Murder Club - Mark Pearson [75]
But what was happening in the Hunt family? Patricia Hunt was not being honest with him. And, in his experience, people who were not honest with the police usually had a very good reason not to be so.
Kate Walker fished the herbal teabag from the mug it had been sitting in, white china with the words ‘I’d rather be in Ballydehob’ written on the front. She had ordered it for Jack online, but somehow appropriated it for herself. Crystal Mountain organic Himalayan green tea. Blended with four botanical herbs, she discovered from the packet: peppermint, angelica, lemon verbena and ginseng. It was supposed to create a deliciously refreshing infusion that would awaken the mind and revitalise the body. Kate blew on the surface, took a cautious sip then added a squirt of honey from a squeezy bottle she kept on her desk. She liked the drink and found it worked for her. Maybe it was a combination of a sense of well-being from being pregnant and giving up the alcohol. Maybe it wasn’t. One thing she did know for sure, though, was that it wasn’t a few glasses of ice-chilled Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc after a hard day’s work that she missed. It was the jolt in the morning that the espresso machine in her kitchen gave her. Coffee was her secret vice. In that respect, she empathised with Jack’s senior boss Superintendent George Napier, if with little else. She took a sip of her tea and permitted herself a small smile. Actually she empathised with the man in one other major way. He had to deal with Detective Inspector Jack Delaney and that could drive any man, or woman, to stronger stimulants than freshly ground Jamaican Blue.
She pulled out the folder she had recently liberated from the courier’s padded envelope and started reading the medical files on the missing man. The Reverend Jeremy Hunt. Last seen in the parish some twenty years previously. She pulled her notepad towards her and started to make notes, correcting herself as she did so. According to the conversation she had just had with Jack, he hadn’t actually been seen twenty years ago. Just made a phone call and never turned up. Jack had put a call though to immigration to chase up entry and exit visas, but, as she well knew, the wheels of that particular bureaucratic engine could turn very slowly, and neither of them had access to the kind of grease required to speed up their progress. Kate made a few jottings as she turned the pages of the various reports and papers, not just Jeremy Hunt’s medical record but his history of service through Africa in the Seventies onwards. Her cup of tea grew cool.
After a while, she picked up her phone and punched a speed-dial button.
‘Hey, Jack,’ she said as the call was answered. ‘Whoever we dug up yesterday from St Luke’s church …’
‘Go on,’ said the familiar voice.
‘Are you smoking?’
‘Never mind that.’ Delaney adopted a professional tone that didn’t fool Kate for one second. ‘What do you want to tell me, Doctor Walker?’
‘Well, Detective Inspector Delaney, I can tell you for a fact that whoever it was we dug up … it wasn’t Jeremy Hunt!’
54.
PC DANNY VINEM and PC Bob Wilkinson were out on foot and none too happy about it.
‘Jeez, Bob,’ said Danny. ‘Why couldn’t they give us a car? My plates are freezing here.’
‘Feet are a part of the job. You know