilled. Giles had every reason to be glad of Lenny’s death and who knew what kind of argument he might have had with Gracie? It was tempting, so tempting, to get the CPS to charge him but this new discovery cast enough doubt to prevent laying charges. ‘He could have committed both of those killings.’

‘He could. But he couldn’t have committed this one, if it’s been committed. And if the blood is fresh — or even relatively fresh — he couldn’t have dumped the knife. Because he was in Kirkby Lonsdale at nine o’clock this morning and he’s been in custody ever since.’

‘Jesus.’ Giles was so smug, so clearly implicated, that Jude couldn’t bear to let him go. ‘No. We’ll keep hold of him just now. Apart from anything else, if this is connected to the two other deaths it could be safer for him that way.’

‘You want me to take over here?’

‘Yeah, go and break it to Colleen, if you wouldn’t mind.’ Jude was already on his way along the corridor. ‘Tell her I’ve been called away. Ashleigh, do you want to come along with me?’

With her in his wake, he raced up to the incident room to find Faye standing by the whiteboard. She turned as she saw him, hands on hips. ‘Jude. This isn’t great. You’ve hauled in the wrong man.’

‘I don’t know if I have.’

‘I can tell you. You have. There’s been another murder and it happened in the past couple of hours.’

So they’d found a body. ‘Who is it?’

She looked down at the scribbled notes she’d tossed onto the table in front of her. ‘His name was George Meadows. He was fifty-five and ran a garage out on the Gilwilly estate.’

‘Gay?’ Jude asked, the second question to spring into his head.

‘Not that I’m aware of. He was widowed, though