Verdict Unsafe

by Jill McGown

  “When do you have breaks?”

  “I have fifteen minutes from eight until eight-fifteen, and an hour at ten o’clock. Then I work straight through. I was here at nine—you can ask any of the regulars.”

  “Do you own a semiautomatic pistol?” asked Tom.

  “No.”

  “Your fingerprints were found on the cartridges ejected by the gun that was used to murder Colin Drummond,” said Lloyd.

  The tiniest of reactions. Barely noticeable.

  “Do you have an explanation for that?” asked Tom.

  Her auburn hair made her face look even paler, Lloyd thought. He thought he probably preferred her as a blond.

  “After—” She paused, as her composure left her for an instant, then started again. “After I was raped,” she said, in her first acknowledgement of it in Lloyd’s hearing, “I was given a pistol for protection. And about … two months ago, I met someone who—who knows nothing about my past. I want to break away from it, I want to make a fresh start. Part of that was giving the gun away.”

  “Who to?” asked Tom.

  She looked at him, and shook her head, almost smiling. “I can’t remember,” she said.

  “We could continue this at the station,” said Tom.

  They could, thought Lloyd. And this would be precisely what they would be continuing. Bobbie sitting there, unbending, Tom going red in the face with frustration. He smiled when he remembered that sometimes he was more philosophical than Tom. He rather liked a challenge—and Bobbie was just that. And he had got what he wanted from her once before with subterfuge; he wondered if he could do it again. Same trick, he decided. Magicians said that if a trick worked once it would again.

  “I take it you are unable to corroborate her story,” he said.

  She frowned. “Whose story?”

  Lloyd turned to Tom. “What’s that little prostitute’s name?” he asked. “The one Judy found beaten up in the underpass?”

  “Ginny?” Bobbie asked, concerned. “Is she all right?”

  Lloyd turned back to her. “No,” he said. “She’s not. She’s had to have stitches in her forehead. She took several hard blows to the head—she’s got two black eyes and severe bruising to the mouth and face— She’s lucky her cheekbone wasn’t broken.”

  “I knew he’d go after her! I heard them in here—they said she’d helped get him caught.”

  “Who?”

  “Drummond, of course!”

  “No—who did you hear?”

  “Policemen. Just before his trial. They used to drink in here in those days.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They were lucky they’d had Ginny in custody. If it hadn’t been for her, they’d never have caught him—that sort of thing. And then at his trial, he said they’d set him up with her. I told her to be careful! I knew he’d go after her.”

  “When did you give her the gun?”

  “The day those idiots let him go!” She looked at him, then her eyes darkened slightly as she realized what she had said. She gave a little rueful laugh. “You did that to me once before,” she said, and shook her head at her own gullibility. “Ginny didn’t tell you I gave her the gun, did she?”

  “I didn’t say she had,” said Lloyd.

  “No,” she said.

  “Do I take it that you are now going to tell the complaints investigation people the truth about what happened to you that night?” asked Lloyd.

  She nodded. “I didn’t want to get Inspector Hill into trouble,” she said. “But after what he did to Marilyn—” Her hand went to her mouth, and she fought back tears. “I was frightened,” she said angrily. “And if Ginny did kill him, then I think everyone should just be grateful to her!”

  Back to Stansfield, to the station, and to lunch at the canteen, where he found Judy, unusually enough, and joined her. “Taken up eating?” he said.

  “It’s better than dying of boredom,” she said. “I’m doing follow-up visits and preparing cases for the CPS.”

  “My first theory’s bitten the dust,” he said, as he started to eat his lunch. “Bobbie Chalmers was in full view of about fifty witnesses at the time of Drummond’s demise. But,” he added conversationally, “it seems that Ginny did have a gun.”

  “Ginny did? How?”

  “Bobbie Chalmers gave her it, in case Drummond went after her. She thinks he did, and so do I. It was self-defense.”

  “He was shot in the back of the head,” said Judy. “And I heard running feet. Did he run the entire length of the underpass before dying?”

  Lloyd grinned. “No,” he said. “According to Freddie, he did nothing whatever but die. Instantly. With the first shot.”

  “Shame.”

  “Judy!” said Lloyd, shocked.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But I wouldn’t object to his having endured a little pain before he finally succumbed.”

  “Well, he didn’t.” He wished she wouldn’t say things like that. “But she could have run the entire length of it before collapsing,” he pointed out.

  “So who did I hear? Anyway, whatever happened to Ginny happened in her own house, and Lennie knew all about it,” she said. “Besides which, Ginny didn’t set him up, so why would he be after her?”

  Lloyd accepted that his second theory left a little to be desired, but she hadn’t finished demolishing it. “And someone rang him saying they had information on Rosa,” she said.

  “Ginny knew Rosa,” said Lloyd.

  “Anyone who was at that trial knows that Drummond wanted to find Rosa—you don’t actually have to have information to lure someone with the promise of it.”

  “All right,” Lloyd said, smiling. “You can work on another little puzzle in your spare time. Why shoot someone during a firework display, and then broadcast the fact over the phone? For all the murderer knew there could have been a police car a hundred yards away. In the meantime—will you come and have your birthday dinner with me tonight?”

  She looked a little guilty. “Yes,” she said.

  “Good.” Lloyd saw Case advance across the floor with food. No. No, he wasn’t coming this way, he mustn’t. He hadn’t had Judy to himself for days. He was coming this way. “Talk about anything but work,” he muttered.

  “You’ve not been watching Time-Served by any chance?” she said, instantly.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all, sir,” she said, smiling pleasantly.

  “Yes, I have,” Lloyd said, grateful as ever for her quick-wittedness. Tom didn’t have that, though he did have other qualities. “It’s pretty good, isn’t it?” he went on, as Case sat down. Judy, he was sure, wouldn’t have seen a moment of it; she had picked it because she knew he watched it.

  “Only I missed this week’s episode,” she said, moving her own stuff over as Case arranged his various dishes on the table.

  “Did you?” said Lloyd. “I’ll take that, sir.” He took the tray that Case was holding aloft as he looked around for somewhere to put it, and handed it to a passing canteen assistant with a winning smile. “That’s a shame.”

  “I wondered if you’d recorded it,” said Judy.

  “What’s that then?” said Case.

  “A serial on BBC Two,” said Lloyd. “Called Time-Served. Have you been watching it, sir?”

  “No.” He addressed himself to his meal.

  “Sorry,” Lloyd said to Judy. “I watched it when it was on— I can tell you, though, bring you up to date.” He switched to what Judy called his literary Welsh, the accent he used to quote poetry, at her request, in circumstances rather more intimate than the ones they now enjoyed. It turned her on. He had the pleasure of watching her go a little pink as he began, and she realized what he was up to.

  He enjoyed himself enormously. He was telling a story, which he loved to do, shutting Case right out, and sharing a very private moment with Judy all at the same time. He finished at precisely the same time as her lunch hour.

  “Thanks,” she said, g
etting up, smiling at him. “That was nearly as good as the real thing.”

  Touché, he thought, as he felt his own face flush slightly.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Judy said, and left.

  Case pushed his plate away. “My office,” he said.

  Lloyd could think of few ways of spending his lunch hour that he would like less; like a sulky schoolboy, he walked one pace behind his boss all the way back, all the way up, and closed the door of Case’s office when instructed, with an ill grace.

  “Playing footsie with her in the canteen isn’t a very smart move,” Case said, sitting down, not inviting Lloyd to do the same.

  “So you keep saying,” said Lloyd. “How you can look at Judy and still believe all these ridiculous imaginings is beyond me.”

  “What’s beyond you is seeing past how she looks. I’m not talking about someone who takes bribes and deals cocaine and has a villa on the Costa del Crime, Lloyd. I’m talking about cop turned crusader. More acceptable and more dangerous. Because you can’t see them coming, you can’t pick them out in a crowd. They do look like her. They are honest, and principled. But their principles get twisted, and their honesty is compromised.”

  Lloyd looked at him, frowning a little. “You rehearsed that,” he said.

  “Yes, I did. Because I realize that I offended you last night. If you’ve known her that long, then obviously it wasn’t quite the way I saw it. But I still think you should back off while you can.”

  “I know why I’m so certain you’re wrong,” said Lloyd. “Why are you so certain you’re right?”

  “I hear things.”

  “On jungle drums? By holding a glass to the wall?”

  Case smiled. “Perhaps the methods are a little primitive, but they work. I’ve got a mole.”

  “In the investigation team?”

  “No. In the Mafia.”

  Lloyd’s eyebrows shot up. “And they’re saying Judy was involved?”

  “No,” said Case. “But they are saying that Drummond was fitted up—not just for the last one. For all of them.”

  “How can you rig a DNA test?”

  “I don’t know. But at the time, they believed that Drummond had raped these women, that they were just … speeding things up. Now, it seems, another candidate is emerging.”

  “One of their number?”

  “I think he must be. I told you what I thought last night.”

  “Last night, you thought Bobbie Chalmers had never been raped at all,” Lloyd reminded him.

  “Yes, I accept that. I was wrong. But she has no more idea of who raped her than any of the others had.”

  “And who is this second candidate?”

  “I don’t know, and neither does my mole. They don’t actually hold monthly meetings. He hears things, and he tells me. And if what he’s hearing turns out to be the case, and Drummond did not carry out the rapes, then even you must come to the inescapable conclusion that he could not have given Inspector Hill that statement.”

  “If,” said Lloyd. “You haven’t met our pathologist, have you?”

  “No,” said Case, puzzled. “Not yet.”

  “He says that theories always come to grief,” said Lloyd. “It’s a good thing to bear in mind. Your one about Bobbie did, and so did mine. And your one about Judy will. You can depend upon it.”

  “Come!” shouted Case, as someone knocked on the door, only just getting the word out as the door opened. Lloyd didn’t need to turn around.

  “Excuse me, sir,” said Tom. “Guv—we’ve checked Lennie Fredericks’s Transit, and we found blood. There had been an attempt to clean it up, but he’d missed a bit.”

  “You’re sure it’s blood?” asked Case.

  “Lennie confirmed that it was blood, but refused to say how it had got there, sir. We’ve got forensic picking up the van. Lennie wasn’t inclined to come voluntarily, so I arrested him on suspicion. He’s being processed, and Ginny’s in the interview room.”

  Lloyd frowned. “Ginny’s here? Is she well enough?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I said we’d get a neighbor in to stay with her, but she wouldn’t let us. She was coming with Lennie, she said. I couldn’t really leave her there on her own—she can hardly walk. So she’s here. And we do have to question her, guv. She’s the one who was given the gun, and she’s the one who got beaten up.”

  Lloyd turned to Case. “Do you want to be in on the interviews, sir?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” said Case. “If and when they get interesting.”

  Back downstairs, Lloyd took one look at Ginny, and closed the door of the interview room again. “Has the FME seen her?” he asked Tom.

  “No, boss,” he said. “Like I said, she’s not under arrest—”

  “Then get her! I want to know that she’s fit to be interviewed— she doesn’t look fit to be out of bed!”

  Tom shot off to phone the FME. Lloyd sighed. He wasn’t angry with Tom. He was angry with whoever had done that to Ginny Fredericks. He was angry with Case for listening to what a band of disillusioned, about-to-be-disgraced, and quite disgraceful police officers were saying, and presuming to judge Judy by it.

  He wasn’t going to interview Fredericks until he’d calmed down, if he did that to that little girl— Words failed him, even in his head. But … perhaps he didn’t He went through the CID room, and knocked on Judy’s door, going in to find her filling in forms, and told her what Tom had found.

  “New theory,” he said. “Lennie Fredericks, who has told you that he knows nothing more about Rosa than her name, realizes once you’ve spoken to him that she is currency. He rings Drummond, says he has information.”

  Judy nodded, happy with that.

  “But Drummond arrives at the Fredericks residence before the due time, and gets Ginny on her own—tries to beat information out of her that she perhaps doesn’t even have. Lennie comes in and finds Drummond beating her up. He gets the gun and shoots him. In the back of the head.” He looked at her, waiting for objections.

  “Go on.”

  “Go on” meant that his theory was flawed, but had possibilities; Lloyd felt that he might be getting warmer. “They then transport him in the van to the far side of the underpass and dump him in there, shooting him again, several times, to make it look as though it had happened there. Hence, six bullet wounds, five cartridges at scene.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “They then put distance between themselves and Drummond by running back along the underpass, toward home, abandoning the Transit until a later time. That way they could say it had been stolen, or whatever, if the need arose. They were leaving the underpass, heading for home, when they heard you coming, turned and ran in the opposite direction. Lennie made it, which accounts for the running feet, but Ginny was too badly injured, and collapsed, so you found her.”

  She nodded again, looking thoughtful.

  “Meanwhile, Lennie, knowing that Ginny has collapsed, tries to get help for her by using Drummond’s mobile phone. His own is out of order, remember? He dials nine-double-nine, then heads back home in the Transit. Not hearing anything about Ginny, he is about to go to the hospital to make sure she got there, when you arrive with her. There are bloodstains in his van, so he closes the door before you can see in.”

  “Nice,” said Judy. “Neat. Except that I saw Drummond go down there under his own steam.”

  “You saw someone in dark clothes and a crash helmet,” said Lloyd.

  “Who had just got off Drummond’s bike,” said Judy. “And who took his crash helmet off.”

  “He was a long way away by then. You were seeing him through heat haze and smoke from the bonfire. Perhaps you were mistaken.”

  “And perhaps it was his twin brother,” said Judy. “But it makes more sense than your last one.”

  The FME said that if Ginny had no objection, then she could be interviewed. Lloyd sent her with a WPC, whom he tried to remember not to call WPCs, to have some lunch in the canteen first, and p
repared to interview her husband.

  Carole watched the news again. The underpass, the enormous bonfire, still smoldering even when the camera crews got there. The firemen, damping it down, the policemen looking through its ashes for the weapon, in case it had been thrown onto the fire.

  Somehow it seemed more real, now that it had been sanctioned by the TV news. It was so neat. Edited, marshalled, explained in short sentences. Not a bit like life. But it made Drummond seem much more dead.

  There was no emotion, as she watched Detective Chief Superintendent Case say that they were keeping an open mind as to the motive behind the murder; no elation, no relief, even. Colin Drummond was dead, and it was just another anxiety.

  * * *

  Ginny was here somewhere; Lennie was worried about her. She wasn’t well enough to be here.

  “No comment,” he said, to the question of why there was blood in his van.

  “Drummond raped your wife, didn’t he?” said Sergeant Finch.

  “She wasn’t my wife then,” said Lennie. “I didn’t even know her. Maybe if I had, I’d have wanted to kill him, but—” He shrugged. “I didn’t,” he said. “I didn’t want to, and I didn’t kill him. Is she all right?” he asked.

  “As well as can be expected,” said Finch.

  She shouldn’t be here. But give Finch his due, he hadn’t meant for her to come; Ginny could sometimes just put her foot down. Even with him.

  “Did he come after her again? Did she kill him?”

  “I don’t know who killed him.”

  “But your wife had a gun, hadn’t she, Lennie?”

  “I don’t know,” said Lennie.

  “Someone gave her a gun. Last Friday.”

  “Did they?”

  “Did she kill Drummond?”

  “No.”

  “You just said you didn’t know who’d killed him.”

  “I know she didn’t.”

  “How?”

  Lennie sighed. “No comment,” he said.

  He had gone back in to her this morning after Rob had gone, and had had to plead with her to let him cut the sweater off. He couldn’t bear looking at it, and it had to have been uncomfortable. He’d promised to get her another one, just like it. Tears came into his eyes again, and he knocked them away.