Picture of Innocence (32 page)

Lloyd frowned. ‘You don’t know where your car was?’ he said.

‘Took it from me at the hotel. Parked it somewhere. Brought it back to me Monday mornin’. Don’t even know where the car park is.’

Lloyd and Inspector Hill left, and Rachel felt the tears coming again. Curtis was right. They did suspect her all over again. But tears wouldn’t help, she told herself sternly. Nicola had said she had seen her car, and that was the important bit. That was what really needed sorting out, and she wouldn’t do that if she sat here crying. She looked at the clock; it was half past twelve, so Nicola should be at home for lunch.

And Rachel was going to find out
why
she had lied to the police.

‘Oh – you’d better come in,’ said Gus.

Rachel followed him into the dining room. She’d never been in this room; when Gus had been working it had been a sort of storeroom, full of things belonging to the first Mrs Bailey. Gus and Nicola had always eaten in the kitchen before. Gus must have done it up since he’d nothing else to do.

Gus sat down again at the table, and Nicola looked guilty.

‘Rachel,’ she said. ‘Er … would you like some lunch? I’m sure there’s enough for Rachel, isn’t there, Gus?’

‘Don’t want no lunch, thanks,’ said Rachel. ‘I want to know why you told Chief Inspector Lloyd you saw my car on Sunday night.’

Gus stopped eating, and looked at Nicola, who had gone pink.

‘I had to, Rachel,’ she said. ‘ I’m really sorry, but I had no choice.’

Rachel looked at Gus. ‘Don’t look like she told
you
’bout seein’ my car,’ she said, and looked back at Nicola. ‘Just the police. Why, Nicola?’

‘I didn’t tell anyone about your car, honestly, I didn’t. Not until I absolutely had to. I swear, Rachel, I would never have said a word, but they think
I
did it!’ She shook her head slightly. ‘And I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I didn’t murder him.’

Now Gus had gone pink.

‘Why do they think you did?’ asked Rachel slowly.

‘He died of a drugs overdose,’ she said.

A drugs overdose. Bernard had died of a drugs overdose, and Nicola had told the police she had seen her car when she hadn’t. Nicola? Nicola had killed Bernard? She couldn’t believe that. What would make her suddenly do a thing like that? But it explained why she had been frightened enough to lie to the police about her. ‘So you said you saw my car to get you off the hook?’ she asked, her voice gentle.

‘Well … yes, I suppose. I couldn’t
not
tell them when they were accusing me of murder, could I? I know you said I should stand up for myself, but I couldn’t …’ She searched for words, then her shoulders went back. ‘I couldn’t,’ she said, decidedly. ‘I had to tell them. I’m sorry.’

Rachel’s frown was growing deeper by the second. ‘But you
didn’t
see my car,’ she said. ‘Did you?’

‘I did. I thought he must have been hitting you, and you’d got away, driven off somewhere. At first I thought he must have gone after you. And then, when I found out next day that he’d been stabbed, I thought you must have gone back, picked up a knife and stabbed him. And I didn’t say anything, Rachel, not then. But I had to today. They think I
murdered
him. If that is what you did, maybe you should tell them. Because he didn’t die from the stabbing.’

Rachel nodded slowly. ‘Right,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry, Rachel.’

‘Don’t worry ’ bout it.’ She would worry enough for both of them, she was sure. ‘I’ll … I’ll let you get on with your lunch,’ she said, and turned to leave, catching sight of the photograph on the sideboard. She frowned. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked.

‘What?’ Nicola followed Rachel’s gaze, and her face brightened again as she smiled. ‘That’s my mother,’ she said. ‘When she was about sixteen. We found it when Gus cleared this room out, so I had it framed. Haven’t you seen it before?’

‘No,’ said Rachel, absently, but her answer wasn’t entirely accurate. She
had
seen the photograph before. That very morning. On the table between the beds in Mike McQueen’s bedroom.

‘Money?’ said Mike, and shook his head. ‘No. His safe was open. I think I would have noticed if it had had cash in it. Why?’

‘It’s just that it seems to have gone missing,’ said Finch. ‘ It could have a bearing on Mr Bailey’s murder.’

Mike frowned. ‘Surely you’ve got his murderer in custody? I understood from the news that you’d charged the TV reporter.’

‘Mr Law was released earlier today,’ said Finch. And the charge has been dropped.’

Mike sat down. ‘Dropped?’

‘Yes, sir’

‘Why?’

Finch looked back at him without speaking. The sun was glinting off his blond curls, making him look more like an angel than ever. Or Nemesis. Those death threats were still lurking somewhere in his computer’s brain, he knew they were. And now Finch was saying that Law wasn’t being charged with Bailey’s murder after all. Rachel Bailey might be his downfall yet.

‘Well, if he didn’t kill him, who the hell did? A burglar? With all his security?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. The money’s what my boss calls a little puzzle. He likes to have them cleared up. But if you didn’t see any money in his safe, you didn’t.’

‘No, I didn’t. And I didn’t steal it, either.’

‘Thank you, Mr McQueen. Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out.’

Mike got ready for his date with Rachel, and found her waiting at the gate of Bailey’s farm, which now stood permanently open. The vultures would be descending any minute now.

She got into the car. ‘They let Curtis go,’ she said.

‘So I’ve just heard.’

‘Is that goin’ to make a difference to what we agreed?’

‘No,’ said Mike, letting in the clutch and driving off. ‘Not if you’re sensible about it.’ He glanced at her. ‘You can have as many men friends as you like,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want that young man hanging round you. He’s a television reporter, and I don’t want anything I might tell you being passed on to him. Pillow talk’s been more than one man’s downfall, and it’s not going to be mine. So get rid of him.’

‘All right.’

One thing about Rachel Bailey, he thought. She knew which side her bread was buttered.

Lloyd had spent the early part of the afternoon explaining to the ACC, who seemed to be in perfect health, that he had had a body with stab wounds, and someone who had confessed to stabbing the owner of said body when it still functioned, which he, simple soul that he was, had assumed meant that he had found the murderer. He wasn’t to know that people had been literally queueing up to murder the man. Though, God knew, if he had known, he’d have joined the queue. He hadn’t said that last bit out loud.

It hadn’t been that bad an interview; he just hadn’t felt up to it, in his less than robust, hung-over condition. The ACC did understand that he had had no reason
not
to charge the man, and that he had not been motivated by a desire for revenge. But the papers wouldn’t. Even if individual reporters did accept that it had been a genuine mistake, they wouldn’t print that.

He didn’t feel much like a trip to London, but one was called for, since he was being trusted to continue heading the enquiry, on the grounds that removing him from it would made it look as though … et cetera, et cetera. And the only way to get the whole nonsense off the news was to get it right the second time around.

‘We have to check out the whole business of the hotel,’ he said to Judy as he went into her office. ‘I want to see how it works. How its car park works. Whether she took that car out for any length of time. Law could be giving her an alibi for earlier in the evening. And maybe stabbing Bailey was some sort of heroic gesture to save her from herself.’

Judy pulled a face.

And then he landed himself in it by dropping his newspaper,’ said Lloyd, rather enjoying this surreal version. ‘So he has to tell her what he’s done and she has to start covering up for
him
instead of the other way round. Though it would have been a great deal simpler just to tell her to get rid of the newspaper, if you ask me, but then, I’m not a romantic telly-person with an overdeveloped sense of the dramatic’

‘No,’ said Judy. ‘ You’re a romantic
policeman
with an overdeveloped sense of the dramatic. Nicola Hutchins isn’t telling us the truth about what went on in that house on Sunday night.’

‘I thought you didn’t think she had the guts to kill her father?’

‘I know,’ said Judy. ‘ But she’s changed since I interviewed her before, Lloyd. And circumstances have changed, haven’t they? If she
had
given her father an overdose, and went to the farm on Monday morning expecting
that
to be what he’d died of, she would be pretty well thrown by discovering that he’d been stabbed, wouldn’t she? And she was. She really was. So I could have got an entirely wrong impression of her, and I think perhaps I did. Because this time round she didn’t seem at all thrown to discover that he’d died of a drugs overdose, did she?’

Lloyd sat on her desk and thought about that. No, she hadn’t. And he’d read Judy’s notes from her original interview, and Nicola Hutchins’s apparent belief that her father had committed suicide had seemed very odd to him at the time. But they had to check out her story about Rachel. She might have seen her at the farm. They couldn’t just ignore it, especially in view of how much Rachel stood to gain, and the fact that her boyfriend had tried to kill him. And Judy would enjoy a trip to London, even if he didn’t.

‘And what about the sheep?’ said Judy.

Ah, yes. The sheep. The phantom sheep. He believed her about that, too, but it was a bit difficult to maintain that belief in the absence of any sighting of this sheep by anyone at all. The Ghost Sheep of Harmston. He could write about it when he retired. In between people-watching as a security man.

‘Still,’ he said, sliding off her desk again. ‘ We still have no idea what her immediate motive could have been.’

‘Abused people don’t always need an immediate motive,’ said Judy. ‘Look at battered wives.’

‘I’d be a lot happier if we could think of one. Battered wives don’t usually make up complex stories about injured sheep and empty houses. And we do have to check out this hotel. I’m just nipping out for half an hour – be ready to go when I get back.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He walked out to his car as fast as he could, given that his head hurt with every step. He had had an idea.

Curtis still had a job. And he’d dropped a tiny hint or two that Lloyd might have had it in for him. Nothing slanderous. Just enough. He had spent all day answering questions from other reporters; newspapers were offering him ridiculous amounts of money for his story; Aquarius TV was already negotiating a deal on repeats of the
Law on the Law
series for a satellite channel, as well as
Mr Big
, which everyone wanted now. It had taken a great deal of the sting out of having been made to look foolish. Lloyd was going to wonder what had hit him.

His bosses had been curious to know how come he had been suspected, never mind charged, but they knew no more than the press release had told them, which was that the police were now satisfied that Mr Law’s actions on the night in question had in no way contributed to Mr Bailey’s death, and Curtis had, without telling any outright lies, suggested that those actions had been carried out on behalf of Aquarius; that he had been in the vicinity, in the hope of catching the leaver of death threats now that the road was to go through the woodland, and that they had found traces of his presence, and had jumped to a wrong conclusion.

And so far, he had pointed out, the police were apparently ignoring the fact that the man
had
been receiving death threats. If he, a mere reporter, thought that whoever had been leaving them would be active on Sunday night, shouldn’t they have thought of it? Because it looked as though he had been active with a vengeance, didn’t it? And all they could do was arrest him for the murder, just because he happened to have been there.

He had watered all that down for the interviews, but he had got substantially the same message across. One of the press boys had mentioned suing Barton-shire Police, but Curtis thought that Rachel would regard that as really pushing his luck, and had said that it was all in the game, and he wouldn’t be suing anyone. But he would milk the situation for all it was worth, career-wise, whatever Rachel thought. She worried too much. They were in the clear. Soon, they could go away and find somewhere to live where he could come home to her every day of his life, and she could spend her money any way she chose.

He strolled up to the farmhouse, to find her waiting at the door, having seen him on the monitor. He had barely time to get in before she was sitting him in an armchair, curling up at his feet, and telling him that she believed Mike McQueen had killed Bailey.

‘Mike McQueen? What on earth makes you think
he
killed him?’

‘He knew the first Mrs Bailey, and he never said nothin’ to no one ’bout that. He had somethin’ else goin’ on with Bernard besides this road – I knew he had. I knew he wanted this land too bad. Don’t you see?
He
might’ve murdered Bernard.’

‘But he isn’t the one who came here on Sunday night with a bag full of drugs, is he?’ said Curtis.

Rachel looked at him, then shook her head slowly. ‘No,’ she said, her voice quiet, and a little sad. ‘ But if Nicola did it, someone put her up to it. She wouldn’t do nothin’ like that off her own bat. And I’d still like to know why McQueen’s got a photograph of Mrs Bailey on his bedside table. What d’you think it means?’

Curtis stared down at her, his mind blown away, unable to speak, or think, or react, even.

‘Curtis,’ she said. ‘What d’you think it
means
?’

‘I think it means you were in McQueen’s bedroom,’ he said, when he found his voice.

‘Never mind that! He knew her, don’t you see?’

‘What were you doing in his bedroom?’

She sat back. ‘What do you think I was doin’?’ she said.

Curtis blinked, looking at the wonderful creature who sat at his feet, and who was calmly telling him that she had been with another man. ‘Are you saying you – you slept with McQueen?’