Fifteen

It was early afternoon when Anna Miles came back to the police station in Melkham. Robert Wilde was waiting for her.

‘I’m sorry to bring you out again,’ he said, as she stepped over the threshold.

‘It’s all right,’ she replied. She was surprised to see him waiting for her in the foyer.

‘I wanted to check something in your statement,’ he said.

He led her through the station. She walked behind him, her handbag held close to her chest, her arms crossed over the bag. They reached the bottom of the stairs, and he paused to let her pass, indicating that she should go on up ahead of him. As she did so, he noticed how tired she looked. She gave him a tentative half-smile. He took her to his office, and, once inside, brought forward a chair for her. ‘Tea?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘No thanks.’

The door opened. Sandys came in, and sat down in a chair in the corner of the room, next to a tape deck.

‘You don’t mind if Inspector Sandys is here?’ Wilde asked.

She looked from one to the other.

‘You don’t mind if we record the conversation?’ he reiterated.

She stared at the tape now poised above the deck. ‘I thought this was just a chat …’

‘That’s right. We have to record things, though.’

‘Just a minute,’ she said.

‘You’re not under arrest,’ he reassured her.

Her mouth dropped open in surprise. ‘I haven’t done a bloody thing wrong,’ she said.

Sandys clicked the tape on. He noted their names, the time.

Wilde did not sit down, but stood by the window and looked at her. ‘How are you?’ he asked.

The question surprised her. ‘I’m OK.’

‘Sleep well?’

She frowned. ‘Yes.’

‘Lots of people don’t. They say they can’t. People who find a dead body.’

‘Do they,’ she murmured. Not a question.

‘You didn’t sleep the night before,’ he said. ‘Tuesday.’

She glanced up at him. She was still fuming over the tape, the presence of Sandys, the feeling that she had been set up. Worse still that she was under some sort of suspicion. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘When we looked in the house,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t help noticing that you hadn’t been to sleep.’

There was a silence. Anna looked down at her hands.

‘The furniture was disturbed,’ he said.

She did not move. Then, quietly, she murmured, ‘I don’t always sleep.’

He nodded, as if this were a quite normal reply to his observation. He walked round to his side of the desk and drew a piece of paper from the file lying there. He read it through. ‘What did you think,’ he asked, ‘when you heard that car coming down the track?’

‘Think?’ she asked.

‘Well … it’s one o’clock in the morning. There’s a storm outside. You’re not expecting anyone … not waiting for anyone.’ He looked at her steadily. ‘That’s right, is it? You weren’t expecting anyone?’

‘No,’ she said.

‘You were pulling a mahogany chest across a door …’

‘No,’ she said.

He acted surprised. ‘I’m sorry? No?’

‘I …’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Right,’ he said, slowly, without tone in his voice. ‘So you weren’t expecting anyone. You were in your bedroom, awake, dressed.’

‘Yes,’ she murmured.

‘And then you hear a car. You hear a car’s horn blowing, and it’s coming nearer.’

‘Yes.’

‘And it’s obvious it’s on your track. You see the headlights.’

‘Yes.’

‘How fast was it travelling?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you drive yourself?’

‘Yes, I …’

‘Could you guess the speed, perhaps?’

‘I suppose it was travelling fairly fast,’ she said. ‘It came over the hill soon after I heard the horn. The headlights … they bumped. Going over the ruts in the lane. They bumped and swayed, as they would if you hit them too fast.’

‘Right. Thirty miles an hour? Forty? Fifty?’

‘Thirty maybe.’

‘OK. Quite a speed for a rainy night on an unsurfaced road.’

‘Yes …’

‘The sort of speed you would do yourself?’

‘No. I’d be worried about the car. The axle. The exhaust.’

He smiled. ‘Yes, so would I.’ He sat down, and drummed his fingers lightly on the desk. ‘So you and I would go slower. But this person didn’t. This girl.’ He paused. ‘Which suggests … what?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She was in a hurry?’

‘Well, obviously.’

‘In a hurry, and knew the road.’

Anna frowned. ‘It doesn’t follow that she knew the road. You could just be anxious to get somewhere …’

‘She was anxious to get to the house?’

Anna gave a half-shrug.

‘Anxious to get to the wrong house?’ Wilde persisted.

‘I don’t know,’ Anna said. ‘I’m guessing.’

‘And yet …’ Wilde picked up Anna’s statement again, and read it. ‘And yet, when she gets to this house, she doesn’t get out of the car at first. And when she eventually does, she just stands in the rain. She even wanders off a little way.’ He looked up again. ‘Is that correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘So she wasn’t that anxious to find you. Casually wandering off, calmly standing in the rain … those aren’t the actions of someone who’s anxious, is it?’

‘No,’ said Anna. ‘But—’

‘So she wasn’t driving fast because she was desperate, frightened, panicked. She was driving fast to get to you.’

‘No,’ Anna objected.

‘And you were up, waiting for her.’

‘No.’

‘Not frightened yourself?’

Anna put one hand to her forehead. ‘Why should I be?’

‘At an unknown intruder, late at night?’

She frowned. Her noticed her hands twisting in her lap.

‘And this girl,’ he continued, ‘said nothing to you. She didn’t react in any way. You sat her down on the chair and then rang us.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

Anna looked completely baffled. ‘Why what?’

‘Why go out there and bring her in?’

‘It was raining …’

‘Granted. But she’s a complete stranger, she’s standing out there in the pouring rain … it’s odd, isn’t it? Peculiar?’

‘Yes, of course it was.’

‘And you were in the house on your own.’

‘Yes.’

‘Couldn’t sleep, restless … and a car horn starts blowing in the middle of the night, and this total stranger turns up in the drive …’

‘I couldn’t see where she’d gone once she got out of the car. She left the engine running, the lights on …’

‘So you went out.’

‘I said in my statement. I hesitated. Eventually I went out to the car.’

‘And found a body.’

‘Yes.’

‘And then you brought the girl into the house.’

‘Yes.’

‘A complete stranger, who’d arrived in this high drama in the middle of the night. She might have murdered this woman. You bring her into your house.’

‘I … I can’t really explain it,’ Anna said. She realized herself now that she was wringing her hands, and made a deliberate, concentrated effort to stop. Without revealing the truth, how could she tell him why the sight of the girl had been a relief? ‘She looked helpless,’ she said.

‘With a dead body in her car?’

‘Yes. I know it sounds strange. I just thought it must be her grandmother, her aunt, a relation … it never occurred to me that she might have killed this woman.’ Anna stared directly at Wilde. ‘Is that what she’s done? Is that what you’re saying? She killed her?’

Wilde didn’t answer the question.

Anna looked away from him. ‘I wasn’t thinking very clearly,’ she whispered. ‘I probably did the wrong thing, I don’t know. I’ve just been … I’m tired.’ Her voice broke a little. She swallowed hard. ‘It’s been difficult lately.’

There was a silence.

Sandys stretched his legs out, crossed his arms, looked at the floor. Anna stared at him, then back at Wilde.

‘Matthew Aubrete,’ Wilde said evenly. ‘You do know him?’

Anna frowned. ‘Matthew? Of course I know him.’

‘But not very well.’

Wilde noticed a flush, a telltale wash of colour, on her throat.

‘No, not very well,’ she said.

‘So you wouldn’t know that Alisha Graham was coming to see him.’

‘No.’

‘You don’t know anything about his plans?’

‘His plans?’ she echoed.

‘Plans for the gardens. Why Miss Graham was brought here.’

‘Not really … look …’

‘Not really?’

‘Well, everyone knows there’s some problem with the water.’

Wilde paused. He held out his own hands, steepled the fingers. ‘And do you know Dominic Aubrete?’ he asked, not looking up at her.

She stole a sideways glance at Sandys. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Just to recognize, that’s all.’

‘Just to say good morning to?’

‘Yes, that’s right.’

He nodded slowly. ‘So you wouldn’t ever have been a guest at the house?’

She said nothing, but, holding his gaze, she shook her head.

‘A private guest sometimes, as a friend of the family?’

‘No …’

‘Perhaps when Mr Aubrete senior and junior were there, over the last year or so?’

‘No …’

‘When Mrs Aubrete was away?’

There was a prolonged silence. Both men watched her. She looked down at the floor. The flush of colour had spread to her face.

‘Miss Miles?’ Wilde prompted. ‘Did you hear my question?’

She closed her eyes for several seconds. The knuckles on her clasped hands turned white. She opened her eyes, and bit on her lip before replying.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t think it was relevant. I didn’t see how it could be.’

‘Didn’t think what was relevant?’ Wilde asked.

‘My friendship with Matthew,’ she told him softly.

‘Friendship? Do you mean an affair?’

She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ she murmured. ‘It’s all finished with.’

Wilde considered her for some moments. ‘And why is that?’ he asked, at last.

‘It’s very complicated.’

‘Is that why you were barricading the door on Tuesday night?’

‘No. Not because of Matthew.’

She realized what she had said too late; raising her head, she gazed at the ceiling in exasperation.

‘Who, then?’ Wilde asked. ‘Who was coming?’

‘I don’t know. No one.’

‘No one? Come on, Miss Miles.’

She lowered her head.

Glancing over at Sandys, Wilde saw his colleague’s raised eyebrows.

‘What had happened?’ Wilde asked Anna. ‘Was it something to do with Matthew Aubrete?’

‘It was just …’ She seemed to cast about her for a reason.

‘You had argued?’

‘No, not exactly.’ She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and put her head in her hands. ‘He wanted something I couldn’t give,’ she said. ‘He wanted to get married.’

‘Is that so unbearable?’ Wilde asked.

‘No—’ she said. She stopped herself.

‘What, then?’ Wilde asked.

A sound of frustration, a high-pitched note, escaped her. ‘I just don’t see what the hell this is to do with you!’

Wilde was regarding her with acute interest, as if he had heard something that he recognized in her voice. ‘Where do you come from?’ he asked.

‘Oh Christ,’ Anna muttered. Just for a second, she looked down at the floor, trying to summon a reserve of patience. It failed her. She got to her feet, snatching her handbag back into its defensive position across her chest. ‘I’ve done all I can to help you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know the girl, I don’t know the Graham woman, Matthew didn’t tell me why she was coming, I don’t know why they turned up at my house or why I was damned stupid enough to go out to her when I should have just rung the police.’ She paused to catch her breath after the torrent of words. ‘I don’t believe that you can keep me here,’ she said.

Wilde walked quickly around the desk.

‘I’m leaving,’ she said, and turned for the door.

He managed to catch her arm, as gently as he could, as she opened the door to the corridor.

‘Miss Miles,’ he murmured, his voice so low that she could barely hear him. ‘Who were you expecting, if it wasn’t Matthew Aubrete?’