‘Did you hear anything at all suspicious?’
Gordon was under instructions to let Pauline do the talking, which command had been given to him last night, when the entrance phone had buzzed.
‘I think,’ he had said, still feeling light-headed, still breathless from Pauline’s urgent restoration of marital relations, still strangely removed from the guilt he should have been feeling, ‘I think that might be the police.’
Pauline had already got out of bed, and was pulling on a wrap. ‘Yes,’ she had said, matter-of-factly. ‘Just let me do the talking.’
It was like something out of a film. Except that he must have dropped off, or they’d put the reels on in the wrong order. She didn’t know what he had done, but she hadn’t been at all surprised that he had thought it might be the police, and calmness itself when that proved to be the case. She had pressed the button to admit them to the building, slipped off the wrap, and returned to bed.
The night had been interrupted by the alarms and excursions next door, and now the police were here, in the flat, asking questions.
‘Did you hear anything at all suspicious?’ DI Hill repeated.
‘Gordon was out for the count,’ Pauline answered. ‘He wouldn’t have heard if they’d dropped a bomb.’
The inspector smiled. ‘I’m like that, given half a chance,’ she said.
‘Gordon’s like that given half a pint,’ countered Pauline.
Gordon wasn’t sure who she was playing, but from the moment she had uttered the deathless line ‘Just let me do the talking’, she had been playing someone. Brittle, smart, unmoved by the tragedy next door. Too coquettish to be Joan Crawford, he thought.
‘Did you hear anything unusual?’ asked the inspector again, almost as though she hadn’t just asked twice before.
Nice-looking girl. Honest, open face. If he hadn’t been ordered to say as little as possible, Gordon might even have been flirting with her. Flirting was all right, he thought, providing it was in the presence of one or other of the spouses. He had flirted with Lennie when Jonathan was there. Not any more.
‘No,’ said Pauline slowly, as though she were trying to recall. ‘No, nothing. It was very quiet – it always is.’
Gordon hoped that the frown hadn’t appeared, but from the sharp glance the inspector gave him, he felt that perhaps it had. But he had never known Pauline to lie before. About anything. He had teased her about it – she had a thing about the truth. And here she was, saying she had heard nothing unusual, when the first thing she had said when he had come home was …
‘Have you remembered something, Mr Pearce?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I’d had a bit more than half a pint. I don’t remember much at all. I’m still a bit woozy.’ A very tall young man hovered at the open door, and the inspector went to talk to him.
That’s not true, Gordon, old son. You remember everything about last night.
He smiled as she came back in, closing the door this time. ‘Can we offer you a cup of tea or coffee or something?’ he asked. ‘You might want some breakfast – have you been here all night? You look a little tired.’
‘Here or hereabouts,’ she said, with a smile. ‘I’d love a cup of tea, thank you.’
‘I’ll get it,’ he said to Pauline.
You’ve lied to the police now, old son.
Yes. But I’m sowing the seeds. I remember nothing. That’s what my defence will be.
I see. So you’ve gone off the idea of suicide?
I’ve got a baby on the way. Can’t run out on Pauline like that, can I?
And you think this defence will work, do you? You remember nothing? That one’s sharp, Gordon, old son. She isn’t going to let you toddle off and make tea and let Pauline do the talking, it might work in old movies, but it doesn’t work in real life. She’s going to ask you more questions, and you had better have answers, because she won’t be fooled by Joan Crawford in there.
He made three mugs of tea, and buttered toast. She must want something to eat.
He went back in, and put the tray on the table, bringing three chairs round it as Pauline answered the inspector.
‘Not very well, no. These flats are very private, really. You can’t hear people through the wall, or anything. Not like our old place.’ She smiled a little. ‘To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I didn’t prefer the lack of privacy. At least we knew our neighbours there. And we really don’t here. We know the Beales better than the others because Mrs Beale recently joined the board of Austin-Pearce, but that’s the only reason.’
Too much talking, Pauline, thought Gordon. Could even be regarded as prattling. How very unlike Pauline it all was.
‘You were here all evening?’
Hill. That was it. Gordon had been trying to remember her name all night. Hill. Detective Inspector Hill. He had only heard Pauline’s end of the entry phone conversation; he had imagined a large man with a five o’clock shadow, wearing a raincoat and a trilby. He thought perhaps he ought to update his image of the average police officer; his was Jack Hawkins or someone. Detective Inspector Hill did not in any way resemble Jack Hawkins.
‘Yes. Well, I was in all evening. Gordon was out for a couple of hours.’
‘What time did you get home, Mr Pearce?’ she asked.
Gordon looked at Pauline.
‘Oh, no use asking him. It was after ten, I know that. About quarter past, I think. Yes – News at Ten was just coming on again.’
My God. Gordon could feel the frank brown eyes on him again, and shiftily avoided their gaze. If Pauline was going to take to bearing false witness, she might at least have let him in on it. With a great effort he pushed the question of her reasons to the back of his mind.
‘Does that seem right, Mr Pearce?’
‘If Pauline says so … I just came in and fell asleep in the chair.’
‘Were you celebrating something?’
‘No – just having dinner with my partner.’
‘We think Mrs Beale came home at about eleven o’clock. Were you still up then?’
The question was addressed to both of them; Gordon looked at Pauline.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I was trying to get Gordon to go to bed, and he just kept falling asleep again. I wasn’t exactly keeping track of the time, but I think it must have been about midnight before I finally got him to bed.’
This time Gordon knew the frown had appeared. That was true, of course. She was telling the truth as much as possible; covering herself. Covering him. She knew.
‘Yes, Mr Pearce?’
He looked at the inspector. ‘ Sorry?’ he said. ‘Oh – look, I’m forgetting the tea. Come and get it.’
They sat round the table and drank cool tea and ate soggy toast.
‘I thought you were going to say something,’ she said, not letting go.
Gordon had given himself a few moments’ thinking time. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I just suddenly remembered Pauline telling me it was quarter to midnight.’ He got up. ‘Excuse me a moment,’ he said.
He walked quickly to the bathroom. It wasn’t an excuse. Suddenly, the deception, the guilt, the realisation of what he had done and what he was doing had hit home, and his bladder had reacted instantly. He sighed with relief, flushed the lavatory, and washed his hands.
Pauline knew. Somehow, she knew, and she was shielding him. And now, for the first time, Gordon was scared. Scared of an attractive young woman in a summer dress that showed off her very nice legs, who looked a little tired.
‘Well,’ she was saying, ‘ if you do remember anything – anything at all – just give me a ring.’ She handed Pauline a card. ‘Don’t think it’s too insignificant, or that you’ll be wasting anyone’s time. That’s sometimes just what we need.’
She was playing someone too. There they were, the three of them, all playing parts fit to bust, and no one knowing the script.
‘Oh – one other thing,’ she said, on her way out ‘There’s an ashtray downstairs in the foyer – were there two, originally?’
‘Yes,’ said Pauline, looking a little puzzled. Then her expression changed. She wasn’t puzzled any more, but she wanted the inspector to think she was. Gordon was in no position to say how successful she had been; he only knew it hadn’t fooled him.
‘Where’s the other one?’ asked the inspector.
‘Isn’t it there?’
Isn’t it there? Oh, Gordon, Gordon. What’s the little woman doing, for God’s sake?
The inspector shook her head.
‘They were both there yesterday – weren’t they, Gordon?’
Oh, dear God. Gordon looked helplessly at Pauline, then at the inspector. ‘I … I wouldn’t know,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Thank you anyway.’
‘Why do you want to know?’ Pauline asked.
There was a pause before she answered, and then it was evasive. ‘We think it may have been used in the commission of a crime,’ she said. ‘Thank you for your help.’
Pauline showed her to the door, then shut it, both hands on the eye-level knob, her forehead resting on them.
‘Pauline, I—’
‘Don’t say anything, please, Gordon.’
‘I have to! I can’t let you do this.’
She turned from the door. ‘I’ve done it,’ she said. ‘ We were here, together, from quarter past ten. And that thing was downstairs. All right?’
He shook his head. He didn’t understand about the ashtray, and he didn’t think he wanted to. ‘They’ll find out I wasn’t home at quarter past ten,’ he said. ‘Anyone could have seen me – I was probably driving badly, and—’
She walked up to him. ‘Then we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,’ she said, putting her arms up, clasping her hands behind his neck. ‘For the moment, that’s our story, and we’re sticking to it.’
Gordon licked dry tips. ‘Well both end up in prison,’ he said. She gave a quick shake of her head. ‘They have to prove it,’ she said, drawing him into a kiss.
Did you leave any evidence, old son? That’s the question.
The smell was the hardest thing to take, and would probably be the most difficult thing to eradicate. The damage, mainly smoke and water, was mostly cosmetic, except where the fire had started. but the office had certainly looked better before it caught light.
Mickey moved into the centre of the room, and looked round at the devastation. It could have swept through the whole floor; an open-plan office, there was nothing to stop the advance of a fire. But the sprinkler system had done its job, and the damage was limited to one small area. A potted plant, its leaves charred and thick with grime, sat defiantly on a wall unit.
Mickey walked over to it, and looked closely to see if it might survive its ordeal. He thought it just might.
‘Whose office is this?’ he asked.
‘Mrs Beale’s,’ said the factory manager.
Mickey’s back was to him; he carefully rearranged his expression into its previous professional blandness before turning back. The door of one cupboard was partially open, buckled by the heat at the seat of the fire. Mickey removed a pen from his inside pocket, and pushed it open further, inside were bottles and glasses; two unopened bottles of wine, one unopened bottle of gin, and mixers. On the floor, behind the open door, its glass darkened by names, lay a half full bottle of Scotch. A glass, cracked in two, lay on the floor in the middle of the room.
The flooring under the cupboard had been burned away in a semi-circle; elsewhere it was browned and distorted, but there it had burned away.
‘Looks as if it started here,’ said Mickey. ‘ It looks as though it must have been deliberate.’
‘It was deliberate, all right.’
‘Was it now?’ Mickey Drake was interrupted in his conversation with the factory manager by the fire officer. He held out his hand. ‘Sergeant Drake, Stansfield CID.’
‘Alarm cut,’ he said, giving Mickey’s hand a shake as perfunctory as his conversation. ‘ Sprinkler system’s on independent wiring. Came on, doused the flames before too much damage done, end of fire. Not discovered till morning.’
Mickey had to make an effort not to emulate the economy of speech. ‘Ex … good,’ he said, with a smile. ‘Would someone think that cutting the alarm would cut out the sprinklers too?’
The fire officer smiled. ‘Good question. Probably would. Wires terminate in a junction box in the basement, and that’s where they’ve been cut. If you follow the wiring as it looks to the naked eye, if you get my meaning, you’d think you’d got both. But if you look at the wiring diagram …’
To Mickey’s horror, he unfolded a sheet of paper. He couldn’t even follow the London Underground map, but his question had apparently been astute enough to qualify him as an aficionado of wiring systems. He nodded and tried to look intelligent. The upshot was that the wires parted company in the junction box, and that only someone involved in actually wiring up the system would have any reason to know that. And since whoever did it didn’t know that, it narrowed the field down to the rest of the civilised world.
‘Well, thank you very much,’ he said, and watched with relief as the fire officer went back about his duties. He turned back to the factory manager. ‘Right – I think perhaps if we could go to your office …’
‘I shouldn’t by rights be doing this,’ he said, as he reluctantly led the way. ‘But none of the directors has come in this morning.’
No, thought Mickey. There’s a good reason for that, as you are about to find out.
In the glass-panelled office, door closed, he told the manager why Mr Austin wasn’t in.
‘Oh, dear,’ he said. ‘ Oh, dear, dear. That’s dreadful – that’s unbelievable. Nice woman, Mrs Austin. I didn’t see her all that often, but she was always … oh, dear.’
Mickey took a deep breath, and told him why Mrs Beale had failed to discover the fire in her office for herself.
‘Dear God.’
No instant praise for the dead this time. Just stunned disbelief. Mickey allowed the man a moment or two to gather his thoughts. ‘I don’t know if you’re aware of the fact, but Mr and Mrs Beale live next door to Mr Pearce, so I shouldn’t expect him in too early, either.’
‘I wasn’t really expecting him in anyway,’ said the manager.
‘Oh?’ Mickey sat forward a little. ‘Why was that?’
‘Well – I think it’s all a bit hush-hush.’ He snorted. ‘A lot of things are, these days. Not like when it was just Gordon Pearce.’
Mickey smiled. ‘I don’t think hush-hush counts any more,’ he said.
‘No. Anyway, I don’t know what it was all about. It was just that Mr Austin—’ He broke off, and shook his head again. ‘Poor lass,’ he said. ‘ Do you know who—?’ He finished the sentence with another shake of his head.
‘No arrest has been made yet,’ said Mickey.
‘Well he came to me last night and said that Mrs Beale would be here on a more regular basis in future. She normally just comes in once or twice a week. And that if Mr Pearce wasn’t here today, I had to refer anything that cropped up on transport to her.’
Mickey nodded. ‘Transport – that’s Mr Pearce’s job, is it?’
‘Well – there used to be a transport manager, but now each of the directors is responsible overall for particular things. And the managing director is labour and transport. So that he’s on the spot if there are any major problems. The other directors just turn up for board meetings.’
‘Isn’t Mr Pearce an engineer?’
‘Yes, but that side of it hardly involves him now. He employs people who know more about what we’re doing here than he does himself. He got bogged down with running a company while techniques improved and production got slicker and faster, except here. When Austin came, he made a lot of changes. All for the better.’
‘Does that mean he sacked a lot of people?’
‘There was a rationalisation programme,’ said the manager.
‘He sacked a lot of people,’ repeated Mickey.
‘Yes, but you’re not suggesting that someone would … come on!’
Mickey shook his head. But someone had set fire to Rosemary Beale’s office, and someone had strangled Rosemary Beale. Someone was less than satisfied with something she had done. And the office suggested it was something she had done in her guise as an Austin-Pearce director rather than any other of her activities.
‘Anyway,’ said the manager. ‘It was Austin did that – not her. I don’t hold much brief for the woman. I’m sorry she died the way she did, but if half what I’ve heard is right, I’m not all that surprised. But she had nothing to do with the redundancies. That was all over with by the time she got involved.’
‘How many directors are there?’
‘Five – including Mrs Beale.’
‘Austin, Pearce, Mrs Beale and …?’
‘Fred Mullen and Charles Race.’
‘You’re not expecting them in, are you?’
The manager shook his head. ‘Though I’d better get on to them and tell them what’s happened,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell.’
Mickey sucked in his breath in sympathy. ‘It took me a long time to work out how to tell you,’ he said.
‘I’ll bet it did.’
Mickey was about to leave, and had lifted himself off the chair a fraction when he caught a look on the other man’s face. He sat down again.
‘It’s …’ he began, but looked at Mickey.
Mickey looked receptive, and he didn’t speak.
‘It’s not something I’d normally talk about,’ he went on. ‘I don’t encourage gossip, but you can’t stop it. And you can’t help hearing it, and you can’t help noticing things yourself.’
Mickey continued to look interested.
‘Men are worse gossips than women, you know,’ he said. ‘I know. I’ve worked in factories all my life – mostly with women. But men are worse.’ He leant forward, and lowered his voice, unnecessarily, since not only was the room soundproof, but there was absolutely no one in the vicinity; they were all working diligently at desks with green screens on them. ‘They reckon she only got on the board because she was sleeping with Austin,’ he said.
Mickey stared at him. ‘Rosemary Beale?’ he said, with a total lack of professional detachment. He knew the woman. She was a tart. Had been. Then Beale had employed her at one of his clubs, and she had married him, and become respectable. After a fashion. He didn’t know Jonathan Austin, but from what he’d seen of him, of his house, of his manner … it seemed inconceivable.
And yet it didn’t, now be came to think about it. In the last century, no one would have thought it at all odd. All the same, he argued with himself, it might not have surprised him so much if she had still been prying her trade. But she wasn’t. Still, it did explain why she was on the board. It didn’t, he thought, explain why she wanted to be.
‘That’s what I said. Someone like him and a woman like her? I thought they were talking rubbish, but then – well, you can’t deny what you see with your own eyes, can you?’
Mickey looked round the factory, with its glass partitions everywhere in the office area, and none at all in the production area, from what he had seen of it. A vast warehouse of a place, as unappealing inside as it was out, in his opinion. He could see clear to the other end of the room. Not the sort of place to conduct an illicit romance, he wouldn’t have thought.
‘What did you see with your own eyes?’ he asked.
‘Them. Whispering in corners. Taking long lunch hours – sitting in the car park for practically the whole afternoon. Once, I caught them behind a lorry.’
Mickey tried and failed to see Jonathan Austin being caught in a compromising position behind a lorry. But it wasn’t difficult to imagine Rosemary Beale in such circumstances, and if the man was involved with her, then she had presumably caused him to shed his inhibitions.
‘I mean, they weren’t doing anything … you know. Not then. But I’ve heard they had somewhere in Barton that they went to.’
‘And you think that this might have something to do with what’s been happening?’
‘Well – someone might resent it,’ said the factory manager, guardedly.
Pearce, thought Mickey. That had to be who the man was indicating. Pearce, being pushed out by Mrs Beale. He had seen Pearce briefly last night, when Judy Hill had been trying to contact her divisional DCI without success. Spoken to him. He hadn’t said much; his wife had answered for him, saying he was still half-smashed from his evening out.
As he walked back through the factory, he passed Rosemary Beale’s office, and stopped and looked. The fire officer was in there making notes; Mickey looked at the hole in the tiling, and the bottle at the door.
‘Can I have a word?’ he asked the fire officer.
‘Come in,’ said Jonathan to the handsome young man who stood at the door. ‘ You’re the one who brought me here yesterday, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sir. Sergeant Drake.’
‘You’re rather more formally dressed this afternoon.’ Drake looked a little embarrassed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘ I was caught a bit on the hop, I’m afraid.’
Jonathan offered him a chair, and sat down himself, reaching over for his cigarettes.
‘No, thanks,’ said Drake, to the proffered packet.
‘Are you a bachelor, Mr Drake?’ He looked a little surprised at the question. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well
– not really. Divorced.’
Jonathan lit his cigarette. ‘An occupational hazard, I believe.’
Drake nodded briefly.
Jonathan thought of his own, prolonged bachelor days. No one
to do your washing. Make your meals. He had got used to having
someone to do that.
‘Have you found him?’ he asked. ‘Is that why you’re here?’
‘Not yet, sir. We don’t know much about him.’
Jonathan flicked non-existent ash from his newly lit cigarette.
‘But you saw him,’ he said.
‘In the dark, sir. And I wasn’t really looking at him with a view
to recognising him again.’
‘Why not?’ demanded Jonathan. He was accosting my wife!’
Drake took a breath. ‘ Sir, I have to say that I got the impression
that … his attentions were not unwelcome.’
‘All I know about him is that she had an on-off sort of relationship
with him. He was too possessive.’
She had told him about this boyfriend when he was still just a
friend, someone who took her out occasionally, someone she
eventually felt that she could confide in.
‘She told me she was frightened of him,’ he said. ‘But presumably
she felt something for him once. She may have resumed the
relationship,’ he conceded, reluctantly. ‘I’m sorry for what I said,
I know it upset you. I’m sure you did all you could.’
‘There really was no reason for me to interfere with them,’ said
Drake. ‘And … there isn’t really any reason to suppose that he
was responsible for what happened.’
Jonathan frowned. ‘ Do you still believe I killed her?’ he asked,
his voice belying the emotion he felt.
‘Sir – the murder weapon. You say that you don’t possess an
ashtray like that.’
Jonathan shook his head.
‘Where could he have got it from?’
Jonathan stared at Drake. ‘Are you saying that someone went
there with the intention of killing Leonora?’
‘If the ashtray wasn’t there to start with, then—’
‘No one would want to kill her! It has to have been someone who lost control, just picked it up!’
‘But you say it isn’t yours, sir.’
It wasn’t. Jonathan had never seen it in his life before.
‘Is this your wife’s ring, sir?’ The sergeant handed him a small plastic bag.
Jonathan took it; through the plastic, he could read the inscription. ‘Yes,’ he said, but his voice had failed. He cleared his throat. ‘Yes. Where did you find it?’
Drake looked at him for a moment before he answered. ‘ In the ashtray, sir,’ he said, his voice expressionless.
‘But – but I …’ Jonathan stared at it.
Drake took it back from him. ‘Do you know how your wife’s ring came to be in there, sir?’
‘No.’
‘Mr Austin, do you know of anyone who might have a grudge against you?’
‘A grudge? No one would kill my wife because of a grudge! Is that what you came here to ask me?’
‘No, sir. I’ve just been to your factory. There’s been a fire there.’
Jonathan’s mouth fell open. ‘What?’ he said. Perhaps it was a dream. His conscience playing tricks on him. ‘How bad? Should I be there?’
‘Not too much damage,’ said Drake. ‘ Your factory manager is there, and Mr Pearce is being informed. I don’t think there’s any need for you to be there unless you want to.’
‘How did it start?’ Jonathan tried not to think of avenging angels and acts of God, because that wasn’t rational, and he must remain rational, whatever was going on.
‘It was deliberate, Mr Austin.’
Deliberate. No avenging angel, then. An avenging person.
‘It started in Mrs Beale’s office,’ the sergeant went on. ‘The damage was confined to that room.’ He cleared his throat. ‘When I was there, I became aware of rumours concerning you and Mrs Beale.’
Jonathan closed his eyes. Gordon had said that. Last night – my God, was it only last night?
‘Are they true?’
‘No.’ He stubbed out his cigarette.
The young man stood up. ‘It’s very warm in here,’ he said. ‘Do you mind if I take my jacket off?’
Polite. Unusually so, in Jonathan’s experience. He shrugged his indifference, and the sergeant took off the jacket, revealing a short-sleeved shirt, which looked odd with the tie. It must have seemed odd to him too; he pulled the tie loose, and put it in his jacket pocket. His arms were already tanned; he unbuttoned the button at the neck of the shirt, and sat down again. He was well built, well muscled. These loose running tops disguised body shape.
‘The thing is,’ Sergeant Drake said, his manner changing slightly with the removal of the formal trappings, ‘it doesn’t really matter whether or not it was true. What matters is that people believe it.’
‘And you think all these things have happened just because someone dislikes me?’
‘I know it sounds a bit unlikely,’ said Drake.
‘It sounds very unlikely. Why wouldn’t whoever it was just kill me and be done with it?’
Drake shrugged. ‘We’re talking about a psychopath,’ he said.
‘Is that official thinking?’
‘We’re keeping an open mind, sir.’ Drake’s eyes were half shut against the sunlight streaming in the window; he held his hand over his eyes.
‘I’ll close the blinds,’ said Jonathan.
He looked down at the busy shopping street, pedestrianised before its time, and a victim of such forward thinking. It looked old-fashioned now, and people went to more up-to-date shopping centres at the weekends. But during the week, it still bustled. Black London cabs formed a constantly moving U-shape at the hotel end of the street, where the pedestrian area met the ring roads. A queue of people formed and reformed. Others stood at the bus-stops. It was an odd mixture, Stansfield. Classless: buses, taxis, private cars – you travelled in the way that suited, not in a way dictated by your circumstances. Leonora liked to use her car. He could have gone to collect it for her when she asked. He could have. And if he had, then …
He remembered why he was at the window, and let down the blind, turning to check that he had remedied Mr Drake’s problem. The chair in which he had sat was no longer in the sun’s glare, but Drake wasn’t in it. He stood, looking at the painting on the wall, lost in thoughts of his own, his hands in the back pockets of his trousers.
‘That’s one of Leonora’s,’ said Jonathan. ‘The hotel bought quite a few.’
‘Restful,’ said the sergeant.
Jonathan could see a strip of sweat down the back of his shirt.
‘Would you like a cold drink?’ he asked, opening the fridge.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll have orange juice, if there is some.’
Jonathan poured him his drink. ‘So what is the official thinking?’ he asked, handing it to him as he resumed his seat.
The sergeant hesitated before he spoke, then took Jonathan into his confidence. ‘ One possibility is that your wife may have overheard something on the phone – something that put Mrs Beale’s killer at risk. We think it’s possible that the fire in Mrs Beale’s office was to destroy some sort of evidence.’
Jonathan sat down on the bed.
‘So we’re looking at the possibility of an Austin-Pearce connection.’
‘And I’m it?’
‘Were you having an affair with Mrs Beale, sir? You do understand that I have to know, if I’m going to get anywhere with the investigation.’
The very idea. Jonathan shook his head.
‘But you were in the habit of spending long periods of time with her alone?’
Jonathan turned to look at him. ‘You and I,’ he said steadily, ‘have spent a long period of time in my hotel room. Alone. You have even removed some of your clothes. What construction would
you put on that, Mr Drake?’
He saw the muscles tense just a little, for just a moment, then
the young man relaxed, and smiled. ‘Point taken,’ he said.
‘We had confidential business to discuss,’ said Jonathan.
‘Would that have concerned Mr Pearce?’
It was Jonathan’s turn to tense up. ‘Amongst others,’ he said.
‘You said that your meeting with Mr Pearce was going to be
difficult. Why?’
Jonathan didn’t want to tell him what had happened at their
meeting. It was ridiculous. Their theory was ridiculous. ‘ I had to
ask him to resign from the board,’ he said.
‘And how did he take that?’
He would have to tell him. Gordon’s bewildered anger, his
accusations …
But Gordon would never have harmed a hair on Leonora’s head.
Never. He couldn’t let them suspect Gordon. He didn’t have to tell
them everything.
He lit another cigarette.
‘Not very well,’ he said.
‘How did you get on?’ asked Judy, as Bob Sandwell emerged from the flats, and they walked to his car.
‘I didn’t. No one saw anything unusual, no one heard anything unusual. They all did the usual things at the usual times – this must be the most usual place in the universe.’
Judy smiled. ‘ Well, it is. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ sighed Sandwell. ‘Well, it was.’ He looked at her. ‘You look all in,’ he said. ‘You should go home and get some sleep.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘ But we have to go to Stansfield. Mr Allison wants a meeting, going on the assumption that all these incidents are connected.’
Sandwell started the car. ‘After that you should go home,’ he said.
‘I feel all right,’ she said. ‘ But I didn’t really get any sleep the night before last either – I was a bit keyed up about starting this job.’ She put her notebook, for once not used, into her handbag. ‘Where nothing ever happens,’ she added.
Sandwell smiled.
‘Anyway – did you believe all your usual people?’
‘Yes,’ said Sandwell, a little hopelessly. ‘I don’t think any of them knew anything was going on at all.’
‘I’m not so sure about the Pearces,’ said Judy.
Sandwell raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you think one of them’s lying?’ he asked.
‘Oh, Bob, I think we were all lying,’ she said. ‘I hated not telling them about Mrs Austin. They say the ashtray was there yesterday.’
Detective Chief Superintendent Allison had told her she must interview them without reference to the other murder, but to find out about the ashtray; obviously the thinking was that Pearce was involved. But she still felt a nagging doubt about that phone-call.
‘Beale’s going back to his own flat today,’ said Sandwell.
Judy wasn’t looking forward to that. Beale, she had discovered, had been in, of all places, Malworth police station when someone was strangling his wife. There had been trouble at the Riverside Inn, and he and the man with whom he had been fighting had both been taken in to cool off. Rosemary Beale had walked home alone.
Beale had taken the news with apparent stoicism, but Judy knew his reputation well enough to know that that was for show. On being released from custody he had spent the rest of the night with friends, and she hadn’t bothered him with questions. But the incident at the Riverside Inn was odd, for two reasons. One, it wasn’t the sort of pub which had incidents of any sort and two, if Frank Beale had trouble, he had lots of very unsavoury characters to cause it for him. He very rarely caused it himself. Except where Rosemary was concerned. He was jealous of Rosemary, and had reason to be, according to Sandwell. But she had to be careful; Frank held the purse-strings, and Rosemary knew which side her bread was buttered. So was the trouble about Rosemary? And had she really walked home alone?
‘I’ll have to talk to him,’ said Judy. ‘ But I want to have a word with Mr Pearce first. Without his wife’s ventriloquist act.’
‘So much for getting some sleep,’ said Sandwell.
Lloyd and Allison were deep in conversation when they got to the station. Judy’s own divisional DCI was on holiday; she had rung his deputy last night to discover that he had been taken to hospital that afternoon, having been inconsiderate enough to fall off a ladder and break his leg. And the connection between the two murders was obvious; it all combined to put her in a very awkward position.
Judy hadn’t seen the extension since it had been brought into use, and they all took a few moments off to discuss the merits and demerits, and the smell of paint. It seemed quite pleasing at first, then just made you want to run as the midday sunshine warmed it up.
Lloyd opened all the windows wide, and ordered coffee.
‘All right,’ Allison said, when they were settled with their coffee. ‘Facts. Yesterday Mr Austin invited his wife to come home and cook a meal for him and Mr Pearce, in which enterprise Mrs Austin was assisted by Mr Beale, who gave her a lift home in his Rolls.’
Drake stirred his coffee thoughtfully, a slight frown suggesting that he was pursuing thoughts of his own.
‘Sergeant Drake here saw Mrs Austin with a man shortly before she died, at eleven thirty. Mrs Beale died some time between approximately eleven p.m. and one a.m. and an arson attempt has been made on the Austin-Pearce factory, of which company Mrs Beale is a director.’
Why? Judy wondered if Beale could throw any light on Rosemary’s sudden interest in engineering.
‘Mrs Beale was apparently strangled while making a phone-call to the Austin house,’ Allison went on, ‘and so far we do not know at what time that call was made or to which of the occupants. Mr Austin denies receiving any call from Mrs Beale or anyone else at any time during the evening. Mrs Austin was hit with a heavy metal ashtray, and Mr Austin denies knowledge of any such object. Mrs Austin’s wedding ring was found inside the ashtray. An exactly similar ashtray is in the lobby of Andwell House, where the Beales have their flat.’
Judy told them her findings on that, such as they were, and Allison sat down.
‘Any suggestions?’ he said, with more than a hint of humour.
‘Someone with a grudge against the company, sir?’ said Sandwell.
Lloyd moved his head from side to side in a gesture which indicated that he wasn’t happy with that suggestion. ‘It might explain – at a push – the factory fire and Mrs Beale’s death, sir,’ he said. ‘But a director’s wife seems, a bit over the top, even for a homicidal maniac.’
‘Wholesale insurance claim,’ Judy ventured, not entirely seriously, but not entirely facetiously.
‘Ah,’ said Allison. ‘Another fact Mr Austin is not what you would call short of money. In fact – he’s rolling in it.’
Lloyd frowned. ‘ Why does he live in the Mitchell Estate flats?’
‘I thought the Mitchell Estate was quite middle-class these days,’ said Sandwell. ‘And it was always quite a nice area.’
‘Still is,’ said Lloyd. ‘But it’s very ordinary.’ He smiled. ‘Let’s face it, I could afford to buy one of those flats.’
‘Man of the people,’ said Judy.
‘Probably,’ said Allison. ‘I met him at a council dinner the other night. When I broached the subject – out of sheer nosiness, I admit – he said that he had his eye on a property outside Stansfield, which he intends to buy when it comes on the market. Which, as far as I can gather, will be when the old lady who currently owns it has the decency to fall off her perch.’
‘Anyone checked that she hasn’t, sir?’ asked Sandwell ‘Perhaps he was having a clear-out.’
They all laughed, even Judy. Laughter was one way to deal with it.
‘Grudge against Austin, sir,’ said Drake. ‘I’m told that he and Rosemary Beale were thought to be having a fling. So he would deny getting a call from her, wouldn’t he?’
Judy stared at him. ‘ Jonathan Austin and Rosemary Beale?’ she repeated, incredulously.
He smiled. ‘That’s the story. The factory manager reckons he caught them behind a lorry. I checked, to make sure the man wasn’t subject to delusions, and it is definitely a firm belief in the factory. He has denied it, of course, and I—’ He changed his mind about what he was going to say, and shrugged. ‘A hundred years ago it was practically the done thing for men like Austin, of course,’ he said.
Judy frowned. True. And Lennie had always said that he was like a Victorian. But Victorian women weren’t exactly encouraged to be hot stuff between the sheets, and if a man wanted a bit of excitement, he had to have a woman of rather easier virtue than his wife. If anything, from what Judy had gathered from the always frank Lennie, her problem was the other way round.
‘I rather got the impression that Austin wasn’t that interested,’ she said.
‘Probably didn’t have any energy left after his sessions behind the lorries with Mrs Beale,’ said Lloyd.
Allison smiled. ‘Before this conversation plumbs even greater depths,’ he said, ‘I’m not really concerned with motive. People get murdered for the most trivial of reasons. I’m assuming we all agree that the murders are connected. I’d like suggestions as to how. Other than by a telephone line.’
‘Well, sir,’ said Sandwell. ‘ It occurred to Sergeant Drake and I that as Mrs Beale seems to have been strangled while she was actually making the call, the killer might have known who the call was to, and think that he’d given himself away somehow.’
Judy suppressed a smile as Lloyd smothered a correction of the serious Sandwell’s grammar.
‘It’s only ten minutes from those flats to the Austins’ flat,’ he went on. ‘ Less, if you put your foot down, and I expect he would. And if he was looking for a likely weapon – he could have picked up one of the ashtrays on his way out.’
Lloyd tipped his chair back on to its back legs as he thought. Then he let it fall forward. ‘ How did Mrs Austin’s wedding ring end up in it?’ he asked.
Sandwell looked a little shy.
‘Sorry, Bob,’ said Lloyd, with a smile. ‘I do think that’s worth pursuing, myself. We’ll find out in the end how Mrs Austin’s ring ended up in there, I’m sure. It’s just a little puzzle that has to be solved. It may already have been in—’ He broke off. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘We’ll work on it, anyway.’
‘Pearce was being kicked out,’ said Drake. ‘He blames Mrs Beale.’
‘He’d been drinking,’ said Judy. ‘Heavily. Enough to pass out His wife insists he was home by ten fifteen, but I’m not at all sure she isn’t covering for him.’ She looked at Allison. ‘I think Pearce is very frightened,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to him again.’
Lloyd, she thought to herself, had that look on his face; he had some way-out idea that he wouldn’t voice in front of Allison. In fact, she had the uneasy feeling that no one was voicing their ideas. Drake had changed his mind about something that he was going to say; Lloyd clearly had some notion about Lennie, and Jonathan Austin still bothered her. But rather like judging a talent contest, everyone’s second choice won. Gordon Pearce.
Allison left, and Bob Sandwell went back to Malworth to see what forensics were making of Lennie’s studio and the Beales’ flat. Drake went back to the paperwork that so mystified Lloyd.
‘If you could give me a moment, Inspector,’ said Lloyd, as the other two left the room.
The door closed, and she waited expectantly.
‘I thought maybe we could have some lunch,’ he said.
She looked at the clock.
‘That’s what Mr Pearce will be doing, so you might as well,’ Lloyd said.
‘Well – just something in the canteen,’ she said. ‘I want to get on, Lloyd.’
‘The canteen it is.’ He frowned. ‘You look very tired,’ he said. If one more person told her she looked tired, she would scream.
‘Haven’t you been home at all?’ he asked.
‘No, I have not.’
‘I got a couple of hours this morning,’ he said.
‘Oh, good.’
Someone came in then, with a message to the effect that Mrs Austin’s car had been discovered where it had been left, at the rear of the garage. Drake was dispatched by Lloyd to find out what he could.
‘So Austin lied,’ said Judy.
‘Not necessarily,’ said Lloyd. ‘She might have been at the studio, remember. The light was on.’
‘Why would she put the car back in the garage?’ asked Judy.
‘If she was meeting this man, and didn’t want her husband to know she’d had the car,’ he said, with a shrug.
‘That’s not like her,’ Judy said.
‘Well – whatever. I’m not sure that Mrs Austin’s car has got much to do with it,’ he said.
‘Oh, come on, Lloyd,’ said Judy. ‘Austin says it wasn’t there. Either he’s lying – in which case, why? – or it wasn’t, which is a bit strange. And the wedding ring suggests that the ashtray was in his house while he and his wife were having some sort of row, doesn’t it?’
Lloyd nodded. ‘All true,’ he said. ‘And I did find Mr Austin a little too eager for us to find out what his wife was doing. Perhaps he knew only too well.’
Judy frowned. He was still being mysterious, but she knew him well enough by now not to try to press him. ‘Let’s go to lunch,’ she said, with a sigh.
They walked through unfamiliar corridors to the old building, and joined the short queue in the canteen, chose their meals, and sat down.
Lloyd picked up his knife and fork. ‘If this is difficult for you, Allison could put someone else on to it,’ he said.
‘What? Eating my lunch?’
He smiled. ‘All right. But I insist that you do not think about any of this until you’ve finished eating.’
‘Then you’d better talk to me.’
‘What about?’
‘Go on with your romantic story of how come your grandmother was French,’ she said. She was still none too sure that any of it was true. ‘Even if it’s just another cock and bull story,’ she added, to be on the safe side.
‘Une histoire de le coq et le taureau? Mais, non.’ Lloyd shook his head sadly. ‘This shows a distressing lack of trust,’ he said.
‘Taureau-merde,’ said Judy.
Lloyd laughed. ‘ Do you want to hear the story or not?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Judy tried to assess the expression on his face, but it was useless. He could make anyone believe or disbelieve anything.
‘It’s true. Ring my father if you don’t believe me. Ask him.’
‘Go on, then.’
‘Right.’ He smiled. ‘Granda Pritchard – Ifor Pritchard, to give him his full name – was in France during the First World War. He met my grandmother – who was eighteen …’
‘I heard a siren,’ said Judy.
Lloyd blinked. ‘What?’
‘I heard a siren. A police siren, when Jonathan Austin was talking to me on the phone.’
‘You’re supposed to be listening to my story!’
‘I was. It was when you said war. I always think of sirens when anyone says war. And that reminded me. I think we should check who was on an emergency call up there, don’t you?’
‘I’ll get Drake to check,’ he said, wearily. ‘That should suit you. He’s obsessive, too.’
‘I’m not obsessive,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t like that call.’
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘I know. I’m not overlooking that, believe me.’
Judy smiled and yawned at the same time. It wasn’t easy.
‘Why haven’t you had any sleep?’ Lloyd demanded.
‘Freddie had gone home, hadn’t he? And he didn’t get to the Beales’ flat until five o’clock in the morning. Meanwhile, I’ve got people looking for Beale when all the time he’s in my own station. There’s efficiency for you. Freddie didn’t leave until seven – two hours non-stop graveyard humour – by which time the neighbours were stirring, so I had to talk to them.’ She looked at her watch.
‘You should go home,’ said Lloyd.
‘I am going home – to fetch my car. Then I’m going back to talk to Pearce again. And Beale – I want to know what the trouble was about at the Riverside.’
‘I’d rather like to see Mr Beale,’ said Lloyd. ‘I’ll meet you at Andwell House.’
Beale was her business, she thought. But she didn’t say it.
‘Fine,’ she said, with a short sigh. ‘See you later.’
It made no sense. Pauline let soapy water trickle through her fingers, the bath water growing cool as she lay back, and tried to believe what Gordon had told her. Lennie was dead, he had said. Jonathan had rung him. He had rung Pauline first, looking for Gordon; getting a call from him had been the first shock.
He had just said he would ring Gordon at work. Gordon said that Jonathan just hadn’t known how to tell her; he always felt more comfortable talking to another man about things he found difficult.
Dead. Lively, talkative, talented Lennie. Dead. She would never see her again. Never feel a little wistful at the ease with which she collected suitors; never feel a little resentful of her hold over Gordon’s emotions. Though that seemed to have gone, last night.
She shivered. Because the water was getting cold. She would have to get out of the bath. The news had stunned her; everything she did was something she had to plan for. Stand up, step out of the bath. Remove the plug. Dry yourself.
It had gone.
She hadn’t discussed it with her doctor, but she had had her own opinion about her lack of desire for Gordon. Perhaps, she had thought, she had simply grown tired of being a substitute. Perhaps, though she had accepted it, she had really objected to Gordon’s emotional commitment to another woman. And once he had fulfilled his role as mate, once she was pregnant, she no longer wanted to perform this understudy role. Because she had something else in her life now, and she didn’t need to keep offering Gordon something that he only wanted because he couldn’t have Lennie. Because she loved Gordon, and she wanted him to love her.
Last night, when he had come in, she had known that that barrier had gone. Lennie’s spell, cast unwittingly, had been broken. And Lennie was dead. But Gordon couldn’t have known that.
She shivered again, and dressed quickly. Coincidence, she told herself. Nothing but coincidence. Or maybe even, if the attraction was strong enough, a sixth sense, telling Gordon that he was free. She went into the bedroom, and put on a dash of make-up. She would be consulting palmists and tarot cards next, she told herself crossly. It was a coincidence. Gordon didn’t know that she was dead, paranormally or otherwise. All that had happened was that seeing him, hurt and angry, needing her more than he needed some idealised fantasy of Lennie, had brought back her normal feelings towards him, that was all it was.
But it still didn’t make sense. It was Lennie. It was Lennie. Jonathan, she had thought. It couldn’t have been Lennie, because she wasn’t there. But it had been. She had been there, and she was dead, and none of it made any sense.
But whether or not it made sense to Pauline, the police would be bound to connect the two deaths, and Gordon wasn’t strong enough to withstand the sort of intense questioning that that would entail. If only he hadn’t woken up.
The entry phone buzzed, making her jump. She touched the switch, and sighed. ‘ Come in,’ she said, pressing the button to admit DI Hill. Gordon wasn’t strong enough, but she was.
She unlocked the door, and a few moments later, DI Hill was knocking and coming in.
‘Sorry to bother you again, Mrs Pearce. Is Mr Pearce here?’
‘Did you know Lennie Austin was dead when you came here this morning?’ demanded Pauline, not answering her question. Attack is the best method of defence, she told herself.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘We were friends of hers!’
‘So was I, Mrs Pearce. That’s the only reason I knew. I didn’t know officially, and I was asked not to make it known to you.’
‘Lennie’s officially dead, though!’
‘Yes.’
She looked at DI Hill. About her own age, well-dressed. Attractive. A little weary-looking now, not surprisingly. Lennie’s friends were a complete cross-section of society, from unemployable layabouts to captains of industry. They rarely met one another; on the few occasions they did, they rarely got along. But Pauline could imagine getting along with DI Hill.
‘Please sit down,’ she said. ‘ I’m sorry. I’ve only just heard, and I’m still trying to take it in. What should I call you?’ she asked, as she sat down.
‘My name’s Judy Hill,’ she said. ‘Judy, Mrs Hill, Inspector – take your pick.’
‘So why are you here again?’
‘I had hoped to have a word with your husband,’ she said, taking out her notebook.
‘He’s gone into work. There was a fire there.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why did you want to see Gordon?’
But the inspector chose to ignore her question this time. ‘I know you said that you didn’t know much about your neighbours,’ she said. ‘But I wondered if you knew anything about the comings and goings from the Beales’ flat. Men, in particular.’
‘I never saw Jonathan there, if that’s what you want to know,’ said Pauline. ‘I think he’s only been here once, when Gordon brought him to see the flat.’
‘So you’ve heard the rumours?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Do you think they’re true?’
‘Probably. I can imagine Rosemary Beale might be the kind of woman Jonathan could relax with. Let his hair down a bit.’
‘And Mrs Austin wasn’t?’
‘No. She was too complex. Too much her own woman. She married Jonathan for his money, nothing else.’ She saw Judy Hill’s face, and smiled. ‘I’m not being bitchy,’ she said. ‘ It’s just a fact, I liked Lennie. I liked her very much. I’ve known her a long time. And Jonathan just isn’t her kind of man. They were putting on an act for each other. I can believe that Rosemary Beale would offer him a release from that.’
‘You seem certain that he was seeing her.’
Pauline raised her eyebrows. ‘Gordon found them in the cab of one of the artics,’ she said. ‘Would you believe they said they were seeing if the design could be improved?’
The inspector smiled a little sadly as she wrote something in her notebook. ‘Do you think Mrs Austin knew?’ she asked.
‘No. Why do you call her Mrs Austin all the time? I thought you were a friend of hers?’
‘I was. That’s why I call her Mrs Austin.’ She looked upset.
Pauline flushed slightly. ‘Sorry. I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘What happened to Lennie?’
‘Someone hit her.’
With the ashtray that was thought to have been used in the commission of another crime, thought Pauline.
‘Strictly speaking, my investigation is into Mrs Beale’s death. We have to have separate investigations, even if we think there is a connection between the two. Which we do.’
They would. But there couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. But it was; it had happened.
‘Was Mrs Beale involved with any other men, do you know?’
Pauline shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t know. People who know her better always give you that impression of her.’
‘And Mrs Austin?’
‘Oh, well – Lennie had men coming out of her ears until she married Jonathan. But she didn’t see any of them afterwards, I’m sure of that.’
‘There is talk of an old boyfriend turning up,’ said Judy. ‘And she was seen with a man last night, at about ten past eleven.’
Pauline stiffened. ‘Lennie?’ she said.
‘Mrs Pearce, do you have any idea who that might have been? Had she spoken to you about anyone?’
My God, that had never entered her head. The studio. Was that what was going on when she heard the noise? Lennie with Steve?
‘Mrs Pearce?’
‘Pauline. Please call me Pauline.’
‘She did mention someone, didn’t she?’
She had said she wouldn’t dream of having anything to do with him again. He was worthless. Immoral. Unreliable. Protesting too much? And it still didn’t make sense.
‘I thought that wasn’t your investigation?’
‘I’m not sure where my investigation leaves off and the other one begins,’ she said. ‘Did she mention someone to you?’
She couldn’t tell her about the studio. Not after lying this morning. But she had to tell her what she knew.
‘Yes. Someone she used to live with.’
‘Live with?’
‘Oh, not officially. I mean, I don’t think you’ll find him on any electoral register or anything. But he was with her at her old flat.’
‘Do you know this man?’
‘I never met him. She knew I wouldn’t approve.’
‘Oh?’
‘You’ll have him on your files, I expect. He went to prison. Drugs. Something to do with drugs.’ She got up and went to the window, without thinking. Looking down at the studio. She had been wrong about that. But she couldn’t sort it out. ‘About a year after that she married Jonathan.’
‘You haven’t given me his name, Mrs Pearce.’
‘Steve,’ she said. ‘Steve Tasker. He’s just got out – about two months ago. He’d seen her a couple of times. Talked to her, chatted her up. She told me she wasn’t going to have anything to do with him. He’d messed her life up once, and he wasn’t doing it again. She wouldn’t do that to Jonathan.’
Now that she was repeating Lennie’s words, she realised what an argument Lennie had been having with herself. But she hadn’t at the time.
The inspector stood up. ‘Thank you, Mrs Pearce,’ she said. ‘You’ve been more than helpful.’ She turned to go and turned back. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Mrs Pearce?’ she asked.
Pauline had stood up to see the inspector to the door; she sank down again. She had pulled that trick this morning. Made it look as though she was going, let the tension drain away, then asked what she really wanted to know.
‘Mrs Pearce?’ Inspector Hill sat down too, and looked as though she would stay all day, wait all day, for an answer.
Pauline closed her eyes. ‘ I heard something,’ she said. ‘A noise – something. Someone …’ She tried to hear it again. ‘Someone trying the studio door,’ she said. ‘Or going in there.’
‘What time was this?’
She was writing it all down. She had written everything down. Now she would write down a lie. Another lie.
‘About quarter of an hour before Gordon came in.’
‘So that would be … around ten o’clock?’
Pauline looked her straight in the eye. ‘Yes,’ she said. Greenwich Mean Time, she told herself. It wasn’t a lie. Not really.
The inspector closed the notebook. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that this morning?’ she asked.
‘Because …’ Pauline looked away, now that she was telling the truth. ‘Because until you reminded me about Steve, I thought – I thought Gordon had been with her.’
Last night, she had thought all sorts of things. Gordon had been with her, and she had repulsed him. Or she hadn’t, and it hadn’t lived up to the fantasy. All sorts of reasons for his no longer being under her spell.
There was a silence. A terrible, eloquent silence that she was going to have to fill by explaining to this woman why she thought Gordon might have been with her.
But Lennie was dead, and it still made no sense.
Steve lay on the bed, thinking about Lennie, and waiting for Rosemary to ring. But she didn’t appear to require his services today, and Mrs Sweeney didn’t run to showers, cold or otherwise, so he just had to live with the ache. Rosemary would have been better than nothing. He had realised as dawn had crept into his room that he couldn’t go to Lennie’s studio with Rosemary’s flat right above it; he had tried to ring her, but a man had answered, and he had hung up.
Normally, he’d be glad of a day off from Rosemary. The job side was boring. Rosemary checked up on Beale’s various enterprises, and those left in charge of them. He would sit outside the seedy establishments, waiting for her, and watch the doormen check the customers’ club cards, almost openly contemptuous of them. He would see them come – on foot, always on foot, with their cars parked anonymously in one of the city centre car parks – looking round furtively in case someone they knew spotted them. But if they had seen anyone they knew, he would have been going about the same shady business, so what the hell?
He smiled. Rosemary had read that someone was trying to get it legalised. She had had a fit. Legalising it wouldn’t make it acceptable. She preferred things the way they were. Her husband ran clubs, where the tired businessman could relax to live entertainment, and buy expensive drinks. If people suspected that the rooms upstairs were probably put to some less visible use, that was fine. But they mustn’t know. That way she could keep what she imagined was her respectability. Massage parlours, health studios, gymnasia – she was very strong on the Latin plural, was Rosemary – even a nice detached house in suburbia. Business ventures. Beale (Brothels) Ltd just wasn’t the sort of business venture she wanted people to know for a fact she was in. She saw it as a social service. They just wanted their ration of whatever sort of thing they went in for, then it would be back on with their business suits and off home to the missus, who presumably did not go in for that sort of thing.
The other side of it, keeping Rosemary amused, was, if anything, becoming even more boring. And last night, with Lennie, he had discovered his self-respect. He was no better than the girls Beale employed to revive the tired businessmen; it wasn’t even his prowess that qualified him for the job. It was simply his proximity, and the trust that Beale had mistakenly placed in him.
He thumbed through a girlie magazine as he lay there, waiting for the phone to ring, but the combination of thoughts of Lennie and the girlie magazine weren’t doing him any good; he pulled a car magazine over the table and looked through it instead.
Now, he could imagine driving one of them. Unlike one of Rosemary’s newly acquired lorries. He’d got an HGV licence; he had mistakenly told her that, and he was being targeted. She would make sure he got the job.
Thanks a lot, Rosemary. Driving through every kind of weather condition imaginable from foggy motorways to desert roads, harried by customs officials and police, never getting any sleep. Trying to communicate with excitable foreigners who couldn’t speak English. Rolling on and off ferries, getting stuck in jams at the docks. Getting caught in some outlandish country and hanged.
Still it paid well, Very well. He might even be able to afford one of these jobs. Right now, he couldn’t afford a fifteen-year-old van. He’d looked at it the other day; almost bought it. But he’d have had to have got the money from Rosemary, so he didn’t. Was that the beginning of his self-respect asserting itself?
He wished he had bought it now. If he’d had a van last night, Lennie would have been in it with him, no danger.
He looked up as a shadow fell across the window, blocking the bright sunlight, and heard the doorbell ring. He didn’t pay much attention, until Mrs Sweeney knocked on his door.
‘Mr Tasker,’ she said, disapproval in every line of her face, ‘there are two gentlemen to see you.’
The problem was, as ever, producing enough evidence to give the lie to what had been said. On his way to Malworth, Lloyd perceived that one possibility was to arrange for a reconstruction of Mrs Beale’s walk home from the Riverside Inn. He stopped at the traffic lights just before the bridge, waiting to turn left along the river bank, and looked at the terrain.
There would have been some traffic and people on the main road which crossed the river; the pub had been about to close. But her walk alongside the river would have been lonely. A children’s play park on one side, closed shops and studios on the other. Someone sitting unnecessarily at the traffic lights, with nothing to do but wait for them to change, may have seen something: a car, another pedestrian, someone hanging about by the river, or in the phone-box. A reconstruction, a woman walking home alone late in the evening, might just jog someone’s memory.
He pulled into the parking area, and pressed the pad beneath Beale’s name.
‘Yes?’
‘DCI Lloyd, Stansfield, Mr Beale.’ Lloyd looked into the eye of the camera. ‘I’m enquiring into the death of Mrs Leonora Austin.’
‘What’s that got to do with me?’
‘Nothing, sir. But we think she may have been in this area last night’
‘My wife was killed last night!’
Lloyd nodded. ‘I know, sir. I’m very sorry. We think the two deaths may be connected.’
It was odd, talking to a camera and having a wall answer. Lloyd rather wished he had been around in the days of hansom cabs and Sherlock Holmes. He could have called the Great Detective in, and gone to the south of France with Judy while he sorted it all out.
‘Come up,’ said Beale, and the door buzzed, and clicked. The Great Detective would have had his work cut out getting into the bloody building, never mind sorting out what had gone on there.
Lloyd saw what Judy meant about the reception area. She was sitting amid the potted plants, smoking.
‘I’ve been listening to some interesting stuff,’ she said.
Lloyd listened to a potted version of her talk with Mrs Pearce. ‘Shouldn’t be too hard to trace Tasker,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t just hash if he’s only just got out of prison.’
‘I’ve put the wheels in motion,’ she said. ‘But I don’t have a description – it might not have been him that Mickey saw.’
‘Surely Mrs Pearce knows what he looks like?’
‘She says she never met him. I think she’s quite strait-laced – she said Mrs Austin knew that she wouldn’t have approved. She stopped seeing her altogether after Tasker was arrested, because every time she went round there there was a police car outside, and she didn’t want to get involved in that sort of thing.’ She smiled tiredly. ‘She’s involved with us now whether she likes it or not,’ she said.
‘So she disapproved of Mrs Austin’s lifestyle,’ said Lloyd thoughtfully. ‘ But her husband fancied her?’
‘So she says. He’d known her practically all her life – Pauline thinks he only married her because Jonathan Austin got the first prize.’
Lloyd sat down. ‘ That doesn’t sound too healthy,’ he said.
‘No. And I’m not keen on Tasker, despite his pedigree.’
‘Why not? Drake’s had him down for it all along. If it was him he saw, which seems more than likely.’
‘She had a lot of ex-boyfriends,’ warned Judy.
‘Did you ever meet any of them?’
‘No,’ said Judy. ‘She was just about to marry Austin when I met her.’ She paused. ‘ I’m not happy about him, Lloyd.’
‘I know. But why would he tell us he’d gone for the car if he hadn’t?’
‘Because he didn’t want us to know where he had been, and that was the first thing that came into his head. He said it wasn’t there because he had to explain why he hadn’t got it.’
He looked at her. ‘You are getting like him,’ he said.
‘Who?’
‘Drake. He’s an obsessive. He’s at the station now, going through piles of paperwork instead of going home.’
‘I’m not obsessed! Neither is he – he’s just trying to make up for showing himself up last night. And he likes his desk to be as clear as possible. You’re the only one who likes it piled to the sky with rubbish.’
‘He might not be obsessive, but you are. Don’t keep trying to prove it was Austin, Judy. It may have been, but it may not. You’ll blind yourself to all the other possibilities.’
‘Jonathan Austin is deadly serious, Lloyd. He intends to be prime minister one day, believe me he does. Anything that endangers that could make him angry enough – frightened enough – to kill without even thinking of the consequences.’
Lloyd stood up. ‘Speculation isn’t a very good idea,’ he said, seeing the irritation sweeping over Judy’s face as he spoke. ‘Let’s go and talk to Beale.’
Frank Beale was waiting at the door; Lloyd apologised for the delay.
‘Do you feel up to a few questions?’ Judy asked.
‘I don’t see how I can help you,’ he said. ‘I was in the police station all night.’
‘Yes, I know, Mr Beale,’ said Judy. ‘I’d like to know about the trouble at the Riverside Inn.’
His mouth opened. ‘My wife gets murdered, and you want to ask me about a bit of a fight in a pub?’ he said.
‘No, Mr Beale. I want to know if your wife was involved in that in any way.’
He subsided. ‘Oh, I see. Yes – well, not involved in the fight, you understand. But someone insulted her.’
‘The man who was taken into custody with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Something about her playing a home match. Meaning she was in the habit of playing away from home,’ said Beale.
‘Was she?’
Beale’s face grew dark. ‘No,’ he said.
‘And what did your wife do when you made a fuss?’
‘She said she was going home. Legged it’
‘What time was this?’
‘Just after the police arrived, I think. Once she knew they were involved, anyway.’
He hardly seemed to have noticed that she had been strangled; Lloyd took the same hard line.
‘We’ve heard rumours, Mr Beale,’ he said. ‘About your wife and Jonathan Austin.’
Beale began to cry. There was something much worse about someone like him giving in to his emotions; someone who was always in control, someone who regarded violence as a way of life, a means to an end, or just retribution. But the violence that had taken his wife wasn’t the same. It was more bewildering, more horrifying than it would have been to someone else, and Lloyd wanted to shoot himself. Judy, he rather gathered from the look he got, would have cheerfully saved him the trouble.
When he had got himself under control, he wiped the tears. ‘My wife was not having an affair,’ he said defiantly, and blew his nose.
Too defiantly; Judy didn’t want Malworth to become too exciting, Lloyd was sure. If Beale suspected someone, they had better find out who that was.
‘Mr Beale,’ said Judy. ‘When I came here last night, the front door was open. It looked closed, but it just opened when I touched it. Would you know why it was like that?’
He nodded. ‘Rosemary took my keys,’ he said. ‘Quick as a flash, as soon as the cops were called.’ He smiled. ‘Just as well she didn’t go in for picking pockets,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know what she was doing, but I realised later when your colleagues tried to have me breathalysed.’
So, thought Lloyd, Rosemary Beale had foiled the police once again in a last act of defiance. That would give Beale some quiet satisfaction, once the shock had worn off.
‘She didn’t know what time they’d let me go, and my door key is on the same ring. So she would leave the door on the latch. But these doors only close if you lock them.’ Tears were back in his eyes. ‘ She’d be going to go to bed,’ he said. ‘She was annoyed with me for starting trouble. She’d think she was safe,’ he said, his voice anguished. ‘This bloody place – you pay the earth for all the security, and then someone can just walk in and—’ He stood up, and turned away from them.
The security certainly didn’t seem to have helped. They had looked at the videos automatically made when the cameras switched on; the visitors to the flats had been few, and were accounted for. The cameras came on when the door phone was answered, so residents using their cards were not on video. The conclusion was that someone with a card had murdered Rosemary Beale, or that she had brought someone home with her, which seemed unlikely, in the circumstances.
‘Why didn’t she take the car?’ asked Judy.
‘She doesn’t drive. I got her a driver to take her round the clubs.’
Judy tried not to look irritated as Lloyd interrupted her. ‘Could I have the driver’s name, Mr Beale?’
Beale frowned. ‘What for?’
‘We need to know of anyone who had contact with your wife.’
‘He just drove her around. Tasker. Steve Tasker.’
Lloyd and Judy manfully avoided looking at one another; it took Lloyd a moment to ask his next question.
‘Do you have an address?’
‘Not on me,’ said Beale. ‘ It’s at the office.’
It was clearly untrue; Lloyd just had to hope that they had got to Tasker first.
‘Mr Beale,’ said Lloyd, ‘you gave Mrs Austin a lift home yesterday evening.’
Beale turned. ‘Yeah.’ He sighed. ‘I was downstairs in her studio. She had to get home in a hurry. I said I’d run her there.’
‘And you drove the car yourself?’
‘Yes.’ Beale frowned. ‘Tasker only drove my wife,’ he said. ‘If that’s what you’re getting at.’
‘What time did you and Mrs Beale go out last night?’ asked Judy.
He shrugged. ‘Late. Half nine, something like that.’
‘Would you have noticed if there had been someone in Mrs Austin’s studio?’
‘The light was on. I just thought she had left it on, though, earlier. I remember her putting it on just before we left. It got dark because of the rain. There didn’t seem to be anyone in there.’
‘You didn’t see anyone … hanging round, maybe?’
He shook his head.
‘And you didn’t try the studio door, did you?’
‘No.’
They took their leave of Mr Beale, and neither of them spoke until the lift doors were firmly closed.
‘Well,’ Lloyd said. ‘The outsider’s coming up on the rails.’
‘Fast,’ said Judy. ‘Tasker. Does the name mean anything to you?’
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘ But the court case was probably just before I came back to Stansfield. Jack’ll know.’ He sighed. ‘Let’s hope we’ve traced him – I’d rather we got to him before Beale does.’
Outside, he surveyed the car park. ‘ Where’s your car?’ he asked.
‘Parked halfway down the road,’ she said. ‘Some woman went on at me about it being in her husband’s space and he’d be home from work soon.’
‘Leave it there,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be driving. You’re too tired.’
She didn’t argue; she just got in to his car like a lamb. She must be tired.
‘So what now?’ she asked.
‘I’m taking you home.’
‘What about Tasker?’
Lloyd sighed deeply. ‘Judy, there are a great many more people working on this besides you and me.’
‘Shouldn’t that be you and I?’
‘No, it should not. And you have got them looking for Tasker. They will have traced him, and spoken to him.’
‘They won’t have arrested him,’ she said. ‘And Beale’s after him.’
‘You couldn’t arrest him either. All we know is that he works for Beale and he may or may not be the man Drake saw.’
‘If he is,’ Judy said slowly, ‘then he couldn’t have had anything to do with Mrs Beale’s murder. He was in Stansfield at ten past eleven.’
Lloyd raised his eyebrows. ‘True,’ he said. ‘Curiouser and curiouser. And another good reason for your not arresting him.’
‘He’s not the one I want to arrest.’
Lloyd sighed again, more deeply, more loudly.
‘Mrs Austin probably wasn’t at the studio at all,’ said Judy.
‘Drake’s wife left him,’ Lloyd said, conversationally.
‘What?’
‘Drake’s wife left him,’ he repeated. ‘ Because when he decided to knuckle down and get on with it, she never saw him. She left him. He became obsessed.’
Judy nodded. ‘And you’re going to leave me, are you?’
‘If you don’t take time off.’ He smiled.
‘And if she wasn’t in the studio, then Austin is lying about the car.’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘ Totally illogical,’ he said. ‘ Not like you at all. Now – I’m banning work as a topic. Shall I tell you more about my French grandmother?’
‘What was her name?’ asked Judy suddenly, clearly determined to catch him out if he was making it up.
‘Françoise,’ he said immediately.
Judy’s eyebrows rose slightly.
Lloyd lifted his shoulders in a Gallic shrug as he turned on to the Stansfield Road. ‘That was her name,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry her parents couldn’t be more imaginative.’
‘I almost believe you,’ said Judy. ‘You would have been more imaginative.’
He smiled again. ‘Ifor met Françoise. He was twenty-two, she was eighteen, and they fell in love.’
‘Mm,’ she said, leaning back in the seat, getting herself more comfortable.
‘No emotions stirring there? Beautiful young girl in the devastated battlefield that had once been the peaceful countryside surrounding her home …’
The evening sun flickered through the branches of the trees, dazzling him; he pulled down the visor.
‘Lonely, frightened young man hurtled into trench warfare by English generals who had apparently thought that a good cavalry charge would sort the Hun out by Christmas? Meeting fleetingly in a brief, uncomfortable respite from the fighting …’
He glanced at her, and smiled. She was sound asleep.