A Sprinkle of Sabotage by Fiona Leitch (bill gates book recommendations TXT) 📗

‘Size eight. Whoever left these prints had bigger feet than me.’ David Morgan’s gaze involuntarily travelled from Nathan’s feet to his own, and then up to my face. He looked surprised (and guilty) to see me staring at him. Every time, I thought. They give themselves away every time.

‘What size are you, Mr Morgan?’ I asked. He looked flustered.

‘Um…’

‘You know the other thing that occurred to me,’ I said, turning to Nathan. ‘I overheard the lighting guy say he’d set the lights up last thing, just before everyone left for the evening. So who would have had access to them overnight? Mr Morgan? Would any of the crew or anyone else connected with the shoot have been able to get into the house without you hearing them?’

Nathan looked at him, waiting for an answer. ‘Mr Morgan?’

David Morgan looked at him for a moment, then gave a kind of helpless but resigned groan.

‘Okay. I admit it. Those were my footprints; I put them there. There never was a trespasser.’

‘And the shards of glass?’

‘That was me too. Oh God, I’m sorry…’ We let him compose himself before continuing. ‘You haven’t met my wife yet, have you Ms Parker? She’s a difficult woman, which I have to admit is one of the things that attracted me to her.’ He smiled. ‘She doesn’t let anyone boss her around, not even me. Ha! Least of all me. When I told her we needed to find a way to make the house pay, she reluctantly agreed to hold weddings here. But the film shoot was the last straw.’

‘Your wife doesn’t like the film people being here?’ asked Nathan.

‘No, she doesn’t. I don’t either really, but we need the money. Anyway, she decided to show her displeasure by causing them a few problems – petty, I know, but … it made her feel better.’

‘She smashed the lightbulbs?’ I asked, and he nodded.

‘Yes. They’d been set up and just left there, overnight. She went in there and smashed them so they’d have to change all the bulbs before they started filming the next day. She thought it was funny, but to me it was obvious that it must have been us…’

‘So you planted the footprints and the glass to make it look like someone had broken in and out of the house?’

‘Yes.’ Morgan looked embarrassed. ‘I am very sorry.’

‘What about the generator?’ asked Nathan. He nodded.

‘I caught her fiddling about with it that day, pulling leads out of the circuit breaker and messing around with it, so I sent her off and plugged everything back in.’

‘But you overloaded it, and that’s when it went bang and scared Jeremy’s horse,’ I said.

‘Yes. I was so relieved that he hadn’t been thrown. And then that night, my wife was annoyed that they were having a party, because we hadn’t agreed to that, so she went back to the generator and turned it off. But I realised what she was doing and followed her, and I managed to turn it back on quite quickly.’

‘That’s when the lights went out,’ I said. ‘When I was clearing everything away, and you turned up…’ I looked at Nathan, remembering the way he’d stood in the doorway, wet and windswept, channelling Heathcliff as the lights had come back on.

‘When I heard that Jeremy Mayhew was dead, I was terrified that it had something to do with the lights going out – maybe he’d fallen in the dark – so when you said it was pufferfish toxin I was relieved.’ He looked at us anxiously. ‘Will we get into trouble? I admit we were wrong, but…’

Nathan stared at him for a moment, making sure he felt guilty (I mean, he and his wife had damaged other people’s property) before shaking his head. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. As you said, the production company have enough to contend with at the moment, so I would be very surprised if they wanted to press charges against your wife.’ He looked serious. ‘However, if any more little accidents were to occur, I would not bet on them being quite so forgiving. Do I make myself understood?’

‘Yes. Crystal clear. Absolutely.’ Morgan reached out to shake Nathan’s hand, and then mine. ‘Thank you, thank you so much. I am so terribly sorry about all of this…’

‘Guv?’ Nathan’s detective sergeant, a bloke whom I was constantly running into during investigations but whose name I could never remember, loitered nearby. Nathan dismissed Morgan with a nod of the head, then turned to his junior officer. ‘Matt. Have you got something for me?’

Matt! I thought. Matt Turner. The one I’d spoken to on the phone when Jeremy had died.

Matt nodded at me. ‘All right, Jodie?’

‘All right, Matt?’ I said. Nathan rolled his eyes.

‘Oh good, we’re all all right,’ he said, with a touch of sarcasm. ‘What is it?’

‘I got all the stuff about tetrodotoxin you wanted.’

‘And you couldn’t tell me it over the phone?’

‘Well, you know, I just wanted to…’ His gaze swept over the house and the organised chaos of the shoot around us. Nathan shook his head, but he looked amused.

‘You wanted to have a nosey around the shoot. Fine.’ He waited. ‘So…? Tetrodotoxin?’

‘Oh, yeah, sorry.’ Matt took out his notebook. ‘Tetrodotoxin is not available to purchase in this country. It’s not used at all over here, but there has been research into using it as a painkiller for cancer patients in the States and in Japan. It’s also been used as an experimental treatment for lessening cravings and preventing relapses in heroin addicts going through withdrawal, again mostly in the States and Japan, although there are also two private addiction clinics in Switzerland and one in Canada where it’s occasionally prescribed.’

‘So there’s no way anyone could buy it here?’ said Nathan. ‘What about in the States, or in Japan?’ He looked at me, significantly; because of course Zack had previously lived in Japan, as had Aiko and Kimi.

Matt Turner shook his head. ‘Nah.