A Choice of Victims (9 page)

‘No. She leaves at twelve-thirty.’

‘Were you still in bed when Mrs Holden rang?’

‘Yes. That’s what woke me. But I was pretty muzzy—it must have been ages before I got around to answering it. She probably thought I was tight. Which I still was, I suppose. A bit, anyway.’ The deep-set eyes narrowed. He said earnestly, ‘My father doesn’t know I was drunk. You don’t have to tell him, do you?’

Hasted smiled. ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

‘I don’t know how he’d take it, you see.’

‘Well, don’t worry.’ Hasted sipped coffee. It was cold, but talking had made him thirsty. ‘Mrs Holden has been telling me of your stepmother’s refusal to let Sam Bates build a road through your paddock. You know about that?’

‘Yes. Why?’

‘I wondered if your father might be more sympathetic to the project.’

‘I don’t know about sympathetic,’ Andrew said. ‘I doubt if he’d care one way or the other. My father isn’t really the rural type, Mr Hasted. I wouldn’t be surprised if he decided to sell the Manor and move to London.’

‘
Chacun à son goût
,’ Hasted said. ‘Me, I prefer West Deering. London’s fine for a night out, but living there would drive me up the wall.’ He stood up to leave. ‘One more thing, Andrew. Did you or your father have occasion to use the Morris while it was here?’

‘I don’t think my father did. But I did. On Thursday. I collected some timber from Mr Bates.’

‘So your fingerprints would be all over the boot?’

‘I suppose so, yes.’

‘Well, later today we’ll be setting up a mobile incident room on the Green. I’d like you to call in and have your fingerprints taken.’ He smiled at the look of concern on Andrew’s face. ‘Not to worry. It’s solely for elimination purposes. OK?’ Andrew nodded. ‘And ask your father to do the same, will you? Even if he didn’t drive the car he may have fingered it.’

Sam Bates’s yard was situated close to the Deering Arms. Hasted picked his way between the racks of timber, the stacks of bricks and other building materials and larger piles of what appeared to be junk, to the office in a room on the ground floor of the house. The office was closed, and he walked round to the front, where Ivy Bates opened the door to him. Sam was out, she said. Rory? Was he not up in the yard? No, Hasted said, he was not. ‘He’ll be in the pub then,’ Ivy said. ‘You’ll catch him there. Good about Saturday, wasn’t it?’

‘Saturday?’ he queried.

‘The match.’ Like her menfolk, Ivy was a cricket fan and a keen supporter of the village team.

‘Oh! We won, did we? Good.’

‘We didn’t just win, George, we walloped them. And Rory got sixty-three and took three wickets.’

‘Good for Rory,’ Hasted said. ‘Sorry I missed it. I was busy Saturday.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Those men. Still, you must be pleased you got them so quick.’ From the kitchen came the hissing sound of water boiling over on a hot stove. ‘Tell Rory not to be late,’ she said as she bustled away.

The Deering Arms was a modernised seventeenth-century alehouse, a happy mixture of the old and the new. Rory Bates was in the small bar, chatting up the landlord’s wife. He was a broad and muscular young man, with a trim little moustache that looked slightly incongruous on his weather-beaten face.

‘A pint of best for the Force, please, Aileen,’ he said when he saw Hasted.

‘Make it a half,’ Hasted said. ‘I’ve a busy afternoon ahead of me and beer makes me sleepy. Especially in this heat. I hear you did yourself proud on Saturday, Rory.’

‘First time I’ve ever topped fifty,’ Rory said. ‘Mind you, I was dropped twice.’

‘It’s all in the game.’ Hasted lifted his glass. ‘Cheers!’

‘Cheers!’ They both drank. ‘You’ve done yourself a bit of good too, haven’t you, George? Picking up those two killers so soon—Big Brother should be pleased with you. I know we are.’ Rory grinned. ‘The old man drank your health. In cocoa, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Hasted said. Sam Bates was a teetotaller. ‘But why?’

‘You know about the feud between him and Mrs Doyle over the Manor paddock?’

‘Vaguely. What about it?’

One or two people, Rory said, had hinted—some broadly, some subtly—that he or his father might have been responsible for Elizabeth Doyle’s death. ‘It was meant as a joke, of course, and I don’t think anyone really believed it. Too way out. All the same, it was in pretty poor taste.’ Rory smiled. ‘The old man was hopping mad.’

‘I can imagine,’ Hasted said. ‘How about you?’

‘Oh, I wasn’t bothered. If it had been serious I’d have quashed it, of course. As it was...’ Rory shrugged. ‘Well, I just ignored it.’

‘Quashed it how?’

‘As it happened, we both had a cast-iron alibi. Dad was in Limpsted—he draws the wages Friday—and didn’t get home till close on two. And Billy Young and I spent the day over at Yellham, repairing the Follicks’ roof.’

Were the alibis cast-iron? Hasted wondered. Rory’s, yes—if Billy Young substantiated it. But why had Sam been late for lunch that day? And why the assumption that his arrival home at two o’clock absolved him from suspicion? Sam Bates might be an unlikely killer, but his alibi needed to be checked.

‘I’ve been talking to Andrew Doyle,’ he said. ‘Do you remember him collecting some timber from your place on Thursday?’

Rory’s weather-beaten face wrinkled in thought. ‘Was it Thursday? I’m not sure. Could have been Wednesday. Want me to look it up?’

‘No. It’s the incident that’s important, not the day.’

‘Oh! Well, in that case—yes, he did. Half a dozen seven-foot lengths of two-by-two. In oak. Why?’

‘Did you help put them in the car?’

‘No. I would have done, only—yes, you’re right, George. It
was
Thursday. I remember now. I was showing him where the posts were stacked when Ma called me to the phone. By the time I got back Andrew had taken the posts and gone.’

‘So your fingerprints wouldn’t be on the Morris? That’s the car he was using.’

‘No.’ With the glass
en
route
to his lips, Rory paused, ‘Here! What’s this all about, George? You’ve got the men that did it, haven’t you? So why the interest in my fingerprints? I don’t get it.’

Hasted explained yet again that there was now some doubt whether the two men they had arrested were guilty of the murder. ‘They deny it,’ he said. ‘And there’s evidence to suggest they may be telling the truth.’

‘Good Lord! You mean the body was already in the boot when they nicked the car? Someone else had put it there?’

‘It’s possible. Which is why we need to check on fingerprints. There are plenty beside theirs on the car. Was your father in the yard on Thursday?’

‘No.’ Rory finished his beer. ‘It was him that phoned me. From the Morris.’

‘Eh?’ Hasted exclaimed. Then he smiled. ‘Oh, I see. Compton Morris.’

‘Yes. He’d been delayed. Wanted me to let the Vicar know he could be late. He didn’t say what for.’

‘Why didn’t he ring the vicar himself?’

‘I’ve no idea. I never thought to ask.’

Now for the awkward bit, Hasted thought. But it could not be avoided, and in as casual a tone as he could muster he said, ‘Well, anyway, we’ll be setting up a mobile incident room on the Green this afternoon or this evening. You know—to gather and sift information. Call in sometime and have your fingerprints taken, will you? We want to eliminate as many as we can.’

‘Will do.’

‘And ask your father to do the same.’

‘Sure. Though he won’t like it. He—’ The smile on Rory’s face vanished. ‘Here, wait a minute! I told you: neither of us touched the damned car. Not Thursday, not any time. So it’s not elimination you’re after, is it? You think one of us might have killed her and that our fingerprints could be on the car to prove it.’ He looked grim. ‘You bloody hypocrite, George!’

‘Oh, don’t be an idiot, Rory,’ Hasted said. ‘I don’t think anything of the sort, and you know it. It’s just normal police procedure. Anyway, what the hell are you beefing about? Just now you were complaining that some of your friends were insinuating—’

‘I didn’t say friends.’

‘Acquaintances, then. Well, here’s where you confound them. And not just by quoting alibis. If your prints aren’t on the Morris you’re in the clear.’ Not entirely true, Hasted thought, but near enough. ‘Isn’t that what you want? Not just to be innocent but to be seen to be innocent?’ Rory shrugged. ‘You see? Like I said, it’s a matter of elimination. Now, how about the other half?’

‘No thanks.’

‘You’re sure? Well, perhaps you’re right.’ Hasted spoke with forced cheerfulness. It worried him that his job should alienate him from his friends. He was a man who valued friendship. ‘Your mother said not to be late for lunch.’

At the garage Derek was checking the oil level in his father-in-law’s car. Hasted exchanged a few words with Plummer, a retired marine engineer whose upright bearing belied his seventy-one years, and explained to Derek about the incident room and the need to have his fingerprints taken. ‘We should be through with the Morris by tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Certainly by Friday.’

‘Good. I feel naked without a spare.’ Derek wiped the top of the engine and closed the bonnet. ‘How’s the new arrival, George?’

‘Fine, thanks. So is Sybil.’

‘Alice said, any help you want, to let her know.’

‘That’s kind of her,’ Hasted said. ‘Thank her for me, will you? But Eileen’s coping magnificently, and Sybil should be home by the weekend.’

‘Another son, eh, Inspector?’ Plummer said. ‘Derek was telling me. Congratulations!’

Hasted thanked him. ‘I’ve been talking to Andrew, Derek,’ he said. ‘I gather you were over at the Falcon with him lunchtime on Friday. He said you—’

‘That’s right,’ Derek interrupted. ‘I wanted to talk to George Glover about his Vauxhall. Ruddy thing’ll never pass the test. Rust everywhere.’

‘He said you left early to meet someone. He seemed to think—’

‘Meet someone?’ Plummer said sharply. ‘I thought you went over to Corston to look at that Metro.’

‘So I did,’ Derek said.

‘Oh! Well, maybe I got it wrong,’ Hasted said, recognizing his
faux
pas
and hoping to correct it. ‘You know he got pickled after you left?’

‘Yes. But then I reckon it wouldn’t take much to get him going,’ Derek said, welcoming the change of topic. ‘He’s not used to drinking. But he certainly looked as if he’d overdone it that morning.’

‘Oh! You saw him, did you? After he got back?’

‘Saw him? Oh, yes. Yes, I did. He was making for the Green as I turned into the garage on my return from Corston. He looked as white as a sheet. He wasn’t too steady on his pins, either.’

‘He didn’t look all that good when I saw him,’ Hasted said. ‘And that was some eight hours later. What time did you see him?’

‘Well, now!’ Derek was watching his father-in-law, who had started to clean the windscreen. ‘I think—yes, that’s right. It was a few minutes after one. Joe was a trifle peevish, I remember. He’d wanted to leave early for lunch. They had a cousin down from Scotland.’

Hasted drove on up the Green to the post office stores. The shop was empty of customers and Ed Mason, a thin beanpole of a man with enormous eyebrows and a hangdog expression, was hovering in the doorway. Hasted gave him the list of goods Eileen had prepared. ‘She’ll collect them this afternoon,’ he said. ‘When she takes Jason for his walk.’

‘It’s Wednesday,’ Mason said. ‘Early closing.’ He looked up at the clock behind the post office counter. ‘And it’s close on one now.’

‘Damn! I forgot. Well, get the stuff together now, will you, and I’ll run it back.’

Mason took the list and disappeared to the rear of the shop. Hasted chatted with Mrs Barnes. Inevitably she brought up the subject of Elizabeth Doyle’s murder, and they were discussing that and the subsequent arrests when Cheryl Mason came into the shop. She hesitated when she saw Hasted, a look of doubt—or perhaps it was apprehension—on her handsome face. Then the look passed and she smiled.

‘Morning, Mr Hasted,’ she said. ‘How’s your wife? And the baby?’

‘Both flourishing, thank you.’

‘I’m glad you’ve got those men who killed Mrs Doyle,’ she said. ‘I liked her, you know. Well, not liked, perhaps, I didn’t know her well enough. But I admired her. She knew what she wanted and she made sure she got it.’

‘She got killed,’ Mason said, joining them. ‘She didn’t want that.’

‘You know what I mean,’ Cheryl said tartly.

Recalling his last meeting with her, Hasted said, ‘Your wife was telling me you go over to Yellham on Fridays, Mr Mason. To lunch with your mother. Did you go last Friday?’

‘I did. Why?’

‘If you left here shortly after one, when the shop closed, you should have seen those two men. On the road, perhaps, or in the car. Did you?’

‘No. But it was raining hard, of course. I could have missed them.’

‘You didn’t notice the car? A grey Morris 1100?’

‘No.’

‘You wouldn’t have done, would you, Mr Mason?’ Mrs Barnes said. ‘You left early that morning. Remember? Just after half-past twelve. You asked me to lock up.’