Lifting the Lid(26)

‘Speaking of old times,’ said Logan loudly enough for her to hear. ‘You still see anything of Veronica from Admin these days, Tom?’

There was a choking sound and the clatter of cups and saucers as Doyle came close to dropping the teapot. Swann thought she detected a slight hesitation in his wife’s step, but she might have been mistaken.

‘What the bloody hell did you have to say that for?’ said Doyle as soon as his wife had disappeared back into the house.

It was Logan’s turn to spread his palms wide, and he added a self-satisfied smirk for good measure.

‘Attractive woman, your wife,’ he said. ‘Must be, what? Twelve, fifteen years younger than you?’

‘You threatening to blackmail me, Logan?’

‘But I’m a police officer. How could you think such a thing?’ He sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘Mind you, I seem to remember that Tony Ambrose took a fair few photos at your retirement bash. I wonder if—’

‘All right. All right. What is it you want?’

‘Three sugars, please.’

Swann wondered if it was physically possible for someone to actually explode from smugness. Doyle was showing no sign of picking up the teapot again, and Logan was obviously far too busy congratulating himself. She was gasping for a cuppa, and if she was ever going to get one, it seemed she’d have to be mother after all. She stood up and pulled the tea tray towards her.

‘Either of you wearing a wire?’ said Doyle.

Logan and Swann exchanged glances.

‘A what?’ said Logan.

‘I’m not saying another word till I know this isn’t being recorded.’

‘And why would we want to do that exactly?’

‘You want me to frisk you?’

Doyle’s “Donger” nickname flashed into Swann’s brain, and she felt a wave of nausea at the idea of a full body search. He wasn’t nearly as repulsive as she’d imagined he would be, and despite the wavy white hair, baggy eyes and sagging jowls, she could tell he’d probably been not bad looking in his day. Even so, a letch was a letch, and she had no desire to have his hands all over her.

‘Trust me,’ said Logan. ‘We’re not wearing wires.’

‘Trust you?’

He ignored the jibe and ploughed straight on. ‘So what made you think Imelda wasn’t dead?’

‘Call it… a copper’s intuition.’

Logan waited for him to continue. He didn’t. ‘Care to elaborate?’

‘For a start, we never found a body.’ Doyle raised a hand to silence Logan, who seemed to be on the point of interrupting. ‘You want to let me finish? – Nor was there any kind of motive for murder. No enemies to speak of. No-one stood to gain financially. Not even the husband.’

‘You interviewed him presumably.’

‘Of course we interviewed him,’ said Doyle, his tone clearly conveying his resentment at being taught how to suck eggs. ‘Several times in fact. You know as well as I do that the husband is always the most likely suspect in cases like this.’

‘And?’

‘Well he was either bloody clever and an exceptionally gifted actor, or he was totally innocent.’ He took a sip of his tea and winced. ‘Put it this way,’ he added, spooning sugar into his cup. ‘He was certainly no Einstein in the brains department.’

‘He have an alibi?’

‘For what?’

Logan sighed. ‘For the time she disappeared.’

‘But that’s the thing of it. No-one knew precisely when she went AWOL. She was a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, so she was often away for days at a time. On this particular occasion, she’d checked into a hotel in Birmingham for four nights, but nobody’d seen her from the moment she signed the register till she was due to vacate the room.’

‘So it could have been any time during those four days.’

Doyle nodded.

‘What about her employers?’ said Logan. ‘You check with them?’

‘Course I checked.’ Again the sucking eggs tone of voice. ‘At least, I tried to.’

Logan raised an eyebrow.

‘No such company ever existed apparently. We found some letterheads at her house, but the address turned out to be an abandoned warehouse in Cheam.’

‘And you didn’t think that was suspicious?’

Doyle rolled his head back and gazed up at the sky. ‘God give me strength.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said Logan. ‘So what did Trevor have to say about it?’

‘Seemed genuinely gobsmacked. Went all pale and vacant, like he’d gone into some kind of trance.’

Logan started drumming his fingers on the edge of the table once again. ‘Then what?’