by Jill McGown
Jonathan took the receiver from his ear, and closed his eyes. For God’s sake, Gordon, take some time off from being obtuse, please. He addressed himself to the phone once more. ‘ To kill her,’ he said through his teeth.
The silence went on so long that he thought Gordon had just gone off and left the phone. When he did speak, it was as though he had been pre-programmed.
‘They were both there on Monday,’ he said.
‘Right,’ he said, and hung up.
They still hadn’t found this man she had been with. He tried to remember everything she had said. They had to find him. They had to.
‘He’s been here a couple of times. I thought you ought to know.’
‘I’d rather your ex-boyfriends didn’t make waves, Leonora. Try to make him understand.’
I have, Jonathan. And I’ve told him I know his boss. He’ll be in trouble if he comes here again – he knows that. I just don’t think he’ll care.’
Jonathan sat down on the bed, and lit a cigarette as he thought. That was what she had said. It didn’t narrow the field as much as it might; he and Leonora knew a lot of Stansfield’s employers. But every little helped.
God, it was the middle of the night. No wonder Gordon had taken so long answering the phone. Day and night had merged into one in Jonathan’s life; nothing seemed real, nothing seemed logical.
He lay back, and looked at the painting. The sergeant was right. It was restful. He’d tell the police in the morning.
Pale light could just be seen behind the curtains as Judy opened her eyes. Sunrise. A new day, and she was happy. She often woke, these days, to that knowledge. It was a bit like thinking you were late for work and remembering it was your day off.
She turned to look at Lloyd, and found him looking at her. ‘ I thought you were asleep,’ she said, and moved closer to him.
He kissed her on the temple.
‘I wish I had run away with you when I was twenty,’ she said. ‘Instead of wasting all that time.’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘Time’s never wasted,’ he said. ‘It shapes us. Makes us who we are.’
She had to have had the years of nothingness first, or she wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the happiness. He was probably right. Lloyd was always right. Annoying, but right.
‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘ I was lecturing young Drake, and asking him why he had nearly got himself thrown out – and he said he’d got involved with another woman. Broke up his marriage. Not then and there, he said. But that was what did it.’
She smiled. ‘Not an obsession about work, then,’ she said.
Lloyd laughed. ‘ No. A woman – what else? But it took the wind out of my sails a bit. It struck a little too close to home.’
‘Are you mixing metaphors?’ she asked sternly.
‘Yes. I mix a mean metaphor. Do you want one?’
She turned so that she could see him properly. ‘Did I break up your marriage?’ She said the words quickly before she could change her mind. She had done everything she could think of not to break up his marriage. She had married Michael, for God’s sake. She had moved away.
Lloyd touched her hair. ‘Oh, love – that wasn’t what I meant,’ he said. ‘ No. But … the situation did, I suppose. But we had started having problems before I ever met you.’ He sighed. ‘If you’d been a different person, we might have had an affair, and that would have been that. But you weren’t, and we didn’t, and it wasn’t. I fell in love with you. I knew what I wanted, and I knew I hadn’t got it.’
‘So I did break up your marriage.’
‘It fell apart, Judy. Or if someone did break it, then it was me. It certainly wasn’t you.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘Do you remember Sergeant Compton’s leaving do?’ he asked.
Judy nodded, smiling too.
‘I’ve never tried so hard to get someone into bed with me,’ he said. ‘Before or since.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, kissing him. ‘ I should have said yes. Broken up your marriage the easy way, and saved everyone a lot of bother.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘ That wouldn’t have been you. I fell in love with someone who kept saying, ‘‘No, Lloyd, it’s wrong.’’’
She lay back. The sun, peeping through the crack in the curtains, had started to travel along the wall. ‘But I don’t think that’s why I said no,’ she told him honestly. ‘I think I was just scared to start something I couldn’t control.’
He sat up a little, and looked down at her. ‘ But that is you,’ he said. ‘That’s what I mean.’
She smiled up at him. ‘When you’re not being a male chauvinist pig,’ she said, ‘or unbearably patronising, or absolutely infuriating, sometimes I think you’re the nicest man in the world.’ She kissed him. ‘And sometimes I know you are,’ she added.
‘Oh, you’ll make me blush.’
‘Fat chance.’ She pushed him down on to the pillow. ‘ I fell asleep on your last round of cock and bull,’ she said. ‘I promise to stay awake this time.’
‘It’s five o’clock in the morning.’
‘I’m not sleepy. Go on – tell me lies. I like it.’
He sighed. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘ My grandfather was injured, and was taken to a field hospital which had been set up in the grounds of a chateau. She lived there. That’s how they met.’
Judy was seeing this in black and white. The wounded soldiers, stretched out under makeshift tents in the grounds. The young girl whose home had been transformed by war into a military hospital. She had seen it. In dozens of the old films that Lloyd was so fond of.
‘It’s all true,’ he repeated, in response to the look she gave him.
‘How come she met him? Out of all the soldiers that were there?’
‘She met a lot of them. She was helping out where she could. But then she met him, and – they fell in love.’ He smiled. ‘I like to think there’s a lot of my granda in me,’ he said.
‘Mm.’ Judy tried to sound dubious, but she didn’t find it difficult to believe that Françoise had fallen in love with Lloyd’s grandfather.
‘OK,’ she conceded. ‘Carry on.’
She lay back, listening to Lloyd’s voice as he produced snippets of information, or disinformation, about his grandfather, and his brief but touching romance with his supposedly French grandmother. She loved to listen to him; that was why she was putting up with being told all this nonsense. He’d surely have mentioned it before now, if it was true, she reasoned. She’d just have to catch him out.
‘He recovered, and was sent back to the front. They wrote to one another …’
‘Which language?’
‘English. He could speak French, but he could never write it.’
‘And you can produce these letters as evidence?’
He shook his head. ‘He lost the letters, and his right leg – when a shell got him.’
Trust Lloyd to make her feel guilty.
Its morning, Gordon.
Gordon looked at Pauline, sleeping soundly beside him, her breathing deep and regular. She had turned into someone else, someone he didn’t know. Someone he was a little frightened of.
Get up, Gordon, old son. You have something to do today. You know you have.
He had been asleep too, until the phone had rung. Eventually it had penetrated, at first as a dream in which he couldn’t make the alarm clock stop ringing, even when he took it to pieces, and then as dim reality. It hadn’t wakened Pauline.
No, well – its tiring, all this lying, isn’t it? You got a few minutes off when you told the chief inspector the truth about the fire. She didn’t. Look at her, poor thing. She’s exhausted.
And when he’d taken the call, he had stayed in the sitting-room, crying like a child.
Much good that did, Gordon. Look at her. Go on, look. She’s expecting a baby, Gordon. Your baby.
All right, all right! I know. But I wasn’t to know that she was going to turn into Barbara Stanwyck, was I?
He didn’t like being in a f
ilm noir. No one had told him his lines, for one thing.
He slid out of bed, and walked naked into the bathroom. People killed themselves like that, he thought, as he ran water into the bath. He was found naked in the bathroom, having cut his wrists.
No thanks. No, he would be found naked in the bathroom having a bath. Then having a shave. Then he would be found fully clothed going to the police station to let them have his fingerprints, because they needed them for elimination, and to arrange their case against him for arson, presumably.
And then?
You don’t have any option, Gordon. Pauline did it because of you – she’s got the police on her back because of you. If it wasn’t for you, old son, she would be nice, dependable, truthful Pauline, not some fugitive from a forties American movie. You don’t have any option, and you know it.
But he hadn’t wanted her to –
What you want and what you get are two different things, as you of all people should know, Gordon. What you wanted was someone who didn’t give a toss about you. What you got was someone who loves you, whether you want her to or not. But you were too busy feeling sorry for yourself, weren’t you, Gordon, old son, to notice? All along, poor Gordon. Poor Gordon couldn’t have Lennie, so he settled for Pauline. Poor Gordon.
He cut himself shaving. He was found naked in the bathroom, with a piece of toilet roll stuck to his chin.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Work,’ he said.
Lying got easier.
‘Is my boss here?’ said a voice.
Mickey turned to see the tall figure of Bob Sandwell. ‘In there,’ he said, inclining his head towards Lloyd’s door. ‘With the chief inspector and the chief super.’
‘I think we’ve got another meeting,’ said Sandwell. ‘Either that or her car’s broken down again.’
Mickey smiled. ‘How do you like having a woman for a boss?’ he asked.
‘Judy’s OK.’
Mickey heard the defensive tone, and held up his hands. ‘I think she’s all right too,’ he said. ‘I worked here with her for a few weeks. She was acting inspector until Barstow arrived.’
Sandwell smiled. ‘I’m getting as bad as her,’ he said. ‘Hearing sexist remarks when they’re not intended.’
‘I just wondered if it bothered you. It bothers some.’
‘Most of them are at Malworth,’ said Sandwell. ‘I’ll tell you something – if they don’t give up soon, I’ll be a raging feminist before the year’s out.’
Mickey got to his feet as Chief Superintendent Allison came out of Lloyd’s office, and nodded acknowledgement to the two sergeants. Lloyd beckoned them into his office, where Judy Hill sat, looking even more attractive than usual. Lloyd was a lucky sod, thought Mickey. He had always blamed his red-haired hot temper for his inability to sustain a permanent relationship, but the chief inspector had a temper too; Mickey had heard him. Sheer luck, he decided.
Lloyd invited them to sit. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘The chief super wants to see some movement on this. We’ve had confirmation that the prints found on the Austins’ phone are those of Stephen Arthur Tasker. Allison is not happy that we haven’t found him yet.’ He sighed. ‘And if Tasker was responsible for Mrs Austin’s death, then our theory is blown away,’ he said, and smiled briefly. ‘Our revered pathologist is always pointing out that theories come to grief,’ he said.
‘I’d like to speak to Austin,’ Judy said. ‘ Question him a little more closely about what he was doing.’
The chief superintendent didn’t sigh; he just looked as though he was going to. ‘I know Mr Allison said that he wasn’t too concerned with motive, but Austin doesn’t strike me as the type who would lose control too readily,’ he said.
‘Why did he lie about going to fetch the car?’ she said. ‘If Pauline Pearce was lying about when her husband got home – and she was – then she was probably lying about when she heard someone going into the studio. And if that was eleven o’clock, it wasn’t Mrs Austin.’
‘He may not have lied about fetching the car,’ said Lloyd.
‘And I’d like to know why Mrs Beale was so keen to ring the Austins,’ said Judy, almost to herself. ‘ She’d hardly want them to know that Frank had been arrested, would she? So what was she ringing them about?’
‘Ringing Austin,’ said Lloyd. ‘Sweet nothings.’
‘I … I don’t know if it’s relevant,’ said Mickey, taking the bull by the horns. ‘But I’m not so sure he was having an affair with Rosemary Beale.’
‘Oh?’ Lloyd looked at him, eyebrows raised, waiting.
‘When I went to see him at the hotel,’ said Mickey, ‘I – well – I got the feeling that I was more his type, sir.’
They all looked at him. Lloyd sat down again, smiling, but interested. ‘Do go on,’ he said. ‘ Did he make a pass at you?’
‘No, sir,’ said Mickey. ‘But he …’ Damn it, he knew when he was being appraised. It was just that it was more usually women who did it.
‘Fancied you,’ supplied Lloyd.
‘Not exactly, sir, but—’
Lloyd relented. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You were aware of his interest.’
‘Yes, sir. And he was almost forty when he got married,’ Mickey went on. ‘And he only did that because he was told he stood more chance as a married man. And Inspector Hill said that he wasn’t all that interested in his wife …’
Lloyd tipped back his chair, and stared into the middle distance. ‘Does it alter things?’ he asked, after a while. ‘If it is the case? I suppose it could explain why he lied about going for his wife’s car.’
‘You agree that he lied, then?’ said Judy.
‘Perhaps,’ said Lloyd. ‘ But I still don’t discount Mrs Austin’s picking it up herself. And I don’t think we can go on the assumption that Austin is homosexual from the impression he gave to one officer.’
Mickey looked at Judy, who was definitely giving Lloyd an old-fashioned look. ‘Oh – I checked into the siren thing,’ he told her. ‘No police vehicle used its siren round the Mitchell Estate at eleven twenty on Thursday night’ He shrugged. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘ I checked the other emergency services, but it’s no go. Maybe it was a car alarm.’
‘I do know the difference!’ she snapped.
‘Sorry.’
‘All right all right,’ said Lloyd. ‘ It could have been the TV, for all we know.’
Mickey couldn’t really imagine Austin watching a cops and robbers show. It was odd, about the siren. And Austin reckoning he couldn’t find her car. And phoning Judy Hill. And his story about going out again to look for his wife was pathetic. The whole thing was odd. Perhaps it did have something to do with his sexual preferences, because he was right about that; he was sure he was.
‘As to Pearce,’ said Lloyd, ‘ now that he’s admitted trying to burn down – with quite startling ineptitude – the Austin-Pearce factory, does that make him more or less likely as a candidate?’
‘The murderer wasn’t inept,’ said Sandwell. ‘ Or we’d have him by now.’
‘No, he wasn’t, as you’ll see from this.’ Lloyd gave out copies of the forensic report on the Beales’ flat.
Mickey read the report, which was basically only of negative use. Everything had been wiped. The phone, the wire, the table, the door. Everything, except the outside of the front door, on which there were a number of prints, and it would take time to sort out any that couldn’t be accounted for.
‘The fire didn’t work. He says he didn’t know that, but perhaps he did. And perhaps he was still angry. He told me he went directly to the factory, but he didn’t – he waited outside Austin’s flat for some time before he left. Altering the time could be a clumsy attempt at an alibi.’
‘You don’t think he planned it all, do you, sir?’ asked Sandwell. ‘And the fire was meant not to work?’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘ He’d have had to have had advanced knowledge of the wiring system, which is unlikely,’ he said. ‘And this
was almost an opportunist murder, if you ask me. There she was, alone, her back to him, using the phone with its nice strong cable …’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘At last, the murderer thought, this is my chance. So who would be most likely to catch her at just the right moment? Pearce.’ He looked at Judy. ‘I take it you’re going to have another go at Mrs Pearce?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ll just give her time to think I’m not going to.’
Mickey smiled.
‘The incident room is being set up at Malworth,’ said Lloyd. ‘We’ve got access to a computer, which Sergeant Sandwell is welcome to play with.’
He got up, and looked out of the window, speaking with his back to them. ‘And we’re still evidence-gathering on the Austin murder, of course. We’ve got a house-to-house being conducted in the streets near the Mitchell flats, and I’m hoping that that might tell us if Austin’s car really did remain unused all evening. It may even turn up a witness.’
He turned. ‘And the reconstruction of Mrs Beale’s walk home will go ahead tonight. Someone may have seen something useful – perhaps someone saw her being followed, or possibly even saw Mrs Austin’s car.’ He smiled at Judy. ‘If it was away from the garage,’ he said, ‘can Austin finally take a back seat, and we concentrate on what she was doing rather than what he was doing?’ She smiled back, her good humour restored. ‘ Done,’ she said.
‘You might as well move in.’
Inspector Hill smiled friendlily enough at Pauline’s greeting, but Pauline didn’t suppose she would enjoy her visit.
‘Do you have a moment, Mrs Pearce?’
Pauline nodded, stepping aside to let the inspector through. ‘ I know why you’re here,’ she said.
They went into the sitting-room. ‘Am I allowed to offer you coffee?’ she asked. ‘ Or would that be fraternising?’
Inspector Hill looked at her for a moment, then smiled. ‘I’d love a cup of coffee,’ she said.
She followed Pauline into the kitchen, which Pauline could have done without. Worse than that; she didn’t speak. She didn’t demand explanations, or truthful answers. At least Gordon was at work. ‘What’s going to happen to Gordon?’ she asked, as she took two mugs off the tree.