‘Yes, I do,’ Woodend said seriously. ‘I was talkin’ to the Governor before I came to see you , an’ it seems you’ve been an exemplary prisoner.’
‘Well, of course I have. If you want to earn time off for good behaviour, that’s exactly what you have to be.’
‘He also told me that you’ve often volunteered to work extra hours in the prison hospital.’
‘Why wouldn’t I? The hospital’s a pleasant place. Certainly a great deal more pleasant than my cell.’
‘An’ you’ve been holdin’ classes – teachin’ some of the worst educated prisoners to read. Now why, I ask myself, should you have bothered to have done all that?’
‘Because it helps to fill in the time?’
‘I don’t think so. I think you’re doin’ it because you’re tryin’ to redeem youself.’
‘Redeem myself!’ Doc Pierson repeated with a contempt which didn’t quite ring true. ‘What kind of language is that to use about me? I’m not a Catholic, you know.’
‘Doesn’t matter whether you are or whether you’re not,’ Woodend said firmly. ‘You don’t have to belong to the Church of Rome to understand that you’ve done wrong in the past, an’ to want to try an’ compensate for it in any way that you can.’
‘And are you saying that my telling you what happened at that autopsy will be part of the redemption process?’
‘Yes, I think it will.’
‘Why should it be?’
‘Because it’ll be one more secret that you’ll no longer have to keep locked up inside yourself – one less weight of wrong-doin’ that’s pressin’ down on your shoulders.’
Pierson laughed again. ‘Perhaps you should have become a priest instead of a policeman,’ he said.
Woodend shook his head. ‘There’d have been no chance of that. I didn’t have the Latin, you see, and you’ll never get anywhere in the priesthood if you don’t have the Latin.’ He paused for a moment. ‘So are you goin’ to tell me what happened, Doc?’
‘Why not?’ Pierson asked. ‘If for no other reason, it’ll be worth it just to see the look on your face when you finally learn the truth.’
The house was located on the cliff-tops, in a seaside town about sixty miles from Whitebridge. It was not quite grand enough to have been called a mansion, but most of the people with whom Rutter rubbed shoulders would have thought all their dreams had come true if they’d had the title deeds to it in their own pockets.
Its present owner had lived there for fifteen years. She had bought it with the money she’d been awarded in the divorce settlement which had left Alec Hawtrey feeling so poor that, in the end, he’d had no choice but to take Bradley Pine into the business as his partner.
The first Mrs Hawtrey was in her late fifties, and was inclining towards becoming stout. She had resisted the temptation to dye her hair – which was now almost white – but it was well cared for and recently permed. She was wearing a sensible tweed skirt, a plain blouse and strong walking shoes – and she had insisted that Rutter accompany her in her daily stroll along the cliffs.
They stood quite close to the edge for a while, watching the seagulls swoop over the sea, then the first Mrs Hawtrey turned to Rutter and said, ‘It is truly remarkable how long bitterness can linger, isn’t it? It’s sixteen years since the divorce, you know.’
‘Yes, I’d worked that out for myself,’ Rutter said.
‘You’d have thought, wouldn’t you, that we would have been able to build ourselves a new life during all that time? But the sad truth is that none of us have quite managed it.’
‘None of you?’ Rutter repeated. ‘None of who?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I wasn’t being very clear, was I? I meant myself and the children. I suppose that if you asked other people’s opinion of us, they’d say we had changed, but believe me, the change is only on the surface. Both children lead their own independent lives now, and I’m very highly thought of as a result of the hard work I’ve put into several local charities. But there’s something missing in all of us, you see – and that something is Alec.’
‘I understand,’ Rutter said, though he was not entirely convinced that he really did.
‘If Alec had died – I mean, if he’d died back then, rather than thirteen years later – it might have been different.’
‘How?’
‘We’d still have been grieving for him even now, of course, but I think that sense of loss would have been a much easier thing to bear than this feeling of betrayal which still clings to me like a thick layer of dirt. We were such a happy family, you see. His life was built around us, and our lives were built around him. Other people called our house “Tara” – in a sneering sort of way – but we didn’t care, because we all loved it. And then Alec became involved with that woman – and he simply deserted us.’
‘Do you blame her entirely for what happened to your marriage?’ Rutter asked.
‘Oh no, I don’t blame her at all.’
‘Really?’
‘Really! I’d know her for years before it all happened, you see. In fact, since she came to us from the orphanage, as little more than a child. That was Bradley’s doing. Being an orphan himself, I think he felt sorry for her.’
She really didn’t know the half of it, Rutter thought. She had no idea of the planning that had gone into the destruction of her idyllic life.
But he said nothing – because it would have been incredibly cruel to tell her the truth now.
‘Even in those early days,’ the first Mrs Hawtrey continued, ‘I could clearly see that she was nothing more than a scheming little bitch – pardon my French, Inspector Rutter, but it happens to be true – and I always thought she’d try to get her claws into some poor unsuspecting man eventually. I just never imagined that man would be my loving husband.’
‘But still you don’t blame her?’
‘No, I promise you I don’t. I happen to believe in free will, and whilst I’m sure that she used all the pretty little tricks she could to win him away from us, Alec could have resisted the temptation if he’d really tried.’
Just as I could have resisted Monika if I’d really tried, Rutter thought.
And he didn’t even have any of the excuses that Alec Hawtrey had, he told himself. Monika hadn’t been anything like a ‘scheming little bitch’. And he hadn’t been going through a mid-life crisis which had made him feel the need to have his vanity massaged.
‘I’d like to ask you about your husband’s friends, if I may,’ he said, pulling his thoughts back to the main purpose of his visit.
‘His friends? I saw nothing at all of Alec in the last thirteen years of his life. So I have absolutely no idea if he made any new friends or not – though I rather suspect that he didn’t.’
‘It’s his old friends I’m more interested in,’ Rutter told her. ‘Friends he’d known for so long that they’d become almost like brothers to him.’
‘Can I know why you’re asking that particular question?’ the first Mrs Hawtrey said thoughtfully. ‘Does it, in some way, have anything to do with Bradley Pine’s death?’
‘We think it may.’
‘And what way might that be?’
‘We think that there may still be people around who were very fond of your husband and blame Bradley Pine for his accident,’ Rutter said, picking his words very carefully.
‘So what you’re actually saying is that you think that Pine’s murder may have been a kind of revenge killing?’
‘It’s a possibility we’re certainly not dismissing.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, I think you’re barking up the completely wrong tree,’ the first Mrs Hawtrey told Rutter. ‘Alec simply didn’t have close friends like that.’
‘Everybody has at least one close friend.’
‘Not my Alec. He worshipped his father and he loved the spring mattress business – and from quite an early age that seems to have been more than enough for him.’
‘Until he met you.’
> ‘Until he met me. You can’t even imagine what our courtship was like. He was so shy and awkward – characteristics his son has inherited from him – and I almost went into shock when he plucked up the nerve to propose to me. But he did propose and I accepted, and we had the lavish wedding which his father insisted on.’ She paused, and frowned. ‘I think it was the wedding which really brought home to me just how isolated he’d been.’
‘Why was that?’
‘Well, there were quite a lot of my friends there, but very few of his – and even the ones of his who did turn up were really more like acquaintances. So, you see, Alec simply wasn’t the kind of man who inspired that kind of loyalty. The only person who’d ever have cared enough about him to avenge his death was me, and since the betrayal, even that’s not true.’
‘Thank you for being so open with me, Mrs Hawtrey,’ Rutter said. ‘I know it can’t have been easy for you.’
‘Actually, it was easier than I thought it would be,’ the first Mrs Hawtrey told him. ‘You’re a good listener. In that way, you quite remind me of my son. Are you shy, too?’
‘Shy?’
‘You are! I can see it now. I suspect that’s why you decided to become a policeman.’
‘Do you really think that “shyness” is a word most people would ever think of applying to bobbies?’ Rutter asked, wondering, even as he spoke, why he should have suddenly started to sound so defensive.
‘Not to all policemen, no, but certainly to some. I would imagine that your work gives you both a sense of certainty and a sense of purpose that would otherwise be lacking. It forces you to be a part of the world, whereas your natural tendency would be to withdraw.’
She was talking total bollocks, Rutter thought. So why had her words made his stomach turn over?
‘If you’ll excuse me, I think I should be getting back to Whitebridge,’ he said hurriedly.
He shook hands with her, and began to walk away.
He had only gone a few yards when she called after him, ‘Will you be writing a report on this meeting?’
He stopped, and turned around. ‘A report? Yes, I suppose so. But I don’t imagine it will be a very long one.’
‘It doesn’t matter how long or short it is,’ the woman said. ‘When you write it, don’t refer to me as you did just now?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You called me Mrs Hawtrey.’
‘Yes?’
‘For years, I thought of myself like that. But it wasn’t true. Even if the Catholic Church refused to recognize the divorce – even if we were still married in the eyes of God – I wasn’t Mrs Hawtrey any longer. At best, I was Used-To-Be Mrs Hawtrey. So I finally cut myself adrift from the past, and reverted to my maiden name. That probably seems like nothing to you, but for me it took a great deal of courage. So when you refer to me in the report, please use my maiden name, which is the name I go by now, even if it does mean putting “Mrs Hawtrey” in brackets after it.’
‘I’d be glad to,’ Rutter said. ‘But I don’t know what your maiden name is?’
‘Don’t you?’ the woman asked. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no reason why you should.’
And then she told him what name she would prefer him to use.
Thirty-Two
Henry Marlowe was standing in the back room of a village hall – the latest in a long string of village halls which the strategists behind his election campaign were requiring him to visit.
The caretaker – who seemed inordinately proud of the place – had informed him it was known as the Green Room, since it was where the ‘actors’ changed when the village put on one of its entertainments.
And what pathetic spectacles they must be, Marlowe thought sourly, picturing half a dozen overweight middle-aged women thumping around the stage and fluffing their lines.
Once he was in London, he’d go to real plays in real theatres, and return to Whitebridge as little as possible, he promised himself.
He looked around him again. When the ‘Green Room’ was between productions, it seemed to serve as nothing more than a general store room for all kinds of unwanted junk. There was a sink – with a mirror above it, and a tap which at first gurgled and then reluctantly released a thin stream of water – but there were no chairs, since these had all been taken into the main hall.
It was a sordid little space at best, Marlowe thought, and he really had no wish to be there.
He’d been booked to address the Women’s Institute. He didn’t want to face them. In truth, he couldn’t see why he should have to face them. He was the Conservative candidate – why didn’t they just vote for him?
His political agent, Bill Hawes, had failed to see his point of view on the matter.
‘So what if you have to humiliate yourself by rubbing shoulders with the riff-raff once every four or five years?’ he’d asked. ‘In between elections, you’re in clover, aren’t you? You’ve got a job which is comparatively well-paid, yet requires no more work than you’re prepared to put into it. You’ve an expense account which most businessmen would give their personal assistants’ right arms to have. And companies will be falling over themselves to offer you directorships. Isn’t all that worth having to crawl on your belly for, just once in a while?’
‘But the WI!’ Marlowe had complained.
‘Oh, they’re a bunch of scatty old bags, who I’d probably end up garrotting myself if I had to spend too much time with them,’ Hawes had admitted cheerfully, ‘but they can usually be trusted to put their cross in roughly the right place, if they’re handled properly.’
And so there he was – in this run-down village hall, practising sincere expressions in the mirror over the sink, and wondering if it was too early to uncork his hip flask – when the door opened and Woodend walked in.
‘What precisely are you doing here, Chief Inspector?’ Marlowe demanded, irritably.
‘I just came to wish you the best of luck with the meeting, sir,’ Woodend said.
‘Is that right?’ Marlowe asked, unconvinced. ‘And you will be voting for me come election day, will you?’
‘No, I’m afraid I just couldn’t quite bring myself to do that, sir,’ Woodend said.
He looked around for somewhere to sit, upended an empty milk crate, and lowered himself on to it.
‘Why are you really here?’ Marlowe asked.
‘I’m really here because of Alec Hawtrey,’ Woodend replied, lighting up a cigarette and inhaling deeply. ‘I was quite convinced, for a while back there, that Bradley Pine had murdered him, you know.’
‘That’s a quite ludicrous assumption for anyone – even you – to make!’ Marlowe said.
‘Thanks for the vote of confidence, sir,’ Woodend said dryly. ‘But there’s more.’
‘More?’
‘I was also convinced that Bradley Pine knew some nasty little secret of yours, an’, because of that, he was able to blackmail you into helpin’ him to cover up the murder.’
‘How dare you even have such thoughts?’ Marlowe demanded. ‘I’m a chief constable! I’m going to be a member of parliament. It would never even occur to me to become involved in a sordid cover-up.’
‘Now that’s not strictly true, is it?’ Woodend asked mildly. ‘You didn’t cover up a murder, but you did cover up somethin’ sordid – somethin’ pretty horrific, in fact – that Pine did on that mountainside.’
‘I must tell you that I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about!’ Marlowe said hotly.
‘What made you do it?’ Woodend mused. ‘The only explanation that I can come up with is that you saw it as no more than a natural extension of the mutual back-scratchin’ that you Golf Club types have made a way of life. But it was a rather big favour he was askin’ on that particular occasion, wasn’t it?’
‘I’ve heard quite enough of this, Chief Inspector Woodend. I don’t know where you get your—’
‘Of course, your lot never do anythin’ without expectin’ somethin’ in return. So what wer
e you expectin’ from Pine? That he’d support your application to be the next Tory candidate? Because if that was what you were after, he let you down quite badly, didn’t he?’
‘I should never have trusted the man,’ Marlowe said bitterly. ‘I should never have taken him at his word.’
He was talking to himself, rather than to Woodend. In fact, in his anger at the dead man, he seemed almost to have forgotten that the chief inspector was even there in the room.
‘I don’t see you had much choice but to take him at his word,’ Woodend pointed out. ‘After all, it wasn’t the kind of deal that you could ever have put down in writin’, now was it?’
‘Deal? What deal?’ Marlowe asked, suddenly conscious of the other man’s presence again. ‘There was no deal. And I can assure you that there was absolutely no cover-up.’
Woodend shook his head slowly – and almost mournfully – from side to side.
‘That really won’t wash any more, you know,’ he said. ‘You can go on denyin’ it till you’ve turned blue in the face, but I talked to your old mate Doc Pierson earlier this mornin’ – an’ so I’m never goin’ to believe you.’
‘You talked to Pierson? And he told you …?’
‘He told me everythin’.’
‘What Pine did wasn’t a crime, you know!’ Marlowe said. ‘They’d never have locked him up for it.’
‘Possibly you’re right, though I think I could find half a dozen lawyers who might disagree with you,’ Woodend replied. ‘But that’s not really the point, is it, sir? Even if it wasn’t strictly a criminal act, it would have ruined him socially. It wouldn’t have done much for his business, either. People tend to be a bit squeamish about havin’ dealin’s with a man like that.’
‘What was so wrong with it, when you look at it objectively?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Strip away all the sugary emotionalism behind it, and what are you left with? The fact that Bradley Pine found himself in a difficult situation, and did no more than he needed to do to ensure his own well-being!’
‘That’s certainly one way of lookin’ at what happened,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But since I’m not one of the élite of Whitebridge society – like you are, an’ Pine was – I don’t think I’d look at it that way myself.’
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