by Janet Neel
‘I was angrier with Alan than with Dad. I mean, if he’d really loved me, Dad wouldn’t have been able to bribe him, would he?’
‘Perhaps he did love you but didn’t want to get married?’
‘Francesca’s like that, of course.’ Sally blew her nose on his handkerchief and looked at him with her father’s bright brown eyes.
‘Yes,’ McLeish said, as evenly as he could.
‘She’ll marry you in the end though, if you hang on. She’s not like Alan who only wanted his bloody mountains. I know it wouldn’t have worked.’ She blew her nose again. ‘Who killed him, do you know yet?’
‘No. But we’ll find out, we mostly do in the end.’ He patted her shoulder again, watching her to see that she was calm enough to be left. ‘A young man of mine is in with Nigel, but there’s no reason you shouldn’t go and see him.’
‘I’ve seen him – I’ve been here for some time. Jim is picking me up on his way back from the airport with Mum.’
‘Your mother’s been abroad?’
‘Only to Paris for the day. We – Vernons – have a small operation there. It’s really a sales office.’
Well, that explained why Dorothy Vernon had not been produced for him to interview, but since he was on the spot, he would wait. For hours if need be. ‘What time are you expecting her?’
‘Ten minutes ago. The plane may be late.’
McLeish felt rather than saw Davidson shift position and looked up to see Mrs Vernon trotting down the corridor.
‘Hello, darling. Ah, Chief Inspector. I understand Nigel has been conscious. Can I see him?’
‘Of course, you can, though he was asleep when I looked in. There’s a man on duty in the room.’
He followed Mrs Vernon down the passage, determined not to lose her and stood behind the two women as Dorothy Vernon moved quietly to the edge of Nigel Makin’s bed and looked down at him. Makin was sleeping uneasily, snoring slightly, looking older than his thirty-five years and very tired, the mousy brown hair, which he normally kept combed forward, receding from the forehead.
As they watched Makin’s eyes opened wide in sudden alarm, and Dorothy Vernon said quietly that it was Dorothy and Sally Vernon, that he was in a hospital, and he was not to worry. He relaxed, intelligence returning slowly to his face, and focused on Sally. ‘You all right?’ he asked, faintly, and she moved forward to touch his hand.
‘I’ll be in the corridor, Sally,’ Dorothy Vernon said quietly and turned to leave, starting slightly as she saw McLeish standing behind her. He followed her out and edged her down to a quiet part of the corridor, Davidson still hovering.
‘I’ve been hoping to have another talk with you about last night,’ he opened firmly. If he had not been watching he would have missed it, he thought, the tiny, instantly controlled tightening of the ringed fingers on her handbag and the swift sidelong glance at his face.
‘Of course, Chief Inspector. I am a little tired now, but I would be happy to see you tomorrow.’
‘There’s a man in Wormwood Scrubs, Mrs Vernon, who isn’t enjoying it very much. If your evidence helps us to decide to let him go, the sooner that happens the better.’
‘I don’t think anything I have to say is going to help to let Michael Hamilton go free, Chief Inspector.’ She was holding herself as tense as a wire spring.
‘You must let me be the judge of that.’
The look he got was not unmixed with respect and he followed up his advantage. ‘Can we go and sit in your car? If that won’t do, then I have facilities at Edgware Road police station.’
She followed him meekly to the big car, telling a surprised driver that he could go and get himself a coffee. McLeish sat sideways in the corner of the back seat, stretching his legs gratefully in the generous space.
‘You told us last night that you went straight from Harrods to dinner in Clarendon Road. We have a report from a CabCall driver who took you to the Western Underpass site at seven-fifteen.’
‘I didn’t realize he knew me.’ Dorothy Vernon was fidgeting with her gloves, visibly thinking. ‘I decided I wanted to talk to Nigel Makin about his investigations. But when I got there I discovered I really did not have time for a proper talk – I was going to make myself late for dinner – so I just caught another cab back to Clarendon Road.’
‘How long did you wait before changing your mind?’
‘Oh, not long. A few minutes.’ She would not meet his eye and McLeish regarded her with exasperation. The evidence of the CabCall driver placed her at seven-fifteen at the gates of the Western Underpass site. The friend with whom she had been dining some ten minutes from the site was equally confident that she had not arrived until eight-thirty. That left an hour unaccounted for, and McLeish considered seriously whether Dorothy Vernon could have exerted sufficient weight to cosh Nigel Makin. He looked warily at her handbag before deciding reluctantly it was just not the right shape. A tyre lever, or something of that ilk, Forensic had opined. He tried again.
‘Mrs Vernon, if you can’t offer a more satisfactory explanation than you have, I may have to get a warrant.’
‘Oh, don’t be silly.’
McLeish blinked at her and she looked him in the face, flushed and irritable. ‘You’re an intelligent young man, you must see that whatever Nigel was finding out, he was doing it for us, for Vernon Engineering. Why would I want to stop him?’
‘I really don’t know. Unless, of course, he was finding out something you would rather not know.’
Dorothy Vernon fixed him with a singularly bleak look. ‘I don’t believe in ignoring unpleasant things, Chief Inspector. You’re better off facing them, they’ll do less damage that way. I came to talk to Nigel, then I realized I was short of time.’ She paused. ‘But that wasn’t the only thing that changed my mind. I saw Michael Hamilton crossing the site – he went through the gate just as I arrived and why it wasn’t locked as it should have been I do not know. I didn’t want to talk to that young man, I don’t like his sort, so I decided not to bother.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Seven-thirty. I looked at my watch.’
McLeish, sitting bolt upright, felt as if he was trying to pick up an eel with his fingers. ‘Why did you not tell us all this, Mrs Vernon? What were you doing that you didn’t want us to know about? It’s your own site; you had every right to be there.’
She smiled at him tranquilly. ‘I know that, but Robert would have been angry with me. And you’d arrested Michael Hamilton anyway, so I didn’t need to tell you.’
McLeish sat back in the corner of the big Rolls, seething but clear on one point. This respectable church-going middle-aged lady was lying her head off, for reasons that were totally unclear.
‘Oh yes,’ he said calmly, not bothering to conceal his scepticism, ‘just go over that again, will you, slowly, from the moment when you got out of the cab.’
She hesitated and looked at him sideways.
‘Come to think of it, I’d rather have my sergeant take the notes, and I’d rather be at Edgware Road,’ McLeish added, pleasantly. ‘So if you don’t mind, we’ll just do that. You’re entitled to have a lawyer present, of course.’
But three hours and a formal caution later, he had to give her best. She had stuck, undeviatingly, to her improbable recital in the presence of a worried senior solicitor, who had attempted one or two interventions before being told sharply to shut up and let her get on. Robert Vernon, unfortunately, was dining out at the Mansion House or McLeish would have welcomed him to the sight of his lady wife lying like a flatfish. Sally had been unceremoniously banished home to rest, and McLeish felt wearily two hours later that he had no alternative but to send her mother home too, after she had signed, in small careful handwriting, every page of what he was confident was an almost entirely mendacious statement.
17
Dorothy Vernon woke up at six o’clock the next morning to daylight and got quietly out of bed, glancing across to the other side of the room where her h
usband still slept peacefully. There was no one like Robert, she thought, not wholly admiringly, for being able to sleep soundly through any crisis. He had that supreme gift for a successful man: once he had done everything he could, he stopped worrying and let matters resolve themselves as they would.
She hesitated a minute; for most of the forty years she had known him all their problems had been shared and discussed, but this one would have to be thought out alone. She sat down at the table in the pretty breakfast-room, telling a still-sleepy Luigi not to bother with an early breakfast for her, just to give her a cup of coffee and get on with his work. She stayed there for a full hour, slowly drinking two cups of coffee and going carefully over every point in her plan. By the time her husband got up to Luigi’s breakfast, Dorothy had decided what to do and could read, with her customary attention, the Telegraph, the Financial Times and, since it was Friday, the Construction News.
She looked over the last paper, a neat, pretty woman with her pink housecoat and carefully arranged hair. ‘I have to do some shopping myself this morning, Robert. I don’t want the car, it’s just a nuisance round Harrods, I’ll take a cab. You’re away to Bedford?’
‘Yes. It doesn’t matter when I get there. Would you rather I stayed with Sally?’
Dorothy Vernon hesitated, disconcerted by realizing she had actually forgotten about her daughter.
‘She could do some shopping with you – might cheer her up.’ Robert Vernon, without one shred of evidence to substantiate the theory, still believed that shopping was therapeutic for all women, and Dorothy Vernon considered him with love and exasperation.
‘She doesn’t like shopping any more than I do,’ she pointed out. ‘And she hates Harrods. I’ll go up and see how she is.’
She was surprised to find her daughter, looking pale and tired, out of bed and buttoning up her housecoat, identical to Dorothy’s but in blue. ‘I thought I’d go and see Nigel, then go back to Spring Gardens today, Mum,’ she said, watching her mother in the mirror to see if she was going to object. Dorothy sat on the end of the bed.
‘I’ve got something I need to do this morning, but if you can wait till the afternoon I can come with you. I don’t think you ought to go back there and unpack by yourself, not when you’re still a bit shaky.’
‘I thought it was this afternoon you and Dad were signing off Bill’s settlement?’
‘Yes, but I’m not needed. I thought we’d explained, Sal, that it’s only your father’s shares which are going to Bill. He gave me a lot when we married, and I would have been happy to put some of those to it, but he wouldn’t let me. So it’s your father’s signature that’s needed, and I think it’s better if I’m not even there.’
‘Dad wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for you.’
‘You’ll not lose by it, Sal.’
‘That’s not what I meant, Mum. I think it’s fair that Bill should have what he’s getting and there’s plenty for me. But you got Dad to do it.’
‘That’s why I’d rather not be there. Now, can you wait till afternoon?’ She looked with pity at her daughter whose blonde hair was looking yellow and limp, sticking to her scalp. ‘Have some breakfast and pop back into bed with the papers until I get back. Then we can go and see Nigel together, if everything’s all right.’
‘You mean if I’m all right?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ Dorothy Vernon, disconcerted, looked for reassurance at her strong, stubby hands and the pale diamond rings which she put on automatically with her housecoat every morning of her life.
‘I’m all right now, Mum. I’ll go and see Nigel this morning, and you can come with me to the flat, later?’
Dorothy yielded, and kissed her daughter.
‘I want to be there by nine o’clock, so I must get ready now.’ She rustled away to get dressed, ringing for a cab as she went.
Mickey Hamilton had also been up early, woken at six for the routine of ‘slopping out’. Although anxious about his cell-mate, a silent and apparently deeply depressed West Indian in his early twenties, Mickey was not much physically affected by the communal living and general squalor of the routine. Anyone who had been stuck for two days at 20,000 feet with three companions in a tent in a blizzard, unable to move more than a foot in either direction for fear of falling off the narrow ledge, was inured both to squalor and the close proximity of other people. Emotionally, however, he was desperate, and greeted the unexpected appearance of a pale, irritable John McLeish with incredulous joy.
‘I’ve not come bearing gifts,’ McLeish said grimly, and Mickey’s shoulders slumped. ‘You were seen heading towards the Section I offices at seven-thirty the night before last, and I want to know what you were doing. Sergeant Davidson here will take notes, and you’re on a caution already.’
Mickey sat down heavily and looked at him, appalled. ‘Seven-thirty? But I never went back to the site, or the offices – I mean I picked up my pay around six and Bill Vernon and I had a drink, then I went to the caravan about seven-fifteen. I got packed up and left and then I realized I’d forgotten to check the Calor gas was turned off – I told you, that’s what I was doing when you saw me. Who says they saw me at the site?’
‘Mrs Vernon, who was around the site at seven-thirty. She says she saw you going towards the Section I offices.’
‘Well, she’s wrong and that’s all there is to it. Unless she got completely muddled and saw me around six p.m. when I was there.’ Mickey looked desperately at McLeish’s unyielding expression. ‘I mean, could her watch have been fast or something?’
His voice trailed away and McLeish said flatly that the time of Mrs Vernon’s arrival had been confirmed independently. He persevered for another fifteen minutes but could not shake Mickey; despite the fact that the younger man was in a panic he was totally unyielding on the question of his whereabouts. McLeish, remembering his own reservations about Dorothy Vernon, sat back and gathered his concentration, mentally chasing an elusive reference, while Mickey Hamilton desperately denied being on the site at the critical time.
‘All right,’ McLeish said, reluctantly, abandoning the attempt to get at the momentary flash of an idea and reverting to the other questions he had come to ask. ‘This lorry fiddle and the bloke on site who signed for the loads that never arrived: who was he? You say you don’t know, but you probably do if you think about it. I’m told he’d have to be staff. I mean, who did Alan know who was staff and around on both those dates?’
Mickey looked at him wearily. ‘Alan had mates all over the place. Wherever you went, people said hello to him, and he turned out to have worked with them before. There must have been dozens.’ He stopped, and his brain perceptibly began working. ‘The site log will tell you who was there – I mean, it’s a rule. Staff don’t clock on but there’s a list kept of who was there – not the hours they worked, of course.’
‘Do you know where the logs are kept?’
‘I assume in the agent’s offices.’
John McLeish’s heart sank. Of course in the agent’s offices, where else? Leaving Davidson with Mickey he found a telephone, managed to get hold of Jimmy Stewart, and took ten minutes to establish that the site log had gone missing the day before yesterday. Nigel Makin had been the last person to have it. McLeish set a similar routine in motion to find out what had happened to the relevant Barbican log, but he knew already he wasn’t going to find that either.
An hour later and four miles away in St Mary’s, Nigel Makin woke up dizzy with headache and a sick taste in his mouth, and kept his head very still while he worked out where he was. His eyes focused on the end of the bed where a small committee was apparently waiting for his attention.
‘John McLeish,’ he said, still dazed, to the biggest of the three.
‘Yes, and I’m only allowed a minute. Take it slowly and don’t worry at all if you can’t remember. Did you have the site logs for the Barbican and the Underpass?’
‘The site logs?’ He fought for clarity.
&n
bsp; ‘We can’t find them, you see,’ the big man said gently.
‘Yes, I did.’ He gathered his breath. ‘Nothing there. Six people there both times, but people you’d expect: Bill Vernon, John Williams and Pete Murray, all QSs. Two engineers, Jennings and Patel, and Sally, who is their apprentice. No one else in the log on both sites.’ He felt his eyes close, and roused himself. ‘Sally, is Sally here?’
‘Yes, I am.’ Makin felt her hand touch his and closed his eyes again gratefully.
‘No more, Chief Inspector,’ the consultant warned, quietly.
McLeish nodded, got himself out of the room fast and silently, and leaned against the corridor wall. Davidson came towards him, glancing at his watch – and McLeish straightened up, suddenly understanding how and why Nigel Makin had been attacked.
‘Come on,’ he said, urgently. ‘Where’s the car?’
‘Where we left it, guv. Where are we going?’
McLeish told him as they half walked, half ran through the long corridors, people turning to watch them. Once liberated from the constraints of the hospital they raced for the car, and as Davidson switched the engine on, the phone rang. Michaels was on the line. ‘Sir, CabCall rang in. I’d asked my brother-in-law just to let me know quietly when they were asked to take the Vernon family anywhere. They took Sally Vernon to St Mary’s an hour ago – oh, you know that – and Mrs Dorothy Vernon to Hornton Street in Chelsea just after that.’
‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Sir? I’m sorry, my brother-in-law only just came on.’
‘Not your fault. Get back to them, Michaels, and tell the driver not to let Mrs Vernon out of the cab if he hasn’t already dropped her. Tell him to get lost in traffic, anything. Call me back.’ He slammed the phone down, and glanced up. Davidson was doing well over the speed limit. ‘Hornton Street, Bruce, off the King’s Road. I’ll check the number.’
‘I have it.’
McLeish was dialling as he spoke and after an agonizing five minutes found his man at St Mary’s.