Faithful unto Death

by Caroline Graham

  “You never know what to chuck away these—” Troy broke off. Though the DCI was facing the other way, there was that about the quality of Barnaby’s attention—a sudden rigidity in the spine, an abnormally still line to the shoulders—that reminded Troy of a Jack Russell at a rabbit hole.

  “You’ve found something.” It was not a question.

  Barnaby sighed then and raised his head and looked around the room. A room which, when he first entered it, had seemed so full of quiet innocence.

  “Yes, I have,” he said and held up his left hand. “I’ve found the camera.”

  The next interview with Sarah Lawson took place, as he had assured her it would, in Barnaby’s own office.

  He had charged Sarah in her cell on suspicion of kidnap and obtaining money by ransom and repeated the caution twice until he was sure she understood the importance of what he was saying. She seemed quite dazed and the duty sergeant explained that the doctor had left two tranquillisers at the desk which the prisoner had taken “docile as a lamb.” Offered food, it had been refused.

  Barnaby also urged, given the seriousness of the offence, the importance of having a legal representative present. Until this was sorted, he made notes and reviewed the case so far, attempting to pare away the dross of rumour, suspicion and supposition and leave bare only incontrovertible facts. He had just completed this when Troy came in with the suspect and John Starkey.

  There is a general feeling abroad that altruism is a highly perishable commodity and that solicitors only offer legal aid if they can’t get enough of the other stuff to keep the practice going. Though this was not always the case, it certainly was with Starkey. If he had been very sharp or the sort to sail close to the wind, Sarah might have been better off. But he was idle, nearly always ill-prepared in court and, as he usually had the sort of clients whose apathy and lack of expectation matched his own, complaints against him were rare.

  Some investigating officers might have been glad to have a suspect under interrogation so poorly protected but DCI Barnaby was not of their number. Sergeant Troy, on the other hand, thought it evened things up somewhat. It seemed to him the chief had already given enough ground letting Lawson dictate where the present interview should be held.

  Starkey, who wore a white-shirt which was far from pristine and had a faint whiff of Newcastle Brown about his person, already seemed to have drifted into a light trance. Barnaby started the tape, gave precise details of the present set-up and began.

  “Let me explain, Miss Lawson, what has led to the present charge being made against you.”

  He described the search of the flat in Flavell Street and Bay Tree Cottage and what had been found there. He did not point out that, until forensic reports had been completed, the evidence was merely circumstantial. That was Starkey’s responsibility. A fact which appeared to have completely passed him by.

  Barnaby then turned over three enlargements of the ransom pictures and placed them one at a time and in order of harrowingness in front of Sarah, describing his actions for the tape.

  If he had had the slightest doubt that she was involved in the kidnap of Simone Hollingsworth it would have been extinguished by her response. It was immediately plain that she had seen all of the photographs before. There was a bitter twist to her mouth as she placed them in a neat pile. Barnaby could not help noticing that the final picture was on top and that she was regarding it with apparent indifference. Such callousness provoked in him a harsh response.

  “Were these taken at number thirteen Flavell Street?”

  “You don’t have to answer that, Mrs. Lawton.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Starkey. Can’t you even get your client’s name right?”

  “What?” The solicitor bent his head and rustled his papers. His bald spot shone greasily under the fluorescent strip. “Oh, I do beg your pardon.”

  “I’ll repeat the question. Miss Lawson, were the photographs I have just shown you taken at number thirteen Flavell Street?”

  “Yes, they were.”

  “With the camera that I discovered in a wooden chest in the bedroom of Bay Tree Cottage?”

  “Yes.”

  Troy, who hadn’t realised he had been holding his breath since the question had first been put, now let it go. A lengthy, jubilant exhalation. In one day—no, tell a lie, half a day—they had moved from floundering in a desert of ignorance getting practically nowhere to being home and dry.

  He turned to glance at the chief—they were sitting side by side—expecting to see the same triumphant flush on those brawny, slab-like cheeks that he could feel warming his own. But Barnaby’s profile was motionless. Cold and judgementally grave. A chill seemed to emanate from the large frame so close to his own and Troy then began to chill out in his turn. Though not an imaginative man, he began to comprehend in a more sharply focused, fresh and vivid manner how cruel were the actions to which Sarah Lawson had just confessed.

  John Starkey also seemed to be waking up to the fact that his client was in the process of laying herself open to a very long jail sentence. He began to close the stable door.

  “You know you’re allowed to remain silent—”

  “Miss Lawson is fully aware of that fact,” said Sergeant Troy. “She has been properly cautioned. Twice.”

  “Well, um, Sarah, I advise you not to say anything else for the—”

  “What does it matter?” She drew one long, shuddering breath. “What does anything matter? It’s all over now.”

  Barnaby stared at Sarah across the desk. She was sitting very still, her head bowed, her face expressionless. She looked even more haggard than when they had first talked. Her skin was as thin and fine as tissue paper and the bones at the base of her neck stuck out like sharp little wings.

  “Where is Mrs. Hollingsworth now, Sarah?”

  “Don’t know.” It was little more than a whisper.

  “Is she still alive?”

  “I . . . I doubt it.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “On Thursday. I went over—”

  “Hold on, which Thursday are we talking about?”

  “The day she disappeared.” Her voice became crowded with agitation. “If only she’d done exactly what we said, none of this would have happened!”

  “Who’s ‘we’?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can’t?” asked Sergeant Troy. “Or won’t?”

  She did not reply and Barnaby did not press the point. The vital thing was to keep the information coming, not dam up the stream for the sake of a single detail. They’d fish it out sooner or later.

  “I think you’d better tell me about this from the beginning, Sarah.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Well, how the whole thing was set up, for instance. And why.”

  “We were desperate for money. My . . . friend—”

  “You mean your lover?” said Troy nastily. The middle classes could be so mealy-mouthed.

  “He’s being pursued in the courts by his ex-wife. Been forced to sell the house and, because she found a really sharp lawyer and there are two children, he got next to nothing. I would have been happy for us to just live at the cottage, we’d have managed, but he’s used to . . . well, finer things.

  “Then one day—this was before she had started my classes—Simone invited me round for coffee. She was always asking people to the house, looking for company. I must have been miles away and said yes without thinking. It was like spending time with a silly child in a toy shop. She ran around chattering away, showing off all her ghastly clothes and make-up. Then she produced this jewel box and flashed the contents about. There was a diamond engagement ring that apparently had set Alan back sixty thousand pounds. It was just so . . .”

  “Gross?” Troy had a quick fantasy of pretty, goldenhaired Simone prancing innocently about her bedroom showing off her trinkets.

  “I told—” She stopped suddenly, glancing across at Barnaby. �
�Sorry, it’s not that I don’t want to carry on. But it’s difficult.”

  “Look. You’re going to be talking about this man for some considerable time and on more than one occasion. It’ll be simpler all round if you make up some sort of name for him.”

  “That seems . . . Oh, well,” she shrugged, “why not? Tim then.”

  “Right. You told Tim about Simone’s collection of jewellery?”

  “Not in the way you’ve made it sound.”

  “Leading the witness.” John Starkey briefly broke the surface of his subterranean doze.

  “It was in passing. During general conversation. We were simply catching up on what we’d been doing since the last time we met. When I described the scene at Nightingales Tim said, ‘A fool and her knick-knacks are soon parted,’ and laughed. Nothing more was said about it at the time. Then, a few weeks later, Simone started coming to my classes.

  “I didn’t tell you the truth about our journeys to and from the college. They weren’t straightforward. The very first time she attended, Tim met us as we left the building. Didn’t tell me he was going to, just turned up. She was smitten by him straightaway. People were. It wasn’t just that he was very attractive. He had a gift, an air about him that made you think he was on his way to a really wonderful party and that all you had to do was stretch out your hand and he’d take you along.”

  “A useful accomplishment,” said Barnaby.

  “You make it sound calculating. It wasn’t like that.”

  It sounded exactly like that to Sergeant Troy. He thought, of all the tricks a con artist could draw on, this sounded like one of the neatest. The guy sounded like the Pied Piper in Talisa-Leanne’s picture book. Except that he was one of the rats.

  “We went for some coffee and stayed so long I only just got Simone home in time. All she could talk about in the car was Tim. Just one meeting and he had her in the palm of his hand. I was very upset of course. I rang him that night.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I’m not prepared to tell you that.”

  “All right. What happened next?”

  “He said he had a wonderful plan, the answer to all our troubles. We would be able to buy a house—he mentioned Ireland—and live together. No money worries. The thought of it—to be able to sculpt and paint all day. And, in the evening, to be with him. It seemed too good to be true.”

  “And did he tell you what this plan was?”

  “Not then. He just said that, at the beginning, it would involve Simone and, however things looked, I was to trust him.” Her eyes brimmed with tears, some of which splashed down on to her cheeks. She brushed the moisture away with the back of her hand and wiped it thoughtlessly on her skirt. “The next week Simone asked if we could go in an hour earlier than usual as she was having lunch with Tim. I could see that she didn’t expect me to be present. After class we all went for coffee again and she was all over him. This routine happened every Wednesday until, as you know, Alan stopped her coming. But by then she was hopelessly in love with Tim who had no trouble at all persuading—”

  “Hang on, hang on,” said Barnaby. “I don’t want the fast track Reader’s Digest version. I want it unexpurgated and a step at a time. First, at what point did Tim tell you what he was actually planning?”

  “When he asked me to sort out a flat. It’s cheaper, going through the college. Also, though this didn’t strike me till later, he didn’t want to do the rounds of estate agents and get his face known. The idea was that Simone would ‘disappear’ and then ransom demands would be made. She was sure Alan would do anything to get her back and, as things turned out, she was right. I’ve never seen anyone so excited. She was like a captive bird watching someone coming to open the cage door. Of course she believed that she and Tim, after they’d got as much as they could from her husband, would be going away together.

  “As fellow conspirator I was naturally privy to it all. She was for ever popping into the cottage going on about how exciting it was, plotting and planning. Discussing the latest twist or turn.”

  “You say ‘plotting and planning,’ ” said the Chief Inspector, “but from what you say all the plotting seems to have been done by other people. What was left for Mrs. Hollingsworth?”

  “Oh, nonsensical dramatic flourishes. She decided when she was running away that it would be fun to be disguised. So she put a wig and some dark glasses in her handbag. That sort of thing. And wore an outfit with a little reversible coat which she could turn inside out.”

  “I see.” No wonder Simone had been so long in the Ladies at Bobby’s department store. Barnaby tried not dwell on the wasted man hours checking on the sale in Causton of pink jackets.

  “Didn’t you find that a problem, Miss Lawson?” asked Troy. “Listening to her burbling on while all the time the shakedown was for you and your fancy man.”

  “It’s not as if her feelings were deeply involved. She was a silly, spoiled woman and very shallow. And I assumed once we’d got enough money, she would simply be returned to her husband who would be so overjoyed to have her back he’d spoil her twice as much.”

  “But something went wrong?”

  “Yes, from the very beginning. She was supposed to take the two thirty market bus to Causton and the four o’clock from there to High Wycombe. Tim, who had already moved into the flat, was meeting her at the bus station. But, I suppose unable to wait to begin her ‘great adventure’ as she kept calling it, she caught the twelve thirty instead and took a taxi to the flat.

  “It was so like her that we should have anticipated it. Anyway, knowing there might not be another chance of being alone together perhaps for some weeks, Tim and I had taken advantage of this last opportunity and gone to bed. The street door wasn’t locked and she just walked in on us.”

  “Holy Moses,” said Sergeant Troy.

  “Simone was devastated. She stood staring for a minute then tried to run away. Tim grabbed her, told me to clear out and bundled her into the kitchen. I got dressed and left straightaway.”

  “So what on earth was the point of then turning up at Nightingales in the afternoon?”

  “For the same reason that Simone didn’t cancel her hair appointment. We wanted to put the idea in people’s heads that she had definitely expected to be back home at that time. In other words, that she was not absent of her own free will. I thought, as I had no idea what was happening back at High Wycombe, I’d better just carry on.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Lawson, I really don’t see the rationale behind all that. What on earth did it matter what people in the village thought?”

  “I suppose we saw it as a check against the idea of collusion, just in case the news of the kidnap somehow got out.”

  “Which did actually happen.”

  “Yes. Alan did everything we asked. Except burn the photographs.”

  “What about the jewellery?” asked Barnaby. “There’s a necklace missing as well as the engagement ring. I’d have thought that would indicate collusion all right.”

  “That was entirely Simone’s doing. We had no idea she was bringing them.”

  “A nice little bonus then,” said Sergeant Troy. “Put them in his pocket when he scarpered, did he, our Tim?”

  Sarah Lawson did not reply but became so pale Barnaby thought she was going to faint. He asked if she would like some water and when she said yes, decided this might be a good time to take a break.

  “Get some tea sorted, would you, Sergeant? And sandwiches.”

  Troy pushed his chair back and attempted to conceal his contempt that this latest diversionary ploy by the suspect had born such a quick result.

  “Try not to disturb our legal eagle as you go. I think he’s hibernating.”

  “Milk and two sugars,” said Starkey as Troy moved towards the door. “And I prefer corned beef and pickle. I hope, Chief Inspector,” he turned the desk fan to an angle more advantageous to himself as the door closed, “that the full extent of my client’s cooperation will be dr
awn to the court’s attention at the proper time.”

  “Rest assured,” replied Barnaby, turning the fan back. “Although, if you can’t soon talk her into eating a few square meals, I fear there’ll be nothing left of her at the proper time.”

  Sergeant Troy brought, as well as the glass of water, tea, ham sandwiches and four Wagon Wheels. All the men tucked in although Sarah would not be persuaded. Starkey ate three of the biscuits.

  After about fifteen minutes Barnaby restarted the tape and the interview continued. To Troy’s disappointment the DCI did not pick up where he himself had left off, on the matter of Mrs. Hollingsworth’s jewellery.

  “So, Miss Lawson. On Thursday the sixth of June things were left in a rather fraught state at Flavell Street. What did you do then?”

  “I stayed at Bay Tree Cottage till I couldn’t bear it any longer. Tim wasn’t able to tell me what was happening, you see, as there isn’t a phone at the flat. I drove back about eight o’clock that same evening. When I knocked, he opened the door. The place was very quiet. There was no sign of Simone. Tim took me into the kitchen. He said he had got the first letter and a photograph off to Alan. I wanted to—”

  “Just a minute. If he was able to leave the flat to post a letter, why couldn’t he ring you from a public box?”

  “Can I just tell this in the order that things happened? Then you’ll understand.”

  “All right,” said Barnaby. “So, you’re both in the kitchen.”

  “I asked if I could see Simone but Tim said she was asleep and not to go into the other room. I should have been more persistent. I knew, after what she’d discovered earlier, she wouldn’t cooperate willingly. But then I told myself that somehow he had managed to talk her round.” She looked back and forth between the two men, urging them to see the inevitability of her actions.

  “He told me to stop worrying, go home and make sure I was seen round and about the village over the next couple of days. And that he would ring me after the weekend. Tim did this on Monday afternoon and said that Hollingsworth was paying up. He didn’t give me any details. Just that he was collecting the money that same night and I should come to the flat around one o’clock the next day and help him count it. I asked about Simone, if she was all right and how he was going to, well, hand her over but he cut me short and rang off. When I arrived on the Tuesday he’d gone. There was no sign of Simone and her handbag was missing. I waited there for an hour or two. But I knew, in my heart, he wasn’t coming back.