Blood Evidence Page 11

  “Oh!” Stacey nodded. “Him. Yeah, no, nothing.”

  I stood up from my bar stool, resigned to leaving. She clearly hadn’t given it a second thought since I asked the first time.

  “Let me know if you need anything else,” Stacey said with a beam, directed entirely at Ram.

  “I will, darlin’,” Ram said, giving her a wink that almost seemed to make her melt on the spot.

  We’d only made it as far as the hall when he shuddered dramatically.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I hate playing straight. Makes me feel weird,” he said.

  “You didn’t have to,” I pointed out.

  “Well, we might need her later,” Ram said, laughing as he took the stairs two at a time.

  The evening was spent going over notes. Ordering drinks and dinner on room service. Checking social media profiles. There was nothing on any of them that suggested they could be a killer. Except for Johnny’s ABH conviction, they were all clean.

  “There is a possibility we haven’t considered,” Ram said thoughtfully, wiping his mouth with a serviette after finishing his apple pie dessert.

  “What’s that?”

  “Johnny’s time inside. What if he made some enemies? Or his dad did? Someone comes to crash the party, mistakes Isabelle for Johnny’s girlfriend. Decides to take some creative revenge. Maybe even goes further than they meant to, has an accident.”

  “An accident with a knife?”

  Ram shrugs. “A threat can turn into the real thing with a trip.”

  In the morning, it was Lina who served us coffee from the bar.

  “Morning, doves,” she said. There was a cheerful, if somewhat muted tone to her voice. I was beginning to realise that everyone here had us inextricably linked to tragedy in their minds. Everyone except Stacey, maybe. But then she only had eyes for one of us anyway.

  “Can we have a word with you, Lina?” Ram asked.

  “Stacey told me you were asking around,” she said. “I’ll just finish up with this order and I’ll come sit. I’ll have to run if another customer comes in, though.”

  “That’s fine with us,” Ram said, smiling gently.

  “You’re so fake,” I muttered, when she was out of earshot. Something about it was really rubbing me up the wrong way this week. Why did he always have to be so smarmy? I was surprised more people didn’t see through the act.

  “Anything for a result,” Ram murmured back, seemingly unfazed.

  I wondered dimly what exactly the scope of ‘anything’ was. How far would he be willing to go to solve a case? What would he sacrifice, what moral lines would he cross? As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I realised that I didn’t want to ever find out.

  Lina sat opposite us only a few minutes later.

  “I’m all yours,” she said, with a smile and that slightly lopsided accent of hers. I had to admit, it was very good. Almost imperceptible. “Until someone comes in, anyway.”

  “Then let’s dive straight in,” Ram said. “When did you start work on the day it happened?”

  “Six in the morning,” she answered promptly.

  I had been poised to write it down, but I stopped and looked at her. “Six a.m.?” I clarified.

  “Yes,” she nodded.

  “But…” I gaped at her. “You were still on shift when we went to bed.”

  “Yes,” Lina nodded again. “I was supposed to go home early but I did overtime for the party. Very important. Beverley can’t really manage with the big crowds.”

  “And then you were back in at six the next day?”

  Lina shrugged, smiling. “It was supposed to be Stacey’s shift. But she closed up and so I was the one who had been asleep for longest. It just worked out that way.”

  “What time did you leave that night?” Ram asked.

  “At midnight,” she said. “I live just down the road, so I was home and asleep within half an hour.”

  “Were you tired?”

  “Of course,” Lina said. “Who wouldn’t be? But I still know what I saw. I was paying careful attention. At these parties, sometimes people misbehave. Try to steal things off the walls because they’re silly drunk. I keep a close eye.”

  “Tell us about the whole day. Anything you noticed.”

  “Mr. Blackburn at lunch, that was the first thing. He sat there opening his presents and telling me all about them. That boy is… well, I think he would chat up anything with a pulse,” she said, shaking her head with a slight modest flush in her cheeks. “He would not let me alone. Finally, I had to go back to the bar to serve. Then he follows me to ask for a drink!”

  “He was bothering you?” Ram asked.

  “Yes, well, no harm done. Just annoying. Sometimes visitors are like this. They want to tell you their whole life story. Usually older men, not the young ones,” Lina said. “When he came back to his table he started to raise a fuss. He said his gold necklace was stolen.”

  “What happened then?”

  “He accused Mr. Winter of taking it. It was all very nasty. I had to call Mr. Winter’s room and ask him to come down. Then they shouted at each other right in the restaurant.”

  “And where was the necklace found?”

  Lina shrugged, glancing around before answering. “Jude says he found it on a chair. But I think something else. I saw him talking to Mr. Winter in the hall.”

  “You think he took it?” Ram pressed.

  “I don’t know,” Lina said. “I only know what I saw.”

  “Alright. And then?”

  “Nothing else much. I saw that Mr. David was watching everything from the back of the room. Then later I did the dinner service. Some guests had dinner. I wasn’t very busy.”

  “Anything unusual then?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “And at the party?” Ram asked.

  “There was a lot of dancing and drinking. More drinking. Those young people, they were just… I remember being that age. But I don’t think I was ever that wild. The young woman who was found, she was almost doing nasty things on the dancefloor.”

  “With Johnny – Mr. Blackburn, right?”

  “You saw it. His hand all inside her dress. Not caring who else could see.”

  “Do you think that behaviour has something to do with what happened to her?” I asked.

  Lina blanched. “No!” she exclaimed. “I am not victim-blaming. I just think it is not the right kind of behaviour. What happened to her afterwards… I don’t know. A girl like that, men want to take her upstairs, not kill her.”

  “But it could have been sexually motivated,” I continued. “If she refused someone’s advances, they might have been upset since she was flaunting it so much.”

  “That’s possible,” Lina conceded. “But not her fault.”

  “Did you notice anything in particular as you were leaving?” Ram asked.

  “Nothing,” Lina shrugged. “Mr. Blackburn and the girl still dancing. Most guests had gone upstairs to bed. Some of the party guests had left already as well, but it was in full swing. I didn’t want to leave Beverley and Stacey with the bar, but they insisted.”

  “I’m sure you’re a gem to work with,” Ram smiled warmly. “Always wanting to pitch in.”

  Lina smiled strangely – like a pride and embarrassment all mixed into one. “Thank you,” she said.

  “And thank you,” Ram replied, leaning back in his chair. “That’s everything, really. Well done. If we think of anything else, we’ll be in touch.”

  “You didn’t remember anything else about Ray Riley, by any chance?” I asked hurriedly as she got up.

  Lina made a sad face. “No, sorry. I thought and thought. He just didn’t stand out back then.”

  I nodded my thanks as she left us. Ram was starting to forget about our missing persons case entirely. I was going to have to keep my own close watch if we were ever going to get to the bottom of it.

  “Oh, wait,” Lina said, stopping right in the doorway.

&
nbsp; “Yes?” Ram prompted.

  “There was one thing. It’s stupid. But…”

  “Anything you can think of might be important. Even things that seem stupid,” Ram assured her.

  “Well, the speakers. That night they played the same song. And earlier in the day I heard it, too. Very strange. They normally play shuffled playlist, no chance of repeats. And the same song when we found the – the…”

  “Isabella,” Ram supplied. “I remember. A couple of other people mentioned it too.”

  “That’s the only other thing,” Lina said. She gave us both a small smile, then hurried on her way.

  “Three people left,” Ram said, sneaking a flask out of his pocket and pouring a shot into his coffee before hiding it away again. “The owners, and Jude.”

  “Jude might be a problem,” I said. “Stacey told us he doesn’t work except parties and weekends. We’ll have to wait to interview him if we want to do it here.”

  “We have ways around that,” Ram winked, taking a sip of his coffee and smacking his lips together in satisfaction.

  “What do you suggest this time? More data theft? A little light breaking and entering?” I scoffed.

  “Relax. You were fine with swiping the guest book.”

  “Yes, but that was before Fairlight gave us official sanction,” I said. “That means no breaking the law, point one. And point two – we have official sanction. We can just ask for his details and go find him.”

  Ram raised an eyebrow at me. “That is an excellent point,” he said. “I didn’t care for the first, but the second was well-put.”

  “Thank you, I do try,” I said drily.

  Ram called Fairlight for the details once we were back in our room, and he promised us a full dossier of information on all of the suspects. We had to head to the station – a drab building - to pick it up, and then took it back to the Inn for reading.

  I was reminded yet again to say no whenever Ram invited me to go anywhere on the bike.

  The files held not much information that we didn’t already have, aside from addresses and contact numbers. Still, it was a lot of reading, and took us well into the early afternoon.

  “Here we are,” Ram said, digging around inside his bag and finally brandishing a couple of packaged sandwiches. “Eat.”

  He put one of them – egg and cress – down in front of me with a resolute thump that almost burst the packet from the impact.

  “But,” I said, the beginning of an extremely convincing and reasoned argument as to why I should not.

  “Eat,” Ram said, cutting me off entirely as he ripped open his BLT. “It’s past lunchtime already.”

  I sighed, opening the packaging as slowly as I could without looking odd. “You have control issues,” I said.

  “So do you,” Ram replied.

  “No, I’m serious. You can’t handle it when people don’t do as you say,” I sulked.

  “And you don’t like following my instructions,” Ram shot back. “So I guess we’re even.”

  “Not even close,” I muttered, taking a small bite.

  Ram wolfed his sandwich down with great gusto, and was done before I was even halfway through my first triangle.

  “Get that down you and then we’ll go see our friend Jude,” he said, brushing crumbs off his lap.

  I nodded mutely, wishing he would leave the room for at least a moment so that I could hide the rest of my food in the bin.

  No such luck, and I had to eat the whole thing under his watchful gaze. And after I didn’t say anything about his whisky coffee, too. As he grabbed his coat to leave the room, I slipped some gum out of my pocket and into my mouth. That would teach him.

  We got a taxi over to Jude’s place, at my insistence. It took about five minutes before Ram was glaring at me with every movement of my jaw.

  “Are you chewing gum?” the driver asked suddenly, looking in the mirror at me.

  “Um…” I said.

  “Don’t you spit it out in here, you hear me?” the driver said. “If you do, you’ll be paying for cleaning. I’ve had enough of people sticking gum in my taxi!”

  “Um,” I said, again. “I… won’t?”

  Ram gave me a smug luck as the driver muttered something under his breath and turned back to concentrating on the road.

  Jude lived a short distance from the centre of town, on an estate that looked decidedly less well-off than the historic buildings of Sevenoaks around it. We walked past overgrown hedges, flowerbeds filled only with dead stalks, and one inexplicable sofa bed parked right outside a house between the door and the pavement. Finally, we reached his address: the upstairs flat in a converted home.

  Ram rapped loudly on the door, tucked around the side of the building, and we waited.

  After a tense few moments, we heard the sound of swearing and then footsteps in the vicinity of the door. I took an instinctive step back as the door was unlocked from within.

  “What?” Jude demanded. No shirt; mussed-up hair; squinting eyes; confused expression. It looked like we had just woken him up.

  “Mind if we have a word?” Ram said. His voice was lower, harsher than usual.

  “Yes, I do,” Jude said, going to close his door. “But here’s one for you: goodbye.”

  “Not so fast,” Ram said, holding up a hand in caution. “We’re on official police business. We’ve been brought on as civilian consultants.”

  Jude squinted at him. “Does that mean you can arrest me?”

  “Not exactly,” Ram said.

  “Goodbye,” Jude repeated, swinging the door in.

  Ram stuck his foot out at the last minute. That old trick. It was a good job he was in the habit of wearing thick, heavy boots.

  “But we can report your behaviour to DCI Fairlight and have him come and arrest you,” he said.

  Jude contemplated us through the thin crack between the door and the frame, and finally sighed. “Make it bloody quick,” he said. “I’m busy.”

  “Busy sleeping,” Ram commented, following Jude through the now-open door and up a narrow staircase.

  “I work nights,” Jude said. “You’re here at the equivalent of my three a.m.”

  “Then it’s best if you answer our questions as carefully as possible so that we can be on our way and let you sleep,” Ram said from above me on the stairs. I didn’t have to see his face to know the shit-eating grin he was wearing.

  Besides, I was too busy trying not to look too hard at something else.

  Upstairs, the flat revealed an open-plan kitchen and living room that had a distinct aura of the man cave about it. Multiple games consoles. Wide-screen TV. Takeaway boxes piled up on a kitchen counter. T-shirts strewn on the back of the sofa. Ring marks all over the coffee table and not a coaster in sight. Last night’s dishes – and the night before that, and the night before that – lingering in the sink.

  Jude sank down on the sofa, rubbing his eyes. He didn’t seem to worry about the fact that he had effectively taken up two of the seats in the room, leaving just a battered armchair.

  After a moment, I sat down on the seat. Ram perched on the arm next to me, extending his long legs in front of him and crossing his boots at the ankles.

  “Hey, Jude,” he began, barely supressing a chuckle at his own joke. “Start by telling us about the day. You had lunch there, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, I sometimes do,” Jude shrugged. “I didn’t have work the night before so I thought I’d pop over. I get employee discount.”

  “What happened at lunch?” Ram asked.

  “Oh, so you heard about that, then?” Jude said. He leaned his head back against the sofa, sitting with his knees akimbo and his arms crossed over his chest. “That Johnny was going on about his gold chain getting nicked. Making a fuss. I had to go and investigate it all.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “Well, I didn’t find it,” Jude said with a crafty look in his eye. “I just handed it over.”

  “You told Johnny yo
u’d found it on a chair,” I said, after consulting my notes.

  “Yeah, well, cover story, innit?” Jude shrugged. “It was Winter who handed it over. I knew he was dodgy. He said he just found it, but I reckon he stole it and then got cold feet.”

  Ram looked at me with a raised eyebrow before turning back to Jude. “Tell us exactly what happened. In detail.”

  “Lina called him down from his room – Winter. He was swearing blind he had nothing to do with it. Kept insisting it was ridiculous for us to interrogate him and interrupt his day like that. He went back up to his room, and maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, he comes down and finds me just as I’m leaving. He says he found it on the stairs, Johnny must have dropped it.”

  “But Johnny opened that present in the restaurant,” I said, thinking out loud.

  “Right,” Jude said, pointing a finger at me with a fox-like smile. “So I’m looking at Winter, thinking, mate, I know you’ve just lied to me. He looks scared shitless – stood there sweating and rubbing his forehead. He even said ‘I didn’t steal it’ right to my face.”

  “Without being accused?” Ram asked.

  “I never said a word, just nodded and took it,” Jude confirmed. “Then I tell him I’ll give it back to Johnny, and he asks me to keep quiet that it was him who found it. Says the two of them don’t get on and he doesn’t want to get involved.”

  This was all extremely interesting. Except, of course, for the fact that it made Cameron look even more guilty.

  “You left right after that?” Ram asked. When Jude nodded, he continued: “And when did you come back to the Inn?”

  “Just before my shift started at six,” Jude said. “I was a couple of minutes early, so I took my time in the staff room and then came out into the restaurant to look around before going to the bar.”

  “What do your duties include?” I asked. I figured it could be relevant.

  “Mostly just patrolling, looking for trouble,” Jude shrugged. “I do a bit of a circle. Start outside by the cocktail bar when the patio is open, then through the main bar, around the crowd a bit. I walk through to the front door, check what’s going on in the car park, then back through to the outside.”

  “And the patio was open, wasn’t it?”