by Oliver Tidy
‘And now we’ve got the names of your confederates from the day Bernie died. Thanks for those, by the way. And when we’ve had forensics take your fancy new tractor apart I’ll bet all of Lombard Street to a China orange we’ll find evidence that Bernie has been inside. Who knows, we might even find something else from that day that won’t look too good for you.’
Romney let it hang for a few seconds before saying. ‘It’s clear to me what happened. Someone tipped you the nod that we were in talking to Bernie so soon after you must have handed over the cash. You panicked that old Bernie might have been got at by us, that we might have put the wind up him and made him see the error of his ways. So you got yourself around there pretty sharpish to check up on him and your investment, didn’t you? You invited Bernie for a drive, ended up back at his place with a few well-chosen threats and he had the mother and father of all heart attacks and expired in front of you.’
Romney sat back suddenly and creased his features in puzzlement at something he wanted Billy to believe had only just occurred to him. ‘You said you knew how Bernie had died. If you were there when he passed away that might make you culpable in some way. Maybe you killed him. Maybe your threats took a physical and violent turn. It baffled our pathologist how Bernie could have set himself alight after he died. Well now it all makes perfect sense. Enough for a case anyway and what with the nasty detail of that messing with justice, I wouldn’t fancy your chances. Everyone’s luck runs out sometime, Billy.
‘So what say I arrest you now on a perversion charge? That’ll give us time to round up your mates and give them a good grilling. And when forensics have had another good hard look at the samples we got from the scene and then your motor... well, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if one of your chums folds.’ Romney smiled widely. As Billy was being led away for charging and detention, Romney said, ‘You want to hear something funny, Billy. Bernie told my DC he was adamant he’d made a mistake with his original statement and he was going to speak up for your old man, tell everyone he’d got it wrong. You had him in the bag, Billy. You didn’t have to go roughing him up. He probably told you the same thing, but you didn’t believe him, did you? Your old man won’t be getting out now. You are probably responsible for the death of the one person that could have got your old man out. But the funny thing is we know your old man didn’t kill Stafford.’ Billy looked like he couldn’t believe his ears. ‘You want to know who did? Bernie Stark. After Jimmy walked away from his little fight with Stafford, Bernie, who owed Stafford for a slight, crossed the road and kicked him in the head while he was getting to his feet. That’s why Bernie was so eager to grass your dad up in the first place. Course, with Bernie dead there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it now. Sorry. On the plus side, you might still get to see more of your dad – only you’ll both be behind bars.’
‘Credit where credit’s due, Tom,’ said Superintendent Vine, when Billy Savage had been led away. ‘An impressive performance. Why didn’t you let me know you had recovered money from Bernie Stark’s home?’
‘We didn’t, ma’am,’ said Romney.
‘But... I don’t understand.’
‘I instructed DS Marsh to rustle up some big notes from anyone who had them, bundle them up with folded paper and bring them in.’
‘You mean you never found any money at Bernie Stark’s?’
‘Not yet. But then we weren’t looking for any, were we? I should have thought about it when I was told by my source. I’ll get a search warrant. I’ll bet a month’s pay it’s there somewhere. Bernie wasn’t the sort to have put it in a bank.’
***
24
Mrs Allen’s legal advice had arrived by the time Romney had finished with Billy Savage. He insisted on a coffee and a cigarette before going in for round two. Marsh left him to it while she went in search of three constables, a sergeant and a uniformed inspector to return their money.
Grimes was given the job of rustling up the necessary paperwork and to go and find Bernie’s stash of ill-gotten gains.
Romney and Marsh agreed to meet up in fifteen minutes and, as Romney put it, take their seats for Mrs Allen’s worming. Buoyed by the adrenalin of his recent performance and subsequent success, he seemed to be positively relishing the next bout. ‘One down, one to go,’ he said, as he headed for the drinks machine.
Sandra Allen’s legal counsel looked every inch the self-important prick Romney was expecting when he learned of his double-barrelled name – expensive clothes, expensive shoes, expensive haircut, expensive voice. Unsurprisingly, Romney took an instant dislike to him.
Sandra Allen looked like she’d lost weight since Romney had last seen her only a few hours ago. Her cheeks had sunken and drooped, like something wax kept too close to the fire. Her eyes had a haunted, fearful emptiness as though she was finally coming to terms with her predicament. Her pupils were widely dilated. If Romney hadn’t known better he would have thought she was on something.
With the necessary preliminaries out of the way, Romney got proceedings moving with a hopeful shot, ‘You understand the charges against you, Mrs Allen.’
‘My client does,’ answered the lawyer.
‘And how do you plead, Mrs Allen?’ said Romney, not looking once at the legal man.
‘My client pleads not guilty, of course.’
Romney made a disappointed face, met the eye of the lawyer and said, ‘Then your client had better start convincing me of her innocence.’
‘On the contrary, Inspector,’ said the lawyer. ‘It is the police who have to convince a court that my client is guilty.’
‘Let’s do that then. Allow me to cut a long story short and tell you what evidence we have pointing to your client’s involvement in the deaths of both Stephanie Lather and her sister Rachael Sparrow. How would that be?’
The lawyer indicated with a slow nod and an easy smile that that would be a fine place to start.
‘In chronological order then. We have your client claiming that the woman lying dead in Stephanie Lather’s hotel room was Stephanie when she’d already been told by a hotel messenger that Stephanie had left the hotel. The dead woman, Rachael Sparrow, was found to be covered in dog hairs that are a perfect match with your client’s recently-deceased dog. Your client claims that she never met Rachael Sparrow, let alone had her in her hotel room where the dog was confined, and that also the dog never set paw in Stephanie Lather’s rooms. So how did Rachael’s clothes come to be covered in the dog’s hair? We have a dead dog and a dead body, both of whom had dosages of your client’s brand of Temazepam in their systems, fatally so for the dog. How could it have opened up the childproof cap to get the pills out to consume them? I’ll explain more on the relevance of that in a moment. The rather rancid icing on this unpalatable cake is that Rachael Sparrow’s blood has been found in the room your client occupied at the Dover Marina Hotel. How could that possibly have got there unless Rachael had been struck down in that room?’
The lawyer maintained his impression of patience, although with the news of Rachael Sparrow’s blood being found in his client’s room his brow furrowed slightly.
Everyone looked at Sandra Allen, but she remained taciturn and preoccupied.
‘Why did you lie about not knowing Steph had left the hotel?’ said Romney. ‘Why encourage everyone to believe that it was Stephanie on the floor? Why didn’t you say something about the note from the porter?’
For reply, Mrs Allen knitted her eyebrows and gave a good impression of deep thought. Then she said, ‘What note?’
‘You’re saying that you didn’t receive a note written by Stephanie saying she’d left the hotel?’
‘Yes. I’m saying I didn’t receive one.’
Romney didn’t look like he believed her but was glad she was painting herself into a corner. ‘You want to hear what I think happened?’ Again the lawyer nodded silently. ‘Rachael, Stephanie’s sister, arrived late to the event because of her husband’s work commitments. This was to be a re
union. She was very excited at the prospect.
‘She’d missed all the fun and went upstairs in search of her sister. She probably wouldn’t have been in a great mood. It’s my belief that you encountered Rachael in the corridor, banging on Steph’s door, perhaps. You knew Stephanie had gone. You identified yourself and Rachael revealed that Stephanie had confided in her that she knew you were in love with her.’ Romney paused to glance at Sandra Allen for a reaction. Mrs Allen had coloured and her eyes were tearful. ‘Perhaps Rachael made fun of you, Mrs Allen. There was a scene that escalated into something physical and violent. Perhaps there was some pushing and shoving. Rachael fell and hit her head. Is that what happened, Mrs Allen?’ Mrs Allen hung her head and her tears coursed freely down her cheeks. Encouraged, Romney continued, albeit with a degree of compassion evident in his tone. ‘When you saw what you’d done, you panicked and, knowing Stephanie’s room was empty, you dragged Rachael’s body along there and set about making it look like Stephanie was in fact the guilty party.’
‘Why would my client do that, Inspector?’ interjected the lawyer.
‘Because she felt betrayed and humiliated by Stephanie. Her resentment towards Stephanie for betraying her feelings and making fun of her with her sister led her to do something silly. After that I believe your client’s actions took on a whole new and darker context. I believe she immediately began constructing a way out of the mess. I believe that your client beat the skull of Rachael Sparrow to a pulp with the first thing that came to hand to make it look like a crime of passion, something that might point the finger at Stephanie. Then after dosing up her shih-tzu on sleeping pills to subdue it – something that was going to prove fatal for the mutt – she slipped out of the hotel under cover of darkness, visited Stephanie at her London home, subdued Stephanie in the same way by slipping Temazepam into her drink and when she was unconscious drowned her in the bath. I believe your client then arranged Stephanie’s fingerprints to be all over the ornament that had been used to cave in Rachael’s skull, tidied up after herself and drove herself back to her room at the hotel.’
Again there was a long drawn out moment of silence as everyone awaited the reaction of Sandra Allen.
‘My, my, Inspector,’ she said finally. ‘What a truly vivid imagination you have. Have you ever thought about writing a detective novel? Or maybe you just read too many of them.’
Inwardly disappointed but outwardly unperturbed, Romney said, ‘So tell me your version, Mrs Allen.’
‘After we left the conference hall, Stephanie and I returned upstairs. Stephanie went to her room. I went to mine. I took Chloe out for some exercise. When I came back I tapped on her door, but there was no answer. I went to my room. I worked and waited for her. Later I went back to her room. I got no answer. I became worried and called the manager. You know what happened after that.’
‘Apart from the dead woman’s blood in your room and your dog’s hair all over her clothing, there is one other particular detail that bothers me a lot, Mrs Allen,’ said Romney with the air of a man holding a trump card.
‘What is that?’ she said.
‘The Temazepam. You said you gave some to Stephanie because she was having trouble sleeping.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Chloe died as a direct result of an overdose of the exact same drug.’
‘So?’
‘So, you would agree with us that Chloe wasn’t administering these to herself. Were you in the habit of giving them to your dog?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘We’ve seen how your Temazepam is supplied to you. You remember when we came to your home you provided us with some for analysis.’
‘What are you driving at, Inspector?’ said the lawyer.
‘Your client’s Temazepam comes in bottles with childproof caps. How would the dog have been able to get access to the drug if Mrs Allen was not giving it to her? It couldn’t. So why would your client give sleeping pills to the dog?’ Mrs Allen opened her mouth to speak and Romney held up his hand, something he’d picked up from his new senior officer. ‘We know why. By your own admission, Chloe could not be left alone for long periods of time without making a fuss. And when you slipped out of the hotel under cover of darkness to drive up to Stephanie’s, kill her and implicate her in the death of her sister, you had to do something to stop Chloe making the kind of fuss that would attract the attention of the hotel. They’d have seen that you weren’t there, wouldn’t they? You couldn’t take the dog with you so you drugged it. Only the dose proved lethal for the poor beast.’
‘Do you have evidence that my client did indeed leave her room in the night, Inspector?’ said the lawyer.
‘Not yet. But we’re looking. I am hopeful. For now I’m interested to know what your client has to say about the Temazepam.’ Romney sat back and folded his arms across his chest.
‘It’s quite simple, Inspector,’ said Mrs Allen. ‘I don’t take my full bottle of Temazepam with me when I stay away overnight somewhere. I wrap a couple of tablets in kitchen towel and put them in my toiletries bag. Chloe got bored. When she became bored, like most dogs, she became mischievous. She found my toiletries bag and she ate them. When I went into the bathroom in the morning my things were everywhere: cosmetics and... things.’
While Mrs Allen had given Romney a wobble by providing a plausible reason for how the dog came by the sleeping pills, she was unable to offer any explanation at all for the rather more incriminating factors of how Rachael Sparrow’s clothes came to be covered in Chloe’s hair and how Rachael Sparrow’s blood had found its way into the carpet.
***
25
It was feeling like a long day. Once they were out of the interrogation environment Romney experienced the not unfamiliar wave of mental and physical exhaustion wash over him. It was often that way for him – the low after his high. The adrenalin ebbed to leave his system craving narcotics to fill the void.
For Romney there was nothing as challenging as pitting his wits against another devious mind, win, lose or draw in the game of cops and killers.
He’d tried other things over the years but they had all amounted to poor imitations, weak substitutes because there was nothing real about them. The result of a game of chess didn’t affect lives; high-tech online gaming left him cold; puzzles, crosswords, Sudokus just felt like he was wasting his time. The only other thing that had ever come close was the pursuit of women but even that had come to lose its appeal at the realisation of the shallow and pointless exercise it ultimately was for him.
His weariness, however, was not on this occasion countered to any extent by feelings of elation at having ‘bagged’ his second confession of the day. On the contrary, he found Mrs Allen’s continued protestations of innocence disconcerting and troubling. He still felt in his bones that she was guilty but if they didn’t come up with something of a more concrete nature to bolster the purely circumstantial evidence that was all they had, and soon, the CPS weren’t going to be interested in taking it forward. That’s the way it was.
There was a message on his desk to call up to Superintendent Vine with news of developments before he left for the day. He blew out his cheeks with that depressing thought and sat behind his desk to ring her.
After feeling the chill indifference of Boudicca’s personal guard, almost as though she were breathing extra strong mints directly into his ear, Boudicca came on the line. ‘How did it go?’
‘Not as well as I’d hoped, ma’am. She hasn’t capitulated.’
‘But she will?’
‘She’s denying everything. She’s lying, of course. So would I be in her position, with what she’s facing.’
‘You have other avenues to explore though?’
‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘I hope to have a breakthrough soon.’
‘Tomorrow would be good. Make myself clear?’
‘Crystal, ma’am.’
‘Good evening, then.’ She hung up without waiting for a reply.
Romney
hooked his coat off the back of the door and wandered into the outer office. Only Grimes and Marsh were still present. Grimes didn’t look to be doing anything in particular and Romney couldn’t think of anything of a police nature the big man was engaged in that would keep him at his desk after hours if overtime had not been sanctioned.
Romney said, ‘Anyone fancy a drink?’ To his surprise they both said yes.
*
A few weeks before, roadworks on the A258 – the short cut to CID’s usual watering hole, The Duke of York at the top of Jubilee Way – had begun. With the three sets of lights the evening traffic put at least another twenty minutes on the journey. So CID had gone back to drinking across the road from the station at the Park Inn. On more than one occasion the question had been raised, why had they been driving miles out of town when there was a perfectly decent pint, good food and a friendly welcome in a pub almost directly opposite them? The added bonus, they had realised, was that anyone with a vehicle could leave it at the station and if they decided to make a night of it get a lift home from a patrol car that could be arranged to head in the direction of their homes. But like so many other things that had made the job more bearable they would not be able to continue the practice under the gaze of the new incumbent upstairs. Bob Falkner had turned a blind eye to it.
‘Won’t Maureen wonder where you are?’ said Romney, when they had settled themselves around a quiet table away from the irritating and distracting influence of the ubiquitous television. ‘Or is sharing a house with the extended family not all it’s cracked up to be?’
