A Narrow Return (23 page)

Peter nodded.

‘For the tape please, Mr McRae,’ Hillary said gently.

‘Yes.’

‘We have Mr Cleeves in custody, and he’s making a statement now,’ she informed him.

Peter managed a somewhat trembling smile. ‘Poor Phil. He’ll hate all this.’

‘How old were you when it first started?’ she asked gently.

‘Fourteen. Well, nothing physical till I was fifteen, and then really only heavy petting. It was all so stupid!’ he burst out. ‘Mum took it far too seriously. We weren’t hurting anyone, for Pete’s sake. It’s not as if Phil was some dirty old man pervert who was corrupting me. I was fifteen! I was learning who I was, and what I wanted, and Phil was kind, and, well, like a father to me. He was good to me. And it’s not as if I didn’t know that I was gay. I’d known that for some time. But Mum never would accept that. She thought it was all his fault. As if Phil could make me gay! I mean, how stupid is that?’

Hillary bit back her anger, and firmly squashed the response she wanted to give. At fifteen, Peter McRae had been in no position to know what he wanted. And a man in authority over him had no damned business taking advantage of his naivety. Whether he was gay or not.

‘When you left school that last day, you didn’t go to your friend’s house straight away, like you told us, did you? You went straight to your house.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Your friend, Brian Gill, inadvertently told me. He said that he remembered he was watching
Blue Peter
when you showed up at his house. And I phoned the BBC. They said that
Blue Peter
aired at a quarter to five in those days. But you’d have got back from school at 4.30 by the latest. Yet when you showed up at Brian’s, the programme was halfway over, meaning that there was half an hour to account for in your version of events.’

Peter shook his head in amazement. ‘If you say so. I can barely remember much of what happened that afternoon. I was in a daze after … after it all happened.’

Hillary nodded. ‘OK. Let’s see what you do remember. You went straight home?’

‘Yes.’

‘Your mother was in the kitchen, baking?’

‘Yes. She told me she’d been around to see Phil, to have a word with him. She made me so angry, bossing me around, telling me I had to stop seeing him. She threatened to go to the head, which would have meant Phil lost his job! Just how spiteful was that?’ he asked, his voice rising with remembered indignation. ‘She was hateful. You’ve got to understand, I was in love with Phil. Well, I thought I was,’ he qualified, almost at once. ‘Back then I was just fifteen. It was all so new to me. Everything felt so intense, do you know what I mean?’

‘I understand,’ Hillary said softly. ‘You wanted to protect him?’

‘Exactly,’ Peter said, looking relieved. ‘You understand. But Mum was like a force of bloody nature when she was riled. She just wouldn’t listen to me. I told her over and over that nothing had happened – well, nothing really physical. I told her that I loved Phil, and he loved me, but she just got angrier and angrier, and said that I didn’t know what I was talking about. She said she was going to fix everything. I began to see red. She just wouldn’t listen to me!’ his voice was almost a shout now in remembered anger and frustration, and Hillary let him get it all out.

‘She was your mother, and you’d do as you were told,’ she said flatly.

‘Yes. That’s it exactly. I was just so damned angry. She was going to ruin Phil’s life, and mine too, and she just wouldn’t listen to me!’

‘So you made her listen,’ Hillary said quietly. ‘With the rolling pin?’

Peter McRae looked at her, his big brown eyes wide with horror. ‘You won’t believe me, but I don’t even remember picking it up. The rolling pin I mean. But I must have done – it was there on the table. And then Mum was on the floor and there was this sticky red stuff all around – on my hands, on my shirt. I just dropped the rolling pin and ran.’

Hillary let him get his breath back. He was breathing hard now, and looking genuinely bewildered. ‘I just wandered around for a bit, and then went to Brian’s. I thought he’d take one look at me, and everything would be over. The police would come, and I’d go to prison. I didn’t know if Mum was dead, or what. But he acted like nothing had happened,’ Peter said, the remembered wonderment of it still in his voice. ‘So I pretended that nothing had happened as well. I didn’t know what else to do. So I sat with him watching the telly, and at some point, I wondered why he wasn’t asking about the blood on me, and then I realized that I wasn’t wearing my sweatshirt.’

‘You took it off,’ Hillary said, and glanced quickly across at Steven. She’d told him about Lucy McRae keeping it, and they’d had word just before starting the interview that forensics had retrieved it from Lucy’s flat.

‘Oh, did I?’ he asked, without interest.

‘Anyway, everything then happened pretty much the way I told you it did when you first talked to me,’ he carried on, sounding exhausted now. ‘I went back home, and Lucy was there. She never said anything about seeing me, but I know she must have done. Because a few days ago, she called me to ask for some money. And then … well….’

‘Pretty much blackmailed you when you said no.’

Peter nodded miserably.

‘So when you heard from Mr Cleeves this afternoon, telling you that his DNA had been matched to the hair found on your mother’s body, you panicked?’ she prompted.

‘Yes. I knew it was only a matter of time before you’d figure it out. You see, I remembered saying that I never went into the kitchen that afternoon – and Lucy would have confirmed that she kept me from going into the house as well. So how could you find one of Phil’s hairs on Mum? I hoped you might think Phil had done it, but I wasn’t sure that that would hold water. I realized what must have happened, of course – that one of his hairs got on to me, and that when I … when Mum died, the hair must have fallen off me and on to her.’

‘We call it secondary transfer,’ Hillary said helpfully.

‘Right. Anyway, you could ask me, and I could deny everything until the cows came home. But if you put pressure on Lucy, I thought she might crack.’

‘So you decided to kill her,’ Hillary said flatly.

And it was then that Peter McRae started to cry in earnest.

Tom Warrington hung around the car park until it was starting to get dark, but his patience was finally rewarded.

He saw Marcus Donleavy first, then Steven Crayle. All the big men, gathered around her, like little satellite moons orbiting a bright shining sun. He barely acknowledged the presence of the old man, Jimmy Jessop. And Sam Pickles, that long ginger streak, was no competition. Vivienne Tyrell barely registered on his consciousness at all.

He had eyes only for Hillary. There they were, in a group, all headed for their cars and ready to meet up again at Hillary’s local for a celebratory drink. It was the tradition, whenever a murder case was successfully closed, he knew that.

And it was all over the station that she’d secured a confession from the killer – the murder victim’s own son. Who’d have thought it? Well, except for Hillary, of course.

She was brilliant.

Amazing.

As the group split up, his eyes followed her hungrily. She looked tired, but triumphant. A conquering heroine. She looked so beautiful. He wanted to go to the pub too, but knew he couldn’t risk it. Not quite yet.

But it was time, he thought, to step up his courtship of her nevertheless. The flowers and poetry were a good first step. But it was time to let her know just how strongly he felt.

As Hillary Greene got into her old car and drove away to join her team for a victory celebration, Tom Warrington began to think of ways to make her pay the proper attention towards him.

And he was good at that. After all, the others had all come to realize that he shouldn’t be taken for granted. A pity they had learned the lesson too late.

But it wouldn’t be like that with Hillary, Tom was sure.

Hillary was the one.

Now all he had to do was prove it to her.

And he was going to enjoy doing that.

A NARROW ESCAPE

ON THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW

NARROW IS THE WAY

BY A NARROW MAJORITY

THROUGH A NARROW DOOR

WITH A NARROW BLADE

BESIDE A NARROW STREAM

DOWN A NARROW PATH

ACROSS THE NARROW BLUE LINE

A NARROW POINT OF VIEW

A NARROW EXIT