Stone Killer

by Sally Spencer

  The main entrance door of the business opened, and two people stepped out. Woodend could see them quite clearly in the illumination which shone from the foyer, but – standing in the shadows as he was – he was not sure that they could see him.

  One of the people was Keene himself, the other a woman who looked to be in her early seventies. The caterer led the woman slowly to the taxi, and opened the back door for her.

  ‘Why don’t you come home with me, Stanley?’ the woman asked, in a thin, reedy voice.

  ‘I can’t, Mother,’ Keene said regretfully. ‘Not this close to Christmas. I’ve got far too much to do.’

  ‘You work too hard,’ his mother complained. ‘You’re never away from this place. That’s the only reason I ever come here – because it’s the one real chance I get to see you.’

  ‘You know I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t have to,’ Keene told her. ‘You know I’d much rather spend my time with you. But now that Judith’s not here any more, I’m having to do twice as much as I used to.’

  ‘All work and no play make Jack a dull boy,’ his mother said sternly.

  Keene laughed. ‘Do you think I’m dull, Mother?’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ his mother said hastily. ‘But I wish you had more time to enjoy yourself.’ She paused. ‘I wish you’d find yourself a nice girl.’

  ‘Now, Mother …’ Keene protested.

  ‘It’s not right that you’re still not married at your age,’ his mother told him. ‘I want some grandchildren before it’s too late.’

  ‘Maybe once the Christmas rush is over, I’ll find the girl of my dreams,’ Keene said.

  ‘Do you promise?’ his mother demanded.

  ‘I’ll certainly try my best,’ Keene said. ‘Is that good enough for you?’

  ‘It’ll have to be, won’t it?’ his mother said sourly.

  Keene bent down and kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘I’ll be home as soon as I can be,’ he said. ‘I love you, Mother.’

  ‘And I love you, too,’ his mother replied. ‘That’s why I want to see you happily settled down before I die.’

  Keene helped the old woman into the taxi, and closed the door behind her. Once she was settled inside, the driver pulled away.

  Woodend coughed.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Keene asked, turning in his direction.

  The Chief Inspector stepped out of the shadows. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Has something happened, Mr Woodend?’ the caterer asked, looking worried.

  ‘Aye,’ Woodend replied. ‘The siege is over. An’ since you risked your neck by comin’ into the bank with me, I thought it was only fair that you should be one of the first ones to know about it.’

  ‘Over!’ Keene repeated. ‘It’s over! But has it … was it …?’

  ‘It all happened without a shot bein’ fired,’ Woodend reassured him. ‘The hostages have been freed, an’ Major Maitland’s been taken into custody.’

  Keene seemed to be temporarily frozen to the spot. ‘I should feel elated,’ he said. ‘But I don’t. I just feel sort of … numb.’

  ‘Relief can do that to you,’ Woodend reassured him. ‘It’s a perfectly normal reaction in the circumstances. So how about a drink?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A drink. If anythin’ was ever worth celebratin’, then it’s this, don’t you think?’

  ‘Of course,’ Keene said, thawing a little. ‘You’re quite right. Come inside, Mr Woodend.’

  He led Woodend through the foyer, and into his office. It struck Woodend, as it had the last time he’d been there, that the office was a perfect blend of functionality and taste – the functionality exemplified by the thoroughly businesslike desk and filing cabinet, the taste displayed in two fine easy chairs with an attractive glass coffee table between them.

  ‘Take a seat,’ Keene said, pointing to one of the easy chairs, then walking over to the rather twee cocktail cabinet which stood in one corner of the room. ‘I don’t have any beer, I’m afraid – I never touch the stuff myself – but I do have some rather fine French brandy, if you’d care to sample that.’

  ‘Champion,’ Woodend said.

  Keene poured the drinks and sat down opposite Woodend. ‘What finally convinced the Major to give up?’ he asked. ‘I assume that he did give up, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Woodend agreed. ‘It’s hard to say at what point he was finally persuaded, but I think it may have been when I told him I think I can get Judith released.’

  ‘You can? On what grounds?’

  Woodend took a sip of the brandy. ‘Very nice,’ he pronounced. ‘You’d think a man who’d supped as much ale as I have would have destroyed his taste for anythin’ more refined, wouldn’t you? But let me tell you now, I haven’t. This stuff doesn’t just stroke the palate – it makes love to it.’

  ‘I asked you on what grounds you thought you could get Judith released,’ Keene said impatiently.

  ‘Oh that!’ Woodend said. ‘On the grounds that she didn’t do what she was convicted of.’

  ‘I always knew she was innocent,’ Keene told him. ‘But can you actually prove it now? Have you managed to come up with some new evidence which clears her name?’

  ‘Not what you – as a layman who knows nothin’ about the way the law an’ the courts work – might think of as evidence,’ Woodend admitted. ‘But it’s evidence of sorts.’

  ‘Tell me more.’

  ‘There’s two basic kinds of evidence – hard evidence an’ circumstantial evidence.’

  ‘Yes, I do know that.’

  ‘Now the case against Judith was entirely circumstantial. She’d been at the scene of the crime round about the time Burroughs was killed, she was presumed to be his lover, an’ there was no sign of her caterin’ overall which – everybody agrees – should have been in the back of the van. The prosecution thought it had an open an’ shut case. An’ it has to be said that the jury agreed with it. But the more you learn about other circumstances, the less convincin’ the case looks. For example, Judith wasn’t Burroughs’ lover, was she?’

  ‘No,’ Keene agreed. ‘She most certainly wasn’t.’

  ‘In fact, the only reason she was interested in him at all was because he could give her access to her child,’ Woodend said.

  Keene’s jaw dropped. ‘You … you know about that?’

  ‘Aye,’ Woodend said. ‘Though I’ve only found out about it recently, whereas you’ve known all along.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you. Truly I did. But Judith made me promise I’d never reveal the secret to anybody.’

  ‘An’ you kept your word,’ Woodend said. ‘But now it is all out in the open, you will admit that Judith would never have had anythin’ to do with Burroughs if it hadn’t been for Timothy?’

  ‘Of course I’ll admit it. She loves Thomas. She’d never have thought of looking at another man.’

  ‘Just so,’ Woodend said. ‘But to get back to our friend, the late Clive Burroughs. He suckered her in beautifully, didn’t he? There were no strings to her seeing Timothy at first, but once he’d got her so attached to the boy that she couldn’t bear the thought of losing him again, he put the squeeze on her. Pay up, he said, or I’ll take the kid to New Zealand.’

  ‘It’s hard to imagine a man being so cruel,’ Stanley Keene said.

  ‘Now, there are some people who would argue that this blackmail attempt was an even stronger motive for Judith to kill Burroughs than if he had actually been her lover. But I have to say that I’m not one of them.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ Keene said. ‘I knew she could never have done it. I said it all along.’

  ‘So you did,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But, with the greatest respect to you, Mr Keene, your argument for her innocence is based on emotion, whereas mine is based on logic.’

  ‘Does that matter, as long as we’ve both reached the same conclusion?’ Keene asked.

  ‘Not to us, maybe,’ Woodend said. ‘But it will to the authorities. So this is the way I�
��ll argue it with them: I’ll say that the very worst thing Judith could have done in her situation was to kill Burroughs. An’ why? Because that would be tantamount to abandoning all hope of gettin’ close to Timothy ever again. She was almost bound to be arrested, an’ even when she eventually came out of prison, Timothy would never agree to see the woman who’d killed his father, would he?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Burroughs agreed.

  ‘Anyway, she’d already solved her problem – at least temporarily,’ Woodend continued. ‘Burroughs wanted money, an’ she was prepared to give it to him. So, while it was far from an ideal situation for her to find herself in, she could have kept on seein’ her son. An’ why should she want to jeopardize that?’

  ‘You’re right, of course,’ Keene agreed.

  ‘What I don’t quite understand is why you, her friend and partner, didn’t try to persuade her to use that same argument at her trial,’ Woodend said.

  ‘I did,’ Keene told him. ‘But she wasn’t having any of it. She said the important thing was to protect Timothy. He must never know what had really happened.’

  ‘What a woman!’ Woodend said.

  ‘What a woman!’ Keene agreed.

  ‘An’ I suppose, given the sacrifices she was prepared to make to keep the secret to herself, we should respect her wishes in the matter,’ Woodend said. ‘I think, on balance, we have no choice but to continue to protect young Timothy from the terrible truth.’

  Stanley Keene looked troubled, but said nothing.

  ‘Is somethin’ botherin’ you, Mr Keene?’ Woodend asked.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Keene admitted. ‘Without Timothy, the whole argument you were going to use to get Judith released simply collapses.’

  ‘You’re quite right, Mr Keene,’ Woodend agreed, frowning. ‘That’s a real problem, isn’t it?’

  ‘A real problem,’ Keene echoed.

  Woodend’s frown melted away, and was replaced by a broad smile which suggested that a brilliant idea had just occurred to him.

  ‘We’ll just have to switch to Plan B, then, won’t we?’ he asked brightly.

  ‘Plan B? What’s Plan B?’

  ‘Plan B is this,’ Woodend said. He reached into his jacket pocket, produced a single sheet of paper, and handed it across the coffee table to Keene. ‘Read it.’

  Keene scanned the page, and with each line he read, his expression grew more troubled. He reached the end, then read through it again, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he had seen the first time through.

  ‘But this is a statement to the police,’ he said. ‘Made by me!’

  ‘The draft of a statement,’ Woodend corrected him. ‘Nothing but a bald outline. I’m sure it’ll read so much better when you’ve got round to putting it in your own words.’

  ‘You want me to say that I thought Clive Burroughs actually was Judith’s lover?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘But I didn’t! You know that.’

  ‘Nobody else knows, though, do they? An’ if you can lie convincingly – which should present you with absolutely no difficulty at all – the rest of the world will be completely taken in.’

  ‘You also want me to say that I thought he was mistreating her?’

  ‘Exactly. Again, we can work out the details later, but I suggest you say somethin’ like you noticed there were bruises on her arms an’ face after she’d been with him.’

  ‘And … and … you want me to confess that because I thought he was mistreating her, I killed him?’

  ‘Yes, that’s about the gist of it.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ Keene demanded.

  ‘No,’ Woodend said calmly. ‘An’ neither are you. That’s why you’ll eventually agree to make the statement.’

  ‘You’re dreaming!’ Keene told him.

  ‘Just consider your options for a moment,’ Woodend suggested. ‘If you play it my way, you’ll be standin’ in the dock as a man who murdered through love. You did it for no other reason, you’ll claim, than to protect Judith. You’ll probably be a hero in the eyes of the jury. An’ you’ll certainly be a hero in your mother’s eyes. You’ll be sent down – there’s no doubt about that – but you’ll be very unlucky to be given a sentence as long as the one that was handed out to Judith.’ He paused. ‘Now consider the other possibility.’

  ‘What other possibility?’

  ‘You’ll be standing in the dock as a man charged with one murder, an’ one attempted murder – crimes motivated not by altruism, but by greed. And what will your mother think of that?’

  ‘Leave my mother out of this, you bastard!’ Keene said.

  ‘There’s no way you can also be charged with arrangin’ for an innocent woman to be locked away for a crime she didn’t commit, but you don’t seriously believe the judge is goin’ to forget that – even for a moment – do you?’

  ‘Wait a minute!’ Keene said. ‘Did you say I’d be charged with one murder and one attempted murder?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘This is going even beyond the realms of fantasy. Just who am I supposed to have attempted to murder?’

  ‘Judith, of course.’

  Keene looked wildly about him, as if hoping that some escape route had magically opened in one of the walls.

  ‘Judith?’ he croaked. ‘But why, in God’s name, would I ever have tried to kill her?’

  ‘For money. Or rather, for the lack of it.’

  ‘For money?’

  ‘It’s the only motive that fits the circumstances,’ Woodend said. ‘The only one that makes any sense of this whole tragic mess.’

  Keene raised his hand to his mouth, and bit into one of his immaculately manicured fingernails.

  ‘Well, it certainly doesn’t make any sense to me,’ he said weakly.

  ‘Of course it does,’ said Woodend, brushing the denial aside. ‘Judith wanted to withdraw money from the company to pay off Burroughs. But – though she didn’t know it herself, because she trusted you to look after the books – there wasn’t any money to withdraw.’

  ‘You could never prove that!’ Keene protested.

  ‘No, not me personally,’ Woodend agreed. ‘I’m not much good with figures. But by the time the forensic accountants have been over your books, I should have all the evidence I need.’

  ‘So I tried to kill Judith, did I?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By doctorin’ the brakin’ system of the van she was drivin’. At first I thought it might be somebody else. Sebastian Courtney-Jones, for example. He might have done it because he was enraged that she wouldn’t go back to him when he wanted her to.’

  ‘Yes, he certainly might—’

  ‘Or Mrs Burroughs – who may have really believed Judith was havin’ an affair with her husband.’

  ‘She’s also a poss—’

  ‘But it couldn’t have been either of them.’

  ‘Why not? Both of them seem perfectly plausible to me.’

  ‘I should have seen right away why they couldn’t have done it,’ Woodend said, shaking his head at his own slow thinking on the matter. ‘But it wasn’t until I was walkin’ alongside your small fleet of identical white vans that the truth finally hit me.’

  ‘What truth?’

  ‘Identical white vans, Mr Keene. Not one kind of van for the bosses an’ another kind for the ordinary workers. They all look exactly the same. So who’d know which particular one Judith would drive away in the followin’ mornin’? You would, Mr Keene! An’ only you.’

  ‘If all this is true, how do you explain the fact that, having once tried and failed, I didn’t make a second attempt?’ Keene asked.

  ‘Ah, because you’d thought through the implications of her death by then,’ Woodend said. ‘And you’d realized it wouldn’t make things better for you. In fact, it would make them worse.’

  ‘Insane!’ Keene said. ‘Totally insane.’

  ‘Judith’s husband would have inherited her half of the bu
siness, wouldn’t he? An’ he’s a military man, with a very orderly mind. He’d have had his own accountants in here before you’d had time to turn around – an’ they’d soon have discovered the huge hole in the accounts.’ Woodend lit up a cigarette. ‘Where did the money go, by the way?’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t—’

  ‘You might as well tell the truth – on this matter at least – because it won’t take the police accountants long to find the holes.’

  ‘I had a friend,’ Keene said sadly. ‘A very dear friend – or so I thought. He told me about this wonderful business opportunity. All he needed was a little backing, to get it started.’

  ‘An’ then he vanished into thin air – an’ the money with him,’ Woodend guessed.

  ‘That’s right,’ Keene agreed. ‘But Élite’s not bankrupt, you know. It’s still a very profitable business, and I could have paid back all the money I’d borrowed, given time.’

  ‘But Judith didn’t give you the time, because she wanted money immediately,’ Woodend said. ‘You should have confided in her, you know. I’m sure she would have understood. She knew all about the kinds of things that people will do for love.’

  ‘But just because I’m an embezzler, it still doesn’t mean that I’m a murderer,’ Keene said defiantly.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Woodend agreed. ‘But I haven’t finished paintin’ the picture for you yet. This jury at your trial is goin’ to be askin’ itself several important questions. An’ one of those questions is goin’ to be, “Who knew that Judith was plannin’ to meet Burroughs that night?” Well, it could only be somebody who shared with her the secret of why she was meetin’ him. An’ that somebody is you.’

  ‘Dozens of people could have known that Burroughs was going to be there that night,’ Keene said. ‘Hundreds of them!’

  ‘I don’t think he would have told anybody at all about what he was doin’,’ Woodend said. ‘It was as much in his interest as in Judith’s to keep the reason for their meetin’ a secret.’