by Joyce Cato
But Causon was far too wily to fall for the likes of that. He batted away the question like a pesky fly. ‘Oh, I’m not at liberty to discuss an ongoing case, Mrs Rawley. In a case of causing grievous bodily harm, or assault with a deadly weapon …’ he began, turning his voice deliberately portentous and ominous.
‘No! You’re making it sound like it’s so much worse than it is … was … that’s not how it happened,’ Marie rushed in. ‘If he told you that I attacked him with a knife then he’s lying. That’s simply not true. He made a grab for it – I have no idea why. It was so stupid. So stupid!’
Marie slumped back in the chair, looking defeated. ‘Why on earth would you do something like that? I mean, grab the blade of a knife with your bare hand?’ she asked, looking from Jenny to Causon, then back to Jenny again. ‘That’s just plain daft, isn’t it?’
Jenny nodded. She didn’t quite know what else to do. Besides, it was daft.
‘Of course he cut his hand,’ Marie said, shaking her head. ‘Good grief, it bled so much.’ Her voice was slightly awed now with remembered horror. ‘I just didn’t know what to do. I don’t think he did, either. We just stood there, both of us like idiots, me gawping at the blood on the knife blade and him staring down at his hand, bleeding all over the place. I don’t know what he was thinking, really I don’t,’ she said, again shaking her head in remembered disbelief. ‘It wasn’t as if I was going to actually hurt the silly sod. I only wanted to make him worried, see? He’s such a rabbit, I thought that I could scare him off.’
‘Scare him off?’ Causon echoed sharply. ‘Scare him off from doing what, Mrs Rawley?’ he demanded.
And Marie went pale again. ‘What? What do you mean?’ she stammered, clearly playing for time.
But Causon was in no mood to indulge her.
‘Mrs Rawley, you just admitted to stabbing Mr Greeves—’
‘I did no such thing!’ she cried. ‘I didn’t stab him at all. I didn’t even take a step towards him. I was just waving my old kitchen knife about, warning him to leave us alone, and he just reached out and grabbed it. It cut his palm. That’s all. It was his fault that happened! All of it is his fault!’ She was beginning to pant now, and tears were pooling in her eyes. ‘He shouldn’t have … shouldn’t have—’
She came to a gasping halt and the tears finally ran free down her cheeks. They plopped off her small chin and fell, unnoticed, onto her cold-looking hands, which were still restlessly twisting about in her lap.
‘What shouldn’t he have done, Mrs Rawley?’ Causon asked intensely.
‘Leave her alone!’
The voice that suddenly, shockingly, cut across the room came from the doorway. It was young, male, impassioned, and it galvanized Marie Rawley to her feet. Inspector Laurence Causon was only a second or two behind her. He turned, instantly tense and alert and ready to defend himself, and narrowed his eyes on the youngster standing in the doorway.
Jenny, who’d seen him before, remained seated and quiet.
‘Mark! Go back to your bedroom,’ Marie all but screamed at him.
‘What? And let this copper bully you?’ her son said scornfully. ‘No can do, Mum. Feel big, do you?’ he demanded of Causon, walking further into the room, and glaring at him. ‘Can’t you see Mum’s close to collapse? I never really believed all those liberal bleeding heart types when they cried “police brutality” but they had it right, didn’t they?’
Of average height, skinny, dressed in jeans and a much-washed T-shirt, he looked a bit like a little cock bantam, strutting grandiosely in front of Causon’s big, bad Brer Fox.
Causon, seeing that the lad wasn’t armed, and was more bark than bite, relaxed visibly.
‘Your mum and I were just discussing why she attacked Lorcan Greeves with a knife. And I don’t believe any brutality came into it. Not on my part, anyway,’ he added mildly, but with a distinct twinkle in his eye now.
Mark Rawley looked distinctly shell-shocked. ‘What?’ His eyes flew to those of his distressed mother. ‘What?’
‘No, it’s not … Mark, I didn’t …’ She held out her hands towards him in a helpless gesture. ‘That’s not really what happened. It was an accident,’ his mother pleaded, her eyes fixed desperately on his face, willing him to be careful.
‘Come on in and sit down, young man, and let’s see if we can’t sort this out,’ Causon invited craftily, moving back to the sofa and patting the seat next to him in an encouraging gesture.
Marie instantly saw the danger of that, and again cried out. ‘No! Mark, go back upstairs. I can handle this.’
‘Oh, but the boy wants to protect his mother,’ Causon said with a jovial smile. ‘And more power to him, I say. I have to say, it does my cynical heart good to see the younger generation showing some backbone. Please, feel free to come and listen in,’ Causon repeated. ‘That way you can make sure for yourself that your mum’s all right and that I’m not being mean to her.’
‘No! Don’t listen to him, Mark. Can’t you see he’s trying to trick you?’ Marie wailed.
‘Mum, did you really hurt Lorcan?’ the boy asked her, ignoring her words of wisdom as if she’d never spoken them. ‘But why? What on earth’s been going on?’
He looked from the big policeman to his distraught mother, and was clearly bewildered.
‘That’s just what I was trying to find out, son,’ Causon said comfortably, again patting the sofa seat next to him, once more inviting the youngster to get comfortable. And to Marie, he added more firmly, ‘Please sit down as well, Mrs Rawley, otherwise I may have to arrest you and take you into custody.’
Marie’s legs seemed to give out at this point, and she fell, rather than sat, back down in her chair, her shoulders slumping in defeat.
‘Now, as far as things stand at the moment,’ Causon began, almost amiably, ‘Mr Greeves hasn’t said that he wants to press any charges against you for assault. But then, he is getting his wounds tended to, so one can see that he has other things on his mind. But priorities can quickly change, and he might want to do so once he’s had a chance to talk to his solicitor.’
‘No! Lorcan won’t—’ Mark began hotly, but didn’t get the chance to finish.
‘Shut up! Don’t say a word, you silly boy!’ Marie said at the same time.
The last thing she wanted was for her son to provide evidence that he and Lorcan Greeves were in any way friendly.
Mark Rawley gaped at his mother.
Causon beamed at them both.
Jenny Starling simply sat and wondered.
‘Now, why don’t we just get this all sorted out, shall we?’ Causon took charge brightly. ‘Mrs Rawley, perhaps you’d like to start by telling us why you sought out Mr Greeves, and what was so urgent that you felt you needed to bring a knife with you.’
Mark, who’d just sat down next to Causon on the sofa, suddenly stiffened. ‘I think I might know why …’
Marie groaned and shook her head. ‘No. No, we want a solicitor. Mark, be quiet. I mean it.’
It was, Jenny thought pensively, probably excellent advice, and she saw Causon wince sourly as yet another of his witnesses ‘lawyered up’ on him.
But Mark – who was, after all, just a teenage boy when all was said and done, and was thus convinced that he knew it all, or at the very least, that he had to know better than his own mother – stubbornly shook his head.
‘No, this is … This is all getting out of hand. We need to sort it out. Mum, what on earth were you thinking?’
‘Mark, don’t,’ his mother implored. ‘Tris has been murdered. Don’t you understand, this man doesn’t want to help us. He only wants to make an arrest. Don’t help him …’
Mark Rawley gave a small, stunned yelp. There really was no other word to describe it. ‘Murdered? Tris has been murdered?’ he repeated, as if he couldn’t quite get his head around the concept. His eyes became enormous as he turned to the man beside him, seeking confirmation.
Causon merely looked back at him impassive
ly.
‘Yes,’ Marie said urgently. ‘He has. Do you see now? Why we have to be careful?’
‘But I didn’t kill Tris,’ Mark said, sounding surprised. ‘And I know that Lorcan didn’t, either. And I know you didn’t, Mum, so wha—’
‘Of course I didn’t,’ Marie wailed. ‘But that’s not—’
‘Listen, son,’ Causon said loudly, clearly not wanting to give the mother any time to talk any sense into her son. ‘I think that you should just tell me all that you know about whatever it is that’s been going on here. Otherwise you or your mum could both be facing all sorts of charges like attempting to pervert the cause of justice, accessory before or after the fact, aiding and abetting an offender, and who knows what else. Once the CPS gets started, sometimes they don’t know when to stop. They have to hit government targets, you see. I’ve seen it all before – those on the fringes of things can sometimes come off worse than those doing the real crimes,’ he warned craftily. ‘Now, you don’t need any of that on your record, dragging you down, do you? Not if you want to get on in life.’
And to Marie, he said flatly, ‘You say you want your son to go to university? And that you don’t want the likes of Tristan Jones to succeed in robbing him of his future? Then don’t you do it, either,’ he warned her starkly. ‘Come clean, and I promise I’ll do my best for the both of you. But you need to start talking now.’
In the face of such grim reality, Marie began to weep helplessly. ‘I’ve tried to look out for him,’ she sniffed. ‘I spent nearly an hour this afternoon, standing under the trees at the top of the field, watching over him.’
Jenny and Causon exchanged a quick look. So that was why there was a distinct patch of cow-parsley trampled down, but only a narrow path leading further in. The bigger patch must have been made by Marie, and later … Jenny swallowed hard. Later, a killer had taken Marie’s father further in and killed him. And she wondered just what sort of nightmares that would give the poor woman when she learned about it.
‘I didn’t know you were there,’ the boy said to his mother. And after a moment or two of thought, a much more subdued Mark Rawley looked at Causon and said quietly, but more cautiously now, ‘Just what is it that you want to know?’
‘Anything and everything you know about Tris Jones and Lorcan Greeves. And what your mother’s so desperate for you to keep quiet about,’ Causon said simply.
The boy thought about it for a long moment, and Jenny could see that the big policeman was almost quivering with tension now that it looked as if they might finally be getting somewhere. She could almost feel the inspector mentally urging him on, and with some surprise she noticed that her own hands were clenched tightly with nerves.
Then Mark Rawley finally let out a long slow breath as he came to a decision.
‘OK then,’ he agreed. And it seemed as if the whole room relaxed. Even his mother gave a little sigh that might have been relief. Or despair.
‘It all started about a week ago,’ Mark began, and Jenny saw the inspector’s eyes gleam in satisfaction. ‘Lorcan approached me with a plan.’
‘A plan to kill Tristan Jones?’ Causon asked quickly.
Too quickly, Jenny thought, and mentally urged him not to let his impatience get the better of him.
‘What? No!’ Mark Rawley shot him a scathing look. ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid,’ he added in patent disgust.
Jenny had to hide a quick smile behind her hand, and she saw that even Causon’s lips quivered with suppressed humour. Because there really was something distinctly funny about the teenager’s self-absorbed disdain.
‘We didn’t want Tris dead,’ Mark Rawley carried on witheringly. ‘We just wanted him to suffer,’ he said. ‘For once, me and Lorcan were determined that he wouldn’t get away with it, and that he would be made to pay.’
And then he proceeded to tell them exactly how they’d planned to go about ensuring that.
‘You see, Tris had really done us both down. You know about Lorcan’s girlfriend, right?’ Mark began.
‘Yes, yes, we know all about that,’ Causon urged him on impatiently.
‘Right. And has Mum told you about how he lost all of Granddad’s money?’
‘Yes,’ Causon snapped, and Jenny shot him a warning look. But the big, grumpy detective was paying her no heed.
‘Right. Well then, you can see why we both had good reason to want to teach him a lesson, right?’ the boy went on. ‘I really used to think Tris was so cool,’ he confessed bitterly. ‘He was so good-looking that all the girls fell for him, and he drove this amazing Aston Martin – not the James Bond car, I mean, not the one Sean Connery had, but still … A really cool car. And he lived in London, in a really cool pad by Canary Wharf, and he … Oh, I don’t know how to explain it really. He just knew a lot of stuff about life, and going abroad, and … well, just stuff. You know?’
Causon smiled. Oh yes. He knew. And you wanted to be just like him, didn’t you, the cynical old policeman thought. ‘Go on, son,’ he said heavily.
‘Well. Anyway, that’s why I advised Granddad to give Tris all his money to invest, because I really believed him when he said that he could make it accrue enough in returns to put me through uni. I mean, it never occurred to me that he couldn’t.’
Jenny sighed, ever so gently.
The boy heard it however, and flushed in mortification as he glanced over at her.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know, you don’t have to say it,’ he mumbled bitterly. ‘I was a gullible twit, all right? I know that now – I acted like a silly little kid. But believe me, when it all went wrong, I really got to see another side of Tris then.’
‘You hated him in fact, for what he’d done?’ Causon said flatly.
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Mark!’ Marie wailed in warning, but her voice lacked hope now.
‘But I didn’t hate him enough to kill him,’ Mark clarified quickly. ‘So when Lorcan came to me with his plan, I jumped at it.’
‘Let’s have it then, son,’ Causon said impatiently. ‘What exactly was this marvellous plan of yours?’
‘We were going to ruin him,’ Mark said simply.
‘Ruin him? How?’ Causon demanded.
‘Like, financially. See, Lorcan had access to all sorts of company stuff. He’s one of Sir Robert’s stockbrokers, like Tris is. Was. So he could get into the computer files. He was going to be the inside man, see?’
Causon bit back a sigh at this. No doubt the kid had visions of himself as some sort of spy-cum-action-hero so beloved of big-money Hollywood blockbusters.
Marie Rawley merely moaned softly.
‘But of course, Tris’s accounts were all password protected, and had firewalls, and all sorts of protection programmes and stuff,’ Mark continued, ‘and Lorcan’s no computer guru, so he needed help with all of that. And that’s where I came in.’
Then he looked at Causon with a gentle sort of pity in his expression. ‘I don’t suppose you know much about IT and computers, right?’ he added.
Causon’s lips again twitched with suppressed humour. ‘That’s right. Just think of me as your average Luddite, son,’ he advised.
But there was something about his smile that made Jenny wonder just how truthful the canny old fox was being. And she rather suspected that should the youngster talk to him about computer software programmes, hacking, and viruses, the wily old policeman would probably have been able to follow him easily enough. But it clearly suited him to have Mark Rawley underestimate him, and she wasn’t about to second-guess his tactics.
‘OK. Well, before I go on then, I suppose I should tell you that I really know about computers and stuff,’ Mark said modestly. And looked at his softly weeping mother with an abashed expression. ‘And a little while ago I sort of got into a little bit of trouble because of it. Oh, nothing major,’ he added hastily. ‘It was just meant as a joke. I hacked into my old school’s computer system and changed some stuff around. Well, in the Education Department’s system, actually.�
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Jenny blinked. She wasn’t particularly IT savvy herself, but she knew enough to know that you had to have considerable skills to be able to hack into government software.
Causon did too, because he gave a long, slow whistle.
Mark Rawley flushed – half with guilt, but also, Jenny suspected, with secret pride.
‘Anyway, we got it all sorted out. I left the school and agreed that I wouldn’t use a computer …’ Mark stuttered a bit as he realized that he was about to admit to breaking that agreement, then he shrugged and stiffened his shoulders. ‘Anyway, Lorcan knew all about it and asked me if I would be willing to do a little … er …’
‘Hacking of Sir Robert’s firm?’ Causon put in delicately.
‘Yes. Well, no. I mean, nothing criminal,’ the lad at least had the sense to qualify quickly. ‘Nothing that would affect anybody else, I mean!’ Mark said, sounding scandalized that the inspector could ever suspect that he wasn’t on the side of the angels. ‘After what happened to Granddad, I wasn’t going to interfere with anyone else’s money. I mean, we weren’t going to touch anybody else’s investments, or steal their identifies or leak their personal details or stuff like that. In fact, we weren’t really going to go into the client’s files at all much. Only to leave traces behind, proving that Tris had swindled them. But mostly we were going to go into Tris’s personal stuff, and maybe one or two other accountancy files. Stuff like that. Just to change details of his transactions. Dates, mostly. I didn’t really understand some of it – I haven’t studied to be a stockbroker or anything. But Lorcan knew all about what was needed.’
‘Needed to do what?’ the inspector asked, but like Jenny, he already had a good idea.
‘To drop Tris in it with the tax people,’ Mark Rawley said, a flash of definite pride in his voice now. ‘Lorcan knew just how to make it look like Tris was doing that insider trading stuff, you know, like in that film, Wall Street?’ he added enthusiastically. ‘He knew all this stuff about what was legal and what wasn’t, and how we could make it look like Tris was really bent. That’s why we met up today. He gave me a dossier on what I needed to look out for. Then we were going to meet up again, and work together to get it done. Me doing the techy stuff, making sure we didn’t leave any digital traces of what we’d done, and Lorcan doing all the stockbrokery things that would make it look like Tris was dirty.’
