Behind Dead Eyes (DC Ian Bradshaw #2) - Howard Linskey Page 0,125

a ticket for the car park before returning home, probably on a bus. Then you took the kids to school in your own car, parked it in the car park at the other end of town – but then I thought otherwise.’

‘I’m lost.’ And she shook her head as if all of this was fantasy. ‘You’ve completely lost me.’

Tom ignored this and continued. He was taking the credit for Ian’s detective work for a reason. ‘I figured that might be tricky first thing in the morning so maybe you dropped the demo at the car park the night before. You couldn’t buy a ticket until the next morning after you dropped the kids at school but you didn’t care about that. No one knew you had the car anyway. You could gamble without any consequences. The attendant came to the car park early that day and issued a ticket for your demo but that didn’t matter.

‘When I checked your demo log there was one car signed out every day that week apart from the days around Rebecca Holt’s murder. I memorised the reg number then went to the department responsible for the collection of fines. Lo and behold, I discovered a VW with the exact same registration number had been parked in the car park behind the cinema without a ticket that very morning. Technically the car belonged to the manufacturer so that’s who they eventually contacted for payment but, as much as they want to sell cars to you, Annie, they are not going to pay your parking fines, so they got in touch with you and the fine was promptly paid. Strangely enough however, it wasn’t paid by your company or even one of your company car drivers.’

‘Wasn’t it?’ Annie asked in a dead voice.

Tom shook his head. ‘No. There’s a neat black and white photocopy in the file. It shows a cheque hastily written by a Mrs Annie Bell.’ She looked as if someone had punched her then. ‘I guess you thought no one would ever find out about that, eh? You figured it would be buried in a file somewhere for years. Well, it was,’ he told her, ‘for two years, to be exact, until I found it. That’s all the proof I need, Annie.’

‘It proves nothing!’ But her voice was wavering.

‘It proves my theory that you slipped out of the cinema through the fire exit then headed for the car park and the second car. I’m assuming you went straight to it before you did anything else that morning, so you could buy a ticket for the vehicle you’d already left there, but you didn’t realise the council had privatised the enforcement. A man had already taken a note of your registration number and started the process of sending you a fixed penalty.’

‘I’m not even going to answer you,’ she said, ‘this is such rubbish. I don’t even …’ She shook her head in disbelief.

‘You don’t have to answer me, Annie. You could just tell it all to the police. They’re the ones who will demand answers and you won’t be able to explain why you had a second car in town that day. If I give it to them, they’ll reopen the case for sure,’ he said, ‘because they’ll know the only reason you would need two cars is so you could use one of them to create an alibi and the other to drive out to meet Rebecca Holt and murder her.’

‘If?’ she asked him.

‘What?’

‘You said if you give it to them – not when.’

‘Did I?’ he asked innocently.

‘What do you want, Mr Carney?’ Annie’s eyes narrowed and she asked, ‘Are you recording this conversation, Tom?’

‘No.’

She insisted on checking him anyway. He unzipped his jacket, raised his arms and stood there compliantly while she patted his torso and checked his pockets.

‘Happy?’ Her answer was to sit back down and he joined her.

‘So what are you selling, Tom?’ she asked. ‘You’re obviously selling something.’

‘Maybe I’m buying,’ he told her. ‘I’d like to buy your story but I don’t know enough of it yet.’

‘I don’t have a story,’ she told him.

‘That’s a shame,’ he said. ‘I guess I’ll never know why you did it then.’

‘Did what?’

‘Killed Rebecca Holt. I mean, it’s obvious on one level. She was screwing your husband. I wouldn’t say that was reason enough to murder her myself but you aren’t the first person to lose your mind over an extramarital affair and you certainly won’t be the last; but I was