Poisoned Cherries (13 page)

“Mrs.
 
Goodchild,” I said.
 
Ross’s eyebrows rose.
 
“Please.
 
Take a couple of deep breaths, and try to control yourself.”

Eventually she could speak again.
 
“Alison called me,” she said. “She’s with the police, and they’ve arrested her.
 
She phoned me just a crt minute ago and asked me to call you and tell you.
 
She said you’d help her.”

“Oh shit,” I murmured.

“Pardon?”

“Yes, Mrs.
 
Goodchild,” I replied, quickly.
 
“Of course I will.
 
Now you just calm down; take a pill, or have a brandy or whatever, and try not to worry.
 
I’ll sort everything out.”
 
I sounded like the Wizard of, rather than just Oz.

“I’ll call you later.”

I hung up and looked at Ricky.
 
“Do me a favour and come with me.”

“Sure, but where are we going?”

“Back to Gayfield; I might need you to use your influence with your protege.”

Twenty.

The woman in the public office looked a little more hesitant this time when ex-Detective Superintendent Ross marched in and asked to see Detective Sergeant Morrow.

“I’ll see if he’s available, sir,” she said, reaching for a telephone.

“He’s available,” Ricky snapped.
 
“Now go and get him.”

Her face flushed up; but she stood and did as she’d been told.

“Did you really leave the force?”
 
I asked him.
 
“They don’t act as if you did.”

“Oh yes,” he replied.
 
“If you’d been a fly on the wall at the last discussion I had with the former chief constable, you wouldn’t ask that.
 
The only choice the old bastard gave me was whether I resigned as a superintendent or was kicked out as a sergeant.”
 
He smiled, grimly.
 
“I had my supporters, though; coppers who’ve actually been out on the trail of villains, rather than building their careers pushing paper.

“When I left, they had a big dinner for me in the King James Hotel.
 
It was organised by the Superintendents’ Association.
 
They invited the boss man, but he declined, so we drank a toast to him in his absence, only none of us stood up for it.

“There’s a new chief now, a bright, young guy; he was a detective sergeant under me before he went south for a spell, so my face fits again, even in the executive corridor.”

The constable reappeared, stone-faced, with Morrow following her.
 
He beckoned us through, and led us into the CID office.
 
“For fuck’s sake, sir,” he began.
 
“I’m in the middle of an interview.”

“We know you are,” Ricky replied, ‘and we know who you’ve got in there.
 
You let her phone her mother, and she phoned Oz in hysterics.
 
Now is the lassie getting home tonight, or what?”

Morrow took in a breath, then let it out.
 
“I don’t know.
 
It’s actually the second time we’ve interviewed her today.
 
I had her in this morning before I saw you.
 
She’s been formally arrested, and cautioned, but we haven’t charged her yet.”

“What are your grounds?”
 
I asked.

It was as if the sergeant was answering Ross.
 
“First she doesn’t have an alibi for last Wednesday, and she’s lying about it.
 
She told me at her first interview that she was at home, but we’ve checked with the taxi firm that has a contract with her company, and they’ve got a record of her being picked up that evening and being taken back to her office.
 
It’s in York Place, and you could spit from there to David Capperauld’s flat.

“On the back of that, we got a warrant from the sheriff to search her house.”
 
He reached into a drawer in his desk, took out a clear plastic bag.
 
“We found that.”

We leaned over and looked down; it was a carpenter’s awl, small and needle-pointed, with a red wooden handle.

“So,” I said.
 
“I used to have one of those.
 
My Dad still has.
 
Why shouldn’t Alison, or are girlies not supposed to have DIY tools?”

“That one was found in her house, but it has David Capperauld’s prints on it... and one of hers.”

“They were engaged.
 
Maybe he helped her put up a curtain rail or something.”

“And maybe he cut himself when he did it,” Ron Morrow retorted.
 
“It also appears to have blood on it.”

“Maybe he did cut himself.”

“And hair.”
 
Finally, the sergeant looked at me.
 
“I’m sorry, Oz, but there’s a real chance that’s the murder weapon.
 
I’m just waiting for someone from the lab to come and collect it.
 
They should be able to tell us for sure.”

“It might take a while, though,” Ricky pointed out.
 
“Can you not let the girl out on police bail meantime?”

“I’m scared she’d abscond.”

“Release her into her mother’s custody then.”

Morrow’s eyebrows shot up.
 
“Have you spoken to her mother?
 
She’s a Mr.
 
Kipling job.”
 
Even I had to agree with that; there was a strong hint of exceedingly good fruitcake about Alison’s mum.
 
“I might release her into someone else’s custody, though.
 
How about you, Oz?”

“Hey, wait a minute,” I protested.
 
I thought about Susie, and, for all her independence, and her hands-off approach to me, about how she might feel about Alison spending a night or maybe more under my roof.

Furthermore, what if she had bumped off Capperauld?
 
All round,

I felt uneasy.
 
“I’m not fucking idle here; I’ve got work to do,” I told him, grabbing the easiest cop-out I could.

“It’s the only way,” said Morrow, firmly.

I looked at Ricky, then shook my head.
 
“Yeah, I know, Mrs.
 
Ross wouldn’t have it either.”

He snorted.
 
“Mrs.
 
Ross hasn’t been having it for a while: at least not off me.
 
There is no Mrs.
 
Ross, not at the moment.
 
Okay, I’ll be responsible for the woman, for tonight at least.”

“If you’re sure about that,” Morrow told him, “I’ll go and do the paperwork now.”

“Go on then,” snapped Ricky, ‘before I change my mind.”

Twenty-One.

Alison was tearful when Morrow brought her to us; she wrapped herself around me straight away and set about soaking my shirt.
 
Eventually I peeled her off, and once she had calmed herself down, introduced her to her new minder.

Ricky did his best to look like a friendly uncle, but he didn’t come close.
 
Like he said; once a copper always a copper.

We went to her place first, so that she could pick up some clothes.
 
As usual, the police had been less than tidy in their search, and as usual they hadn’t bothered to clear up once they’d finished.
 
She wanted to start in on the mess right there and then, but we had more urgent things to do.
 
She started to talk to us about her head-to-head with Morrow as she packed her overnight bag, but Ricky stopped her.

“Don’t tell us anything,” he warned her, ‘however innocuous it might be.
 
We’ve got no privilege.
 
Just get on with packing.”

The Ross residence turned out to be a grey stone semi-detached near King’s Buildings, which are part of Edinburgh University.
 
He showed his unexpected house guest her bedroom then sat her down in the conservatively furnished living room.

“Right,” he began, ‘first off, who’s your lawyer?”

“Alex Stein, of Stein and Rothman,” she told him.
 
“He does all my stuff.”

“He’s no good; that firm doesn’t do criminal work.
 
Leave this to me.” He went out into the hall; within a minute we could hear him talking, earnestly, on the phone.
 
The conversation didn’t last long but when he came back into the living room, he had a satisfied smile on his face.

“Well?”
 
I asked him.

He picked up a remote and switched on the television.
 
“Wait.”
 
He flicked through the channels until he found an Australian rugby league match on Sky, dropped into a chair and settled down to watch.

There were still seven minutes to go when the doorbell rang.
 
Ricky went to answer and returned with a short, balding, middle-aged guy in a dark suit.
 
“This is Charlie Badenoch,” he said.
 
“He’s the best criminal solicitor in Scotland.”

The lawyer looked at me in surprise.
 
Charlie and I know each other from way back; his firm gave me quite a lot of work in the days when I was a private enquiry agent.

“Alison’s a friend,” I explained, before he had a chance to ask what the hell I was doing there.

He nodded, then shook hands with his new client as she stood to greet him.

“Give us a pound, Charlie.”
 
It was my turn to be surprised, but Badenoch simply smiled at Ross, dug into his pocket and handed us each a pound coin.

“You are now both investigators in my employ in connection with this incident,” he announced.

“Fine.”
 
Ross looked at Alison.
 
“Now we’ve got privilege.
 
You can say anything you like in front of us and we can’t be called as witnesses.
 
Okay, did you kill him?”

“What?”
 
she gasped.
 
If she was acting, she was better at it than me.

“Did you drive an awl into the back of David Capperauld’s head and kill him?”

“No!
 
I didn’t.
 
And what’s an awl?”

Ricky didn’t say anything; he just turned on his heel and left the room.
 
When he came back, a few minutes later, he was holding an implement identical to the one Morrow had shown us, only its handle was blue.

“That’s an awl,” he told her, pinching its shaft between his thumb and forefinger so that she could see it.
 
“Also known as a gimlet.
 
The police found one just like it at your flat.
 
Your fingerprint’s on it, and his, and they’re going to prove that it has your fiance’s blood and hair on it as well.”

She went chalk white, even as I looked at her.
 
“I helped him fix something up a few weeks ago, in his kitchen,” she whispered.
 
“I handled it then.”

“Why did you lie to the police,” I asked her, ‘about being at home on Wednesday night?”

“I didn’t.”

“Alison,” Ricky said.
 
“They’ve spoken to the taxi firm; they know you were picked up from home and dropped at your office.
 
They’ll argue that you didn’t go in; that instead you went round to David’s place and killed him with that thing they’ve got.

“They’ll then argue that you took it away with you, and four days later staged an elaborate charade with Oz, here, so that he could find the poor guy.”

“But I didn’t!”
 
she wailed, then burst into tears again.

Ross threw Badenoch a grim glance.
 
“Do you still want this, Charlie?”

“Like her boyfriend needed a hole in the fucking head,” the solicitor replied.
 
“But I’m in it now.
 
I’ll tell you one thing, though.
 
I’m not pleading this one in the High Court myself, even though I could.
 
I’m going to instruct a top silk.”

I did what I did best, and calmed Alison down again.
 
When she could, she looked up at Ricky.
 
“I was at home last Wednesday,” she said. “But I got a phone call from someone telling me that there was a light left on in my office, so I called a taxi and went to switch it off.”

“Who called you?”
 
Charlie asked.

“I don’t know.
 
He just asked if I was the Goodchild in Goodchild Capperauld.
 
When I said I was, he said that he worked in an office across from mine and he told me what the problem was.
 
He didn’t give me his name.”

“When you got there, was there a light on?”

Alison shook her head.
 
“No,” she whispered.

“Why didn’t you tell Ronnie Morrow this story?”
 
Ross demanded.
 
“Is it because you’ve just made it up?”

“No, it’s the truth.
 
As far as I was concerned I was at home on Wednesday night.
 
That was just an interlude; I never thought to mention it.”

I felt myself getting into the swing of this.
 
“Have you got call identification on your phone?
 
Like a readout that gives you the number calling?”

“Yes, I have.”

I looked at the other two guys, then back at Alison.
 
“Have you had many incoming calls at home since then?”

“No, not really’

“That’s good,” said Badenoch, then glanced at Ricky and me.
 
“You two should get back to Ms Goodchild’s place now and check that instrument, but be bloody careful not to erase anything.”

“I can’t,” Ross told him.
 
“The girl’s virtually in my custody, at this address; I can’t leave her and I can’t traipse her all over the city.”