Stuart Pawson - Limestone Cowboy

"You're leaving him?" I said.

"Yes."

"Divorce?"

"Yes."

"Because he went to a dog fight and spent the night in police custody?"

Her cheeks flushed and she plucked at her sleeve with those long fingernails as if something objectionable were sticking to it. "This isn't easy for me," she said.

"I know."

"He's having an affair, isn't he?"

"Who with?" I asked, turning the question back at her.

"I can guess." She jumped up, fetched a mobile phone from a drawer and pressed a pre-set button. "Could I speak to Sharon Brown, please," she said, then: "Is she? Do you know when she'll be back? Thank you, I'll contact her then."

She put the phone down. "Ms Brown is on a course and won't be back until Monday. Guess when Mort will be back. Was she at this dog fight, Inspector?"

"Mmm."

"Well, at least there'll have been one bitch there." She jumped up again and strode over to the window, looking out, hiding her tears.

"I'm sorry," I said, walking over to stand beside her.

"It's happened before, it's not your fault."

"How long have you known?"

"About Sharon? A year or so. She was one of his brighter employees. He encouraged her, put her through college. It's a familiar story, Inspector, a tried and trusted formula. There were others before her, but nothing I could prove."

A grey squirrel galloped across the lawn where I'd watched her sunbathing, sending a pair of collared doves flapping off, and in the distance I could see Stoodley Pike.

"Have you heard the expression 'trailer trash', Inspector?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Well that's what we were, as my husband likes to remind me. My parents moved to Florida from Virginia when I was a baby, looking for a better life for them and me. They swapped one trailer park for another, but the winters were milder. Things didn't go well for them but they stayed together through thick and thin because that's what they believed in. That and in Jesus Christ. They didn't want me to marry Mort, said he was too old for me, that I wasn't sophisticated enough for him, but I wanted to escape from that life so I leapt at the opportunity. Now I've got to go back to them and admit that they were right, and it's not easy."

I told her to come and sit down again, and she followed me. "You can afford a good lawyer," I said, "and he's a wealthy man. You'll come out of it OK. You'll be able to build your parents that villa with the ocean view they've always dreamed of. I know it's not the best solution but it helps."

"Look on the bright side?"

"That's right."

"When will I be able to go home?"

"It's not that simple," I said, reaching down for my briefcase which I'd left on the floor at the side of my chair. I removed a large manila envelope and extracted the photo of the woman in the long coat and gloves.

"Is this you, Mrs Grainger?" I asked.

She studied it for much longer than necessary, weighing the implications of her reply.

"It… could be," she decided upon, eventually.

"Is it or isn't it?"

"I think it is."

"Do you still have that coat?"

"Yes."

"Can I see it, please?"

"The coat?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"To prove to myself that it's you in the picture."

"I'll fetch it." She stood up and left the room. I was wondering if I should have followed her, how it would look if she hurled herself from an upstairs window while I was sitting there twiddling my toes, when she returned with the coat over her arm. I took it from her and held it up by the shoulders.

It was a navy blue Burberry, lightweight, with an expensive feel to it, and exactly like the one in the photo. I delved into a pocket and found a leather glove. Its partner was in the other pocket. That saved me having to ask to see the gloves.

"I was worried about these," I said, flapping the gloves at her. "I didn't think you'd be able to wear them over your nail extensions, so we made enquiries with your hairdresser. Apparently you had short nails up to last week."

"What's all this about, Inspector?"

"I think you have a good idea, but I'll show you." I reached into the briefcase again and retrieved the tin of corned beef. "This is a tin of corned beef exactly like the one that poisoned Maureen Wall, nearly three weeks ago. Somebody had pierced the tin, and the others that were found, with something small and sharp, like a drawing pin." I produced one from my briefcase. "Let's see if it works," I said.

It was awkward, holding the tin steady while trying to balance the pin under my thumb with the point against the hard metal. When it was stable I placed my other thumb over the first one and squeezed. The thumbnail turned pink with the pressure until, without a sound, the pin penetrated the steel and slid effortlessly into the meat.

"There," I said. "Nothing to it."

"I don't know what all this has to do with me," she said, but her expression told a different story.

"You're a practical person, Mrs Grainger," I told her. "I'm told you made the model of the office and leisure complex with your own hands. You know how to use tools, have access to them, no doubt know all about soldering and super glue and saturated solutions. I think it was you that contaminated all the food at Grainger's superstore."

She was staring down at her hands and I noticed that one of her nail extensions had become detached. She tried to press it back in place. "It's absurd," she declared. "Why would I do such a thing?"

"To hurt your husband," I suggested. "You'd had as much as you could take and this was revenge for all his philandering." She stayed silent, as I expected, so I threw her the lifeline: "Or perhaps you did it to save your marriage. You saw it as a way to win Sir Morton's affection back by giving him your full support and understanding during these difficult times? If the Press were hounding him everywhere he turned perhaps he'd spend more time at home instead of gallivanting off every weekend? Or maybe you thought that by putting pressure on the company you'd create stress between him and his staff, in other words, between him and Sharon Brown. You tell me."

"You haven't any evidence. None at all."

The gloves were on the arm of my chair. "That's true," I conceded, "and you saw how fiddly it was holding the pin against the tin. Doing that whilst at the shelves might attract attention; might be picked up by the CCTV cameras. But if you put the pin inside your glove, poking out of the thump, it would look perfectly natural to pick up a tin, appear to read the label and then replace it, after piercing it with the drawing pin. That's what you did, Mrs Grainger."

She shook her head but was unable to speak.

"And if we look at your gloves," I continued, "I suspect we'll find a neat little hole in the thumb of the right hand one."

"You're very clever."

"It's what I'm paid for."

"You're right, I did it to save my marriage," she said, her voice a whisper.

"I don't think you should say any more," I told her, "until you have a solicitor present. I'll have to ask you to come to the station with me."

"Am I under arrest?"

"Not unless you refuse to come."

"Will I go to jail?"

"Two people nearly died. You put hundreds of lives at risk, scared half the population out of their wits and wasted thousands of hours of police time. If a child or someone frail had eaten that corned beef this might have been a murder enquiry. You could go to jail, but no doubt you will have a very good lawyer in your corner."

"I didn't want to hurt anybody. It's just that nothing happened."

I interrupted her — "I'd prefer you not to say anything until we're at the station," — but she ignored me.

"I pierced the corned beef and some tins of fruit, but nobody noticed. I wanted them to go bad, that's all, but nothing happened. So then I used the dye, but it was covered up by the store. Next I used the rat poison. It tastes horrible. I tried it. I didn't think anybody would actually eat the stuff."