Picture of Innocence (11 page)

In silence, over a black background, the most serious charges being brought against the man arrested were rolled up the screen, with a note of the maximum sentence allowed on each, followed by the number of other arrests made as a direct consequence. Over this rolling list of iniquities, Curtis Law’s voice-over said that perhaps the problem society had to face in the twenty-first century was less one of organized crime than one of disorganized policing.

The black faded up to the freeze-frame of Lloyd’s face, and the silence in which the credits went up was broken by his voice: ‘
These are random break-ins, not the work of some Mr Big
, now with multiple echo effect, so that the last seven words repeated several times as the soundtrack faded to silence again.
An Aquarius Television Production
rounded the whole miserable thing off.

‘Well, gentlemen?’

Lloyd had been mocked once before, in his childhood, because he had a first name that other children found hysterically funny. The mockery had made him want to cry then, and now he had discovered that it still made him want to cry. But he was a fifty-year-old man, and his colleagues would find it more than a little odd if he did. Besides, he had embarrassed them enough already by making the bloody remark in the first place. He was aware that his face was flushed, and wished he smoked, like Judy did in times of emotional stress. He knew why now.

‘It’s a bit slanted,’ said Case. ‘And sensationalized. But I imagine they’ve made damn sure they’re watertight.’ He did light a cigarette, having waved the packet at his senior officer by way of asking permission, the gesture answered by a brief nod. ‘But,’ he added, ‘I think that the programme’s presentation amounts to a totally unwarranted personal attack on Chief Inspector Lloyd and I would urge the Chief Constable to seek an injunction on those grounds.’

The ACC nodded, and turned to Lloyd, his eyebrows raised, waiting for his comments.

Lloyd swallowed a little. ‘I …’ he began, and cleared his throat. Mr Law’s programme had exposed a nerve that hadn’t seen the light of day since he was thirteen years old. He took a breath. ‘I said what I said, and I said it in reply to a direct question about organized crime – there is no misrepresentation there. As to the other point – Mr Law wanted to make a fool of me, and he has. But if it’s up to me, I would rather we didn’t try to stop them showing it for that reason.’

The ACC ejected the video, and put it carefully back in its slip cover. He looked from Lloyd to Case and back again.

‘Mr Law’s approach may be objectionable,’ he said. ‘But he has indicated a huge hole in our defences. No overall pattern was seen because the cases were buried among many others being investigated, and the large network of thieves and suppliers muddied the waters as far as MO and so on. No individual is to blame for that, but as a service, we must address the problem.’

As far as MO and so on
was concerned
, Lloyd corrected him, silently. The man used so many bloody words in the first place, you wouldn’t think he’d balk at two more. He watched as the ACC poured another glass of water. Oh, God. The man was going to give a speech.

‘Other industries are using new technology to produce better results with reduced manpower,’ the ACC went on, ‘and we must do the same. The system must be made to work for us, not against us.’ He picked up two sets of papers, and handed one each to Lloyd and Case. ‘To this end, as you will see when you read this document, it is proposed to set up a service-wide system to be known as LINKS, which stands for Local Information Networked Knowledge System.’

Acronyms. Everything was fine as long as you could think up a good acronym. Lloyd glanced at the document and mentally filed it under waste-paper basket as the ACC described how it was intended to work. There was, of course, to be a working party.

‘The composition of the working party will have been decided by the end of the month,’ said the ACC. ‘It will be given twelve months to complete its task, and it is proposed to second a CID officer full time to head it. I feel it’s important that it be headed by a working detective who knows what is and is not feasible with regard to investigation practices, whose experience will enhance and inform the entire project.’

Yes, yes. Get on with it.

‘I think that one officer in particular has that experience, the necessary authority; and the analytical skills that we need for the job. Before offering the post to her, however, I would welcome your comments. I’m referring, as you may already have worked out, to WDI Hill.’

Lloyd stared at him. He hadn’t already worked it out; he had hardly been listening, still smarting from the treatment he’d received at Curtis Law’s hands. This had to be the worst Monday morning he had ever endured. They couldn’t take Judy. He would fight it. He needed her at Stansfield. Besides, she wouldn’t want to do it, and she would blame him if he didn’t try to get her off the hook.

But someone had to do it, and her logical mind would ensure that whatever system they came up with was as simple and as effective as possible. If the scheme had flaws, which it surely would, she would find them. She was, in short, perfect for the job.

‘I think she would be an excellent choice,’ he heard his own voice saying. It sounded traitorous. She would kill him. But it was true, and it would do her career no harm to get a bit of administrative experience.

‘Couldn’t do better,’ said Case. ‘She’s got a good head on her.’

The words ‘for a woman’ hovered in the air, but weren’t actually spoken. Possibly because Case assumed that that qualification would be taken for granted.

‘Good. Sergeant Sandwell will be acting DI in the interim,’ said the ACC. ‘It is anticipated that Mrs Hill will return to Stansfield at the end of the secondment, and slot into the restructuring which will, with luck, be in place by then, in view of Stansfield’s increased responsibilities. Any questions?’

Lloyd had a question. How was Stansfield CID supposed to operate one more under-strength for a year? They had the increased responsibilities
now
. But he’d caused enough trouble for one day. ‘She might not be too keen on a desk job. She may take some persuading.’

‘Unless it means promotion,’ said Case.

‘It does,’ said the ACC. As you will see in the document I’ve given you, the post will carry the rank of Detective Chief Inspector.’

She wouldn’t kill him after all. She’d caught him up. She had always been going to; she had passed her promotion board first time. But Lloyd had secretly and guiltily hoped that she wouldn’t get a post until he had retired, or got promotion himself. Now he was going to have to deal with his regrettable tendency to male chauvinism on top of everything else.

And Judy would be coming back to Stansfield a DCI; it didn’t take too much brain power to see that this secondment was in order to achieve just that, and that early retirement was on the cards for him. And it was not impossible that Curtis Law’s programme had played a part in that decision.

‘When will DI Hill be told officially?’ he asked.

‘Oh … next week some time, I think. You can tell her yourself now, if you like. There’s no reason why not. He closed his copy of the report. ‘Thank you for your time, gentlemen.’

Judy was back at Bailey’s farm, looking at a body and trying not to breathe, her second-least favourite part of the job. Everyone’s least favourite was telling someone that their nearest and dearest was dead, and at least she was being spared that with this one. For one thing, it had been his wife who had found him, and had told everyone who needed to know, and for another, Bernard Bailey seemed to have been near and dear to a very limited number of people, as she had discovered when investigating the death threats. Death threats that she had, to all intents and purposes, dismissed.

But now he was undoubtedly, though not yet officially, dead. That conclusion had to await unnecessary confirmation by the Forensic Medical Examiner. There were bloodstains on his shirt and part of the sofa, a number of tears in his shirt indicating a stabbing. He had evidently been unwell at some point, a fact probably not unconnected to the bottle of whisky, about two-thirds full, which sat on the coffee table, a full glass beside it, and the empty bottle which lay on the floor. The smell of the whisky mingled with the other odours in the hot, airless room, its windows shuttered and locked, its radiators full on, for some reason. A browning apple sat amid the coffee-table clutter, roughly cut in two, the sweet smell making matters worse, but there was no knife. The duty inspector was organizing a search of the immediate grounds; they would have to draft people in if they had to search the whole place.

Judy wanted to talk to Mrs Bailey, who had apparently discovered her husband’s body, but she was being seen by her GP, who had been summoned by the officers first on the scene. They had arrived to find Steve Paxton trying to hit the Aquarius TV cameraman, the cameraman fighting back, Curtis Law trying to separate them, and Mrs Bailey in near-hysterics, screaming at them all to stop.

A blood-smeared copy of
The Times
lay on the floor beside the empty bottle, the crossword half done, as though Bailey had been surprised in the middle of doing it. Judy turned her head to one side to read the date, to discover that it was that morning’s paper.

She thought of her father then; she couldn’t imagine why, except that it had been a long time since she’d seen either of her parents. It was ridiculous; it was only a couple of hours away down the motorway. You’d think they lived in Australia. She didn’t even ring them all that often. She should go and see them. But then again, she thought, now might not be the best time, and she didn’t want to think about that. She had work to do.

The officers first on the scene had cordoned off Bailey’s office; they had found the safe open, and had thought it might have been a burglary gone wrong. It didn’t do to rule anything out, but his safe had been open the last time she had been here, and it was hard to see how a burglar could have got into the grounds, never mind the house, without Bailey knowing. The alarms were set, and the windows were all shuttered on the inside. The lights had been on in the sitting room and the office, and off everywhere else. She’d get the SOCOs to check the office out. If they ever arrived.

She left the body, and went up the steps, through the archway, to the dining area. A hatch to the kitchen was on her left; she looked through it to see by the sitting-room light a big, working farmhouse kitchen, equipped and decorated with the same eye to design. Gleaming, state-of-the-art kitchen units lined the walls under the two windows. The dark red quarry tiles of the floor contrasted with the pristine whiteness of the walls and the woodwork. Beyond that was the area that housed the big freezer, the washing machine and dryer, and the deep Belfast sink in which nameless dead rural things got unpleasant things done to them, she supposed. Not, she imagined, by the farmer’s wife. She could see from there that the back door was locked, the key still in it.

She turned round, the smell hitting her again as she went back down the steps, and forgot not to breathe through her nose. The room which had struck her as light and airy the first time she had seen it had been rendered claustrophobic and oppressive by the inordinate heat, the shutters, and the foul pot-pourri of sudden, violent death; Judy knew she had to get out of there. Now. She picked her way over the vomit, past the body, ducked under the blue and white ribbon barring the doorway, and went out into the hot morning, taking deep breaths.

She had thought, in her probationer days, that she would get over the revulsion, but she never had. She had simply learned how to control it, and she was never entirely convinced that she would always manage that. And outside was, she realized, not that much of an improvement. Nameless farmyard smells hung in the motionless air, only marginally better, to her nostrils, than the room she had just left.

Paxton was sitting at the table on the veranda; Judy took out her cigarettes, and sat down beside him, lighting one as he glowered over to where Curtis Law and his cameraman stood with Tom Finch.

‘Bloody vultures,’ he said. ‘ That girl was in a right state, and they’re filming, trying to ask her questions. They’d no business being here!’

‘A complaint will be made to Aquarius Television,’ said Judy. ‘But, to be honest, a video of the murder scene might be useful to us.’

‘If you give a bugger who did it,’ said Paxton.

‘You don’t, I take it?’ Judy said, expelling smoke with the words. It crossed her mind that maybe she shouldn’t be smoking, but, she dismissed the thought for a dozen different reasons. She hardly ever did, anyway. Only when she really felt the need. And when had she ever felt the need more?

‘He was a nasty piece of work. There won’t be many who’ll mourn Bernard Bailey.’

That much she had already surmised. ‘ Why did you work for him?’

‘There aren’t too many jobs in a place like this.’

‘How long have you worked here?’

He sighed. ‘Six years. I had my own farm, but it didn’t survive the recession.’

‘So you were here when the first Mrs Bailey was alive?’

‘If you can call it that,’ he said. ‘She was always pregnant – lost I don’t know how many babies. That’s how she died. She looked fifteen years older than she was, I can tell you that. And scared stiff of him, she was. At least this one stands up to him.’

That hadn’t been Judy’s impression. ‘Does she?’ she asked.

‘As best she can,’ said Paxton. ‘I mean, she’s got more about her than the first one. And she’s a nice girl – friendly, you know. There’s no side to her. She’ll muck in with everyone else if there’s a job to be done.’

Perhaps she did do nameless things to dead creatures in that big sink, thought Judy. She had obviously got a slightly misleading impression of Mrs Bailey.

Paxton shook his head. ‘ The way she looks, she could have done anything. Why she wanted to marry that nutcase, I’ll never know. I mean, all right, he’s got a lot of brass, but even so. He was a nutter. I mean,’ he said. ‘Look at this place. Like bloody Alcatraz. And she didn’t even have a key to the bloody gate.’