Stephen Booth - Scared to Live

‘I really don’t know, sir. I’m sorry. But we’re doing our best to find her.’

It hadn’t sounded convincing, even to Fry herself. Mullen had just looked even more sick.

‘Can I ask you about something else, Mr Mullen?’ she’d said.

‘What?’

‘Your next-door neighbour, Mr Wade.’

‘Keith Wade? He’s a good neighbour. He’s always kept an eye on our house. I know he can seem a bit rough, and his wife walked out on him, poor bloke. But Lindsay saw a lot of him during the day when he was on late shifts, and he always took an interest in the kids.’

‘Mr Mullen, when you say Mr Wade kept an eye on your house, what exactly do you mean?’

‘We gave him a spare key. So if we were away for the weekend, he could get in to deal with any emergencies.’

‘Wait a minute — he has a key to your house?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Fry shook her head at the memory of her conversation with Mullen. As far as she was concerned, the question of who’d killed Lindsay Mullen and the two boys in the fire remained open. Despite his parents’ protestations, it would be easy to blame John Lowther and leave it at that. But she was feeling guilty that she’d been so wrong about him. Her preconceptions had overruled her judgement. Bad mistake.

She considered Brian Mullen again. He was one of only two people she could definitely place at the scene around the time of the fire. Mullen had a key to the house, so he wouldn’t have needed to break in through the side window. Of course, the damage to the window might simply have been a blind, to make everyone think there had been a break-in.

She wondered whether she ought to have seized Mullen’s clothes for forensic examination at an early stage in the enquiry. But it would have been a pointless exercise, even immediately after the incident. Mullen had legitimate reasons for his clothes being impregnated with smoke, or even singed by the fire. He’d tried to get into the house to rescue his children, hadn’t he? He had plenty of witnesses to that fact, including the two firefighters who’d physically dragged him back to the pavement. It took a bit of clever forward planning to contaminate forensic evidence like that. She couldn’t believe Brian Mullen had it in him.

But no, she shouldn’t rule out it out completely. No more false assumptions.

Gradually, Fry found her thoughts focusing on Keith Wade. The perfect neighbour, the assiduous member of Neighbourhood Watch. The keen amateur photographer. The only other person she knew to have been at the scene when the fire started.

Fry paused and checked her email. Wade had promised to send her some of his photos, but they hadn’t arrived yet. She doubted if they ever would.

Then another thought struck her. Brian Mullen had an alibi for the time of the fire — he’d been at the Broken Wheel with Jed Skinner until the early hours of the morning. In Wade’s case, it was that very same fact that had made it possible for him to get into the Mullens’ house. If Brian hadn’t been out late that night, the front door of number 32 would have been bolted on the inside. But Lindsay had left the bolts off for her husband to come home. Wade could have known that quite easily, couldn’t he?

There was one person who wasn’t out with the search teams. He wasn’t on duty because he was at home, recovering from his unexpected dip in the trapped waters of the Derwent. Fry dialled his number.

‘Ben,’ she said, ‘can I bounce something off you?’

‘Yes, I’m fine. Thanks for asking, Diane.’

‘Oh. Well, I can tell you’re all right by the way you sound.’

Cooper sighed. ‘What did you want to bounce off me?’

‘Brian Mullen. You know that he denied the arguments with his wife?’

‘Yes.’

‘Whose word do we have that those arguments ever took place?’

Cooper considered the question for a moment. ‘Well, the lady on one side of the Mullens heard the row about the carpet.’

‘Which is the only one Brian admits to. And the rest?’

‘We only have the other neighbour’s word for those.’

‘Keith Wade.’

‘Yes, Wade. Why, Diane?’

‘I’m thinking of getting Mr Wade in. Perhaps he wasn’t such a good friend of the Mullens, after all.’

‘But he seems to have been the perfect next-door neighbour.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Did the prints come back from the can of lighter fluid?’

‘Yes, just today. I’m going to ask Mr Wade to give his prints for comparison.’

‘He’s lived next door to the Mullens for six years,’ said Cooper. ‘And they got on fine, by all accounts. Why would he decide to do them harm? What would have been his motive?’

‘Motive?’

‘Yes, motive. That’s a bit of a problem all round, isn’t it? Juries like a motive. They’re never entirely happy if they don’t get one, you know.’

‘I’ll be sure to let you know when I find out,’ said Fry.

Cooper paused. ‘Do you want me to come in?’

‘No, you’re recuperating.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s any news …?’

‘We’re still working on the Rose Shepherd shooting.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

‘I know,’ said Fry. ‘No, there isn’t any news of Luanne Mullen. Not yet.’

Cooper put the phone down thoughtfully. Neighbours had been a bit outside his experience until he moved to Welbeck Street. At Bridge End Farm, the nearest house had been several fields away. Even here in Edendale, there was only his landlady, Mrs Shelley, on one side, and a retired couple on the other, two former teachers who seemed to spend most of their time in Spain.

‘Who was that, Ben?’

‘It was Diane Fry.’

Liz was in his kitchen. Cooper wasn’t sure what she was doing, and it felt wrong somehow for her to be there. A few months of living on his own, and he was already feeling territorial about his space. He just hoped she wasn’t tidying up. He couldn’t do with that.

Cooper put his head around the door and saw that Liz was talking to the cat, who’d taken to her straightaway. So that was all right.

‘They still haven’t found the child,’ he said. ‘You know — Luanne Mullen.’

Liz looked up, her eyes suddenly full of concern at something she’d detected in his voice. Her dark hair was loose today, curled round her ears in the way that he liked.

‘It wasn’t your fault if the child was snatched, Ben.’

‘I didn’t say it was.’

‘No, but you were thinking it.’

Cooper raised his hands. ‘It’s a fair cop.’

Liz gave the cat another stroke, rubbing him behind the ears, creating a deep buzz of pleasure.

‘Just so long as you weren’t planning on going in to work,’ she said. ‘This is a rest day. We don’t get much chance to spend a whole day together.’

‘No, of course,’ said Cooper. ‘I wasn’t thinking that .’

‘Mmm.’

She stood up and came towards him. When she was close, he could feel her warmth. In another moment, he’d be distracted completely from what had really been on his mind.

‘Diane says they’re still working on the Rose Shepherd shooting,’ he said. ‘There’s a suspect in custody, but it isn’t going too well with him, from what I hear.’

Liz looked up at him, instinctively sharing the desire to see a satisfactory conclusion in a tragic case like the death of Miss Shepherd.

‘Did I tell you about the gun, by the way?’

‘The gun?’ said Cooper.

‘The gun you asked about, Ben. The Romanian PSL. I did tell you about the gun, didn’t I?’

A defendant was always advised by his lawyers to smarten himself up when he appeared in court. It made a better impression on a jury, and even on magistrates, who ought to know better. Have a shave, comb your hair, and borrow a suit, even if it didn’t fit.