by Jill McGown
‘Coffee and biscuits,’ he announced, setting the tray down on the coffee table. ‘The biscuits are of a certain age – I don’t really advise them.’
‘I’m hungry,’ she said, biting into one. ‘They’re all right. A bit soft.’
Lloyd sat beside her on the sofa. ‘You know how I never discuss work at home?’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Go on – you’re going to give me my time-table for tomorrow, aren’t you?’
‘You started it!’
‘I did not,’ she said. ‘You mentioned Wade – I was talking about your childhood.’
‘So you were.’ He bit into a biscuit, but he couldn’t agree with her as to their all rightness. He screwed up his face. ‘Don’t eat these – I’ll make you a sandwich if you’re hungry.’
‘They’re fine. But since you’ve brought the subject up again, what are you going to do about Helen Mitchell?’
‘Randall says I should use my discretion,’ he said. ‘Assuming Wade’s telling the truth, that is. She didn’t know he would suddenly disappear as soon as she left him. And then she found herself in a difficult position.’ He shook his head. ‘One law for the rich.’
‘Oh, come on – that’s fair enough. It’s not as though she knew where he was.’
‘Do you think Superintendent Don’t-You-Know-Who-I-Am-Randall would have been as sweetly reasonable if it had been some little scrubber and her boyfriend?’
Maybe he would, Judy thought. She had a higher opinion of Randall than Lloyd did, but she didn’t say so. ‘I think we should talk to her, all the same,’ she said. ‘About withholding information.’
‘And about nipping up and doing in her sister-in-law?’ Lloyd asked. ‘I could touch on that.’
‘We could. I want to see her too. After all, when you think about it, she wasn’t so much losing a sister-in-law as gaming access to what Mitchell described as “a considerable estate”.’
Judy solemnly finished her revolting biscuit, and washed it down. ‘I think he’s telling the truth,’ she said.
Lloyd raised his eyebrows. ‘The whole truth?’ he asked.
‘If he isn’t, he’s very good. And the bit about the near miss is probably true – Diane heard his brakes squealing.’
Lloyd knew what she meant, but there was no point in flying in the face of the evidence. ‘We’ll see what we can get from Mrs Mitchell,’ he said. ‘Are we missing something? Is it wheelbarrows, do you think?’
‘Wheelbarrows?’
‘Man wheeling a wheelbarrow covered with a tarpaulin out of a building site. The foreman stops him, looks under the tarpaulin, but it’s empty. So he has to let him go. The man does the same thing every day for six weeks, until the job’s finished.
‘On the last day, the foreman stops him, says he won’t shop him, but will he please put him out of his misery, and tell him what he’s been stealing, because he knows he’s been stealing something. And the man says—’
‘Wheelbarrows,’ Judy finished, smiling. ‘But what could we be missing?’
‘Perhaps there’s a glaringly obvious reason for taking her clothes off – with care, the report said. Her clothes were removed with care.’
‘With care.’ Judy thought for a moment. ‘So she didn’t divest herself in a mad passion.’ She leant back, her head on his shoulder, and he smiled to himself.
‘Love, oh love, oh careful love,’ he said. ‘And he didn’t tear them off in a frenzy. Someone took them off with care, then someone rolled them up and hid them. Why?’
‘To delay identification?’ Judy suggested.
‘It didn’t work. Her bag was there, anyway – with letters and credit cards. Not to mention a reminder from her dentist in case we had to identify her by her teeth.’ He laughed. ‘As cunning ruses go, that one wasn’t so good.’
‘Even if he was stupid enough to think that we’d fall for rape – he’d surely have just messed her clothes about? Torn them, that sort of thing?’ Judy got herself more comfortable. ‘And if he was going to hide them, or set fire to them – why roll them all up together like that? Wouldn’t you just pick them up?’
‘I think they were thrown,’ Lloyd said. ‘From the car, as it left. They would land about there from the pathway. Then the shoes.’ His arm was beginning to go to sleep, and he shifted slightly. ‘But why stuff her underwear into the roots of a tree?’
‘You didn’t tell me that bit,’ she said, twisting round.
Lloyd exercised his arm to bring the circulation back. ‘Oh, sorry. Yes, stuffed into the roots of a tree.’ He rubbed his eyes. ‘And I thought we’d have all the answers once we spoke to Wade – if you ask me, he’s as much in the dark as we are.’
Judy grinned triumphantly. ‘Hah! You don’t think he killed her.’
‘No, I don’t. But Randall says we’ll have to charge him tomorrow if we’re no further forward, and for once I think he’s right. We’ve got an eye-witness, fingerprints, the time – his own behaviour. We can’t ignore all that.’
‘Then we’ll just have to give Mrs M. a fright,’ she said decidedly. ‘Let’s talk to her on our own ground.’
‘Anything you say.’ He bent over to kiss her, but she slid deftly away from him.
‘I’m going.’
‘What’s the point? It’s well after midnight – your reputation is in shreds, Mrs Hill.’
‘I’m still going.’ She went to get her raincoat, and Lloyd found himself back in the café, trying to find the wheelbarrows. ‘He’s lying about one thing,’ he said when she came back. ‘The phone – her fingerprints would have been on the phone, as you so rightly pointed out.’
‘Yes, I don’t understand that. Why say it at all?’
‘Well, we can see what sort of prints they did get from the phone,’ he said, following her to the door. ‘It’s raining,’ he said.
‘I’ll survive.’ They kissed goodnight at the door, like teenagers, and he knew she didn’t want to go any more than he wanted her to.
‘Julia’s prints are elusive,’ she whispered, stepping outside.
‘The car door’s stiff,’ he said. ‘The passenger can’t do it unless they’re used to it. I checked – it’s true. And his prints bear him out.’
‘Everything,’ Judy said, kissing him again, ‘bears him out.’
Lloyd watched her until she disappeared round the zig-zag of the pathway to the garages.
It was true. Everything did bear Wade’s story out. The only conflicting evidence was the phone, which until now hadn’t even come into the reckoning. Well, at least he could check that.
He heard Judy’s car start up, and wished she had stayed.
Helen Mitchell was driving home late, too. She drove fast along Thorpe Wood Road, feeling better since her visit to Elaine. Insects danced in the lights, and died on her windscreen as she drove, and she could see that the house was in darkness. She hadn’t really meant to disappear all evening without telling Donald where she was going, but there was something about his attitude that she found hard to take.
All that seemed to be bothering him was that she had lied to the police, and that Chris might land them in it. Everything else – including Julia’s death – he was quite happy to take in his stride. Everything else. And that irked her slightly, she told herself honestly. A little jealousy might have been in order. But he took that in his stride as well, because he’d been going to leave her anyway. As long as it didn’t directly affect him, Donald didn’t care what happened to anyone. She had tried to tell him about her interview with the sergeant, but he’d been too preoccupied to listen.
Still, Elaine seemed to think that the police weren’t entirely hostile. She had even said that Sergeant Hill was nice, an adjective that had not leaped to Helen’s mind when describing her. But it had made her feel better, and a little more as though she might come out of this business unscathed.
A cat, blacker than the night, streaked across the road as soon as the car had passed, skittering to a halt at the long grass, overdue for
mowing. Above its yellowing fringe danced the daddy-long-legs, bathed in light from the road. The cat dabbed a curious paw at one or two, but she was after bigger game. She moved noiselessly through the grass, into the woods, stopping in the clearing where Paul and Diane had inexpertly consummated their union. She could have told them a thing or two about that, if they’d asked.
She stood motionless, then darted through the trees towards the building. She watched for a moment as the ducks swam away, but they weren’t her prey. Into the trees again, and she was there. Invisible against the dark bark, she waited for the mice who would come to nibble the picnic leftovers.
She had to keep her strength up. She had kittens to feed. She washed unnecessarily, her sleek coat shining in the fitful moonlight, and settled down, her eyes closing now and again, but her ears pricked for the tiny sound of an unwitting mouse. She wouldn’t miss a thing; she never did.
Oh yes. She could tell them a thing or two, if they asked.
Chapter Ten
Judy woke before the alarm, and lay in a delicious state of semi-consciousness, sleepily aware that she was happy. They had made each other laugh, she and Lloyd, and the knowledge that they could just as easily make each other cry made the laughter all the sweeter. She had laughed at his need for words, but delighted in the sound of his voice, by turns persuasive, funny, soothing, exciting. She had gone home simply because he didn’t want her to, and he had laughed at her need for independence, but he hadn’t tried too hard to make her stay.
With deliberate perverseness, they had steered the talk round to work; the whispered doorstep conversation had been about Wade, as though they were trying to assure one another that it had all been just for fun. They needed the assurance, because whatever way it had started out, and whatever way it had ended, in between there had been an intensity of feeling that had caught them both unaware.
And she still didn’t feel guilty. In fact, she thought drowsily, it was that which was making her happy, because she had never felt like that before. She was glad she was on her own, hugging her thoughts to herself with no temptation to impart them to Lloyd.
The buzzer rudely invaded those private thoughts, and dragged her reluctantly out into the day. The morning paper screamed WOODLAND MURDER – MAN HELD at her. Everyone did it – she did it. You heard that the police had someone helping them with their enquiries, and you thought ‘oh good, they’ve got him’ – it was human nature, though not a particularly praiseworthy aspect of it. She ran her bath, reading the emotional, if not sensational words that accompanied the photograph of Superintendent Randall ‘leading the murder hunt’. Murder Weapon Still Missing, read a smaller sub-heading. Woodland Hideout, read another. They knew nothing of Wade – nothing that they could print – and yet without a single libellous word, they managed to produce him to the public, gift-wrapped and guilty.
The morning routine began to take over; it was difficult to remain on a high philosophical plane with the smell of bacon and eggs teasing your nostrils. She ate rather more heartily than might be expected of someone entering a new phase of her life, and drove to work entirely restored to normality.
‘Morning Sarge,’ Sandwell said as she walked in – an unusually colloquial greeting from him.
‘Good morning, Bob – anything I should know about?’
‘Forensics’ report on the rest of Mrs Mitchell’s clothes,’ he said. ‘It’s on Inspector Lloyd’s desk, but he’s not in yet.’
‘My God!’ Judy said, startling him a little. Perhaps not entirely restored, she told herself. Freud would have been interested. ‘I think he might be expecting me to pick him up,’ she said. ‘Unless he’s gone to fetch his car – I think it’s ready now.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Why don’t you give him a ring?’ she said. ‘And I’ll see if that report says anything interesting.’
She left Sandwell to it, fighting the desire to laugh as she walked through the CID room with people in various stages of arriving, bidding them a cheerier good morning than they were used to.
Closing the office door behind her, she waited for the extension to ring, which it duly did.
‘Did you do this on purpose?’ Lloyd’s voice demanded to know.
‘No!’ She laughed. ‘I swear I didn’t – I’m sorry.’
There was a small silence. ‘But that’s worse,’ he said.
‘No, it’s not really. Do you want me to come and pick you up now?’
‘No thank you,’ he said huffily. ‘Bob Sandwell’s coming for me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said again, there being not a lot else to say. ‘I’ll see you when you come in.’
‘Huh.’ And he hung up.
Judy replaced the receiver, and picked up the lab report on the underwear. Like the other clothes, it had merely been removed. Nothing to suggest whether it was before or after death, nothing to suggest forcible or violent removal. The tights had a small run, but that could have happened at any time. They were not the murder weapon.
Not the murder weapon. Everyone had assumed that they must have been, since they weren’t found with her other clothes. She wondered if she should see Chief Inspector Royle about releasing men to continue the search, but decided against it. Lloyd might think otherwise, so for the moment she’d leave it. Whatever was used had probably been burned long ago, and it was unlikely to tell them much more than they already knew.
Lloyd came in a few minutes later, and agreed with her that there was little point in searching now, especially since the inch by inch search had yielded nothing.
There was an unspoken agreement that only work would be discussed during working hours. Lloyd stuck to this one, unlike the reverse agreement.
‘I think we can take the barriers down,’ he said. ‘We’re not going to learn any more there.’ He spoke to Randall, then arranged for the watch to be taken off the boating lake.
‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘Send a car and bring her in for questioning?’
‘Yes,’ Judy said. ‘Let her get the wind up a bit.’
Helen had just put away the breakfast dishes when the knock came to the door. Donald had left early to go to work, because he had missed a day. She had wondered a little about that. She opened the door to an extremely tall, extremely young constable.
‘Mrs Helen Mitchell?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Can I help you?’
‘It’s in connection with your sister-in-law’s death,’ he said, very formally. ‘Inspector Lloyd would like a word with you. At the police station,’ he added, slightly hesitantly, very politely.
‘Now?’
‘Yes, please, Mrs Mitchell.’
‘I have already spoken to someone – a lady. A sergeant, I think.’ It was supposed to sound casual, unconcerned; it didn’t.
‘That would be Sergeant Hill,’ he said. ‘But Inspector Lloyd has a few more questions, if you wouldn’t mind.’
And if she did? Helen decided there was little to be gained from finding out, and got her handbag. She glanced up at the sky. She wouldn’t need her coat. The sky, a bright jigsaw puzzle blue, held the promise of a warm, late summer day.
As she got into the car, she saw a neighbour’s curtain twitch. What did they think of all this, all these polite people who had smiled good morning shyly since it had happened? What did they think of all the police cars, and the reporters still having to be repulsed? The ones she knew merely sympathised; the ones she didn’t must wonder.
In no time, they were pulling into the station car-park, and she was being ushered up some steps into the building itself. She had never been inside a police station, a fact that only came home to her as she walked along the corridor. You would think that everyone would have been in one by the time they were fifty, she thought. But she couldn’t remember ever having lost her bicycle, like the small boy at the desk. When her purse was stolen, she put it down to experience. That it had happened twice showed that she did not learn by her mistakes.
She followed the young man through a room
with three empty desks, to an ante-room in which sat the sergeant who had so easily manipulated her, and Inspector Lloyd, only dimly remembered from the frantic moments of Sunday morning, a hundred years ago.
‘Mrs Mitchell. Do have a seat.’ It was the cool collected sergeant who spoke, extending her hand towards the empty chair in front of her desk. Helen glanced nervously at the inspector, but he was sorting papers, taking no apparent interest in her presence. She sat down, feeling like a child who has been sent for by the head.
‘Thank you for coming in,’ the sergeant continued, as though she had had any choice in the matter. Though the constable hadn’t said that she must come.
‘Mrs Mitchell, I got the impression from you that you want to help Mr Wade in any way you can. Was I right?’
‘He is a friend, as you pointed out,’ Helen said frostily.
‘Quite. That’s why it is important that you tell us the truth. I wonder if you are.’
‘I am not accustomed to having my word doubted,’ Helen said. It did annoy her, even if there was every reason to doubt it. ‘Do you object to my having a cigarette?’
‘Not at all.’ The sergeant pushed the ashtray towards her with her pen.
Helen smoked nervously, still looking across at Lloyd now and again.
‘You did leave one thing out when we spoke before,’ the sergeant said. ‘And I get the feeling that you have left rather more than that out.’
Helen began to see what Donald meant. She had no idea what Chris had said to them – how much of the truth. She had no idea how much damage the truth would do, or if lying would just hammer the final nail in his coffin. She said nothing, and waited for the next question.
‘Where were you at five to nine on Saturday evening?’ The question came, disconcertingly, from the inspector.
Helen twisted round. ‘I told Sergeant Hill,’ she said. ‘I was coming back from the station – I had to see someone to a train.’