Verdict Unsafe (19 page)

He watched her drive off too fast, and wished he had got her something more sedate.

Carole Jarvis had woken from the nightmares that the evening news and her memories had reawakened, when her unconscious mind would go over and over what she had banished from her conscious mind, and she couldn’t get back to sleep.

The whole thing was a mess. They couldn’t go on like this forever—Rob working nights so as to avoid her, her pretending that she didn’t know about Ginny. Rob … well, he had found some sort of release with Ginny, and he would be prepared to go on like this for another two years; forever. But she wasn’t. Their life together was a sham. Rob wouldn’t leave her, wouldn’t let her leave, wouldn’t discuss their problems, wouldn’t try to make it work, wouldn’t admit that it was finished.

She had to do something. Anything. Just whatever it took to shake them out of this dreadful impasse. She got up, eventually, when she realized that it was almost seven o’clock, and she might as well.

Light fell on the pavement across the road, catching Mart’s attention, and he looked out of the high window at the pale yellow rectangle in the building opposite. Judy Hill was rising, with a proper job to go to. A job with pension rights and a decent salary. With prospects. Especially if you were prepared to sleep with whomever you needed to in order to get ahead, and grass up your colleagues as soon as look at them. Bitch.

Yesterday, she had had Drummond ringing her up to wish her happy birthday. Matt had watched and listened as he had made his call; Drummond had walked over to the taxi when he’d finished, and Matt had thought he was leaving, but he had just paid off the driver and come back to the bank doorway. Then Lloyd had arrived. Drummond had stepped into the recess of the doorway, waited, watched, and so had Matt. A few
minutes later, Lloyd had come out again, got into the car and driven off. Matt knew why; he was shifting the car before the traffic warden booked him, but Drummond, not aware of Malworth’s new traffic systems, had thought he’d gone; he’d rung her up again.

Drummond had been too deep in shadow for Judy Hill to see him when she came to the window, for Lloyd to see him when he walked back. In his black clothes, Drummond could make himself invisible. If Matt had turned his head from the opened window he would have seen him on the screen, caught-on the camera that would record any in-and-out holdup, the one that took in the recess of the doorway, and enhanced the picture until it looked like underwater daylight.

This shift had been livened up by a visit from Sergeant Finch. Where was Matt, he had wanted to know, between ten and eleven o’clock? There had been another rape, Finch had said. The girl was dead, and they were questioning everyone who had been in the area. Matt had spun him a yarn; Tom Finch knew him, was happy to accept what he had told him, and hadn’t asked for detail. Yes, he had said, he had been running into the underpass at about that time. That couple had seen him, recognized him, for God’s sake. How come they knew who he was? She works in the off-license next door, Tom had said; she sees you arrive here when she’s on lates.

All very friendly. Nothing to worry about. Matt stretched, yawned, and turned his attention back to the screens, where no one was tunnelling into the vaults or abseiling down the roof. At ten to nine, the staff began to arrive, and Matt was released from bondage for another day.

Ginny watched the cab arrive; Rob hooted for Lennie, and sat behind the Transit, engine running, in the alley.

She turned from the sink. “That’s Rob,” she said.

Lennie was sitting at the table, smoking, lost in thought. He looked at her when she spoke, but it was as if she wasn’t there.

She was wearing an old gray polo-neck sweater of Lennie’s and nothing else; Lennie usually liked that, usually couldn’t resist pinching her bum where the sweater just covered it, but he
hadn’t done that, hadn’t even spoken to her mis morning. He didn’t now; he just got up from the table and went out, getting into the back of the taxi. Rob backed the taxi out, and they were gone.

Lennie was still in the same rotten mood as he’d been in last night; Ginny was quite relieved to see the back of him.

“I think we should pay Baz Turner a visit, guy,” said Tom, knocking, entering and speaking all at once.

Judy looked up from the files she had pulled on the rapes, and had been reading all morning, in an effort to find something the original inquiry had missed. “Why?” she asked.

“I want to know why he gave evidence in Drummond’s defense,” he said. “When I spoke to him at the time, he said he thought Drummond was the rapist. I want to know what made him change his mind.”

Judy thought about it. “Do you think Drummond might have got to him?” she asked.

“It hadn’t occurred to me before, but it’s possible. If he can do what he did last night to scare Bobbie Chalmers off, he could do anything.”

Getting him for seeking to pervert the course of justice was better than nothing. Judy agreed that they should talk to Baz, and she and Tom drove to Barry Turner’s house.

“Won’t he be at work?” Judy asked.

“Unemployed,” said Tom.

Judy sighed. The only two police officers in Malworth who had done something worthwhile, and they were the ones that had got the sack.

Turner didn’t look overjoyed to see them, but he invited them in, and Tom asked his question.

“Well, I just …” Turner began, and floundered immediately. “Is it true?” he asked. “Has someone been murdered this time?”

“Yes,” said Tom. “And we think it was a warning.”

Turner sat down. “A warning?”

“To Bobbie Chalmers. To keep her mouth shut. It was her flatmate.”

Turner went pale, and Tom sat opposite him. “Come on, Baz,” he said. “What haven’t you told us?”

Turner looked at him, and then up at Judy. “You … you’d better sit down, too,” he said. He looked at her, then at Tom, then at his hands. “When Matt Burbidge beat that kid up,” he said, “he hadn’t mentioned the rapes. No one had.”

“But you said he’d been taunting you—” Judy began.

“I know,” said Turner. “That was Matt’s idea. But it was like the defense bloke said. Matt was just getting him back for giving us the runaround before. We told him he’d be getting a summons, and I walked back to the car. Next thing, I hear Matt saying that Drummond would remember us, and I turned around just in time to see him throw a punch at the kid, right in the mouth. I yelled to Matt, but he said it was private, and hit him again.”

“Private?” said Judy.

“Yeah, well—you know. Stay out of it. So I did. But then he punched him full in the stomach and the kid went down like a stone. I thought he’d leave it then, but next thing, he’s trying to kick the shit out of him. It took me all my time to get him off him. I made him go back to the car, and checked that Drummond could stand up. Then I went back to the car and took off like the clappers.”

“Did you ask him why he’d done it?”

“Sure. He just said he’d felt like it, and not to worry, Drummond wouldn’t make trouble. Then a little while later, we got sent to a minor RTA—no one badly hurt, but one of them needed patching up. So I go to the car for the first-aid box. Only the roll of adhesive bandage is gone.”

Judy could feel Tom’s eyes on her; she wouldn’t look at him.

“I never thought anything of it, not at the time. It was back in the tin next morning. But then I heard about the Chalmers girl—how there had been a rape just before we’d stopped Drummond. And … well, the thing is …” He looked away. “Matt wasn’t in the car when that happened,” he said.

“Not in the car? For how long?”

“About half an hour,” said Turner, miserably. “We’d been on
duty at the football ground. That celebrity match. They’d thought there might be a lot of traffic, but with the fog and everything …” He looked up again, then, at Judy. “The match was abandoned at halftime,” he said. “We were told to go down to the lay-by on the Malworth Road. Matt lived right across the road from the ground—still does. And he said he wanted to sort something out at home, and would I cover for him. He got back to the car about a minute before Drummond passed us.”

“And you didn’t tell anyone about this?” asked Judy.

“Well—no. I mean, you can’t go shopping your mates …” He looked away from her, and appealed to Tom, who was less given to shopping his mates. “I mean, you can’t, can you?” he said. “Anyway, there had been no official report of the rape. And I’d only just started to think about it all when the next thing I know we’re on the carpet, being suspended—I didn’t know what had hit me.” He looked at Judy. “I know Matt blames you,” he said. “But it was his fault, not yours. The inspector reckoned you were just trying to stick up for us.”

Judy nodded. Her helpful intervention had got them the sack. She had happened to witness the incident on her way home from Lloyd’s flat; she had seen Drummond all in one piece, proudly reported that fact to her boss when Drummond had said the police had assaulted him. Trouble was, they had said he was in his battered condition
when
they had stopped him, so she had landed them in it instead of getting them out of it.

“That was Mart’s idea, too,” said Turner. “Saying he was in that state when we stopped him. Then after that got blown out, he said we should go for provocation, to lessen the sentence, and he came up with the rape business. Then things got worse. Because I heard on the grapevine that the lads were going to get Drummond back, and next night he’s nicked for assaulting a prostitute. And—well, Matt knew the little tom, didn’t he? And he knew the one called Rosa, too.”

“He what?” said Tom, his voice flat.

“Definitely. He was the beat man in Parkside for months. He knew all those girls—he nicked them all the time. He told me
stories about it, you know, like you do—and he told me about one called Rosa. He said he hadn’t ever nicked her because he felt sorry for her. She wasn’t cut out for it. And just before the trial, everyone was looking for her, weren’t they? And he never said he knew her—he couldn’t have, because everyone thought Drummond had made her up until the other one said she’d seen him with her. And it might have got Drummond off, if she’d given evidence.”

It might not have. “And you still said nothing?” said Judy.

“I couldn’t. But now someone’s been murdered. I can’t live with that.”

He could live with the rapes, though. Judy wondered how many more times in the course of this inquiry she was going to have to sit and listen to tales of police corruption and cover-ups, and began to wonder if she was the only straight police officer in the job. But there was Lloyd. Lloyd was straight. She made herself look at it rationally. Corruption had obviously become rife at Malworth—that was why serious crime had been taken away from them. It didn’t mean that it had set in anywhere else.

“So that’s why I gave evidence in his defense,” Turner said. “He was being fitted up. I had to stick to the story about provocation—that was what I’d used in mitigation. But the rapes never crossed my mind—it had been six weeks since the last one. I never thought he’d raped anyone, so that was what I said.” He looked at Judy. “And I still don’t think he raped anyone,” he said. “Do you know why Matt Burbidge was taken off the beat at Parkside?”

Judy was certain she didn’t want to know.

“They needed him for undercover work,” said Turner. “He was doing that most of July, and then he came into Traffic. He was working at Oakleigh farm.”

Judy and Tom left Barry Turner’s house shell-shocked; neither of them spoke on the journey back to the station, which was where Judy was going, despite Tom’s urging her to go to see Matt Burbidge. She suggested that Tom have lunch first, and spent her lunch hour setting up the incident room. Whatever Case thought, though, she was no window dresser.

“When
are
we going to see Matt Burbidge?” Tom asked, as she came back through the CID room, where Alan Marshall was engaged in his mammoth task of ringing around Stansfield’s many taxi firms, trying to find out which taxis had had trips into Malworth yesterday.

“My office,” Judy said to Tom, who followed her in, and closed the door. “I don’t want this to become public knowledge,” she said. “Not if it doesn’t have to.”

“No. Right. But he
was
working undercover at Oakleigh farm,” Tom said. “And it was the school holidays. He must have known Lucy Rogerson—seen her around, at least. He never told anyone that, Judy. Why not?”

“It’s all circumstantial,” said Judy. “And irrelevant. Matt didn’t rape these girls, Tom! Drummond did.”

“We have to talk to him. He would know all about forensic procedure, he was out of the car when Bobbie was raped and in Parkside when Marilyn was—and that’s a very long way from where he lives or where he works. He knew that farm, and Lucy. It was his idea to say Drummond was boasting about raping these women, he kept quiet about Rosa— Guv, you can’t ignore all that!”

“You told me yesterday that someone watched Drummond raping Ginny,” said Judy. “Are you saying we’ve got two rapists with exactly the same MO?”

“Well, I said I was
told
Drummond had raped Ginny. There’s a difference. There’s a big difference when you’re talking about that lot in Malworth, obviously. I mean, they wouldn’t tell me, would they? Not if they really did set him up, pay Ginny to approach him—”

“Pay her to approach a rapist? Ginny might not be bright, but she isn’t stupid!”

“She didn’t know he was a rapist, or that anyone even thought he was. She knew him as a punter. All she’d need to know was that they wanted him fitted up and they’d pay her to do it—she was living off scraps, guv, and she’d been banged up all evening! If they offered her enough money, she’d have bitten their hands off.”

“it was Drummond who was waiting for me,” she reminded Tom. “Not Matt Burbidge.”

“But we don’t know why, do we? He never got the chance to do anything. We don’t know he was going to rape you. He might have just wanted to put the wind up you, like he said. Maybe that was all he ever did.”

No. No, she wouldn’t believe that, not for one moment. And for one good reason. Colin Drummond had given her a statement about a rape which had contained information known only to the victim, herself, and the rapist. “Tom—how could it have been Matt?” she said. “He was in uniform when Bobbie was raped! Who rapes anyone when he’s wearing a police uniform?”