by Jo Bannister
Her voice was low, controlled. ‘If this is about Detective Sergeant Donovan—’
‘It’s not,’ Liz interrupted shortly. ‘It’s about your client, Mikey Dickens.’
Jade stared at her. ‘What’s happened to him now?’
‘Nothing more. I’m still trying to work out what happened to him on Friday night. Who he went to Cornmarket to meet. We think it may have been a woman. When you sent him home you said you’d see him later.’
The solicitor had been present at too many police interviews to be intimidated by this one. She considered before answering. ‘That’s right. I called at his house on my way home after work. About six o’clock. What passed between us is, of course, privileged information.’
‘Then what did you do?’
‘I told you: I went home.’
‘Did you go out again later?’
Jade was regarding her with cool disdain. ‘You realize, Inspector Graham, that if I decline to answer your questions you have no grounds on which to proceed?’
‘Perhaps not; but I’d have every reason to wonder why. What does a respectable family solicitor get up to on a Friday night that she can’t talk about even to a police officer investigating an attempted murder?’
The smile that tilted the blood-red lips didn’t reach the cat’s eyes. ‘In fact, nothing at all. I was home all evening.’
‘Can anyone confirm that?’
‘I’m afraid not. I was alone. My last relationship had just ended; or hadn’t you heard?’
Liz hung on to her patience. ‘I’d heard. When Donovan left you he came to me to explain what had happened. He was going to resign. We talked him out of it.’
‘Resign?’ Jade sounded taken aback, as if she hadn’t anticipated that. ‘Because—?’
‘Because you passed on things he had no business telling you. You said he was naive, and you were right. But he deserved better than that. You hurt him.’
‘I hurt him?’ The green eyes flashed. ‘He called me a whore!’
Liz refrained from commenting. ‘So you were angry with him. Angry enough to want to hurt him some more?’
Jade wasn’t sure now what she was being accused of. Her gaze grew wary. ‘Angry, yes. Sufficiently angry to do something about it? – no. I thought I’d done enough.’
So did Liz. But she also thought the woman was probably telling the truth. If she’d had anything much to hide she’d have fallen back on her rights before now; after all, she knew them inside out. ‘So you know nothing about the attack on Mikey or the subsequent attempt to implicate Detective Sergeant Donovan?’
Jade shook her head. Her voice was low. ‘A frame. Is that how you’re describing it?’
‘You mean, you think he did it?’ Liz found herself fighting a thoroughly unprofessional desire to slap the other woman’s face.
‘You think you mattered to him so much that losing you drove him over the edge? Don’t flatter yourself!’
‘You didn’t see his face.’
Liz was staggered by her impertinence. ‘Ms Holloway, I have worked with Donovan for three years now. I’ve seen him angry, and scared, and desperate. I’ve seen him in pain; I’ve seen him bleed. Don’t presume to tell me I don’t know what he’s capable of.’
The younger woman dipped her gaze in what might have been an apology. ‘All right. If you say it isn’t possible I’ll believe you. Gladly: I’ve been worried that he might really have done it, and he might have done it at least in part because of me. I’d much sooner think that I have an inflated idea of what our relationship meant to him.’
As she talked Liz began to understand what it was about Jade Holloway that Donovan had responded to. She was a good-looking woman, but that was the smaller part of it. And there was the fact that she was a biker. But there was also a directness about her that would appeal to a man who put a premium on honesty. He’d thought she was someone who’d always be straight with him. Her deception had been devastating.
‘Look,’ said Jade, ‘if there’s any way I can help I’d like to. For Mikey’s sake, and for Donovan’s. We were angry with one another, but I don’t want to see him take the rap for something he didn’t do. If he isn’t to blame for what happened to Mikey I hope you’ll prove it. You say you’re looking for a woman. You think Mikey was attacked by a woman?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Liz guardedly. ‘It’s probably more likely that the woman was the assailant’s accomplice. But we have a small sized fingerprint, and it occurred to me …’ She petered out, a little embarrassed. Put into words it sounded pretty silly.
Jade smiled again. This time there was some warmth in it. ‘I understand. But it isn’t mine, and I can prove it. Why don’t I stop by Queen’s Street and give you a set of my prints? For elimination purposes.’
Liz nodded a gracious acceptance. ‘I’d appreciate it. I appreciate your co-operation.’
‘Inspector,’ said the other woman, ‘I realize I’m not Flavour of the Month at Queen’s Street right now. I’m sorry about that. What I did was probably a misjudgement. I’d quite like the chance to tell Donovan that in person, but if he isn’t there when I call – or if he’s too busy to see me – I’d be glad if you’d tell him for me.’
Liz stared at her. But of course there was no way Jade could know what was going on. Roly might need her to know afterwards but not in advance. ‘Ms Holloway, Donovan’s missing. We’ve found his bike, we can’t find him. There’s a possibility – I wouldn’t put it any higher than that – that the Dickenses have got him.’
She watched comprehension grow in the cat-green eyes, and with it a concern Jade couldn’t possibly have feigned. Her voice cracked with fear. ‘You have to find him. They’ll crucify him!’
‘We’re doing our best,’ said Liz. ‘We’ve got people looking for him and for Roly. Until one of them’s spotted there’s not much more we can do. Which is why I thought I’d come here and annoy you – to take my mind off …’ She didn’t finish. ‘Anyway, thanks for your help. It was always a bit imaginative, I just felt I had to be sure before binning it. It made a certain amount of sense. It was a girl’s print on the weapon; if the passenger in Mikey’s car was also a girl, obviously she knows everything that happened. It was mostly-wishful thinking that she might be someone we already know about.’
Jade’s eyes were still full of the image of Donovan in Roly’s hands. She shook her head, partly to clear it. ‘But Inspector, there wasn’t—’ She stopped.
It didn’t matter. If she’d finished the sentence she couldn’t have made it any clearer. Liz’s eyes opened wide. ‘There wasn’t anyone in the van with Mikey?’
It had been a mistake on the solicitor’s part; not an important one, because the chances of Mikey needing that defence again were remote, but still, a legal representative who lets vital secrets slip while conversing with the police is about as much use as … well, as a detective who blabs to his suspect’s brief. Colour rose through Jade’s ivory cheeks. ‘Shit!’
Then, collecting herself: ‘I didn’t say that, Inspector. If you want to put words in my mouth feel free, but don’t expect me to confirm that that was in fact what I was about to say.’
But there was no doubt in Liz’s mind. Jade Holloway knew – of course she did – that that plank of Mikey’s defence was rotten, and shock had thrown her off her guard just long enough to admit it. There was no passenger. There was no partner who might have required Mikey’s silence.
If there was no passenger, why did Mrs Taylor say there was?
Mrs Taylor was back at school now. Liz headed back to her car; but before she got there another brass plate on the wall caught her eye. Birdsall, Taylor and Nesbitt, Accountants. Perhaps Clifford Taylor could cast some light on the mystery of the crime victim who lied to assist the perpetrator.
Taylor was much as Liz remembered him, a pleasant man, quiet of manner and open of countenance. He didn’t react defensively, demanding she explain herself – which was just as well because she couldn’t
have done.
He took her to his office, but this wasn’t a social call and he didn’t waste time on small-talk. They’d been on first-name terms at the fête but this was a different sort of occasion. ‘How can I help you, Inspector Graham?’
‘To be honest, Mr Taylor, I’m not sure you can. But I’m a little worried about your wife. You know she was involved in a car crash ten days ago?’ Taylor nodded, his eyes attentive. ‘The car was a write-off. Mrs Taylor seemed to come out of it all right, but I’ve seen her a couple of times since and she still seems badly shaken up. And some of the things she’s telling us – well, don’t seem a very accurate representation of what happened. I suppose what I’m asking is, how reliable a witness should we consider her? Is she someone who’d be so upset by an incident like this that she could produce a sort of false memory of it?’ She gave a little wry grin. ‘Answer in two hundred words or less, using one side of the paper only.’
He returned her smile, but gave her question several moments’ thought before responding. ‘You know that we’re separated.’
‘You still know her better than anyone else.’
‘I expect so. Pat isn’t the biggest extrovert in the world: we were together almost twenty years and I still wouldn’t claim to know everything about her. But it doesn’t surprise me if she’s – gone off the rails a bit. I don’t mean to be unkind, but she tends to look for conspiracies. She always has to blame someone. Is that what she’s doing – trying to blame someone who doesn’t deserve it?’
He could hardly have got closer if he’d been trawling around inside her head. ‘It’s possible. And that would make sense to you?’
Taylor shrugged. He was a big squarish man, with freckles and sandy hair that had once been red and would soon be grey. ‘It was something like that we split up over. She was dissatisfied with her life. That had to be someone’s fault too: in this case, mine.’
‘Have you spoken to her since the accident?’
‘I haven’t seen her since I moved out before Christmas. That’s not my choice: she put me out of her life and doesn’t want me back in.’ He flushed. ‘I’m sorry, that sounded spiteful. I suppose I’m trying to explain why I’ve stayed away. It’s not that I don’t care.’
‘I understand that. I don’t mean to suggest you should be doing more for her: I was worried that maybe I should.’ That was true, though not the whole truth. Liz took a deep breath. ‘This really will sound impertinent, but it just might be relevant so – can I ask what it was that split you up?’
Taylor couldn’t imagine what bearing that might have on investigating a car accident, but he was a middle-aged middle-class professional, it didn’t occur to him to refuse to answer a police officer’s question.
‘She wanted a baby,’ he said. ‘Desperately. She’s thirty-eight now, which means the chances are fading fast anyway. We went to a fertility clinic for ten years and never even got close. I said it was time to stop, she didn’t want to. She said it could still happen; I felt we were throwing good money after bad. We had two good salaries coming in, and a big part of it was going straight to the Feyd Clinic. I didn’t begrudge it when there still seemed to be some hope. I came to begrudge it when we had nothing to show for it after ten years. We argued, we both dug our heels in and she told me to leave. By then I was glad to go. I couldn’t take the recrimination any longer. He met Liz’s gaze a shade defiantly. ‘Does that tell you what you need to know?’
In fact it told her little that was new. Shapiro said those were the most useful interviews: when you were asking questions to which you already had the answers. They added little to your knowledge but increased your understanding enormously.
‘I’m grateful for your frankness,’ she said. ‘We’re having problems with several aspects of the case and Mrs Taylor’s attitude is one. This helps. It’s the double grieving thing, isn’t it, where somebody copes magnificently with a death in the family only to fall apart six months later when the corgi gets run over. I wonder if that’s what happened to Pat. She lost her marriage, and her last hope of a longed-for baby; when she lost the car as well it was the last straw. She isn’t this upset by the crash: she’s dealing with ten years of disappointment.’
‘Is that my fault?’ It wasn’t a challenge: he genuinely wanted her opinion.
‘Of course not,’ Liz said firmly. ‘Sooner or later she was going to have to face it. Time, tide and a woman’s body-clock wait for no man.’
‘She was so – angry.’
‘She was after the crash,’ nodded Liz. ‘That was what bothered me. Most people who walk away from a bad accident are euphoric, amazed at their own survival. But Mrs Taylor wanted to lay the blame. She wouldn’t let me call it an accident. She was even angry with my sergeant, who was first on the scene: for causing the accident, for leaving her while he helped the other driver, who knows? Of course, it makes more sense if she was angry before the crash. She probably thought that one man running her off the road and another leaving her upside down was just par for the course.’ She stopped abruptly then, afraid that she might have offended him. ‘I’m sorry…’
Taylor smiled wryly. ‘You’re right, I don’t think she has much of an opinion of men just now. That’s how she is: she takes things personally, cares too much. If she’d been able to keep a sense of proportion I think we’d have been all right. But it mattered too much to her, and it drove out all the things that mattered less. Like being happy together.’
There wasn’t much more they could say. Either Liz asked now the question no one else could answer or she left with it unasked. She was a professional: she’d asked all sorts of people all sorts of questions, often at the worst possible times. She’d learned the knack of distancing herself from the hurt it not infrequently caused.
‘Mr Taylor, this is going to sound dreadful. But we’ve been discussing how your wife feels, and why she feels that way, and I will understand if it’s led her to do something that would normally be considered irresponsible. What I need to know is whether her anger has a vindictive side? Can you see her doing something – unkind, let’s say, and unfair – to avenge herself on someone she believed had harmed her?’
He didn’t answer right away. Liz saw reluctance in his eyes but also recognition. Finally he sighed. ‘Yes.’
Liz breathed steadily for a moment. ‘I think so too.’
‘What do you think she’s done?’
‘Oh, nothing too awful. I think she lied about how many people were in the van that hit her, and I think she did it to make trouble for my sergeant. His account of what happened hinged on the driver being the only occupant of the van. But Mrs Taylor said she saw two faces. It undermined DS Donovan’s credibility; it was part of why he was taken off the case. We believed Mrs Taylor because we thought she had no reason to lie. But maybe she had after all. She thought Donovan let her down. Maybe in her current state of mind that seemed reason enough.’
Chapter Two
Shapiro went alone into The Jubilee. He gave a little thought first to whether a show of force or an appeal for reason was most likely to succeed, decided that he’d lose more than he stood to gain by throwing his weight around. If the moment came when he thought Donovan’s safety required him to search every room, cellar and outhouse in the six streets, somehow he’d find the manpower and the authority to do it. But he judged that moment had not yet come. If this could be caught at the silly-buggers stage, before Donovan or anyone else got hurt and while any charges could be kept to the minimum, the ill-feeling afterwards would be less of a problem.
He didn’t expect Roly to be at home, and he wasn’t. Thelma answered the door. Neither of them wanted to hold this conversation on the step: she asked him inside.
He couldn’t be sure how much she knew: probably some of it but not all. She knew about the vigilantes at the wharf last night. She knew, and seemed relieved, that they hadn’t got what they went for. She didn’t seem to know until Shapiro told her that they might have got it this morning.
Thelma didn’t insult his intelligence by asking what this had to do with her. She said, ‘Roly hasn’t been home for twenty-four hours.’
Shapiro nodded slowly. ‘So far as you know, would he have been at the hospital around nine this morning?’
‘So far as I know, he’s been there for the last four days, except for a few hours here and there. He hasn’t slept at home since it happened.’
‘I’ve had people looking,’ said Shapiro. ‘He doesn’t seem to be there now.’
Thelma Dickens had used up all the emotion she could muster. Now she seemed drained, utterly weary, too exhausted to worry any more about either her grandson or her son. ‘That’s your answer, then.’
‘You think he’d do that? Kidnap a police officer?’
The thin shoulders shrugged inside her cardigan. ‘Mr Shapiro, nobody knows for sure what somebody else is capable of. If you’d asked me a month ago if Roly would do GBH on a policeman I’d have thought you’d been drinking. If I’d asked you a month ago if your sergeant would beat the living daylights out of a nineteen-year-old boy you’d have thought the same about me.
‘In the normal way of things it’s not Roly’s style. He may not be Citizen of the Year material, but he’s not a fool. But now his youngest son’s lying in the hospital and the chances are he’ll only leave it in a box. And that wasn’t an accident, or even something that got out of hand. It was deliberate – intentional. Somebody meant to beat Mikey to death.
‘And the only name anybody’s come up with so far is Mr Donovan’s. Mrs Graham said she didn’t think he’d done it, and unless you’ve found out who actually did it that’s about as far as you can go too. We started off by believing her. But things have happened since to make us wonder. Can you tell me they haven’t made you wonder too?’
