by Jill McGown
I know what you did in that alleyway on Sunday. You made that woman’s murder look different. Her bingo prize was stolen, but you left yours there instead and changed the time it happened. Leave £1000 in a padded envelope in the yellow wastebin behind the Civic Center in Stansfield by half past ten at night on Friday March 24 or your newspaper will get the story.
Lloyd turned from the window again. “What I don’t understand is why murder seemed to you to be the solution to the situation.”
Tony smiled. “It was the trigger, Chief Inspector. I told you serial killers are born, not made. I played fair—I told you the money might be meaningless. I explained that the ultimate in murder was the motiveless, random killing. I think I’ve always known that eventually I would murder someone myself. The mind of the murderer is so fascinating, and I knew I had the mind of a murderer.”
And he fancied that Lloyd was looking at him with a kind of horrified fascination.
“I thought if I ever did murder someone, it would be simply as an experiment, an experience. But as you say, most murders are motivated, and I needed more motive than mere curiosity. That letter provided it. Only Mrs. Fenton’s murderer could have written it, because only Mrs. Fenton’s murderer and I knew that her money had been stolen. Her murderer—at that point I still didn’t believe it could be Stephen—was writing to me, and threatening me with exposure that would ruin my reputation, my career, my life. Paying him his paltry thousand pounds wouldn’t alter the fact that he had this power over me. He had given me the motive that I needed. That’s when I conceived my plan.”
“Your plan being what?”
“Plan A was to establish the blackmailer as a serial killer, and once his existence was undeniable and his identity was suspected, to kill him—in self-defense, of course.” He smiled a little ruefully. “It didn’t work out that way, but I thought plan B was working, until today.”
Lloyd frowned. “I don’t quite understand.”
“Why should you? You don’t have the devious mind of a serial killer.”
Lloyd acknowledged his shortcomings in that regard with a nod of his head.
Tony glanced at Judy Hill. “I wrote the letter that I brought to you, Superintendent. I made it look exactly like the letter I had received, and I put it in the genuine envelope. Then I wrote to the newspaper.”
“Why did you do that?” she asked. “Just so that you would be back on the front pages?”
Tony shook his head. Of course, they were bound to think that it was for the publicity it had generated, pushing him right back into the public consciousness, but that had been the effect of it, not the reason for it.
“I know that I’m seen as having little regard for the way the police go about their business, but I don’t have that low an opinion of your capabilities, and I was embarking on a very risky venture. I wanted to be certain that you and your colleagues were working under as much pressure as I could possibly produce. I knew I would leave you virtually no evidence to go on, and by giving the impression that you were being fed with information by the murderer and still getting nowhere, I could rely on the British press dogging your every move, criticizing your lack of results, and making your job difficult to the point of impossibility.”
“That part of your plan succeeded admirably,” said Lloyd.
Tony looked over at him. “Thank you. I was particularly gratified when Detective Chief Superintendent Yardley stepped down from the inquiry on Saturday. Turmoil at the top—that’s always a distraction for the investigation team.”
“And once you had set that in motion?” asked Judy Hill. “What then?”
“The blackmailer had chosen the site, the date, and the time, so all that remained then was to plan the murder. The victim was chosen, as you so rightly said, for ease of dispatch. I used to see him when I was working late in my office in Stansfield. Every night, regular as the town hall clock, he would pay in his no doubt meager takings. I reconnoitered the area, working out which part of this man’s routine rendered him most vulnerable to murder and me least vulnerable to detection. As you’ve seen, I did my homework very carefully.”
Lloyd looked troubled. “Does it bother you at all that two children were left fatherless?”
No, it didn’t. Tony saw no reason to display any remorse that he didn’t feel. “The victim was of no importance. Death is random, Chief Inspector. He might have been involved in a motorway pileup the very next day. The important part was that he was habitually abroad at half past ten at night, not far from the spot where Mrs. Fenton’s murderer would be going to collect his blackmail money. When suspicion fell on him, as it eventually would, he would have no alibi.”
He sat back. This little room with its barred windows was not unlike a prison cell. But the Tulliver Inn, his home for almost the last four months, had begun to seem like a prison cell itself, especially once he had engaged the affections of Grace Halliday. Even having sex with her—his usual method of changing whatever subject she was wearying him with—had begun to pall. But now, he would find out what a real prison cell was like, quite possibly for the rest of his life. He could write his book, perhaps. They might allow him to do that, if the proceeds went to charity, or something.
“That murder could have scared the blackmailer off altogether,” he went on, “in which case, I might have stopped there, but probably not. The experience was . . .” He searched for the right word. “Exhilarating. I think I would have felt compelled to repeat it, whatever happened.”
“And it didn’t scare him off,” said Judy Hill.
“No. He wrote to me again with another turn of the screw, as blackmailers will.”
You killed that man instead of leaving my money, so the price just went up. I want £10,000 now. Leave it in the bin on the corner of Ladysmith Avenue and Kimberley Court at the same time as before, on Monday April 17. Don’t try anything funny this time.
“I did the same as I had before. Gave you a rather different letter.”
“And you left the murder weapon in the bin instead.”
Yes. He had tried something funny, despite the blackmailer’s advice. “That didn’t quite pan out the way I’d hoped. When I saw how easy it would be to kill the man who chose to sleep on Ladysmith Avenue itself, I thought I might net my real prey that night, because this time the murder would take place within yards of where the blackmailer was going to be. That I might catch him in the act of retrieving his envelope, and finding, not ten thousand pounds, but a bloody knife. That I could reveal to the world that I had once again worked out where a murderer would strike next, but that this time, sadly, I had been too late to prevent him murdering again, and had had to kill him with his own knife when he came at me.”
But he had been held up on his way out of the casino, and then again by a blind man who had engaged the derelict in conversation for some reason, and a drag artist from the Queen Bee, who had been standing in the doorway of that establishment for what seemed like an eternity.
“As it turned out, it was too late by the time I had killed the tramp to leave the knife for the reasons I had intended. But I thought it might be fun to let you puzzle over it.”
Lloyd strolled back to the table once more. “So now we come to yesterday,” he said, sitting down.
“Almost—almost. You see, I got a nasty shock when I did get home that night. Grace Halliday had been in my room, and she’d found the documents that you removed this afternoon. She was all for calling the police then and there. I toyed with the idea of telling her that if she did, her precious Stephen would go to prison too, because there was now no doubt whatever that he was sending me these letters. That was the thanks I got for trying to save his skin.”
“But you didn’t tell her about Stephen,” said Lloyd. “Instead, you used the fact that she was attracted to you to persuade her that she had got it all wrong.”
“Indeed. She hadn’t had a man for seven years, and she hadn’t had much of a one then. She had never met anyone like me—she had
thrown herself at me ever since I’d got here. I was a catch, as I told you. It took little effort to persuade her that she had overreacted to what was simply my way of trying to catch this nameless terror that stalked the streets of Bartonshire. I offered her my undying devotion in return for her unqualified trust.”
“And once you had her unqualified trust,” said Judy Hill, “you began to plan her murder?”
“Yes.” Tony smiled at her. “She was just as dangerous as her son now. And by Wednesday morning, I had the next letter. He wanted fifty thousand pounds now. I had to leave it in the summerhouse of the Grange at 11 a.m. on May Day. It came as no surprise to me to find that Stephen had developed a sudden desire to attend the May Day festivities. It was a duel to the death. So I devised a way of ridding myself of both of them, but in the end I rid myself of neither. I’ve no doubt it would have continued, had you not stumbled on the solution. I wonder which of us would have cracked first?”
“Plan A was to kill him, you said. How were you going to do that?” asked Lloyd.
“I made an excuse not to accompany them to the Grange, took Stephen’s rifle, wrapped it in plastic sheeting and put it in my car. I was interrupted by Waterman’s arrival—it was very stupid of me to leave the back door open, but he saw nothing. He seemed to be very angry with Stephen about something, and I had no desire for him to interfere with Stephen’s or Grace’s plans by having some argument, so I didn’t tell him that Stephen was at the Grange. I tried to ring Stephen to tell him to keep out of Waterman’s way, but—as I told you, I got no reply.” He shook his head. “I thought that might make my plans go awry, but in the end, that wasn’t what went wrong.”
They were both looking at him with slightly bemused expressions, mixed with deep disapproval.
“Sorry—did you want remorse? I don’t do remorse. I drove to the so-called VIP car park, and left the rifle in the bushes on my way up to the fairground. I judged my competition, left, walked back toward the car park, and waited for Grace, my intention being to kill her shortly before the time I presumed Stephen would be at the summerhouse, looking for his money. I would then take the rifle to the summerhouse and wait for a few minutes. If he turned up, I would shoot him too, and explain that I, on my way to meet Grace, had witnessed her murder, seen him run away, chased him, fought with him, and the gun had gone off in the struggle.”
“Do you seriously believe you would have got away with that?” asked Judy Hill.
“Yes. You already suspected Stephen—you’ve questioned him after every incident, just as I planned you should. I knew how to make the evidence fit my story of a struggle. I had sown the seeds of animosity between him and his mother. He went out shooting almost every day, so any tests you did for residue on his skin would almost certainly be positive. Yes, I believe I would have got away with it.”
There was a silence before Lloyd spoke. “And this plan B you spoke of?”
“Timing is always a variable. I could only stay in the summerhouse for a few minutes. Stephen might not get there before I had to leave, in which case I would leave the gun, and he would find it, and almost certainly pick it up. I would go back along the shortcut and down to the lake, where I would be waiting for Grace by eleven o’clock, and Stephen himself would see me from the summerhouse, and thus give me my alibi. That seemed to me to be poetic justice.”
“But Jack Shaw ruined your plans,” said Superintendent Hill.
“He did. I had no idea about his leg—I thought it was because of his sprained ankle that he clearly couldn’t get up. And I couldn’t unjam the rifle. So I ran to the summerhouse, left it there—and when I got back to Shaw, he was very nearly on his feet, pulling himself up on one of the crutches. I kicked it away, picked up the other one, and tried to kill him with it. But I got blood on my jacket, so I stopped. I left him, and went down to the lake, carrying my jacket. I left the crutch there where you’d find it—I knew it would have Stephen’s fingerprints on it, because I saw him helping Jack into Grace’s car.”
“But you were agitated,” she said. “Stephen Halliday watched you pacing up and down.”
Tony smiled. “I don’t mind admitting that I was more than agitated. I was panicking. I had no idea what to do—I couldn’t rely on Shaw not being able to remember anything, and I was obviously right to be worried about that. Then I realized that I had the means of his destruction in my jacket pocket.”
“So you walked back up, injected him with insulin, laid the money he was carrying on top of him, covered him with your already bloodstained jacket, and called an ambulance.”
“Correct in every detail. But I could never have hoped for what happened after that—the place crawling with armed police officers, the clearing of the grounds, a siege . . . it was wonderful. And all for one very confused would-be blackmailer with an obstinately jammed rifle. I do congratulate you on your sense of the absurd, Superintendent.”
If that annoyed her, she showed no sign of it.
“In plan B you knew that Stephen wouldn’t be dead,” said Lloyd. “How could you stop him talking?”
“Has he talked? No. Because his choice is to explain that he is a murderer, a thief and a blackmailer, or simply to deny everything. I assumed, correctly, that he would choose the latter course. As I told you—plan B was working, despite things going wrong. But I was tripped up by a variable that I had not bargained for.”
“Jack Shaw’s artificial leg,” said Lloyd.
“Tripped up by Jack Shaw’s artificial leg.” Tony smiled. “I could have injected him anywhere—I chose the calf because I thought the time it took the insulin to take effect from that area was best for my purposes. My mistake was to choose the wrong calf.” He shook his head. “Jack Shaw,” he said, shaking his head. “Who never did or said anything of consequence in his entire life. It’s almost too much to bear that he should be my downfall. Significant, though, that it was his prosthetic—clearly considerably more remarkable than the man himself—that led you to the truth.”
“Well, I’m sorry if the rest of us poor mortals don’t come up to your exacting standards,” said Lloyd. “But despite that, we’ve somehow muddled through and are about to charge you with murder.”
It was much easier to get under Lloyd’s skin than it was to irritate the composed, serene Acting Superintendent Hill. Tony thought it would be fun to irritate him even more.
“Well, if Jack’s alive and talking, then you already knew that I tried to kill Grace Halliday and him, so that wasn’t such a great feat of detection. And I’ve freely admitted that I stabbed the tramp in Barton and strangled the burger bar owner in Stansfield. But I want it very clearly on record that I didn’t kill Wilma Fenton. Stephen Halliday did that. I merely and misguidedly gave him an alibi.”
Lloyd stood up. “Well, thank you, Mr. Baker, for being so frank. But, as I told you, Jack Shaw will never be able to tell us who fired that shot. Because though his memory of the incident is indeed intact, all he saw was the barrel of the rifle.”
Tony closed his eyes again. Had he been tricked into that confession? Undoubtedly, the answer was yes, he had. But it was equally true that Lloyd had told him that Jack couldn’t identify him, so he doubted that he could have his confession ruled inadmissible on those grounds. Perhaps he should have had legal representation.
“That was your real mistake, Mr. Baker. You didn’t need to use the insulin at all.”
Tom was in the briefing room, listening to Judy thanking everyone for their hard work. She wasn’t in a celebratory mood, because Stephen Halliday had to be regarded as the prime suspect for Wilma Fenton’s murder now that his alibi was no longer any good, but the serial killer had been caught, and celebrations were in order.
Mrs. Fenton’s murder was technically Malworth’s pigeon again, but it was by no means straightforward, because whatever Tony Baker thought, they all believed that Stephen was innocent, and that Keith Scopes had murdered Mrs. Fenton and blackmailed Baker.
Tom and Judy went for the alm
ost obligatory celebration drink, leaving as soon as they could without giving offense. They had a ticking clock: Stephen had to be charged or released by 2 a.m., and they had witness statements placing him at the scene and running away from it, plus Baker’s statement that he had tried to give him an alibi.
Lloyd, no longer officially involved, was still at the pub, hoping to have a quiet word with Yardley about the advisability, or lack of it, of talking so freely to his brother-in-law. Despite the difference in ranks, he felt that the younger man would listen without taking offense, and Tom thought he probably would. But he also thought that he would listen without taking the advice.
Now Tom and Judy were back in the office, arguing the toss about Halliday, with Gary Sims as a spectator, looking from one to the other as if he were at a tennis match.
“It’s obvious,” Tom said. “Waterman told me himself that he overheard Ben arranging to meet Stephen, and we know what he did that evening, guv. He went to Malworth bingo club—everyone I spoke to said that they were surprised to see him there. He was there to let Scopes know when Stephen left, so he could be waiting for him in the alleyway with his cosh.”
“We don’t know that’s why he went there.”
“We know he hadn’t intended going anywhere before he overheard that phone call, because he’d been drinking, and he won’t drink and drive. But suddenly, he’s so keen to go somewhere that he never goes—on a Sunday, when he never works—that he pays Jack Shaw to chauffeur him? I think we do know.”
“All right, we know. But we can’t prove it. And we have to approach it from an angle that doesn’t involve Waterman, because what he told you about overhearing that conversation is as close as he’s going to get to admitting that he set Keith Scopes on Stephen.”
Tom felt his spirits sag. Stephen’s best defense was that Scopes had been in the alleyway, too and could have carried out the assault, but no jury would believe that Baker had interfered with the scene in order to give an alibi to some man he’d never even met. If only Baker had kept the blackmail letters, they might have had something to go on, something that implicated Scopes. But he hadn’t. “If we could get a search warrant, we could find the cosh and prove that it was the murder weapon,” he said.
