Inspector Rames

Chapter 15

I scrambled to call Elena Ackerman. She picked up on the first ring, wearing a scowl. "Oh, for God's sake. Not you again. I know what you're going to ask me. No, I haven't seen -- "

"Daniel." I suspended my tabphone in the air. "We'd like to know the whereabouts of your husband, ma'am."

Her frown deepened. "Daniel? He's right here."

She turned around in the home office, taking the camera with her. Desks span and merged into white sofas in the background. When she stopped moving, Daniel was behind her on an office chair. "There he is."

He came over, his expression relaxed. "Inspector."

"Sir, you appear to have misplaced your tabphone." I held my hand out, and Alex passed it to me in the tissue. I raised the device for Daniel to see.

"Oh, yes, I've been missing that all evening. Where was it?"

"At the scene of an attempted murder."

They both stared at me.

At last, Daniel said shakily, "I don't know anything about that."

"We're putting your flat on lockdown. Alex, tell Laney to take some PRBs over."

"Now, hold on a minute," Elena said. "Just what do you think -- "

"This is non-negotiable, Mrs Ackerman. Don't go anywhere." I ended the call.

Dixon strode back in with Gem behind him. She was a little unsteady on her feet, and she plopped down at the kitchen table. Dixon stood behind her. Cassia and Sebastian stayed together at the side of the kitchen. Alex finished his call to Laney beside me.

I addressed Dixon. "Sir, we've found Daniel Castle's tabphone here at the crime scene. We're putting the Castle-Ackerman duplex on lockdown. I want to go over there and ask Daniel how his device arrived at the scene of an attempted murder -- and to look for any subtle signs of Maxx Ackerman."

"But is the murderer Maxx?" Sebastian said, looking at the tabphone.

Alex set about cracking Daniel's password, and I watched him absently. Daniel had certainly been eavesdropping on us earlier when we'd interviewed Elena: a man could not claim he'd been about to open a door and enter the room when his hands were still in his pockets. And he hadn't been wet, even though it had been raining outside. He probably hadn't gone for a walk at all.

But lots of people would eavesdrop if the police came to talk with their partner. Maybe he'd been feeling nosy. Maybe he'd been feeling protective. After all, although he and Elena were not conventionally head-over-heels in love, they were something. A business partnership, a partnership in bed, a family.

"I don't see any motives for Daniel," I said. "I think Maxx went back to the Castle-Ackermans sometime this afternoon or this evening. Tonight, he left again to kill Gem, and as he no longer has his own tabphone, he brought his step-father's with him."

"Why?" Cassia asked. "What would he need it for?"

"To read romance novels on the tram journey," Alex said.

"What?" I turned to him.

"Only one application is running in the background. Daniel is clearly tidy when he uses his tabphone -- he shuts all his apps down properly. But whoever brought this with them tonight isn't so tidy. They've left Xplora Books running, and when you load it, you see this..."

I leaned over his shoulder as he opened Xplora Books. A saucy romance cover flashed onto the screen before fading into text.

"Um, I can't really picture Maxx reading romance novels," Gem said.