‘Sorry for keeping you waiting, Mr Moran.’ Zigic closed the door, went to sit down next to Murray, who was already setting up the tapes. ‘We’ll try not to take up any more of your time than necessary.’
Brynn Moran unfolded his burly arms and laid them on the tabletop, an ancient but expensive watch hitting the scarred melamine with a crack. It had the look of a family heirloom, the kind given out at retirement when jobs were still for life. His entire appearance was that of a man unconcerned with how he looked, but Zigic saw through the facade. His jumper was moth-holed, but cashmere, his jeans too well cut to be anything but a designer brand. The effect was somewhere between gentleman farmer and green-energy entrepreneur, which Zigic supposed was exactly right for the owner of a landscape gardening company which catered to the wealthy locals.
Once again he wondered at the kind of couple Brynn and Nina made. She was so neat and precise, chilly in temperament and demeanour.
Was Brynn her bit of rough? Different enough from the man Colin had been that she felt secure in her ability to keep him?
Or maybe he was being unfair to Nina. Murder rarely brought out the best in people and he suspected those who put up the highest, most formidable defences were the most vulnerable underneath.
Murray went through the basics, asking again about Brynn’s alibi, information he’d already supplied, about his friendship with Corinne and how and when he and Nina got together. Simple questions, designed to put him at ease. He answered shortly, stayed in neutral.
Unlike Nina and Jessica he didn’t try to fill the quiet when Murray let a sentence hang.
Zigic hated dealing with suspects like this. He wanted a spewer. Then again, with the reticent ones you at least had the advantage of knowing anything they did say would be carefully weighed and meaningful, if not always in the way they intended.
It was odd though, considering how talkative he’d been when they’d spoken to him a few days ago. He’d been more than happy to spill back then. It made Zigic wonder what he might have learned in the meantime. If he was watching his words because he knew he was bad at keeping secrets.
Murray wasn’t softening him up, they were just wasting time.
Cut to the chase, Zigic thought.
‘Mr Moran, had you been in contact with Corinne recently?’
‘How recently?’ he asked. ‘I saw her at Christmas, we had her over for dinner. Boxing Day.’
‘What about since then?’
‘I didn’t see her in person, but we talked on the phone a couple of times.’
Zigic held his hand still on the blue cardboard file he’d brought with him, no need to put the evidence in front of Moran since he’d been good enough to admit it. He was slightly disappointed. Would have liked him to lie, giving them the opportunity to unfoot him.
‘Who called who?’
‘I called her, she called me back.’ He scratched his eyebrow with a green-rimmed thumbnail. ‘I might’ve rung her again. Or she rang me. One or the other.’
The truth, again. Given up so easily it took on the cast of a lie.
‘What did you talk about?’
Moran heaved a deep breath. ‘Lily, mostly. Corinne wanted to see her and Nina wouldn’t let her go round there.’
‘She’s a teenage girl,’ Zigic said. ‘Surely she’d do whatever she wanted.’
‘Yeah, but Nina would have kicked up merry hell as soon as she noticed she was gone. Corinne wanted her organised visits back.’
Zigic tried to remember what he’d read in the notes from their divorce proceedings, didn’t recall anything about custody wranglings.
‘Why had the organised visits stopped?’ Zigic asked.
‘They hadn’t, not officially.’ Moran shifted his weight in the chair, hunched over, weary-looking. ‘After all that at Christmas, Nina put her foot down, told Corinne she wasn’t welcome any more and not to come and get Lily at the weekend.’
‘Why didn’t Corinne take it up with the court?’ Murray asked, and Zigic could hear her own history bleeding through in her voice, the angry edge. ‘If they’d made legal arrangements Nina couldn’t stop her seeing her daughter.’
‘That’s what I was calling Corinne about. I thought if she apologised for how she’d gone on when she was round ours, Nina might calm down about the whole thing.’ He showed them his open hands, rough red palms, heavily calloused. ‘I just reckoned it was better for everyone if we sorted it out among ourselves.’
‘And did Corinne apologise?’ Zigic asked, opening the file to check the dates.
Moran grimaced. ‘No. Like a couple of cats in a bag, them two.’
‘The last time you called Corinne – Thursday 28th of January – that was almost a month after the argument. They still hadn’t made peace?’
‘No.’
‘Corinne must have seriously offended Nina then. What did she say?’
Another wriggle of discomfort in his seat. ‘She was harping on about Nina’s appearance. Saying she was anorexic. Telling her men liked something to grab hold of. It was a load of rubbish. Nina’s got a fantastic figure and she works hard for it.’
‘What about Harry?’ Zigic asked.
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Harry and Corinne had a falling-out, right?’
‘He was only defending his mum.’ Moran cupped one big fist inside his palm, rubbed his thumb over his knuckles. He looked to Murray. ‘You know how boys are with their mums. And Harry’s been the man of that house for a lot of years.’
‘Until you came along,’ Murray said.
‘Harry and me get on fine. Bloody hell, he’s been working with me since he left school. He’s like my own son.’
‘Do you have children?’ Murray asked.
He shook his head. ‘Never met the right woman.’
Had he been waiting in the wings for Nina all this time, knowing what Corinne was putting her through, just waiting for the inevitable split to happen so he could move in on that ready-made family?
‘Harry and you are close, then?’
A wary nod.
‘He confides in you?’
‘We’re men,’ Moran said, with a rueful smile. ‘We don’t go in for confiding much.’
‘Did he tell you Corinne slapped him?’
‘Yeah.’ Moran pressed his balled fists to his chin. ‘Shocked me, that. She’d never been the type for it. Colin was a scrapper when we were kids but that was his mum’s doing. Old cow used to knock seven bells out of him. Way she went on Colin swore he’d never lay a hand on his own kids, no matter what they did.’
‘Not even when Harry got in trouble with the law?’
Brynn frowned. ‘He wasn’t happy about that, but he blamed himself. He knew what it was about. Harry thought Colin was gay; he goes after some gay fella. Doesn’t take a genius, does it?’
‘Sounds like you and Colin confided in each other,’ Zigic said.
‘We were like brothers, it’s different.’
He was still grieving, the sadness hanging over him, there in the tone of his voice and the droop of his eyes whenever he said Colin’s name. Not Corinne – she was a different person, an agitant to be appeased, an unwelcome guest at his new family’s table. Days into the inquiry and it still surprised Zigic how the people around her struggled to reconcile the two versions of Corinne, how polarised their feelings were.
‘Harry threw Corinne out of the house,’ Zigic said. ‘What did she say to provoke him?’
‘From what I can make out it was Harry doing the provoking. He said—’ Brynn braced against the edge of the table as he gathered himself. ‘Harry told her it didn’t matter what she did, or how much money she spent on herself, she’d always just be a freak in a dress.’
‘Did you witness this directly?’
‘No. Harry told me afterwards. I think he was a bit ashamed of himself.’
‘That didn’t come from nowhere,’ Zigic said.
‘She’d been winding Nina up. Harry’d just had enough.’ Brynn drew his hands off the table. ‘He feels terrible about it, of course. The last thing he said to his dad and it was that. No taking it back now. Not for any of them.’
Fifteen minutes later, with Moran dispatched back to reception, Zigic stood in front of the murder board, looking at the photograph of Harry Sawyer. He imagined him in Corinne’s face, spitting the words at her, a precisely calibrated insult guaranteed to pay her back for an afternoon sniping at his beloved mother. Corinne shouldn’t have lashed out, but it was an understandable response.
How much further had that argument gone, though?
Could either of them let it lie?
If Harry didn’t see Corinne as a woman then maybe he’d consider it a fair fight. The father he hated, who he’d long since rejected. He’d already sought a proxy victim in the man he’d beaten up when he was still a teenager.
Seven years on – seven years of insults and provocations – did he need to hit back at the real person now?