Page 133 of Joker in the Pack

“Prepare a document detailing the chain of evidence and linking everything we have. We need to pass it over to the police, and they’ll have to dig up that grave as the final piece of proof.”

“Will do. The local police?”

“Hell no. The village bobby couldn’t detect his asshole with both hands and a map. I’ll give Jason from the Met a call and see if he can suggest someone.”

“This is gonna upset a few people, I bet.”

He wasn’t wrong there.

CHAPTER 38

“OLIVIA, ONCE AGAIN, I’m sorry for being so rude,” Daisy said as she topped up my coffee. “I’ll know better than to listen to rumours in future.”

She’d apologised at least seventeen times in the last half hour, but I pasted on another smile.

“Daisy, it’s fine, honestly. I’m not one to bear a grudge.”

Luckily, neither was Warren, and he’d joined Maddie, Mickey, and me for drinks and cakes in the café. Carol had tracked the origin of the gold-digger rumours down to an evening canapé party thrown by the Palmers. It seemed every guest got given a version of the story with their glass of champagne, and once they left the manor, the tales spread like wildfire.

“This is all on the house, of course. I still can’t believe Fenton Palmer murdered his own wife. Do you know why?”

“Nobody does yet.”

“They used to fight,” Warren said. “She called me a couple of times, drunk, wanting me to drive her to stay with a friend in London.”

“Do you know what the arguments were about?” I asked, my nosiness coming to the fore.

Warren stared at the wall, thinking. “One time, it was the amount of time Fenton spent on the golf course. Another night, a disagreement about Tate’s upbringing, and then she reckoned Fenton was having an affair.” He wrinkled his nose. “She was wasted that time. Puked in the footwell, but at least she forked out for the valet.”

“I suppose that’s something.”

“Yeah. I got the impression she was high maintenance, but killing her?” He shook his head. “That poor woman.”

“At least he can’t hurt anyone else.”

Fenton had been taken to jail two days earlier. Nye made sure I was safely tucked up in front of the television when it happened, but he’d driven to Upper Foxford to make sure the locals didn’t balls things up, in his words.

A task force from the neighbouring town had done the honours, advised by Nye’s friend from the Met, and they’d woken Fenton at dawn and arrested him in his pyjamas. The local reporter had been more switched on than Graham, because he’d hotfooted it down there with his camera and snapped Fenton being led out of Prestwold Manor in handcuffs, looking furious. The pictures were plastered all over the front of theFoxford Expressthe next day.

Mickey had a copy spread out on the table in front of him.

“A crime of passion, it says here. Fenton told everybody she ran off with the gardener so they’d think she was still alive.”

“Cold,” Maddie said. “You had a lucky escape, Liv. Just think, he could have been your father-in-law.”

Just think. No, I didn’t want to. “It’s Tate I feel sorry for. I mean, all that time, he thought his mother had abandoned him, when really she was lying six feet under just a few hundred yards away. Nye said he broke down when the police interviewed him.”

Mickey’s eyes dipped to the paper again. “It says here that Fenton even sent postcards to Tate, pretending to be his mother.”

I nodded. Nye had told me that much was true. Apparently, Tate had been distraught over what his father did to me as well, especially as it was he who’d told Fenton which evenings we were going out together.

I’d considered calling him to offer my…sympathy? Condolences? But I wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe I’d leave it a week or two and then try? When my own mother passed, the pain had eased with time.

“At least Tate can bury his mother properly now,” Maddie said.

“I guess that might help.”

Nye had been there yesterday afternoon when they found Helena, right where Ronnie said she would be. Her body had still been wrapped in the plastic sheeting described in the letter.

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