“We will. Did you go back to have that chat later?”
“What? No!”
“Where were you for the rest of the weekend?”
“I was working on Saturday and around the house. And Sunday? Er, football training with my boy and at home. That was the night of the fire, wasn’t it? I was up there. Look, I need to use the toilet.”
* * *
—
The team was checking Liam Eastwood’s alibis while Caro and Atkins moved on to Dee.
When Elise slipped into a chair behind the one-way glass down the corridor, her cleaner was tensed up in her chair with her hands clasped in her lap. She watched as Caro shuffled her notes and DS Atkins set up the recording equipment, taking their time, letting the pressure build.
“Look,” Dee said eventually, “Liam told me he gave Charlie a lift last week. Before his body was found. I know we should have said something but he said Charlie was fine when he left him and we thought Charlie would show up. And he didn’t die until later, did he?”
“How do you know that?” Caro said, and stopped flicking through the paper trail.
“What? Well, it’s what people are saying. And Liam and I had other things to worry about at the time.”
“Yes, those ecstasy tablets,” Caro said.
Dee looked at her hands. “Liam had nothing to do with that. Ade’s family is trying to find someone else to blame. They don’t want it to be their son.”
“That matter is still under investigation.” Caro closed her down. “You know the Perrys well, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Dee muttered. “I clean for them once a week. Do a bit of ironing. But I clean for lots of people.”
“But you know all about their personal lives, don’t you? You told DI King that they talked openly about their problems in front of you and rowed frequently about their sex life. And that Mrs. Perry was having an affair with their gardener.”
“I was worried about Charlie,” Dee said quietly. “I thought the police should know that it wasn’t all hearts and flowers in the caravan.”
“Do you think Pauline Perry had something to do with Charlie’s death?”
Dee’s head went up, eyes wide. “I don’t know. But she was horrible to him. Cruel. Said she wished she could get rid of him. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You sound very protective of Charlie. What was your relationship with him?”
Dee’s spine straightened and her feet curled around the chair legs as if bracing for a crash. Elise wondered if the officers were seeing the same body language. Were they touching a nerve?
“Relationship? What are you going on about? I worked for him.”
“But you told DI King he was a sweetheart and a lovely man,” her sergeant plowed on. “It sounds like you were very fond of him. Did he ever confide in you? Or meet you away from the caravan?”
“？’Course not!” Dee snapped. “Look, we weren’t friends—or anything else. I said that because that’s what everyone said about him.”
She paused. “But I didn’t really know him.”
Forty-two
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019
Elise
Bram O’Dowd had been sitting in the interview room for more than an hour by the time the detectives finally walked in.
The Eastwoods had taken longer than Elise had expected. Then there’d been the Lithuanian laborer with the suitcase to deal with. They’d pushed him as hard as they could but he had a cast-iron alibi for the weekend—in the cells at Bournemouth police station from the early hours of Saturday to first thing Monday morning after a fight at a nightclub. An officer was doing background checks with Interpol just in case he had form but the focus was on the contents of the suitcase and what forensics could make of them.
“It’s a bizarre haul,” Caro said. “He wasn’t packing for a fortnight on the beach. There’s a screwdriver tucked into the underpants!”
“It looks like Charlie was getting ready to leave but he never made it out of the door,” Elise said. “So who took his bag and hid it in a skip? The person who moved his body?”
“Come on, let the lab boys work their magic. The lover’s waiting,” Caro said, and handed her a list of the CCTV sightings for O’Dowd’s pickup truck near Tall Trees over the bank holiday weekend.
“He’s been a busy boy . . .” Elise murmured as she scanned it.
* * *
—
O’Dowd had slipped his flip-flops off and one leg was stretched languorously under the table so that his grubby foot was under Elise’s chair. She made sure to catch it when she pulled the seat out.