Mud Pie

by Emma Lee Bole

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Frank

  Sprinting out of the club grounds, I pounded down the road to Fylington main street, half a mile and more to the parish hall. I was terrified that the incident room might have been dismantled. Now that they’d got Frank, they might have packed up and gone...

  But the police car was still there. And when I arrived at the front desk, gasping my errand, so was Grimshaw, standing up and leafing through a pile of beige folders. He dropped them on the desk and looked at me.

  “Frank’s innocent,” I said, chest heaving. “That blood on his jacket. The one you found in his house. That’s what you arrested him for, isn’t it? I know how it got there.”

  “Oh, shit,” said Grimshaw, unprofessionally.

  I had to stop and pant before I took a deep breath and tried to get it out in one burst. “The first Saturday I helped out at the rugby club, Becki borrowed my knife to cut up a lemon and cut her thumb instead and it bled all over the place so she picked up the nearest cloth to wipe it with, which was Frank’s jacket which he’d left lying on the bar. I’m sure, I think.”

  “What jacket?” said Grimshaw sharply.

  “Dark sort of charcoal tweed, a bit scruffy, with little flecks. The one you asked me whose was it, after I got chased, when you came to the house with Ed.”

  Grimshaw closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.

  “Interview room,” he said brusquely, and together with a thin, nervous WPC we trooped into a small office labelled Finance Section and sat down amidst the filing cabinets, where I said it all again to a recorder, only slightly more coherently.

  There was a brief silence, during which Grimshaw looked totally fed up. “When exactly was this?”

  “Early December.” Sighing, he gave me a calendar and I worked out the date, the time, who else I remembered being there.

  “I don’t know if any of them saw Becki cut herself,” I said, “but they would have heard her go on about it afterwards. And they would have seen the plaster on her thumb when she served up the food. She put a dinosaur plaster on it.”

  “A what?”

  “A kid’s one. With little dinosaurs printed on it.” The memory made me want to choke. Becki like a big kid proud of her plaster. And a purse full of illegal drugs.

  “I remember Drop-goal commenting on it,” I said, and named a couple of other players whom I recalled being around that afternoon.

  “Frank didn’t tell us any of this,” pointed out Grimshaw.

  “He didn’t know. He dumped his coat and went off to watch TV. He wouldn’t have picked it up again until he left.”

  “Wouldn’t he have got it cleaned since then?”

  “The blood wouldn’t show on that fabric,” I said.

  “But still.”

  I looked at him. Sharp trousers, expensive for a copper, polished shoes, crease free cotton shirt, none of your cheap stuff. “I bet you go to the dry-cleaners every week,” I said. “High maintenance man. I doubt if Frank even knows where a dry-cleaners is.”

  “We’ll ask him.”

  “So you see,” I insisted, “if the jacket is the evidence you’re going on, it’s worthless.”

  “If you’re right,” said Grimshaw tersely. “Which part of the coat did Becki wipe the knife on? And was the sharp or the blunt edge against the fabric?”

  I thought hard, trying to visualise that long-ago day. Becki all affable aggression. “Not sure. She wasn’t careful about it. I think she wiped it down one of the front panels, and dabbed her thumb there too. She could well have cut the cloth. Is that what you found?”

  He looked tired and annoyed. “Leave the jacket for a moment. Go back to the house in Brocklow. In the back bedroom we also found a handkerchief covered in blood. What can you tell me about that?”

  “That’s not Becki’s blood. That’s Dean’s. Frank must have told you about Dean.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “That Dean came off his motorbike on the Cat and Fiddle fifteen years ago. He didn’t tell me the details, but Rhoda did. She says Frank’s been mourning him ever since.”

  Grimshaw nodded, reluctantly. “Forensics confirmed the blood was old, and not Becki’s. The point is, don’t you think it an odd character trait to keep a blood-stained handkerchief for fifteen years?”

  “Not if it’s all you’ve got to remember your friend by.”

  “Is that how Frank explained it to you?”

  “He didn’t explain it at all. I found the handkerchief.”

  “Along with more meaningful mementoes. Why keep the handkerchief?”

  “Sentiment,” I said. “He couldn’t bear to throw it away.” Like poor Sammie and that IOU.

  Grimshaw leaned forward. “I was struck by the fact that Frank did not appear surprised to be arrested.”

  “That’s just his manner. He’s phlegmatic. You don’t have to be indignant to be innocent.”

  “Most innocent people are, however.”

  “Frank isn’t most people. And he didn’t kill Becki.”

  Grimshaw folded his arms and tipped his chair back. I sensed exasperation. “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  “And you’re still equally sure about all other members of the rugby club, are you?”

  I was silent.

  “Any other revelations you want to tell me while you’re here?”

  I shook my head.

  “This interview is concluded,” said Grimshaw. He switched off the recorder, scraped back his chair with a squeal, and marched me to the door. Not a happy bunny.

  Come to that, neither was I. Although I’d set Frank free, I was slowly realising that I was out of the frying pan and into the fire. Only there were so many smoking fires I didn’t know which was the big one, the real one, the one that had done all the damage.

  “Will you let Frank go now?” I asked.

  “We will be interviewing a number of people,” he said grimly and emphatically, “yet again. Thank you for your invaluable assistance.” His eyes were stony as he showed me out.