Picture of Innocence (15 page)

Or in the Baileys’ case, Terri was saying, what went on behind umpteen alarms and God knew how many television cameras.

Jack stiffened. He’d forgotten about that. Oh, dear God. The police would know he’d been there. He shot a look at Terri, but she was engrossed in gossip, thank God. He had to think. He had to think very, very carefully. He mustn’t panic. He must think of a good reason. One he could offer Terri. Any reason. Anything but the truth.

Curtis walked towards Chief Inspector Lloyd and Inspector Hill, who were coming out of the house at last, ducking under the cordon. ‘Any particular lines of enquiry yet?’ he asked. The question was directed at Inspector Hill, who shook her head in reply. ‘Have you revised your opinion on the death threats?’

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘But nothing has been ruled out.’

‘We would like the public’s help on this one,’ said Lloyd, ‘if we can use your airwaves, it would be a big help.’

Curtis wondered if he’d seen
Mr Big
yet, and decided that he couldn’t have, or he wouldn’t be being that friendly. They had never been bosom buddies in the first place, and Lloyd wasn’t going to like
Mr Big
one little bit. Presumably his bosses had seen it, though. He had thought the police might try to stop it being shown, but they hadn’t. Which was a pity. An injunction got you on the news, doubled your viewing figures when you did show it, even if you did have to take out the naughty bits.

‘Just along the lines of anyone who was in this area yesterday to come forward, that sort of thing,’ Lloyd went on.

‘I was in the area,’ said Gary.

‘This is my cameraman, Gary,’ said Curtis. ‘Say hello to the police officers, Gary.’

Gary shook hands with Lloyd, and nodded to Inspector Hill. ‘I was here,’ he said. ‘Taking shots of anyone who came to the farm, right up until the light went, really, so I can let you see who came here up to about eight.’

‘That’s good news,’ said Lloyd. ‘I’d like to see the tape when it’s convenient.’

Any time, really. Your sergeant’s got the one I shot this morning – just come in any time. There’s always someone there in office hours.’

Anything you can tell us now about his visitors? Did he let anyone in?’

‘Only one. McQueen, the developer who wants this place for his road. Struck me as odd, him calling on Bailey. I thought he’d get short shrift like everyone else, but he was let in.’

‘Did you see him leave?’

‘No. He came just as the light was going. I packed up then.’

‘What about Bailey’s CCTV?’ asked Curtis.

‘Not as helpful as it might have been,’ said Lloyd. ‘Thank you very much.’ He turned to Curtis. ‘And you, Mr Law. I take it you would like an interview?’

‘Please,’ said Curtis. ‘Do you want to go over the ground before we start?’

‘Well, I’m prepared to say that he was found with knife wounds, and that we’re treating it as murder. The usual stuff. And that any information will be treated in the utmost confidence, in view of the use to which these secluded lanes are put now and then,’ he added. ‘Nothing too specific, but you wouldn’t expect me to be, not at this stage. At the moment we need all the help we can get.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know how the police managed before television,’ he said.

Curtis smiled inwardly at the irony of that remark.

‘And we might want volunteers to help us search for the weapon.’ Lloyd waved a hand in the general direction of the fields. ‘There’s a lot of land to cover.’

‘You might never find it,’ said Curtis.

‘If it’s here, we’ll find it. You can be sure of that, Mr Law. We’ll find it, whatever it is, wherever it is.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Inspector Hill, and walked off in the direction of the old brown estate car that was pulling into the courtyard.

Curtis was barely aware of the visitor, his mind still on what Lloyd had just said. Was it his imagination, or had that conversation turned a little sinister? Probably his imagination. He realized then whose car the inspector had gone to meet, as he saw Nicola Hutchins disappear into a crowd of police and reporters. ‘ We’ll want a shot of her,’ he told Gary, running forward. ‘The dark-haired one. That’s the daughter.’

They got their shots, but she hadn’t said anything. Curtis prepared to begin his interview with Lloyd, glancing up at Rachel’s bedroom window.

He hoped she was all right.

Nicola had been startled to see the number of police vehicles there, as they had got out of the car. What seemed like a dozen cameras were pointing at them. Why all the media? She supposed it was because her father had become something of a local celebrity.

‘That’s the inspector that called about the death threats,’ said Gus, as a woman approached them, and saw them safely through to the other side of the cordon.

Inspector Hill said hello to Gus, and introduced herself to Nicola. ‘I’m very sorry about your father,’ she said, leading them up the steps to the house.

‘Thank you,’ said Nicola, a little uncomfortably. ‘How’s Rachel?’

‘She’s been seen by her doctor,’ said the inspector. ‘ I think she just needs to rest a little.’

Nicola was sure Rachel wouldn’t be in mourning for too long, and neither would she, come to that. But she would miss him, in an odd sort of way. She felt a little as though an ugly factory chimney that she passed every day had been demolished; she was glad to see it gone, but it would take her a while to get her bearings now that it wasn’t going to be there.

Inspector Hill took them into Bernard’s office, and Nicola didn’t want to be in here. Why were there so many police? The inspector sat behind the desk, and indicated that Nicola should sit on the other chair. Gus perched on the safe, closed for the first time Nicola could remember. She swallowed hard. Could she weather this?

‘You called on your father at about ten to eleven last night, is that right, Mrs Hutchins?’ asked the inspector.

The closed-circuit television, of course. Nicola nodded.

‘Was it usual for you to call on him that late?’

‘No. He’d rung me earlier. About a sheep.’ She supposed they had to ask questions. It didn’t mean they suspected her of anything.

‘Oh, yes,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘You’re the vet, of course.’

‘He rang at about half past ten. He said a sheep had got on to the road and been badly injured.’ She noticed that Inspector Hill was writing down what she was saying, and became a little self-conscious. ‘ He wanted me to deal with it.’

‘Wouldn’t a sheep getting out set off the alarms?’

Oh, God. There was no sheep. There had never been a sheep. ‘Yes, but the alarms weren’t on, for some reason,’ she said. ‘He told me where to find it, but when I got there, there wasn’t any sign of a sheep. I thought he must have given me wrong directions.’

The inspector looked a little puzzled. ‘Wrong directions?’ she queried. ‘ I would have thought your father knew every inch of the land round here.’

‘He does. Did. But he’d had a lot to drink.’

She looked interested. ‘Was that unusual?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He always had a whisky at night before he went to bed, but that was it. Just one. He never drank the rest of the time. Well – not unless something had really upset him.’

‘Would you have any idea
what
might have upset him?’

Nicola hesitated, then said, ‘Not really.’

‘Which means you have,’ the inspector said.

Her voice was gentle, but it held a slight warning, and Nicola reacted to that automatically. ‘Well, I don’t know for a fact,’ she said. ‘I mean, I don’t really know at all. I just think that he must have been upset to have been drinking so much.’

‘And you think you know what
might
have upset him,’ Inspector Hill persisted, her voice quiet, sympathetic, but somehow remorseless. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Nicola reluctantly, horribly aware that she was not going to get off the hook until she told her. ‘ I … I think he may have had a row with Rachel.’

‘Did he often have rows with her?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said, uncomfortably. ‘Yes,’ she said, when the inspector still hadn’t spoken. ‘I think he probably did.’

‘What makes you think that?’

It was a reasonable question. Nicola sighed. ‘I just think it’s a possibility,’ she said. ‘It didn’t strike me as a match made in heaven.’

‘Where did he say you’d find the sheep?’ asked Inspector Hill, changing the subject completely, much to Nicola’s relief, even if it was to the non-existent sheep.

Nicola hadn’t thought about any of this. She had thought she would find Rachel, and maybe a couple of policemen. Not swarms of them. They were searching the grounds. Why? And why were they asking so many questions?

‘On the road just behind the farm,’ she said. ‘When I couldn’t find it, I came on up to the farm. And when I got here I saw that the alarms weren’t on.’

‘Was the front door locked?’

‘No.’

‘Did that surprise you?’

‘Not really. He locks up when he goes to bed, I think. And he hadn’t gone to bed. He was out.’ The inspector wrote that down, too. Word for word. ‘ I don’t know where he was,’ she said. ‘I thought …’ She changed her mind about what she had been going to say. ‘I thought perhaps he’d gone to meet me, but I’d gone to the wrong place, so I thought I’d better wait.’

‘Was the Land Rover here?’

‘I don’t know. He locks it up at night ever since the vandalism, so it might have been. Or he might have taken it out – I don’t know. I didn’t look. When he didn’t come back, I left.’

‘You waited for over an hour,’ said Inspector Hill.

‘Yes.’

‘Were you worried about him?’

Nicola shook her head.

‘But he’d had a lot to drink, and you thought he might be driving. He’d left the house open, the alarms off – didn’t that bother you?’

‘I … I thought it was odd, that’s all.’

‘Did you switch the alarms back on when you left?’

‘No. I wasn’t going to interfere with them. I just left them the way I found them. Look – why are you asking all these questions?’

Inspector Hill’s eyebrows flickered in the tiniest of frowns. ‘Mrs Hutchins,’ she said carefully, firmly. ‘Your father has been found dead, with several stab wounds to his chest. I think we do have—’

Nicola stared at her. ‘He was stabbed?’ she said, uncomprehendingly.

‘What did you think had happened, Mrs Hutchins?’ she asked, her voice quiet, sympathetic.

Nicola swallowed. ‘I just … well, I thought … No. It was silly. I just thought he—’ She was gabbling. She had to say something, for God’s sake. Something sensible. But nothing sensible came out. ‘It was just, with the drinking and everything, I just—’

‘Take your time.’

Nicola took the inspector’s advice, and waited for some moments before trying to speak again. ‘Gus said that Rachel had rung, said that something awful had happened, that my father was dead. But I – I thought he’d, well … killed himself. I had no idea—’

‘Killed himself?’ Inspector Hill looked up from the notebook in which she was writing. ‘Was he suicidal?’

Oh, God. She appeared to be writing down every single word Nicola was saying. Weren’t they supposed to caution you or something? Maybe she should refuse to say any more until her solicitor was present. No, no.
You
didn’t stab him, for God’s sake, she told herself, trying to gather her wits while the intelligent brown eyes watched her, and her patient, polite, persistent interrogator waited for an answer to her question.

‘No, I just—’ Nicola pushed her hair behind her ears. ‘ It was just that the last time he got drunk was just after my mother died.’ It had the merit of being entirely truthful, unlike some of her other answers. ‘And, that time, he
did
make a sort of suicide attempt.’

A
sort
of suicide attempt?’

‘I think it was just a melodramatic gesture, like everything else he ever did. He shut himself up in the barn with the Land Rover engine running. It would have taken him about three weeks to die, and he’d have had to keep going out for petrol.’

Inspector Hill smiled. ‘ So what happened?’

‘Someone heard the engine, opened the barn door and found him sitting there. Nothing wrong with him at all. But he was very drunk. I thought he might have got the same idea this time, and succeeded. I had no idea that he’d—’ She stopped talking.

Inspector Hill nodded. ‘ I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘I assumed you knew what had happened.’

Nicola waved away the apology.

‘What made you think he had committed suicide?’

‘I just thought … I thought he’d had a row with Rachel,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘No reason. I just don’t think they got on very well.’ She wished with all her heart that the interview would stop, and perhaps she had sold her soul to the devil last night, because her wish was immediately granted.

‘One more thing,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘You might find this question a little odd, but I need to know. Did your father do
The Times
crossword at all?’

Nicola almost laughed, not only at the unthreatening nature of the question, but at the very idea. ‘No, he never did a crossword in his life.’ She frowned. ‘ Why?’

‘Just checking something,’ said Inspector Hill. There was a tiny pause. ‘Why did you believe that your father had had a row with Rachel?’

It was for all the world as though she hadn’t asked the question before; Nicola pushed her hair behind her ears as the silence that followed it went on and on, and the inspector waited for an answer.

‘I didn’t mean a row, not really.’

‘What did you mean?’

With considerable reluctance, Nicola answered. ‘I thought he might have been hitting her again.’

‘What?’ said Gus. ‘
Bernard
? I’ve never seen him lose his temper with anyone.’

‘He didn’t lose his temper.’

‘Well, then. What makes you think he hit her? Did she tell you that?’

Nicola shook her head. ‘I know he hit her.’

‘And you think that this would be a fairly regular occurrence?’ asked the inspector.

‘Yes,’ sighed Nicola, turning back to her, away from Gus’s bemused look. ‘ He did it all the time.’

‘If he did it all the time, that wouldn’t be what you thought had made him get drunk,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘Or that he might have committed suicide. Why did you think that?’