Guns in the Gallery

Detective Inspector Hodgkinson looked at her watch. ‘Now, as I’m sure you know, time is money in police work, as it is in most other areas of life. And it’s going to become even more precious with all the new government cuts that are coming in. What this means is that at any given time we have to make hard decisions about where our resources are channelled. Getting together the paperwork for a suicide for the Coroner’s Court is boring but straightforward. Investigating the possibility that an apparent suicide was in fact a murder would take a huge amount of police time and is therefore not something we would wish to embark on, unless we had cast-iron evidence for our suspicions. So, Jude, I come back to a variation on my original question. The TMO question. Do you have any cast-iron evidence to support the thesis that Fennel Whittaker was murdered?’

‘Not evidence as such.’

‘But . . .?’

‘But I do think it’s odd that her mobile phone seems to have disappeared.’

‘On what do you base the assumption that it has disappeared?’

‘I didn’t see it in the yurt when I found her body.’

‘No, but that was hardly the moment when you were going to be at your most observant, Jude. You were probably in shock. You knew you were about to face the unpleasant task of telling the girl’s parents what had happened to their daughter. Fennel could have dropped the phone anywhere.’

‘Yes, but . . .’

Detective Inspector Hodgkinson suddenly gave Jude a narrow look. ‘You’re not implying, are you, that you made a detailed examination of the yurt where the girl died?’

Jude was quick with her denial. Whatever the truth, she knew the police wouldn’t take kindly to the activities of amateur detectives.

The Inspector looked down at her printouts. ‘There’s no mention in this lot of a mobile having been found.’ She made a note. ‘I’ll check it out. And you’re sure the girl had it with her when you were drinking in the other yurt?’

‘Certain. And I do have a vague recollection of her receiving a text on it.’

‘What time would this have been?’

Jude spread her hands wide in apology. ‘Sorry. As I say, it was all a bit blurry.’

‘Hm.’ Detective Inspector Hodgkinson made another note. ‘So, apart from the absence of the mobile, back to the same question. Do you have any evidence that might suggest Fennel Whittaker’s death was anything other than what it appears to be – in other words, suicide?’

Jude was forced to admit that she didn’t. Just a gut instinct. And though what she’d seen of Carmen Hodgkinson suggested that the Inspector might be more sympathetic to gut instincts than the average member of the police force, she didn’t think that sympathy would be sufficient for the initiation of a full-scale murder enquiry.

TWELVE

Most weekends now Carole Seddon heard from the family in Fulham. A weekly call from Stephen was far greater frequency of communication than she had been used to, but then so much in their relationship had changed. His marriage to Gaby, introducing someone who hadn’t grown up in the claustrophobia of Carole’s own marriage to David, had started the thaw, and its progress had been greatly speeded up by the arrival of Lily. Whereas conversations between mother and son had always been rather stilted, with Stephen talking about his work (which Carole never fully understood) and both of them trying to avoid any mention of David, there now always seemed to be something to say. Lily was developing at such a rate that every week there was some new achievement to report, some physical action, a new word or, increasingly, new sentences.

But that Sunday evening the Fulham call came not from Carole’s son but her daughter-in-law.

‘About the week after the end of May Bank Holiday . . .’

‘What about the week after the end of May Bank Holiday, Gaby?’ asked Carole, trying to work out what date that would be. One of the effects of retirement from the Home Office, she found, was a profound vagueness about the dates of public holidays. Now they no longer represented days off work, they seemed infinitely less important than they had.

‘I’m talking about the one at the end of May, not the one at the beginning. Well, Stephen’s got to be in Frankfurt that week for work.’

‘Oh, really?’

‘Yes, his bosses never seem to be aware of public holidays.’ Carole almost heard that as a criticism of herself. ‘So he’s flying out on the Bank Holiday Monday and doesn’t get back till the Sunday after. And I was thinking: what a perfect opportunity for me to take Lily for a little jaunt to the South Coast.’

‘That’d be lovely. You’d be most welcome here, of course, Gaby. Just let me get my diary and check the dates.’

‘No, don’t worry, Carole. I wasn’t suggesting that we should impose ourselves on you at High Tor.’