Behind Dead Eyes (DC Ian Bradshaw #2) - Howard Linskey Page 0,50

motor.’

She answered absent-mindedly, ‘I drive a different one every week.’

‘How do you manage that?’

‘I don’t own them. It’s from the manufacturer. We have a large fleet of company cars. We get demonstrators dropped in every two or three weeks,’ she explained. ‘The novelty wears off pretty quickly.’

‘I’d be willing to risk that,’ he said. ‘So what exactly does Soleil do?’

‘We provide a range of integrated IT solutions tailored to suit the needs of an individual business. We don’t just sell unsuitable products then leave you to pick up the pieces. Our sales team act as management consultants who will help a firm with every step, from the purchase of hardware to the creation and installation of tailored software and staff training programmes then we help to set up management information reports.’

‘Sounds like a lot of hand-holding; must be expensive.’

‘In this life, you get what you pay for.’

The entrance to the park was a few hundred yards from Annie’s office. She directed him to a bench in front of some hedges shaded by a large tree whose leaves had started to fall and littered the ground around them. ‘I have my lunch here every day,’ she said and he got the strong impression she did that alone. ‘It’s my favourite spot.’

‘It’s very peaceful.’ He joined her on the bench and they sat for a moment in silence until she decided to answer the question he’d asked in her office.

‘I might very well have harboured murderous thoughts towards that woman if I had known anything about her,’ said Annie. ‘Oh, I knew of her existence, even met her once, but I had no idea she was in any kind of relationship with my husband, until the police turned up on our doorstep to tell Richard she’d been murdered. Then it all came out, eventually. They quizzed me about her obviously. I suppose I was even a suspect at first but I had an alibi for the day of the murder …’

‘You had a day off,’ he recalled, ‘shopping in town?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘lots of people saw me,’ adding, ‘then later the forensic expert said the blows could only have been administered by a man, so that should convince you.’

‘I read that,’ he said, ‘so who did kill Rebecca Holt, if not Richard or yourself?’

‘Her husband of course,’ she said, as if it was obvious, ‘though we’ll have a devil of a time proving it. He also has an alibi, for one thing.’

‘I’m not one for trusting alibis, Mrs Bell,’ Tom said pointedly, ‘they can be bought or manufactured.’

‘Well I didn’t buy mine,’ she challenged him, ‘there’s probably a dozen people who saw me in town during the course of that day.’

‘That was convenient.’

‘I’m a working mother,’ Annie reminded him, ‘I rarely have time alone. I run in the mornings though, before I take the kids to school. That’s my time. The rest of my day is pretty hectic.’

‘So you think Freddie Holt may have done it? You don’t subscribe to the mad stranger theory?’

‘That’s possible too, but her husband had a motive.’

‘Mad strangers don’t need a motive. It’s what makes them mad. Her husband didn’t necessarily have a motive either, come to think of it.’

‘She cheated on him.’

‘He didn’t know about that until after she was found dead,’ said Tom.

‘That’s what he said,’ scoffed Annie, ‘but you don’t really believe that, do you?’

‘Why not?’ asked Tom. ‘You expect me to believe the same thing about you.’

‘You obviously don’t know much about Freddie Holt,’ she said.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘If ever there was a man capable of murder, it’s him.’

They spent half an hour discussing the rumours that followed Freddie Holt while he amassed his fortune. If a tenth of them were true, Rebecca Holt’s husband was a fully paid-up member of the ruthless bastard society who was not afraid to bend rules or even hurt people if he thought it was required.

Annie glanced at her watch. ‘I have a meeting,’ she told Tom. ‘If you’re finished,’ then she demurred, ‘for now?’

‘Not quite. I do have one last question for you,’ said Tom, ‘and it’s this: why would you care one way or another about the well-being of your cheating bastard of a husband when most women would probably abandon him?’

‘Would most women abandon him? Perhaps, but I doubt it. This is the real world and he is not just my bastard of a husband, as you put it, he’s the father of my children. I have two wonderful daughters who miss