The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [187]
‘I did tell Mr Bolger the SOCOs would arrive this morning. Didn’t he pass it on?’
I leave him in the kitchen, assuring me he’s perfectly capable of making his own cup of tea. Or, translated, of having a good nose round while I’m upstairs. I throw on jeans and a T-shirt as fast as I can, trying to remember what I should have been doing this morning before the world broke up. Well, ringing Corey to cancel my shift at the caf can wait.
‘Would you mind…’ I put my head round the kitchen door to find DI Jennings with his reading glasses on and his fat red face pressed to John’s crop-circle calendar. ‘Won’t be long. I have to call the hospital to find out how my grandmother is.’
DI Jennings’s expression conveys surprise that I haven’t done so already.
‘I was asleep until…’ For Christ’s sake, why am I justifying myself? He’s a master of making the innocent feel guilty. ‘The nurses don’t like people calling too early,’ I finish lamely.
It takes three tries on the phone in the living room to reach the ward. Turns out to be doctors’ rounds, no one able to tell me much. ‘She slept well, though,’ says the nurse, brightly.
At the kitchen table, DI Jennings pushes a mug of lukewarm black coffee towards me. ‘Didn’t know if you took milk.’ He proffers the bottle.
‘Oh, you found the sugar all right?’
‘Just kept opening cupboards.’
I’m sure you did. ‘When will the fingerprint people be coming back?’ I ask.
‘They’ve finished. Your friend John hadn’t done a very good job with the plywood, and he’d forgotten to lock up too. We thought you wouldn’t mind if we let ourselves in.’ His eyes dare me to disagree. ‘We’ll need your fingerprints, of course, and Mr Bolger’s.’
‘Of course.’ I try to sound like I’m completely in control. ‘I want this bloke caught, Inspector.’
‘Well, that’s what I’m coming to,’ he says. ‘You do know your friend John has a conviction for ABH?’
It isn’t John. No way. He’s the most harmless bloke I know.
‘See, Miss Robinson, I’ve no reason to doubt you’re telling the truth when you say you were at work yesterday’ DI Jennings’s narrowed eyes suggest he’ll be checking carefully nonetheless. ‘But Mr Bolger seems to have spent most of the day on his own, apart from the time you were with him.’
‘He wouldn’t,’ I say. ‘He loves Frannie…’ Jennings’s furry eyebrows rear. ‘I mean, he’s an old friend of the family. And he has his own key. Anyway, Frannie would open the door to him. He wouldn’t need to break in–’ The eyebrows writhe like caterpillars, sceptical. If you wanted to make it look like a break-in–
No, for God’s sake. The bastard’s trying to manipulate me. John wouldn’t do anything of the kind, and if you really wanted to make it look like a break-in, you’d take her purse.
‘See, half the time these things are family,’ says Jennings. ‘Granny-bashing’s a lot more common than people think. And we talked to your grandmother’s social worker.’
‘Adele.’
‘No, she’s on holiday. The other one, at the day centre. Bob. He says your grandmother is disturbed about something. She starts screaming for no apparent reason. Classic. Maybe your friend John didn’t mean to hurt her, but she started screaming and it wound him up, terrible noise it can be, red rag to someone with a violent temper–’
‘No,’ I say, firm. ‘He doesn’t have a violent temper. And if it was him, don’t you think she’d have said? She was conscious, in the hallway, the paramedic can tell you, and John was standing right beside her…’
‘Exactly Intimidating her. She’s frightened to death of him.’
‘She’s not. You don’t know my grandmother.’ ‘Or she’s confused.’
John is still sprawled across the bed, eyes closed. I shake his shoulder roughly.
‘Wh–’
‘Get up. The police want to talk to you. Jennings has already grilled me.’
His eyes come open, bloodshot faded blue, pinprick pupils. ‘Tell them I’ll call them back…’
‘Not on the phone. Jennings is downstairs.’ Rotating his teacup thoughtfully, I bet, to read