Past Tense (21 page)

Much the same applied to encounters with the medical profession.

Which side of the debate succeeded with the police often depended on which member of the force was accompanying the interviewer. In the case of Detective Constable Crosby, Sloan was in no doubt. He was better without him. However, proper police procedure required that Sloan had someone with him when he questioned William Wakefield over the matter of his late return to the Erroll Garden Hotel the night after the funeral – or, rather, his failure to mention the fact when interviewed earlier.

And so it was with Crosby at his side that Sloan returned to The Old Post Office at Staple St James following at a discreet distance an unsuspecting William Wakefield back home after he came off the London train.

‘We'd just like to run over a few things, sir,' said Sloan to William Wakefield overtaking the man as he walked up the garden path to his house. ‘To make sure we've got it right.'

‘Sure, Inspector.' The man seemed unalarmed. ‘Come along in. I expect Jan's got the kettle on.'

Finding the door locked, Wakefield let them in with his own house key. Not only did Janet Wakefield not have the kettle on but she wasn't there.

‘Funny,' said Bill Wakefield. ‘I thought she'd guess I'd be on this train. I expect she's gone round to her friend, Dawn. Something must have cropped up because she didn't meet me at the station.' He led the way to the kitchen and put the kettle on himself.

‘What we are investigating, sir,' said Sloan, ‘are your movements the night you got back from Brazil.'

He turned to face him. ‘I told you, Inspector. I checked in to the Erroll Garden Hotel.'

‘What you didn't tell us, sir, is that you went out again after that. Would you like to tell us where you went?'

William Wakefield glanced round the room as if to make sure that the three of them were alone. He took a deep breath and said, ‘Only if you promise not to tell my wife.'

‘I can't give you any specific undertaking of any sort,' said Sloan steadily, ‘and I would remind you that we are investigating a matter of the utmost seriousness.'

The man wasn't really listening. ‘You could say,' he said slowly, ‘that I was being taught a lesson. Well, having one anyway.'

‘Sir?'

‘My wife and I have been trying to start a family. Having fertility treatment and all that.'

‘Brazil's a long way away,' observed Crosby in a detached manner.

‘When I'm at home,' he said with dignity.

‘And?' said Sloan.

‘And the doctor johnnies always try to pin the blame on the wife, willy-nilly. Or so they say. But they shouldn't. Not always.'

‘The male ego being a tender plant?' suggested Sloan. This was something no policeman needed to be told: it was demonstrated most Saturday nights by alcohol-fuelled punch-ups in the town centre.

‘I thought perhaps someone else might be able to help,' said William Wakefield simply.

‘Someone with very wide experience?' suggested Sloan expressionlessly.

‘All right, then, Inspector.' He opened his hands in a gesture of defeat. ‘Have it your way. A lady of the night.'

‘And did she?' enquired Crosby with interest.

William Wakefield favoured him with a long look and then his face suddenly burst into a grin and he yelped, ‘And how!' He gave Sloan a playful dig in the ribs. ‘I'm going to tell that supercilious medic that he only told me the half of it.'

 

‘Not a
mariage blanc,
surely?' said the superintendent, pursing his lips.

‘Not exactly,' said Sloan ambiguously. ‘That's his story, anyway,' he added, deliberately vague.

‘It's new, I will say that,' commented Leeyes. ‘And what, might I ask,' he went on, rolling his eyes, ‘did his wife have to say about that?'

‘She wasn't there.' Sloan didn't suppose they would have heard about the matter at all – or was it an alibi? – if she had been. That she hadn't been present in the house was something he was beginning to find a little disturbing.

‘It takes two to tango,' remarked Leeyes obscurely.

‘Her husband told us that he didn't know where she was, either,' Sloan reported to the superintendent. The policeman in him wondered whether this, too, was something else he should worry about.

‘Wakefield's London story isn't provable, of course,' Leeyes went on, pursuing his own train of thought. ‘That he was with a lady of the night when he says he was, I mean, or exactly where.'

‘No, sir.' Those of the red-light district never gave their names and address to the gentlemen from the blue-lamp police station if they could avoid it. Or to anyone else, come to that. He coughed. ‘If he wasn't with anyone like her, of course, he would have had time to come down to Berebury. All he had to do was arrange to meet Lucy Lansdown on the bridge or anywhere else and he could still get back to his hotel in the early hours. ‘Joseph Short,' he added fairly, ‘would have had even more time because he was on the spot here in the town and he could have got in and out of the Bellingham very easily.'

‘Out and back in, you mean, Sloan.'

‘Yes, sir, of course. Sorry, sir.'

‘And I take it we still don't know who gains from Lucy Lansdown's death?'

‘Not yet. We're working on it.' Other minions were indeed going through every piece of paper that had been found in Lucy Lansdown's house – so far without finding anything that might lead anywhere at all.

‘Or what Matthew Steele was really up to?'

‘We're working on that, too, sir.' Even to Sloan's own ears that sounded lame. Nobody knew what Matthew Steele might have been up to: a man who could rob a grave – if he had – was doubtless capable of anything at all. ‘He hasn't been near his home yet. We do know that.' That it was all they knew, Sloan decided it was prudent not to add.

Leeyes drummed his fingers on the table in a peremptory way. ‘How long have we got, Sloan?'

‘Sir?'

‘Before two of the three men connected with Josephine Short and thus presumably with Lucy Lansdown leave the country,' Leeyes said impatiently. ‘She didn't go to that funeral for fun, you know.'

‘Twenty-four hours,' said Sloan bleakly. He was tempted to add
One Fine Day
but thought better of it just in time. ‘I'm told Joseph Short has a flight back to Lasserta booked for late this afternoon and William Wakefield one first thing tomorrow morning.' He didn't hazard a guess as to what Matthew Steele's intentions might be or where he might have got to; perhaps he ought to be as concerned about his being missing as he was about Janet Wakefield not being around but he wasn't. The devil usually looked after his own.

The superintendent leant back in his chair. ‘Have we got any grounds for detaining either of them? Or, better still, both?' Leeyes, too, seemed to have forgotten about Matthew Steele for the time being.

‘None whatsoever, sir. Any half-awake solicitor would get them released in minutes.' Habeas corpus might be one of the oldest statutes in the book but it could still be invoked.

Leeyes sighed but said nothing.

‘Quite so,' said Sloan, responding to the sigh not the silence. Having egg on his face was something that never had appealed to the police superintendent.

‘And you're quite sure, Sloan, there's nothing we can get either of them on as of the present?' Leeyes sounded quite wistful now. ‘Or Matthew Steele for anything at all yet?'

‘Not unless Wakefield attempts to kill Short,' said Sloan succintly. ‘Joseph Short dead would be worth a great deal to William Wakefield and his family and old Josephine Short was worth a lot to Matthew Steele dead – at least her rings were. We know that now but as to who benefits from Lucy Lansdown being dead, we still don't know.'

‘And what has the man Short got to do wrong to give us some leverage? He seems to me to be sitting pretty if he does nothing at all.'

‘Attempt to kill somebody,' said Sloan uneasily, ‘although I can't for the life of me see why he should. The same goes for Matthew Steele. He's connected with Josephine Short, too, even if it's only after death.'

‘Well, Sloan,' commanded Superintendent Leeyes at his most authoritative, ‘just you make sure that nobody kills anybody else. And report back to me soonest.'

Suppressing any retort that included references to Merlin and sundry other wizards, Sloan made for the door. As he neared it Leeyes called out to his departing back, ‘Think off-piste, Inspector.'

 

There was nothing for it, decided Detective Inspector Sloan, but to start at the very beginning of the case all over again – and not a lot of time left now in which to do it. ‘It's back to the drawing board, I'm afraid, Crosby,' he said as the constable entered his office with two steaming mugs of tea. This wasn't the place for exotic skiing parallels.

‘Calleford Hospital, you mean?' said that worthy readily. ‘When Josephine Short was an inpatient and Lucy Lansdown was a nurse over there on the same ward and where Joe Short last saw his grandmother alive…'

Sloan stared at him. ‘Say that again, Crosby.'

Obedient as ever, Crosby repeated the sentence.

‘That's what I thought you said.' Sloan hunched his shoulders forward. ‘Joe Short told us that he visited his grandmother there when she was ill there, didn't he?'

‘That's right, sir. Something like three or four years ago. Before she went into the nursing home and before her son and daughter-in-law were killed in that accident. She was living over in Calleford then. I've got the dates in my notebook.'

Sloan wasn't listening. ‘The stars in their courses…' he murmured softly.

‘Pardon, sir?'

Sloan hit his palm hard with his other fist. ‘What fools we've been, Crosby. Utter fools.'

‘Sorry, sir, did I give you the one with sugar in?'

‘In that hospital and then was one time that those three people could possibly all have met, although we don't know for sure that they did and might not be able to prove it.'

‘That's right, sir. When the old lady was a patient there and the grandson was visiting her the last time he was back in England and Lucy Lansdown was nursing at the hospital,' repeated the detective constable. He took a sip of his own tea and screwed up his face. ‘Ugh. No sugar.'

‘But don't you see, Crosby?' Sloan said urgently, ‘Lucy Lansdown was at that funeral at Damory Regis and as far as we know didn't recognise Joe Short then. At least, she didn't attempt to speak to him there. Janet Wakefield told us that and so did Joe Short himself and nobody else saw her approach Joe Short either. It was the first thing we checked. Short said that he picked up her handbag when she dropped it and handed it back to her but that was all. Or so he told us,' added Sloan, a new thought to do with fingerprints on the handbag retrieved from the river coming to him. He stored it away at the back of his mind for further consideration.

‘And,' said the detective constable, suddenly tumbling to the meaning of what Sloan had said, ‘that Mrs Wakefield confirmed that Joe Short didn't appear to recognise Lucy Lansdown either.' He screwed up his face in a prodigious frown and then went on, ‘Or if he did, he didn't let it show.'

‘But he might just have guessed who she was,' reasoned Sloan slowly. ‘And why she'd come to the funeral. She seems to have been the only young woman there, anyway.'

‘To meet Joe Short again?' hazarded Crosby.

‘If so, then perhaps he isn't Joe Short,' concluded Sloan, starting to get to his feet. ‘And that might be why she had to be killed. If she knew he wasn't who everyone else thought he was, then she would have been undoubtedly in danger.'

‘Was in danger,' pointed out Crosby.

‘From someone,' said Sloan, the image of the dead girl on the riverbank rising unbidden in his mind.

‘Everyone else does say he is Joe Short, sir,' pointed out Crosby, pushing his mug in Sloan's direction and taking the other one for himself. ‘His firm emailed us his photograph, remember, and that was definitely of him.'

Sloan sat down again. ‘True.'

‘And his photograph was in the old lady's drawer with the other ones. That was of him, too.'

‘So it was,' conceded Sloan. ‘And since he handled it there, his fingerprints will be all over it. His photo'll have been in his passport, of course. Simon Puckle said he had looked at that before it was stolen.'

‘It mightn't have been stolen, sir,' offered Crosby. ‘He could have lost it on purpose.'

‘No point doing that, though, if the photograph had already passed muster, was there?' said Sloan. He frowned. ‘Handwriting?'

‘There weren't any letters from him at the nursing home, remember.' Crosby stirred his tea with vigour and took a sip, smacking his lips with relish. ‘That's better. I like it sweet.'

‘He said that the old lady was practically blind, of course, and so he'd given up writing,' said Sloan automatically. ‘They said that at the nursing home, too.'

‘And deaf.'

‘Suppose,' said Sloan, thinking aloud, ‘that the nursing home was broken into not to take something away but to put something there…'

‘Like a photograph?' suggested Crosby.

‘Exactly…but it doesn't get round the fact that his firm sent us one of him which matched.'

‘Perhaps he isn't Joseph Short there,' said Crosby idly. ‘More tea, sir?'

Sloan reached for the telephone. ‘I think, Crosby, we'll check with the nursing home all the same.'

‘The room's occupied again,' the matron answered his call crisply. ‘And all the contents have gone to the solicitors.'

When applied to, Simon Puckle said that they were indeed holding the contents of the drawers in Josephine Short's room. And that Joseph Short had arranged to call in to collect them before he went back to Lasserta since there seemed to be nothing of relevance in them to the winding up of their client's estate. ‘That will be in due course,' added the solicitor automatically.