A Shred of Evidence (38 page)

“Of course it worried me,” she said. “But when I found myself in her car, I let her think that I thought Mr. Murray had done it, like I told you. So I thought it would be safest if I did
what she suggested, in case I made her suspect that I knew what had really happened. I took the knife, though. Just in case.”

“Yes, so you did. With considerable foresight, as it turned out.”

“Now, look here,” said her mother, tired of behaving herself. “Hannah’s answered all your questions—she’s told you exactly what happened. You just let her sign that statement and go.”

Chief Inspector Lloyd’s eyes dropped to her mother, and he stopped rocking gently to and fro, but he remained precariously balanced on the chair’s back legs. “Just a few more questions, Mrs. Lewis,” he said, his voice Welsh and reassuring. “Bear with us.”

“I don’t see what other questions you can possibly have!”

“Just a couple,” he said, going back to his previous rocking. Hannah hoped he would fall. It seemed almost inevitable that he would.

“You see,” said Inspector Hill, “we spoke to Mr. Murray yesterday. As you suspected, Hannah, when you saw him he was bringing back Natalie’s shoes.”

Hannah frowned, dragging her eyes, and her attention, back from the chief inspector. “So?” she said.

“He said he had to bring them back—he couldn’t let Natalie go home with bare feet,” she said. “I’ve checked with him. He is quite sure—and I think you’ll agree that he was in a good position to know—that Natalie wasn’t
wearing
any tights.”

God, had it taken them until today to find that out? She had been proud of that touch, using Erica Cochrane’s own tights. “I wasn’t wearing any either,” she said.

The inspector frowned. “What’s that got to do with it?” she asked.

“She used her
own
tights to strangle Natalie, like she did with me.”

“I don’t think we said anything about Natalie having been strangled,” the inspector said, not to Hannah, but to Chief Inspector Lloyd, who didn’t seem to be taking much notice of her. “We can check the tape, but I know I didn’t mention it.
After all, it was my idea not to release the manner of Natalie’s death, and you didn’t see the murder, did you?” she said, turning back to Hannah.

This was pathetic. That trick was as old as the hills, and even if she had slightly fallen for it, it wasn’t going to catch her out. No wonder Chief Inspector Lloyd was having nothing to do with it.

“She told me,” she said. “Mrs. Cochrane told me. She told me exactly what she did to Natalie, because she was going to do it to me as well. It should have been me in the first place, that’s what she said, so she was going to kill me in exactly the same way. She was insane with jealousy. She was enjoying telling me.”

“When did she tell you?” asked the inspector.

“While she was taking her tights off.” Gotcha, she thought, triumphantly. Gotcha.

Inspector Hill’s demeanour hadn’t altered, but Chief Inspector Lloyd looked very crestfallen at the failed manoeuvre. He let the chair fall forward, and looked at the inspector, his shoulders drooping slightly in disappointment. Then he looked at Hannah, his blue eyes hard.

“If Mrs. Cochrane used her own tights to strangle Natalia,” he said, “how come she was still wearing them just minutes after the murder?”

What? This time panic was making her head spin, just like after Natalie. Think, Hannah. Think. It’s a bluff. They can’t know for sure whether she was or not.

“We might not have noticed,” he was saying, becoming Welsher by the syllable. “But she had tried to climb up the bank to get to the phone—her tights were all laddered and torn. In shreds, they were.”

Hannah stared back at the blue eyes that hadn’t left hers.

“The inspector here noticed it straight away,” he went on. “Well—women notice things like that, don’t they? But she’s a policewoman, you see, so she made a note of it at the time. ‘Informant dishevelled,’ it says. ‘Tights torn. Slight injury to leg.’ We’re trained to suspect everyone at the scene, you see, and it did seem suspicious—Mrs. Cochrane being all messed
up like that.” He smiled. “But it wasn’t suspicious after all. Because it proves she didn’t do it—doesn’t it?”

Hannah tried hard to get her thoughts under control. It didn’t prove that she had. “Then someone else must have done it,” she said.

Chief Inspector Lloyd frowned deeply as he gave that full consideration. “So—as you see it, Mrs. Cochrane beats Natalia senseless, then someone else altogether comes along and strangles her?”

“Yes.” Prove they didn’t, Mr. Smartass. Prove they didn’t.

“The trouble with that,” said Inspector Hill, “is that they would have had to tell you all about it, wouldn’t they? Or—like the chief inspector says—how could you have known? Even Mrs. Cochrane didn’t know that she had been strangled, and she found her. I didn’t know, until someone gave me a torch. It was too dark to see inside that pipe without one.”

Hannah stared at her, the panic rising.

“No one knew how she had died, Hannah,” she said. “No one but the investigation team—and the murderer. And since we’ve just established that Erica Cochrane
wasn’t
the murderer, that means she couldn’t have said those things to you—and she couldn’t have tried to commit a carbon copy of Natalie’s murder.”

Her voice seemed to be fading away.

“But someone in that flat tried to produce a carbon copy—and that rather leaves you, doesn’t it?” she was saying.

Hannah closed her eyes, and the room seemed to be spinning.

“You used your own tights on Natalia Ouspensky,” the chief inspector’s voice said. “And you used Erica Cochrane’s tights on yourself.”

Her head felt like it had when she had pulled the nylon tights across her throat, tighter and tighter, until she had passed out. No such luck now.

She opened her eyes and slowly lifted her head to look at the inspector, and Chief Inspector Lloyd, then at her mother, shocked into total, blank, horrified silence.

She hadn’t thought up an answer to that, and she wasn’t
going to. The game that she had seemed to be winning so easily had slipped from her grasp; it was over. The inspector had won, after all.

Inspector Hill sat impassively, pen poised over her notebook. “The truth this time, Hannah,” she warned.

The truth …

She had been watching Natalie and Murray, when suddenly Murray got into Colin’s car and sped out backwards. She had seen Natalie walking towards her, doing up her blouse. She hadn’t seen Mrs. Cochrane—Natalie had told her about that. Natalie had told her that Mrs. Cochrane must have thought it was Colin she had been with. She had laughed about that.

“The sod’s gone off with my shoes—look!” She had laughed about that, too.

And Hannah had been so relieved that Natalie hadn’t been with Colin that she had laughed with her. They had reached the adventure playground by that time, and Natalie had asked her why she was there.

She had told her that she was waiting for Colin.

“What for?” she’d asked.

“What do you think for? The same as you and Mr. Murray,” Hannah had said.

Natalie hadn’t believed her, so Hannah had told her the things that she and Colin did together, all those things she had put in the letters, all the things she had imagined doing with Colin.

But Natalie hadn’t been impressed at all; she had just laughed again. And this time, she had laughed at
her
. So Hannah had stopped Natalie laughing. Then she had made a proper job of it. After that, she had unbuttoned her blouse again, so everyone would know what sort of girl she was.

And then last night, she had sat in the almost-empty flat and listened as Erica Cochrane had told her what she had done to Colin, what she had done to her, shaking with anger as she spoke, and stirring her tea all the time.

Her voice had echoed; the room had a coffee table and a couple of chairs in it, and nothing else. It wasn’t somewhere Hannah would have chosen to get away from it all.

“Do you understand what you’ve done?” she had finished.

“I split you up,” Hannah had said. “You’re here, and he’s in a hotel.”

“The police,” she had said, suddenly, and had stopped stirring her tea at last, leaving the spoon in the cup as she had stood up. “We have to go to the police.”

Hannah had felt in her pocket, felt the handle of the knife. “The police?” she had said.

“Yes. You were there. You might have seen something that can help them.”

“So were you,” Hannah had said. She had taken out the knife, and held it against Erica Cochrane. “I’ll go to the police by myself,” she had said. “Afterwards.”

Mrs. Cochrane had frozen like a statue, her eyes on the blade of the knife. “Afterwards?” she had said, still not moving. “After what?”

“After I’ve killed you. Then I’ll tell them what I saw. I’ll tell them you killed her, that you brought me up here and tried to kill me, because you found out that I had written those letters.”

Mrs. Cochrane’s eyes had never left the knife-blade; she hadn’t moved a muscle. “They … they won’t believe you,” she had said.

Hannah had pushed the point of the knife against her. “They will,” she had said. “When I’ve finished.” Then she’d pulled her hand back and thrust the knife in.

But it hadn’t killed her. Mrs. Cochrane’s hands had clamped round her wrist, and they had fought for the knife. Hannah hadn’t minded at first, because there would be cuts and bruises as well, and signs of a struggle, which would all help. Sooner or later, the knife would find its target, she had thought.

The fight had been silent and fierce; over and over again Hannah had got the blade within a millimetre of Mrs. Cochrane’s throat, her eye, her face, but she would push her away again, despite her injury, fighting for her life.

Natalie had been much easier, because she had been half unconscious when Hannah had actually killed her. This might really be quite difficult, she had realized, just as her arm had
been pushed hard against the wall, jarring her elbow, and she had dropped the knife.

She had bent down to retrieve it, and Erica Cochrane had pushed her over, sat on her, tried to pin her arms to the floor. But Hannah had reached the knife before she could do that, and with the second thrust Mrs. Cochrane had slumped over.

Then she had removed Mrs. Cochrane’s tights, and knelt underneath the corner of the shelving, standing up quickly, delivering herself a literally sickening blow to the head. Its effects had delayed her; the police had been breaking down the door before she had been quite ready for them.

Hannah had barely been aware of the urgent knocking at the door at first; then, it had filled her head as she had prayed for oblivion, when her own grip would of necessity relax, and she would be able to breathe once more, her fiction complete.

It had very nearly worked, better than she could ever have hoped. The fight had given her details that she would never have been able to invent, and injuries that she could never have inflicted upon herself.

There was silence when she had finished, broken eventually by the inspector.

“But why, Hannah?” she asked. “Why did you kill Mrs. Cochrane? She hadn’t guessed that it was you. Why?”

“I had to,” said Hannah. “You had arrested Colin. I couldn’t let Colin take the blame for what happened to Natalie. It was much better if she got blamed. She wasn’t good enough for him anyway.”

She felt better, in an odd sort of way. And she had wanted to tell
someone
. After all, it had really been very clever.

Patrick prepared Monday’s lessons. It always calmed him, sitting quietly in an empty staff room, doing what he liked best.

Second best? No, he thought, after some thought. Best. He’d sooner give up women than teaching. And he still might have to give up both for a while.

Hannah Lewis had been charged with the murders; the police had come to tell him, just after four. Someone alive and kicking, someone who would have to stand trial. And he would
be called as a witness, he had been told. He’d rung to tell Victoria the first part, but not the second.

He would have to tell her, though. The luck of the Irish had finally run out, he thought, as he packed up and headed for home, where he had a wife who put up with him, tolerated his shenanigans. Loved him, he supposed. But perhaps not for much longer.

He opened the front door and mentally squared his shoulders. It had to be faced.

“Are you all right?” Victoria asked him as he went in.

He smiled. “Yes, sure,” he said. “I hope Colin’s OK, though.”

“Haven’t you been to see him?” she asked.

“No,” said Patrick. “I didn’t think I should intrude, really.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said. “It’s difficult to know what to do for the best.”

It was. But sometimes you had no choice, whatever the inspector said. “Victoria,” he said. “There’s something you should know.”

“Yes?” she said, her voice dubious.

He smiled. “I love you,” he said.

These things took a while coming to court, after all. He might not be charged—and you never knew—Hannah might not be charged, come to that. Anything could happen between here and Armageddon. Look what had happened to Erica. He might not have to give evidence at all, and baring his soul might be premature.

Sufficient unto the day, he thought, as he kissed his long-suffering, accommodating, forgiving wife, was the evil thereof.

And that was in the Bible, so it must be right.

Colin sat in the armchair where he had been sitting since Chief Inspector Lloyd’s second visit of the day.

Sherlock had been sleeping; he was hungry now. He woke up and came stumping over to where Colin sat, and placed a large, trusting head in his lap.

Colin mustered a smile, and spread the dog’s ears out over
his knees, stroking them. The silly creature liked that. “It’s you and me now, Sherlock,” he said.

Sherlock lifted his eyes at the sound of his name, and his tail wagged.

Colin was glad that Sherlock was just as happy to be with him as he had been with Erica. He couldn’t have borne it if the dog had been looking for her. But Sherlock’s love was given to anyone and everyone, even someone who had never previously had much rapport with him, and somehow that was helping Colin.