CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

‘I reckon he’s lying through his teeth about what happened with Belinda Travers, guv,’ Abbott said when they were back in the corridor outside Slade’s room. ‘He adopted the usual tactic of going on the offensive in the hope it would confuse the issue.’

James nodded. ‘That’s what I’m inclined to believe too. But I felt he was a tad more convincing when it came to saying that he had nothing to do with Rachel’s death.’

‘True, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t him who killed her. Belinda gave the impression that he was acting like a dog in heat and if so then he may well have gone sniffing out another woman after she rejected him and come across Rachel.’

‘The tricky thing will be proving it if we don’t come up with any forensic evidence,’ James said. ‘I’m sure that if any of the guests or staff had seen or heard anything they would have come forward by now. Without any credible witnesses or physical evidence this is likely to be a difficult case to solve.’

Every floor of the hotel had at least one uniformed officer patrolling it so there was someone on hand to stand outside Slade’s room while James and Abbott went downstairs and put other wheels in motion.

Sergeant Thomas was tasked with obtaining formal statements from both Slade and Belinda Travers and DC Hall was told to go back over the photos and CCTV footage, this time searching for the best man.

‘We now have a new person of interest in Mark Slade,’ James said. ‘So, let’s see where he crops up on the recorded images.’

While Abbott went to speak to Tony Coppell about assigning a couple of SOCOs to Slade’s room, James called Control to check if there had been any developments in the search for the Italian, Carlo Salvi. There hadn’t, but he did learn that police resources across the whole of Cumbria were under extreme pressure because the early hours of New Year’s Day had arrived with a spate of other serious crimes and incidents.

A man had been stabbed to death outside a pub in Carlisle, two youths had been hospitalised after a street brawl in Whitehaven and a large warehouse in Milnthorpe had been razed to the ground in what was believed to have been an arson attack. There had also been several road accidents in which a total of seven people had been injured, and one of the accidents was being treated as a hit and run.

James was also told that the pressure was likely to grow over the rest of the day as the Met Office had just issued a severe weather warning for northern counties, including Cumbria. The heavy snow and gales they’d predicted for later in the week would now arrive sooner than expected.

James knew that it did not bode well for the investigation. One thing he had learned since moving to Cumbria was that extreme weather invariably slowed things down. Staff couldn’t get into work. Roads were closed. Emergency services became overwhelmed. And sometimes entire communities found themselves cut off.