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‘She told Betts to leave me, find someone new,’ he said, eyes blazing.
Betts threw her hands in the air and stormed from the room, while Kim tried to follow his logic.
‘You’re saying that Sandy encouraged Betts to end the marriage and that Betts did everything that Sandy told her to?’
‘She was an interfering, poisonous—’
‘So why is Betts still here?’ Kim asked simply. ‘If she did everything Sandy told her to do, why hasn’t she gone?’
‘She’s planning to. Sandra has put her up to it and it’s just a matter of time until she does what that crackpot said. I don’t care if she’s dead or not. I despise every single word that ever came out of her mouth.’
Kim’s mind went straight to the vision of Sandra, lying amongst the gravestones, covered in blood, with a slash across that mouth that he so despised.
TWELVE
Stacey got out of the squad car and stood at the top of the street in Coombs Wood.
She knocked on the window and told the police officer to go. Never would she get over the guilt of taking up an officer’s time to ferry her around. She resolved to take Devon up on her offer of free driving lessons.
After she reassured him she’d get an Uber back, he pulled away from the kerb.
She walked the narrow street taking note of the house numbers. She passed by number seventeen, the house where Charlotte Danks had once lived. She took another couple of steps and spied the house of Terence Birch across the road. The first thing she noticed was a midi skip in front of it, and the second was that the man had enjoyed a clear and unobstructed view of Charlotte’s house from any one of his front windows. He hadn’t needed to stand right opposite to see everything, so that action had been purely to terrorise her. A shudder passed through her but she pushed it aside. She wasn’t here to judge him on his past crimes but to see if there was any link to the current one.
A man approached the skip with an old bedside cabinet. He hauled it in and looked her way.
‘Terence Birch?’ she asked, offering a smile. Remembering that was what appeared to have got Charlotte into trouble, she hastily tried to rearrange her face into total neutrality.
‘That’s me,’ he said, wiping his hands on his jeans.
Stacey introduced herself. ‘Just here to go over a couple of things in your statement, if that’s okay.’
‘You mean you’ve discovered my history and now I’m a suspect. I bloody knew this would happen,’ he seethed, hitting the top of the skip with both hands.
Stacey was caught off guard by his sudden rise to anger. She took a half step back.
The boss had described him as meek, non-threatening and a bit of a drip.
‘I should have just left her. Someone would have found her eventually.’
‘May we step closer to the front door, Mr Birch?’
Normally she would have asked if they could talk inside but the thought made her uneasy.
‘No, we may not,’ he said, planting his feet firmly. ‘I’m a bit busy clearing out my dead mother’s belongings.’
‘I’m sorry for—’
‘No you’re not, so keep your platitudes.’
Stacey wondered how they had reached open hostility so soon and how the hell she could bring it back. Trouble was, he was bang on the money about the reason for her visit.
‘We understand you knew Sandra Deakin,’ she said, forging ahead. She needed to ask the questions whether he was hostile or not.
‘I’ve seen her in the graveyard a few times. We’re not friends or anything.’
‘But you’ve spoken to her a couple of times?’
‘Yeah, so?’
