by Jo Allen
Something in her expression — some slight reservation — implied there was something she was holding back from him. ‘It was shaping up to be interesting.’
‘Some of us could do with a reminder about sensitivity.’
He could hardly disagree, and shook his head at her as he ducked into his office and grabbed his jacket and bag. ‘We’ll get down there straight away.’
‘You don’t want to take Doddsy?’
‘No. One of us had better endure Claud’s presentation, for form’s sake.’ He stifled a smile. Ashleigh was by far the most skilled interviewer on his team ‘You’ve got an innocent face and the bad guys all fall for it. I’ll play bad cop to your good cop.’
‘If he’s turned himself in, hopefully we won’t need to play games,’ she said. ‘Shall I drive?’
*
In the half an hour it took the two detectives to turn up at the police station, the courage Giles had struggled so hard to muster seeped away. Someone had found him a cup of coffee and settled him in an interview room and there, in the relatively pleasant surroundings of such a functional space, Giles reduced himself to a helpless specimen, a lost soul. Everything was against him. He’d been with Len. He hadn’t presented himself the second he’d learned it was murder. He was a respectable man who kept secrets.
He pulled himself up on that last point, refusing to feel guilty about that, at least. Everyone kept secrets.
‘Dr Butler. I’m DCI Satterthwaite. This is Detective Sergeant O’Halloran. We’re working on the Pierce case.’ The detective was brisk and business-like, hiding his character behind the neutrality of a sharp suit and a crisp white shirt. There was something vaguely attractive about him and Giles, who had taken a long while to acknowledge that it was normal to find men attractive, shivered a little at the thought of how he’d allowed obedience to his parents’ traditionalism to lead him into trouble. There was nothing wrong with being gay, he reminded himself, as if there was a chance there might be. It was judging himself by other people’s standards that was wrong. That, and lying about it.
He scrambled to his feet, shook the man’s hand and then turned to the woman. She was anything but neutral, all vibrant personality the way Janice had been when he first dated her and Gracie still so obviously was, voluptuous and sparkling. She looked as if she was fighting back a permanent smile and despite the sombreness of the situation she did smile, briefly, when she shook his hand.
‘Giles Butler.’ Sweat gleamed in his palms. They would take that as a sign of guilt, and they must find his carefully-tended image preposterous — pink and plump and tweedy, a countryman from a 1920s seaside postcard, with a thatch of hair that was just too glossily brown not to have had some kind of help from a bottle. Maybe that was why the sergeant was smiling. If you were to cast a country doctor in a stage farce, surely you would cast him. That was all he was — a character living out a lie, but in a murder inquiry not a farce.
The three of them sat down. The chief inspector laid down a pad in front of him and clicked a silver ballpoint pen into action, his hand poised over the pad.
‘We’ll just take a witness statement at this stage,’ the woman said, as reassuring as his practice nurse about to draw blood from a nervous patient. ‘I believe you’ve got something to tell us about Len Pierce. Is that right?’
‘Yes.’ Giles cleared his throat like a bad actor about to deliver a famous line. ‘I imagine you’ll have guessed already. I was Lenny’s lover.’ The phrase screamed, like a bad headline in a red-top tabloid. He threw them an appealing glance, begging them not to judge him too harshly. ‘But I swear I didn’t kill him.’
His wedding ring caught the light and he turned it over on his finger thinking of Janice, wondering what she’d say when she found out. Their names were engraved together inside the ring, along with the date and a temptation to fate, the words Happy Ever After. He’d tried, but he’d failed. Would she understand that?
‘Okay,’ the man said, suspending the discussion while the receptionist appeared with coffees for himself and the woman, ‘why don't we start at the beginning? Tell us a bit about yourself.’ He pushed his chair back and the sergeant sat forward to take over the interview but Giles wasn’t fooled. While he was concentrating on what she had to say her boss would listen and watch the two of them, chipping in where necessary, reading Giles’s body language and interpreting his nervousness as something deeper and far more sinister, as guilt or fear. And he’d be right in that. Giles was both guilty and fearful.
‘I’m Dr Giles Butler. GP. From Kirkby Lonsdale.’ He coughed. ‘I’m fifty-six. Married.’ Because that mattered, if only to Janice. ‘Three sons, two at university, one still at school.’ He issued the two of them with a pleading look, trying it on one of them, then the other, backwards and forwards and turning to Ashleigh O’Halloran.
‘Thanks, Dr Butler. Let’s start off with what made you come and talk to us.’
Gracie. It had been her sound common sense, the doubt he’d heard in her voice. That the only person left alive who understood him might suspect him had forced his hand. He couldn’t let her think he was a killer and this was the only way out.
‘I saw your appeal on the news.’ He nodded towards Jude Satterthwaite, who seemed to hide a wry smile. ‘I had no idea. I was shocked when I heard.’
‘The television appeal was on Monday,’ the sergeant reminded him. ‘Why didn’t you get in touch with us before?’
‘I was very busy.’ Giles’s nerves tightened into nausea. ‘But it was on my conscience once I saw the appeal. It was a shock, a terrible shock.’ He reached for the cup and the dregs of his cold coffee. ‘I didn’t kill Lenny — I swear I didn’t. But you’ll think I did.’
‘We don’t think anything, Dr Butler.’ The woman picked up her pen, turned it over in her fingers and put it down again, a futile gesture since the man was taking the notes . ‘We’re here to listen. Tell us about how you know Lenny. That’s a good starting point.’
He gave a small, huffing sigh, reviewing a prepared speech and trying to remember all the things he had to say. ‘I’m gay. I suppose you know that.’ Someone in a lab somewhere would already have unpacked the secret he’d kept from everyone but Len and Gracie for the best part of forty years. ‘Obviously I hadn’t told anyone.’
‘Obviously,’ she affirmed, without a trace of irony
The difficulty of explaining his domestic situation was too much, though it would hardly be unusual, and she didn’t ask. Thank God for that. Janice would be disappointed in him. The boys would be furious or, worse, mortified. His patients, or some of them, would be shocked, either at his sexuality or his cowardice. A few might not care. ‘I met him about eighteen months ago, in a cafe in Penrith. He’d been in to see his bank manager and I’d been at the hospital to visit my father. The place was busy so he asked if he could share my table and we got chatting.’ Like Brief Encounter, or a bad romance. He wasn’t sure which.
‘You got on well, then.’
What attracted one person to another? It certainly hadn’t been his looks. Len had been a skinny man with a sharp expression that reflected his dissatisfaction with the way the world had treated him, but whatever it was some bolt from the blue had taken Giles straight in the stomach and those decades of forcing himself into his parents’ expectations had been swept aside. ‘I can't remember what, but there was something about him that made me laugh. I took to him straight away.’ That was the good side. Len had had a dry wit, not unlike Giles’ own. He’d poked fun at him for his staid respectability, teased him about his double life while being the first person ever to understand it. They’d laughed about it, and a whole lot of other, trivial things. In this world it did you good to laugh. ‘You know how it is. Sometimes you meet the least likely people and you click. That was what it was like with Lenny and me.’ Most of all he’d loved Len’s stubborn refusal to care about what other people thought of him. If he had his time over again… Gay, he’d have said to the world at l
arge, wide-eyed at the age of sixteen when the possibility had first, briefly, occurred to him, so what? But life punished you for being born in the wrong generation and he was trapped in its expectations.
‘And you started meeting regularly?’
‘Yes. For coffee at first, and to talk. Then later, more.’ He couldn’t help it. He went scarlet, reached for his coffee again and found the cup empty. ‘We didn’t always have sex.’ In the end it hadn’t been about that. ‘Sometimes we just talked. Sometimes we went for a walk. On Sunday I met him in the lane as we agreed.’
‘Did you always meet there?’
Giles twisted his fingers together. He hadn’t thought he could regret his cowardice any more but as the detective forced him to think about Len, talk about him, he did. ‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t it a bit…’ She turned the pen over in her fingers. ‘Basic?’
‘I didn’t want to go to his house,’ Giles mumbled. ‘And he couldn’t come to mine. I’m married. People know me. Even in Appleby. They talk. My career.’ The lies. The deceit. That was the only thing they’d fallen out about. Can’t you be honest with people, Len had demanded, and they’d always ended by laughing. ‘We chatted for a bit. We made love. And then I drove away.’
‘What time was that?’
‘I remember it exactly, because I put on the radio to hear the football. It was Liverpool-Spurs. It was just kicking off. So it would have been two o’clock.’
‘You didn’t see anything around there?’ prompted the sergeant. ‘Anybody? Any cars?’
‘I wasn’t looking. I was concerned about getting back home. I’d spent longer with him than I’d intended and I was in a hurry to get away. I’d told my wife I was playing golf.’ He flicked miserably at his top lip. He’d always known he’d be found out, but he’d deluded himself into thinking he’d have the courage to tell her before it happened. Now time had run out on him and his confession was forced.
‘You went to a good deal of effort to cover your tracks,’ she said. ‘Was that entirely necessary?’
‘My wife. My patients.’ Giles shifted in his seat again. ‘It’s all going to come out now, isn’t it?’
‘I’m afraid it’ll have to, when the case goes to court. It was courageous of you to come forward. You did exactly the right thing.’
Something about her made him want to confide. ‘I wish to God it had never happened the way it did. If I’d admitted to myself I might be gay a bit earlier I’d never have got married, but I never did. God knows, sometimes I think I wasn’t gay when I was married. There have been studies that suggest—’ He pulled himself up. Poor Janice. What a deception. Had she ever sighed in private about the absence of that passionate something from their lovemaking? ‘Never mind. I only realised for sure about ten years ago. There I was. Wonderful wife. Terrific career. I was working in the kind of place where being a doctor means something, where you still have a bit more respect in the community. Very traditional. Everybody was very happy. Except me.’
‘Is your wife happy?’ she asked.
A strange question. Perhaps a lot of crimes took place behind just such a curtain of perfection, dramas playing out in the heart while the window on the world was one of false happiness. ‘I don’t know.’ He’d never asked her. Maybe she’d guessed and played her own part in his drama, pretending for the sake of the children, or the neighbours, or her own self-respect.
The woman gave a wry smile, as if she was reviewing her own mistakes. ‘And then you met Len.’
Belatedly, Giles realised what she was up to, taking him back over the story to check for inconsistencies, looking for things he’d wish he hadn’t said. The questioning was innocuous but the path it led him down was full of traps waiting to be sprung and a false step would mean a murder charge. ‘I never went looking for a partner. He just walked into my life. But he was my friend.’
‘What did you talk about?’
‘Everything.’ They’d talked about football and politics and work, about the changes in the seasons, about food and holidays and music, about everything except the discomfort of the lives they lived.
‘Did he tell you much about his private life?’
‘I don’t think he had a private life, if I’m honest. He lived on his own, he didn’t go out much. He spent a lot of time baking. He loved baking. He made all the cakes for the shop his sister ran.’ Giles’s voice was wistful. ‘I gave him money for the tea shop, once. For new crockery. It was a loan. Interest free. Because we were friends. I always said I’d call in there and try the baking, have a look at my investment, but I never did.’ And never would.
The woman wrote it down as if it wasn’t at all unusual. ‘Can you think of anyone who disliked him?’
‘None. I can see he might have ticked a few people off by being abrupt with them, but that’s not a crime. And to be honest I don't think he interacted with anyone enough to make an enemy of them.’
Silence bred between them. ‘Thank you very much for your help, Dr Butler. It’s been invaluable. There are a number of steps we’ll have to take to check out your story, of course.’
‘I expect you’ll want to take my car.’ Giles got to his feet, the imminence of disaster closing in on him. ‘I don’t know how I’ll explain that to my wife.’
He got no sympathy from the chief inspector. ‘You can tell her it was impounded because the tyres were illegal.’ The man pushed back his chair. ‘I take it you’ll be happy for us to be in touch at a later stage. I’ve no doubt there will be other questions we want to ask as the investigation progresses. With your permission I’d like to take fingerprints and a DNA sample. In the meantime, if you could read over this witness statement and sign it as a true report of what you’ve told us…’
‘I appreciate your courage in coming to talk to us,’ the sergeant said as he scanned his own words, reproaching him in black and white. She must have decided that he’d earned a little soft talking.
‘It’s in my own interests, isn't it? Because if there’s someone going around slaughtering gay people it’s in everyone’s interests that we catch him.’
*
‘What do we reckon, then?’ Jude had been silent for most of the short journey from Hunter Lane to the Carlton Hall HQ, drumming his fingers on his knee while he thought it through.
‘He definitely has a few more questions to answer, doesn’t he?’
‘He does. It’ll be interesting to see what we get from the car, if anything. Natalie claims to have discovered the body at a little after two, which fits with the information on her fitness tracker. Even if Giles was telling the truth about timings the window in which Len died is large enough for him to have been the killer.’
‘It doesn’t look good for him, does it?’ Ashleigh pictured Giles’s round, pink face with its expression of naked fear. ‘I know he came to us voluntarily, but I’ll bet it was only because he thought we’d find him.’ She turned off into the slip road.
‘He certainly thought about it for long enough. And it strikes me he’s an accomplished liar.’
‘I really struggle to understand why people have to get so hung up about their sexuality.’ Ashleigh thought of Faye, and how horrified both their husbands had been to discover the place Scott had left in Ashleigh’s bed had been filled by a woman.
‘My guess is that the doctor cares more about his good name and what’s left of his reputation. I imagine he’d have squirmed just as much if Len had been Leona.’
‘Do you? Maybe you’re right. But I don’t think he’d have hated himself quite as much as he seems to.’
‘You’re probably right.’ He glanced down at his watch as the car slowed. ‘I’ll go up and brief Doddsy. You run and get some lunch. I’ll join you there.’
‘Can I get you anything?’
‘A ham sandwich. Cake. Anything, as long as there’s lots of it. I’m starving.’
Ashleigh pulled up outside the entrance to let him out, then parked the car and made her way to the canteen. Over by t
he window Natalie Blackwell sat forlornly by herself while Claud stood at the other side of the room, deep in animated conversation with Faye.
In the course of the previous week’s fruitless investigation Ashleigh had delved into Natalie’s background. The overwhelming impression she’d acquired was of a woman who, with her intense and anxious gaze, her defensive body language and her obsession with running, had more to offer than anyone had ever asked of her. Pausing to evaluate her chances of avoiding Faye, she spared Natalie a second glance. Engaging her in conversation involved the risk of being cornered by Claud, whom she instinctively distrusted, or Faye, but curiosity got the better of her. She carried her tray across to the table where Natalie sat with an uneaten sandwich on a plate in front of her and indicated the seat next to her. ‘May I?’
‘Of course.’ Natalie shifted her seat to one side even though there was plenty of room, an indication of her willingness to chat. ‘Have a seat.’ A pause, while Ashleigh did so. ‘I’m sorry the chief inspector had to leave the workshop this morning.’
‘I’m sure he was, too.’ Ashleigh managed to look at Natalie with what passed for total sincerity and then turned back to her lunch. Natalie’s thin frame, her consuming obsession with exercise and the look she gave the two sandwiches and two pieces of cake on Ashleigh’s tray implied an eating disorder, either in the past or in the present.
‘We’ll be doing some more. Claud always tweaks the script as he goes on, to make it more bespoke. He’ll have a chance to review what we’ve done so far. Superintendent Scanlon asked DI Dodd to work with him on it.’ With apparent reluctance, Natalie made an attack on her sandwich, taking it apart with a knife and fork and extracting the filling. Limp lettuce and pale ham, shiny with mayonnaise, spilled out over the plate and she lifted the bread and piled the two slices to one side. ‘Sorry,’ she said, seeing Ashleigh’s look. ‘It’s a ballet dancer’s habit. No carbs.’
Aye right, thought Ashleigh to herself. It had been years since Natalie had quit the hard labour of the ballet and her tenure in it had barely lasted two years. Miles run, calories consumed, minutes passed — all were the indicators of Natalie’s insecurity, everything trapped and pigeonholed, even the abstract accounted for. ‘I should probably cut a few carbs myself.’