by Jill McGown
‘Yes, sir,’ she said. Not ‘Who, me?’ which was what she was actually thinking.
He smiled. ‘It’s an unusual step to take, I know, so soon after your promotion. But it’s an unusual situation. The chief is sure that his confidence will not be misplaced.’ He smiled. ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Hill,’ he said.
She felt almost light-headed as she went out, to find Lloyd waiting impatiently for her. Allison waved as his car wafted him away back to Barton. His car wouldn’t be hot and stuffy, she thought. He didn’t even have to drive it. She watched as it went off, wondering a little how it must feel.
She told Lloyd; he seemed pleased. But then Lloyd could seem anything he liked. He should have been on the stage. And she couldn’t be sure how he really felt.
‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ she said, as they ordered spaghetti in Malworth’s pride and joy, a yuppie Italian wine bar and restaurant which charged too much, but had a good chef. ‘ It’s only because we’re so undermanned they can’t spare a real one.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘Oh, I think they could if they thought it necessary,’ he said.
‘They’d have thought it necessary if it wasn’t all mixed up with your case,’ she said. ‘ They think you’ll babysit me.’
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘But I doubt it.’ He patted her hand. ‘I told you when they offered you the job – they’re seeing how you handle command.’
Their meals came; Lloyd issued a stern warning about eating and working.
‘He’d lost his leg,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes.’ Lloyd twirled spaghetti expertly round his fork as he spoke. ‘He woke up to find himself this side of the Channel, invalided out. He wrote to her, but he never got a reply.’
Judy’s fork didn’t twirl. It would get halfway round, then slip back, and ship its cargo. ‘What did he do?’ she asked, trying again. Some Italians must starve to death.
‘When the war was over, he went back. The family had left the château, and the people there didn’t know where they’d gone.’
She watched him for a moment, and tried hard to do what he did. This time she got it round her fork, all right, but she doubted very much if she could actually get it in her mouth.
‘You should take two or three strands,’ he said helpfully. ‘ It builds up. Anyway, he did odd jobs to keep himself going while he asked everyone for miles until he found someone who knew them. Then he followed the trail until he found her.’
All with just the one leg, she thought, but she couldn’t speak. It was like parking, she thought. He made it look so easy, but it never worked for her. He wouldn’t have held up an entire streetful of traffic; his car would have slid exactly the correct distance on to the pavement. And he wouldn’t have got a parking ticket, she thought sourly, determinedly getting through her mammoth mouthful. ‘What did he do once he’d found her?’ she asked.
‘He brought her back to Wales, and they got married in the chapel.’
Wales. Judy had been there with Lloyd, very briefly. Even in the eighties they had regarded her, a Londoner, with deep suspicion. What would they have thought of a French girl, seventy years ago?
‘What sort of reception did she get?’ she asked.
‘Oh, the usual, I think. In the front parlour. The Co-op Hall wasn’t built until the thirties.’ He smiled. ‘Now – hurry up and finish your coffee. We’ve got work to do.’
You can’t give me orders, she thought. But she didn’t say it out loud.
Back at Andwell House, people milled around, getting things organised for the reconstruction. Lloyd went off to talk to Allison, and Judy spied Drake.
‘Mickey! Just the man I want.’
‘That’s nice to know,’ he said.
‘The Apollo Gymnasium, in Barton,’ she said. ‘ What is it?’
‘Caxton Lane?’
‘That’s it. Above a cinema.’
‘It’s a gym,’ he said, his eyes widely innocent, the accent American. ‘Where we macho men can go pump iron.’
‘And?’
‘And meet a lot of like-minded people, some of whom are quite definitely juveniles,’ he said, his face grim.
Judy nodded. ‘ You don’t approve?’
‘No, I don’t. I don’t care what anyone’s sexual preferences are, but I don’t approve of kids being exploited, and I don’t approve of the drug culture that the whole business encourages, and if that makes me a prude, that’s too bad.’
She smiled. ‘It can’t make you a prude,’ she said. ‘Because I agree with you. I’m broad-minded, you’re conservative, and he’s a prude.’
Drake laughed.
‘Not mine, needless to say. Lloyd’s.’
‘We tried to raid it once, but it was no go,’ said Drake. ‘ Rosemary’s too clever for that. Was too clever.’ He brightened a little. ‘ Maybe we’ll get Beale now that she’s not there to keep him in line,’ he said. ‘What’s your interest?’
‘Austin,’ she said. ‘You were right, Mickey.’
He smiled. ‘I think he’s gone off me, now,’ he said.
‘He signs himself in as David Morris, would you believe?’
‘Morris as in Austin?’
‘And David as in Jonathan. He’s got less imagination than me,’ she said.
Drake walked with her along the river bank as the lowering sky grew dark for real. ‘Do you think he was just doing something he’d rather no one knew about when he says he was going for his wife’s car?’ he asked.
‘I’m sure he was,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like that call.’
‘No,’ said Drake. ‘I know what you mean. I felt as if he knew a lot more about this than he’s saying.’ He stopped, and looked down into the river. ‘We let Pearce go,’ he said. ‘ There didn’t seem much point in passing him on to you. He hasn’t murdered anyone.’
‘No. I don’t know what Mr Pearce’s problem is, but I never fancied him for a murderer.’
‘No.’ Drake looked at her. ‘Do you think a woman could have killed Mrs Beale?’ he asked.
Judy nodded. ‘Freddie said it was possible.’
‘The chief inspector wants to see if Mrs Austin’s car was here,’ said Drake. ‘He’s got a theory.’
‘Mm. I know.’ Judy was about to point out that the car hadn’t been anywhere, when she knew what had clicked into place. ‘Do we still have it?’ she asked.
‘What?’ Drake looked lost.
‘Mrs Austin’s car – is it still at the police lab?’
‘Yes, as far as I know.’ ‘Would you do me a favour, Mickey?’
Steve had been given accommodation, he had been fed, he had been looked after better than Beale’s mother would have been. He just hadn’t been able to leave. Not that Beale had actually said so, or locked him in or anything. It was just made clear that any attempt to leave would be met with resistance from the heavies, who had reappeared about the time he was thinking of leaving, of course. He wasn’t afraid of them now; he had got used to their looming presence in his life, and if he didn’t touch them they would do him no harm, like little pussy. The nursery rhyme made him five again, for a moment. He wondered what his mother would say if she could see him now.
Beale was introducing him to his solicitor, a thinly handsome fortyish West Indian in an expensive grey suit. Steve frowned. ‘ I don’t get it,’ he said.
Beale sighed. ‘ Steve, if I had let you go last night just after I’d told you about Mrs Austin, what would you have done?’
‘Run,’ said Steve, with feeling.
‘Run. And how far do you think you would have got?’
Steve shrugged.
‘I’ll tell you. You’d have run right back into prison.’ He shook his head. ‘No wonder people like you spend half your lives there,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to use your brain sometimes.’
Steve used to think he had one, of sorts. Now he wasn’t so sure.
‘You’re going to go to the police of your own accord,’ said the solicitor.
‘What?’ Steve
twisted round to Beale. ‘ I was in her flat, Frank! They’ll have my prints – they’ll do me for it!’
Beale was shaking his head again. ‘See?’ he said. ‘You were seen with her. You went home with her. Your prints are there. So what were you going to do when they caught up with you, which they would have done before you got to the end of the street?’ He sat down, and looked at the solicitor, raising his eyes to heaven. Then he turned back to Steve. ‘Denied it,’ he said. ‘Right?’
Steve thought No … no, he wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try to deny it, but— He sighed.
‘You are going to go to the police,’ said the solicitor, ‘I will accompany you. You will say you believe they want to talk to you, and you will tell them what happened.’
Steve gasped. ‘What happened is that I took her home, and left her there and now she’s dead and they’re looking for me!’ he shouted. ‘What use will you be?’
‘Did you kill Mrs Austin?’ he asked.
‘No, but they won’t believe that – and neither do you.’ He looked suspiciously at Beale. ‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘Why’s he here? Not because you believe me – not because you want to help.’
Beale leant across the solicitor and looked closely at Steve. ‘I think he might be using his brain at last.’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you did, Steve. But someone killed Rosemary, and I want the cops to find out who. No – I don’t want to help you. But you are going to help them.’
‘But – didn’t you say they were questioning someone?’
‘Yes. But I know who it is, and I know he hasn’t got the guts to kill anyone.’
‘But if they think they’ve got him – where does that leave me?’
Beale beckoned him to the window, and he looked down to see police everywhere. He went pale. ‘Are they waiting for me?’ he asked.
‘No, they don’t know you’re here. They think they know you’re not – it’ll take them a while to come and check again. You’re safe for the moment. No, Steve, what they’re doing is getting ready for a reconstruction of my wife’s last few minutes on this earth. Which means that they don’t believe they’ve got him. And they think the two crimes are linked,’ he said.
Steve felt his legs go again, and walked shakily away from the window.
‘I don’t know enough about what went on in the Austin place to make my own investigation,’ said Beale. ‘But they do. And I have faith in that young woman,’ he added. ‘She’s no one’s fool. She knows Pearce didn’t do it – he’s home already. I saw him. But, if she fails – and even the best fail sometimes – Mr Mervyn will have learned a whole lot more about what went on than we know at present and I can make my own investigation then.’
Steve sat down with a bump. So he was Frank’s key to inside information. Carrying out his own investigation might have been how he put it to Mervyn, but what he really wanted was a way of getting information early enough to exact his own revenge before the police could stop him.
‘I look after my employees, Steve.’ He bent down towards him. ‘Mr Mervyn is the best. You listen to what he says, and do what he says. Co-operate with the police, Steve. And if they find out who killed Rosemary as a result of your co-operation, you’re on a fat bonus.’
Steve swallowed. ‘ What if I’m doing life?’ he asked.
Beale shrugged. ‘That won’t really concern me too much,’ he said. ‘I’ll have got the information I need.’
Steve knew when he was beaten.
The solicitor let loose a long, long sigh. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I want to know what you did from the moment – the moment you saw Mrs Austin that evening, until the moment you left her. And I mean everything.’ He sat down. ‘We may decide that the police don’t need to know everything,’ he said. ‘But I do.’
Oh well. Things could be worse. They could have brought back hanging.
Lloyd hadn’t seen the riverside development at night before; he watched as Drake and Judy walked along a pathway lit by fake Victorian lamp standards. They feigned gas-lighting, creating small splashes of weak light at regular intervals, dimly reflected in the water. He wondered if the reconstruction would produce anything. It would be hard to see anyone walking along here, if you weren’t deliberately looking; harder still to spot anyone following.
They parted company; Judy walked back down to her car, parked close to the Riverside Inn, and Drake joined Lloyd. He was impressed by Judy’s temporary promotion; Lloyd needed a little time to think about how he felt.
Only the day before yesterday, it had been something that might happen one day, and Jack Woodford had taken him by surprise by pointing that out to him; now, it was something that was obviously going to happen much sooner than later. A chief constable with an eye to current preoccupations, and a late flowering of ambition in a more than able female officer made for speedy promotion, or a shrug of the shoulders over missed opportunities. The chief constable had clearly opted for the former, and Lloyd had to think about that he had been thinking about it longer than Judy had: Allison had told him what they had decided.
But all that would have to wait, and be examined at three o’clock in the morning, when, he would be awake with a book and Judy would be asleep. Right now, he had work to do. He was parked opposite Andwell House; it was late twentieth-century twee, with its craft shops and dwelling units faced with coloured stone, the paintwork picked out in primary colours. Spaces had been cut into the building every so often, and greenery sprouted. They knew that greenery was important, these days. It never occurred to them that they were directly opposite natural parkland. He glanced over at it. On which they had put unnatural objects for children to amuse themselves with, he added to himself. What was wrong with climbing trees, for God’s sake?
‘Horrible, isn’t it?’ said Drake.
Lloyd smiled. ‘I suppose it’s an improvement on Mitchell Engineering effluent fouling the river,’ he said. ‘ Judy pointed that out to me. She likes it.’
‘If they would just clean up the rivers and leave it at that,’ said Drake. ‘Why do they have to build toytowns everywhere half decent?’
‘Don’t ask me,’ said Lloyd. ‘It used to be an empty warehouse. I suppose it’s more useful now.’
‘That factory’s worse,’ said Drake. ‘Pity Pearce didn’t burn it down.’
‘Oh – I meant to congratulate you about that,’ said Lloyd. ‘You were spot on. Wanted to go up with it, apparently.’ He glanced up at the flat. ‘I shouldn’t think he’s too far off suicide now,’ he added.
Drake grunted.
‘That’s why he made the false confessions, if you ask me. He wants to be punished for something, does our Mr Pearce.’ He laughed at himself. ‘You’ll have to get used to half-baked psychology,’ he said, and looked at Drake, who seemed less than cheerful. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘We’re investigating two murders, sir. I come up with a failed arson attempt,’ said Drake.
‘It was a little puzzle, and it’s been solved. Ask Acting Chief Inspector Hill – in my experience, if you solve the little puzzles, the big one stops being just as puzzling as you thought it was. Like the wedding ring. Another little puzzle that needed sorting out.’
Drake smiled. ‘And which little puzzle would you like me to turn my hand to next, sir?’ he asked.
‘Mrs Hill’s siren,’ said Lloyd, and wound down his window as the police officer impersonating Mrs Beale came into view.
‘I thought you thought it was just the TV, sir.’
Lloyd watched as the cars were waved down at the temporarily disabled traffic lights, and their occupants questioned. ‘ I don’t think,’ he said, his mind only half on Drake’s question, ‘that Mr Austin will watch that sort of television.’
‘That’s what I thought, sir,’ said Drake. ‘I didn’t like to say.’
Lloyd grinned at him. ‘ Mickey,’ he said, ‘ you can tell me I’m wrong any time you like. I’ll soon pull rank when it suits me. And unless the circumstances are highly inappro
priate, for God’s sake call me Lloyd, like everyone else.’
They did it for over an hour, the policewoman walking six times from the pub to the flats from eleven until after midnight, walking through the pools of light, more slowly probably than Mrs Beale would have done. Not perhaps as nervous as Mrs Beale might have been on the final, lonely stretch. She knew she was surrounded by police; Mrs Beale had no such back-up. But then, Mrs Beale had had a long apprenticeship walking the streets at night, and Lloyd doubted if any aspect of human nature could have surprised her. But the psychologists said that people lost that essential wariness when they were within sight of home. Even Mrs Beale.
Drake rubbed his eyes as she made her final journey, with the traffic now virtually non-existent, and yawned. ‘She looks just like Rosemary Beale,’ he said. ‘I hope Beale’s not watching.’
There was a rumble of thunder, and large, heavy drops of rain sliced across the windscreen.
‘Mrs Hill’s asked me to tell the lab to hang on to Lennie Austin’s car,’ said Drake. ‘And I’ve to ask Austin to collect it himself, and watch him doing it.’
Lloyd looked at him. ‘And has she been so good as to indicate why you have to do all this?’ he said. He leant out of the car. ‘Thank you, Anne,’ he called. ‘ I’ll bet you’re glad this stayed off until you’d finished! Let’s all go home.’
‘I’ve to tell her what happens,’ he said. ‘But she didn’t say why.’
‘Did she by any chance strongly resemble a gun-dog at the time?’
Drake laughed. ‘She did a bit,’ he said.
‘Then do it,’ said Lloyd.
Drake smiled. ‘I will,’ he said; getting out.
Lloyd watched him go to his own car, and drive off, reaching the junction just as the lights were switched on again, at red. He smiled. Drake was signalling right as he waited, but as the lights changed he pulled his car into the left lane, and on to the bridge.
Lloyd started his car, and followed suit, curious to know what had made Drake change his mind about going home. From the crown of the bridge, he could see Drake’s car heading for the Riverside Inn, where he turned into the car park, pulling up beside Judy’s car. Lloyd drove down and parked in the street outside, watching him.