Scene of Crime

by Jill McGown

  “Not particularly well. Not well enough to know if he would do something like that.”

  “We could be jumping to conclusions.”

  Lloyd shook his head. “We could, but I doubt it.”

  The scenario was a little different, though. And even more sinister. “Do you think he murdered her?” she asked.

  “It answers your objection if he did. She might have been threatening to tell her husband what had been going on. He could see himself being struck off if he didn’t stop her. The threat of being banned from practicing medicine might well have been motive enough.” Lloyd sighed. “You’d better take the car home,” he said, giving her the keys.

  She got out and walked around, sliding over no longer being an option. “Good luck,” she said.

  “Thanks. I’ll see you when I see you. It’ll probably be very late.” He gave her a kiss. “Drive carefully.”

  She got into the car and watched him as he walked back into the building. She missed all this. She didn’t like sitting at a computer, and anyway, Joe Miller was running a betting pool on exactly when they would pull the plug on LINKS, because it would cost so much. Her forecast was even more pessimistic than his. Or optimistic, of course, depending on how you looked at it. It was a good idea, but it wasn’t going to happen, and as far as Judy was concerned, the sooner they released her from her transfer, the better. She wanted to get back to doing real work. Her mother said that her views on that might change when the baby was born, but she doubted it.

  “Take one three times a day,” Denis said, handing his last patient a prescription. “If there’s no improvement, come back and see me again.”

  As the door closed, his phone rang, and the receptionist told him that a Chief Inspector Lloyd wanted a word with him. Denis closed his eyes briefly and wondered just what the blood-pressure kit lying on his desk would register if he were to use it now. He steadied himself with deep breaths. “Yes, of course,” he said, his voice sounding surprisingly normal. The right amount of puzzlement, the right amount of confidence.

  “Lloyd!” he said, as heartily as he could, when his visitor arrived. “It’s been a long time—how are you?”

  “Well, thanks, Doctor,” said Lloyd.

  “How can I help you?” It was almost easy. Maybe he should have gone in for amateur dramatics, like the Bignalls.

  “I’d like to talk to you about Estelle Bignall,” said Lloyd.

  “Dreadful business.” Now he could switch to professional mode. “Of course, I can’t discuss her medical history with you unless you think it has a direct bearing on her death, and in this case I don’t see how it can.”

  “No, nothing like that,” said Lloyd.

  Denis was still holding the previous patient’s medical records; he realized he was fiddling with the envelope, tapping it on the desk, turning it, tapping it, turning it, tapping it. And he realized it because Lloyd had noticed, his watchful blue eyes interested in this nervous reaction to his visit. It was odd, Denis thought: he had time, somehow, to wonder whether stopping would look worse than just continuing, as though it was just a habit, like drumming your fingers or stroking your chin. But the decision had been made for him; once it became a conscious act, he wasn’t sure how to do it. He put the envelope in the out tray and indicated that Lloyd should ask his questions.

  “Am I right in thinking that you drive the Saab parked outside?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that it’s registered to Carl Bignall?”

  “Yes. He regards it as belonging to the practice, but I have the use of it.”

  “And can you tell me where it was last night at about eight-fifteen?”

  Suddenly and without warning, Denis’s intellect deserted him. “It—It was probably outside the Horse and Halfpenny,” he said. “That’s a pub in the village where I live.”

  “We’ve been told that it was at the rear of the Bignalls’ house at that time.”

  “What? No—I don’t think so. I—I don’t think …” He tailed off, his brain having virtually ceased to function, then tried again. “I was with my brother Alan last night. All evening.”

  “Perhaps you could let me have his address?”

  But he couldn’t do that to Alan. It was one thing asking him to provide an alibi if Meg asked—Alan had, albeit reluctantly, been prepared to do that; Meg had never asked. But he couldn’t expect him to do it if the police asked; for one thing, it would be unfair, and for another, he wasn’t at all sure that Alan would do it.

  “What? No. No—I wasn’t with him. I was getting mixed up.” He glanced at the clock above his door. Not quite twenty-two hours. That was how long it had taken them to get on to him. “I—I can’t remember where I was.”

  “Were you having an affair with Estelle Bignall?”

  Denis thought about that for a long time before he gave Lloyd an answer. An affair presumably meant a love affair, but he hadn’t loved her, and she hadn’t loved him. She had loved Carl, to the point of obsession, but Carl hadn’t even wanted her; he had grown tired of her, had lost interest in her, like he lost interest in his cars and his gadgets.

  Carl, the man who had everything—looks and personality and a lifestyle to match—had by his indifference reduced someone who had refused to rely on drugs, who had held herself together by sheer strength of will, to a mass of neuroses and hang-ups within the space of twelve months. Denis had had to begin all over again with her. He had advised her to leave the amateur dramatic society, to find something to do that didn’t involve Carl. She had found a writer’s circle that met on the same night as the society’s rehearsals; she had chosen writing as her new hobby because that way she would only have to endure one evening away from Carl, and it might make him more interested in her if she wrote, too. It wasn’t quite what Denis had meant, but it had been a start.

  The craziness had begun one Monday night, when she turned up at the surgery just as he was leaving. She had said she wasn’t going back to the writer’s circle, that she was going to join MADS again, because at least if she and Carl were acting together they had some communication. She had really believed that if she was acting, playing someone else, he might want her again, that as herself she was so unattractive, so ugly, so repellent, that he couldn’t bring himself to make love to her.

  Everything else Carl grew tired of came Denis’s way; his car, his computer, his golf clubs. Why not his wife? Carl had passed responsibility for her over to him, and if he didn’t want her, Denis did; he had wanted her for a long time. She had desperately needed something to raise her self-esteem, and he had provided it, telling himself, telling her, that it was all right; it was just treatment, like giving a heroin addict methadone. She had said he reminded her of Papa in the car ad—he had called her Nicole, and somehow it had seemed like two other people altogether. And she responded to the treatment in the end.

  “Dr. Leeward? Could you answer the question?”

  It had been crazy, he knew that now. But it hadn’t been an affair.

  “No,” he said.

  “Did you see Estelle Bignall last night?”

  “No.”

  “Were you in the Bignalls’ house last night?”

  “No.”

  “What size shoes do you wear, Dr. Leeward?”

  Denis tried hard to make his brain function. “Shoes?” he repeated.

  “Shoes. What size?”

  “Eleven.”

  “And are those the shoes you were wearing last night?”

  He nodded. He considered, briefly, picking the bit of glass out of the wastepaper basket, handing it to Lloyd, telling him everything. But he didn’t.

  “I would like you to come to the station to answer some questions in connection with the murder of Estelle Bignall,” Lloyd said. “You are not under arrest, and you do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. You are entitled to free legal advice at any time, or you may ask us to contact a
specific solicitor for you.”

  “Not under arrest?”

  “No,” said Lloyd. “But if you refuse to come voluntarily, I will place you under arrest.”

  Not under arrest. Not under arrest. That was all he had to hang on to. He wasn’t under arrest. He should get his solicitor, really. But he wasn’t under arrest, so they didn’t know for a fact that he’d been in the house. If he just said nothing, then maybe there would be nothing they could prove. How many times had he heard them complain about suspects who said nothing? Every word you uttered could betray you. He could get out of this without Meg or Carl or anyone ever knowing.

  That was it. He didn’t need a solicitor to tell him to say nothing. He could do that for himself.

  Lloyd had done what Tom privately called reading Leeward his rights, but Lloyd always gave him a lecture when he said it. In Britain, he would say, it was called administering the caution.

  This, of course, ought not to be confused with the other caution, the official warning given to offenders if the police thought prosecution unlikely to benefit anyone, and it seemed to Tom that using the same word to mean two entirely different things was a bit eccentric, but Lloyd said the British legal system was eccentric, and he liked it that way. He’d already had to learn to live with autopsies instead of postmortem examinations, not to mention witnesses taking the stand instead of entering the witness box and testifying instead of giving evidence, and he was damned if he was going to have people read their rights into the bargain.

  Tom usually liked irritating him, but he’d decided to cool it with that one, even though Judy had told him that Lloyd was pulling his leg and didn’t really mind at all. He’d had too many dressing downs lately as it was, from practically everyone.

  He had time to reflect on all of this because Leeward had said nothing. Absolutely nothing. He hadn’t even confirmed his name. He had literally not opened his mouth, to the extent that Tom was seriously wondering if he was suffering from shock or something. Lloyd had repeated the contradictory statements Leeward made to him in his surgery, repeated his denial that he’d been having an affair with Estelle Bignall, had asked if he wanted to say anything more, but Leeward said nothing.

  He had shown him the glove, asked if he recognized it, and Leeward said nothing.

  He had asked him again if he’d been having an affair with Estelle Bignall, and Leeward said nothing.

  The shoes had been taken over to the lab before it closed in the hope that they could be examined first thing in the morning; Lloyd sent a note with them, begging them to do them the minute they got in. It was Christmas Eve tomorrow, and Lloyd was absolutely determined to get this one sewn up, at least to the extent that Estelle Bignall’s murderer had been charged, before the holidays hit. Leeward’s fingerprints had been taken, and they’d know tomorrow if he’d been in that house.

  In the meantime they didn’t have hard evidence with which to force a response out of Leeward, and he just sat there. Saying nothing.

  “Did you see Estelle Bignall last night?”

  Nothing. Tom felt extraneous to this cross-examination—he and Lloyd had worked out a strategy, but his rapid questioning approach only worked when people answered you. You couldn’t trip someone up if they were saying nothing at all. Dr. Leeward had not wasted his years as a forensic medical examiner.

  “Did you kill Estelle Bignall?”

  That produced a flicker of something; his expression changed. And Lloyd capitalized on it immediately.

  “Your shoes will be forensically examined, Dr. Leeward,” he said. “They will be compared with impressions taken at the scene. Whoever wore the shoes that made those impressions walked into the Bignalls’ house, and his shoes took brick dust with them. That brick dust will still be detectable. So if it was you, I suggest you tell us you were in that house before we tell you that you were.”

  Leeward nodded slowly.

  Tom was startled; he almost forgot to mention it for the tape’s benefit. “Dr. Leeward nods his head,” he said.

  “Are you admitting that you were in the Bignalls’ house last night?” Lloyd asked.

  “Yes,” said Leeward.

  Lloyd picked up his pen; it was Tom’s turn now. “Why did you go there?” he asked.

  “She hadn’t turned up. I knew something had to be wrong—it was too important to her for her just not to turn up.”

  “What was?”

  Leeward smiled a little. “Her methadone.”

  Tom stared at him, feeling his face grow red with anger. Freddie had phoned less than an hour ago and said he hadn’t found any evidence of drugs in her system at all. What was Leeward trying to pull? “Are you trying to tell us she was a drug addict?” he said.

  Leeward shook his head. “No,” he said. “I was speaking figuratively.”

  “Well, I’d rather you spoke English.”

  “I was her methadone. I was trying to reduce her dependency on Carl, that’s all.”

  “How?”

  “By proving to her that she was desirable.”

  “How?”

  Leeward still smiled. “The usual way,” he said.

  Tom ran a hand over his cropped hair and didn’t speak for a moment, because if he had, he would have been calling Leeward very unpleasant names. “Are you now saying you were having an affair with Estelle Bignall?” he said, when he felt able to be civil.

  “Yes,” Leeward said. “If you want to call it that.”

  “What would you call it?”

  “Therapy.”

  “Therapy?”

  “Yes. But—it wasn’t something I set out to do. I didn’t mean it to happen. It just did. I thought it would help her. She was obsessed with him, and she … she seemed so alone. She said he wouldn’t have anything to do with her, that he hated her, that she was so unattractive that he couldn’t bear to touch her. Yes. At the time, I thought it was therapy.”

  Tom jumped on that. “At the time?” he repeated. “What do you think it was now?”

  Leeward shook his head, and thought for a moment. When he spoke, it was in a mocking tone, stressing the word “think” each time he used it.

  “I think,” he said, “I was allowing myself to be deceived. I think she might not have told me the truth about their marriage, because Carl is devastated now that she’s dead. I think I was just jealous of Carl, and I think she knew that, used that knowledge to … ensnare me, I suppose. That, Sergeant Finch, is what I think.”

  Tom was open-mouthed. “You took advantage of a vulnerable patient, and now you’re saying she seduced you?”

  “I suppose you’ve been made to believe that Estelle was a raving lunatic,” Leeward said.

  “No,” said Tom, his voice cold. “We’ve been told she was a manic-depressive.”

  Leeward smiled again. “Labels,” he said. “It’s very easy to put labels on people. Psychiatrists love doing it.”

  “Are you saying there was nothing wrong with her?”

  “No. There’s no doubt she had psychological problems. But I think that Carl has a tendency to blow them out of proportion. He behaved to the outside world as though there were no problems at all, and all that does is exaggerate what problems there are when you have to go home to them.”

  “Is this relevant?” asked Tom.

  “I think so. You said I took advantage of her, but Estelle was perfectly capable of living her life without Carl—she just didn’t believe that she could. She was an intelligent woman, she was popular, she had friends. But she did have low self-esteem, and the impression given to me was that this was because of how Carl saw her. I saw her differently, and at the time I believed she needed to know that.”

  “By having sex with her?”

  “The ethics involved here don’t actually concern the police,” Lloyd said. “It’s a criminal offense if you work in a mental institution and have sex with a patient whom you know to be mentally ill, but that doesn’t apply here, as I’m sure Dr. Leeward is aware.”

  �
�You’re making it sound as though I planned it,” said Leeward. “I just saw her there, in tears, desperate for Carl, who didn’t want her anymore. She thought no one wanted her. I just wanted to prove to her that she was desirable. It was … crazy. I know that now. I think I got it all wrong, anyway, and I don’t know how I allowed it to happen.”

  “How you allowed it to happen? You made it happen!”

  “It takes two to tango, Sergeant Finch.”

  Tom tried to calm down. As Lloyd had just pointed out, all this was only relevant in as much as it gave Leeward a motive. He knew that he would be no use to Lloyd if he stayed angry; two-handed interviews only worked if you were aware of what the other was doing, and Lloyd was being the friendly cop. He was the aggressive one, but the aggression wasn’t supposed to be real; Lloyd needed him to be on the team. He took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “Why did you go there last night?” he asked.

  “As I said, I was worried when she didn’t turn up, because it was very important to her. I waited until I knew that Carl would have gone to his rehearsal, and I went over there. The house had been broken into, and I could see her in the kitchen. She was … tied up. Gagged. She was dead.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Tom. “I think she was alive when you got there. But you found out that she didn’t need your so-called therapy anymore. That’s why you think she lied to you about her marriage, isn’t it? Why you think she deceived you? Because she told you that she and her husband had got it together that very evening.”

  “No,” said Leeward, his eyes widening. “No.”

  “Then what happened?” Tom carried on, deliberately ignoring Leeward’s denial. “She threatened to tell her husband? You went for her—she tried to get away from you? Ran into the sitting room, making for the French window? You caught her as she opened it, called her names, struggled with her, decided that she had to die. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”