It seemed to Tom that they were once more ruling everybody out, and nobody in. They had officers out interviewing the people on Janice’s original list, and maybe one tiny little thing on those reports would send them off in a new direction, but his optimism wasn’t at its highest point.
His door opened and Holly walked in carrying two plastic-packaged sandwiches. ‘Let’s have these, then go and deal with our husbands. I don’t suppose for a minute they’ll be as co-operative as Janice and Dave, but we can hope.’
He laughed. ‘I love your optimistic view of this world. Co-operative? They haven’t been that since the beginning. And there’s still nothing on Isaac West. We need to find him as a matter of urgency now. I don’t want to think we’re getting close to the next stage being a body, but…’
‘What if somebody’s hiding him? What if he’s somehow involved with the murders and needs to be kept out of sight. His dad? Could Kenny have spirited him away to avoid justice? God, it makes my head spin, this bloody case.’
30
‘Thank you for coming in, Mr Andrews.’ Holly didn’t feel polite, but her words came across as such. There was something about this man, his attitude, his bloody voice, for heaven’s sake, that she couldn’t abide. Or maybe she remembered the journal…
‘Did I have a choice?’
‘No. We have further questions about lots of things turning up in this case. Can we start with Tina Jackson?’
‘I’ve told you about Tina. We had a bit of a fling. I called it off. End of story.’
‘But it’s not the end of the story is it? We have information that some gossip had been passed on to Tina, and we believe she may have told you.’
‘Don’t listen to gossip.’
‘Do you act on it?’ Holly’s tone was cutting, and his eyes narrowed.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘Tina knew something about Lorraine West, and as you were in the middle of your so-called fling with Tina, it occurred to us that there might have been a bit of pillow talk going on.’
‘No comment.’
‘No comment? You’re not under arrest, you know. Not yet, anyway. Start talking, Graham, or the status quo might change significantly.’
His lips remained firmly closed, and for a few seconds he shut his eyes. When he opened them, he fixed them firmly on Tom.
‘Thought you’re the boss.’
‘I am,’ Tom remarked mildly, ‘but I won’t get up your nose half as efficiently as DS Jones will. Answer her questions or you’re in a cell until you do.’
Holly tried not to smile. She loved the way he could control any situation with such calmness; she hoped Andrews didn’t expect the same from her.
‘Okay, Graham. No more messing about. We’re as eager to be free of you as you are of us, so no more prevaricating. What did Tina Jackson tell you about Lorraine West?’
The struggle was evident on Graham’s face. ‘She’d met somebody.’
‘And?’
‘She said it was a woman.’
‘Graham, this is like pulling teeth. Tell me what Tina said, and then you can tell me who you gave that information to.’
For a second, he looked startled. ‘She said that on the holiday Lorraine and Janice took, Lorraine met a woman and they spent the full week together. Left Janice pretty much to her own devices, it seems. And then she said that Lorraine was leaving Kenny and her boys to go to live with this woman. I didn’t really believe her. Lorraine with a woman? She’s been with Kenny for years.’
‘Where did Tina get this information from?’
‘Janice. Gobby Janice told her. It’s no good Janice having secrets, they explode out of her at every opportunity.’
‘When did Tina tell you this?’
‘A couple of nights before Carla and Lorraine died. I asked her not to tell Kenny, but she grinned at me in that way she had, so I don’t know how many she had told, or if it was only me. I mulled it over for all of the next day, and decided I should maybe have a word with Lorraine before she did something stupid. I mean, I knew they’d been having problems, but Kenny seemed to think they were working through them. And a woman? For fuck’s sake, that wasn’t Lorraine at all. I never got the chance to say anything…’
‘So Kenny West didn’t know before Lorraine’s death?’
Graham shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I can’t say for definite, but what I can say is that we’re pretty close, best mates, and he gave no hint of it. We’d talked about them drifting apart, but he said nothing about this.’
‘Okay, I need to know exactly what Tina told you because you’ll be signing a statement with this in, so we want it exact, please.’
Graham looked around the room, almost as if searching for an escape route, and then he sighed. ‘Do I need a solicitor?’
‘Yes, if you’ve done something illegal. No, if you haven’t. We can wait two or three hours if you want, your choice.’
‘Of course I haven’t done anything illegal. I walked Tina home that night. We stopped for a bit of a kiss and a cuddle down by the pond and afterwards, she told me. She said that Lorraine had met a woman called Beth in Benidorm, that it was serious and that Lorraine was planning on leaving Kenny once the boys had finished their exams. I called her an idiot for believing anything Janice Marshall said, but she said she did believe her. She said Janice was worried about it, because she didn’t know how Kenny would react once he found out. He would obviously want details from her, because she had been with Lorraine when she met this Beth woman.’
Holly looked across the table at the man who had suddenly become compliant. ‘And you don’t believe Kenny knew about this before Lorraine’s death?’
‘No.’ He shook his head in emphasis. ‘No, because if he had the shit would have hit the fan immediately. Kenny isn’t known for reining in his temper, trust me. I don’t mean he used violence towards Lorraine, as far as I know he never touched her, but he would do things like not talking to her for weeks at a time, using the boys to convey messages if anything was necessary, mental violence if you like. The night before our wives died, he was out with Lorraine and they were fine. I would say he knew nothing at that point. We’ve obviously spoken about it since and after you’d told him, he was wiped out by it, so I think we can safely say he didn’t know prior to that.’
‘Or is he a good actor? So, let’s move on. Could the boys have known?’
‘No, because Janice wouldn’t have told them. Although…’ Graham hesitated, as if letting his mind wander.
‘Although?’
‘Although they knew about Tina seeing me. I think Leo heard them discussing it at home, his mother and that boyfriend of hers. When Kenny came to talk to me about it, he said Leo had told Jack and Isaac. I suppose if Janice had been spreading her poison far and wide about Lorraine, it could have resulted in the same thing, Leo listening in on parental conversations. I don’t know, that’s only supposition.’
‘And Kenny didn’t know about you prior to his boys telling him? This best mate of yours didn’t know you were having it off with the local barmaid?’