The Lost Child (Detective Lottie Parker #3)(42)

Thirty-Six





Arthur Russell sat down heavily on the steel chair and faced the two detectives, listening as they went through the formalities and fiddled with the recording equipment.

‘Any chance of a decent cup of tea?’ he asked. ‘I came in voluntarily without my solicitor. The least you can do is get me a cuppa.’

‘Do you want us to call your solicitor?’

‘Tea with two sugars would be grand.’ He needed something in his bloodstream to keep him focused. Fat lot of good the solicitor had done him so far. He’d listen and keep his trap shut.

The chubby detective with the bushy hair, the one who called himself Kirby, returned with the tea. Russell savoured it, even though it was in a paper cup. At least it was hot. The sugar surged through his brain. More than two, he thought. These boys wanted him alert.

‘Do you have any idea where your daughter is?’

He hadn’t been expecting this. ‘What are you talking about? Didn’t you tell me she was at that Kelly one’s house?’

‘She was. But she appears to have run away from there. Have you seen her?’

Russell went to stand up. The burly detective pushed him back down. ‘What’s going on? Where’s Emma? I’m leaving. I need to look for my girl.’

‘Sit down, Mr Russell. Do you know where she might be?’

Hyperventilating now, he tried to get the words out of his mouth. ‘Try my studio… shed. She sometimes comes round and listens to me play music. I was at work and came straight here when you called. She might be there.’

‘We checked. She’s not there. She took Natasha’s bicycle earlier, and Natasha said she might have gone to her boyfriend. You know about that?’

‘Emma doesn’t have a boyfriend.’

‘You sure?’

Running his hand furiously across his head, he tried to think. No, he’d never heard Emma mention anyone. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Lorcan Brady. Mean anything to you?’

‘Don’t think so.’ His brain was too tired to compute. Lorcan Brady? He thought he’d heard of him, but he wasn’t about to tell these two eejits.

‘Does this belong to you?’ Boyd placed a folded black jacket, in a plastic bag, on the table.

‘I had one like that,’ Russell said. He put down his cup and pulled the bag towards him. ‘Looks too new to be mine. It’s not mine.’

An A4 page was put in front of him. In the centre he could see a photocopy of a receipt.

Boyd said, ‘Do you want to change your story about what you did on the night Tessa Ball was murdered?’

Pushing the page back to the detective, Russell said, ‘Why would I change it? It’s the truth.’

‘You said you went straight back to your digs after your shift ended. This tells us you didn’t.’

Russell tugged at his beard. ‘I had a pint, okay? No crime in that.’

‘Two pints. Who was with you?’

‘No one. I ordered two together. Quicker that way.’ Russell looked from one detective to the other. He knew they were thinking he was talking a load of shite.

The bushy-haired one snorted.

‘What’s so funny?’ Russell asked.

‘I do that myself sometimes.’

‘There. Told you so.’

Boyd said, ‘You never mentioned having a drink. Why?’

‘I forgot. Never thought about it until you showed me the… receipt.’

‘So we find your jacket in the house and your fingerprints on the murder weapon. Can you explain that?’

‘Murder weapon?’

‘Baseball bat. The one belonging to your daughter.’

Thinking that offence was his best method of defence, Russell said, ‘So what if my fingerprints are on the baseball bat. I bought the darn thing!’

‘And the jacket?’

‘It’s not mine.’

‘Your receipt was in the pocket.’

‘I said it’s not mine.’

‘The receipt?’

‘No, knobhead, the jacket.’

‘But you said you had one just like it. The bar manager said it looked like yours when he confirmed to us that you bought the two pints.’

‘It might look like mine, but it isn’t. Go look around my digs and you’ll find mine. It’s older than that and it was wet from all the rain. I hung it up there.’

‘I have an inventory of everything in your room at the B and B. No jacket.’

‘That’s a load of bollocks.’

‘It’s a fact.’

‘Screw you.’ Russell folded his arms and sat back in his chair. Little and Large were not going to pin Tessa’s murder on him. ‘No matter how many times I actually thought of killing the old crone, I didn’t do it.’

‘You admit you had murderous thoughts?’ The bushy-haired one had woken up.

‘Right now, I want to murder the two of you. Going to arrest me for that?’

‘Do you admit to having a drink at Danny’s the evening of the murder?’

‘Yes.’

‘On your own?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you own a black North Face jacket?’