Scene of Crime (8 page)

The sergeant was a brisk, no-nonsense man with little time for finer feelings, and Carl could handle that; he felt at least that the sergeant believed him. But Lloyd—well, Lloyd didn’t say much, but Carl felt as though every question he did ask was loaded.

After what seemed hours, Denis came to the phone.

“Denis,” Carl began. “I don’t quite know how to tell you this. There’s … there’s been a break-in here. Estelle—well, she … that is, the police think she surprised the burglar, and he—” Carl took a moment. “She’s dead, Denis,” he said. “They tied her up and gagged her. She couldn’t breathe.”

There was silence. For a moment Carl thought he’d been talking to thin air and was going to have to say it all again, but finally Denis found his voice.

“That’s dreadful,” he said. “I don’t know what to say.”

“There’s nothing anyone can say,” said Carl. “But I wondered if you could do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“It’s young Dexter Gibson. I’ve just had a call from his mother to say that he had an accident tonight, and she’s worried he might be concussed. Perhaps you could go and check him out for me?”

“Of course,” said Denis.

“She’s probably worrying about nothing, but if you could go, I’d be grateful.”

“Of course I will. Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes. Thanks. I—I’ll talk to you later.”

“Right. Look—if there’s anything I can do, just say. I know it’s a useless thing to say, but I do mean it. I mean—don’t stay there on your own, will you? I know there’s probably somewhere else you’d rather go, but there’s a bed here for you if you’d like to stay with us. And don’t, whatever you do, worry about work. I can handle everything.”

“Thanks, Denis.”

Carl hung up and went back into the living room. “Sorry about that,” he said. “A patient wanted me to go out—Denis Leeward’s dealing with it.”

Chief Inspector Lloyd looked faintly puzzled. “You don’t subscribe to one of these emergency night doctor units?”

“Yes, I do,” said Carl. “But Mrs. Gibson cleans for us. That’s why she called me direct.”

“Your cleaner? Does she work here or at the surgery?”

Carl stared at him. Why on earth did he care about that? What did it have to do with the police? Or Estelle’s death? “If it’s of any consequence,” he said testily, “she works here.”

“Fingerprints,” said Lloyd. “We need to eliminate any that have a right to be here. When did Mrs. Gibson clean here last?”

“Oh,” said Carl, feeling foolish. “This morning, I imagine. She comes every day.”

“If you can let us have her address? And we will need your fingerprints, too. Not tonight, obviously, but if you could come to the station tomorrow perhaps?”

“Yes, of course. Sorry. I didn’t mean to bite your head off.”

“Oh, forget it. Now—do you think you could try to sort out what’s missing?”

Sergeant Finch, young and fair-haired, with a crew cut that made him look like an American marine, asked Eric when he had heard the window break.

“I’m not sure. About ten, quarter past eight. Something like that.”

“And you went out into the garden?”

“Yes. Like I said, I thought it was my greenhouse.”

“I believe you have a security light that’s activated by movement?”

“Yes.”

“Did it come on when you went out, or was it already on?”

Eric didn’t know how much Mr. Jones had actually seen; he might have told the sergeant that the light was already on. Though it went against the grain, he felt obliged to tell the truth. “It was on.”

“So someone or something must have activated it before you went out to investigate the breaking glass?”

Eric shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“How long does it stay on?”

“Three minutes, if it doesn’t detect any further movement.”

“And how close does the movement have to be? Would movement in the Bignalls’ garden trigger it?”

“No. It did, but she complained, of course, so I had to change the setting.”

“She?”

“Mrs. Bignall. Whatever I did, she complained. Anyway, now it comes on about a third of the way up the garden, I suppose. And from the side …” He thought about it. “I think it would come on if anyone got within a foot or so of the garage.”

The young detective looked thoughtful. “So someone running diagonally from the Bignalls’ house over the wall into your garden would trigger it when he crossed your driveway,” he said, almost to himself. “But someone getting into the Bignalls’ garden from yours probably wouldn’t, because they’d probably stay near the back wall.” He looked at Eric. “Does that seem reasonable?”

Eric agreed that in such a hypothetical situation, that would probably be the case.

“We have a witness who saw someone leave by your gate. You were in the garden at that moment, according to him, and your light was on. But you didn’t see anything.”

“No. I was checking out my greenhouse.”

“Did you hear anything before that?”

“Like what?”

“Raised voices?”

Eric shrugged. “I doubt if I’d notice,” he said. “That mad cow next door is always crying or yelling.” He
smiled. “You move to a neighborhood like this, you’d think you’d get a bit of peace, wouldn’t you? Not with her next door, you don’t.”

“How long have you lived here?”

“Since February. These two next door are always shouting—and she has the nerve to complain about me,” Eric added.

Sergeant Finch didn’t seem too interested in his squabbles with his neighbors. “Did you hear anything later on?” he asked. “When you were checking out your greenhouse?”

“Like what?”

It was the sergeant’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know,” he said. “Running feet, maybe?”

Eric’s policy had always been to let the police find out things on their own and to give them no help whatsoever, even when he’d been in the job. Besides, the less you told them, the quicker they went away. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “I didn’t see anything. I just checked the greenhouse and came back in.”

“Then why did you shout to whoever it was to stop?”

If Geoffrey Jones had more to do with his time than spy on his neighbors, Eric reflected, he wouldn’t be in this position. “Someone had broken a window or something,” he said. “I just shouted.”

“I’m told you shouted, ‘Come back here, you little bugger,’ ” said Finch. “That isn’t just shouting, Mr. Watson. That’s shouting
at
someone.”

“Buggers,” said Eric. “Plural. It was kids breaking bottles against the wall, I thought. And nothing scares them off more than inviting them to come back and talk to you.”

“And you didn’t notice the Bignalls’ French window standing open though the house was in darkness?”

“No.”

“If you didn’t see someone leaving your garden, didn’t you wonder what had made your security light come on?”

“No.”

Finch sighed. “For someone who was a cop and security conscious, you seem to have been very uninterested in what was going on.”

“Wasn’t my problem,” said Eric. “My property was intact. I’m not in the job anymore. And everyone round here’s security conscious. Why do you think Bignall had his gates locked? There have been burglaries round here, Sergeant. Just like tonight.”

“To be honest, I was wondering why he bothered to lock his gates, since it’s so easy to get on to his property via yours. And you don’t keep your gates locked.”

“I do if I’m leaving the house empty. A bloke up the road had his house broken into a month ago and the thieves backed a bloody van up his driveway and filled it up with his belongings. We don’t have to make it that easy for them.”

“And yet,” said Finch, “you hear a window breaking, come out to find your security light on, and don’t notice an intruder in your own garden?”

“I’m sorry if I don’t come up to scratch as a witness, Sergeant.”

“And you don’t notice that your neighbor’s French window is wide open with the rain getting in?”

“I’m not the bloody neighborhood watch! As long as it isn’t me, I don’t give a bugger who’s been turned over.”

“So you did see something.”

Eric shook his head and smiled. “All right, yes. I saw the French window open, and I just didn’t give a shit. But I saw nothing else, and if you sit here until hell freezes over, you can’t make me say I did. I’ve got better things to do with my time than sit around the bloody magistrates’ court waiting to give evidence against some kid who’ll get off with a smacked wrist anyway. My time’s money.”

“What do you do for a living these days?”

“I’m a photographer. I’ve got a studio in Welchester.”

The sergeant looked interested. “What got you into that?”

“I was a police photographer, but they civilianized the job fourteen years ago. I didn’t fancy being back in the front line, so I left and started up a business.”

“You’ve done all right, then?”

“Can’t complain.”

“The thing is, this’ll be going further than the magistrates’ court.” Finch was watching him closely as he spoke. “This is manslaughter, at the least.”

“Manslaughter?” Eric repeated. “I thought it was just a break-in. Who’s been killed?”

He could see the sergeant try to work out if it was genuine surprise or not, but it didn’t really matter what he thought. With the police, all that mattered was what you said. And that only mattered if they’d cautioned you.

“I’m sorry,” Finch said. “I thought someone would have told you. Mrs. Bignall was found dead.”

“Bloody hell.” He hadn’t known there was anyone at home.

“Does her death change your mind about what you saw?”

Eric shook his head. “I didn’t see anything,” he said. “How can it change my mind?”

“Thanks very much,” said Judy, who could have walked home by the time Marianne finally stopped flapping and left the theater.

During the day it was actually quicker to walk, especially since there was a shortcut through the park. Because not only couldn’t cars use the shortcut, but the one-way system meant it was necessary to drive for a considerable distance in the opposite direction before finally making it into the center of Malworth where she lived.

“It’s very good of you to give me a lift home,” she said. “It’s taking you out of your way.”

“Oh, no trouble at all, darling!” Marianne started the car, and the windshield wipers cut two semicircles in the fine spray of rain on the glass. “We couldn’t have you walking home through the park, not at this time of the night—I don’t care if you are a police officer. A warrant card isn’t a suit of armor, and there are some very funny characters about. And you couldn’t really run, could you, darling? Not in your condition.” She backed carefully out of the parking space, and that maneuver completed, the brief silence was over. But when she spoke, it was about neither of the things Judy expected to be exercising Marianne’s mind.

It wasn’t about Carl Bignall’s sudden departure with Lloyd, despite the fact that Carl’s car remained on the rooftop car park, something that must surely have been driving the ever-curious Marianne mad with a desire to know what was happening.

And it wasn’t about the impossibility of mounting a production when Cinderella had the flu, her understudy had phoned to say the train had been delayed by at least fifty minutes and she wouldn’t make it to rehearsal after all, and Buttons’s under-understudy had to go rushing off on police business, unaccountably taking Buttons’s actual understudy-cum-Ugly Sister with him. This had left Marianne with no Buttons, Judy’s inadequate Cinderella, only one Ugly Sister, and no choice but to abandon that evening’s rehearsal, but none of that seemed to be uppermost in Marianne’s mind.

Indeed, for a moment after Marianne spoke, Judy had no idea what she
was
talking about.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” she said. “Both of you being in the police, having to drop everything at a moment’s notice.”

What was going to be difficult? Then it struck Judy that Marianne was still talking about her condition. She was beginning to realize the immense pulling power of babies, and consequently of mothers-to-be; other people seemed to be endlessly fascinated by the whole thing. She, of course, never had been, and still wasn’t. Normally, she hated discussions of this sort. But at least she wasn’t being pumped for information about Carl.

“It’s not as difficult at the moment as it might be. I’ve been transferred to HQ—it’s nine to five. And I’m working from home most of the time anyway.”

“And will you still be doing that when the baby’s born?”

“I’ll be on maternity leave starting next month. But even when that’s up I can probably work mainly from
home until next September,” said Judy. “Then I’ll be back in Stansfield.”

“But still nine to five?”

“Basically,” said Judy, not exactly truthfully, but she had no desire to discuss the pros and cons of working mothers, child care, nurseries, or anything else with Marianne.

The current canteen wisdom was that Lloyd would be offered early retirement and she would get his job, but there was a lot of time for them to change their plans between now and next September. And CID was nine to five, more or less. But circumstances had temporarily forced Stansfield CID to become a serious crime squad in all but name, expected to handle all serious crime committed in an area with a population of 300,000; as a result, its Detective Chief Inspector did get called out at odd hours. Come the reorganization, due to be revealed in March and in place by April, it was rumored there would be a small Serious Crime Squad based at Barton HQ, and if that happened, the Stansfield CID chief would have an easier time of it. The problem was, she would prefer to head up the serious crime squad.

“When
is
the baby due?” asked Marianne.

Judy was brought firmly back to reality. She was an expectant mother—if there was a police force on this planet that had ever entertained the idea of having their serious crime squad run by someone who had to breastfeed an infant, she didn’t know of it. “Early February,” she said.

“Aquarius! How wonderful! What are you?”

“Scorpio, I think.”

“Ah! An unbeliever.”

Judy smiled. “Lloyd’s the one who believes in all that sort of thing,” she said.