Chapters (49)
- Cover
- Table of Contents
- Also by Graham Hurley
- LIMELIGHT
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- AFTERWARDS
None of this has any effect on Bullivant. Should McFaul refuse to attend for interview, then only one option remains. The word ‘arrest’ makes me blink. How come the conversation has so suddenly taken a turn like this? A moment ago, I was wondering about putting the kettle on. Now, I’m thinking handcuffs.
‘You have to have grounds. There has to be a reason.’ McFaul has taken a step closer.
‘You’re right, Mr McFaul.’
‘So why threaten me with arrest?’
‘Because we think you may have murdered Miss Beaucarne.’
‘You have grounds for that? Evidence?’
‘That remains to be seen, Mr McFaul.’ He gestures round. ‘It might be wise to leave us with the key. The forensic boys hate putting doors in.’
FOURTEEN
McFaul is unbending. Bullivant asks him twice more to submit to a voluntary interview and when McFaul shakes his head, he’s arrested and formally cautioned. Budleigh police station has been abandoned and so we drive to nearby Exmouth. McFaul is now handcuffed to Brett, and they sit wedged together in the back of the unmarked Ford. It has squeaky brakes and smells of cheap air freshener, and by the time we get to Exmouth I’m getting slightly nauseous. I know the police station well, thanks to events earlier in the year, but being back in the green-washed corridors, beneath the soulless glare of the neon lights, makes me feel like a recidivist.
Exmouth’s top cop is a uniformed inspector called Geraghty, a big, untidy woman, much shrewder than you might think, whom I got to know and like.
She greets me at her office door. ‘Welcome to Operation Bulldog,’ she says. ‘Still a splash of milk, is it? No sugar?’
Her coffee is beyond awful and she laughs when I say no. We share a moment of chit-chat and she asks how I’m coping without Pavel around. When I confess that his last stroke was a blessing, she puts a big hand on my arm and says she understands. Brett, she promises, will sort me out. ‘Have a good day.’
Have a good day? By now, McFaul has disappeared, handcuffed to a uniformed officer. I follow Brett along the corridor and into an office at the end. There’s no name on the door, and not much inside: a desk, a metal filing cabinet, and a faintly gothic poster on the wall portraying the tell-tale signs of domestic violence. Brett waves me into the chair in front of the desk, but for the time being I stay standing.
‘Operation Bulldog?’ I want to know more.
‘That’s right. Every major enquiry gets a codename. This one happens to be Bulldog. We have a suss death on our hands. We need to bottom one or two things out.’