Picture of Innocence (41 page)

‘You left the back door unlocked, took his key to the alarm system, and switched off the alarms by opening the box on the wall, so you could leave the back way, over the fence, dodging the cameras that you helped set up in the first place.’

He had told Bailey that blind spots were inevitable, as he had positioned the cameras to leave himself a clear run, not to the fence, but to and from a gap in the hedging. He hadn’t wanted to be spotted climbing over a ten-foot fence by some courting couple.

‘You then ran the tape back, and recorded over your arrival. We all missed that, I have to confess, because of course by the time we saw it, the tape had been recorded on again, and there was no jump in time to give us a clue. But the tape didn’t run itself back until ten thirty-nine, and a twelve-hour tape running from ten-thirty in the morning would normally run itself back three or four minutes past the half-hour at the most. That one ran nine minutes past the half-hour, and a test has revealed that six minutes of that tape must have been run back and recorded over We should have spotted that at the time, rather than in retrospect. But as you pointed out in your programme, we do make mistakes.’

So, someone had tampered with it. It wasn’t proof that he had. Inspector Hill might have worked it all out, but that was no good without proof, and that she hadn’t got.

‘You amused yourself in the meantime by working out what clue you were going to leave for me on your voice-over for your report of the murder, and you saw the open safe, and the money that was lying in it. So you closed the office door. But we’ll come back to that.’

Curtis lit another cigarette.

‘And then you left by the rear, ran round to the front, waited until you saw Nicola Hutchins’s car in your rear-view mirror. You knew she would be arriving sooner or later, as she would not, of course, have found the sheep. Once you saw her, you drove off, making certain that she saw
your
car.’

And it had worked beautifully. Nicola had driven towards the farm, obediently going to confess to Daddy that she hadn’t found his sheep, and get herself beaten up for it. The woman needed her head tested.

‘You knew that naturally, she would assume it was Mrs Bailey that she had seen,’ Lloyd said. ‘ You knew that naturally, whether she wanted to or not, she would tell us that, and that the alarms had been off, and the house empty. Naturally, we would suspect her, especially when we checked up on the whereabouts of Mrs Bailey’s car. There she was, telling us about a sheep that didn’t exist, and a phone call that had never been made, and alarms that had unaccountably been switched off in an empty, unlocked house, when we had been told that Bailey had been in mortal fear all day, and would never have put the alarms off or left the farm late at night. And we would conclude that since she was there at the material time, complete with drugs, that she had had to lie about the alarms to explain how this mythical sheep had got out in the first place, lied about the car to incriminate Rachel, and lied about the house being empty because she had murdered her father.’

So how come he was here and she wasn’t?

‘She had the motive,’ Lloyd went on. ‘ She had been abused all her life, had been deliberately omitted from her father’s will. We would think that she was hoping to lay the blame at Rachel’s door, knowing, as she did, of Rachel’s relationship with you, and knowing, as everyone did, your relationship with drug suppliers. We were supposed to think she was trying to frame you, when all the time you were framing her.’ He leaned forward. ‘And there was the possibility, wasn’t there, that sooner than incur anyone’s displeasure, she would actually confess to murdering her father, wasn’t there? You knew that. She might give the impression of being in control, but you know just how unstable she is, because Rachel had told you, hadn’t she?’

Curtis smiled again. This was all guesswork. It was right, but it was guesswork.

‘And – most importantly – you knew that she would be too frightened of her father to put the alarms back on again without his permission, which he would be unable to give, since he wouldn’t, as far as she was concerned, even be there.’

Curtis stubbed out his cigarette, and sat back, arms folded. ‘I don’t see you producing evidence of any of
that
,’ he said.

‘N,’ said Lloyd. ‘And I can’t produce evidence that you then drove the car to Barton, almost certainly to the Aquarius flat, changed out of your jeans and into a suit, then drove away again and parked close to the station. Or that you joined the passengers leaving the eleven-thirty from St Pancras, and drove hack to where you had parked the BMW, stopping only to pick up your accomplice on the way.’

No proof. No evidence. As long as he kept his mouth shut, they could prove absolutely nothing. All Lloyd was doing was digging a great big hole for himself.

Lloyd got up again, walking round the little room as he spoke. ‘Your accomplice gave you the newspaper and the cancelled return ticket, and drove the BMW back to London, to be collected by Wicked Wheels later that day, and you drove back to Bailey’s farm. You parked on the road, this time at the rear of the property, for an hour and a half, and you did the
Times
crossword. You smoked and drank Coke, and for someone with a conscience about forest fires, you have very little regard for the litter laws, because you threw out your Coke cans, you emptied your ashtray … in other words, you left clues. Big, bold clues that even an incompetent copper like me couldn’t miss.’

Curtis looked away. Lloyd was enjoying this. He was centre stage, and loving every minute. But he wouldn’t enjoy it for very long, because providing he said nothing, it was all just guesswork, however clever his detective inspector had been.

‘Then, when you felt you had crossed off enough clues in your crossword, and left enough clues on the roadway, you let yourself in to Bailey’s property the same way you had left it. If the alarms had all gone off, you would have driven away before anyone got there, but they didn’t. True to form, Nicola had interfered with nothing. Or so you thought.’

Now, they were coming to whatever it was he had done wrong. He was supposed to ask what she’d done, he supposed. Lloyd really was skating on very thin ice. He wondered how much the tabloids would pay for his story after this.

‘You went in by the back door, locked it, went to the drawer and chose a knife entirely unsuited both to cutting apples and to murdering anyone. An old, blunt, short-bladed vegetable knife. The last thing you wanted it to do was finish him off, or even be capable of doing him much damage. But it couldn’t look as though you’d
chosen
it. It had to look as though you had just picked it up, so you hacked an apple in two with it, and put it on the coffee table.’

Now, Curtis lit another cigarette. Pretty good, except that he had chosen the knife weeks before, when he was helping Bailey with the cameras. He had taken it away, deliberately blunted it, kept it. Rachel, if she had missed it, would just think she had mislaid it. That wasn’t it, wasn’t what had got Judy Hill on to him. It was something to do with Nicola Hutchins, but he couldn’t imagine what. It didn’t really matter. Proof was what Lloyd needed.

‘Then you switched the alarms back on, pushed the phone back into the socket, gave the now comatose Mr Bailey his key back, and stuck the knife into him four times. When you had done that, you took your newspaper, and you smeared it with blood, and left it lying on the floor.’ Lloyd perched on the corner of the table. ‘This was the window dressing. And it was done for three reasons. One was to make me suspect you of a murder that never happened, the second was to leave a clue that would give you an alibi for the real murder, and the third was to give Rachel Bailey a real, honest-to-God fright.’

And it had worked, Curtis thought. On all counts.

‘This time you ran the tape back thirteen minutes,’ said Lloyd. ‘Not to remove the recording of your arrival as before, and as you would subsequently say, but rather to mask the fact that you had not arrived by the gate, which was, of course, going to be your story. Because the longer Bailey had appeared to remain conscious, the later he would be assumed to have been given the drugs, which would have the effect of isolating Nicola Hutchins as his murderer.’ He got off the table. ‘ Then you
left
by the front gate, concealing your identity to some extent, but knowing that you would be faintly recognizable, and that together with all the other clues, you were certain to be suspected of the murder of Bernard Bailey.’

Curtis lit a fresh cigarette.

‘And it was, you thought, foolproof. The worst that could happen would be that Nicola would find Bailey, and get help in time to save him. Then when Bailey recovered and accused you, you would simply deny ever having been there, and you would have an alibi to prove it. However, none of that happened. As far as you were concerned, everything had gone as hoped for. But it hadn’t, Mr Law. It hadn’t.’

Presumably Rachel had been right. Nicola had found her father. So what? She hadn’t done anything about it. Curtis had been a bit worried about how long Nicola had been in the house, but not too worried, because nothing had come of it. He had assumed that Nicola had thought her father was drunk, and that Rachel had been involved in his subsequent stabbing; that she had said nothing in order not to get Rachel into trouble. But he had known that she would crack, that she would tell them in the end about seeing the car, and that the hotel car-park videos would apparently prove she was lying.

‘You thought Bailey would still be unconscious by the time his daughter left, but she, afraid of offending him, waited longer than you thought, and Bailey was conscious and lucid long enough to get himself from the kitchen to the sitting room, long enough to try to tell Nicola what you’d done to him, and long enough to issue a final threat. And that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, Mr Law. The worm turned. But you weren’t to know that.’

Curtis didn’t know what he was going on about with his camels and worms. He was still waiting to see some evidence.

‘So you thought it had worked. But in order for me to suspect you, you had to catch my attention, didn’t you, Mr Law? So you did a voice-over for the news report, mentioning money in a safe that you couldn’t have seen through a closed door. You knew Gary would get the camera rolling as soon as he got to the farm, and we would confiscate the tape, and, of course, watch it – video of a murder scene is very helpful. And the first thing the camera would see would be the closed door to Bernard Bailey’s office.’

Curtis didn’t react at all.

‘What you didn’t know; Lloyd went on, ‘was that the money wasn’t
there
any more. And what you still don’t know is that it was Nicola Hutchins who removed it.’

‘So?’

‘We have two statements, Mr Law. One is from a Jack Melville, who called on Mr Bailey at ten o’clock on Sunday evening in which he says that he gave Mr Bailey four thousand six hundred pounds, and one is from Nicola Hutchins, who says that she removed four thousand six hundred pounds from Mr Bailey’s safe at about midnight that same evening. And if you saw that money, Mr Law, then you couldn’t possibly have been on the eleven-thirty from St Pancras.’

Was that it? Were they going to have to rely on Nicola Hutchins giving evidence? Someone who stole from her own father? Someone who would agree that the moon was made of green cheese if it meant avoiding an argument? Someone who every now and then lost it altogether? Curtis smiled. ‘ How do you know she removed it at midnight?’ he said. ‘
She
could have put the alarms off. She could have come back later, once she was certain he would be in a coma, gone in the back way, and taken the money
after
I stabbed him. A good brief would get her admitting that in five minutes flat.’

‘For the tape,’ said Lloyd, ‘I am shaking my head. A good brief would know that she couldn’t possibly have done that. How did she leave? If she had left the back way, the alarms would have had to remain off. If she left the front way, she would have been on the video.’

Shit, shit. Curtis thought furiously. ‘How do you know Rachel didn’t turn the alarms hack on when she got home?’ he said, beginning to hear a note of desperation in his voice. ‘ Just because she says they were on doesn’t mean they were. You can’t trust her an inch. She and Nicola could be in this together.’

‘But the alarms were on when
we
got there,’ said Lloyd. ‘And when Bernard Bailey was examined by the pathologist, the key to them was in his shirt pocket. That key was in there when he was stabbed, Mr Law. And no one had removed it, because it was covered in undisturbed blood. Therefore the alarms were reset
before
you stabbed Bailey. No one turned them on after that. Mrs Hutchins took the money when she says she did, and you were not on that train.’

Curtis closed his eyes. Sod’s Law. Sod’s Law had got him. Law on Sod’s Law, he thought. Maybe he could do a series when he got out of prison.

‘But.’ Lloyd reached down, and picked up a video. ‘ Thanks to Inspector Hill, we can prove that by more solid means.’

Barton station concourse, timed at eleven twenty-five, when the station was busy with people catching last trains. Curtis watched as he walked into camera range in a crowd of other people. There simply wasn’t a way on to Barton station by which you could avoid the cameras, but he had taken precautions. He had worn a different hooded jacket from the one he had been wearing when he had left Bailey’s farm, and had ditched it on platform three.

With the hood up, he couldn’t be picked out from the crowd just by running through the security videos, because his face was in shadow. He had given Rachel the Roger Wheeler disguise, because there was no way in the world that he was recognizable on the video as it stood. So how the hell had they picked him out? But they had. They could, and would enhance it.

‘It’s good to know, isn’t it,’ said Lloyd, ‘that there are some honest people left in the world. An anorak was found on platform three, Mr Law, and handed to a member of staff, who handed it in to Lost Property, as we saw when we were anxious to prove that you
were
on that train. And it occurred to me that it was a very warm night on which to have worn such a garment. Inspector Hill even found herself reflecting that she had only seen one other person wearing a hooded jacket recently, and that had been to conceal his identity. She remembered that, Mr Law, when we began to piece things together.’