‘Thomas Clegg is due to be cross-examined on his testimony in fifteen minutes,’ the judge says.
‘Yes, My Lord, I know,’ Addison agrees.
‘But Clegg isn’t here. Why is that?’
‘I don’t know, My Lord.’
‘How is he supposed to get to court?’
‘I gave him a travel voucher and told him to catch the eight o’clock train from Whitebridge.’
‘But you didn’t travel with him?’
‘No, My Lord, I came by car.’
‘I hold you personally responsible for this delay, sergeant.’
‘But My Lord—’
‘You are to drive back to Whitebridge, pick Clegg up, and bring him to me. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, My Lord.’
By the time Addison reaches Clegg’s house, there are already four constables standing out on the pavement, and another two in the kitchen, at the table, interrogating Tom’s weeping mother.
‘Where is he, Mrs Clegg?’ one of them is shouting.
‘I don’t know – I’ve told you a thousand times, Constable Walker, I just don’t know.’
‘What pubs does he use regularly?’
‘None – he’s not much of a drinker.’
‘Who are his friends?’
‘He doesn’t really have any. He’s always found it hard to make friends. Besides, he doesn’t have the time. Mr Wilfred works him very hard, and if Mr Wilfred doesn’t want him, then Mr Oswald finds him jobs to do.’
‘You’re lying to me,’ the constable says. ‘You know exactly where he is, don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t. I swear I don’t.’
This is getting us nowhere, Addison thinks, and sometimes the best way to get what you want quickly is to slow down a little.
He gestures to the constable to stand up, and he takes the man’s place at the table.
‘Good morning, Mrs Clegg,’ he says. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Stan Addison.’
The gentleness of his tone surprises her.
‘Good … good morning, Mr Addison,’ she stutters.
‘You look like you could use a cup of tea,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘Shall I get one of my lads to make you one?’
She stands up.
‘That you’ll not, sergeant. I’m not having no man making the tea in my kitchen.’
Addison smiles.
‘Then would you like to make it?’
‘All right.’
‘Just for you and me,’ Addison says, because he guesses he has more chance of learning something useful if there are just the two of them there.
‘Won’t the constables …?’
‘They’ve already had their tea.’
He forces himself to wait patiently while Mrs Clegg boils the kettle over the open fire, pours the boiling water into the teapot, and lets the tea brew. Only when she is back at the table does he speak.
‘Does Tom have any favourite places, Mrs Clegg?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
I can see now why your son’s so thick, Addison thinks. He obviously takes after you.
‘Is there somewhere he likes to go when he’s upset, or needs time to think things over?’
‘He’s always liked the woods,’ Mrs Clegg says.
The woods are a mile and a half from the edge of Whitebridge, on the other side of the river. In the summer, they are lush and green, the ground is springy underfoot, and the clean air offers a welcome relief from the soot-filled atmosphere of the town. But now it is winter, the trees are stark and dark and skeletal, and the ground is as hard as rock.
It is from one of these skeletal trees that they find Tom Clegg hanging. The noose he has fashioned for himself is a clumsy one, but it has done its job and he is quite dead.
There is a note pinned to his shirt. It reads: I DINT SEE JOHN LEAF THE OFFICE. I LIED IN COURT.
‘Maybe he lied in court, and maybe he lied in the note,’ Addison said. ‘Who can say for sure which it was? The judge advised the jury to believe what he’d said in court, because that was under oath – and that was good enough for me.’
‘On the other hand, his suicide note could be regarded as a dying declaration,’ Crane said.
‘Now you’re just splitting hairs,’ Addison said uneasily.
‘Why did he hang himself?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And didn’t you bother to find out?’
‘No. Who knows why people kill themselves? Maybe his girlfriend wouldn’t open her legs for him, and he found out that she was opening them for some other feller.’
‘I thought you said you couldn’t ever imagine him trying to talk a girl out of her knickers.’
‘That was probably going too far. Every young lad wants to get his end away, doesn’t he? You know what they say about a woman’s thingy – when you’re being born you can’t wait to get out of there, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to get back in.’
This was the sort of comment that Crane was expected to laugh at, and if it had been someone else, he might have faked it, but he didn’t like the kind of policeman Stan Addison had been, and – for the purposes of this interrogation – he had no wish to put the other man at his ease.
There was an uncomfortable silence which Addison finally broke by saying, ‘Or maybe he’d convinced himself he’d got some incurable disease. There could be dozens of reasons he decided to top himself.’
‘But before he kills himself, he goes to all the trouble of writing the note, and then pins it on his shirt so you couldn’t miss it?’ Crane asked.
‘There could be reasons for that as well. Maybe he hated Wilfred Hardcastle, but liked John Entwistle, and was feeling guilty about shopping him. Well, he’d decided to kill himself anyway, so he thought he might as well do what he could to get John off.’
‘Even though he knew him to be a killer?’
‘Could be.’
‘What was the other evidence you mentioned?’
‘Wasn’t that in the transcript?’
‘Yes, but I’d rather hear it from you.’
Frankie Flynn rubbed his chin gingerly, then shot a hostile look across the interview table at Meadows and Paniatowski – but mainly at Meadows.
‘I’ve been a victim of police brutality,’ he complained.
‘Police brutality?’ Paniatowski repeated. ‘Wherever did you learn a phrase like that, Frankie?’
‘He’s maybe been watching some of those American cop shows on the telly,’ Meadows suggested.
‘Yes, that’ll be it,’ Paniatowski agreed.
‘You think it’s all just a big joke, don’t you?’ Flynn asked sullenly. ‘Well, let me tell you, you won’t be laughing when my solicitor gets here. Then, you’ll be in real trouble.’
Meadows chuckled. ‘I’ll be in trouble, will I?’ she asked. ‘That’s hysterical coming from a feller who punched a detective inspector in the gut.’
‘You almost broke my jaw,’ Flynn said.
‘Nonsense,’ Meadows countered. ‘I gave you the gentlest of taps – as has been confirmed by the police doctor. I wasn’t even trying to hurt you. If I had been, you’d have spent the next half hour chasing your rolling head down the street.’
‘Speaking of solicitors, where is yours, Frankie?’ Paniatowski asked. ‘He should have been here by now.’
‘He’s probably tied up with another case – one in which the client’s prepared to pay him what he thinks he’s worth,’ Meadows said.
‘Yes, I think you’re right about that,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘And what that means is that even if he does eventually turn up here, he’ll probably cut the quickest deal he can, so that he can get back to the client who’s paying him real money as soon as possible.’
‘I think we should use the time before he gets here constructively,’ Meadows said. ‘Don’t you agree, Frankie?’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ Flynn told her.
&nb
sp; ‘It was a huge blow to your pride when Mary Edwards kicked you in the balls, and you knew you’d never be able to look yourself in the face again unless you did something about it,’ Meadows said. ‘So you went up to her suite in the Royal Vic, didn’t you? I don’t think you wanted to kill her – you were just looking for an apology – but she was probably very provocative, and you lost your temper, and hit her with the poker.’ Meadows shrugged. ‘These things happen.’
‘I didn’t go anywhere near her,’ Flynn said.
‘Now that’s not entirely true, is it?’ Meadows suggested. ‘It can’t be true, because the doorman at the Royal Vic – who, I have to tell you, will be a very credible witness – saw you walking back and forth in front of the hotel on Saturday. Now you’re not going to deny that, are you?’
‘It’s a free country,’ Flynn said. ‘I can go where I like.’
‘Yes, but why would you want to walk up and down in that bloody awful weather? It was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass—’ Meadows stopped abruptly. ‘Sorry, Frankie, I forgot that balls are a particularly sensitive subject with you at the moment. But you get the point? It was so cold that nobody was outside unless they absolutely had to be – yet there you were.’
‘It’s a free country,’ Flynn repeated, stubbornly.
‘The thing is, Frankie, if you help us, we’ll help you,’ Meadows said. ‘I’m more than willing to stand up in court and tell the judge that she was more-or-less asking for what she got. We think she was a lesbian—’
‘She was! She was! When I found her in the Grapes, she was trying to talk my missus into bed.’
‘And nobody likes lesbians, do they? I don’t like them, juries don’t like them, and judges don’t like them. So that can only be to your advantage, can’t it? But if we’re going to do a deal, Frankie, then we really do have to do it before your solicitor arrives.’
The door swung open, and Arthur Tyndale – leaning heavily on his stick – entered the room.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘I had a certain amount of difficulty getting out of bed this morning.’ He turned to his client. ‘Not another word, Frankie – until we’ve had a little chat, you’re not to say another word.’
‘You asked for the other evidence,’ Stan Addison said to Crane. ‘Well, for a start, there was the fact that Hardcastle and Entwistle had had a big argument.’
‘But the only reason we know about that argument is because Tom Clegg told us. And we’ve already established that he lied at least once.’
‘There will have been an argument,’ Addison said confidently. ‘Two looms had broken down – and that, we do know for a fact, because it was confirmed by the weavers. Well, that kind of disruption costs money, and Wilfred Hardcastle would have been wanting his pound of flesh.’
‘But Entwistle said he never went to the office, because if he was going to be fired – and knowing Hardcastle’s reputation, he was sure he would be – he didn’t see why he should have to put up with a half-hour bollocking first.’
‘He went to Hardcastle’s office,’ Addison said stubbornly ‘He’s bound to have gone there.’
‘Why is he bound to have gone there?’ Crane asked. ‘Is it because your whole case was based on him going?’
‘And then, of course, there was the money,’ said Addison, ignoring the question.
‘Ah yes, the money,’ Crane said.
‘We found fifty pounds under Entwistle’s mattress. That’s a handy sum even nowadays, but it was one hell of a lot of money back then.’
‘You think he stole it from Hardcastle, do you?’
‘I’m convinced he did.’
‘Why?’
‘He needed money to run away.’
‘But he didn’t run away, did he? Despite the fact that he knows Tom Clegg has seen him running from the office, he leaves the money where it is bound to be found – and goes fishing.’
‘Maybe he thought his bluff would work, that we’d believe him and not Tom, and there’d be no need to run away.’
‘Did you check how long he’d been down at the canal?’
‘No, we bloody didn’t!’ Addison said.
He’s getting angry now, Crane thought, and the only reason he’s not telling me to piss off is because if I do, he’ll be alone again – and that’s the last thing he wants.
‘Why didn’t you check how long John Entwistle had been down at the canal?’ he asked.
‘Because it just wasn’t bloody necessary. The whole business was in the papers.’
‘So?’
‘So say I’m a fisherman, and I’d been down at the canal that day, and seen Entwistle. I read in the papers that he’s been arrested, and I think to myself, “Hello, that can’t be right, because at the time the murder occurred, I was talking to him myself.” So what do I do? I get myself off to the police station, and I give Entwistle an alibi. But nobody did that because nobody saw him. And the reason nobody saw him was because he wasn’t there for long.’
‘There are any number of reasons why a witness won’t come forward voluntarily,’ Crane said.
‘Like what?’
‘Like he’d been skiving off work and didn’t want his employer to find out. Like he had a criminal record, and didn’t want to draw attention to himself in case the police started taking a new interest in him. Like—’
‘You’re a real armchair bobby, aren’t you, son?’ Addison sneered. ‘Well, let me tell you, I was a real policeman, working in the real world.’
‘Were you in the court yourself when the jury brought in its verdict?’ Crane asked.
‘I was.’
‘And how did you feel?’
‘I was shocked. Everybody was shocked.’
Nearly the entire Hardcastle family is sitting on the front row.
There is Sarah Hardcastle, the dead man’s widow, dressed from head to foot in black, and as stern and unyielding as her late husband had been.
There is Anne, her daughter, heavily pregnant – and a very useful prop for the prosecutor.
‘Think of the damage John Entwistle has caused,’ he’d said in his closing remarks. ‘What he has done means that a grandchild will be denied the love of his grandfather. What he has done means a grandfather will never experience the joy of holding his little grandchild in his arms.’
Next to Anne is her husband, Simon, who is a competent enough barrister, but will never be impressive enough to command high fees.
The only one who is not there is Oswald Hardcastle. He has no real feelings of family obligation. For the first few days of the trial, he was a reluctant attendee at best, and for the last few days he has been wholly absent.
The trial has not gone as well as it might have done since John Entwistle’s barrister insisted that Tom Clegg’s suicide note be read to the jury. The family know that. Yet they are confident the right verdict will be arrived at, because the jury is made up exclusively of ratepayers – members of the middle class. This jury, they feel, will have known even before the trial started that John Entwistle was guilty, because if he wasn’t guilty, the police would never have arrested him. Besides, they appreciate the damage that the wrong verdict could do. It would be seen as a defeat for the police, and anything which damages the police damages them, too, since the forces of law and order are all that is preventing the workers from rising up – as they have so recently done in Russia – and murdering their betters in their beds.
The jury is led in, and the clerk of the court asks the foreman of the jury if it has reached its verdict, and if it is the verdict of them all. The foreman says that it is, and – ominously – looks straight at the prisoner in the dock.
‘Then on the charge of the wilful murder of Wilfred Hardcastle, do you find John Entwistle guilty or not guilty?’ the clerk of the court asks.
The foreman of the jury fingers his tie nervously, as if he knows he is about to do the right thing, yet wishes he didn’t have to do it.
‘Not guilty,’ he says.
Though all the signs had been there that he was going to say exactly that, a collective gasp still fills the courtroom.
Sarah Hardcastle turns to face the dock, and gives John Entwistle a look of pure hatred.
And Entwistle himself – standing there open-mouthed – seems hardly able to believe his luck.
‘Hardly able to believe his luck,’ Addison said, ‘because he knew he was guilty, and he’d got off.’
‘Or perhaps because, although he was innocent, he knew the odds were stacked against him and never really expected to get off,’ Crane countered.
‘He was guilty,’ Addison said wearily. ‘He was as guilty as sin. Your problem, lad, is that you don’t know which facts are important, and which facts don’t matter a damn – so instead of seeing the bigger picture, you get bogged down in a thousand petty details.’
‘And your problem is that you refuse to see that you made a monumental mistake,’ Crane said. ‘You expected to get a conviction on the basis of one discredited witness and the money you found in John Entwistle’s room. But if he’d stolen the money in order to run away, he’d almost certainly have done just that. At the least – the very least – he’d have found a better hiding place for it. The money was planted. It simply had to have been.’
‘So who did kill Wilfred Hardcastle?’ Addison screamed. ‘I know – it was Tom Clegg. Tom wasn’t very bright, and nobody but Hardcastle would even think of giving him a job, so by killing his boss he would lose his livelihood. That’s a perfect motive for murder, isn’t it? No, I’m wrong – it wasn’t Tom, it was Oswald. You see, Oswald didn’t like it that his brother was earning him a lot of money, and all he had to do was spend it. So he thought he’d kill Wilfred and let the mill go bust. Except that Oswald was so upset about what had happened to his brother that within three years he’d drunk himself to death. Hold on – maybe it was a passing tramp who thought he’d kill Hardcastle for fun, and then take fifty quid and then leave it under the mattress in John Entwistle’s room.’
Addison fell silent, clearly exhausted by the effort.
‘It could have been worse,’ Crane said. ‘The guilty man got away with it, it’s true, but at least you didn’t hang an innocent one.’
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