She was walking through the car park when Pete Diamond stumbled out of the police van with a tissue held to his bloody nose. He saw Elise and looked like he was going to involve her, so she picked up speed. His daughter’s love interest was behind him, head down until he stumbled and looked up. Elise stopped in her tracks. That face. It was on the whiteboard upstairs.
“Hello, Stuart,” she said. “We’ve been looking for you.”
Sixty-six
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2019
Elise
Stuart Bennett was staring at his bruised knuckles, refusing to engage with the detectives.
“Why did you text Phil Golding after he’d died, Stuart?” Elise asked, and Bennett looked up, startled by the question.
“Well, I didn’t know, did I? We were supposed to be meeting for a coffee. But he went back on the booze. It was a real shame. He was trying to make something of himself.”
“You should know that the police are looking at evidence of foul play in connection with his death.”
Bennett stared at her. “No! What do you mean? Did someone kill him?”
“It’s being investigated. When did you last hear from him?”
“We saw each other a couple of times after I got out of prison.”
“But when did you first meet?”
“Years ago. We lived in the same squat for a bit. We were just kids and we all helped one another out back then.”
“When was that?”
“Nineteen ninety-nine,” Bennett muttered.
“Why did you get back in touch?”
“Phil came to see me in prison last year. It was completely out of the blue but he said he wanted to say he was sorry.”
“For what?”
“For sending me to do the burglary at Addison Gardens.”
“So it was a setup?” Elise asked. “Was it Phil’s idea?”
“No, he was made to do it by the man he worked for. He threatened to plant drugs in the squat and call the police on Phil. He said he’d go to prison and his little sister would be taken into care. So Phil got me to rob the house.”
“Who did he work for?”
“Charles Williams—the man who owned the house.”
There it was. The final confirmation. Elise felt a bit teary and put her head down, pretending to finish making a note. When she looked up, Bennett didn’t seem to have noticed.
“He was a rich bloke who owned lots of the old properties round Paddington. Phil collected rent for him. He told me the best way to get into the house and said the alarms would be fixed. It was all going to be so easy. All I had to do was take the stuff out of the cabinets, bring it back to the squat, and I’d be paid my cut. Look, you have to understand I was injecting back then—I would’ve done anything for my next fix.”
“But it didn’t go according to plan?” Elise said quietly. Nudging him along. He was ready to tell the whole story.
Bennett rubbed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear to see what had happened.
“Everything was wrong. I thought I’d broken into the wrong house. There was nothing there to steal. Just empty cabinets. And the girl and her boyfriend were there. It was like I was in a bad dream.”
“Why didn’t you just make a run for it?”
“They’d seen us.”
“？‘Us’？ Who else was there?”
Bennett’s head went down. “Phil’s kid sister,” he whispered. “I was minding her for him but he didn’t come back. I would never have taken her with me. But she made me. She kept crying and stuff. She wouldn’t stay on her own. I forgot she was there after we got in. But then—”
“What? What happened?”
“She was seen by the girl in the house. I heard her shouting. That’s when it all went to hell.”
“Did she see what you did? When you killed the boyfriend? And put the bag over Sofia Nightingale’s head?”
“I was off my face. I didn’t know what I was doing.” He broke down in dry sobs. “I can’t remember all of what happened.”
“That poor child,” Caro said. “Let’s hope she can’t either. How would you ever get over that?”
“Did you come to Ebbing to have it out with Charles Williams?” Elise asked when Bennett had finished blowing his nose.
“Williams? No, I didn’t know he was here. I went and asked around his old place in Kensington but he was long gone and no one had an address.”
“That’s not true, is it? You had an arrangement to meet him here on Sunday evening. You and Charlie had been e-mailing.”