He exhaled and a slight smile spread across his face. ‘Of course. I absolutely understand.’
Did he? Gina couldn’t help noticing how undisturbed he looked after finding her body. He seemed relaxed and as far away from upset as a person could look. ‘There’s something I need to speak further about. You told me you were walking but you looked dressed up, like you were going somewhere rather than the walk around the lake you say you were doing. You also drove for about fifteen minutes to get there. Why were you really there?’
His smile cracked. ‘I told you.’
‘Yes, you were taking a walk. The problem is, it seems odd. Do you see where I’m coming from?’ There was no time to waste and drawing the interview out was wasting precious time when PC Kapoor was missing.
The man began to bite the inside of his cheek. ‘Look, I found her. I had nothing to do with what happened to her and I called you. I should have just left her and got on with my day. If I’d known it would cause this much hassle, I would have.’
‘Hassle? A woman has been murdered. The least she deserves is that we investigate thoroughly. Can your wife confirm you were with her before you left for your walk and the evening before?’
He shook his head. ‘My wife? Are you serious? She barely knows what day it is. Late stage Parkinson’s disease, that’s what she has, and the dementia is worsening. Besides, she was still in bed and we’ve had separate rooms since her illness took over completely. She has to use a hospital bed and I didn’t want to wake her. A carer normally comes in to do that as I can’t cope.’
Gina remained silent for a few seconds, trying to read his body language but he wasn’t giving anything away. ‘See it from my point of view. No one can vouch for where you were from Sunday evening and you are clearly lying to us about where you were going? You need to be honest with us.’ She threw her pen to the table and leaned back in her chair.
Jacob cleared his throat. ‘Mr Norton. It would be better for us all if you just told us the truth.’
He shook his head and stared into space. ‘You’re trying to pin this on me.’
Gina felt the urge to grab her pen and snap it. ‘Why were you at Cleevesford Park on Monday morning?’
He started twisting his ring round and round and all Gina could think about was how Terry had scared her on so many occasions with his. She fought the urge to flinch as she replayed the punch to her chest. She focused back on Mr Norton, noticing that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. ‘I was meant to be meeting someone but that never happened because I called you.’
‘Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. Who were you meant to meet?’
‘HappyGoLucky1207. We messaged on a dating app.’ He pulled his phone out of his pocket and selected the app. ‘Happy now?’
Gina picked up his phone and clicked on the message centre. Message after message filled his box. Some explicit, others arranging dates. There was even one from the evening before.
‘Go ahead and judge all you like but I get lonely and sometimes I meet people just to talk, sometimes we screw and sometimes we grab a drink. Do you know what it’s like seeing someone you love deteriorate? She is barely present any more and her weeks are numbered. I’m scared of the silence in our home and I have to get out or I’ll go insane. The nursing staff come several times a day, which gives me some sort of life. I don’t want to be alone when she’s gone. I can’t be alone, which is why I meet people. I don’t lie to these women about my situation. They get the whole truth, each and every one of them, and I won’t apologise for what I do. It’s me who is soon going to be left in this shitty world alone.’ He placed his head in his hands and leaned over the table. ‘HappyGoLucky gave me her phone number. Call her. Her real name is Ellen and she lives in Worcester. She’s also married to a man who forever sleeps around on her, which is why she probably agrees to meet people like me. What’s good for the goose, and all that. Nothing changes the fact that we’re both married so we decided to meet at the lake, out of the way from anyone we might know. A snatched hour, that’s all we had and now she’s not picking up her phone if I call. Maybe if you get through to her, you can tell her I’m sorry for standing her up on Monday.’
Scanning down the whole message chain, Gina knew he was telling the truth. ‘I’ll be back in a moment. May I take your phone for a minute?’
He shrugged then nodded.
So Otis Norton had been cheating on his sick wife. That’s all they had on him and that wasn’t against the law. She walked up to O’Connor and popped the phone down. ‘I’m just going to grab a glass of water. Can you call this number for me and ask the woman, Ellen, if she was set to meet someone called Otis Norton on Monday morning at Cleevesford Park?’
‘Yes, no worries.’ He took the phone from her.
She continued to the kitchen and ran the tap. The lights were giving her a thick head. The cold was making her bones ache and a night of watching Vincent Jordan’s bungalow sounded like a recipe for cramp. She filled her glass and headed back out. ‘Did you get through?’
O’Connor read the notes he’d just taken. ‘She said she was meant to meet someone she knows as FunnyLoverMan who was in his fifties and from what she said he matches Otis’s description. She said that he’s tried calling her a few times but she decided that she wanted to work on her marriage so she ignored him. She asked that we don’t contact her husband as she’s ashamed.’
‘So he is telling the truth. That’s the end of that chain of investigation. I’d look into it further but I’ve seen the messages, they go back to last week and their little date was arranged before Amber was even taken. You can cross Otis Norton off the list.’ She held her hands in the air. ‘Kapoor is out there and going through something that none of us can comprehend and we’re getting nowhere. I’m going to spend the evening going over old ground with the other tenants and spending the night in a car hoping that Vincent Jordan is the killer and that he slips up somewhere so that we have an inroad. We have so little to go on. When you can, please make sure the system is fully updated with the other tenants’ details and interviews and those of Vincent Jordan. It’ll give me something to plough through over the course of the evening.’
‘We’ll find her, guv.’
All hope was slowly diminishing. If they didn’t find her alive within the next day, Gina wondered if they would ever see their chirpy, much loved colleague ever again. ‘If the person who killed Amber has escalated, they might kill Kapoor earlier to get the same high. She might not be given two whole days. What if the killer’s frustrations at not managing to kidnap Madison drives this too?’ She checked her watch and carried her water to the door. ‘I best get this phone back to Mr Norton and let him go. Any further on tracking down where the Collinses might be?’
‘I’ve eliminated another four campsites.’
‘Keep up the good work.’
Water sloshed over the sides of the glass as she entered the interview room. Jacob began introductions again as he rolled the tape. ‘Here you go, Mr Norton.’ She put his phone on the table. ‘You’re free to go.’
‘Is that it?’
She shook the water off her hand onto the floor. ‘That’s it. Your alibi has come through. We thank you for your cooperation and I’m really sorry to hear of your wife’s illness. Interview suspended at nineteen-twenty hours on Wednesday the twenty-seventh of January.’
