Then She Vanishes(63)

‘Because you knew him.’

He stands up, the wine in his glass sloshing so that some of it lands on the ancient patterned rug. ‘What? Of course I didn’t know him. What makes you say that?’ He slams his glass down on the coffee table and, for one fleeting moment, Margot actually feels afraid of him. Was this what he was like when he argued with Heather? Threatening? Aggressive?

She stands up, too, but she only reaches his shoulder. ‘Please don’t lie to me, Adam,’ she says calmly. ‘You were seen with him in the pub. And I know you wrote a threatening note to him after he died. This was one bullet you couldn’t dodge. Ring any bells?’

He runs his hand over his chin and she notices a throbbing in his jaw. ‘Fucking hell. Don’t you trust me?’

She flinches. Adam never normally swears in front of her. ‘I want to know what you’re hiding. I’m Heather’s mother. I’m on your side. Heather’s side. Adam … Please. What were you both involved in? You can tell me anything.’

He laughs, but there is an edge of mania to it. ‘You really think that I … that Heather … would be involved in anything dodgy?’ He slumps back on the sofa. Suddenly the fight has gone out of him. His chin quivers and she sees, with a jolt, that he’s on the verge of tears. ‘I was just trying to do something good.’ He gulps. ‘The pain she was in. It was always there, since the day I met her. The guilt she felt at Flora’s death. She suffered with bouts of depression long before she had Ethan. But she didn’t want to worry you. You’d been through enough, don’t you see?’

Margot did. Her daughter, her lovely, gentle, kind Heather, hid her suffering so as not to upset her. The thought of it broke Margot’s heart. ‘Go on,’ she says, in a small voice.

‘At the beginning of the year Deirdre Wilson booked two nights in one of the caravans. She said she was in the process of buying a house in the area so wanted to be near as she had a few things to sort out. She brought her dog with her. It was extremely cute. Like a bear. Heather got talking to Deirdre.’ He smiles at the memory. ‘You know what Heather’s like. She’s always so good at small-talk. She’s genuinely interested in people. Anyway, Heather was really taken with the dog, I can’t remember its name, and Deirdre told Heather she used to breed them, and gave Heather her contact details as her son, Clive, still did. I remembered Heather telling me about it. We felt it would be good for Ethan – for all of us – to have a puppy.’

‘So you spoke to Deirdre?’

‘Yes. Only on the phone to get her son’s details. By this time she’d moved into her cottage in Tilby.’

‘So then you contacted Clive?’

He nods. ‘Yes. We met up in the Funky Raven, as that’s near where his mum was living, and he was staying with her. The dogs were expensive. Over a grand. I gave him a deposit and he promised there would be a litter due in a few weeks. We wouldn’t be able to take the puppy, of course, until it was a few months old, but we could come and see the litter and reserve one. I gave him three hundred quid up front.’

Margot sits back down on the sofa again. ‘And what happened?’

‘He was bloody lying, wasn’t he? The fucking con artist. There was no pregnant bitch. I asked around and apparently he had a dog. A male dog. So I met up with him again and asked for my money back. But he continued lying about it, making excuses. Anything, rather than give me the money. I threatened to knock his block off if he didn’t return it.’

‘Oh, Adam.’

‘Well,’ he growls, ‘it was out of order, Marg.’

Her mind races. ‘Even so, a note like that after he died was a bit extreme.’ There is dirt under her fingernails from cleaning out the horses earlier. She picks at it distractedly. ‘Especially with a murder investigation going on. What were you thinking?’

He shakes his head, his eyes bloodshot. ‘That’s the thing. I wasn’t thinking straight. Heather was in the hospital … They were saying she’d killed him. I was just so angry, with her … with Clive … everyone. It was stupid, I know. I blamed Clive. For the money … and then for what happened after, with Heather killing him … I think he was on her radar because of that. You know she’s not been well,’ he points to his head, ‘mentally. She flipped. She was angry with the world. She had a bee in her bonnet about Flora’s disappearance. She blamed herself for that … I think it all got too much. So, the night after Heather did …’ he gulps ‘… what she did, I came home and scribbled the note on a piece of paper to get the wording right, then rang up a florist and told them it was a joke for a friend’s birthday.’

‘And Deirdre? Where does she fit into all this? She must have known that Clive wasn’t really breeding from his own dog. Was she in on the scam too?’

‘I don’t know what she thought, Marg. She was an old lady. Maybe she didn’t know what he was up to.’

‘Why didn’t you tell the police any of this after … after …?’

‘I didn’t want them to think that was why Heather killed them.’

‘Over a dog.’ She laughs. ‘But that’s ridiculous.’

He frowns. ‘I know that, but the police would try to find any spurious link, wouldn’t they?’