Joanna flicked to the front of the magazine. It had come out that day. Thoughtfully she passed it to Mike. He read it without comment. She stood up, unhooked her coat from the back of the chair, draped it round her shoulders. She was getting quite adept at coping with the plaster cast. It had become less of an encumbrance as the days had moved on.
‘So we’ve got the answer to at least one of our questions,’ she said. ‘That’s where the photograph went. Funny, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘That first day we met them it was already written on the wall, as it were.’ Neither Korpanski nor Dawn had the faintest idea what Joanna was talking about.
She stared at them. ‘You don’t see, do you? Come on, Korpanski, I should buy you lunch. As a chauffeur you haven’t been bad.’
They were almost through the door when the telephone rang. She was in two minds whether to pick it up. Her conscience won.
‘Am I speaking to Detective Inspector Piercy?’
‘You are, Mr Prince.’
His voice was strong and steady. People had their own ways of dealing with grief. ‘We feel we must speak up for our daughter,’ he began. ‘The newspapers are making suggestions.’
Joanna didn’t even try to apologize for the tabloids’ excesses. The reporters were an intelligent pack, on the whole, and they had scented blood the moment Yolande’s death had been made public. They had soon started speculating with their talent for making suppositions sound like facts.
‘She wouldn’t have done it,’ he said. ‘We knew our daughter extremely well. She was protective towards anyone in her care, no matter what their past was. She didn’t discriminate.’
Joanna’s instinct was to discount a fond father’s assessment of his daughter’s character, but there was no emotion behind his statement. This was a statement of fact.
Mr Prince spoke again. ‘I suggest, Inspector,’ he said quietly, ‘that you stop blaming my daughter for the abduction of Mr Selkirk and look instead at the other nurses on duty that night. My daughter,’ he said with dignity, ‘has been made a scapegoat.’
‘So what do you think, Mike?’ Joanna had relayed the conversation to Mike. Her desk was littered with the contents of all the files connected with the case. Her computer screen was switched on. She had finished leafing through all the statements.
Mike’s square face was pensive.
‘If Yolande’s father is right it would put the case under a different light, wouldn’t it?’
He nodded slowly.
She leaned forward, her elbow making a dent in the cover of the magazine. ‘I think we’re getting closer. Let’s visit Emily Place and see if we can get an answer to our second question. Then we’ll do a bit of talking.’
Mike stood up, towering over her. ‘We’ve nearly got them,’ she said.
His eyebrows almost met in the middle. ‘Proof?’
‘We’ll play one off against the other. There won’t be any trust between them, only fear.’
Emily Place looked quiet and dull in the middle of the day. No one was there. There was no sign of life at all.
Except at number fourteen.
Andy Carter was painting an upstairs windowframe. He saw them from the top of the ladder. ‘Bloody hell, aren’t you done with us yet?’ he exclaimed.
‘Just two more questions, Mr Carter.’
He stepped down the ladder, made no attempt to invite them inside.
‘You’ve raked it all up,’ he said resentfully. ‘Ann hasn’t had a wink of sleep since you first came.’
‘We didn’t rake it up,’ Joanna said quietly. ‘We weren’t the ones to shoot Selkirk. Once he’d been shot we had no option but to pursue our investigations until we found the perpetrator. Understand?’
Carter blinked. ‘I suppose you’re only doing your job. What was it you wanted to know?’
‘How did you know Selkirk had been forced to kneel before he was shot?’
Carter looked rattled. His eyes bounced from Joanna to Mike and back to Joanna again.
‘Come on, Carter,’ Mike urged.
Carter pressed his lips together.
‘Then we’ll have to take you down to the station for further questioning.’
‘No, no. I have to be here. Ann’ll go mad if I aren’t here when she gets home.’ The two officers waited and finally Carter relented. ‘I’ve got a mate,’ he said. ‘He sometimes wanders up those woods. He saw him, lying on his side, his hands tied behind his back.’
Joanna let out a long sigh. Another piece of the puzzle had slipped into place.
‘Your mate’s name wouldn’t happen to be Holloway, would it?’
‘I can’t tell you that,’ Carter was defensive, ‘but it’s the truth.’ He turned his back on them. But Joanna waited until the penny dropped and Carter turned around again. ‘And the other question?’
‘I suppose in the last five years you’ve bought yourselves a new word processor?’
A sharp indrawn breath was the only sign that Carter had heard. ‘Leave us alone.’
‘Where is your wife, Mr Carter?’
‘Where do you think? She’s at work.’
It was an extraordinary sight, the bright, fluorescent green coat, the huge lollipop, STOP, Children Crossing. They watched her for a few minutes, painfully aware of what she was doing.
A crowd of children gathered at the side of the road. Ann Carter waited. A car approached, slowly. She waited ... another approached, gathered speed, determined not to be halted.
The car hurtled towards her. Herding the children back on to the pavement, she stepped boldly out. The car screeched to a stop. Two fingers appeared over the driving wheel.
Ann Carter smiled.
The children crossed.
They met her back on the pavement.
She frowned. ‘Why have you come here?’
Joanna said nothing but watched her steadily.
The woman’s eyes slid away from the two officers and towards the traffic belting along the road and the waiting clusters of mothers and children. ‘I should go to them,’ she said.
Joanna put a hand on her arm. ‘I think you should come with us.’
Chapter Seventeen
Mike radioed in for a constable to cover the crossing and they drove Ann Carter to the station. She neither argued nor complained. Neither, they noticed, did she ask them to ring her husband. While he had worried about her returning from work to an empty house she had no thought for him. As they watched the thin, tense face they both knew her mind was still with her daughter.
The first real breakthrough came after half an hour during which she had been silent. Quite suddenly she said very quietly, ‘I watched him get into the ambulance, you know.’
‘I thought you might have done.’ And Joanna at last voiced the one thought that had drawn her back to Ann Carter. ‘I suppose you had to send the letter didn’t you?’
Her answer was a wry shake of the head.
‘It was the only thing that could force him to realize the connection with Rowena.’
Dumbly Ann Carter nodded. Tears streamed down her face. ‘He had to know.’
‘It took you so long to save the money up?’
Ann Carter smiled. ‘I decided the fates should choose,’ she said calmly. ‘Like the National Lottery. Either I would be knocked down or Selkirk would die.’ She gave a pathetic shake of her head. ‘It didn’t really matter which.’ Then she stared at Joanna. ‘I’ve got nothing left now.’
Joanna touched her shoulder briefly. ‘Let’s get you a solicitor, Mrs Carter.’
Mike followed her up the corridor.
‘So the letters?’
‘Were written by the same hand but on different machines. The wording, Mike, it was the same. Forensics will never replace good human common sense,’
‘But what about the nurse? She didn’t kill her, did she?’
Joanna turned to face him. ‘You must be joking,’ she said.
‘Then who?’
She waited until she was safely ensc
onced in her office before answering. ‘O’Sullivan,’ she said. ‘He was greedy enough to take the money, and hang on to it. He knew Yolande would put two and two together and realize he had let Gallini in.’
Mike sank down into the chair. ‘But why?’
‘Why what?’ Relief at solving the case was making her light-hearted. ‘Why did he do it? For money. Remember the Carter family were friendly with the Frosts. They would almost certainly have visited Michael Frost in hospital. O’Sullivan was a nurse on the ward where Michael Frost was, as well as Yolande. They would have met them both.
‘When Selkirk received the letter, Ann Carter was watching outside. She must have panicked when the ambulance took him to hospital. She rang Gallini and then must have contacted O’Sullivan and enlisted his help. Unfortunately O’Sullivan was astute enough to realize somebody would piece together the fact that Gallini had had help. Cleverly he worked out that strangling Yolande would divert suspicion from him. It would make us think that Yolande had let Gallini in, not him. And we nearly fell for it. It nearly worked.’
Mike stared at her. ‘Proof,’ he said and she repeated her earlier words.
‘We’ll play one off against the other. There won’t be any trust between them, only fear.’
She glanced at the door. Ann Carter will spill the beans,’ she said confidently, ‘in the end. Once we explain the full facts about Yolande. She doesn’t lack a conscience. Unlike O’Sullivan. In fact,’ she said, ‘there’s only one thing bothering me now. What the hell did Justin Selkirk do with all that money?’
Mike was laughing. ‘I could make an inspired guess.’
She eyed him curiously. ‘Go on.’
‘That place where he works. All that scaffolding. I bet he’s lent Lou-lou some money for renovations.’ As always when he spoke the woman’s name he had difficulty controlling his laughter. This time he didn’t bother.
The rest of the force listened to the sound of uncontrolled laughter coming from Joanna’s office.
Dawn spoke for them all. ‘They must have cracked it.’
Chapter Eighteen
A few weeks later Joanna’s plaster cast was removed. Her arm looked unfamiliar, white and wasted. She flexed her wrist stiffly.
Tomorrow she could use her bike again.
The station was deserted. Most of the officers involved in the murders had taken advantage of some warm autumn sunshine to take back the hours owed. She found Mike sitting at his desk, drinking coffee and checking a pile of statements.
‘The case is going to need a stronger prosecution than this,’ he said. ‘The proof is flimsy. Basically O’Sullivan denies the lot and Ann Carter’s conviction relies on her confession.’
‘We’ll get there, Mike. We’ve unearthed Gallini’s phone print-out. She used the call box at the end of the street. But to ring O’Sullivan she made the mistake of using her own telephone. When we question O’Sullivan we can use that as a lever. We know exactly what time they spoke and for how long. That should help a bit.’
‘I hope you’re right, Jo.’ Then he noticed her arm. ‘You’ve lost your plaster.’
‘And gained an arm.’
She perched on the side of his desk and gave a tentative smile. ‘She must have planned this whole business all those years ago because Selkirk had killed her daughter and had got off scot free. Love for a child,’ she said diffidently. ‘It’s a strong thing, isn’t it?’
Mike’s dark eyes watched her fidget with the pens on his desk. ‘Are we talking about Rowena Carter,’ he asked flatly, ‘or Eloise Levin?’ He looked beyond her towards the window. ‘Because I’m never quite sure with you.’
‘Both,’ she said idly, refusing to meet his gaze. She hesitated before plunging on. ‘I never realized how strong family ties can be.’
When Mike had left she picked up the telephone. She’d seen the hotel last year on a drive near Stratford-upon-Avon and thought it looked a perfect retreat for a break – a half-timbered sixteenth-century coaching inn, boasting Egon Ronay recommended food and four-posters in every room. She dialled the number.
‘I’d like to book a double room, please, for next weekend ...’
She put down the phone with a sense of relief.
The struggle was over.
And None Shall Sleep Page 20
