Skeleton Plot (19 page)

‘You’re saying that you suspect me of killing Julie.’

Lambert gave him a very tiny smile. ‘Unless we have an obvious killer, we work by elimination. That is particularly so in the case of a crime committed twenty years ago, where every scent has long since gone cold. We should like to eliminate you: that would make our task easier as well as being a relief to you. So far we have not been able to do that. Tell us again why you broke up with her. Give us the most complete picture possible.’

Andrew Burrell seemed to have aged even during the few minutes they had spent with him. Like many fair-skinned people, he showed strain more visibly than he would have wished. He looked pale and drawn and his lank fair hair seemed to insist on falling over the right side of his face. He brushed it away suddenly and said, ‘Julie said she wasn’t ready for marriage. I don’t think I was that keen on it myself. I wanted us to be an item and see how it went from there. Also, I’d got this place on a history degree course in Liverpool and I was determined to take it up – I think I wanted to show my dad that I was finished with farming and there was no turning back to it. Julie was living in a squat and in danger of becoming addicted to drugs and for half the time didn’t know her own mind. I think all of these things were involved in our relationship, so it was complicated. But nothing was set in stone at the time of her disappearance – at the time of her death, as you now insist.’

‘Thank you. That is a fuller account of the situation between the two of you than you gave us on Tuesday. We’re policemen, not lawyers, but it’s my opinion that there are still areas where you are not telling us the whole truth and nothing but the truth.’

‘I’ve told you what I can remember. I can’t do more than that.’ He was sitting in his favourite leather armchair, with his interrogators opposite him on the sofa. He saw now that his fingers were white with tension as they grasped the ends of the arms. He felt very exposed. ‘I can’t do more than that to convince you of my innocence.’ He looked suddenly at Hook, hoping for a more sympathetic hearing from that less threatening presence.

It was not forthcoming. Instead, Hook said, ‘We’re talking about a girl who was probably murdered and certainly buried on the land of Lower Valley Farm, which was your home at the time. On Tuesday you told us very little about the other people who were involved with you and Julie during this period. You haven’t added anything so far today. What can you tell us about Jim Simmons?’

Andrew wondered if they knew that he had been in contact with Jim. He didn’t see how they could know about his phone call to Jim on Friday, unless Jim had told them of it. But they seemed to know all sorts of things which he hadn’t thought they would know. You couldn’t rely on their ignorance of anything. Yet this was one of the areas where he could talk safely. He couldn’t see how in talking about Simmons he could possibly incriminate himself, so he might enlarge a little on how things had been between the two of them.

‘Jim and I were rivals, in a way. But we weren’t competing for Julie. I think Jim liked her, but he didn’t want her in the way I wanted her. We were wary of each other because he had designs on the farm, which had been intended as my inheritance. That suited me, really, because I’d decided farming wasn’t for me and I was going off to Liverpool University to pursue an entirely different career and lifestyle. But it put him in a difficult position, and I think I was still rather jealous of him when I saw how Dad was relying on him and favouring him. It’s illogical, I suppose, but you still feel a little jealous when you see someone else taking on the role intended for you – especially when they’re demonstrably much better fitted than you for the role.’

‘Mr Simmons felt that your mother was also helpful to him as he found his feet in farming.’

Hook was watching him carefully, Andrew felt, probing for a weakness, seeking an unguarded reaction. But he could surely baffle this pedestrian plod in any battle of words. He smiled patronizingly. ‘If you’re looking for an Oedipus complex, DS Hook, you’re much mistaken. I maintained an excellent and perfectly normal relationship with my mother until the day she died. I’m no Hamlet, with my whole conduct dictated by a fractured attitude towards women.’

‘I do hope not, Mr Burrell. The Danish prince concluded that play as you know with multiple killings, an outcome we should prefer to avoid in your case.’

Andrew remembered too late Lambert’s warning during their previous meeting that Hook had a rather better degree than he had himself. He said sullenly, ‘As far as I know, Jim Simmons didn’t kill Julie. I can’t see what motive he could have had. But I’m sure you’ve already questioned him about the matter.’

‘Indeed we have. He was quite frank about the fact that he saw an opportunity at Lower Valley Farm when he realized that you were no longer interested in taking over from your father. He told us in fact that both your father and your mother were not only friendly and supportive but actively helpful to him as he took over the running of the farm and eventually secured the ownership of it for himself. They seem to have been extraordinarily well-disposed towards Mr Simmons – some might even say abnormally so. Do you think that their support for him might in fact be a recognition of something he had done for them?’

‘A quid pro quo? I can’t think of anything a man as young and inexperienced as Jim would have been able to offer Mum and Dad.’

But Andrew could. He was stalling for time, wondering how he might play this to his advantage. It wasn’t helpful to him that Hook seemed to be able to follow his every thought process. The DS now pointed out, ‘Obviously we cannot speak with your dead mother on this. But we know that both she and your father were bitterly opposed to your proposed long-term association with Julie Grimshaw. She disappeared at a very convenient time, from their point of view. We now know that she was murdered. You will be relieved to know that we are satisfied that neither of your parents was directly involved in her death. There remains the possibility that someone else chose to remove her in order to accommodate them. In view of his subsequent career and his present ownership of Lower Valley Farm, Mr Simmons is the obvious candidate.’

Andrew’s mind raced with alternative reactions to this. As a suspect himself, it could only help him to incriminate someone else, and Hook was offering him Simmons on a plate. But the right tactic must be to seem reluctant to accept the plate. He said, ‘I can see exactly what you mean. I’m shaken, because it’s a possibility I hadn’t entertained. To be frank, I wasn’t surprised when Dad turned to Jim to run the farm as he looked towards retirement: Jim was the only obvious candidate, once Dad accepted that I’d ruled myself out. But I confess I was rather surprised when he told me a year or two later that he was selling the farm to Jim Simmons. Lower Valley Farm has been worked by our family for centuries. I thought Dad would have wished to retain ownership of it, even though it wasn’t me who was taking over from him.’

He’d done that well, he thought. Voiced a doubt about Simmons with apparent reluctance. Drawn attention to the key factor in any suspicion of Simmons, the mysterious and surprising way in which he’d acquired Lower Valley Farm. Andrew had no compunction about what he was doing to Simmons: it was dog eat dog, when it came to saving your own skin in a murder inquiry.

Andrew rather hoped Hook would pursue this further. He was on strong ground here. He would show more reluctance as he dropped Jim deeper into the mire. Instead, it was the sterner Lambert who now resumed the questioning. ‘Julie Grimshaw was an attractive girl and a vulnerable one, as you and others have told us. That often causes problems, when such a woman is amidst a group of red-blooded young men in their early twenties, as you and Simmons and others were at that time.’

Andrew Burrell didn’t like the mention of ‘others’. He managed to summon a small sneer as he strove to reassert himself. ‘If by “red-blooded” you mean heterosexual, I can confirm that as far as I am aware none of the men in our set at that time was gay.’

‘Thank you for the information. We are very interested in the men and women who were in what you call your set. Tell us about this woman Kate, who at that time was calling herself Kathy. She was physically very close to Julie throughout those months in the summer of 1995: they shared the first floor of the squat in Gloucester, whilst others came and went around them. Because of that, she had a clearer opportunity to kill Julie than anyone else we’ve spoken to. Do you think that might be what happened?’

Andrew tried not to leap in here. He sensed that they would find it easier to believe him if he once again appeared loth to incriminate others. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. It’s a possibility. They were together in the squat, as you say. All kinds of things happen in squats. The desperate, sometimes unbalanced people who live there are more disposed to violence than people living in more settled conditions. Julie was into drugs in a big way – she wasn’t an addict, but one of my fears for her was that she was on the way to becoming one. Drugs make people unpredictable; they make people behave abnormally and sometimes violently. I had some experience of this myself with Julie. I suppose it’s possible that the two of them had some sort of violent row and that Kathy killed her during that. Have you considered the possibility that Kathy might not actually have intended to kill her?’

‘We have indeed, Mr Burrell. We have to include it as a possibility for almost everyone who was close to our victim at the time, including you. You could confess to the lesser charge of manslaughter right now, if you thought that was appropriate.’

Andrew looked to see a smile on Lambert’s long gaunt face, but he didn’t find one. ‘I don’t think that’s either appropriate or funny, Chief Superintendent Lambert. I didn’t kill Julie Grimshaw and I don’t know who did.’

‘I see. Well, it seems to us significant that despite numerous opportunities you have not named one other male who was in contact with both you and Julie at that time. Omissions can be more informative to us than inclusions, on occasion. They suggest to us that someone may have important things to hide.’

Lambert was picking his words as carefully as Burrell, showing the academic that he could confront him on his own terms and outwit him, because he held all the important cards in this particular hand. Andrew said with an assumed weariness, ‘This is all a long time ago, as we’ve agreed. I didn’t think you would be interested in people who were only peripheral or occasional members of our set.’

‘A man who was a rival of yours for the favours of Julie is hardly peripheral to our investigation, Mr Burrell. I’m sure that anyone striving to be as objective as you are will recognize that.’

This was sarcasm with a deadpan delivery. Andrew recognized defeat and said dully, ‘I suppose you mean Liam Williams.’

‘It’s taken you a long time to get there, Mr Burrell. Now that you have, please don’t omit anything significant.’

How much did they already know, having grilled others as effectively as they were now grilling him? Everything, perhaps? Were they hoping that he’d enmesh himself even more hopelessly in the net they prepared for him? Andrew said carefully, ‘I suppose Liam was exactly what you described him as just now: a rival for Julie’s favours. He lived in the house adjoining our farmland. He was good-looking, I suppose, though I wouldn’t have admitted that at the time. He had long hair and an earring, and he had money. Plenty of money.’

An old animosity flashed briefly into Burrell’s blue eyes and pale face, then was equally swiftly banished. ‘I’d known Liam since he was at school with me. He was a year or two behind me and not as bright.’ He smiled over that small barb, then moved swiftly on. ‘He didn’t go around with our set all the time in 1995, but joined us on occasions when it suited him. Mostly when we went to pop concerts or wanted to listen to particular bands. Liam always had money and he could always get tickets.’

‘Thank you. That gives us the background to this. Now tell us about Liam and Julie Grimshaw.’

‘He fancied her from when he first saw her, I think. But it was towards the end of the summer when he took up with her. Julie and I were finished by then. In retrospect I don’t think Liam and I were ever rivals for Julie’s favours. And I don’t think she played one of us off against the other, in case you’re setting that up.’

‘We’re not setting anything up, Mr Burrell. But we need to know exactly what happened. And we cannot question Liam Williams on the matter, as you are no doubt aware.’

Andrew nodded. ‘Poor bugger killed himself in a car smash, didn’t he? I don’t suppose you’ll believe this, but I was sorry about that.’

‘Do you think Liam killed Julie?’

‘He might have done, I suppose. He was much given to violence, when things didn’t go his way. That was why he wasn’t one of the regular members of our set.’

‘Why did you conceal his presence alongside you during the summer of 1995 for so long?’

Andrew contrived a shrug, his brain working desperately on the phrases he would give them now. ‘For obvious reasons, Mr Lambert. At the time of her death, Julie Grimshaw seemed to have opted for Liam. Hell might have no fury like a woman scorned, but young men can be pretty furious as well, when the hormones are raging and their pride is wounded. Revenge on Julie, if you could call it that, gives me an obvious motive. As a man completely innocent of this crime, I didn’t want to provide you with that.’

‘But you’ve just claimed that your close relationship with Julie was over by the time Liam’s began. And we’ve had to find out about Liam Williams’s connection with Julie from others, when you could have given us all these details on Tuesday. Concealing things makes the motive you’ve just outlined seem much stronger. The body was buried hurriedly in land which was then part of Lower Valley Farm. I now ask you again whether you had any connection with either the death or the burial of Julie Grimshaw.’

‘No. I didn’t kill her and I don’t know who did. I hope you discover who murdered her and put him or her away. I’d almost forgotten Julie, but this has brought back my affection for her. I want her death to be avenged.’