seventy-four

Tick-tock, the race was on.

I sped outside into the night, ran down a street distorted with lights and shadows, and hailed the first cab coming off the Bath Road.

“Police station,” I said. The cabbie stepped on it. No small talk. No conversation at all. I called Slater en route.

“I’m coming in,” I told him. “But I need to speak to Strong first.”

“That’s not possible. He’s interviewing a suspect.” I presumed he meant the suspect.

“I’m not making a statement until I speak to him.” I spoke with more poise than I’d felt in the past twelve months.

“And I already told you—”

“Sorry, lost signal,” I said and hung up.

Slater was already outside when I handed money to the taxi driver and told him to keep the change. As I slammed the cab door shut, Slater started towards me, his lips twisted in an ugly show of annoyance. “Who the hell do you think you are? You can’t dictate terms to me.”

“I’m not prepared to stand idly by even if you refuse to see the connection between the murders in Cheltenham and the murder of a judge in Birmingham.”

“You have a duty.”

“And so do you.” I looked over his shoulder and jerked my chin in the direction of the building. “Is Strong available, or shall I go back home until he’s prepared to see me?” Your call my expression said.

His hands balled into fists as if tempted to take a swing at me. What really narked him was the fact I preferred his boss to him. Eventually he spoke. “All right,” he said, his jaw grinding with tooth-shattering intensity. “I’ll see what I can do. I suppose you’d better come inside.”

I sat in a foyer while Slater strode through a door and disappeared from view. One minute rolled into another. He was gone for at least an hour, maybe more, and during that time the thing I dreaded most threatened to overwhelm me: doubt.

Was Monica like the client who left false trails? These were individuals adept at the art of manipulation. They gave every impression of cooperation, every appearance of friendliness. Occasionally, when you broke through the endless psychological diversion, they’d come clean and confess, and you got a ringside view of the real persona underneath layers of gamesmanship and obfuscation.

“Miss Slade?”

I turned towards the voice, which belonged to Strong. There was no sign of Slater. He probably couldn’t bear the sight of me. I stood up. Strong held a door open.

He took me into a room and invited me to sit down. There was no hostility, no pressure for me to hurry up and say what I came for so that he could get on with his very important job. He pulled up a chair and sat back, his arms loose at his side, in listening mode. He was sympathetic, which rated as a first for me when it came to dealing with the police.

“You wanted to talk,” he said. “Before you do, Stacey Walton alleges that you had a gun.”

“Me, a gun?” I said wide-eyed. “That’s preposterous.”

“She was vociferous about it.”

“Do I seem the type of person to carry a firearm? I wouldn’t know one end of a gun from the other.” But my prints would be all over it, I remembered with a jag of realisation. From hours in the consulting room, I’d discovered that, to be a convincing liar, all you needed to do was play dumb and mix truth with the lie. “Stacey waved a firearm at me,” I said boldly. “I made a grab for it and that’s when she hit me.” I pointed to the blood on my head. Strong held my gaze for a moment and appeared to relax.

“We’ll need to take your fingerprints to corroborate.”

I resisted the urge to inform him that my prints were already on file.

“The floor is yours,” he said.

“Have you questioned Stacey about Hawkes?”

“Claims to know nothing about it.”

I choked back a groan. “That’s it?” The thought of my mother remaining in the frame killed me.

“Not quite. She’s pleading not guilty to Otto Vellender’s murder.”

“She shows no remorse?”

“None.”

I fell silent. In Stacey’s eyes, she’d meted out her own brand of justice so a not guilty plea was consistent with that, but why was she giving Strong the run-around about Hawkes? Because she didn’t do it? a spectral voice said inside me. “Have you spoken to Nicholas Vellender?”

“As soon as he was discharged from hospital, Vellender gave Slater a statement.”

“Are you going to prosecute him?”

“For what?”

“Wasting police time?”

“Paris Vellender would have been a more likely candidate. With her death …” He didn’t finish. Didn’t need to.

Uncomfortable with it, I asked, “What happens next?”

“Stacey appears at the magistrates court tomorrow.”

“And after that?”

“She’ll be held on remand until the case goes to Crown court.”

“When will that be?”

“Hard to say. Ten months, a year, maybe.”

“I take it bail isn’t an issue?”

“Correct.”

“That’s something, I guess.”

Strong tipped his head and smiled. “Why don’t you tell me what’s troubling you?” So I did.

I told him the whole story. Finally, I explained to Strong about the judge and Joyce Conway and the connection to Stacey Walton.

“Stacey killed Martell,” I finished.

He accepted this because Stacey had presumably admitted it. When I confessed to the part I’d really played in Martell’s life, his mouth slanted down, his open features darkened.

“Didn’t you think it odd that Martell was keen to find Nicholas?” he said.

“I believed Martell was doing it for Mimi’s sake. In fact he was doing it for the usual reason: rank greed. Whatever the truth, Monica, my mother, had nothing to do with Judge Hawkes’s death.”

“Even though she’d displayed a similar pattern of behaviour some years before? Come on, you’re the psychologist.”

I shifted in my seat. “It’s tempting to draw comparisons.”

“But you don’t buy it?”

“No.”

Strong stroked his chin thoughtfully. “You could be wrong, and we still need your statement regarding Walton.”

“But that won’t save my mother.”

He hitched a shoulder in a nothing I can do about that gesture. I believe he thought, as a daughter, I was blind to the truth. “West Mids will see that justice is done.” I didn’t share his confidence.

“Let me talk to Stacey,” I said.

“Out of the question.”

“It could be legit. I’m a professional. You have cameras in the interview rooms, don’t you? You could even sit in.”

“You’re a witness. I can’t allow you anywhere near her until the trial is finished and even then it would only be with her agreement.”

“But—”

“You’ve been watching too much television. She wouldn’t talk to you even if it were possible.”

“She would. I formed a connection with her in that place. Truly. Give me a chance.”

I watched his eyes, saw him compute, skirmish with temptation and then doubt so weighty you could have used it to crush rock. My stomach lurched. “Please.”

Strong cocked his head to one side as though he were viewing an endangered species. I didn’t dare move. I didn’t want to screw up.

“No,” he said. “To allow you to talk to her at this critical stage is not only unorthodox, it could compromise the entire investigation. More than my job’s worth, frankly. Sorry.”

A wave of desolation swept over me so strong I thought I’d never recover from it.