by Braven
“I don’t see why not, if he’s properly handled, of course. Everyone has a cracking point. Even the Richard Marshalls of this world, Karen.”
Tomlinson’s eyes were narrow. His use of her Christian name might have appeared on the surface to be conciliatory, a gesture of friendship and informality, but Karen merely found it patronizing. She had little doubt that her chief disliked her every bit as much as she disliked him. She thanked God that he was due to retire the following year because she did not know how long she was likely to survive having such a tricky relationship with her chief constable. Tomlinson had been a stopgap appointment, given the job largely because of his political expertise and his instinctive knack for avoiding controversy and maintaining the status quo.
Karen had adored his predecessor, John Mason, a visionary high flier who had reached the office of chief constable at the age of forty-two but had died, completely unexpectedly, of an aneurysm five years later. However, Mason’s fresh and liberal approach to policing had not always met with approval in high places. He had opened all manner of cans of worms which nobody quite knew how to deal with after his untimely death. Tomlinson, Karen was well aware, had been almost a safety measure. This was a man who stuck so rigidly to the book it was difficult to work out whether or not he ever had a truly original thought of his own. Tomlinson was not about taking risks, he wanted every case he embarked on to be copper-bottomed even though he knew perfectly well that was impossible, and particularly so with a case that had been around as long as this one and was already so high-profile.
Karen took a deep breath. This was about control, about remaining calm and reasoned. She had not made the best beginning. She had ground to regain.
“You’re absolutely right, sir,” she began, repeating her earlier response, one which she knew full well the chief constable never tired of hearing. “Some kind of confession would be the ideal, and that’s what we are all still hoping for. I have given instructions for Marshall to be interviewed continuously, within the rules of course,” she added hastily. “But I don’t think we can rely on this man breaking, I really don’t. He’s as cool as they come, sir. I think we have to be prepared to go with what we’ve already got, and it’s certainly a hell of a lot more than we ever had before.”
Tomlinson seemed mildly mollified, but still unconvinced.
“What we have, Karen, is a pile of very old bones,” he said. “And no possibility of getting any verifiable DNA from them, I understand.”
“I am confident that our identification is already quite solid enough without DNA verification,” countered Karen defiantly.
“Well, that’s as may be. But shouldn’t we at least wait until we get word from London confirming how long ago that body was dumped in the sea?”
Karen couldn’t believe her ears. “That would mean letting Marshall go, sir,” Karen replied, rather more sharply than she had intended. “It’ll be weeks before the isotopes of those bones can be established.”
The chief constable sniffed in a derisory fashion. “I don’t even know what a bloody isotope is,” he said, with a brief laugh in the direction of James Cromby-White. This called for the kind of chummy male-bonding response which Karen noticed, somewhat to her surprise, he didn’t get.
“It’s two or more species of a chemical element that have the same atomic number and nearly identical chemical behaviour but differ in atomic mass and physical properties, sir,” rattled off Karen, who’d looked it up in a reference book the previous afternoon. She actually understood the nature of an isotope or how its establishment actually determined age no more than the chief constable did, but she couldn’t resist the self-indulgence of supplying him with her recently gleaned textbook definition.
“Oh, very well,” he muttered, and Karen was pretty sure she heard Cromby-White struggling to stifle a giggle.
“You’re always in a hurry, aren’t you, Detective Superintendent?” the chief constable continued.
Karen made no comment. She did not think a reply was called for. The chief constable was obviously in one of his obstructive moods, which was pretty much true to form, she reckoned.
“Did it not occur to you that it might be better to wait until we had all our cards in our hand before arresting Marshall?” he asked crisply.
“I considered that we had quite enough evidence already, sir, and I still believe that,” she answered. “The media were already speculating about the identity of the recovered remains and I didn’t want to give Marshall the opportunity to do a disappearing act.”
The CC grunted again. “What if it turns out that the body was only dumped in the sea ten years ago? We’ve no way of telling so far, have we? What then?”
Karen gritted her teeth. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, sir,” she persisted. “Don’t forget we also have the watch. And I consider that to be quite conclusive—”
“Ah yes, the watch,” Tomlinson interrupted, waving a hand dismissively. “A watch that could have been dropped overboard independently of the body. Nothing conclusive about it, surely, Karen? A watch that, in my opinion, I’m afraid we have yet to prove absolutely belonged to Clara Marshall.”
“Well, I think we have already done that, sir,” said Karen, forcing herself to be patient, not her foremost quality. She was, she knew, in danger of losing it. Help came from a corner she had always previously regarded as unlikely.
“I’m pretty much content with the identification as it stands, actually,” interrupted James Cromby-White suddenly. “We have a precedent with the records of a Rolex watch being used to identify a murder victim. That alone, I think, would be enough. And yes, if you accept that the watch was Clara Marshall’s, and the sale of it from that dealer in Inverness does, I feel, establish that beyond any reasonable doubt, then there has to have been one hell of a lot of coincidences for those remains to be of anybody but her. I think even the lowliest hack lawyer could convince a jury of that one. With or without any further verification, it is my opinion that we do probably already have enough to go ahead.”
Karen shot the chief prosecutor a grateful look. He responded with a small shake of his head.
“Don’t run away with the idea that I’m ecstatic about this case, Karen,” he said. “But I do think we have one at last.”
“Well, it’s your call, ultimately, James,” said Tomlinson, who liked nothing better than passing the buck. “Are you really happy to go with it?”
“I don’t think happy is quite the word, Harry. It’s a quantum leap from accepting that the remains found in that wartime wreck are those of Clara Marshall to convicting her killer. But we do know Richard Marshall had the means, we do know he went out in his boat at the appropriate time, and we have all that other old circumstantial evidence against him including the lies he was continually caught out in and the fact that almost all of his wife’s clothes and belongings were found at their house. And of course, most damning of all, certainly until these remains were found, no word of his wife or children for almost thirty years.”
James Cromby-White paused.
“So? Can we go ahead? Can I charge him?” Karen was champing at the bit.
The chief prosecutor looked directly at her. “Karen, do not think for a moment that I want Marshall to continue to get away with this terrible crime we all believe he is guilty of, any more than you do. But as you know, my foremost concern with almost any case is twofold. I have to weigh up the chances of success and then consider whether or not it is in the public interest.”
“In this case it has to be in the public interest to prosecute Marshall. It is reasonable to assume we are never going to have a stronger case, and we do not want a treble murderer cocking a snoot at the law-enforcement agencies of this country, we really don’t. But, and I must stress this, prosecuting Richard Marshall on what we’ve got will be risky. Just like Harry, although I do think we should go ahead, I really would prefer it if we could strengthen the case considerably.”
“I would like to charge M
arshall today,” said Karen flatly. “Apart from anything else, there is just a chance that if he is actually charged after all this time we might get something out of him at last. Perhaps he might be shocked into giving something away.”
Karen didn’t actually think that was very likely. But on that particular morning, when she felt so near and yet somehow so far from finally bringing Marshall to justice, she was prepared to say almost anything in order to get her way. There was a pause which seemed like forever to her. Eventually James Cromby-White hauled himself out of his chair rather more efficiently than Karen would have thought possible, and walked over to the window. When he spoke again he had his back to both Karen and Tomlinson, and he did not turn round.
“Charge him,” he instructed briskly. “But don’t stop working on it, aye? We’ll need everything we can dig out on this one. You should have your team checking out every possible angle again and again and again. OK?”
“Absolutely OK,” said Karen, grinning at his not-inconsiderable rear view. Obese though he was, she could cheerfully have given the chief prosecutor a big sloppy kiss.
On the way back to Torquay Karen felt almost exultant. She knew it was ridiculous. There was still a long way to go. But at least the first hurdle had been safely manoeuvred. She called Phil Cooper to give him the news and asked him to pass it on to the rest of the team.
“But tell ’em to keep up the pressure, Phil,” she said. “This case is far from watertight, as you know. Keep on interviewing that bastard Marshall. Harry Tomlinson says everybody has a breaking point. Let’s hope he’s right.”
“He probably is, boss,” said Cooper. “But we’re not allowed to torture our suspects, are we?”
Karen chuckled. The man always had that effect on her, the ability to lighten the moment and to make her laugh. That was what had driven her into such dangerous areas the night before, and she somehow felt she couldn’t finish the conversation without referring to that.
“How did you feel first thing, Phil?” she asked.
“Bloody awful, boss,” he replied. “How ’bout you?”
“Terrible. And I was late for the CC because of it.” Briefly she told the sergeant the story of how she had forgotten that she had left her car at the station.
“Well, you got the right result nonetheless, boss,” said Cooper.
“Thank God, and for once old fatso himself deserves a thank-you, too,” Karen replied.
“See you soon then, boss.”
“Uh, yes.”
But something else had been weighing on Karen’s mind. She decided that this was her opportunity to deal with it.
“I’ll be another hour or so though, Phil,” she continued. “Something I’ve got to do on the way. Then as soon as I get back we’ll charge the bastard.”
She swung the car through the porticoed entrance of the Old Manor nursing home, and was immediately overwhelmed by her usual reluctance to proceed any further. It was not just guilt and distress which stopped her visiting her mother more often. Nor was it really pressure of work, although that was what she used as an excuse.
Karen had an almost pathological sense of foreboding about seeing Margaret Meadows in such a place. On more than one occasion she had driven to the Old Manor, sat in her car outside for as long as thirty or forty minutes, and then just driven away, totally unable to make herself go inside.
On this occasion, however, she had an extra incentive to carry through her intentions and pay her mother a visit—all the old questions that were still bugging her, so many of which she felt her mother could have the answer to inside her poor lost head.
Karen parked to one side of the gravelled driveway, refusing, just for once, to dwell on her mother’s sorry condition. She forced herself to approach the big front doors, locked as always, and rang the bell. They couldn’t leave the doors open because some of the residents wandered, or so they said. Karen hated the place, hated herself for leaving her mother there, and hated herself for neglecting her while she was there.
Margaret Meadows was only seventy-two years old, very young to be suffering from severe dementia. But the illness had started to develop in her mid-sixties and she had now been at the Old Manor for two and a half years.
She was in the big day room, surrounded by other residents in a similar state, all of whom seemed unable to do anything with their lives anymore, other than to stare endlessly into the middle distance with blank unseeing eyes. Margaret Meadows was sitting in her wheelchair, slumped forward over one steel armrest. Karen felt another stab of guilt. She always seemed to be like that when she visited, rather than in the comfortable electronically-reclining armchair Karen had bought her. The staff invariably told her that she had either just been put in the wheelchair or was just about to be lifted out of it. Karen did not feel she was in a position to argue. She had complied with strangers in order to look after her own mother. She had in effect washed her hands of this sometimes so charming, always so vulnerable, woman whom she knew, whatever else, had always loved her.
Therefore she did not consider herself able to question much of the treatment her mother received. Or maybe that was a cop-out, too. Karen wasn’t sure. Margaret Meadows had lost the ability to walk, for no apparent reason really, but in the way that people suffering from dementia are inclined to—Karen knew that it was as if they forgot to walk as well as forgetting so much else—and the various regulations covering what nursing staff could and could not do in their daily work sometimes had rather cruel results. Karen supposed that she understood why they could not be expected to manually lift her mother around, even though Margaret Meadows was so small and slight, but she hated the thought of her being lifted in and out of her bed and her chair by a mechanical hoist. The last time she had visited, Margaret had had an angry black bruise on her forehead. The staff had explained that she had knocked her head while fighting with the hoist.
The very thought of it made a little bit of Karen shrivel up and die.
She braced herself, leaned forward and touched her mother’s arm. Margaret Meadows did not move. She had never been a big woman, but it seemed to Karen that she had shrunk considerably since she’d been in the Old Manor. Karen stroked her hair. It was still soft and pretty and, with the help of a hairdresser, retained much of its natural pale gold colour. Karen’s mother had always been fussy about her appearance, except when she was into a heavy drinking bout, of course, and Karen paid for her to have her hair done twice a week. Such a small thing, when she knew there was so much else that she should do but didn’t.
Not for the first time she noticed that her mother was wearing somebody else’s clothes. However much she complained to the nursing staff this happened repeatedly. On this occasion Margaret Meadows was wearing a blouse Karen did not recognize.
Abruptly her mother sat up. Karen noticed then that not only was the blouse not hers but that two of the buttons were missing. You could clearly see her breasts, hanging low and encased in an inadequate bra.
Karen felt the tears welling, and fought them back. She had no right to cry. This was, after all, her fault, she felt. She was not equipped to look after her own mother, and she knew it, but that didn’t make her feel any better about not doing so. It wasn’t just the demands of her job and her desire, her need even, to have a life of her own. It was more than that. She was just not able to do it.
Margaret Meadows looked up at her daughter. Her eyes were very dark, surely much darker than they had been when she was well, and very bright. She wore no make-up but her cheeks had a pink and healthy shine to them. Her body, though emaciated with premature senility, was agile, and she still contrived to move in her chair in a quick, almost youthful fashion. Often she sat with her legs curled up in positions Karen thought most people half her age would probably be unable to achieve.
“Hello, Karen,” she said. “Have you come to take me home?”
Karen clenched her fists behind her back. The tears nearly broke through. Tears of guilt every bit as much as of pit
y. She mustn’t let them happen. She had on one or two previous occasions been unable to stop herself crying, and her mother had been bewildered and upset. This was, after all, only what her mother said to her every time she visited. She should be used to it by now. But she knew she would never get used to it. The words cut through her, cold and sharp as a knife, every time.
“Yes, darling,” she lied. And she hated herself for the lies. Hated herself for making a fool of her mother.
Margaret Meadows nodded contentedly and slumped back over the arm of her chair again. Visits were all too often like that. Her mother asleep in some contorted uncomfortable position, and Karen sitting quietly immersed in her own silent guilt.
She knew that when her mother woke again, in just a few minutes probably, she would either have forgotten what she had asked or would simply ask it again. The only replies you could give Margaret Meadows were those that she wanted to hear, the ones that would keep her quiet and moderately contented. If Karen had told her that she had not come to take her home, Margaret Meadows would have been distressed. And Karen knew that as long as she told her that was what she was going to do, all would be well. She never actually made a fuss about going with Karen. Indeed, she hardly knew where she was, and when she talked about home she was invariably referring to the little North Devon seaside village where she had been brought up. All the intervening years had disappeared into the indecipherable mists within her head.
Karen knew all that. It didn’t make any of it any better. Didn’t make what she felt she had done to her mother any less terrible. She knew that she had not really done anything to her mother. She knew that she was not responsible. She knew that she was not capable of coping with her mother in this state. She knew that she had done her best. And that at least she cared, cared deeply. It made no difference. The pain was a stabbing feeling in her heart, the pain was a contraction in her gut, the pain was inside her head, and ran through every vein in her body.