by Morag Joss
‘I’ve been trying to call you,’ Andrew said. ‘I’ve moved out.’
‘Oh, I see.’ She hoped that he was not going to go into the telephone call with Valerie, the thought of which still upset her to the point of nausea.
He said, ‘I’m really sorry about...earlier. She got the wrong end of the stick entirely.’
Sara would give him no help. ‘Quite. You might want to tell Valerie that I rang you about the case.’
‘Right. Only she insists on having the bike. It’s hers really. I’ll have to come and get it. I left it under that big tree in your drive yesterday.’
‘The what? Oh, I forgot all about the bike. It’ll be soaking wet. It’s still where you left it,’ she said. She walked with the telephone to the side window of the drawing room and looked down the drive to the copper beech tree at the end. As she stood rather stupidly looking at the place where the bike had been, there was another roll of thunder.
‘It’s gone,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m really sorry. I suppose I should have brought it in. No hope of getting it back, I suppose?’
‘None. Never mind.’
‘Look, I’ve got some things to tell you about the case. I think I know who might have done it. Although I can’t work out how,’ she said.
‘I appreciate it, Sara, but this isn’t a good time. Please don’t add to the theories about who. What we need is the why and how, and something that will stand up in court. Oh, bugger it. Bugger Valerie’s bike. I should have locked it. I was too excited about playing the Beethoven for you yesterday. Too excited about leaving my wife. Serves me right.’
‘Anyway, you couldn’t have ridden it home in this,’ Sara said. ‘Where are you staying now, anyway?’
‘I’m in a B and B till the weekend, then I’m moving into a flat in Combe Down. The house of one of the Victim Support clients. She’s a widow, got burgled last year. She’s giving me the ground floor. Quite chuffed to have a DCI on the premises, so the rent’s low. It’s only temporary, until the house is sold. Look, Sara, about Valerie...’
She was simply not going to listen. She said, ‘Don’t. It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry about the bike. You couldn’t have got it in the car anyway, could you? There isn’t a roof rack. Look, there are some things I’ve got to tell you—’
‘No, I’d have had to take the front wheel off. Bloody nuisance really, but of course she wanted it,’ Andrew said. ‘What I’d like is one of those great little folding bikes, you know the ones? I don’t suppose I’ll be spending money on bikes for a while now, though. Valerie’s—’
Sara broke in rapidly. ‘We’ve got to go to Fortune Park. They haven’t moved anything, have they? Meet me there. I’ll tell you why when I see you. Go, Andrew, I’ll see you there.’
ANDREW’S CAR drew up alongside hers in the car park. Through the pelting rain Sara saw his dark form loom towards her passenger door, open it and land heavily beside her, chilling the car with his large, outdoors wetness. He hadn’t bothered with a coat and his hair was dripping.
‘What’s this about?’
They walked through the rain under Sara’s large umbrella to the hotel entrance where she lingered under the porch while Andrew went in alone. The hotel manager had been warned that the DCI was looking in, but he was nonetheless surprised to see Chief Inspector Poole in wet-through, off-duty clothes, asking for the key to the flat. He’d been given to understand that the police had finished at the scene. He handed over the key without volunteering to accompany him, and watched him set off back into the rain.
As soon as Andrew had unlocked the door Sara darted into the hallway of the flat, towards the bike propped against the wall. Thinking she was about to touch it he had been on the point of calling out a warning, but she had already turned away and was saying, ‘Yes. That’s it. Come on.’ She was excited and looked about to fling her arms round him.
‘The car’s clammy,’ Sara said when they came out. ‘Let’s walk.’
They wandered under the dripping chestnut trees towards the avenue, while Sara related her conversation with Olivia. He listened, resisting the urge to hurry her. The rain did not let up and Andrew, holding the umbrella over them, noticed how the pale pink of the material had given Sara’s skin, shiny from the rain, the glow of a child’s.
‘So just where does this get us?’ he asked finally. ‘All right, the Hackett Collection was being sold off. I don’t yet see it gets us anywhere. And just what are we doing here? What’s a bike got to do with it?’
‘Remember, Olivia’s admitted that she was angry with Matthew Sawyer about being turned down by the Terry Trust. And she’s admitted that she and Paul were selling the Hackett Collection. She as good as admitted that she jumped to the wrong conclusion when she read Sawyer’s memo. If she did, it’s quite easy to see that she would want Matthew Sawyer stopped.’
‘But she didn’t admit that, did she? You said she must have misread the memo. And misreading a memo, even if she did, is not an admission of murder.’
‘Yes, but listen. She was angry and upset over the stairlift. Suppose then she gets the memo, reads it and misunderstands it, thinks there’s no time to waste and gets Paul to kill him that night. Then she has to go on as normal, of course, so she takes up as acting director on the Monday, shaken but calm, show must go on, all that. But on the Friday of that week Mrs Trowels comes back to work, and two things emerge. First, Matthew Sawyer is a more thorough administrator than Olivia gave him credit for. The memo was handwritten on plain paper when he was down in the Guildhall archive and just bunged into the internal mail. The last thing that Olivia expected was that he photocopied it at the Guildhall and sent the photocopy back to the Circus for Mrs Trowels to file in his Bring Forward file for him to follow up. So one, there’s a copy, and two, Olivia reads it again in a calmer frame of mind and sees her mistake.’
The rain pattered harder on the cotton of the umbrella and a flash of lightning, far off, was followed by thunder. ‘And that was when she nearly panicked. First of all, she feels genuinely awful. Sawyer’s been killed for nothing, it was all a stupid mistake, and so then she feels terrible about his widow and all that. So you see her grief, which was real, also stopped her being suspected. And then, because George is clearly fretting about something, she starts worrying in case he saw anything. She starts wondering if he had maybe come back for some reason. But of course she just has to brazen it out, talk about the memo as if it had all been crystal clear to her from the beginning. And the reason she asked me to supper was because she thought I was well placed to winkle anything out of George and because she guessed you might be talking to me about the case. I didn’t notice anything at the time about Paul, anything worth mentioning. I did see them glance at each other, and I thought she was just signalling him to pour more wine. I didn’t suspect her for a moment.’
‘And I’m not sure I suspect her now,’ said Andrew, shivering slightly. ‘But go on. Let’s hear how it was done.’
Sara had allowed herself to be led away from the chestnut trees and into the walled garden, where the smell of wet catmint rose around them through the cold rain.
‘Right. Olivia’s at the Assembly Rooms with Sawyer, for the opening of the alternative healing thing. Then she’s due at the Pump Room. Sawyer’s going there too, to do the rounds and lock up. And Paul’s working at the Assembly Rooms, remember. So she explains it all to him and they work out that Paul should get to the Pump Room and do it there, because Sawyer will be the last person in the building. It’ll have to be done with one of Paul’s knives. You know chefs all have their own knives. Paul’s got a set, although of course by the time I saw them, at Olivia’s supper, the one he killed Matthew Sawyer with had been replaced. So Olivia goes to the Pump Room dinner and leaves early, gets home and goes up to see the night nurse and Edwin. She leaves them upstairs and says she’s going to bed. Paul finishes at the Assembly Rooms and goes round to the Pump Room on the pretext of seeing if help is needed. He’s trying to impress Coldstreams
, remember, looking to further his career, so it’s quite natural. But I bet if you check you’ll find he’d never done it before.’
Sara looked at Andrew a little triumphantly. He looked back, thinking how wrong he had been, up until this moment, to assume that women looking unbelievably sexy in the rain was something you only saw in films.
‘He chains his bike to the railings in Abbey Churchyard, instead of taking it round to the staff entrance on Stall Street. Then he milled about helping for a bit, and just after eleven he quietly checked that the little office was still unlocked and that it was empty. James and I had both left by then, so our stuff had gone. I suppose if we hadn’t he would have found another office – there are several little rooms only used in the daytime. And he checked that the Stall Street door could still be opened from the outside and then he left by the front door, the one that always has a doorman on it. That way he says a proper good night to Matthew Sawyer, who’s seeing people off, and he’s sure that he has been seen leaving.’
‘Or could it be because his bike’s just outside, chained to the railings?’
‘Ah, but he’s only put his bike there to make that look the reason. Don’t you see? So he cycled off, but then, you see, he went back round to Stall Street and slipped back in and hid in the office. And it’s a folding bike, Andrew, so he could bring it in with him. We established that, didn’t I?’
She looked so cheeky and pleased with herself that he thought he was going to kiss her. Instead he said, ‘And he hid there until everyone had gone, is that it?’
‘Everyone except Matthew Sawyer. From the Stall Street lobby you can go down the back stairs and out to the Great Bath, can’t you? So Paul went down, probably when the last of the kitchen staff left and it went quiet. Now, he must have realised that it would be dangerous to kill Sawyer out by the Great Bath. It’s too exposed. And if there was a struggle there would be noise, and anyone outside the building on the other side of the wall would be able to hear. They could even end up fighting in the water. Just in front of the spring overflow was a better place because it was inside and also it was dark. And there’s the noise of the water.’
Andrew nodded. His hair was drying now, Sara noticed, and going a little fluffy. She wanted to touch it. She stared at the place between the base of his throat and the top of his chest, where dark hairs lay just under the top shirt button. She wanted to reach under his damp sweater and pull it over his head, hauling his shirt off with it.
Andrew said, ‘I think you’re overlooking how messy these things are. You said they hadn’t planned it before that evening. How would he deal with the problem of heavily bloodstained clothes? He could hardly walk through the streets or cycle off, even late at night, drenched in blood.’
‘He couldn’t have dealt with bloodstained clothes. He was in his chef’s clothes: checked trousers, apron and T-shirt. He wouldn’t have a change of clothes with him. He would just have a carrier bag or something for the apron and his knives.’
‘Well, doesn’t your hypothesis fall apart then? You agree he couldn’t deal with bloodstained clothes?’
‘Oh yes,’ Sara said, ‘and he must have realised it too, so he took his clothes off. He took them off and put them somewhere well out of the way. He was naked.’ She dwelt just slightly on the mental picture, and then substituted Andrew for Paul for a brief, private moment.
‘Bet he kept his socks on,’ said Andrew jealously. ‘A bloodstained footprint could have identified him almost as conclusively as a fingerprint. We didn’t find any.’
‘There’s more than one possibility there, I think. He might have kept socks on, or’ – she could not help smiling as she spoke – ‘he might have halved his carrier bag and sellotaped his feet up in the two halves. There would be sellotape in the booking office. Or he could have washed the flagstones down afterwards – plenty of water.
‘After everyone had left, he must have shouted or called for help, anything to bring Sawyer down to investigate. Sawyer would be thinking that somebody from the dinner had got drunk and passed out or something. If it occurred to him at all, he would know that there were enough people there unpartnered for someone to disappear and be assumed to have gone home. And when he investigates, maybe even leans over the railing, suddenly there’s a naked, terrifying savage behind him with a knife. A Celtic ghost, a soldier of Sulis, carrying out the wishes of the goddess. “May my enemy become as liquid as water” or something like it.’
She shuddered. ‘In fact, I hope the poor man never knew what hit him.’
‘Then what?’ Andrew was concentrating hard now.
‘When he was sure Sawyer was dead, he just left him there, hanging over the railing, dripping blood into the water that runs into the Roman drain and away. But of course he must have been covered in blood himself.’
She leaned forward under the umbrella. ‘So he went out to the Great Bath and just walked into the water and washed himself clean.’
There was silence except for the rain. Andrew said, ‘That’s outrageous.’
Sara nodded. ‘He threw the knife in too, of course. Then he dried himself off with his T-shirt, got dressed, and took the keys from the body. After that he just went back upstairs, retrieved his bike and his apron and the rest of his knives. I should think he locked the Abbey Churchyard door from the inside and left from the Stall Street door. It’s quieter. Then he just rides off.’
‘Back to Fortune Park? And what about the alarm?’
‘No, no,’ Sara said almost crossly. ‘Remember, it was just after midnight by then. Sawyer was killed around midnight at the earliest. Say it was around twenty past, he couldn’t have got back to Fortune Park, on the bike, before two o’clock in the morning. No, he went to Olivia’s. He went in by the garden gate and she would be waiting for him in the study. They left the same way, with the night nurse assuming that Olivia was in bed. Olivia drove him back to Fortune Park. That was what puzzled me, you see: she drives a Citroen AX – far too small to take a bike. I didn’t think of a folding one. It would take less than half an hour, and she would drop him off before the entrance so he could unfold the bike and cycle up to his door and arrive suitably puffed.’
‘And he arrived back there before one o’clock, which is when he would have arrived if he’d left the Pump Room at quarter past eleven to cycle home.’
‘Exactly. So his movements at the time of the murder appear to be accounted for, since he couldn’t actually have an alibi.’
Andrew pondered this for a time. They had reached the end of the rose walk, and were standing by a pretty wooden bench under an arbour of yellow climbing roses. The bench was sodden, too wet to sit down. By silent consent they moved away, back down between the dripping rose beds.
‘There is, of course, not a shred of evidence to support this.’
‘Well, no, but there are things that are difficult to explain if it didn’t happen that way.’
‘Such as?’
Sara sighed, as if Andrew were being just a tiny bit dim. Again he found himself wanting, at the very least, to kiss her. ‘Sue confirmed that he arrived at about quarter to one. She waited up for him. When he came in, she said his hair was damp.’
‘So what? It had been raining.’
‘Yes. It was raining at about ten thirty. I remember because that was when I left and I had to get across to Manvers Street with the cello and all my stuff in the rain. But it stopped about ten to twelve, didn’t it? If Paul had left to cycle home at quarter past eleven his hair would have got wet, but it would have been bone dry long before he arrived near one o’clock, even long hair like his would have dried completely as he cycled. And it was damp. And I think the reason it was damp was because he had been immersed in the Roman Bath less than an hour before, washing off Matthew Sawyer’s blood.’
‘Oh, Sara. I wonder. I wonder. And the alarm?’ Andrew murmured.
She went on, ‘I think they realised in the car that there were loose ends.’ She took a deep breath and stopped. ‘I t
hink,’ she said, ‘that Matthew Sawyer had the memo on him. When I saw Olivia and Sawyer at the Assembly Rooms they were arguing. There was a piece of paper and she was objecting to something in it. When she stalked off she practically shoved the paper at him. I thought it was all to do with his speech, that he’d ignored all her briefing notes or something.’
Andrew turned to face her. ‘And you think it was the memo.’
‘Yes. You see, I don’t think she’d briefed him at all. He hadn’t a clue; she couldn’t have. I think she spent the entire time before the opening, when she was meant to be briefing him, arguing about the Terry Trust’s decision. And maybe Sawyer wanted to discuss the Hackett memo as well, and I guess she wouldn’t let him get a word in. A pity, because then she would have realised that she had nothing to fear and he’d still be alive. At any rate, after the murder Olivia had to get back into the Pump Room, and I think it was to retrieve the memo from Sawyer’s pocket. Of course at that stage she didn’t realise that there was a copy. But she couldn’t just saunter into the Pump Room at half past one in the morning, even with the keys, could she?’
‘So what do you think she did instead?’
‘She’s your jogger,’ Sara said, walking on. ‘She went back home, went in by the study, and put on Sue’s tracksuit and trainers, because she didn’t have any of that kind of thing herself. Plenty of people jog at night, and with the hood up she wouldn’t be recognised. But there were people around, the ones the shop security videos showed. Drunks on the benches, and those teenagers. She had no option but to go round and round the town until the coast was clear. It was about twenty to three before the area was completely deserted.’
‘And then?’
‘She let herself in and went down to the body, where Paul had told her she’d find it. She got the memo. But she found another piece of paper too, the one that Matthew Sawyer took from the attendants’ room, with all the security codes on it. Then she must have wondered about another thing. Fingerprints on the body. So she heaved him over the side into the water, certain that he’d lie there for hours and prints would be washed away. Then I think she must have realised that she’d got all the security codes in her hand. Now, remember what we said ages ago about the building being locked and alarmed? Why had the murderer bothered to do it at all?’