Chapter 43
883 Words
43
‘How the f**k did that not come up at the start?’ Culverhouse yelled, as he slammed the car door behind him and started up the engine.
‘I really don’t know,’ Wendy replied, fastening the passenger seatbelt. ‘It clearly slipped through the net somewhere. We’ll sort out the details later. The most important thing is that we get on it now.’
The news that PC Rashid had imparted was that when they’d gone to John Lucas’s house to return his belongings, a woman had answered the door. It transpired that the woman was called Valentina Kuznetsova, and had been John Lucas’s mother’s cleaner for a number of years. She’d been kept on for a few hours a week after his mother had died, to keep the house clean.
‘He never mentioned anything about anyone else having access to the house. He lied to us, Knight.’
‘Can you be sure we even asked him? I’d have to go back and look through the notes. It might have been overlooked.’
‘Overlooked my arse. If the police find a pile of evidence from a murder in your garage and you know damn well someone else has had full access to the house for the past however many years, would you not say something? Why would he keep that from us?’
‘He might not have thought of it.’
‘That’s bollocks and you know it. If he knows he didn’t kill Freddie Galloway, and he knows the evidence from the murder scene is in his garage, he’s going to bloody well think of who else might have had access to that garage. Cut and dried. If anything, that has just convinced me that John Lucas was the killer after all.’
Wendy was still less than sure. ‘Let’s wait and see, shall we?’
Culverhouse rang the doorbell and waited for Valentina to answer the door. When she did so, she looked to him to be the stereotypical Russian babushka — a headscarf tied around her chin and a pink apron covering the front of her dress.
She welcomed them into the house and stood in the living room as she watched the two detectives sit down.
‘Please, take a seat,’ Culverhouse said, feeling a little strange that he was the one trying to make her feel at home, despite the fact she’d been spending a few hours a week here for many years.
‘I am afraid Mr Lucas is not here right now,’ she said, her accent still very evident, but having softened over her years in England.
‘That’s fine. It’s you we’d like to speak to, actually,’ Wendy said. ‘You’ve been working here for a while, is that right?’
‘Yes, I have many clients but John’s mother, Mrs Lucas, she hired me many years ago, just before her husband died.’ As she mentioned Mrs Lucas and her husband, Valentina made the sign of the cross over her chest.
‘And there was provision in Mrs Lucas’s will for you to keep the house clean while her son was in prison, is that right?’
‘That is right, yes. Although now when John is back here, I wonder if maybe I will not work here much longer.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Well, I get the impression that he does not want me here. I think it is a reminder of how things used to be. I think soon he will want to sell the house.’
‘He said that to you?’
‘Not in so many words, no. But I have a feeling.’
The two detectives shared a glance. They both knew that ‘having a feeling’ didn’t butter any parsnips in policing any more, despite how often that feeling tended to be right.
‘And did anyone else have access to the house at all?’ Culverhouse asked.
Valentina seemed to consider this for a moment, then shook her head. ‘No, only John had a key, but he was in prison, and his mother before she died.’
‘What about people coming into the house, though? Not just people with keys, but anyone who might have been let in, even if only for a minute or two.’
She started to shake her head again, then stopped. ‘Well yes, there was one quite recently. Maybe two weeks ago, I think. No, less. One week ago. A man came round to look at the meters for the gas and electricity. I thought it was a little bit strange because the company only came round about one month before. It is usually twice a year. When I asked him, he said there was a problem with the reading they look last time and he had to do it again.’
‘And where are the meters?’ Culverhouse asked.
‘The gas meter is on the front wall of the house, by the holly bush. The electricity meter is in the garage.’
Both detectives tried to hide their visible shock and excitement, and briefly exchanged glances.
‘Did he have anything with him?’ Wendy asked her.
‘Yes, a large bag. I presumed maybe this was things to fix it if he found a problem.’
The two detectives shared another glance. Both knew that meter readers weren’t there to look for problems, much less to carry out repairs.
‘Do you remember what he looked like?’
‘Yes, a little. He was well built, maybe a little fat. I remember he was a little old for working still. Maybe he was around retirement age or he chose to work longer.’
‘Hair colour?’
‘Quite light, I think. Maybe going grey, but it was difficult to tell because it was a light colour anyway.’
Wendy typed a couple of words into her police-issue tablet computer, waited for the screen to load, and showed Valentina the photograph on the screen.
‘Do you recognise this man at all?’
‘Yes,’ Valentina said, nodding. ‘Yes, that is him. That is the man who came here.’
- Writer
