“Told? Who by? Do we have any evidence?”
“We’re examining clothing and bedding from the caravan,” Caro said. “There was a man’s T-shirt found tucked down behind the headboard—not one of Charlie’s, I’d say.”
“And what do Pauline and Mr. O’Dowd say about their relationship?”
“They’re both denying it but they would, wouldn’t they?”
“Right, Pauline and O’Dowd are top of my list too,” Elise said. “There was a lot going on in that caravan—a possible affair, threatened repossession of their dream house, debts piling up. It must have been like a powder keg. I want to reinterview them today. Okay, what does the pathologist say about time of death?”
Caro gave her a look. “Well, you know what Aoife’s like . . . but she’s as certain as she’s prepared to be that it wasn’t Friday night. She puts it closer to the discovery of the body—probably in the twenty-four hours preceding.”
“So Sunday,” Elise said. “Then why were there no more sightings of him after the concert? Where was Charlie Perry for the rest of the weekend? Did we get anywhere with the witness who saw him up at the workers’ village?”
“DS Susie Atkins from this station is following it up—she’s nailed the reporter’s source as Liam Eastwood.”
“Seriously?” Elise muttered. “Isn’t he still in the frame for the drugs case?”
“We’re working on that,” Caro said. “But he told Susie he’d just overheard someone saying it. Anyway, she’s gone back to see Mr. Eastwood this morning. She’s got some CCTV footage to discuss with him.” Her phone rang and she put it to her ear.
Elise went to look at the information on the board, aware that eyes were following her.
“Who is this?” She pointed at a screen grab from CCTV of a skinny middle-aged man with haunted eyes.
“It’s the bloke who tried to see Charlie Perry’s daughter in her residential home,” DC Eyebrows piped up, and came to stand with her. “I’m DC Lucy Chevening, ma’am. The home has a security camera by the front door.”
“Good. Do we know who he is yet?”
“No, but we’re on it.”
“Have you got the techies to use live-facial-recognition software to see if he’s on our radar already?”
Elise was explaining the process when her sergeant interrupted.
“Well . . .” Caro grinned. “Shaking down the workers wasn’t a complete waste of time. Perhaps we should be grateful to Mr. Eastwood. A laborer has come in with a bag he found at the Harbor Row building site. He told the desk officer that he spotted a corner of it in a skip as he barrowed rubble up a ramp on Monday and pulled it free. And took it home. He said people chucked things they didn’t want in the skips all the time—there was an old washing machine the other day. But when he opened it, there was a laptop. To be honest, I think he’d have kept it and kept quiet, but underneath the clothes and stuff, there was a passport and a phone.”
“Bloody hell. Whose?”
“Not sure about the phone but the passport is in the name Charles Williams. Looks like our Mr. Perry was planning to return to his old identity.”
Forty
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019
Dee
I’ve lost another two clients by text—one of them Liz, and she was my first friend in Ebbing. We met when the boys started school—the school gate was a bit lonely at first and some of the local mums were a bit up themselves but Liz chatted with me and we started playdates for the boys. I wouldn’t say we were close close or in and out of each other’s houses all the time—we both work, for a start, her in the estate agent’s and me cleaning—but it was nice. ’Course, when I started cleaning for her, things changed a bit.
She tried to pretend they hadn’t—that I was doing her a huge favor and bringing me drinks and chatting like I’d just popped round—but I think it got embarrassing: her standing over me while I cleaned under her sofas. And I suppose she must have started seeing her house through my eyes.
The place looks like she’s been burgled every time I go but she refuses to pay for more than one hour a week. What can you do in an hour? She said, “I just need you to give it a quick once-over,” when I started, so I gave the carpets a Brazilian with the Hoover down the middle of each room and sprayed furniture polish about but didn’t dust anywhere that wasn’t immediately visible. I hate cutting corners—it’s like only shaving the front of your legs—and I never did the bedrooms. She said she’d do those but I looked. She didn’t. I suppose she thought no one else could see it.