Darkness Falls (Kate Marshall, #3)(39)

“I can’t say. That’s confidential.”

Marnie nodded and tapped the side of her nose. “Course; mum’s the word. He’s been there for years, having Bev cry on his shoulder, paying the bills,” said Marnie. “They never got married or even lived together. He was in and out at Bev’s evenings and weekends, and she used to accompany him for work dinners.”

“When you were growing up, Bev and Joanna lived here on the estate?”

“Yes. In Florence House, the tower opposite,” said Marnie, tipping her head at the window. There was a pile of shoeboxes on the table. Marnie opened the top one and took out a couple of small photo albums. She picked up the first and opened it.

“Here. That’s Jo and Fred’s wedding,” she said, flicking through photos of Joanna in a beautiful, simple silk bridal gown with Fred outside a church in a vintage Daimler. “That’s Jo and Fred at the top table. Fred’s parents to the left, and Bev with Bill on the right. This was 2000. Bill was Bev’s guest at the wedding, but he stumped up for most of the wedding too. It’s one of the only photos I’ve got of him. Hates having his photo taken . . .”

She pulled out another photo album and opened it.

“Me and Jo were friends from when we were small. Our mums got to know each other cleaning the same office block. We were in the same class at primary school. My mum passed away eight years ago now . . . Here . . .” Marnie twisted the photo album around to face Kate and flicked through pages of photos of when Joanna and Marnie were small: trips out to the zoo, first days at school, fancy-dress parties, Christmases. She came to a photo that Kate had seen before, of Joanna, aged eleven, the Christmas that she’d got the mini typewriter, and then turned the page to another of her and Jo sitting on a brick wall in the car park of the tower block, wearing stonewashed blue jeans and white blouses.

“Bloody hell. Look, that’s when we were Brosettes. Bev got those jeans for us from a bloke she knew on the market. Jeans were well expensive back then.”

“Are you still on good terms with Bev?”

Marnie put the album down and took a gulp of tea.

“No. We’ve drifted apart. She was very good to me growing up, and when my mum died, we stayed in contact, but I don’t know. It got difficult to be around her. We’d have the same endless conversations about Jo not being here, what happened to her. After eight years, I found it hard to be around.”

“Did you get on with Bill?”

“Yeah. He was fine. Nice. A bit bland.”

“Did Jo see Bill as a stepfather?” asked Kate.

“She did, but Jo had a big falling-out with him a few weeks before she went missing.”

“What happened?”

“Jo was working on a story, investigating a development in Exeter. An office block had been bought by an investment firm, and it was being refurbished, but they found asbestos in the building.”

“Marco Polo House?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“From someone else we talked to,” said Kate, feeling her heart sink a little. It meant that Joanna could have been calling Shelley Morden about the asbestos and not about David Lamb.

“The investment firm Bill was involved with bought Marco Polo House to do it up and then flog it on to the council for a huge profit. When they found asbestos, they tried to cover it up, literally and figuratively, so they didn’t lose money. Jo found out.”

“How?”

“A whistleblower at the council. She started investigating it for the West Country News, and that’s when she found out Bill was one of the three investors in the project. She went to him and told him that she was in this horrible position. Jo said if they didn’t sort it out, she would write a story about it.”

“Marco Polo House was next to a big primary school in the city?” said Kate.

“Yeah, and it was blue asbestos, the worst kind. It cost Bill and the other investors a lot of money to fix it safely. And then the sale to the council fell through. They ended up selling it privately at a loss.”

“What did Bev have to say about it?” asked Kate.

“Oh, it caused tension, but Jo never published the story, which she could have. It would have been a much bigger scandal. She held back out of loyalty to Bill and her mum. Luckily, he did as she asked and got it fixed safely.”

“Was Bill ever a suspect?”

“What? With Jo going missing? No . . . No . . .” It was as if the thought had never crossed Marnie’s mind. She shook her head again. “No . . . And he’d been with Bev on the day that Jo went missing. They’d been out together, and then Bill went into work. People saw him. Two blokes he worked with confirmed he was there.”

“What did Fred think of Bill?”

Marnie shrugged.

“They got on fine . . . It was all very weird because Bev and Bill were always so funny about their relationship. Fred would only really see him at Bev’s place. I think Bill went to Jo and Fred’s house only once when they moved in. It was like there was an unofficial rule that Bill only went to Bev’s house. Bev wanted her boundaries. She’d lived with Jo’s dad, and it hadn’t been happy. She never wanted to sacrifice her independence.”

“Where did Bill live?”

“He had a big flat over the other side of town. Bev didn’t go there often. Nor did Jo.”