by Jill McGown
‘He’s probably right.’
Philip shook his head. ‘That’s why I’m depressed,’ he said. ‘Why can’t the fool see that? I don’t want pills and pep-talks. I’m frightened.’
‘You’re not going to molest anyone,’ she said, smiling again.
‘That’s what he says.’
‘What else does he say?’
‘He says I’m avoiding physical contact, not looking for it. He says that’s why I pick women I can’t have.’
‘What makes you think you can’t have me?’ she asked.
‘You were Andrew’s wife!’
‘You were Andrew’s best friend,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to let you turn into a dirty old man.’ And she smiled again.
The knock at the door made him jump, jarring his back. It was impossible. Whatever she said, whatever the doctor said.
‘Don’t go away,’ she said, going to the door.
‘I believe Mr Newby’s with you?’
It was, of course, Chief Inspector Lloyd. He always seemed to appear just when his discomfort was at its height. Philip reached for his stick, and even that was agony. He wanted his fantasy back, because there could be nothing else.
‘I’m glad you’re together,’ said Lloyd breezily. ‘Because you both reported seeing someone on the fire-escape outside the Hamlyns’ bedroom window. I’d like to talk to you about that, if I may.’
Caroline was open-mouthed. ‘You saw him?’ she said. ‘You saw him, too?’
Philip nodded, intensely grateful to Lloyd for the change of subject, even if it was to this one. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well – thought I did. Just a glimpse.’
‘I didn’t imagine it.’ She shivered. ‘I thought maybe it was just my reflection or something.’
Philip wanted to reassure her, but how could he?
‘Well – perhaps we can get a reasonably precise time,’ said Lloyd. ‘Mr Newby – about when did you see this person?’
‘I don’t know for certain. It was just after I’d arrived in the car park. About five to eleven, or so.’
‘I thought it was a few minutes after eleven,’ said Caroline. ‘I told your sergeant.’
‘Still – we’re agreed that it was about eleven o’clock,’ Lloyd said. He looked at Philip. ‘You didn’t see whoever it was come down again?’
‘No. It was just a figure – it was there, and it was gone. I thought I’d imagined it, too.’
‘Did you put the bedroom light out when you left, Mrs Knight?’
‘I don’t honestly know,’ she said.
‘But you might have, automatically. In which case . . .’ He turned back to Philip. ‘He could have come down again without your seeing him. It’s very dark out there.’
‘Yes,’ said Philip, his voice flat. ‘But the light didn’t go out,’ he said.
‘So where did he go?’
Philip shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘Well – thank you both. I apologise for the intrusion.’
Lloyd went, and Philip got to his feet. He had the stick now, and he could leave at last. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m terribly sorry I upset you.’
‘Don’t go,’ she said.
‘I must.’ He opened the door.
‘Don’t think you won’t be welcome here,’ she said. ‘Please, Philip. Come back tomorrow. When you’ve had a chance to think.’
Matthew had watched as the daylight faded, and the playing-field emptied. They seemed to be checking every blade of grass. There had been a whole team of people in the Barn, looking for something. He had spoken to the pathologist; he had been pleased to be asked, and explained that the tiniest of objects could yield clues. Murderers rarely left anything obvious behind, not if they were intent on getting away with it. Most of them weren’t, oddly enough, he told Matthew. Some of them gave themselves up, some even killed themselves. But most just waited for the reckoning, and didn’t bother to deny it.
The interesting ones were the ones who thought they could beat the investigation teams. But if they only knew, he said, what they could discover from mud, from blood – from anything that was found in the area. It wasn’t just in Sherlock Holmes that footprints – he called them footmarks – and cigarette ends gave the murderer away. They really did.
He had shown Matthew how they took casts of footmarks, explained how even the way the soles were worn down was sometimes how they proved someone’s presence at the scene. But the ground in this case had still been frozen, despite the rain, and hadn’t proved much help. But there were other things, he said. He had explained how the injuries themselves could point to someone in particular – someone left-handed, for instance. And how they could work out how many blows had been struck – that, he said, gave you an idea of the state of mind of the attacker.
Matthew had been fascinated.
‘Do you think forensics might interest you?’ he had asked.
‘I’m sure it would,’ Matthew had replied.
The pathologist had beamed; a sudden, wide smile that changed his whole face. ‘Then, you should talk to your careers master,’ he had said. ‘Do you have one?’
Matthew had nodded.
‘If he needs to know anything – tell him to contact me.’ He had given Matthew a card. ‘I’ll show you round,’ he said. ‘When we’re not so busy.’
Matthew had watched him drive away, and had raised his hand in salute, still holding the card. It was the first profession that had ever really caught his attention, the first time he had ever known what he wanted to do. His father had suggested the law, which had had some appeal. But this was much better. Piecing evidence together, like a jigsaw. Proving what must have happened, perhaps even proving who must have done it, from tiny fragments of information. A piece here, a piece there, the pathologist had said. He did his job, the police did theirs and, if they were lucky, it all came together to prove or disprove someone’s story.
Of course, he had said, they didn’t always win. But there was always excitement, always urgency, always something interesting to work on.
It was what he wanted to do, he realised, as he saw the chief inspector and the sergeant leave the staff block, and walk towards the car park. He had been waiting for them when he met the pathologist, but he couldn’t tell them anything. Not now.
‘Right,’ Lloyd said to Judy, as they sat in his car in the school car park.
Everyone else had gone with the daylight; they would be back at dawn, looking for the murder weapon.
‘What have we got?’ he asked.
Judy smiled. ‘Do you really want to know?’ she asked, reaching into her bag for her notebook, turning on the interior light.
‘No, but I expect we’d better make some sense of it all, if we can.’
‘We’ve got Newby. Whose explanation about what he was doing between ten twenty-five and ten fifty-five is uncorroborated.’
‘Except Sam reckons he’s impotent,’ said Lloyd.
‘Sam reckons he’s an expert on everyone’s sexuality,’ said Judy. She smiled. ‘Including mine. But would Newby have had the strength to kill her? He can hardly move, and you can see he’s in real pain. All the time.’
‘But only since last night,’ said Lloyd. ‘If we are to believe Sam. Again. And if that’s true – what happened to him? Would throwing up be enough exertion to do that to him?’
Judy shrugged. ‘He could certainly walk better than that when I saw him last month,’ she said. Something still bothered her about that. She would have to think about it.
‘And both Caroline Knight and Philip Newby say that someone was hanging round the junior dormitory,’ said Lloyd. ‘What do you make of that?’
Judy looked up at the bedroom window, and the easy access it gave to the fire-escape door on the balcony. The window should have a lock, she thought, with her crime prevention officer’s hat on. ‘It’s quite possible,’ she said. ‘The lab might come up with something.’
Lloyd sighed. ‘All rig
ht,’ he said. ‘So what was he doing? Trying to get in? Was Mrs Knight going to be his victim if Newby hadn’t turned up?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Unless he thought the flat would be empty,’ he said. ‘He might have been trying to get into the building to hide somewhere, after he’d killed Mrs Hamlyn.’
‘I’ve got them looking for this handyman person,’ Judy said. ‘His name is James Lacey. But the golf-club doesn’t make sense. He was long gone when it went missing.’
Lloyd grunted. ‘It’s not just the golf-club that doesn’t make sense,’ he said. ‘It could just be a coincidence, I suppose. But I doubt it. That’s what Freddie thought it was straight away.’ He sighed, a deep sigh of frustration. ‘I don’t know these people,’ he said. ‘And Sam Waters is right about one thing.’
‘Really?’ said Judy, unwilling to concede that the odious Mr Waters was right about anything.
‘Flotsam and jetsam,’ Lloyd said. ‘They all work here and live here, but that’s it. They’re all loners, they’re all failures. Putting Diana Hamlyn in amongst them was bound to end in disaster.’
Judy nodded a little sadly.
‘They don’t like one another,’ Lloyd went on. ‘They don’t trust one another. They accuse one another – but I’d swear not one of them has told us the truth. Sam Waters did go to a club, like he said. Sandwell checked up – that’s what he came to tell me. They know him in there – he was there from about half past midnight until about two, according to the owner. But he says he left here at about ten past eleven. It only takes half an hour to get into Stansfield.’
‘But Newby confirms that he saw him leave,’ said Judy. ‘And Freddie says she was dead by then anyway. Does it matter?’
‘But where did he go?’ asked Lloyd. ‘To dump the murder weapon? But I’ll let Mr Waters stew for the moment. He’s coming to the station to make a statement about what he saw. I’ll have a few more questions for him when he does.’
‘He could be making it up about seeing a boy with her,’ Judy said. ‘Treadwell certainly thinks he was.’
Lloyd sighed. ‘He could,’ he said. ‘And we ought to check up on that film he was supposed to be taking Caroline Knight to – it could be some sort of alibi. You said Treadwell isn’t convinced that there was a film. We should pay the club secretary a visit.’
‘I rang,’ said Judy. ‘You had to book – and Mrs Knight booked two tickets in January.’
Lloyd looked a little disappointed.
‘You just want to see if the club secretary can get a pirate video of that film that was supposed to be on,’ Judy said.
‘How do you know about that?’ he asked.
‘Because I tried to watch it.’
‘Why? I thought it wasn’t your kind of thing.’
She gave a little sigh. ‘Because I knew you’d be watching it,’ she said. ‘We might as well go straight to the pub,’ she added quickly, before he could say anything. ‘We don’t want to keep Freddie waiting.’
Lloyd smiled. ‘All right,’ he said, and waited until she had got the car started before leading the way out of the school, and into Stansfield, and the car park of the Derbyshire Hotel.
‘Anyway, Sherlock,’ he said, as they sat down with their drinks. ‘You scored a bull’s-eye with the pen. How did you know it was his?’
Judy smiled. ‘You know the pattern down the side?’
‘Yes,’ said Lloyd warily.
‘When I looked at it more closely, I realised it was “SW” linked over and over again.’ She smiled. ‘And I enjoyed taking the wind out of his sails for a moment,’ she said.
Freddie was good company when it was possible to steer him away from pathology humour. He had come with bits and pieces of information; the bag and shoes were covered with too many prints to be of any use. But the squashed shoe had been run over by a car wheel.
Judy frowned. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked.
Freddie didn’t deign to reply. ‘So there must have been a car involved,’ he said.
Which sounded as though it hardly needed to be said, except that Judy knew what he meant. A car furthered his theory, which he didn’t have, because he didn’t have theories. The back seat of a car seemed a quite likely place for consenting sex, even to Judy.
‘But cars aren’t allowed up at that end of the school,’ Judy said.
Freddie spread out his hands. ‘Allowed or not, there was a car in the Barn,’ he said. ‘And we haven’t found her buttons in the Barn or the field,’ he said. ‘I presume Mrs Hamlyn wouldn’t go to a dinner dance with buttons missing from the front of her dress, so it’s a reasonable assumption that they came off in the car.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Lloyd, his voice heavily sarcastic. ‘All we have to do is find out which car it was. There were only about two hundred people there. Have you any idea?’
‘We’re checking,’ said Freddie. ‘It all takes time, Lloyd.’
A niblick fitted the bill, he said, and pointed out to Lloyd that he hadn’t been so far off when he suggested a sand iron. Sam Waters’s suit had yielded nothing of interest. He was delighted because he had apparently made a convert while he was at the school.
Judy excused herself to make a phone call, and ordered another slimline tonic when Freddie got another round.
‘Did you have to?’ Lloyd muttered, as Freddie went to the bar. ‘I just want to get out of this place.’
‘You’re the one who made the arrangement for you and Freddie and I to have a drink,’ she said. ‘So we’re having a drink. All right?’
‘You and Freddie and me,’ he said, and smiled.
Freddie came back with the drinks. ‘We’ve found a couple of strands of grey wool on Mrs Hamlyn’s clothes,’ he said, also, it would appear, a saver of the best till last.
‘Grey wool?’ said Lloyd. ‘Like a school blazer?’
‘Could be,’ said Freddie. ‘Get me one of the blazers, and I’ll tell you.’
When they left the pub, and got into their separate cars, she didn’t go home, but followed Lloyd to the flat. She pulled in beside him, and got out of the car.
It was dark in the garage area. She couldn’t see his face.
‘Judy,’ he said, his voice tired. ‘I’m getting too old for this. Setting alarms, looking at watches. It’s not for me.’
‘No alarms,’ she said, and it seemed that her voice echoed quietly through the buildings.
There was a little silence. ‘Does this mean you’re not going to stay with him after all?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But it means I can spend the night with you.’
‘And then go home to your husband?’
She was cold, shivering inside her coat, and it wasn’t just the weather. ‘No,’ she said. ‘And then go home. Michael just lives there, too, that’s all.’
She still couldn’t see his face. Just his shape, as he stood irresolutely beside his car.
‘I can’t stay here anyway,’ she said. ‘It would be silly moving to a flat, just to have to move again in a few months.’
‘That’s Michael talking. I can hear him.’
Having a relationship with a mind-reader wasn’t easy. ‘It’s true, all the same,’ she said.
He came up to her then, and she could just see his face in the strand of light from the street-lamp. He was angry. ‘Was it Michael you phoned from the hotel?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He looked at her for a moment. ‘Do you mean we have Michael’s permission?’
‘No, of course not! I just told him I wouldn’t be home tonight.’
‘Well, you were wrong. Unless you’ve somewhere else to go.’
Judy’s heart was beating painfully hard. ‘What?’ she said. ‘You don’t mean that.’ She was shivering.
‘You have no intention of leaving him.’
‘I have,’ she said helplessly. ‘But not until the transfer. I made him a promise.’
‘You made me a promise.’
‘I kept it! I told him – and I am leaving. I just didn�
��t know it would hurt him like this!’
‘It was going to hurt someone,’ said Lloyd. ‘Just as long as it wasn’t you.’
‘That isn’t fair!’
‘Fair?’ he said. ‘What’s fair? Is what you’re doing fair? Go back to Michael, Judy. I don’t want this any more. Do you understand? No more. I don’t care what you do – leave him, stay with him, do what the hell you like. But don’t come back here. I’ve had enough.’
He turned, and walked away, into the flats.
Judy waited motionless by the car, until she could no longer hear his footsteps on the stairs. Numbly, she drove away, her hands and feet automatically manipulating the controls, her mind blankly refusing to face the situation. The road seemed to steer; she made signals and turned corners, but there was no will, no decision. The car stopped outside the house, and the path took her to the front door. They key opened it, her feet took her into the sitting-room.
‘Change of plan?’ asked Michael.
‘I don’t want to talk just now,’ she heard her voice saying, as she turned back into the hallway to go upstairs. She stopped, frowning, at the suitcases.
‘I do,’ Michael said. ‘I’ll be making an early start. Since you’re here, we might as well get things sorted out.’
Still frowning with the effort of regaining her thinking processes, she went back into the room. ‘Have you got a business trip?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m moving into the penthouse.’
The penthouse was the flattering name given to the flat at the top of the office block where Michael worked.
‘Ronnie and Lisa moved into their cottage today,’ he went on. ‘Shirley and I are moving into the penthouse tomorrow. I’ve got the removal people coming on Monday – it’s furnished, so we won’t need much. But I want the stuff from my study, and the hi-fi and records, and so on. Just my own things.’
Carefully, Judy searched for her wits, and gathered them gingerly together. ‘You and Shirley?’ she repeated, her voice small.
‘Oh, you don’t know her. She came to work for us about six months ago.’
Judy stared at him, sudden tears pricking the backs of her eyes. ‘Then . . . what was all that stuff about Woolworth’s?’ she said.