By a Narrow Majority

by Faith Martin

  ‘But not everything you suspect,’ Hillary prompted at once, making it a statement this time, and not a question. ‘What is it? Financial irregularities in his campaign?’

  As expected, that made her head shoot up, and Hillary noticed a dull flush of anger stain her cheekbones. ‘Hell, no. I run an honest ship,’ she said hotly.

  Hillary nodded. When questioning a reluctant witness, it was always best to lead with something they could indignantly deny. That way, it made admitting to the truth somehow easier. She’d have to ask a psychologist why that was sometime. ‘So it was something in his personal life,’ she pressed on. ‘What was it? An affair?’

  ‘Why do you coppers always assume the worst?’ Marcia demanded belligerently. ‘The poor sod’s dead, isn’t he? I didn’t like him much, but he deserves some privacy, some respect.’

  Hillary nodded. ‘Yes, he’s dead,’ she said flatly. ‘And it’s up to me to find out who killed him.’ She paused a moment, to let that sink in. ‘He’s got nobody else who can help him now. Only me. And I can only help him in that one, single way. To find out who did it, why, and make sure they’re brought to account for it.’ Hillary waited until the other woman was looking her in the eye, before adding quietly, ‘So anything you can tell me will really be appreciated. And useful. Really.’

  Marcia’s high colour slowly ebbed, and she looked away, but this time, Hillary thought, with a sense of shame. It was always easier to reach the ones who still had consciences.

  ‘I thought he was having an affair, yeah,’ she said at last. ‘But I’ve got no proof, mind. I never saw nothing, no notes or anything. He didn’t ask me to send flowers or anything icky like that.’

  ‘Do you know the woman involved? It was a woman, I take it?’ Hillary said softly.

  Marcia sighed softly. ‘Yeah, it was a woman. A GP. Name of Gemma Knowles. She works at the Oxlip Health Centre. I saw them having lunch, once, in this little out-of-the-way pub in Oxford. Course, I could have got it wrong.’

  Hillary nodded. She talked to Marcia for a while longer, but was finally satisfied that she’d got everything out of her that she was going to. She thanked her, then left.

  By the time they made their way out of Witney it was fully dark. ‘I’ll be glad when the clocks go on. This Saturday, isn’t it?’ she mused to Tommy, who nodded.

  ‘OK. Finish the paperwork and then you can get off,’ Hillary said, as he pulled into the parking lot back at HQ. ‘You can drop me off here. I’m having an early night for once,’ Hillary said, making Tommy look at her in some surprise. He couldn’t remember the last time his governor had gone home much before six, and never when she was working on a case. And, of course, Hillary couldn’t tell him about the raid tomorrow night until much closer to the time, mindful as she was about the super’s desire to keep this totally hush-hush. ‘Get some sleep yourself,’ was all she said, as she shuffled across into the driver’s seat.

  Tommy watched, fascinated, as her skirt rode up her thighs, and mumbled something indistinctly.

  Hillary drove home, making the three-quarters of a mile or so out of town and to the tiny hamlet of Thrupp in less than five minutes. Now that was what she called a commute.

  Walking along the dark towpath, she shivered as the cold wind rippled around her. The dried sedges on the opposite side of the canal whispered to her as she opened the padlock and duck-walked down the stairs. When she’d first moved on to the boat, supposedly as a temporary measure nearly three years ago now, she’d hit her head constantly on the hatchway. Now she didn’t give it a second thought.

  She’d recharged the generators yesterday, so she turned on the lights as she went, and threw her coat and bag on to one of the two chairs in the Mollern’s forward cabin. She rifled through the cupboards, and came up with a can of chicken in white wine sauce, a tin of garden peas, and one of new potatoes. These three items took up every saucepan the tiny galley owned.

  As she reached for the tin opener, she gave a brief thought to the fine cuisine dining that the modern working woman was supposed to enjoy, as a matter of course, and snorted. As the assorted gloops started to simmer on the small gas stove, she promised herself a meal at The Boat that weekend. Something with French words in it. And a pudding that would make calorie counters sit up and weep. For a week.

  She ate quickly, and had to admit that the tinned fare really wasn’t all that bad. Either that, or her taste buds had finally packed up on her. She washed up carefully after her, having long since learned the need for neatness and method when you lived in such a confined space.

  Still, less space meant less housework, and she didn’t regret her decision to put the house she and Ronnie had once shared on the market. Not that it was moving yet. Trust her to hit a slump in the property market, just when her main financial asset suddenly became free.

  She wiped the small table down, then folded it away, and walked two paces forward to peruse her small library. It consisted of three shelves, tucked down in the bottom right-hand corner, and was already overflowing. She’d studied English literature at college, and her eye ran restlessly over all her old favourites – every Brontë ever written, the same for Austen, with some modern poetry and the odd biography thrown in.

  Her eyes stalled over the tattered paperback of a single Dick Francis book, and her heart did its usual slump into her boots. She was going to have to do something about that. Something soon. If she was caught with it, and somebody worked out what it contained, it could send her to prison for up to five years.

  And for a cop, prison was not a good place to be.

  Pushing the thought aside, she selected Jude the Obscure. For some reason, she was in the mood for Hardy. Perhaps she saw herself as one of his flawed, inevitably doomed heroines?

  Now there was a thought to take to a cold and lonely bed with you on a windy March night.

  She got in the next morning, to find Janine already ahead of her, and fuming. The moment she used her key-card to gain access to the big, main, open-plan office, she could feel waves of frustration emanating from her pretty blonde sergeant.

  She hadn’t even put her bag down on the desk before Janine swivelled her chair around to face her, a dark glower ruining the effects of her perfectly applied make-up. ‘Bloody judge wouldn’t roll over on the Matthews search warrant, boss.’

  Hillary sighed, but she’d expected as much. ‘Who did you try?’

  ‘Phelps.’

  Hillary nodded. The most pro-police of the lot.

  ‘Should I try going round him?’ Janine asked, but without much heat, and wasn’t surprised when Hillary firmly shook her head. No, the last thing they needed was to piss Phelps off. He came in very handy at times.

  ‘We’ll just have to wait and watch them,’ Hillary said. And hope the press didn’t get a hold of it. So far, she’d been dodging reporters with ease, with most of them content to go through the press liaison officer, with the odd harassment of Lower Heyfordites thrown in. So far, most of the press speculation had, almost inevitably, centred around Valerie Dale, but that would quickly change when they got whiff that she wasn’t a serious suspect any more. Nobody but a tiny and rather ridiculously radical tabloid took the political angle seriously. Who’d want to knock off a man who hadn’t even been elected MP yet? But if the vultures got hold of Percy Matthews, and his story, she shuddered to think what the headlines would be.

  And how long would it take the batty old coot to realize that he now had the perfect opportunity to immortalize his Wordsworth once and for all? All he had to do was show them his scrapbook and that would be it. Feeding frenzy.

  Please, please, please, don’t let him ‘confess’ to a reporter live on air, Hillary pleaded silently to whoever might be listening.

  ‘OK. Well, it’s not all doom and gloom. Tommy and I winkled a nice tit-bit from Marcia Brock yesterday afternoon,’ Hillary said, by way of cheering her up, and filled her in as Janine drove them towards the small village of Oxlip, not far from the Oxford suburb
of Headington.

  ‘Brings back old memories, this,’ Janine muttered, as they parked up in the health centre’s large car park.

  Hillary nodded. They’d had cause to come here before, on a previous case, to question one of the doctors. He’d since been struck off, or so she’d read. She wasn’t sure that that had been altogether fair, but then, she didn’t sit on the Medical Council.

  Inside, the waiting room was half full, and Hillary felt all eyes on her as she showed her warrant card to the receptionist. She felt guilty about pushing in ahead of the queue and lengthening their wait to see Dr Gemma Knowles, but that was life.

  ‘Dr Knowles is out on a home visit,’ the receptionist said worriedly when she heard what the policewoman wanted, and Hillary had to grin. Oh yes, that was life all right. It wasn’t fussy about who it shafted.

  ‘Will she be returning here when she’s finished?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘Oh yes. And she shouldn’t be too long. She’s usually in before ten. She has patients starting at a quarter past,’ the receptionist added firmly.

  Hillary smiled grimly. Not any more she didn’t.

  ‘We’ll wait,’ she said. ‘Please inform us the moment Dr Knowles comes in.’

  Janine heaved a sigh as she selected a month-old Homes & Gardens magazine from the pile on the table, and took the seat farthest away from the children’s play area, where a loud three-year-old was playing with a wooden engine.

  Hillary spotted Gemma Knowles the moment she stepped out of her car. She’d been gazing out of the window at a pretty, early flowering almond tree for the last ten minutes, when a smart and zippy new Mazda pulled in. The doctor wasn’t tall, but was dressed in a well-tailored, navy blue pair of slacks, with a matching, quilted Barbour coat. She had a short cap of dark hair that had been professionally highlighted with auburn streaks, and, even from a distance, big pansy-brown eyes. As Hillary suspected, she didn’t use the front door, but trotted off to a private entrance round the back.

  Hillary tapped Janine on the top of her arm and got up, making her way to reception. The same receptionist noticed her approach and spoke quickly into the phone, then put it down. She nodded, and directed them to the first office down the corridor.

  Gemma Knowles opened the door before they reached it and pulled it open. She looked rather relieved to find two female police officers, and Hillary suddenly knew that she wasn’t going to have much trouble with this witness.

  ‘Oh, hello. Yes, I’ve been expecting this,’ Gemma Knowles said, pointing to the single chair standing beside her desk. ‘Er, I’m afraid one of you will either have to stand, or if you prefer …’ She waved vaguely to the padded, narrow couch where patients could stretch out for more intimate examinations. Janine shuddered and leaned against the door, getting her notebook out. Hillary sat.

  Gemma crossed a pair of legs, clad in expensive hosiery, and fiddled with a pen. Hillary guessed there was money somewhere about – either she’d married well, or she had private means.

  ‘It’s about Malcolm, I take it,’ Gemma Knowles said at once. Obviously the kind who liked to take the bull by the horns, which was fine by Hillary. Her face, though perfectly made up, was pale, and she had hollows under her eyes that looked dark, in spite of the powder. The GP was genuinely upset about her lover’s death, Hillary realized, and gave a mental nod.

  ‘Yes. We understand you and he were intimate?’ She asked the question bluntly, but her voice was kind. Gemma Knowles blinked, and Hillary could almost see her shoulders straighten. She’d been right to choose this no-nonsense but non-brutal approach. As a doctor who must have grown used to being firm but compassionate, it struck just the right chord.

  ‘Yes. Yes, we were. For about four months now.’

  ‘Was it serious?’

  ‘Oh no. I mean, neither of us was going to break up our marriages or anything,’ Gemma said. ‘Apart from the odd lapses, created by boredom mostly, I’m quite content with Larry,’ Gemma said frankly. ‘And Malcolm, of course, had so much more to lose than I did. So, no, we were very discreet, and we both knew exactly where we stood.’

  Hillary nodded. Well, if that was true, then Gemma Knowles had no reason to kill Malcolm Dale. If it was true. If it wasn’t, well, it opened up a whole lot of potential. Had she really loved the man, and been angered by his refusal to leave his wife, so killed him in a fit of jealousy and rage? Or had he been the one pushing her to leave her husband, and had she then killed him to keep her marriage safe?

  Of course, a lot of people were appalled by the thought of doctors, people who dedicated their lives to tending the sick and curing the ill, actually killing someone. But they were human, just like everyone else. And Harold Shipman had probably changed the British public’s conception of GPs for ever.

  ‘You’ll understand that I need to know where you were, two nights ago, from, say, five o’clock onwards, Dr Knowles.’

  The GP nodded. An intelligent woman, she’d of course have expected that. ‘I can tell you all right, but I’m afraid it’s not ideal. We see the last of our patients here at 4.30. After that, we usually stay in the office for up to an hour or so finishing off our paperwork. That night, I’m afraid I had to stay even later. I’d had a few emergency call-outs the day before, and had more than two days’ worth of notes to put into the computer. I worked until nearly eight, then left.’

  Hillary gave a mental head shake. Yet another one with no solid alibi. ‘What time do the secretaries leave?’

  ‘About five.’

  ‘And that night, did you see anyone? Did one of the partners pop his head around the door to say hello, anything like that?’ Hillary asked, although the other woman was already shaking her head.

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ Gemma Knowles said ruefully. ‘I wish they had.’

  So did Hillary. Just for once, it would be nice to categorically rule someone in or out.

  ‘So, you got home about what time?’ Hillary ploughed on.

  ‘About twenty past. I only live in Bletchington, not far away.’

  ‘And your husband, Larry, was in?’

  ‘Yes, he’d cooked dinner, bless him.’

  ‘And you stayed at home all that night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Hillary nodded. Not that that helped. According to Marcia Brock and the pathologist, Malcolm Dale had been dead by then. So Gemma could have left earlier, motored to Lower Heyford, parked up somewhere dark, then walked to her lover’s door, been invited in, and killed him. And she could so easily have come back here to clean up. Even if she got forensics to go over the place, it was a doctor’s surgery, for pete’s sake. They’d come up with scores of blood traces and who the hell knew what else.

  Hillary sighed. ‘And your husband? Had he been in all night?’

  ‘Larry?’ Gemma said sharply. ‘No. I’m pretty sure he said he’d been out to the pub.’

  ‘I thought you said he’d cooked you dinner?’ Hillary pointed out softly.

  ‘So he had, but only Chicken Kievs from the freezer,’ Gemma said. ‘Look, I promise you, Larry didn’t know about me and Malcolm. I’d have known if he had.’

  Her voice, for the first time since the interview began, showed signs of strain. Hillary reached into the bag for her notebook and scribbled a quick message: ‘Go and speak to the hubby. I don’t want them to have time to confer. Grill him hard.’

  This she handed over to Janine, who read it, poker faced, and got up and left without a word. Gemma watched her go, a real look of alarm on her face now.

  Yes. Gemma Knowles seemed very worried about her husband all right. But then again, perhaps she was simply afraid that he’d find out about her affair – if he really did know nothing about it, as she insisted.

  It didn’t necessarily mean that she was secretly worried that he had killed her lover.

  ‘So, Doctor Knowles, tell me how you met,’ Hillary said, settling down to a nice long chat.

  chapter seven

  * * *

  Janin
e got the home address of Gemma Knowles from the receptionist, who didn’t like handing it over, and quickly headed towards Bletchington. It was a small village, with a surviving village shop overlooking a triangular village green. The GP and her spouse lived in a small cul-de sac in one of six large, similar-looking mock Tudor detached houses that would be forever out of Janine’s price range.

  But as she parked her sporty little Mini by the double set of wrought-iron gates, she checked the house out with a small smile of satisfaction on her lips. Mel’s house in The Moors was older, bigger and better-looking than any of these.

  When they’d first started dating over two years ago now, she’d gradually begun to spend more and more time at his place, since the house she rented out with three other girls was hardly the place for romance. She had most of her stuff moved in now, including her CD set and her favourite chair. She loved living in the big house, with the pond and weeping willow in the front garden, and nodding hello to neighbours in the morning who were judges and architects, computer designers and art collectors. She was even thinking about approaching her three friends and asking them to find somebody else to help out with the rent. It seemed such an unnecessary expense.

  But just lately, Janine had become less sure. She might be wrong, but she thought she’d begun to detect a distinct sense of ‘cooling off’ in Mel. Nothing concrete, nothing she could put her finger on. Just stupid little things that ran warning bells. Like him insisting on watching a football programme on Sky, when she wanted to watch something else. In the early days, she’d always been able to wangle control of the remote. And he hadn’t come home with a bottle of wine, or box of Belgian chocs for a while. And sometimes, when she’d be talking to him, chatting in the kitchen or wherever, she’d suddenly realize he hadn’t been listening to her.

  As she walked up the path and rang the doorbell of the Knowles’s family home, she wondered seriously, and for the first time, if Mel was getting ready to dump her.