The next morning, Caroline and Dexter sat down in the interview room opposite Toni Scott and her solicitor.
‘Okay, Toni. This is our second interview following your arrest on suspicion of the murder of Clive Thornton. When we spoke in the first interview, we were mostly trying to ascertain what had gone on, and to determine the circumstances surrounding Clive’s death. You weren’t particularly forthcoming. I don’t know if that was concern for your daughter, or the advice of your solicitor, but we really do need to get to the bottom of things now. For everyone’s sake, including Kelly’s.’
‘How’s she doing?’ Toni asked.
‘She’s fine. She’s with your sister. She’s going to be looking after Kelly now.’
Toni nodded solemnly. She clearly knew it could be some time before she saw her daughter again, and she certainly wasn’t likely to be out of prison for some years. A smart barrister would be able to minimise the sentence by highlighting the abuse Kelly had been subjected to and the horrors that Clive had inflicted, but there was no way around the fact that Toni had planned to and succeeded in murdering him. Although many people would have happily let her walk free under the circumstances, a crime had clearly been committed, and an-eye-for-an-eye wasn’t a defence in law.
‘Can I ask you an odd question, Toni? Did Clive have an interest in the Royal Family at all?’
Toni smiled slightly, as if Caroline had asked her if Eskimos like the cold.
‘He had an interest in Princess Margaret. An obsession, I’d have called it. Clive was a couple of years too young to have made the most of the swinging sixties, but the whole hedonistic vibe was something that fascinated him. He loved the hidden side of society. He was totally… What’s the word — captivated — by Princess Margaret’s reputation as a good time girl. The idea that she could be the Queen’s sister — a senior member of the Royal Family — and at the same time be living this completely self-indulgent and carefree lifestyle completely mesmerised him.’
‘Which is why you chose that horseshoe, correct?’
Toni didn’t reply. Caroline continued.
‘It was poetic justice, wasn’t it? Like Princess Margaret, Clive had lived his public life very differently to how he did in private. He’d had to reconcile those two parts of himself. And ultimately, although in very different ways, they both met untimely ends due to their private excesses. I mean, I don’t know if you put quite that much thought into it, but I imagine on seeing the horseshoes available to you there was only ever going to be one choice.
‘Listen,’ Caroline said, leaning forward and resting her elbows on the table. ‘When we searched your house, we found something quite interesting.’ She took out a photo of the key copying kit and pushed it across the table to her. ‘Can you tell me what this is?’
Toni looked at the photo, her face passive but the length of her gaze telling Caroline all she needed to know.
‘It’s a key copying kit,’ Caroline said. ‘You use it to make impressions of keys in clay moulds, which you can then cast new keys with. It’s a clever little way of copying them. What did you need this for, Toni?’
The solicitor put his hand on the table. ‘Is there anything to suggest that this item was actually purchased or owned by Ms Scott?’ he asked, the question dripping with subtext.
‘It was in her house, amongst her belongings. So yes, I’d say there’s quite a lot that suggests that. Can you tell me what you needed it for, Toni?’
Toni Scott remained quiet.
Caroline decided to launch another curveball. ‘Do you recognise this item?’ she asked, passing across a photograph of a horseshoe. ‘We discovered it buried in one of the flowerbeds in your garden. Can you tell me how it got there?’
Toni’s eyes stayed locked onto the photo, but she didn’t respond.
‘I don’t think Ms Scott will be making any comment at this time,’ the solicitor said.
Caroline ignored him. ‘Okay, well if you don’t want to tell us, the only option we’ve got is to put our own theories out there and see how they land. So how about I tell you what I think happened? I think you broke into Clive Thornton’s house that night. I don’t think it was a burglar who got interrupted before they managed to get anything. I think it was you, and you got exactly what you were after. You wanted to copy his keys — specifically his key to Oakham Castle. That’s how you managed to get into the castle through the back door, and how you managed to hide yourself away without being spotted on CCTV or coming in through the main entrance. You knew you could tell Clive you’d come in the usual way and he just hadn’t seen you. Maybe it was all part of one of your roleplaying games. I don’t know. But I think that’s how you got in. We know you didn’t use the main entrance, and we know you weren’t picked up on CCTV. Then all you had to do was wait for Clive to close the castle for the night, cut the power so you wouldn’t be picked up on the internal CCTV, and then you were free to come out and do what you did.’
‘Do you have anything other than wild theory, Detective Inspector?’ the solicitor asked.
Caroline ignored him again. ‘You see, this all seems to make perfect sense to me so far, Toni. But there was something that didn’t quite seem to fit. Again, it was the break-in at Clive and Susan Thornton’s place. We know the person who broke in didn’t take anything, and the theory was they’d been disturbed and disappeared before they’d taken anything. Strange they got away with absolutely nothing, but not unheard of. But what didn’t quite fit was that Clive reported the break-in to the police the next morning, and when the police called back, Susan answered the phone and was clear that they didn’t want to pursue the matter further. Of course, I understand that nothing was taken and maybe they thought there was no need for any action, but if your house has just been broken into, you feel scared. Unsafe. Insecure. You want the police to catch whoever did it, if only to make sure they won’t come back and try again. You don’t just replace the broken window and carry on as if nothing ever happened. Unless, of course, you knew the person who’d broken it, or if you’d somehow managed to mete out your own form of justice.’
‘What are you insinuating, DI Hills?’ the solicitor asked.
Caroline watched as tears began to form in Toni’s eyes.
‘She didn’t do anything wrong,’ Toni said, eventually. ‘She stood by that man for years. She shut herself off to all his ways, all the things he’d tried to keep hidden behind closed doors. She kept herself just the other side of the door, standing guard over it, never quite knowing what was behind it either. And do you know why? Because she didn’t want to look inside. She couldn’t bear to think about what she might find. She kept herself firmly swept up in the narrative he’d woven for everyone else, too. And why wouldn’t she? If she did otherwise, it meant her whole adult life had been a lie.’
‘What happened, Toni?’
Toni looked away and shook her head as more tears began to fall.
‘What’ll happen to Susan?’
‘That depends entirely on what she’s done.’
‘Nothing. She did nothing. That’s my whole point.’
In that moment, Caroline was pretty sure she knew exactly what Toni meant.
‘When you say she did nothing…’
Toni sighed and leaned back in her chair. ‘I mean she did nothing.’
‘Did you know Susan went to visit Kelly at your sister’s house?’
Caroline watched as Toni registered this — the reaction on her face unmissable.
‘When?’
‘Last night. You might as well tell us what happened, Toni. What was Susan’s involvement in this? Did she put you up to it?’
‘No. Like I said, she did nothing.’
‘But she knew what you were going to do?’
Toni’s silence told Caroline all she needed to know. Caroline leaned forward on her elbows again.
‘Toni, I think everyone’s had enough of lies and deceit for one lifetime, don’t you? This whole sorry saga was all to do with the truth coming out once and for all. It’s not going to do anyone any favours to hide things at this stage.’
‘I know. But I don’t want to see another wronged woman going down and being punished for what that man did.’
‘This has nothing to do with what Clive Thornton did, Toni. It’s to do with what Susan Thornton did or didn’t do. That’s all we’re interested in at this moment in time. When you broke into the house, did Susan apprehend you?’
Toni gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. ‘She had the fright of her life. She heard a noise and thought the cat had knocked something over. I think the only reason she didn’t start screaming was because she could see I was as scared as she was.’
‘And did you talk?’
Toni nodded again. ‘It all came out. It couldn’t not. We sat and talked for over an hour. Clive was out cold. He’s been on sleeping tablets for years. It all adds up now. Who on earth could fall asleep easily with all that on his conscience? So I told her everything. I told her about our affair. I told her what he’d done to Kelly. And I told her I’d broken in to make a copy of his keys, so I could make sure he got what he deserved.’
‘Did you tell her you were planning to murder him?’
Toni shook her head. ‘No. She didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.’
Caroline registered the meaning of this. Without clear evidence, claiming conspiracy to murder would be difficult, to say the least. But she had no doubt in her mind that Susan Thornton must have at least considered the possibility that this was what Toni had been insinuating. In any case, at the very least, she’d simply sat back and let events take their course.
‘So what, she just said “Sure, take the keys and do what you like”?’ Caroline asked.
‘Not quite, no. Nothing was really said. She just stood up and went to go back upstairs.’
‘And did she?’
‘She was about to. But then I asked her to do something for me.’
‘Go on.’
‘I asked her to keep an eye on Kelly. Check in on her. If I ended up going anywhere. I didn’t say prison. I don’t know if I was even thinking prison. In my mind, I was probably thinking of a wooden box. But I asked her to watch over her from time to time. If she could.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘She didn’t say anything.’
Caroline watched as Toni looked down at her own hands. To her, this was a tale of two women, each remarkable in their own way, dealing with extreme trauma in two very different fashions. And it struck her that Susan Thornton, a woman who rarely said a word, could still so often say so much.