by Jill McGown
‘Detective sergeant?’ said Tasker. ‘You’ve done all right for yourself.’
Mickey still smiled. ‘You haven’t answered the chief inspector’s question,’ he said. ‘ Why didn’t you go to the studio?’
‘I was busy.’
‘Doing what?’
‘None of your business,’ said Tasker.
Mervyn fixed him with a stare, and Mickey watched interestedly as Tasker wilted under it.
‘I just changed my mind,’ said Tasker. ‘ It didn’t seem such a good idea next day.’
Lloyd sat back, tipping the chair back, rocking gently on its back legs. ‘Why are your fingerprints on the Austins’ phone?’ he asked.
Tasker glanced at Mervyn before he spoke. ‘The phone was ringing when we got to the door,’ he said. ‘ She went in to answer it, and I followed her in. I – I stopped her picking it up.’
Lloyd let the chair fall forward with a thump. ‘You certainly did,’ he said.
‘No! I just stopped her … I wanted to say goodnight.’
Lloyd raised an eyebrow. ‘A very permanent goodnight,’ he observed.
‘I never touched her!’
‘Oh – you just said goodnight. Hardly worth stopping her answering the phone, was it?’
Mervyn was watching Tasker like a cat; Mickey got the odd feeling that Tasker was on his own in here. Mervyn was on their side.
‘I don’t mean that,’ Tasker said miserably. ‘I mean I didn’t hurt her.’
Constable Merriwether was writing, and Tasker looked over at him. ‘I just kissed her goodnight,’ he said. ‘You make sure that’s what you put down!’
‘When did she remove her wedding ring?’ Mickey asked.
He shrugged. ‘Before I saw her,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know! She said she was angry with herself.’
Lloyd rocked gently back and forth. Mickey hoped the chair legs held out. ‘Someone else was angry with her too,’ he said. ‘Who, do you suppose?’
Tasker looked at Mervyn again.
‘My client really doesn’t have any knowledge of that,’ said Mervyn.
‘But he must have thought about it,’ Lloyd said. ‘If he didn’t kill her. She died minutes after you left her, Tasker. The place was practically demolished – you disappeared off the face of the earth.’
Mickey saw Tasker begin to understand what he was getting at. Mervyn, who had understood all along, was tense, still watching Tasker as though he could pull his strings. Lloyd’s chair waited in suspended animation, and Mickey held his breath.
‘You think I saw someone,’ said Tasker. He shook his head, ‘ I didn’t, I’d have killed him, believe me.’
Mickey did. Lloyd relaxed, and resumed the rocking.
‘I reckon her old man was in there all the time,’ Tasker said. ‘Watching us.’ He looked down at the table. ‘She was surprised the flat was in darkness. She thought he’d be in. I think he was.’
Lloyd tipped the chair way, way back, as he thought. It was all for show, as though this was a wholly new concept, and not one that Judy Hill had been putting forward for some time.
‘It was a bit dangerous, wasn’t it?’ he asked, after a moment.
‘Getting close enough to see the flat, if she thought her husband was home?’
Mickey smiled inwardly at the sodden Welshness, normally only just apparent.
‘I made her let me walk up with her,’ said Tasker.
Mickey waited for the chair to fall forward dramatically, but it didn’t. It remained, precariously balanced on its back legs, while Lloyd looked up at the ceiling.
‘Made her?’ he asked, his voice light.
Tasker sighed again. ‘I was worried about some nutter in a car.’
‘A nutter in a car? Where did he suddenly spring from?’ asked Lloyd.
‘Well – we’re at the old post office, and this bloke comes in a car and just sits and watches us.’
Lloyd glanced at Mickey. ‘Ah, that car,’ he said. ‘We know about that.’ Now he let the chair fall forward, but with much less force. ‘And that worried you, did it?’
‘He’d done it earlier,’ said Tasker. ‘ When we were outside the pub.’
Lloyd frowned. ‘ When?’
‘About ten minutes after we came out – about half past ten, or so.’
Mickey looked at Lloyd, barely shaking his head.
‘And he stopped and watched you that time too?’
‘He didn’t exactly stop the first time. Just slowed right down as he passed us. It bothered Lennie a bit.’
‘And then at the post office, you say it happened again?’
‘Only he stopped this time. And I didn’t want her walking up there alone.’
‘And that’s it, is it?’ said Lloyd. ‘That’s all you’re going to tell me? No make of car, no number, no description of the driver?’
‘My client has told you all he knows, Mr Lloyd,’ said Mervyn.
‘Yes,’ said Lloyd, getting up. ‘It was her husband, or this phantom in the car. Think about it, Mr Tasker,’ he said, indicating with a little jerk of his head that Mickey should also leave. ‘And think about Mrs Beale. My colleague will want to ask you some questions about her.’
Mickey met Judy Hill on his way out. Lloyd didn’t even acknowledge her, but went striding into his office, closing the door firmly.
Judy shrugged. ‘Is Tasker still here?’ she said.
‘In there, with his brief,’ said Mickey. ‘ But I don’t think you’d better go in until Mr Lloyd’s finished with him.’
‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen the mood he’s in.’
Mickey should have heeded her implicit advice, but he didn’t. He left her talking to the desk sergeant, and knocked on Lloyd’s door.
Lloyd was on the phone to an estate agent about some property he seemed fairly desperate to see. Presumably all was not well, after all. Perhaps he did stand a chance, he thought. But he was probably too young for her. Pity.
Lloyd put down the phone. ‘ I take it that it wasn’t you who saw them at the pub?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Mickey. ‘I was still on watch at the flats.’ He suspected that Tasker had invented the first incident, but Lloyd seemed to believe him.
‘So someone else was interested in them,’ he said.
Mickey frowned. ‘Maybe,’ he said.
Lloyd rubbed his eyes. ‘ Well,’ he said, ‘ did I catch sight of Mrs Hill?’
‘Yes – she’s waiting to talk to Tasker.’
‘Then she’d better get on with it,’ said Lloyd. ‘ Mervyn won’t let us keep him for ever.’
Mickey gasped. ‘You’re never letting him go, are you?’
‘Don’t have much option.’ Lloyd stood up, and reached for his jacket.
‘But he was there! His prints are all over the place – there’s a whole handprint on the phone! He isn’t even denying that he stopped her answering it.’
‘Quite.’ Lloyd banged his own hand down on his phone, making Mickey jump again. ‘So when did she answer it? While she was dodging a maniac who was trying to bash her brains out?’
Mickey sat down, and thought about what might have happened. ‘Maybe he did let her answer it,’ he said. ‘Maybe he got angry after that. Or maybe he answered it himself – afterwards.’
‘Maybe,’ said Lloyd. ‘And maybe he didn’t. The only motive anyone can come up with is sexual frustration – he’d be unlikely, I would have thought, to call her a whore in those circumstances. There are other much more apt names he could have called her. There is no evidence to suggest that there was any bad feeling between them – in fact mere is a lot of evidence to the contrary from the people in the pub.’
Mickey nodded.
‘And maybe, as Judy never tires of pointing out, Austin did it. Tasker’s suggestion is perfectly valid. Austin’s story is weak and uncorroborated, and doesn’t even hold up, because the car was at the garage. He could well have been in the house all along
, with the lights out, watching them. Tasker and Mrs Austin even come in and say a passionate goodnight. It was too much for him, and as soon as Tasker left, he killed her.’
‘Do you think that’s likely?’ asked Mickey. ‘In view of his membership of the Apollo?’
‘I don’t think he would be too pleased to see his wife behaving like that in public – especially in view of his political aspirations.’ He closed and locked his desk drawer. ‘Perhaps it was Austin who saw them at the pub. You pays your money, and you takes your choice,’ he said.
‘The neighbours say that Austin’s car was there all evening,’ countered Mickey.
‘And Mrs Hill thinks he used his wife’s car. She could be right.’
Mickey nodded again. Austin’s behaviour had certainly been strange. And he could have taken his wife’s car. And he had also felt that knowingness that had bothered Judy when Austin rang her. He began to see what Lloyd meant.
‘Like I said, you pays your money. Reasonable doubt, Mickey. As long as they could both have been there, there is reasonable doubt.’
‘Isn’t that for the court to worry about, though?’
Lloyd sighed. ‘If a jury convicted someone in circumstances that I thought constituted reasonable doubt, I would not be happy. I’m not out to get a result. I’m trying to get at the truth.’
Mickey blew out his cheeks. ‘But – if it was an unsafe conviction it would get overturned. It’s not as though they hang them any more.’
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘Sometimes I wish they did.’
‘What?’ Mickey said, startled. ‘I’d never have had you down for a bring back hanging man.’
‘I’m not,’ said Lloyd. ‘I think it was utterly barbaric. But we’ve lost our way since we abandoned it. When a man’s life was at stake, reasonable doubt meant something. Now, juries seem to me to convict on possibilities.’
He sat on the desk as he warmed to his subject and Mickey knew that he had made a fundamental error in bringing the subject up.
‘How easy would a bent copper find it to get colleagues to alter statements and plant evidence on suspected IRA terrorists if someone was going to get hanged at the end of it?’ he asked.
‘Not very,’ agreed Mickey.
‘No. And the other side of the coin is that without the drama of death being the penalty, some judges seem to have forgotten that murder is a deadly crime. We send people to jail for not paying library fines and give wife murderers probation.’ He slid off the desk again. ‘If they don’t get to put a bit of black cloth on their heads, they can’t be bothered doing anything.’ He opened the door. ‘We abolished hanging, and I for one am heartily glad. But we failed to come up with anything to replace it. Now – I’m off out for an hour or so. If anyone wants me, too bad.’
Mickey watched him go, shaking his head. The day had started out so promisingly, too.
Call him Lloyd? He must be joking.
Steve Tasker sat opposite her, hands thrust in the pockets of his jeans, his face blank.
‘I’m investigating the death of Mrs Rosemary Beale,’ she said.
‘I had nothing to do with that!’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘And of course you don’t have to answer my questions. But you’re in trouble, Mr Tasker. I don’t think you killed Mrs Austin, but there are people here who do.’
‘My client wishes to co-operate with the police,’ said Mervyn. ‘He is as anxious to find the murderer of these ladies as you are, Chief Inspector.’
Judy liked being called Chief Inspector, but her heart felt a little heavy. Lloyd clearly didn’t want to know.
‘Are you anxious to know who killed them, Mr Tasker?’
‘Yes,’ he said simply, and Judy believed him, if only because it would let him off the hook.
‘Mrs Austin told people that you were making a nuisance of yourself,’ she said.
‘She wouldn’t have said that,’ said Tasker. ‘ I don’t believe that – who told you?’
‘Her husband.’
‘He’s lying.’
Yes, thought Judy. I know he is. But you have to help me, Stephen Arthur Tasker. ‘ Her friend said she wanted nothing to do with you.’
Tasker smiled, unexpectedly. ‘She didn’t want anything to do with me,’ he said. ‘She came to see me once when I was in prison, and that was to tell me what she thought of me. For what I’d done – for using her – she did want nothing to do with me. The trouble was, she fancied me something rotten.’
‘Fancied you? Or was in love with you?’
Tasker shook his head. ‘ I don’t go in much for that,’ he said.
‘But is it true?’
He dropped his eyes from hers. ‘I think so,’ he said.
‘Were you sleeping with her?’
‘You mean since I came out?’ He shook his head.
‘Why not?’
He smiled. ‘I know I’m a dead ringer for Tom Cruise,’ he said, ‘but I don’t always get lucky.’
‘Especially not with Mrs Austin?’
‘Chief Inspector – you did say you were investigating Mrs Beale’s murder?’ enquired the solicitor.
‘Yes,’ said Judy, not taking her eyes off Tasker. ‘She wasn’t into one-night stands, was she? Or cheating on her husband. If she had wanted to go back to you, that’s what she’d have told him. Not that she was frightened of you.’
Tasker’s eyes widened. ‘She didn’t say that! I don’t believe you.’
Judy shrugged. ‘That’s what I’ve been told,’ she said.
‘By Austin again.’
She didn’t answer, but picked up Tasker’s statement. ‘ It says here she was all for it,’ she said. ‘Arranged a clandestine meeting with you, even.’
Tasker looked desperately at Mervyn, but he seemed to have lost interest in his client. ‘She did,’ he said. ‘I’ve said why I didn’t go.’
‘You changed your mind,’ said Judy.
‘Can you think of any reason why I would want to kill her? She was great,’ he said, and his shoulders drooped a little. ‘She was great I … I can’t believe she’s dead. I can’t believe someone did that to her.’
‘But she didn’t want to have anything to do with you.’
He looked up. ‘She could have said no till the cows came home – I would never have hurt her. But she didn’t. She was going to meet me.’
‘But she had been saying no,’ said Judy.
‘Yes.’
‘So what made her finally say yes?’
He looked down at the table again.
‘Because you told her that her husband was gay? That he was just using her?’
Mervyn looked up sharply, suddenly interested.
Tasker, on the other hand, lifted his head slowly, giving her the blank stare that she knew so well. Which meant she was right.
‘But you hardly know the man,’ she said, countering his stare. ‘Just by sight. You’ve been out of circulation since before she met him. So how could you have known that?’
His face didn’t so much as flicker a response.
‘Because you worked as a driver for Rosemary Beale,’ she went on, answering her own questions. ‘ You’ve seen him. At one of her husband’s unsavoury establishments. You didn’t just tell Mrs Austin that her husband was gay – you told her that he was a regular at the Apollo.’
She stood up. Tasker’s eyes followed her movement, but he himself remained quite still.
‘How well did you know Rosemary Beale?’ she asked, using Lloyd’s trick of looking out of the window. The idea was to turn quickly, to catch a reaction that might escape the witness who was trying hard not to react.
No response.
‘Was it when you found out where Mrs Austin’s studio was that you went off the idea of meeting her?’
She turned then, and caught him as his eyes lost the blank look, for just an instant. He stiffened slightly, knowing he had given himself away; he wouldn’t do it again, so Judy sat down. He was involved with Rosemary Beale.
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‘Do you know why Mrs Beale wanted to get into Austin-Pearce? Do you know why she wanted Gordon Pearce out? Do you know why she and Jonathan Austin were so interested in lorries?’
He turned to Mervyn. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Do I still co-operate?’
Mervyn looked from Tasker to Judy, and lifted his shoulders in an elegant little shrug. ‘That’s what we are being asked to do.’ he said.
Tasker held his eyes for a moment, then looked back at Judy. ‘I haven’t done anything against the law,’ he said.
Judy picked up her notebook. ‘ Then it won’t do any harm to co-operate, will it?’ she said.
Tasker sat back. ‘I saw him go into the Apollo,’ he said. ‘I was interested, and then I found that he used a false name – and that just means one thing. So I told Rosemary who he was.’ He leant forward. ‘ That’s not against the law, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Then Rosemary comes up with this scheme.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know if it would have worked – she thought it would. She had contacts, you see. In Europe and the near East – drug suppliers. The big fish,’ he said. ‘They ship it in from South America, and sell it to smaller fish who import it.’
‘And you are one of the scavenger fish who pick up the scraps,’ said Judy. ‘To sell on the street.’
‘I was,’ he said, not in the least offended. ‘I’m not involved in that now.’
‘No?’
‘Rosie wanted to bring it in – there’s a lot of money to be made.’
Judy’s eyebrow suggested that he should tell her something she didn’t know.
‘They search practically everything that floats – and they take lorries to pieces. But she said it was owner-drivers that they really went for. Because the owners could be bribed, or be drug-runners themselves. They didn’t pay so much attention to fleet lorries, with employee drivers. Especially not ones that had been operating for the last twenty years with a spotless record.’
Judy was writing it down, and he was speaking more slowly so as not to leave her behind.
He went on. ‘And Austin had a fleet of lorries, the nomination to stand at the next general election, and a guilty secret,’ he said.
Lloyd would love this. Judy began to see what Lennie saw in Stephen Arthur Tasker.