When Paniatowski arrived home, the phone was ringing, and picking it up, she found herself speaking to the chief constable.
‘I missed seeing you at headquarters, and I just wanted you to know how very proud of you I am,’ he said. ‘You’ve arrested two different murderers in one day! That’s got to be a record!’
‘I haven’t got a confession out of Sarah Audley yet, sir,’ Paniatowski cautioned. ‘And given the nature of the evidence we have against her, I really do need one to make my case.’
‘You’ll get it,’ Pickering said confidently. ‘DCI Monika Paniatowski can do anything she sets her mind to.’
But it wasn’t going to be as easy as that, Paniatowski thought, as she put the phone down.
Given that the evidence was so circumstantial, she didn’t dare leave the interviewing to just Meadows. And yet, could she do it herself?
There was only one personality present in an interrogation room – that of the man or woman being questioned. The interrogator was a ghost – a godlike ghost, it was true, but a ghost nonetheless. He had no back story. He had no weaknesses or worries that the suspect knew about. And while he was asking that suspect to spread out his whole life out on the table for inspection, he had to be careful to keep his own hidden.
‘But I won’t be a ghost to Sarah Audley at all, will I?’ she asked the empty hallway.
Sarah Audley knew a great deal about her – and she had provided that information herself, in the Drum and Monkey.
Was it possible that Sarah had planned for just this eventuality? That she had intended to kill Mark Cotton long before he wrote the letter, that she had calculated there was a chance she would be caught, and it was possible that DCI Paniatowski would be the one to catch her, and that if all these things did come to pass, it would be to her advantage to know something about the woman who was attempting to sweat a confession out of her?
Yes, given the cold, careful way Mark Cotton’s murder had been planned, it was possible.
Her head was aching and her legs throbbed with tiredness. She would go straight to bed, she told herself, and maybe things would be a little clearer in the morning.
TWENTY-TWO
31st March 1977
The morning after Sarah Audley’s arrest was cold and miserable. The wind blew in off the moors, and howled down the alleyways in the older parts of Whitebridge. The rain only fell intermittently, but when it fell, it was with a passion. It was not a morning which engendered hope. It was, rather, one which foreshadowed failure.
Thoughts of failure – lightly disguised, but all the more evident because of that – filled Paniatowski’s office. And it was her fault that the team felt like that, she acknowledged. She had been too quick to arrest Sarah Audley. She should have waited until they had built up a stronger case. And she was still not quite sure why she had made the arrest then. Looking back, it almost felt as if Sarah herself had pushed her into it.
She became aware of the fact that her team were waiting for her to say something.
‘Right from the start, Sarah Audley claimed that she wouldn’t have killed Cotton because it would have damaged her career,’ she began, ‘but that argument doesn’t hold water any more. If she killed him because he told her about the letter, then he’d already have damaged her career. And if she killed him out of jealousy, she’d have done so in the knowledge that even though that would be the end of DCI Prince, Lew Wiseman was already considering her for something else.’
‘There’s something about that letter that really bothers me,’ Beresford mused.
‘We’ve had the experts look at it, and they’re certain that’s Mark Cotton’s signature,’ Paniatowski told him. ‘They’ve also established that it was written on a typewriter in the theatre.’
‘It’s not whether it’s fake or real that’s bothering me,’ Beresford told her. ‘It’s that there’s something not quite right about it.’
‘In what way?’
‘I don’t know. There is a small part of my brain that knows the answer, but it’s not talking.’
‘Maybe it will come to you later,’ Paniatowski said quickly, before Meadows had time to insert a witty barb into the conversation. ‘Now here’s what’s going to happen. Kate and I will interview Sarah, but it’s going to be a tough job, because she’s no Tony Brown, who was already weighed down with guilt when Jack started questioning him. Do you agree with that, DS Meadows?’
‘She’s calm, she’s cold and she’s clever, which is not a good combination from our viewpoint,’ Meadows said.
‘The only way we’re going to have any chance of breaking her down is to catch her out in a lie,’ Paniatowski continued, ‘which means that I need to know everything that went on in the theatre in the week prior to the murder. That’s why I want you, Inspector Beresford, to go through every bit of documentation we have on the case, and you, DC Crane, to study the film again. Bring me something I can use, because if you don’t, there’s a good chance we’ll have to let her go.’
Sarah Audley’s solicitor was called Banks. He was in his late forties, smartly dressed, and as sharp as a razor. Paniatowski wondered how – even with her Kindly Witch from Friday Corner money – Sarah could afford such an obviously expensive lawyer, and then she saw a look pass between them, and realized that they either were – or once had been – lovers.
She found herself wondering whether that was just a coincidence, or if Sarah, knowing she might find herself in this situation – or, given her nature, a situation just like it – had selected her lover on the basis of his legal expertise.
She wouldn’t put that past the woman, she decided. She wouldn’t put anything past her.
For the first ten minutes of the interview, Paniatowski stuck to safe, uncontroversial matters. Then, judging the time was right, she hit Sarah with her first hard question.
‘On the two occasions that we know you’ve taken a life, you’ve chosen to hang your victims,’ she said. ‘Should we attach any particular significance to that fact?’
‘That is an improper question, and I strongly advise you not to answer it,’ Banks said.
‘But I want to answer it,’ Sarah told him. ‘Or, at least, I want to find out just what it is that she’s talking about.’ She turned her attention to Paniatowski. ‘You say I’ve killed twice, Monika. Tell me more. I’d be really fascinated to find out who my victims are supposed to be.’
The previous evening, Sarah had been playing her cards very close to her chest. Now, with her solicitor there as a safety net if she needed him, she was being much more reckless. And it wasn’t just the recklessness that was notable – there was a twinkle in her eye which suggested she was actually having fun!
‘You know as well as I do who your victims were,’ Paniatowski said. ‘There was Mark Cotton …’
‘I strongly deny having anything to do with his death.’
‘… and there was the cat.’
Sarah seemed puzzled – or perhaps was just acting seeming puzzled.
‘What cat?’ she asked.
‘Your headmistress’s cat?’
‘How did you know about that?’ Sarah asked sharply. Then she shrugged. ‘Oh well, I don’t suppose it matters how you know.’
‘Again, I advise you to say nothing, Sarah,’ Banks counselled.
‘I did not kill that cat,’ Sarah Audley said firmly. ‘I never even saw that cat. I didn’t even know where that old bitch of a headmistress lived.’
‘You left a note pinned to the cat.’
‘I did not.’
‘Your fingerprint was lifted from the plant pot bracket the cat was hanging from.’
‘How do you know that? Have you checked the fingerprints you took yesterday with the ones on the bracket?’
Twenty years was a long time, and it was almost inconceivable that the fingerprints taken then still existed, Paniatowski thought – and Sarah would have guessed that.
‘The note said, “Screw you, you old bitch.” And that’s not just h
ow you described her a moment ago – it’s also the same words you used when you were in your headmistress’s study.’
Sarah threw back her head and laughed. ‘You can’t hold me responsible for what I said to her in her study. I was high at the time.’
‘High?’ Paniatowski repeated incredulously. ‘In 1956? Nobody got high in 1956.’
‘Well, of course, I didn’t call it “being high” back then. It wasn’t a term that anybody used. But do you really think I would have screwed a spotty schoolboy in front of a bunch of other spotty tossers if I hadn’t been high?’
‘How did you get high?’
‘I took some pills. Don’t ask me what they were called, because I don’t know.’
‘Where did you get these pills from?’
‘From some Americans I knew.’
‘What Americans?
‘There was an American army base close to where I lived. The GIs were a bit older than the spotty youths at school, but they were equally as wet. Give them a hand job, and they’d get you anything.’
The date stamp told Crane that he was watching film that had been shot on the previous Monday, just a couple of hours before Mark Cotton had died.
Cotton himself was standing on the stage. He was wearing a light sports coat and sporting a cravat and a beret. He looked more like an actor playing the part of a theatre director than an actor preparing himself to play Hieronimo.
Ruth Audley walked on to the stage and started talking to him. It was difficult to say for certain at a distance – and without sound – but it looked as if whatever Ruth was telling him was of great interest to Cotton. Then Ruth pointed across the auditorium at one of the boxes, and Cotton nodded.
Was she indicating a technical problem – something to do with acoustics?
No sooner had Ruth left the stage than Sarah appeared. She stood chatting to Cotton for perhaps two minutes, but he did not seem as enthralled by her conversation as he had been by Ruth’s. In fact, he seemed eager for her to be gone.
How cold do you have to be to chat like that with the man you intend to kill in two hours’ time? Crane wondered. The woman must have ice in her veins.
Once Sarah had left, Cotton wandered over to one of the cameramen, and pointed into the auditorium, at roughly the same spot as Ruth had pointed.
The cameraman shook his head.
Cotton mimed moving the camera around, and the cameraman shook his head again, as if to say that it couldn’t be done.
Then Cotton reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of bank notes. He held them up for the cameraman to see before stuffing them into the man’s shirt pocket. And suddenly the cameraman seemed to be indicating that the impossible might just be possible after all.
Beresford was finding it hard to concentrate on the documentation, because every time he tried to read a report, he found himself thinking about the letter.
There was something wrong with it. He was sure there was. But how many things could there be wrong with a single sheet of paper?
The signature was genuine. The letter had been typed on a machine that Mark Cotton had access to.
There was nothing unusual about the paper itself, either. Admittedly, it wasn’t the sort of posh pastel-coloured paper that an actor might use to make an impression. It was, in fact, just the ordinary plain white stuff.
But that was easily explained. When Mark Cotton had learned, in the theatre, that Sarah Audley was to co-star in his precious DCI Prince, he had flown into such a rage that he’d grabbed the first piece of paper he could find and typed the letter, not caring how many mistakes he made.
So if it wasn’t the signature and it wasn’t the typewriter and it wasn’t the quality of the paper, then it simply had to be …
Beresford examined the letter again, then picked up the phone and dialled the clerical department.
‘This is DI Beresford,’ he said. ‘I’d like a sample of every size of paper we have, please – and I’d like them now.’
‘When did you learn about the letter that Mark Cotton wrote to Lew Wiseman, Sarah?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘What letter he wrote to Lew Wiseman?’
‘The one in which he said he would refuse to have you as his co-star in DCI Prince?’
Sarah Audley shook her head.
‘Mark wouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why? Are you saying he liked the idea of you co-starring in the show with him?’
‘No, I’m certain that he hated the idea. He would have hated the idea of any woman co-starring with him, but the fact that the role would be played by a woman who saw stealing his limelight as just revenge for the way he’d treated her in the past would have really stuck in his craw.’
‘And yet you say he wouldn’t have written the letter?’
‘That’s right. Later on, he might have tried to persuade Lew to drop me, but he wouldn’t have done it last week.’
‘Why not?’
‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ Sarah Audley said. ‘What Mark wanted most in the world was to become the next Laurence Olivier.’ She smiled. ‘He’d never have made it, of course. He simply didn’t have the talent.’
‘What’s that got to do with the letter?’
‘Are you just pretending to be dense, Monika? Is this nothing more than some cleverly thought-out trap to try and trip me up?’
‘No, I really don’t know,’ Paniatowski admitted.
‘The Spanish Tragedy was supposed to be his springboard. It had to be a success. But just imagine that he did write a letter to Lew, and Lew rang me to say I was sacked even before I’d started. What do you think I would have done?’
Paniatowski had a sudden sinking feeling.
‘Why don’t you tell me what you think you would have done?’ she said.
‘There’s no “think” about it – I would have walked out. And Ruth – because she’s my dutiful older sister, and always does what I want her to do – would have come with me. Without us, there would have been no play, and without the play there would have been no springboard to thespian respectability. So tell me, Monika, do you really think Mark would have been prepared to take that chance?’
Paniatowski and Meadows were sitting in the canteen, shrouded in an air of despondency as thick as fog.
‘Maybe Mark Cotton was so angry when he wrote the letter that he didn’t even consider the consequences,’ Meadows said half-heartedly.
‘All he had to do was wait a week before contacting Wiseman, and then it wouldn’t have mattered a toss to him what Sarah Audley thought,’ Paniatowski pointed out.
‘Perhaps he thought that if he did leave it a week, the project would be too far advanced for Wiseman to get rid of Sarah.’
‘In that case, why didn’t he just add a second paragraph to the letter – something along the lines of, “Please don’t tell Sarah about this till next week.” And if he was that angry, why write a letter at all? Why not just pick up the phone?’
Beresford strode purposefully – and triumphantly – into the canteen and sat down beside them.
‘I know what was bothering me about the letter,’ he said without preamble. ‘It’s the wrong size.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Paper sizes aren’t just random. There are international standards, and every piece of paper you buy matches one of them. The letter doesn’t.’
‘So what?’
‘I took the letter up to the lab, and asked the technical people to examine the edges of it under a microscope. And what they say is that, from the way the fibres are torn, it’s clear that it wasn’t manufactured like that, but has been carefully cut down to that size using scissors.’
‘Go on,’ Paniatowski said.
‘We’ve been working on the assumption that Cotton was so angry when he typed the letter that he didn’t even bother to correct his mistakes. Would a man who wrote a letter in that frame of mind have taken the trouble to cut up the piece of paper so carefully that only the experts could tell
he’d done it?’
‘Perhaps he just found the piece of paper,’ Meadows suggested.
‘Why would anybody go to the trouble of cutting the paper up?’ Beresford countered.
‘You already have a theory,’ Paniatowski guessed.
‘Mark Cotton signed a much larger piece of paper, and whoever got their hands on that signature cut the paper down to make it roughly letter size.’
‘Which means he didn’t write the letter at all,’ Paniatowski said. ‘Then who did?’
‘I think it’s possible Sarah did it herself,’ Meadows said.
‘And why would she have done that?’
‘She knew we’d think she had the strongest motive for killing Mark Cotton, she knew we’d probably find out about her hanging the cat, and she thought it was likely we’d arrest her. So she wanted to make sure that when she was arrested it was for the wrong reasons – and it’s worked.’
Then she rushed me into arresting by refusing to cooperate, Paniatowski thought. And she already had her fancy London lawyer standing by.
‘The letter is the foundation stone to this case,’ Meadows continued. ‘It provides us with a motive. And when that letter turns out to be a fake, what are we left with? A lot of speculation, and a pair of scissors.’
‘They are her scissors,’ Beresford pointed out.
‘Yes, they are. They’re the scissors she used to cut through the harness. So why didn’t she hide them – or throw them away? Because she wanted us to find them, to make sure we arrested her. My guess is that at some point in the future, she’s going to tell us that she took the scissors into the theatre, and left them in a public place where anyone could have picked them up. And the rest of the cast will confirm it. So what are we left with then? Nothing! We’ll have to let her go – and once we’ve done that, re-arresting her will be far from easy.’
‘We’ve at least answered one question,’ Paniatowski said, with a kind of gloomy satisfaction. ‘We now know why she had to kill Mark Cotton on Monday night, rather than waiting until Tuesday.’
‘Do we?’ Beresford asked.
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