Fiona Barton - The Widow

“Yes, his mood, Mrs. Taylor?”

Jean Taylor closed her eyes and seemed to sway in the witness box. Tom Payne and the coroner’s officer leaped up to catch her and lower her into a chair as the court hummed with concern. “It’s a line, I suppose,” the reporter behind Kate muttered to a colleague. “Widow of Bella suspect collapses. Better than nothing.”

“It’s not over yet,” she hissed over her shoulder.

Jean gripped a glass of water and stared at the coroner.

“Better now, Mrs. Taylor?” he asked.

“Yes, thank you. Sorry about that. I didn’t eat anything this morning and . . .”

“That’s perfectly all right. No need to explain. Now, shall we get back to my question?”

Jean took a deep breath. “He hadn’t been sleeping properly, not for ages, and he’d been getting bad headaches.”

“And had he been treated for his insomnia and headaches?”

She shook her head. “He said he wasn’t well, but he wouldn’t go to the doctor. He didn’t want to talk about it, I think.”

“I see. Why not, Mrs. Taylor?”

She looked at her lap for a moment, then raised her head. “Because he said he kept dreaming about Bella Elliott.”

Hugh Holden held her gaze, and the room stilled as he nodded to encourage her to continue.

“She was there when he closed his eyes, he said. It was making him ill. And he wanted to be with me all the time. Following me around the house. I didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t well.”

The coroner noted it all down carefully as the reporters scribbled furiously to his left.

“Given his state of mind, Mrs. Taylor, is there a possibility that your husband stepped in front of the bus on purpose?” the coroner asked.

Tom Payne rose to challenge the question, but Jean waved him away.

“I don’t know, sir. He never said anything about taking his own life. But he wasn’t well.”

The coroner thanked her for her evidence, gave her his condolences, and recorded a verdict of accidental death.

“I’ll be on the news tonight,” he told the court usher gleefully as the press filed out.

FIFTY-THREE

The Detective

THURSDAY, JULY 1, 2010

Glen Taylor’s dreams of Bella led the news bulletins on the radio all afternoon and came a respectable third on the evening television news. In the dog days of summer—the media’s “silly season,” when politicians are on holiday, schools close, and the country gently grinds to a halt—anything with a hint of a news angle plays well.

Sparkes had heard it all from Salmond straight after the inquest, but he read it anyway, scanning every word in the papers. “Jean’s beginning to unravel, Bob,” Salmond had said, puffing slightly as she marched back to her car. “I tried to talk to her afterward. All the reporters were there—your Kate Waters was there—but Jean wouldn’t say another word. She’s still in charge, but only just.”

The collapse in court must be a sign that with Glen gone, the secret was becoming too much for her, Sparkes felt. “She’s trying to let it seep out in a controlled way, like when they used to bleed a patient in medieval times. Getting rid of the bad thing a bit at a time,” he’d suggested to Salmond.

He looked over at his sergeant; she was now sitting at his computer to look at the news reports. “We’re going to wait her out. Literally.”

They were in position at five a.m. the next morning, parked out of sight, half a mile from the Taylor house, waiting for the surveillance team’s call. “I know this is a long shot, but we’ve got to try it. She will do something,” he’d told her.

“Feel it in your waters, sir?” she said.

“Not sure where my waters are, but yes, I do.”

Twelve hours later, the air in the car was thick with their breath and fast food.

At ten p.m., they had exhausted their life stories, criminals they’d arrested, holiday disasters, TV programs from their childhoods, favorite meals, best action films, and who was sleeping with whom in the office. Sparkes felt he could go on Mastermind and answer questions on Zara Salmond without passing, and both were quietly relieved when the surveillance team finally rang to say all the lights in the house had been turned off.

Sparkes called it a day. They would stay in the cheap hotel down the hill to grab some sleep before resuming their vigil. Another team would keep watch overnight.

His phone rang at four a.m. “Lights are on, sir.”

He pulled on his clothes and rang Salmond at the same time, dropping his phone down a trouser leg. “Sir, is that you?”

“Yes, yes. She’s up. Downstairs in five.”

Zara Salmond looked less than perfect for the first time: bed hair and bare-faced, she was waiting for him at the front door. “And to think I told my mum I wanted to be an air hostess,” she said.

“Come on, then. Seats for takeoff,” he replied with the ghost of a smile.

Jean came out of the front door quickly, triggering her own security light, and stood in the spotlight, looking up and down the street for signs of life. She pressed the key fob to open the car, and the electronic beep echoed off the facades of the houses opposite as she pulled open the door and slid in behind the wheel. She was wearing her funeral dress again.

Two streets away, Zara Salmond started their car and waited for instructions from the team. Sparkes was deep in thought beside her, maps on his lap. “She’s just turned onto the A2 headed in the direction of the M25, sir,” the officer in the unmarked van barked down the phone. And they pulled away to start their pursuit. “Bet she’s going down to Hampshire,” Salmond said as she sped down the dual carriageway.

“Let’s not try to second-guess her,” Sparkes said. He could not bear to hope too much as he followed their route on the map with his finger.

The rising sun was beginning to lighten the sky, but the GPS had still not switched from night colors when they took the turnoff for the M3 and Southampton. The convoy was evenly spaced over three miles of the motorway, with Sparkes and Salmond holding back to avoid being recognized. “She’s signaling to pull into the services, sir,” the van informed. “Where are your officers now? We’ll need to change over, or she’s going to spot us.”

“On it. We’ve got another vehicle waiting at the next junction. Stick with her until she leaves the services, and we’ll take her from there,” Sparkes replied.

The van crawled into the parking area and slid into a bay two cars back from the target. One of the police team got out, scratching his head and stretching, and headed after Jean Taylor. She went into the ladies’ room, and the officer stood in a queue for a burger. He pretended to compare the qualities of the meals advertised in nuclear fallout colors above the counter while he waited for her to emerge. She didn’t take long, shaking the last drops of water from her hands as she walked. The officer munched into his double cheeseburger as she went into the shop and carefully picked through the plastic buckets of flowers, selecting a bouquet of pink rosebuds and white lilies wrapped in pink tissue paper and cellophane. She held them up to her face to catch the perfume from the powdery stamens as she walked over to the sweet counter and picked up a brightly colored packet. Skittles, the officer noted from the other side of the deserted shop. Then she queued to pay.

“She’s got flowers and sweets, sir. She’s on her way to the car. Will follow her out onto the motorway and hand over,” he reported back.

Sparkes and Salmond looked at each other. “She’s going to a grave,” he said, his mouth dry. “Get our boys ready.”

Five minutes later, two other vehicles were on her tail, overtaking each other, taking turns to be three cars back. Jean maintained a steady sixty-five miles per hour. A careful driver. She’s probably not used to driving on motorways on her own, Sparkes thought. I wonder if this is the first time she’s made this journey.