The Not Quite Perfect Murderer by Margaret Duffy

Author:Margaret Duffy [Duffy, Margaret]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2021-06-10T23:00:00+00:00

NINE

Lynn Outhwaite knew that her boss hadn’t lost heart; he was just exhausted from struggling on crutches. He shouldn’t be at work at all. It was so frustrating not to be able to grab this Mansell character and ask him more than a few questions. Feeling bloody-minded, she requested, and received, a search warrant for the only address they had for the Baker family, something that she thought ought to have been done before. OK, a watch – intermittent, it had to be admitted – had been put on the place and nothing suspicious observed but …

This time, Doreen Baker tried to bar the way into the house, all the while shouting abuse. Lynn, who had, wisely or not, led from the front, tried to remind the woman calmly that obstructing the police was a criminal offence. But she saw the fear in her eyes, the reason for which was soon discovered when suspected stolen property was found in a plastic sack under a couple of bicycles, also removed by the police, in a shed, possibly from either of the city-centre jewellery robberies. A very old woman – apparently, Mrs Baker’s mother – who also had a good selection of non-complimentary epithets, was gently assisted to her feet from an armchair by Lynn and Joanna – who had gone along to add to the back-up – and found to have been sitting on a small hoard of stolen property hidden beneath a cushion. It consisted of some old jewellery, perhaps from the Atworths’ home, a small silver trophy, now dented, with Best in Show engraved on it, a couple of ladies’ gold watches and a solitary gold cufflink. Asked afterwards why she suspected something like that, Lynn replied that part of a necklace was actually visible poking out from under the edge of the cushion.

Lynn charged the two women with handling stolen property and they were released on police bail. To the DI, they were an irrelevance in that they did not really further the investigation at all and had answered ‘No comment’ to all questions. Nothing else of note had been found at the house so far, but a team was still working there.

Then there was a breakthrough. Lynn didn’t believe in coincidences, but the scenes-of-crime team at the quarry cottage, who were on the verge of finishing, found a diamond earring that had fallen down a gap in the rotten floorboards and this was immediately identified by the manager of the jeweller’s as missing stock. He had the other earring of the pair, which had been dropped on the shop floor, to prove it. And, just as the picture frame found in Steven Baker’s car would most likely tie him in with the first of these raids when the Atworths returned, this connected Mansell with the latest as he had been heard and seen going to and leaving the cottage.

‘OK, see if Mansell’s returned home,’ Carrick said. ‘If he has, do you want to question him yourself?’

‘Too right,’ the DI replied.

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