Chapter 25

I’m busy thinking about where to send Piper today when DC Ben Baker calls. The police want me down at the station again. What now?

“I’m staying in my publisher’s house and I can’t leave Raider here on his own.”

I won’t interrupt Rupert to mind him again.

“Bring him with you. It’s probably against the rules but we’ll call him a comfort dog. He can sit on the floor of the interview room.”

I dread to think why they want to interview me again but I’m glad the pooch will be there this time. I message Rupert so someone knows where I am. Then I get changed. My ‘I’m with the Dalmador’ basics for October are skinny black jeans, matching polo neck and knee-high boots. It almost stops me thinking about why they want to see me.

There’s something about walking into a busy police station with a big black-on-white spotted Dalmatian-cross on a lead beside you. The confidence-boost is sudden and adrenalin-charged. My slight stature makes him look closer to a Great Dane size. My tension about the interview is stealing my breath but Raider makes me feel like a celebrity stepping out of a limo onto the red carpet, instead of a woman with ‘interesting’ fingerprints who might get charged with murder. Every phone in the waiting room is snapping. Several people call out for me to turn their way, making my head swivel and my hair fly.

Ben’s face appears at a window in the door to the interview rooms. He takes in what’s happening and semaphores to a uniformed constable who rushes over and whisks us through the door. Now we’re inside the long hall but Ben has disappeared. The constable looks at Raider, not sure what to do.

“My comfort dog,” I say. “Please don’t pat him. He’s working.”

This fake bravado is about to fizzle and burn. They might be going to arrest me.

Our guide turns and escorts us all the way to the interview room where he checks my tote bag for weapons, forgetting Raider has sharp teeth and knows how to use them.

Ben comes in and hisses, “Don’t do that again, Tiggy. This is a murder investigation.”

The lump I swallow to stifle a sob makes me cough. He pushes a box of tissues across the table and sits down.

DS Chubb appears at the door. Ben introduces himself for the tape then says, “Detective Sergeant Darryl Chubb enters the room. Interview with Antigone Jones begins at 10.35 am.” This is followed by the date.

“Ms Jones,” DS Chubb begins. “Thank you for making yourself available again. We think the murderer may have been in the house when you were there.”

“I didn’t hear or see anyone,” I hear myself say. They really don’t think it was me?

Now both detectives are looking at me, giving me a taste of some pre-arranged silence.

Was the comment about a murderer in the house a trick?

And I’ve just thought of something else.

When Helena messaged me that she wasn’t coming, she could have been upstairs and heard me come in. The timing fits. And it makes more sense of the secret connecting doors being ajar than what I thought at the time – that she’d just left. What if she was waiting for me – and Ambrose came back and challenged her? They argued about her reason for being there, obviously waiting for someone.

Was Helena upstairs with the corpse of the brother she’d just murdered? She’d want to get rid of me in a hurry. And later allow the police to think it was me.

And when she came downstairs after I’d gone and saw the hidden door open, she knew I’d probably touched it – leaving my fingerprints – so she smeared blood on the wall?

But why implicate me? Someone she’s just met who helped her. It’s more likely she could hear me talking to Ben outside and knew she had to leave. With blood on her own hands, she touched the wall, then wiped off her own prints leaving the smears.

I open my mouth and close it again.

“Do you have something to tell us?” DS Chubb prompts.

That’s what triggers my memory.

This is the room where they interviewed me last time but something’s missing. Hayden Sinclair my solicitor. Today Raider’s with me – for comfort not legal advice. I’ve been so distracted about not leaving him at home or disturbing Rupert to look after him, it didn’t even occur to me to call Hayden.

Why did Ben advise me to bring Hayden last time but not today? Is it my responsibility to ask if I need a lawyer or remember to call one? This whole thing feels like a trap. I have no intention of implicating myself in a murder I didn’t commit but that’s what they seem to be waiting for. Then they’ll suggest I call a lawyer?

They must have new evidence that they’re keeping under wraps.

“Thank you DS Chubb. I do have something to say. Please pause the interview. I want to call my solicitor. I won’t answer any more questions until he’s here.”

The two strapping men opposite me visibly deflate.

“Certainly, Ms Jones,” says DS Chubb.

Hayden’s delayed with a client and they put me and the pooch in a small room to wait.

There’s a reply from Rupert asking me to let him know how it goes.

I’m writing that I have nothing to tell him yet when the buzz from my burner phone makes me jump. I slump back in the chair, hugely relieved it didn’t happen in the interview. I can just see the two faces of my inquisitors craning over the table to stare at the incriminating tote bag on the floor.

It’s another photo from Charlie. An old school photo. Chaddiford Secondary School Sixth Form, forty years ago. Why is he sending me this? I stare at a sea of young faces, some still prepubescent with cheap haircuts and too many freckles, and others already too sophisticated-looking with big 1980s hair and dark kohl smudged under their eyes. I’m zooming in to see if I can recognise anyone when my usual phone rings.

Anita Blaine. Welcoming another distraction from my predicament, I answer it. Then wish I hadn’t.

“There are videos of you and the dog all over social media, Tiggy. At police headquarters. Lots of conjecture about why you’re there and why the police got you out of the waiting room quick smart. What’s going on?”

“When the police start taking me into their confidence, Anita, you’ll be the first to know.”

“Very cute,” she says. “Give me something, otherwise I’ll join the wrong dots. I can’t be the town’s anointed ‘hearsay-hooverer’ if no-one talks to me.”

Do I want her to join the wrong dots? It would point away from the pickle I’m in but that could backfire too.

“It must be about the pooch,” she guesses, “or you would have left him at home.”

“I couldn’t find anyone to mind him.” It’s always best to stick close to the truth with Anita.

“He witnessed a crime and they’ve brought him in to sniff things that might point to the culprit.”

“That didn’t happen.”

“He sank his teeth into the criminal’s wrist and they’re taking a cast of his jaw to match the wound.”

I laugh for the first time this morning. “You’re good. At joining the wrong dots.”

“Help me out. If you’re in some kind of trouble, don’t let me make things worse.”

A little fictional hocus pocus might give her something – and work some magic on my mood.

“OK. You type, I’ll dictate: Mystery author, Tiggy Jones, was seen in police headquarters in Exeter today with her easy-to-spot Dalmatian-Labrador cross, Raider.”

“Slow down. I’m a two-finger typist.”

A journalist who can’t type? I’ll remember that.

“It wasn’t long,” I continue, “before a constable marched both of them out of public view.” Pause. “Echo Chamber has spoken exclusively to Tiggy who has denied that Raider, who is famous for his dynamic olfactometry,” – I spell it – “is helping the police with their enquiries. Her assertion that he was with her because she couldn’t find a dog-sitter failed to sound pawsible.” I stop while she catches up, composing the last line. “Tight-lipped Tiggy will keep Echo Chamber updated as events evolve.”

“If that’s all you’ve got,” she says. “I’ll take it. But I’ll hold you to that last line.”