Murder... Now and Then, page 19
‘This is ridiculous,’ Max said.
‘What’s ridiculous, Mr Scott?’ asked Detective Sergeant Finch.
Max didn’t know. He just hoped that if he kept saying it, Finch would believe it and let him go.
‘Miss Worthing’s next-door neighbour – garagewise – says that when he came home at around eight thirty, her car was not there. When he went out to get something from the car at about eleven thirty, it was there. He knows it was because he thought he wasn’t going to be able to get his car out in the morning, and he tried to get it moved.’ He looked brightly at Max. ‘Conclusion. She came home some time between eight thirty and eleven thirty.’
‘Is that who came to the door?’ asked Max.
‘He didn’t get a reply,’ said Finch. ‘He assumed that no one had heard him.’
‘I heard him – I just didn’t feel like answering the door.’
‘Ah well,’ said Finch. ‘He was able to get his car out after all, so what really matters is when it arrived there. And he says it wasn’t there at eight thirty.’
‘Nonsense. I wasn’t waiting that long.’
The schoolboy eagerness increased. ‘ You weren’t waiting at all according to your first statement,’ Finch said.
Max glanced at the tape as it went round. He hadn’t been cautioned before, and if there was one thing he knew, it was that they couldn’t quote you if they hadn’t cautioned you. ‘This is my first statement,’ he said.
Finch sat back and looked at him. ‘ You are now denying that Miss Worthing was at home when you arrived at her flat at six thirty?’
‘You must have misunderstood,’ said Max. ‘I arrived at six thirty. She came a little later.’
‘Like two hours later?’
‘I don’t know.’
Max had been through all this before. Over and over and over. Different questions, different answers, but the same feeling in the pit of his stomach.
‘You are now saying that you were waiting outside Miss Worthing’s flat for an indeterminate period of time before she came home? You must know when it was.’
Max shrugged.
Finch pushed his chair back with an angry scrape. ‘What time is it?’ he asked, standing up.
Max automatically looked at his watch. ‘ Five past one,’ he said.
‘It didn’t occur to you to look at your watch when you were waiting?’
‘Why should it? She wasn’t expecting me – she hadn’t said that she’d be there at any particular time.’
‘But we have established that you were there for at least two hours before Miss Worthing arrived home?’
‘I must have been,’ said Max.
‘Or were you right in the first place?’
Max looked up at him.
‘Was she there when you arrived – only you didn’t arrive until after eight thirty, by which time she had got home?’
‘Zelda Driver dropped me off at about six thirty,’ said Max. ‘Ask her.’
‘I will,’ said Finch. ‘Don’t worry. Interview suspended,’ he said, switching off the tape.
Lloyd was waiting to see if they had anything on Holyoak; it seemed to him that you were unlikely to have a razor scar if you had led an entirely blameless life, or that if you had, you would assuredly have reported it to the police. Finch, on the other hand, was keen to hang on to Scott and Worthing, and was trying to convince Lloyd.
‘It’s not much to hold them on, is it? You said yourself that Scott was drunk,’ Lloyd reminded Finch. ‘He wakes up to find you there, badgering his girlfriend – so he says she was with him. Now he’s regretting his chivalry. She was somewhere she doesn’t want him to know about. Not you.’
Finch shook his head. ‘She knows the score, sir,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘She hasn’t spoken a word since I cautioned her,’ said Finch. ‘Not one. Practically everybody’s had a go.’
Lloyd shrugged. ‘That’s her right,’ he said.
‘Takes a pro to exercise it that well,’ said Finch.
‘Well,’ said Lloyd, ‘we’ve nothing on her.’
There was a knock at the door, and the collator came in with a piece of paper in her hand. ‘Holyoak, Victor Andrew,’ she said. ‘Nothing too exciting, I’m afraid. One minor conviction, thirteen years ago.’
One minor conviction, thirteen years ago. Unlucky for some. He frowned. He’d thought that already today, unoriginally enough. Wasn’t that when Mrs Scott the first met her maker? He checked his notes. Yes indeed. Thirteen years ago. Third of May.
‘He was booked for kerb-crawling, early hours of nineteenth February, nineteen seventy-nine,’ she said. ‘ But I’ve got a friend in the Serious Crimes Squad – I’m seeing if he can find anything. Holyoak might have been mentioned in despatches.’
‘Good girl,’ said Lloyd approvingly.
She looked at him just like Judy did sometimes. They couldn’t even take a compliment these days, he thought, as he watched her retreating figure through the new glass pane in his door.
Kerb-crawling. Lloyd was transported back to London, and the depression which he still felt when he thought about it. Depressing nights at home, with long, huffy silences. Even more depressing nights at work, watching little girls and lonely men being rounded up. His eyes widened. Of course. Of course.
‘Jenny!’ he yelled as she disappeared round the corner of the corridor. She didn’t hear. He picked up the phone and dialled her extension, drumming his fingers impatiently until, breathless, she picked up her phone.
‘Collator.’
‘Where was Holyoak picked up?’ he demanded.
‘Leyford, South London,’ she said.
‘Bingo,’ said Lloyd and put the phone down.
No dreams, no premonitions. No clairvoyance. It was something of a relief.
Another figure came into view through his glass panel. ‘Judy!’ he shouted, with more success this time, catching her just before she turned into the CID room.
She opened the door. ‘ You wanted me?’
‘Leyford,’ he said.
Finch might not have noticed, because he really didn’t know her all that well. But Lloyd knew her very well indeed, and he saw the little flush that touched her cheekbones as he said the word. He grinned.
‘Yes, sir?’ she said.
She always got formal when he’d caught her not being a policeman. ‘Operation Kerbcrawl,’ he said. ‘That’s when I saw Holyoak. Through binoculars. That’s why I could see him, and he couldn’t see me. That’s why he was really close to me but I couldn’t touch him.’
She smiled. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ she said.
‘My sentiments exactly,’ said Lloyd, and glanced at the bemused Finch. ‘The Inspector and I worked together before,’ he explained, ‘The Met – Kingston Road Division, Leyford. From time to time we were both drafted into a special squad they’d set up to combat kerb-crawling. We worked about a dozen streets – residential areas. Sometimes we did them two nights running, that sort of thing. No pattern, no warning. Just getting told the day before which streets to do.’ He smiled. ‘And as a result of our efforts, streetwalkers are not a thing of the past in that particular area of London.’
Finch laughed.
‘And I knew I’d seen Holyoak before,’ he said. ‘I just couldn’t remember where, and I couldn’t make sense of the memory.’
But even as he said the words, he knew that he still couldn’t really make sense of it. Because try as he might to fit Holyoak’s features to the memory, he couldn’t. He sighed, and put it to one side.
‘How did you get on with Mrs Scott?’ he asked Judy.
She gave them a brief account of the interview, and Lloyd thought about it. Especially the bit about the police never knocking on Holyoak’s door. Maybe Jenny’s friend would come up with something.
‘Did you believe her?’ he asked. ‘About why he was hitting her?’
‘Hard to say. She won’t hear a word against her husband, so I wouldn’t rule out her covering up for him.’
‘Her stepfather’s murder or his wife’s murder? Both?’
A shrug. ‘She couldn’t stand her stepfather,’ she said. ‘And she’s totally loyal to Max. So there would be no contest either time, I shouldn’t think.’
‘Even if what she says is true,’ Tom said. ‘His reaction was a bit strong. He was threatening to beat her black and blue to get the truth out of her when I saw him.’
‘He had a good try,’ said Judy.
Finch bristled. ‘Not when I was there, he didn’t,’ he said.
‘Well – she says he grabbed her arms, and she bruises easily,’ said Judy. ‘ I suppose that might be true. I’ve got them digging out the statements and interviews and so on from the Valerie Scott murder. Perhaps they’ll show Mr Scott in a less favourable light.’
‘Let me see them when you’ve finished with them,’ said Lloyd. ‘In the mean time, I think I’ll have a word with our Mr Scott’ More movement in the corridor caught Lloyd’s eye. He preferred the door he’d had in the first place, through which he couldn’t see. This was supposed to encourage the troops, remind them of his presence. It hadn’t been his idea. ‘And that,’ he said, with a nod, ‘is Anna Worthing on her way back to the interview room.’
Judy turned to look, and turned back, frowning slightly.
‘Finch is having a bit of a problem with her,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you, Tom?’
Tom nodded. ‘She’s no stranger to police stations, if you ask me,’ he said. ‘She’s saying nothing.’
‘Has she got a solicitor?’ asked Judy.
‘When I say she’s saying nothing, I mean nothing. She hasn’t opened her mouth, not even to ask for a solicitor. I don’t know why she agreed to come in – probably thought I’d arrest her if she didn’t.’
‘Why don’t you see how they’re getting on with the security tapes, Tom?’ said Lloyd. ‘Mrs Hill can have a go at Anna Worthing.’
Tom complied with relief, and left the room.
Judy smiled. ‘You want me to talk to her?’ she asked.
‘Please.’
‘But the book says women are more likely to open up to men,’ she said, a mischievous look in her eye. ‘Wouldn’t you be better?’
‘I just think you should have a go,’ said Lloyd, a touch uncomfortably.
‘So it’s true,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘A little bird told me that you fancied her,’ said Judy.
‘You’ve been talking to Zelda Driver!’
Damn the woman, thought Lloyd. Thank God Judy wasn’t the jealous type. If Zelda Driver had told him that Judy fancied some bloke, he’d have been worried.
‘She’s right though, isn’t she?’ teased Judy.
‘I met Anna Worthing socially,’ he said, hearing the defensive tone that he was trying to disguise. ‘That’s all. So I don’t think I should interview her. Not at this stage. Besides – we really haven’t much to hold her on, as I just told Finch.’
‘She lied about where she was,’ said Judy.
‘No,’ said Lloyd seriously. ‘Finch was very particular about that. Scott lied. She just wasn’t saying. And let’s face it – unless we have some reason to believe that she stabbed her boss to death, where she went after she left is her business. I’ve an idea where Scott was, though,’ he said.
‘And you’re keeping it to yourself?’
‘Till I’ve spoken to him, yes. She’s in interview room one – help yourself. You’re the expert at getting the silent ones to talk.’
She sighed. ‘You make it sound as though I use a bullwhip,’ she said.
‘Now there’s a nice thought,’ said Lloyd.
She pulled, a face, then turned her no doubt professional countenance to the door. Lloyd had had time to read exactly one page of the report on his desk when she came back.
‘Confessed already?’ he said.
‘This is weird,’ she said.
Lloyd raised his eyebrows. He knew it was weird. Until now, Judy hadn’t admitted that anything could be weird.
‘I think whatever you’ve got is catching,’ she said.
‘What’s up?’
‘I know her. I thought I did when I saw her in the corridor, but I didn’t think I really could. I thought it was an association of ideas. But it is her. She looks different too, but it’s her all right.’
Whatever it was, it had unsettled Judy to the point where she was positively rambling, and interested him to the point where he didn’t even attempt to correct her grammar. ‘ Who?’ he asked.
‘I knew her as Annabel, not Anna. In Leyford. On Operation Kerbcrawl. She was a prostitute. She went by the name of Annabel le Sueur, would you believe?’
Lloyd smiled. ‘Did she now? Perhaps I will talk to her after all.’
‘Do you know her?’
He shook his head, smiling. ‘I’m just interested in anyone who uses Joan Crawford’s real surname as her alias.’ He grinned, a little puzzled. ‘ Have you been reading one of these Astound Your Friends with Your Memory books?’
Judy smiled. ‘ Oh, I remember her,’ she said.
Like he remembered Holyoak. Except that nagging away at the back of his mind was the fact that he hadn’t really remembered him. He couldn’t rid himself of the image, and it still had the wrong face. He wondered idly if the deceased really was Holyoak. His stepdaughter was identifying him later; presumably she would know.
‘You’ve got that look on your face again,’ Judy said.
He snapped out of it, and looked at her. ‘He just seemed different,’ he said. ‘Younger.’
‘He was younger. I’ll go and get my bullwhip – there’s something very odd going on here.’
‘I told you that,’ he said, as he followed her down the corridor to the interview room. A gap of thirteen years didn’t account for it. Holyoak would have been in his early forties; the face which he could see in infuriating flashes was someone in his late twenties. He was simply mixing up two memories.
And Finch had been right; Anna Worthing did know her way around a police station. Zelda Driver was right, too, in her way, because there was something about Anna Worthing that he liked, not least her choice of soubriquet. He didn’t mind that she had been a prostitute; he hoped very much that she wasn’t a murderer.
He pushed open the interview-room door, and looked at Max Scott dressed in what he had been wearing yesterday, a little crumpled now, as he sat at the table. There were moves afoot to do away with the table in between; make it all nice and cosy. And there were times when Lloyd felt that the informal approach would work better. But Scott had been through the mill of a police investigation before; he would be wary whatever they did. Lloyd met with instant hostility.
‘Are you people going to drag me in here every time anyone gets murdered?’
Lloyd shrugged. ‘I think we’ll confine ourselves to the ones that are related to you,’ he said, going to the tape-recorder, setting it up. At first it had irritated him, this preamble that had to be gone through before he could start asking questions, but he had, as ever, brought it into the act. Sometimes it heightened the tension, sometimes he affected not to be entirely sure of new-fangled gadgets, sometimes he produced a kind of camaraderie with the suspect, man against machine, us against them, the ones who make up the rules.
‘This is what we do these days,’ he said, after indicating the time, the date, and those present. ‘We record the interviews. Better idea, really – I can’t think why we didn’t always do it.’ He sat down. ‘Because quite genuine mistakes were made, you know. I mean – it isn’t easy, making notes while you’re talking to someone – look at the tabloid papers. They get it wrong all the time. And of course, sometimes we wrote up notes of the interview hours afterwards. You can’t rely on your memory like that – a case in point,’ he said, conspiratorially, leaning towards Scott. ‘My sergeant could have sworn that this morning you said that Zelda Driver dropped you off at Anna Worthing’s flat at six thirty, and that she was already there.’
Scott sighed loudly.
‘But what you actually said, apparently, was that you waited outside her door for two hours or more before she came home.’ He shook his head. ‘Funny the tricks your memory plays on you,’ he said.
Scott stared down at the table. ‘I just didn’t want her to have to go through what I went through,’ he muttered.
‘How very gallant of you.’
And yet, from what Zelda Driver had said that morning, the gallantry didn’t seem so far fetched. She professed to be no admirer of Scott, and yet the picture she had painted was pretty much along the lines of the one his wife had given Judy. Zelda held firm in her belief that he could never have hurt Valerie. Lloyd had got the impression that Zelda even had someone else in mind, but he had been unable to draw it out of her. He might get Judy and her bullwhip to call on Zelda.
But, Zelda notwithstanding, Lloyd pressed on with his theory. After all, Tom had witnessed the man hitting his wife, and threatening her. ‘ My sergeant heard you tell your wife you’d get the truth out of her if you had to beat her black and blue,’ he said, employing a tone of voice more suited to asking the man if he would like another cup of tea. ‘Is that right?’
Scott went brick red. ‘I’ve never done anything like that in my life before,’ he whispered.
‘The truth about what?’
‘I … I don’t know how much she’s told you about that,’ Scott said still painfully blushing. ‘Holyoak could have proved that I didn’t kill Valerie. I saw him coming in to the flats as I was leaving. But Catherine never told me that that was who I had seen – she let me find out at the opening. I … I just—’
Lloyd shook his head. ‘But you knew the truth about that as soon as you saw him,’ he said. ‘What truth were you going to beat out of her?’
He covered his face with his hands. ‘Nothing. I don’t know. I didn’t know what I was saying. Or doing.’
‘Didn’t you? Then how do you account for the bruises? She didn’t get them at the time, not according to my sergeant. I think your memory’s been playing you false, Mr Scott.’
