LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Twenty-Three

      Sheldon banged on the door to Ted Kenyon’s house.

      ‘What are you going to do, sir?’ Tracey Peters whispered.

      ‘Get some answers.’

      There was no answer, and so he banged again. When Ted opened the door, surprised, Sheldon barked, ‘Why did you lie?’

      Ted took a step back and said, ‘About what?’

      ‘You said you’d stayed in. You hadn’t. You went into Oulton on the night Billy died, and then you lied to me.’

      Emily appeared from the kitchen. ‘What’s all the shouting about?’

      Tracey went to her, her hands out, placating. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Kenyon. My inspector is just talking to your husband.’

      ‘He’s shouting.’

      ‘It’s nothing to worry about.’

      Emily pushed past Tracey. ‘Ted, are you all right? What’s going on?’

      Sheldon tried to ignore her as he stared at Ted. He wanted to see the flicker of recognition, that moment when he knew that he had gone too far in going after Billy Privett, and that he had been found out. But there was only anger.

      ‘Are you going to arrest me?’ Ted said, and then held his hands out. ‘Go on then, here they are. You couldn’t get it right last time. Why not repeat it?’

      Sheldon paused, remembering what he had said in the Incident Room, that there wasn’t enough to arrest him yet. As he thought of that, some of his anger subsided. He looked at Tracey, and then at Emily, who appeared distressed, her hand over her mouth.

      ‘So why did you lie?’ Sheldon said, his voice softer now.

      ‘Because the last time I followed up a lead like this, I was set up and photographed with a young woman. You remember, the thing that made the front page and ruined my reputation, but I’m not rich enough to fight a libel case. And what did they say anyway? That I was with a young woman who wasn’t wearing a top, that’s all. All they had to do was print the picture.’

      ‘You explain it how you want, Mr Kenyon,’ Sheldon said.

      Ted stepped closer. ‘That’s how it was,’ he said, his voice more threatening now. ‘The calls and the letters about Alice dried up afterwards, but I bet you can guess that. So why set me up? Do you know what I think? Someone didn’t want me to get any closer. The girl promised me some answers, and so I turned up. Somewhere quiet, she said, because she was scared. We were talking, but she wasn’t saying much, just putting on the tears, and so when I leaned across to her, there was a flash. Before I knew what was happening, her top was off and she was trying to straddle me, and the flashes were still going on. It was a fix, designed to make me go away, and it worked.’

      ‘I’ve been in the police more than twenty years, Mr Kenyon, and so I’ve heard plenty of people try to explain away tricky situations. That was one of the worst efforts I’ve ever heard.’

      ‘I don’t care whether you believe it or not, but you asked me why I lied, and so I’ve told you.’

      ‘I don’t understand,’ Sheldon said.

      ‘I got a similar message,’ Ted said. ‘It wasn’t the same person. It was a man this time, someone who said he was a friend of Billy Privett, and Billy had told him what had happened when Alice died. The full story, he promised. He told me to meet him in Oulton, outside the Crown and Feathers, just down the road from the hotel where he was found. I went, but he didn’t turn up, and so I came home. When I heard that Billy had died, I wondered whether it was a set-up again, and so I lied. So go on, lock me up, if you think it will help. But that’s all I did, tell a lie.’

      Sheldon closed his eyes and rubbed his temple. Glimpses of Billy Privett came into his head. Grinning, taunting, brash and arrogant. Then he thought of the corpse on the hotel bed, his face ripped off. It was nasty, vengeful, so it hinted at Ted, but he knew it was too obvious.

      Sheldon spoke the words before he thought to stop them. ‘I think of Alice all the time,’ he said. He opened his eyes. ‘I found her, but you know that. It’s more than that though. I see her body when I’m asleep, and when I’m on my own. I feel like I can’t rest until I know, because all we found was Alice, with no one else there. Even Billy had gone, and no one knew who else was there.’

      Sheldon felt a hand on his arm. It was Tracey Peters, raising her eyebrows, a hint that they should leave. He pulled his arm away.

      ‘If you are lying to me again,’ Sheldon said to Ted, ‘I will make sure that everyone knows that you lied, so that even if we can’t prove it, people will think you as much a murderer as an adulterer.’

      ‘You don’t need to threaten me,’ Ted said. ‘Take my car. If the reports in the paper are true, there will be traces of Billy everywhere. Just to eliminate me, take it and check it out. Then you can leave me alone.’

      Sheldon looked at Tracey. She had moved further down the hall and was speaking into her phone, her voice just whispers.

      Sheldon turned to Tracey. ‘What is it?’

      She looked at Ted, and then back to Sheldon, before saying, ‘I need to talk to you, in private.’

      Sheldon moved down the hall, away from Ted and Emily. ‘What is it?’

      She leaned in and whispered, ‘Jim Kelly has called in. There’s been another package delivered to the paper.’

      Sheldon clenched his jaw. ‘Another one?’

      Tracey nodded. ‘He didn’t open it this time, but on the box this time are the words The Face of Lies.’

      Sheldon had to reach out for the wall, just to stay on his feet.

      Charlie was outside Amelia’s house, sitting in his car and staring through his windscreen. He had persuaded Donia to return to the office, because Amelia wouldn’t welcome visitors if she was ill. If Donia wanted work experience, she could read some files.

      Amelia’s house was as he remembered it, although he had only been there a couple of times before. It was a grey stone cottage, with black timbers set into the ceiling and roses that curled around a slate-covered porch. At the back, it looked out onto a reservoir by an abandoned paper mill, so that it was dark at night, except for when a bright moon turned the water silver.

      The setting had surprised him when he first saw it. Amelia was business-like and unemotional, but the street was a chocolate box image of country living, the sort of place where tea came in china cups and people rode bikes with baskets under the handlebars. Her house was detached, although

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