She leaned forwards towards him, placing her hands flat on the table in front of her. ‘I’m sorry to make you go over all of this again, Sean, but we need to come up with something new. If you were trying to find Jane’s killer, where would you look?’
The fire died in his eyes. Maybe he had thought that just saying he was innocent would be enough, or maybe he realized he had failed to convince her.
‘I don’t know,’ he mumbled.
‘Come on. We need to find something.’
He shrugged, as though it were all meaningless, and shook his head. ‘There’s nothing new.’
His voice was surprisingly deep with a light, West Country accent. Even though he was seated, she could tell he wasn’t particularly tall, with broad shoulders, short, muscular arms and strong, workmanlike hands, which he kept clasped tightly in front of him. The shell-shocked man in the police mugshot from ten years before was barely recognizable. His short hair was now thinning on top and almost entirely grey, his face and neck thickened, the strain of prison life and his various appeals showing clearly in his exhausted eyes and the deep lines of his face. He had one final chance to prove his innocence and it was probably all that was keeping him going.
‘So where would you be looking, if you were me? You must have some idea, after all these years. I imagine you’ve been thinking of nothing else.’ If you’re innocent, she wanted to say.
His face hardened as though he read her mind. ‘I told the police she was seeing someone else, but they wouldn’t believe me. That’s where I’d look.’ He started to drum his fingers impatiently on the table.
He was like a stuck record, the same version being trotted out over and over again. He had been dumped. He had done nothing wrong. It had happened without warning. Rather than admit the possibility that Jane had just had enough of him, he was still fixated with the idea that there must have been somebody else. Maybe he was right. She reminded herself that seminal fluid had been found on Jane’s thigh and that it wasn’t Farrell’s.
‘Forget what you’ve told everybody in the past. As I said, I’m looking at this completely fresh. I know you were feeling very hurt by the way she treated you. You followed her around on a few occasions, didn’t you? She even made a complaint to the police.’
‘Doesn’t mean I killed her,’ he said belligerently.
‘Who did you see her with?’
‘Just Holly and Grace, mostly.’
‘Anyone else?’
‘A woman from the office. She was a bit older. I think her name was Annie, but I don’t think they were great mates.’
‘What about men?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t remember.’
‘What about the man you saw her with in the bar in Marlborough, where you made a scene?’
‘Don’t remember his name, but the police checked him out. They told me he had an alibi.’
She made a mental note to speak to Dan Cooper again to make sure he had double-checked this. ‘OK. Tell me what Jane was like? Tell me everything you know about her.’
He frowned, as though not knowing where to start. ‘I dunno.’
‘What was so attractive about her?’ she prodded.
He gave her a blank look. ‘She was nice-looking.’
‘I meant her personality.’ He looked puzzled, as though it wasn’t what he had been expecting. Maybe in his book, looks were everything. ‘Was she lively, easy to talk to?’ she continued when he didn’t say anything.
‘She was quite quiet to start off with, a bit shy, but friendly when you got to know her. I used to see her at the yard a lot and we just got talking.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘The horses, I suppose. And racing. It’s hard to remember, now. So much has happened.’
‘What were her good points? Was she clever? Funny? Silly? Tidy?’ He had gone out with her for three months; there must be something useful buried in his unconscious. If nothing else, she needed to understand Jane McNeil better.
This brought a weak smile. ‘She was very tidy, I’ll give her that. Liked things just so and neat as a little pin, never a hair out of place. But she gave herself airs and graces, like she was something special. Lady Muck, I called her sometimes. Miss La-di-da. She liked her breakfast in bed. Liked me to bring it to her, like a bloody servant. And she was sharp. A lot sharper than me, at any rate. She knew what she was up to, if you know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t. Can you explain?’
He rubbed his chin for a moment. ‘She was full of ideas of what she wanted to do and she knew her own mind. She told me she had a plan. To be honest, I wasn’t sure where I fitted in.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, her parents had money, or so she said. She didn’t like being seen in my van, I can tell you. If I was taking her out, it had to be the car and it had to be clean before she’d get in it. She told me she wanted to be a journalist, and write about racing and stuff to do with horses. She said she wanted to be on TV. That’s why she was working in a racing yard, to get background experience.’
‘Anything else about her?’
He frowned again, as though he didn’t see the point of it.
‘Anything at all?’ Even the clearest memories faded with time and she didn’t want to push him and make him feel that he had to come up with something. But she wasn’t learning anything much from him.
‘She was real nosy,’ he said, after a moment.
‘In what way?’
‘You know, always asking questions.’
‘What sort of questions?’
‘She wanted to know about the other yards where I worked, for starters.’
‘Why would that be?’
He shrugged. ‘Search me. People used to tell her things.’
‘Her friends?’
‘The people she worked with, mostly. She used to tell me some of the stuff she’d heard around the office and I was gobsmacked. But that’s women for you, I guess.’
‘Can you remember anything in particular?’
‘It was right silly stuff, but she found it funny. You know, stupid gossip, like who’s shagging who, who had too much to drink, who’s got money problems. That sort of thing. She was quiet and kept her head down and people just talked in front of her. One of the girls in the office split up from her husband and Jane knew before anyone else. I told her more than once to keep her trap shut. Telling tales gets you into trouble. But she said she didn’t gossip, she just listened and she couldn’t help it if people said things they shouldn’t.’
‘Was she particularly friends with anyone?’
‘Not really. She didn’t like the girls she shared with.’
‘Why was that?’
‘She said they weren’t very nice. I’d say she preferred male company to women.’
Blackmail was as good a motive for murder as jealousy and she