Lee frowned, and seemed to be thinking hard.
‘I’m sorry. It’s all so long ago. I just don’t remember.’
‘That’s fine. It’s only natural. So let’s talk about exactly what he said. Can you remember?’
‘Just that he’d killed Sharon, and dumped her in Crummock Water.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Like I say, I can’t really remember now. It’s a long time ago, and I’ve just lost my wife.’
‘Don’t worry. Did he say why he’d decided to confess to you?’
‘I asked. I do remember that. I was shocked, amazed, like. So I asked him straight out.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said that he had to tell someone, like. That it was doing his head in.’
‘And did you ask him for more details?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like how he’d killed her, or how he’d moved the body? Anything like that, really.’
‘No. No, I don’t think so. Like I say I was completely stunned. Well, it’s not every day that your best mate admits that he’s a murderer, is it?’
‘Indeed not. So what happened then? Did you tell Adam that you’d have to tell the police what he’d said?’
‘No, not at the time. But I told my wife everything the next morning, and she persuaded me that I had to do the right thing. So I did. I didn’t want to, like, I hated myself for it, but I still did it anyway.’
Hall kept eye contact with Lee, and smiled encouragingly.
‘Of course you did. Quite right, too. You had no choice. So Jack, just one other thing that you might be able to help us with, and I must admit that it’s got me stumped.’
‘Oh, aye? What’s that, then?’
‘Why did Adam say anything to you precisely when he did? Why not confess earlier? And did you know that the police had actually told him, just a couple of days before he confessed to you, that they were scaling down the enquiry? Did he tell you that?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure he didn’t say anything about that? You sound pretty sure, I must say.’
‘Aye, I’m sure. He didn’t tell me that. I’d remember.’
‘OK, fine. So why do you think he told you when he did?’
‘Like I told you, it was doing in his head in. It was the guilt that really got to him, in the end. Aye, it was the guilt. That’s what made him tell me.’
‘And did you see Adam again? After that night, I mean.’
‘Just in court, like. I’ve seen him about in town a few times over the years since he got out, but he doesn’t socialise much, doesn’t Adam.’
‘And you’ve never spoken since?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve had no contact at all?’
‘None.’
Hall stood up, and Dixon reached forward to turn off the tape, before getting to his feet.
‘Oh, yes,’ said Hall, ‘I almost forgot. In terms of the new information that I mentioned. I said we’d share some of it, didn’t I? So let’s see. First, we now have some new evidence to support the account that Adam Burke gave of the day and night of his wife’s disappearance.’
‘He said he was in bed, poorly, didn’t he? Well, I can tell you that he’d been fine at work the day before. I remember that very clearly.’
‘Yes, you and two other witnesses said that at the trial, didn’t you? He’d been fine on the Thursday. And what we’ve found out doesn’t contradict that testimony, not at all, but it does explain why Adam Burke was indisposed for the better part of twenty four hours. I can’t give you the details, but it is a viable explanation.’
‘I see.’
‘And there’s more. We now have a pretty solid lead as to the identity of the person with whom Sharon Burke may have been having an extra-marital relationship.’
‘Really? So this person could actually have been the killer?’
‘That’s certainly a possibility. You never had any ideas about who it might have been, did you?’
Lee hesitated, and Hall didn’t even exhale as he waited, and watched.
‘No, sorry. Like I said, I never really knew Sharon that well. As I told the coppers at the time, she was just my mate’s wife, that’s all.’
‘You did say that, yes. But it’s a funny thing about other people’s lives, and other people’s wives, come to that. You just can’t help but wonder what kind of relationship they have, can you? How they get on, behind closed doors.’
‘Here’s another job for, Ray’, said Hall as they were driving away. ‘Check on Lee’s wife’s cause of death, would you? Discreetly, mind.’
‘You’re not thinking that he topped her too, are you, Andy? Why would he do that, after all these years?’
‘I’m just wondering, that’s all.’
‘You should have been a policeman, mate, with a mind like that.’
Hall smiled, and listened to the new noise that his old BMW was suddenly making. It was, he decided, another one that he could safely ignore.
Hall dropped Dixon at his house, and told Ray that he needed to get off home when a coffee was offered.
‘Nappies to change, eh?’
‘Something like that, yeah. But that was a good day, wasn’t it, Ray?’
‘Good? The best, mate.’
‘Because we might be on the road to putting right a major miscarriage of justice?’
‘Aye, that, of course. But mainly because it made me feel like I mattered again, you know? Christ, but I’ve missed that. So anyway, boss, what’s the next step?’
Hall counted the points off on his fingers.
‘One, can we stand up this claim that Sharon drugged Adam Burke? What drugs, if any, were found when the house was searched? That’ll be in the file. And if the place was clean, what do her old workmates at the hospital say? Could Sharon have been nicking tranquillisers, or sleeping pills, or whatever? Then, what about this doctor? What’s he got to say for himself? Finally, and you need to be really, really careful Ray, what’s the story on Mrs. Lee’s death? I expect there was a PM, in which case Sandy Smith will be able to get a squint at the file.’
‘And she’ll know what it actually means.’
‘That too. Can I leave it with you?’
Dixon opened the door.
‘Tell you what, Andy. Why don’t I follow up on the doc and the drugs, and you have a word with Sandy. How’s that?’
‘What, are you frightened, Ray?’
‘Too right I am, mate. There’s nothing like a conversation with Sandy to dent a bloke’s new-found feeling of self worth, now is there?’
Hall really enjoyed his evening. Grace seemed extra adorable, after not seeing her for eight whole hours, and Jane listened with a satisfying level of attention as he summarised the events of his day.
‘That’s great, love’, she said. ‘Lots to go at then, isn’t there?’
‘That’s true’, said Hall, cautiously.
Jane smiled, because it was exactly the response that she’d expected. Hall wasn’t a man to ever see a half-full glass, but rather a glass that might easily fall off the table altogether, in any one of a number of catastrophic scenarios. It was just how he was made. So she waited for him to go on.
‘What worries me is that we’ll end up in a worst of all worlds situation, where we’ve got a shed-load of new circumstantial evidence that undermines the prosecution case significantly, but not quite enough to make a retrial inevitable. Imagine how Burke would feel then.’
‘Blimey, love, that’s a bit of a negative take on things, even for you, isn’t it?’
‘Just realistic. I’m not even sure if Ray can even talk to this Dr. Fleming, since his name didn’t come up at all in the original enquiry. He wasn’t even spoken to when they were doing the background checks on the victim.’
‘So you’re asking if I mind if you talk to this bloke now?’
‘I suppose I am, yes.’
‘Well, thanks for asking, love. And of course you c
an. You know the rules. So long as you don’t misrepresent who you are, or the extent of your powers, then I’m fine with it. He doesn’t have to engage with you at all, after all.’
‘Don’t you want to check with the ACC first?’
‘No way. He tried to play us, by making me your point of contact, but that also means I have the authority to make this call. And I have. So have at the bloke, Andy. I know you’ll be careful and responsible. I’ve never even known you raise your voice to a suspect.’
‘You know why that is, Jane.’
‘Aye, I know. You realised that it was the only way you’d survive in the job, if you could build a wall between yourself and the offender, so you didn’t ever get sucked in to their madness, or their badness. But you’re getting drawn right into this one, aren’t you, love?’
‘Burke’s innocent, Jane. He’s not especially likeable, he’s not even intelligent, but he deserves help. Sarah Hardcastle was right. I completely get that now. I’m going to do all I can to help put this right, or at least leave it less wrong than it is now.’
Jane sat back in her chair, and put her hand to the back of her neck. It felt as knotted as the wires behind the TV. Grace was fast asleep, and would need to be taken up to her cot in a minute. She hoped that Andy would offer to do it, so she could check her work email for one last time.
‘Good for you, love. So when will you talk to this doctor? I’m not off again for nearly a week, you do know that?’
‘I do. I was thinking of asking Ray to fly solo on that one. He’s recording all the interviews anyway.’
She smiled again, because she knew exactly what that response really meant.
’So you don’t fancy this doctor for it at all, do you?’
‘What makes you think that, love?’
‘Because you’d move heaven and earth to be there if you seriously reckoned this bloke as the killer.’
Hall smiled back. ’OK, you’ve got me. It doesn’t seem likely at all, no. The timings are all wrong, for a start. Because the affair ended about a month before Sharon disappeared, at least according to Adam. So if the doctor did it, then why wait so long?’
‘I don’t know, lots of reasons. Maybe Sharon threatened to tell his wife, or the hospital authorities, about the affair. A woman scorned, and all that.’
‘I suppose so.’
She could hear in his tone that he wasn’t remotely convinced, and it irritated her slightly. He could be a right stubborn bastard, sometimes. Always giving more weight to his own instinctive reactions than to those of anyone else. It was one of his faults as a detective, and as a bloke, too.
’I hope that you’re not showing prejudice in favour of the professional classes, Andy. I mean, even doctors can be cold-blooded killers, can’t they?’
Hall nodded. But then he’d been thinking much the same thing himself, and warning himself against it too. ’I’ll get Grace up to bed, shall I?’
Monday, 13th August
Kendal
Andy Hall couldn’t remember the last summer that he’d spent so much time in the garden. One year when the girls were very small, maybe. But now Grace was asleep in the warm shade of the house, and he decided that this was a safe time to call Sandy Smith. She’d be in the lab, and she hated being called to the phone, but he was absolutely certain that if he turned up at CSI central with Grace in tow Sandy would do nothing but take the piss. And he wanted her to focus on what he needed to talk to her about, not listen to her go on about how much Grace looked like the postman.
‘Fuck me’, said Sandy when she came to the phone, ‘I thought you were dead, Andy.’
‘Just retired.’
‘That’s what they all say. But judging by your email you’re not all that retired, are you? I bloody knew you’d never be able to give it up, mate.’
Hall agreed. It was usually the safest course of action.
‘Did you have a chance to look at that file?’
‘I did. But you haven’t gone soft in the head, have you, Andy? You do know I’m not a pathologist?’
‘I do. But you’re an expert on poisons, or am I going soft in the head?’
‘Probably. But aye, I know a bit. You have to, in my line of work. And why do you think we’ve had so many Chiefs, this last few years? They even call his office the waiting room now, did you know that?’
Hall did. ‘No, I didn’t. A bit like Grange, then. But you know they’ll keep appointing new Chiefs, no matter how many you bump off?’
‘Aye, so it bloody seems.’
Hall laughed. ‘So you know what I’m going to ask.’
‘Could this Ruth Lee have been poisoned, and it not show up in the PM?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And this is strictly off the record, right, mate? I don’t want to find myself in the box on this one.’
‘You won’t, don’t worry.’
‘All right then. Well here’s the idiot’s guide, just for you. First, the cause of death was rare. People do just peg out like that in middle age, but you’ll be pleased to know that it’s not all that common. Second, the lab ran the normal bloods and fluids, and nothing unusual showed up. But then they weren’t looking for anything really unusual, were they?’
‘So could she have been poisoned? Is there something that could give those symptoms, and not show up in the tests that they ran?’
‘Aye, it is possible, but without digging her up we’d never know. And it’s not likely, Andy, I can tell you that. Is this suspect of yours, the husband I assume, a chemist, or a doctor? Owt like that?’
‘No, he works in a factory.’
‘Well, then I’d say natural causes is a racing certainty, unless he had outside help. We’d be talking about using a couple of compounds in a very specific relationship, and at very low doses. Joking aside, if I wanted to kill someone that’s probably the way I’d do it. But it would take skill, and plenty of it.’
‘OK, thanks. But is this something that you could find out how to do online?’
There was a silence at the other end of the line, and Hall knew much better than to fill it.
‘Aye, probably. That’s a surprisingly intelligent question, Andy, but then you were always were a cut above the ordinary copper. Let me have a look. Hold on a minute.’ It turned into a long minute, but Hall didn’t mind. He was listening to the birdsong, and feeling the warm sun on the side of his face. Eventually Sandy was back. ’Aye, you could, maybe. I found a few references to what I was thinking of. But you’d need to know what you were looking for already. You couldn’t find it by accident, like.’
‘So there’s no online poisoner’s guide? Something that spells it all out in layman’s terms?’
‘Not that I could see, no. Put it this way: a normal GP probably wouldn’t know what I was talking about, if I tried to explain how it could be done.’
‘All right, thanks.’
‘No problem. So I’ve saved the Whitehaven gravediggers from making an early withdrawal, have I?’
‘You have. It was just a thought anyway, that’s all it was.’
‘Mmmm. I know you, Andy Hall. In my experience your nasty, dirty little ideas have an unpleasant habit of turning out to be right. I wouldn’t like to be inside your head, I really wouldn’t.’
Ray Dixon was enjoying his morning too. He’d left home early, and the drive through the lakes was stunning. There was no traffic through Ambleside, and just wisps of mist rising off the lake, and the sun was high by the time he topped Dunmail Raise. He stopped for breakfast at a little cafe he knew near Keswick, and bantered with the lass who served him. It was turning into his idea of a perfect day, and he still had a morning of old-school detective work to look forward to. He just didn’t know how it could get any better, until he dropped a blob of egg yolk straight onto his favourite leather jacket. The lass came and helped, but he knew that the stain would never come out properly.
He’d called the administrator at the hospital the day before, and although she
was suspicious about his identity and intentions he’d eventually won her round. Two of Sharon’s former colleagues still worked at the hospital, both as nurses, and by coincidence both were on the early-turn the next day, and would be on duty until noon. So Dixon went straight to the administrator’s office when he arrived, and explained again that he was a former police officer, and that he was involved in an investigation that the police were well aware of. The administrator still looked at him as if he was trying to sell her second-hand stethoscopes, so he suggested that she call DI Jane Francis at Kendal CID for confirmation.
The administrator took him up on his offer, so it was another ten minutes before he was following her along corridors and through the double doors.
‘You’ll find Emma and Polly in there, Mr. Dixon. You won’t keep them long, I hope?’
‘No. Just a minute or two.’
‘And your questions won’t reflect badly on the hospital, I hope.’
‘No. I’m asking about things that happened twenty years ago. You were still at school then, I expect.’
The administrator smiled, and turned to go. She should be pleased, thought Dixon, because if she was a day under fifty then she must have had an especially arduous paper-round when she was a kid.
Both nurses were in the small office off the open ward when Dixon knocked at the door. He briefly explained who he was and what he wanted, and then shut up. They didn’t have to talk to him, so he wanted to gauge how hard he’d have to push.
‘The husband didn’t do it’ said Emma firmly, ‘I always knew that. So I’ll help if I can.’
‘I’ll leave you to it, then’, said Polly, ‘I need to get round the ward.’
Dixon knew that, copper or not, a friendly witness was always more use than a hostile one, so he just smiled as Polly left.
‘Why do you reckon that the husband didn’t do it?’ he asked Emma, when the door had swung closed. ‘Do you have an idea about who did?’
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