‘Can you prove she wasn’t?’
‘The evidence is irrefutable. Her case is weakened if she continues to deny it.’
‘Then go and see her, tell her to follow your advice.’
The barman disrupted his chain of thought. ‘You’re not looking yourself tonight,’ he said.
Grantham downed what remained in the glass, ordered another. ‘Not tonight,’ he said.
‘Woman trouble?’
‘What else?’ Grantham said. And her father, he thought. In one gulp, he drank his wine and walked out of the bar.
The next day, he was led into a room at the prison, the metal bars on the windows, the solid metal door, the feeling of despair. A CCTV camera in one corner; a prison officer not far away, Samantha sitting in front of him.
‘It’s good to see you,’ she said.
‘Prison suits you,’ Grantham said.
‘I’ve lost weight. The food is barely edible.’
‘I’ve been with your father. We need to adopt a different strategy.’
‘I’ve missed you,’ she said.
Grantham wasn’t sure if he could reciprocate but said it anyway. ‘I’ve missed you, too.’
A brief touching of hands.
‘How’s my father?’
‘He’s Hamish McIntyre. He doesn’t let anyone or anything get him down.’
‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Let me say my piece first before you answer.’
‘I trust you.’
‘If you deny being in Polperro, you’ll lose credibility. The evidence places you there, and you did scrape another car; it can’t be dismissed. And given time, someone will remember you, or a tourist might have taken a happy snap, you in the background.’
‘I wasn’t there.’
‘Samantha, listen to me. Admit that you were.’
‘I stole the car.’
‘You were unhinged after Marcus’s body was found. You weren’t sure what you were doing, and yes, maybe you felt that the woman had blighted your life, destroyed your happiness.’
‘I’m admitting to murder?’
‘While mentally distraught. Don’t worry, I’ll get a couple of eminent experts to testify, quote similar cases.’
‘Do you want me to admit to murder?’
‘It was an accident, that’s what you’ll agree to. You had left London intent on harming the woman, but by the time you got to Polperro, you’d calmed down. You found the woman sitting near the cliff, you became emotional, the same as she did. There was a tussle, and the woman slipped.’
‘Will they believe that?’
‘They’ll not believe anything you say if you continue to deny taking that car and driving to the village. This is the only way.’
‘What do you believe happened?’
‘What I believe is not important.’
‘I’d like to know.’
‘I’m your lawyer. I’ll defend you to the best of my ability. What I think is not relevant.’
‘I’ll make it up to you after I get out of here.’
‘I know that,’ Grantham said. He realised he no longer felt for the woman the way he had before. She was as hard as her father, as ruthless. She acted in the prison as though it didn’t exist, as if her reputation no longer mattered. He’d get her off the charge, first-degree at least.
***
McIntyre could not remember Devon Toxteth; there had been more than a few who had tried to ingratiate themselves with him, others who had tried to extort money, others who had cheated.
Toxteth, according to the police, was interested in extortion. The man’s death did not concern him; after all, it was twenty years ago, the same time as Samantha’s fancy man had met his end. He could remember that vividly, the man pleading for his life, Marcus cowering to one side.
‘Don’t do it,’ Marcus had pleaded.
McIntyre had known it was the time to make a man out of his wimpish son-in-law. How his daughter could have fallen for such a man, he never understood.
He thought of Yanna, the first time he had seen her, a rose amongst thorns. There was something about her that attracted him. He knew he had to take her away, to protect her, and she had treated him well, as he had her. And then he had let her go, only for her to die in prison years later.
There was only one man who could have known of her life: Charles Stanford. And if he knew about Yanna and Toxteth, then what else did he know?
He had handed over the keys to Bedford Gardens quickly enough, not once asking why. But then the man had had no option.
Why Stanford was talking now baffled McIntyre. He had to speak to him.
He phoned Grantham. ‘Throw Gareth to the wolves,’ he said.
‘If you’re sure.’
‘I’ve no time for fools.’
‘Samantha will do it.’
‘I knew she would. I’ve one more job for you. Set up a meeting with Stanford.’
‘If you’re seen?’
‘Neither of us has been charged with any crime. I’ve considered being secretive, but that would be suspicious. Make sure it’s very public.’
At eight that evening, McIntyre left his mansion in Grantham’s BMW. The police had no authority to restrict his movements or to follow him. It was clear to Homicide that the man was up to something.
In Brighton, a taxi pulled up in front of Charles Stanford’s house. No one saw it arrive or pull away, except for one small dog and its owner. One could not tell anyone; the other wasn’t interested.
***
Isaac and Wendy sat opposite Samantha Matthews. It was the same room where she had met with Grantham less than twenty-four hours before.
‘I want to make a new statement,’ she said.
‘Your lawyer?’
‘I don’t need him to hold my hand. I took the woman’s car.’
‘Why tell us this now?’
‘Fergus Grantham counselled me. I didn’t kill Liz, not intentionally. It was an accident.’
‘Do we rip up your previous statement?’
‘Not totally. I was confused, wanting to harm the woman, not sure why. And then I’m in St Austell, and there’s a car next to me, the keys in it.’
‘Why not use your car?’
‘I was disturbed, mentally unbalanced probably. Marcus had been found, and I realised how much I missed Stephen and how he had preferred her to me, or maybe it was the other way around. Whatever it was, she had been in the way. I had to continue with Marcus over the years, and then he disappeared. I can’t say I missed him very much, although he was like an old piece of clothing. You don’t want to wear it, but you can’t throw it out.’
‘Had you intended to harm the woman?’ Wendy asked.
‘When I saw her there, I wanted to scratch her eyes out.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was sunny, boats out at sea. It was so tranquil. I just sat down beside her. At first, she didn’t recognise me, but once she did, she was alarmed.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘We just talked for a while; we had a mutual history. It was convivial, but then she spoke about her marriages and how her first husband had died, and the other two had disappointed. Melancholic, that’s what she was. Anyway, we’re talking, not as friends, not as enemies, but something’s niggling her. She started pushing me, and before I knew it, we’re at the cliff edge, not that I was looking. In the end, she fell, almost took me with her.’
‘You could have gone to the police,’ Isaac said.
‘And said what? I had arrived in the village in a stolen car.’
‘You panicked?’
‘Not panicked. I was in shock, I think. I don’t know how but I walked away, got in the car and drove to St Austell. The reality didn’t hit home for a couple of days.’
‘And you expect us to believe this?’ Isaac said.
‘It’s the truth. I’ll admit that I was there when she died and that it was an accident.’
‘Your lawyer’s hand is invo
lved here. Is this his strategy to get you out of a murder charge?’
‘It’s the truth. Charge me with stealing a car, but I didn’t kill the woman.’
Isaac and Wendy left the prison. Wendy had glanced back to see a smile on the woman’s face as they left the room where they had met her. ‘She thinks she’s got one over on us,’ she said.
‘She has,’ Isaac’s only reply.
***
Two men, both getting old, sat in a nondescript pub to the south of London. One was drinking a whisky; the other a half-pint of beer. Neither liked the other, even though their lives had been intertwined over the years.
‘You’ve caused me trouble,’ McIntyre said.
‘No more than you’ve caused me. I had hoped that I would never see your face again, to be reminded,’ Stanford said.
‘You agreed to our meeting.’
‘I had to know what you intend to do?’
‘I protect my own, always have, always will.’
‘Even if the evidence is damning?’
‘Why does it concern you? I would have thought you’d had enough of that.’
‘The screw is turning. Your time is rapidly drawing to a close.’
‘Stanford, you might have been a good barrister once, a mediocre judge, but you’re wrong. Grantham’s as good as you once were. You helped me out then; he’ll help me now.’
‘Marcus Matthews?’
‘What about him?’
‘Why was he in that upstairs room?’
‘I thought we had come here to talk, not to indulge in verbal fisticuffs.’
Fergus Grantham sat over the other side of the room. He watched the two old men, not sure what McIntyre’s plan was.
‘I gave you the house, not that I had wanted to.’
‘You had no option. What did you tell the police? That you are innocent of all charges?’
‘I am.’
‘You knew what would happen to that witness. Wet behind the ears, you might have been, but you knew.’
‘Even if I did, murdering a man in cold blood in my house was a mistake.’
‘Marcus, blood! Pure yellow ran through the man’s veins.’
‘Stephen Palmer?’
‘Why do you want to go there? The police told me about this Devon Toxteth. That’s how I knew it was you who had been talking, and then they mentioned Yanna.’
‘Toxteth, did you kill him?’
‘If I had, I can’t remember the name.’
‘Are you admitting to killing?’
‘What if I am? What are you going to do about it? You were responsible for Yanna being found guilty. The woman was mixed up, unable to talk about her life, to throw herself on the mercy of the court.’
‘You know why.’
‘She’d had a rough life.’
‘No conscience?’
‘None at all. And besides, Yanna didn’t suffer with me. In the end, I wished her well and sent her on her way. How was I to know that she was going to top her husband?’
‘How long have you got?’
‘Six months to a year,’ McIntyre said. ‘Not enough time for us to argue, is it?’
‘Jacob? He was your friend when you were young.’
‘Yours as well.’
‘I can’t remember him. Fred Wilkinson, I can.’
‘He’s family on my mother’s side, you’re not.’
‘Are you going to have me killed?’
‘I should, but I don’t think so.’
The two men continued to drink, even to enjoy each other’s company. After all, they had been the closest of friends until the age of nine, when Stanford had left the area, eventually adopting his mother’s new husband’s surname.
‘It’s a quiet life that I want now,’ McIntyre said.
‘What you sow, you reap, to quote from the Bible.’
‘You were always smarter than me, even as children. I barely scraped through school, not that I was much interested, but you graduated from university with honours, became a respected man.’
‘Soon to be derided.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll be condemned due to you regardless.’
‘No one needs to know about our childhood. Fred’s the only one who remembers, and he won’t talk.’
‘Marcus Matthews?’ Stanford repeated.
‘I never used Bedford Gardens, not often anyway.’
‘Women?’
‘Not for that, and believe me I wasn’t involved, not that much. Sure, there was a time when I didn’t care who was hurt, only that the money came rolling in. Give me a good old-fashioned English criminal anytime. Foreign criminals, especially the Romanians, are a whole different breed; it took me a while to find out how treacherous they were.’
‘Yanna?’
‘She told me some of it. It was the day I wished her well. Admittedly, I’ve been a savage bastard in my time, but what she told me sickened even me.’
‘You had grown fond of her?’
‘Strange, isn’t it? A man like me, but underneath the exterior, there was something for that woman. I wished her well, gave her enough money to find a place to live.’
‘Did you ever see her again?’
‘Never. I knew she had married, a couple of kids, a dull and honest man for a husband. I never expected you to convict her.’
‘I had no option. She never denied that she had killed the man.’
‘If you had known?’
‘Unless it were put forward as evidence, then it wouldn’t have helped. Yanna was determined to pay for her crime.’
‘The depth of the woman, to hold that in,’ McIntyre said. ‘A unique person, not like us.’
Stanford had to admit it was good to see his childhood friend one last time.
‘The police will solve your son-in-law’s murder,’ he said.
The charmless pub had filled up while they had been sitting there. Over near the bar, a group of youths out for the night were bragging to each other about who they were going to chat up, who they were going to take home. Sitting at the next table, three women in their early twenties. McIntyre had looked over, smiled at them; they ignored him. A drunken old lecher, they would have thought, not realising they had given the cold shoulder to one of the most violent men in London.
‘It was Marcus. He believed a man’s word was his bond,’ McIntyre said.
‘You just said that’s what you admired about the English criminal.’
‘To an extent, but with Marcus, it was an obsession. When he had made Samantha pregnant, he visited me in prison, asked my permission to marry her. Can you believe it?’
‘It’s the decent thing to do.’
‘Decent, it might have been, but Marcus knew my reputation. He knew I could have put him six feet under, or organised a savage beating.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘I don’t know who killed Marcus, that’s the truth. If, as the police reckon, the man sat there and allowed himself to be shot, then it must have been someone as obsessive as him.’
‘Why did you phone me to tell me about the drugs in the basement?’
‘I knew Marcus was there.’
‘How?’
‘If you want to get the police off our backs, you’ve got to tell them the truth.’
‘The whole truth?’
‘Of course not.’
‘What then?’
‘It was a few months before the man was shot. He started to change, became more furtive. Before that, he was impulsive, making mistakes.’
The three women left, the young men at the bar casting glances as they went, none saying anything. McIntyre knew their sort: the sort who had come into the strip clubs he had once owned, full of themselves, big mouths, money inside the skimpy underwear of the women on the stage, but when it came to a decent woman, they were tongue-tied. The only women they’d be taking home that night would be ones they’d paid for.
‘He had something on his mind?’ Stanford said.
‘He wanted me dead.’
‘How could you know?’
‘I know the look of hate; I’d seen it before, not with him, but with others.’
‘Do you know why he hated you?’
‘I trusted the man. He had seen things, done things which he abhorred. Toughening up as I saw it. After all, someone had to take over from me when the time came.’
‘And now, you’ll die in your bed, an old man.’
‘I played hard. Someone else could have got to me.’
‘Killed you?’
‘Yes. But Marcus didn’t want to take over. At heart, he was a petty criminal; I never contemplated Samantha taking over, not even now.’
‘She’s still in prison.’
‘Grantham will get her out.’
‘If you had known that Matthews hated you, why did you keep him close to you.’
‘Hate’s a powerful weapon, especially if you can direct it.’
‘And then he died.’
‘He had a plan, not that I knew what it was. He couldn’t have been acting alone.’
‘Do you know who?’
‘Never.’
‘We didn’t meet here to just chat about old times, did we?’ Stanford said. He looked up at the clock on the wall, realised that it was past ten in the evening; two hours in the pub with a man he had previously hated, but not any longer. For whatever reason, he was the friend that he had known as a child.
‘I knew Marcus was up there.’
‘A phone call? Did you recognise the voice?’
‘I couldn’t go to the house, but you could.’
‘The voice?’
‘It told me that Marcus was in the top room. At the time, I wasn’t focusing that much.’
‘Who?’
‘Someone close, but I’ve no idea, and that’s the truth.’
‘A man?’
‘The man who had shot him.’
‘Do you know why?’
‘He wanted my fingerprints in that room. He wanted to implicate me.’
‘Is this what it’s all about? Marcus had wanted to kill you?’
‘He couldn’t have done it, but I knew that he wanted to. I had known that for years. I had forced him to do something a long time ago. He never forgave me.’
‘He killed Stephen Palmer.’
McIntyre put down his drink and stood up. ‘It’s been good seeing you, Charles. We’ll never meet again, I’m sure of that. I’ve told you all I know, now I suggest you use it wisely.’ And with that the man walked out of the pub, the group of men still bragging, getting progressively drunker.
DCI Isaac Cook Box Set 2 Page 119
