Fry had seen this sort of woman before. When others around them smiled or laughed, their mouths barely twitched. In some women, that might suggest too much Botox, their facial muscles frozen from attempts to resist the process of ageing. But not the likes of Barbara Dean. These women were frozen on the inside, their souls crushed by the intolerable strain of being alive. Now and then, Fry was consumed by the fear that she might end up like that herself in a few years’ time. It might only take one bad decision to trap her into a situation she was unable to escape, and all the life could be drained from her too.
‘What was her name?’ asked Barbara. ‘The woman. The other officers wouldn’t tell me.’
‘Sullivan,’ said Fry. ‘Sheena Sullivan. She’s a hairdresser, here in Wirksworth.’
‘The girl at …? Oh, I think she did my hair once.’
‘She says she met your husband on a speed awareness course.’
‘Oh, that,’ said Barbara. ‘He met too many of the wrong kind of people on that.’
There was a big fireplace, and a heavy beam dividing the living room. Upstairs, a wide landing was in use as a home office, a computer workstation occupying one corner, bookshelves lining the wall.
Fry looked out at the rooftop views over Wirksworth, and the actual magnolia tree in the garden. From here, residents had the best outlook: eastwards across the town, not at the ragged wall of abandoned quarry immediately behind their houses. An area had been dug out behind the house, as if in preparation for foundations. She remembered the pile of breeze blocks and building materials.
‘What are you planning, Mrs Dean?’ she asked.
‘A kitchen extension. Charlie had been promising it to me for years, but he never seemed to have the money. The property market has been so depressed, you know. He was finally getting round to it, when…’
Fry nodded. It was strange that someone else had found a source of extra cash, as well as the Turners. Or perhaps not so strange.
‘Mrs Dean, do you know of anyone who might want to harm your husband?’ she asked.
Barbara gave her a small, humourless smile.
‘Well, that’s obvious,’ she said. ‘Me.’
The vehicle examiner had Charlie Dean’s wrecked red BMW 5 series up on a ramp when Fry arrived in the police garage. It was a complete write-off, the front end crumpled beyond recognition, the roof peeled back by the fire and rescue crew to free the occupants. Dean himself had been dead on arrival, his body crushed by the bus, but Sheena was in hospital in Derby. Doctors were hoping she’d escaped life-threatening injuries thanks to airbags and her position in the rolled car when the bus hit it.
‘Were the brake lines cut?’ Fry asked the examiner.
‘Looks like it at first glance. It’s becoming a bit of an epidemic.’
‘Sorry?’
‘We’ve had quite a number of incidents around the county of brake lines being cut in the last few months. They all appear random at first, with no apparent intention of harming any specific victim. A bit of superficial investigation turns up several vehicles damaged in the same street, which suggests mindless vandalism, though of a particularly reckless kind. But usually some of the cars turn out to have had their fuel lines cut instead, which is the real clue.’
‘You’re talking about fuel theft.’
‘Yes. A litre of fuel costs almost one pound forty pence at the pumps now, and thieves are looking for an easy way to steal petrol. Most filler caps have secure locks these days, but it’s perfectly possible to drain petrol from a car by cutting through the fuel line, if you have the opportunity and a few simple bits of equipment. Of course, these guys aren’t experts, just chancers. On some vehicles, they mistake the brake line for a fuel line and find themselves draining hydraulic fluid instead of petrol. But they’re never going to put their hands up and admit their mistake, are they?’
‘Unlikely.’
‘Fortunately, no one has suffered a serious accident as a result of one of those incidents. Before now, anyway. But I dare say there are a few motorists driving around Derbyshire testing their brakes at regular intervals, convinced that someone is out to get them.’
‘Mr Dean was just unlucky that he was on such a steep hill, then.’
‘Maybe so.’
Ursula Hart was one of the partners in estate agents Williamson Hart, Charlie Dean’s employers. Though it was Sunday and the office wasn’t normally open, she’d agreed to meet Fry in their old fashioned premises just off St John’s Street in Wirksworth.
‘He was a good estate agent in a lot of ways,’ said Hart. ‘Great at doing the hard sell without putting off the buyer completely, which is a rare skill these days. But we were going to have to let him go.’