Critical Incidents. Lucie Whitehouse
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.
‘Just after Christmas.’
‘You left because …?’
‘I didn’t leave, I was fired.’ Robin looked Thomas in the eye. ‘Misconduct. It was in the papers – Jamie Hinton.’
Thomas nodded and Robin saw that of course she’d known all about it; she’d just wanted to hear her say it. How she’d say it.
‘Tell us about that.’
Robin looked at her. She’d probably read the whole thing on her phone while Patel drove them over here. ‘We – my team – were investigating the murder of a guy called Jay Farrell. Officially, he was a property developer – thirty-three, good-looking, big house in Hammersmith a couple of streets back from the river – but as we discovered, he also had a couple of sidelines, significantly, running illegal parties. Raves. It started with a house he was converting to flats, before the building work, but it was such a success, he started hiring places – barns, a big empty house out in Hertfordshire. Word went out on Facebook and hundreds of people turned up, the Nineties all over again. He charged them entry and sold them drugs – which he’d bought from Jamie Hinton.’
‘Okay.’
‘Hinton’s a career crim – previous for GBH and acquiring criminal property, known gangland ties. A friend of a friend introduced them but they’d become mates themselves. They were very similar – both all about the lifestyle, the clothes, the cars, the girls. When we got Farrell’s phone, there were selfies of them out together at clubs.
‘But then – word is, at least – Hinton was robbed. A big stash of coke and E taken from a house in Richmond – a house Farrell knew about because he’d been there. His body was found in a park on the Thames towpath, tortured in various ways – cigarette burns, lacerations.’
Thomas raised her eyebrows, waiting for the crowd-pleaser.
‘Hands cut off.’
‘He was being punished for stealing?’ Patel.
Top marks. ‘Or so whoever it was wants us to believe. My guv’nor, Detective Superintendent Freshwater,’ she couldn’t quite mask her scorn, ‘wanted me to charge Hinton, but I wouldn’t because I didn’t think he’d done it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Several reasons. They were mates, like I said. They had a good thing going – they were both doing very nicely out of the parties so why kill the golden goose? Also, Hinton’s intelligent. If he had been stolen from, he’s far too clever to advertise either that – Excuse me, officer, someone’s nicked my drugs! – or the fact that he’d murdered