Already Dead(63)

She looked at the details Irvine had taken from him, and remembered that Charlie Dean was an estate agent. It might be wrong to follow the stereotype, but it must be a job which gave him the opportunities to act out his role. If you were hesitant or unsure of yourself, you might be willing to let a man like Mr Dean steer you in whatever direction he wanted you to go. If he told you a house was perfect for you, it would be tempting to believe him.

‘We need more details of this man you encountered,’ said Fry. ‘A description. What type of car he was driving.’

Dean shrugged. ‘I’m sorry. It was so dark. And in the circumstances I just wanted to get my friend out of there.’

‘Your friend. Whose name you told us earlier is Mrs Sheena Sullivan.’

‘Yes.’

She could see that it had caused him some pain to reveal the name of the woman he’d been with. It was probably the sort of discomfort he felt when having to admit that the property he was selling you suffered from rising damp. There was no point in denying it once the survey had been done. In this case, he had no choice but to give up Sheena Sullivan’s name.

‘I wouldn’t want her husband to find out,’ said Dean. ‘Obviously.’

He directed a roguish, bad boy smile at Fry, but the charm was lost on her.

‘And your own wife, sir? You haven’t mentioned her.’

‘Oh, and Barbara too,’ he said.

Fry had never met anyone she could imagine marrying and spending the rest of her life with. Encounters with the likes of Charlie Dean were enough to put her off the idea completely.

‘You’ve made things a lot more difficult for us, sir,’ she said. ‘This sort of delay could have serious implications for our investigation, you know.’

Now Dean licked his lips nervously. ‘You’ll catch him, though, won’t you? The man in the red rain jacket, I mean.’

‘Let’s hope so, sir. Let’s hope so.’

Sheena Sullivan smoked a cigarette anxiously as she told her version of the story. They’d located her at the hairdressing salon in Wirksworth where she worked as a stylist, and she talked to Diane Fry in the back room of the salon. There was just room for two of them to sit among fresh supplies of gel sprays and boxes of Barbicide disinfectant, close to a tiny kitchen area.

Her statement was fractured and hesitant, though generally consistent with Dean’s. She continually returned to the impression that the man in the red rain jacket had made on her.

‘So what did you notice about him?’ asked Fry. ‘Anything would be helpful. Any small details that could help us identify him.’

‘He seemed big,’ she said. ‘But he was standing against the headlights of his car, you know, so I didn’t see much of him, apart from the coat. He frightened me, I can tell you that. He was already breathing heavily when he got out of his car. I don’t want to imagine what he’d been doing. And there was something about his voice…’

Sheena shuddered visibly and took a drag on her cigarette. She’d opened a small window that looked out on to a backyard, but smoking in the workplace was still illegal. There were times to point these things out, but this wasn’t one of them. Not when Fry wanted Mrs Sullivan to feel relaxed enough to talk.

‘The coat?’ said Fry. ‘You mentioned the coat?’

‘Yes, it had a logo on the chest. Red and blue, with a name next to it. I couldn’t read the lettering.’

‘But you saw the colours.’

‘In the car headlights. The colours were reflected in the light. That’s why I noticed the logo. It just sort of stood out.’

Sheena pushed her blonde hair back from her forehead and looked at Fry with a pleading expression. She looked frail and vulnerable, and a little lost. Fry really wanted to ask her what she saw in a man like Charlie Dean, and how she’d ended up in this situation. But it wasn’t the right time for that either. And she suspected that Sheena Sullivan wouldn’t know the answer anyway.

‘Berghaus,’ said Luke Irvine when Fry described the logo. ‘Everyone knows the Berghaus logo. You see BBC news reporters wearing it all the time.’

‘I’ve never noticed,’ said Fry.

Irvine looked at her. ‘I bet you don’t care about designer labels at all,’ he said.

‘What are you trying to say, DC Irvine? Are you making some comment about the way I dress? Do you think you’re in a position to criticise my fashion sense?’

Irvine began to backtrack. ‘No, no. I mean – I suppose you don’t recognise it because you just don’t watch much telly.’

Fry still wasn’t mollified. ‘Maybe.’