Murder... Now and Then (42 page)

‘He came up in the lift to the flat door,' Finch continued. ‘But you led us to believe that it was the ground-floor door, because you had told us you left without seeing who it was. And that isn't possible. You didn't leave at all, did you, Anna?'

‘Yes,' she said tiredly, knowing where the questions were leading, knowing what the answer would sound like.

‘How did you manage that?' he asked. ‘If this person was on one side of the door and you were on the other? He didn't see you leave.'

‘I left by the fire escape,' she muttered.

He looked like an old man, hard of hearing, as he cocked his head towards her. ‘ I'm sorry?' he said. ‘ What was that?'

‘I left by the fire escape,' she said, loudly and clearly, lifting her head, looking into his eyes.

Finch looked back at her, his eyebrows arched. ‘The fire escape?' he echoed.

She remembered Max doing that that night when they were in bed. She'd told him that, then. And he'd been sober, so he'd remember. Finch probably already knew all of this. Max had been talking, Bannister had been talking, Victor's bloody boyfriend had been talking. If she wasn't careful, they'd talk her into a murder charge.

‘Yes. That's why the fire door was open,' she said.

‘Now why would you do that?' he asked, his routine questioning taking on a tone that she knew only too well.

‘Victor was expecting someone, and he didn't want me to see whoever it was,' she said. ‘He told me to leave by the fire escape, and I did.'

‘The fire escape's a proper staircase, is it? I mean – it is a normal means of entry and exit as well as being a fire escape?'

Anna had had enough of the cat and mouse; her temper, the quick temper that had got her into so much trouble all her life, snapped. ‘Your lot were crawling round there all that day!' she shouted. ‘You know perfectly well what sort of fucking fire escape it is!'

Finch nodded. ‘It's a ladder,' he said, his voice hard, at odds with his choirboy looks. ‘Hardly a normal way to leave the building is it?'

She hated policemen.

‘So … you climbed off the balcony and down a ladder in your best party frock because Mr Holyoak
asked
you to?'

She shook her head slightly. ‘Max said that,' she said. ‘You've no idea, any of you. No – not because he asked me to. Because he told me to.'

Lloyd came over and sat down, looking at her for a long time. If Finch hadn't been here, she might have tried chatting him up, offering something in return for being left alone. But Finch was here, giving him protection against predatory interviewees.

‘What was your relationship with Victor Holyoak, Anna?' he asked.

‘Oh, for Christ's sake, how many more times? I worked for him!'

‘Doing what?'

Just tell them the truth, Anna. She could hear Max's voice, gentle, persuasive. But Max didn't know the whole truth.

‘I kept his business acquaintances sweet,' she said. ‘Or compromised them. It depended on Victor what the outcome was. I did whatever turned them on, whatever they wanted me to do, whatever Victor wanted me to do – and Victor got pretty pictures of it all.'

Finch's eyes widened. ‘And you were prepared to do that?'

‘I had no choice. I did what I was told.'

‘Did you sleep with him?'

She sighed heavily. Were they deaf? ‘No. He never wanted me to – you just said his visitor was a man. I expect that's why.'

‘Wouldn't you have known if Holyoak had been homosexual?' asked Lloyd.

Anna smiled. ‘Only if he had wanted me to know,' she said. ‘And he obviously didn't want anyone to know.'

‘Does the name Raymond Arthur Wilkes mean anything to you?'

Oh, God. She had spent years trying to forget that. She nodded. ‘He did some work for Victor,' she said.

‘What sort of work?'

‘Same as me.'

‘Compromised people?'

‘No,' she said, thinking about that. ‘Not that time, I don't think. He would go to this bloke's house, and even Victor couldn't put cameras into other people's houses without their noticing. I think Ray was just payment for services rendered or something.'

‘He was homosexual?'

‘Yes.'

‘How were you involved with him?'

Tell them the truth, Anna. She looked at Lloyd for a long time, then took a deep breath. ‘Victor needed to keep someone sweet and got Ray to visit him. Ray would come to me to get paid. Ray told me that was what he was doing.' She told Lloyd about Victor making her tell him everything Ray had said, about telling her not to warn Ray that he knew. ‘I don't think he did kill himself,' she finished, her voice quiet. ‘I think Victor killed him because of what I told him.'

‘When did Holyoak get this information from you?'

She shrugged, then remembered. ‘ Oh, yes. January – late January. Because that was when she left.'

‘She?'

‘Catherine. Victor saw her that night and next day she left. I thought she was going home!' She still defended herself. ‘But she had just disappeared again, and I got into trouble the next time Victor came. She always got me into trouble with Victor. But that was when he told me I could go to Holland with him. That was when he promised he'd never hurt me.' She smiled. ‘He didn't have to do that for me,' she said. ‘I'd let him down. I was supposed to be watching Catherine. But he took me with him. He didn't have to do that. I didn't murder him, Mr Lloyd. Why would I?'

Lloyd sighed deeply. ‘But did you witness his murder, Anna?' he asked quietly.

She stared at him.

‘You see,' he said, as he tipped his chair on to its back legs. ‘There's a wardrobe in the bedroom – great big thing,' he said. ‘Built in.'

‘Victor's got a thing about clothes,' she said.

‘But he doesn't have any clothes in it.'

‘Not yet.' Not ever. She shivered.

‘So it was an ideal place to stay out of the way for a few moments when someone came to the door. Which is what he told you to do. Except that he was angry with you – you had been calling him names, you had told him you weren't going to do what he wanted this time. So he was going to teach you a lesson, humiliate you – he invited his visitor in and entertained him while you were stuck in the wardrobe.'

Anna shook her head slightly.

‘The wardrobe door was open before the murder and closed after it,' Lloyd said. ‘Why would it be open? It was empty – no one was using it. And even if someone did open it, why close it after the murder? Did you close it? In the hope that we wouldn't know that you were in the flat when his visitor was there? Did you witness the murder, Anna? Did you leave by the fire escape afterwards, so that the cameras wouldn't pick you up? Is that what made you go and get drunk? Is that why you're so scared?'

Anna smiled at him, at the flurry of questions. ‘You've got Victor all wrong,' she said. ‘ He wasn't into humiliating people – shutting me in a wardrobe while he had a roll in the hay with someone wasn't his style. All Victor was interested in was getting people to do what he wanted. Someone was at the door that he didn't want me to see, so he told me to go. The only way out was the fire escape, so he told me to use that.'

Lloyd's eyes were slightly puzzled. ‘So what made you go and get drunk?' he asked.

‘I drink. It's how I cope. Victor made me do things I didn't want to do, and I drink so that I can sleep at nights. But this time I sent Bannister up there to catch him with whoever this visitor was. And I realized that I'd gone too far, and I got really drunk, because I was scared.'

‘That you'd lose the car, and the clothes and all the rest?'

She shook her head. ‘That I'd lose Victor. Because I felt safe with him,' she said. ‘And I'm scared because he's not here any more.'

‘Safe? With someone who blackmailed his business contacts? Someone who beat a man senseless, who made you do things you found so repellent you had to drink to live with yourself? Someone you believe murdered a young man in cold blood because he talked out of turn? You yourself called him a psychopath! Safe?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘ I felt safe with him. ‘Because he'd given me his word he wouldn't hurt me. He was a total bastard, but you could rely on his word. He had a thing about that. But that was the only guarantee I got from him. I knew the score.'

‘How much of what you've got do you actually own, Anna?' he asked wearily.

‘Nothing,' she said. ‘He's got an inventory – everything's on it. Everything I use, right down to the black suspender belts. If I lost my job, everything went back to him. And if I ever let him down, I'd lose my job – he'd have taken the clothes off my back. He said he would – and he means what he says. I didn't kill him.'

‘We know that,' said Lloyd. ‘His visitor was with him until eight – Bannister was with you in the pub from ten past.'

‘If I had killed him at least I'd know I'd got a roof over my head for the foreseeable future,' she said.

‘Don't you have any money put by?' asked Lloyd, looking worried.

‘I didn't get any money until three months ago when he made me the public relations manager. Pocket money, that's all. For personal things. Toothpaste, that sort of thing. I've saved quite a lot of money from my salary, but not enough to live on for long.

Everything else I've got belongs to whoever picks up his loot in his will. Bloody Catherine, I suppose.'

Lloyd looked quite baffled. ‘Then what made you pick a row with him, Anna? Why did you tell him to stuff his job if it was the last thing you could afford to do?'

‘I was angry,' she said. ‘The deal was that he'd look after me as long as I didn't let him down. And I didn't! I did everything he wanted. He gave me the PR job when the deal with Driver's went through.' She laughed at herself. ‘I believed it was a real job. But I wasn't good at it – I told him I was happier doing what I'd done before.'

Lloyd watched her intently as she spoke.

‘And he told me I was too old. That he'd no use for me any more, and he'd given me a job I couldn't do so that I'd be bound to let him down, and he could get rid of me without going back on his word. And I had let him down, but I was being given another chance, because things had changed.'

‘What had changed?'

She shrugged. ‘Something to do with Max, I think,' she said.

‘Go on.'

‘It was so obvious that I couldn't do the bloody job that people had jumped to conclusions, and it suited him for them to believe that I was his mistress. So I still had my uses after all. The tabloids could latch on to me instead and my background would give them plenty to get their teeth into. I told him to stuff it – but it was only because I knew he needed me, and I could get away with it. I knew how far I could go with him.'

Lloyd looked at her for a little while, shaking his head slightly again. Then he terminated the interview, and switched off the tape. ‘Don't forget that you have still got the job with Holyoak UK,' he said quietly. ‘That belongs to the shareholders, not Holyoak himself.'

She had forgotten. ‘But I can't do it,' she said.

‘Neither can half the managers in the country. Being incompetent isn't grounds for dismissal these days – they just promote you out of the way. Play your cards wrong and you could end up on the board of directors.' She smiled. She was in danger of liking Lloyd.

Catherine looked at the cool Inspector Hill, and wondered when she would get that grown up.

‘So – what can I do for you?' Max asked, once they were all seated.

She took out a notebook. ‘You told my DCI that you came here after Mrs Driver dropped you off, and continued your assault on your wife.'

Max went slightly pink. ‘I've just spent all evening extolling the virtues of the truth,' he said. ‘I should have taken my own advice. But it was one of those occasions when it seemed that a lie was more likely to be believed.'

‘You wouldn't believe me when I told you, either,' said Catherine. ‘I bruise easily.'

Catherine could see the disbelief still there in the inspector's eyes as they left hers and turned to Max. ‘ What
did
you do?' she asked. ‘Between six thirty and nine?'

‘I waited outside Anna's flat, but your colleagues were singularly unwilling to believe that. I didn't want to go home. I needed time to think. And I needed Anna. It's how I relax, and I badly needed to relax before I saw Catherine again.'

The inspector glanced at Catherine. ‘Mrs Scott you might prefer it if I spoke to Mr Scott alone,' she said.

‘Why?' said Catherine. ‘I know all about Anna. I told you I did.'

Inspector Hill looked a little baffled.

Max smiled at her. ‘ You think love and sex are inextricably entangled, do you, Inspector?' he said.

She was commendably unfazed by the question, winning some grudging admiration from Catherine. ‘ No,' she said. ‘ Since you ask, I don't think I do. It's good when they are, though,' she added.

Max smiled at her.

‘All right' she said. ‘If neither of you mind, I'll go ahead. When Holyoak arrived here, he discovered that you had been suspected of murdering your first wife, and that at the time you had been having an affair with his seventeen-year-old stepdaughter, whom you allowed to lie for you. It was also virtually common knowledge that you were being unfaithful to her, now that
she
was your wife. I'm not making moral judgements, Mr Scott, but I don't suppose he thought very highly of you.'

Max smiled a little. ‘I'm sure you're right. I'm sure my stepfather-in-law had very little time for me,' he said. ‘ I can't say that that upsets me too much now that I know the sort of man he was.'