Thicker Than Water

by Sally Spencer

  There was a small table of the sort that is wheeled up to a patient’s bed in hospital, and on it were a number of mild sedatives, which, without checking, Paniatowski knew would be suitable for children.

  And there was a cot, just about large enough for the two-year-old Melanie Danbury.

  TWELVE

  Sunday, 9th October 1977

  The gulls were out in force that morning. Some, framed against a battleship-grey sky, seemed content to glide lazily on the air currents, and emitted only the occasional shriek to make the world aware of their existence. Others had landed on the quay, where, chests puffed out and necks craned forward, they strutted up and down, angrily disputing the ownership of the remains of a sandwich that one of the dock workers had thrown to them.

  Paniatowski walked quickly along the dock, the collar of her coat turned up against the cold wind blowing in from the sea. She had hardly spoken to DC Jack Crane on the drive down from Whitebridge, and even now, as they approached the prefab that served as a temporary station for the Port of Liverpool police, she did not really feel like talking.

  The problem with the evidence they had was that it was all circumstantial, she told herself. There was no difficulty in proving that Dr Lucas had been in the Danbury house on the night of the murder, nor that he had taken Melanie away with him. But proving that he had struck the blows which killed Jane Danbury was quite another matter.

  A good defence lawyer could argue convincingly that it had all been a burglary gone wrong, and however much the prosecution talked about locks and security systems, the jury might just look at weak, amiable Dr Lucas, sitting there in the dock, and find it very hard to believe that he had taken the life of another human being.

  So she needed a confession – and she was not at all sure that Lucas would confess.

  One of the gulls on the quay – a big brute, a William Danbury of a seabird – had succeeded in grabbing most of the prize, and as he flew off with the sandwich in his beak, the others screamed their curses after him.

  That could happen to me, Paniatowski thought. I could lose this one – I really could lose it!

  The walls in the biggest room of the temporary police station were covered with nautical charts, shipping schedules and tide timetables. There were two smaller rooms which led off the main one – a holding cell and an interview room. Dr Lucas had been in the former before Paniatowski and Crane arrived, but now he had been transferred to the latter, and was looking at them across the table.

  Lucas seemed remarkably calm, given the circumstances he found himself in. His hands, cupped in front of him, showed no signs of a tremble, nor did he twitch while the standard police protocol was being recited for the benefit of the tape recorder.

  Perhaps the fact that he’d acted decisively for once in his life had given him new confidence, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘Are you sure that you don’t want a lawyer present, Dr Lucas?’ she asked.

  ‘Why would I want a lawyer?’

  ‘I need you to tell me, specifically, and in your own words, that you don’t want one.’

  ‘I don’t want a lawyer. Is that good enough for you?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Where’s Melanie?’ Lucas asked.

  ‘The Liverpool Social Services Department is taking care of her for the moment,’ Paniatowski said.

  She took out her cigarettes, and offered the packet to Lucas.

  The doctor shook his head.

  ‘I’ve given up,’ he said. ‘I’ve done it for Melanie. Nobody should smoke around children.’

  He was sending her a message, Paniatowski thought. He had weighed up the probabilities, just as she had. He had realised that making a run for it had been a mistake, and now he was saying, ‘If you charge me with murder, I can beat it, and if I want custody of Melanie, I can have it!’

  She lit up her own cigarette.

  ‘Right,’ she said, ‘let’s get started. You were caught trying to bribe a crew member to smuggle you aboard a merchant ship heading for Panama, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes. So what? It’s a very minor crime, and I’m sure I’ll get away with a slap on the wrist.’

  ‘I agree with you,’ Paniatowski said. ‘It is a minor crime. However, murder and kidnapping are not.’

  ‘And are you going to charge me with murder and kidnapping?’ Lucas challenged.

  ‘Not for the moment. Just now, all I want to do is talk.’

  ‘And what if I don’t want to talk?’

  ‘Well, I suppose if you’re too frightened to talk, then you’ll just have to listen to me wittering on to Detective Constable Crane,’ Paniatowski told him.

  ‘I’m not afraid to talk,’ Lucas said. ‘What would you like to talk about, Chief Inspector Paniatowski?’

  ‘Let’s start with William Danbury. He was never really your friend at all, was he?’

  ‘Of course he was my friend.’

  ‘I don’t see how any kind of real friendship was possible between two men with such a big gap dividing them.’

  ‘What do you mean – a big gap?’

  ‘He was the great dramatic hero, striding across the centre of the stage of life, with everyone’s eyes on him. And you followed in his wake – no more than the humble spear carrier. And you resented it. God, you resented it! But you did it anyway – because without William, you wouldn’t have been on the stage at all.’

  ‘I did not feel inferior to William Danbury,’ Lucas said.

  ‘Of course you did. You were bound to. He had everything, and you had nothing.’

  ‘And perhaps the main reason I did not feel inferior to him was that I was not ambivalent about my sexuality.’

  ‘And he was? Is that what you’re trying to tell me now?’

  ‘Was? He still is! Haven’t you noticed what a boyish figure Gretchen Müller has? And she wasn’t his first.’

  ‘His first what?’

  ‘His first mistress. She’s merely the latest in a long line – and they all looked like her. I can give you some of their names, if you like, so you can judge for yourself.’

  Paniatowski turned to Crane.

  ‘Do you fancy Gretchen Müller, DC Crane?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, ma’am, I do.’

  ‘Just a little? Or quite a lot?’

  ‘Quite a lot.’

  ‘And are you homosexual, DC Crane?’

  ‘No, ma’am. Definitely not.’

  ‘We’re not convinced,’ Paniatowski said to Lucas. ‘Neither of us can really accept this picture of William Danbury that you’re trying to foist onto us.’

  ‘William is a man born out of his time,’ Lucas said, sounding more agitated now. ‘He should have been an ancient Greek. They married only because they wanted children. But women were always regarded as inferior creatures – scarcely even human. For love, they chose boys. And for company, they chose men – men to drink with, and wrestle naked with.’

  ‘I think what Dr Lucas is trying to tell us is that he had an affair with William Danbury,’ Paniatowski said to Crane.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ Lucas protested. ‘Don’t you understand anything of what I’ve just said? I’m a perfectly normal heterosexual. I would have found the whole idea of an affair with William totally repulsive.’

  ‘Maybe, but I’m sure you would have agreed to it if that had been what William wanted. You’d have been too weak to refuse,’ Paniatowski taunted. ‘If he’d asked you to, you’d have lain face down on the bed, gagging yourself with the pillow, and let him do whatever he wanted to you.’

  ‘He never would have asked me,’ Lucas said. ‘He would never have asked any man, because he’d have been too afraid that that brute of a father of his might find out and want nothing more to do with him. But he still has the yearning. Look at the charities he’s involved in. Virtually all of them deal with young men.’

  ‘So you’re telling me that because you know about this weakness of his, you feel as superior to him as he must feel to you, and that’s how yo
u make the friendship work?’

  ‘Isn’t that how all friendships work?’ Lucas asked. ‘Could you ever have a real friendship if there wasn’t some way in which you were top dog?’

  ‘I’m not buying any of this “I feel superior” shit!’ Paniatowski said. ‘You crap yourself at even the thought of displeasing William. Take the night of the murder, for example. Gretchen asked you to ring William at the Ribble Valley Hotel. You didn’t want to do it. You knew it could get you into trouble. But you did it anyway – because you were afraid of what William might do to you if you didn’t warn him.’

  ‘That’s not why I did it. I did it because …’

  Lucas suddenly clamped his mouth closed.

  ‘Because?’ Paniatowski prodded.

  ‘… because he was my friend.’

  ‘You did it because you knew he’d react exactly in the way he did react. You wanted us to make him our prime suspect, not because you thought the charge would stick – you knew it wouldn’t – but because it would stop the focus of the investigation coming anywhere near you. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘No comment.’

  ‘Tell me about Jane,’ Paniatowski suggested.

  ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘I can understand why she agreed to sleep with you – she was like a frightened, wounded animal, and she would have slept with anyone who offered her comfort. But why did you want to sleep with her? Was it to get revenge on William – even though you knew you’d never have the balls to let him know you were taking that revenge?’

  ‘I had no need to take revenge.’

  ‘Then why?’

  ‘I loved her.’

  ‘Then why kill her? And why do it in such a vicious manner? Why crush her skull to a pulp?’

  ‘I did not kill Jane.’

  ‘I think you did.’

  ‘Then prove it.’

  She couldn’t prove it conclusively, not without hard evidence – and he knew that as well as she did.

  ‘You don’t deny that you were in the Danbury house on the night she died, do you?’ she asked.

  ‘How could I?’

  Indeed, how could he? That, at least, was easy to prove.

  ‘How did you get in? Did Jane let you in?’

  A smile crossed Lucas’ face, and then was gone. He thought he was back in control again – and perhaps he was.

  ‘How could Jane have let me in?’ he asked. ‘She was already dead when I arrived.’

  ‘So how did you get in?’

  ‘Jane had a key made for me.’

  ‘Can you show me the key?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘After the murder, I threw it into the canal.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think? It had nothing to do with Jane’s murder, but I knew that if you found it, you’d make it seem as if it had.’

  There’d been no key, of course. Jane had let him into the house herself. And possibly the prosecution could make something out of that – could point out to the jury that such specialist keys were numbered, and difficult to duplicate. But then the defence would produce four or five locksmiths who would testify that they could easily have replicated it, and the jury would be so confused that the point would be lost.

  ‘So tell me what happened that night,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘William was away and it was Gretchen’s day off, so Jane had asked me to come up to the house. There was always a chance that William would turn up unexpectedly, of course, but even if he did, there was no problem, because I had the perfect excuse for being there.’

  ‘You were the family doctor.’

  ‘I was the family doctor. The gate was locked, and I undid it with the key I’ve since thrown away, but the main door to the house was wide open, as if someone had left in such a hurry that they’d forgotten to close it.’

  He was already laying the ground for the burglar theory, Paniatowski thought.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Jane was lying on the rug – dead.’

  ‘Did you touch her?’

  He had only to say no, and she’d got him – because if he hadn’t touched her, how had the blood got on Melanie’s pillow?

  ‘Yes, I touched her,’ Lucas said. ‘I knelt down beside her, and I touched her head.’

  ‘Why did you do that when, by your own admission, she was obviously dead?’

  ‘I don’t know. It was instinctive. Maybe it was because I loved her.’

  Oh, he was good, Paniatowski thought – he was very good.

  ‘And then you went upstairs, lifted Melanie from her bed, and took her back to your house?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘It was for her own protection. I knew that once your investigation really got underway, William would learn that he was not Melanie’s real father, and I was frightened that when he did, he might hurt her.’

  It was all sounding so plausible, Paniatowski thought, and she could almost see the jury nodding in agreement with him as he gave his evidence.

  She decided she was going to have to go for his weak spot – his fragile sense of his own superiority. It was risky, and if she blew it this time she would never get another chance, but there really was no other way.

  ‘You know what the people who know you will say when all this comes out in the newspapers, don’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t care what anybody will say – especially the people I know.’

  He had to be lying, she thought.

  But what if he wasn’t lying? What if his ego was now so inflated that he really didn’t care what other people thought?

  ‘They’ll say – and I think I’ll agree with them – that you did it for William. When they learn that it was Jane who actually controlled the purse strings, and that she was thinking of divorcing William because of his affair with Gretchen …’

  ‘She wasn’t thinking of divorcing him.’

  ‘… they’ll say that William put you up to it. Remember how the two of them were at school, they’ll say. Remember how Roger followed William round like a faithful dog.’

  ‘They’ll never say that,’ Lucas protested.

  But the look on his face suggested that he thought they would.

  ‘They’ll say, “Did you know that Roger and William were supposed to have gone to bed together? I don’t know whether it’s true or not – but if it is true, you know which one will have been on top, don’t you?”’

  ‘They won’t say that, they won’t say that, they won’t say that …’ Lucas chanted, as if he was trying to hypnotise himself.

  ‘And when William asked Roger to kill his wife …’ Paniatowski said, raising her voice in order to penetrate his wail of denial, ‘… when William asked Roger to kill his wife, Roger agreed immediately – even though he was supposed to be in love with her – because William still had the power over him.’

  ‘That’s not why I killed her!’ Lucas screamed.

  ‘What was that you just said?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘That’s not why I killed her,’ Lucas repeated, more softly this time.

  ‘So why did you kill her?’

  Lucas isn’t listening. More than just not listening, he isn’t really there in that police station, with those officers, any more. He has travelled back in both time and distance, and now he is in the Danburys’ living room, facing Jane across an expensive Persian rug.

  ‘I don’t want you to go to Canada,’ he says.

  ‘And do you think I want to go?’ Jane asks.

  ‘If you don’t want to go, why are you going?’

  Jane shrugs helplessly. ‘It’s what William wants – and William always gets his own way in the end.’

  ‘But he doesn’t have to – not this time. You can say that you refuse to go, and move in with me.’

  ‘The children …’

  ‘You’ll get custody of them, and I’ll raise all of them as if they were my
own. I promise you that.’

  She laughs. ‘That’s easy for you to say here and now, with William away in Newcastle, but you’d never go through with it if he was here. You’re as frightened of him as I am.’

  ‘I’m not,’ he says – and wishes he sounded more convincing.

  ‘Besides, I need him,’ Jane says. ‘I couldn’t imagine life without him.’

  ‘But that’s just part of the syndrome,’ he tells her. ‘Battered wives always think they can’t manage without their husbands – but once they’ve escaped the man’s clutches, they see things as they really are.’ He pauses. ‘You say you still need him. Do you still love him, too?’

  ‘I think so.’

  He knows he shouldn’t ask the next question, but he asks it anyway. ‘And how do you feel about me?’

  ‘I’m fond of you,’ she says. ‘You’re very sweet and very kind.’

  ‘But you don’t love me?’

  ‘I know that’s what you want, and I’ve tried to love you, Roger, I really have, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with me?’ he says, knowing that this is another question he should never have asked.

  He can see her searching for the right words – the words he will find acceptable. And then he sees her decide it is a hopeless task, and give up.

  ‘You’re so weak, Roger.’

  It feels as if she has driven a burning hot spear through his heart.

  ‘And what is it that makes me weak?’ he asks. ‘Is it the fact that I don’t knock you around like he does?’

  She shrugs helplessly.

  ‘No, it’s just … it’s just that you are.’

  ‘I won’t allow William to take Melanie to Canada,’ he says, drawing what he thinks of as his line in the sand.

  ‘How will you stop him?’ she asks. ‘By telling him she’s your daughter, and not his? You know you’d never be brave enough to do that.’

  She turns her back on him.

  Why?

  Is she crying?

  Or is she merely showing her contempt for him?

  His mind takes another leap backwards, and though he is still in the Danburys’ living room, he is also back in the school playground.