by Jill McGown
That was reassuring. Marianne finished eating and put her knife and fork together before continuing, leaving Judy in a state of near panic.
“I looked at the entry for the previous Monday night—I told you her Mondays were important to her, and I doubted that it was some writer’s circle that got her so excited. Sure enough, she had been writing about this man, and I thought—well, it could be evidence. And since the police hadn’t removed it, and anyone could go into that room—well, someone else could have removed it. Someone who wouldn’t have brought it to you.” She dipped into her bag and produced the diary, placing it on the table, then gave a little shrug. “So I took it first.”
Judy closed her eyes.
“I mean, if Carl knew about the affair, well—it could be evidence, couldn’t it, as I said?”
It seemed unlikely to Judy that it was evidence; Carl would hardly have left it lying on the bedside table if he’d known it could incriminate him.
“Is that stealing?”
Marianne was looking theatrically perplexed, but Judy was used to Lloyd, who could look any way he chose, and she wasn’t fooled. Marianne had known exactly what she was doing when she took that diary.
“Well, it belongs to Carl,” Judy said. “And you had no right to remove it, so—technically, yes.”
“But I’ve brought it to you, darling. You’re the police.”
“And what am I supposed to do with it?”
Judy hadn’t opened it. Hadn’t touched it. She wished Marianne’s supernatural powers could transport it back to where it came from, beside Estelle Bignall’s bed. But, a little voice at the back of her head was asking, why was it beside her bed? Surely Estelle hadn’t kept it there? Had Carl Bignall found it and confronted her with it? Judy picked it up and put it in her own bag; it could indeed be evidence. But she couldn’t invent some story to account for its now being in the possession of the police, which was clearly what Marianne wanted her to do.
“Marianne,” she said, in what Lloyd called her nanny voice, “if it is evidence, we have to say how it was obtained. I have to give it to the investigating officers, and I have to tell them how I got it. Which means I have to tell them how you got it.”
Marianne thought about that, then flicked one of her scarves over her shoulder. “Oh, well,” she said, and smiled. “All I could think when I saw it was that it shouldn’t be left there for just anyone to pick up. If they clap me in irons, at least it’ll be a new experience, and I love new experiences.”
Ryan, alone in a cell, was only too aware of the seriousness of his position; he hadn’t needed the evening paper to tell him, though that was obviously why Sergeant Finch had so thoughtfully provided it. A woman had died, and the police thought he, Ryan, had brought about her death. They were doing everything in their power to find evidence to charge him with manslaughter. And, possibly for the first time in his life, he had thrown himself on their mercy and told the truth.
But Dexter hadn’t. What had he been doing there in the first place? Surely he wasn’t involved in something like this? And he’d lied to them about what he’d seen. Why? He’d never asked Dex to lie for him, never once. Contrary to what his mother apparently thought, he had never involved Dexter in anything. But what Dexter had said had made it look as though he’d made everything up.
When the interview had been abruptly suspended, he’d begged Stan to get Dexter to tell the truth, but Stan said it would do no good; the police would say he’d told Dexter what to say. He couldn’t interfere with a witness, and he didn’t represent Dexter.
So Ryan was reduced to trying to send a telepathic message to his brother. Please, please, Dex, tell the truth. There was no way Dex was involved in anything like that, and whatever he was doing there, it wasn’t because he was burgling the Bignalls’ house, so there was no reason for him to lie except to protect him. All Dex had to do was tell the truth—naturally, the police still wouldn’t believe him, but they would have to take it into account.
But he knew his little brother. Lying didn’t come easily to him, so once he’d made up his mind to lie, that’s what he’d do. With all the conviction that a good actor had at his disposal. If Dex had decided he didn’t see Ryan breaking into a car, then that’s what he would say. For the rest of his life, if he had to. And by the time he realized that he wasn’t helping, it would be too late to change his story.
Ryan picked up the evening paper again. How the hell could he convince them that he had had nothing to do with it? He turned the pages, trying to take his mind off it, and found himself reading something that brought his eyebrows together in a frown of concentration.
By the time the interview began again, Ryan couldn’t wait to talk. Stan had called to say he’d been held up in court and would be there as soon as he could get away, and Ryan waived his right to have him present. He didn’t need him present.
“Look,” said Ryan, as soon as Finch had finished all the messing about with the tapes and the caution. He jabbed a finger at the paper. “That traffic jam. I was in it.” He looked at Lloyd, and pushed the paper across to him. “Read it,” he said. “The lights came back at 8:28, and I was there when they did. And the traffic was at a standstill for ten minutes before that. So I couldn’t have been burgling a house out in the sticks at eight-fifteen, could I?”
Finch read it and looked up, his face amused. “Nice try, Ryan,” he said.
Ryan’s heart plunged. “What? What do you mean?”
“You read about a traffic jam and suddenly remember you were in it? Do me a favor. You didn’t nick the car until half past. Twenty-five past at the earliest. That’s how long it was there. And we know you’ve been telling us porkies, Ryan.”
“What about?” said Ryan.
“About seeing a Saab. About sending Baz home.”
“I did see a Saab! I tried to break into it.”
“Not according to Baz,” said Finch. “I’ve just been talking to him. He had no idea what I was talking about.”
“Oh, come on—you know he would say that!”
“And his van was seen, Ryan. At twenty past eight. He was seen, running back to it. You and he were there to burgle the Bignalls’ house, weren’t you?”
“No!”
“Well, he didn’t drop you off and leave, did he?”
Oh God. Ryan took a deep breath. “No—all right, he was waiting to make sure I got the Saab. Only that never happened. And when I found myself with all this stuff in the sack, I rang him to come and pick me up, but he didn’t answer. That’s why I legged it through the wood and nicked the car. And then I did get hold of him. And that’s when I told him to go home. He’d been out of the van for a pee—that’s why he was running back to it.”
Finch was grinning.
“It’s true! And I was in that traffic jam!” He looked at Lloyd. “I was, I swear it. I was in it for the whole ten minutes—that’s the God’s honest truth. There were kids singing Christmas carols—I can even tell you which ones they sang!”
“Did anyone see you?” asked Lloyd.
Ryan stared at him. He had never been in this position before. He had always told lies or said nothing whenever he’d been brought to a police station for questioning. Somehow, he’d thought the truth would do the trick, but it wouldn’t. It couldn’t. He didn’t have any proof. Then he remembered.
“Yes!” he said. “Someone did see me.”
“Oh, yeah?” Finch, of course. “Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, this gets better.”
“No, I mean I didn’t know who she was, but she knew me. She spoke to me.”
Finch sighed. “All right, Ryan, I’ll buy it. What did she look like?”
And that was when Ryan realized he had no chance. No chance at all. He closed his eyes.
“Come on, Ryan. It’s not a difficult question. If you say someone saw you, I’m prepared to try and find her. What did she look like?”
“The Pink Panther,” said Ryan miserably,
his eyes still closed, and sighed. “She looked like the Pink sodding Panther.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Are you going to check it out?”
“Oh, come on, guv—he must think we’re idiots! I should never have left him the paper.”
“Probably not,” said Lloyd. “But you never know—Ryan could be covering up for someone. You thought that yourself at one point. At least, it was one of the answers you offered him to choose from.”
“But you said that Dexter would never have broken into Estelle Bignall’s house, and I agree with you—he thought far too much of her to do anything like that.”
“But Baz Martin didn’t. He’s Dexter’s cousin, remember—Dexter might accidentally have given him the information that the house would be empty. And Ryan could be covering for him.”
Tom thought about that. Baz was certainly stupid enough to have bound and gagged someone for no reason, but he had never been violent in his life. If Ryan was unlikely, Baz was even more so.
“Perhaps Ryan wasn’t there at all,” Lloyd went on. “It’s Dexter and Baz who were seen there, not Ryan. And if he really did get caught in that traffic jam—” Lloyd sat down on the edge of Tom’s desk. “—then eliminating him could point us in the right direction.”
Tom wasn’t sure what to do with a senior officer who had a fixation. “Carl Bignall’s direction, would that be?” he asked.
“No,” Lloyd said. “Unlike you, Sergeant Finch, I’m keeping an open mind.”
Tom gasped. “Since when?”
Lloyd grinned. “Since you told me Watson confirmed that Bignall did leave his house at half past seven—though that doesn’t mean that Bignall didn’t go back again, of course.”
“No—it means that Ryan Chester was lying,” Tom said, doggedly determined. “I reckon it’s just the way it looks.” He hit the newspaper. “This is just a story he’s concocted after reading this.”
“But we can’t place Ryan in the house or the garden, and what happened in there just isn’t his style—especially not if she was sexually assaulted, which she might well have been.”
“Baz is even less likely, guv. He’s got no record of violence at all—at least Ryan’s been known to take a pop at someone in his time.”
“But if Ryan’s lying about Bignall’s car being there, he might be lying about being there himself. And he might be telling the truth about the traffic jam.”
“How?” said Tom, perplexed. “He didn’t take Hutchinson’s car until half past eight—the traffic lights had come back on by then.”
“What if he didn’t take Hutchinson’s car at all? What if he was doing what he says he was doing? Stealing an upmarket car to order? Couldn’t that have been what he was driving when he got caught in the traffic jam?”
Tom tried to hang in there.
“Just suppose,” Lloyd said, “that while Ryan’s peaceably going about his business, stealing a car from wherever, his cousin Baz is going in for a spot of private enterprise with someone else—that would explain why we’ve got two sets of footprints that don’t belong to anyone we know of yet. And what if the one he teams up with is both stupid and violent? Dexter realizes what they’re up to and tries to stop them. The language used was about Mrs. Bignall, not to her.”
This was beginning to make sense, Tom thought, and carried Lloyd’s hypothesis further. “Dexter’s no match for the violent one,” he said. “He gets a beating, runs as soon as they’re busy breaking the window. They go in, and are interrupted by Mrs. Bignall. The other one assaults her, Baz realizes it’s all getting too heavy for him, takes fright, and runs back to his van. The other one leaves with what he’s got and runs through the wood. He takes Hutchinson’s car.”
Lloyd nodded. “And then Baz rings his cousin Ryan, tells him they’ve got a stolen car full of stolen goods, and will Ryan help them out? Naturally, he doesn’t tell him they’re the proceeds of an aggravated burglary, or Ryan wouldn’t have taken anything to do with it. Ryan goes to meet him, getting caught in the traffic jam, and once he’s free, drives to where Baz has the car, and goes to his mum’s lock-up garage in it—leaving his fingerprints—and hides the booty. Then he drives the car to the car park where it was found, and he and Baz go to the Starland club to sell some of the stolen goods.”
Tom thought about that. “So Ryan doesn’t know until we tell him where the stuff came from, or that Estelle Bignall died as a result of what Baz’s mate did to her.” Tom had to admit that Ryan really did seem in the dark about all of that, and trotting out the hoary old story of having found the stuff indicated that he’d had no time to prepare for questioning. “He’s caught on the hop, and he’s trying to protect Baz, so he makes up a story about being there and seeing Bignall’s car to throw suspicion on Bignall himself.” Tom was nodding now that he could see the logic of this. “But that backfired because of Dexter, and now he’s stuck in a cell trying to work out how he can get out of this without shopping Baz,” he said. “That’s why he said Baz was working with him, because if he can prove he wasn’t burgling the Bignalls’ house, we might leave Baz out of it, too.”
Lloyd smiled at him. “It’s perfectly possible,” he said.
Tom smiled back. “I like it, guv. We can get them to check the prints against Baz Martin’s at least. And we should have no trouble finding his mate when they check the other ones.” He backtracked slightly. “Assuming he’s known to us and was known to us long enough ago,” he said. “Do you know they’ve got unindexed prints going back two years? No wonder the little sods don’t mind leaving their prints everywhere.”
“Quite,” said Lloyd. “So, if you can find the Pink Panther and eliminate Ryan, we might get a step closer to finding out who did break into the Bignalls’ house.”
Yes, thought Tom. It would be worth checking out.
Lloyd stood up. “But, as it happens, I agree with you,” he said, turning to go. “It’s a fiction. Because I still think Ryan was trying to break into Bignall’s Saab.”
Tom made a good-humoured V sign at Lloyd’s retreating back.
“I’ve got eyes in the back of my head, Sergeant Finch,” he called over his shoulder.
Lloyd was very good at theories, and Tom knew that he had a tendency to accept them as gospel. Lloyd knew that, too; he said that Judy always found the flaw in them, and that Tom took them too seriously. That was why Lloyd had laughed that one off at the end.
But Judy said there was always something in Lloyd’s theories. It was instinctive; he didn’t know himself what it was. The trouble was, Tom knew he couldn’t sift through the nonsense to find the nugget of truth the way Judy could, so he would just have to do it the hard way, and check out Ryan’s story.
He picked up the paper he had confiscated and read the report, swearing under his breath as he reached the part about how charity workers had made the most of the traffic jam “with Sylvesters and Donald Ducks and Pink Panthers all descending on the becalmed drivers,” and how “the frayed nerves of the frustrated drivers were soothed by the St. Anne’s School choir singing Christmas carols.” Ryan had almost certainly got the whole thing out of the paper. He was probably just trying to make a fool of him. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to make inquiries. Ryan need never know he’d taken it seriously, even for a moment. He glanced at the number, rang it, and asked to speak to the editor.
“Yes, Sergeant Finch, how can I help the police?”
Tom explained how he could help.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. “Our collectors weren’t in costume. But dozens of people were organizing collections and bringing the money to us—that little girl has really touched Malworth’s heart.”
He even spoke in journalese. Tom sighed. “I don’t suppose you know which organization wore costumes?”
“I don’t even know which organizations were doing it.”
“But if I find out who was registered—”
“I think you’ll find most of them were spontaneous, Sergeant. Our appeal is properly registered,
of course, but as I said—everyone is collecting. Shops, offices, you name it. We had a steady queue of people bringing in bucketfuls of money, but—really, I don’t think many of them were doing it on an official basis.”
“I wonder where they got the costumes?” Tom asked, thinking aloud.
“There’s a firm that rents that sort of thing—I know it lent them for the day as their contribution to the cause. They’d know who they lent them to, I suppose, but I doubt if the organizers themselves will know exactly who wore what. And, well—I saw at least three Pink Panthers all at once yesterday. I don’t fancy your chances of finding a particular one.”
What he was saying, thought Tom, was that anyone at all could have put on a Pink Panther costume and rattled a bucket at people in order to relieve them of their money. And even if Ryan was telling the truth about being in the traffic jam, then that’s what any friend of his would be doing. Ripping people off. And he wasn’t very likely to find her, in that event. But he could approach this from a different angle; he would have another word with Baz Martin.
And he was beginning to think he’d let Watson off too lightly—he still wasn’t being straight with them about last night, and it might well be worth having another go at him.
The fax suddenly came to life with the report on the broken pane of glass, and Tom read it, his brow furrowing. The writer was puzzled about exactly where the glass had gone when the window was broken. There were what he called spicules of glass in the curtains, which he had expected to find, as the curtains were apparently closed at the time of the incident. However, he went on, the glass itself had scattered two feet beyond the curtain, which didn’t really make sense, as a closed curtain would have had the effect of containing the glass, and it would have scattered only an inch or two out on reaching the ground. On the one hand, the curtains appeared to have been shut, and on the other, they appeared to have been open.
“Another little puzzle,” Lloyd said when Tom arrived in his office and he read the report on the glass.