‘Of course not!’
‘Well, no one else knows. If you didn’t tell anyone, I wouldn’t have to either, would I? I mean, I could just say I did it because I was angry with Uncle Zak.’
‘About what?’
Jonathan waved a hand. ‘I’d think of something.’
‘No. Sorry, Jonathan, I couldn’t agree to that.’
‘But why not? Bridget told Mrs Thanet in confidence, didn’t she? And Mrs Thanet told you. If you tell anyone else Bridget will be furious with you.’
‘I know,’ said Thanet grimly. ‘But the fact is that I simply cannot withhold evidence which has come into my possession. And if Bridget realises, and I would make sure she did, that knowing why you killed your uncle would probably have a profound effect upon the kind of sentence you’re likely to get, I think she’ll probably forgive me. I really am sorry, Jonathan, but I can’t do it. In any case, as far as your mother’s concerned, just remember you’re all she has left now. I think you’ll find it’s more important to her to understand why you did this than to preserve your uncle’s reputation.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I do. And what’s more, in the circumstances, I think Karen would, too.’
‘But I promised her I wouldn’t tell anyone, ever!’
‘Circumstances have changed, you must see that. Do you think she’d want you to spend years and years in prison?’
‘I will anyway, surely.’
‘Your chances will be improved, if the jury can be given good reason why you lost control as you did. It’s no good, Jonathan. You really can’t keep quiet about this.’
Jonathan remained silent, lips set in a stubborn line.
‘Look,’ said Thanet, with an inward sigh. ‘Would it help if I told your mother for you? At least then you will, strictly speaking, have kept your word.’
It was a compromise, a less than satisfactory solution, but Jonathan seized on the suggestion eagerly. ‘Would you? Would you really?’
What have I let myself in for? thought Thanet as he walked back down the ward. I must be mad.
Lineham was sitting on a chair outside Sister Benedict’s office. She must have been watching out for Thanet through the glass panel which gave her a view of what was going on in her ward, because she came out as he approached. ‘How is he?’ she said.
Lineham stood up, joining them as Thanet said, ‘Happier in his mind, I think. Would you excuse me just for a moment, Sister?’
He felt he owed it to Lineham to break the news to him first. When he did so, the sergeant looked as stunned as he himself had initially felt.
‘And you believed him?’
‘Yes, Mike, I did. Look, I’ll explain it all to you in a minute, but I have to square things with sister, first.’
Sister Benedict, too, reacted with incredulity and once again Thanet had to explain that he was taking the confession seriously. ‘I’m afraid we shall have to cause you a certain amount of disruption. I know he’s not going anywhere at the moment but I shall have to put someone on guard here and of course we shall have to take a formal statement. He’ll need to see his solicitor, too.’
After the initial shock Sister Benedict had made a swift recovery. ‘From what you’re saying, I assume I can take it that he is no danger either to my staff or my patients?’
‘Absolutely not. I can guarantee it.’
‘Right. Well, in that case, one of the side wards is vacant. We’ll put him in there.’
‘An excellent idea.’
She put her office at their disposal and arrangements were swiftly made.
‘Right,’ said Lineham, as they left. ‘I can’t wait to hear this.’
‘I’ll tell you on the way.’
‘Where to?’
‘To see Jonathan’s mother. And believe me, I’m not looking forward to it.’
TWENTY-ONE
Thanet decided that it would be best to sit in the car in the hospital car park to talk. Explanations would be complicated and he wanted Lineham’s undivided attention. Lineham listened in silence and when Thanet had finished said, ‘Poor kid.’
‘Jonathan, you mean? Or Karen?’
‘Both of them.’
‘Well, I never thought the day would dawn, but at last it has!’
‘What day?’
‘The day when you were actually sorry for someone who has committed a murder!’
Lineham looked sheepish. ‘Well, these are rather unusual circumstances, sir.’
‘Murders frequently are committed in unusual circumstances. No, Mike, there’s no doubt about it. What I said the other day is true. You are definitely going soft in your old age.’
At thirty-four Lineham was able to smile at the idea.
Thanet sobered. ‘Unfortunately, so am I, if in a rather different way.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Because the idea that Jonathan could have done it never even entered my head!’
‘But how could you possibly have known?’
‘Well, I don’t see how you could have worked it out, certainly – and don’t look like that, Mike! I’m not in the habit of insulting you, am I? I’m about to explain why! The point is that in order to have done so you really did need one or two essential pieces of information – or rather, three, to be precise: that Karen had had a baby when she was twelve; that no one ever knew who the father was; and that it was her pregnancy which triggered off the anorexia that killed her. You had none of them, but I had them all.’
‘Even if you did, I don’t see how you could have guessed.’
‘Not guessed. Worked it out. Yes I could! Think about it. The clues were all there.’ Thanet began to tick them off on his fingers as he spoke. ‘Landers told us that Alice Randish had been particularly fond of Karen ever since the twins came to stay at the vineyard for a few days when their mother was in hospital, and that it was just before Fiona was born.’
‘Why is that so significant?’
‘For two reasons. One, Fiona is eight. Now, I knew that Karen was twenty, because she is the same age as Bridget. And I later learnt that Karen was twelve when she had the baby.’
‘So you could have worked out that it was around the time when they went to stay at the vineyard that Karen became pregnant – and therefore, that Randish might have been responsible.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And the second reason?’
‘Because if it was just before Fiona was born, Randish might well have been suffering from sexual frustration. And he was always a man who needed women.’
‘And Karen just happened to be around at the time, you mean?’
‘Quite.’
‘Nasty.’
‘He was a pretty nasty character, by all accounts. And that in itself was important, too. Only a nasty character would have taken advantage of his twelve-year-old niece.’
‘Go on.’
‘Landers also told us that Karen seemed to get on better with Alice Randish than with her uncle.’
‘Nothing unusual about that. Everyone’s got relations they like better than others.’
‘You’re missing the point, Mike. The point is that the fact has significance only if you take other factors into consideration.’
‘So, what other factors?’
‘A major one was Randish’s taste in women.’
‘Small, slight, you mean.’
‘Invariably, yes.’
‘I see what you’re getting at. As Karen would have been. Not quite the same thing, though, is it? A twelve-year-old girl?’
‘Perhaps not. But has it occurred to you that possibly that was where Randish’s taste truly lay? That he picked his women because physically they were the nearest thing to pubescent?’
‘That’s a thought, sir. Do you think he might have tried it on with Elaine Wood? She was ten at the time. Perhaps that’s another reason why she was so determined to get her own back on him.’
‘Possibly. If so, I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. And
of course I could be doing him an injustice in suggesting it.’
‘He must have got the fright of his life when he heard Karen was pregnant. Perhaps that’s what has kept him on the straight and narrow ever since.’
‘So far as we know. Quite. Anyway, the other thing that ought to have put me on to Jonathan, of course, was the coincidence of two deaths and a major accident in one family within the space of only a couple of hours. Just think what the odds must be against it! There seemed to be no connection between them but I really should have realised that there must be – or at the very least have considered that there might be. If I had, all these other things would have begun to fall into place. I just assumed that Jonathan had had an accident because he was so upset after being with his sister when she died. But if I’d checked the time at which he left the hospital along with the time of his accident, I might have begun to wonder if he hadn’t been upset for another reason, such as witnessing or even committing a murder.’
‘There seemed to be such a tenuous connection …’
‘But the connection was there, that’s the point. And knowing all these other facts, I should have spotted that it was more important than we assumed. In fact, I ought to know by now that you shouldn’t assume anything, in this game, ever.’
‘I think you’re being unduly hard on yourself.’
‘I haven’t finished yet! There’s one other, further point, which came up only this afternoon. It was just a small thing, but it should have given me cause to think … You remember when we called in at my house, for me to change? Well, Bridget was there. She’d got soaked too, and I nearly fell over her trainers. She’d left them on the mat in the hall, so I picked them up. They were in an awful state – caked with mud. And there was a fragment of glass embedded in the sole of one of them.’
‘So? I don’t see what you’re getting at.’
‘Glass, Mike! Think!’
‘I’m beginning to feel distinctly dim, sir. I can’t see any possible connection between Bridget’s trainers and Jonathan’s guilt.’
‘No, you’re not being dim, Mike. I’m not being fair to you. Once again, I’m in possession of the facts and you’re not. Will it make a difference if I tell you this? When Bridget went to visit Jonathan yesterday she discovered that Mrs Redman hadn’t left Jonathan’s bedside since she first arrived at the hospital after the accident. There were various things that needed to be done, so Bridget volunteered to do them – and this included taking Jonathan’s clothes home. The clothes he was wearing on the night of the murder.’
‘I see … You’re saying that Jonathan might have picked up some splinters of glass either in the soles of his shoes or elsewhere in his clothes and that when Bridget was handling his things, some of them might have fallen out and she trod in them?’
‘Possibly, Mike, yes. Oh, I do realise that she could have picked that bit of glass up anywhere, that it could be pure coincidence. But you saw what a state the laboratory was in. Glass must have been flying about all over the place. Anyway, forensic might be able to verify – provided I can rescue the piece of glass from our kitchen waste bin. I actually put it there myself! In any case, whether that was what happened or whether she picked it up somewhere else, by chance, it was one more thing which should at least have given me pause for thought, a nudge in the right direction. No, Mike, there’s no doubt about it. I’ve been shamefully slow on the uptake.’
‘Well, I still think you’re being too hard on yourself. And in any case, we’d no doubt have got there in the end.’
‘When forensic identified Jonathan’s fingerprints on pieces of glass picked up in the laboratory, you mean? I’d like to think so, yes – if it would ever have occurred to us to take his prints in the first place, to compare them.’
‘It would have,’ said Lineham confidently. ‘You’d have added two and two together sooner or later. I’m sure of it.’
‘I wish I agreed with you.’
‘If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, I think what’s really bugging you is that Jonathan got in first with his confession and beat you to it.’
‘Ouch. You’re probably right. And if you are it’ll do me good to be brought down a peg or two.’ Thanet grinned. ‘The trouble with you, Mike, is that you know me too well.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Anyway, we’d better make a move. I want to get this over with.’ He gave Lineham Mrs Redman’s address.
‘I assume we’re going to see her to break the news of Jonathan’s confession,’ said Lineham as he started the car.
‘There’s a bit more to it than that, I’m afraid.’
Thanet explained his agreement with Jonathan and Lineham groaned. ‘Great! Honestly, sir, you do land yourself in it, don’t you?’
The Redmans lived on a big council estate on the far side of town. It was five o’clock and despite the much vaunted one-way system which had been installed some years ago, the roads were clogged with home-going traffic. Patiently, Lineham settled down to work his way through the endless sets of traffic lights.
Although he wasn’t looking forward to the interview, by the time they arrived Thanet found that he was feeling increasingly curious about Mrs Redman. So far she had been a shadowy figure, ever-present but always in the background, out of sight. He had met her a couple of times briefly, years ago, at school functions, but she was very quiet and they had scarcely exchanged more than a few words.
She had certainly had more than her share of misfortune, he thought: an unhappy childhood with a ‘drunken brute’ of a father, a difficult marriage with a rigid, unyielding man who had given both Bridget and Ben ‘the creeps’, and then all the pain of seeing a daughter who was no more than a child bear a child herself as the result of rape and thereafter spend the remaining years of her short life in and out of hospital under the cloud of anorexia. Then, to cap it all, had come the events of the last few days.
And he, Thanet, was about to deliver the coup de grâce – no, not a coup de grâce, because he wouldn’t be putting Mrs Redman out of her misery but increasing it tenfold. What on earth had he been thinking of, actually to volunteer for a task like this? he asked himself as the car slid smoothly to a stop outside her house. He glanced at Lineham, who pulled a face. ‘Good luck, sir. I’d rather you than me. Do you want me to come in with you?’
Thanet shook his head. ‘It’ll be easier alone.’
The sky had become overcast again and lights had been switched on in some of the houses. The Redmans’ house and garden were well cared for but all the curtains had been drawn and the place looked deserted, forlorn, as if the life had bled slowly out of it and all that was left was an empty shell.
Thanet told himself not to be fanciful. He walked briskly up the concrete path, noting the regimented rows of newly planted wallflowers, and knocked at the front door. There was no reply. He knocked again, stepped back, scanned the house, glanced over his shoulder at Lineham, who gave an exaggerated shrug. He knocked once more, still with no response. He was about to give up, walk away, when there was a sound from above. The curtain had been pulled aside and the window opened a crack. A face peered out. ‘Yes?’
‘Mrs Redman? It’s Inspector Thanet, Bridget’s father. Could I have a word?’
‘I’ll be right down.’ The window closed.
She had no doubt been having a rest, thought Thanet, feeling guilty at having disturbed her. The past few days must have been exhausting beyond belief. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other as he waited, thinking that breaking bad news to people was the part of his job he hated most, and how this time was even worse because he knew everybody involved.
He didn’t have to wait long. In a few moments the door opened. She had put on a plaid woollen dressing gown which was so long it touched the floor and looked as though it might once have belonged to her husband. She was still tying the twisted two-coloured cord at her waist. ‘Is it Jonathan?’ Her face was knotted with anxiety, as if she were bracing herself for the worst. She was, as he remembered, a li
ttle wisp of a woman who scarcely reached his shoulder. Unless she had married or had children very late indeed she must be about the same age as he and Joan, but she looked many years older. Long-term suffering and anxiety had left their mark, scoring deep furrows between her eyes and draining away any vitality she might once have possessed.
‘Jonathan’s fine,’ said Thanet. ‘I’ve just left him, as a matter of fact. But I do need to talk to you.’
She peered back at him anxiously, over her shoulder, as she led him into the room at the front of the house, switching the light on as she went in. With daylight still seeping in around the edges of the drawn curtains the artificial light cast a sickly glow over the sparsely furnished room. Randish’s so-called generosity to his sister’s family certainly didn’t show in here, thought Thanet, noting the scuffed carpet and worn loose covers. The room, though shabby, showed evidence of care – it was scrupulously clean and someone, Jonathan perhaps, had recently given the walls a coat of emulsion paint. There was a small twelve-inch television set on a table in the corner. Evidently, since Mr Redman’s death, some of the household rules had been relaxed.
She sat down on the very edge of a chair, tucking the dressing gown around her legs as if even a glimpse of ankle would be improper. ‘Is it about the accident?’
‘No, it’s not.’ Thanet took a deep breath. There was no way that this was going to be easy. Nothing could cushion the blow. He hesitated, seeking the right words. ‘I’m afraid it’s rather more serious than that.’
‘It’s about my brother, then? About his … death.’ The last word was barely audible.
‘Yes, it is. And I’m sorry. You’ve had a lot to bear these last few days, Mrs Redman. My wife and I were so upset to hear about Karen.’
She stared at him and he saw she was fighting to hold back the tears. The prospect of what he was about to do appalled him, but it had to be done. Perhaps in the circumstances it was not a good idea to be too sympathetic. Deliberately, he made his tone brisk. ‘Yes, as I say, it does concern your brother. But I’m afraid, in connection with Mr Randish’s death, it also concerns Jonathan.’
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