Immediately after briefings on Wednesday morning the Chief set about checking Ian Wilmot’s account of his movements on Friday afternoon. They tracked down the foreman from the last site Ian had visited but the man couldn’t be exact about the time Ian had left. He did recall that they had had a lively discussion and that Ian had gone with him into the site office to look at the plans. He hadn’t noticed Ian setting down his rule and tape on the bench outside the office. Yes, Ian had walked with him to his car. As he drove away he saw Ian walk across to his own car. ‘I’d put it at around five-thirty when I drove off,’ he concluded. ‘But I certainly couldn’t swear to it.’
Kelsey asked if he had noticed the time when he reached home.
He hadn’t gone straight home. He was a widower, living alone, he had stopped, as he often did, at a transport café for a meal. He hadn’t checked the time at any stage, he’d had no reason to.
Nor could Kelsey come across anyone who could tell him exactly when Ian arrived at the meeting, though there was no doubt that he had attended the meeting and had gone along afterwards to the home of the chairman. Nothing in his behaviour during the evening had aroused any comment, had appeared in any way unusual or remarkable.
‘The whole thing’s pretty inconclusive,’ the Chief pronounced with dissatisfaction as they headed back to Cannonbridge. ‘That tale about forgetting the rule and the tape could be a complete fairy-story. Ian could have left the site as early as five-thirty, driven straight over to Cannonbridge, stopping on the way to phone Karen at the college, tell her some tale, any tale, something had happened to Christine, some emergency had cropped up, she’d have to get home pronto at the end of classes, he’d drive her home himself, he’d be waiting outside at six.’
‘That note Karen passed to Lynn Musgrove after she came back from the phone,’ Lambert said. “‘Can’t come home with you this evening. I’ve got to meet someone.” If it was Ian who phoned her, don’t you think she’d have written something like: I have to get home straight after class, something’s cropped up. Ian’s picking me up.’
Kelsey gave a grunt. ‘Possibly. But Karen doesn’t strike me as a girl who would ever be inclined to spell out any little bit of her business to anyone if she didn’t have to.’ Karen might have started out in life as an outgoing, merry, trusting, little girl, but all the evidence went to show that along the way she had definitely acquired a strong taste for secrecy–as well as a taste for keeping all the compartments of her life separate.
It was after four when they left the station again, bound for Overmead. The afternoon was dark and overcast, lights gleamed from dwellings along the way.
But no lights showed in the windows of Jubilee Cottage. Nevertheless they rang and knocked, kept on knocking and ringing. At last a light appeared in a front bedroom and a few minutes later they heard slow footsteps inside the house.
The door opened to reveal Christine Wilmot huddled into a woollen dressing-gown. Her face was flushed and shiny, her eyes heavy, the skin around them puffy. She looked far from well.
She gazed lethargically out at them. ‘I was having a rest before I have to go out again,’ she told them flatly. ‘I must have dropped off.’
Kelsey apologized for disturbing her and asked if they might come in.
She made no move to admit them. ‘Ian’s not here,’ she pointed out. ‘He’s still at work.’
‘It’s you we want to talk to,’ Kelsey said. She made no reply but held the door wide for them to enter.
Inside the sitting room the Chief began by asking if she was aware of the existence of a trust set up by James Boland for his daughter. Christine gave a weary nod.
‘When did you first learn of the existence of the trust?’ Kelsey asked. ‘Think well before you answer. I want to know the very first time you ever heard anything to suggest that such a trust existed.’
She leaned back in her chair. ‘Ian said something about it when it was first suggested that Karen might come here to live. He heard about it from a friend of ours called Trewin, he’s a clerk in Mr Spedding’s office in Okeshot. Ian was over there one day and he ran into Trewin. He told him about Karen and Trewin mentioned the trust.’
‘Did your husband tell you in detail the terms of the trust?’
She shook her head slowly.
‘Weren’t you interested?’
She gazed at him expressionlessly. ‘Not particularly. I was pleased that Karen would have some money coming to her, but I always imagined she would have. Her father had done well in business, he always lived very quietly, I thought he must have a lot put by. I took it for granted he’d have made good provision for his only child.’
‘Did your husband tell you that in the event of Karen’s death half the trust capital would come to you?’
She stared at him. ‘I have no recollection that he ever told me that. If he did, then I certainly paid no attention to it. It would have seemed far too remote a possibility, Karen was less than half my age.’
‘You’re inheriting it now,’ Kelsey said.
The colour rose in her cheeks. She spoke up with sudden challenge. ‘I’ve no idea how much that money amounts to, or what we’ll do with it. We certainly never wanted it–and we certainly don’t need it. I’d give every penny of it to bring Karen back.’ The colour ebbed again. She looked pale and exhausted.
‘You weren’t at all anxious to take Karen in here at first,’ Kelsey observed. ‘Why was that?’
She said nothing for some moments, then she answered in a low voice. ‘When Karen got in touch, it brought back painful memories I thought I’d turned my back on for good. I didn’t have a happy childhood, I was never on good terms with my parents.’ She put a hand up to her face. ‘They drank. And gambled. Both of them. My father only had a labourer’s wages–when he had any wages at all. You can imagine the rest of it.
‘I cleared out as soon as I could, I was determined to have nothing more to do with my family, I wanted to make my own way in life. After I was married, when Ian was offered the chance of moving over to the Cannonbridge office, I was the one that wanted the move, Ian wasn’t all that keen. I couldn’t wait to leave Okeshot, to turn my back on the past.’
She gave a long, trembling sigh. ‘I’ve never set foot in the town since the day we left. I never even went to the funeral of either of my parents.’
She pressed her hands together. ‘But that doesn’t mean you can forget it all, blot it all out. It doesn’t mean you don’t suffer terrible guilt. You can push it all to the back of your mind, you can kid yourself you’ve got over it, it’s all in the past, over and done with.’ She made a bleak little gesture. ‘But it’s all there, somewhere, still. It bubbles up sometimes, you can never get rid of it completely.’
She put a hand across her eyes. ‘That was why I didn’t want to take Karen at first. I felt as if it would pull me back into the past. The very fact that she wrote to me, just that first letter, started Ian talking to me about my family.’ She took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. ‘It was natural enough. He was interested in Karen, in her background. He knew the bare outlines of my childhood but I’d never really talked about it to him, I always wanted to forget it.’
She put her handkerchief away. ‘Ian took the line that it might be a good thing for me to face the past. If I took a really good look at it it might not haunt me any more. After all, there was no one else left, just me and Karen. Why not take her in? Maybe we could help her. She’d had a rotten time too.’
Her tone grew firmer. ‘I began to think maybe Ian was right, maybe I could help Karen and at the same time help myself. So I agreed to have her to stay for a weekend, see what she was like, how we all got on.’
She gave a tremulous smile. ‘I was so nervous. But the moment I saw her I felt it was going to be all right.’ She suddenly broke into loud, racking sobs. She lowered her head and gave way to them. Kelsey waited in silence until the sobbing had died away.
She exhaled a long breath, took out her handkerchief again and dried her eyes. She gave him all at once a warm, glowing smile.
‘You’ve no idea,’ she said in a lively voice, ‘how much better I feel, just telling you all that.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s been like a dreadful nightmare since Karen died, I’ve felt so muddled, so confused. I think now I might be able to come to terms with it.’
‘Was it your husband who persuaded you in the end to foster Karen?’ Kelsey asked.
‘No, not really. It was that first moment when I met her. I saw she was just a lovely young girl who’d somehow got herself into a mess. She had nothing at all to do with the bad old days of my childhood, she wasn’t even born then. She was just herself, needing a home, wanting a family to love her. We stood there and looked at each other. I knew then I was going to take her–and love her. I knew it would be all right.’
She leaned back again. ‘It was all going so well.’ Her voice was full of sadness. ‘She would have had a good life here.’
Kelsey asked about her husband’s movements on Friday afternoon and evening but she could give him no assistance. She had left the house shortly after lunch, hadn’t returned till almost midnight. She couldn’t even tell the Chief what time Ian normally came home on a Friday; she was always out herself.
She didn’t come with them to the door when they left but remained sunk into her chair.
‘There’s the other half of the trust money,’ the Chief said grimly as they got into the car again. ‘The half that goes to Enid Lorimer. And there’s no doubt whatever that Enid knew every last detail of the trust fund.’
Victor Lorimer had served his sentence in a prison twenty-five miles to the north-east of Cannonbridge, a large, mid-Victorian building of grey granite, sombre-faced, with a great many tiny, barred eyes.
The Chief had an appointment to see the deputy governor at eleven on Thursday morning. He also spoke, during his visit, to the prison chaplain, and a warder who had known Lorimer.
According to the deputy governor, Lorimer’s attitude when he entered prison had been neutral; certainly not positively cooperative, but he had never displayed any overt rebellion. He had been a very quiet, silent prisoner, obeying all the rules, determined not to lose a single day of remission. He hadn’t spent his time protesting his innocence, attempting to get his case reviewed, making appeals to members of staff or prison visitors. He had tried to keep his head down and get through his sentence as best he could. He was given a job in the prison library and had worked well there.
But it was rarely possible for a man sentenced for sex offences to escape the attention of other prisoners, however hard he tried to keep a low profile. Lorimer had been in prison only a few weeks when he was attacked in the showers, slashed about the body. He was moved to the hospital wing. Later, when he had recovered, he asked to be segregated from the other prisoners. He was prepared to serve the rest of his sentence in solitary but that hadn’t proved necessary. He was found a job in the hospital wing and remained there until his release.
Nine or ten months after Lorimer began his sentence his mother died. It seemed that her health had broken down under the strain of her son’s trial. She had gone steadily downhill and was never well enough to visit Lorimer in prison, although she wrote to him faithfully. According to the chaplain, her death had a shattering effect on Lorimer. ‘He became seriously depressed,’ he told the Chief, ‘but I couldn’t get him to talk about it.’ Lorimer had been offered psychiatric help and counselling, opportunities for group therapy, but he would have none of it. He had somehow slogged his way up through the depression by his own unaided efforts.
‘His wife came regularly to see him,’ the chaplain added. ‘She never missed a visiting day. She was very concerned about him, very devoted. You don’t often see that when a man’s committed the sort of offence Lorimer was sentenced for. Very few marriages survive that kind of trauma.’
Far from seeking solace in religion, Lorimer had completely turned his back on religion in all its manifestations. ‘My wife has been a good churchwoman all her life,’ he told the chaplain with great bitterness. ‘But that didn’t stop her being driven out of all her church groups and activities because of me. She even had to give up attending church services, because of the whispers. What had she done? What crime had she committed? Nothing, nothing at all. That’s the true face of religion for you.’
Kelsey asked the warder if he could tell him of any prisoner who had known Lorimer and might be willing to talk about him. The warder mentioned an old lag by the name of Barny Pringle who had left prison a week ago. Pringle had worked in the hospital wing, had shared a cell with Lorimer during the final part of Lorimer’s sentence. Pringle’s address on release was in a town eight miles to the east of the prison.
The address, when they located it shortly before one o’clock, turned out to be that of a shop in a rough area of the town. Double-fronted premises dealing in men’s working clothes. Every inch of window space crammed with jeans, corduroys, tweed trousers, flannelette shirts, piles of large, coarse handkerchiefs in dark serviceable colours. The entrance was festooned with heavy boots of tan leather, wellingtons, donkey jackets, string vests. The Chief left the car parked right outside, where he could keep a watchful eye on it.
The shopkeeper glanced up at the clock as they came in. ‘I’m closing for lunch in five minutes,’ he warned. The shop was empty except for a couple of girls shrieking and giggling in front of a wall mirror as they tried on a selection of men’s cloth caps.
The Chief discreetly disclosed his identity and indicated that he would be happy to wait until the girls had departed and the door had been locked behind them.
‘Well, now,’ the shopkeeper said a few minutes later when the girls had gone on their way, still giggling and shrieking, in their new caps. ‘What can I do for you?’
The Chief asked if he had a man named Barny Pringle lodging with him. Yes, Barny did have a room at the back, but he wasn’t here at present. The shopkeeper couldn’t tell them where he was or when he would be back. He had known Barny a good many years, he always let him have a room in between his spells in gaol. ‘He seemed very nervous this time when he came out,’ he added. Barny hadn’t been very forthcoming, he had given the impression of some kind of vendetta being afoot. After a few uneasy days he had decided to take himself off for a week or two, give things a chance to settle down.
Kelsey assured the shopkeeper that it wasn’t Pringle himself they were interested in, merely in what he might be able to tell them about another ex-prisoner; their inquiries concerned the brutal killing of a young girl.
As soon as the shopkeeper heard mention of the death of a young girl, his manner underwent a marked change, becomong on the instant a great deal more cooperative.
‘Barny said he’d give me a ring from time to time,’ he volunteered. ‘To find out if anyone’s come calling here, looking for him, if I’ve noticed anyone hanging round the shop.’ As soon as Pringle phoned the shopkeeper would find out where he was and at once ring the Cannonbridge police.
When they left the clothes shop they found a café where they had a bite to eat. Afterwards they drove across country to the Fairdeal supermarket which the Lorimers claimed to have visited on Friday afternoon.
Kelsey produced the garments the Lorimers said they had bought there and showed them to the manager. He was able to tell them that the underwear came from their regular stock and could have been bought any day since the supermarket opened a couple of months ago.
The case was somewhat different with the shirt and sweater. They were part of a consignment of chance-bought merchandise. Such goods were always disposed of quickly, heaped up in open baskets at strategic points along the aisles.
The lot from which Lorimer had bought the shirt and sweater had gone on display first thing last Thursday morning, November 12th. The baskets were usually empty by closing time but the manager couldn’t take his oath there hadn’t been a few garments left on Friday morning, though he was very doubtful indeed about Friday afternoon.
There was no record of any credit transaction or use of a cheque card in the name of Lorimer, with the Furzebank Cottage address, on either Thursday or Friday. Anything the Lorimers bought must have been paid for in cash. And the manager confirmed that the till slips did indeed show the time of day as well as the date.
At the Chief’s request the manager produced the menus for teas served in the restaurant during the previous week. Toasted muffins with butter and bramble jelly had been served on Friday afternoon and only on Friday afternoon; a different speciality appeared at tea-time every day.
The tea menus were never placed on the tables until three o’clock, after lunch had been cleared and the tables relaid. But when the Chief strolled round the restaurant it became clear that an observant customer could have learned of Friday’s speciality ahead of time.
A number of posters were displayed on the restaurant walls, giving gobbets of information: opening times of store and restaurant, the hours various meals were served, special facilities and discounts available for large parties, and–for the benefit of the staff–a list pinned up by the door leading out to the kitchens, setting out the week’s menus in advance, including the daily specialities. This list was smaller and less conspicuous than the others but there were some tables nearby and a sharp-eyed customer, sitting at one of them, waiting to be served, glancing idly about, would have no difficulty in reading the list, commenting, perhaps, to a companion, on some unusual item.
On the way back to Cannonbridge the Chief sat deep in thought. As they neared the station he roused himself to say, ‘That accident the Lorimers say they passed on their way home from Fairdeal, get on to the local radio station as soon as we get in, see if they put out reports of the accident.’
It didn’t take Lambert long to discover that the radio station had indeed made mention of the accident, giving details of time, place, vehicles involved, number of persons injured, in their news bulletins throughout Friday evening, the first mention being made in the bulletin put out at six-thirty.