by Faith Martin
Colin Harcourt looked at her, his mouth falling open a little in surprise, and then he laughed. ‘Oh right. Yes, I see. You think maybe I was paid off, after all! Well, it’s nothing that sinister, I can promise you,’ he said, and then waved a hand at his workshop. ‘When the normal work started to dry up, I had to let two of my employees go, and then, with only the one chap left, spent half my time on contracts and the other doing more stained glass work. It was enough to keep our heads afloat, until both of us were ready to retire permanently, like. You’d be surprised how many people are willing to pay for good-quality work. I think it’s because in this day and age there aren’t many true craftsmen left maybe. Anyway, I was lucky enough to know this fella who’d just been made redundant and wanted to start his own company with his payout. So I sold the business on to him. Nowadays I make quite a nice living with the stained glass – nothing fancy but enough for me. See?’
Hillary did. She glanced at Jake, whose lips were twitching with repressed amusement, and had to smile herself. So much for any hopes that there’d been some sort of sinister conspiracy between their murder victim and this average, nice, talented man.
Zoe would be disappointed.
‘Well, thank you, Mr Harcourt. We’ll see ourselves out,’ Hillary said wryly.
‘Peter Goodman’s still a bartender! Would you believe it, guv?’ Zoe said, the moment they walked back in to HQ. ‘I thought that would be just a job he was doing whilst attending uni or something.’
‘Well, some people make it a career,’ Hillary pointed out reasonably. ‘Where’s he working nowadays?’
‘In a pub in Oxford. But he doesn’t start work until tonight, so he’s at home at the moment. It’s a small bedsit just up the road.’
‘Right then, in that case you can drive,’ Hillary said. ‘We’ll take your Mini. I wouldn’t want to be accused of vehicular prejudice.’
Peter Goodman looked decidedly ill at ease when he opened the door to their knocking. At nearly six feet tall, he had a slightly muscular frame and an attractive mop of nut-brown hair, but that was about as far as it went in the looks department as far as Hillary was concerned. The rest of his features comprised rather wide-set, grey eyes, a sharply pointed nose and a distinctly less-than-spectacular chin.
Beside her, Hillary could almost feel Zoe sag with disappointment, and smiled wryly. Obviously the goth shared Querida Phelps’s assessment of him as not being particularly foxy at all. Or perhaps all the other female witnesses they’d interviewed just had very different views on what constituted good looks?
‘Mr Goodman?’ Hillary said, amused and annoyed at the whimsical tangent that was distracting her from the matter at hand.
‘Yes. You’re the police, right?’ he said, with a shade of uneasy eagerness that accompanied a patently false welcoming smile. ‘Well, come on in. I really don’t know what I can do for you, but I’ll try,’ he gabbled, showing them into a small but pleasant enough room. A single bed was tucked discreetly out of the way against the far wall, and he led them past a small sink, to where a small table had been set up with two mismatched chairs placed around it.
He stood, hovering nervously, as they took a seat each, before looking around somewhat vaguely and then finally sitting on the arm of the room’s only large piece of furniture, a rather shop-worn black leather settee.
Hillary saw him rub his palms on his jeans as he sat down.
‘Just a few quick questions, sir,’ Hillary said, careful to keep her voice calm and neutral. But if he’d been this jumpy when DI Varney had interviewed him, no wonder he’d attracted the policeman’s attention. Witnesses with sweaty palms tended to ping any copper’s radar.
‘If you can just cast your mind back to New Year’s Eve, 1999. You’d been hired by Querida Phelps to tend the bar at her costume party, yes?’ she began briskly, hoping to focus his mind on something other than his own nerves.
‘Yes.’ Peter Goodman nodded emphatically. ‘That’s right.’
‘You were eighteen at the time?’
‘Yes. I suppose you might think that’s a bit young, but I’d had a few gigs before,’ he said defensively. ‘Mostly at the local pub, I admit, but one time I did a two-week stint at a nightclub in Oxford. So I wasn’t a complete novice or nothing.’
He talked fast, like most people did when they wanted something over and done with quickly.
‘Right. And during the night you must have served Mr Felix Olliphant with some drinks?’ she pressed on.
‘Well, yes, I must have done,’ he agreed readily enough. ‘But I wouldn’t have known it, would I? I mean, I didn’t know him or what he looked like, so I wouldn’t have known who I was serving. If you see what I mean? He’d have just been another guest. And besides, everyone was dressed up as someone else, weren’t they?’ he rambled confusingly. He flushed a little, as if aware of it, which only seemed to highlight the very pedestrian quality of his facial features.
Hillary had a quick vision of the Gregory twins giggling over the ‘foxy’ barman, wondering what on earth they saw in him, and then suddenly twigged. Of course! How bloody dim she’d been.
‘You were dressed as a fox, weren’t you, Mr Goodman?’ Hillary said, with a smile. ‘That was your costume?’
Beside her, she heard Zoe suppress a slight chuckle as she too caught on.
‘Yes, that’s right. I borrowed it from a friend, to be honest. I couldn’t afford to rent one. It was a bit manky – it was an old football mascot costume – a local team. It was twenty years old if it was a day. The nap on it was even wearing thin in places. I was a fox with mange, if you like!’ He tried to laugh, and rubbed his sweaty palms on his jeans again. ‘It was a full outfit though, you know, like you see them wear sometimes in the London Marathon – a full body suit, padded with that foam stuff, and a big fox head. Made me look about seven foot tall, I can tell you! I was actually looking out of the mouth part of it in order to see. Only the gloves on it were really thick and hopeless for bar work so I just wore a thin pair of orange gloves instead,’ he rattled on, then paused to take a gulp of air.
‘Yes, I think I get the picture,’ Hillary said wryly. ‘And I understand you left the party shortly after the midnight countdown? So you weren’t there when Mr Olliphant’s body was discovered and the police arrived?’
‘Yes. I mean, no, I wasn’t there. Mrs Phelps didn’t seem to mind, about my wanting to leave so early, like, and a mate of mine was throwing this really awesome rave at … well, never mind about that,’ he broke off suddenly, clearly flustered. Probably because he’d just realized that the rave he was on about had been illegally organized. Not that Hillary cared about that at this point.
‘And you never met the man who was killed, Mr Olliphant?’ she pressed.
‘Didn’t know him from Adam,’ he said emphatically.
‘Did you notice a young man at the party, dressed like poet, becoming ill or being helped out of the room by anyone?’
‘No. I told all this to that other man who came asking the next morning. I wish I could have helped, but I didn’t see nothing. Honest. I just served drinks.’
He smiled, and looked from Zoe to Hillary hopefully.
‘You didn’t see anyone acting suspiciously? Slipping something into an unattended glass or something?’ Hillary pressed, her eyes wandering around the room and falling on a small cupboard on which resided the almost obligatory collection of family photographs.
‘No. What, like a date-rape drug or something?’ Peter said, eyes going wide. ‘No, we watch out for that sort of thing nowadays. Mind you, back then it wasn’t so common, like.’
‘No, not necessarily drugs,’ Hillary said. ‘Mr Olliphant was very drunk at the time of this death, but everyone who knew him insisted that he wasn’t much of a drinker. Did you see anyone slipping spirits or maybe what looked like water in another glass?’
‘Vodka or gin, you mean? No, I didn’t. I would have said so if I had. Honest,’ he added, again looking from one woman or th
e other, as if checking to see if he was being believed.
Hillary tried to reassure him with a bland smile. Some witnesses were just naturally highly strung. She wondered if Goodman had a long-term partner, and if he did, how she coped with his hang-ups.
‘All right, sir. Did you know the victim’s girlfriend? Or notice her? A rather pretty blonde woman, called Becky, or Rebecca?’
‘Nah, can’t say as I did. I was too busy to do any flirting, to be honest. Not that I felt in the mood for it – those outfits are heavy and make you sweat like a horse.’ Again he tried to laugh. Zoe found herself thinking that it made him sound like a horse, though, so maybe it was apposite.
‘OK, well, I think that’s all for now,’ Hillary said with a small sigh, thinking this was yet another dead end. Getting up, she glanced again at the array of photographs on the dresser. And as she did so, her eyes were snagged by one photograph in particular.
It showed Peter Goodman and another older man standing proudly beside a car – no doubt a new family purchase – grinning widely and smugly at the camera.
But it wasn’t the bartender that Hillary was looking at. Instead it was the older man beside him. For she’d seen another photograph of this man, just recently, and in a very different home from this.
And in that instant, it all dropped into place.
And just like that – unexpectedly and totally out of the blue – she saw it all. She knew exactly who had killed Felix Olliphant. How. And why.
She picked up the photograph and showed it to Zoe, who looked at it blankly. ‘You’re going to have to learn to be more observant, my girl,’ Hillary told her quietly. Then she turned and looked at Peter Goodman thoughtfully. ‘This is your father, is it, sir?’ she asked silkily.
‘Er, yes,’ Peter Goodman said, going slightly pale. ‘Why? I mean, what about it?’
‘His name’s Martin, I believe?’ Hillary asked gently.
Peter Goodman’s jaw dropped just a little. ‘Yes. But how did you know that? What’s Dad got to do with anything?’
Hillary slowly put the photograph down and turned to look at the now openly sweating man in front of her.
‘Oh, Mr Goodman,’ she said sadly, shaking her head at him. ‘You have been telling me lies, haven’t you? Big fat porkies, in fact,’ she chided.
His face suddenly and dramatically losing all its colour, Peter Goodman slowly sank back down onto the black leather settee. ‘Oh shit,’ he said helplessly.
‘Yes, that’s what you’re in, all right,’ Hillary Greene agreed flatly.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Beside her, she felt Zoe shift with sudden tension.
‘All right, Mr Goodman. I think you’d better come with us. Get up, please,’ Hillary said crisply.
‘What? Where are we going?’ Peter Goodman asked, his voice little more than a terrified squeak now.
‘Just down the road, sir. To HQ,’ Hillary said, in a slightly gentler voice. She was very aware that she had no power to arrest him, and didn’t want to go down the citizen’s arrest route if she could avoid it. ‘It’s not far, as you know. You need to have a word with my superior officer, that’s all,’ she said, giving a small smile. ‘Do you have a coat?’
‘Do I need a solicitor?’ Peter Goodman asked, getting to his feet and looking decidedly dazed.
‘You can certainly telephone for one from the station, sir, if you think one is needed,’ Hillary agreed carefully. ‘But I think you’d be better off talking to Superintendent Crayle first. After all, it’s not as if you’ve really done anything wrong, is it?’ she asked, looking at him closely.
Some of the colour and a little of his nerve seemed to come back, and she noticed his shoulders relax fractionally. ‘No. No, I haven’t really, have I?’
Hillary smiled gently. ‘This way then, sir,’ she said, and with a baffled but increasingly excited Zoe Turnbull in tow, the two women escorted the not so foxy bartender downstairs to the waiting Mini.
Hillary deliberately made only small talk as Zoe drove the short distance to HQ. The moment they walked in, Hillary gave the nod to the desk sergeant, who caught on, and quickly sorted them out an interview room.
‘If you’ll just go with the custody sergeant for a moment, Mr Goodman, while I sort out the paperwork.’ She nodded to the custody sergeant, who’d appeared to take her suspect and start processing him through the system, then inclined her head to Zoe to follow her down to CRT.
‘What’s going on, guv? Who was in that photograph? Are we arresting him? Did he do it?’ Zoe’s chatter and flock of questions skimmed mostly over Hillary’s head as her mind raced, sorting out what needed to be done, and in what order of priority.
‘Go and fetch Jimmy to the super’s office, Zoe. I need to speak to Steven. Then you and the Boy Wonder get off to the observation room. I want you to watch carefully all the interviews we do under caution. Got that?’
‘Right, guv,’ Zoe said eagerly, and shot off as Hillary tapped on Steven’s door and entered.
‘Hillary, we need … What’s up?’ He took one look at her face and felt his stomach clench in reciprocal excitement. She had that look about her that he instantly recognized and which always succeeded in making his blood race.
‘Sir, I need you to make an arrest. First we need a warrant – two, in fact. One for the arrest of Peter Goodman, for aiding and abetting after the fact, and obstruction of justice. For a start. There may be other charges to follow, we’ll have to see how we go. And one for another suspect on the charge of murder.’
‘The Olliphant case?’
‘Yes, sir.’
Steven Crayle barely noticed that she’d slipped unconsciously into a more formal mode of address for him. He too was all business in that moment. ‘Right. And the name of the suspect?’
She was just about to tell him when Jimmy Jessop knocked and put his head around the door. Hillary beckoned him in.
‘Come in, Jimmy. We’re about to make an arrest in our murder case. I’ve got a man, Peter Goodman, in the interview rooms. Go and keep him company for a moment, will you? If you can, get him talking about what he really did on the night that Felix Olliphant was killed. Because this is what I think he did.’
For the next ten minutes, she outlined her case to Steven and Jimmy. When she was finished, Jimmy whistled silently.
‘It sounds to me as if this Goodman’s confession is going to be crucial, guv,’ Jimmy said. ‘You’ve not got a lot of other evidence to go on. You sure you want me to handle it?’
‘Yes, I was wondering about that,’ Steven said. Whilst he didn’t doubt that Hillary had got it right, the lack of evidence was clearly going to be a major stumbling block for them. Getting a confession from the killer was going to be crucial. The Crown Prosecution Service wanted everything tied up in bows nowadays, and with the tricks barristers could get up to even a confession was hardly a guarantee of a guilty verdict any more. Which meant that Goodman’s corroboration was essential. ‘No offence, Jimmy, but you haven’t even been working this case. And you’re a civilian.’
‘Oh, we’ll need to get a serving officer in there as well,’ Hillary agreed. ‘But this witness is weak, and he’s been carrying around his fear for years now. I think he’s been half expecting to get caught all this time, and now that he has he’ll be bursting his sides to tell his version of events and try and wriggle out from under. I want to strike now before he has a chance to have second thoughts. And before he wises up enough to ask for a brief, who’ll tell him to zip it.’
Steven nodded, understanding her need to move fast. ‘Right. Jimmy, nab DI Taylor then and have him oversee the ins and out. But you do the interviewing.’
‘Right, guv,’ Jimmy said. Then to Hillary, ‘Any way you think I should play it?’
Hillary thought for a second, then smiled. ‘I got the feeling that he was close to his dad. Likes a strong, guiding male hand, maybe. So be paternal. Explain to him how you’ve got his best interests in heart. Also, he’s nervous as
hell, so stress how the difference between serving time and maybe having a chance of getting a suspended sentence lies in full co-operation. I really don’t think he’ll give you a hard time.’
Jimmy grinned. ‘Right, guv. Everybody’s favourite grandpa, that’s me.’
As Jimmy Jessop went out to start interviewing Peter Goodman, Steven got on the phone and wasted no time in getting the warrants needed. Then he and Hillary Greene went to arrest the killer of Felix Olliphant.
They didn’t expect any trouble, and they weren’t given any.
When Mrs Eileen Millbright opened the door to find them on her doorstep, and Steven began the formal words of caution, she was totally docile and said not a word in response.
And it was her silence that worried Hillary Greene the most.
‘But she must have said who it was,’ Jake Barnes said impatiently, as he and Zoe finally managed to find out which interview room their guv’nors had been allocated and bundled in to the observation room.
‘Well, she didn’t,’ Zoe said, too excited to take umbrage. ‘I told you, one minute we were interviewing this bartender bloke and the next she’s showing me a photograph on his dresser, or whatever, and telling me I had to pay more attention. Then we were bringing him in. And on the way in, she clearly didn’t want to discuss the case in front of the suspect. I have no idea who …’
Just then, the door beyond the two-way mirror opened and Steven Crayle walked in. Behind him came Hillary Greene and a tall, lean, grey-haired woman who Jake had never seen before.
‘Bloody hell. That’s Mrs Millbright,’ Zoe said, stunned.
‘Who?’
‘The mother of Felix’s friend. You know, the one who fell off the roof.’
‘The gay one?’
‘Harry Fletcher, yes. But why’s she brought her in? Oh, hang on. The photograph!’ Zoe said. ‘Now I remember. She had a photograph of her husband – well, one of them, anyway. She’s been married what, like, three times. I can’t remember which one it was …’