Free Chill Factor by Stuart Pawson Page A

of the actual deed.
    When he realised the enormity of what he’d done he sat in the front room for a while – about ten minutes, he thought – then dialled 999. Prendergast made sympathetic noises about the state of his client’s mind and suggested that Unlawful Killing might be an appropriate charge.
    “Do you think there was any sort of relationship between your wife and Latham?” I asked, and Silkstone’s shrug suggested that it was a possibility. The tape doesn’t pick up shrugs, but I let it go. “Could you explain, please,” I asked.
    He stubbed his cigarette in the tin ashtray and left the butt there with the other three he’d had. Only prisoners are allowed to smoke in the nick. “I wondered if they were having an affair,” he said. He thought about his words for a while, then added: “Or perhaps Peter – Latham – wanted to start one, and Margaret didn’t. Last week, last Wednesday, I went home early and he was there, talking to her. He said he’d just called in for a coffee, and she said the same. But there was a strained air, if you follow me. They seemed embarrassed that I caught them together. Maybe, you know, he was trying it on.”
    “How well did Margaret know him?” I asked, adding: “Officially, so to speak.”
    “Quite well,” he replied. “We – that’s Peter and I – married two sisters, back in 1975, and he came to work for me. Neither marriage lasted long, but we stayed friends.”
    “What line of work are you in?”
    “I’m Northern Manager of Trans Global Finance, and Peter is – was – one of my sales executives.”
    “Wasn’t he working yesterday?”
    “No. He often sees clients at weekends, when it’s convenient for them, and takes a day off through the week.”
    “Is it usually Wednesday?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “And Margaret? Did she work?”
    “For me. TGF is heavily into e-commerce, and Margaret acted as my secretary, working from home.”
    “E-commerce?” I queried, vaguely knowing what he meant.
    “Electronic commerce.”
    “In other words, your company doesn’t have a huge office block somewhere.”
    “That’s right, Inspector. We have very small premises, just an office and a typist, in Halifax and various other towns. Our HQ is in Docklands, but that’s quite modest. Our parent company resides in Geneva.”
    I exhaled, puffing my cheeks out, and tapped the desk with my pencil. Dave took it as his cue and came in with: “Mr Silkstone, you said that Latham was at your house the previous Wednesday, when you arrived home early.”
    “Yes.” He reached into his pocket and removed a Benson and Hedges packet.
    “What time was that?” Dave asked.
    “About four o’clock. Perhaps a few minutes earlier.”
    “Was it unusual for you to come home at that time?”
    “Yes. Very unusual.”
    “So Latham could have been there the week before, and the week before that, and you wouldn’t have known.”
    He lit a cigarette with a gold lighter borrowed from his brief and took a deep draw on it. “Yes,” he mumbled, exhaling down his nose. There were four of us in the tiny interview room and three of us were passively smoking the equivalent of twenty a day, thanks to Silkstone. The atmosphere in there would have given a Greenpeace activist apoplexy. Carcinogenic condensates were coagulating on the walls, evil little particulates furring-up the light fittings. What they were doing to our tubes I preferred not to imagine but I vowed to sue him if I contracted anything.
    “But yesterday you came home early again,” Dave stated.
    Good on yer, mate, I thought, as our prisoner sucked his cheeks in and felt round the inside of his mouth with his tongue.
    “That’s true,” Silkstone admitted.
    “Twice in eight days. Very unusual, wouldn’t you say?”
    “Gentlemen,” Prendergast interrupted. “My client is senior management with an international company. His hours are flexible, not governed by the necessity to watch a clock. He works a sixty-hour week