The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(33)
Ryan set his hands on his hips and puffed out a frustrated breath.
“Well, looks like it’s you and me, Old Man.”
“Less of the ‘old’,” Phillips replied, and took his pick from the row of empty seats before giving Ryan a gesture to continue.
“Fire away.”
Ryan opened his mouth and then shut it again, feeling like a lemon.
“You already know everything I’m about to tell you,” he said, hitching a hip onto the edge of the desk at the front. “The upshot is, we need to establish who else was around at the time of Esme’s murder; who would have had motive, means and opportunity.”
There was an awkward pause.
“Shall we just head back to the circus and get on with questioning the rest of the crew?” Ryan offered.
Phillips took a long slurp of milky coffee, then pursed his lips.
“Aye, let’s just do that.”
Ryan snapped his folder shut and thought that would go down as the shortest briefing in living memory. Not that he minded; both men preferred field work to being shut inside a stuffy office, especially at this time of year.
“Your car, or mine?”
“Well, that depends whether you want to enjoy the journey at a leisurely pace—”
“We’ll take my car,” Ryan decided.
*
In the Family Room, Samantha closed her eyes and ordered herself to remember.
Come on!
Think!
But there was nothing in her mind’s eye; nothing except the images she had already relayed.
“I’m sorry,” she said, unhappily. “I can’t remember anything else.”
MacKenzie set her notepad aside and the representative from Social Services did the same.
“Don’t worry, you’ve done more than enough for one day,” she said, and gave the girl a reassuring smile. “Why don’t you put it out of your head, for now?”
“I don’t know if I can,” she replied. “I keep seeing my mum’s face and hearing that music…”
MacKenzie had an idea.
“I know what we’ll do,” she said brightly. “Why don’t we go to the seaside?”
Samantha’s face broke into a smile.
“Really?”
“Really. We’re going to make a quick pit-stop on the way,” MacKenzie added, casting her eye over the girl’s well-worn clothes. She’d brought a change of underwear and a t-shirt in her backpack, but not much else. “We’ll go shopping.”
Samantha had never been shopping; not like other girls her age did, with their friends or with their mums. She was given new clothes as an afterthought; not because her father couldn’t afford it, but because he simply didn’t care enough to notice when her legs had grown too long for her jeans.
“Can I pick the colours?” she asked, excitedly.
MacKenzie ushered her outside a few moments later, leaving Mrs Carter to collect her things at a slower pace. She thought of the burgeoning affection she’d seen developing between the little girl and the police detective, then shook her head sadly.
Pity, she thought.
It would all come to nothing.
*
Whitley Bay was a seaside town situated on the coastline to the northeast of Newcastle. It had a long history, having survived the Crusades and the Dissolution of the Monasteries, before coming into the hands of the Dukes of Northumberland—who had retained it over the centuries so that the present Duke remained the principal landowner. To the ordinary residents, it was a family destination, with an attractive seafront where they could stroll across the tidal causeway to St Mary’s Lighthouse or pop into the ‘Spanish City’, a white-painted, former concert hall and tearoom, overlooking the sea. It had been erected in the early part of the twentieth century and enjoyed many years as the premier place for courting couples to dine or watch a show, before it was reimagined as a children’s funfair for most of Lowerson and Yates’ formative years. Thanks to a recent regeneration effort, its freshly painted towers were once again home to an impressive restaurant complex where locals could enjoy afternoon tea with a view.
“Have you been inside, since they changed it all back?” Yates asked, as they drove past.
Lowerson glanced at the elegant white curves of the building and shook his head.
“Haven’t had time,” he said, dismissively. Or anyone to go with, he added silently.
She opened her mouth to ask whether he’d like to try it out, sometime, but the words died on her tongue. A girl could only stomach so much rejection.
“It’s the next street on the left,” she said.
Dan Hepple had lived in a smart, semi-detached, red-brick house that had been built at the turn of the last century. It was one of the largest on the street and less than a minute’s walk from the sea, where, as they would learn, he’d enjoyed a jog along the promenade each morning. Lowerson slowed the car to a crawl and, after a short battle to find a parking space, eventually performed a lengthy parallel park into a slot at the other end of the road.
“If those other cars hadn’t parked over the lines, that would have been a lot easier,” he said, feeling a bit hot under the collar.
“Mm-hmm,” Yates said. “I don’t like parallel parking either.”
“Women are notoriously bad at parking,” he agreed, without any irony whatsoever, and then sauntered off towards Hepple’s residence. Yates’ eyes narrowed at his retreating figure and she took a couple of deep breaths, telling herself she’d give him a firm piece of her mind, the next time he tried to suggest women were inferior drivers.