Lucie Whitehouse - Critical Incidents

‘Mr Legge may have killed his wife then set the fire to destroy evidence.’

A sort of bark escaped her. She almost laughed. ‘Josh? You think Josh killed Corinna? That’s … No. There’s no way. No way.’

‘His car is missing,’ said Patel again, as if that settled it.

‘So? He’s a businessman – he travels. He’ll have been away for the night.’ Oh god – it dawned on her that if that was the case, Josh didn’t know. If he was out of contact, no one had reached him, he still had to find out. Rin dead, Peter in hospital – she closed her eyes.

You moved yesterday.

Suddenly Robin stiffened. The floor seemed to shift beneath her chair.

‘We’ve spoken to Mr Legge’s secretary.’ Patel’s voice reached her from a distance. ‘There were no plans for him to be away. But more importantly, the neighbours on both sides reported seeing his car on the drive yesterday evening. Monday is bin day over there – he took their rubbish out after ten last night, spoke to one of them.’

Could it …? Could someone …?

She pressed her hands against her knees to try and stop them shaking. Focus , she told herself, focus . ‘In the extremely unlikely event that Josh, who loved Corinna beyond all reason …’ She faltered, seeing Patel scribble in his pad. ‘I don’t mean literally beyond reason. Just – he loved her. He really loved her. In the event that he had some sort of mental breakdown or psychotic episode – again, extremely unlikely – and killed her in a moment of madness, there’s no way he would have hurt Peter.’

‘Do you know how Peter sustained his injuries?’ Thomas this time.

‘No. But fire – smoke inhalation, burns?’

‘Inhalation, yes, but actually the worst of his injuries came from the fall.’

‘He fell?’

‘He jumped. Into the back garden from a skylight on the second floor. Broken legs, pelvis and three ribs, one of which punctured his left lung.’

Robin covered her mouth.

‘We haven’t been able to talk to him, he’s unconscious, but he was wearing pyjamas so our guess is he was asleep and woke to discover the fire, jumped to escape.’

She thought of him at Christmas the year before last. They’d spent it in Edgbaston with Corinna and Josh. It had worked really well; they’d all had proper time together, and Len had made trips over here to see her grandparents. In the evenings, after Josh had got him into his PJs, Peter had come to the dining table to say goodnight. Those legs – in tight jersey bottoms printed with aliens and flying saucers, they’d been long and spindly as breadsticks. She’d looked at Corinna, who’d folded her lips together to contain the laugh, the I know, it’s too much of maternal love.

‘It’s an hypothesis – a theory,’ said Patel.

She gave him a look: I know what a fucking hypothesis is.

‘That having killed his wife in the heat of the moment, Mr Legge came to himself, realized what he’d done and knew he couldn’t bear his son to know. But knowing also that he couldn’t actively kill his son – the moment had passed, whatever had led him to kill Mrs Legge – he set the fire not only to destroy evidence but in the hope that his son, who he knew to be asleep upstairs, would die from smoke inhalation without ever waking up.’ He laid it in front of her, formal as a barrister.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not possible.’

‘As Mrs Legge’s closest friend, were you a person she confided in? Shared her secrets with?’ Thomas.

‘Yes, when there were any.’

‘What sort of things would they be?’

Robin took a silent breath, tried to calm the storm in her head. Arson . ‘Rin’s dad was an alcoholic,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t physically violent, nothing like that, but he was useless, Trevor. Worse than. Her mum was basically a single parent when Rin and Will – her brother – were growing up. Oh god – does Di know?’

Thomas nodded.

‘It was the full Monty with him: sleeping rough round the coach station, going AWOL for weeks at a time, getting beaten up. Lost his teeth. Mrs Pascoe brought up Rin and Will on her own and she’s a nurse so they never had much money. It’s why Rin didn’t go to uni – she was more than capable, she was with me at the grammar school, she got two As and a B at A-level. She wanted to start earning straight away, though, help her mother.’ She remembered Corinna walking out of the British Heart Foundation in town, that Yorkshire accent: ‘You know what, pet? I’ve ’ad it up to me neck with cast-offs. Time to get a job.’

‘How about more recently than that? Was there anything on her mind? Anything worrying her?’

Robin tried to think. ‘No. Nothing that would even remotely … They would have liked another baby.’

‘But they didn’t?’

‘She had a difficult time with Peter – placenta praevia . He was early, she lost a lot of blood. It was Josh who was most afraid of going through that again – losing her.’

Another little note in Patel’s book.

‘Did she talk to you about their relationship?’

‘Never negatively. Unless you count joking about how they never had enough sex – too bloody tired after work, being parents, the house, what’s for dinner, you know.’ Maybe they didn’t; Baby Cop was too young and Thomas didn’t look like she’d settle for less than perfection in any area of her life. ‘But it was nothing, just idle talk over a bottle of wine, nothing to do with how much she loved him, which was a lot. They’d been together since she was sixteen.’

‘You never had reason to believe she felt frightened of him?’

‘No.’

‘Did he try to control her at all – dominate her? Did you ever see him behave in a way you’d describe as intimidating?’

The image appeared in her head without warning; she shoved it away.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Generous, protective, kind, yes; controlling, dominating, no.’

‘DI Nuttall contacted Maggie Hammond because he knows she sometimes works with local women experiencing domestic violence.’

‘Maggie knew Corinna but only through me. She wouldn’t have anything different to tell you about Josh. She’d have told me – today if not before.’

‘And what about Corinna herself – the other side? You never had reason to think she might have been bored of the marriage? That there was someone else? They’d been married for …’ Patel flicked back a couple of pages in his notebook, ‘twelve years.’

‘No, she never even hinted at that.’

‘And she would?’

‘Yes.’

‘If she’d met someone else or was thinking of leaving him – for whatever reason – might that be enough to make him lose control? If he loved her as much as you say.’

‘Didn’t happen.’

‘Infidelity can make people react in extreme ways,’ pronounced Patel as if he was whipping back the cloth on a remarkable truth. ‘Not just men, either. Totally normal people can go completely off the deep end and behave in a way no one could predict. It could also explain why Josh would set the fire knowing his son was upstairs – these kinds of killings can be a misguided attempt to keep a family together, in death if not in life.’

‘I’m aware.’

DS Thomas sat back and crossed her legs as if to signal that she was satisfied, the heat was now off. Robin braced herself.

‘You were in the job yourself, weren’t you?’ Thomas said. ‘The Met.’

Here it came.

‘DCI with HMCC.’

‘That’s …?’ Patel, pen poised.

‘Homicide and Major Crime Command. I led a murder investigation team.’ Fifty people.

‘Until quite recently.’ An eyebrow rose towards the Emeli Sandé quiff.