My knuckles throbbed after I knocked on the cottage door. I rubbed them as locks clicked behind the thick wood. Muted light filtered out of the smudged windows.
Karl pulled the door open. His wild hair was trapped under a fraying yellow bobble hat and he looked reduced without his long, green coat on. An orange-and-brown knitted jumper revealed narrow shoulders.
‘Karl, could we come in for a minute?’ I asked.
He looked between Juliet and me but pulled the door wide. It opened straight into his living room. A dining table was squashed under one window and sagging sofas aimed towards a blackened fireplace.
Two long shotguns crossed on the wall above. Dirty windows didn’t let in much light, but the naked overhead bulb showed the guns were caked in dust.
‘Are these the only guns you have?’ I walked around a sofa to get a closer look at them. From this vantage, I could see into Karl’s bedroom. A single mattress rested on the floor, the sheets on top rumpled.
‘Yeah.’ Karl swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his long throat. ‘They were here when I moved in. I didn’t think it was important to tell you.’
Turns out, it wasn’t. There was no way these guns had been fired recently, probably not for many years. I walked over to Juliet, shaking my head.
‘I didn’t mean to cause a problem.’
‘You didn’t,’ I reassured Karl. Terence sent us down here. Had he known exactly what we’d find, but wanted us out of his kitchen as quickly as possible? ‘Sorry to have intruded on you.’
Karl followed us to the front door. He stood watching as we climbed into our car. He fiddled with his phone and the gates swung open.
‘That was pointless,’ Juliet said as we passed through. ‘Those guns couldn’t have been used to kill Melanie.’
I pulled out into the lane. ‘Do you think Terence knew that?’
‘You think he sent us down there on purpose?’
‘Maybe. He didn’t like us asking questions and poking into his personal life, so he sent us on a wild goose chase. Or maybe he knows more than he’s letting on.’ I swerved into a lay-by to let a tractor pass. ‘Even if his friend says they were together, what were they doing? What’s not illegal but something he’s desperate to keep hidden from his dad?’
‘An affair?’
I huffed as the tractor trundled by. ‘Dunlow seems the type to veer towards homophobia, but that isn’t the only option. Could be Terence was gambling, or even indulging in some kind of drug that isn’t strictly illegal. I can’t see Dunlow being happy about their wealth being squandered or used frivolously.’
‘Do you think Terence was involved in Melanie’s murder?’ Juliet’s phone rested on one knee.
Terence was his father’s son; believed himself untouchable whether or not he’d had a hand in Melanie’s death. I didn’t know if secrecy was important enough that he would end someone’s life. It depended on whether Terence saw Melanie as a person or not. His treatment of Karl, throwing him under the bus and no doubt treating him as lesser because he worked for them, suggested he didn’t think twice about how his actions affected other people.
‘I don’t know, but he was the only one with an alibi, which we’ve found out is a lie, and he has a new one but won’t tell us anything. He’s definitely hiding something.’ I pulled into the road, biting my lip. ‘How far would he go to keep his secret hidden? Maybe Melanie discovered something, and the only way to keep her quiet was to have her killed.’