‘Excuse me. I have to make a call – I’ll go outside.’
Gemma left Meredith sitting in the kitchen, looking as stunned as if someone had just told her this shocking news, instead of the other way around.
She let herself out of the back door and walked a little way from the house, her heart pounding. Shit, she thought. This changed everything. She felt simultaneously furious with and sympathetic towards Meredith, for not saying anything sooner.
But then, if you shagged your mate’s husband, you really wouldn’t want to admit it, would you?
‘Boss, sorry to call you out of hours but there’s been a big development,’ she said when Lincoln picked up the phone. She could hear loud music in the background, something grungy that she would never have expected Lincoln to enjoy; the Smashing Pumpkins or Nirvana or something from the nineties. He’d turned it down to a background hum before she could identify it. It could even have been Cohen.
‘I’m at Meredith Vincent’s cottage. She says Ralph Allerton died in an abandoned ice house in the grounds of Minstead House and that someone dumped his body in the pond later.’
She heard a splutter. Lincoln had presumably taken a swig of whatever he was drinking at the wrong moment.
‘What?’
‘Meredith Vincent just confessed to finding his body and not saying anything.’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘Because they got pissed at the office staff lunch the day his wife reported him missing, and had a sneaky shag after work. Meredith said he was fine when she left him in the ice house, but she realised she’d dropped her keys, and when she went back for them, he was lying on the floor, dead. She did mouth-to-mouth but he was definitely gone.’
Gemma heard Lincoln whistle with incredulity. ‘Good grief. This is astonishing. Do you believe her?’
‘I think so, boss. Obviously we need to bring her in, but she was clearly very fond of the man.’
‘Do you think it was some sort of sex game that went wrong?’
‘I don’t think it was anything to do with the sex,’ Gemma said. ‘Though I suppose we can’t rule it out. If she did strangle him while they were shagging, she’d have to be stronger than she looks.’
‘And if she was all that fond of him, why did she just leave his body in there?’ Lincoln mused.
‘She wasn’t going to, she said.’ Gemma glanced over her shoulder back at the house, hoping Meredith couldn’t hear her. It was so deathly quiet in these hills, sound must carry for miles. She walked a little further away, into a large walled vegetable garden – huge beds of netted strawberry plants, their delicate foliage in stark contrast with the obscenely broad leaves of the pinkening rhubarb stems in the neighbouring beds. The smell of warm fruit was intoxicating.
Gemma gave a start when she saw a figure crouching over one of the far beds. Then she realised the person was in the green uniform of Minstead House’s gardening team, and they were pulling weeds out from around what looked like carrots. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, but they showed no signs of having noticed or overheard her, so she paced in the opposite direction.
‘She rang her brother in a panic. He told her to stay put till he got there, and then they’d go back; pretend to discover Allerton “by chance” and call the police. But when they went back to the ice house, he was gone.’
‘Right,’ Lincoln said. ‘I’ll meet you at the station in an hour. We’ll interview her. Let’s get all the CCTV from inside the house that day, as well as any in the grounds near the ice house. I’ll get someone stationed over there twenty-four/seven; it’s a new crime scene. I don’t want any gap in the evidence chain, now we’ve finally got one. Oh, and Gemma?’
‘Sir?’
‘Nice work, getting her to tell you that.’
Gemma returned to the cottage, her cheeks flushed the same pink as the rhubarb at DI Lincoln’s praise.
Meredith was still sitting in the same position in the kitchen, her arms hanging uselessly by her sides, looking more like an old woman than she ever had before. The stew was still bubbled gently on the Aga’s hotplate, the soft plopping sounds somehow comforting.
She touched Meredith’s shoulder gently.
‘OK Meredith, we’re going to have to go to the station – but I think you should eat something first. You’ve made this lovely stew, and all that’ll be on offer down there will be some dodgy sandwiches.’
‘I’m not hungry now,’ Meredith said, in a dull monotone.
‘I’m sure. I’m not really either – but let’s try. Just a small amount. You sit there, I’ll sort it.’
Gemma took two glasses down from a shelf and ran the tap to fill them with cold water, thinking how glad she was that she hadn’t succumbed to the sneaky glass of Rioja she’d been tempted by just half an hour ago. Imagine Lincoln smelling it on her breath! She glanced at Meredith’s wineglass – it didn’t look like she’d downed any more since Gemma had been on the phone to Lincoln. That was good. It would be far from ideal if Meredith was under the influence when interviewed.
‘Do I need a lawyer?’ Meredith’s voice was tiny and thin.
‘You’re not under arrest so, no, not unless you want one. We just need to get a proper record of what happened, on tape. OK?’
‘OK.’
There were oven gloves on a hook near the Aga, so Gemma slotted one hand into each end, lifting the heavy iron pot off the stove and placing it on a mat on the table. Steam rushed out in a thick cloud when she took off the lid, and the smell of the succulent meat made her mouth water. She ladled a couple of spoonfuls into two bowls and handed one to Meredith, who merely gazed at it as if she didn’t know what she was meant to do with it.
As Gemma hung the gloves back up, something else glove-related occurred to her:
‘Can I ask you a slightly personal question, Meredith?’
Meredith shrugged, not meeting her eyes.
‘Your scar … I know Mark asked you about it before, but it’s obvious that you’re self-conscious about it. How come you don’t wear gloves? Wouldn’t that be easier for you than people staring at it all the time?’
As if to demonstrate, Meredith slid her damaged hand under her buttock on the chair; an instinctive movement.
‘I used to,’ she said, quietly. ‘When I first got the job here. It’s hard to hide it when you work in a shop. But one glove makes you look like a weirdo – I kept getting comments about Michael Jackson, or people just outright sniggered. Two gloves isn’t much better – not to mention just being totally impractical. You can’t use a phone, wash your hands, type – none of the things I need to do a lot of the time…’
She paused, pulled out her hand and studied the scar, turning her hand this way and that as the steam from the bowls gradually died down.
‘I thought I’d get used to it, but I never have. I did plan to have reconstructive surgery – you know, a skin graft – but once I took the job here, I never got round to it, I suppose. I just learned to block out the sight of it; and I do, most of the time.’
Gemma took a seat at the table with her, digging a fork into the stew and blowing on it before putting it in her mouth. It tasted as delicious as it had smelled.
‘I know what happened; how you got it,’ she said carefully. It felt the right time, having broached the subject already.
Meredith’s head jerked up. ‘How?’
‘I did a search for your name on the General Registry – sorry, our database – and saw the report about the attack on you. I’m so sorry, Meredith; it sounds like a horrific experience. A terrible thing to happen to you.’
Meredith sat completely still, glassy-eyed, and Gemma felt it would be insensitive to take another mouthful of the stew. She gently picked up Meredith’s fork and placed it into her hand. ‘Please, try and eat if you can.’
‘I don’t want anyone to know,’ Meredith blurted eventually. ‘It would be in the papers. I couldn’t bear it all being raked up again, when I did everything to avoid people knowing last time.’