Chapter 8: Dot's Letter and the Device
He didn't sleep.
He lay on his side of the bed listening to Vivian breathe — slow and even, the sleep of someone who had made their calculations and felt satisfied with them — and he stared at the ceiling and thought about what she had said.
*Your mother is old.
She gets confused.*
It was a threat, but it was also a strategy.
He had seen it work.
He had read about it.
Elderly witnesses undermined in court, their memories questioned, their credibility dissolved by a competent barrister before a single document was examined.
Vivian was not stupid.
She had known this was coming and she had prepared for it.
He needed something she couldn't explain away.
At six in the morning he got up, dressed quietly, and drove to Dot's house.
Dot answered the door already awake, already dressed, with a sealed envelope in her hand.
"I wrote it all down," she said.
"Dates, times, what I saw.
I had my son witness it last night.
He's a retired magistrate." She pressed the envelope into his hands.
"I also printed my phone's photo gallery.
I take pictures of the street sometimes — birds, the garden, that sort of thing.
But there are two photographs from the day she came while Margaret was at the GP.
You can see Vivian's car in the drive and the timestamp is there."
Daniel looked at the envelope.
"Dot."
"Don't thank me yet," she said.
"Go finish it."
He drove to the police station at eight o'clock.
He asked to speak to someone in the financial crjmes unit.
He was taken to a small room and sat across from a detective constable named Marsh who had the kind of face that gave nothing away and the kind of eyes that missed nothing.
Daniel laid it out in order.
The documents.
The draft Power of Attorney.
The missing statements.
The bank's records of the unauthorized access attempts.
Gerald Fitch's account of Vivian's contact with him.
Dot's letter and the photographs.
Marsh listened without interrupting.
When Daniel finished, she looked at the envelope for a moment.
"The bank records are the strongest piece," she said.
"Combined with the witness statement placing her at the property during the victim's absence, and the solicitor's account of unsolicited contact — that's a workable picture." She paused.
"Mr.
Howell, does your wife know you're here?"
"No."
"Good.
I'd like to keep it that way for now." Marsh picked up a pen.
"I'm going to need your mother to come in and make a formal statement.
And I'll need access to the bank's records directly.
That will take a day or two to arrange."
"What happens after that?"
"We'll want to speak with your wife." Marsh looked at him steadily.
"This may move quickly once it starts.
Are you prepared for that?"
He thought about the candle on the dinner table.
The pasta.
The hand on his face.
"Yes," he said.
He was in the car park, keys in hand, when his phone rang.
Vivian.
He stared at the screen for three full rings.
Then he answered.
"Where are you?" she said.
Her voice was different.
Tighter.
"Errands," he said.
"Why?"
A pause.
"Your mother called me this morning."
His chest went cold.
"What did she say?"
"She asked me to come over.
She said she wanted to talk." Another pause — longer this time.
"She sounded strange.
I'm on my way there now."
He was already moving toward his car.
May you like
"Vivian, don't—"
But she had already hung up.
