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there for years now and seems comfortable. Lately, Bill has been pushing her to move on, but she claims that the time isn’t right with the recession. Bill thinks that this is exactly the time to move as he doesn’t think that there will be a future for small independents. They argued about it a lot.” She shrugged. “Sally says her dad doesn’t know anything about travel agents, since he’s only ever worked in sports clothing. Bill says that business is business and an outside perspective is important.” She wiped her eyes with another tissue. “Maybe they’re both right, but they kept on going around in circles and I stopped getting involved.”

      “So where does Darren fit into this?”

      Mrs Evans sighed. “He’s a tyre fitter and a lovely boy, he really is, but he has zero ambition and isn’t very well educated at all. Bill always felt that Sally should marry a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist — not a tyre fitter. It was something else to argue about.”

      “So what was his reaction when Sally moved in with Darren?”

      Mrs Evans looked even more sad. “He was really angry. He told her she was wasting her life and tried to make her feel guilty, claiming that she was throwing away all of her years of hard work. He implied that he wouldn’t contribute to any wedding plans and told her not to turn up on the doorstep pregnant and homeless.”

      Warren could feel the pain in the room and struggled to find the words to ask her the questions he needed to without upsetting the poor woman further. Again, it was Karen Hardwick who saved the day.

      “It sounds as if he really loved her and was afraid of losing her.”

      Mrs Evans smiled through the tears. “That’s exactly right. He loves her to bits. I think that with a little more time he’d have come around and everything would have been all right.” Her voice choked slightly. “I guess we’ll never know.”

      Taking over from Hardwick, Warren tried to be as sensitive as possible. “I imagine he was worried when she didn’t come home that night. Where was he?”

      If Mrs Evans realised that the question was about establishing Bill Evans’ alibi, she gave no sign.

      “I called Bill just before we called the police. He was working away in Leeds that night. He’s been doing that quite a bit lately. They have a new branch up there and Bill has been going up to iron out the teething troubles. He stays in a Travelodge hotel near the airport. He came back immediately, made it in record time — he was here by three a.m.”

      Warren jotted down the company’s details and made a note to get his alibi checked out. It could just be that this wasn’t a stranger murder after all.

      In the car on the way back to the station, Warren praised Hardwick’s questioning technique before asking her opinion on what they had heard so far.

      “I can’t see Darren Blackheath being guilty. He doesn’t seem the type.”

      “I tend to agree,” admitted Warren, “but we can’t rule him out just yet. It’s possible that he had a motive — what if he popped the question early and Sally decided to turn down his proposal because of her relationship with her father? Maybe he flew into a jealous rage and killed her?”

      Hardwick looked doubtful. “Anything’s possible, sir, but again I don’t think he seems the type. And if her upcoming wedding was the catalyst, what about her father? Could he have had an argument with her about it?”

      Warren shook his head slowly. “I don’t see how the timing would work. If, as Mrs Evans claims, her father loved her, then if he did kill her it would almost certainly be a crime of passion. The sequence of events as we know them suggests that Sally Evans left work at her usual time of six p.m. If Blackheath is in the clear and telling the truth, then she disappeared some time in the next ten minutes. Could her father have dropped by unexpectedly to offer her a lift home — and she forgot to text Blackheath — then they get into a row and he kills her and dumps her, before pretending to be all concerned when his wife phones late that night?”

      Hardwick pursed her lips. “I agree, it seems a bit far-fetched. I guess we’ll just have to see if their alibis check out and what Forensics have to say.”

      In other words, hurry up and wait — sometimes I think that should be the motto of the police, thought Warren ruefully.

Chapter 6

      By the time they returned to the station it was more or less lunchtime. Warren scheduled a team briefing in a half-hour, insisting his officers got at least a short break and something to eat. Warren’s gut told him that this investigation might run for some time and he wanted his team to take care of themselves.

      Karen Hardwick stopped by her desk and picked up her lunch box, before heading out for some fresh air. Almost exactly a minute later, Gary Hastings grabbed his lunch and followed her out of the door.

      Tony Sutton sidled up to Warren.

      “Do you reckon they think nobody’s noticed?”

      Warren nodded, a small smile forming on his lips.

      “Yup. They haven’t a clue.”

      Sutton sighed theatrically.

      “Young love, eh, boss. Is there any better kind?”

      Warren chuckled, glad for a moment of brightness in an otherwise bleak day.

      “Yeah. I think they make a sweet couple. I wonder how long it’ll be until they stop trying to hide it.”

      * * *

      Warren held the team meeting in the largest of the unit’s briefing rooms. Detective Superintendent John Grayson had formally delegated the lead investigator role to Warren; nevertheless he was present, since part of the agenda would be to discuss the upcoming press conference.

      Grayson was a small, dapper man, with a steel grey moustache, in his early fifties. Common consensus was that he was more interested in securing his next promotion and thus a more generous final-salary pension than actively heading up investigations. Whether that was a fair assessment or not, Warren had yet to decide, but it was certainly true that he spent more time meeting with senior colleagues at the Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire Major Crime Unit in Welwyn Garden City than he did at his desk in Middlesbury CID.

      The man was certainly a crafty politician. Warren still remembered his first serious case at Middlesbury during the summer, when Grayson had made it clear that it was sink or swim for the newly promoted DCI. To make things worse, Tony Sutton had been extremely vocal in his opposition to Warren’s handling of the case and the two had almost come to blows. Sutton had finally confided in Warren that he was worried that the future of Middlesbury CID was under threat, with its unique role as a small, first-response CID unit outside the main Major Crime Unit in Welwyn a source of tension in a time of budget cutbacks. Sutton had been convinced that Jones had been sent to close them down.

      Matters were further complicated by the fact that the strongest proponent for maintaining Middlesbury’s unique status had been Gavin Sheehy, Warren’s predecessor and Sutton’s mentor, who was currently awaiting trial later in the new year for corruption. Grayson had yet to make his views clear on whether he thought Middlesbury had a future or should be absorbed into the main unit and so Sutton and now Warren, who had grown to value Middlesbury CID’s independence and unique place in the local community, were careful around him. Both men had a strong suspicion that Grayson would happily see Middlesbury CID closed if it meant that he would be moved to a more senior role within Welwyn Garden City.

      One plus, as far as Warren was concerned, was that Grayson was always willing to talk to the press. Warren, on the other hand, regarded press conferences as a necessary evil and was happy to let Grayson enjoy his fifteen minutes of fame, whilst he stayed in the background and answered the odd question. Grayson had already decided that there would be a press conference to announce the finding of Sally Evans’ body that evening, just in time for the late-night news bulletins and later editions of the next day’s newspapers;

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