The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(46)

“And a bit of good luck,” Phillips muttered.

*

Duke O’Neill was sweating like a pig on market day, as Phillips’ old grandma used to say.

After Ryan had completed the preliminaries for the record, he reached across to pour the man some water. He would prefer that a suspect passed out thanks to his robust questioning techniques, rather than simple dehydration.

“So, Mr O’Neill,” he said, with a welcoming smile. “Thank you for taking the trouble to come in and give a statement.”

“Has Charlie finished his, now?”

Ryan smiled.

“Yes, your brother’s gone home now,” he replied, and noticed the casual hurt flicker across Duke’s face, because Charlie had not bothered to wait around as he might have done.

“How will I get back to the circus?”

“We’ll have one of the squad cars drop you off,” Ryan assured him, and thought that, if he hadn’t known Duke was the same age as himself, he might have pegged him for a much younger man. “I wonder if you could tell me the first time you met Esme O’Neill?”

“She wasn’t an ‘O’Neill’ when I first met her,” Duke replied, and took another long gulp of water. “She was just Esme.”

“And when was that?”

Duke couldn’t meet his eyes.

“Must’ve been around 2003,” he said softly. “She had just joined the circus, to help look after the horses. We were doing this stint in Leicester, and she rocked up one day asking if she could come along with us.”

“Did you like her?”

Duke swallowed painfully.

Like her? He’d loved her: painfully, enduringly—unrequitedly.

“She was nice,” he said awkwardly. “She was kind to the horses.” And to me.

“You got along, then?”

“Yes, we were friends.”

Ryan leaned forward, so that Duke could try to fool himself that they were just two blokes, sharing a story.

“And, since she was your friend, I guess she must have told you things about her life?”

Duke shrugged.

“Esme was a private person,” he said. “If she told anyone anything, it would have been Sabina or Leonie. They were the closest, the three of them.”

“How about your brother?” Phillips asked. “Wouldn’t you say she was close to him, too?”

“Well, yes, of course—” he stammered, conscious of having said the wrong thing. “But, for a long time, she avoided him. He wasn’t her type.”

“What was her type?” Ryan asked, gently. “Someone…quieter?”

“Is that a relevant question, chief inspector?” Kingley asked. “It has no bearing on the events of 3rd June 2011.”

“That’s debatable,” Ryan said, watching Duke twirl his water glass. “But we’ll move on, for now. Mr O’Neill, can you tell us what happened, to the best of your recollection, on the day that Esme disappeared?”

He ran both hands through his hair, stretching the skin back on his forehead.

“Ah, yeah. Yeah, sure. Um, I was helping Charlie to get the rigging up in the morning, and I’d planned to head over and help muck out the stable tent before the afternoon show. Esme usually took the baby over to see the horses after lunch and Samantha would nap while she did the grooming. Anyway, when I got there, the horses hadn’t been touched. Nobody had fed them, either, which was strange.”

“What time was this?”

“Must’ve been sometime after one,” he said. “Usually, it took a couple of hours to wash the horses down, clean them up, and get them ready for a show. Since the baby came along, Esme hadn’t been able to do it all alone, so I was helping out again.”

“So, what did you do, after you found she wasn’t there?”

“Well, I fed the horses and gave them a bit of water, cleaned up the worst of it, then I started to worry in case something was wrong. It was so unusual for her to forget them,” he explained. “So I decided to stop by the caravan and check she was okay.”

“Around what time did you reach the caravan?” Phillips asked.

“Maybe around two?” Duke said, then scraped his hair back again, his eyes suddenly wild. “I just keep thinking—if I hadn’t stopped to muck out the bloody horses, if I’d got there a bit sooner, maybe I’d have been able to help, to—to stop whatever happened to her.”

“You’re doing the right thing now, in coming forward to help,” Ryan said.

“I wish I could tell you more,” Duke said, and his malleable face fell into long, sad lines again. “But when I got there, all I heard was the baby crying. The front door was closed—”

“Was it locked?” Phillips asked, but Duke shook his head.

“Nobody locks their doors, except at night,” he continued. “As I said, I heard Samantha crying. It sounded pretty bad, so I just went inside.”

“What did you see?”

“See?” he repeated, blankly. “Just the baby—I went straight to her. The play pen sort of faced the door, and she was standing up and bawling her eyes out, pointing towards something and saying ‘mama’ over and over.”

“What was she pointing at?”