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

tracker wasn’t at any one of them. We know that at every one it shows she’d stopped for ten minutes or so within a couple of hundred yards of the scene of the murder. Look on the table.’ Before, he had suspected. This clinched it. ‘The fitness tracker she swears she’s so obsessed with that she never takes it off. It’s there. So we can’t conclude that because the tracker was somewhere Natalie must have been there too. As an alibi, it’s busted.’

He paused, waiting for the lights of the patrol cars that would descend on the scene. ‘There’s no knife. She’s taken it with her.’ What else did Natalie know, and where was she heading?

He could ask her.

*

Natalie’s phone rang as she bumped along the track out of the woods where she’d parked up. She knew whom it would be. She’d seen the car going up the track and the figures moving in the garden of Rainbow Cottage. It would be Jude Satterthwaite, and he would know what she’d done.

Only for the sake of a human voice, because she’d never hear Claud’s voice again, she answered it, fishing her phone out of her pocket and clamping it to her ear as she headed towards the village. A walker gestured to her, an imaginary phone in his own hand and a scowl on his face, but she ignored him. What was another law broken?

‘Natalie,’ the detective said, as calm as she’d have expected of so cold a man. ‘It’s Jude Satterthwaite here. I’m calling to make sure you’re all right.’

‘Yes. Thank you. I’m perfectly all right.’ She would never be all right again. At some stage, later, she’d understand the implications of what she’d done and it would break her, but for now she cherished the strange moment of calm that always followed the madness of self-destruction and, latterly, the destruction of others.

‘Where are you?’ He kept his tone even.

‘Oh, just out for a run.’

‘Are you driving, Natalie? In town?’

She didn’t answer.

‘Natalie? We’re at your house. I’d very much like to talk to you. Where are you?’

More silence. She’d driven out of Temple Sowerby and could just see the low roof of Rainbow Cottage on the far side of the A66. It would be so easy to turn round and hand herself over. Then she thought of Claud and the pain of his interest in people other than herself, and drove on.

‘We’ve found Claud, Natalie. I need you to be sensible, here. I need you to give yourself up. So I want you to drive to the police station, or tell me where you are and I’ll come and find you. You have to do the right thing.’

‘The right thing? What’s the right thing? I hate people, Chief Inspector. I want to love them. I want to be good to them. But they let you down. They’re liars and they’re cheats.’ Like Claud. And then the people who loved them — genuinely loved them — were left with nothing but a broken heart. ‘They all deserve to die, you know that? Because I only had Claud and they would have taken him away from me.’

‘Who deserved to die?’ There was an edge to his voice.

‘All of them,’ she said, sharing her voice rising to a wail. She was going mad, and the recognition was relief. She could do whatever she wanted to ease the pain of jealousy and loss. When you were mad, no laws or morals bound you. ‘They all deserved to die. They tried to come between me and Claud. They’ll all pay. All of them. Even DI Dodd. Such a lovely man. So kind.’ And Claud had been so so taken with him, bland and ordinary as he was, so that surely he must have felt an attraction to him that he didn’t feel for her. ‘I hate him, too. I want Claud back. I only want Claud.’

‘Natalie. Tell me where you are, and let me get you some help.’

She flicked the phone off and dropped it in the foot well. Inspector Dodd and Len and Gracie and George. Faye Scanlon, too, all over Claud, all those cosy little tête-à-têtes in her office. She hated them all.

She turned into the estate. Detective Inspector Dodd lived in one of the new houses on the edge of Temple Sowerby, behind the medical centre. She’d seen him a couple of times, driving out of the new estate, but she wasn’t entirely sure which house it was. Being a detective wasn’t so difficult after all. His car, or one very like it, was parked up on the drive outside one of the houses. It would be easy. He was as tall as she and much stronger, of course, but so had Len Pierce been, and George Meadows. It was the element of surprise that had proved fatal. She would ring the doorbell and before he had the chance to react she’d plunge the knife, still wet from Claud’s slaying, into his heart. It had worked so well with George. Push him inside, shut the door and escape. Then the superintendent, who was responsible for it all. She knew where she lived, too. Natalie had dropped a document off for Claud one evening on the way past on her run.

She watched as DI Dodd moved about inside, straying occasionally to the window as if he was expecting someone. If he saw her, her chance would be lost. He’d be bound to look twice, bound to raise an eyebrow and, now the secret was out, to call for help.

With that in mind, she drove the car to the far end of the estate. She shouldn’t have mentioned the man to Satterthwaite. The first thing he’d do would be to send a car round.

A car drew up outside the house and the policeman who’d taken charge in the churchyard got out.