Murder... Now and Then, page 14
‘Because it isn’t sensible to have a first child at your age,’ said Charles, untearful, as maddeningly reasonable as he had been last night.
‘If it was sensible last week, it’s sensible this week!’ she shouted.
‘The subject’s closed, Gerry,’ he said, buttering the toast that he had made himself, for himself.
‘Then I might as well stay in the spare room,’ she said, not above the Lysistrata gambit if it would help.
‘Please yourself,’ he said. ‘It really makes very little difference to me what form of contraceptive we use, providing it isn’t your decision whether or not to use it.’ He got two mugs from the cupboard. ‘Abstinence will be fine by me,’ he said.
She knew that. She had known as she had said it that withdrawal of conjugal rights was no threat at all. She had always known that he had never really wanted her physical love Or even returned her spiritual love. The love in their marriage had flowed one way; she had known all along, she supposed, but it took until last night for her to admit it to herself. In a way, Charles hardly knew her. Her, not the wife he had invented for himself.
A baby wouldn’t have been enough. A son or a daughter might have loved her back, but she would still have needed Charles’s love as well. That was what she wanted, and had always wanted, since she had met him. She sat down as she was hit by the sudden realization that she may never really have wanted a baby at all, that the one thing that had filled her hopes and dreams and fantasies had never been real. She had wanted to make up for Charles’s coldness somehow. To make their love-making mean something, because it had never been important to Charles, and she had known that, even before they were married. The baby she had tried to conceive all these years was a substitute for Charles’s love.
She had even convinced herself that her brief affair had been a desperate attempt to conceive, but now she thought that perhaps all she had wanted was someone who had wanted her. She had lived a lie, and she hadn’t even known that until last night. The truth now seemed to empty her of emotion, of energy, of any sort of meaning to her life.
‘But …’ She looked up at Charles. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Where we go is up to you,’ he said.
Freddie arrived just after ten, assistant in tow, to make his in situ examination of the body. He was tall and thin and suitably serious looking for a forensic pathologist, until he noted the lack of close relatives in the vicinity. Then he grinned and waved cheerily into the bedroom, where the Scene of Crime Officers had just finished, and Lloyd stood surveying the aftermath of violent, death, watching the SOCOs leave with their booty. Scenes of crime looked like Moon landings these days, with anonymous white-suited astronauts taking samples back to Earth.
‘Morning, Lloyd!’ Freddie came into the room. ‘Ah,’ he said, beaming. ‘A nice bloody one this time.’
As long as he lived, Lloyd would never understand Freddie. ‘We haven’t found the murder weapon,’ he said. ‘But there’s a block of knives in the kitchen – forensic have taken them for examination.’
‘Right, then, let’s have a look – ah, Kathy. This is a good one for you. Probable cause of death?’
‘Even I can work that out,’ said Lloyd, as he tried not to look at the blood-soaked, bath-robed body. But all around, there was more blood. Not the full horror-film variety; a fine spray of blood, all over everything. The chairs, the dressing table, the headboard of the bed had been dusted for prints, and the blood-spattered white wood was smudged and dirty where they had been working. The blood had gone into long, thin diagonal dashes as it had hit the floor, and the wall, and the double doors set into it.
Lloyd opened both the doors of the walk-in wardrobe, and whistled slightly. It had two rails running down either side, both empty except for padded hangers; it wasn’t much smaller than his bathroom in the flat, and it wasn’t even being used. But much good all that money did you when you were doing a very good impersonation of Julius Caesar on the Ides of March.
‘You can work it out?’ said Freddie eagerly. ‘ Come on then. Get down. Have a good look.’
He enjoyed it. The blasted man enjoyed it. Some sort of macho instinct wouldn’t allow Lloyd to refuse. He got down, and had a look. ‘Stab wounds,’ he said.
‘Stab wounds,’ agreed Freddie. ‘But you don’t die from stab wounds, Lloyd.’
‘Eh?’
‘What I mean is that stab wounds are not of themselves a cause of death. You can be stabbed and not die. So why is he dead?’
‘Because he’s lost a lot of blood,’ said Lloyd.
Freddie sucked in his breath. ‘Wouldn’t necessarily kill you,’ he said.
Lloyd sincerely hoped that something would rescue him from this, and his prayers were answered.
‘Sir?’
Lloyd got up from his brief and unwilling examination of Holyoak’s body.
‘Sir – they’ve got the video set up in security.’
‘Oh, what a pity,’ said Lloyd to Freddie. ‘ I’m going to have to leave you to it.’ He looked at Kathy. ‘Well?’ he said.
‘Well,’ she said, looking not only at the body, but at the bed, at the headboard, at the wall behind it. ‘We’d have to see how deep the wounds are. An artery has been severed, but he may have died from a wound or wounds to vital organs. But the indications are that he died from haemorrhage.’
‘Haemorrhage,’ said Lloyd. ‘ Isn’t that what I said?’
‘Yes,’ they chorused.
My God, she was getting just like Freddie. One of Lloyd’s ex-colleagues had been brave enough to marry her; Lloyd hoped she didn’t take her work home. He was sure Freddie did. He probably had horrible things in jars all over the house.
He went down the steps from the penthouse, and walked across to the security building, with its bank of screens, showing different areas of the factory and office premises. The tapes ran twenty-four hours a day, showing a panoramic view from a swivelling camera on the central lighting tower; other static cameras allowed the security men to watch strategic areas of the grounds and the factory floor itself. They could zoom in on anything untoward. The output from these cameras was also recorded.
‘The main camera output shows the whole area,’ said the security officer. ‘There’s just one blind spot – the exit from the underground staff car park – but you’re more interested in people coming in than going out, aren’t you?’
‘Right,’ said. Lloyd. He really wanted to play with the video himself, but even he couldn’t think of a good reason why it ought to be watched by a DCI rather than someone a little lower down the pay scale.
‘Most of the cameras concentrate on the factory,’ the security man said. ‘There’s millions of pounds’ worth of equipment in there. And the rooftop camera’s just a sweep of the area covered by the static cameras. So if you do see anything that looks interesting, give us the sector letter and the time, and we can give you it in close-up. One of the cameras takes in the ground-floor door of the flat – but the one that might be of most use to you is on the other monitor – that’s the camera on the main entrance. All vehicles enter there, as I said, and all pedestrians enter and leave there. The gates are opened at five thirty in the morning and closed at ten thirty at night, but some vehicles do come in outside these hours – they use a phone on the gate, which also has a camera.’
‘What if our man came and parked in the underground car park a week ago?’ asked Lloyd gloomily.
‘It was completely clear yesterday morning,’ said the security man. ‘ Special Branch insisted.’
Lloyd brightened. They had been useful for once, instead of just getting in everyone’s way. ‘And you’ve actually got on tape every vehicle that entered the premises between then and when Mr Holyoak was found dead?’
‘We have,’ he said proudly.
In a corner, two detective constables sat at monitors, being given their instructions. They would be watching the two tapes from the moment Special Branch, who had of course searched the place from top to bottom, left, until they reached the time that the police arrived at the scene.
Lloyd looked at the surprisingly clear black and white image of a retreating, would-be anonymous Special Branch car, its number plate brought into close-up at the touch of a button, as the constables were shown what the machine could do.
‘We can get you a still photograph of anything interesting,’ the security man said.
Lloyd beamed at the two young men. ‘Good luck, lads,’ he said. ‘Only eighteen hours to go.’
They could fast-search through a lot of that, but they had no idea whether they were looking for someone in a vehide, on a bike, or on foot. The tape had to be stopped every time anything moved. It had to be hoped that the intruder, if such there was, had come reasonably early. And if something caught their eye on the sweep, and that incident had to be located on another tape …
Lloyd gave up working out the man hours, and went back up to the penthouse. It had been his idea to look at the tapes. He just had to hope that they came up with some evidence.
‘Ah – sir.’
Lloyd looked at Detective Sergeant Finch, who came out of the bedroom, quite unconcerned by Freddie’s activities.
‘Sir – I can’t find a wallet,’ he said.
Lloyd’s eyebrows rose. ‘ Where have you looked?’ he asked.
‘Well – everywhere I can think of, now that the SOCOs have finished in the flat itself,’ he said.
There was something almost angelic about Finch’s looks; the fair curly hair, the youthful face; he looked like an eager ten-year-old, and he was as sharp as they came.
‘It’s not in any of the drawers,’ he said. ‘In here or the bedroom. I’ve even looked in the kitchen. It’s not in the jacket that was in here, or in any of his other pockets. I’ve got them searching for it outside.’
Lloyd nodded grimly, and went back into the bedroom, looking down at the body as it lay sprawled half on, half off the bed. ‘Would someone do this for a wallet?’ he asked.
The young man shrugged, following him in.
‘Depends what was in it,’ Freddie said.
‘Mm. We need to know if anything else is missing.’ Lloyd looked at Finch. ‘There was a young woman here yesterday. Anna Worthing – see if you can get hold of her, Tom. She was fixing everything up for Holyoak – she might know what ought to be here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And there were a lot of people in and out of here yesterday – we’re going to need their prints for elimination. Get hold of the collective Drs Rule – I’ve already asked Mrs Driver to come in some time.’
As Finch left, Lloyd heard Judy’s voice. Oh, boy. Judy was less than enthusiastic about blood; she hadn’t even cared for the first-aid classes that all police officers had to attend, and had had to accept that either she learned how to dress wounds and give artificial respiration or her career stopped there. And though apart from the body itself there was no heavy bloodstaining in the room, what there was seemed to Lloyd to be even more unsettling. The fine flecks of blood gave the impression of having been painted on to the surfaces; it looked like hell might look if someone got in an interior decorator with a sense of humour. She and Finch came to the bedroom door, and he could see her grow visibly pale. She had never fainted yet, but there was always a first time.
‘Morning, Judy! Lovely as ever, I see,’ said Freddie, not actually looking at her.
Judy grunted a reply.
‘Have you run your check already?’ Lloyd asked.
She swallowed. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And there’s interesting stuff on Scott. That’s why I hung on to Tom.’
‘Good,’ said Lloyd. ‘Perhaps we could listen to it in the kitchen?’
Judy needed no second telling; he and Finch followed her back through the sitting room, past the open door where they could see the fingerprint man who was now working in the lift, shepherding her through to the little kitchen, where she leant against the washer-drier and took several deep, slow breaths before she attempted to speak again.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Scott was very strongly suspected of having murdered his first wife thirteen years ago next month.’
Lloyd’s eyebrows rose again. So that’s what Anna Worthing had meant.
‘Scott claimed that he was in London when his wife died,’ said Judy. ‘Which we know was between five forty-five and seven o’clock in the evening of the third of May.’
‘How did she die?’ asked Finch.
‘Strangled,’ she said. ‘Manually.’
‘Go on,’ said Lloyd.
‘At first Scott said that he had gone back to vote – it was election day, and he had only just moved to Stansfield, so he wasn’t registered here. And that while he was there he decided to go to a prostitute.’ She raised her eyebrows, indicating her disbelief.
‘Doesn’t everyone?’ said Finch. ‘That’s why I hate stable government. The more elections the better, that’s what I say. Once every five years is a killer.’
Judy laughed. The colour was coming back to her cheeks now that she was no longer faced with the horror of the bedroom.
‘And he had no idea who, or where, I expect,’ said Lloyd.
‘He never went through with it, he told them. So no alibi Except that he knew the address he’d gone to – but none of the girls there were very forthcoming.’
Was very forthcoming, thought Lloyd. He’d have said so, if Finch hadn’t been there.
‘But he has a reputation with women which made the investigating officers a touch suspicious of his sudden shyness.’
She was enjoying herself now. Lloyd waited to hear what gem she was about to give them.
‘Anyway,’ Judy went on, ‘he stuck to this not terribly convincing story until, one Miss Barnes turned up the next morning. She was seventeen, and had worked for him in London. She said that he had been with her on business, and had been trying to keep her name out of it, not wanting to get her mixed up in a murder enquiry. She had a bedsit in that block of flats, but there was no suggestion that she was on the game herself.’ She smiled. ‘In any event, Scott married her just over six months later.’
‘The woman he’s married to now?’ said Lloyd.
Judy nodded. ‘No one believed her for a minute, but they were never able to get any hard evidence that he’d been at home either. Forensic couldn’t place him at the scene, no one remembered seeing him when he shouldn’t have been there. It was election day, so there were a lot of people about in the area, which is how come they could narrow down the time of death. Broad daylight, but none of them saw Scott. And the case was never officially closed. And something else. Zelda Driver tells me that Scott didn’t even know Holyoak was his wife’s stepfather until the day before yesterday.’
‘And when her stepfather turns up …’ said Finch slowly, ‘ Scott starts slapping his wife about.’
Lloyd thought about that. A man like Holyoak, with a multi-million-pound fortune, discovering that his stepdaughter had been used to concoct some phony alibi, might have been able to dig into the matter of Mrs Scott’s death with more time and money and fewer restrictions on how he operated than the police; he might have found out too much. Scott might have thought his wife had colluded with her stepfather in someway, especially if she had kept the relationship a secret.
‘A chat with Mr and Mrs Scott would appear to be indicated,’ said Lloyd. ‘If we can find them. But in the mean time, Tom, you have a word with Miss Worthing.’
Finch went off, and Lloyd told Judy about the lack of a wallet, which was a little puzzle that didn’t quite fit in, in his opinion. ‘I think you should get as much as you can on the first Mrs Scott’s murder,’ he said. ‘It may well have to be unofficially reopened from never having been officially closed.’
‘You can have the body taken to the mortuary now,’ said Freddie. ‘I can do the PM tomorrow morning.’
‘Good,’ said Lloyd. ‘Any chance of a time of death?’
‘Thirteen minutes past eight,’ said Freddie.
Lloyd sighed. ‘All right, all right. I just want a very rough estimate.’
‘Very rough? All right. Over twelve hours. That’s as rough as you can get.’
Lloyd’s face lit up. ‘ Over twelve hours?’ he repeated, and looked at his watch. ‘Are you saying he was dead by eleven o’clock last night?’
Freddie sighed deeply. ‘I’m saying that rigor mortis is complete,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘That makes it just possible – no more – that he’s been dead for over twelve hours, and under twenty-four. His body temperature suggests the lower end. It could get argued out of any court in the world. I don’t know what he was doing at the time of death – if he was taking exercise, that could have speeded everything up, and the indications are that he was taking very vigorous exercise indeed. And, despite your expert advice, Lloyd, I still don’t know what killed him. If he bled to death, the attack could have happened some considerable time before he died. If his attacker stabbed a vital organ, he could have died there and then. All or any of these factors could cancel one another out, and bring you back to the figure you first thought of. He could have died the day before yesterday, for all that rigor tells us. Or two o’clock this morning. Take your pick.’
Lloyd sighed.
‘But whoever did it must have caught some blood,’ Freddie said. ‘Their clothes would be flecked with the stuff – even if they weren’t wearing any at the time. Unless they had hung them up neatly in the wardrobe of course,’ he added cheerfully. ‘Holyoak didn’t, though. His were on the chair.’
Lloyd was almost getting to the stage where he permitted the neutral plural to denote a single person of either sex. Its use in this case said more about Freddie’s refusal to make automatic assumptions than his grammar.
‘Probably someone right-handed,’ said Freddie. ‘I’ll get a better idea when I’ve got him on the table, and can measure the depth and angle and all that.’
He was looking forward to it.
‘Sorry to have had to bring you bad news, Miss Worthing,’ said the young man who had introduced him self as Detective Sergeant Finch.
