In the Still of the Night

Billy, as she expected, had exploded at first into violent emotions: shock, then horror, then rage. Billy was given to such eruptions; for a shrewd, hard-headed businessman, he was deeply emotional. Harriet couldn’t help wondering what sort of lover he would be – he wasn’t good-looking but he had all that emotional power dammed up inside. What would it be like to be the one to break that dam?

She knew his marriage was on the rocks; he and his wife had separated and he had allowed her custody of their children. The gossip around the company was that Billy’s wife was dull; everyone who had ever met her said she was good to look at, a tall, elegant creature with blonde hair which was always perfect, an enamelled face, long red nails and polite smile. But she was jawbreakingly tedious to talk to – all you got from her was small talk, automatic questions about how you were, was your work going well, what did you think about the latest news?

No wonder Billy spent every waking hour at work and very little time at home.

It had taken her nearly ten minutes to soothe him down, but she had finally got him into the right sort of mind to take practical steps to deal with the fall-out from Derek’s death.

Sean smiled at her. ‘Good girl.’

Harriet gave him a dry look. Men could be patronising jerks! And they didn’t even seem to realise it. But she liked Sean a lot, so she grinned forgivingly, and vanished to make the tea; when she was upset it always calmed her down to have something useful to do. She and Billy had that in common.

She had a lot of thinking to do. If Annie had taken up with someone else now, would Sean be looking for comfort elsewhere?

Harriet always liked to keep her options open. ‘Wait and see’ was her motto.

When she had gone, Sean insisted on finding Annie a drink in the sideboard where her mother had always kept s

herry. While he was pouring some of that into a glass, he glanced along the framed photographs of Annie which stood on the sideboard; Annie as a baby, wearing a frilly dress, with dimpled knees, her blue eyes already dominating her baby face; Annie aged about five or six in a swimsuit at the seaside, Annie in school uniform; Annie with a middle-aged man’s arm around her, leaning confidingly on him. Her father? wondered Sean, turning to take the glass of sherry to her.

Annie’s lower lip was trembling, her small white teeth gnawing at it as she accepted the glass. She didn’t drink the sherry, just held the glass, staring up at him, her blue eyes glazed with unshed tears.

‘Oh, God, I feel so bad … Sean, it was my fault, I did it.’

Sean looked at her in startled shock, a coldness invaded his limbs. ‘What? What the hell are you saying?’

‘He told me he owed money to a nasty crowd who were threatening to kill him, and I didn’t believe him, I wouldn’t lend him any more money. If I had, he’d be alive now!’

Sean gave a long-drawn-out sigh of relief. Oh, that was all! Women were such inveterate victims – how typical of Annie to try to take the blame for something Fenn had brought on himself!

But it gave a new perspective to the murder. He thought aloud, ‘That never occurred to me, that it could have been a professional murder. Or to the police, I expect. They’ll have to be told about this. I suppose he didn’t mention a name? Did he say who he owed the money to?’

She shook her head. ‘Only that it was a gambling debt.’

Sean whistled. ‘That can be a very nasty crowd. Maybe Marty Keats will know exactly who he owed the money to.’ But Sean had handled crimes involved with gambling before, and they rarely killed someone who owed them money – that would merely make sure they never got it! No, their idea of a warning was to break your arm or a leg and warn you to pay up or next time it would be worse. Sean thought of the murder scene and doubted if Derek’s death had been a professional hit. There had been something nastily personal about the way the body had been arranged. Someone had hated Derek Fenn, had taken time and trouble to make him look ridiculous in death. Professionals didn’t play games. They made their hit and left quickly, they didn’t hang around dressing the body up.

The first press car arrived while they were drinking the coffee Harriet had made. It was Harriet who heard the screech of tyres on wet tarmac and got up and went to the window.

‘Oh, no!’ she groaned, staring out. ‘That didn’t take them long!’

Annie either didn’t hear anything, or didn’t care what was going on – she sat staring into the red-glowing bars of the electric fire like someone gazing into hell.

Sean gave her a concerned look, then joined Harriet at the window and scowled at the reporter and photographer running up the path. ‘Hell.’ Giving Harriet a furious look, he said, ‘I thought Billy was supposed to be coping with them?’

The front door bell rang loudly, and a man yelled through the letter box. ‘Hello? Annie? This is Jamie Bellew – remember me? I’ve interviewed you often enough. You know me, Annie, Can we talk? You’ll have to talk to someone and you know you can trust me to put your side of the story. You want everyone to know the truth, don’t you, darling?’

The photographer came to the lamp-lit window and tried peering through the Venetian blind over it. Before he could make out who was in the room, Sean quickly jerked the cord which closed the blind completely.

‘They won’t go away,’ Harriet muttered to him. ‘And there will be more of them any minute.’

Sean turned to look at Annie’s pale face, her dilated eyes. ‘Is there a back way out of here?’

She wasn’t listening.

‘Annie!’ he snapped and her head came round. She looked blankly at him.

‘What?’

‘Is there a way out of here through the back garden?’