Behind Dead Eyes (DC Ian Bradshaw #2) - Howard Linskey Page 0,105

didn’t fit properly. The transaction showed up on her credit card as a refund, so we know that was legit. Her next appointment was with a travel agent, where she spent half an hour talking to a woman about a package holiday and left with some brochures.’

‘Doesn’t just browse aimlessly, does she?’ remarked Tom. ‘Very organised, likes to get things done.’

‘She stopped for lunch at a café called Oscars and there was an argument.’

‘What about?’ asked Helen.

‘Her order.’ He glanced at his notebook to confirm. ‘A jacket potato. She wanted cheese and they gave her tuna.’

‘And that caused a row?’ asked Helen. ‘Couldn’t they have just exchanged it?’

‘They did offer,’ said Bradshaw, ‘but only after the waitress had told her she got what she originally asked for.’

‘And Mrs Bell didn’t take kindly to that?’

‘She made a bit of a scene, gave the waitress a right dressing-down and told off the manager, said she’d been coming there for years but the food was always cold or she got the wrong thing and she was never coming back again. There were a couple of regulars and a number of casual diners who witnessed this. We traced some of them. They recognised her photo and confirmed she’d lost her temper with the staff.’

‘Interesting,’ said Tom. ‘Where’d she go next?’

‘A bakery, where she ordered a replacement lunch of a sausage roll and a coffee. She ate it in the place, kept the receipt.’

‘Why would you?’ asked Helen. ‘Keep the receipt, I mean. You’ve eaten your sausage roll and drunk your coffee, what use is the receipt?’

‘No use, but she probably stuffed it in her purse with her change and forgot about it. Next stop was the cinema.’

‘I’m guessing she had the ticket?’ asked Tom and Bradshaw nodded.

‘She keeps everything,’ said Helen.

‘Lucky for us.’

‘And for her,’ said Helen. ‘What did she see?’

‘Schindler’s List.’

‘Good choice,’ said Helen and Bradshaw suddenly remembered wanting to see it on video with Karen but she said it would be too depressing, so they watched Mrs Doubtfire instead.

‘A long film too,’ said Tom. ‘Did anyone ask her about it?’

Bradshaw nodded. ‘She’d seen it all right and described it well enough.’

‘And after the cinema?’

‘Back to the car park, paid her fine for overrunning, then home to see the kids, who’d been picked up from school by the au pair. She confirmed Mrs Bell returned around fifteen minutes after she left the car park.’

‘Is there any way she could have driven out of the car park and gone back in again?’ asked Helen.

He shook his head. ‘That car park isn’t automated. It’s one of the last old-fashioned ones with an attendant and she parked right by the old guy’s booth. Her car never left and he reckons she was very flustered about overrunning and having to pay the fine.’

‘Busy day,’ observed Helen. ‘She packed a lot in.’

‘And scarcely a minute of it unaccounted for,’ added Tom, ‘so, like you say, it’s absolutely watertight.’

‘Absolutely.’ And the detective gave a sly grin.

‘What?’ Helen didn’t understand what was so amusing.

‘I know what he’s going to say.’

‘What is he going to say?’ She looked at Bradshaw and then at Tom.

‘He’s going to say,’ Bradshaw began, ‘that an alibi that perfect …’ and he let Tom finish.

‘… Can’t possibly be real.’

‘Exactly.’ And the policeman’s grin grew broader.

They walked in silence for a while until Tom said, ‘This is it.’

‘Is this the exact place?’ Helen asked.

‘The case files mention a spot between the river and the woods with a gap in the barbed-wire fence and two felled trees close by,’ he said, and pointed out each of those landmarks in turn. ‘This cut is where Rebecca Holt used to meet Richard Bell. It’s also the spot where she died.’

Helen found it hard to imagine. The location was so peaceful. She realised it was foolish but somehow she expected Lonely Lane to show signs that a brutal murder had occurred at this solitary spot; not ghosts exactly, more of an atmosphere of some kind, but it was as if nothing bad had ever happened here.

‘I wanted to see it,’ said Tom eventually, ‘even though I knew it was probably a waste of time.’ But neither Helen nor Ian questioned the wisdom of that idea.

By the time they dropped Bradshaw the rain was coming down hard. Traffic slowed so much Tom wondered if everyone just forgot how to drive once the roads were wet.

‘It’s time we checked out that alibi on the ground,’ Tom said, ‘and you could buy a few