FORTY-TWO
They finally had Fabien in an interview room sitting next to the solicitor who took an age to arrive. Gina leaned back in her chair and swigged a glass of water, knowing her jaw now looked a sight but recognising that finding Lindy was her priority. Her face pain could wait. She hoped the paracetamol and ibuprofen she’d taken would kick in fast. The recorder was rolling, the introductions had taken place and Jacob was sitting next to her, ready to begin.
Fabien ran his fingers along his short brown goatee and sighed as if bored. Light glinted off the large diamond stud in his left ear and his full head of dark hair looked stiffly brushed back like he’d used too much hair gel.
‘Mr Stone, where were you between one p.m. on Friday the fourteenth of November and six a.m. on Sunday the sixteenth of November?’ Gina knew she had to get the questions in thick and fast. Time was ticking and now Craig’s face had already been reported in the lunchtime news and pasted everywhere online.
‘Saturday and Sunday is family time. That week, I had a long weekend with her. I didn’t work Friday. I was with Sheena, at home, building a cot.’
She thought about Zavier’s murder. ‘Where were you on the twentieth and the twenty-first of November?’
‘At the office and home at five each evening.’
‘Was anyone else in the building?’
‘Keri, the apprentice, and two other debt collectors.’
‘Will they be able to confirm that you were in?’
He shrugged. ‘I base myself on the top floor, the other collectors are on the middle floor and Keri does admin from the back room on the bottom floor. The cellar is used to keep the archives but you probably already know that. You can ask them but I don’t answer to anyone because I own the company. I went home to work at lunchtime on the twentieth so I could be with Sheena. I stayed in all day after about one. She’s pregnant and struggling, especially since that arsehole came by shouting his mouth off.’ He licked his teeth and folded his arms.
‘Who are you referring to?’
‘Kain. She dared to post on Instagram about her pregnancy and that entitled prick came by shouting his mouth off a while back. He was mad that she’d apparently led him on and that she promised they’d have a family together.’
‘And did that make you angry?’
‘You bet it did. You’d be angry too if someone came by screaming their mouth off at the person you love. He spat in her face. Who does that?’
Gina wanted to reply, you, but she didn’t. She’d seen him spit at the PC during his arrest.
‘I don’t know what she ever saw in him.’
Gina was struggling to see what Sheena saw in Fabien too, but her taste in men was none of Gina’s business. ‘Is that why you killed him?’
Fabien leaned forward and stared at Gina for an uncomfortable few seconds. ‘Looks like you’ve already decided I did it. Really? Here I am, cooperating and not going no commentand here you are trying to trip me up PC, err… Who are you again?’
‘Detective Inspector Harte,’ she corrected him, knowing full well he was trying to get a rise out of her. ‘Tell me where you were last night?’
‘With Sheena, at home.’
The problem was, Gina knew that Sheena would most likely back his story up. ‘Did anyone else see you?’
‘No, because we were at home together, sitting on the sofa, reading and watching the TV. She was watching some sitcom on Netflix and I was reading Dostoevsky’s,Crime and Punishment.’
Great, he was reading a book written from the perspective of a man who’d committed a murder against a pawnbroker. She wondered if Fabien saw himself as the protagonist in this real-life crime despite him being a debt collector – a bit of role reversal – and was doing no more than playing a game with her. Why even mention the book? ‘How do you know Lindy Pickering?’
‘Not well. Lindy still talks to Sheena and they sometimes go for coffee. They were in each other’s lives for years and they got on so that’s nothing unusual. Kain hated that they met up. Lindy told Sheena that Kain referred to her as the traitorous bitch when he’d had a few. That’s the kind of man he was. I think he’d have had a lot of enemies.’
‘He also had a lot of debt. Did you ever chase him for any of it? We will find out. There are officers going through your records as we speak.’ She knew it would take days to go through all the paperwork but he had to know he couldn’t hide that information from her.
‘Why would I care? The people we chase don’t owe us personally. What stupid logic you apply.’
Gina sighed and had to agree, but she had to ask the question.
Gina wondered if Sheena’s ongoing relationship with her ex’s sister caused Fabien to be jealous enough to make him want to hurt Lindy. After all, Lindy would have been keeping Kain in her life. ‘Where’s Lindy?’
He shrugged and smirked. ‘Have you tried knocking on her door and seeing if she’s in. Lindy makes a mean cup of coffee.’
