Chapter Seventy-Nine

IT WAS EARLY on Monday morning. Tim and Juliet had been summoned to Superintendent Thornton’s office before they began interrogating Frederick Start.

“Do you think you’ve got to the bottom of this now that Cushing’s confessed?” said the Superintendent, no doubt, Tim thought, with one eye on his budget.

“I think it’ll be many months before we find out the exact truth, sir, especially exactly who was responsible for what. We think we know who most of the perpetrators are, but there may be others, and several have yet to be apprehended. We do have a rough idea of the sequence of events, unbelievable though some of them seem.”

“Do you think we should charge Helena Nurmi with murder?”

“The crown prosecution service will probably push for it. If she’s charged, she’s almost bound to get off with a plea of temporary insanity. But she may be wanted by the Finnish police for a cold case murder.”

“Ironical, isn’t it?” mused the Superintendent. “Talking of the CPS, Ms Trotter’s asked for a meeting this week to talk about whether Ruby Grummett should be charged with criminal negligence.”

“Another irony. Ruby Grummett and her family have a lot more to worry about than that now.”

“Quite so, Yates. We’ll have solved a good number of crimes by the time we’ve finished, won’t we? A good thing I put Armstrong onto that cold case. Well done, Armstrong,” he added belatedly.

Juliet wasn’t listening. She was still reeling from a call she’d had that morning from Louise Butler.

“You really are married to your job, aren’t you?” Louise was venomous. “Didn’t it even occur to you to call me to say you’d been rescued?”

“I didn’t know you knew about it,” Juliet said weakly.

“It wasn’t important enough to you to find out,” said Louise, and finished the call abruptly.

Andy Carstairs had just arrived for work. He was sitting outside the police station in his car, gazing vacantly out of the window. He’d have to pull himself together now and get into gear for the day, but he’d been flattened. He’d called Jocelyn Greaves several times since she’d been expelled from the school grounds almost forty-eight hours before. Each time the phone had gone to message. Finally, he received a text from her: Please stop.