DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2, стр. 309
‘I was upset when I heard. I never knew the reason he left me.’
‘He left everyone. Did you take it personally?’
‘At the time, but now we know it wasn’t me.’
‘His brother believed you wanted Stephen to marry you.’
‘And you listened to him?’ Liz said.
‘We listen to everyone, not necessarily believe them,’ Larry said.
‘Yes, I wanted Stephen to marry me, although he wouldn’t have unless I had been pregnant.’
‘Why?’
‘Stephen wasn’t the settling down type.’
‘An honest answer,’ Wendy said. ‘Now let’s get down to the basics, find out about you and what you can tell us about Stephen that we don’t already know.’
‘Please don’t read me wrong. Three husbands, another one soon enough, doesn’t make me an empty-headed floozy. I’ve still got a brain in my head, and your inspector trying to look down the top of my blouse isn’t doing either of you any favours.’
Larry averted his eyes, shifted uneasily in his chair. The truth hurt, and he’d been caught out. He was red in the face; Wendy was ready to burst out laughing.
In the end, it was Liz Spalding who defused the situation. ‘I suggest we all have a glass of wine and forget what I just said,’ she said. ‘Shock tactics were needed. I can’t blame Inspector Hill for looking, and I can’t say I mind. I do, however, get upset when I’m judged, openly or otherwise, of being something I’m not. For the record, my first husband died before his time; the second left me; the third left me for his boyfriend. How I would have fared with Stephen, who knows?’
With Liz inside the house organising the wine, Larry and Wendy looked at each other.
It was Wendy who broke the ice. ‘How do you feel? Or is that a silly question?’
‘The woman’s no pushover; hardly Bob Palmer’s type.’
‘She’s manipulative; used to putting people, more likely men, on the spot, and then coming on coy and innocent, wheedling her way to get any man she wants in her bed. Just make sure you’re not one of them, and stop looking down her blouse.’
‘Not so easy when she thrusts her breasts at me all the time. She made sure that the sun was shining on her blouse; I could see straight through it.’
‘If she’s as hard as I just said, then why was she crying her eyes out at Stephen Palmer’s funeral. It makes you think, doesn’t it?’
‘Crocodile tears?’
‘Why not? She had Bob Palmer wrapped around her little finger, making him believe in her sadness. What if it wasn’t?’
‘For what reason?’
Liz Spalding returned with a bottle of wine and three glasses. Larry eyed the wine, a pinot grigio. He wasn’t a wine drinker, only when his wife was entertaining the local social-climbing set at his house.
‘You’d better have just the one glass,’ Wendy said to him. ‘You’re driving on the way back to London, so you’d better be careful.’
‘My second husband had a fondness for drink,’ Liz said, having overheard the exchange between the two officers.
‘Did he stop?’
‘It was either the bottle or me; it didn’t stop him, in the end, walking out on me.’
Larry said nothing, careful to avert his eyes. Wendy could see that the woman was a tease. Larry, even if he had been there on his own, would have left the cottage with no more than a handshake and a sore head. A detective inspector would not have kept her in the luxury that she was accustomed to, although Stephen Palmer might have.
‘There are several questions that come to mind,’ Wendy said as she downed her first glass. Larry sipped at his, his hand shaking slightly: the taste of alcohol was good. The desire to down it in one go and to pour another glass was too tempting. He put his glass back on the table and pushed it to one side.’
‘Not to your liking, Inspector?’
‘I’m afraid the opposite is true.’
‘A beer?’
‘Not for me. I’ll just sit here while you two drink,’ Larry said. ‘Bob Palmer said that you clung to him at the funeral.’
‘He was the nearest there was to Stephen.’
‘And that he had wanted to spend time with you; that he had wanted to ever since you had both been at school.’
‘He was a complete dork at school. Every spare moment, there he would be sitting down reading a science fiction book or Moby Dick or Treasure Island, or something like them.
‘But not you.’
‘Now I thrive on reading and the documentaries on television, but back then, all I wanted was to be with my girlfriends making silly talk, and after I turned fourteen, it was the boys I went for.’
‘You played the field?’ Wendy asked.
‘Harmless kissing around the back of the bike shed.’
‘Harmless?’
‘It wasn’t even a bike shed, and there were plenty of places to disappear if you wanted. Many a young lad found out about the facts of life in that school.’
‘Bob Palmer?’
‘Not with me, he didn’t. There was one girl, a plain-faced girl with horn-rimmed glasses who was after him. No idea what happened to her, no idea what happened to my girlfriends either.’
‘Is this young woman important?’ Larry asked.
‘To Bob, she may be.’
‘Palmer is distraught, his brother’s in the ground, you’re the closest person to Stephen other than him. What happened after the funeral?’
‘I went to Bob’s house after the funeral. Bec Johnson was there, as was the vicar. We had a few drinks, reminisced over his brother. Strange how agreeable those get-togethers can be.’
‘And after that?’
‘I stayed that night with him. Is that what you wanted me to say?’
‘We