twenty

Rex found St. Mary’s Wharf Divisional Headquarters looming behind heavy metal gates, the utilitarian brick building with its narrow windows and side tower promoting a sense of foreboding. Special arrangements had been made to gain Rex access to the custody suite, where Inspector Fiske met him at the front desk with a warm handshake and thanked the uniformed sergeant for taking care of his visitor.

“Holden didn’t have any family to call, so I let him contact you,” Fiske explained.

“To tell the truth, I was even more surprised to learn he was here than I was when I heard Christopher Ells had been brought in. Holden said his friend Ells had implicated him in the murder, but he refused to give me any details over the phone.”

“Ells was no doubt trying to deflect suspicion from himself by making Holden look bad. He said Holden had watched snuff films with him and had confessed to fantasizing about killing someone onstage in front of an audience.”

Rex checked his surprise. “No accounting for taste,” he remarked, ever perturbed by the depths of people’s depravity. “If making a snuff film were the motive for Cassie’s murder, you’d expect some recording of the event, no?”

“We’re looking on Ells’ laptop. We didn’t find any flash drives, but those little buggers are easy to conceal.”

“Did anyone see someone filming the opening night?” Rex recalled that signs in the hall expressly prohibited the use of mobile phones during a performance.

The inspector shook his head. “None of the spectators noticed anything.”

“In any case, it’s impossible Holden shot Cassie if Ada Case and Susan Richardson returned with him backstage after visiting the lavatories.”

“The two women do corroborate Holden’s alibi,” Fiske confirmed. “But before we release him, see if you can get anything out of him. It seems he was quite chummy with Ells. It should be illegal to watch snuff material, but how to monitor it all?” Fiske rubbed the bags under his bleary eyes. “Forgive the rant, Rex. I need some coffee. Fancy some?”

Rex declined, having no palate for police station coffee, which seemed to impregnate the walls with its stale aroma. After grabbing one for himself, the inspector led him upstairs and down a corridor with a succession of numerically lettered doors on either side. Detective Sergeant Antonescu stood outside Interview Room Two, arms crossed against his chest, eyes peering beneath his menacing eyebrows. He gave a brief if not very encouraging nod as he stepped aside to permit Rex to enter the room.

Timothy Holden sat at a bare table in front of a white paper cup, facing an observation window in the wall. He had changed out of the shirt and tie he had worn at the memorial service and into a long-sleeved grey sweatshirt mottled with bleach stains. His jutting chin exhibited late-night shadow, his dazed face sickly pale beneath the flickering fluorescent strip lighting that emitted a continuous electric hum. As Rex sat down in one of the two extra chairs, he noted dark shadows circling Holden’s eyes, enlarged behind his glasses.

“Thanks for coming,” Holden said with a pitiful sigh of relief.

“How can I help?”

“Like I said on the phone, I didn’t do nothing, but I don’t want to talk to the detectives. They’ll hammer me for hours until I can’t think straight. On the other hand, if I insist on a lawyer, it might make me look guilty. And it’s a lottery with public defenders, innit, with no more chance of a win than with a million-pound scratch-off. So, what d’you advise?”

Rex could be sure the two detectives were listening in on the other side of the blind window. “I cannot advise you. For one thing, I only practise Scottish law.”

“Fat lot of use that is.”

“Rest assured, if the guilty party is found, you have nothing to worry about.”

“Well, hurry it up, yeh? I’m innocent! How much longer do I have to sit in here? I’m freezing my nuts off.”

Rex perceived it wasn’t only the frigid temperature that made the room cold. Everything, from the minimalist furnishings to the dingy walls displaying crime prevention posters, was designed to optimize discomfort and demoralize suspects into submission. He removed his jacket and told Holden to put it around his shoulders, which he did with a touching expression of gratitude.

“Tell me about the snuff films you watched with Ells. That seems to be the main reason you’re here.”

“It was just a bit of escapism.”

Rex wondered what Holden’s life was like that he felt the need to resort to snuff films to escape. He tried to imagine him working at the sandwich shop and living alone, probably with no girlfriend in the picture. He was not an attractive proposition for women with his protruding jaw and only the bottom row of teeth visible, ragged and grey. More than likely, Penny’s play had been a high point in his monotonous existence.

“There’s no real harm in it,” Holden went on, defending his viewing choice. “There’s worse on the Internet with ISIS beheading people and burning them alive in cages.”

“Ells said you wanted to kill someone onstage.”

“That’s a lie! Or if I said anything like that, it was under the influence of one too many. It was just beer talk.”

“So, Cassie Chase’s death in front of a live audience was purely coincidental?”

“It wasn’t me! Anyway, her death was offstage. No one saw nothing. Except the killer, of course, who might’ve videoed it.”

“Unlikely they had time.”

“They could’ve worn a camera and rolled the video while in motion.” Holden planted his elbows on the table, closed his eyes, and shook his head wearily. “Even if I wanted to kill someone, it would never be Cassie.”

Rex feared Holden might clam up if he persisted with the current line of questioning. “I, personally, am more interested in why Penny said she had seen you at the community centre on Friday, almost an hour prior to your stated time of arrival of five forty.”

Holden looked up in surprise. “Why would she say that?”

“You tell me.”

“Same reason as Chris,” the detainee replied glumly. “To put the blame somewhere else, or maybe she’s covering for someone. Penny Spencer has a wild imagination. She wrote the play, after all. And she doesn’t like me. She never wanted me in the play even though I looked enough the part and the Father Brown costume fit. Rodney told me. He said Mr. Reddit had asked him to coach me on my lines so I could, in his words, deliver an acceptable Essex accent. I had less than two weeks to prepare because the first Father Brown was leaving before the play opened. I’d have asked Mr. Reddit to represent me, but Ells got to him first.”

“Did you meet the person who had the part before you? Penny mentioned he left the play to pursue an acting career in the States.”

Holden shook his head. “I heard, though, he’d done some TV ads and managed to score a few small parts in films and in a kid’s serial playing a track star.” He opened his palms on the table in a helpless gesture of entreaty, revealing stubby fingers on his wide hands. “Can you help me, Mr. Graves? It’s like everyone’s out to get me.”

“Sit tight, Mr. Holden, and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I don’t have much choice other than to sit tight, do I?”

Rex got up and recovered his jacket with a word of apology, giving Holden a reassuring pat on the shoulder. Inspector Fiske met him on the other side of the door.

“Playing the victim card, I see,” the inspector said with a wry smirk.

“If you’re going to release him, I could offer to take him home.”

“I’d like to take another crack at him. Maybe he’ll change his mind about talking to us now that you’ve softened him up. Ells is the reason he’s here. Perhaps now he’ll return the favour and snitch on his friend.”

“I wish you luck,” Rex said with a small smile of his own. He paused as he turned away. “Could you at least fetch the poor man a blanket or turn up the thermostat?”

“How about a hot water bottle and a mug of Ovaltine while we’re at it,” jibed Antonescu, shutting the door of the next room and joining them.

“Watch it, son,” Fiske told his sergeant. “I hear Mr. Graves is a formidable prosecutor.”

“It may be a matter of catching more flies with honey than vinegar,” Rex responded mildly to Antonescu’s comments.

With a brief nod to the inspector, he made his way back along the interminable corridor, down the stairs to the main entrance, and into the car park, glad when he had left the police complex and the slow late-night lorries far behind him on the parkway.

By the time he returned to Barley Close, Helen was already in bed, wearing a lacy nightdress and sitting up against the pillows in the soft light cast by the reading lamp. She slipped the pattern-framed glasses off her nose and bookmarked the page of her novel.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked.

“I didn’t even try. Not sure I could, alone in the house. How did you get on? You have that cat-and-canary look about you. Don’t deny it!”

Rex removed his jacket and sat down on her side of the bed. “I do have a theory, but it is only a theory at this point. I really need to talk to Penny again.”

Helen furrowed her brow. “It’s too late to ring her.”

“I’ll try her first thing in the morning. If I’m on the right track, it may mean delaying our return to Edinburgh by a day or two.”

“Well, I’m temporarily unemployed, and you have the rest of the week off, so it’s not really a problem, except that your mother is expecting us for dinner.”

“I’ll call her as soon as I have a better idea of where I am in the case. She’s used to my erratic schedule.”

“But what about Julie? She’s supposed to be moving in tomorrow afternoon. I don’t think she could stand another night at her mum’s.”

Rex took his wife’s hand and kissed her palm. “She can still move in tomorrow. It’ll be company for you while I’m off hopefully solving the case.”

He gave her fingers a quick squeeze and rose from the bed to undress.

“But you don’t think it’s the butler or Father Brown?”

Rex turned towards Helen as he continued to unbutton his shirt, and merely smiled. She retaliated by throwing a pillow at him.

“You are insufferable,” she said, snuggling down into the bed. “But I correctly guessed the fictitious murderer, don’t forget.”

“You did. Robin Busket, the interloper at Pinegrove Hall. But I don’t think Cassie’s killer is going to so conveniently trip up and spill the beans, more’s the pity.”

At that moment, a sudden spring rain began pattering against the panes. Rex looked out behind the curtains at the windows in the houses on the opposite side of the street, for the most part clothed in darkness, only a few blurry yellow squares attesting to wakeful residents or nightmare-prone children.

He would not have to put on the lawn sprinklers, after all, he reflected as he watched droplets of water wiggle down the glass. He reclosed the red crêpe curtains and finished getting ready for bed. Nothing at that moment was more appealing than holding Helen in his arms and being lulled to sleep by the rain.