What Would Wimsey Do?

by Guy Fraser-Sampson

  She looked at them in a faintly comical, mildly enquiring way, her eyebrows raised.

  “I’m afraid we can’t discuss our internal process,” Collison said formally. Metcalfe stared at the table.

  There was a knock at the door and Willis came in with another note.

  “DC Willis has entered the room,” Metcalfe informed the tape recorder as Collison read the note.

  “Ms McCormick,” he said after a moment’s thought. “I need to suspend this interview for an hour or so while I deal with some other matters. I am going to ask DC Willis to show you to the desk sergeant to be taken into custody. Please ask for any food or drink, or anything else that you require. Before I switch off the tape, I would like to state for the record that it is currently my intention to charge you with the murder of Amy Grant. Further charges may follow. Do you understand? I am happy to repeat anything or offer any explanation you may require.”

  “I understand,” she said calmly.

  “Interview suspended at 1741.” Metcalfe switched off the machine. He gave one tape to Susan McCormick, who looked at it as though uncertain what to do with it, and finally put it in her handbag.

  “Bob,” Collison said quietly, “would you please go ahead and make sure that our various visitors don’t run into each other?”

  “Right, guv,” said Metcalfe, and left the room.

  Collison stood back as Willis led Susan McCormick away. He followed them down the corridor and noted with relief that the waiting area was clear. As the two women walked away into the custody area, the sergeant jerked his head at the door leading into the magistrates’ court. Collison opened it, and Metcalfe led Colin Barker and Stephen Cohen back into the waiting area. Without waiting to be asked, they filed back into the interview room.

  “Thank you for your patience, gentlemen,” Collison said as they sat down. “I don’t intend to switch the tape recorder back on again unless you’d particularly like me to.”

  Cohen looked shocked. “You know the rules as to how interviews with suspects should be conducted, Superintendent.”

  “That’s just the point,” Collison replied. “I would like to inform you that we have just received some information which, while it has to be independently verified, leads me to conclude that Dr Barker should no longer be treated as a suspect for his wife’s murder, for the present at least.”

  “For the present at least?” echoed Cohen. “Surely he is either a suspect or he’s not. Which is it?”

  “Please bear with me, Mr Cohen,” Collison said wearily. “I am partway through another interview which I have broken off specifically to talk to you now rather than keep you waiting for what might prove a very long time. If you would rather I did things differently then I will happily do so.”

  The solicitor made no answer, but gestured grudging acceptance.

  “I don’t think that any good purpose would be served by Dr Barker remaining here this evening, Mr Cohen,” Collison went on. “As far as we are concerned he is free to return home, though we may wish him to return tomorrow, as a witness rather than a suspect. DI Metcalfe, please return Dr Barker’s passport to him.”

  Barker, who had been gaping soundlessly throughout this exchange, now regained the power of speech. “Does this have something to do with whatever my ex-wife’s been telling you?” he demanded.

  “Whatever your ex-wife may have told us is of course confidential, Dr Barker,” Collison said blandly. “And, as regards the press outside, I would be grateful if you would refrain from any comment as you leave. I cannot dictate to you what to say or not to say, but I can tell you honestly that I believe it would greatly help the search for your wife’s killer were you to remain silent at this point.”

  “All very mysterious,” Cohen commented, “but in the circumstances, Superintendent, we will do as you ask.”

  “It’s much appreciated,” Collison acknowledged. “Bob, will you show our guests out, please?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “You don’t suppose, do you,” Metcalfe asked Willis as they grabbed a quick cup of coffee in the canteen, “that she’s come forward with a false confession just because her ex is in the frame?”

  “To clear his name, you mean?”

  “That and to show him that she’s still so much in love with him that she’s prepared to go to prison in his place, yes.”

  She stirred what passed for coffee reflectively. “Anything’s possible, I suppose. But she did seem to know an awful lot about the killings.”

  “Nothing that didn’t come out in evidence at the trial.”

  “Really? What about the fact that she didn’t realise how ineffective chloroform was? That was never mentioned. We only found out about it ourselves a day or so back.”

  “That’s true,” he acknowledged grudgingly. “And she can explain how it came to be ordered by the practice and then disappear.”

  “I know it all sounds absurd,” she said, “but it seems to hang together. She must be a very disturbed person. I’d love to have Peter’s opinion.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, looking at her uncomfortably. “Karen…”

  “Give me a bit more time, Bob,” she said quietly, giving him a smile that made him feel suddenly breathless. “Not long now.”

  “There’s the guvnor,” he said, glancing away from her with difficulty.

  “Coffee, sir?” he asked as Collison approached.

  “So that’s what it is,” Collison said with a smile. “Another mystery solved. No, but you finish yours. There’s no hurry. I’ve just been trying to speak to the ACC but he’s not in the office, so I’ve left a message.”

  “Is she genuine, do you think, sir?” Willis asked.

  “Seems to be, but frankly I’m losing all grasp of reality on this case. I don’t know what to believe anymore. There’s always the possibility that she’s making it all up, but she hasn’t made any slips so far.”

  “I’m waiting to see how she deals with the fact that Clarke had an alibi for the Hillyer murder,” said Metcalfe.

  “To be honest, so am I,” Collison concurred. “Right now that’s about the only thing I can see standing between us throwing out her story or having to admit that we’ve been wrong about this case yet again.”

  “So, Ms McCormick,” he said once the tapes were switched on and the preliminary announcements out of the way, “I’d like to remind you that you are still under caution.”

  “I understand.”

  “Before we suspended the interview you were telling us about how you came to murder Amy Grant. I want to now move on to Jenny Hillyer. You said that your intention was simply to kill one other woman before Katherine Barker, so why would you want to kill anyone else?”

  “Yes, I did say that,” she agreed, “and it was true at the time. But then I realised that two wasn’t enough; I had to make this look like the work of a serial killer. I knew that I’d be most at risk when it was Kathy’s turn, as I’d have to act whenever I had a good opportunity, rather than be sure of getting her somewhere private, like my garage. Doubly at risk, actually. First there was the chance of being surprised in the act by a passer-by. Second there was the risk of being an obvious suspect.”

  “So?”

  “So I thought that once she was dead a few other women would need to die too, and it would be that much more difficult—who knows, I might even have been under observation as a possible suspect—so it was better to focus on the others first, establishing and strengthening the pattern all the time, and then make her murder, the real one, the last. I was hoping that perhaps the police might think the killer had moved away from London or fled the country.”

  “And Jenny Hillyer?”

  “I met her in a pub in Belsize Park. She’d been waiting for one of these internet blind dates but he’d never shown up, or maybe he had and didn’t fancy what he saw and went home again. She had a few drinks while she was waiting so she was a bit drunk already. I pretended to be waiting for a date as well, and bought her a few
more. Then I suggested we go back to my place and call out for a pizza. She never made it into the house. We went in through the garage and I grabbed the hammer and hit her on the back of the head. She went down straight away and I carefully repeated everything I’d done to Amy, including making sure there were chloroform burns on her face.”

  “And then you called Clarke and he came over as before and disposed of the body?” said Metcalfe.

  She laughed. “Ah, that’s where you all went wrong, wasn’t it? Because you thought he was actually the murderer you jumped to the conclusion that if he had an alibi for the night she was killed then he must be innocent. How funny I thought, when I read about it in the newspapers. What you should have been asking, had you known the truth, was whether he had an alibi for the next night, the night she was moved and dumped.”

  “And that’s when he did it?”

  “Yes, though he was in a dreadful state. He’d obviously been drinking heavily the night before and he was still massively hungover. Maybe that’s why he didn’t object so much that time. It also got me out of sleeping with him, though he came back a few nights later for his pound of flesh.”

  “So you kept the body in your garage for twenty-four hours?”

  “Well, I didn’t have much choice, did I? I rang Clarke and got no answer, then I tried again later and still no good. I was pretty angry actually. I didn’t finally get hold of him until the following afternoon, and he sounded pretty shaky. I met him when I came home from work, though I’d tried cleaning up a bit already the night before.”

  “So having discovered that you liked killing, you went on with it?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure I liked it exactly. Frankly, I didn’t feel much at all. I simply had a plan and I did what needed to be done to carry it out. Joyce was what you’d probably call a random victim. I met her at the hospital when I was visiting a friend who’d had a hysterectomy. We got chatting and I asked her if she’d like to do some private work caring for my invalid mother. She said she would, so I invited her to call round and discuss it.”

  “And Tracy Redman?”

  “Rather sordid, I’m afraid. I saw a card in a newsagent’s window and called to ask if she’d like to service a couple. I didn’t even know her real name until I saw the press reports. She was going by Tiffany when I met her.”

  “So in each case the victim went to your house? As simple as that?”

  “Yes, and in each case they never got further than the garage,” she said dispassionately.

  “Very well,” Collison said. “We will of course be despatching a Scene of Crime team to your property.”

  “And I’m sure they’ll find lots of supporting evidence, won’t they?” she replied calmly. “I know it’s almost impossible to get rid of it all, even if it looks really clean.”

  “Let’s move on to Katherine Barker,” Collison asked, ignoring her response.

  “She was the one I felt nervous about. The only one I felt any real emotion about, actually. I was excited by the thought of doing it, but at the same time nervous about being discovered. The one thing that could spoil everything with Colin was him finding out that I’d killed her.”

  “And how did you go about it?”

  “I started waiting outside their flat in my car at night. After a while I noticed a pattern of noisy rows late at night, ending with her storming out of the flat. The first few times he ran after her and they had an argument in the street and then finally went back in again, but after a while he stopped following her. So I did. She went to the same place every time, and often she looked the worse for wear. Too much alcohol, clearly. I worked out that if I drove off straight away while she was staggering around looking for a taxi I could get there first and wait for her. There was an alleyway that she had to walk through after the taxi dropped her, and there was usually nobody around; it was a pretty dodgy neighbourhood. I reckoned I could do everything I needed to do in about three or four minutes. It meant taking a big risk, but it was worth it.”

  “It sounds as if this was a rational process on your part—you planned it all very carefully?”

  “Yes, and it was round then that I went to Gary’s flat for the first time. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I realised it was our flat—mine and Colin’s that is, the one I used to rent out. I kept quiet about that, of course, but a few idle questions were enough to establish that he knew Kathy. God, he even fancied her! Ridiculous though it may seem, the moron fantasised about her being secretly in love with him.”

  “She was an attractive woman,” Collison pointed out mildly.

  “She was a bitch!” spat Susan McCormick. “And a totally unprincipled bitch at that. She stole my husband. Even though she wasn’t in love with him and he wasn’t in love with her.”

  “At the risk of getting drawn off the main topic at hand,” Collison said, surprised, “if Dr Barker wasn’t in love with Katherine, then why did he leave you and marry her?”

  “He thought he was in love with her, of course. Women like her are good at that. She made eyes at him and wore tarty clothes, and made him believe that a young woman really could find a middle-aged man attractive. Typical man; he might just as well have been locked on auto-pilot. Pathetic!”

  It was not clear whether this epithet was being applied to the late Katherine Barker, her husband or men in general, but Collison decided to press on.

  “Perhaps we’ll back come to this point later. Tell me how you felt when you realised that by strange coincidence Gary Clarke actually knew your intended victim.”

  “At first I was panicked,” she admitted. “I thought about calling the whole thing off. It seemed too risky. She’d even told him off about trying to contact her all the time, you know, making excuses to call her. It seemed likely that she would have mentioned that to someone, which would mean that the police might well come knocking on his door as a suspect.”

  “What changed your mind then?” Metcalfe enquired.

  “I suddenly had a brainwave.” She beamed. “I was looking at it all wrong; he was a ready-made suspect all by himself. I’d constructed a mythical serial killer who was probably inadequate with women, and he was undoubtedly that. He was well known as a fantasist, so people would be unlikely to believe anything he said—he used to tell silly stories all the time. Best of all, he knew Katherine Barker and was close to being obsessed with her. If the killings stopped with her, it might indeed look as if she had been the real target all along—but his target, not mine.”

  “Weren’t you still taking a great risk though?” Collison asked. “If he was arrested and questioned, why wouldn’t he just tell the truth and implicate you?”

  “Two reasons. First, I think he had genuine feelings for me, despite the silly crush he had on Kathy. As far as he was concerned we were both committed to this special relationship together, albeit based, as it turned out, on killing. Sharing something like that brings you together in a strange way. I knew he wouldn’t want to let me down.”

  “And second?”

  “Second, we’d talked about one of us getting caught; we agreed that the other would keep shtum. I’d impressed upon him that he was likely to get exactly the same sentence as an accessory to murder as he would if he’d done the actual murders himself. So if either of us was charged, the best course would be to plead guilty and serve the time without mentioning the other. After all, these days even killers get let out after a few years, don’t they?”

  “And was he comfortable with that?”

  “No, he was very unhappy about it but I had one more trick up my sleeve. I said that if either one of us was picked up, we should claim that we had been in bed together on the night of the murder, which would give either of us a perfect alibi.”

  “Yet you testified to the exact opposite. Why?”

  “Because I realised he was the perfect suspect, like I said. I hid the stuff in the loft one day just after Kathy was killed, when I knew everyone was likely to be at work. I got the l
adder from the flat; it was hard to reach but I was wearing heels and I was just able to get the bag into the loft. I knew that if you suspected him it would be one of the first places you’d look—it was so obvious.”

  Collison and Metcalfe exchanged wry glances.

  “Then you’d have him ‘bang to rights,’ as you say. I thought he’d eventually realise things were hopeless and confess. When he stuck to our plan instead and tried to involve me in his alibi, I knew that by denying his story I’d just be making things even more open and shut for you. It would gel with what other people—like his colleagues—would say about him being a fantasist. So you’d have a man whom nobody would believe, with a bag full of murder evidence in his loft. Simple.”

  “Tell us about the night of Katherine’s death,” said Collison. She shrugged. “It was all really just as I’d planned it. I waited outside the flat for a few nights until a row started, and right on cue she came staggering out. For a moment I wondered if I should risk just doing it there and then, but Lyndhurst Gardens is much too public, even after dark. You have occasional cars cutting through from Haverstock Hill to Fitzjohn’s Avenue. So off I went and was ready waiting for her when she arrived. It was easy because she was very drunk. The only problem was that I got a lot of blood on my clothes, so when I got home I took off literally everything I was wearing and put it all in a bin bag.”

  “Where is the bag now?” Collison asked.

  “God knows. I took it to the dump the next day. I expect it’s in a landfill site somewhere by now.”

  “Did you see anyone else while you were…at the scene?”

  “I think there was a homeless guy wandering around somewhere, but he looked as if he was pretty much out of it himself—either drink or drugs. He had a dog with him. I remember it barked at me once or twice, just out of curiosity I suspect.”