Free Honeytrap: Part 3 by Roberta Kray Page A

gave a shake of his head. ‘I didn’t say it was professional. But I thought I’d be a couple of minutes, that’s all. In retrospect, I can see it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it. I couldn’t find Ellen and by the time I got back Caroline had lost interest and was sitting with her friends again.’
    ‘That must have been annoying. All that effort you’d put in and then she gave you the brush-off.’
    Harry looked into the grey eyes of the DI, taking care to hold her gaze. ‘I’d say more resigned than annoyed. These things happen. It was my own fault.’ He wondered what Caroline had said to her friends after he’d run out on her and imagined it was nothing complimentary.
    DC Wells chose this moment to try a bloke-to-bloke approach. ‘I wouldn’t have been too happy. Women, eh?’
    But Harry knew better than to be drawn into that one. ‘It’s the way it goes,’ he replied calmly. ‘That’s when I decided to call it a night. I left. I caught a black cab from Euston Road and went home.’ He didn’t mention Danny Street stopping to warn him off or indeed that the lowlife had even been at the Lumière. Things were complicated enough without dropping that particular bomb into the mix.
    ‘And then?’ the DI asked.
    ‘And then nothing. It was getting late. I had a shower and went to bed.’
    ‘You didn’t return to the hotel?’
    ‘Why would I do that?’
    DI Cobb’s eyebrows shifted up a notch. ‘I don’t know, maybe you had a think about things, didn’t like the way they’d gone, decided there was unfinished business.’
    ‘I didn’t go back to the hotel. Check with the receptionist.’
    ‘There are other ways to get in. Like the staff entrance round the side.’
    ‘I didn’t go back,’ Harry repeated firmly. ‘And you’re wasting your time here. I had no reason to kill Caroline Westwood.’ If it hadn’t been for that damn tape, he’d have probably been in and out of the station in half an hour. By deciding to delete it, he’d propelled himself up the list of suspects. Only guilty people went around removing evidence. ‘I didn’t even know which room she was staying in.’
    ‘We only have your word for that.’
    ‘I’m telling the truth.’
    There was a short silence. The two officers stared across the table at him. DI Cobb smiled in what was probably supposed to be a friendly manner but which came across as more cunning than reassuring. She had a small sharp face and wily eyes.
    ‘Do you have a girlfriend at the moment, Harry?’
    ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
    ‘Just answer the question, please.’
    ‘No.’
    Cobb and Wells exchanged a quick knowing glance. Harry could tell they were busy building up a psychological profile in their minds: the ex-cop full of anger, a man who’d once held a position of power and respect but was now reduced to trying to catch out cheating wives, a guy so full of resentment that he might snap at any time. Caroline Westwood, they were thinking, could have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
    Cobb glanced down at her notes, studied them for a second and looked back up. ‘I see you were arrested in the Locke murder case.’
    ‘And cleared of all charges.’
    ‘It was his wife, wasn’t it, who tried to set you up?’
    ‘Yes.’
    Cobb produced that sly smile again. ‘Aimee Locke,’ she said. ‘Women seem to cause you a lot of trouble, Harry. I wonder why that is?’
    Harry lifted his hands in a what-can-I-say kind of gesture and dropped them gently back on to the table. He hadn’t bothered with a solicitor – innocent men didn’t need one, right? –but now he was beginning to wonder if that was yet another mistake. Still, the onus was on the police to prove his guilt, not for him to prove his innocence. At some point soon they would have to either charge him or let him go.

14
    Mac came out of his office as Harry walked into reception. ‘It’s about time,’ he said, glancing up at the clock on the wall.