by Jill McGown
The inspector listened gravely to the speech, jotting things down in her notebook. ‘Can I ask you about this morning?’ she said.
Rachel nodded. She felt better now. Even the pendant didn’t seem to matter so much. And maybe it was at the hotel. ‘I came home just after ten o’clock,’ she said. ‘I went into the living room, and—’ She broke off, took a deep breath. ‘And it was like a furnace, and there was this awful smell, and he was lyin’ there in all that blood.’ She felt the panic again, but she controlled it. ‘I rang the police.’ She shrugged. ‘That’s it.’
‘I understand the front door was unlocked – was that usual?’
‘Yes. More often than not stands open in the summer. Well – you saw yourself, when you were here. But it was closed.’
‘Does it get locked at night?’
Rachel nodded. It was the last thing Bernard did before he came upstairs. She could hear the heavy old-fashioned lock being turned, feel the tension in her body that that sound had created. ‘He changed the tape and shuttered all the downstairs windows and locked the door ’fore he come to bed,’ she said, with an involuntary shudder. ‘ Half ten. When the news had finished.’
‘I’m sorry if this is difficult for you.’
Rachel shook her head.
‘You found him when you came home, you said. Can I ask where you had been?’
Rachel gave her a severely edited account of her weekend in London, leaving out any mention of Curtis. Then she had to go through what she had found when she got into the house. She hadn’t touched anything but the phone, and the phone book, she said, in answer to the inspector’s question. The alarms had been on, the shutters down and locked. She had used the light from the living room to do her phoning.
‘Was your husband on any sort of medication?’
‘No,’ said Rachel. ‘He was as healthy as an ox.’
Inspector Hill looked up from her notebook. ‘Do you know what your husband kept in the safe?’ she asked.
Rachel shook her head. ‘Just papers and stuff.’ He never closed it, so I don’t think he had nothin’ worth much in there. You can check it, if you like – look at anythin’ you want, anywhere.’
‘Thank you. And … this may sound unimportant, but what newspapers do you have delivered?’
‘The Mail,’ said Rachel.
‘Neither of you took The Times?’
Rachel closed her eyes as a wave of panic caught her. ‘ No.’
‘Thank you,’ said the inspector. ‘ Rachel – we’re going to be in and out of here for a while yet. Is there somewhere you can go rather than stay here? Your stepdaughter’s, perhaps?’
Rachel smiled at that description of Nicola, and shook her head, then the smile went. ‘You’ll be takin’ him away, won’t you?’ she asked anxiously. And the sofa?’ She couldn’t have that bloodstained sofa in the house. She couldn’t. ‘I heard someone say they needed a van for it. Does that mean they’re takin’ it away too?’ She had listened to the conversations through the chimney breast.
‘Yes. It’ll go to forensic’
And can I clean up the carpet where he was sick?’
‘Yes, when they’ve finished. Once they take the crime-scene tape down, you can do what you like.’
She gave a little sigh of relief. ‘Then I’ll be all right here,’ she said.
‘If you’re sure. Would you like us to try to contact your family?’
She shook her head, and the inspector left the bedroom, but not the house, as Rachel discovered when she watched from the window. She saw Aquarius TV’s estate car; Curtis must still be around somewhere. But he’d be busy. He’d come back tonight, when everyone had gone.
Judy had come downstairs to find Lloyd and DC Marshall in the hallway, with the TV monitor and recorder, watching the tape. Steve Paxton had been relieved of entryphone duty; Lloyd had had the alarms switched off once the SOCOs had finished, and now the gate stood open. A crowd of local reporters had gathered in the courtyard behind a cordon.
She told Lloyd what she had so far learned; he told her that Bailey’s morning paper had not been collected from his mailbox, and was indeed the Mail.
The tapes ran for twelve hours, and it appeared to have been Bailey’s habit to change the tape sharp at ten-thirty in the morning and ten-thirty in the evening, which tallied, as Judy told Lloyd, with what Mrs Bailey had said. He had two tapes for each day of the week, so that Monday’s tapes would be reused the following Monday, if there was no reason to hold on to them. The tape found in the machine was marked Sunday 1; Sunday 2 was still on the shelf. Bailey had obviously not changed the tape at ten-thirty yesterday evening, nor bolted the door, and yet Freddie had indicated that he had died later than that.
‘So that’s a little puzzle, isn’t it?’ said Lloyd. ‘Why didn’t he change the tape, bolt the door, and go to bed like he always did?’
Judy nodded, noted it down. Lloyd’s little puzzles were always worth investigating. But Bailey had been drinking; he had been expecting marauders all day, and may have thought he was still at risk; and Rachel hadn’t been there. His ten-thirty ritual may have had more to do with trying to get her pregnant than with a desire to sleep. His routine had already been broken, so perhaps it wasn’t so puzzling.
‘If the tape doesn’t get changed,’ Lloyd went on, ‘it rewinds itself. Which it did. So practically the whole of yesterday from ten-thirty in the morning has been wiped with the new recording, and there’s nothing on the few minutes at the end of the tape.’
‘What have we got on it?’ asked Judy. ‘Anything?’
‘The tape ran itself back at ten thirty-nine p. m., and starts recording again at ten forty-three. The first thing we’ve got is at ten-fifty p.m., when an estate car came through the gate without using the phone. We had the number plate checked, and the car is registered to Mrs Nicola Hutchins.’
‘That’s his daughter.’ said Judy.
Lloyd nodded. ‘It leaves again just after midnight. So far, its driver is our best bet. And nothing whatever was happening anywhere else there’s a camera.’
‘Hello,’ said Marshall. ‘ Look at this.’
He rewound the tape, and played it in normal time. As far as Judy could see there was still nothing whatever happening on any of the six boxes into which the screen was split.
Marshall rewound the tape again, and replayed it. ‘Don’t watch the pictures,’ he said. ‘Look at the time.’
And this time Judy saw the figures at the bottom right of the screen jump from 02.23.43 to 02.37.04. Marshall paused the tape.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Lloyd, sitting back. It was a swivel chair; it wouldn’t tip back. He contented himself with swaying gently to and fro. ‘So someone arrived here at about – call it two twenty-four in the morning – and then, to wipe out the recording of his or her arrival, thirteen minutes later he or she ran the tape back, and started it recording again.’ He smiled. ‘ But,’ he said, ‘ he or she would still have to get out again, unless, of course, he or she lived here.’
Marshall ran the tape in normal time, this time with all three of them watching. At 02.40.23, the gate opened, and a figure on foot, slim, wearing jeans and a hooded jacket, face turned away from the camera, walked quickly through it, away from the farm.
The camera was high, so that no one could use the gate without being picked up by it, and they only had a back view to work with, on a black and white picture lit by a security lamp.
The tape was put back on fast forward, and they watched the sun rise on Harmston, but that was all that happened until a few minutes to six, when Paxton arrived, and waited for the farmhands. He let them in, and they went about their business, none of them ever out of camera range for more than a few seconds. At six thirty-five, the paper was delivered. At nine-thirty, Paxton left in the pick-up to go for breakfast, dropping off one of the farmhands, who waited at the gate, eating his sandwiches. Rachel Bailey’s BMW arrived at two minutes past ten, and the farmhand opened the gate for her.
Seven minutes after that the Aquarius TV estate car pulled up and Curtis Law got out, used the entryphone, and was admitted. That was followed shortly by Paxton in the pick-up, using his key. Then the two police officers who had responded to the 999, then Tom Finch and Judy herself. A few minutes after that, the tape reverted to the night shots for the last nine minutes of its length.
Marshall switched it off, and got up stiffly from the crouching position he had necessarily adopted, since Lloyd was occupying the only chair, swaying to and fro as he thought.
‘We could look at the other cameras’ output more closely, I suppose,’ Marshall said. ‘ But I couldn’t see anything going on.’
‘I’ll put someone on to it, but I think we can safely concentrate on the camera over the gate for now,’ said Lloyd. ‘And we’ll want a copy of the tape.’ He got up, and beckoned them to follow him into the office, where their conversation would be less public. The SOCOs had finished in there, and the DC looking through the safe had found papers which showed that Bernard Bailey had, contrary to popular belief, been on the verge of bankruptcy. Whether that had a bearing on his death remained to be seen.
‘Comments,’ Lloyd said.
‘This farm is a long way from anywhere,’ said Judy. ‘Even the village is two miles away. Whoever that was, was on foot.’
‘Someone could have driven here and parked on the road beyond the gate,’ said Marshall. ‘No one would see a car parked way out here at that time in the morning.’
No, thought Judy, they wouldn’t. They probably all went to bed at ten-thirty. She had quite often been known to go to bed at ten-thirty herself, but she liked to feel that life was going on outside her window, that the odd late-night reveller was creeping home at half past two in the morning. And even if such a thing ever occurred in Harmston, she thought, no late reveller would be creeping home via Bailey’s isolated farm. She could no more live here than she could live on the moon, never mind with the uncommunicative Bailey trying to get her pregnant all the time. But she didn’t want to think about that, she reminded herself, so she put it out of her mind. Again.
‘Now, who might want to erase the record of her homecoming, if that was several hours earlier than she’s prepared to admit?’ asked Lloyd. ‘And who could have used that thirteen minutes to murder her husband, drive her car out, come back, wipe the tape, and leave on foot, making sure the camera didn’t catch a glimpse of her face? She could have spent the rest of the night in the car, then driven back in to be recorded on video at the time she does admit to coming home.’
‘Oh,’ said Marshall, a little surprised. ‘I thought it was a man on the video.’
Lloyd looked at Judy, eyebrows raised.
‘I wasn’t sure,’ she said. ‘Someone slim, certainly. And young. But I wouldn’t put money on either sex.’
‘Alan,’ said Lloyd. ‘See if you can get an idea of his or her height. Check the other videos for someone whose height you can check.’
Marshall went off to comply, and Lloyd looked back at Judy. ‘It could have been Mrs Bailey,’ he said. ‘Couldn’t it?’
Lloyd’s instant theories were legendary. So was Judy’s equally instant disproving of them. She couldn’t actually see anything wrong with this one so far, but the newspaper still puzzled her. ‘Who brought The Times in?’ she asked. ‘And who did the crossword? And when? There’s blood on it.’
‘Ah, yes – the SOCO thinks the paper fell on to the sofa, and got blood on it that way, if that’s any help,’ said Lloyd. ‘How it got here in the first place is another little puzzle for you to ponder.’
‘Thanks.’
They went back out into the hallway, and she saw Curtis Law hanging round outside waiting for an interview. That was when she remembered that he had offered Bailey help in setting the system up; he’d know how to tamper with it, she thought. He was slim. Young. But she didn’t suppose he had taken to murder just so he had a story to cover.
She felt Lloyd tense up as he saw him, and frowned a little. She knew that Curtis Law had stolen a march on them with this drugs business; she knew that it had not gone down very well with Lloyd, who had never been very enamoured of him in the first place. She would have understood if he’d been irritated – angry, even, about Law succeeding where he had failed. But he hadn’t been, not really. He was always quick to admit his mistakes; he had accepted that he had been wrong, and Law had been right. So that wasn’t it.
Lloyd was nervous of only one thing that Judy knew of, and that was heights. He pretended to other people that he wasn’t, and his would be air of indifference upon finding himself on the top floor of a high-rise fooled them, but she knew him too well not to be aware of the waves of discomfort. She was aware of them now, as he talked to Marshall, looked at videos, did anything he could to delay going outside.
Lloyd was nervous of Curtis Law, and that didn’t just puzzle her; it worried her.
Terri Melville was, as she unoriginally put it on the phone to her Save Our Woodland Sites committee members, over the moon. Oh, of course, she had said, it was dreadful, but she didn’t suppose that it would be too long before McQueen was offered the land, and that was a great relief. But yes, a terrible thing to have happened, in Harmston of all places.
Well, yes, she supposed Rachel might have done it herself, which was what most people thought must have happened. It had always been a very strange setup. A girl like that, and a man like Bailey.
Oh, yes, really beautiful. And always very pleasant, and easy to talk to, which was more than you could say for her husband. But what reason could she possibly have had for marrying Bailey if it wasn’t for his money? And she’d made the most of it. There was that car, for a start. And the clothes. Designer dungarees for mucking out, she supposed. But seriously, she had some wonderful clothes. But then, she was that kind of woman, wasn’t she? She could wear anything and make it look fantastic. Then if you rushed out and got the same thing, you just looked like a sack of potatoes in it.
No – Terri had wondered why he’d married her, too. He had certainly never seemed like someone who would want a girl nearly twenty years younger than him for that sort of thing. Of course that poor wife of his – no, his first wife – well, she was hardly ever not pregnant, so maybe he was more interested in that sort of thing than he seemed.
Jack Melville gloomily listened to variations on this theme eight times. He had given up trying to work; for some reason, the many telephone calls had to be made in his presence, despite the fact that these days they had a phone in every room, in each car, a cordless one in the hall, and a mobile.
And of course, Terry was saying for the umpteenth time, who knew what went on behind closed doors?
Jack did. He knew what had been going on behind Bailey’s closed doors. He knew a great deal more than he should know, or wanted to know.
Or in the Baileys’ case, Terri was saying, what went on behind umpteen alarms and God knew how many television cameras.
Jack stiffened. He’d forgotten about that. Oh, dear God. The police would know he’d been there. He shot a look at Terri, but she was engrossed in gossip, thank God. He had to think. He had to think very, very carefully. He mustn’t panic. He must think of a good reason. One he could offer Terri. Any reason. Anything but the truth.
Curtis walked towards Chief Inspector Lloyd and Inspector Hill, who were coming out of the house at last, ducking under the cordon. ‘Any particular lines of enquiry yet?’ he asked. The question was directed at Inspector Hill, who shook her head in reply. ‘Have you revised your opinion on the death threats?’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But nothing has been ruled out.’
‘We would like the public’s help on this one,’ said Lloyd, ‘if we can use your airwaves, it would be a big help.’
Curtis wondered if he’d seen Mr Big yet, and decided that he couldn’t have, or he wouldn’t be being that friendly. They had never been bosom buddies in the first place, and Lloyd wasn’t going to like Mr Big one little bit. Presuma
bly his bosses had seen it, though. He had thought the police might try to stop it being shown, but they hadn’t. Which was a pity. An injunction got you on the news, doubled your viewing figures when you did show it, even if you did have to take out the naughty bits.
‘Just along the lines of anyone who was in this area yesterday to come forward, that sort of thing,’ Lloyd went on.
‘I was in the area,’ said Gary.
‘This is my cameraman, Gary,’ said Curtis. ‘Say hello to the police officers, Gary.’
Gary shook hands with Lloyd, and nodded to Inspector Hill. ‘I was here,’ he said. ‘Taking shots of anyone who came to the farm, right up until the light went, really, so I can let you see who came here up to about eight.’
‘That’s good news,’ said Lloyd. ‘I’d like to see the tape when it’s convenient.’
Any time, really. Your sergeant’s got the one I shot this morning – just come in any time. There’s always someone there in office hours.’
Anything you can tell us now about his visitors? Did he let anyone in?’
‘Only one. McQueen, the developer who wants this place for his road. Struck me as odd, him calling on Bailey. I thought he’d get short shrift like everyone else, but he was let in.’
‘Did you see him leave?’
‘No. He came just as the light was going. I packed up then.’
‘What about Bailey’s CCTV?’ asked Curtis.
‘Not as helpful as it might have been,’ said Lloyd. ‘Thank you very much.’ He turned to Curtis. ‘And you, Mr Law. I take it you would like an interview?’