Gordon looked up as the door opened and both Chief Inspector Lloyd and Inspector Hill came in.
‘You know Inspector Hill, Malworth CID, I believe?’ said Lloyd briskly.
‘Yes,’ said Gordon, half rising from the chair.
He watched as the uniformed man set up a cassette recorder, obviously unused to its intricacies.
Lloyd sighed. ‘Let me do it,’ he said, impatiently, and efficiently got it into operation. He picked up the microphone, and rattled off the date and all the other details of the interview about to take place.
‘We now record all interviews, Mr Pearce, as you can see. Now the sergeant tells me that you want to confess to two murders.’
He pulled two chairs from the wall and set them at the table, but only Inspector Hill sat down. Lloyd walked about the room, looking with interest at everything but Gordon.
‘So go ahead,’ he said. ‘The constable here will write down what you say. You have been cautioned, I understand.’
Gordon looked at the constable. ‘Er … yes,’ he said.
‘He will read it back to you, and then you can sign it as a true account, or alter it as you wish. Or, of course, you can write it out yourself. The inspector will almost certainly write it all down too, so we should have a very accurate record by the time we’ve finished, shouldn’t we?’
‘Yes,’ said Gordon.
‘Right.’ Lloyd wandered to the window, and stood on tiptoe to look down at something outside. ‘ Off you go, Mr Pearce.’
Gordon wasn’t sure what he had expected. Not this, at any rate. Questions. Questions that he had to answer. ‘ I thought you were going to interview me,’ he said.
Lloyd whirled round from the window. ‘It’s not a chat show, Mr Pearce. I thought you were going to make a statement about murdering two women.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Oh, do get on with it, Mr Pearce,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘The inspector has a post-mortem to go to.’
Gordon swallowed. ‘ I don’t know where to start,’ he said.
‘How about with the first one? Who did you murder first, Mr Pearce?’
Gordon’s eyes widened. The inspector sat with a thick notebook open at a clean page. The constable had a statement form, pen poised above it. The chief inspector was now standing behind his empty chair, his fingers lightly tapping the back, waiting for an answer.
‘I’ve asked you a question,’ he said. ‘That was what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it?’
‘Rosemary Beale,’ said Gordon firmly.
‘Ah – not mine, then,’ said Lloyd. And left the room.
Gordon twisted round to watch the door close, and slowly turned back to Inspector Hill.
‘When?’ she asked.
‘What?’ Gordon could feel his palms grow sweaty.
‘When did you kill Mrs Beale?’
‘When I went home,’ he said. ‘I killed her, and then I went back to the Austins, and …’ He couldn’t say it.
Inspector Hill frowned. ‘What time was that, Mr Pearce?’
‘After I’d been to the factory,’ he said.
‘So you went to the factory, started the fire, left, killed Mrs Beale, then left there and killed Mrs Austin?’
Gordon nodded.
She wrote it all down. ‘What time did you get home, after all that?’ she asked, still writing.
‘Quarter to twelve,’ he said, without hesitation.
She looked up. ‘Your wife says you came home at eleven fifteen.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘At least, that’s her latest estimate,’ she added. ‘Is she still lying, Mr Pearce?’
‘Only to protect me.’
The door opened and Lloyd reappeared with four paper cups in a holder. He didn’t offer them round; he put them down in a line on the window-sill. ‘They have to cool,’ he said.
‘You left Mr Austin at ten o’clock,’ the inspector said pleasantly. ‘And by quarter to midnight you had tried to burn down the factory and murdered two women?’
‘Yes.’
‘Quite impressive,’ she said. ‘What time did you arrive at the factory?’
‘About five past ten,’ said Gordon.
‘And leave?’
‘Twenty to eleven.’
He saw the tiny glance that passed between the inspector and the chief inspector.
The inspector looked at her notes, leafing back through the book. ‘And you told your wife what you had done, did you?’ she asked.
Gordon shook his head.
‘So why did she lie?’
‘She … she guessed. About the fire.’
Lloyd looked startled. ‘ Guessed?’
‘Yes,’ said Gordon.
‘She said, “Good evening, Gordon, I’ll bet you’ve been setting fire to the factory, haven’t you?’’ Is that right?’
Gordon looked away.
‘Guessed, Mr Pearce?’ said the inspector with a look that reminded Gordon of his mother when he was little.
‘Yes! Not like that, but she—’ He broke off. ‘Why don’t you believe me?’ he asked.
‘Coffee,’ said Lloyd, and the constable went and fetched the cups.
‘I got them all without sugar,’ said Lloyd, leaning back dangerously on his chair and sweeping packets of sugar off the window sill ‘Filched these from the canteen,’ he said, letting them fall on to the table.
‘All right,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘Let’s get down to the important part, Mr Pearce. How did you kill Mrs Beale?’
Gordon almost sighed with relief. That was more like it. That was what he’d rehearsed for hours in the library, under the guise of reading the papers. ‘I strangled her,’ he said. ‘With the telephone cord.’
‘Why was she ringing the Austins?’
Oh, God. ‘What?’ Gordon asked dully.
‘She was on the phone to the Austins. Why?’
‘I don’t know! I wasn’t there when she made the call.’
The inspector wrote that down. He could read it, upside down. Wasn’t there when she made the call.
‘She was already on the phone when you got there?’
‘Yes.’ Gordon waited for her to speak, but she didn’t, so he expanded. ‘She let me in, and went back to the phone,’ he said.
‘Ah.’ She wrote that down too. ‘And you strangled her.’
‘Yes.’ Gordon bit his lip, watching her pen move.
‘Why?’
‘I was upset.’
She looked up. ‘Do you always strangle people when you’re upset?’ she asked.
He didn’t reply.
‘Did you go with the intention of strangling her?’
Gordon ran a hand over his hair. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I did.’
But I did, she wrote. ‘What was your intention?’
‘To talk to her. But I … I didn’t.’
‘No. Then what did you do?’
‘I went back to the Austins’.’
‘No – I mean, before you left Mrs Beale.’
Gordon looked at the constable, who was also labouring over his version of this statement. He couldn’t read it; it was too far away. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
‘You just left her there.’
‘Yes.’ She drew a line under what she had written, and looked at the
chief inspector.
He smiled at Gordon. ‘My turn, now, Mr Pearce,’ he said. ‘This
might be more difficult.’
Gordon frowned slightly.
‘How did you kill Mrs Austin?’ Lloyd asked.
‘I hit her.’
‘With what?’ asked Lloyd.
He had to be right. He had to be. The papers hadn’t said. They
just said a heavy implement. It had to be, though, or why would
the inspector have asked about them? And why would Jonathan?
And why would Pauline have lied? He had repeated that lie to
Jonathan, but he had decided in the library that the truth would
be better. Take a leaf out of Pauline’s book. As much of the truth
as possible.
‘Well, Mr Pearce?’
He looked into frankly disbelieving blue eyes. ‘The ashtray,’ he
said.
‘What ashtray?’
‘The ashtray I took with me.’
The inspector looked up from her notes then. ‘ Where from?’ she
asked.
Now. Decision time. Go along with Pauline’s lie? No. The truth.
Tell them the truth. His mouth was dry; he could hardly breathe.
He had to make a decision.
‘Not from anywhere,’ he said. ‘I had it with me all along. I
bought them in an auction.’
Lloyd sat forward, almost as though he was going to tell him a
secret. ‘How many times did you hit her, Mr Pearce?’ he asked.
He didn’t want to think about that. Bludgeoned, the papers had
said. Oh, dear God. Lennie. It was all his fault. He couldn’t think
about it.
‘Once? More than once? Over and over again?’
Gordon stared at him. ‘I … I don’t know!’ he said.
‘We do,’ said Lloyd.
Bludgeoned. ‘I just kept hitting her,’ Gordon muttered.
Lloyd sat back again, and regarded him. ‘ Mr Pearce,’ he said, ‘why don’t we stop this nonsense?’
‘Please,’ said Gordon. ‘I did it. I – I …’ He looked away. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘ I’ve wasted your time.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Lloyd. ‘Not if you tell me what you do know. Tell me about the ashtray, Mr Pearce.’
‘It – it was a joke,’ Gordon said, helplessly.
They looked at one another again then, but neither of them spoke. They just waited for an explanation.
‘Pauline and I got them at an auction,’ he said. ‘We go to auctions – just for fun, really. Local ones. You know. And I saw this big ashtray – I thought we should get it for the lobby. People smoke, you see. And they … well, I bid for it, and I got it. But when I went to collect it, the lot was two ashtrays. I hadn’t realised.’
The inspector was writing it down. His stupid joke.
‘I said to Pauline I’d give one to Jonathan. It was a joke – it was so big, and he smokes such a lot. Everyone was always trying to get him to stop, especially—’ Oh, God. Poor Lennie. He swallowed. ‘Well anyway, I left it in the car to give to him, and I took it in with me when I went to see him on Monday.’
‘You gave it to him?’ Lloyd asked.
‘No. I just left it in the hallway, for him to find. It was so big, you see – it was for him to put his cigarettes in before he went into the sitting-room, so that he wouldn’t get into trouble for smoking. It was a joke, it was just—’ He broke off, and gathered himself together again. ‘Then he told me I was out – the board wanted me out. That – that woman …’
They didn’t help him out; they just waited.
‘I left. And I saw it in the hallway, and I picked it up – I didn’t want … I didn’t want him to have it But then I was outside his door with this bloody thing in my hand, I felt silly. So I just put it down again.’
‘Outside his front door?’
Gordon nodded. ‘It was a joke, it was just a stupid joke!’ he repeated, his voice breaking on the final word. He could hardly speak for the tears. ‘If I hadn’t taken it, she wouldn’t be dead,’ he said.
‘No, Mr Pearce,’ said Lloyd, his voice quiet, and angry. ‘She would still have been dead. He wanted her dead. By whatever means.’
Gordon looked up slowly. ‘He?’
Lloyd nodded.
‘Who? Austin?’
‘We don’t know that yet, Mr Pearce.’ He thought for a moment. ‘The ashtray was inside the house when Mrs Austin left?’
Gordon nodded again.
‘She was irritated by Mr Austin’s attitude, I believe.’
Gordon smiled, involuntarily. ‘ She was livid,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t seen her that angry since she was about five.’
‘Angry enough to take off her ring and throw it into the ashtray?’
Gordon frowned. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That would be just the sort of thing she would do.’
‘And then you picked it up again, and left it just outside the door?’
Gordon sighed his confirmation.
‘Where?’ asked the inspector.
Gordon shook his head. ‘I just put it down,’ he said. ‘By the wall. I didn’t want anyone tripping over it.’ Tripping over it. My God. He’d thought it might be dangerous.
‘So someone leaving the flat might not have noticed it?’
Gordon thought. He had put it down carefully. Quietly. He had felt so foolish about the whole thing. ‘They wouldn’t,’ he said. ‘They’d see it when they came in, but not leaving.’
‘Thank you, Mr Pearce,’ she said.
‘Sneakers.’
Mickey frowned. ‘In Stansfield?’ he said. ‘ I thought I knew all the pubs in Stansfield.’
‘It used to be the Red Lion. They’ve done it up.’
‘Oh, in the old village.’ Ah well, it had been three years. They were always rubbing Stansfield out and starting again. ‘And you’re certain it was Mrs Austin?’
‘Oh, yes. There was a crowd of us. We all saw her.’
‘And you all work at Austin-Pearce?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled. ‘I saw you there after the fire,’ she said.
Mickey smiled back. ‘This man she was with – can you give me a description?’ he asked.
‘He was a lot older than her,’ she said. ‘But he wore jeans – you know the sort.’ Her gaze was fixed on the corner of the ceiling, which seemed to help her powers of recall. ‘Dark,’ was all she came up with, however.
‘Tall, short, fat, thin?’
‘Taller than her – and she was quite tall, wasn’t she? Not fat, but not thin either.’
‘Average build? Bigger, smaller?’
Between them they arrived at a description, which fitted Tasker.
‘Do you think you would recognise him if you saw him again?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Everyone would,’ she said. ‘We were all having a laugh about it. You should have seen them. They didn’t care.’
He did see them. ‘Did she seem … alarmed, at all, by him?’ he asked. ‘Was she trying to get away from him? Was he annoying her?’
‘No! Just the opposite.’
She signed her statement; Mickey was showing her out when the girl at the desk spoke to him.
‘Mr Austin to see you, Mickey,’ she said, nodding across at the waiting area.
Mickey nodded. At least they wouldn’t be in an hotel room, he thought. He almost asked her to be present, then decided that he couldn’t stand the laughter. Anyway, even if he was right, that didn’t mean that that was why he was here. He wanted a cigarette. Three years since he’d given up, and he wanted a cigarette.
‘Yes, Mr Austin,’ he said as he showed him into an interview room, trying to copy Lloyd’s bright and breezy manner. It didn’t really suit him, he decided. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.
‘I … er … I’ve been trying to do what you said,’ said Austin.
Mickey racked his brains, but nothing fell into place. He sat down. ‘Sorry about the smell of paint,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Mr Austin – trying to do what, exactly?’
‘Remember what Leonora told me about this man,’ said Austin.
‘Oh – yes. We think we know who he is,’ said Mickey. ‘We should have him quite soon now.’
‘Well, perhaps I shouldn’t have …’
‘Oh, no – not at all, that’s fine. We need all the information we can get. What have you remembered?’
‘She said that she had told him she would tell his boss if he didn’t stop bothering her,’ said Austin. ‘I don’t know if that helps at all.’
Mickey thought about that. Did it help? Yes, it did. If Tasker said he hadn’t been bothering her, which he would. It fitted. She knew Beale, and Beale employed Tasker; he certainly wouldn’t have taken kindly to Tasker upsetting her. He smiled. ‘Everything helps, Mr Austin,’ he said.
Austin clearly hadn’t finished. Mickey began to feel uneasy again. No, sorry, Mr Austin, I’m washing my hair. God – did women feel like this all the time?
‘I think you might have the wrong idea.’
Mickey frowned a little. ‘The wrong idea about what, Mr Austin?’ he asked.
‘About …’ Austin searched his pockets, and took out cigarettes, automatically pushing the packet across to Mickey. ‘About … about Mrs Beale’s murder and my wife’s murder being linked.’
Mickey sat back a little. Now he knew what Judy meant. He could hear it too. A disconcerting air of certainty, of knowing what had happened. ‘You don’t think they are?’ he asked cautiously.
‘I …’ Austin shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.
‘Why not? She was on the phone to your number when she died.’
‘I know. I just don’t think that …’ Austin looked haunted.
‘Was she ringing you, Mr Austin?’
He shook his head. ‘ Or – if she was, I wasn’t there,’ he said.
‘Why would she ring you at that time of night?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Austin rose. ‘But my wife was killed by someone who … who went mad. You’re looking for someone who wanted Mrs Beale dead, and you’re wrong. You think someone had a reason to kill Leonora. But he had no reason. He had lost his reason. He didn’t reason! He just hacked away at everything until he got her. Over and over and over, until he got her. Look what he did! Go to my flat and look at what he did!’
Lloyd had said that Austin had given Judy the willies; she wasn’t the only one. There was such certainty.
‘Were you there, Mr Austin?’ he asked quietly.
The chilling question hung in the air, and Austin blinked at him. ‘What?’ he whispered, then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. You think I … I didn’t have to be there to know,’ he said.
‘All right, Mr Austin,’ Mickey said, relieved. ‘Don’t worry. We’re sure he’s still in Stansfield. We will get him.’
Austin wiped perspiration from his upper lip. ‘I don’t want anyone else to die like that,’ he said.
Mickey stood up. ‘ No one else will, Mr Austin,’ he said, extending his hand.
Austin shook it. ‘It’s the one that went to prison,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it? They say she was with him at some pub.’
She was, thought Mickey. Which means that she wasn’t at her studio at all, and Austin’s claim that his wife’s car wasn’t at the garage seemed doubtful again. It was all very odd.
‘That’s who we’re looking for,’ he said.
Austin nodded slowly, and left.
His cigarette packet still lay on the table. Mickey looked at it, then picked it up, and closed it with determination.
‘Mr Austin,’ he called.
‘Lloyd, Stansfield CID. This is WPC Alexander.’
Pauline had thought it might be Gordon. But it was Lloyd, Stansfield CID, and WPC Alexander. ‘Come in,’ she said, pushing the button, and waiting at the door.
The lift arrived after a moment, and he got out, with a uniformed policewoman. For an instant, Pauline thought they had come to arrest her.
‘Mrs Pearce,’ Lloyd said as they followed her into the sitting-room, ‘your husband is at Stansfield police station, answering questions.’
She stopped walking, her back to them. ‘ Why?’ she asked.
‘Because he has confessed to the murders of Mrs Beale and Mrs Austin.’
She turned. ‘ Lennie?’ she said. ‘But – but that’s ridiculous! Gordon would no more harm Lennie than – anyway, he was here! He was with me!’
Lloyd looked totally impassive; the policewoman looked motherly and sympathetic. Pauline didn’t suppose she would be.
‘He says you are lying to protect him.’
Pauline couldn’t believe this was happening. Not this, not the one thing she was sure of. ‘He was here,’ she said again. ‘ He came home at quarter past eleven, and he passed out on that chair!’ She pointed to it, as though its presence somehow proved what she was saying. ‘She was alive at ten past and dead by half past – Gordon couldn’t possibly have killed her!’
‘How do you know what time she died, Mrs Pearce?’ he asked.
Her energy, her will seemed to drain out. She could feel it flow from her body, and she sank down in the chair. ‘I was there,’ she said.
Lloyd sat down. He didn’t speak.
‘I heard someone at the studio door,’ she said, her voice flat, unemotional. ‘And about fifteen minutes later, I heard a car leave. Then Gordon came in. I knew he’d done something wrong. I knew he felt betrayed by her. I thought he’d been in her studio, and I could smell burning. I could smell it on his clothes. I thought he’d set fire to her studio, burnt her paintings. When he passed out, I went down there. But the studio was all right.’
She looked at him. Clear blue eyes watched her as she spoke.
‘Then I thought she must have been in there, and that I had heard Gordon going in. And that he’d done something – maybe even tried to rape her or something.’ She closed her eyes. ‘ I knew he’d done something. So I drove over to Stansfield to ask Lennie what was going on. And – there were police cars, and an ambulance, and no sign of Lennie. Her car wasn’t there – I didn’t know where she’d got to, but I thought then that he’d done something awful to Jonathan.’ She looked at him again. ‘Because I thought Lennie wasn’t there,’ she said. ‘ I thought she had left the studio just minutes before me.’
‘You heard a car drive away,’ Lloyd said. ‘You didn’t see it?’
‘No.’
‘Had there been a car parked in the street?’
Pauline frowned a little as she thought. ‘ No,’ she said. ‘No, there wasn’t. I actually remember that there wasn’t, because I was looking for something to account for the noise.’
Lloyd nodded. ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘You went over to the Austins’, saw that the police were there, and you came back here, thinking that your husband had killed Jonathan Austin?’
She nodded. ‘Or that he’d hurt him, at any rate. Then I found out it was Lennie who was dead. And I didn’t even consider Gordon – he couldn’t possibly have done that to her. Then Inspector Hill told me that she’d been seen with Steve Tasker – and that was when Gordon was here with me. So I knew he didn’t have anything to do with it.’
It was almost easy to forget Rosemary Beale, she thought, enjoying the sheer luxury of telling the truth. She didn’t hold out any hope that the chief inspector had forgotten her, but she very nearly had.
‘Why would he say that he killed her?’ asked Lloyd.
Pauline sighed. ‘ I can only think of one reason,’ she said. ‘He knew I’d been out. He must have thought I’d done it.’
Lloyd agreed. ‘I have a pathologist who could have told him that that was out of the question,’ he said. ‘It would have saved a lot of heartache.’
‘You do believe me, then? That Gordon was here?’
‘I don’t have to believe you, Mrs Pearce. Your husband hadn’t the faintest idea what had gone on in the Austin flat.’
Pauline felt scared. ‘What did happen to her?’ she asked.
Lloyd thought for a moment before he spoke. ‘ She was hit on the head with the ashtray that your husband left outside the Austins’ door,’ he said. ‘But that isn’t the whole story.’
It was all she was going to be told. All she wanted to be told.
‘That leaves us with Mrs Beale,’ said Lloyd,
Pauline said nothing.
‘Did you know Mrs Beale was dead when Inspector Hill came to see her that night?’
‘No,’ said Pauline.
The short holiday from lying was over.
It was Wednesday afternoon.
Jonathan looked out of the hotel window at the people who hurried past, hot and bothered and busy. Once, Wednesday had been early closing; people didn’t believe in that any more.
He was hot – the hotel didn’t run to air-conditioning. But he wasn’t busy – he wasn’t expected to go to work, so he had nothing to do. And he was bothered. Not like these women with their bulging plastic carrier bags, who somehow manhandled them, a pushchair and a toddler through the town; they were another species. His future constituents, he hoped, still, despite everything. He just had to get through. He’d come through this far.
They had come, offering their condolences, from the party. It was hard enough under normal circumstances to know what to say to the suddenly bereaved; they were completely out of their depth with murder. An intruder, they seemed to have decided, amongst themselves. He could almost imagine the sub-committee, formed to discuss the best approach to the husband of a murder victim. Ignore the fact that the spouse is always automatically under suspicion; ignore the rumours that she had been out on the town with some man who was just out of prison. Offer condolences, and refer vaguely to an intruder.
But Leonora’s murder shouldn’t affect his chances. The public had a short memory, and anyway, he would be cleared of any suspicion once they picked this person up.
Until then, there was nothing he could do, except worry about what was going to happen. All the people that he had regarded as his friends, were, now he came to think of it, Leonora’s friends, and they were giving him a wide berth. The police had offered to take him to friends; that was when it had come home to him that he really didn’t have any.
But it was Wednesday, and the prospect of unquestioning human companionship beckoned. Not friendship, not by any stretch of the imagination. Not even the ill-at-ease sympathy of his party acquaintances would be offered, and that was, in a strange way, the attraction. People who didn’t know who he was, or care. People who had no interest whatever in what was happening to him, and did not feel obliged to pretend any.
A couple of hours off, that was all it was. All it ever had been. It wasn’t so much to ask. He hadn’t been going to go, but he would. He deserved some time off, because his mind, despite his efforts to stop it, kept reviewing what had happened, what Leonora had been frightened might happen.
But they had to find this man; even though Sergeant Drake had seen her, and she seemed to have been at the pub with him – he wouldn’t be cleared of suspicion until they actually had him. His boss. Leonora had threatened to tell his boss. Jonathan frowned. In what circumstances would telling his boss have any effect on his behaviour? He had merely been making a nuisance of himself. Hanging about, trying to talk to her. His boss could hardly be expected to do anything about that. He hadn’t been paying much attention when Leonora told him.
And maybe that wasn’t who she was with at all; they said it was this ex-convict, and it seemed unlikely that he would have a boss at all. If he wasn’t the one who had been hanging around, that would leave it all up in the air again.
He needed some time off.
‘No surprises,’ said Freddie, when he’d finished. ‘She died of asphyxiation. I can’t narrow the time down any more than you already know, I’m afraid. Between eleven and one, give or take.’
Judy nodded.
‘No struggle. She tried to pull the restriction away, but she doesn’t seem to have got hold of her attacker at all. Taken entirely by surprise, I’d say. No other assault of any sort.’ He washed his hands, and ushered her out of the room.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any evidence that the same person attacked both of them?’ Judy said.
‘No,’ said Freddie. ‘I’m told there are some fibres on Mrs Beale’s clothes that should be able to be matched up once you’ve got a suspect, but nothing that ties in with Mrs Austin.’ He walked with her to the door, opening it for her. ‘And there’s no similarity in the type of attack, or the amount of strength required – a woman could have killed Mrs Beale, but not Mrs Austin.’ He cleared his throat a little. ‘I was sorry to hear that she was a friend of yours,’ he said.
It almost took Judy by surprise to hear Freddie being serious. She gave a short sigh, and nodded.
‘Can’t be easy for you,’ he said. ‘I hope it’s over soon.’
Yes. Judy went out into the late afternoon, and walked to her car, which had been sitting in the sun for two hours before the clouds had rolled in, making the sky dark and depressing. She spent some moments, her mind on other things, trying to get into the car with Lloyd’s key. She found her own, and opened the door to heat that she was quite certain would have happily cooked a small chicken. In winter, the cold would have kept the same chicken fresh for days.
She joined the shoppers and commuters on their way back from Barton to Stansfield, getting stopped at every red light. The open windows made it a noisy, smelly journey out of the city; the oppressive, dark heat was depressing her as she sat waiting at an unexplained hold-up.
A water-main had been ruptured by telephone workers; Judy glared at the orange-jacketed constable who waved her right, on to a diversion through Barton’s seedier back-streets. In unfamiliar territory, she slowed the car down as she negotiated tiny cobbled one-way streets barely wide enough for the car. Frank Beale would have been risking scraping the Rolls on the walls of the buildings; he needed two spaces to park at Andwell House.
Another hold-up, waiting to join the side-street which took traffic back to the main road. Escape from this hot stuffy city was almost in sight, but the main stream of traffic would not give way; perspiration trickled down her neck from her hairline, and Judy pulled on the hand-brake, resigned to her fate.
A tall, fair man walked briskly past the line of traffic; Judy watched as he made his way along the litter-strewn pavement, past a cinema the attraction of whose bill eluded her, and in through the door of something called the Apollo Gymnasium.
Judy looked ahead, counting the cars between her and freedom; the traffic on the main road, having escaped whatever dire diversion it had had to endure, was not about to let anyone in. She pulled the car over, driving its nearside wheels on to the pavement, and got out, walking quickly towards the door.
‘Sorry, love – men only.’ The large, suntanned tattooed figure had appeared as if by magic, as soon as she had touched the door.
‘I thought that was against the law these days,’ she said.
‘Yeah, well – you take us to court, darling.’
She produced her identification. ‘Do your members sign in?’ she asked.
‘Have you got a warrant?’
‘No,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I just want a look at the book,’ she said. ‘That’s all.’
She had not, it would appear, pulled the car over far enough. The traffic ahead of her car was moving, and horns started to sound.
‘I’m going to get lynched,’ she said. ‘ Go on – just one look, that’s all.’
‘What for?’
‘Nothing to do with the club,’ she said. ‘Look – I’m not vice squad – I’m not even Barton. Not my problem. Someone who attacks women is – and I’m told he was in here today. I just want a quick look at your book to see if his name’s there.’ It was stretching the truth water-thin, but sex offenders weren’t protected by the honour amongst thieves code, and it might work.
It was beginning to sound like Paris on a bad day. She glanced back, and her heart sank as she saw a yellow-banded cap make its sinister way along the double yellow-lined road. ‘One look,’ she pleaded.
He reached into the void behind him, and produced the book, open at the appropriate page. ‘ He won’t use his right name,’ he said.
Judy looked at the last signature, and smiled again. ‘You’re a toff,’ she said.
The dreaded ticket was being placed under her windscreen wiper by a traffic warden who was enjoying unheard-of popularity as a cheer went up.
‘Sorry, sorry!’ Judy grabbed the polythene package, and thanked God that the threatening downpour had had the decency to stay off, or the car wouldn’t have started.
Once on the dual carriageway, everything on the road was determined to pass her with a growl of its engine and a rush of air that made the car shudder; all the people she had kept waiting outside the Apollo, she reckoned. Lloyd would be telling her to get a new car. One that was less likely to fall apart if a lorry passed it. One that could possibly pass other vehicles.
The traffic slowed to a crawl, and stopped. Judy didn’t believe it. Defeated by the nameless, darting hedgerow insects and the dirty exhaust of the van in front of her, she closed the windows, and baked as the line inched its way towards temporary traffic lights erected for roadworks that no one seemed to be working on. A new car wouldn’t have prevented this, she told herself. No, but a new car would have a fan which would distribute cold air. And hot air, when the occasion arose. Unlike hers, which hadn’t worked for years, and confirmed the car in its belief that it was actually a piece of kitchen equipment.
Her thoughts strayed to Mrs Austin’s car. The lab said that only the mechanic’s prints were on the ignition key under the seat; he would hardly have taken it for a joyride, not knowing when it was likely to be picked up. Anyone else using it would either have destroyed his prints or left their own. The rest of it was clean; that could be accounted for by the fact that it had just been valeted. Therefore, it had never moved from the spot, and Jonathan Austin was lying. And now she knew that Drake was right – well, she’d check with him. He’d know Barton’s dives. She wasn’t sure where it got her, but she felt as though something had clicked into place. She wasn’t sure what; she’d have to go over her notes.
She drove through Stansfield, thanking God for its traffic-light-Free streets, making for Malworth, now very late for Lloyd, with whom she was supposed to be eating before they started organising the reconstruction, and arrived at the station hot, crumpled, sweaty and bad-tempered. It did nothing for her morale to discover Detective Chief Superintendent Allison passing the time of day with the desk sergeant.
‘Ah, Mrs Hill,’ he said. ‘May I take up some more of your valuable time?’
Freddie being serious and Allison being positively gallant; Lloyd would be putting it down to body snatchers. Well, she thought, as they went through the usual impossibility of who went through doors first, if this, is my first taste of sexual harassment, it won’t last long, the state I’m in.
‘This is what you might call baptism by fire,’ he said.
You might, she thought. If you talked in clichés. Oh, my God, she was getting just like Lloyd. She’d be correcting the man’s grammar next. Not that she could. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
‘Your divisional chief inspector is in Marbella or somewhere, and his deputy, I am reliably informed, has just managed to break his leg.’
‘Yes, sir. Painting his window-frames.’
Allison nodded. ‘ The problem is,’ he said, ‘ that on-the-spot decisions do have to be made, and Chief Inspector Lloyd is making them at the moment.’
Judy was puzzled. Had she said something this morning that had made Allison think she wasn’t showing Lloyd due deference? He was only one rank above her, after all. Did she have to behave as though he was the Chief Constable to prove that they weren’t going to start having domestic differences at work? They weren’t even having them at home yet.
Anyway – he’d just said himself that the circumstances were quite exceptional. Under normal circumstances, she would be taking her orders from her own DCI, and they would not be investigating a crime which happened to be in telephonic communication with another one in another division. It was hardly her fault that despite transferring out of the division she was finding herself working with him still. And quite apart from all that, Allison had never even hinted that he knew about their private lives, so why start complaining now that she had transferred?
‘But DCI Lloyd is Stansfield division, and one of the murders occurred in this division. The incident room will be here, and some decisions which may have to be made on a purely local basis can only be made at chief inspector level or above. If neither Mr Lloyd or myself is available, this could cause problems. Your divisional superintendent is very heavily committed with a major enquiry, and can’t really leave divisional headquarters.’
Oh, that’s what it was. So we’re sending in someone from another division to take local charge, Mrs Hill, and we all know that as a rabid feminist you are extremely touchy about women not being regarded as capable, so I’ve come here to pacify you by going on about your valuable time, instead of just getting on with it.
‘It is therefore felt that you should – for the duration of this investigation, or until the return of your divisional chief inspector – take the temporary rank of Acting DCI.’
And she hadn’t even had to wink at him.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said. Not ‘Who, me?’ which was what she was actually thinking.
He smiled. ‘It’s an unusual step to take, I know, so soon after your promotion. But it’s an unusual situation. The chief is sure that his confidence will not be misplaced.’ He smiled. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Hill,’ he said.
She felt almost light-headed as she went out, to find Lloyd waiting impatiently for her. Allison waved as his car wafted him away back to Barton. His car wouldn’t be hot and stuffy, she thought. He didn’t even have to drive it. She watched as it went off, wondering a little how it must feel.
She told Lloyd; he seemed pleased. But then Lloyd could seem anything he liked. He should have been on the stage. And she couldn’t be sure how he really felt.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she said, as they ordered spaghetti in Malworth’s pride and joy, a yuppie Italian wine bar and restaurant which charged too much, but had a good chef. ‘ It’s only because we’re so undermanned they can’t spare a real one.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘Oh, I think they could if they thought it necessary,’ he said.
‘They’d have thought it necessary if it wasn’t all mixed up with your case,’ she said. ‘ They think you’ll babysit me.’
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But I doubt it.’ He patted her hand. ‘I told you when they offered you the job – they’re seeing how you handle command.’
Their meals came; Lloyd issued a stern warning about eating and working.
‘He’d lost his leg,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes.’ Lloyd twirled spaghetti expertly round his fork as he spoke. ‘He woke up to find himself this side of the Channel, invalided out. He wrote to her, but he never got a reply.’
Judy’s fork didn’t twirl. It would get halfway round, then slip back, and ship its cargo. ‘What did he do?’ she asked, trying again. Some Italians must starve to death.
‘When the war was over, he went back. The family had left the château, and the people there didn’t know where they’d gone.’
She watched him for a moment, and tried hard to do what he did. This time she got it round her fork, all right, but she doubted very much if she could actually get it in her mouth.
‘You should take two or three strands,’ he said helpfully. ‘ It builds up. Anyway, he did odd jobs to keep himself going while he asked everyone for miles until he found someone who knew them. Then he followed the trail until he found her.’
All with just the one leg, she thought, but she couldn’t speak. It was like parking, she thought. He made it look so easy, but it never worked for her. He wouldn’t have held up an entire streetful of traffic; his car would have slid exactly the correct distance on to the pavement. And he wouldn’t have got a parking ticket, she thought sourly, determinedly getting through her mammoth mouthful. ‘What did he do once he’d found her?’ she asked.
‘He brought her back to Wales, and they got married in the chapel.’
Wales. Judy had been there with Lloyd, very briefly. Even in the eighties they had regarded her, a Londoner, with deep suspicion. What would they have thought of a French girl, seventy years ago?
‘What sort of reception did she get?’ she asked.
‘Oh, the usual, I think. In the front parlour. The Co-op Hall wasn’t built until the thirties.’ He smiled. ‘Now – hurry up and finish your coffee. We’ve got work to do.’
You can’t give me orders, she thought. But she didn’t say it out loud.
Back at Andwell House, people milled around, getting things organised for the reconstruction. Lloyd went off to talk to Allison, and Judy spied Drake.
‘Mickey! Just the man I want.’
‘That’s nice to know,’ he said.
‘The Apollo Gymnasium, in Barton,’ she said. ‘ What is it?’
‘Caxton Lane?’
‘That’s it. Above a cinema.’
‘It’s a gym,’ he said, his eyes widely innocent, the accent American. ‘Where we macho men can go pump iron.’
‘And?’
‘And meet a lot of like-minded people, some of whom are quite definitely juveniles,’ he said, his face grim.
Judy nodded. ‘ You don’t approve?’
‘No, I don’t. I don’t care what anyone’s sexual preferences are, but I don’t approve of kids being exploited, and I don’t approve of the drug culture that the whole business encourages, and if that makes me a prude, that’s too bad.’
She smiled. ‘It can’t make you a prude,’ she said. ‘Because I agree with you. I’m broad-minded, you’re conservative, and he’s a prude.’
Drake laughed.
‘Not mine, needless to say. Lloyd’s.’
‘We tried to raid it once, but it was no go,’ said Drake. ‘ Rosemary’s too clever for that. Was too clever.’ He brightened a little. ‘ Maybe we’ll get Beale now that she’s not there to keep him in line,’ he said. ‘What’s your interest?’
‘Austin,’ she said. ‘You were right, Mickey.’
He smiled. ‘I think he’s gone off me, now,’ he said.
‘He signs himself in as David Morris, would you believe?’
‘Morris as in Austin?’
‘And David as in Jonathan. He’s got less imagination than me,’ she said.
Drake walked with her along the river bank as the lowering sky grew dark for real. ‘Do you think he was just doing something he’d rather no one knew about when he says he was going for his wife’s car?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure he was,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like that call.’
‘No,’ said Drake. ‘I know what you mean. I felt as if he knew a lot more about this than he’s saying.’ He stopped, and looked down into the river. ‘We let Pearce go,’ he said. ‘ There didn’t seem much point in passing him on to you. He hasn’t murdered anyone.’
‘No. I don’t know what Mr Pearce’s problem is, but I never fancied him for a murderer.’
‘No.’ Drake looked at her. ‘Do you think a woman could have killed Mrs Beale?’ he asked.
Judy nodded. ‘Freddie said it was possible.’
‘The chief inspector wants to see if Mrs Austin’s car was here,’ said Drake. ‘He’s got a theory.’
‘Mm. I know.’ Judy was about to point out that the car hadn’t been anywhere, when she knew what had clicked into place. ‘Do we still have it?’ she asked.
‘What?’ Drake looked lost.
‘Mrs Austin’s car – is it still at the police lab?’
‘Yes, as far as I know.’ ‘Would you do me a favour, Mickey?’
Steve had been given accommodation, he had been fed, he had been looked after better than Beale’s mother would have been. He just hadn’t been able to leave. Not that Beale had actually said so, or locked him in or anything. It was just made clear that any attempt to leave would be met with resistance from the heavies, who had reappeared about the time he was thinking of leaving, of course. He wasn’t afraid of them now; he had got used to their looming presence in his life, and if he didn’t touch them they would do him no harm, like little pussy. The nursery rhyme made him five again, for a moment. He wondered what his mother would say if she could see him now.
Beale was introducing him to his solicitor, a thinly handsome fortyish West Indian in an expensive grey suit. Steve frowned. ‘ I don’t get it,’ he said.
Beale sighed. ‘ Steve, if I had let you go last night just after I’d told you about Mrs Austin, what would you have done?’
‘Run,’ said Steve, with feeling.
‘Run. And how far do you think you would have got?’
Steve shrugged.
‘I’ll tell you. You’d have run right back into prison.’ He shook his head. ‘No wonder people like you spend half your lives there,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to use your brain sometimes.’
Steve used to think he had one, of sorts. Now he wasn’t so sure.
‘You’re going to go to the police of your own accord,’ said the solicitor.
‘What?’ Steve twisted round to Beale. ‘ I was in her flat, Frank! They’ll have my prints – they’ll do me for it!’
Beale was shaking his head again. ‘See?’ he said. ‘You were seen with her. You went home with her. Your prints are there. So what were you going to do when they caught up with you, which they would have done before you got to the end of the street?’ He sat down, and looked at the solicitor, raising his eyes to heaven. Then he turned back to Steve. ‘Denied it,’ he said. ‘Right?’
Steve thought No … no, he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try to deny it, but— He sighed.
‘You are going to go to the police,’ said the solicitor, ‘I will accompany you. You will say you believe they want to talk to you, and you will tell them what happened.’
Steve gasped. ‘What happened is that I took her home, and left her there and now she’s dead and they’re looking for me!’ he shouted. ‘What use will you be?’
‘Did you kill Mrs Austin?’ he asked.
‘No, but they won’t believe that – and neither do you.’ He looked suspiciously at Beale. ‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘Why’s he here? Not because you believe me – not because you want to help.’
Beale leant across the solicitor and looked closely at Steve. ‘I think he might be using his brain at last.’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you did, Steve. But someone killed Rosemary, and I want the cops to find out who. No – I don’t want to help you. But you are going to help them.’
‘But – didn’t you say they were questioning someone?’
‘Yes. But I know who it is, and I know he hasn’t got the guts to kill anyone.’
‘But if they think they’ve got him – where does that leave me?’
Beale beckoned him to the window, and he looked down to see police everywhere. He went pale. ‘Are they waiting for me?’ he asked.
‘No, they don’t know you’re here. They think they know you’re not – it’ll take them a while to come and check again. You’re safe for the moment. No, Steve, what they’re doing is getting ready for a reconstruction of my wife’s last few minutes on this earth. Which means that they don’t believe they’ve got him. And they think the two crimes are linked,’ he said.
Steve felt his legs go again, and walked shakily away from the window.
‘I don’t know enough about what went on in the Austin place to make my own investigation,’ said Beale. ‘But they do. And I have faith in that young woman,’ he added. ‘She’s no one’s fool. She knows Pearce didn’t do it – he’s home already. I saw him. But, if she fails – and even the best fail sometimes – Mr Mervyn will have learned a whole lot more about what went on than we know at present and I can make my own investigation then.’
Steve sat down with a bump. So he was Frank’s key to inside information. Carrying out his own investigation might have been how he put it to Mervyn, but what he really wanted was a way of getting information early enough to exact his own revenge before the police could stop him.
‘I look after my employees, Steve.’ He bent down towards him. ‘Mr Mervyn is the best. You listen to what he says, and do what he says. Co-operate with the police, Steve. And if they find out who killed Rosemary as a result of your co-operation, you’re on a fat bonus.’
Steve swallowed. ‘ What if I’m doing life?’ he asked.
Beale shrugged. ‘That won’t really concern me too much,’ he said. ‘I’ll have got the information I need.’
Steve knew when he was beaten.
The solicitor let loose a long, long sigh. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I want to know what you did from the moment – the moment you saw Mrs Austin that evening, until the moment you left her. And I mean everything.’ He sat down. ‘We may decide that the police don’t need to know everything,’ he said. ‘But I do.’
Oh well. Things could be worse. They could have brought back hanging.
Lloyd hadn’t seen the riverside development at night before; he watched as Drake and Judy walked along a pathway lit by fake Victorian lamp standards. They feigned gas-lighting, creating small splashes of weak light at regular intervals, dimly reflected in the water. He wondered if the reconstruction would produce anything. It would be hard to see anyone walking along here, if you weren’t deliberately looking; harder still to spot anyone following.
They parted company; Judy walked back down to her car, parked close to the Riverside Inn, and Drake joined Lloyd. He was impressed by Judy’s temporary promotion; Lloyd needed a little time to think about how he felt.
Only the day before yesterday, it had been something that might happen one day, and Jack Woodford had taken him by surprise by pointing that out to him; now, it was something that was obviously going to happen much sooner than later. A chief constable with an eye to current preoccupations, and a late flowering of ambition in a more than able female officer made for speedy promotion, or a shrug of the shoulders over missed opportunities. The chief constable had clearly opted for the former, and Lloyd had to think about that he had been thinking about it longer than Judy had: Allison had told him what they had decided.
But all that would have to wait, and be examined at three o’clock in the morning, when, he would be awake with a book and Judy would be asleep. Right now, he had work to do. He was parked opposite Andwell House; it was late twentieth-century twee, with its craft shops and dwelling units faced with coloured stone, the paintwork picked out in primary colours. Spaces had been cut into the building every so often, and greenery sprouted. They knew that greenery was important, these days. It never occurred to them that they were directly opposite natural parkland. He glanced over at it. On which they had put unnatural objects for children to amuse themselves with, he added to himself. What was wrong with climbing trees, for God’s sake?
‘Horrible, isn’t it?’ said Drake.
Lloyd smiled. ‘I suppose it’s an improvement on Mitchell Engineering effluent fouling the river,’ he said. ‘ Judy pointed that out to me. She likes it.’
‘If they would just clean up the rivers and leave it at that,’ said Drake. ‘Why do they have to build toytowns everywhere half decent?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Lloyd. ‘It used to be an empty warehouse. I suppose it’s more useful now.’
‘That factory’s worse,’ said Drake. ‘Pity Pearce didn’t burn it down.’
‘Oh – I meant to congratulate you about that,’ said Lloyd. ‘You were spot on. Wanted to go up with it, apparently.’ He glanced up at the flat. ‘I shouldn’t think he’s too far off suicide now,’ he added.
Drake grunted.
‘That’s why he made the false confessions, if you ask me. He wants to be punished for something, does our Mr Pearce.’ He laughed at himself. ‘You’ll have to get used to half-baked psychology,’ he said, and looked at Drake, who seemed less than cheerful. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘We’re investigating two murders, sir. I come up with a failed arson attempt,’ said Drake.
‘It was a little puzzle, and it’s been solved. Ask Acting Chief Inspector Hill – in my experience, if you solve the little puzzles, the big one stops being just as puzzling as you thought it was. Like the wedding ring. Another little puzzle that needed sorting out.’
Drake smiled. ‘And which little puzzle would you like me to turn my hand to next, sir?’ he asked.
‘Mrs Hill’s siren,’ said Lloyd, and wound down his window as the police officer impersonating Mrs Beale came into view.
‘I thought you thought it was just the TV, sir.’
Lloyd watched as the cars were waved down at the temporarily disabled traffic lights, and their occupants questioned. ‘ I don’t think,’ he said, his mind only half on Drake’s question, ‘that Mr Austin will watch that sort of television.’
‘That’s what I thought, sir,’ said Drake. ‘I didn’t like to say.’
Lloyd grinned at him. ‘ Mickey,’ he said, ‘ you can tell me I’m wrong any time you like. I’ll soon pull rank when it suits me. And unless the circumstances are highly inappropriate, for God’s sake call me Lloyd, like everyone else.’
They did it for over an hour, the policewoman walking six times from the pub to the flats from eleven until after midnight, walking through the pools of light, more slowly probably than Mrs Beale would have done. Not perhaps as nervous as Mrs Beale might have been on the final, lonely stretch. She knew she was surrounded by police; Mrs Beale had no such back-up. But then, Mrs Beale had had a long apprenticeship walking the streets at night, and Lloyd doubted if any aspect of human nature could have surprised her. But the psychologists said that people lost that essential wariness when they were within sight of home. Even Mrs Beale.
Drake rubbed his eyes as she made her final journey, with the traffic now virtually non-existent, and yawned. ‘She looks just like Rosemary Beale,’ he said. ‘I hope Beale’s not watching.’
There was a rumble of thunder, and large, heavy drops of rain sliced across the windscreen.
‘Mrs Hill’s asked me to tell the lab to hang on to Lennie Austin’s car,’ said Drake. ‘And I’ve to ask Austin to collect it himself, and watch him doing it.’
Lloyd looked at him. ‘And has she been so good as to indicate why you have to do all this?’ he said. He leant out of the car. ‘Thank you, Anne,’ he called. ‘ I’ll bet you’re glad this stayed off until you’d finished! Let’s all go home.’
‘I’ve to tell her what happens,’ he said. ‘But she didn’t say why.’
‘Did she by any chance strongly resemble a gun-dog at the time?’
Drake laughed. ‘She did a bit,’ he said.
‘Then do it,’ said Lloyd.
Drake smiled. ‘I will,’ he said; getting out.
Lloyd watched him go to his own car, and drive off, reaching the junction just as the lights were switched on again, at red. He smiled. Drake was signalling right as he waited, but as the lights changed he pulled his car into the left lane, and on to the bridge.
Lloyd started his car, and followed suit, curious to know what had made Drake change his mind about going home. From the crown of the bridge, he could see Drake’s car heading for the Riverside Inn, where he turned into the car park, pulling up beside Judy’s car. Lloyd drove down and parked in the street outside, watching him.
Drake bent down, talking to Judy through the window as the rain grew heavier; then he got in with her just before the heavens opened.
Lloyd waited, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel, but they seemed to be there for the night. His windscreen wipers whipped back and forth, sending showers of rain off at either side; it grew even harder, bouncing off the pavements, and he glared at it as he waited for it to ease off. It did, after a fashion, but Drake didn’t take the opportunity to leave Judy’s car, and Lloyd switched off his engine. After a few moments, he sounded his horn twice but they took no notice. Swearing to himself, he got out and strode towards them, standing by the still open window.
‘But there aren’t any in Stansfield,’ Judy said gloomily.
‘No. It’s a non-starter, really. But it seemed like a good idea at the time,’ Drake sat back a little. ‘ I’ll tell you what puzzles me,’ he said. ‘If Rosemary didn’t sleep her way on to Austin-Pearce’s board, how the hell did she get there?’
Judy nodded. ‘What puzzles me even more,’ she said, ‘is why she wanted to be there at all.’
‘Right,’ said Lloyd. ‘ Ring Obsessives Anonymous if you need someone to talk to, but I want to go home, and I can’t because the chances are that this bloody car won’t start. I’m not staying here all night. Go home, Mickey.’
Drake looked up, startled. ‘I was just trying to work out what this siren could have been,’ he said.
‘It’s nearly one o’clock in the morning. You have to be back at work at nine o’clock, and you are entitled to eight hours away from the station. Take it. That’s an order.’
‘Sorry, s—’ Drake bit off the automatic mode of address. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Judy, and scrambled out of the car. ‘ Goodnight.’
‘Night, Mickey,’ said Judy, smiling a little at his confusion.
‘Home,’ said Lloyd, opening the car door.
‘I’ll try it first,’ she said.
‘Don’t bother,’ said Lloyd.
‘It might be all right – the rain’s only just come on.’
Lloyd slammed her door, and ran back to his own car in a crash of thunder that would have done Hollywood proud. He got in, getting angrier by the minute. They had to go through the ritual. He started the engine, and waited. He knew what was going to happen – she knew what was going to happen. But they had to pretend they didn’t. Her car coughed and wheezed and shuddered, but it did not start. Eventually, she got out and ran to his car. He opened the door, and looked at her as she got in beside him.
‘Listen, Acting Chief Inspector Hill,’ he said. ‘ That car does not enhance your image.’
She shook rain from her hair, showering him. ‘I like it,’ she said obstinately.
‘Now? You like it right now?’
‘It’s friendly,’ she said.
‘Friendly?’ He drove into the car park, sweeping round to turn, and made his way through the teeming rain to the exit. ‘ Nothing works on it. And every time it rains, it gives up the ghost. And speaking of friendly – a new car would run on lead-free petrol.’
‘So would that one,’ she said.
‘If you got it converted, which you haven’t.’
He was stopped at the bloody lights now.
‘I can’t afford a new car.’
‘Well, it doesn’t look as though it’ll be too long before you can,’ he said.
There was a silence.
He pulled away on amber and turned on to the bridge, at last pointing in the right direction to get home, and away from here.
‘Is that what’s put you in a bad mood?’ she asked, after a moment.
‘I’m not in a bad mood.’ A fork of lightning split the dark sky, and he peered through the rain at the tree-lined road. He wanted to be home. He wanted to be wrapped round a large whisky, and possibly Judy, if she was still speaking to him. He did not want to talk to Judy about her temporary promotion, and that was what he knew he was going to do.
‘You could have fooled me. It bothers you, doesn’t it?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
He was supposed to be thinking about this rationally. Not arguing about it while he was trying to drive through a thunderstorm.
The car made its way along the Stansfield Road for some minutes before she spoke again.
‘If I wasn’t working on the same case, would it still bother you?’ she asked.
‘I can’t very well answer that, since it doesn’t bother me in the first place!’
‘Pull in at that lay-by,’ she said.
‘What?’ Automaticaliy, he was signalling: Maybe she’d seen something going on. He pulled the car to a halt, and looked out at the empty road. ‘Why?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Us,’ she said. ‘And I want to talk about it.’
He turned to her. ‘We can talk about it at home, for God’s sake!’ he said.
‘No, we can’t. As far as I’m concerned, when we are at home we don’t have ranks, and we’re not going to discuss them there. We’re going to sort this out here and now, once and for all.’
Right. That was clear enough. He switched off the engine, and listened to the rain battering the roof.
‘So what’s the problem?’ she said.
He looked at the streaks of light through the streaming windscreen, and tried to think of the right words, but he couldn’t. He hadn’t been expecting it, that was the main problem. ‘I saw you watching Allison when he left today,’ he said. ‘You fancy that, don’t you? Senior management It appeals to you.’
‘Yes,’ she said, defensively. ‘ What’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing.’ He wound down the window pointedly as she reached into her bag for a cigarette. Lightning lit the road, the woods; a train passed alongside them, silenced by the crack of thunder. This was crazy. Sitting here with a thunderstorm raging over their heads instead of being at home.
She hadn’t spoken. She did that; she used her interviewing technique when they were having a row. He used words. She used silence.
‘I just don’t know when it happened,’ he said. ‘My God, it took you ten years to take your sergeant’s exam – now all of a sudden you want to be chief constable.’
‘For one thing,’ she said, after a moment, ‘I joined a force that thought that women were for making the tea and looking after lost children. They were forced to call them women police officers rather than policewomen, and give them the same pay, but they didn’t have to give them any opportunities. Or encouragement.’ She paused. ‘For another, I was married to someone who thought that my job was expendable, and his was the only one that mattered.’
‘And it took you ten years to discover yourself, did it?’
‘Yes.’
‘And another three to get up the courage to apply for a sergeant’s post,’ he muttered.
She didn’t say anything, but it wasn’t technique time. He’d hurt her. He was very good at hurting her.
‘I know what I’m like,’ she said quietly, after a few moments. ‘But they offered me this job. And the temporary rank. I am getting more confident – it gives you confidence if people believe in you. It’s because you believe in me that I’ve got this far, however belatedly.’
He sighed. ‘I know,’ he said. And she was good enough, and confident enough to go on. He knew that too. He also knew that he was ten years older than her, and even if his chance hadn’t gone, he had neither the energy nor the ambition to keep one step ahead of her.
‘I’ve got another fifteen, twenty years to go,’ she said. ‘ Why shouldn’t I try to go as far as I can?’
‘No reason.’
‘Lloyd, if this rape squad gets set up, it’ll be headed by a DCI, and I’m going to apply,’ she said.
He nodded. And get it. Clearly. She was practically being ordered to apply for it.
‘Are you saying I shouldn’t?’
‘Of course not.’
The scene was bathed in white light again, and it sounded as though the sky was falling in. Perhaps it was.
‘Would you resent it?’
Smoke drifted past his face, out into the pounding rain. He looked at her. ‘ No,’ he said. ‘I’d find it … difficult I’m used to being senior to you,’ he said, ashamed of himself even as he said it.
She looked baffled. ‘ I don’t understand you,’ she said. ‘You don’t think a woman’s place is in the home – you don’t think there are men’s jobs and women’s jobs – why does this matter?’
‘The three-quarters Welsh,’ he said. ‘Men must work and women must weep.’ He took her hand. ‘If you catch up with me, the next step is overtaking me.’
‘But you encouraged me to get promotion!’
He nodded. ‘I just didn’t realise you’d want to go further,’ he said. ‘ I don’t mean I wouldn’t have encouraged you. I just never thought about it.’
‘I don’t know what I want, Lloyd. Sometimes I wish I was back on the beat. Being visible – being there when people need help. There’s much more job satisfaction.’ She was holding tight to his hand as she spoke. ‘That or higher up,’ she said. ‘At this level, you’re not one thing or the other. You’re not on the front line, and you’re not influencing policy. So if I want to move, the only way is up.’
Lloyd listened. ‘ I told you you’d end up as my chief super,’ he said. ‘You laughed.’
‘Anyone listening to us would have hysterics,’ the said. ‘ I’ve only just been promoted to inspector.’
Lloyd smiled, despite himself. Little drops of water, deflected by the open window, splashed his face.
‘You and I are more important than any promotion,’ she said.
He turned to her. ‘You’re not saying you’d hold back just because I don’t like the idea,’ he said, illogically appalled by that.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Not with something like the rape squad. But if it was going to affect our lives, I wouldn’t do it if you weren’t happy with it. Neither would you. I wouldn’t expect you to drag me off to West Yorkshire if I didn’t want to go, and I’ve no intention of putting you in that position either.’
‘No,’ he said. He hadn’t thought she would.
She still held on to his hand as though he might run away if she didn’t. ‘And if I really thought I might lose you,’ she said, ‘then I wouldn’t do anything at all.’
‘I said I’d find it difficult.’ He smiled. ‘Not impossible.’
‘Right,’ she said, releasing his hand. ‘You can go home now.’
He started the engine, which he thought for one stricken moment had done a Judy on him, but it fired at the second attempt, and he moved off.
‘What’s this you’re up to with Mrs Austin’s car?’ he asked.
‘I just want to know what he does,’ she said.
‘But you’re not telling anyone why?’
‘I’m tired of being told I’m obsessed.’
‘And you’re going to prove that he’s lying?’ said Lloyd, quite unable to work out how.
‘No,’ she said. ‘ But Mrs Austin’s car is really quite important, I think.’
He indicated left. ‘You always call her that, don’t you?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It just … distances me from it a little, that’s all.’
They didn’t speak for the rest of the journey home; it was an unnatural silence, and it made the time pass slowly. He pulled in behind the flats, and they ran through the thunder and lightning to the door, getting soaked.
Judy went to have a bath, and he poured himself the drink he had been looking forward to. His usual practice was to read a book, or watch something on the video, but tonight, he pulled his briefcase on to his knee, and took out copies of the statements. He read them all, such as they were. Pearce’s withdrawn nonsense, Austin’s dubious declaration of his movements, Pauline Pearce’s several different versions, the next-door neighbour’s, written in Mary Alexander’s neat, sloping hand, and police officerese.
I made the 999 call to the police while the sounds were still going on. My telephone is positioned by the window, and I was looking out when the noise ceased, and remained there until the police car arrived. I saw no one entering or leaving the flats during this time. I could hear a woman screaming, and someone shouting the word ‘whore’ repeatedly. I did not recognise the voice. I believe it was a man’s voice.
Useless. Saw nothing, knows nothing. It was always the same.
Whatever Judy had in mind about Jonathan Austin, she was going about it the wrong way, he was sure of that. She had set him up as the villain from the start, and now she was trying to prove it. But that wasn’t how it was done – she knew that usually. Facts, she would tell him. Look at the facts, and see them in a different light. She insisted that she wasn’t letting her emotional involvement get in the way of her judgement, but calling her Mrs Austin like that was proof that she was, and she was forgetting her own advice.
Her newly kindled ambition did bother his male chauvinist soul; he knew that, and was honest enough with himself to admit it. But their relationship could survive a bit of male ego bashing. That wasn’t what had put him in a bad mood.
It was his case, not Judy’s, and he had to find the evidence he needed. He had to find Tasker, for one thing, but he felt that that would not be likely to get him any further forward. He had got all he was going to get; he simply had to look at what he’d got in a new light.
And he had to do it without Judy’s help.