‘Your argument might sound a bit more convincin’ if it had been only the watch that we found,’ Woodend said. ‘But it wasn’t. We also retrieved a button that matches the ones on the jacket that Bradley Pine was wearing when his body was discovered.’
‘You could have planted that, too.’
‘An’ what about the bloodstains, Mrs Hawtrey?’ Woodend asked, exasperatedly. ‘Because you do know that we found bloodstains on the ground, don’t you?’
‘None of which has anything to do with me.’
‘Up until now, we’ve been assumin’ that Pine was already dead by the time he reached your house, and that he was only taken there so that you could accompany him on his last journey to the lay-by,’ Woodend said.
Thelma Hawtrey smiled. ‘You almost make it sound like a funeral cortege,’ she said.
‘But he wasn’t dead at that point, was he?’ Woodend asked, ignoring the interruption. ‘He was killed in your garden, by your lover, who’d been waitin’ for him in the bushes. How’d you get him to come to your house on a night when he must have had lots of other things to do, and there was thick fog which made goin’ anywhere a bit of an effort? Exactly what tale did you spin him, Mrs Hawtrey?’
‘I didn’t spin him any tale, as you put it, and, as far as I know, he didn’t come to the house.’
‘Maybe you didn’t know anythin’ about it, after all,’ Woodend conceded. ‘Maybe it was all your lover’s idea, an’ he kept you completely in the dark about the murder until after the deed itself was actually done.’
He paused, to give Thelma Hawtrey time to speak, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to.
‘If that is the case,’ he continued, ‘then the worst thing that you can possibly do, from your own viewpoint, is to take the fall for him. So why not tell us his name, then we can go an’ pick him up? I promise you, Mrs Hawtrey, that the moment he’s confessed, all charges against you will be dropped, an’ we’ll have you back in your own home within half an hour.’
‘There is no lover, and though you have charged me with Bradley Pine’s murder, you’ll never make the charges stick.’
‘Won’t I? What makes you think that?’
‘I still have faith in British justice. I still believe that the guilty will be punished, and the innocent will go free. And I’ll go free, Mr Woodend – because I didn’t do it!’
‘What about all the evidence which seems to say different?’ Woodend asked quietly.
‘Look, maybe I was being unfair to you to even suggest that you planted the watch,’ Thelma Hawtrey said. ‘Perhaps you’ve behaved properly throughout this whole sorry business, and you really did find the watch in my garden, after all. And maybe Bradley Pine was killed there, too. I honestly don’t know. But it still had nothing to do with me.’
What had happened to bring about the change in her, Woodend wondered. While they’d been searching her house, she’d seemed as nervous as a kitten. Now, in the intimidating atmosphere of the interview room – and after she’d actually been charged – she seemed perfectly in control of herself.
Woodend reached into his pocket and pulled out a packet of Capstan Full Strength.
‘Would you care for a cigarette, Mrs Hawtrey?’ he asked, offering them across the table.
Thelma Hawtrey shook her head. ‘No, thank you.’
‘Go on,’ Woodend urged. ‘I’m only offerin’ you a smoke, you know. It’s not all part of some kind of clever trick to get you to lower your guard, I can promise you that.’
‘I never thought it was a trick,’ Thelma Hawtrey said – still calm, still very much in control. ‘But it just so happens that I don’t smoke untipped cigarettes.’
‘No, you don’t, do you?’ Woodend agreed quietly. ‘There were half a dozen opened packets of cigarettes lyin’ around your house at various points, but not a single one of them was untipped. So where did all the untipped butt ends come from?’
‘What untipped butt ends?’
‘The ones that kept appearin’ in your rubbish bin.’
Thelma Hawtrey’s left eye suddenly began to twitch.
That question had shaken her, Woodend thought. Finally, he’d been able to come up with a question that had bloody shaken her!
‘Who … who was it who told you about the untipped cigarette ends?’ she asked.
‘If it’s true – an’ I believe it is – then the source doesn’t really matter, does it?’
‘It was that awful Chubb woman, wasn’t it?’ Thelma Hawtrey demanded. ‘The nosy bitch!’
‘Aye, it was her,’ Woodend admitted. ‘An’ we got a lot more information from her, as well – the brown ale that got drunk, when you never touched the stuff yourself; the one wine glass you washed up, while you left the other for Mrs Chubb to deal with; the bed sheets that you stripped off personally, so she wouldn’t find out what you’d been doin’ between them … Need I go on?’
Thelma Hawtrey was looking more than rattled – she looked as if she’d gone into shock. With what obviously took her a huge effort, she managed to fold her arms across her chest.
‘Well, do I need to go on?’ Woodend asked.
‘I’d like to talk to my solicitor now,’ Thelma Hawtrey said.
‘You can certainly do that if you want to,’ Woodend agreed, ‘but once we put things on a formal footin’, that’s how they have to stay, an’ I think you might be better off just tellin’ me—’
‘My solicitor,’ Thelma Hawtrey said. ‘I demand to speak to my solicitor.’
‘She’s asked for Foxy Rowton,’ Woodend told the rest of the team as they sat over steaming cups of industrial-strength tea in the police canteen.
Paniatowski consulted the background notes she’d started making the moment that Thelma Hawtrey had been arrested.
‘Rowton?’ she said. ‘But he’s not the solicitor that she normally uses to handle her affairs.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But maybe somebody’s told her that he’s the feller you go to when you’re in such deep shit that it’s starting to spill over the top of your wellingtons.’
‘What I don’t understand is why she didn’t ask for him when you first charged her,’ Rutter said.
‘I think I’ve got an answer to that,’ Woodend told him. ‘When we brought her in, she was confident that she could beat the murder charge. An’ maybe she was right about that. If her lover did everythin’ – killed Pine, took his body to the lay-by an’ carried out the mutilation – then there’d be no physical evidence to tie her to the killin’ at all.’
‘And so what if the murder was committed in her garden?’ Paniatowski added. ‘When we find a body, we don’t automatically arrest anybody who happens to be living near the scene of the crime, do we?’
‘So what was it that panicked her?’ Rutter asked.
‘It was when I talked about the untipped cigarette ends that Mrs Chubb had seen in the waste bin,’ Woodend said.
‘Why should that have done it?’
‘Because, although she already knew that we thought she had a lover who’d helped her to carry out the murder, she didn’t think we’d ever be able to trace him. But when I mentioned the cigarette ends, she began to get some idea of the extent of the resources we’ve got at our disposal. From that, it was a short step to convincin’ herself that if we really wanted to find him, we would. An’ maybe she thinks he’s the weak link in the chain. Maybe she thinks that the second we slap the cuffs on him, he’ll tell us everythin’ we want to know.’
‘You could be right,’ Rutter said.
A uniformed constable entered the canteen, and walked straight over to their table.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said to Woodend.
‘Yes?’
‘Mrs Hawtrey and her solicitor would like to see you now.’
Woodend nodded. ‘Well, that’s it then,’ he told his team. ‘It’s all over bar the shoutin’.’
Foxy Rowton had a thin, pointy face and restless, searching eyes, but his nick
name came not so much from his looks as from the manner in which he conducted his business. Half the serious criminals in Whitebridge had his telephone number either memorized or tattooed on their arms, and there were any number of men who, thanks to his efforts, were still walking free when – if justice had been allowed to run its course – they would have been banged up long ago.
Rowton was sitting in the interview room, next to his client, with his hand resting reassuringly on her arm. He gave the briefest of nods when Woodend entered the room.
‘Please sit down, Chief Inspector,’ he said, as if this whole encounter was taking place on his own territory.
Woodend sat, without comment. After all, why not let Rowton have his moment at centre stage when, in the few moments, he’d become no more than a minor character in the drama which was being played out.
‘My client wishes to make a short statement, then is prepared to answer any questions you may care to put to her,’ Rowton said. ‘Is that acceptable to you, Chief Inspector?’
‘Aye, as long as she does eventually answer my questions.’
‘She will.’
‘Then I’m all ears.’
‘I was not expecting Bradley Pine to come to my house that night,’ Thelma Hawtrey said, almost as if she were reading – badly – from a prepared script. ‘But though I was not expecting him, I would not have been at all surprised if he had turned up unannounced. He often did that – especially late at night.’
‘Hang on!’ Woodend said. ‘You told me you’d hardly seen him at all since your husband’s funeral – an’ even then it had been mostly by chance.’
‘First the statement, then the questions, if you don’t mind,’ Foxy Rowton said, rebukingly.
‘Oh, all right! Just get on with it!’ Woodend replied.
‘That is precisely what my client was attempting to do when you interrupted her,’ Rowton said. He turned to that client now. ‘Do please carry on, Mrs Hawtrey, whenever you feel ready.’
‘I heard a few cars that night, but not as many as usual, probably because of the fog,’ Thelma Hawtrey continued. ‘Two of them even stopped quite close to my house, but since no one rang my door bell, I assumed they were either neighbours themselves, or were visiting neighbours. I was drinking wine as I watched the television, and without really noticing I was doing it, I finished a whole bottle. I suddenly realized I was quite drunk, and decided to go to bed. When I got out of my chair to turn the television off, the nine o’clock news was just starting.’
Woodend waited for her to say more, but she had plainly reached the end of her tale.
‘Is that it?’ he asked.
‘What more do you want?’ Rowton asked. ‘What more can Mrs Hawtrey tell you than what actually happened?’
‘Well, she could give me the name of her lover, for a start.’
Rowton looked pained. ‘Is that really absolutely necessary, Chief Inspector?’ he asked.
‘You bet it bloody-well is!’
Rowton nodded to his client. ‘Go ahead.’
‘For the past three years, since shortly after my husband’s death, I have been having an affair with Bradley Pine,’ Thelma Hawtrey said.
‘What!’ Woodend exploded.
‘That was clear enough, surely,’ Rowton said.
‘You were havin’ an affair – an’ nobody else knew about it?’ Woodend asked, incredulously.
‘We were very discreet,’ Thelma Hawtrey said.
‘But why, for God’s sake? You were both free as birds. You could have done what you liked.’
‘This is Whitebridge, where we are ruled not by a monarch and her government, but by the tyranny of public opinion,’ Foxy Rowton said.
‘An’ what’s that supposed to mean, exactly?’ Woodend asked.
‘It means that in some circles, though not perhaps the ones that you move in, Chief Inspector, there is a very keen sense of what is appropriate behaviour and what isn’t.’
‘I haven’t had much of a social life since my husband’s death,’ Thelma Hawtrey said, ‘but if it had become generally known that I’d started an affair so soon after his funeral, I would have had no social life at all.’
‘But it’s now three years since your husband died,’ Woodend said. ‘Surely there was no need to keep it a secret any longer.’
‘Not from my side, no,’ Thelma Hawtrey agreed. ‘But there was from Bradley’s. The electors of Whitebridge would not look favourably on a candidate who had a mistress.’
‘Then why didn’t you get wed?’
‘We could have done that, I suppose. Bradley wanted to. But I have no wish to be married again to anyone – and certainly not to Bradley.’
‘No?’
‘No!’
‘Why not?’
‘Mainly because I didn’t love him. In fact, I’m not sure that I even liked him that much.’
‘Then why …?’
‘But he was a stallion in the bedroom, and – in some strange way – that helped to ease the grief I was feeling for Alec.’
‘This is bollocks!’ Woodend said. ‘You think that you can keep your real lover hidden away from me by confessin’ to an affair you never had. Well, I’m not buyin’ it!’
‘Mrs Hawtrey and Mr Pine were not always as discreet everywhere else as they had to be in places where they were both well known,’ Foxy Rowton said.
‘Meanin’ what?’
‘We found excuses for us both to be away from Whitebridge at the same time,’ Thelma Hawtrey said. ‘Bradley would say he had to attend a mattress conference somewhere, and I would come up with some other convenient reason to explain my absence. Then we’d spend a few days in a hotel together, as man and wife. London was one of the places we went to. Brighton was another.’
‘An’ I suppose you’re about to tell me you can prove that, are you?’ Woodend asked sceptically.
‘Yes, she is,’ Foxy Rowton said. ‘The last time they went away together was only three weeks ago, just before the start of the election campaign.’
Mrs Hawtrey smiled. ‘Bradley said he needed a break before the campaign started to hot up,’ she said.
‘They stayed in the Grand Hotel in Great Yarmouth for the weekend,’ Rowton continued. ‘You’ll find Mr Pine’s name down in the register, and I’m sure that if you show Mrs Hawtrey’s photograph to the hotel staff, they’ll be more than willing to identify her as the woman they knew as Mrs Pine.’
Woodend had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Both Thelma Hawtrey and her solicitor sounded so sure of what they were saying that it simply had to be true.
‘So the only way Mrs Hawtrey could have got her lover to kill Mr Pine was if she’d persuaded Mr Pine to hit himself over the back of the head, and then drive himself out to the lay-by, which – considering he was already dead – would have been no mean feat,’ Rowton said.
‘You’re a very funny man,’ Woodend told the solicitor. ‘You should be on the stage.’
Rowton looked suitably modest. ‘I bet you say that to all the solicitors who manage to run rings round you,’ he said.
Twenty-Two
Holy Trinity Catholic Orphanage for Boys had been established in a large country house which stood shivering at the foot of the Pennine Hills. Its design had been grand in concept but crude in execution, and the result was a heavy sandstone structure which squatted instead of soared, and had probably once been a Victorian wool-millionaire’s misguided idea of gracious living.
The director’s office, to which Woodend was shown, was panelled in dark oak and filled with heavy furniture which had been out of style long before the Second World War. There were photographs of groups of boys on the walls, and a display case holding sporting trophies and thus proclaiming to the whole world that even orphans can sometimes win prizes.
The director himself, Father Swales, was in his late sixties. His face was heavily lined, and his gnarled hands gave evidence of advanced arthritis, but his pale eyes suggested kindness as well as authority, and h
is welcoming smile was that of a man who was far from giving up on life.
‘You wanted to ask about Bradley Pine,’ he said.
‘That’s right,’ Woodend agreed.
The director shook his head sadly. ‘Poor Bradley. To have come so far and yet have died in such a violent manner.’
‘You remember him well, do you?’
‘Oh yes, even after twenty-five long years, I remember him. But I must admit, it is far from clear to me how my memories of him will help you to catch his murderer.’
‘I’m not sure, either,’ Woodend admitted.
But apart from the line of inquiry he was now following, what other options were open to him?
There was no disputing that Thelma Hawtrey’s revelations had been a blow, and that they’d unravelled what he’d thought was a cast-iron case as if it were no more than a ball of string. So now he was like a gambler, who puts his last pound on the outsider in the last race of the day – or a centre-forward who hopes against hope that his misplaced shot will magically rebound into the goal-mouth in the few remaining seconds of the game.
‘I like to build up a picture of the victim in my head,’ he explained to the director. ‘It helps me to see the world as he might have seen it – and sometimes, it leads me to his killer.’
The director nodded. ‘Very well, if you think it might help you, I will do my best to paint a picture for you of the boy I knew,’ he promised. ‘Bradley was eleven when he came to us, and had already known more despair, at that tender age, than most of us will experience in a lifetime.’
‘You’re sayin’ he’d had a rough childhood?’
‘He had a vile childhood. His own mother died when he was just a baby. His father married again, and he and his new wife had another child – a little girl. It could have been a shining bright new start for all of them.’
‘But it wasn’t?’
‘His father and his stepmother had skills by which they could have earned a very decent living – he was a motor mechanic, she was a ladies’ hairdresser – but they were hopeless alcoholics, and so neither of them held a job down for very long. Bradley and his little half-sister were both badly neglected by them, and sometimes – when the drink took one of the parents the wrong way – they were actually physically abused.’
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