The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(43)

“You mean, Sabina?”

If Ryan was surprised that Sabina and Esme had once been close, nothing of it showed on his face.

“Aye, Sabina Egerton and Leonie D’Angelo. The three of them were of an age, although Leonie’s the eldest.”

“And I understand Leonie is married to her fellow acrobat, Marco D’Angelo?”

“Yeah, they’ve been together since they were kids.”

“I see—and when did you first strike up a relationship with Ms Egerton?”

Charlie didn’t bother to act surprised. It was no secret, anyway.

“When we were kids, just teenagers, we used to bounce around a bit,” he said. “And she kept me company a few nights a week, when I wasn’t getting anywhere with Esme. But I never touched her while I was married,” he said, firmly. “After Esme left, I guess Sabby was just there.”

He rolled his shoulders, wishing for a cigarette.

“Were you the reason Esme’s friendship with Sabina began to deteriorate?”

He ran his tongue around his teeth, wondering how much to say.

“Look, I don’t know what goes on in women’s minds,” he muttered. “But Sabina was making a nuisance of herself, turning up at all hours, hanging around the house like a third wheel. I had to speak to her about it.”

And she’d put up a fight, he remembered, with a trace of admiration. After all, he was a desirable man, especially in his own eyes.

“How would you describe your relationship with Esme, leading up to her disappearance on 3rd June 2011?”

“It was…fine,” he said. No sex. Arguments every day. “Things were good between us.”

Ryan cocked his head.

“Was she ever in the habit of removing her wedding ring? While she was cleaning, for example?”

“No, she kept it on and wore rubber gloves,” he recalled, then grew suspicious. “Why?”

“It helps us to build up a picture,” Ryan repeated. “Talk us through what happened, on the day she disappeared.”

Charlie leaned back in his chair, and prepared to dive down the rabbit hole one more time.





CHAPTER 23


While Ryan and Phillips picked apart the last known movements of Esme O’Neill, Lowerson and Yates made their way back to Police Headquarters. The CSI team remained at Daniel Hepple’s home, looking through the minutiae of his life for clues about his death, but they had already taken several useful swabs and fingerprint samples. They would be sent to the tech team who, they hoped, might be able to unlock the cheap, burner mobile phone they had found. It would also serve the useful purpose of identifying which set of prints belonged to the dead man, so they could focus on the remaining sets, one of which might belong to his killer.

Since Yates had given Lowerson a piece of her mind, the air had cleared a bit and they were enjoying a spot of early-nineties dance music on the car radio when her phone began to ring. She turned the music down and answered the call, which turned out to be from the Control Room.

“Any other details?” she asked, after a minute. “Alright, tell them to cordon it off and keep the crowd back. We’re on our way.”

She turned to her partner.

“Another male,” she said. “Fell from the top floor of the multi-storey car park, on Dean Street.”

Lowerson executed a slow U-turn, eliciting a couple of angry toots from commuter traffic on the road, and then moved off towards the centre of town.

“Fell—or was pushed?” he asked.

“That’s what we need to find out. We need to determine whether it’s a jumper or something for CID.”

“We get all the best jobs,” he murmured, with a smile.

“Nobody said it would be glamorous,” she said, tucking her tongue into her cheek.

He shook his head, secretly glad that she had forgiven him sufficiently to tease him.

“A wise man must’ve said that.”

“Nah, it was just some muppet,” she said, and he laughed appreciatively.

“Have we heard anything back from the maintenance team at St Peter’s Wharf? I was hoping they’d have sent through the CCTV footage from the apartment building, by now.”

“It came through just as we were getting in the car,” she said, dragging her mind back to business. “I’ve asked one of the analysts to start going through it.”

Lowerson tried not to feel put out by her obvious talent for leadership, telling himself he was lucky to have such a great partner.

“Any word from the pathologist?”

Yates nodded.

“He’s been delayed because of a big road traffic incident the other day, but he’ll have a preliminary report ready for us by the end of today. Hopefully, we’ll be able to stop into the mortuary first thing tomorrow.”

“Right after breakfast,” Lowerson said. “Here’s hoping.”

She chuckled.

“I never realised you were such a wuss around dead bodies.”

He didn’t bother to deny it.

“I’ve managed to camouflage it for some years, now,” he said. “Until you came along and exposed me as a fraud.”

“You’re as bad as Phillips,” she grinned. “How have you managed to hide it so well?”