Marina was still talking, shaking her head with tears running freely down her face. “It’s absolutely no excuse and he regrets it so much. But he’s been so screwed up since our parents died. The only thing that gives him any relief is the gym, all that bloody Ironman stuff. And he nurses a pathological hatred for Bob Jameson.”

“Do you think Chris might have had something to do with his death?” I asked. I remembered the conversation that Lissa had overheard, the one that had caused her to think that Chris was trying to kill her. The words “It would be worth serving a fucking life sentence for.”

She shook her head vehemently. “No. He’s not capable of that. I’m sure of it.”

“But he’s capable of hitting his wife because her sister is the daughter of the man he hates?”

She looked away uncomfortably.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” I asked. “Or Molloy? Maybe knowing all of this would help find out who killed him.”

She replied, “I know it sounds awful, but I just didn’t care. I was glad he was dead. I was grateful to whoever did it and I didn’t,” she corrected herself, “don’t, particularly want them caught. Whether it was Chris or anyone else.”

She stood her ground and looked at me as if waiting for a reaction or objection on my part, but I didn’t have one. Finally, she took something out of her bag and handed it to me. “Here’s your key. Thank you for the job. I enjoyed the work, most of it anyway.”

As I watched her go back into Harry’s surgery, I knew that this had been part of the problem. That Marina wasn’t the only one who hated Bob Jameson so much that they didn’t care whether his killer was caught.

Chapter Twenty-Four

I CROSSED THE square again, mind whirring. So much for Bob Jameson turning over a new leaf in Nigeria. All that “Amazing Grace”, Road-to-Damascus rhetoric was nothing but a scam to create a persona people trusted enough to head up a charity for which people would raise money. I assumed most who were taking part in the cycle had loved ones in the Jameson Grace care homes. And as far as the broader charity was concerned, while dementia might not affect all families, aging certainly did, which meant that Bob Jameson had tapped into a highly lucrative concern, taking advantage of people at a time when they were desperate and vulnerable. I wondered if the online comment about the snake shedding its skin had come from someone whose loved one was in a Jameson Grace Home, who had lost everything in exchange for care that was below par. Or someone who had raised money that had gone directly into Bob Jameson’s pocket.