‘Yes, guv,’ Wyre replied.
O’Connor took his second pain au chocolat and bit into it.
‘Do we know when Francesca Carter’s post-mortem is scheduled?’
Bernard glanced at his notes. ‘Sixteen hundred hours, today.’
‘Thank you. Wyre, O’Connor, can you two attend and feed straight back to me when it’s over. I want to know if they find something in her throat.’
Placing his pain au chocolat down, O’Connor clapped his hands to dislodge the greasy crumbs. ‘I think I’ll save this for later, much later.’
Gina glanced at the receipt from Piccolo’s. ‘This receipt from around a month ago which Charlie Carter found in his wife’s bag shows her to have ordered a couple of sharing platters. The vegetable and the meat. Then we have the couple of bottles of wine. We need to find out who she was with. It is odd that she’d go there when this was her and Mr Carter’s special place. She never mentioned it to him at all. Who was she with? Why had she hidden it from him?’
She put the receipt down on the table.
‘Jacob, you said you have something to share.’
He nodded as he scraped his chair bringing himself closer to the central table. ‘This is where it gets interesting. One of the other people at the party has a juvenile record for sexually assaulting one of his classmates at Cleevesford High School ten years ago. Robin Dawkins, also known as Elvis. He was serving that night.’
‘We need to put him at the top of our list.’
‘Do we know anything about the case?’
‘It was at an end of year school disco. The girl called Jill Snaith said she’d fallen asleep by the lockers after being given a few shots of vodka that some of the other kids had brought with them. They were both fifteen at the time. She’d gone to her own locker to retrieve a bag of crisps she’d left there at lunchtime and had felt a little tipsy, so she sat on the floor in the dark. She awoke to him trying to pull her underwear off. He had his trousers pulled down and lay on top of her. Eventually, she managed to push him off. There had been another witness at this point who verified that it looked like Jill had been asleep. Anyway, he pleaded guilty to sexual assault and did a year before coming back out. No record since.’
‘That certainly puts him in the spotlight. Bring him in. I think we have reasonable grounds there.’ Gina closed her notepad. ‘There’s also our other bridesmaid, Lilly Hill. Given what happened to Holly and Francesca, we need to look out for her. Right, I’ll be out for a while. First stop, Edward Powell.’
Chapter Forty-Two
Gina tapped on the door and listened out for footsteps. Edward Powell’s black SUV was parked up on the drive. It hadn’t been there when they’d spoken to Kerry the night before.
‘Aha, I can see him coming down the stairs,’ Jacob said as the young man opened the door.
With a towel in one hand, Edward began to dry his dark hair. He glanced at his reflection in the door glass. His baby blue shirt hung over his trousers and he’d left his green striped tie looped around his neck. ‘Are you here to talk to Kerry? She isn’t in at the moment.’
‘We’re here to talk to you actually. DI Harte and DS Driscoll. May we come in?’
‘I’m just getting ready to go to work. I’m already late.’
‘This won’t take long.’
He glanced at the clock over his shoulder. ‘I really have to get going. I don’t know anything about what happened to Holly, she was Kerry’s friend.’
‘Have you spoken to Kerry since last night?’
He finished towel drying his hair and ran his fingers through the tangles. ‘We haven’t spoken since last night. When I got home, I found a message on the answering machine saying that her mother had collected her. She’d taken her to the family home and she wanted me to call when I got back. It was a bit late so I haven’t managed to phone yet. Wait.’ He frowned. ‘Is everything okay? Nothing’s happened to Kerry, has it?’
Gina shook her head. ‘It would be best if we came in.’ She wanted to go into the house, see if there was anything lying around that would give her more of a clue as to what Edward had been up to the previous evening.
‘I’ll just message the office and let them know that I’ll be late. Come through.’ As he typed out a text, he led them to a formal dining room through a door on the left. The table was surrounded by ten hardwood chairs, and a large candelabra adorned the centre of the runner. The huge brick fireplace gave the house an older style even though it looked to be fairly modern from the outside. A framed silhouette photo of the happy couple staring out to sea as the sun set, took pride of place on the hearth. ‘Have a seat.’
Gina and Jacob sat by the fireplace while Edward sat at the head of the table in the carver chair.
‘Last night, Francesca Carter was murdered in her own home. Could you tell me how well you knew her?’
The bulge of his biceps showed through his shirt as the sleeve stuck to a damp patch on his arm. ‘I had no idea. Poor Frannie.’ He paused. ‘I should’ve called Kerry last night but I didn’t want to disturb her. If I’d heard what happened to Fran, I’d have called straight away.’
‘How well did you know Francesca?’
