Scene of Crime

by Jill McGown

  Because he’d been careful. Never went so far that the kids would go running to the police despite the consequences. Just got them to do enough to keep the pervs happy, and paid them enough to keep quiet about what they were doing. And in all that time, he had only once made the initial approach to someone who told his parents, and he’d smoothed that over. Just a misunderstanding. Only two of his employees had needed a reminder to keep their mouths shut, and Dexter was the first one of the kids to cause a problem. Dexter was why he was sitting here now, but Dexter wasn’t the original cause of his problems.

  Since he’d moved to Malworth, he’d had cops in the house five times, thanks to that madwoman next door. She was the one who got to Dexter, and despite his advice to the boy, Dexter had told the cops everything; obviously, because they’d shown him the search warrant, gone straight upstairs to the landing and released the ceiling molding to get into the loft. But they found nothing worth finding, because he had made sure of that. They’d raided the Welchester studio, too, but they wouldn’t find anything there either.

  So all they had was Dexter Gibson’s word against his about everything, including the assault. He’d be walking out of here in no time, and he had decided to let his expensive solicitor stay in bed this morning. It was Christmas Eve, after all, and he could handle this himself.

  He denied everything that Dexter had said about the photographs and the films, and now Lloyd was moving on to the assault.

  “It’s been alleged that you assaulted Dexter Gibson in the garage of your home between eight and eight-fifteen on Monday night,” Lloyd said. “Have you anything to say about that?”

  “I didn’t assault anyone.”

  “Was Dexter Gibson in your house that night?”

  “No. I heard a window break, came out, and saw him running away, that’s all.” He smiled. “And you can’t prove any different.”

  “We now have reason to believe that your next door neighbor, Mrs. Bignall, knew of your activities and threatened to go to the police,” said Lloyd. “You held Dexter responsible for this, which is why you assaulted him.”

  God, that was the oldest trick in the book. Lloyd was trying to get him to say that Dexter was lying about what the mad cow had said, thus proving that Dexter was in his house. He’d have to sharpen up his act a bit if that was the best he could do.

  “That’s rubbish,” said Eric. “What activities? The woman was a nutcase. I keep telling you. She accused me of everything under the sun.”

  “How long had you known her, Mr. Watson?”

  Eric frowned. “What’s that got to do with the price of fish?” he said. He couldn’t understand why he was being asked, but he couldn’t see how answering it could hurt. “I didn’t know her at all. I moved in next door to her in February. I saw her from time to time, that’s all.”

  “Did you ever take photographs of her?”

  “For the umpteenth time, no. I didn’t spy on her, and I didn’t take any photographs of her.”

  “Never?”

  “No, never!”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Of course I’m sure! What the hell are you bringing all this up again for? I told you yesterday I’d never taken any photographs of her. And I told that WPC at the time—I was photographing blue tits feeding. I’m sorry it was something with suggestive connotations, but that’s what I was doing! And it’s all I was doing! Why the hell would I want to photograph her?”

  “Cast your mind back,” said Lloyd.

  Eric frowned. “To when?”

  “To a thirteen-year-old girl to whom you offered a Saturday job,” said Lloyd. “You keep excellent business records, Mr. Watson. Everything by the book. But then, you didn’t want to get caught in the same way as Al Capone, did you?”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t want bureaucracy to get in your way. You pay your taxes, and you charge VAT, and children must be thirteen years old before they do any work in your studio or accompany you on your photo shoots, mustn’t they? All in accordance with the Children and Young Persons Act. Very commendable.”

  The Saturday job was a great cover—he wouldn’t risk being found out by having officialdom sniffing round. He didn’t want to use little kids anyway. You could get away with a lot more once they were thirteen, fourteen, and the sentences weren’t as daunting if you got caught, providing you’d been careful. So he used them when they were prepubescent—the pervs liked them like that. Almost, but not quite, adults.

  And they always did it voluntarily, at least to start with—if they said no to the nudie pics, he didn’t take it any further. If they said yes, then he knew he’d got them, and he’d hang on to them until postpubescence. Once the down had turned into hair and their voices had broken, they were no use to him, so he had to make the most of them while he had them.

  “Estelle Greaves,” said Lloyd. “Remember her? She was your first Saturday employee.”

  Estelle. Sure, he remembered Estelle. He didn’t use many girls; they matured too early. By the time they were thirteen, some of them were having babies; they might be kids in the eyes of the law, but they weren’t what his pervs wanted. Estelle had been a late developer; at thirteen she was just right. Good little body. Just the right waiflike proportions, but with a hint of adolescence. The photographs were doing good business on the net even now.

  He couldn’t see what she had to do with anything. “What about her?”

  “She became Mrs. Estelle Bignall,” said Lloyd.

  Eric stared at him in sheer disbelief.

  “You didn’t know?”

  Jesus. He had had no idea. He’d never heard Mrs. Bignall’s first name, or he might have made the connection. But Christ Almighty, the woman had worked for him. No wonder she knew why Dexter was there. But she was dead. It was still just Dexter’s word against his.

  “Well?”

  He gathered his thoughts. “Yes, I remember her. I did take photographs of her—I did a modeling portfolio for her. She worked for me for a couple of years, I think.”

  “I think you did rather more than a modeling portfolio in the way of photographs.”

  Eric shook his head, smiling again. “No,” he said. “And there’s no way she can give you a statement lying in the morgue.”

  “Quite,” said Lloyd. “I think you had good reason to want Mrs. Bignall out of the way.”

  Too true, he had; the crazy bitch had given him nothing but grief since he’d moved in. Then Eric realized what Lloyd was saying and his mouth dropped open. “Now, wait a minute,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. And you can’t go saying I did.”

  “Can’t I?” said Lloyd. “Your fingerprints have been found on the frame of the Bignalls’ French window, and your shoe prints on the patio. Can you account for that?”

  Oh, Jesus. He must have stepped in wet earth when he went over the wall. He hadn’t known the woman had been killed, for God’s sake. He simply hadn’t thought about it. He hadn’t been taking precautions—why would he? He thought whatever shoe prints they’d found belonged to burglars, not him. And the fingerprints hadn’t even occurred to him; he hadn’t realized he touched anything, but he wasn’t trying not to. He had actually forgotten they would have his fingerprints on file. “I did go and have a look,” he said. “But that’s all.”

  “Then why didn’t you tell us that in the first place?”

  Eric sighed. Because the last thing he had wanted was to be involved in a police investigation into a break-in from which Dexter Gibson was seen running away. Well, no, the last thing he’d wanted was to be blown up in a gas explosion; that was why he’d gone there in the first place.

  “As I was walking back from the greenhouse I could hear this hissing noise,” he said. “I thought it was rain—you know, the way you do. It wasn’t until I got back in that I realized it had stopped raining. And then I thought—well, I’d been assuming that Dexter had broken the window for some reason, but for all I knew it was some sort of gas buildup that had blow
n the window out. So, I went over and had a look.”

  “And?”

  “And I saw they’d been burgled. But the noise had stopped and there wasn’t a smell of gas, so I just went back in the house.”

  “A hissing noise?” said Lloyd, his face amused. “Gas? Am I being invited to believe that, by any chance?”

  “Yes,” said Eric, beginning to feel panicky. The truth always sounded worse than lies. “Am I being accused of murder here?”

  “You admitted being on the Bignalls’ premises only after repeated denials, and only when forensic evidence had been produced which proved that you had. Estelle Bignall lodged a complaint about you with the council alleging that you were intimidating her. You had a visit from her at about five o’clock on the day of her death, threatening to make your activities known to the police, a visit which was witnessed by Dexter Gibson. She worked for you when she was a child, and you have in this very interview indicated how her death has benefited you in that regard. You are undoubtedly a suspect.”

  “I had nothing to do with what went on in that house!” said Eric. “And there’s no way you’ve found anything on me inside the house, so you’ve got no case against me.”

  “No? You told us you saw Carl Bignall leave at half past seven. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.” Eric wished it wasn’t, but it was. Whoever had killed her had done Bignall a favor. But it hadn’t been Bignall himself, because he hadn’t been there.

  “So to your certain knowledge, from half past seven onward, Estelle Bignall was alone in the house. And during that time someone murdered her. Someone who had no need to leave fingerprints or shoe prints—someone who was quite possibly admitted by the front door. Somebody she knew. That someone could undoubtedly have been you, Mr. Watson.”

  Bloody hell. It could.

  “Later, you produce circumstances in which Dexter Gibson will be seen to be running away from the scene by the simple expedient of preventing him from leaving when he intended to, beating him up and then five minutes later stepping over the wall into the Bignalls’ house and breaking their window, knowing he would run from any more trouble.”

  Eric swallowed.

  “So I would like to know what you were doing between seven-thirty and eight-fifteen last night, Mr. Watson.” He sat back and tipped his chair onto its rear legs, swinging very gently back and forth. “If you have an alibi, then I’m happy to listen to it.”

  Eric stared at him.

  Lloyd smiled. “The words rock and hard place come to mind.”

  Eric asked for his solicitor and was taken to the cells. He sank down on the bench as the door banged behind him, and wished with all his heart that he had murdered the cow.

  Denis found himself awake very early; the unusual noises, the necessary loudness of keys in locks, of metal doors opening and closing as they put someone in the cells, were bound to bring anyone to consciousness.

  He didn’t have his watch, but he could tell by the feel of the place that it was early morning. They took his belongings last night, listed them, got him to sign for them, and asked if he wanted any of them back. He hadn’t wanted them back; having no belongings added to the paradoxical freedom that he had felt the moment he was arrested.

  He could see that police cells might frighten the uninitiated, but the racket kicked up by the victims of Christmas excess was one that he was used to, and once all the banging and shouting had died down, and his fellow detainees were released or finally succumbed to sleep, it had become strangely calming to be locked in a little room with a bunk and a toilet and nothing else.

  Because in here, under arrest, nothing at all was his responsibility. The people outside the room, whose footsteps he had heard as they checked on the drunks, had decisions to make, duties to attend to, orders to give and carry out. He didn’t. All he had to do was wait until they decided it was time to feed him. And in the meantime, sleep had come relatively easily.

  Now that he was awake, he still felt safe. For the first time he understood the monks who entered closed orders, the ones who took a vow of silence, whose only obligation was to their God. No one could reach him in here; no one could expect anything of him.

  Life imprisonment might not be such a dreadful option after all.

  Not nine o’clock yet, and Lloyd felt as though he had actually achieved something. And now that the rest of the world was waking up, the incident room was awash with e-mails and faxes as the lab pulled out all the stops, also eager to get this one put to bed before Christmas.

  Lloyd perched on the corner of Tom Finch’s desk as he read them. The prints on the door between the dining room and the kitchen were Denis Leeward’s, as they had presumed. Lloyd was sincerely thankful that they didn’t have yet another set of prints to account for, but Leeward was bothering him all the same, especially after what Judy had said.

  The cushions and pillows had proved innocent of anyone’s saliva, except one, and that, he was assured by the lab, had been only the small amount produced by someone sleeping with his or her mouth open and did not in any way indicate that the pillow had been used to smother someone.

  Tom came in, and was duly impressed by the way Lloyd had backed Watson into a corner. Lloyd did credit Judy with the idea, but the Judy-proof theory had been his, and he was proud of it.

  “A gas leak?” said Tom, grinning.

  Lloyd nodded. “I couldn’t believe my luck when he said that. What jury in the world would believe him?”

  “So he’s looking at a trial for murder or a full confession about his filming activities? Nice one, guv.”

  The report on Leeward’s shoes came in, and Tom removed it from the fax, sitting down and reading it while Lloyd looked over the notes he’d taken while Dexter had given him his statement. Dexter went into the garage and the security light was on. It went out almost immediately, and didn’t come on again until he, Dexter, caused it to come on by running away when the window broke.

  “Are we charging Leeward, guv?” asked Tom. “Or did you want to get more detail?”

  Lloyd looked up from his notes. “I don’t think he did it, Tom. What he said last night rang true. Taking off his glove to feel for a pulse—that makes sense.”

  “What? We’ve got five witnesses, guv—you said so yourself.”

  “I know,” said Lloyd. “But I think we’ve got four witnesses to one thing, and just one witness to the other.”

  Tom looked baffled.

  “He told us he found glass in the sole of his shoe,” Lloyd said.

  “Yeah,” said Tom uncomprehendingly, and held out the report. “The lab found glass, too. Traces of glass and brick dust in the soles of both shoes. Just the same as was walked into the carpet. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Judy wants to know how he got it,” said Lloyd. “And so do I. Why would he have glass in the soles of his shoes? If he did what we assumed he did, he would have killed Estelle, tied her up, gagged her, taken the bin bag from the roll, shoved the Christmas presents and a couple of other things in it, and left, pausing only to pick up a brick and break the window. With him on one side and the glass on the other.”

  Tom scratched his crew cut. “Guv—you’re getting as bad as the forensic guys. We don’t know what he did—it probably wasn’t all as neat and efficient as that. Maybe he had to go back in for something, picked up the glass then.”

  Lloyd nodded. “Maybe,” he said, and went back to Dexter’s statement.

  “The lab say they found nothing on the stereo, guv—they’re sending it and the pillows and things back this morning. They’re not needed as evidence anymore—should I tell Dr. Bignall he can come and pick them up?”

  “Mm,” said Lloyd absently. The security light, he thought. The security light was trying to tell him something.

  “Telephone for you, Carl.”

  Meg looked very pale. Carl had heard her moving about her bedroom all morning, and it didn’t take a genius to deduce that she had been packing. Finally, she’d accepted th
at the only possible explanation for Denis not telling the police he had been with his brother was that he had not been with his brother. She’d rung Alan, and after a tense, difficult conversation, he told her the truth.

  Carl wasn’t sure how he felt about Denis’s activities. As a doctor, he strongly disapproved. He didn’t actually believe that all patient-doctor affairs were to be condemned; adult people were adult people. But Estelle had been a very vulnerable patient, and just a glance at her journal was all anyone needed to know that Denis had played on that vulnerability.

  And yet, as Estelle’s husband, he couldn’t find it in his heart to blame Denis; he knew Estelle, knew only too well what that very vulnerability had brought out in him, and it was too easy to say that in his case it had been a desire to make her happy and in Denis’s it had been exploitation. It had been a little bit of both for him, and he suspected it had been a little bit of both for Denis.

  He picked up the phone, and Sergeant Finch told him he could collect the items that the police had removed from the house on Monday night, as it was no longer necessary for the police to hold onto them. That was the first bit of good news he’d had since this whole thing began. He arranged to call at the Stansfield police station at eleven-thirty, and then, surely, he could begin to put all this behind him.

  Tom put down the phone, and Lloyd pushed whatever it was he’d been studying so closely over the desk to him. “Read that,” he said.

  Tom picked it up and saw that it was a list of when Watson’s security light had gone on and off, with rough timings. He looked up at Lloyd, still sitting on the corner of his desk.

  “Dexter says that the light was on when he went into the garage,” Lloyd said, “then went out, and didn’t come on again until he ran away. And he swears he did not see a car.”

  Tom looked at the notes as he spoke, and that was what they said. The light was on at approximately ten past eight, and went out almost immediately, coming on again when Dexter ran away, at approximately eight-fifteen. He frowned, not sure what he was supposed to be gathering from that.