The Brief

by Simon Michael

  ‘Did she have a will?’

  ‘Er… yes. We did our wills together some years ago – unless she changed hers I suppose.’

  ‘Might she have changed her will?’ asked the superintendent.

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, as I said before, we weren’t very happy.’

  ‘So divorce was a possibility?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘At whose instance?’

  ‘I wanted to divorce her. I went there last night to talk about just that.’

  ‘And what do you say was her attitude?’

  ‘I resent the implication that what I am about to say is a lie. That’s hardly open-minded questioning.’

  ‘I’ve already told you I suspect you murdered your wife. I am not open-minded. What was her attitude?’

  ‘She was very upset. She cried, and shouted, and told me to get out of the house.’

  ‘So you say that she was not happy at the prospect of a divorce?’

  ‘It appeared that way.’

  ‘Did you not write to her only last week, threatening her that if she divorced you, I quote,’ and here he picked up a letter, ‘“It’ll be something that you will regret, I assure you”?’

  ‘May I see that?’ asked Charles.

  ‘No. I may show you a copy later. For the present I shall read it to you.’

  He did. In it Charles told Henrietta that his career depended on being perceived as a happily married man, and that he would never countenance divorce, threatening her in veiled terms if she proceeded with it.

  ‘I suggest it was your wife who wanted the divorce. You on the other hand were opposed to it. And, this, Mr Holborne,’ said Wheatley, brandishing the letter, ‘was written on a typewriter. Can you see how part of the “a” and the “e” are missing? It’s caused by wear on those keys. Before they left your Chambers, my officers asked your clerk to type a short passage on the typewriter in the clerks’ room. What would you say if I told you that the typing they produced demonstrated exactly the same defect with those two letters?’

  ‘I would say, if I was going to write such a letter, why on earth would I type it?’

  ‘Are you saying you didn’t write this?’

  ‘Yes. That’s exactly what I’m saying. I wanted a divorce. She was the one who didn’t.’

  ‘Can you think of anyone who might have the slightest motive for writing this and pretending it came from you?’

  ‘Of course I can. The person trying to frame me for Henrietta’s murder.’

  ‘Who? Who might have any motive for killing your wife? Or who hates you so much as to kill an innocent woman, just to frame you?’

  That, Charles was unable to answer. Wheatley went on: ‘You were seen to leave your house last night immediately after a violent row with your wife.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Although it wasn’t violent other than in the sense that she screamed and shouted at me.’

  ‘Well, we agree that much. You were then seen to drive off, in such a hurry as to smash the side of your Jaguar on the garage doorpost. You wife was found dead half an hour later.’

  So someone could have entered via the garden doors without doing damage, thought Charles. ‘Drive off? I didn’t drive off. I walked back to the station.’

  ‘You did not, Mr Holborne.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Why should you do that? You had the car?’

  ‘I didn’t have the car. It had broken down and I had to use the train.’

  ‘Where’s the ticket?’

  Charles sighed. ‘I threw it away at Marylebone.’

  ‘How unfortunate. So you say the car isn’t working? Your Jaguar motor car?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Your Jaguar, registration plate BHA 402, was found this morning by police officers from Snow Hill Police Station outside the Temple. It drove perfectly. It is now sitting in the yard of this police station.’

  Charles looked at his interrogator in open-mouthed disbelief.

  ‘Do you wish to make any comment?’ asked Wheatley, an unpleasant triumphant smile on his thin lips.

  ‘I…don’t understand…that can’t be right. You must have made a mistake.’

  ‘Why don’t you start telling us the truth, Holborne? Surely, a man with your training can see how hopeless it is? What did you do with the knife?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything with any knife. I never had a knife. We argued, I was told to get out. I went across the fields to the station, and got a train to London. I didn’t kill her!’

  ‘You were still wearing the muddy shoes when you were brought to the house. I suggest you wore them when throwing the knife away in the fields behind your house before driving off.’

  ‘No! I wore them across the fields, yes, but I never had any knife.’

  The superintendent looked at DC Sloane, who shook his head. He continued: ‘I propose ending this interview now pending further enquiries. You will have to remain here. One last matter: we have been unable to find a copy of your wife’s will. It’s supposed to be in safekeeping with a solicitor, but we don’t know who. Do you know where we can find a copy?’

  Charles frowned. ‘Yes. There’s one in a safety deposit box at Midland Bank in Fleet Street. I have a key and a combination number.’

  ‘Thank you. Where are they?’

  ‘At the flat in Fetter Lane.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the bachelor pad. We’ll need to have a chat about that in due course.’

  ‘It’s not a “bachelor pad”. It’s somewhere I can sleep when working late, that’s all.’

  ‘Come on Holborne, this is the swinging 60s, right?’

  ‘No one else has ever slept there except me.’

  ‘Who said anything about sleeping?’ interjected Sloane with a smirk.

  Wheatley looked across sharply at him, and returned to his earlier theme. ‘Where can we find the key to the safety deposit box?’

  ‘I think it’s in a little Chinese jar on the windowsill. I’m not sure though, as I haven’t used it in a while.’

  ‘And the combination?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. I only use the box once in a blue moon, so I have the number written down.’

  ‘Where?’

  Charles thought quickly. ‘In the flat somewhere. I’d have to look for it.’

  ‘We’re proposing to search your flat this evening. Whereabouts shall we look?’

  Charles shrugged. ‘I wrote it down somewhere and disguised it as a telephone number.’

  Wheatley looked hard at Charles, weighing him up. ‘They tell me that people in your profession value integrity more than anything else.’

  ‘What of it?’ asked Charles.

  Wheatley didn’t answer. ‘All right,’ he said after a moment’s consideration. ‘There’s no time like the present. We’ll go now, and you can come with us. Sloane, get him something to eat. We don’t want him saying the interrogation was unfair, or that he was so hungry he’d admit to anything.’

  Superintendent Wheatley left the room and Charles was taken back to the cell. Once there, for the first time since the day began, Charles permitted himself a small, weary, smile.

  Wheatley and Sloane walked back up the stairs from the cells. ‘Guv?’ asked Sloane.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you going to ask him about that lump on his head?’

  ‘In due course. I ’spect she got one good thump in before he cut her throat.’

  Sloane frowned. ‘Maybe. But I spoke to the staff at his chambers, and they say they found him asleep – or maybe unconscious – on the floor outside his office.’

  ‘So? I’m no doctor, but maybe the Hon Lady Muck gave him a delayed concussion.’

  ‘He was saying he thought he was hit from behind in the corridor at chambers.’

  Wheatley turned to the junior officer at the top of the stairs. ‘Well he would, wouldn’t he? You just listen and learn, Sloane. Don’t presume to tell me my job, right?’
<
br />   ‘Right, sir.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Charles climbed out of the police car onto New Fetter Lane, hampered by the handcuffs on his wrist attaching him to a young uniformed officer. The road thronged with people, cars parked on the pavement, vans double-parked – the usual late afternoon clamour. A cold hamburger and soggy chips had arrived in Charles’s cell within a half an hour of the interview ending, and Charles had bolted them down as fast as he could, but then nothing happened for over an hour and he’d been pacing his cell. Once on the road his impatience had been almost intolerable. It was essential they reached London while it was still busy. At last, after fifteen minutes of crawling traffic, Wheatley directed DS Bricker to put on the siren, and they completed the rest of the journey in half an hour.

  Charles and the young officer waited while Wheatley and Bricker got out of the front of the vehicle.

  ‘Well?’ asked Wheatley.

  Charles indicated the entrance and the group crossed the road. As they sidled between stationary taxis Charles sized up the two men ahead of him. Wheatley was tall but Charles doubted that he was a fighter, more cerebral and probably past it anyway. Bricker on the other hand, although slightly shorter, probably weighed in at 15 stone. His thick neck and the jacket that pulled taut over his shoulders suggested a sportsman. He was in his mid-30s and he walked lightly on his feet. He can probably handle himself, Charles thought. Then Charles glanced to his left at the young copper to whom he was attached. Probably only a couple of years out of the police college at Hendon, and thin as a whip. So, Bricker first.

  The porter at the door recognised Charles immediately and was half-way into a salute when he saw the handcuffs. His hand froze in mid-movement, leaving him looking like an uncertain signpost pointing right.

  ‘Mr Holborne?’ he asked.

  ‘Not to worry, Dennis. Parking fines,’ Charles replied. Dennis nodded and smiled, and then did a classic double-take as his meagre brain cells reconsidered Charles’s response, leaving him looking puzzled. The group entered the lobby.

  ‘It’s the fourth floor,’ said Charles. ‘The lift’ll take two.’ He paused, waiting for the police to make a decision.

  ‘You go in the lift with Holborne,’ said Wheatley to the man to whom Charles was attached. ‘We’ll take the stairs. Wait at the top.’

  The lift was a tight fit even with only two in it, and Charles and his escort had to do a little dance before they could arrange themselves for the button to be pressed. They arrived on the fourth floor only just ahead of the others.

  ‘Keys,’ demanded Wheatley. Bricker fished in his pocket for the plastic bag in which Charles’s keys had been sealed earlier and handed the bunch to Wheatley.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Wheatley.

  ‘The small gold one, and the long Chubb,’ Charles replied.

  The door was opened and they filed into the small living area. Charles gasped. He barely recognised the place. There were flowers in a pot that he did not own on the table. A huge pink fluffy duck sat in the corner of the couch, an inane grin on its face. The lampshade had been replaced with something frilly, and there were doilies on the arms of the armchair.

  ‘Charming,’ said Wheatley, with heavy sarcasm. ‘You were telling the truth – at least when you said it’s not a bachelor pad.’

  ‘Looks very feminine to me, sir,’ said Bricker.

  ‘Maybe the handiwork of this young lady, sir?’ said the escort, picking up a photograph from the mantle. It was of a blonde, lots of bright teeth, lots of cleavage.

  ‘“To Charlie, with love and thanks, Melissa”,’ read Wheatley from the bottom of the photograph. ‘I see we’ve just found another motive. Or maybe even an accomplice, eh, Holborne?’ said Wheatley.

  Charles shrugged. ‘I don’t suppose for one minute it’d do any good to say that all this stuff has been planted, would it?’

  ‘Oh, please, surely you can do better than that?’ He called to Bricker who had disappeared into the bedroom. ‘Bricker: go downstairs and have a word with the porter; see if Melissa’s a figment of someone’s imagination.’

  ‘Certainly sir. But look at this!’ called back the sergeant. He came out with a very skimpy nightie held aloft in one hand and a pile of women’s clothes over his other arm. ‘The wardrobe’s full of women’s clothes. And this lot was on a chair by the bed.’

  ‘I suppose now you’ll say you’re into women’s clothes, eh, Charlie?’ Charles noted how the respect had ebbed away as the evidence stacked up against him. At first he had been “Mr Holborne”, then “Holborne”, now “Charlie”. As far as Wheatley was concerned he was now definitely dealing with a murderer, and murderers don’t require courtesy.

  The final piece of evidence came to light while Wheatley was going through a kitchen drawer: a paying-in book for a Midland Bank account. It was in the names of “C. Holborne and Miss M. Maxwell”. Wheatley turned to Charles, wagged his finger at him and tutted slowly, shaking his head.

  ‘Very careless, Charlie. I’m surprised at you. You should have known better than do something official like this. Now I can go to the bank and ask for the correspondence setting up the account. You’ll hardly be able to deny an affair then.’

  He smiled and shook his head sadly at Charles with an odd expression – an expression which seemed to convey “I had hoped for a more worthy opponent” – and it was that expression which caused the cogs inside Charles’s head to click into place. He remembered who Wheatley was. He’d been Inspector Wheatley then, but he had faced Charles in the witness box. Charles’s instructions had been that his client’s confession had been beaten out of him over the space of two days by Inspector Wheatley, then of the notorious Robbery Squad in London. At the trial, with a totally straight face and an almost apologetic air, he had convinced the judge and jury that it had never happened, and Charles’s client had gone inside for 15 years. That had been several years before – and this leapt into Charles’s consciousness with complete clarity – Detective Inspector Wheatley had been the subject of a complaint of corruption. It had been in the newspapers; Wheatley had been suspended for a while during an investigation, but no convincing evidence had been found and he’d been reinstated. And apparently promoted after his transfer to Thames Valley.

  ‘Sir!’ called a breathless Bricker, just having climbed the stairs. ‘The porter’s seen her come and go quite often. Got her own key.’

  ‘That’s enough for me,’ said Wheatley with satisfaction. ‘Get the Scenes of Crimes chaps over. I want the whole place taken apart. Now,’ he said, addressing Charles. ‘Where’s this combination?’

  Charles pulled his escort over to the table and began, with obvious difficulty, to go through the papers stacked on it. The other policemen stood watching him as he dropped a sheaf of papers and bent down to collect them, dragging his guard with him. Charles painstakingly tried to reorder the papers.

  ‘How long is this going to take?’ asked Wheatley after several minutes.

  ‘A while; I can barely move,’ said Charles, continuing his search.

  ‘Unlock him,’ said Wheatley wearily. ‘He won’t get past three of us.’

  The young escort reached into his pocket and took out the keys to the handcuffs. Wheatley was standing with his back to the window, watching intently, and Bricker was directly behind Charles in the doorway. The escort undid the cuff on Charles’s wrist and was about to unlock himself when Charles whirled round and with all his strength caught Bricker with a perfect right-handed uppercut on the underside of the sergeant’s chin. The blow snapped his lower jaw closed with such force that the sound was like a ceramic tile breaking. The policeman’s eyes rolled up, his knees buckled and he dropped. Charles recognised the look from many a boxing match; Bricker was out of it. He continued in his spin and grabbed the trailing end of the handcuffs still attached to his escort. He yanked hard, spun the man around, and pulled the officer’s own arm round his throat. He heaved with all his might, and the young man gagged, his f
ace suddenly red.

  ‘Don’t come anywhere near me,’ Charles said to Wheatley, ‘or I’ll break his neck!’

  The superintendent hesitated for a second.

  ‘You’d better believe I can do it,’ said Charles, calmly.

  ‘Where d’you think you’re going to go?’ said Wheatley. ‘You won’t even get out the building. Even if you do, then where? You’re no criminal, Charlie. You’re just making a fool of yourself.’

  Charles backed out of the living room and onto the landing, keeping his grip as tight as he could. The escort’s face was turning purple. The lift was there. Charles backed further away to the stairs, Wheatley inching after him cautiously.

  ‘Superintendent,’ said Charles. ‘Get in that lift, if you’d be so kind.’ Wheatley hesitated but did as he was bid. ‘Close the gates and press the alarm button,’ ordered Charles.

  As the button was pressed a bell sounded in the lower reaches of the building. The lift was now immobilised until the alarm was shut off from below, and Charles knew from previous experience that even if Dennis was still in the building, the task would take him at least five minutes.

  Charles backed onto the top step of the staircase, took a deep breath, and shoved the escort forward. He then turned and raced down the stairs.

  He took them two at a time, hearing footsteps almost immediately behind him. He stumbled, regained his balance, stumbled again, but kept going throughout, his hands on the rails on each side. As he reached the first floor landing he ran headlong into Dennis, on his way up to investigate the alarm bell. He bundled the porter over, leaving him gasping on the landing, hoping that his body would slow up any pursuers for another second.

  Charles burst into the street and turned immediately right. He sprinted across Fleet Street, oblivious to the screech of tyres and blaring of horns, and into Sergeant’s Inn. He raced down the steps and through the arch into the Temple proper. He could hear footsteps behind, but not as close as they had been. He turned sharp right, ran across the open courtyard, and turned right again by Temple Church.