‘So Polly Sinclair has been on your boat.’
‘Briefly.’
Grace tried her best to remain impassive: had Pawel given such a careful reply because he’d calculated that they might find trace evidence of Polly on board the Daisy Chain and wanted to cover himself? If so, this was the clearest indication yet that he might be involved in her disappearance. And that he was clever.
‘What about nights out?’ she asked, deliberately moving on. ‘Ever go to the Blue Bar?’
He shook his head. ‘Too full of noisy kids.’
‘So you know it?’
‘Everyone knows it.’ Pawel’s blue eyes blazed, showing he understood the significance of her questions.
‘So where do you drink?’
‘At home. A beer sometimes. I don’t drink much.’
Grace glanced at the camera that was feeding images to Keith and Lance: if Pawel wasn’t a drinker himself, then maybe he disapproved of girls who got plastered.
‘The evening you fixed the shower at your house in Alma Street,’ she continued. ‘Where did you go afterwards?’
Pawel shook his head. ‘Home? Maybe the supermarket. I don’t remember.’
‘Which supermarket?’
‘The big Tesco.’
‘And the Friday night after you mended the washing machine in Station Road?’
‘I don’t know. Much the same probably. I’m working on the costing for a new house.’
‘You weren’t in the centre of town?’
‘No.’
‘You told us that Polly Sinclair was in bed with someone when you went to the house.’ Grace paused, giving him time to recall the memory accurately.
‘Sure, I told you, I heard them.’
For the first time, Pawel looked discomfited and uneasy.
‘Did you go upstairs?’
He hesitated, gave her an injured look, then raised his chin. ‘Sure, why not? It made me horny.’
‘Did you masturbate?’
Pawel appeared genuinely appalled and then paled with fury, his lips drawing into a thin line. He turned to appeal to the solicitor, as if he ought to disbar such questions; when the lawyer merely shrugged uncomfortably, Pawel snorted in contempt.
‘Please answer DS Fisher’s question,’ Duncan told him.
‘No, I did not.’
‘Had you ever had sex with Polly Sinclair?’
‘No.’
‘Ever ask her for sex?’
‘No.’
‘So what was your relationship? Were you friendly?’
‘She made me a cup of tea once in a while. We’d chat. The girls are always on the phone with problems. I get to know them.’
‘Did Polly ever ask you for a lift?’
‘No.’
‘What about your other tenants? Were you friendly with Amber, for instance?’
Pawel turned angrily to Duncan. ‘Why do you let her keep asking questions when she already knows the answers?’
Duncan made no reaction, allowing Grace to continue pleasantly. ‘I’d like to hear what you have to say.’
‘I slept with her a few times.’
‘Because you liked her?’
‘Yes, I liked her.’
‘Not to get value for money when she couldn’t pay the rent?’
‘It was her suggestion and I accepted. I liked her. She respected my hard work.’
‘Have other tenants shown respect by offering you sex?’
Pawel looked from her to Duncan and back again. He fixed his now icy blue eyes on hers and shook his head.
‘Did you demand sex from the girl who accused you of harassing her?’
‘I see these girls in town giving it away for free,’ he replied. ‘They expect everything for nothing. I don’t give my hard work away for free. Do you?’
‘One tenant alleged that you stole her underwear? Did you?’
‘No.’
‘What about Rachel Moston, was she friendly?’
‘No. She acted like I should use the tradesman’s entrance in my own house! Then goes out looking like a tart. Sorry, sorry!’ Pawel held up his hands. ‘I forget. She’s dead. I forget.’
Grace, acutely aware of Keith and Lance watching remotely on the monitor, remembered not only Lance’s suggestion that Rachel’s killer had used the vodka bottle to humiliate his victim, but also that Rachel’s underwear had not been found. She studied Pawel’s face, attempting to evaluate whether his contrition was a pretence but, for the first time, he looked down at the floor, keeping his eyes veiled. Until this point he had sat with an easy composure, but now he began to rub the palms of his hands slowly up and down his thighs.
‘Rachel’s parents gave her a generous allowance,’ she said. ‘She had a job lined up with a prestigious law firm. Everything handed to her on a plate.’ It was hateful to collude in speaking of the victim in this way, but Grace could all but hear Lance urging her to push as hard as she could to provoke another outburst.
‘No matter.’ Pawel crossed himself quickly. ‘I shouldn’t speak ill.’
Catching Pawel’s gesture, everything fell into place in Grace’s mind: angry enough to kill a young woman who refused to show respect for his hard work, he’d nevertheless been sufficiently repentant to rest her head on her folded jacket. ‘So you don’t like the way the students behave in town at night?’ she asked.
‘Do you?’ he countered angrily.
‘Please answer the question, Mr Zawodny.’ Duncan’s tone verged on offensive.
‘They get drunk, ask for trouble.’
‘What sort of trouble?’
‘I liked Polly. You want to know why I went upstairs?
‘Please. Tell us.’
Pawel began again to run his palms up and down his thighs. He seemed undecided about whether or not to speak. ‘I thought I heard her –’ He stopped and took a deep breath. ‘I worried she was in trouble.’
‘You thought she was being assaulted?’
He nodded. ‘Maybe I should have gone in. Asked if she was OK.’
‘What stopped you?’ Grace found that she really wanted to know.
‘She saw me at the door. Turned away. She knew I was there, and she didn’t care that I was watching. She was a slut.’
‘A slut?’
‘No one is going to marry such girls.’
‘So what does happen to them? To Polly? To Rachel?’
Pawel folded his arms stubbornly across his chest. ‘Good girls don’t die,’ he said.
TWENTY-ONE
‘I bet he’s our man,’ crowed Lance as they joined Keith in his office. ‘Has to be! He admits Polly was on his boat. Why else have we found absolutely no trace of her?’ His excitement made Grace hope that perhaps he had forgotten their earlier antagonism.
‘It’s possible,’ said Keith. ‘But right now it’s stalemate. He can’t alibi himself, and we can’t prove he’s actually done anything.’
‘How are forensics doing on the boat?’ asked Duncan.
‘Nothing yet, but it’s early days. He admits he took it out last weekend, so find out if anyone saw him. Did he depart from any usual habits last weekend? Anyone notice anything different? Get house-to-house down to the moorings and begin asking questions. If we get started today, we’ll pick up the some of the same people who were there last Saturday.’
‘Yes, boss.’
‘We need to focus on putting Zawodny in town on Friday night and again on Wednesday night. Or catching him in a lie about where he says he was. So nail down his precise movements.’
‘He deliberately left a lot of big gaps that he knows will be hard to corroborate,’ said Grace.
‘So find something to crack him open,’ Keith ordered. ‘His truck’s distinctive, and there are one hundred and seventy-five cameras in this town. Unless he’s clever, lucky or was never there, he must have been caught on CCTV somewhere along the line.’
‘We want footage that shows Polly in the passenger seat!’ said Lance.
‘Eve
n by narrowing the time frame, it’s going to take us days to trawl through it all, boss,’ said Duncan. ‘Especially since we’ve had to deploy manpower back to the switchboards. Since the Courier’s reward stunt, we’ve been fielding a massive torrent of calls.’
‘Fuck!’ Keith smacked the desk with the palm of his hand, making Grace jump. ‘Tell me the calls are at least giving us something useful.’
‘It’s going to take a while to sift through and follow up.’
‘We’ll have two dozen false sightings of Polly just when I have to tell her parents it’s possible we may never recover a body!’ said Keith.
No one said anything for a moment, and then Duncan spoke in comforting tones. ‘We’ve also had plenty of offers from both uniform and civvies to come in and work over the weekend, boss,’ he told the superintendent. ‘They know the clock’s ticking. Everyone wants to help see this job done.’
Keith nodded his appreciation.
‘Plus we’ve had two more women with unhappy stories about Matt Beeston,’ said Duncan. ‘Plenty for the CPS to take a look at on the other charges.’
‘Good.’
‘Pawel’s boat, boss,’ hazarded Grace. ‘If he did use it to dispose of Polly, then why not use it to get rid of Rachel, too?’
‘Some killers get pissed off when they don’t get attention,’ said Lance eagerly. ‘Some even go back to move the body, like the Yorkshire Ripper did with one of his. That would tie in with the way Rachel was staged, too.’
‘So he’s refining?’ asked Grace, not entirely convinced but wary of challenging Lance too openly. ‘Progressing?’
‘Don’t get carried away,’ Keith warned. ‘He may just not have fancied his chances on transporting a second body without being seen.’
‘Might it be worth asking around the working girls?’ asked Duncan. ‘See if they’re familiar with Zawodny? Might help build up a profile.’
‘Good idea.’
‘What about putting feelers out with them for any punters who like playing with bottles?’ asked Lance, with a glance at Duncan, who had not yet been told the full story behind the bottle of Fire’n’Ice.
Keith sat back in his chair, considering. ‘See what you get first,’ he told Duncan. ‘I’d rather keep all that under wraps a bit longer. Something only matey and we know.’
Duncan nodded, his curiosity kept well under wraps.
‘I had an idea about the bottle,’ Grace began tentatively.
‘Let’s hear it.’
‘Well, we’ve assumed it was a weapon. That the girls were easy prey because they were falling-down drunk. But what if it was because they were drunk that he preyed on them? Not while they were drunk. That would make the vodka more significant than the bottle.’
‘I don’t get your point.’
‘They weren’t good girls. He was punishing them.’
Lance shook his head vehemently. ‘The bottle was a coup de grâce. A signature.’
Duncan nodded, and Grace could see that Keith’s thoughts were already elsewhere, searching for hard evidence, not theories. She could hardly blame him.
‘Might be worth speaking to more of Pawel’s past tenants,’ she said, deciding there was nothing to be gained from clashing with Lance over his interpretation of the crime scene. ‘And to Polly and Rachel’s housemates. Build up a more detailed picture of what he’s like around them. It’s clear that he expects respect and appreciation, but how far does he go? After all, he bought Amber perfume. He was concerned about Polly.’
‘If you believe him,’ said Lance.
‘We know what Matt’s like. If Polly was too hung-over to fight him off, Pawel may well have heard her cry out.’
‘So why didn’t she holler for help when he came upstairs?’
‘Ashamed?’ Grace suggested.
‘Enough,’ said Keith irritably. ‘I want evidence, not speculation.’
‘Well, what about the man Polly asked for a lift?’ Lance asked stubbornly. ‘That could have been Pawel. We could show Matt an album? See if he can pick Pawel out?’
‘Yes, but that was Thursday,’ Duncan pointed out. ‘Besides, whoever it was refused to take her.’
‘But it shows Polly would’ve been happy to go off with him on her own the following night,’ Lance argued.
‘OK, enough,’ repeated Keith, clearly annoyed. ‘Say we assume that Zawodny did give Polly a lift, then where’s the murder scene? Is it his boat? Somewhere else? For all we know, she was alive when she went in the water. Why don’t we just stick to trying to establish a few facts?’
Grace thought again of Danny Tooley, wondered if he might remember ever seeing Pawel with Polly – or anyone else. But it was clear that Keith didn’t need to be offered any more supposition right now. Maybe later she could slip off and speak to Danny without first running it by the SIO. Maybe not tell Lance, either: she didn’t want to risk alienating him any more than she had to.
TWENTY-TWO
On the deserted campus, Grace was pleased to notice that several Missing posters with a smiling photo of Polly had been put up at the entrances to shops and departmental offices, and that yellow ribbons had been tied to pillars and lamp posts. The raised concrete walkway was eerily quiet at the end of a Saturday afternoon and she was almost surprised to find the bookshop open. Here, too, there was both a poster in the window and ribbons tied to the handles of the glass door. Inside, Danny sat alone on a stool behind the till, his nose in a book. He looked up when she entered and, recognising her, slid it aside and got up to meet her.
‘You’ve arrested Dr Beeston,’ he said, emerging from behind the counter.
‘You saw it in the papers?’
‘Yes. Roxanne Carson came to ask what I could tell her about him.’
‘And did you tell her anything?’
Danny gave a tiny shrug. ‘Not really. You asked me not to, didn’t you? I just said he always seemed to be hanging around, when most of the teaching staff try to avoid spending much time with the students.’
‘Did you hear any gossip about him? Hear any of his students talk about him?’ she asked.
‘He likes chatting up the women, though I never saw him with the same girl twice.’
Grace laughed. ‘You notice quite a bit!’
He smiled. ‘Part of the job, to watch people. You’d be amazed how many of them try to steal books.’
‘I guess.’
‘They’re not very good at it, though. They’re pretty easy to spot.’
Grace laughed, liking his dry delivery, and was glad, for his sake, that he wasn’t as naive as he sometimes appeared. ‘Did you ever see Dr Beeston with either Polly Sinclair or Rachel Moston?’ she asked.
‘I never really knew the other one. Will he go to prison?’
‘He’s not been charged with any offence, but we’re still asking him questions.’
Danny nodded, and Grace couldn’t quite decipher his reaction. Was he disappointed? If Matt came in here, she doubted he’d have shown much courtesy to a shop assistant, so perhaps Danny might enjoy watching him get some kind of comeuppance.
‘Were any of the girls he chatted up unhappy about it, do you think?’ she asked. ‘Anyone ever come in here upset or crying? Anything like that?’
Danny shook his head, apparently uninterested now.
‘What else did Roxanne Carson ask you about?’
‘Just chatting. I like her. She’s OK.’
Grace had to agree: Roxanne had been a kind and sympathetic friend last night, and this morning’s woozy hangover had been a worthwhile price to pay for her welcome new feeling of release.
‘She was interested in which books sell the most,’ Danny continued. ‘Said she might come back and do a feature on what students are reading.’ He gave her a wry look. ‘She won’t, though, will she?’
‘No.’ Grace laughed but, all the same, doubted that Roxanne would have wasted time schmoozing him unless she expected to get some kind of story out of it. Maybe she should use the same tact
ic. ‘Out of interest, what did Polly like to read?’ she asked. ‘Do you remember? It really helps to build up a complete picture. You never know what might lead to us finding her.’
‘That’s what Roxanne said.’ He nodded towards the door. ‘I put up the poster for her.’
‘Yes, I saw,’ said Grace. ‘That’s great, thanks.’
‘Polly likes foreign fiction. She was doing Spanish. We talked about which South American writers she liked.’
Grace smiled encouragingly. ‘You mentioned she left her phone here once.’
‘Yes.’
‘Thing is, we can’t trace any signal on it. Is she the kind of person who often loses her phone, do you think? Or forgets to charge it?’
Danny smiled back. ‘She can be a bit scatty sometimes.’
‘Scatty enough to have gone off somewhere and not told anyone?’
He frowned, considering the question, then nodded. ‘Maybe.’
‘In what other ways was she scatty?’
Danny smiled fondly. ‘I ran into her once in Wivenhoe when she’d missed the bus and was late for an important lecture. She gets on at the bus stop before my road,’ he added, as if Grace might require an explanation.
‘Don’t suppose you know her landlord, Pawel Zawodny?’ she asked casually. She turned to select a birthday card from a rack near the counter. ‘I’ll take this while I’m here,’ she added. ‘For one of my nephews.’ Danny took it from her and keyed in the purchase as she busied herself with finding and handing over the correct change. ‘He owns several student properties in Wivenhoe. Has a boat on the river, too. You might’ve seen him about.’
But Danny shook his head. ‘No, don’t think so. Do you want a bag?’
‘Yes, thanks. So you wouldn’t recognise him if you’d seen Polly out and about with him?’
‘No.’ He put the receipt in the bag and handed it to her.
‘You said the other day that Polly popped in for a chat on the morning of the day she disappeared. That was the Friday.’
Danny began to shift nervously but said nothing.
‘I don’t mean to upset you,’ she said reassuringly. ‘The two of you were obviously friendly. I don’t want to pry into your relationship, but I guess you liked her?’
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