‘I thought you would be more interested in the father,’ Gerard Hargrave said, as we walked towards the interview room.
Leo stopped short. ‘You’ve got Dad here?’
‘Yes.’ I glared at the solicitor. It was a conflict of interest for him to represent both father and son, but he’d found a way to make trouble. ‘That’s not important right now. We have a few more questions for you about the night Melanie was killed.’
‘Not important?’ Leo echoed, allowing himself to be shepherded into the interview room. He sat down heavily. ‘How can that be true? I told you, Dad didn’t have anything to do with what happened.’
I stared at Hargrave, trying to convey with the merest twitch of facial muscles that he was a twat who had made our job a whole lot harder. He settled in his chair, unconcerned.
My finger hovered over the button to begin recording. ‘We need you to focus and answer our questions as carefully as possible. Can you do that for us, Leo?’
He bit his lip. ‘I’ll try.’
‘Thank you.’ I pressed the button.
‘Second interview with Leonard Dunlow.’ Juliet rattled off the information, her voice a gentle monotone.
My mind drifted to Dunlow. Such unaffected calm. Nothing like his son, who wore his lies plainly for everyone to see. We hoped that asking Leo about the gloves and scarf might give us something concrete to throw at his father before the DNA results came back. It wasn’t likely Dunlow would crack under questioning, so we needed to smash him open.
‘We have a couple more questions for you, Leo,’ Juliet said.
I opened my notepad. ‘After your father came to the den and spoke to you on the night Melanie was killed, you said you watched him walk in the direction of the house. Is that correct?’
Leo nodded. ‘Yeah. I didn’t stay awake long enough to see him go inside, but that was definitely the way he was headed.’
Hargrave didn’t move, but disapproval radiated from him in waves. Dunlow was making his wishes known by proxy. But what did Hargrave expect Leo to say? He’d already confessed he hadn’t seen his father go into the house, and it wasn’t like we would let him change his mind now.
‘Can you remember if your dad was wearing gloves that night?’ I asked.
Leo’s forehead creased with vertical lines. ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you remember him wearing?’ Juliet nudged.
‘It was a cold night, so he was in a coat.’ Leo closed his eyes, the skin around them bruised from his encounter with Jordan. After a moment, he reopened them. ‘I’m sorry. He was shouting and all I was thinking about was Mel and how tired I felt. I don’t remember.’
‘It’s okay, Leo,’ I reassured him, hoping my lies were not as obvious as his. ‘The other thing we wanted to check was whether Melanie was wearing a scarf when she came to see you that evening.’
‘Yeah, she was.’ His face twisted into a sad smile. ‘I’d given it to her a couple of weeks beforehand.’
‘Can you describe it?’ Juliet asked.
‘I picked it really carefully.’ Leo’s voice thickened. ‘It was navy, looked amazing on her. It had swooping grey swallows on it.’
A perfect description of the piece of scarf we’d found in the bins. I made a note, my handwriting messy with excitement. Whatever the DNA results said about those gloves, Dunlow having access to Melanie’s scarf had to be incriminating.
‘Do you remember if Melanie was wearing the scarf when she left?’ Juliet sat forward, her eyes not leaving Leo for a second.
‘I think so.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘It’s all a bit of a mess in my head, I’ve thought about it too many times. I wasn’t paying much attention to what she wore as she left. She got dressed quickly and I was upset. I guess she could have left it, but I would have noticed it afterwards.’
‘Could your dad have taken it?’ I asked.
Leo looked between the two of us. ‘Is this important? Have you found something?’
‘It would help if you’d tell us whether your dad took the scarf,’ Juliet said.
‘Like I said, everything from that night is a muddle.’ Leo grimaced. ‘I guess he could have. He was shouting for a long time and I wasn’t always looking at him. But I think I would have noticed him holding it.’
Not if he’d hidden it. I knew how useful a deep coat pocket was.
‘Okay, Leo. That’s all we need,’ Juliet said.
I reached for the button to stop the recording, but Leo spoke before I pressed it.
‘Do you think Dad did it? Is that what this is about?’
Juliet tapped one manicured fingernail on the table. ‘We have some questions for your father, but at the moment we are no closer to discovering who killed Melanie.’
I hoped Juliet was saying that to reassure Leo, although that wasn’t her style. The scarf and gloves had to mean we were closer to finding Melanie’s killer.
‘Dad wouldn’t have done it,’ Leo said. ‘He’s not always nice and he didn’t like that I was with Mel, but he wouldn’t have killed her. I told him I loved her.’
Leo’s gaze was beseeching. He offered his words in the innocent belief they would clear his father’s name.
Family was the most important thing to Timothy Dunlow. What would he have done to disentangle one of his sons from a relationship he considered unsuitable?