SIXTY-TWO

It was quite true what Maria Quinn had told Elias. She did hate a loose end. When her lunch hour arrived, therefore, she didn’t take her usual walk around the park to get some exercise and some sunlight, but rather bought herself a chicken salad sandwich from across the road to eat at her desk while browsing Google Earth for a stretch of cobbled lane beside a pair of scarlet oaks, by far the most distinctive landmark in Dunstan Warne’s drone photos.

She’d only been at it a few minutes when Tom rang from the front desk. ‘Ursula Yates for you,’ he said in a puzzled low voice.

‘Yates?’ said Quinn, equally nonplussed. The woman was a civil rather than a criminal lawyer, and senior enough not to have to deal with humble WPCs.

‘She has a lady with her,’ added Tom. ‘An Indian lady. From the King John Hotel.’

‘Ah,’ said Quinn. ‘Okay. I’ll be straight out.’

She found Priya Kapur and Ursula Yates by the cork board, pretending interest in the notices. Priya looked very different today, having exchanged her hotel jacket and skirt for an ivory kurta and an embroidered peach pashmina with which she’d covered her hair and head, yet which still couldn’t quite hide the torment in her expression, as though she’d rather be anywhere else on earth. Quinn put on her friendliest smile as she went to greet them both and ask what this was about.

‘Not here,’ murmured Priya, so softly that Quinn almost had to lip-read. ‘Is there not somewhere more private?’

‘Of course,’ said Quinn. The interview rooms were all free, yet she took the end one anyway, to make quite sure they wouldn’t be overheard. The room was small and bare, designed for interrogations, so she rearranged the chairs in a circle to make it less confrontational. ‘So Priya?’ she asked, with another encouraging smile. ‘How can I help you?’

Priya looked miserably down at the floor. Some kind of confession was coming, Quinn was sure of it. Yet her expression and the way she was twisting her hands spoke of shame rather than guilt. And, just like that, Quinn realised why Priya had wanted a woman solicitor to accompany her here, rather than one of the firm’s male criminal lawyers; and also why she’d asked to speak to Quinn specifically, rather than any of the more senior officers on the Warne Farm investigation. And with a thrill of what she recognised to be utterly inappropriate excitement, she guessed exactly what Priya was about to tell her, and how it was going to throw Dunstan Warne’s murder investigation back into complete chaos.