Drake considered the question for a moment, composing his thoughts. “Traces of sweat on the bed linen. They yielded Rachel’s DNA. According to her, Pearson simply hadn’t changed the sheets, but that doesn’t hold water does it? If we assume she was telling the truth, and she had sex on that same bed the day before, we would not only find sweat, but vaginal and seminal fluids from her and Walston. Your people found nothing but sweat. Now, imagine that she and Walston were in the room the day before. They’ve had sex, she goes to the bathroom to clean up, and while she is there Walston gathers a little bit of her sweat in a – I don’t know – small container. Perhaps not Walston. Perhaps Pearson when he really did change the bed linen. It’s an incredibly difficult feat to achieve, but it could have been done.”
“And the blood on her blouse?”
“The killer beats Barbara to death. The bed is covered in blood. So is he. He gathers some in a container, and then, when Rachel is arrested later that day, he gets into her house, spills it on the blouse, and puts it back in her wardrobe.”
Sam took him to task. “There was no sign of a break-in at Rachel’s place, Wes. For someone to get in, they would have needed a key.”
“Quite right. And you have to ask, how did they get it? But that’s a question only Rachel might answer, and when I asked her, she couldn’t.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
While Drake took himself out on some errand, the rest of Sam’s morning was taken up with Czarniak alongside her, interviewing a furious Rachel Jenner for the third time since Monday, and meeting with the same angry denials from both Rachel and her solicitor.
“How the hell should I know what happened to the pistol? I handed it in. If it went missing, it was some other hooky bastard in this shithole. There are enough of them.”
Ignoring the vehemence, the response came as a surprise to Sam. “Give me some names.”
“Piss off. Find them yourself.”
“Tom Hacton?”
Rachel laughed. “Tommy? Do me a favour. He wouldn’t take a light from a stranger, never mind money.”
Sam had to wonder how much Rachel knew about Hacton’s activities in hiding the one piece of evidence that might have cleared her name. Hayley knew about it, for sure, and she was certain that Rachel did, but that only called into question the last remark.
She never had chance to push it. Rachel tore into her again. “How much more of this crap do I have to take from you? Or do I report you for harassment?”
Sam remembered Drake’s speculation that Rachel might yet be angling for an excuse to make such a report. It made no difference. The questions had to be asked.
“You’ll take as much as I need to give you until I’m satisfied you’re not involved. Since Sunday we’ve had four murders and you can’t positively account for your whereabouts at the time any of them were committed.”
“Just like last time. You’ll do me not because I was there but because I couldn’t prove I wasn’t.”
Sam was beginning to tire of the anger.
After the meeting where Drake had explained his various theories, while the chief constable and Trentham returned to the station commander’s office, she had Drake stay behind in the briefing room at her insistence. She felt guilty about the way she had screamed at him outside the Castle Hotel, and promptly apologised for it, but Drake would not hear it.
“It’s exactly what I needed. You’ve nothing to apologise for. It wasn’t exactly bog-standard counselling practice, but it worked, and in my case, non-standard ideas are exactly the way to go.” He smiled encouragement. “Don’t beat yourself up.”
“Nevertheless, I still feel bad. Let me make it up to you. The meal we keep putting off. Come to my place tonight, I’ll cook dinner.”
“Don’t be daft. You work hard enough during the day without—”
“Please, Wes. It’s not often I get the chance to cook for anyone. Most of the time I just throw something in the microwave. It’ll be good for me, and it might improve our, er, friendship.”
She placed only the slightest stress on the word ‘friendship’ but it was enough to get Drake’s agreement.
With that pleasant memory in mind, she changed tack with Rachel.
“There’s something else I wanted to ask. It came up at a routine meeting this morning. Just give me a few more minutes, and then you can go. You and Walston; the affair which he claimed ever happened, which you said was a fact.”
“It was. Not for long. Only a few weeks, but it happened.”
“Fine. However, Pearson at the Bellevue also denied he had ever seen you there with Walston. How is it possible if you met there regularly?”
“We didn’t. Alex used to come to my house. And there’s no point asking my neighbours. They wouldn’t have seen him. There’s a lane at the back of the house, and he parked there whenever he visited.”
Sam was puzzled. “So why the change the day before Barbara was killed?”
Rachel sighed. “He was concerned that someone had followed him a couple of days earlier, and he thought it might be his wife getting someone to track his movements. He suggested the Bellevue, and I said okay.”
It did not seem likely, and Sam said so. “And how do you view that in light of Barbara’s murder?”
“You know damn well what I think about it. He said it was is first time with Barbara, but I think they’d been at it for a while, and for some reason, Christ knows what, he decided he’d had enough of her, and he was gonna deal with her. I think he’d been planning it for some time, and somewhere along the line, he took a mould of my back door key and had a copy made. Face it, he had plenty of opportunity, the number of times he visited my drum. Then he got us to the Bellevue. It was a set up.”
“And Pearson’s insistence that you were lying?”
“Alex probably threatened to give him the same as he gave Barbara.”
Sam took a little time to consider the answers. “You do realise that if this is true, it puts you firmly in the frame for shooting Walston?”
Rachel’s voice was a hiss. “It wasn’t me. I don’t have the bleeding gun.” She leaned back in her seat. “You want to look at anyone for killing Walston, try talking to Marc Shawforth. Let’s face it, Alex was shagging his wife.”
Sam allowed Rachel and her solicitor to leave, and came away from the interview with Rachel’s final words ringing in her ear. It did not make complete sense, but she wanted to bounce it off Drake. Unfortunately, Drake wasn’t available, and when she tried to ring him, he didn’t answer.
Shawforth was in Landshaven, not Westminster, and he had been one of the most vehement campaigners against Rachel’s release. At every turn, he could be heard insisting that she should be returned to prison. While Rachel’s allegation made a sort of sense, why – if he believed so fervently in Rachel’s guilt – would he hold Walston at gunpoint and compel him to confess to Barbara’s murder.
Bluff and double bluff and triple bluff. It was a logical morass, while Sam prided herself upon her analytical abilities, she needed to bounce it from someone capable of understanding the problem, and with all due respect to her favourite sergeant, Czarniak was not that man. Neither was Barker, and she had a distinct antipathy to Dominic Larne. Drake was the only man she could think of who might be able to sort a way through it.
But where was he?
***
It occurred to Drake as he parked on the harbour pay and display and crossed to the Trafalgar, that like the Bellevue, the place had not loomed large enough in his working life over the last few days. In a roundabout way, Olivia Bradley had gone to her death from here, and four years previously, Kylie Griffiths was last seen in the pub. Barbara Shawforth had been in there on the night Kylie disappeared. And yet Drake had crossed the threshold only once.
After dealing with Sam, Trentham and the chief constable, he had left the police station in search of John Jenner. A quick call to the Duke of York revealed no sign of him, but one of the bar staff suggested the Trafalgar
. “Or if you don’t have any luck there, try the Fisherman’s Rest on the seafront, close to the spa complex.”
And from there, he made his way down Town Hill to the harbour. But his thoughts were consumed with Sam’s invitation. Her tentative use of the word ‘friendship’ came with a soupçon of invitation. He could not recall the last time he had indulged his dormant libido, but the prospect was one to relish.
For now, he had other business to attend to, and as he approached the bar, the landlord, tall stout and stocky, sporting a drooping moustache under a bulbous nose, clearly remembered him.
“Don’t you be hassling my regulars, or you’ll be out.”
“It’s all right. I’m not in a buying mood.” Drake scanned the range of pumps each carrying the logo of a well-known brand. “I’ll have a glass of lager, please.”
He handed over the money, took his glass and crossed the thinly carpeted floor to join Rachel’s ex-husband.
“You’ve got a bloody nerve, Drake.”
The surly greeting was not unexpected.
“Yes, I have. But we’re much the same, you and I, Jenner. You need nerve, bottle, to get where you are, and I routinely piss with the big boys. We also share a refusal to be intimidated by anyone; a bloody-minded determination not to back off no matter how unpopular we are.”
Jenner glowered over the rim of his class. “I don’t care for the way you and the Landshaven mob are treating Rachel.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, I’m trying to clear her name.” Drake took a mouthful of lager. “You obviously know about Alex Walston. Did you know he was shot with Rachel’s service pistol?”
Jenner almost choked on his beer. “What?”
Drake nodded solemnly. “According to what I’m told, she handed it in when her firearms ticket was taken from her. But it never went back to York. Someone nicked it from the station that same day, and she’s favourite.”
Jenner’s face turned into an impossible compound of a scowl and sneer. “You’re talking out of your arse.”
“It’s not really me. Farrington, the chief constable, and Trentham.”
“It’s bollocks.”
Taking another gulp of his beer, Drake maintained a breezy, laid-back approach. “I thought so too. Everyone in that station knew about her authorisation being taken from her, and they’d be watching her like a hawk. Besides, as I understand it she was under suspension when that authorisation was withdrawn. So I don’t believe it was her. But who else could it be?” He put down his glass and stared at Jenner. “I thought it could be you.”
The effect on Jenner was interesting. Firstly, he stared, his dark eyes bulging, then slowly the anger returned until the same eyes became needles, spearing into Drake. “You say that again, and I’ll kick your arse all over this town.”
“I thought it could be you.”
Repeating it was a direct challenge, and to Drake’s mild surprise, Jenner half rose before the landlord approached and stopped him.
“If you two gentleman are going to fight, would you mind taking it outside?”
Jenner glared at him. “Piss off. Before I bring Frank Barker down on your head.”
Drake was impressed. The landlord was clearly well aware of Jenner and his contacts, and wandered away muttering to himself.
He concentrated on the superintendent again. “Your threats are meaningless, Jenner. Didn’t I tell you to check up on The Anagramist? I was that close to killing him.” He held his forefinger and thumb millimetres apart to stress his meaning. “Bully boy tactics, don’t bother me. I don’t scare, and if you wanna take me on physically, I’ll tear you to pieces.” He paused to clear his thinking. “I’m a civilian, and I’m here at the request of DCC Mullins who asked me to assess whether your ex-wife was really guilty of Barbara Shawforth’s murder. I don’t think she was, but I could be wrong. But I figure a man like you would have no hesitation.”
Jenner slid his glass to one side and leaned on the table, lowering his voice so that only Drake could hear.
“And if you think I’m scared of you, you’ve another think coming. Listen to me, pal, I don’t care who sent you here. Give me an excuse, and like I said, I’ll kick you from here to York and back. I might be a bit rough around the edges, but I’m straight. I always have been. To get to my rank you have to be whiter than white, and if she was still with us, your partner, Becky Teale would tell you the same thing… Yes, I checked up on you and The Anagramist.” He let Drake absorb the information. “If someone nicked Rachel’s piece from behind reception, it wasn’t me, and I’m bloody certain it wasn’t her. Now why don’t you do us both a favour and clear off while you’re still in one piece?”
Drake showed no inclination to do anything of the kind, and it was with some satisfaction that he noticed his hand was rock steady when he picked up his glass and drank again.
“My speciality is motive, and I can see one or two motives when it comes to you. You’re so hot on Rachel’s innocence, that you could have stolen that gun four years ago with the intention of wasting a few people as a means of getting her off the hook. That’s especially true when it comes to battering Olivia Bradley the way Barbara Shawforth was murdered. Alternatively, you killed Barbara, to try to pin it on your wife, and all this, ‘oh, I do love you’ shit really is shit. You then killed Olivia and Walston in an attempt to send Rachel back to prison and close the investigation down.”
Jenner picked up his glass, took another drink, slammed it back on the table, and opened his mouth to protest. “Check the station log, smartarse. I never left the place on the afternoon the Shawforth bag was murdered until Neville Trentham called me to the Bellevue.”
“I don’t doubt it, but it means nothing. I’ve been here almost a week, and I’ve noticed crews coming out of the rear entrance, straight onto the car park. They probably signed out, but if they didn’t, who would be any the wiser? No, the station log doesn’t clear you, Jenner.” Drake took another swallow from his glass. “So convince me.”
“Since you’ve decided I’m guilty, how do I do that?”
“Where were you on Sunday night at the time Olivia Bradley was murdered. Between, say, eleven o’clock and half past one in the morning?”
“At my hotel. The Esplanade. It’s one of those where you hand the key in when you go out. Check with the night porter. I had a couple of beers in the Fisherman’s Rest, I got back to my digs about five past eleven. And I didn’t hand the keys over again until first thing Monday morning.”
“Sam Feyer will check,” Drake assured him. “And the night Walston was murdered?”
“Same again.” Jenner sat back, smugly satisfied. “All I can say to you is, prove different.”
“Not my place.” Drake honed his attention. “At the time of Barbara Shawforth’s killing, you and Rachel were no longer an item. What difference did it make to you whether she was convicted or not?”
“A lot.” Lowering his voice and leaning forward again, Jenner went on. “I don’t give a toss what you think of me, but I love her. I always have. I didn’t want a divorce. She did. It was my fault, fair comment, but I pleaded with her to give me one last chance. She refused, but over the last few days, ever since she came back to Landshaven I’ve asked her to move to Middlesbrough with me, start afresh, and she’s promised to seriously think about it, but only when her name’s cleared. I want her back, Drake, but I can’t have her back until your girlfriend finds the bastard who killed Barbara.”
Drake relaxed, considering his options. He prided himself on his ability to judge character and something told him that this man was telling the simple truth.
He glanced around the room again, to ensure no one was paying much attention, and once again the only glances coming in their direction were from the landlord and the harbour girls at the other end of the room.
Leaning forward so Jenner could hear him properly, he asked, “If Rachel didn’t kill her and you didn’t, who did?”
“If I knew that, I’d have ha
d the bastard four years ago.”
Drake laughed sarcastically. “My father, brother and sister are the lawyers, not me. I didn’t ask you to prove it, I asked you for an opinion.”
This time Jenner looked around to make sure no one was listening in. “There was only ever one candidate in my book. Alex Walston. I’d have had the fucker, but Rachel’s name got mentioned, and that was it. I was kicked off the case, by the time Oxley turned up, the spotlight was on Rachel. I don’t know whether you know Oxley—”
“I’ve never had the pleasure,” Drake cut in. “But I’m assured he’s a waste of the taxpayer’s money.”
For the first time, Jenner agreed with him. “Bang on. When I tried to advise him, he told me to bugger off and mind my own business. I tried telling Frank, but Oxley wouldn’t listen to him either. The gospel according to Vernon Oxley was that Walston did not have time. Oxley was wrong. Walston had plenty of time. Time enough to take a shower afterwards, and as long as he was careful coming out of the shower, he wouldn’t leave incriminating footprints in the blood. I was kept out of it and Rachel went down, and then I gave Walston some shit. The bastard reported me to Neville, I got hauled over the coals, and the next thing I knew, they were gently shipping me off to Middlesbrough.”
Drake reminded himself that he had reached similar conclusions regarding Walston’s opportunity, but there were many outstanding questions.
“If we accept all this, it means that Walston also lied about his affair with Rachel.”
“He did. He was shagging her for a few weeks before Barbara was murdered. I think he was setting Rachel up.”
“Leonard Pearson?”
Jenner had a dismissive smile on his face. “Lenny’s a sleazy little git. He had a juvenile for nicking knickers in Hull, and as it happens, Walston came from Hull originally. The way I figure it, Walston smashed Barbara, shoved Pearson five hundred dabs, and gave him instructions not to go to room sixteen until about half past four, and ring the cops when he found Barbara. He would have also warned the little shit to keep his mouth shut on pain of getting the same. Pearson’s not only a sleazebag, but a coward too. He’d keep schtum.”
The Frame - from the author of the Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) series (A Feyer and Drake Mystery Book 2) Page 20