Page 75 of Glasshouses

His face reddened and I wondered for a moment if he was about to have a heart attack. I shot a glance to Verity, who seemed to be thinking the same thing.

“Are you okay, Mr Smith?” Verity said. “Can I get you some water?”

He shook his head. “She may have mentioned something, but I don’t remember details. I wasn’t very interested in Amanda beyond what I had to be as her employer.”

“I assume she was very good at her job if you kept her on,” I said. “You don’t seem to have much time for her, despite knowing her for years. Is that because you could trust her not to whistle blow on how you misused money, or because you couldn’t dismiss her because she knew too much?”

He winced, looking increasingly uncomfortable. “Amanda needed her job, so we had a mutual agreement.”

“Did she know what the cash withdrawal each month was for?”

He regained his composure. “I wouldn’t know about that, Detective. Absolutely not.”

I left Andrew Smith’s house wanting a long, hot shower. The place was clean, probably a cleaning service because I doubted he was the sort of man who’d tidy his own shit, but it made me feel itchy.

“He was lying,” Verity said as soon as we got in my car. “He knows about the cash withdrawals.”

“He’ll also know there’s no way we can find out who was receiving them, and the dead can’t be called on to give evidence. He’s got motive for the fire at Micky Mulligan’s.” We had a tentative lead.

“What about the original fire? Could he have been responsible for that – especially if Amanda had died in it?”

“He could’ve had motive. She knew about the school fees. The cash withdrawals didn’t start until afterwards though and they could be completely innocuous.” I tapped the steering wheel. “But why wait until now? Why leave it all these years.”

“Would he be physically fit enough. He looked pretty wrecked in there.”

“Don’t believe everything you see. That could’ve been an act. He’s just confessed to fraud and theft at the very least. Why do that? He could’ve blamed it on Amanda.”

“He knew we’d be able to trace the accounts to a pupil anyway so was there any point in lying.”

I slowed down for lights. “None. He’s saved us some time, but why bother? Why not make it harder for us. Although we still need to check it out, and I don’t think it will be that easy.”

“The school’s closed down so getting hold of the records wouldn’t be straightforward.”

“And they’d want a warrant. I just can’t see why he’d go to the extreme of killing Amanda now. She’s not grassed him up about the fraud in well over a decade – why would it be an issue now, unless there was something else. Like thinking Lily was innocent.” The pages that had been printed off for her had been recent; date stamped at the bottom as long as that was accurate. Ten months ago someone had searched the internet at Amanda’s bequest; her investigation into what happened the night of the fire already on the way.

“What are you thinking, Mia?”

“That Amanda found something out about the night of the fire that someone wanted to keep hidden.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Retired DCI Terry Jones was polishing his car when I got there, Verity still with me. I’d reported into Wrigley about our conversation with Andrew Smith, and he started Carly on digging up what she could about Stefan. He also said he’d alert the Financial Investigation Team about the irregularities Smith had confessed to, less enthusiastically so.

“DCI Jones,” I said as we walked up his driveway. I didn’t have to use his rank, but I didn’t want to piss him off.

“Detective Sergeant Mia McAllister. How’s the investigation going and who’s your friend?” He gave Verity an appraising look, that of a senior cop working out if someone was going to be a waste of a wage.

“DC Verity Golding,” she said, not flinching from his gaze. “Same unit as Mia.”

“What can I do for you?” He made no attempt to put down the cloth he was using to polish.

“There are a few more things I want to go through about the fire at Roselea.” He’d not had any warning that we were dropping by; I hadn’t run this past Wrigley because I had a feeling I’d be batted away from it.

“I thought we’d covered everything.” He looked like he was trying to grow a couple of inches.

I’d been done being intimidated by men by the time I was fifteen. It didn’t matter that he had almost a foot on me in height, or that he was a legendary old school cop, I wasn’t going to give way.

“We had, but a few things have come up. When you were investigating, did you come across Andrew Smith, the director of The Holding?”