Picture of Innocence (40 page)

‘I’m sure you will,’ said Lloyd. ‘But perhaps you shouldn’t try doing it all on your own. Or it’ll keep coming back. Like the gypsies.’

‘I will get help. Counselling. Whatever. If I’m not in prison. Well, I suppose even if I am, they might let me have …’

‘I don’t think it’ll come to prison,’ said Inspector Hill. ‘And as far as counselling goes, Rachel’s probably as good as you could get anyway. Have you told her all this?’

‘No.’

‘Perhaps you should.’

Mr McQueen drove her back to Rachel’s, then went wandering off while she and Rachel sat in her father’s office.

‘They don’t want the stuff in here,’ Rachel said. ‘Too old and battered for them to be interested in it. Reckoned I might as well sit somewhere that wasn’t goin’ to disappear from under me.’

Nicola told Rachel what she had told the police, and she looked as unshocked as they had. But it was a shocking thing to have done, wasn’t it? She thought it was. Rachel just said that she should never have been there, but Nicola didn’t understand what she meant.

She watched as all Rachel’s lovely stuff was being carried out of the house, and looked back at her. ‘I caused all this, didn’t I?’ she said.

‘No.’

‘But if I hadn’t taken the money, you could have paid this month’s instalment on the loan, and maybe you could have found a way to keep this from happening.’

‘The money wouldn’t’ve made no difference.’

‘It would have made a difference to you. You’ve got to find the rent for this place.’

But Rachel just smiled. ‘Don’t worry ’bout it,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry’bout nothin’, Nicola. It’s not your problem.’ The smile went, and her face grew serious. ‘It never was,’ she said.

Curtis was back in Stansfield police station. He had been arrested again, cautioned, and the tape was being set up. By Lloyd’s feet there was a small pile of stuff: papers, videos. A TV and video recorder were sitting on a table in the corner. It looked a little ominous. Attack, he decided, was the best method of defence. ‘This is harassment,’ he said.

‘Is that right?’ said Chief Inspector Lloyd. ‘And what would you call what you’ve been doing to me, Mr Law?’

Curtis shrugged.

Lloyd sat down opposite him. ‘A word,’ he said. ‘Off the record. You’re a good journalist, Mr Law. You know your subject. You knew how I would react to that programme, even if it never got shown, because
I
would have seen it, and it would have done nothing for my self-esteem.’

‘You don’t seem lacking in that,’ said Curtis.

‘No. It can afford to take a knock or two. Unlike some people’s. You knew it wouldn’t stop me coming after you when you began to emerge as the prime suspect. But you thought that it would stop me coming after you a second time, didn’t you? And you were wrong about that, because here you are.’

‘You might regret it yet.’

‘I doubt it. And let’s get one thing straight from the outset. For the first time in my career – and I mean for the first time – I couldn’t care less about the fact that you killed in cold blood, because your victim was Bernard Bailey, and I actually think it’s a great pity someone didn’t do it sooner. What I object to, Mr Law, are your methods.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I tried to kill Bailey, but I failed. I don’t know why I’m back here.’

‘You’re back here because you sadly underestimated Detective Inspector Hill. I make mistakes, Mr Law, as you were only too pleased to point out in your programme. But I have
never
made that mistake.’

Inspector Hill started the tape, and sat down. ‘Interview with Curtis Law, Thursday, thirty-first July. Present are DI Hill, DCI Lloyd, and Curtis Law. Mr Law, you are not obliged …’

Curtis listened again to the rigmarole, then smiled. ‘How can I help you this time, Chief Inspector?’ he asked.

‘Let’s see.’ Lloyd went through a lot of mannerisms. Head-scratching, finger-steepling, hand-clasping. ‘It’s difficult to know where to start, really,’ he said, sounding as though he had just arrived at the pithead after a night at the coalface. ‘Videos,’ he said, and sighed. ‘I have seen more videos this week than the most ardent of blue-movie fans.’

Curtis raised an uninterested eyebrow.

‘You wanted to murder Bailey,’ Lloyd said. ‘But Bailey was having closed-circuit television installed, and that obviously presented a problem. So you thought you would turn this disadvantage to your advantage. You decided that the whole
thing
would be recorded for posterity. Everywhere you went, you were going to be on video. Video was going to prove you had been on a train when Bailey was really murdered. Video was going to prove that Mrs Bailey’s car hadn’t moved from the moment she arrived at the hotel until the moment she left. And video was going to make me suspect you of murder, and look for all those clues you had so obligingly left me.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Curtis removed a cigarette from the packet, and lit it.

‘But we’ll come to the videos presently,’ said Lloyd. ‘ Let’s start with the red BMW two-seater that was seen driving away from Bernard Bailey’s farm at approximately ten minutes to eleven on Sunday the twenty-seventh of July. Were you driving that car, Mr Law?’

‘No,’ said Curtis. ‘At ten to eleven on Sunday I was in a hotel suite with Rachel Bailey.’

‘Well, let’s go back a bit. Where were you at, say, twenty past ten?’

‘The same place, with the same person.’

Lloyd shook his head.

‘For the tape, Chief Inspector,’ said Curtis, archly.

‘For the tape, I am shaking my head,’ said Lloyd. At twenty past ten, you were at Bailey’s farm. You were driving a red BMW with false number plates, and you parked in the road at the front of Bailey’s property.’

Curtis didn’t like the accuracy of his timing, or his geography. Surely Bailey hadn’t had a camera installed that he knew nothing about? ‘Do you have some evidence of this?’ he asked.

‘Evidence? Certainly.’ He went into the pile of stuff, and pulled out a sheet of paper in a plastic folder. ‘I am showing Mr Law a faxed invoice from Wicked Wheels Ltd., a car-hire firm, addressed to a Mr Roger Wheeler, at the address of the flat owned by Aquarius Television in Barton. It is for the twenty-four-hour hire of a BMW sports car of exactly similar specification to that owned by Bernard Bailey, driven by Rachel Bailey, and repossessed by the finance company this afternoon.’

Curtis breathed a silent sigh of relief. No evidence that he had been at Bailey’s farm, thank God. He had had no idea that Rachel’s car was in imminent danger of repossession until he’d seen the repo man on the video Gary took. That would have ruined everything.

Lloyd stood up, flexed his back, and stepped over the pile. ‘It could have taken us a lot of man-hours to find the hire company,’ he said. ‘Naturally, you wouldn’t have used the same one that supplied Roger Wheeler with his Jaguar. But we knew it would be a London firm, we knew it hired upmarket cars – we would have found it in the end. Fortunately, thanks to DI Hill here, we didn’t have to.’

Curtis blew smoke in DI Hill’s direction.

‘She makes notes – I expect you’ve noticed. Well, she’s making them now, isn’t she, even though we’ve got a tape running. And she made a note of everything she found in your flat. Including a mailshot from Wicked Wheels lying in the waste bin along with a couple of other car-hire firms hoping to get Mr Wheeler’s business. Try these ones first, she said. So we did. And bingo. I imagine the false number plates have been destroyed, but we’ll keep looking in likely places, just in case. And of course enquiries are proceeding in an effort to find where you had them made up?

‘What false number plates? I hired a car. That’s all you know.’

‘You hired this car from seven o’clock on Sunday evening to seven o’clock on Monday evening. And shortly after you had received dinner in your suite together with Mrs Bailey, you left the hotel by the Executive Wing door, picked up that car and drove it to Harmston.’ He turned away, and seemed to be reading a notice about AIDS.

‘Prove it,’ Curtis said to his back, then turned to Inspector Hill. ‘Prove that car ever left London. I hired a car, using an alias. Perhaps I was hoping to defraud Aquarius TV. That’s all you’ve got.’

‘You left the car,’ said Lloyd, still with his back to him, ‘and you went to Bailey’s gate. You told Bernard Bailey that you had just seen a badly injured sheep on the road. Not one of his, of course, or the alarms would have been set off, but that wouldn’t matter to Bailey. He liked animals. Not so keen on women, but he liked animals.’

Curtis shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No – you’re mixing your suspects up. That’s his daughter’s story.’

Lloyd turned, his face like thunder. ‘ No, Mr Law,’ he said, his voice low and threatening. ‘That is your story. The one you told Bernard Bailey to get yourself through his gate and into his house in order to murder him, the one that you hoped would make Nicola Hutchins look a liar.’

Curtis smiled.

‘Now, I don’t know exactly how you did it, but the pegs are very conveniently situated. I think I would hang up my jacket, perhaps drop something, bend to pick it up, and remove the phone connection from its socket.’

Spot on. Prove it, Curtis said nothing.

‘Bailey would, of course, attempt to phone his daughter. But the phone would be dead, since you’d just pulled it out of the socket. And you would kindly offer your mobile phone.’

Curtis lit a cigarette. ‘ I left Rachel the mobile,’ he said.

‘For the tape,’ said Lloyd, ‘I am shaking my head again. You didn’t leave Rachel the mobile.’

‘Then how did I ring her about the newspaper? Doubtless you’ve checked. She didn’t receive any phone calls through the hotel switchboard.’

‘You didn’t ring her about the newspaper,’ said Lloyd. He sat down again. ‘ If you really had had occasion to ring her about the newspaper, you would have told her that you had inadvertently dropped your newspaper at the scene of the crime, and asked her to get rid of it. Much simpler all round. But you didn’t want her to get rid of it, because it was very important that we find that newspaper, wasn’t it, Mr Law?’

Oh, Jesus Christ, thought Curtis as he looked at the blue eyes that looked coldly into his. Lloyd knew exactly what he’d done. He’d slipped up somewhere. He must have. But they had to prove it, he told himself. They had to prove it. Guesses weren’t worth anything.

‘Oh, Mr Law,’ Lloyd said, shaking his head. ‘You thought you had been so terribly clever, didn’t you? But you have been found out. And the beauty of it is that it was Nicola Hutchins whose actions found you out. Poetic licence may be foreign to your journalistic nature, Mr Law, but I’m sure you recognize poetic justice when it jumps up and bites you.’

Curtis decided that from this point on, he should say nothing. He hadn’t asked for a solicitor. Perhaps he should ask for one, but he wouldn’t, not yet.

Lloyd reached back into the pile of stuff. ‘I am showing Mr Law a fax of the printout of calls made on the mobile phone issued to Roger Wheeler. At ten twenty-nine on Sunday evening, a call was made from that phone to the surgery of Mrs Nicola Hutchins.’

Shit.

‘We weren’t supposed to check the calls made on this phone, were we, Mr Law? You knew that as soon as we suspected you of stabbing Bailey, we’d search that flat, knew we’d find the phone charged up. But you
confessed
to leaving it with Rachel. We had had to wring that confession out of you. So why on earth would we check that it was the truth?’

That had been the general thinking. Curtis stubbed out his cigarette.

‘Shall I tell you why? Because Bernard Bailey hadn’t rung a doctor. He had to have known that he was very ill for some time before he became too disoriented to deal with it. But he hadn’t rung a doctor. Why? It had to be because his phone wasn’t working, we thought. He’d rung his daughter from some other phone, which further suggested that his phone wasn’t working, but since he hadn’t left the premises all day, how had he done that? Answer. Someone brought a phone to him. And that’s why we checked Roger Wheeler’s charged-up mobile phone to see exactly what calls had been made from it, and when. And the silly thing is, that isn’t why he hadn’t rung the doctor at all. I doubt if he even tried.’

Curtis lit another cigarette, drawing calming smoke into his lungs. ‘You can’t prove where the phone was when that call was made,’ he said. ‘ Or who made it. You can’t prove that Rachel didn’t have it. She might have called Nicola for a chat. She might be knocking off Gus for all you know, and called him.’

‘Quite true, Mr Law.’ Lloyd sat back. ‘ Which is something you may live to regret. But let us return to our sheep,’ he said, and smiled broadly. ‘Bailey tries to ring his daughter about it, finds the phone isn’t working, and you offer your mobile. But you wanted the house to appear empty, and Mrs Hutchins would be bound to look in the office, and the sitting room, so you chose the kitchen. She would see that it was in darkness through the hatch, so she wouldn’t try there. He’d be unconscious, or as good as, so with luck she would never know he was in the house.’

Very, very good. And all totally unprovable. Did Lloyd seriously think he would break down and confess, or what?

‘So … how to get him there? I think you would take him to the back door, where you would try to show him where exactly you had seen this poor, distressed animal that urgently needed veterinary attention. You showed him, he rang Nicola, and as soon as he had relayed the sheep’s position …’ Lloyd smiled. ‘You jammed a hypodermic into his neck, and knocked him out. Now,’ he said. ‘ Which of us should tell the rest of this story, Mr Law? You or I?’

‘I’m fascinated,’ said Curtis. ‘Why don’t you carry on telling it?’ He still wasn’t convinced that Lloyd had real evidence. It was psychological trickery.

‘Then you injected the morphine, taking care this time not to find a vein, because he might have died there and then, and that wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. He had to stay alive for several hours if your plan was to work in its entirety.’

Curtis tried to look calm and unruffled. It was as though he really had carried out this murder on camera.