Murder... Now and Then (24 page)

She couldn't go on not replying. The woman never lost her patience, and Catherine did. She would win in the end, so she might as well win now. But it was hard, trying to find the words.

‘When I was seventeen, I came to Stansfield to see Max,' she said, after long moments of agonized thought. ‘And I found out what had happened to his wife. The police thought he'd killed her.'

Now she was speaking slowly enough for the inspector to take down what she said word for word, and she was doing just that.

‘They had to let him go in the morning – that's when I got the chance to speak to him. I said I would tell them that he'd been with me, but he didn't want me to.' She sniffed away the tears. ‘That was when he remembered that he'd seen someone when he left the flats. He could describe him, he said. If the police could find him, that would prove that Max was where he said he was. My name wouldn't have to be mentioned.'

There was a long silence then; the inspector didn't look up from her notes, but sat, pen poised, waiting for more.

‘And he described my stepfather,' she said, ‘I didn't tell him that that was who it was, and I talked him out of giving his description to the police. I said it would just be one of the girls' customers, and no one would be able to trace him. I told the police he had been with me. Max didn't know it was my stepfather he had seen until he saw him here yesterday morning.' She could feel the tears running down her face; she didn't try to wipe them away. ‘He hadn't met him – he didn't even know that Victor Holyoak
was
my stepfather until Tuesday. That was why he was so angry with me,' she said. ‘My stepfather was Max's proof that he was innocent.'

Inspector Hill put her pen down, and regarded Catherine for long moments. ‘All right' she said, eventually. ‘Let's start at the beginning. Why did you come to see Max Scott that day?'

She had been pregnant.

‘Mrs Scott?'

‘I – I wanted to see him,' she said.

‘Was he expecting you?'

‘No.'

‘Why did you want to see him?'

‘I …' Catherine licked dry lips. ‘ I just wanted to talk to him.'

‘But you'd seen him the evening before.'

‘I wanted to be with him.'

Inspector Hill's brown eyes rested on hers as she spoke. ‘At the time, you denied any emotional involvement with Max Scott,' she said. ‘Are you contradicting that?'

Catherine nodded.

‘And is that why Mr Scott was reluctant to let you tell the police that he'd been with you?'

‘Yes.' No, but it would do.

She made a note. ‘ Why didn't you tell Mr Scott that it was your stepfather he had seen?'

‘My parents had moved to Holland. They had left the night before. My stepfather came to … to tell me.'

‘And Mr Scott saw Mr Holyoak enter the flats as he was leaving?'

‘Yes. But if I'd told Max that it was my stepfather, they'd have brought him back, and … and I was frightened he'd find put about Max and me. I thought he might be able to make me go back with him.'

‘Are you saying that you and Max Scott were having an affair?'

‘We loved one another,' Catherine said. ‘But the police thought that I was this other woman that his wife had been going on about so we … we said we had just been colleagues.'

She even wrote that down. ‘And it
was
you,' she murmured, as she wrote. It was a statement, not a question. She looked up. ‘He was having an affair with you,' she said. ‘Wasn't he?'

Catherine shook her head, and saw the disbelief. ‘ I didn't say we were having an affair. I said we loved one another,' she repeated defiantly. ‘We still do.'

‘And yet you tell me that you think he spent last night with another woman?'

Catherine smiled then, for the first time. Easier ground at last. ‘I know what Max is like about women,' she said. ‘I've always known. I don't mind.'

‘Has he had many other women?' she asked.

‘Probably. I don't usually find out about them.'

‘How did you find out about Anna Worthing?'

‘My stepfather told me. He wanted me to leave Max. He said it worried my mother, my being married to someone like that.'

‘Did that bother you that your mother was worried?'

Catherine shrugged. ‘If it worried my mother, it was because he chose to let it. He knew where Max was that night. He knew Max had seen him. He knew he hadn't murdered anyone.' She doubted very much that her mother had any opinion on the subject but she didn't express that doubt to the inspector.

You didn't care for your stepfather over much, I take it,' she said.

‘I loathed him. He was a liar and a cheat and a fraud, and when I think—' She felt her heart start to race again, and made another conscious effort to calm down. ‘When I think that he waltzed through life without the police ever knocking on his door, and someone good and kind like Max gets accused of murder, I just—'

‘He was suspected of murder,' said Inspector Hill. ‘He was never accused.'

‘It's the same thing! You don't know what it did to him. He'd just moved here. He'd made some friends – they vanished. It was years –
years
before he could live his normal life again. He still had nightmares! Do you
know
how many times the police questioned him? He tosses and turns and says he didn't kill Valerie and I …' She closed her eyes, trying not to think of it. ‘I could have stopped all that,' she said. ‘And I didn't. I didn't. I was too young, and too silly, and too selfish. I didn't realize what it would do to him, and by the time I did, it was much too late!'

She locked eyes with the inspector, who wasn't even trying to take the torrent of words down.

‘So now you know,' she said. ‘You know why he was slapping me, and you know why I was afraid to go home. I wasn't afraid of Max! I was afraid to face him, that's all.'

‘Why didn't you tell him sooner?' the inspector asked. ‘Why did you let him find out like that?'

Because that was what she had always done with anything unpleasant. Put it off, and put it off, until the very last moment. But the last moment had never arrived, and Max had been shocked into sudden violence.

‘Because I didn't know how to tell him,' she said.

The inspector closed her notebook. ‘Well,' she said. ‘I think I've finished, for the moment.'

She came down in the lift with her. ‘Do you still have the car?' she asked.

‘Yes. It's over by the stairs.' Catherine found that she was still being accompanied; her hand shook as she tried to get the key into the car door.

‘Would you rather I gave you a lift home?' the inspector asked.

Catherine nodded. Her legs were shaking too much to drive.

They didn't speak in the car; Catherine had said all that she had to say, all that she had rehearsed. Come what may, the day of reckoning had been coming; she had been going to have to say it all. She had meant to say it to her husband. She had ended up saying it to the police.

‘I'll see if we've turned him up,' Inspector Hill said as she drew up on the small pavement forecourt of the Scott house. She used a radio; she told them that Catherine had suggested that Max might be found at Anna Worthing's flat.

He had been; Catherine stared at the inspector as the radio informed them both that Max and Anna Worthing had been brought in for questioning in connection with the murder of Victor Holyoak.

‘This is ridiculous,' Max said.

‘What's ridiculous, Mr Scott?' asked Detective Sergeant Finch.

Max didn't know. He just hoped that if he kept saying it, Finch would believe it and let him go.

‘Miss Worthing's next-door neighbour – garagewise – says that when he came home at around eight thirty, her car was not there. When he went out to get something from the car at about eleven thirty, it was there. He knows it was because he thought he wasn't going to be able to get his car out in the morning, and he tried to get it moved.' He looked brightly at Max. ‘Conclusion. She came home some time between eight thirty and eleven thirty.'

‘Is that who came to the door?' asked Max.

‘He didn't get a reply,' said Finch. ‘He assumed that no one had heard him.'

‘I heard him – I just didn't feel like answering the door.'

‘Ah well,' said Finch. ‘He was able to get his car out after all, so what really matters is when it arrived there. And he says it wasn't there at eight thirty.'

‘Nonsense. I wasn't waiting that long.'

The schoolboy eagerness increased. ‘ You weren't waiting at all according to your first statement,' Finch said.

Max glanced at the tape as it went round. He hadn't been cautioned before, and if there was one thing he knew, it was that they couldn't quote you if they hadn't cautioned you. ‘This is my first statement,' he said.

Finch sat back and looked at him. ‘ You are now denying that Miss Worthing was at home when you arrived at her flat at six thirty?'

‘You must have misunderstood,' said Max. ‘I arrived at six thirty. She came a little later.'

‘Like two hours later?'

‘I don't know.'

Max had been through all this before. Over and over and over. Different questions, different answers, but the same feeling in the pit of his stomach.

‘You are now saying that you were waiting outside Miss Worthing's flat for an indeterminate period of time before she came home? You must know when it was.'

Max shrugged.

Finch pushed his chair back with an angry scrape. ‘What time is it?' he asked, standing up.

Max automatically looked at his watch. ‘ Five past one,' he said.

‘It didn't occur to you to look at your watch when you were waiting?'

‘Why should it? She wasn't expecting me – she hadn't said that she'd be there at any particular time.'

‘But we have established that you were there for at least two hours before Miss Worthing arrived home?'

‘I must have been,' said Max.

‘Or were you right in the first place?'

Max looked up at him.

‘Was she there when you arrived – only
you
didn't arrive until after eight thirty, by which time she had got home?'

‘Zelda Driver dropped me off at about six thirty,' said Max. ‘Ask her.'

‘I will,' said Finch. ‘Don't worry. Interview suspended,' he said, switching off the tape.

Lloyd was waiting to see if they had anything on Holyoak; it seemed to him that you were unlikely to have a razor scar if you had led an entirely blameless life, or that if you had, you would assuredly have reported it to the police. Finch, on the other hand, was keen to hang on to Scott and Worthing, and was trying to convince Lloyd.

‘It's not much to hold them on, is it? You said yourself that Scott was drunk,' Lloyd reminded Finch. ‘He wakes up to find you there, badgering his girlfriend – so he says she was with him. Now he's regretting his chivalry. She was somewhere she doesn't want
him
to know about. Not you.'

Finch shook his head. ‘She knows the score, sir,' he said.

‘Oh?'

‘She hasn't spoken a word since I cautioned her,' said Finch. ‘Not one. Practically everybody's had a go.'

Lloyd shrugged. ‘That's her right,' he said.

‘Takes a pro to exercise it that well,' said Finch.

‘Well,' said Lloyd, ‘we've nothing on her.'

There was a knock at the door, and the collator came in with a piece of paper in her hand. ‘Holyoak, Victor Andrew,' she said. ‘Nothing too exciting, I'm afraid. One minor conviction, thirteen years ago.'

One minor conviction, thirteen years ago. Unlucky for some. He frowned. He'd thought that already today, unoriginally enough. Wasn't that when Mrs Scott the first met her maker? He checked his notes. Yes indeed. Thirteen years ago. Third of May.

‘He was booked for kerb-crawling, early hours of nineteenth February, nineteen seventy-nine,' she said. ‘ But I've got a friend in the Serious Crimes Squad – I'm seeing if he can find anything. Holyoak might have been mentioned in despatches.'

‘Good girl,' said Lloyd approvingly.

She looked at him just like Judy did sometimes. They couldn't even take a compliment these days, he thought, as he watched her retreating figure through the new glass pane in his door.

Kerb-crawling. Lloyd was transported back to London, and the depression which he still felt when he thought about it. Depressing nights at home, with long, huffy silences. Even more depressing nights at work, watching little girls and lonely men being rounded up. His eyes widened. Of course.
Of course
.

‘Jenny!' he yelled as she disappeared round the corner of the corridor. She didn't hear. He picked up the phone and dialled her extension, drumming his fingers impatiently until, breathless, she picked up her phone.

‘Collator.'

‘Where was Holyoak picked up?' he demanded.

‘Leyford, South London,' she said.

‘Bingo,' said Lloyd and put the phone down.

No dreams, no premonitions. No clairvoyance. It was something of a relief.

Another figure came into view through his glass panel. ‘Judy!' he shouted, with more success this time, catching her just before she turned into the CID room.

She opened the door. ‘ You wanted me?'

‘Leyford,' he said.

Finch might not have noticed, because he really didn't know her all that well. But Lloyd knew her very well indeed, and he saw the little flush that touched her cheekbones as he said the word. He grinned.

‘Yes, sir?' she said.

She always got formal when he'd caught her not being a policeman. ‘Operation Kerbcrawl,' he said. ‘That's when I saw Holyoak. Through binoculars. That's why I could see him, and he couldn't see me. That's why he was really close to me but I couldn't touch him.'