Silent Witness (A Dylan Scott Mystery)

by Wells, Shirley

  He might pretend to be in control of his emotions but the colour had slowly ebbed from his face with every word. His sickly pallor made those dark eyes even more startling.

  If—and it was a big if—he was telling the truth, it was a shocking story. Reliving it would make anyone queasy.

  “Her collection of sex toys. Describe them to me.”

  Dark eyebrows rose at the request. “She had handcuffs, a whip, a huge red vibrator—”

  “Okay. And who knew you were seeing her?” Dylan asked.

  “Apart from the lying doctor? No one.”

  “What do you mean? Are you saying Walsingham knew about it?”

  “Me and Carly thought so. I don’t know how he could have found out, but we were pretty sure he knew. Or at least suspected.”

  Walsingham knew that Kaminski had been phoning his wife. Stalking her. Could he have known they were having an affair? If, of course, they were having an affair.

  “As far as I’m aware,” Kaminski said, “no one else knew. I don’t see how they could have. Carly liked to live dangerously, that’s why she wanted me in his bed, why she insisted on my taking a shower in his bathroom, but she wouldn’t have told anyone. She wasn’t that crazy.”

  “Was she seeing anyone else?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Dylan asked again.

  “Yes.”

  “Were you seeing anyone else?”

  Kaminski smiled that half-smile again. “No.”

  It was almost time to go and Dylan was more than ready.

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll think about everything you’ve told me.”

  “Please yourself,” Kaminski said.

  “What I can’t understand is your attitude.” Again, Dylan felt an almost overwhelming urge to shake the bloke. “You don’t seem to care whether you get out of here or not. Are you really prepared to rot in this hellhole?”

  Kaminski leaned in until he was inches from Dylan’s face. “Tell you what, Mr. Scott, why don’t you go home and put the television on? Catch the local news and imagine they’re saying your wife’s been butchered. Forget they’re talking about yet another murder or a senseless stabbing in another anonymous city. Imagine it’s your wife. Picture your wife lying in a bath of blood. See what you care about after that.”

  It was time to go and Dylan got to his feet.

  “It’s not the same though, is it? Mrs. Walsingham wasn’t your wife.”

  Kaminski nodded slowly, looked as if he was about to argue and then couldn’t be bothered. “No. She wasn’t my wife.”

  Dylan really didn’t know what to make of Kaminski.

  “So,” he said, “who do you think killed her?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “What? None at all? You’ve been here all this time, with nothing to do but think, and yet you haven’t come up with a single suspect?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Kaminski was totally unruffled. “I said I had no idea who killed her. It could have been anyone. I’d start with her husband.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Kaminski shrugged. “It could as easily have been him as anyone else. Carly wasn’t the only one looking elsewhere.”

  “How do you know?” Dylan asked.

  Kaminski was standing. Time was up. “That he was seeing other women? Carly told me.”

  “He has an alibi.”

  “Yeah, I know. A nurse he was shagging vowed he was at the hospital when Carly was killed.” Kaminski’s smile was bitter. “Life’s full of surprises, isn’t it?”

  Chapter Five

  Bev pulled her fingers through her hair. She was quite probably going insane. So far today, she’d burst into tears three times for no apparent reason. And now—

  God, now the TV was loud enough to split eardrums, Freya was screaming at the top of her exceptionally healthy lungs, Luke was yelling “Freya’s screaming” above the noise, and the bloody phone was ringing.

  Bev Scott, this is your life.

  She snatched at the phone. “Yes?”

  Although she hadn’t bothered to look at the display, the surprised silence on the other end told her who was calling.

  “Everything all right?” Dylan asked.

  “Bloody hell, Dylan. Does it sound all right?”

  “I’ve called at a bad time, haven’t I? You get on with whatever you were doing and I’ll call back later, okay?”

  “Good idea, Dylan. You go and put your feet up. Have a drink, watch a film, enjoy yourself. Meanwhile, I’ll deal with your family, shall I?”

  “Bev, I’m only trying to—”

  “Shut up.” She bit back on her temper. “Have a chat with Luke while I try to stop Freya screaming. Then again, I might just join her.” She held the phone at arm’s length and called to Luke. “Your dad’s on the phone.”

  Luke was smiling for the first time that day as he grabbed the phone, and Bev’s mood softened slightly. It couldn’t be easy for Luke either. As soon as she’d settled Freya and spoken to Dylan, she’d spend some quality time with him. Perhaps they could watch a DVD together.

  That was assuming she could stay awake because, right now, exhausted didn’t even hint at how she felt. Dylan’s mum had been a gem and would have been here now if Bev hadn’t sent her away until the morning, but Bev didn’t want to take advantage.

  This was no joke though. Even climbing the stairs took effort.

  When she reached Freya’s room, she was tempted to sit in the middle of the floor and howl. It wasn’t only that Freya enjoyed exercising her lungs constantly, it was the lack of—something. Wasn’t she supposed to experience a huge gut-wrenching rush of love when she saw her daughter? She felt nothing.

  She couldn’t remember how she’d felt when Luke was born, but she knew she hadn’t been this empty.

  “Okay, madam, what can we do for you?” She reached into the cot and lifted Freya out. Her baby’s face was red from screaming, but there were no pointers as to what she might want. She’d been fed and changed less than twenty minutes ago.

  Bev carried her round the room, rocking her in an instinctive manner and, gradually, the screams subsided to sobs. With the noise level bearable, Bev carried her downstairs and kept rocking her as she waited for Luke to finish talking to his dad.

  Her baby was stunningly beautiful. She had huge eyes and a thick tuft of dark hair. Perhaps if she wasn’t so noisy, so demanding, Bev would feel that overwhelming rush of love she kept waiting for.

  Luke handed over the phone, grabbed an apple and went to the relative safety of the sitting room. Bev sat at the kitchen table, baby in one hand, phone in the other. She felt more like bursting into tears than talking.

  “So what’s it like to have peace, quiet and room service?” she asked.

  “I’d rather be at home.”

  “Tell you what then, let’s swap. You come home and I’ll bugger off to Lancashire for weeks at a time.” Even as she spoke, she knew there was no point taking everything out on Dylan. Who else was there, though?

  “Bev, if you want me to come home, just say the word.”

  Really, when she stopped to think about it, all she had to do was cope with one small child. It wasn’t as if Luke made huge demands on her. He was a sensible kid, old enough to be fairly independent, and even quite helpful when he put his mind to it. All she had to do was cope with a baby. She’d done it before. All over the world, women were coping. Some were doing all sorts of amazing things at the same time. Bev was on maternity leave so all she had to think about was one small child. It wasn’t rocket science.

  “Your mum’s been,” she said, “and she’s coming round tomorrow. It’s fine.”

  “Good.”

  “So,” she said, “did you see Aleksander today? Can you prove his innocence?”

  She didn’t really care one way or the other, but even she was tired of her constant whining.

  “You’ve been talking to Mum. Her friends—friends she hasn’t seen for ages,
I might add—believe their son is innocent. Therefore, Mum believes he’s innocent. For all I know, he could have butchered dozens of people in his time.”

  “You think he might be guilty?”

  “Of course he might be.” She heard amusement in his voice. “The police thought him guilty, the jury decided he was guilty—”

  “Well, yes, but what do you think?”

  He was a long time answering. “I don’t know. I truly don’t know.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Bev was torn. Half of her wanted him at home to share the responsibility. On the other hand, she liked him better when he was working. Added to that, babies were unbelievably expensive. They needed the money.

  “I’m going to do a bit of digging around,” he said. “According to Kaminski, Carly Walsingham’s husband was having affairs and one of his women provided his alibi. I want to look into that, see what I can find out.”

  “You’ll be home at the weekend though, won’t you? It’s Easter.”

  “Of course I will. Meanwhile, make good use of my mother. She’s desperate to help, you know she is. She’d be more than happy to spend the night and—”

  “I can cope.” It was only one baby, she reminded herself.

  “I know, but you may as well make the most of her. God, there has to be some advantage to my having her for a mother.”

  Bev had to smile. She knew how much Dylan loved his mother. She also knew that the woman drove him to distraction and he longed for what he called a normal mother.

  Bev adored her mother-in-law. Yes, she still wore beads and flowers in her hair, a relic from the sixties, and she smoked marijuana like some people drank coffee, but she was fun. True, the ideas she came up with, like the camel-trekking holiday they’d survived in the summer, were a tad off the wall, but life was never boring around Vicky Scott.

  Life was an exciting adventure as far as Vicky was concerned. No way would she let one small child turn her life and her emotions upside down. Bev could learn a lot from her.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “Truly. Do what you have to do and I’ll see you at the weekend.”

  As soon as she replaced the receiver, she took her sleeping baby upstairs.

  Then she sat on the floor and burst into tears.

  Chapter Six

  Alek lay on his mattress and stared at the ceiling. The quick and no doubt cheap paint job was already failing. A crack in the shape of a V was getting bigger. Perhaps, in ten years, the ceiling would crash down on top of him.

  He didn’t have to be in his cell for another hour, but it was where he preferred to be. In an hour, at lights out, he’d have a peace of sorts. The constant talking—or, more often, shouting—would cease for a few hours and all would be as quiet as it got in this place. Meanwhile, he concentrated on blocking out the noise.

  An unread letter from Sue scowled at him from the desk. It had arrived this morning—at least one arrived every morning—but he hadn’t been in the mood to read it. He wasn’t now.

  It would be filled with the same old crap that was of no interest to him. She always started and ended her letters by telling him how much she missed him. The middle would be taken up with the minute details of her day, like 10:50 Jamie called and I spent an hour with him before taking Fido for a walk, 2:15 I nipped into town for groceries. Always, hidden among the six or so pages, would be something along the lines of Don’t worry about writing to me, I know your time’s taken up with stuff. That always made him smile. If there was one thing he did have, the only thing he had, it was time. Days stretched endlessly toward the night and sometimes, he was convinced time had stopped. It was inclination he lacked, not time.

  He received almost as many letters from his mother, but those weren’t too bad. His mother wasn’t as needy or as clingy as his wife. He could write his mother half a page about how well he was doing, and she’d be content. Not content enough to give up on him without a fight though.

  Dylan Scott was the third private investigator she’d spoken to. The first one had been a stiff, formal man who, after speaking to Alek, wrote to his parents saying that, regrettably, he felt unable to take on the case. The second hadn’t even bothered speaking to him.

  It didn’t matter. Alek couldn’t complain of being lonely because he had plenty of guilt to keep him company.

  Guilt was another reason, possibly the real reason he couldn’t bring himself to read Sue’s letter. He’d lived with shame because, no matter how hard he tried, he’d never been able to love Sue. That was why he’d been so careful. He and Carly had never enjoyed nights together or romantic meals for two so he’d never had the usual adulterer’s slip-ups to worry about, but he’d always made doubly sure there were no stray hairs on his jacket or lipstick smears on his collar. Although he’d never loved Sue, he’d cared about her enough to make sure she never knew about him and Carly.

  Having to tell her he’d been screwing his ex-wife while she’d been visiting her great-aunt was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. It would have been easier perhaps if she’d walked out on him. But no. Shock and hurt had been there for all the world to see, yet there had been no recriminations.

  Before this nightmare started, they hadn’t been worrying unduly about finances. They’d had to stretch their money and make cutbacks, though. Thanks to the recession, people were panicking about their jobs and putting any plans they’d had to add extensions or conservatories to their homes on the back burner until the economy picked up. Now, Sue would be finding it almost impossible to cope without his income. She’d go without food herself rather than let the strays starve. She had a roof over her head at the moment, but for how long?

  And still there were no recriminations. Still she loved him. Still the letters arrived.

  His parents didn’t deserve this either. They were proud people who’d worked hard all their lives. The shame of having a son forever branded a killer would be more than they should have to bear.

  The noise around him built to a crescendo. Voices were raised, heavy metal doors were slammed shut, locks were checked and double-checked. At last, a restless, uneasy quiet descended on the cells.

  Alek didn’t move. He knew from experience that, eventually, he’d drift off to sleep for a couple of hours, maybe even four or five. It was the dreams he dreaded. Some people, Sue for one, could sleep for eight hours solid without having a single dream. Alek envied her. He would love to sleep and wake up slowly feeling relaxed and refreshed. When he slept, he invariably woke bathed in sweat with his heart doing its best to leap out of his ribcage.

  He’d never been a great fan of reading or watching television, but he’d done a lot of both in Strangeways. Biographies were his reading choice and he was halfway through Kirk Douglas’s life story.

  Many people thought it wrong that prisoners had televisions in their cells. They said prison was more luxury holiday than punishment. The argument was that the punishment was being relieved of freedom and that, if men were treated like animals, they came out fighting. Alek didn’t know who was right or wrong. Nor did he know if he’d go out fighting when he’d served his life sentence.

  “And that’s another thing,” the moaning brigade would cry. “Life should mean life.”

  In Alek’s case, life meant at least twelve years. It would be long enough.

  He closed his eyes but knew sleep was a long way off. He didn’t mind. If he slept, he would dream, and the dream was always the same. He would hear Carly calling to him above the sound of running water. He’d watch that water turn red.

  Sometimes, in his dreams, the hot red water swallowed them both.

  Chapter Seven

  Early the next morning, Dylan called Dr. Neil Walsingham’s home phone. Receiving no reply, he called the hospital and was soon thanking God it wasn’t an emergency. The phone rang out for a full two minutes before Dylan gave up and redialled. Again, it rang out unanswered. He ordered himself a coffee in the hotel’s lounge, carried it to a table near
the window, and tried the number again. This time it rang out for just over a minute.

  “Dawson’s Clough General Hospital. How may I help you?”

  Dylan decided that “by answering the damn phone more quickly” wasn’t a suitable response.

  “I’d like to speak to Dr. Walsingham, please,” he said.

  “Just a minute.” Papers rustled. “He’s on duty in Accident and Emergency at the moment. I can leave a message for him if you like.”

  “Will you ask him to call me? My name’s Dylan Scott. I’m a private investigator.” He gave her his number and, because she didn’t inspire confidence, he made her read it back to him.

  “I’ll pass on the message,” she said.

  “I’d be grateful. It’s important. What time will he be off duty?”

  “Six o’clock this evening.”

  Dylan thanked her and, as he drank his coffee, he wondered how to spend time until Walsingham called.

  He still wasn’t sure what to make of Aleksander Kaminski. It was impossible to know if he was innocent or guilty, or why he was so damned unconcerned about spending years of his life locked up like an animal.