The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(71)

MacKenzie listened with wide-eyed attention, already knowing that this new information would be life-changing for Samantha. It meant that her mother had been intending to leave, but not without her baby. There had been two bags, not one.

The question was whether she had intended to leave on her own, or with somebody else.

“That’s great, Samantha,” Gregory was saying. “What does your mum do, after she carries the bags through?”

“She puts them on the sofa,” the girl replied. “Then she’s turning around, because somebody’s coming through the front door.”

“Who is it?” Gregory said, in the same even tone. He knew that breaking the rhythm now could ruin everything.

But Samantha shook her head from side to side, fighting the knowledge, fighting the memory.

“The monster,” is all she would say. “The one with the white hands.”

“Tell me about the hands,” Gregory said. “Are they big, or small?”

“They can wrap all the way around her neck,” Samantha said, in a distant voice. “I can see them.”

“Are they white, like your skin is white, or white, like the cloud?”

“Like the cloud,” Sam said. “Bright white.”

MacKenzie nodded in the dim space, knowing now that the girl had been speaking literally when she said her mother’s attacker had ‘white hands’. Possibly, because they were wearing gloves.

The problem was, almost everyone in the circus wore gloves as part of the show.

“Focus on the hands, Samantha,” Gregory was saying. “Can you see anything else?”

“Yes,” she replied simply. “They’re white cotton gloves, with little gripper things on the edges.”





CHAPTER 40


Given the sensitivity of the case, and allowing for the fact he had a wife in the later stages of pregnancy, Ryan rang Marco D’Angelo to set up an immediate appointment at CID Headquarters, rather than turning up at his motorhome unannounced. It was a judgment call, because there was every possibility Marco would decide to run, but the man apparently had a conscience because they found him waiting for them in the foyer at Police Headquarters, a short while later.

“Mr D’Angelo, thanks for coming in,” Ryan said, and went on to recite the standard caution. “This is a formal interview in connection with the murders of Esme and Charles O’Neill, so if you would like to exercise your right to have a legal representative present, you’re entitled to do so.”

“I don’t need a lawyer,” Marco said.

Ryan wasn’t about to argue the point. He led the way to the interview suite and selected a room, flipping the sign to ‘OCCUPIED’.

“Please, have a seat.”

“Chief Inspector, you said this was in connection with two murders, but I thought Charlie committed suicide?”

“We are treating his death as murder,” Ryan said shortly. “But the reason we’ve called you in here today concerns Esme’s disappearance.”

Marco looked between the pair of them and lifted his hands in a mute gesture of apology. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

He lied so flawlessly, Ryan thought, it was almost possible to believe the DNA results could be wrong.

And yet, the statistical probabilities said otherwise.

“You can start by telling us why you lied in your statement, when you stated you had no reason to believe Esme had been having an affair.”

Marco laughed, and looked away.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about your relationship with Esme O’Neill, sometime around 2007 and 2008.”

There it was, Ryan thought, as a flicker of panic skidded across the other man’s face.

“How long did it last, Marco?”

The other man raised a hand to his mouth, then scrubbed it over his eyes, trying to think.

“It was always Esme,” he said, after the silence had stretched for over a minute. “It was always her, from the first time I saw her—but I was already married to Leonie.”

“Go on,” Ryan urged.

“She didn’t believe me, when I said I would divorce Leonie,” Marco continued. “In Esme’s world, a marriage was meant to be for life. She’d been brought up Roman Catholic, and felt bad enough about committing adultery. She couldn’t stand the thought of having my divorce on her conscience, especially as Leonie was her friend.”

“So, what did you do?”

“She called it off,” he said. “It came as a shock, out of the blue. The next day, I saw her with Charlie, and I thought”—he laughed, and shrugged a muscular shoulder—“I thought she’d transferred her feelings. I felt relieved not to have done anything drastic, if what she felt for me was so superficial.

“It seemed like they were married overnight, and the baby followed straight away, so I figured she’d been playing around with both of us. I was angry about it, and she kept her distance and tried to make things work with Charlie. She was loyal to him, at first.”

“What changed?” Phillips asked.

“He wasn’t cut out for marriage,” Marco said. “He didn’t like the responsibility of a family, and he wanted her all to himself. He didn’t want to have to share her with the baby. From what I heard, he slapped her around a few times.”