Dead Weight

by Frank Smith

  ‘Later,’ Paget said. ‘Let him stew for a while. It sounds as if he and his wife have their stories straight at least, but he’s going to have to wait his turn. I want to hear what Bradley has to say for himself before I talk to Lorrimer.’

  ‘It’s about time!’ Jim Bradley said truculently when Paget and Tregalles entered the room. ‘My house is being torn apart, my car has been taken away, and I’m told I’m suspected of disposing of a body in an unlawful manner, whatever that means.’

  ‘It means exactly what it says,’ Paget replied. He held up his hand for silence while Tregalles proceeded to put new tapes into the recorder and enter the requisite information. ‘I’m told you have been cautioned; your rights have been explained to you, and you have been given the opportunity to call a solicitor, which you refused to do, Mr Bradley. Is that correct?’

  ‘You know it is, so just get on with it,’ Bradley growled. ‘And I don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘Oh, I think you do,’ said Paget, and proceeded to lay out the pictures of Bradley’s SUV entering and leaving Lorrimer Drive on Easter Saturday and Sunday, together with pictures of his mother’s car on River Road on the following Monday.

  ‘Doesn’t mean anything,’ Bradley said, but his tone was more subdued. ‘I mean, how do you connect that with a body? They’re just pictures of cars. There’s nothing to show what’s in them, or even who’s driving.’ He folded his arms as if that ended the matter.

  ‘Then perhaps you should hear this,’ Paget said, producing a cassette recorder and setting it on the table between them. He turned it on.

  Bradley couldn’t hide his surprise as the sound of Julia Lorrimer’s voice filled the room. Grim-faced at first, his expression slowly changed. He bent his head to listen more closely. Colour began to rise in his neck, and the muscles around his jaw stood out like cords beneath the skin by the time the tape came to the end. Paget switched it off. Head bowed, elbows on the table, Bradley ran his fingers through his hair.

  They waited for him to say something, but Bradley remained silent. Tregalles, impatient to get on, said, ‘So how do you respond to that, Mr Bradley?’

  Bradley raised his head. His face had undergone a complete change. He looked older, almost haggard. ‘She makes it sound so bloody plausible, doesn’t she?’ he said in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘And she leaves you thinking that all that stuff about blackmail really happened, and I killed Justine to keep her quiet. Oh, yes,’ he breathed, ‘Julia’s very good with stories. God knows she’s had a lot of practice over the years, believe me. But it’s still a load of bollocks from beginning to end. In fact, I never even met the girl while she was alive. I’ve seen her around a few times, but never close enough to be introduced or to even say hello.’

  Bradley picked up the pictures on the table and studied them closely. Considering his options, thought Paget. The silence lengthened.

  ‘Mr Bradley is looking at the pictures of his late mother’s car on River Road,’ Tregalles said for the benefit of the tape.

  Bradley roused himself and tossed the pictures on the table. ‘I’ve always known that Julia would do anything to help Stephen get ahead,’ he said, ‘but I never thought it would include murder, and that she would try to pin it on me. I loved her; even knowing that she would never feel the same about me, I was prepared to do as she asked as long as no one was hurt. We were doing it for Stephen, she said, and I’ll admit I went along willingly, because I didn’t think that Stephen should suffer because of an unfortunate accident.’ Bradley tilted his head back, closed his eyes and shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘I really thought I meant more to her than that,’ he said. He was silent for a few moments, and when he opened his eyes again, the contours of his face had undergone a subtle change. His tone of voice was almost light as he said, ‘I suppose this is a foolish question, Chief Inspector, but do I get any credit if I tell you what really happened the night Justine died?’

  ‘All I can tell you is that your cooperation will be noted,’ Paget told him. ‘No promises, I’m afraid.’

  Bradley nodded as if to say he’d thought as much, and had resigned himself to the inevitable. ‘So, where to begin?’ he said pensively, looking at Paget as if seeking direction.

  ‘You might start with the phone call Mrs Lorrimer made to you shortly after learning that her husband would be staying overnight in Worcester,’ Paget suggested.

  ‘Ah, yes, you know about that, don’t you?’ said Bradley. His voice was perceptibly stronger. ‘Very well, then, Julia rang me to say that Stephen wouldn’t be home that night, and asked me to come over. As she says on the tape, we’ve been sleeping together fairly regularly when Stephen’s away. He knows, but as long as we don’t actually talk about it openly, he lives with it, and we’re still friends. In fact, he has a similar arrangement when he’s in London. Tania, I believe her name is. One of the opposition members’ wives.’

  ‘Lorrimer claims he didn’t know until his wife told him yesterday,’ said Paget.

  Bradley snorted. ‘Of course he knew. In fact, he as good as told me he was glad Julia was sleeping with someone he knew. But then that’s Stephen for you. He would say that. Always conscious of the image, is Stephen.’

  Paget wasn’t surprised. ‘So you went over …’ he prompted.

  ‘That’s right. Julia and I had a drink, We talked for a while, then went up to Julia’s bedroom about quarter past eleven. We were just starting to get undressed when we heard shouting coming from down the corridor. Julia stuck her head out the door and said something like, “That sounds like Sebastian. He’s drunk and he’s brought someone home with him.” Then she told me to stay there while she went to see what was going on.

  ‘But I didn’t stay there,’ he said, ‘because I was sure that it was Stephen’s voice I’d heard, as well as Sebastian’s. I was curious, so I slipped out and followed Julia at a distance down the corridor.’

  ‘Weren’t you afraid of being seen?’ Tregalles asked.

  Bradley shook his head. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Julia was well ahead of me, and that corridor is very poorly lit at night, and with those deep alcoves every few feet, I wasn’t worried. Even if they did see me, I’d just say I was downstairs, heard the noise and thought someone might be in trouble. That wouldn’t have been too hard to believe, because there was one hell of a shouting match going on, and one of those voices was definitely Stephen’s, and it was coming from Justine’s room.’

  ‘How did you know it was Justine’s room?’ Tregalles cut in. ‘You said you had never really met the girl, so how did you know it was her room?’

  ‘I didn’t until then,’ Bradley shot back, ‘but it became pretty obvious once I could see inside. The door was wide open and Stephen and Sebastian were yelling at each other, and Justine was in the middle trying to break things up.’

  ‘And you saw all this without anyone realizing you were there?’ Tregalles shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘As I said, there are alcoves,’ Bradley said patiently, ‘deep alcoves in the corridor between the rooms; you must have seen them. They go back the depth of the rooms on either side, and if you stand well back in any of them at night, no one would know you were there unless they really stopped to look. But, yes, I was afraid I might be seen, so when Julia went into the room, I crossed the corridor to the alcove on the other side and stayed there out of sight. I didn’t know it at the time, but it turned out to be next to Michael’s room. And from there I had a clear view through the open door across the corridor into Justine’s room. Go and take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.’

  Tregalles gave a non-committal grunt. ‘So what happened then?’

  Bradley thought for a moment. ‘Julia just stood there for a moment in the doorway. I don’t think she could believe what she was seeing, and neither could I. Stephen was supposed to be in Worcester, but there he was, wearing nothing but boxer shorts; Justine was wearing some sort of short negligee with nothing underneath, and
Sebastian was fully clothed and screaming obscenities at his stepfather while trying to brain him with a bottle. In any other setting, it would have been a farce. But not in this case,’ he ended soberly. ‘They were deadly serious.’ Bradley blew out his cheeks as if he’d been running. ‘As I said, Sebastian was trying to hit Stephen with the bottle, and Stephen was trying to get it away from him, while Justine was trying to get in between to part them. I don’t think they knew Julia was there until she screamed for them to stop. And I mean screamed!’ Bradley said. ‘And that’s when it happened. Sebastian let go of the bottle just as Stephen was trying to wrench it away. Stephen’s arm flew back and the bottle hit Justine square in the face. She staggered back, whacked her head on the mantel, then fell forward and collapsed on the floor.’

  Bradley paused to slow his breathing. There was sweat on his brow. ‘It was as if time had stopped,’ he said. ‘Everyone just stood there for two or three seconds, then Stephen dropped to his knees and started screaming for someone to call an ambulance, while he was dabbing at Justine’s head, trying to stop the bleeding. Sebastian just stood there like an idiot, saying things like, “I didn’t do it. You saw it, Mother. He hit her. I didn’t do it; it was him, not me,” until Julia slapped him so hard that he almost fell over.

  ‘But it shut him up, and, from that point on, Julia took charge. She pushed Stephen out of the way and got down on her knees to feel for a pulse, then shook her head. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I think she said that Justine was dead. Stephen was panicking about getting an ambulance, and I think he was about to call one when, suddenly, there was this godawful noise bouncing off the walls of the corridor. I didn’t know what the hell it was until I saw young Michael standing in the middle of the corridor, bawling his head off, and he was heading straight for Justine’s room. He couldn’t see, of course, but he could hear, and I suppose he woke up to hear the shouting, and he was scared. Scared the hell out of me, too, because his door was only a few feet away from where I was standing, and I hadn’t seen him come out.’

  Bradley took another deep breath and let it out again. ‘The boy was almost at the door before anyone reacted, but Stephen got there just in time to scoop him up and try to calm him. The boy was crying and I think Stephen was, too. He stood there rocking the boy and sort of crooning to him. Then Julia called to him from inside the room. She said, “Take him back and stay with him until he goes to sleep, Stephen. There’s nothing you can do here.”’

  Tregalles snorted. ‘And you just stood there and did nothing?’ he said.

  ‘What could I do?’ Bradley turned to Paget. ‘You have to realize that everything I’ve told you took place within the space of two or three minutes.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Paget.

  Bradley didn’t respond immediately, and Paget had the feeling that the man was thinking carefully before he carried on.

  Bradley put a hand to his head and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Yes, well, sorry,’ he said vaguely as if finding it hard to concentrate. ‘Stephen took the boy back to his room and closed the door. I was afraid I might be caught if I stayed there any longer, so I went back to Julia’s room to wait and think about what I’d seen.’

  Tregalles flicked a questioning glance at Paget, but the DCI shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know how long it was before Julia came in,’ Bradley said dully. ‘Fifteen minutes, half an hour perhaps – I really don’t know. I remember how upset she looked as she sat down on the bed beside me and told me there had been a terrible accident, and Justine was dead. She said Sebastian had come home after an evening of drinking, with some silly idea of going to Justine’s room with a bottle of wine and asking her to have a drink with him. She said Justine told him to leave, he wouldn’t, they argued and it turned into a pushing match. Sebastian pushed her back, she tripped and fell back and hit her head on the corner of the mantel, and, suddenly, she was on the floor and bleeding. Julia said it happened just as she got there; she’d tried to revive her, but Justine was dead.’

  Tregalles groaned. ‘So now we have three versions of what happened,’ he said, ‘and I don’t believe any one of them. And you’re saying she expected you to buy a story like that? What about her husband? How did she explain his presence there?’

  ‘She didn’t,’ Bradley said. ‘There was no mention of him being there.’ Bradley looked directly at Tregalles and said, ‘Look, I knew she was lying. She didn’t know that I’d followed her down the corridor and had seen what really happened, but I was still trying to work out what to do to avoid a scandal that could destroy Stephen’s career. I mean, I knew Justine’s death was an accident; Stephen wasn’t at fault, but I also knew what the media could do with such a story, so I was looking for a way out. The girl was dead; we couldn’t bring her back, so, as Julia said, it would be in the best interests of everyone if Justine simply disappeared. And if Julia was prepared to let me think that her son had killed the girl, accidentally or not, then she was, indeed, desperate. Which is why I agreed to go along when she asked me for my help.’

  ‘You must love that woman very much to take a risk like that,’ said Paget.

  Bradley turned to meet his gaze. ‘I’ve loved her from the first day she came to work for Stephen,’ he said softly. ‘I even asked her to marry me, but she married Stephen instead. Even so, I always hoped that one day … .’

  ‘You knew she didn’t love you, but by agreeing to help her, it gave you a hold over her,’ Paget said. ‘Right, Mr Bradley?’

  Bradley chewed on his lip, but he didn’t answer.

  ‘Whose idea was it to make up the story of Justine going missing?’

  ‘Julia’s,’ Bradley said promptly. ‘As she said, it would focus attention outside the house if it was believed that Justine had been seen going off to mass on the Sunday morning.’

  At least Julia had told the truth about that, thought Paget. As for the rest …

  Bradley went on to say that when they left the bedroom to go to Justine’s room, there was no sign of Stephen Lorrimer, nor was there any mention of him as they set to work to clean things up. Michael was fussing, so Julia went into the classroom and warmed some milk, then gave him half of one of her sleeping pills, and that soon put him to sleep. Sebastian was sent to bring up as many bin bags as he could find, together with duct tape, and it was he and Bradley who had wrapped the body and secured it with tape. Once that was done, he said they spent most of the rest of the night cleaning and scrubbing and changing the rug and bedspread.

  ‘You took the body with you when you left that morning,’ Paget said.

  ‘That’s right, and I took the old rug and bedspread and all the cleaning stuff as well – in fact, I took everything remotely associated with what had happened. But it was too late to get rid of it all that night, so I chucked a bunch of things out of the freezer I have in my garage, and put the body in there.’

  ‘What did you do with the rug and the other things?’ asked Paget.

  ‘Cut them up and dropped them off in individual bags in waste bins in different places while we were doing the boot sale tour on Easter Sunday,’ Bradley said. ‘They’ll all be gone by now, of course.’

  ‘You couldn’t have had much sleep?’ Paget observed. ‘How did you and Sebastian manage to stay awake all day?’

  ‘We didn’t. When we picked up Danny – my cousin, Danny Speers – I told him we were both a bit hung-over, and asked him to drive while we nodded off.’

  ‘And you moved the body on Monday morning,’ Paget said. ‘Still the long weekend, still quiet, very little traffic about, but why your mother’s car?’

  ‘I used to belong to the boat club years ago,’ said Bradley, ‘and I knew the track leading down there wasn’t all that safe even then, so I didn’t want to chance it with the Lexus. Too heavy, whereas the Picanto is about a third of the weight.’

  ‘How did you get the body out into deep water?’

  ‘Borrowed a skiff,’ Bradley said. ‘Unfortunately, I lost control
of it when I went to tie it up again, and it drifted away.’

  ‘And you still maintain that Justine’s death was an accident? That no one struck her intentionally?’

  ‘That’s right. It was sheer bad luck that Justine was in the way when Stephen pulled the bottle out of Sebastian’s hand.’

  ‘Have you talked to Stephen Lorrimer about it since that time?’

  Jim Bradley frowned. ‘I thought I told you,’ he said. ‘Stephen has no idea that I know he was there that night. And neither does Julia know that I saw the whole thing from the very beginning. And Stephen is still acting as though he believes Justine went missing after she left the house on Sunday.’

  ‘Unless his wife told him about your part in all this,’ Tregalles suggested.

  ‘Why would she?’ Bradley countered. ‘As far as Julia was concerned, the less he knew, the better. Which was why it came as such a shock to him when her body turned up in the river, because I told no one what I’d done with it, not even Julia, and she was just as happy not to know.’

  ‘Where did the weights come from?’ Tregalles asked.

  ‘From an old set that I’ve had for years,’ Bradley told him. ‘I dropped the rest of the set at different points along the river in case someone came looking around my place.’ Bradley rubbed his face with his hands. ‘I hated doing it,’ he said. ‘But Stephen wasn’t responsible for Justine’s death; it was just one of those weird accidents. No one was to blame, and I didn’t see what good it would do to drag his name through the mud. He’s a good friend, for God’s sake!’

  Who had just told someone at the front desk that it was Bradley who had killed Justine. Clearly, Julia and Stephen Lorrimer had decided that Bradley was to be the sacrificial lamb. Some friend, thought Paget.

  He gathered up the papers in front of him and nodded to Tregalles. ‘We’ll take a break,’ he said, ‘but we’ll be back after we’ve had a word with Mr Lorrimer.’