Chapter Thirty-One

Over her bowl of oatmeal the next morning, Penny’s thoughts turned to Michael Quinn, who, despite his denials, she believed had been at the Hall on the night of the robbery. Why? What had brought him there? If his role had been to submit a diagram showing the layout of the ground floor, he’d done that. Knowing that a robbery was going to take place at the Hall, surely he wouldn’t have risked being there while it was in progress unless he had a really good reason to do so.

After rinsing her bowl and spoon, she reached for her phone and scrolled back in time until she came to images she hadn’t looked at since that day she’d learned Michael Quinn was married. How could she ever have been attracted to him? Of course, he’d looked better then, not nearly so seedy as when she’d seen him in Dublin, but still he was the same person, then as now. Or was he?

If only Lane would or could tell us what he saw, she thought. He might be able to place Quinn inside the Hall on the night Rhodri was murdered. And as her next step came clear to her, she copied a couple of images that clearly showed Quinn’s face to move them to the front of her camera roll.

She set off for work a little earlier than usual, to leave time to pick up a cup of coffee, and just as she’d hoped, when she entered the café, Lane was behind the counter working the coffee machine.

“Morning, Penny,” he beamed at her. “What can I get you?”

“Morning, Lane. You’re enjoying your new job, I see. I’d like a latte, please.” She said nothing to break his concentration while he measured out the coffee, tamped it down, and poured milk into a jug ready for the steamer. When her coffee was ready, he handed it to her, and she paid the woman behind the cash register. As there were no other customers waiting to be served, she asked Lane if she could have a word with him.

“Sorry, Penny, not right now. This is the breakfast rush. Too busy.”

“It’s all right, Lane,” said the woman at the cash register. “You can take five minutes.” Penny nodded her thanks, and Lane stepped out from behind the counter. “Let’s just sit over at that empty table, shall we?” Penny said.

“What did you want to ask me? You’ll have to be quick, because I have to get back to work.”

Penny got out her phone. “We really need your help, Lane,” she said. “The investigation into the death of the young man who died up at the Hall is stalled. We need you to help get it going again.” Lane frowned. “If you could help bring justice to this young man, you’d want to do that, wouldn’t you?”

Lane didn’t respond, but an encouraging flicker of something like agreement flashed across his face, so Penny continued, “Now, you told me before that someone told you not to tell anybody what you saw or heard in the Hall just before you dropped the tray or you’d get hurt, but what if I told you that the man who said that to you is now in police custody and he can’t hurt you? And I know it’s hard keeping a big secret. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just get rid of that burden so you don’t have to carry it around anymore?”

A look of vast relief marked Lane’s face, replaced almost immediately by a pained frown. He held up his hands to the side of his face and said, “I just want it to stop. I don’t want to think about it anymore. I don’t want to be asked any more questions.”

Penny held out her phone to him.

“Let’s get this over with then, once and for all. Tell me, is that the man you saw in the hallway outside the library at Ty Brith Hall the night of the dinner party?”

Lane’s eyes slid to her phone and then darted back to meet Penny’s. He nodded slowly. Penny looked at her phone and then back at Lane, her mouth making a little round O of surprise. She’d scrolled back an image too far and shown him the picture of Rhodri Phillips. “Lane, that was the young man who died that night.”

“He was in the hall,” Lane said. “With the other one.”

“What other one?”

“The other man. The older one.”

Penny thumbed to the picture of Michael Quinn. “This man?”

Lane nodded.

“And what were they doing? Were they talking? Did you hear what they were saying?”

“The younger man, he was angry. He used bad words.”

“I’m amazed nobody heard all this going on. Were they shouting, or talking loudly?”

Lane nodded. “The older guy, he said, ‘Keep your voice down.’”

“And did you a get a sense of what they were arguing about?”

“The younger man, he said, ‘I want my paintings back,’ and the older man, he sort of laughed and …”

“Sorry, Lane, don’t mean to interrupt, but the younger one said, ‘I want my paintings back.’”

“Yeah, and then this woman in a blue dress appeared out of the dining room, and she told the younger man to go back to the kitchen, and then she went to the loo and then the older man saw me, and he told me not to say anything to anyone, and then he put his hand underneath my tray and knocked it out of my hands. Like this.” Lane demonstrated with a strong upward swing of his right hand how his tray had been upended. “It all happened so fast. But I don’t remember how I ended up on the floor.”

“You probably slipped on some spilled champagne,” said Penny. “But tell me …”

But before she could frame her next question, asking Lane if the older man had used the word “grand,” the door opened and half a dozen men in work clothes, high-visibility jackets, and heavy boots walked up to the counter. Lane glanced at his boss, who tipped her head at the coffee machine. Penny’s time was up.