Past Praying For (37 page)

He
found the pair sitting drinking coffee at the kitchen table in a parody of domesticity. Vezey, with a mixture of distaste and impatience, would not join them.

‘
The two-minute job? Right.’ Nolan clasped his pudgy hands, flexed his fingers till they cracked, and considered.

‘
First thing – position of the deceased. No attempt at escape. You noticed that?’ as Vezey nodded. ‘OK. Next thing, the weapon. No problem about provenance – seven others identical on that rack over there.’

Vezey
followed his pointing finger. Attached to the kitchen wall was a decorative rack made of wrought iron with brass trim, and across it, in fitted spaces, were laid the barbecue skewers with their Spanish-style hilts. One space was eloquently empty and the rack showed the metallic traces of fingerprint powder.

‘
You can have a look at one if you like. They’re all the same – sturdy, well-made, lethal. No problem about getting purchase for the thrust.

‘
No fingerprints on the skewer that was used, though. Smudges which we haven’t analysed yet, but Chummy definitely wore gloves.’

‘
What?’ Vezey, who had taken down one of the skewers and was fingering it thoughtfully, spun round.

Nolan
cocked an eye. ‘Touched a nerve, have we?’

Missy
had no gloves with her. And there had been no glove smudges on the matchbox.

‘
What about the brandy bottles she used to start the fire?’

‘
Oho, we
are
well-informed, aren’t we? Spoiled one of my little surprises, that has. They’re covered with prints, though we haven’t had time to check whose.’

Vezey
knew whose they would prove to be. And could he really believe that she was organized enough to use gloves for murdering her husband, then conceal them somewhere before carrying on bare-handed with the bottles and the box of matches? It seemed unlikely. More than unlikely.

‘
There are dozens of unidentified prints everywhere,’ Nolan went on. ‘You’d expect that. But the handle of the door to the den, or whatever they like to call it, has smudges uppermost. Although, interestingly, that door was locked and the key shows fingerprints.’

‘
OK. What else?’

‘
The body itself. I’ll let Hoots Mon! here tell you himself. Take it away, Jock!’

With
the infinitely patient smile of the Scot who has heard that joke a hundred times before and found it minimally amusing the first time, the pathologist outlined his findings.

He
was used to a lay audience, and his explanation was commendably clear and simple. The skewer, passing in front of the vertebrae which might have deflected it and behind the windpipe, had penetrated the carotid artery. Bleeding would be instantaneous and profuse. The immediate loss of blood to the brain would produce confusion and loss of control of the limbs, and death would follow in around three minutes.

‘
He must, I would say, have been asleep – or drunk, maybe, though I’ve not had time to check – because there’s no sign of struggle or alarm. He’d hardly know a thing about it. A sudden jab, a moment’s panic as he clutched at his throat – there are signs of blood on the charred right hand – and then struggled to his feet. Hands instinctively forward as he felt himself falling. After that – oblivion. I will say I can think of nastier ways to go. Quite a lot of them, truth to tell.’ The blue eyes gleamed ghoulishly. ‘But I don’t expect you’ll be wanting me to tell you about those.’

‘
No,’ Vezey agreed absently, thinking it through. ‘I suppose if you planned to kill someone it’s a pretty effective way to do it.’

‘
Ah!’ A finger was wagged in caution. ‘Not necessarily. It could be, but on the other hand you could put a spike through someone’s throat and miss all the vital organs quite easily. You could hit the backbone, without doing fatal damage. I’m not saying your victim would enjoy it, right enough, but he’d still be in a state to come out fighting.’

‘
Right.’ Vezey digested that. ‘So you reckon this was just a lucky thrust?’

‘
Lucky for some, you could say. Yes, unless you think the perpetrator was likely to know precisely the right spot to hit.’

‘
So let me recap. You’re saying it was either someone who was so inexpert they didn’t know it was difficult, or someone who was so expert they knew precisely? Thanks, doc, you’re a great help.’

‘
My pleasure. And hoots, mon!, as we don’t say in Scotland.’

Vezey
had made his mind up by the time he got back to his car. The fingerprints clinched it; he didn’t believe that the woman he had been dealing with last night would – in whatever manifestation – be capable of planning this pointless deception. So he must, after all, cast the net wider. There were the other women he must question; Suzanne Bolton, with her nurse’s knowledge of anatomy, came to mind. And they must question the people who had been at the Golf Club; someone there must, apart from his murderer, have been the last to see Piers McEvoy alive.

He
drove away quickly to evade the group of reporters. It had grown; word was obviously getting about, and a camera flashed in his face before he could turn aside. He gave his orders over the radio as he drove. There were plenty of officers he could deploy, mercifully, and he could have everything well in hand by mid-morning.

***

Ted and Jean Brancombe had gone off to church, but Margaret had declined to go with them. She felt, she told them, obliged to stay in case there should be another summons for her now-slumbering brother, who could sleep through an earthquake let alone a ringing phone, but in fact she was still feeling far from robust and dealing with well-meant enquiries and sympathy would deplete the strength she felt she might need to cope with other demands as the day’s events unfolded.

She
was in the sitting room trying hard to focus her mind on the morning epistle with Pyewacket dozing on her knee when the doorbell rang. He gave her a death stare as she unceremoniously tipped him on to the hearth rug and went to answer it.

Andy
Cutler, of course, she recognized immediately. The girl beside him, a thin wiry child in her early teens, wore the surly expression the young adopt when they are deeply uncertain, and she was pulling the dark grey jersey, which all but covered her micro-skirt, down over her hands, thrusting her thumbs through the holes they had worn in the seams. The heavy mascara on her eyes was smudged, as if she had been crying.

Andy,
too, was very pale. He said without preamble, ‘Can we come in and talk to you? There isn’t anyone else, and I told Martha you were OK. We went to the church but it was someone else doing the service, so we came away.’

‘
I’m glad you knew where to find me. Come through to the kitchen. Would you like coffee, tea – ?’

She
chose the kitchen rather than the sitting room deliberately; its sturdy, practical furnishings were reassuring, and they took seats at the table without waiting to be asked. They both shook their heads at the offer of coffee, but Martha, in a show of defiance, asked if she could smoke.

It
was clearly a test; Margaret passed it by saying indifferently, ‘Sure,’ and found a saucer to use as an ashtray, hoping that Jean wouldn’t have a fit when she returned and found her kitchen polluted.

Andy
burst out, as if this were a burden too heavy for him to bear a moment longer, ‘It’s the police. I think they’re going to arrest Hayley for killing that sod McEvoy, and she didn’t do it. I can’t stop them; they won’t listen to me.’

‘
The pigs never do,’ Martha put in, but he ignored her.

‘
Would you speak to them?’ he begged. ‘They’d listen to you.’

Martha,
stubbing out the cigarette she had just lit, added, ‘She’s a rotten mother, actually. Everyone thinks that, and it’s quite true, she is. But she hasn’t done this, I swear she hasn’t.’

Margaret
looked at their tortured faces, in which the pain showed as clearly as the colour of their eyes. Was there no limit to the agony some parents chose to inflict on their children, the sins of the fathers – and mothers – visited so directly and horribly on these hapless innocents? Robert had outlined briefly the later developments, and it seemed all too hideously plausible, given Hayley’s involvement with Piers, that she might have been moved to kill him. A man who treated one woman as badly as he treated his wife would have had few scruples about the way he used his mistress. But Margaret could hardly say that now.

‘
Tell me everything that’s been happening, and I’ll try to think what we should do.’

They
poured it all out; it was the fourth time the police had questioned Hayley, and this time they had taken her away. She had an alibi for the night of the fire at the Boltons’, she had reminded them, but apparently they weren’t interested in that any more. They had evidence that Hayley had quarrelled with McEvoy last night, and Hayley’s airy explanation that it was just a little misunderstanding between friends hadn’t cut any ice.

‘
And was it?’ Margaret asked gently.

They
exchanged glances. ‘No,’ said Andy. ‘She was fit to be tied when she came home last night. It’s her business, you see: it’s like – well, a bit iffy just now. With Piers being loaded and – ’ he hesitated on the word, ‘a friend, she thought she could get him to sub her so she could keep it going. She wouldn’t tell us what he said, apart from no. But she was spitting tacks.’

‘
Did she go out afterwards?’

‘
No, of course not,’ Martha said fiercely, then without warning burst into tears. ‘She couldn’t have, I’m sure she couldn’t have.’

Andy
absently patted her shoulder, but his own olive skin had taken on a greenish tinge.

‘
That’s the problem,’ he said. ‘We wouldn’t actually know, once we were all asleep. I wanted to ask you, when we know she didn’t do it, should we, like, invent an alibi for her that we can tell the police?’

‘
No,’ said Margaret, sick at heart. ‘You must never lie to the police. Leaving aside the fact that it’s simply wrong, you couldn’t do it well enough. They’d trip you up in five minutes, and that would make everything much, much worse.

‘
But –’ she paused, trying to frame the question in such as way as not to alienate them, ‘I know she’s your mother, and of course you believe what she’s told you, but is there anything – anything at all – that the police might take account of, that might show them that she didn’t do it?’

Then
Martha, her husky voice further thickened by tears, said, ‘She didn’t want to kill him. She just wanted the money, and she’d decided exactly how she was going to get it. And she surely couldn’t get it from him if he was dead.’

Andy
’s head had gone down. ‘We might as well tell it like it is. She was going to blackmail him. Our mother was going to blackmail her former lover. That’s a great thing to have to live with. Not.’ He raised his head, and his eyes were blazing at the injustice of it all. ‘But I’d rather that than be the son of a murderess.’

***

Vezey took Jackie Boyd with him to take notes while he questioned Suzanne Bolton. She was looking surprisingly calm if somewhat drained this morning, and Patrick sat close at her side on the sofa throughout the police interview, exuding husbandly support.

Yes,
she was prepared to tell them all about last night, about the strain she had been under and the upset at the hospital, and – with shame – about her attack on Elizabeth. It was difficult, looking at the neat, composed woman, to imagine her as an avenging Fury.

‘
I think, I really think I must have had some sort of brainstorm,’ she said. ‘I just can’t believe I did that to poor Lizzie. As if she hasn’t got troubles enough! Are you – are you going to charge me with assault?’

No,
Vezey didn’t think it was likely that charges would be brought, and her relief was obvious.

‘
We’d had a very bumpy time in our marriage,’ she said, looking affectionately at Patrick, who squeezed her hand.

‘
But Patrick came after me last night, in all that fog: he searched and searched until he found me. I’d just parked the car up by the reservoir at the top of the common, and cried and cried. I don’t know what I’d have done if he hadn’t coaxed me to come back. We talked half the night, and I’ve promised to see the doctor and talk to him about depression. And it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I had to give up my job, either.’

She
smiled at Patrick again.

Vezey
did not feel that it was part of his police duties to preside over a love fest. ‘And exactly what time was it when you found your wife, Mr Bolton?’

‘
Time?’ Patrick looked to Suzanne for help, and she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t the faintest idea. I seemed to be driving round for ages, but that could have been because of the fog. It probably wasn’t as long as all that. I really couldn’t say.’