by Simon Hall
Dan took out his notebook and was hit by a warning look that could have been propelled by a cricket bat. “That’s not for broadcast,” Adam ordered.
“But it’s an important part of the story…”
“Which you can wait to report. I need to make sure all her family know before it goes out on the TV. Now, Katrina, I think you had something to tell us?”
She pushed a stray lock of hair behind an ear. “I had a coffee with Templar yesterday evening. Just for half an hour.”
“And how was he?”
“He was – odd, to say the least. When I knew him in London, he was very straight, very calm. Whatever case he handled, he could be detached. But yesterday, he was…”
“Angry?”
“More than that – he had a kind of controlled fury about him. But when we went on to talk about old times, he changed. He became really jolly, laughing and joking.”
“He’s going to be a suspect, however unlikely,” Adam replied. “Given what he said at the end of the case about the needs of justice not being served. And from how angry he was about what happened to Annette.”
They went on to talk about other suspects. The foreman also received a mention in dispatches, given his little speech about thinking the Edwards were guilty but not being able to convict them.
“But the prime suspect,” Adam said, “has to be Roger Newman. Who else has a more powerful motive?”
There were nods all round. “We’d better look at his friend, Ivy, as well,” Claire added. “He was trailing round like a puppy after Newman. He’s got a decent motive, too.”
They began walking for the gate. “First order of business, then,” Adam said. “Let’s see who on of little menu of suspects has an alibi for last night.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
In a profession with the pomp and preening of the law, office would be far too mundane a word. So it was in Templar’s chambers that Dan and Adam awaited the arrival of the learned judge.
The room was grandiose defined. One wall was lined with a dense mass of books, and by no means the bestseller, beach-read kind. Rows of aged and comfortably worn leather backs stared loftily down, replete with the wisdom of hundreds of years of the precedents which guided the calling. A large window looked out over the plaza. In front of it squatted the dark, shining curves of Templar’s hardwood desk.
But amongst the majesty of the room there was a reassuring humanity. The desk was strewn with ramshackle piles of papers and the silver balls and strings of a sizeable Newton’s cradle. There was also a photograph of a couple in a large, silver frame.
The carpet was as thick as the lawn of an idle gardener and a set of leather armchairs were arranged around the desk. Neither Dan nor Adam made a move to settle. It was one of those rooms where relaxation felt out of bounds.
Enquiries into the deaths of the Edwards were already well underway and were being directed by the diligent hand of Claire. She had returned to Charles Cross to assemble the usual team of detectives, all of which had been arranged without a single glance, or word, towards Dan. It was as if his presence had been airbrushed from the world.
Katrina had gone to talk to Roger Newman. Not a formal interview, Adam stressed. The businessman was distraught and needed no further additions to his suffering. Katrina had got to know the Newmans from her work with Annette following the kidnapping. She was best placed to tell Roger what had happened to the Edwards and gently to find out whether he had an alibi for last night.
At least Katrina, as she left the Edwards’ house, did favour Dan with a look. But as ever with such a woman, a reliable interpretation was impossible. She was like trying to break a code.
The usher, Ivy, would also be spoken to, as would the foreman of the jury, to see whether they had alibis sufficient to free them from the clutches of the inquiry.
Important news had already come from the fire investigator. The Edwards’ cooker was found in the ruins of the kitchen, and one of the hobs was turned on. It could have moved in the explosion, but that was thought unlikely. The amount of gas which would have been released was quite sufficient to cause the blast.
The problem was that the information, in itself, meant nothing. It could easily be the familiar story – that the Edwards fancied a snack when they got home. They were considerably the worse for wear and may have omitted to turn off the ring. Such a scenario had been responsible for more gas explosions than the investigator cared to recall. It was one of the most common methods of involuntary suicide.
The scenes of crime officers had examined the controls of the cooker and taken seconds to conclude that any attempt to lift fingerprints would be folly. It had been burned, scratched and beaten in the rubble and dowsed with jets of water. On top of that, given the scenario the police were considering, the killer would have to be thoughtful. The chances of them touching the dial without using gloves or a tea towel were negligible.
Which brought them to the interviews with the suspects. Adam had decided to see Templar personally. The judge was a prominent and powerful individual, perhaps able to cow detectives of lesser ranks. There was also the question of Templar’s eccentric behaviour, something which may require sensitive handling, to which Dan had raised the obvious question of whether he should come along.
“Yes, but keep quiet,” was the reply. “Try the Victorian child model, however much it might go against the grain.”
Dan thought of responding with some form of indignation, but decided against it. He’d started to feel jaded after the beer and limited sleep of last night. It was another fine autumn day, and the cheerful morning sun was blazing through the window, making the room a little too warm.
The comfort of the chairs beckoned with their allure of a few minutes peaceful rest. But there was no chance of that. Heavy footsteps, that somehow managed to sound impatient, announced the arrival of Judge Templar.
***
In Dan’s experience of almost every interview carried out by the police, they had the initiative. The subject was often nervous or apprehensive, and nearly always on the defensive. But not here, not with Templar.
“I wondered how long it’d be before you arrived,” he barked. “Got me down as a killer, have you? A double killer in fact, damn it.”
“No, Your Honour,” Adam soothed. “But you’ll appreciate—”
“Of course you bloody have, man!” Templar interrupted. “I could scarcely have made myself more of a suspect, with my little speech about justice not being served. I could have gone on a fair bit more, I can tell you. Bloody juries and their nonsense. You’d be a fool if you didn’t want to speak to me.”
Adam’s chosen attempt to defuse the bomb was to proffer a hand. Templar eyed it disdainfully before engaging. Dan did likewise. The eyeing went on for double the time and the handshake was transitory, at best.
Adam began to introduce Dan and explain his presence. The words came easily through familiarity. Police assistant, co-opted to help handle the media. But again Templar cut in.
“I am aware you conduct your inquiries in an unorthodox manner, Chief Inspector. It has become a matter of some renown. But I lay down this warning. If one detail of our discussions becomes public, through the medium of…”
He hesitated before pronouncing the word, and when it came it was ridden with rank distaste. “… television, I shall instantly take up the matter with your Chief Constable and the Attorney General. In fact I may even trouble the Justice Secretary with it. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Your Honour.”
Templar paced around to his desk and prodded disdainfully at one of the teetering piles of paper. “Bail applications, I loathe them with a particular passion. A bunch of neer-do-well miscreants and their dribbling advocates trying to convince me they should be set free, no doubt to commit more crimes. I usually manage to find reason to refuse them.”
He sat down, extended a bony finger, pulled back one of the silver spheres and set the cradle swinging. The metallic click of
the rebounding balls beat with a clock’s tempo.
Click clack, click clack…
“Look at that!” he exclaimed, face changing instantly to a delighted grin. “Splendid, isn’t it? I’ve been wanting one for ages, but you can’t get them anywhere. Then I looked them up on this new-fangled internet thing, and blow me – one’s here in a week.”
He rubbed his hands together, the beaming smile growing. “It’s damned good if you like a round, too.”
“I’m sorry?” Adam replied.
“The internet, man! Golf! I take it you don’t play?”
“Err, no.”
“I thought not. You hardly look the type. But you must have heard of St Andrews? A wonderful, ancient course.”
“Yes, Your Honour.”
“Every year they set aside some tees for amateur players. But they’re damnably in demand. They make you apply by email, you know. Noon, the thing opens, and I was stuck in court. So, do you know what I did?”
“Um, no Your Honour.”
“I set up a little program! To send my application at one second past noon. And within minutes back came the answer that I’d got a tee. How splendid is that?”
Adam shifted his weight and tried to put on an expression of polite interest, although with limited success. “Wonderful, Your Honour.”
The judge discarded his wig and threw it onto a chair. He leaned forwards and gazed at the silver balls, busily swinging back and forth.
Click clack, click clack…
Dan realised it was the first time he had seen Templar without a wig. The judge was in his late fifties, maybe sixty at most, with tightly cropped, silver hair and a keen shrewdness in his expression. He had the face of an aged, but still formidable, bird of prey.
“Your Honour,” Adam began, but was once more sliced through with all the efficiency of a newly sharpened scythe.
“No, I haven’t.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I haven’t got a blasted alibi. For last night. I take it that’s what you want to know?”
“Well, yes.”
“I looked up the story. His Wessex News website thing.” The judge pointed an accusing finger at Dan. “About four o’clock in the a-m, wasn’t it? The explosion?”
“Yes.”
“I was at home. I think I was online. I don’t know for sure. But I don’t have an alibi.”
“You were awake?”
Templar reached out and stopped the flight of the silver balls. Slowly, with unexpected tenderness, he angled the photograph to face Adam and Dan. It was black and white and showed a couple on their wedding day. The bride had long, light hair and was beaming at the camera. The handsome young groom was the Templar of perhaps thirty-five years ago.
“Eileen, my lady wife,” he said quietly. “I lost her last year. Since then, I’ve been – struggling to sleep. I sometimes pass a few of the long nighttime hours on the computer.”
Adam nodded understandingly. His fingers went to his own wedding band and shifted it up and down.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Everyone is. Everyone’s sorry.”
The judge tapped a hand on the wood of the desk, the reflection of the movement rising to meet it. His gaze was way afar, not for the two visitors, not for this room, not even for this time. The smile was gone, as though it had never existed and could never be resurrected.
“Your Honour,” Adam said, after a long pause, “your computer could help us. It will probably retain a record of what you were doing, and at what times. It would help us to eliminate you from the investigation if we might take a look?”
The question didn’t register, was a mere whisper against a wall. Whether subconsciously or deliberately Templar began to toy with his own wedding band, eyes following every shift of the dull metal.
“I’ve never taken it off. I never will, you know.” He looked back up. “I see you have a wife, Chief Inspector.”
“Yes.”
“Make the most of her is my advice. You never know what the world has in wait.”
Adam didn’t reply. Templar studied him and waved an irritable hand of acquiescence.
“I should make you apply for a warrant,” he announced, as though addressing a courtroom. “But as I’d probably have to sign the bloody thing myself, I might as well save the trouble and say yes. You may examine my computer.”
***
They emerged from Templar’s chambers to a surprise. Jonathan Ivy was sitting directly outside the door.
“Not listening in were you, by any chance?” Adam asked.
“No!” The usher sounded genuinely taken aback. “One of your colleagues has been on the phone and said you wanted to see me.”
Adam gave him a cool look but allowed Ivy to lead them down the stairs, along the corridor and to an interview room. Dark portraits of judges past, stalwarts of the local legal system, watched them go. All were men and all were glaring. Even the hint of an accommodating expression was clearly not the done look within the higher ranks of the profession.
The detective had turned off his mobile for the duration of the interview with Templar. As he switched it back on, it bleeped with a series of messages.
All three were from Claire and contained news of useful, and perhaps even important, developments. The flow of the investigation was in their favour.
Two more interviews had been set up, both for this morning. One message confirmed that Jonathan Ivy was at work and would be expecting them as soon as they had finished with Judge Templar. There was also a rapid briefing on the man, impressively thorough and quickly compiled, even by Claire’s standards.
The second informed Adam that the foreman of the jury was an Ian Parkinson. He worked for the City Council in the tower block of the Civic Centre, just across the plaza. He was in his office all morning.
The final message was the most interesting. The fire investigator had called and said it was urgent. An important and highly suggestive discovery had been made in the ruins of the Edwards’ home.
It couldn’t be properly explained over the phone and had to be seen.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The interview room was small and clinical, but full of the ghosts of emotion. It resounded with anger, remorse and fear, all emanating from a couple of rough carvings on the wooden table.
One professed an undying love for Janet. The other had some highly offensive words for the police.
Dan sensed a young man sitting alone, head in hands. A barrister had been here. He’d told the man the weight of evidence meant continued denial would only see him found guilty anyway, and receive an even more severe sentence. He should plead guilty and prepare himself for long years in prison. He’d been permitted ten minutes to consider his predicament.
Similar fates had befallen many in this intense little cube of space, and would find more again in future days.
The room was entirely plain, just the table and four plastic chairs. Ivy explained it was used by lawyers for talking to their clients and so there was little incentive to make it comfortable. At this point he tried a smile but it was unsuccessful and faded as fast as a match struck in a gale.
Ivy was an odd looking man. Dan tried to sum him up and an image arrived in mind that even he thought was unkind, but which nonetheless lingered. The usher had a face like a satellite dish. The complexion was pale and the shape round and cursed with an antenna of a nose.
Unlike his friend Roger Newman, Ivy had kept his hair but it was a sandy shade of nondescript. He was carrying a magazine, DIY Monthly, and a copy of the Daily Mail folded inside.
“Sometimes we have to wait about for juries and that sort of thing,” he said, placing the indispensable contributions to the library of world literature on the table. “I always bring something to read.
I imagine it’s the same in your job?”
Adam didn’t take up the invitation to conversation. Dan had a clear sense he’d taken against the man from the moment they found Ivy lurking outsi
de Templar’s chambers. Instead, the detective asked what he was doing at about four o’clock this morning. The predictable answer came back, that the usher was at home.
“Can anyone confirm that?”
“No. I live alone. My wife and I, we – separated a few years ago.”
It was more than a few according to Claire’s briefing. Twenty would have been the honest answer. There was still loss in his voice, and he hadn’t been able to use the word divorce. Jonathan Ivy had spent a long time waiting to move on.
He’d lived a difficult life in several ways. Claire’s research found that Ivy had been the victim of a sizeable con. An invitation to make money aplenty on some investments which couldn’t possibly lose was offered by a friend of a friend. The trusting Mr Ivy had duly invested and the couple’s life savings – several tens of thousands of pounds – disappeared.
Marie Ivy had left home and not returned. The theory was that the marriage had been in difficulties beforehand and the loss was the catalyst for a divorce. Since then, Ivy had worked at a variety of jobs, from sales, to management at a waste disposal company, to local government administration. For the last nine years, he had been an usher at Plymouth Crown Court.
“I enjoy it – most of the time,” was his verdict on the position.
“Most?” Dan queried.
“I can make a difference; do something to help the poor victims. And it’s always interesting to see the cases played out. Sometimes we even manage to get some justice done.”
There was a bitterness in Ivy’s words which Adam noted down but didn’t comment upon. The detective was looking thoughtful and disinclined to venture another question. He could sometimes be that way, saying he learned more from observing than talking. In which case, Dan was aware of his part and carried on with the interview.
“How do you know Roger Newman? You seem close.”
“We grew up together. We got on from the start.”
Ivy had a tendency to rub a nervous hand over the furrow of a scar on his forehead. He saw Adam watching and explained, “I got that at school. I was bullied a fair bit, being, well – not the best looking. Some kids threw this rock. It could have killed me. Roger used to look after me, though. They didn’t mix it with him.”