Already Dead(104)

‘Was that done here?’

‘No. Either way, brake sabotage is a sloppy way to try to harm someone. There are too many ways it could fail. If you’re smart, you look for an alternative. Your man was smart. It’s even cleverer to interfere with the physical linkage from the pedal to the brake master cylinder. Maybe replace part of the linkage with something that will break on application of the brakes. That’s the only sure way to have a one hundred per cent failure that wouldn’t be noticed before it happens.’

‘Is that what happened here?’

‘Yes. The steering linkage has been sabotaged. It can be done pretty easily and there’d be a sudden, unpredictable loss of steering control. Our saboteur went for the double whammy here. Brakes and steering. He wanted to make sure it worked properly.’

‘I don’t think we’re looking too far for this one, do you?’ said Irvine as they left.

‘Why do you say that, Luke?’

‘Well, what does Sheena Sullivan’s husband do for a living?’

‘He’s a garage mechanic.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Jumping to a conclusion?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Me too,’ said Fry, grateful that something appeared straightforward at last.

Even when there were no injuries, cutting the brakes on someone’s vehicle would result in charges of attempted malicious wounding, causing criminal damage with intent, vehicle tampering, destruction of property. In Jay Sullivan’s case, it would be manslaughter at least.

The Sullivans’ house was a fairly modern three-bedroom detached on Yokecliffe Avenue, with a pocket handkerchief garden in front – a few feet of unfenced grass surrounding a patch of soil which contained more ornamental rocks than plants.

In Fry’s view, the house could only just be described as detached – the neighbouring properties couldn’t be any more than four or five feet away. There were no windows in the side walls, because there was nothing to look out at except the brickwork of the house next door. But the property did possess off-street parking – and that seemed to be quite something in Wirksworth.

She entered through a sun room into a large kitchen. There was a wood burning stove in the lounge, but it looked too clean, as if it was only there for show and had never been used for anything so messy as burning wood. The gas central heating was much more convenient.

Fry had noticed this phenomenon often enough around the villages of Derbyshire. House owners seemed to hanker after a rustic look inside their homes, but without the trouble of real country life. Sometimes it wasn’t just the stove that had a purely decorative purpose, but the logs too. She’d seen them stacked up by the fire, all perfectly round and symmetrical, cut cleanly and in identical lengths. The giveaway was their unnatural air of permanence, as if they were dusted and sprayed with air freshener once a week. They were more of an art installation than a stock of winter fuel.

Naturally, Fry had come to regard this as one of the symptoms of middle-class bucolic pretensions, like green wellies and an overfed pony in a paddock. She wasn’t surprised that Sheena Sullivan had developed those pretensions. Sheena had turned away from the car mechanic husband with a garage full of oily engine parts to the smooth estate agent lover with a red BMW. It was upward mobility of a kind, she supposed. But her upward mobility had ended in a tragic downward plunge as that BMW hurtled uncontrollably down Green Hill. She wondered if Jay Sullivan had worked out the symbolism in it. Probably not, she thought.

Sullivan had been arrested and escorted to the station in Edendale for processing. Fry wasn’t sure what she might find in his house. Evidence that he’d been aware of the affair between his wife and Charlie Dean, perhaps.

She could see that Sullivan had been to the local Chinese takeaway for his evening meal last night. Sweet and sour pork with boiled rice, and a special chow mein. The foil containers still lay on the kitchen counter, red streaks of sweet and sour sauce, a blob of uneaten rice, the remains of a side order of prawn crackers in a grease-stained bag. This was a meal for two people, surely. Who had Jay Sullivan been entertaining while his wife was in hospital?

Fry found a fortune cookie, opened but abandoned. The strip of paper inside it read: Now is the time to try something new.

Diane Fry was back at her desk, tapping irritably at her keyboard to input a report when Matt Cooper called. At first, she had no idea who she was talking to, and that made her more irritable.

‘Sorry, who are you?’ she said.

‘Matt Cooper. I’m Ben Cooper’s brother. That is Detective Sergeant Fry, isn’t it? I thought you might remember.’