eating), but he had hustled her out of the Portakabin as quickly as he could. ‘No place for a lady,’ he said. ‘The guys’ll enjoy that, though,’ he said, taking the cake from her, and she hadn’t the heart (ha!) to point out that it was a romantic gesture aimed at him and not the couple of overweight blokes smoking and playing cards who she had glimpsed inside the Portakabin.
‘Thanks,’ he said, taking the sandwich off the plate and biting into it without even looking at it. Crystal spared another thought for the chickens. God only knows what they had gone through in order to keep Tommy Holroyd fed. Best not to think about it. Keep your mouth shut.
‘Anything else, babe?’ she asked.
‘Nah. Close the door again on the way out, will you?’
The entryphone buzzed while she was still in the hallway and Tommy shouted through the door, ‘Get that, will you?’
When Crystal peered at the monitor next to the front door she could see a girl standing in front of the camera. She was so short that only the top half of her head showed. Crystal pressed the button on the microphone and said, ‘Hello?’ The girl held up something, a wallet or a card, Crystal couldn’t make it out. ‘I’m DC Reggie Chase,’ she said. ‘I’m here with my colleague DC Ronnie Dibicki.’ She indicated someone else, out of sight of the camera. ‘We’d like to have a chat with Mr Holroyd. Mr Thomas Holroyd.’
Detectives? ‘It’s a routine enquiry,’ the detective said. ‘Nothing to be alarmed by.’ Keep your mouth shut, Christina. But they weren’t here for her, they were here for Tommy. Crystal hesitated, more from a natural aversion to the police than any anxiety about Tommy’s wrongdoing.
‘Mrs Holroyd?’
Crystal let them in, she didn’t have a choice really, did she? She knocked on the door of the office and said, ‘Tommy? There are two detectives here. They’d like a word with you.’
‘A chat,’ one of the detectives amended sweetly. ‘Just a chat.’
Crystal led them into the living room. It was a room that had several huge windows with fantastic views of the sea – the wow factor, Tommy called it. Neither of the detectives seemed to notice the wow.
Tommy appeared, looking more bulky than usual beside the two girls. He could have picked one up in each hand.
‘Make us a coffee, will you, love?’ he said to Crystal. ‘And for the ladies here too?’
The ladies smiled and said no, thank you.
Crystal went out of the room, but left the door ajar and lingered on the other side of it. Was Tommy in trouble? She was expecting it to be something about the lorries, or the drivers. An accident of some kind, a traffic misdemeanour. It wasn’t the first time the police had turned up at the house with questions about the lorries, but any problems usually quietly disappeared. As far as Crystal was aware, Tommy was pretty law-abiding. So he maintained, anyway. ‘Not in my interests as a businessman to be on the wrong side of the law,’ he said. ‘Plenty of money to be made keeping to the right side of it.’
Or perhaps it was something about Wendy. They would be interviewing everyone who knew her, wouldn’t they? Wendy had been to High Haven a few times – the pool party for her birthday, Christmas drinks, that kind of thing. She was always snooty, as if she was better than them. Better than Crystal, anyway. (‘Oh, I wish I was brave enough to wear such a tiny bikini!’ ‘Just as well she’s not,’ Tommy said. ‘It would frighten the horses.’)
She could hear some kind of preamble on Tommy’s part – dropping the names of a couple of senior policemen he ‘knocked out a round of golf with’ at the Belvedere. The detectives sounded unimpressed.
‘Has this got something to do with Wendy Ives?’ he asked.
Has this got something to do with Wendy Ives? Reggie exchanged a look with Ronnie. Ronnie silently mouthed the word ‘golf’ and raised not one but two eyebrows. Vince had said that Tommy Holroyd was a ‘golfing friend’. Could he also have been a ‘special friend’ of Wendy Easton’s? A lot hinged on the ownership of that golf club. Had it been tested for prints yet? Was there some weird, as yet unfathomable link between Wendy Easton’s murder and their own Operation Villette? So many questions. Someone had once told Reggie that there were always more questions than answers. The same someone she