Oh, phew. They’re here for you.
Rafe suddenly appears at my side, all smiles. He trots over to Hayes and sniffs his trouser leg.
I’ll get rid of the coppers for you, my Magnificent Mead Witch…hmmm, I think Hayes had a sausage roll for breakfast. I wonder if he has any leftovers…
“Rrrrrwww,” he demands, butting his head against Inspector Hayes’ shin.
“If he does have sausage roll in his pocket, he’s not sharing,” I snap. I clamp my hand over my mouth.Why did I say that out loud?
“What did you say?” Wilson asks.
“Oh, nothing. I’m, uh, craving a sausage roll. I’m such a mess these days, I’ve been forgetting to eat, and when your shop is next door to Celeste’s bakery, and there are all these delicious smells, that’s dangerous.” My hands tremble as I unscrew the lid of a drink bottle and take a swig.At least they can see you’re frazzled.“So you have news about Warrick?”
“We’re following several inquiries,” Hayes says. “At this stage, we’re open to all possibilities. This morning, we pulled your and your husband’s financial records. We wondered if you might be able to explain a few things.”
Cold panic settles in my stomach. “I’ll do my best, but Warrick managed all our money. He’s good at that stuff.”
Hayes strides across the shop and opens his fileon the counter. Rafe jumps up and bats the corner of the pages. Wilson stays by the doorway, her gaze wandering over every surface of the shop.
“Someone’s helping you with the painting,” she says. It’s not a question. I guess it’s her job to notice things, like two walls being worked on at the same time. “Where did they go?”
“My friend…uh, Mina. She just stepped out?—”
“Mina from Nevermore Bookshop? Mina, who’s blind—” Wilson eyes the careful cutting in around the window.
“Oh, well, she…um…one of her husbands is helping, too,” I remember. “I can’t remember his name.”
“With that kind of attention to detail, it must have been Moriarty,” Hayes muses as he wrestles Rafe’s paw from his pocket. “You beware of Mina Wilde, Mrs Abernathy. She and her husbands are nothing but trouble. They like to get involved in police business. They may have solved a few petty crimes around the village, but that’s no reason to get them to stick their nose into your husband’s case?—”
Noooo, unhand me, copper. Let me at the Crunchy Meat Pillow.
“Don’t worry, Inspector. I have no intention of letting anything mess up the case, not when you and Sergeant Wilson are doing everything to find Warrick.” I lean my elbows on the counter, squinting at the papers Hayes spreads out in front of me. Rafe glares at Hayes as he tears off the corner of one and swallows it.
“That’s evidence, little guy.” Hayes pats his head.
Who are you calling little? And I’d be less inclined to eat these if you’d share the Savoury Caterpillar in your pocket.
“I think he’s just hungry,” I say.
“Here’s your joint account.” Hayes places a document in front of me. I see tiny lines of text and columns of numbers, but they jumble together. I don’t understand what I’m looking at. I squint at the page, hoping he can’t tell that I’m struggling. “Now, you both have signing rights to this account, but in the last six months of records we pulled, you never made a single transaction. Not one. Except yesterday, where you took out £2000 in cash, and then here, £118 at Harold’s Hardware.”
“I brought paintbrushes and rollers.” I fish around in mypocket. “I have the receipt somewhere. It’s the first time I’ve used a card in a long time. Danny helped me with tap! The cash was to pay for the first three months’ shop rental.”
“Is it the done thing to pay rent in cash?” he asks. Behind him, Wilson moves into the backroom, where I’ve stacked the rest of Widow Hardcastle’s junk on top of her old cot. I want to tell her to stop snooping, but after the Mina lie, that seems like a bad idea.
“I like to pay for things with cash,” I say instead. Cash is coloured. It’s easy for me to count it, to tell that I have the right notes. I don’t mix up numbers on the screen like I do when I try to put in a PIN, and if I didn’t bring cash, Angela would have wanted me to fill in an extra form, and the rental agreement was hard enough. “I’m a bit old-fashioned like that.”
“That’s perfectly reasonable. But why don’t you ever use this account?” Hayes asks. “All the transactions are from Warrick, yet as far as we can tell, this is your only bank account. How do you pay for things?”
“I don’t,” I shrug. “Warrick pays the bills. He gives me money in cash each week for groceries. He knows I prefer cash.”
“Okay, but did you know that not all of these transactions are for household bills?” Hayes points to some lines. “Here, and here, and here, thousands of pounds have been swapped into a different account, one that only your husband could access. We were able to pull that account, too, and do you know what we found?”
My ears ring. “What?”
Hayes flips over another page. “Hotel rooms. Lots of hotel rooms. In London, mostly, but also in Exeter and Liverpool.”
“That’s not right. My husband travels to those cities for his work, but he doesn’t need hotel rooms. He never stays the night.”
