A Shred of Evidence

by Jill McGown

  Colin hadn’t really expected to find Erica there, never mind Patrick Murray. Still, at least he had confirmed to Erica that the car really had broken down.

  “He said it only took an hour to fix it,” said Erica.

  “Erica, you can’t believe I had anything to do with what happened to Natalie,” he said wearily. “You just can’t.”

  She looked at him steadily. “I know you didn’t kill her,” she said.

  “I didn’t do anything with her!”

  “You left her there, Colin!”

  Colin closed his eyes.

  “You just … left her there,” Erica said again, her voice accusing.

  He opened his eyes slowly. “How … how do you know that?” he asked.

  Erica frowned. “How do you suppose I know?” she asked.

  Natalie must have spoken to her. My God, no wonder she thought the worst. “It … it isn’t how it seems,” he said. “It’s not what you think. Whatever she said, whatever she told you, I wasn’t having an affair with her, Erica. I swear to you. She’s been writing these letters—she sent one yesterday, saying she’d meet me there. That’s all. I swear. That’s all.”

  “Are you still trying to tell me it was all in her mind?” Erica asked “It was just a teenage fantasy? Nothing to worry about?”

  Yes, he thought helplessly. Yes. “It’s the truth,” he said, his voice weak. “What did she say to you?” he asked.

  “She told me to mind my own business.”

  “I’ve never had anything to do with her! Whatever she said, you must believe me.”

  “She didn’t have to say anything!”

  “She must have—and it’s lies. All lies.”

  “I knew you’d do this,” she said. “I knew it.” She looked away.

  “Erica—it’s all in her imagination.”

  “Go away, Colin,” she said. “Go back to school.”

  “What?” he said. “How can I go back to school when you’re accusing me of God knows what?”

  “If you won’t leave, I will,” she said. “I know what I saw.”

  “You didn’t see me,” said Colin.

  “No,” she agreed. “I didn’t see you. You made damn sure of that”

  She was snapping on the dog’s lead, she was leaving, and he couldn’t stop her. It was a nightmare. A nightmare. Surely to God he would wake up soon?

  * * *

  There were names now; boys that Natalie had been known to consort with. A lot of names. Lloyd decided to wait until Judy got back from interviewing this girl who was reputed to be Natalie’s best friend. She would know the latest boyfriend, presumably.

  “You’d better put Cochrane on that list,” Tom Finch said, knocking on the open door as he spoke. He smiled. “And at least I won’t need kid gloves to deal with him because he left adolescence behind a long time ago,” he added.

  “What have you got?” asked Lloyd.

  “Cochrane. On toast.” Tom held out a sheet of paper. “It’s the best we can do,” he said as Lloyd reached for his glasses. “A photocopy of a letter that’s been washed, spun and tumble-dried isn’t going to be too good. The original’s gone to see if we can get any prints from it. Not much chance of that, but since it was found in Cochrane’s tracksuit …”

  Lloyd read the letter with some difficulty, not just because the copy was very pale. He wasn’t sure that someone who was anticipating a reunion after two celibate months should be reading it, really.

  When he got to the end, he slid his glasses down his nose and looked at Tom. “Natalia’s mother will dispute that any of these lads had anything to do with Natalia,” he said, nodding to the details on his desk about her possible boyfriends. “Never mind that she wrote this letter.”

  “Who else could have written it?” asked Tom. “And there are rumours about Cochrane and a schoolgirl going round like wildfire.”

  “Since the murder?”

  “Someone told me that they heard it yesterday afternoon,” said Tom.

  Lloyd took off his specs and handed the letter back. “Why would she type it?” he asked.

  “They all do,” said Tom. “Keep it. That’s your copy.”

  Lloyd frowned. “All who do?” he asked.

  “Kids. They’ve all got computers with word processors now, you know. It’s how they do their homework—it’s how they do everything. My sister’s kids don’t know what a pen’s for.” He grinned at Lloyd. “It even fixes their spelling for them,” he said.

  “Time you got one, then, isn’t it?” said Lloyd automatically, but he was thinking about Natalia’s room. She did have a computer, he had seen it. He told Tom.

  “There you are, then,” he said.

  “But this sort of thing?” said Lloyd. He wasn’t convinced. It seemed a very calculated way of dealing with what was a very passionate letter. And the lack of a signature bothered him.

  “Probably got washed away,” said Tom.

  “Maybe,” said Lloyd. He sighed. “I hate to sound like Methuselah, but you used to be able to check typewritten letters,” he said. “Match up the type with the typewriter.”

  “Well,” said Tom. “I don’t suppose you know what sort of software she was using?”

  Lloyd had put in a number of hours on the subject, and knew enough to know that even Tom couldn’t tell what software someone was using from seeing the computer in an off mode.

  Tom grinned. “I just thought you might have seen a manual or something,” he said. “Some programs have a safety net affair.”

  Lloyd heard the spelling of the word program. He had had to come to terms with programs and disk before he could even begin to come to terms with the actual beast. But now, for the first time in his life, he found himself actually wanting to hear what a computer man had to say.

  “You type your letter, print it out, and then delete it if you don’t need to keep it,” said Tom.

  So far, so good.

  “Some programs let you rescue it later, even if you have deleted it. Providing you haven’t deleted enough things after that to have wiped that one out, if you see what I mean. It’s like a sort of wastepaper basket that gets emptied when it’s full, on a first-in first-out basis.”

  “You mean it holds what you’ve done even if you’ve told it not to?” said Lloyd, wondering at the tyranny of this technology that the world was worshipping. But then, the world had always worshipped tyranny, so it was no real surprise.

  “It might have. It might not, of course. Shall I send someone to check out what’s what?”

  “Please,” said Lloyd, absently. Cochrane could deny that Natalia had written it, as long as it remained anonymous.

  “Shall I bring Cochrane in?” Tom asked.

  Lloyd nodded. “Discreetly, Tom,” he said. “And voluntarily, if at all possible.”

  “Sir.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was relatively easy to be discreet at the school, Tom discovered; neither Cochrane nor his wife had turned in for work.

  “I think Mr. Cochrane went home at lunchtime,” said the head. “Mrs. Cochrane didn’t come in at all today. I wasn’t surprised, after what she …” The sentence tailed off. “But it is most unusual— No, to be quite accurate, it’s unheard-of for Mr. Cochrane not to be here when he’s supposed to be.”

  “Well, I’ll pop down to his house, then,” said Tom.

  “Oh, good,” said the head. “I’m a little worried. It’s so unlike him, not even getting in touch … I rang because I thought something must have happened. But it was just their answering machine.”

  “Perhaps his wife wasn’t too good,” said Tom. “She did take it very hard.”

  Very. He had wondered about that. All right, no one wanted their dog to turn up a dead body, least of all that of a teenage girl. But there had been more to it than that, he had known that there was.

  “He probably thought he ought to stay with her,” Tom said.

  “But not even ringing in?” The other man shook his head. “
I’m worried, Sergeant … er …” He waved his hand about. “I’m worried. Mr. Cochrane is someone you could honestly set your clock by. I really am worried.”

  So was Tom. Worried about Mrs. Cochrane’s insistence that she’d seen the girl alive. She hadn’t told him that; that little gem hadn’t come out until Judy got there. He’d sent a car for Judy straight away, but even so, Erica Cochrane had had twenty minutes to think about it. He had taken her at face value then. Just some woman who had stumbled on a body. He had given her some time to get over it. Idiot. She was covering for her husband; he had given her time to work out what must have happened and to amend her story accordingly.

  Cochrane was once again fresh from the shower, bathrobed and deodorized, when Tom got to his house. Who was it who kept trying to wash her hands? Lady Macbeth? He smiled. Lloyd would be proud of him.

  “Is your wife here, Mr. Cochrane?” he asked, stepping into the hallway.

  “No,” he said. “She’s gone out with the dog. What do you want with her?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” said Tom. “It’ll keep. Your headmaster’s very worried about you, you know.”

  “I should have rung,” Cochrane said. He did not invite Tom further in.

  “We thought your wife must be ill,” said Tom.

  “Well … she’s certainly not herself,” said Cochrane. “I didn’t feel that I could go back to work this afternoon.” He looked irritated at having found himself accounting for his behaviour to Tom, of all people, and said so. “I don’t know why I should be explaining all this to you,” he said. “What are you doing here? Have you brought my clothes back?”

  “Sorry. We don’t work that quickly,” Tom said. “But I take it you do have some other clothes, do you, Mr. Cochrane? There has been a development which we would like to discuss with you at the station, if you wouldn’t mind coming with me.”

  “The station?” he said. “Can’t you just tell me whatever it is here? What development?”

  “I think it would be better down at the station,” said Tom.

  Cochrane disappeared back upstairs without a word, then came down again, tucking his shirt into his trousers, a tie draped round his neck, a jacket over his arm. He wanted to make a good impression, it seemed to Tom.

  Cochrane looked at him in the mirror as he did up his tie. “You made up your mind last night,” he said. “No evidence—no reason. You just decided you were going after me. Why?”

  Your deodorant, mate, thought Tom. “If you’ll just come with me, sir,” he said.

  “Jealousy? Because I’m well-known, and I earn a lot of money?” Cochrane slicked his hair back with the comb on the hall table. “Is that it?”

  Tom was always supremely unmoved by insults; it was par for the course as far as he was concerned to be called a fascist pig and worse.

  “I could sue you for wrongful arrest.”

  “I’m not arresting you, sir. Just asking you to help with our enquiries.”

  Cochrane turned to face him. “And if I refuse, that makes me look as though I’ve got something to hide, is that it?”

  “We think you can throw some light on some new evidence, sir,” said Tom stolidly.

  “This is personal,” said Cochrane. “You decided last night that you were going to involve me in this,” he said. “Do you get brownie points if it’s someone well-known?”

  “Sir.” Tom indicated the door. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  Cochrane walked ahead of him to where the car sat with a uniformed constable at the wheel, and got in.

  Tom sat beside him in the back and listened politely to the running commentary about citizens’ rights as the car drove along Ash Road. Cochrane hadn’t thought it necessary to leave a note for his wife, Tom had noticed. Because she would be able to guess where he’d be?

  And just what was her part in all this? She had gone to meet him, and had found a body, not a live person, Tom would be prepared to bet. The body of a girl who was in the school’s drama group, as was Cochrane. A girl she reluctantly admitted knowing, but whose name she claimed not to know. She hadn’t been going to tell them that her husband taught at the school—it had had to be dragged out of her.

  And Natalie? A girl who liked having a good time, by all accounts. A girl who had been writing Cochrane steamy love letters that raised more than an eyebrow, and who had arranged to meet Cochrane last night at the adventure playground. Which was where Sherlock had found her body.

  A body on which Tom had smelt Cochrane’s deodorant, and on which the dog had smelt Cochrane’s scent.

  “Fasten your seat belt, Mr. Cochrane,” he said, and smiled a little as Cochrane complied.

  It’s going to be a bumpy ride, he thought. Lloyd would have been even more proud of him for that. He couldn’t remember which film it came from, though. That was going to annoy him.

  The car made the short journey along Ash Road and turned right up to the police station, where Tom shepherded his charge into the building. He installed Cochrane in an interview room, and went along to the DCI’s office.

  Judy Hill was in there. “I had a word with Britten,” she was saying to Lloyd. “It seems that he and Natalie were seeing one another steadily from January until about April, then she began to lose interest. She finished it at the end of last term.”

  “Did she give a reason?” asked Lloyd, beckoning Tom in.

  “She dumped him, in his words. She said she had started seeing someone else.”

  Lloyd nodded. “I take it that the verb ‘to see’ is being its usual elastic self in this context?”

  “Oh, yes. And I gather he wasn’t the first.”

  “He definitely wasn’t the first,” said Tom. “I spoke to someone who reckoned his brother and Natalie got it together over a year ago.”

  Lloyd looked up. “Over a year ago?” he repeated. “She’s only just turned fifteen now.”

  “They start young these days, guv. Natalie did, anyway, by all accounts.”

  Lloyd looked pained, but it wasn’t Natalie’s morals that were bothering him. “Tom,” he said. “Call me Lloyd. Call me Chief Inspector. Call me sir, if you want. Call me Baldie. But please stop calling me guv.”

  “Sorry, guv.”

  “Isn’t Inspector Hill your guv, anyway?”

  “You’re both my guvs, guv.”

  “What rank do I have to achieve to escape being called guv?”

  “The one you’re after,” said Tom, with a smile. “I’d have to call you sir until I got promotion too. Then I could call you guv again, guv.”

  Lloyd laughed. “I take it you’ve got Cochrane waiting to see us?”

  “I certainly have. I reckon he’s had a bust-up with the missus.”

  “Oh?”

  Tom explained the circumstances, and sighed. “I screwed up,” he said to Judy. “Sorry.”

  She frowned. “Did you?” she asked.

  “She worked it out, didn’t she?” said Tom. “She realized what must have happened, and told you she saw the girl alive to cover for her husband.”

  Judy looked less than convinced.

  “Why did she take the dog on to the Green at all?” asked Tom. “Not the sort of place many women would go alone after dark, is it? You have to go past the council depot, and it’s like midnight in the coal hole down there.”

  “There’s supposed to be a light,” said Judy. “Vandals got it weeks ago and it hasn’t been replaced.”

  “Even so. The Green itself isn’t lit, is it? There’s open ground right opposite her. Why not go there?”

  Judy shrugged. “She thought she would be bound to meet up with her husband, because he always came back that way from his training run.”

  “But he wasn’t there when she got there, was he? Instead of finding him she found Natalie’s body, and she’s lying when she says she was alive.”

  Lloyd, who had been reading Mrs. Cochrane’s statement, looked up, pushing his glasses down. “Why should she leap to the conclusion that her husband had mur
dered her?” he asked.

  “Because I reckon she knew he was having it off with her,” said Tom. “Cochrane could have taken the dog out when he came back, but she left minutes before he was due home, didn’t she? So, like I said. Why did she take the dog to the Green at all?”

  “Go on, then,” said Judy. “Why?”

  “She went to check up on him, that’s why. And finds Natalie’s body. So she tells you that she saw the kid alive, because she knows that fifteen minutes after she left the house, hubby would be home and out of the frame.”

  “Why would she be so keen to cover up for him?” asked Judy.

  “Because women are like that.”

  “Are they?” Judy smiled, shaking her head. “Has Freddie ever talked to you about theories?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I know. They always come to grief. But I was with these two last night, and there was grief there already, believe me.”

  Lloyd tipped back his chair. Tom could see Judy tense up, as he was doing himself.

  “Well,” he said, rocking gently back and forth, “is it much of an alibi? We don’t know when he got home.”

  “He had told her he would be home at ten,” said Tom. “And he’s got a thing about being bang on time.”

  “I can try to find out if he was,” said Judy. “That’s a very flashy car they’ve got—the neighbours might notice its comings and goings.”

  “An interesting situation,” said Lloyd, coming down again, much to Tom’s relief. “If someone did see him come home at ten, he’s got an apparent alibi, which as far as Tom’s concerned makes him guilty as sin.”

  “It all depends when she died, doesn’t it?” said Tom. “We’ve only got his wife’s word for it that she was alive at ten o’clock. She could have been dead half an hour by then, according to the doc.”

  “She could,” said Lloyd, seriously. “Judy, see if you can get any more from Mrs. Cochrane. And talk to the neighbours.” He stood up. “I think Mr. Cochrane’s had enough time to stew now, don’t you, Tom?”

  Tom couldn’t wait. They’d see how cocky Mr. Cochrane was after this.

  Patrick tried to keep his mind on his work, but it wasn’t easy, what with the police fetching kids out of class all afternoon, and his drawing a blank with Erica. He had hoped to make certain that she was on his side; he might have been able to do that if Colin hadn’t come home unexpectedly.