‘There are dozens of unidentified prints everywhere,’ Nolan went on. ‘You’d expect that. But the handle of the door to the den, or whatever they like to call it, has smudges uppermost. Although, interestingly, that door was locked and the key shows fingerprints.’
‘OK. What else?’
‘The body itself. I’ll let Hoots Mon! here tell you himself. Take it away, Jock!’
With the infinitely patient smile of the Scot who has heard that joke a hundred times before and found it minimally amusing the first time, the pathologist outlined his findings.
He was used to a lay audience, and his explanation was commendably clear and simple. The skewer, passing in front of the vertebrae which might have deflected it and behind the windpipe, had penetrated the carotid artery. Bleeding would be instantaneous and profuse. The immediate loss of blood to the brain would produce confusion and loss of control of the limbs, and death would follow in around three minutes.
‘He must, I would say, have been asleep – or drunk, maybe, though I’ve not had time to check – because there’s no sign of struggle or alarm. He’d hardly know a thing about it. A sudden jab, a moment’s panic as he clutched at his throat – there are signs of blood on the charred right hand – and then struggled to his feet. Hands instinctively forward as he felt himself falling. After that – oblivion. I will say I can think of nastier ways to go. Quite a lot of them, truth to tell.’ The blue eyes gleamed ghoulishly. ‘But I don’t expect you’ll be wanting me to tell you about those.’
‘No,’ Vezey agreed absently, thinking it through. ‘I suppose if you planned to kill someone it’s a pretty effective way to do it.’
‘Ah!’ A finger was wagged in caution. ‘Not necessarily. It could be, but on the other hand you could put a spike through someone’s throat and miss all the vital organs quite easily. You could hit the backbone, without doing fatal damage. I’m not saying your victim would enjoy it, right enough, but he’d still be in a state to come out fighting.’
‘Right.’ Vezey digested that. ‘So you reckon this was just a lucky thrust?’
‘Lucky for some, you could say. Yes, unless you think the perpetrator was likely to know precisely the right spot to hit.’
‘So let me recap. You’re saying it was either someone who was so inexpert they didn’t know it was difficult, or someone who was so expert they knew precisely? Thanks, doc, you’re a great help.’
‘My pleasure. And hoots, mon!, as we don’t say in Scotland.’
Vezey had made his mind up by the time he got back to his car. The fingerprints clinched it; he didn’t believe that the woman he had been dealing with last night would – in whatever manifestation – be capable of planning this pointless deception. So he must, after all, cast the net wider. There were the other women he must question; Suzanne Bolton, with her nurse’s knowledge of anatomy, came to mind. And they must question the people who had been at the Golf Club; someone there must, apart from his murderer, have been the last to see Piers McEvoy alive.
He drove away quickly to evade the group of reporters. It had grown; word was obviously getting about, and a camera flashed in his face before he could turn aside. He gave his orders over the radio as he drove. There were plenty of officers he could deploy, mercifully, and he could have everything well in hand by mid-morning.
***
Ted and Jean Brancombe had gone off to church, but Margaret had declined to go with them. She felt, she told them, obliged to stay in case there should be another summons for her now-slumbering brother, who could sleep through an earthquake let alone a ringing phone, but in fact she was still feeling far from robust and dealing with well-meant enquiries and sympathy would deplete the strength she felt she might need to cope with other demands as the day’s events unfolded.
She was in the sitting room trying hard to focus her mind on the morning epistle with Pyewacket dozing on her knee when the doorbell rang. He gave her a death stare as she unceremoniously tipped him on to the hearth rug and went to answer it.
Andy Cutler, of course, she recognized immediately. The girl beside him, a thin wiry child in her early teens, wore the surly expression the young adopt when they are deeply uncertain, and she was pulling the dark grey jersey, which all but covered her micro-skirt, down over her hands, thrusting her thumbs through the holes they had worn in the seams. The heavy mascara on her eyes was smudged, as if she had been crying.
Andy, too, was very pale. He said without preamble, ‘Can we come in and talk to you? There isn’t anyone else, and I told Martha you were OK. We went to the church but it was someone else doing the service, so we came away.’
‘I’m glad you knew where to find me. Come through to the kitchen. Would you like coffee, tea – ?’
She chose the kitchen rather than the sitting room deliberately; its sturdy, practical furnishings were reassuring, and they took seats at the table without waiting to be asked. They both shook their heads at the offer of coffee, but Martha, in a show of defiance, asked if she could smoke.
It was clearly a test; Margaret passed it by saying indifferently, ‘Sure,’ and found a saucer to use as an ashtray, hoping that Jean wouldn’t have a fit when she returned and found her kitchen polluted.
Andy burst out, as if this were a burden too heavy for him to bear a moment longer, ‘It’s the police. I think they’re going to arrest Hayley for killing that sod McEvoy, and she didn’t do it. I can’t stop them; they won’t listen to me.’
‘The pigs never do,’ Martha put in, but he ignored her.
‘Would you speak to them?’ he begged. ‘They’d listen to you.’
Martha, stubbing out the cigarette she had just lit, added, ‘She’s a rotten mother, actually. Everyone thinks that, and it’s quite true, she is. But she hasn’t done this, I swear she hasn’t.’
Margaret looked at their tortured faces, in which the pain showed as clearly as the colour of their eyes. Was there no limit to the agony some parents chose to inflict on their children, the sins of the fathers – and mothers – visited so directly and horribly on these hapless innocents? Robert had outlined briefly the later developments, and it seemed all too hideously plausible, given Hayley’s involvement with Piers, that she might have been moved to kill him. A man who treated one woman as badly as he treated his wife would have had few scruples about the way he used his mistress. But Margaret could hardly say that now.
‘Tell me everything that’s been happening, and I’ll try to think what we should do.’
They poured it all out; it was the fourth time the police had questioned Hayley, and this time they had taken her away. She had an alibi for the night of the fire at the Boltons’, she had reminded them, but apparently they weren’t interested in that any more. They had evidence that Hayley had quarrelled with McEvoy last night, and Hayley’s airy explanation that it was just a little misunderstanding between friends hadn’t cut any ice.
‘And was it?’ Margaret asked gently.
They exchanged glances. ‘No,’ said Andy. ‘She was fit to be tied when she came home last night. It’s her business, you see: it’s like – well, a bit iffy just now. With Piers being loaded and – ’ he hesitated on the word, ‘a friend, she thought she could get him to sub her so she could keep it going. She wouldn’t tell us what he said, apart from no. But she was spitting tacks.’
‘Did she go out afterwards?’
‘No, of course not,’ Martha said fiercely, then without warning burst into tears. ‘She couldn’t have, I’m sure she couldn’t have.’
Andy absently patted her shoulder, but his own olive skin had taken on a greenish tinge.
‘That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t actually know, once we were all asleep. I wanted to ask you, when we know she didn’t do it, should we, like, invent an alibi for her that we can tell the police?’
‘No,’ said Margaret, sick at heart. ‘You must never lie to the police. Leaving aside the fact that it’s simply wrong, you couldn’t do it well enough. They�
��d trip you up in five minutes, and that would make everything much, much worse.
‘But –’ she paused, trying to frame the question in such as way as not to alienate them, ‘I know she’s your mother, and of course you believe what she’s told you, but is there anything – anything at all – that the police might take account of, that might show them that she didn’t do it?’
Then Martha, her husky voice further thickened by tears, said, ‘She didn’t want to kill him. She just wanted the money, and she’d decided exactly how she was going to get it. And she surely couldn’t get it from him if he was dead.’
Andy’s head had gone down. ‘We might as well tell it like it is. She was going to blackmail him. Our mother was going to blackmail her former lover. That’s a great thing to have to live with. Not.’ He raised his head, and his eyes were blazing at the injustice of it all. ‘But I’d rather that than be the son of a murderess.’
***
Vezey took Jackie Boyd with him to take notes while he questioned Suzanne Bolton. She was looking surprisingly calm if somewhat drained this morning, and Patrick sat close at her side on the sofa throughout the police interview, exuding husbandly support.
Yes, she was prepared to tell them all about last night, about the strain she had been under and the upset at the hospital, and – with shame – about her attack on Elizabeth. It was difficult, looking at the neat, composed woman, to imagine her as an avenging Fury.
‘I think, I really think I must have had some sort of brainstorm,’ she said. ‘I just can’t believe I did that to poor Lizzie. As if she hasn’t got troubles enough! Are you – are you going to charge me with assault?’
No, Vezey didn’t think it was likely that charges would be brought, and her relief was obvious.
‘We’d had a very bumpy time in our marriage,’ she said, looking affectionately at Patrick, who squeezed her hand.
‘But Patrick came after me last night, in all that fog: he searched and searched until he found me. I’d just parked the car up by the reservoir at the top of the common, and cried and cried. I don’t know what I’d have done if he hadn’t coaxed me to come back. We talked half the night, and I’ve promised to see the doctor and talk to him about depression. And it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I had to give up my job, either.’
She smiled at Patrick again.
Vezey did not feel that it was part of his police duties to preside over a love fest. ‘And exactly what time was it when you found your wife, Mr Bolton?’
‘Time?’ Patrick looked to Suzanne for help, and she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t the faintest idea. I seemed to be driving round for ages, but that could have been because of the fog. It probably wasn’t as long as all that. I really couldn’t say.’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’ Vezey tried not to sound heavily ironic, and failed. She didn’t have an alibi, but then she really didn’t have a motive either.
They left, and went on to Laura Ferrars. James had been interviewed at his office, and had given a precise, lawyer’s account of Hayley Cutler’s contretemps with McEvoy. But he had been hesitant about what had happened after he went home, and his wife’s statement was a loose end Vezey wanted tidied up and out of the way. He had directed that Cutler should be taken to headquarters, and he was hopeful that he could have the whole thing tied up in pretty pink ribbon by the end of the afternoon.
Laura Ferrars seemed somehow different. He was not a man who paid much attention to feminine appearance, but he had her filed as cool, well-groomed, understated. When last he had seen her she had been both nervous and defensive.
This woman was none of these things. Her feet were bare; she was wearing jeans and a Garfield sweater which might have belonged to one of her children. Her hair, normally smooth and sleeked-down, looked as wild and fluffy as a dandelion clock. He had the impression that the appropriate expressions of concern for Elizabeth McEvoy cloaked an emotion that was almost elation, and he wanted to know why.
‘We have reason to believe,’ he said brutally, ‘that some third person was involved in Piers McEvoy’s death. According to our information you bore him a considerable grudge because you believe he cost you a professional promotion which you coveted. Is that correct?’
Colour stained her cheekbones, but she did not lose her composure. ‘Yes, I’m quite prepared to accept that’s a fair enough way to put it. I made one or two resolutions last night, and since one of them was not to fudge things any more, I have to say that the man was a wart on the face of humanity. I can’t think of anyone who won’t be better off without him.’
‘That’s straight enough, anyway. And may I be equally direct, and ask you whether your sense of duty to humanity might have compelled you to run a barbecue skewer through his neck?’
This was plain speaking with a vengeance. She had invited it, but even so recoiled instinctively.
Recovering herself, she said, ‘Not my duty to humanity, no. At one stage, I’d probably have done it on my own account, if I’d had the guts. But as it happens, I didn’t.’
‘And can your husband confirm your movements during the hours in question?’
For the first time, she seemed flustered. ‘Well no, not really, I suppose. We had a bit of a row – no, that’s not true, and I said I would be honest, didn’t I? We had the mother and father of all rows, and he slept on the sofa in the sitting room, because he was scared I might throw something else at him if he came upstairs. So I daresay I could have got up and murdered half the population of Stretton Noble in their beds and he would have been none the wiser.’
So she had no alibi either, and she had been more than frank about her motive. But somehow he couldn’t see it. He was very tired. He was looking forward to interviewing Hayley Cutler and getting it all wrapped up, but in deference to his exhaustion he let Jackie Boyd take the wheel on the journey back to district headquarters.
***
When he reached his office Robert Moon was waiting for him, looking disgustingly spruce. He was bathed, freshly shaved, and had the well-fed air of someone who has just consumed a farmhouse breakfast and lunch rolled into one. He looked up with concern as Rod Vezey came in, hollow-eyed and gaunt, with a day’s growth of stubble, and stumbled over a pile of files which had been left on the floor beside his desk.
‘Good grief, you look terrible!’ Moon exclaimed. ‘Haven’t you had any sleep?’
Vezey shook his head. ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got to sort out Hayley Cutler – they’ve picked her up for me, and she’s waiting for questioning downstairs. And after that I can sleep for twenty-four hours while some other poor sod gets it all down on paper, secure in the knowledge of a job well done. Are you coming with me to talk to her?’
‘Hayley Cutler?’ Moon sounded startled. ‘Look, I think you’d better listen to this first, before you find yourself doing something you might regret.’
He told Vezey what the Cutler children had said, and watched with considerable sympathy the doubt growing in his heavy eyes.
‘But for God’s sake, man! It has to be her!’ He rubbed his hands over his face, as if he could wipe the tiredness away. ‘She’s the only one left – there just isn’t a case against either of the other two. Oh, you could argue back and forwards intellectually, but in fact it’s perfectly obvious that they’re non-starters. And you may well say that there are umpteen other women who fit your profile, but these are surely the only ones in the frame – ’
‘Rod,’ Moon interrupted, ‘you really should get some sleep you know.’
‘Oh, don’t waste my time! How can I, before I get a line on this? I’m the only person in possession of all the facts of the case.’
‘You’re not in possession of all the facts of the case – or at least, I suppose you may be, but you’re certainly proceeding on entirely the wrong premise.
‘I’m gratified to find you paying such slavish attention to my profile, but that was to help find Missy. And we’ve found her, remember? This – Mc
Evoy’s murder – is an entirely new and separate crime.’
As Vezey stared at him blankly, he continued, ‘You’re simply too tired to think clearly. Have a rest. The killer is most unlikely to strike again while you’re asleep.’
Blankness had given way to despair. ‘If you think there’s the remotest chance that I could sleep, after that bombshell, you’re off your trolley. I’ll have to report to the super, and how can I say, “I’m sorry, sir, I’ve just wasted a day of the investigation and however many hundreds of pounds of the taxpayer’s money it is in barking up the wrong tree, and I haven’t the faintest idea where to go from here”?’
Robert Moon sat back in his chair, folding his hands across his well-rounded stomach, and said gently, ‘Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as that. That’s exhaustion talking. If you were in anything like your normal form, I’m sure you’d have realized that it’s all remarkably obvious, really.’
16
Patrick Bolton opened the door. Robert Moon, who was observing him minutely, thought he saw a dilation of the pupils of his eyes, but there was no other visible reaction beyond a natural surprise.
‘Well, good afternoon, gentlemen. I must confess I didn’t expect to see you back so soon.’
‘Just a few more questions, Sir, if you don’t mind.’
Rodney Vezey had got his second wind; he had washed, shaved, had a cup of black coffee and a couple of sausage rolls and now looked, to his companion’s admiration, as if he were fit for another twenty-four hour stint.
A frown crossed Bolton’s brow. ‘I did hope my wife could be left alone for the rest of the day, after cooperating with you so fully this morning,’ he said stiffly. ‘She’s very tired, you know, and I’ve persuaded her to go upstairs and lie down.’
Moon saw Vezey smile. ‘Oh the shark has pretty teeth, dear...’ The line came irresistibly to mind.
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