Picture of Innocence (22 page)

‘No,’ she said. ‘But it won’t be difficult to find out.’

‘And,’ he said, ‘there is one other reason.’

But Judy had to wait to find out what that other reason was as Law came back in.

‘Anything else I can show you?’ he asked.

‘I’d like to see the first tape again, please,’ said Lloyd. ‘ From the top.’

Law obliged, removing the tape that was inside the machine, and inserting the first one again. With his left hand, Judy noted. It was presumably
his
crossword.

The gate, Law using the phone, the front door, the screen going dark, Bailey’s office door …

‘Pause it, please.’ The picture froze on the door, and Lloyd looked at Law. ‘How did you see cash or anything else in Mr Bailey’s safe when – as is quite evident on the still displayed on your video – his office door was closed when you arrived at the farmhouse?’

Law stared at the screen, then looked back at Lloyd. ‘Someone must have opened it after that,’ he said.

‘When? Who? According to you, one officer was calming Mrs Bailey down, and the other was ejecting you and your cameraman.’

‘You don’t think
I
took the money, do you?’ asked Law incredulously. ‘I know I’m not likely to be at the top of your Christmas-card list, but accusing me of theft seems a little—’

‘No,’ said Lloyd, interrupting him. ‘You would hardly have mentioned it in your report if you had stolen it. But someone took it, and I’m trying to get an idea of when.’

Law shrugged. ‘I’ve already told you what I think happened to it, and that seems to bear me out. The foreman must have gone into the office after the scuffle and left the door open. I must have seen the money as I left.’

‘Perhaps.’ Lloyd picked up the newspaper. ‘I see you do the crossword,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Law, looking a little confused by the abrupt change of subject.

‘Do you always do it?’

‘Yes.’ His tone was a touch wary. ‘ I’m not one of those three-minute forty-two-seconds men, though,’ he added.

‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘In fact, you didn’t finish yesterday’s at all, did you?’

Law frowned. ‘ Yesterday’s?’ he repeated.

‘Yesterday morning’s
Times
was found beside Bernard Bailey’s body,’ said Lloyd. ‘With the crossword half done. By someone left-handed. Mr Bailey didn’t take
the Times
, he didn’t do crosswords, and while I don’t know which hand
he
favoured, I know which one you do. I think it was
your
newspaper, Mr Law.’

Law’s eyes widened, and he hit his forehead. ‘I
knew
I’d mislaid it,’ he said. ‘I was going to finish the crossword when I got home, and it wasn’t in my pocket. It must have dropped out. I’m sorry.’

‘Where were you at half past two yesterday morning?’

‘I was in bed.’

‘Can anyone confirm that?’

‘No,’ Law said. ‘I live alone. But don’t you think it’s more likely that I dropped it during the scuffle with Bailey’s foreman?’

‘Is it?’

‘Of course it is,’ said Law. ‘ I was doing the crossword when he got the call about Bailey having been murdered. I thought I’d left it in the café, but obviously
that’s
what happened to it.’

Lloyd smiled. ‘Let’s watch the next bit, Mr Law.’

Law looked less than enthusiastic as he played the video again. The camera swept round, the screen Went almost white, then Bailey’s body and the coffee table appeared. Under it was the newspaper.

‘Pause it.’ Lloyd looked at Law, his eyebrows raised. ‘The paper seems already to be there, Mr Law.’

Law swallowed. ‘So was I,’ he said quickly. ‘I went in first.’

‘Gary will confirm that, will he?’

‘I doubt it. He was trying to keep the camera functioning, as you can see. I doubt if he knows where I was.’

‘But you didn’t lose it in the scuffle, did you?’ said Judy.

‘Obviously not. It must have fallen out of my pocket when I bent down to look at Bailey.’ He looked from Judy to Lloyd. ‘ I’ve confirmed that it was my paper,’ he said. ‘I’ve apologized. Why all the questions?’

‘Oh, just little puzzles, Mr Law.’

‘Well, I hope I’ve cleared them up for you.’

‘Perhaps.’ Lloyd stood up. ‘Good morning, Mr Law. Thank you for your time. But I think we may be having another chat quite soon.’

Judy smiled, when they got back out. ‘You really enjoyed that, didn’t you?’ she said.

‘Yes.’ He smiled back. ‘Do you think he is Rachel’s boyfriend?’

‘I don’t know. Which is why,’ she said, as she got to her car, ‘I’m going to have another word with Nicola Hutchins, because I’m pretty sure she knows who is.’ She shrugged. ‘She won’t be difficult to crack,’ she said, a little guiltily.

Someone who was perfectly prepared, just to get her hands on some money, to live with a man capable of calculated, sadistic violence towards her, was able to make her feel guilty, and Judy wasn’t sure why. But she
had
walked all over Nicola Hutchins, and she was about to do it again; she didn’t exactly feel proud of her ability to do that. Rachel had spoken of her in the same breath as Bernard Bailey more than once, and Judy hadn’t liked that at all.

‘And I’m going to check out Mr Law’s story,’ said Lloyd grimly. ‘He’s no innocent bystander. He’s no mere reporter of the facts. He didn’t ask me why half past two in the morning was important – he just went straight into his explanation for the paper being there.’

‘But it probably
is
what happened,’ Judy pointed out.

‘Is it? Would blood have come off the sofa and on to the paper if he’d dropped it when he said he did? Wouldn’t it have been too dry by then? It was certainly dry by the time I got there.’

Judy wasn’t sure. It had been more or less dry when she had seen it, but some might still have got smeared on to the paper.

‘And he didn’t ask me why he would
want
to kill Bernard Bailey. A disinterested observer would surely have found the suggestion a little odd.’

‘Yes,’ said Judy, thoughtfully. ‘I expect he would.’ And she headed off to speak to Nicola Hutchins.

‘At last.’

‘Sorry, Mr McQueen. Couldn’t get here no sooner,’ she said.

She was wearing a sundress so light and fine and soft that it barely seemed to exist at all. It was short. It was sleeveless. It had probably cost more than Shirley’s entire wardrobe. Mike had never seen her like that; she had always worn modest, if expensive, clothes on her visits to him before.

He held open the study door, and she went in, sitting down at the desk, looking up at him expectantly. ‘What did you want to see me about?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘I really fell for it, didn’t I?’ he said, taking a cigar from the box, and walking over to the open French window, his back to her. ‘ Hook, line and sinker’

‘Fell for what?’

He turned back, picked up the matches, and removed the unlit cigar from his mouth. ‘ Such innocence,’ he said. ‘You’re good. You’re very good.’ He walked out on to the terrace, and didn’t turn round when he heard her follow him out. She moved into his line of vision.

‘I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,’ she said.

She had been sunbathing during the heatwave; her skin had tanned, rather than reddened, as you might expect it to, with her colouring. But there were those dark lashes that fringed her eyes, and those dark brown, almost black eyebrows, and Mike supposed that was the explanation; her genes had naturally produced the look that other women used hair dye and eyebrow pencil and mascara to achieve, and they allowed her skin to tan.

He had thought that her attraction would have waned, now that he knew what she was really like. The woman was trying to implicate him in her husband’s murder, and he still wanted her. Her legs were bare and brown, and Mike couldn’t take his eyes off them, as she leaned back against the hideous fakerustic garden table that Shirley had installed, its honest wood turned and varnished and polished, its rough edges smoothed. She had done much the same to him, he supposed, now that he came to think of it.

‘I’m talking about death threats,’ he said. ‘It never crossed my mind that I was being set up to carry the can for a murder.’

She stared at him, her eyes widening. ‘You don’t really think I did that, do you?’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t do that to you, Mr McQueen. You and Mrs McQueen have been good to me.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t do that,’ she said slowly, seriously. ‘I didn’t. And I didn’t stab Bernard, neither. I wasn’t even there.’

‘So it was a stroke of good fortune that someone came and stabbed your husband to death just when I was going to take the other route and you were going to lose out?’

She shrugged a little. ‘Reckon so.’

Mike shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not, pet,’ he said. ‘Because I won’t be buying your land.’ He lit his cigar to give himself something less heady than her perfume to smell. He shook the match out. ‘The police will see I had no motive.’

‘You think if you don’t buy my land the cops’ll just forget ’bout how much you wanted it?’ she said, her voice low and sweet. ‘‘ They might start rememberin’ if I tell them bout the abortion.’

Mike stepped forward in what was intended to be a threatening manner. ‘Are you trying to
blackmail
me now?’ he asked.

As threats went, it was less than effective. The slow smile began to appear, and her blue eyes twinkled at him. She stepped forward too, her face close to his. ‘ Reckon I am,’ she whispered.

He moved away from her again. ‘Well, it won’t work. I’m not buying your land. Tell the police what you like.’

Still she smiled. Nodded her head a little to acknowledge her failure as a blackmailer. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘ But I didn’t stab Bernard. And I didn’t get you to do them death threats so you’d get into trouble. The death threats didn’t have nothin’ to do with you. I just needed them, that’s all.’

Mike was intrigued, if a little sceptical. ‘
Needed
them?’ he said.

She leaned back on the table again. ‘ You know Curtis Law?’ she asked.

‘The young man from Aquarius? Yes.’

‘Well, him and me – we’ve been … you know.’

Mike couldn’t remember the last time he had felt a stab of real, green-eyed jealousy. He thought perhaps he never had. He puffed his cigar. Once, he would have thought she was telling him in all innocence, with her Mr McQueen act. Now he knew better. She knew exactly the effect she had on him, had played on it ever since he’d met her.

‘It’s been goin’ on ever since he came here ’bout the vandalism,’ she was saying. ‘Only – there wasn’t no way I could get away to see him. Bernard never let me out of his sight that long. Curtis don’t even live in Bartonshire, and couldn’t neither of us afford to go to hotels or get a flat or nothin’. Only time I saw him was when he come to the farm. But after the alarms went in, there wasn’t nothin’ bringin’ him here. And I thought up the death threats. That was all,’ she said. ‘It was just to get Curtis here.’

The thought of assisting her to make assignations with her lover was worse, much worse, than assisting her to do away with her repulsive husband. A voice at the back of his head was pointing out that Curtis Law was her contemporary, not old enough to be her father, but it made no difference to how he felt. She had used him, used every trick in the book to ensnare him, knowing he would do exactly what she wanted.

‘That’s all there was to it,’ she said. ‘ Nothin’ to do with you.’

No. Nothing to do with him. He’d risked prison so that Curtis Law could get his leg over, while all he could do was fantasize about it. But tables could be turned; that fantasy could become reality. He breathed in her perfume, instead of trying to ignore it. It would become reality.

She gave him a little smile. ‘ You goin’ to buy the land now?’ she asked. ‘Now you know I wasn’t tryin’ to set you up?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘I’ll go, then.’ She walked past him, back into the house.

She thought he would call her back, but he let her go, because she was desperate for that money, and she would be back. And next time she would do what he wanted, for a change.

Nicola came home to find Inspector Hill waiting for her.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘ Gus keeps saying I should get a mobile phone.’

‘That’s all right,’ said the inspector. ‘I’d just like to ask you a few more questions.’

She had been expecting this, had resigned herself to it, steeled herself against it. She hoped.

Inspector Hill got straight down to the reason for her visit, with what Nicola already recognized as typical directness. ‘Yesterday,’ she said, ‘ you were going to tell me something about Rachel. What was it?’

‘Nothing,’ said Nicola, pushing her hair behind her ear, and wishing she hadn’t. It wasn’t a good start.

‘Something that you thought had caused your father to get violent. Not the baby business – something Rachel had been doing, rather than not doing. What was that, Mrs Hutchins?’

‘It’s none of my
business
,’ Nicola said fiercely. ‘And Rachel wasn’t there. She was in London.’

‘But you think she
had
been there, don’t you? You think he might have assaulted her, so you must think she had been there to be assaulted.’

‘I just assumed she was there!’ She wasn’t going to say what she saw. If he had been going to do that to her again, he deserved everything he’d got, and anyway, she still didn’t understand what had happened. ‘And I assumed he’d been hitting her, because he was always hitting her. She didn’t do as she was told, not like me.’

Inspector Hill looked concerned. ‘ Rachel told me your father had been physically abusing you since you were two years old,’ she said. ‘Is that true?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nicola. ‘But I can’t remember him not doing it.’

‘Didn’t your mother—?’

‘Don’t start blaming her! She was frightened he’d do something worse if she tried to stop him, and she was right, if what he did to Rachel’s anything to go by.’

‘Why didn’t she leave, him?’

‘She was frightened to. She tried to, once, but …’ Nicola shook her head. ‘He stopped her.’

In the silence that followed, Nicola could hear the big old-fashioned pendulum clock tick away the seconds in the waiting room next door, and remembered that day. Her mother had never learned to drive; she had waited until the coast was clear, and had ordered a taxi. It had arrived in the courtyard; hooted. She had picked up the cases, shepherding Nicola ahead of her. Nicola had gone out to find the taxi driving away, and her father standing there. She closed her eyes, her fists clenched to her mouth, as the memory claimed her. ‘ He stopped her,’ she repeated, her voice a whisper.