‘If she had one,’ Ian said.
‘She always has matches,’ I pointed out. ‘She’s a smoker. I’ve watched her. She snaps every match in half before discarding it.’
Ian said something under his breath which I failed to catch. ‘Say that again?’ I asked him.
He had been listening with a worried expression on his square face, but now he smiled. ‘I thought so. Your hearing’s deteriorated. I noticed that you’re watching people’s lips more than you used to.’
I dislike having my failing faculties discussed in public but I refused to take more than a small amount of umbrage. ‘Even if that’s true, is it relevant?’
‘I think it is. You say the engine was still warm. How warm?’
‘I already told you, I couldn’t say. The exhaust was still making clicking noises as it cooled, if that’s any guide.’
‘It is,’ Ian said. ‘I think that the car went down the embankment very shortly before you arrived there but you didn’t hear it. Whoever sent the car down may have intended to climb down and set fire to it, but that would have taken time. Climbing down would have been very difficult at that place and traces would have been left. Before they reached the place where the beaters always climb down, they could see or hear you coming. So they abandoned that idea and hoped for the best. If you were still a couple of hundred yards off at the time and with the sound of the burn around you, would you have heard the crash?’
‘Probably not,’ I admitted. ‘She — they, if you like — could have walked past me on the road before descending to the Den Burn and walking down the gully.’
‘Or they could have walked the other way, met an accomplice and been driven home.’
‘I think not. I think that the only possible accomplice was on his way to Holland.’
‘There was no conspiracy,’ Miles said angrily. ‘You make any more suggestions like that and I’ll sue you. And I can assure you that Bea never walked down the Den Burn.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘She hates country walking. I suggested once that she walk halfway down to meet me, and she thought that I’d gone mad. She said that she’s left the country far behind her and as far as she’s concerned it’s for supplying the supermarkets and looking pretty on calendars.’
‘Shut up, you fool,’ Bea said furiously. ‘Just listen.’
‘Well, you did say that.’ But Miles took another look at the strain on her face and fell suddenly silent again.
‘I took the spaniel for a walk down the Den Burn this morning,’ I said. ‘He’d taken a fancy to Bea while she was staying in the house — look at him now.’ Unnoticed, Spin had resumed his earlier position with his chin on her foot. ‘Your men may have taken a look along the burn but they couldn’t possibly have done a fingertip search and they didn’t have a spaniel’s nose. Spin picked this up and brought it to me.’ I produced a small handkerchief from the polythene bag. ‘It’s very faint, but you can still smell her perfume on it. It has some very distinctive embroidery on it, the kind of thing that an aunt does for a favourite niece as a Christmas present. If Mrs Ilwand’s staff did Bea’s laundry they’ll be able to identify it. They may even know if she had it with her on Sunday.’
‘She could have walked down the Den Burn at any time,’ Ian said.
‘But she didn’t. You just heard Miles. And Elizabeth says that Bea never developed the walking habit that most of us have in the country. She drives everywhere. It would take a very pressing need to get her out on foot. And then there were these.’ I placed on the desk a broken match and the apple with tooth-marks.
Ian scowled at the exhibits. ‘I sent three men down the Den Burn with orders to collect anything of even faintly possible significance. They wouldn’t have missed the apple. So it was dropped later.’
‘In point of fact,’ I said, ‘there was an apple tree nearby and if the apple was dropped among other wind-falls, and with the tooth-marks on the underside, who was going to notice? But, anyway, the apple had been placed on top of a section of wall. You couldn’t see it from below. Some tidy-minded person had picked it up, started to bite into it, found that it was a cooking apple and very bitter, and so placed it neatly out of the way on top of the wall because it was against their instincts to throw it down on the ground. Bea Payne is a compulsive tidier and she takes an apple every time she passes the bowl. Her teeth are very regular, as are the tooth-marks. I suggest that a forensic odontologist could easily prove the connection.’
As evidence, what I had brought out so far would have been of little use except perhaps for a question to be used in cross-examination. Ian was looking doubtful. But in Miles’s eyes I could see shock and the dawning of reluctant belief. ‘Bea,’ he said, ‘you didn’t, did you?’
Bea Payne shot me a glance which, I swear, sent a chill through to my spine. It left me in no doubt that I was at the head of her list of People I would most like to eviscerate with a rusty razorblade. Then she looked at Miss McLure’s still moving pencil. ‘I deny it,’ she said in a choked voice.
Miles seemed not to have heard her. ‘My father?’ he said wonderingly. ‘You killed my father? Just because he found out about the e-mails and wouldn’t go along?’
‘No,’ said Bea more loudly. What she was denying was unclear to me.
‘He was my dad,’ Miles said patiently, as though explaining something to himself. ‘He was far from being a saint in some ways and he could be as thick as two planks in others, but he never stole. He shouldn’t have died, it wasn’t worth it, not for money. Bea, how could you do that to him? And to me?’
It was a measure of the hold that their relationship had on her mind that our presence seemed by now to be forgotten. Preserving his love for her outweighed any question of her own safety. When she spoke it was directly to Miles, her eyes locked with his. She seemed to be pleading. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she said. ‘I swear it wasn’t. You’d told him that you were going to Holland to raise the wind on condition that you had a say in the running of the business and he seemed to accept that. He even said to me that he was getting too old for all the stress and that it would be a relief not to have to do all the worrying any more. But when I met him on Sunday he was suddenly a different man. You were away and that seemed to be what made the difference.
‘I’d spent some time unpacking some of my things and arranging the flat the way I wanted it. I was happy at last. I had a job and you’d be nearby and we would be working together. And I loved my little flat. I’d never had space that was private to me before.
‘The excitement of it kept me going until, all of a sudden, I realized that it was past lunchtime. I was hungry and I still had to get in some food. The supermarket stays open on a Sunday so I decided to drive down there and stock up.’
Ian, I noticed, had leaned forward very slowly and seemed to be looking out of the window. His bulk now screened WDC McLure and her darting pencil. Bea was not to be distracted, nor reminded that the law was listening.
‘As I came down the outside stair your father came out of the front door. He waved cheerily and walked to meet me. He was very friendly and asked if I was settling in all right and I said that I was. As he came closer I could smell whisky on his breath. He was steady on his feet but he seemed somehow out of focus.
‘He asked how long we’d known each other. I didn’t want to anger him so I told him the truth, two years. But that wasn’t enough, he grinned at me in a way I didn’t like and asked me outright if we were sleeping together.’
Miles seemed more shocked than by any of her other disclosures. ‘The old devil!’ he said. ‘What did you tell him?’
‘It was none of his business. So I denied it. That was a mistake as it turned out. I was going to have to own up about the baby soon enough and meantime it left him feeling free to . . . to try his hand. He said that he was attracted to me and he began to make all sorts of suggestions.’ She coloured. Tears were running freely but she ignored them. ‘He didn’t just want a roll in the hay. Some of what he said I won’t ever
repeat, even to you. I tried to laugh it off and I went to push past him but he looked round once to be sure that nobody was watching and then he grabbed me. There seemed to be hands everywhere, up my skirt, on my breasts and at the same time holding me so that I couldn’t get away. He was trying to find my mouth and I could feel his stubble and his tongue and the smell of drink was strong and I wanted to be sick. I would have bitten him except that I couldn’t have borne having any part of him in my mouth.’
She drew a shuddering breath and went on. ‘I had one arm free and in a sort of desperation I punched him low down as hard as I could and then gave him a push. He let go then and I fell, almost into the trench. He was doubled up above me but, looking up, it seemed as though he’d be ten feet tall if he straightened and he was furious, hurt physically as well as in his pride. His face had gone scarlet. And he was saying awful things. That I was sacked was the least of them. You wouldn’t believe what he was going to do to me. He bent down further and grabbed me by the elbow. ‘Into the house,’ he said.
‘The way I’d fallen, my hand closed on a piece of pipe and before I could think what to do I’d hit him with it. I didn’t want to kill him but I didn’t want to be dragged inside and have the things he’d been talking about done to me.’ She drew breath in a shuddering sigh. ‘I didn’t mean to hit him so hard, but I was in a panic. He fell down. I couldn’t find a pulse and he wasn’t breathing and there was a squashy dent in his head and where the skin was broken it only bled for a second or two and then stopped. I was horrified. I threw the piece of pipe into the bottom of the trench and knelt down. I forced myself to try the kiss of life but he never breathed on his own and even the tiniest twitchings stopped. I knew, I absolutely knew, that he was dead. After that, it was just as Mr Kitts told it. Miles, do you forgive me?’ she asked urgently.
There was silence, as if sound had been switched off. I think that we were all as curious to know the answer to her question as we had been to hear the rest of her story. Spin sat up and pawed her leg, offering comfort, but he was ignored.
Miles took a large handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. She began to dry her face which was soaked with tears. ‘I think so,’ he said at last. ‘You’ll have to give me time.’
Bea breathed again. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes. ‘You believe me, then?’
‘Oh yes. I believe you. There had been one or two other incidents, when he’d been drinking. I’ve managed to smooth them over until now. He . . . he always accepted that he’d been wrong and tried to make it all right with gifts and an apology.’ He sighed. ‘I believe you all right.’
‘And you’ll stand by me if I go to jail? And look after my baby?’
‘If I can. For as long as it takes. It’s my baby too.’
Bea sighed deeply and then her old, peevish expression made a return. ‘That damned mobile phone!’ she said. ‘If it weren’t for that, there’d have been no proof. I was going to throw it away and get a replacement, but I had to go out for an hour this morning so I left its number with the girls, to call me if anything came up, and took it with me. And then I forgot all about it.’
*
Later, when the formalities had been observed and I met Ian to get my statement down on paper, I reminded him of Miles’s words.
‘For as long as it takes,’ I echoed. ‘That’s what he said. How long do you think that will be?’
‘Who can tell how a judge and jury will react? But my guess is that if she pleads guilty, sheds a few more tears, tells that story as convincingly as she did to us and sticks to it, that may not be for very long. The courts tend to be sympathetic to a woman defending her honour. And undoubtedly the defence can produce witnesses to Maurice Cowieson’s bad behaviour in the past. We’ve heard tales.’
‘And him?’ I asked.
Ian shrugged. ‘A first offender, promising good behaviour and with a job to go to? Not very much. He might even get off with a fine and community service.’
There was something missing. It took me a few seconds to think what it was. ‘You’ve only discussed whether a judge and jury would believe her. But do you believe her?’ I asked him. ‘Or was it really over the money?’
‘That’s quite a different matter.’ He looked at me speculatively, holding my eye. ‘You’re inviting me to guess what was in a woman’s mind on a particular occasion, several days ago. What do you yourself think?’
‘She’s a competent actress — I never detected anything odd in her manner when I met her the next day, or no more than could have been explained by finding herself suddenly in sole charge of the business. Was there whisky in his stomach?’
Ian tapped the post mortem report on his desk. ‘No doubt of it. He was carrying about twice the limit set for the breathalyser. That was the one thing that lent credibility to the accident theory. And I’ll tell you another thing. Professor Manatoy — remember him? — he did the autopsy himself and he’s very thorough. He says that the corpse showed distinct signs of recent sexual excitement.’
‘And, of course, you have to hand that over to the defence,’ I said. ‘So who cares what the truth is? If she puts over her story as dramatically as she did, she’ll get off with about three years for manslaughter and serve maybe two.’
‘As much as that?’ Ian said. ‘With a baby to carry into court? I doubt it. And she’ll sell her story to the tabloids for enough to buy the firm back from you. Who says that crime doesn’t pay?’
‘Nobody, these days,’ I said. ‘And how about yourself. How have you come out of it? Not too many ructions within the Force?’
He grinned suddenly and I realized that he had with difficulty been containing some secret joy. ‘I let you do your thing,’ he said, ‘when I should really have shut you up and carted you back here. But I decided that it was a heads I win, tails you lose situation. If you blew it, you’d carry all the blame and probably get sued for slander. But it worked. When I produced the two accused, they were still preoccupied with purging their souls and confessing like mad to anybody who would listen.
‘Mr Dornoch had sent in a damning report about me. And he’d just arrested and charged the builder, Allardyce.’
*
THE END
Illegal Tender (Three Oaks Book 12) Page 19