Gordon opened his eyes, and immediately shielded them from the overhead light. Then he tried to get to his feet, and staggered slightly as he became upright.
He’d say he was drunk. He didn’t know what he was doing. He had known, of course. He had been horribly aware of what he was doing, aware that it was wrong. Aware that the only way in which it would change things would be that he would go to prison if he got found out. He shook his throbbing head. Can’t blame the drink, he told himself, as he stumbled through to the kitchen. You didn’t have enough. Still. You can try.
I was drunk, m’lud.
Were you, Gordon? Oh, well, that explains everything. Don’t worry about it, old son, could have happened to anyone. Don’t give it another thought. If you were drunk, you were drunk.
Thing is, m’lud, I think I was intending suicide. But I got frightened, and ran away instead.
Suicide? Well – no wonder. I mean, here you are, no bloody use to anyone. The only worthwhile thing you ever did was to develop an engineering process so obscure that no one knows what it was you did anyway. And then you couldn’t even cash in on that without help. And you were too stupid to see that people don’t do anything for anyone but themselves in this world, that everyone is out for what he – or she – can grab. Your wife doesn’t want you, your fellow directors don’t want you, and the woman you would have jumped off a cliff for was practically having it off against a wall with some ne’er-do-well of her acquaintance. No wonder you were contemplating suicide.
Gordon finally got the childproof top off the aspirin bottle, and knocked three tablets into the palm of his hand.
Go on, Gordon. You can still do it. Where’s Pauline? In bed? Well – she won’t mind. She’d get the insurance.
Would she? Where did she keep the policies? He should check that. Make sure there wasn’t an exclusion clause. He chewed the aspirin and groped his way back into the sitting-room, pulling open the drawer in the bureau where Pauline kept important documents.
Will. You haven’t made a will, Gordon. You should have. You’ve a baby to consider now. Still. Doesn’t matter. It’ll go to Pauline and the baby anyway.
He scrabbled amongst the envelopes and folded A4 sheets, but he couldn’t concentrate.
Sorry, m’lud. Couldn’t kill myself, couldn’t find the insurance policy. Scared to, anyway. What if it’s true? What if you’re damned?
Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, Gordon. Prison. You weren’t drunk, you weren’t unaware of what you were doing, you knew the difference between right and wrong. No option but to send you to prison, old son.
Might as well, m’lud. Better than a funny farm. Better than everlasting hell.
Of course, Gordon, we have to prove that it was you. No proof, no prison. Did you leave evidence, Gordon?
I don’t know, m’lud. I just left.
He pushed the drawer, trapping paper in the runners; he tried to ram it shut, but it wouldn’t work. Sighing, he straightened up, and held on to his head, moving slowly through the room, out into the hallway, and into the bedroom.
No Pauline. Gordon frowned, and focused with difficulty on the alarm clock. Twenty-five to twelve.
‘Pauline?’ he called.
He went back out into the hallway, and knocked on the bathroom door. ‘Are you in there, Pauline?’
Panicking a little, he tried the door, which opened immediately.
No Pauline.
‘Pauline!’ he called again, uselessly. The other rooms were open; she wasn’t there. But he went from one to the other, calling her name. Where was she? Where had she gone? Why had she gone? He ran back into the bedroom, and opened the wardrobe doors. Her clothes were there. But they would be, he told himself. It was only in films that people removed every item of clothing when they left the marital home. Real people didn’t do that.
Real people just left. When things got too much, they just left. She hadn’t wanted him before; now he had told her what they had done, she just wanted out. She didn’t even know what he had done, and she had gone. Which was all he deserved. What had he done for her, other than give her a standard of living which he had just told her was about to take a nosedive? Nothing. He had married her because Lennie had deserted him, and she knew that. He hadn’t appreciated what he had got, so envious was he of what Austin had. She knew that too. She had accepted it; even let him make jokes about it. They weren’t jokes, and she knew that too.
Not surprised she’s quit the happy home, old son. All you deserve, really. So – you don’t have to worry about going to prison, do you?
A car slowed down outside, and pulled into the car park. The police. It was bound to be the police.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her. He hadn’t been going to; for one thing he was a very strong believer in minding his own business, and for another Rosemary Beale would be less than pleased if she found out that he’d told anyone. Steve shook his head slightly, as he waited for the kettle to boil. Mrs Sweeney didn’t know he had a kettle; he hid it when he went out. Very hot on use of electricity, was Mrs S.
He wasn’t sure why he had told her; true, it had entirely altered her stand on fidelity, but he hadn’t known that it would. And risking Rosemary’s wrath for a bit of nooky was far from sensible, even if it was with Lennie. Telling Lennie had been pure madness. But he had told her, out of some long-dormant sense of the fitness of things. Seeing her there, holding her, knowing how much she still felt for him – not just physically, either – watching her determination not to give in to these feelings, however tempted, because of loyalty to Austin … it had just got too much for him. Austin had no right to that loyalty, no right to use Lennie as he had.
At first, when he found out, his only thought had been that it served her right. Marrying that prat while he was in prison, and in no position to talk her out of it. But the first thing he’d done when he got out was find out where she was. Then he’d hung about in the hope of catching sight of her. He had; she hadn’t seen him. And he hadn’t been prepared for the shock of seeing her again, after so long.
She looked the same; she hadn’t altered. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt, and walked to the same car that she had been running when he knew her. It was as if nothing had happened. Then Beale had offered him a job; chauffeuring Rosemary around, plus. Plus reporting back to Beale if she was taking too much interest in any member of the opposite sex. It was while gainfully employed in this fashion that he had found out about Austin, and he had wanted to tell Lennie then. Tell her what a mistake she had made. Tell her it served her right. Next time he found himself at the Mitchell Estate flats, he had let her see him; he had spoken to her. But he didn’t tell her.
The kettle sang louder and louder, then the sound died away, and steam poured from the spout. Steve splashed water on the coffee, and looked at the clouded dressing-table mirror.
He hadn’t told her because he hadn’t wanted to hurt her after all, and that’s what the knowledge was. A weapon. A weapon that he didn’t want to use. But when all he had hoped for was a roll in the hay for old times’ sake, when all it looked like he was going to get was the frustration of a teenage heavy petting session, and he was prepared to settle even for that, he had told her. There she was, vulnerable and alone; the perfect time to hurt her. But he hadn’t done it to hurt her; he had handed her the weapon hilt-first. Because it seemed to him that she needed it more than he did.
So that was why he had told her. He wiped away a patch of steam, and looked at himself. A funny time of life to find your self-respect But he must have found it, to feel so strongly about Lennie’s.
He hoped Lennie used her weapon wisely – for his sake, he admitted to himself – not hers. Because if she blew the whistle on Austin, Rosemary would not be pleased.
And that would be bad news for Steve.
Pauline moved quietly along the corridor, and put her key in the lock, jumping as the door swung open, just as the Beales’ door had.
Slowly, cautiously, she stepped inside, her heart beating too fast her breath too shallow. She walked along the hallway without making a sound, and pushed open the sitting-room door. The room was empty; her heart beat painfully fast.
‘I heard your car.’
Gordon’s voice made her start; she closed her eyes with relief.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I opened the door when I realised it was you. I thought at first it was—’ He stopped speaking, shook his head, and went back into the kitchen.
She licked her lips, took a deep breath, and followed him in. ‘You thought at first … what?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Forget it.’
She frowned. She had expected him to be still slumped in the chair, sleeping it off. ‘Are you sober?’ she asked.
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘I’ve put the kettle on for black coffee. That’s what you’re supposed to drink, isn’t it?’
‘If you’re trying to sober up,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s what I’m doing, isn’t it?’ His voice was hard-edged, unhappy. Not like his voice at all.
‘If you were ever drunk in the first place,’ said Pauline.
He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t do it often,’ he said. He smiled, a brittle, unhappy smile. He made coffee. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked, taking his into the sitting-room.
Pauline stiffened slightly. He was supposed to be unconscious in the armchair; he wasn’t supposed to know that she had been anywhere. ‘I went for a drive,’ she said.
He looked at his watch. ‘At quarter to midnight?’
‘I just wanted to think,’ she said, picking up her mug, and going in.
Gordon sat on the sofa, hunched up, with his hands round the mug.
‘Are you cold?’ she asked, sitting beside him.
He shook his head.
They drank the coffee in silence.
‘And … what were you thinking about?’ Gordon asked.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘No.’ He put his mug beside hers on the table, pushing it over until they touched. ‘Nothing matters any more.’
‘Stop saying that!’
‘Why? It’s true.’
‘No,’ she said.
He looked bleakly at her, and she touched his cheek. He turned his head to kiss the palm of her hand.
‘We’ll be all right,’ she said, as he buried his face in her shoulder. ‘We’ll be all right. You’ll see.’ She kissed the top of his head. ‘It’ll be all right.’
The call had come about twenty-minutes after Jonathan Austin’s call to Judy. A woman had been murdered at Flat 2, Mitchell House. Lloyd had tried to talk Judy out of coming, but to no avail. She sat beside him in the five-minute journey round the corner from the old village, her face tense.
‘There’s all sorts of reasons why you shouldn’t be here,’ he said. ‘It’s not your division, you’re probably going to have to give us a statement about that phone-call – which makes you a witness – and you –’ He took a breath. ‘You’re personally involved,’ he said.
‘I don’t know her all that well,’ said Judy, defensively.
No, thought Lloyd. But you’re none too keen on dead bodies that you don’t know at all.
‘And I can give you an immediate ID,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll keep out of your way.’
The car swept round the roundabout, leaving the old village. ‘You’ll keep out of Austin’s way,’ said Lloyd.
‘I just want to see for myself what’s happened,’ she said. ‘I won’t go for him, don’t worry.’ She gave a bitter little laugh. ‘And you said she was using me for an alibi,’ she said.
Neither of them spoke until Lloyd had made the turn into the Mitchell Estate.
‘You seem to have already decided what’s happened,’ he said, turning into the garage area, bringing the car to a halt behind Drake’s Chevette. From there they could see the side and the front of the flats. A police car sat outside, and another joined it, siren blaring. A small crowd had gathered.
‘Why ring me?’ said Judy. ‘ I don’t know her well. Why ring me unless it was to have a police officer confirm …’ She shook her head.
‘Confirm what? That he was in the house minutes before the neighbour raised the alarm? That he was upset about her not having come home?’ He sat back. ‘As alibis go, it isn’t much cop, is it? Isn’t it more likely that she came in after that and they had a row that got out of hand?’
Judy closed her eyes in a brief nod, and they got out of the car. As they entered the flats, a tough young constable was standing in front of the open door of Flat 2.
‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Ma’am.’
‘Do we have any witnesses?’
‘Well, sir, the lady next door – the one who rang? WPC Alexander’s with her. I don’t think she saw anything, though. Sergeant Drake’s inside, sir. He was here first.’
Lloyd smiled, and nodded his thanks. He paused at the threshold of Flat 2, looking through the open door before he entered, to make sure he didn’t disturb evidence.
Slowly, carefully, he and Judy went into the hallway, and looked into the room. The mirror which had been on the wall behind the telephone was shattered; splinters of glass had been showered on to the table and the floor, and twinkled in the light. Broken furniture lay scattered, and the girl lay dead amongst it. A freestanding chromium ashtray of the kind used in office receptions lay close by, its recent use all too apparent. A box of tissues had been torn open, and its contents strewn over the floor.
‘That’s her,’ said Judy, looking away immediately.
Drake, his face pale and grim, picked his way carefully through the devastation towards them as the scene of crime officers arrived. He looked at Lloyd as he joined them in the hallway. ‘I was watching these bloody flats all night,’ he muttered.
Lloyd looked through the door again, and noticed the open doors on to the balcony. Though it was a ground-floor flat, it had a balcony like the upper floors; it opened on to a public grassed area with young trees. Cover, means of entry, on the ground floor. Architects never thought things through. But the glass was intact, and the door didn’t appear to have been forced; not from where he was standing at any rate. The fingerprint man was working on it.
Judy was almost certainly right about what had happened, even if Lloyd had his doubts about her theory.
‘Was the balcony door open when you entered?’ he asked Drake. ‘Or did you open it?’
‘It was open, sir. So was the front door. I ran out on to the balcony, but I couldn’t see anyone. Then I …’ He tailed off.
‘Yes?’
‘I had to pull all the stuff off her. I tried … I tried to revive her, but –’ He looked down at himself, at his clothes streaked with her blood, and his hand flew to his mouth.
Lloyd sighed. Another one like Judy. A few more years on the beat would have taught him how to cope with this like they had taught her; in Lloyd’s opinion high-flyers were more trouble than they were worth. Too much theory and not enough practice. ‘Outside,’ he said, pushing him towards the door. ‘Right out, into the air.’
Freddie, tall and thin, appeared at the front door. ‘I thought the lovely Inspector Hill wasn’t based in Stansfield any more,’ he said, as Judy greeted him with a brief smile of acknowledgement before taking advantage of the diversion to slip into the room.
‘She’s not,’ sighed Lloyd. ‘It’s a long story. How come you’re here already? Were you camping out on the doorstep waiting for a body to examine? She’s only been dead half an hour.’
Freddie gave him a smile, the only clue his appearance gave to his true nature. In repose, his face made him look a bit like everyone’s idea of an undertaker. Or death itself, even, thought Lloyd. Thin, serious, almost sad. But the smile was really Freddie.
‘I’ll be the judge of that, DCI Lloyd,’ he said. He smiled again. ‘I was in Stansfield, visiting friends, your honour,’ he said to Lloyd. ‘Jack Woodford knew that because I had rung him up earlier in the evening to check on my date for the squash tournament, and I left him the number. I have not yet taken to murder as a means of remaining on the Home Office books.’
‘Just get on with it, Freddie,’ groaned Lloyd. ‘ Oh – and Judy was friends with this woman, so no wisecracks, all right?’
Freddie’s face sobered. ‘Oh.’
‘Looks like a row that got out of hand,’ said Lloyd. ‘The husband seems to have taken off.’
‘Sir,’ said a voice.
Lloyd turned to see Drake, some colour back in his face.
‘I saw her earlier, sir,’ he said. ‘With a man. I thought she might be in trouble … that is – I couldn’t be sure. I’ve given his description to control,’ he said. ‘Such as it is. It was dark – I didn’t get that good a look at him.’
Freddie gave Lloyd a look of sympathy, and went off to begin his examination.
Lloyd took Drake back out again. ‘ Right,’ he said. ‘From the beginning.’
Hazy stars were appearing; midsummer day, and a short night That was good, whoever and whatever they were looking for.
‘I was watching the flats,’ said Drake. ‘And I saw this lady being dropped off at about teatime. By Frank Beale, as it happens.’
‘Who?’
The young man looked a little surprised. ‘Frank Beale, sir,’ he said. ‘He’s well known in Barton. Used to live there, but he’s moved to Malworth now. All his business interests are in Barton,’ he added.
‘Right. Go on.’
‘Later on she went out alone, leaving her husband with a visitor. The visitor left at about ten – that is, he left the building. But he sat in his car for about twenty minutes. The husband left the flat about half past ten. I went off watch a few minutes after eleven, and I was passing the old post office building when I saw her again. With a man. Not the husband, or the visitor.’
‘Or Frank Beale, presumably,’ said Lloyd.
‘No, sir. Five ten, regular features, dark hair. Jeans and a leather jacket.’
‘What time would that have been?’
‘About ten or quarter past eleven, sir. I thought for a moment that she was trying to get away from him, so I stopped the car. But then I thought I was mistaken, and I drove off. But it bothered me a little, so I turned round and came back. There was no sign of them, and I came back up here. The flat was in darkness, but the front door was open. I was just on my way to investigate that when Sergeant Woodford asked me if I was still in the area, because they’d had a 999.’
‘Did you see anyone enter or leave the flats?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Right. Did you talk to the next-door neighbour?’
‘I sent WPC Alexander to take her statement, sir, now that she’s calmed down a bit. The neighbour, that is, not WPC Alexander,’ he added in an heroic attempt at a joke. ‘ I couldn’t talk to her myself, not looking like …’ He looked down again at his clothes, and fought the nausea. ‘She was very upset, sir,’ he said.
Lloyd nodded, then smiled for what may have been the first time ever at Drake. At last, the man seemed human. ‘She’s not the only one,’ he said.
‘No, sir. Sorry, sir. It was just—’ He shook his head. ‘ If I’d acted on my first instinct, maybe I could have stopped it. It just suddenly got to me.’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘There’s a very fine line between crime prevention and downright interference. We can’t always get it right.’
He looked up at the still distraught young man. ‘Anyway, I’m not sure it’s the boyfriend we should be looking for.’
‘Sir?’ He didn’t look any happier at that; just puzzled.
‘Her husband came back after you left,’ said Lloyd. ‘ So where is he now?’
Drake frowned. ‘How do you know that, sir?’
‘Because he rang me. Well – not me but …’ He sighed. ‘I just know, all right?’
‘Sir.’
‘I think you should go home and change,’ said Lloyd. ‘Then come back here.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Drake, visibly pulling himself together.
Judy came out of the room, her face controlled and calm.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘Let’s talk in the car,’ he said.
She lit a cigarette as soon as they were outside. She had almost given up, too. She hadn’t had one for days, as far as Lloyd knew.
‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ he asked, as he got into the car beside her.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Sergeant Drake’s thrown a bit of a spanner in the works,’ said Lloyd. He gave her the description of the man with Mrs Austin. ‘Does it mean anything to you? One of her friends?’
Judy shook her head. ‘I don’t really know her friends. I think she prefers to keep it that way. I don’t think too many of them are all that keen on the law.’
‘So,’ said Lloyd, pulling the door shut on the fresh breeze. ‘The phone-call. What did he say to you?’
‘He asked if she was with me. He seemed to think I might just be saying she wasn’t. He said they’d had words. Then he just suddenly said she was probably at the studio, and he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of that in the first place.’ She looked at him. ‘Neither do I,’ she added drily.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I just felt as though he was acting,’ she said. ‘Something. Something about his manner.’ She sighed. ‘But I really don’t know him at all. He might always sound like that on the phone. Some people do. They can’t talk naturally to a piece of plastic.’
‘So it sounded unnatural?’
She nodded. ‘In fact,’ she said, after a moment, ‘ it sounded as though he knew perfectly well where she was.’
Lloyd looked through the narrow entrance to the garages at the normally quiet street, now awash with police vehicles and flashing lights, and neighbours who had given up hiding behind net curtains to stand at their doors and watch.
‘Are you saying you think she was already dead when he rang you?’
Judy didn’t answer, and he looked at her. ‘And then he made all the noise that alarmed the neighbour?’
The boot was on the other foot for once. It was Judy who was sitting there having to account for a theory that didn’t really hold water while he demolished it. Somehow, that made him feel uncomfortable. He was the theoriser, the scenario man. Judy just took notes and looked at the facts. But then, she wasn’t part of this investigation. She was on the other side of the fence; her friend had been murdered, and she had been unwittingly involved.
‘Well,’ said Lloyd. ‘Let’s look at what we know. She was with this man at the old post office, at about ten past eleven. We know that her husband was out of the flat from about ten thirty and back again by eleven twenty. Ten minutes after that the neighbour heard noises which alarmed her, and by eleven thirty-two she was dialling 999. The message went to Drake at eleven thirty-five.’
‘I didn’t like that call,’ she said again.
‘It doesn’t make sense, Judy,’ Lloyd said gently. ‘ What good would ringing you do him? What would be the point of making such a commotion that the neighbour rang the police if he’d already disposed of her quietly?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just know that that call disturbed me.’
It had. This wasn’t hindsight; Lloyd had seen that it had worried her. But it didn’t make sense. And it hardly mattered.
‘If he’d been trying to establish some sort of alibi, he’d have pretended he was somewhere else altogether,’ he pointed out reasonably. ‘ Isn’t it more likely that he went out for whatever reason, came home – she still wasn’t in, and he rang you because you were the first person who came to mind, since she’d seen you this morning? She comes in, they have a row. It gets out of hand, and he takes off the back way.’ He put his arm round her. ‘Either way, there isn’t much doubt,’ he said.
But Judy had twisted round, and was looking out of the rear window, her eyes widening.
‘That’s him,’ she said.
Lloyd saw a tall, fair man walking slowly past the car, towards the flats. One of the officers stopped him, and there followed a short conversation.
Lloyd saw Austin’s reaction when the officer told him what had happened, and glanced at Judy.
‘He’s still acting,’ she said firmly.
But Lloyd wasn’t so sure.
‘Mr Austin?’
Jonathan looked at the man who emerged from the garages, and walked into the light.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd, sir. Stansfield CID.’
‘He won’t let me see her,’ said Jonathan.
The chief inspector took his arm. ‘You will have to make a formal identification, Mr Austin,’ he said. ‘ But it doesn’t have to be now.’
‘I want to see her! How do you know it’s her – how do you know you’ve not …’ He broke off, looking again at the flat, its aspect suddenly altered by the police activity, by the urgency, by the pall of death.
‘DI Hill has …’ began Lloyd.
Judy Hill stepped forward, and Jonathan saw her for the first time. ‘Judy?’ he said, his mind trying to cope with too many things at once. ‘Is … is Leonora really dead?’
She nodded, and turned away, getting into a car.
‘I want to see her!’ he said again.
Lloyd led him into the house, and Austin nodded briefly when they asked if it was his wife.
‘Is there another room, Mr Austin?’ asked Lloyd. ‘Where we could talk?’
Jonathan took him into the kitchen, and sat down at the breakfast bar.
A young man wearing very casual clothes came in; he and the chief inspector had a hurried conference just out of his hearing. All Jonathan found himself doing was wondering why the young man looked as though he was going out for an evening run. A track suit, or jogging suit or whatever. He never knew the difference. It said ‘Morocco’ across the front, and there was a palm tree on the breast pocket.
He reached into his pocket for his cigarettes, and lit one, his hand shaking. Jonathan hated himself for smoking. It was anti-social, it was unhealthy, it was expensive, and dirty. It was proof of his lack of willpower. Leonora hadn’t wanted him to smoke.
They sat down with him at the breakfast bar, and the young man was introduced. It was he who asked the first question; that surprised Jonathan. He would have expected the senior man to make the first move.
‘You rang Mrs Judy Hill at twenty past eleven, didn’t you?’
Jonathan nodded.
‘So what happened after that?’
‘I … I went out. To look for Leonora. I was worried.’
‘What about?’
‘It isn’t – wasn’t – like her. Going off without saying where. Staying out.’
The sergeant nodded, and looked at the chief inspector.
He, in his turn, took a slow, deep breath, and stood up. He walked round the room, pausing to pull back the blind and look out of the window. There was nothing to see; just the reflection of the neat kitchen. ‘ Where did you look for her, Mr Austin?’ he asked.
‘Just … about. I went through the alley behind the garages – it goes down to the main road. I thought …’ He shrugged.
‘Had you already been out looking for her?’
‘No,’ said Jonathan.
‘But you had been out before?’
Jonathan frowned, and didn’t answer.
‘You left the house at ten thirty, and you hadn’t returned by eleven o’clock.’
Jonathan stared at him. ‘How do— ?’ He shook his head. ‘ How do you know that?’
Chief Inspector Lloyd smiled. ‘All in good time, Mr Austin,’ he said, his Welsh accent becoming more evident. ‘But it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. But – but, no, I wasn’t looking for her. Not then.’
‘Perhaps you won’t mind telling me what you were doing?’
‘I … my wife’s car was in being serviced,’ he began.
And he had thought that maybe it would help if he collected it. Stop her being angry with him. Put her in a better mood before he had to tell her about Gordon. What did that have to do with them?
‘Go on,’ said the chief inspector.
Jonathan realised that he hadn’t actually said any of that. ‘ She’d asked me earlier if I could run her over there to collect it and I’d said I didn’t have time,’ he said. Of course he had had time. He just hadn’t wanted to be distracted from his preparations for breaking the news to Gordon.
He looked at Lloyd. ‘She had arranged for it to be left out for her, and I thought … I just went to collect it.’
‘What made you decide to pick it up for her?’
Jonathan put out his cigarette on a saucer, and lit another. ‘ I thought it might make up for my being short with her earlier,’ he said.
‘Short?’
‘I had a very difficult business meeting. I had asked her to leave.’
Lloyd sat down again, and looked at him, his face a little puzzled. ‘So she left the house in a huff?’
Jonathan sighed. ‘Sort of,’ he said. ‘She didn’t like being asked to leave – and as I said, I had been a bit short with her.’
He looked more puzzled than ever. Too puzzled. He should try to curb the over-acting.
‘Did your wife normally attend business meetings, then?’ he asked.
‘No, but this was with a very old friend of hers. And I don’t normally have business meetings at home.’
‘Ah,’ said Lloyd. ‘That would be the gentleman who left your flat at about ten o’clock?’
‘Look, what is this? Have you been watching me, for God’s sake?’
‘No, no, sir. The flats. One of the flats in this building. Nothing whatever to do with you. But the officer did notice all the comings and goings from the building, naturally.’
Jonathan flushed. If he had known someone was out there, watching …
‘Could I have this friend’s name, sir?’ asked the sergeant.
Gordon? They couldn’t think that … Jonathan remembered how angry, how hurt Gordon had been. Blaming Leonora. ‘Gordon Pearce,’ he muttered.
‘Your co-director,’ said Sergeant Drake.
‘One of them. There are a number of directors now.’
‘Ah yes,’ said Lloyd. ‘You’ve expanded very rapidly, haven’t you? New factory – much larger premises.’
Jonathan could contain himself no longer. ‘If someone was watching the flats, then he must have seen Leonora come back,’ he said.
But the chief inspector was shaking his head. ‘It was Sergeant Drake who was watching the flats,’ he said. ‘He went off duty at eleven o’clock. Just before you returned from your first trip out, apparently.’
They didn’t believe him, obviously.
‘You went straight to pick up the car?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where is this garage?’
‘It’s one of the factory units on the old Mitchell Engineering site. Quite close to the Austin-Pearce factory.’
Lloyd nodded. ‘And you went on foot – how long would you say it took you to get there?’
‘Twenty minutes or so.’
‘And what – a few minutes’ drive back?’
Jonathan closed his eyes. ‘I didn’t drive back,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘The car wasn’t there. She must have picked it up herself. I walked back.’
‘It hadn’t occurred to you that your wife would have picked it up herself?
‘No. It’s a much longer walk by the roads – I took the shortcut across the Mitchell Engineering land. I didn’t think she would have done that – It’s very lonely.’
‘So you came back, without the car. Then what did you do?’
‘I went out to look for her! Does it matter? Isn’t it what Leonora was doing that you should be concerning yourself with?’
Lloyd frowned very slightly. ‘What do you think she was doing, Mr Austin?’ he asked.
‘I thought she was at her studio,’ he said. ‘In Malworth.’
‘You said that to Mrs Hill,’ said Lloyd.
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t think that when you rang Mrs Hill in the first place,’ he pointed out.
‘No.’ Jonathan desperately tried to sort out his thoughts. ‘I did think that, earlier. Or that she’d gone to visit Pauline Pearce. But then I remembered she hadn’t got the car, and I dismissed the idea. That was when I went to get it for her. But when I was talking to Judy I suddenly thought that if she had the car after all, that was where she would have gone,’ he said.
‘So why did you go out to look for her, if that’s what you thought?’ asked Drake.
‘I … I just went out. To see if I could see her car coming.’
‘And you returned a few minutes ago, at midnight,’ he said. ‘By which time your wife had come home.’
Jonathan closed his eyes.
‘Where would she park?’
‘In the garage area,’ said Jonathan. ‘ Her car isn’t there,’ he said, anticipating the next question.
They took the make and number, and the sergeant went into the sitting-room again, leaving the door open. Someone got on to the radio about it, what seemed like hordes of people moved around, flashbulbs went off now and then. People spoke to one another, called to one another. A group of them laughed. Lloyd looked angry, and got up to close the door, but the sergeant came back in.
‘Is your wife on the phone at the studio, sir?’ he asked as he came in, closing the door behind him.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you ring there when you were looking for her?’
‘No. She doesn’t like to be disturbed when she’s working.’
‘Does your wife normally wear a wedding ring, Mr Austin?’
Jonathan frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes, of course.’
‘And she was wearing it this evening?’
Jonathan was bewildered. ‘I – I imagine so,’ he said.
‘She isn’t wearing it now, Mr Austin,’ said Drake.
‘Did you kill your wife, Mr Austin?’ asked Lloyd, his voice gentle, belying the harsh question.
‘No,’ said Jonathan, turning back to him, unsurprised at the accusation. ‘ No.’ He looked from one to the other. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why would I kill her?’
Lloyd sat back a little, apparently at ease. ‘Would anyone want to kill her, Mr Austin?’ he asked.
‘There was …’ His voice trailed off.
‘There was what?’
‘A few weeks ago. She told me some man was pestering her. She – she was quite worried.’
That made the chief inspector sit forward. ‘A man?’ he said.
‘Just before I met Leonora,’ Jonathan said slowly, ‘she was seeing some man. He … he was becoming a nuisance. I think one of the reasons she married me was to make it clear to him that there was no future in it. It was him. That’s all I know.’
‘And you don’t know his name, or what he does for—’
‘That’s all I know!’
‘Why did your wife tell you about him?’
Jonathan shook his head. ‘ Why shouldn’t she? She was worried about him – I’ve told you that.’
‘I mean – did she want you to do something about it?’
‘No – she …’ Jonathan sighed. ‘I have been adopted as the parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party in the next general election. My private life has to be free of … well, you know. He had been here, apparently. Once or twice. She said she thought he would have grown out of it by now, but he was just as persistent, and she thought he might cause some trouble. She was warning me.’
He had been prepared for scepticism, but they seemed to be taking it seriously. ‘You should be finding out what Leonora was doing,’ he said, emboldened by that. ‘ Not what I was doing.’
Lloyd sat back again. ‘We do know something of your wife’s movements,’ he said. ‘We’re trying to discover more.’
Jonathan frowned. ‘ What? What do you know?’
‘I saw your wife as I left the estate,’ said Sergeant Drake. ‘At about ten past eleven. Were you waiting for her when she got home, Mr Austin?’
Jonathan couldn’t grasp it all. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t here when she got home.’ He looked up at them, bewildered.
‘When I saw her,’ Drake said slowly, watching Jonathan’s face as he spoke, ‘she was with a man.’
Jonathan frowned. ‘ What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘What do you mean, with a man?’
The young man looked a little uncomfortable.
‘Well? What do you mean?’
Drake coloured, and looked away.
Jonathan stared at him. ‘ She wasn’t with him, was she? He was accosting her, wasn’t he?’ he shouted. ‘Wasn’t he? When you saw her? He was accosting her, and you did nothing!’
‘I – I couldn’t tell if …’
‘You did nothing, and now she’s dead! Why aren’t you looking for him? She was afraid of him, she told me! Why are you wasting your time with me, instead of looking for him?’
‘We are looking for him,’ said the chief inspector, his voice still gentle, still soothing. ‘Did your wife tell you anything more about him?’
Jonathan was still glaring at Drake, who stared unhappily at the formica. Slowly his gaze turned to Lloyd. He knew the name. Lloyd, Lloyd … wasn’t that the man that Judy Hill had left her husband for? So he must have answered the phone.
He shook his head. ‘ I’ve told you all I know about him,’ he said, and looked back at the sergeant. ‘Ask him,’ he said. ‘He saw him molesting her, and he did nothing. And now she’s dead.’
The sergeant got up abruptly, and left the room.
It wasn’t my fault.
That’s all that went through Mickey’s head as he came out of the kitchen into the sitting-room. The doctor was dictating notes to his assistant, the photographer was still snapping away at the devastation, and he thought he was going to be sick again.
‘I’ve given Mr Austin a brandy,’ said Lloyd, closing the kitchen door, ‘ he’s going to go to the Derbyshire.’ He looked at the doctor. ‘I’d rather she wasn’t still here when he leaves,’ he said.
‘I won’t be much longer,’ said the doctor.
Lloyd squatted down beside him. ‘I think he’d just taken off when Drake got here,’ he said. ‘How much can you tell me now? Anything that would help?’
‘She’s been dead less than an hour,’ said the doctor. ‘ But then, you told me that.’
Lloyd grunted.
‘Death due to a single blow to the temple, probably from behind.’
‘Just one?’
Mickey looked at the mess it had made of her. He felt sick again.
‘Just one. One very savage blow. There doesn’t seem to have been a struggle, as such. The indications are that she was trying to get the furniture between herself and her attacker, rather than trying to fight him off.’
Lloyd got to his feet. ‘Look at this lot,’ he said.
The leg of one chair was broken off; a shelf unit had been broken almost in two. The coffee table had a deep indentation in the middle, and the corner was smashed away. One of the scattered tissues clung to the ragged edge; it was folded into a square, unlike the others. Mickey took a closer look, and could just see that it was slightly discoloured. He bent down and sniffed. ‘Whisky,’ he said, looking up at Lloyd.
‘Gordon spilled some,’ Jonathan Austin said, and Mickey turned to see him standing in the doorway. How long had he been there? ‘Sir, do you think you should— ?’ he began.
‘It’s my house,’ he said, and looked again at his wife. But then he went back into the kitchen, closing the door.
Lloyd looked at Mickey. ‘You didn’t hear anything, I take it?’ he said.
‘No, sir. It was quiet.’
The doctor straightened up, and looked at the smashed furniture. ‘She ran out of protection, and he found his target,’ he said, with the cheerfulness of a football commentator.
Mary Alexander came in. ‘I’ve spoken to the next-door neighbour, sir,’ she said. ‘I’ve said someone will be back to take her formal statement. All she knows is that she heard screaming, and’ – she looked at the shattered furniture – ‘all this,’ she said. ‘And someone shouting ‘‘whore’’, over and over again. A man’s voice, she thinks. It was hysterical – she couldn’t be certain.’
‘Which means she can’t identify it.’
‘No, sir.’ WPC Alexander looked at Mickey. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
Mickey nodded, praying that he wasn’t going to be sick again.
Lloyd glanced at him. ‘If you think you’re going to throw up, go out,’ he said.
‘I’m all right, sir.’
‘The neighbour’s phone is by the window, sir. She says the noises were still going on when she was talking to the station, and that she stayed there, watching. She didn’t see anyone at all.’ Lloyd nodded. ‘She wouldn’t,’ he said, he went that-a-way.’ He pointed to the balcony. ‘By the looks of things.’
Mickey watched as the murder weapon was carefully bagged.
‘Ask Austin where that ashtray was normally kept,’ Lloyd said.
Mickey got the feeling that he was just giving him an excuse to leave the scene, but he was glad of it, and escaped back into the comparative normality of the kitchen, where Austin sat, sipping his brandy, smoking.
‘Mr Austin,’ he said, sitting down at the breakfast bar. ‘ Can you tell me where the tall chromium ashtray was usually kept?’
Austin looked blankly at him.
Oh, God. Mickey took a breath. ‘Did you keep it in the sitting-room, or in here, perhaps? Did you have it in the sitting-room tonight, for instance?’
Austin frowned. ‘What ashtray?’ he asked.
‘About two feet high,’ said Mickey. ‘With a heavy metal base. The kind you find in banks, and—’
Austin was shaking his head. ‘I’ve never seen anything like that here,’ he said.
Mickey stared at him. ‘But—’ he began.
Realisation dawned in Austin’s pained features. ‘That’s what he used, isn’t it?’ he said.
Mickey nodded briefly, and got up. ‘Just … just wait here. Mr Austin,’ he said.
He went back out and told Lloyd, who raised an eyebrow, and turned back to the doctor. ‘Anything else you can tell me?’ he asked.
‘There are indications of a fairly enthusiastic amorous encounter,’ he said, beckoning Lloyd to join him.
With some reluctance, the chief inspector crouched down again.
‘This,’ said the doctor, indicating a mark on the curve of her neck and shoulder, and another on her breast. ‘ The usual sort of thing. Small bruise on her lower lip. But the underclothes are intact, and there’s nothing to suggest assault.’ He looked up from the body, and beamed at Lloyd. ‘But maybe the lady wouldn’t let him go any further, and that upset him.’
‘Mm.’ Lloyd got to his feet again. ‘He’d hardly call her a whore in those circumstances,’ he said, and looked at the closed kitchen door. ‘Her husband might if he caught her at it, though. And Mr Austin reckons he’s never seen the murder weapon,’ he added quietly, almost to himself.
‘Her blouse was unbuttoned,’ said the doctor. ‘Not all the way, just more than modesty would usually permit.’
‘Could that have happened while she was trying to get away from him?’
‘Doubt it. I think the buttons would have had to have come off. I think – for what it’s worth before I’ve done a proper examination – that she called a halt, or they were interrupted.’ He frowned, and looked round. He nodded to a piece gouged out of the plaster in the wall. ‘ But this was a ferocious attack, Lloyd,’ he said. ‘With a weapon from the word go. There are no manual blows. I’d have thought her husband would have grabbed her, if he’d been that angry. I’d have expected some signs of a struggle. But there’s nothing. Just that,’ he said, indicating the terrible injury that had killed her.
Mickey looked, and fled.
Outside, he was sick again. He took deep breaths of fresh air. He was having to make a fool of himself, in front of Lloyd of all people. As if it wasn’t bad enough being back in Stansfield without having to make himself look like a prize idiot into the bargain. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t. But the two images kept swimming into his mind: one of her and the man, one of her lying there. Minutes. Just minutes. It wasn’t his fault. If it was anyone’s fault, it was her own. Because she had been with him, she had been encouraging him. She wasn’t trying to stop him – the doctor was wrong. He wasn’t accosting her, she wasn’t frightened of him – Austin was wrong. He had seen a couple, not someone being assaulted.
And the jogging suit. Oh, God, the jogging suit. Everything else he possessed was sitting in the washing machine, soaking wet. He’d missed the jogging suit, which was just as well, really. If only he’d missed a sweater and jeans. But no, he had to come back looking as though he was on holiday. He’d seen the look that passed between Lloyd and the doctor.
It wasn’t his fault. The colour drained from his face again, but he fought it this time. God damn it, she was with the bloody man, and Lloyd wasn’t even going after him. And if he thought Austin had done it, why was he letting him go to a hotel, instead of taking him into custody? He couldn’t make him out. Sometimes during the interview, he had been convinced that Lloyd thought Austin had killed her; at others he seemed to think he had nothing to do with it. He’d heard about Lloyd’s tactics. Lull them into a false sense of security. Their guard will slip. No point in treating murderers like common criminals. They’re not. They’re uncommon criminals. He was used to Barton, with its hard core of crooks, like Beale. Softly softly was no good there. But this was different.
He decided he was all right, and went back into the flats.
‘Drake,’ said Lloyd. ‘ OK now?’
‘Yes, sir.’ But he kept a discreet distance from the body this time.
‘Chief Inspector?’ One of the SOC men came back in, still carrying the murder weapon in its polythene bag. ‘There’s something in here,’ he said, shaking it slightly. Something rattled in its depths.
‘Probably a ring-pull,’ said Lloyd. ‘Let’s find out.’
A sheet of paper was placed on the floor, and the end of the bag opened. As the ashtray was upturned, and after much careful shaking, a plain gold wedding ring fell to the ground, rolling off the paper.
Lloyd stood up, looking grim. ‘Bag it,’ he said.
Mickey looked expectantly at him, but Lloyd shook his head. ‘Leave it,’ he said.
‘But, sir—’
‘Oh, I know,’ said Lloyd. ‘The book says to confront them with evidence straight away and with any luck they’ll break down and confess. I prefer to let them think they’ve got away with it,’ he said.
Working with Chief Inspector Lloyd wasn’t going to be dull, Mickey could see that.
‘Oh – Sergeant. Mickey, is it?’ the doctor said, looking up from the body.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Call me Freddie. And – do me a favour, will you? Ring my wife and explain to her where I am, or she’ll think I’ve wrapped the car round a tree.’
Mickey took a note of the number, and went to the phone. ‘ Has this been done?’ he called to the fingerprint man.
‘Yes, Sarge. Mind the broken glass.’
He picked it up, and was about to key the number automatically when he realised he didn’t have a dialling tone. He frowned, and pressed the rest, but he couldn’t clear the line. He listened, and tried again, then checked to see that the phone hadn’t been pulled out. It was intact. And the line wasn’t dead, he realised; he just couldn’t get the dialling tone back. Despite the way he was feeling, a little tingle of excitement went through him. Something odd, something that had to be explained. It was why he had wanted CID work.
‘Chief Inspector,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ Lloyd came over to him.
‘The phone’s dead – at least …’ Mickey listened closely, anxious not to make a fool of himself again. But he was right, he was sure he was. ‘I think the line’s open, sir,’ he said, handing Lloyd the phone.
Lloyd listened.
If the line was open, then someone had rung the Austins’ number, and hadn’t hung up properly. It would almost certainly lead to nothing, but it was interesting, all the same.
‘I think you’re right,’ said Lloyd.
‘Right, sir,’ said Mickey. ‘ I’ll get on to BT, get them to trace it.’
‘You do that,’ said Lloyd.
Mickey went out, sighing with relief. For one thing, he’d stayed in the room without feeling sick, and for another, he had actually done something which met with Lloyd’s approval.
There was a wait, of course, but when he got the answer, it was worth it.
More than worth it.
Judy saw Sergeant Drake hurrying towards her, and stubbed out her cigarette for some reason.
He leant in the open window. ‘Frank Beale – do you know him?’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Chief Inspector Lloyd,’ he said, with a grin.
‘Oh, I don’t suppose he does,’ said Judy, ‘he hasn’t had him on his patch. I got told all about him before I even got to Malworth.’ Sandwell had briefed her well about her new manor, as he insisted on calling it.
‘Someone rang this number from his number some time this evening,’ said Drake. ‘We know, because the line’s still open. The chief inspector says it’s your pigeon. I’ve to drive you over there and you’ve to see what you can get from them.’
Judy smiled. This was Lloyd not allowing her to get involved. ‘Right,’ she said, getting out of Lloyd’s car. ‘Let’s go.’
It had taken ten minutes for her to get from the village to Malworth that morning. It would take Sergeant Drake about two, at this rate.
‘I think we could afford to slow down,’ she said. ‘It probably has nothing to do with it, anyway.’
Drake allowed the car to lose some speed. ‘You never know,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Judy. ‘But Frank Beale’s wife is on the board of Austin-Pearce.’
‘Is she?’ Drake sounded startled, as well he might. ‘I’d have thought she was a bit … well, shady, for an outfit like that.’
‘Isn’t she, though,’ said Judy. ‘But she’s on the board, nonetheless. And she probably just rang Austin about something.’
‘Oh – of course. You know the Austins, don’t you?’ said Drake, apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. This must be terrible.’
Judy smiled. ‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘ We weren’t bosom friends or anything. It was a shock. But I’m much happier having something to do, even if it is a wild goose chase.’ She wondered if mentioning it would be right or wrong, and just hoped that she was right. ‘ It was a bit of a facer for you too, I gather,’ she said.
He went pink.
‘I’m sure it is a wild goose chase,’ he said. ‘I think the chief inspector was just getting me out of the way.’ He glanced at her. ‘I was sick again,’ he said.
‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ she said. ‘You’re not the first, and you won’t be the last.’
‘God knows what Chief Inspector Lloyd thinks of me,’ Drake muttered.
‘Lloyd understands,’ she said. ‘He’s none too happy with dead bodies himself. But he can make himself squint so that he doesn’t really look at them. I don’t know how he does it.’ She took out her cigarettes. ‘He was always thinking of useful things for me to do, too,’ she said. She waved the cigarette packet at him. ‘ Do you mind?’ she asked.
‘No, no. Go ahead. I was a sixty a day man once.’
‘How did you give up?’
‘I found something else to lavish my money on.’
She laughed, and lit one. ‘I had very nearly given up,’ she said. ‘But if I have three in one day, I think I’m chain-smoking, so I’m not too bad.’
‘You’re a non-smoker,’ he said. ‘You don’t crave it.’
‘No.’
‘I couldn’t have made a worse impression, could I?’ asked Drake. ‘I made a complete balls of it.’
‘Don’t worry about it. You did what you thought was right.’
He drove without speaking until they were entering Malworth. ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ he said.
Judy looked at him. ‘Lloyd said that Austin had blamed you,’ she said. ‘ He was upset, Mickey. Of course you weren’t to blame.’
‘No. But he wasn’t assaulting her,’ said Drake. ‘I’d have stopped him if he had been. He says she was afraid of him – but she wasn’t.’
‘But you did think she might have been in trouble?’ Judy said. ‘I mean, that’s why you went back, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he said defensively. ‘But – but it wasn’t like Austin thinks. She was – she was with him. She was with him. I mean – I suppose she might have been saying no, but—’ He broke off, and slowed down as they passed the row of craft shops and studios. ‘The doctor thinks that’s why she got killed,’ he added, in a low voice.
Judy noticed the light in the studio, as Drake signalled to turn into the small car park. ‘Stop a minute, Mickey,’ she said.
There was nothing to be seen through the window; just the empty studio, and the open door into the office, where the desk light burned.
‘Austin said he thought she was here,’ said Drake.
Judy listened to the story about the car, and tried the studio door. ‘Do you think she was here with her boyfriend?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t see the car anywhere when I saw them,’ said Drake. ‘They’d have been in it, wouldn’t they?’
‘Maybe not,’ said Judy, as they got back into their car. ‘ If she was trying to get out of a tricky situation.’
‘If you ask me, it was her own fault,’ he said, as he pulled into a parking space in the private car park behind the flats.
‘You don’t mean that,’ said Judy quietly.
‘She could have got away,’ he said. ‘She could have got away, when I pulled up. He came towards the car. She could have got away then, and she didn’t! It wasn’t my fault!’
Judy knew what Lloyd meant; Drake wasn’t ready for any of this. And they would promote him next year. She put her arm round him, instinctively comforting him.
‘Don’t keep blaming yourself,’ she said. ‘I think you saw exactly what there was to be seen. Someone who wasn’t sure what she wanted. But whether that was what made this man kill her, or whether Austin killed her in a rage – it doesn’t matter. We’ll find out which – but don’t whatever you do blame yourself. Most people wouldn’t have come back at all. Wouldn’t have found her, wouldn’t have put themselves through all this. You’re a good policeman, Mickey. I know you are.’
‘Lloyd doesn’t,’ he said miserably.
She smiled. ‘Give him time,’ she said. ‘And don’t try so hard to impress him. He won’t think any less of you because you were upset tonight – but you have to start being professional about it now. You couldn’t stop it happening, but we can find out exactly what did happen.’
She gave him a little squeeze. ‘ Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s see if Mr Beale can help us with our enquiries, as I understand he’s so often done before.’
She was rewarded with something approaching a smile. ‘Yes,’ he said.
But it wasn’t as simple as all that, as they discovered when they were confronted with the Andwell House hi-tech security system.
‘You have to have a card,’ said Drake, wonderingly. ‘And a PIN number.’
‘My God, I’d never get in,’ said Judy. ‘I’m always standing at hole-in-the-wall machines having another stab at remembering my number and then watching it eat my card.’
Drake touched the sensor below the Beales’ name, but nothing happened. He tried again. And again. ‘We’ll have to wake someone else up,’ he said. ‘Someone with more on his conscience than Frank Beale.’
Judy laughed. ‘Try the … oh – the Pearces live here, of course.’ She wasn’t sure of the etiquette. Gordon Pearce was Austin’s partner – they could hardly barge in there, if the Pearces didn’t know what had happened.
‘Pearce,’ said Drake. ‘He was at the Austins’ house tonight. I think Mr Lloyd wants to see him.’
‘Does he think he might be involved?’
‘Well … he seemed to. He was the cause of the row, in a way.’ He explained the nature of the row to Judy.
Judy made a decision. If it was the wrong one, she would hear all about it in due course, but for now, she was the man on the ground, so to speak. She pressed the pad under the Pearces’ name.
There was a moment’s wait, then a woman spoke. ‘Who is it?’
‘Police, Mrs Pearce. I’m sorry to bother you so late, but we have to come in. Could you open the front door for us?’
‘Can I see your identification?’
Judy frowned. If she couldn’t get in, how could she show her ID?
‘There’s a camera just above your head,’ said the voice.
So there was. Self-consciously, Judy removed her warrant card and held it up to the lens. ‘Is that all right?’ she asked. ‘Can you read it?’
‘Could you move it back a little? Yes – yes, I can read it … Inspector Hill? Thank you.’
There was a buzz and a click, and Drake pushed open the door, and went in.
Judy was still taken with the camera, until she realised that the door was slowly closing again. She made it in just before it closed with a little world-weary sigh.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘How much do you suppose it costs for a flat here?’
‘No idea,’ said Drake. ‘I’d feel a bit as though I was in prison.’
‘Mm. Nice, though,’ said Judy, looking round at the designer reception area, where chauffeurs and the like waited, by the look of things. A table, with magazines. A little fountain, switched off for the night. Plants. Real or plastic? She peered at them, then realised that the ash on her practically unsmoked cigarette was dangerously close to falling all over the floor that looked suspiciously like real marble. There must be an ashtray. She looked round.
There was. A free-standing chromium ashtray, with a heavy metal base. She looked at Drake as she let her cigarette slip into its depths. He had gone pale again. ‘Sit down,’ she said.
He obeyed, and she sat down too, to work out how to approach the matter.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘It’s all right. Just take your time. I’ve got a lot to think about.’ She sat back in the chair. ‘All right,’ she said quietly, after a few moments. ‘We’ve got two lots of people upstairs who knew Mrs Austin. One was on the phone to the Austins, and the other was visiting them.’
Smoke curled up from the ashtray as she stood up again, and picked it up. The weight surprised her. ‘It must have lead in the base,’ she said, and understood how it had made such a mess of Mrs Austin. ‘ Right,’ she said, briskly, in grave danger of emulating Drake. ‘Mrs Pearce knows we’re here, so we can’t just disappear again, I don’t think. We’ll proceed exactly as we meant to – don’t
ask anyone about the ashtray. OK?’
‘Keep them off their guard?’
She smiled. ‘I see you’ve had the lecture. But if someone left here
with one of those things in order to kill Mrs Austin, there’s nothing
to be gained by letting them know we suspect that.’
‘No,’ agreed Drake. He stood up.
‘And if the subject arises, I don’t smoke.’
They used the lift. It deposited them quietly and went back down
with a well-bred whine.
Knocking on the Beales’ door, and ringing the Beales’ bell proved
just as ineffective as the Beales’ entrance phone had.
Judy sighed, rather like the entrance door. ‘They’re out,’ she said.
‘Or avoiding us. If that camera comes on when you press the
pad, then Beale would see us, wouldn’t he?’
Judy nodded, and bent down. ‘When in doubt,’ she said, ‘look
through the—’ The door swung open at her touch.
Rosemary Beale lay on the hall floor, the telephone receiver lying
on her chest. Its cable was still tight round her neck.