‘They were killed by the same person. We had been looking at Pratt for Johnson’s murder,’ he stood and stretched tiredly, ‘it looks like we were on the wrong track, doesn’t it. There’s someone we’re missing. Some connection between the two men that we haven’t found yet.’
Joe Pengelly sat back and slurped his coffee noisily. ‘Our dead man conned your dead man out of two grand a month, then meets and marries this Kelly what’s ‘er name without bothering to divorce his wife.’ He looked across the desk at West. ‘It’s hard keeping one wife happy and this bugger wants two!’ He frowned. ‘She’s on her way in by the way.’
West looked puzzled. ‘Who?’
DI Pengelly looked slightly embarrassed. ‘Pratt’s name and address was in his wallet. His wife, the other one, I mean, was contacted first thing. There was a slight mix-up in the communication; your Kelly Johnson wasn’t really required for identification. She isn’t legally married to him after all, as you know. Mrs Pratt is on her way.’
West looked suitably annoyed, ‘Dammit, Joe! So Kelly didn’t have to go through that?’
Pengelly shrugged his beefy shoulders, ‘What would you have had me do, Mike, tell her she wasn’t any use to us because her marriage was bigamous. It seemed to me to be better to let her identify him. She probably wanted to see him anyway. It is supposed to be healthier. All about closure and all that crap.’
Kelly had said something similar, Mike remembered frowning.
Pengelly chewed a fat finger nail. ‘So you figured Simon Johnson had gone to Foxrock to confront Pratt and Pratt had killed him?’
West nodded. ‘We’ve been trying to join the dots with the admittedly sparse information we’ve managed to acquire. We know Johnson found out about the scam but we don’t know, yet, how, or even if, he found out it was Pratt. The scrap of paper we found in Johnson’s pocket had Come-to-Good written on it and, we know now, Pratt had been living there for the last three months, so he must have had the name from him. But how did he contact him? Johnson was found in the graveyard beside Pratt’s house so it looks like he was able to trace where he lived, too. How? Pratt had been missing for three months. We had a trace on his bank accounts and nothing turned up and yet this guy arrives home and within days has found him. It’s a bit galling for the team!’
‘And if Johnson knew Pratt was in Come-to-Good, what was he doing in Foxrock, anyway.’ Inspector Pengelly finished.
‘Exactly,’ West sat restlessly back in the chair. ‘All we have are questions. And then, apart from the dead bodies piling up, there’s the money. Somewhere, Pratt got his mitts on five hundred thousand euro and we have no idea where from. But nowhere legal, I’m sure. Maybe our unknown is connected to the money but then what’s his connection to Johnson. From all accounts, Johnson was a law abiding, up-right, model citizen.’ He ran a tired hand over his face. ‘We just need a bit of luck on our side.’
The Cornish detective smiled. Luck had a big part in their work, asking the right questions; being in the right place; talking to the right person. Sometimes, both men knew, luck was on the other side.
‘The wife wasn’t involved, was she?’ he asked.
‘Which one?’ West replied grimly.
Pengelly looked momentarily flummoxed, ‘First? The legal one...the one in Cork.’
‘Third to be exact, if you mean the current Mrs Pratt! No. We’ve had her checked out. As far as she was aware her husband was working away. He sent her money every week or so. They’ve been married six years. Two kids. Live in a council house on the outskirts of Cork. We got the impression she didn’t particularly care if he came back or not as long as he sent the money. The officer who went to interview her described her as a bottle-blonde battleaxe.’
‘A different sort to Kelly Johnson then, eh? Wonder why he didn’t just divorce her?’
West stared musingly into his coffee. He had wondered the same thing. What had made Cyril Pratt marry Kelly and live a lie? He had an idea but didn’t know if he was indulging in psycho-babble or whether the idea had real merit. He tried to put his idea into words now, tried it out on the big, gruff, plain-talking detective sitting opposite.
‘I think it might have started out as a scam. He had lived in Simon Johnson’s apartment, was wearing his expensive Armani suits, living his expensive lifestyle for about a week before he bumped, accidentally into a beautiful woman. He followed her and manipulated another accidental meeting. She laughed at the coincidence, he invited her for coffee, they had dinner and she told him all about herself.
‘He may have planned a scam but instead he finds himself with the perfect woman to match his newly acquired lifestyle. A glamorous, attractive, successful woman who finds him, Simon Johnson successful engineer, attractive –a woman, he probably thought wouldn’t have looked twice at Cyril Pratt, factory cleaner and ex-con.
‘Kelly said he was very easy to talk to, she told him things she had never told anyone. He used the information to become the man of her dreams, and he got deeper and deeper into his dream lifestyle, far too deep to turn around and admit the truth. The pinnacle of his dream, of course, was when she agreed to marry him. There was no choice but to continue the deception, he was so immersed in his dream that he didn’t see it was doomed.’
‘It only fell apart when Simon Johnson came home?’ Joe Pengelly asked.
West shrugged, ‘He was supposed to be away two years but an aunt, who was a favourite of his, died suddenly and he came home for the funeral. At that stage Pratt had already gone missing, so perhaps the disintegration began earlier, triggered by who knows what.’
‘But Pratt must have known he couldn’t keep it going indefinitely, anyway, Mike.’
‘He was a con man, a scam artist, Joe. I suppose he thought something would turn up to save the day. You know the way they work, living from scam to scam.’
Pengelly nodded making his chair creak then leaned forward over his desk, ‘You are sure wife number three isn’t in the picture. She might have found out about his other life, resented it.’
West shook his head, sitting back in his chair with a groan. ‘Jesus, I am tired. No, the local officers say she had a cast iron alibi, brings the kids to school every day, picks ‘em up. School confirms it.’
‘Just leaves us one candidate for his murder then, doesn’t it?’ The Cornish detective concluded draining the last of his coffee. ‘Wife number four. She finds out her beloved husband is a con-artist, and that her marriage is as legal as a nine-pound note.’
West stood and moved to the window. He watched as a large seagull banked and shimmied again and again, using the breeze to lift itself so it floated above the harbour below. He had stayed in Falmouth once, years before, and the noise of the seagulls had woken him at some ungodly hour and he had cursed them roundly. Now he watched in admiration as the bird, continuing to shimmy, silently perused the water below.
He turned reluctantly. ‘Time of death would leave her without an alibi, certainly. She could have driven to Falmouth and back to the cottage easily. She says his car had broken down, I suppose she could have sabotaged that after she returned from Falmouth, called me to establish an alibi of sorts. She certainly has a motive, Joe but...I just don’t see her as a murderer.’
The big Cornish detective sat back in his chair and looked grim. He’d seen officers getting involved with suspects before. It happened. A bit like actors falling for their leading ladies, he supposed. But falling for a suspect could be dangerous, it could cloud your judgement, make you lose track of the case and could lose you your job. He knew this, he knew West knew this but he didn’t know if West knew he was getting too close. He sighed, debated saying something, searched for appropriate words, failed miserably and fell back on pointing out the blindingly obvious.
‘She had motive, opportunity and no alibi. She looks pretty good for it to me. Pratt was strangled by someone who got into the car in the seat behind – her car, Mike. Pratt wasn’t an innocent; it had to have been someone who didn’t m
ake him suspicious, someone he knew.
‘The pathologist said it could have been a woman; insists it would have taken dexterity rather than strength. And your Simon Johnson, he was sitting down, didn’t expect trouble, she could have done that too. She certainly had the motive – he knew her husband was a con-artist, was going to expose her lifestyle for what it was.’
West stood restlessly. Was he wrong? Was Kelly guilty of two murders? He sensed the hidden warning behind the Cornish detective’s words, knew what he was thinking, why he was being circumspect in what he said. He always could read him like a book, he thought with a sigh, deciding to address and dispense with the issue.
‘You’re wrong, Joe,’ he said bluntly, continuing in the face of the other officer’s innocent expression, ‘I’m not blind to her attractions but they haven’t blinded me. I just don’t think she did it. We still haven’t sourced the money and I think that’s where we’ll find our answer.’
Pengelly considered a moment and then stood holding out his hand. ‘Cherchez la dosh, eh? I hope you’re right, Mike. You always did have good instincts I’ll admit, and by all accounts you’ve never gone wrong following them before. But,’ he continued as they shook hands, ‘you be careful!’
West smiled in return. ‘Always.’
‘And come back and stay with us next time. Bring a friend,’ Pengelly smiled, always liking to have the last word.
FOURTEEN
West stood a moment looking through the window of the visitor’s room door, watching Kelly as she sat and stared without moving. Death and its consequences were an accepted part of his job, he knew, but that didn’t make it any easier. He checked his watch. Three, he saw with annoyance, another day almost gone. He opened the door quietly giving Kelly time to come back from wherever it was she had gone. She rose when she saw him, coming to the door to join him.
‘We can head back now,’ he said quietly, reaching out to take her arm.
She nodded without speaking and they headed down the chill corridor toward the exit. Suddenly, a loud voice in a loudly dressed woman came crashing through the double doors leading from the reception area. She was followed quickly by a harassed looking officer who was making ineffectual gestures to halt her progress.
West and Kelly froze as they realised, at the same moment, who this woman was.
She stopped, uncertain which of the many doors to take. She was shorter than Kelly by a couple of inches but those inches and more were added to her girth. Her hair, dyed an unbecoming peroxide blonde, showed dark roots down a severe centre parting. She had had little notice, West knew, but had made an effort with her clothes and was dressed completely and severely in black. Or did she always dress like that, West wondered, thinking he would ask Andrews at a later date.
‘I don’t care what you think, you smarmy bastard,’ she addressed the remonstrating officer over her shoulders, ‘I want to see my husband and if that slut is there, I’ll put her eyes out!’
Capitulating, from necessity, the young officer indicated the door at the end of the corridor and Amanda Pratt stormed toward it passing West and Kelly without a glance. The officer followed her with a worried expression on his face throwing them a quick, flustered glance in passing. West returned his glance with a sympathetic smile.
‘Mrs Pratt, I assume,’ Kelly said quietly as the woman and her satellite officer went through the door they had only exited minutes before.
‘Yes.’ West agreed and turned to the exit. ‘We should go,’ he said as she continued to stand, staring down to where the doors still trembled in Mrs Pratt’s wake. He thought, for a moment, she would follow her but she turned and walked beside him without comment to the exit.
Outside, Kelly hesitated. ‘My car,’ she began with an interrogative glance in his direction, ‘am I allowed take it?’
‘I’m afraid not for the moment,’ he apologised, knowing her car probably bore little resemblance to one at the moment. Forensics would have pulled it to pieces. ‘I’ll arrange to get it sent back to Dublin when they’ve finished with it but that won’t be for some time, I’m afraid. Maybe you should get a hire car for the moment.’
‘Maybe,’ she replied noncommittally She sat into his car without further comment and buckling up she leaned her head back against the headrest, sighed and closed her eyes,
The drive Plymouth was fast and uneventful, Kelly keeping her eyes closed throughout the journey. Whether to prevent conversation or because she was tired, West didn’t know but he maintained the silence she seemed to prefer. He was honest enough to admit it suited him too, gave him time to think. He was running through the day’s events when he remembered the briefcase. Damn, he thought, he should have turned it over to Pengelly really. They were almost at the airport, he certainly wasn’t turning around, he decided tiredly. He saw a lay-by sign and, moments later, pulled over and dialled the Falmouth station and was soon explaining his lapse to Inspector Pengelly. His apology casually accepted, he promised to relay anything of interest and cut the connection.
Back on the road he glanced in Kelly’s direction to find her staring intently at him. Slightly unnerved he concentrated on the road ahead. A brief glance, moments later, found her still staring and he felt irritation beginning to prickle.
Irritation turned to surprise when she finally spoke. ‘Are you a good detective?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ he replied briefly, unsure where the conversation was going.
‘Do you think my Simon killed your Simon Johnson?’
He sighed and decided he had nothing to lose by telling her. ‘Cyril Pratt had a record; he had the means, motive and opportunity. He certainly was a suspect in the murder of Simon Johnson but now, well, now we’re not so sure.’
‘Because he was murdered too.’ It was a statement, not a question and he didn’t comment. Kelly sat back again, thinking. She was tired. She had had just about enough, but knew it wasn’t over yet. She had seen enough detective shows, read enough detective novels to know how it went.
‘Means, motive and opportunity,’ she repeated, glancing at the detective beside her. He gave her a quick look before concentrating on the road ahead.
Air Southwest were very accommodating. They changed West’s flight without extra charge and happily sold the adjacent seat to Kelly.
Flying at thirty thousand feet, his head resting against the seatback, he once again became aware of her eyes on him. He tried to ignore the feeling. Dammit, he was tired; he just wanted an hour’s rest. Impossible, he could feel her eyes boring into him. In exasperation he threw her a look. ‘What?’ he asked gruffly.
‘Both Simon Johnsons are now dead. If, as you say, Simon...or as I suppose I must get used to calling him, Cyril Pratt...had means, motive and opportunity to murder Simon Johnson, but didn’t, then who did?’ She continued to stare at him intently for a long moment then laughed shortly. ‘You think Cyril and Simon were killed by the same person, don’t you.’ Again this appeared to be a statement rather than a question and West said nothing.
‘Means, motive and opportunity,’ she repeated quietly, ‘if it were just Cyril you might have thought I had killed him.’
She waited for him to remonstrate. To reassure her. But instead he looked at her and asked, ‘Did you?’
Horrified, for a moment she was speechless.
‘It is very unlikely that Cyril’s death is unconnected to that of Simon Johnson’s – let’s just say there are certain elements in common,’ he continued, aware of her shocked silence but choosing to ignore it. ‘You did have means, and opportunity and you certainly had motive. I think you were probably genuinely unaware of your husband’s deceit and were shocked by it but you were probably more horrified by his bigamy – that’s a much more intimate crime, destroys your belief in what you had, what you were. Made you question yourself.’ He hesitated, ‘I think when you found that photo it was the last straw.’
‘And you think I drove into Falmouth and murdered him, then drove back and sabotaged the ca
r to look as though I couldn’t drive, then phoned you to provide myself with an alibi!’
Since this was exactly the scenario purported by Inspector Pengelly, West refused to answer. Kelly sat stunned, her hands curling into balls so tight she could feel her fingernails pierce her skin. The pain kept her focused.
West rested his head back again, wishing he could get her shocked face out of his mind. Did he really think she was involved? He had to admit that he was attracted to her and struggled to remain objective. He was venturing into very dangerous territory and he knew it. It was a classic scenario to fall for a suspect, one most good detectives steered well clear of. He had been a smug bastard, he thought now, thinking he was immune to such stupidity, so above making an idiot of himself.
No, he decided, he didn’t think she was involved but he had to prove it.
‘What I think doesn’t matter,’ he replied eventually with care, ‘We’ll do what we do. Investigate Cyril Pratt’s murder, examine all evidence and then, and only then, draw our conclusions. If you murdered him, we’ll prove it.’
‘I didn’t. I couldn’t.’ Kelly felt waves of sorrow wash over her, not just for the loss of her husband. West was right, the bigamy had robbed her of her memories too. She felt, suddenly, as if a gaping great hole had opened inside, devouring her from within, turning everything she had been, was, could be into a vast nothingness. She looked out the window where the darkness reflected darkness back and she let it envelop her.
He heard her sobs and, cursing under his breath, turned toward her. He watched her struggle to bring the sobs under control, saw them subside into simple tears and then stop. She drew a deep shuddering breath and wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket, snuffled as she did so and turned red, swollen eyes to West, her lips resolutely firming the quiver that still threatened.
That One May Smile Page 15
