Verdict Unsafe

by Jill McGown

  Marshall arrived at the door, breathless, and still trying to swallow something. “You wanted me, sir?” he said to Case.

  “Jarvis,” Case said, lighting his cigarette. “What’s happening with him?”

  “He’s been arrested for burglary, sir. We found the stuff from the last job in his garage, and he admitted it. He’s not been processed yet, so I thought I’d grab a bite—”

  “Fine,” said Case. “Before you carry on with your meal, tell Finch to bring ex-Constable Matthew Burbidge in to help us with our inquiries into the rapes.” He shut the; door in Marshall’s face, and turned to Lloyd.

  “So now we’re down to three,” he said. “And one of them was seen entering the underpass where Drummond was shot dead, and she’s beginning to look like she had a very good motive.”

  Lloyd didn’t dignify that with a response, but he hadn’t been expected to respond; Case carried on, and Lloyd listened with mounting dismay to what he was being told.

  “Now do you accept that she’s mixed up in this business?”

  Lloyd shook his head. “No,” he said. “No. She feels guilty about Matt Burbidge getting the sack—she was just trying to keep him out of it, as she said.”

  “Of course she was trying to keep him out of it,” said Case, crushing the cigarette out in the tinfoil ashtray. “Matt Burbidge knew Rosa—he would have known that Drummond was a client of hers. And if he knew that Drummond had been with her earlier that evening, he would know that Drummond’s—and only Drummond’s—DNA would be found, if any was found at all. That’s how you rig a DNA test.”

  “But how could he know that?” said Lloyd. “At that point there had only been one rape, and we had no reason to suppose the rapist didn’t ejaculate like everyone else!”

  “The rapist knew.”

  Lloyd’s eyes grew wide. “Matt Burbidge?” he said. “Is that why you asked Ginny if he’d gone with her?”

  “Yes. It might have shed some light, if we could have found out how he functioned. Why didn’t he tell us who Rosa was?”

  “It was Judy who told us he knew Rosa, so she was hardly covering up for him there!” said Lloyd. “And the fact that Drummond was with Mrs. Ashman earlier in the evening does not preclude his having raped her later in the evening.”

  “You’re clutching at straws, man!”

  Lloyd stood up, wishing, as ever, that he was taller, as he looked into the other man’s eyes. “Drummond gave Judy that statement,” he said slowly, a space between each word. “I know he did.”

  “How can you know?”

  “Because she says so.” Lloyd sat down again. “And that means that he raped those women,” he went on. “No one else.”

  “Right now, who raped them is not our greatest concern,” said Case. “Right now, who murdered Drummond himself is. Now—there’s blood in Fredericks’s van that he won’t account for, and his wife admits having been in possession of the gun that killed him. If and when we find the gun, it may tell us more. And we had better find that sixth cartridge in their house, or I don’t see how we can hang on to them.”

  He slammed the door on his way out, and Lloyd sat for a moment, staring at it as he thought. If Lennie or Ginny had killed Drummond, the obvious motive would be that he had come looking for Ginny, beaten her up for helping set him up for his arrest, and that one of them had shot him. He’d like that scenario better if he even half believed it himself.

  He was on his way to talk to Judy when he saw Tom coming along the corridor toward him.

  “Sir?”

  Tom never called him sir. Guv, boss—Lloyd, off-duty. Never sir. Lloyd knew he wasn’t going to like whatever was coming. “What’s happened now?” he asked.

  “The DNA results were faxed through a little while ago,” said Tom. “You wanted to see them as soon as they came in.” He handed Lloyd the typewritten sheets, pointing to a marked paragraph. “That’s the bottom line, sir,” he said.

  Lloyd read it, closed his eyes, read it again, and looked at his sergeant. “Thank you, Tom,” he said. He patted him on the shoulder. “I know you must have tried to talk her out of it,” he said.

  “Sir,” said Tom, unhappily.

  “Look—press Ginny about this gun,” said Lloyd. “I want to know if it really did go missing. We haven’t found the other cartridge, have we?”

  “No. Or the gun. They’ll start looking for it again at first light.”

  Lloyd nodded, and took the stairs slowly, wearily, like an old man. He didn’t wait to be told to come, he didn’t allow Case his moment of pretending to work while someone waited to talk to him. He put the report down on the desk, on top of the file on which Case was working, right under his eyes.

  Case read it in silence, then picked up the paper, and dropped it in his in tray. He looked up for the first time. “That shit, Lloyd,” he said, pointing to it with his pen. “That fan.”

  “Yes,” said Rob, smoothing out the skin under tired eyes. “That was one of mine. Tenerife, they went to.” He yawned, massaged his temples.

  Marshall smiled. “Is that how you remember them?” he asked. “By where they’d gone on holiday?”

  “Yes. It’s how I thought of them. Tuesday night’s job, Tenerife. Saturday night’s, Crete. Thursday night, the Lake District. It got quite hectic in the summer.”

  “I know,” said Marshall, with feeling.

  There was no way Rob could remember all the houses he’d done. He recognized the addresses when he heard them, though, and Marshall was going through every burgled house in Stansfield for the last six months. A lot of them were his, but not all. Marshall had to sort out which were his and which weren’t. He hadn’t, and wouldn’t, give them the name of his fence, which Marshall had pointed out would not go down well when it came to court. But Rob really didn’t care.

  “Forty-two Lancaster Walk?”

  “No. Not mine.” It was a long, slow job. “Could I phone my wife?” he asked. “I’m entitled to a phone call.”

  “That’s usually to inform someone that you’re here,” said Marshall. “Your wife already knows.”

  “Yes, but I didn’t realize everything would take so long,” said Rob. “I just want to tell her I’m all right—she’ll be worried.”

  “Yes, all right,” said Marshall. “Interview suspended …”

  Ginny had been fed again, and now she was back in an interview room. Sergeant Finch switched on the tape.

  “Interview with Virginia Fredericks at eighteen twenty-five hours on the sixth of November,” he said. “Officers present DS Finch and DC Richards.” He sat down, and looked at her. “I must remind you that you are not under arrest, and are free to leave at any time. This interview is being taped. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something that you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. You are entitled to free legal advice—”

  “You said all that before,” said Ginny.

  “Yes,” said Sergeant Finch. “We have to remind you now and then of your rights, or we get into trouble.”

  Ginny hadn’t liked to say before, when Chief Inspector Lloyd was there, but she didn’t mind asking Sergeant Finch. “What’s it mean?” she asked.

  Sergeant Finch sighed. “You were asked if you understood the caution, Ginny,” he said. “You said you did.”

  “I do understand the caution,” she said indignantly. “I just don’t understand that.”

  He looked at the woman, and then at her. “That’s the new caution,” he said. “You’ve not been in a police station for a while, have you?”

  “No. So what’s it mean?”

  “It means that if you end up in court, and you tell them something in your defense that you didn’t tell us when you had the chance, they’ll wonder why you didn’t. And they might think it means you’re guilty.”

  She frowned. “But I’ve not done anything,” she said.

  “Maybe not. But you’re not telling u
s the truth, are you?”

  “Yes,” she said, not looking at him.

  “You know what I think, Ginny?” he said. “I think you were beaten up in your own house, not in the underpass. Inspector Hill saw blood on the staircase in your kitchen. I think Drummond came to your house when Lennie wasn’t there, and beat you up. I think you shot him. I don’t think that the gun went missing at all.”

  “It did! I wouldn’t have let him get me into this state if I’d had a gun, would I?” Ginny said.

  “That’s fair enough, Sarge,” said DC Richards. “I wouldn’t have, either, if all I had to do was go to—” She looked at Ginny. “Where did you keep it?” she asked.

  “In the drawer,” said Ginny. “The one where I keep the stuff for work. Condoms, and … you know. Stuff.” She looked at Sergeant Finch. “Handcuffs and that,” she said. It had made him smile last time. It didn’t this time.

  “Well, there you are, Sarge,” DC Richards said to Sergeant Finch. “If it had been there, Ginny would just have gone and got it.” She turned back to Ginny. “Wouldn’t you?” she asked. “You’d have gone to the drawer and got the gun, told him to leave you alone or else. I would have. Anyone would.”

  “Yeah,” Ginny said to Sergeant Finch. “See? It wasn’t there anymore, so I couldn’t. Rob Jarvis must’ve taken it.”

  Sergeant Finch nodded. “But you couldn’t have gone to the drawer and got it if you had been in the underpass, could you, Ginny?” he said. “So it happened in the house. Didn’t it?”

  Oh, hell. Ginny nodded sullenly. “Yeah, all right,” she said. “But it was still a punter. And the gun wasn’t there.”

  “I think I’d better have a word with Lennie,” said Sergeant Finch. “Interview suspended …”

  Carole had always known that this would be the real test. She had to do it. And it wasn’t difficult. You just opened the door, drove in, switched off, got out, walked back out, remotely locked it, closed the door. Two minutes? Not even that.

  She could do it. She had opened the garage door the other night, and she could do it tonight. She could take the car in there. But now as she addressed herself to the task, it was memories of what she had found in the garage that came back to her.

  This place that had haunted her for over two years, that had represented the breakdown of her health, her job, her marriage, her life; this place that it had taken such strength of will simply to enter—this place was being used to store stolen goods. By her husband. Because he thought they’d be safe from discovery there. It had been like being raped again. Maybe worse.

  She threw open the door, and looked at the garage, innocent of rapists and stolen goods. She drove the car in, and sat there for exactly one minute before she got out. Just to prove she could.

  “Why do you keep telling us Mes, Lennie?” asked Finch.

  Lennie, being fed at Her Majesty’s expense, saving money on lighting, heating, petrol, thought that perhaps all in all he was in the best place, even if he did have to put up with being shunted backward and forward from the cells.

  “Which lies, Mr. Finch?” he asked.

  “Jarvis told Chief Inspector Lloyd that you knew all about the gun. He told you about it, told you Ginny still had it. Is that right?”

  “No comment.”

  “He says you beat Ginny up because she hadn’t taken it back when you’d told her to.”

  “No comment.”

  “I don’t think you beat her up. I think you found Drummond beating her up. We know it didn’t happen in the underpass. It happened in your house. I think you got the gun, and you shot him, and Ginny’s covering up for you.”

  “No comment.”

  Finch suspended the interview again. Lennie was taken back to the cells.

  Judy had bought more cigarettes; she had smoked more in the last three days than she had in the last thirty. Lloyd was still with Case, and she couldn’t leave without seeing him.

  “Come in,” she called, to the almost tentative knock on her door, surprised to see Tom. He didn’t knock tentatively; he never waited to be asked in. “Are you still here?” she asked, seeing the empty CID room beyond him.

  He nodded, pulled a chair over, and sat down. “Trying to get the truth out of Lenny and Ginny,” he said. “But I’ve left them to stew for a bit. I saw you coming back—I wanted to talk to you. Have you seen Lloyd?”

  “No. He’s with Case.”

  “Have you seen the DNA results?”

  “No,” she said, surprised she hadn’t been shown them. But, of course, she wasn’t on the rape inquiry. “Oh, God, I hate not being involved in this!” she said, and looked at his face. “It wasn’t Drummond’s hair, I take it,” she said.

  “No.”

  “I suppose it was always too good to be true,” she said. Case would just have to go on thinking she was corrupt; the last chance had gone of ever proving that Drummond was the rapist.

  “It wasn’t the boyfriend’s, either,” said Tom. “No?” Judy shrugged. “Maybe Marilyn was two-timing him.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Tom. “The blood on Drummond’s jeans,” he went on. “They did manage to get a profile.”

  “Yes, well, that’s not going to be much help. It’s Matt Burbidge’s blood.”

  “Yes,” said Tom. “And that’s the problem. Because it is a match for the hair on Marilyn’s bed, Judy.”

  Judy stared at him. “That’s not possible,” she said.

  “It is, Judy. I had to let Lloyd see it—I couldn’t find you. I just—”

  “It’s not possible.” Judy looked away, at her own reflection in the darkness beyond the window. Her shoulders sagged. “Have you arrested him?” she asked.

  “He’s done a runner. A neighbor saw him put a bag in the boot of his car and drive off.”

  Judy looked at Tom’s reflection then, at his face, strained and serious and not at all like it usually was. “I don’t believe this is happening,” she said.

  “We checked with the travel agents, found him eventually. He was booked on the Dover-Calais ferry. But he wasn’t on it. Or—his car wasn’t, at any rate. They found it parked at the terminal. We’ve got the Kent police—”

  “Yes, all right!”

  “I’m sorry, Jude.”

  She turned and looked at him properly. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I made sure Case knew that.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “You really couldn’t have arrested him, not then. And it was my interview—I chose not to pass on the information.”

  Tom nodded. “There’s more,” he said. “It gets worse. Ginny recog—” He broke off as Lloyd appeared in the open doorway.

  “Could you leave us, Tom?” he said.

  Tom looked anxiously at her, then got up slowly, and left, closing the door quietly behind him.

  Lloyd looked at her, his eyes bright with anger, his face pale and set. “I think you’ll find that what your loyal sergeant was about to tell you is that a short while ago, we learned that Rosa was none other than Rachel Ashman,” he said quietly. “And that Drummond had had unprotected sex with her earlier that evening, which is why his DNA was found.”

  Judy stared at him, her mouth opening slightly. “Mrs. Ashman?” she repeated, idiotically. “Rosa?”

  “Does that surprise you? I certainly hope it does.”

  Judy nodded, her mind racing. “Has anyone told her husband?” she asked.

  “We are still debating the ethics of that, if ethics mean much to you,” said Lloyd.

  Judy barely noticed the insult. “But Matt Burbidge must have known who she was,” she said. “That photograph of her in the service station was up on the wall of—”

  “Yes,” he said. “He must.”

  Oh, God. Judy took a deep breath. “Look, Lloyd—I agree that it now looks as if—in theory—Matt could have carried out the rapes, and made it look as though Drummond had committed them. But he didn’t.”

  “There’s no theory about it, Judy! I ass
ume Tom’s told you about the DNA.”

  “There has to be a mistake! He was with Ginny when Marilyn was raped.”

  “He was with her until ten-twenty or so,” said Lloyd. “He was seen at the underpass minutes later—that’s a stone’s throw from Marilyn’s flat. He could have doubled back—it looks as though he must have doubled back. The DNA makes it slightly more than a theory, don’t you think?”

  “But it’s—”

  “I’ll tell you a theory, Judy,” he went on. “In theory, you could have seen that gun on your first visit to Ginny Fredericks, and taken it during your fruitless search of the Fredericks’s premises two days later. In theory, you could have lured Drummond to the underpass by saying you had information on Rosa, and shot him dead in order that he ceased to be a threat to you. That’s what Case believes, and who can blame him? A witness saw you at the scene of the crime moments before it happened. You were the first person we were looking for! And someone rang Stansfield police station immediately before dialing nine-double-nine.”

  “Why would I ring Stansfield?” asked Judy, mystified.

  “To establish some sort of alibi, to talk to me—who knows? But you changed your mind, or found yourself on the queuing system, and gave up.”

  “So why would I ring nine-double-nine?”

  “You would ring nine-double-nine to get help for Ginny, who had run away from her violent husband, and whom you practically fell over. Then you decided that taking her to hospital yourself would give you a sort of an alibi. Better than nothing.”

  Judy nodded. “And is that what you believe?” she asked.

  “No. I think Drummond beat up Ginny, Lennie discovered them, and shot him. And you’d better hope I can prove it,” he said. “Because you’re the only other candidate!” He looked at her, his head shaking. “How could you do this to me?” he asked. “How could you do this to me, Judy?”

  “I haven’t done anything to you!”

  “No,” he said. “Nothing at all. Three days after the event, you finally get around to telling us that Burbidge wasn’t in the car when Bobbie Chalmers was raped? That the bandage was missing? That he has no alibi whatsoever? That he knew Lucy Rogerson, knew that farm? You kept me in the dark, you put Tom in a very invidious position—why, Judy?”