Final Beat of the Drum, page 25
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ Beresford said. ‘I don’t know about that at all.’ Then he realized the rest of the team were laughing at him. ‘Whitebridge was only big enough for one Shagger at a time,’ he continued, doing his best to make it sound as if he had been joking all along, ‘and back then, if you’d polled the young women of the town, they’d all have agreed it was me.’
‘We can assume Jane found out about all this, can’t we?’ Paniatowski asked.
‘Yes,’ Crane agreed. ‘It’s the only thing that would explain her subsequent behaviour.’
‘She realized that since the transfer was legal – she had, however inadvertently, signed the documents herself – the only way she was going to get the company back was to inherit it from her dead husband,’ Beresford said.
‘She decided to kill him,’ Crane continued. ‘She also decided that the first thing she needed was a rock-solid alibi for when he was murdered, which also enabled her to do the actual killing herself. And that’s when she came up with the idea of using Kate’s hostel.’
‘You’re sure she wasn’t a battered wife, are you?’ asked Beresford, who was reluctant to give up something which had been part of his working theory for most of the investigation.
‘Absolutely certain,’ Paniatowski said. ‘For a start, there’s Jim Hadley’s claim that she was a battered wife.
‘He’d said, “I’d run into her at the golf club dinner or my lodge’s ladies night … I wasn’t that close to her – but I was close enough to guess what was going on … I wasn’t the only one. Everybody could see what was happening, and nobody did anything about it.”
‘He had two reasons for saying that,’ Paniatowski explained. ‘The first was that it helped to explain why he was so willing to drop everything and rush over to Overcroft House the moment she called. The second was that it reinforced her story. But we know it was a lie, because we know he never belonged to the golf club or the Freemasons.’
‘Andrew Lofthouse was on the point of telling us it was a lie while he was demanding I let him in to Overcroft House,’ Meadows said.
‘I’ve seen the bruises,’ Meadows had said.
‘Oh, I see! You’ve seen the bruises! And do you know how she got those bruises?’
‘No, so why don’t you tell me?’
‘They … they were self-inflicted.’
‘He wanted to tell me that she’d got the bruises at the Hellfire Club, and …’ Meadows began.
‘Hang on,’ Beresford interrupted. ‘If she got the bruises during some perv … during some sadomasochistic ritual, why didn’t you, of all people, recognize them as such?’
Meadows sighed. ‘There are an infinite number of encounters possible. I’ve never been in one that leaves that particular pattern of bruising, so I didn’t recognize it, but …’
‘And another thing,’ Beresford interrupted, ‘were you about to say that the reason he didn’t tell you how she got the bruising was because that might expose him as a fellow … a fellow whatever.’
‘Exactly,’ Meadows agreed.
‘So by the same argument, he would never have exposed you, either. It was all a bluff.’
‘That’s right,’ Meadows admitted. ‘The reason he wore a mask in the Hellfire Club was so he wouldn’t be recognized – he must have thought it would be bad for business and might ruin his chances of eventually becoming lord mayor. So he would never have exposed me. It was all a bluff, and I fell for it. I humiliated myself for nothing. What an idiot.’
‘I’m sorry, I never meant …’ Beresford said.
‘Given the size of your feet, it’s almost impossible to imagine one of them would fit in your mouth, but you seem to manage that easily enough, sir,’ Meadows said.
‘I deserve that,’ Beresford admitted.
‘Bloody right you do,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘What else is there, Kate?’
‘I’ve had dozens of women pass through Overcroft House, and when they eventually decide to step outside they take slow, tentative steps. They’re scared, even if the man they’re afraid of has been locked up, because that’s the nature of terror – it’s just not rational. But Jane wasn’t like that – at least, not for long. She seemed very confident, and that just doesn’t square up with the woman who was so terrified just twenty-four hours earlier that she crawled into a cupboard under the stairs. I should have spotted that, and I didn’t.’
‘Don’t be so hard on yourself,’ Beresford said. ‘After all you’d been through the day before, it’s a wonder you were functioning at all.’
‘Why, thank you, Colin, that was really nice of you,’ Meadows said.
Beresford shrugged. ‘Well, you know …’
Paniatowski looked at her watch.
‘I wonder how Louisa’s getting on,’ she said.
They all wondered how Louisa was getting on.
TWENTY-THREE
Louisa Rutter had interviewed Cecilia Maitland Williams in her own office. There had been no one else present, and the meeting had not been recorded.
The interview with Jane Lofthouse was somewhat different. This was held in Interview Room A, there was a tape recording machine in operation, and Rutter was accompanied by DS Boyd.
Jane Lofthouse was alone on the other side of the table. She had been offered a solicitor, but had disdainfully turned the offer down.
‘The thing I’d like to make plain before we begin is that whatever else happens, I will be charging you with the murders of Andrew Lofthouse and James Hadley,’ Louisa said.
Jane Lofthouse smirked. ‘Good luck with that.’
‘Thank you,’ Louisa replied.
It wasn’t going to be easy, she thought. True, Jane Lofthouse was arrogant, but then she had much to be arrogant about. Her plan had been bold, the execution of it had been pretty near perfect, and if Philip hadn’t broken out of the remand centre, there was an excellent chance that she would never even have been arrested.
‘Contrary to what you seem to believe, we have – or will shortly have – all the evidence we need for a conviction,’ she continued, with much more confidence than she actually felt, ‘but it will make things easier for us if you agree to cooperate, and that might be to your advantage, too.’
‘How might it be to my advantage?’ Jane wondered.
‘I have a lot of sympathy for you,’ Louisa said. ‘You learned that your husband had stolen your life’s work, and you decided to strike back. There’s certainly quite a while between the theft and the murder, but if your barrister were to argue extenuating circumstances, the prosecution might well agree to go along with it if you’d already shown willing to cooperate with us.’
‘And what about Jim Hadley’s murder?’ Jane Lofthouse asked. ‘Would they accept that as part of the extenuating circumstances package?’
Yes, what about Hadley’s murder, Louisa asked herself. The question was a logical comeback, and she should have been expecting it – but she bloody well hadn’t been.
‘Well, you were having an affair with him,’ she said, improvising wildly, ‘but the jury will probably be able work out for themselves that it was less an act of passion, and more a case of you needing a dupe. So on reflection, you might be better going for diminished responsibility – after all, you’ve been put under a lot of strain – and it wouldn’t do you any harm to have the prosecution behind you on that, either.’
‘I’ll make a deal with you,’ Jane said. ‘You tell me what you think you’ve got on me, and I’ll tell you if I’m prepared to confess.’
She was a very experienced police officer, and she should be making a better job of this, Louisa thought.
Maybe it was that she was nervous, because her mother and Kate were relying on her.
Or maybe, she thought miserably, it was because she’d never been very good at this aspect of the work.
‘Well, do we have a deal?’ Jane asked.
And Louisa realized that she must have been silent for some time.
‘All right, we have a deal,’ she agreed. ‘Shall we talk about this plan of yours? It really was a very good plan, you know, but the time element let you down.’
‘What do you mean?’ Jane asked.
For the first time in the entire interview, she sounded a little unsure of herself.
‘Once the papers had been signed, your husband could have kicked you out of the business any time he wanted to, so you had to make your own move quickly,’ Louisa said. ‘Seducing poor, lonely Jim Hadley took no time at all. What should have taken longer was developing the role of the battered wife, but you simply couldn’t afford the luxury of doing it properly. And that’s why, when we get around to questioning all your friends, they’ll deny you were ever a victim.’
‘Them!’ Jane said contemptuously. ‘They’re so insensitive they wouldn’t notice if I stood there bleeding all over the carpet. Unless it was their carpet of course – they’d notice then.’
‘I could talk to half a dozen experts right now who’d be prepared to swear under oath that friends – and even casual acquaintances – always notice when a woman is being abused,’ Louisa said.
‘And I could talk to half a dozen barristers right now who would tear your “experts” apart on the witness stand,’ Jane said.
She had an answer for everything, and the problem was they were usually the right answers.
‘You hadn’t really been beaten up at all,’ Louisa said. ‘The bruises you showed to Kate Meadows and the Overcroft House were injuries you sustained in the Hellfire Club.’
‘No, they weren’t – and you can’t prove they were.’
‘Do you deny you went to the Hellfire Club?’ Louisa asked.
For a few happy seconds it looked as if Jane would do just that.
Then she said, ‘Yes, I did go, as a matter of fact. But I’m a dominatrix. No man there laid a hand on me.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Louisa said.
‘Prove me wrong,’ Jane said. ‘Talk to members of the club. Call them as witnesses.’
She was really starting to enjoy herself now, Louisa thought. And why wouldn’t she – she was winning!
‘So, you’re in a house you can’t possibly get out of without setting off the alarm, so if you can find a way round that, you’ll have the perfect alibi. Your lover can circumvent the system – that’s the only reason you’ve made him your lover – but he needs an excuse to get into the building. So what do you do? You’ve previously prepared an anonymous letter saying where you’ll be, and you get Hadley to deliver it to your husband. Andrew rushes round to Overcroft House, and you pretend to be in a panic and demand the right to call in your expert to check the alarms. And while he’s doing that, he fits the interrupter switch.’
‘It’s a good story,’ Jane said.
‘The only problem is, you can’t do it alone. You need someone to switch the alarm back on once you’ve gone, and switch it off again once you want to get back in. And that’s why you’ve spent the last few weeks making friends with Lizzie Grimshaw. Unfortunately for you, she uses the switch again, to let her boyfriend in, and that’s how we discover it.’
‘Did Lizzie tell you this?’ Jane asked.
‘No, for some strange reason, she has a strong sense of loyalty towards you. But she will tell us in the end.’
‘I doubt it,’ Jane said. ‘But what if she does? Who’d believe her – the woman’s a bloody halfwit.’
‘We haven’t traced the interrupter back to Hadley yet, but that’s only a matter of time,’ Louisa said.
‘Again, so what? I never said he didn’t do it – but it has nothing to do with me.’
‘Why would he do it, if not for you?’
‘I don’t know – and I don’t really care.’
‘You left the building, and no doubt your lovesick lackey, Jim Hadley, was waiting for you round the corner. He drove you to your house. When you got there, I suspect you told him to stay in the car. Am I right?’
‘Yes, he …’ Jane began. She checked herself and took a deep breath. ‘Yes, he would have stayed in the car if that was what happened,’ she continued, ‘but, you see, it didn’t.’
‘You went inside. I don’t know what you said to your husband, but you got him to turn his back, and when he did, you hit him over the head with a statue. Where was the noose, by the way?’
‘The noose?’
‘You’re not going to deny knowing about the noose, are you?’
‘No, of course not. Andrew was very fond of a little auto-erotic strangulation, but I don’t know where it was that night – because I wasn’t there.’
‘It was either hanging from the hook in the bedroom or back in the cupboard,’ Louisa said. ‘You took it, and tied it to the banister on the minstrels’ gallery. Then you stripped him, washed him down, dragged him out to the corridor, put the noose around his neck, and threw him over the rail. And that was where he was hanging when the police arrived.’
Jane laughed. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you think so?’
‘Simple laws of physics. Once he’d lost his head, there was nothing to keep him up there.’
‘How do you know he was decapitated?’ Louisa asked, pouncing on what just might be her breakthrough.
‘I must have read it in the papers.’
‘It wasn’t in any of the papers. We held that detail back.’
Jane laughed again. ‘You’ve got me then, because only the murderer could have known Andrew was decapitated. Except that that’s not true. Dozens of people knew – policemen, ambulance men, mortuary officials – and, as my barrister would point out, one of them could easily have told me.’
She was right, of course, Louisa thought.
‘The reason for all the theatricals was to throw us off the trail,’ she ploughed on. ‘Purely domestic murders simply aren’t that elaborate.’
‘I’ll take your word for that. After all, you do claim to be the expert.’
‘The investigating officers speculated that the murderer could be a policeman or an ex-policeman, because he was smart enough to wipe down the body with a chemical which the lab hasn’t precisely identified yet.’
‘It could just be someone who watches a lot of American cop shows. Their murderers are always doing things like that,’ Jane said helpfully.
‘Or it could be someone who’s been on mandatory courses on sterilization – someone, for example, in the bottling industry. And I’m guessing that’s what the chemical is – something used in the bottling industry.’
‘All the chemicals used in the industry are widely available,’ Jane said.
‘Aside from getting Lizzie to let you in and out, you also wanted her to steal the security tape for you,’ Louisa said, shifting ground again.
‘Why would I want her to do that? If things had gone as you describe them, I wouldn’t have been on the tape, because the system would have been switched off when I was making my entrances and exits.’
‘That’s true, but when the system is deactivated or reactivated, it registers the fact. So we know that it was switched off at midnight for five minutes, and again at three o’clock for the same amount of time. Three hours was easily long enough for you to drive to your house, kill your husband and get back here, and five minutes was plenty of time to get in or out. You didn’t want us to have those timings. That’s why you tried to persuade Kate to destroy the tape – for her own protection, of course – and when that didn’t work, you talked Lizzie into trying to steal it. Unfortunately for you, Kate had already locked it away somewhere safe.’
‘Oh, with rock-solid evidence like that, I suppose I’d better confess now,’ Jane said. She laughed. ‘I’m joking, of course.’
‘Poor Jim Hadley! He couldn’t believe that a loner like him would ever interest a beautiful woman like you, and he was willing to do anything he could to keep you. Up to a point! I suspect the reason that you killed Jim Hadley was that he was horrified by what you’d done, and wanted to go to the police. And you killed him in exactly the same way you killed your husband, so that the police would know they were killed by the same person.’
‘And that couldn’t be me, because when Andrew was killed, I was safely locked up in Overcroft House.’ Jane Lofthouse smiled again. ‘Is that it? Is that all you’ve got?’
Yes, that was all she’d got – and she’d failed.
‘Interview paused at one-fifteen,’ Louisa said, and pressed the stop button on the recorder. ‘I think I could use a breath of fresh air,’ she said to DS Boyd.
She walked down the corridor, then took out her mobile phone and dialled a familiar number.
‘Yes, Louisa?’ said an anxious voice on the other end. ‘How’s it gone?’
‘I need help, Mum,’ Louisa said. ‘I really need help.’
TWENTY-FOUR
Paniatowski stood up and walked away from the table, stopping only when she judged she was out of earshot of the rest of the team. She had been mentally preparing herself for a call just like this one, but now that it had actually happened she felt as if she’d been smashed in the stomach with a sledgehammer.
‘Are you there?’ Louisa asked, sounding desperate.
‘Yes, I’m here,’ Monika replied. ‘How can I help?’
‘It’s ironic,’ Louisa said. ‘I joined the police because I wanted to be just like you, but I’ve never been like you. I never could do interrogations, and I’m making a real bloody mess of this one. Jane Lofthouse was better prepared for this than I am. Every question I ask, she’s got an answer ready. I’m getting nowhere – and she’s laughing at me. What do I do, Mum?’
‘You could hand the interrogation over to somebody else,’ Paniatowski suggested.
‘No, I couldn’t. It has to be me, because anybody else would drag you and Kate into it, and that would be a disaster.’
It sounds like a disaster already, Paniatowski thought.
‘What I always used to do, especially with the confident ones, was look for a weakness – a chink in their armour,’ she said. ‘What do you think Jane Lofthouse’s weakness is?’
