Stop Dead (DI Geraldine Steel)

your husband will be brought to justice. Make no mistake about that. The person or persons responsible are not going to get away with it.’
    ‘Are you telling me you have no idea who did this terrible thing?’
    ‘That’s not what I said. Now, Mrs Henshaw, if you don’t mind, we’ll get through this a lot faster if you let us ask the questions.’

     
    Amy Henshaw sat very upright in her chair, a bored expression on her face. But her eyes revealed her anxiety.
    ‘Did you have a close relationship with your husband?’
    Pencilled eyebrows rose. She was clearly startled at the direction the interview was taking.
    ‘Close? Yes, of course we were close. We’d been married for twenty years.’
    Her eyes flicked to Geraldine’s left hand.
    ‘Are you married, Inspector?’
    Ignoring the question, Geraldine continued.
    ‘It seems a reasonable question under the circumstances. Your husband left you nothing in his will after your twenty years of marriage, during which you were conducting a long-standing affair. So I’ll ask you again, was your relationship close?’

     
    ‘My relationships in and outside of my marriage are none of your business.’
    Amy was unnerved, her composure beginning to slip. With luck it wouldn’t be long before she lost control of herself. Geraldine leaned back in her chair and scrutinised the widow’s face, focusing solely on her left eye, until Amy began to fidget.
    ‘Not only did he leave you destitute, he didn’t even warn you about the position he was leaving you in, did he? And it’s not as if he was a very young man, not like Guy. He was an experienced business man who understood very well what he was doing with his money. I’d say that leaving you saddled with a mortgage you couldn’t possibly repay was pretty harsh, after twenty years. It’s not as if you walked out on him. You were still his wife.’

     
    Amy didn’t answer but she looked tense.
    ‘Why would he do that?’ Geraldine pressed her, ‘leave you so badly off without preparing you for what might happen?’
    ‘Because he’s a bastard, that’s why.’
    Geraldine nodded sympathetically. Leaning forward, she spoke gently.
    ‘Tell me about Patrick.’
    To Geraldine’s relief, Amy began to talk. Geraldine already knew she had met her husband when she was only nineteen, but she kept quiet and let her talk.

     
    ‘I was a child,’ Amy said. ‘I didn’t know anything and he was forty-five when we met. He was so much older than me, he swept me off my feet.’
    Geraldine thought about Amy’s twenty-three year old boyfriend but said nothing. Bowled over by the attentions of an older man Amy had readily succumbed to his courtship, flattered and excited by the glamour of the wealthy lifestyle he was offering her. But the reality of their marriage had been a miserable failure. The more Amy talked, the angrier she became, while Geraldine sat listening in silence, waiting for her to slip up.

     
    ‘You think if you marry an old bloke like that with so much money you’ll be sorted for life, but it didn’t work out that way. And now, after putting up with his foul temper and disgusting habits all this time, the bastard’s gone and left me without a penny to my name and a bloody great mortgage hanging over me.’
    With increasing vehemence she described the breakdown in her marriage which, in her opinion, was entirely the fault of her self-centred husband who often came home drunk and, on more than one occasion, behaved violently towards her.

     
    ‘He hit me, properly. He really hurt me. And he had no respect for women. You know what I mean. Only of course I didn’t find that out until it was too late.’
    Under other circumstances Geraldine would have felt sorry for the abused and emotionally neglected woman, but she was concentrating on unpicking the truth from Amy’s narrative, and couldn’t afford to sympathise with a woman who was a suspect in a murder investigation.
    ‘That’s what he was like,’ Amy concluded, ‘a selfish vicious brute. He was a real pig.’

     
    ‘You must have been relieved when you heard he was dead,’ Geraldine said quietly. ‘Before you knew about the will, that is.’
    Amy nodded.
    ‘I was pleased alright. It was the best news I’d ever had. And I’ll tell you something else. I’m still pleased he’s gone, even with all the money trouble he’s left me in. That’s just typical, that is. I mean, what husband does that to his wife? You’re absolutely right in