Murder... Now and Then (41 page)

Max's eyebrows rose. ‘You lived there?' he said. ‘I thought the tenants were all hookers apart from Catherine.'

She swallowed the brandy, and looked at him through the empty glass. ‘ You thought right' she said.

Max blinked. ‘ You were a prostitute?' he said slowly. Then he felt silly. Positively unworldly. He really should have realized; she was rather better versed in the erotic arts than most of the women of his acquaintance.

‘Oh, yes.' She recharged the glass. ‘Taking me to Holland did seem a bit coals to Newcastle, but I wasn't about to turn it down.' She gulped down half the measure. ‘He'd pay my fare, my rent my food and clothes.'

‘He promoted you to kept woman?' he said, with an attempt at a smile.

She shook her head. ‘No,' she said wearily. ‘Why will no one believe me? I'm not his mistress. I never have been.'

‘So what did you do for him?'

‘I worked for him, that's all.'

And he had sacked her. Max still felt bad about that. ‘Did you get into trouble because of me?' he asked.

She looked at him, shaking her head a little sadly. ‘He
told
me to sleep with you, Max,' she said.

‘What?' He must have misunderstood.

‘He told me to do it,' she replied. ‘I never stopped being a prostitute. That's what I did. What I do. What I am. My job was to make men like you think they were fantastic in bed. All right?'

No. No, it was far from all right. And it made no sense. ‘ Why?' he asked, bewildered. ‘ Why did he tell you to sleep with me?'

She shrugged.

Max closed his eyes for a second, then threw the sheets back, swinging his legs out of bed.

‘Don't leave me,' she said.

He turned to look at her. ‘You tell me that I was just some trick that you turned, and—'

‘You're not now. Please, Max. Stay. I'm frightened.'

He got back into bed; she was a damsel in distress, and he couldn't resist that. He couldn't leave her to drink away thoughts of a vengeful Bannister and whatever other demons lurked in her psyche; he couldn't abandon her, despite what she had done to him. Like Catherine at the side of the road, she would be better off with him than with the alternative. He took the glass from her. ‘You don't need that,' he said.

Someone who had seen it all, done it all, and then some; she would take some convincing – that his ministrations could beat the bottle. It was a challenge; it would concentrate his mind on something other than what was happening in the world beyond the darkened window.

And that was what he needed, because he didn't think his mind could cope with that any more.

‘Are you feeling up to this, Dr Rule?' asked Lloyd.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘You must have questions … I'm sorry – I probably wasn't making much sense earlier.'

‘Dr Rule,' said the inspector briskly. ‘I understand that you went back into the Holyoak office building after everyone had left on Wednesday night,' she said.

Charles nodded. ‘I had been paged,' he said. It could have been urgent. I … I saw Mr Holyoak,' he said. ‘ Perhaps I should have told you that before. I couldn't find a phone that worked downstairs because the switchboard was closed – so I went up to ask if I might use Mr Holyoak's phone.'

A silence. He didn't have to answer their questions, they had said. ‘But the thing is,' he said, ‘as I came out of the lift, I could hear that he was arguing with someone. I assume it was Anna Worthing – she had left the reception with him, and that's where everyone thought they had gone. I waited for a little while – I didn't like to interrupt. But then I knocked on the door. There was a bit of a wait and when Holyoak opened it he was alone. At least no one else was in evidence.'

‘You didn't think to tell us this before now?' asked Finch angrily, to be silenced by a look from the inspector.

‘Well – no. I didn't know it was critical.'

Silly answer. A disappearing trick prior to a murder, and he didn't think it was critical. But he was cross-examining himself; the inspector clearly didn't want Sergeant Finch to, and he had to content himself with looking unimpressed by Charles's reply.

‘What exactly did you hear?' she asked.

Exactly. He shook his head. He didn't know, not exactly. ‘They were shouting,' he said. ‘Angry – I just heard snatches.' He thought about it. ‘ She was angry,' he said. ‘She was shouting – I could hear her more clearly. He was just talking, really.'

Victor's tone of voice had actually seemed almost threatening to Charles, but in truth, it simply hadn't sounded anything in particular, and he certainly hadn't been threatening her in so many words, so he mustn't give them that impression. In fact, Holyoak hadn't evinced any emotion that Charles could put a name to. She had been angry, though. Very angry.

‘She said she wouldn't be a decoy for whoever he was—' He broke off. ‘She was a little coarse,' he said.

‘And what did he say?'

‘He just told her not to swear,' said Charles. ‘Then she asked why it was better that people should think it was her rather than this other person. He said because it was vital that no one found out he had given his word. She called him names then.'

‘Was he angry?'

‘No. He just told her to be quiet and listen. I couldn't hear what he said to her, but then she was shouting that she didn't want to work for him any more. Only she didn't put it quite like that. He told her to think about what she was giving up, and it went quiet. I knocked on the door then. I heard them speak in low voices – then he opened the door.'

‘And Anna Worthing was no longer in the room?' said Lloyd, removing his glasses and straightening up from the cartoons, in which he had been apparently engrossed.

‘She – she didn't seem to be in the flat at all,' said Charles. ‘In fact he offered me a drink, and … well, I was there for a couple of hours.'

‘A couple of—?' Finch began angrily, but once again subsided under a look from his inspector.

‘Couldn't Anna Worthing simply have been in another room?' she asked.

‘She must have been, but I don't really understand. I felt as though someone was there, but I used his loo, so there was no one hiding in there. But she must have been there somewhere – not the kitchen, because I was in there too.'

‘Were you in the bedroom, Dr Rule?' Lloyd asked.

Charles looked up at him. ‘ No,' he said. ‘ No. Of course not.'

‘So …' Lloyd shrugged.

‘No – the door was open. You can see the whole room, really. Because what you can't see through the door is reflected in the mirror – I was
looking
for her,' he added. ‘You can't even get under the bed – it's flush to the floor.'

‘What was Mr Holyoak wearing when you saw him?' Finch asked.

‘Well … he was wearing a white bathrobe. I obviously had interrupted something. But I don't understand where she went.'

‘You said you could see the bed,' said Finch. ‘Was it made or unmade?'

‘Made,' Charles said. ‘At least the duvet was straight, if that counts as made.'

‘How did you get out of the building, Dr Rule?' Lloyd asked. ‘You didn't use the ground-floor door to the flats.'

‘No – I went down in the lift,' said Charles, puzzled. ‘To the car park – that's where my car was.'

‘But I understood from Mrs Driver that the lift was closed down at six thirty,' said Lloyd.

‘Not entirely. You can take it down to the car park – you just can't take it back up again. It has to be called from inside the building.'

‘Thank you, Dr Rule,' said Inspector Hill, standing up. ‘ Just one other thing,' she asked pleasantly. ‘ Why did you withhold this information? Because you murdered him, perhaps?'

Charles, half-way to his feet, fell back into the chair as though she had hit him. ‘No! I … I just didn't want to get involved,' he said. ‘ It's as simple as that. Victor and I were discussing his possible investment in the clinic. He was talking about expansion – setting up a clinic in another part of the country.' He looked up at her. ‘I thought he was having an affair with my wife, and that that was in all probability why he was murdered. I didn't want the clinic's name –
my
name – linked with that.'

Sergeant Finch spoke, then. ‘You thought he was having an affair with your wife, but you were still quite happy to go into business with him?' he said.

‘Yes,' said Charles. ‘I didn't want it to continue, that was all.'

‘You said you put a stop to it. How?'

‘I told Gerry – Geraldine – that we were no longer going to try to have a child,' he said. ‘That would have made the affair pointless as far as she was concerned. But Zelda says I was wrong about her and Holyoak. And she's usually right so I … I caused my wife's suicide for nothing. For what its worth, I think she did it sooner rather than later. I think she would have done it once the possibility of having a baby had gone. But I would have caused it, in any event and I have to live with that.'

‘When did you indicate to your wife that the affair you suspected her of having was pointless?' asked Lloyd.

‘When she came home. At about midnight. She said she had been with Zelda all evening, but I had
rung
there, so I thought she'd been with him. I told her then. She went downstairs – I could hear her crying, but I …' He swallowed hard. ‘I didn't see her again until the morning. She … she was still crying. Then – I heard what had happened to Victor. And I thought that … I thought she might have—'

‘Are you saying you failed to come forward with this information because you thought your wife had killed Holyoak?'

Charles hadn't wanted, to face this. He nodded.

‘Why? What made you think she would kill him?'

‘I heard the way he was with Anna Worthing. How … how
ruthless
he sounded. It wasn't what he was saying, it was – I don't know. He wanted something and he was going to have it. I thought if she had gone to him, told him it was over, he could have turned nasty. She might have had to … to defend herself.'

‘Mr Holyoak was almost certainly dead by midnight, Dr Rule,' said Lloyd. ‘ I don't think your wife had anything to do with him. Then, or at any other time. And I don't believe you murdered him in a jealous rage over your wife.'

Charles felt very relieved to hear it. But not for long.

‘But I understand that you and Mr Holyoak had become quite close friends?' Lloyd said.

Charles shrugged. ‘Not friends, exactly.'

‘But you went to some trouble to get him the man he wanted to do the opening ceremony, didn't you?'

Charles looked away. ‘ Not trouble, not really.'

‘You had to ask someone else to do you a favour – that's surely an act of friendship?'

‘Well … yes and no. I mean, it wasn't because of my friendship with Victor. He did do something in return.'

Three faces waited to hear exactly what.

‘He gave Max the job he should have had all along,' said Charles.

And they left. Zelda was still there, though. She had made him something to eat. She had taken great care to ensure that it was healthy. He thanked her. But he couldn't eat it.

Anna woke up, surprised to discover that she had been asleep. She could barely remember the last time she had slept without the anaesthetic of alcohol. Through the open bedroom door she could see Max, as he came out of the kitchen with two mugs.

‘Coffee.' He put the mugs down, and sat on the edge of the bed.

She smiled, and took his hand. ‘ I've never met anyone like you,' she said.

He looked unconvinced. ‘Were you faking it this time too?' he asked.

She smiled. ‘I wasn't always faking it before,' she said. That was true; she had enjoyed being with Max.

‘Just most of the time?'

She conceded that. ‘But no,' she said, in answer to his anxious question. ‘ I didn't fake it. Not this time.' That
wasn't
true, but she hadn't wanted to hurt his feelings then, and she didn't now.

But she had stopped being afraid, which as far as she was concerned was much, much better, before she had slipped into her blissful, non-artificially induced sleep. She had believed every word that Max had said, in the end. She could still believe it now, with him sitting on the edge of her bed. But he couldn't stay with her forever. The future was staring her in the face, and nothing Max could do would alter that.

She drank her coffee, and had a bath with Max's active participation. Then they got dressed, laughing. Actually laughing. It was almost possible to forget that any of the nightmare was happening, until the knock, the knock that only policemen could produce.

She was taken in for questioning. Again. Not Max this time, though. She gave him permission to go home; she couldn't make him wait for her. She might be arrested for all she knew. And she felt as though Max were with her, at her elbow, telling her that she could do anything, without fear, because she had done nothing wrong. Not strictly true. But nothing like they thought she had done. Tell them the truth, Max had said. Just tell them the truth, Anna.

Chief Inspector Lloyd, this time. The one who fancied her. With Finch, who was doing the talking.

But telling the truth was one thing; being believed was quite another. And even if they believed her, Bannister never would. If only she had kept her mouth shut about him – but it was the shock of being called Annabel like that. It had taken her right back to Leyford, and the life that once again beckoned, now that she was no longer nineteen, no longer what the punters wanted.

‘We've found him,' said Finch. ‘Your visitor.'

Him? Oh, that explained a lot, really. Was that why Victor was so keen to keep it quiet? Why the hell didn't he just tell her?