Tim and Juliet had to wait only a few minutes for the patrol car they had requested to arrive. Tim was amused to see Giash Chakrabati step out of it.
‘What did you say about needing someone hefty?’ said Tim sotto voce as they went to meet him. ‘He’s the thinnest copper I know.’
‘Maybe, but he’s got a black belt in karate,’ said Juliet.
‘You’re just jealous!’ said Katrin, who had accompanied them as far as the gate. Tim’s grin faded a little. He was conscious that he’d developed the beginnings of a small paunch, the consequence of many nights working late, sometimes snatching stodgy food, since the missing vehicles investigation had started.
‘Where’s Verity?’ Juliet asked Giash.
‘Gone to get some sleep. I’d just dropped her off when DC MacFadyen called me for this job. He said I wouldn’t need a partner because there’d be the three of us.’
‘That’s right,’ said Tim.
‘But we’re sorry you drew the short straw,’ said Juliet. ‘Another five minutes and you’d have been off duty yourself?’ Giash shrugged and smiled. Never mind being the thinnest copper in the force, thought Juliet: he was certainly the politest.
‘Where does this guy live?’ he asked.
Tim took out his notebook. The scrap of paper on which Marriott had written his address was still tucked inside it.
‘He lives at Twenty Drove, out beyond Bourne,’ he said. ‘According to Marriott, the house has no number. It’s called Beet House.’
‘Shouldn’t be hard to find, sir. There aren’t many houses out that way. We can be there in twenty minutes or so.’
‘You want to sit in the front with Giash?’ Tim said to Juliet. ‘I might try to get a power sleep.’
It was dark – there was a moon, but obscured by cloud. The street lights petered out once they’d left Spalding. Tim closed his eyes and tried to rest. That he was able to relax cleared his head, but he was very far from being able to sleep. His conversation with Josh Marriott returned with astonishing clarity: ‘Things haven’t been so great lately, what with the boss mooning after Martha and Susie in a perpetual bad mood.’
Susie Fovargue, thought Tim. They hadn’t really considered her except as Fovargue’s wife, helper and, they now knew, female cuckold. Cuckquean, he thought the correct term was. He’d come across it in a history book and the word had intrigued him.
Fovargue had been terrified that Susie would find out about his relationship with Martha, but in practice she must have known of it. Why else would she have been so hostile to Martha? And if Marriott recognised that she was in a ‘perpetual bad mood’, Fovargue would have noticed that, too.
It beggared belief that Susie Fovargue was the mastermind behind the organised vehicle thefts. Perhaps Juliet was wrong about the thefts being mixed up in some way with the murders. She’d almost succeeded in convincing Tim that Silverdale Farm was at the heart of the crimes, but nevertheless he retained a lingering belief in Marriott’s assertion of his own innocence. If neither Susie nor Marriott was the vehicle thief, the other likely candidates were Fovargue himself and Nathan Buckland, whom Marriott seemed to hold in inexplicably high regard. If Martha had been killed but not by Marriott, Susie was her most likely murderer. Of the people they knew at Silverdale Farm, that was; there were other people working there, too, that they hadn’t met. Or maybe between them she and Katrin had invented it all and none of the crimes had anything to do with Silverdale Farm. Except Martha’s disappearance, if it was indeed the result of a crime.
Tim sighed. For a few exuberant seconds he’d believed he was getting somewhere: when he was half asleep the answer to the whole conundrum had appeared to be within his grasp; now it was slipping away again.
‘Just waking up?’ said Juliet, turning round to peer at him.
‘I’ve been thinking, not sleeping,’ said Tim crossly.
‘Sounds nasty,’ said Juliet. ‘Anyway, we’re here now.’
Giash had pulled up outside a neat brick house with no front garden or fence. The front door was protected by a porch, but otherwise opened straight on to the road. Tim stepped under the porch, which was dimly lit by an electric lantern. A black ring-shaped doorknocker had been fastened to the door. He took hold of it and rapped it fairly gently a couple of times. As he did so, he heard the sound of a catch being released and noticed there was a small square glass window set above the knocker. He recognised it as a type of spy-hole; it was protected on the other side by a shutter, which someone had just pulled open.
‘Who is it?’ Unmistakeably, the voice was Marriott’s.
‘Police,’ said Tim. ‘It’s DI Yates and DS Armstrong.’
Heavy bolts were drawn back and a double lock released. Marriott clearly took no chances when it came to security.
Marriott half-opened the door and himself stepped into the porch, almost closing the door behind him. He was fully dressed, not in the work gear that he’d been wearing earlier that day, but in a pair of smart chinos and a Pringle sweater. Tim stepped back on to the road to give him some space.
‘DI Yates,’ he said, echoing Tim’s words as if he didn’t believe them. ‘It’s a bit late for bothering folk, in’t it? Can’t it wait until morning? Have you come to tell me you’ve found the girl?’
‘Unfortunately not, Mr Marriott. We’re sorry to disturb you at this hour – as you say, it’s very late. But we need to ask you some more questions. You’ll know that every minute counts after someone’s first reported missing.’
‘That’s as maybe. It took you long enough to decide that she was missing, didn’t it?’
Tim ignored the comment.
‘I’m glad you’re still up because we do need to talk to you. May we come in?’
‘I don’t know about that. The girlfriend’s had a tough time at work and she’s to get up in the morning. Can’t we talk out here?’
‘Most people prefer conversations with the police to be as private as possible.’
Marriott chuckled and stretched his arms as wide as the porch would allow.
‘Nothing to bother my privacy here,’ he said. ‘As you can see, we’ve got no neighbours.’
‘We could sit in the patrol car to interview you,’ said Juliet.
‘Aye, let’s do that,’ said Marriott, with some alacrity.
‘I’ll stand in the doorway, sir,’ said Giash.
‘No need for that,’ said Marriott quickly. ‘The girlfriend doesn’t need guarding.’
‘Nevertheless, it’s not a bad idea of PC Chakrabati’s. It’ll be cramped in the car if we’re all there.’
Marriott shrugged and sullenly accepted one of the back seats. Tim climbed in beside him, while Juliet resumed her place in the passenger seat. Both Tim and Juliet noticed that Marriott was uneasy. He kept flicking glances at Giash, as if afraid that the policeman might try to enter the house.
‘Now, Mr Marriott,’ said Tim, ‘take your time to answer these questions. We need you to be as accurate as possible. We may want you to think back a few weeks. Do you think you can do that?’
‘It depends,’ said Marriott gravely. ‘I’ll do me best.’
‘Good. Now you’ll remember that earlier today I removed some files from the office at the farm. You didn’t want me to take them. Did you have any particular reason for that?’
‘I told you, they weren’t mine to lend.’
‘Was that your only reason?’
Marriott nodded.
‘You knew what was in the files?’
‘Course. All the vehicle records. The vehicles we use, I mean. Not the ones for sale.’
‘Are you responsible for helping to keep those records?’
‘No. All I do is hand over the receipts. Same as the others in my team.’
‘And they’re mainly receipts for fuel?’
‘Not just fuel. Services and repairs as well. Sometimes bills for food or overnight stays, but we don’t often do those.’
‘And you’ve never filed the receipts yourself? Not at any time in the past?’
‘No, that’s always been Susie’s job. She’s good at that sort of thing. She’s got a tidy mind. Trained as an accountant, too.’
‘Have you ever taken an interest in those files? Looked through them yourself? I want you to think carefully, now.’
Marriott pantomimed deep concentration with an intensity that forced Tim to suppress a laugh.
‘Can’t say I have. I may have checked the odd sheet with Susie when she wanted me to explain something, but not looked through them, no. I don’t take no interest in the paperwork if I can help it.’
‘Each of those files has a cardboard pocket fixed to the inside of the back cover. Did you notice that?’
Marriott furrowed his brow.
‘I can’t say as I did. I’ve told you, I don’t really handle the files.’
‘Okay. So it was always Mrs Fovargue – Susie – who looked after them?’
‘Yes.’
‘But when DS Armstrong was in the office, she thought the files were piled up on Martha’s desk.’
‘They could of been. Poke her nose into anything, she would. Owt except getting on with her own business.’
‘You don’t like Martha much, do you?’
‘I’ve told you I don’t. I don’t make no secret of it.’
‘You said it’s because you feel she’s upset things at Silverdale Farm and it doesn’t run as smoothly as before she came?’
‘That’s about right, yes.’
‘Susie doesn’t like her either, does she?’
‘Well, you can’t hardly blame her, can you? That mealy-mouthed act didn’t fool Susie, or me, for that matter. She was…’
There came an urgent tapping at Tim’s window. He opened the car door.
‘PC Chakrabati, is everything all right?’
‘I’m not sure, sir. I thought I heard a door slam at the back of the house and when I came out of the porch I could see a light moving across the fields. Do you think we should go in, see that the lady’s okay?’
Tim sprang out of the car and peered into the darkness in the direction in which Giash was pointing. Two small points of light could be seen disappearing at some speed into the gloom.
‘What do you think it is, sir? Someone on a motorbike?’
‘No,’ said Tim. ‘That vehicle has two rear lights, not one. And from the speed at which it’s travelling over rough land, I’d say there’s only one thing it could be: it’s a quad.’