Stephen Booth - Scared to Live

But Keith Wade had gone a step further — he’d smartened himself up for his interview at the police station. Not many people cared about looking good in an interview room. But at least he’d ditched the woolly Arbroath smoky, and Fry could risk breathing.

‘Mr Wade, thank you for coming in earlier to give us your fingerprints.’

‘For elimination purposes, you said. Is that right?’

‘Well, that was the idea.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘First of all, I want to take you back to Sunday night again, when you first noticed the fire at your neighbour’s house.’

He looked irritated. ‘I think I’ve told you everything. Twice, probably.’

‘How did you get into the house?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Surely you must do. You saw the smoke, went to make the 999 call, then …?’

‘I opened their front door.’

‘You opened the front door of number 32? Do you mean you broke the door down?’

‘No.’

‘Surely it wasn’t unlocked?’

Wade decided not to answer that one. He began to look sulky. In a moment, she could be into ‘no comment’ territory.

‘You’ve got a key, haven’t you?’ said Fry.

‘Like I said, I knew Brian and Lindsay well. I keep an eye on their house when they’re away.’

‘They leave you a key. That’s how you got in.’

‘Yes.’

‘You knew Brian was out that night, didn’t you?’

‘Well, yes. I always see him come and go.’

‘Mr Wade, how did you get on with boys? Jack and Liam?’

‘Oh, them — ’

‘They were nice lads, you said.’

‘Little bastards, that’s what they were.’

‘One was seven years old, and the other four, Mr Wade.’

He stared at her sullenly. ‘I know that.’

‘You’re a smoker, aren’t you, sir? It was obvious as soon as I walked through your door.’

‘There’s no law against it, is there?’

‘Actually, yes. But not in the privacy of your own home.’

‘So?’

‘Unfortunately, you took your matches and lighter fluid out of your house. You took them to your next-door neighbour’s, in fact.’

‘Brian’s a good bloke,’ said Wade, leaning forward urgently.

‘He says the same about you, funnily enough. But he couldn’t be more wrong, could he?’

‘He’s my mate. I look out for him.’

‘So why did you go into his house that night, pour lighter fluid in the sitting room and set fire to it? Why did you murder his wife and children?’

‘What?’

‘There’s no point in denying it. We have your fingerprints from the can of lighter fluid that you used and left in a bin down the street.’

Wade shook his head. ‘Brian’s better off without them. Look at me — I’m a lot better off without my wife. It was the best thing that ever happened to me when she went. I ought to have kicked her out a lot sooner. Once they start giving you trouble, the best thing is to get rid of them.’

‘You mean you thought you were doing Brian Mullen a favour?’

‘Well, you could put it like that. He was a brave bloke, but not that brave. I think that’s why Brian went out so often, he couldn’t face it. He needed a helping hand, like.’

‘So you stepped in. Watching out for your neighbour, Mr Wade? That’s just great. Thank God we don’t all have neighbours like you.’

‘I don’t want to talk any more.’

‘You’ve said enough.’

Fry began to get up, then stopped. ‘When you said Brian went out so often, what did you mean?’

‘He’d been staying out really late.’

‘Like Sunday night, you mean?’

‘Yes, Sunday. And Saturday.’

‘Saturday? Brian Mullen was out on Saturday night as well?’

‘Oh yes, all night. Past three o’clock, as I recall.’

‘Why didn’t you mention this before?’

‘You never asked.’

She had a sudden memory of her conversation with Jed Skinner, Brian Mullen’s friend, his alibi. Had Skinner just slipped up when he mentioned Saturday instead of Sunday, the night of the fire? But then, why should he have thought that Saturday was the night Brian needed an alibi for? Did he think he was covering for an affair?

‘That’ll do for now, Mr Wade,’ said Fry. ‘You’ll be charged with the murder of Lindsay Mullen and her two children.’

Wade looked at her with something like distaste. Surely it ought to be the other way round. But there was no accounting for what went on in people’s minds, their rationalizations and self-justifications.

‘You know, I thought Lindsay would welcome a bit of company, with Brian being out,’ he said. ‘A bit of male company, like. But she was a bitch, like all the others. Brian is a lot better off without her.’

Hitchens kept his chair still for once, instead of making it squeal on its swivel. Perhaps he was finally reading her thoughts, responding to the force of her unspoken will. Fry made a mental note to ask someone to come in and oil the thing when the DI was off duty.

‘The SOCOs found Wade’s digital camera,’ he said. ‘But all the photographs of the fire had been deleted from the memory card.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Fry. ‘He was worried we might find something incriminating.’

‘Like what?’

‘I think he probably started taking photographs long before he made the 999 call. We’d have been able to see the time of each photograph on the memory card, wouldn’t we?’

‘Yes, that’s right. Or even on a jpeg copy if he’d emailed them.’

‘Well, then it might have occurred to us to compare them to the time of his call. And he’d have some difficult questions to answer. I don’t think our Mr Wade is too technical. He wouldn’t have known how to check the time stamp of each photo, so he deleted the whole lot.’

‘You must have had him worried from the start, Diane.’

‘He was an amateur. Look at how many mistakes he made.’

‘Well, you always said the answer to the Mullen case would be close to home.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Fry. ‘I was thinking about a member of the family. But I suppose your next-door neighbour is pretty close. The Mullens put their trust in him.’

Hitchens stood up from his chair. ‘Let’s go and see the DCI.’

In the DCI’s office, they found that Kessen had just received the results of the latest actions from the incident room — a detailed assessment of Rose Shepherd’s financial circumstances.

‘Miss Shepherd had several savings accounts at different banks,’ he said, ‘but they were practically empty. Unless there are some investments or deposits we haven’t located, the victim’s funds were getting dangerously low.’

‘She doesn’t seem to have had any income, either,’ pointed out Fry.

‘That’s right. Apart from interest on her savings, nothing has been added to any of the accounts as far back as we can go. Since the house purchase, the flow of money has been in one direction — into her current account, where it’s been used to pay bills. We had a quick calculation of her annual expenditure. At her present rate, she couldn’t have survived more than another six months, I reckon.’

Fry took the print-out he offered her. ‘Was she spending heavily?’

‘Not really. Well, her big expenditure was on the house purchase and everything that went with it — solicitor’s fees, and the work she had done, like the gates and the burglar alarms. That must have made a huge hole in her resources. But since then, it’s just been normal living expenses. Council Tax, utilities, telephone bills. Not to mention food and general household expenses. They’ve all been increasing.’

‘And interest rates have been falling.’

‘She must have miscalculated badly, if she thought she could hide herself away in Bain House for the rest of her life.’