The Fourth Friend (DI Jackman & DS Evans #3)(32)

Jackman squeezed her hand. ‘Okay, that’s fine by me. But talk to me, Marie, because a problem shared and all that? Don’t shoulder all this alone. I’m here, aren’t I?

‘It’s difficult when someone shares their innermost feelings. You kind of feel you’re betraying them if you talk about it.’

‘I know. But try dumping some of the more mundane stuff on me. I have broad shoulders, you know.’ Jackman flexed an invisible muscle.

Marie smiled. ‘I might just do that.’ She looked over to the old cottage. ‘I like rural, and I like traditional, and sometimes I even like isolated, but I do not like this place.’

Jackman nodded. He turned in a circle and gazed out at the surroundings.

There was the river, with a footpath on both sides. Then an expanse of reeds and water grass that was sometimes covered at very high tide, and then a grassy overgrown bank. Finally, mile upon mile of arable fields, broken only by the odd tree or clump of scrubby bushes. In the distance lay the marshland and the grey waters of the Wash. ‘I can only count three other dwellings in the whole area,’ said Jackman. ‘And the reports state that uniform covered those on a house to house that started right at the beginning of the towpath.’ Jackman took a small pair of birding binoculars from his pocket and focussed on the largest of the three homes. ‘That’s Bittern Lodge. I went there once for a charity ball. Very posh indeed.’

Marie stifled a laugh. It sounded odd coming from Jackman, who looked every inch the wealthy landowner.

‘The Lodge is empty this month. Douglas Fitzpatrick, the owner, is out of the country. He left his contact numbers before he left, so that uniform could do a drive by every so often.’

‘What? No servants?’ Marie pretended to be shocked.

‘None that live in. Times is ’ard, milady, didn’t you know?’

Marie borrowed Jackman’s glasses and surveyed the country house. ‘Doesn’t look that way. Does he use nail scissors to manicure that lawn? There’s not a blade of grass out of place.’

‘He does keep it nice. It wasn’t his family home or anything. He purchased it when the original owner went bankrupt and had to sell up.’

Marie turned the glasses on the other two properties, ‘And those two? Isn’t that Mallard’s Farm, the old Curtis place?’

‘It is, and it’s been a building site for months. They’ve just finished revamping it. Bit too modern for me now, but each to their own, I guess.’

‘And the other?’ Marie squinted through the lens at a cluster of dilapidated barns.

Jackman shook his head. ‘Not sure. We’ll check it when we get back.’

‘It looks deserted, but it’s a bit far away to be sure.’

Jackman pursed his lips. ‘Then maybe we should drive round and take a look.’

Marie handed back his binoculars. ‘Definitely. Five minutes across the field pads and you could reach that place from here.’

‘Shall we go inside?’

‘Can’t wait.’ She gave an exaggerated shiver.

Jackman took a key from his pocket and walked up the overgrown path. ‘With the husband tragically killed, and the wife mysteriously missing. No wonder no one comes here.’

‘Jackman? I’ve not read the old reports fully, but why did Tom Holland fly off on a jolly “boys’ outing” with his mates, three days after his wife’s blood was splattered across the lounge carpet?’

‘It’s not very clear, but it seems they’d had a falling out. Tom had walked out and was staying at his mate’s place — Ray Barratt? The groom?’

‘Ah, another of Carter’s dead friends.’

‘That’s the one. As far as we can tell, Tom never knew that anything had happened to his wife.’

‘He can’t have done, can he? He’d hardly have been jetting off on a stag weekend if he knew she had been hurt or abducted.’

‘We have a character profile on Tom Holland, and it would be more than out of character. He was a decent, hardworking lad. I think he would have been devastated, even if they’d had a tiff.’

‘So who found the crime scene?’

‘We did. Well, the local bobby came to break the news of the air crash, but got no answer. When he came back for the second time, he looked through the windows and saw the blood.’

‘And no one had reported her missing?’

‘Apparently not, but then she wasn’t universally liked, or so it seems.’

‘And what was the assumed timescale?’ asked Marie.

‘Forensics thought the incident must have happened about three days prior to the crash.’

Marie gave a little shiver. ‘This is not a lucky house, is it?’

They spent around fifteen minutes in the musty, deserted cottage. Jackman stood for a while longer in the lounge, staring around him and trying to imagine what might have happened. Apart from the discoloured patches on the floor and walls, there was nothing to indicate an altercation or a fight. Whether she was killed or abducted, Suzanne Holland hadn’t struggled. He turned to go. ‘Seen enough?’

Marie nodded. ‘Nothing to see.’

Even so, Jackman hung back. He looked again, trying to absorb every last ounce of atmosphere. Outside, he stared at the ground, at the river, at the sky, and then hurried to join Marie. ‘As I said, a miserable place to live . . . or die?’