Page 6 of Her Lips Are Sealed

‘We didn’t see a cat, maybe it’s outside somewhere. Who did the cleaning before Brian? Would they have had a key?’

Linda nodded. ‘Yes, before Brian we had Paul.’

Morgan noticed the way Linda grimaced at the mention of Paul.

‘How did Paul get on with Rachel?’

Linda sighed. ‘Not good at all, she accused him of stealing from her.’

‘Did he?’

‘We could never prove it, so obviously we didn’t let Paul go back after that and Brian took over.’

‘She never had a problem with Brian?’ Morgan was wondering what kind of person Rachel was.

Brian looked up. ‘No, we got on well. She seems to like me, and I’d never steal from anyone, ever.’

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound like I was accusing you of anything. I’m just trying to get an idea of what Rachel was like.’

Linda began typing on a keyboard. ‘I’ll get you Paul’s address, and you can speak to him yourself. He no longer works here.’

‘Thank you. When he left was it on good terms?’

‘Not really, he was angry that we believed Rachel over him and, to be fair, he’d worked here a couple of years with no issues. It was the anger he showed when I had to confront him about the complaint that scared me a little and that was the reason I decided to let him go. I didn’t feel safe in my own office, he was shouting and threatening me. I had to phone the police.’

As Morgan wrote it all down she thought Paul was looking like a viable suspect, though she couldn’t rule Brian out. She had instantly thought he was genuine, but Paul had a motive.

Linda retrieved a sheet of paper from the printer with all of Paul Graham’s personal details on, and she passed it to Morgan.

‘Thank you so much. I’ll be in touch if we need anything else.’

Morgan left them and walked back to the scene. At least she had a suspect. She would go and speak to Paul Graham as a person of interest, and she couldn’t wait to tell Ben that just maybe for once this was going to be solved in a couple of hours. For once, they’d get a killer quickly and stop another person from becoming prey.

FOUR

Back at the scene, Morgan looked around for a cat and realised she didn’t even know what kind it was, she should have asked Brian. On the side of the cottage there was a staircase that led to the upstairs flat. Sitting watching her on the top step was a fluffy, ginger and white cat. Morgan walked up the stairs giving the cat her best tsch, tsch, tsch. It stared at her as if she was mad and she grinned at it. Knocking on the same mint green door as the one below she waited for an answer. There were two cat bowls, one filled with dried biscuits, another with water. The cat began to eat the biscuits, and she wondered if this was Rachel’s cat. The door opened and a guy in a pair of Sponge Bob pyjamas with a thick head of dark brown, bed hair who had clearly been asleep, squinted at her.

‘Yes.’

‘Hi, I’m Detective Morgan Brookes. Is this your cat?’

‘Kind of, I share it with my neighbour. Why, is it under arrest?’ He laughed at his joke. ‘What did you do, Biscuit? If it’s in any kind of trouble then speak to Rachel about it. She brought it home so technically it’s hers, even though we’re not supposed to have pets, but it won’t leave me alone and spends more time up here than downstairs.’ He was smiling at her and she felt bad; she was about to turn his afternoon into a living nightmare.

‘Can I come inside for a minute?’

He paused, looked down onto the street and saw the police vans, Wendy and Joe moving around in their crime-scene overalls, and his face paled as the panic set in.

‘What’s going on?’

‘It might be best to talk inside.’

He nodded and opened the door wide enough for her to step in.

This flat was the opposite of Rachel’s – the walls were painted black, there were lots of gold candlesticks, a gorgeous cut-glass chandelier, a bookcase filled one wall – it was a small, Gothic dream with a blood-red crushed velvet sofa and lots of church candles scattered around.

He ran his hand through his hair, then pointed to the sofa. Morgan sat down.

‘Can I get your name and date of birth, please? How well do you know Rachel?’