A Killing Resurrected (20 page)

‘There' was the cafeteria on the first floor of Marks and Spencer's in Fish Street. It was across the street from Anderson's office and, as he explained to Molly when they sat down to face each other across the small table, he had been coming here almost every morning for years for hot chocolate and a teacake. ‘Best hot chocolate in town,' he told her as he spooned the whipped cream topping into his mouth.

Molly had her coffee black. She didn't really like it, but she'd decided she was using too much sugar, so she was trying to get used to going without.

She glanced around. Mid-morning, and the place was filled with shoppers, mostly grey-haired couples and women with babies and small children. The only available table was outside the baby-change room, and a steady stream of young mothers paraded past their table. The noise level was high, and Molly had to listen hard to hear what the man was saying.

Peter Anderson looked as if he'd been carved from rock. Solid body, square face, deeply chiselled features, hair clipped short and already turning grey, and pale eyes that never seemed to blink. A self-important man, Molly decided, because, despite his insistence that he didn't have much time to spare, it was becoming clearer by the minute that he was trying to impress her.

‘I am presenting a paper in Stockholm,' he said proudly. ‘Representatives from all over the world will be there. My sphere of interest is in metal fatigue; the stresses and strains on metals found in everything from the materials used in large buildings and bridges to such things as hinges and handles on saucepans and kitchen utensils.'

He paused to sip his hot chocolate, and Molly seized the opportunity to take control of the conversation. She asked the standard questions and received the standard answers. Yes, he had known Barry Grant, and didn't think much of him. Why? Because he was stupid. He had brains, he could have been almost anything he wanted, in Anderson's opinion, but he spent all of his time trying to impress people by doing silly stunts.

‘What sort of stunts?' Molly wanted to know.

Anderson shrugged. ‘Like playing truant, then sitting outside the school gates with some older kids in a stolen Porsche or BMW, or whatever, to impress the girls as they came out of class. Absolutely idiotic, of course, because the police would have him before the end of the day. But he never learned. He would do something equally stupid the following week.'

‘Are you talking about when he was at Westonleigh?'

‘Good God, no! If he'd done that at Westonleigh, he would have been out on his ear, and he knew it. No, this was while he was still at Gordon Street. He would only be about ten or eleven at the time. Police were powerless because of his age, of course, but then that's what happens when we live in a country where no one is responsible for anything any more.'

‘But he did do well enough at Westonleigh to go on to university,' Molly pointed out.

‘Means to an end,' Anderson said through a mouthful of teacake. ‘That's all it was. Means to an end.'

‘Meaning what, exactly?'

Anderson stuck a straw into his drink and sucked deeply before sitting back to fix Molly with his pallid eyes. ‘Social climbing,' he said. ‘That's what Grant was all about. That's all he ever thought about; getting in with the right crowd. Being accepted. But all he succeeded in doing was making a nuisance of himself.'

‘Were you in that crowd, Mr Anderson?'

Anderson considered the question. ‘I suppose I was,' he conceded. ‘I come from, what I suppose Grant would consider to be a wealthy family, although my father worked his way up from an ordinary bricklayer to become the owner of a construction company. As for me, while I was given encouragement at home, I got where I am today through my own merits and hard work. Barry Grant wasn't prepared to do that.'

‘You were there last Saturday when Miss Hammond was talking about searching the Grant house, were you not, Mr Anderson?'

The man nodded, popped another piece of teacake in his mouth, and said, ‘Yes, and I'm told that someone tried to burn it down on the weekend.' He raised a warning finger. ‘I hope you are not suggesting that I had anything to do with that?'

Molly held the man's gaze. ‘Did you?' she asked.

‘Don't be absurd! Of course not.'

‘Where were you from say midnight to three o'clock on Monday morning, Mr Anderson?'

Anderson wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. ‘I was asleep in my bed,' he said, ‘but I have no wife, no sleeping partner, so you will just have to take my word for it, Miss Forsythe.'

Molly tried another tack. ‘Did Barry have a girlfriend when he was in university?'

Another shrug. ‘If he did, I don't know who it was. Why would I? I wasn't interested in what he was doing or who his friends were, male or female. In fact I made it a point to avoid him whenever possible.' Anderson looked pointedly at his watch, then pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. ‘I'm afraid I have no more time,' he said. ‘I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help, but as I said, Grant was no friend of mine, either in school or university.' With a curt nod, Anderson turned and worked his way through the tables to the top of the escalator and disappeared from view.

Molly pushed her mug of cold coffee aside and left her seat to join the queue at the counter, where she ordered a blueberry muffin and a hot chocolate. ‘Whipped cream, love?' the woman behind the counter asked.

Molly hesitated. The sugarless coffee had left a foul taste in her mouth. She needed something . . . ‘Why not?' she said, and watched as a swirl of cream was added to the foamy chocolate. She had almost an hour to kill before her next appointment, and watching Anderson enjoying his teacake and chocolate had made her hungry.

Paget was in Alcott's office when Ormside rang to tell him that a woman by the name of Irene Sinclair had come in to enquire about Roger Corbett.

‘She's with me now,' he said. ‘She says Corbett is a friend of hers, and he was in quite a state when he phoned her last Tuesday afternoon and said he had to talk to her. She asked him what it was about, but he wouldn't say. He told her he'd explain when he got there, but he had to talk to someone else first. But he never showed up. He isn't answering his mobile, and nobody seems to have seen him since. He hasn't been to work and he hasn't been home.'

Paget had his notebook out. Ah yes, the woman Corbett said he was sleeping with on Sunday night. ‘Have someone take her to an interview room,' he told the Sergeant. ‘And find Tregalles and tell him to meet me there in ten minutes.'

Molly Forsythe was surprised when Stephanie Taylor answered the door herself. Looking at the house and grounds as she drove up the drive, Molly had half expected to be greeted by at least a maid if not a butler. But Stephanie must have seen her coming, because she opened the door before Molly had a chance to touch the bell.

‘Detective Constable Forsythe, I presume,' she said, thrusting out a hand. ‘I'm Stephanie Taylor. Do come through. I thought we'd be more comfortable on the terrace. It's shaded and quite lovely out there at this time of day. She turned and led Molly through the house, her bare feet slapping softly against the tiles on the floor of a kitchen that was more than half the size of Molly's flat, and out to a paved terrace overlooking a generous expanse of lawn dotted with shade trees. A meandering path led to a summer house on the far side of the property against a backdrop of colourful Japanese maples and a single sturdy oak that looked as if it had been there for a hundred years or more. Molly breathed in deeply; it was a park in miniature.

‘I think I could get used to this,' she said softly. ‘It's so quiet and peaceful. You must love it here.'

‘Oh, yes,' Stephanie said perfunctorily. ‘Would you like some iced tea? It's green tea. A special blend. It's very good for you.'

Molly wasn't too sure, but since Stephanie was waiting with jug poised, she said, ‘Thank you, I'd like that very much.' She waited until Stephanie filled a glass and handed it to her before settling into what proved to be a very comfortable chair.

Stephanie was taller than Molly by an inch or two, and yet she seemed to fold herself into a neat little package as she sat down and tucked her legs under her. In fact, everything about Stephanie Taylor was neat, thought Molly. From the short blonde hair to the striped shirt and dazzling white shorts, neither of which seemed to be capable of holding anything as untidy as a crease.

She tasted the tea. Ice tinkled softly against the glass. Not bad at all, she decided. In fact much better than she'd expected.

‘So, I suppose you want to ask me the same things as the others?' Stephanie said. ‘Not,' she added almost as an afterthought, ‘that I can add much to what you must know already, but we'll have to see, won't we?'

She flicked a quick glance at the watch on her wrist, perhaps as a gentle reminder to Molly that, while she was prepared to help if she could, she had better things to do.

It was becoming something of a litany by now, but Molly pressed on with the standard questions and, as she had with Anderson, received similar responses until they started to talk about Leeds.

‘I always felt rather sorry for Barry,' Stephanie said. ‘I suppose I was vaguely aware of him at Westonleigh, but he was a couple of years behind me, and two years between teenagers is a huge gap, so I didn't
really
come into contact with him until later during his first, and last, year at university. Has anyone told you he had a crush on me?'

‘A crush . . .?' Molly said cautiously.

Stephanie laughed, but sobered quickly and became serious. ‘I shouldn't laugh,' she said. ‘Not after the way he ended his life. I know everyone was down on him, but I thought Barry was rather sweet – at least I did at first.'

Stephanie smiled at Molly's reaction. ‘You might well look surprised,' she said. ‘In fact I think I surprised myself at the time. Normally I wouldn't have looked at a boy two years younger than myself, and I was already dating Kevin, but Barry was so cheeky. And he was fun at first. He had such an outrageous line you couldn't help but want to find out how far he would go with it.'

‘And how far did he go?'

Stephanie hesitated, lips compressed as she looked off into the distance, and when she spoke she sounded almost sad. ‘The poor boy claimed he loved me,' she said softly. ‘He told me he'd fallen in love with me the very first time he'd set eyes on me when I was at Westonleigh.'

Stephanie turned to face Molly once again. ‘It was all a line of course,' she said with a dismissive toss of the head, ‘but he was so intensely earnest about it, and I never knew whether to be flattered, amused, or annoyed by his attentions.'

Stephanie sipped her iced tea, then set the glass aside. ‘I should have put a stop to it from the very beginning,' she continued, ‘but the poor boy seemed so desperately sincere that I halfway believed him.' She smiled. ‘It was flattering and rather fun at first, but it wasn't quite so funny when I told him that was all it was.'

The lines around Stephanie's mouth tightened. ‘I couldn't get rid of him,' she said. ‘He wouldn't leave me alone. He was there every time I turned around, and I finally had to ask Kevin to warn him off, because nothing I said seemed to make any difference.'

‘And that put an end to it, did it?' Molly asked.

Stephanie shrugged. ‘He still kept popping up, especially when Kevin wasn't around, but he finally got the message.'

‘What about the holidays when you were back here in Broadminster? Did you have any trouble with Barry then?'

Stephanie shook her head. ‘No, not really,' she said. ‘We would run into him the odd time in a pub or on the street, but he didn't bother me. In fact I wondered if he'd found another girl. If he had, I hoped she wouldn't have to go through the same sort of thing that I'd gone through.'

‘Did you ever see him with another girl?'

‘No. And come to think of it, I can't remember ever seeing Barry with an individual companion, male or female. He was always hovering on the fringes of a group, but he was never a part of it. Sad when you think of it,' Stephanie concluded, ‘but Barry Grant couldn't blame anyone but himself for that.'

She grimaced in a self-deprecating way as she picked up her glass and said, ‘But here I am going on about myself, and I'm sure that's not what you wanted to hear, is it, detective? I can't see how any of it can be relevant to your investigation. On the other hand, I don't know what I can tell you that would be relevant. Or how it relates to your investigation into Kevin's father's murder back then.'

‘We don't know ourselves until we sift through the information,' Molly admitted. ‘But there is one thing you can tell me, and that's where you were between midnight and two o'clock last Monday morning?'

Stephanie smiled. ‘I wondered when you would get around to that,' she said. ‘Kevin told me he'd had to account for his movements, and since you know already that he spent the night in the old house on Oak Street, I have no one to back me up when I tell you I was here all night, alone.'

As Molly drove back into town, she thought about the interview. Interesting, especially the part about Barry Grant's crush on Stephanie, and she wondered why, if they'd all been good friends back then, Peter Anderson hadn't mentioned it when she'd asked him if Barry had a girlfriend. But whatever the answer, Molly couldn't see how it was going to help them with either the attempted arson at the Grant house, or the killing of two people thirteen years ago. In fact, the only glimmer of hope that she could see lay in Sharon Jessop's story about the man who had whispered in her ear. But even that was a long shot, because it depended entirely upon Sharon's memory improving or being able to track down Sharon's friend, Rachel.