can do at this moment, please ask. Anything.”
Felicity Davidson seemed touched by Spence’s show of concern. “Thank you, Inspector.”
“Mrs Davidson, I know this is an awful time but we will need to ask you some questions. Are you up to talking to me?” He squeezed her hand gently and looked her in the eye with the most sympathetic look he could manage.
“Yes, of course Inspector.”
Felicity Davidson was casually dressed, jeans and a cashmere jumper, but here was a woman who looked good, knew she looked good and worked at maintaining that. She was not the sort of woman who shopped in Marks and Sparks or Matalan. Spence had never forgotten the advice of an older DI years before: “Styles of music, fashion, house design, anything, learn it all Spence, remember it.”
Perhaps it was his working class dislike of people who shopped at Harrods or holidayed in Tuscany, maybe it was his sixth sense that here was a lady who “doth protest too much, methinks”, but Spence had a strong feeling that the emotions were being put on display for others to see.
Spence did not come straight out asking for details of her movements that evening nor did he start asking if her husband had any enemies. Neither was he going to betray his quickly growing distrust of this woman. He was not going to ask how the hell a school teacher could afford a place like this. Details of their sex life, and past and present affairs could also wait.
All these things would be dealt with but for now instead, he asked her about her mother, her little girl and when the baby was due. He discovered that she was also a teacher, at the same school as her murdered husband. He asked what subjects she taught and threw in a few self-deprecating comments about his own less than illustrious teaching career. His gentle questioning worked, and Felicity Davidson was visibly becoming calmer.
Finally, he stood up.
“We’ll talk again Mrs Davidson. My sergeant may come and ask you a few questions in a moment. I’ll leave you with WPC Grant.”
Just as he was about to leave, Joanne Grant stood up and said, “How did you do that sir? She was uncontrollable two minutes ago?”
Spence just smiled. “I’ll send the DS in. And make sure he keeps his mind on the job.” Her face reddened as Spence left the room.
Spence passed Ferguson in the hallway and motioned him to start questioning Felicity Davidson. “Go easy Ferguson, go very easy. She works in the same school as the husband. Leave that, we’ll follow up on the school connections later.” Ferguson nodded, he had seen Spence do the softly, softly approach many times. He knew what was expected.
“And I’m not convinced by the histrionics. Try and get her to open a little. She has settled down a bit.”
Spence took himself upstairs.
It was dark and so he turned on every light he could find. As he looked around, lots of questions were bouncing around in his mind. The throat neatly, almost clinically slit from end to end, no blood, no struggle, almost as if the victim had willingly placed himself in position for the attack. Drugged maybe? How did the assailant get in? They must have known each other. Did the attacker know the wife was out? And look at this place!
“They’re only teachers,” thought Spence, “how the hell could they afford all this stuff?”
Debts? Criminal activity? He was already working out the first lines of investigation. Spence was renowned for his irreverence and his liking for a good red, but nobody doubted the sharpness of his thinking.
He took everything in. The expensive but classy look of downstairs was replicated upstairs. The bathroom tiles had not come out of Mica Hardware and the bedframe in the master bedroom was solid Thai teak. Spence looked up at the ceiling.
“Ducted air-conditioning. Fuck, what’s going on here? This couple must be loaded.”
Spence finished his reconnaissance, checking out daughter Rebecca’s room and what appeared to be the new nursery. Again, all top quality stuff. He wandered downstairs and found Ferguson waiting for him.
“So what have we got Ferguson?”
“Mrs Davidson is adamant. Her husband had no enemies. He’s popular at work, gets on with the neighbours, and she says nothing out of the ordinary has been going on. I think we’ll need to see her a few times more.”
Spence nodded. “What do you notice about this place Ferguson?”
Ferguson looked around, a little non-plussed. “What do you mean? It’s quite nice, but nothing out of the ordinary?”
“Look closely. Everything in this place has quality written all over it. Expensive. Very expensive. This is Kingsdown for god’s sake, not Broome Manor Lane, let alone Knightsbridge. He’s a deputy headmaster and she’s a classroom teacher. Where the hell do they get the money for all this? She’s dressed as if she is heading to a Polo match, flash car in the driveway, overseas holiday pictures. First thing tomorrow, I want details of Roger and Felicity Davidson’s bank accounts, property dealings, check out his credit cards. See if his or her daddy finances them. Maybe he won the lottery recently. If nothing else, let’s remove the financial from the possible motives. I’ll head into his school in the morning to get a feel of what was happening there.”
Spence headed back out to the biting wind. Mrs Davidson had started up again. “Good luck WPC Grant,” he said to himself. The crowd of onlookers had thinned out. Spence walked down Merton Ave to his car. As he started up, the evening football results were coming through on the radio.
“Milton Keynes Dons 2, Yeovil Town 1. Swindon Town nil, Portsmouth 1.”
Spence switched off the radio. He took a slow convoluted route back to his flat, heading down Whitworth Road towards Rodbourne Cheney and then up towards Old Town along Kingshill.
He had just seen the result of a shocking crime. But what was going through his mind was not disgust or compassion or empathy. He found himself smiling as he started tossing around strategies for dealing with it. His DC, Paul Traynor would check the finances and the family background, and Josie will hopefully come up with something. Ferguson can check on similar cases, and he would go into the school.
“What the hell’s wrong with you Spence? Some poor bastard has been brutally murdered and all you can do is think of the fun you’re going to have solving it. Ah, bugger it.”
Once he was back in his flat, Spence went into automatic. ‘Disraeli Gears’ was already loaded in the CD player, so on it went, straight to ‘Sunshine of your love’ and turned up more loudly than the neighbours would probably like. Time to open his 2010 Annie’s Lane Cooper Trail Shiraz that he had had shipped over from South Australia’s Clare Valley. Spence had read somewhere that it had won some wine competitions in Australia.
“Must go to Australia one day,” Spence mused. “Nah, too many spiders and snakes”.
He slid into his armchair and allowed his mind to wander. He began to think of the break-up of Cream and how Clapton had managed to survive a life of drugs, the fact that this was a beautiful drop of red, and had he really made love to Susannah Pearson earlier this evening? Oh, and that poor bastard Roger Davidson. Clapton, the wine and the solitude were combining to get Spence’s mind into gear.
“Who was out to get you Roger Davidson? What do we know so far? School
