“Ignore him,” I say. “And the others.”
“A journalist from Woman’s Weekly then dropped a bombshell. It blasted everyone out of their seats.”
I flick an eyebrow up at Hamish.
“She’d received a text message from Evans’s wife. Claire Evans apparently wants a divorce.”
“What?”
“Yes. All hell broke loose after that.”
“I must have triggered it. What did Evans say?”
“He mumbled that they had a little spat earlier this morning. But he thought that everything would be all right soon. You ought to have seen the expression on his campaign manager’s face. Redford, I think his name was. The poor man looked as though he was about to vomit.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“He stepped forward and bundled his client out before Evans could say anything more damaging. That was the end of it. No more press conference. Disappointed faces all around, of course. There’s nothing like divorce to get journalistic pulses racing.”
“Fascinating,” I say, casting my thoughts back to my morning encounter with Mrs. Evans. Especially the shock that registered on her face when I implied that her husband had engaged in certain extramarital shenanigans. So that’s why Mark Evans was carrying a hundred roses into his home. I should have guessed. I fish out my Dictaphone and say: “Outraged wife Claire Evans tells journalist she wants divorce.”
“One of our patrol units has found Ayling’s Fiat,” says Hamish.
My mouth is dry; I should remain calm. Damn that overefficient patrol unit. I should say something. Anything.
“Your arse is blocking my way,” I say.
“Sorry.” Hamish moves over to a chair.
I ought to do something with my hands. I take in a deep breath before reaching out and shoving the white queen forward in a random direction. Hamish watches my antics with a long-suffering frown.
“I still don’t understand why you bother with that chessboard.” He shakes his head in mock exasperation. “Anyway, her Fiat was found in Newnham. Parked in the pull-off area at the far end of Grantchester Meadows. The one full of potholes. Right next to Skaters’ Meadow, before the start of the public footpath to Grantchester.”
Something clicks in my head.
Sophia’s diary says she conducted several reconnaissance missions on the Evanses’ home from the uncomfortable confines of her Fiat. Carmen Miranda Scott-Thomas saw the Fiat two evenings ago. So Sophia must have been spying on Mark and Claire then. That’s the reason why her Fiat was parked at the end of Grantchester Meadows. But why was she snooping around? What was she after? And what was the precise sequence of events that culminated in her watery demise?
I recite “Deceased’s black Fiat found at far end of Grantchester Meadows” into my Dictaphone.
“Forensics is on it,” says Hamish. “Like Marge, they hope to get a report to us before the end of the day.”
“The Kandinsky.”
“Slow down, Hans. I was just coming to it. There isn’t a Mark Henry Evans on the Kandinsky’s guest book. But a couple named Matthew and Veronica Adams were indeed regular guests between September of 2013 and July of 2014. Stayed there twelve times in total, mostly during the weekends. In room 261, as you’ve said. Always for one night.”
“This is much better,” I say, before reciting “Twelve Kandinsky encounters, two filmed” to my Dictaphone.
“Veronica Adams must have been Sophia Ayling,” says Hamish. “If so, she was definitely Evans’s mistress.”
I raise a surprised eyebrow. Perhaps my deputy is capable of thinking outside the box once in a while.
“Well done,” I say. “That’s precisely why Evans stinks to the skies. I picked up a memory stick from Ayling’s cottage during my second visit there. It contains six videos of her engaging in various bedroom acrobatics with him.”
“What? She filmed them having sex?” Hamish’s mouth is a wide chasm.
“Indeed,” I say. “Blackmail, I reckon.”
“But why?”
“I should finish reading her diary.”
“Evans is damned fishy, all right,” says Hamish. “Which makes it tempting to point the finger at him. But we should wait for the postmortem report before concluding it’s a murder. We haven’t yet found any signs of external injury on Ayling’s body.”
“Oh, come on, Ham—”
“The Textbook of Criminal Investigation says we shouldn’t be making snap judgments about the nature of crimes and the identity of their perpetrators.”
I sigh. Hamish has retreated back into his myopic, rule-bound box, which suggests that I would merely be wasting my time arguing with him. I should give him something to do.
“I need more on Ayling,” I say. “Her background in particular. Details of her parents, probably deceased. She may have had a stepmother named Aggie. I want full details of her schooling, university education, et cetera. She may have studied at Cambridge around twenty years ago.”
“She was a Cambridge student once?” Hamish blinks at me.
“Perhaps.”
“So our busty blond bombshell had some brains after all.”
There are four variables on the path to success. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
—Mark Henry Evans, draft of
The Serendipity of Being
Chapter Thirteen
Sophia
1 December 2013
Think I’ve struck paydirt. Shivered in my Fiat for fifty-five fucking minutes this morning. Waiting. Yawning. Cursing. Keeping two bleary eyes on that mansion in the distance. To my surprise, she emerged from the house. Jumped into her Range Rover and sped off. I revved up my own engine and followed at a safe, discreet distance as she drove out of Newnham. Down Fen Causeway and along Trumpington Road. Was sure she was going to Waitrose to do some shopping.
But she swung left into Long Road and veered right into Robinson Way. A street I knew well. Because it led to Addenbrooke’s Hospital. The place where I once spent twenty-two days of my life under sedated surveillance after Dad found my diaries in the bin. I did, after all, scream until my eyes and throat were on fire. As soon as I found myself back in one of its wards.
She parked her car and got out. Walked through the front doors of the main building. I hesitated. Terrible demons were lurking beyond, right behind those double doors. Dark splinters that shredded my soul. But I gritted my teeth. Told myself that I had to do it. I had to know what she was up to.
So I took a deep breath and pushed my way through those doors.
The foyer was large, its decor unfamiliar. Must have been renovated since I last saw it. But the people still looked the same. Doctors in white scrubs were marching through. Nurses in blue uniforms were scuttling about. The air inside was still the same. It reeked of antiseptic. That cloying, sickly sweet scourge of hospitals everywhere, masking immanent decay.