by J M Gregson
‘That sounds rather feeble, if I may say so.’ David found he was very cool, in what he now recognized as a crisis. Keep up the front, keep dishing out scorn, and this implacable, gimlet-eyed man would be reduced to the bald-headed clown which was his real status in life.
‘Once we have charged you with murder and are holding you in custody, we shall be able to take DNA samples from you. I have no doubt that we shall find a match or matches with material gathered from Sunita’s corpse and from the site where it was discovered.’
David felt the first prick of fear through the adrenalin which had been insulating him against it. He wished Peach wouldn’t keep mentioning murder, as if it were a recurring chorus in his attack. He could not keep the same degree of confidence in his voice as he said, ‘I’ve already admitted to you in our previous meetings that I saw the girl, that she said she had been working for me. In other words, I’ve admitted to an association with her. The discovery of material like that upon her would imply nothing more than the connections which I have already declared.’
‘A lawyer would argue with that view, I’m sure. And I’m sure you’ll have the very best lawyers, when the time comes. We’ll wait and see whether the forensic material from the corpse is conclusive. It will certainly add to the sum of the case against you.’
Peach sounded as dry and dispassionate now as a lawyer in chambers. His calmness was disconcerting. Edmonds said, ‘I can assure you that it will reveal nothing.’
Peach studied him for a moment, noting the strain evident in the face, which belied the calmness the man still maintained in his voice. ‘Are you volunteering to give us DNA samples now, then?’
‘I have been as cooperative as I intend to be. I’m getting rather tired of this. My staff will be here soon and—’
‘Then we’ll get on with it. If you had no connection with this murder, how did you know how Sunita Akhtar was killed, Mr Edmonds?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. If you’re trying to trump up some kind of case against me, you’d better—’
‘Read it to him, DS Blake.’ Peach was suddenly weary of his evasions.
Lucy Blake looked down at the page of her notebook she had held open for several minutes and read the words she knew now by heart, ‘Mr Edmonds said when interviewed on Sunday last: “I could no more strangle a helpless girl than fly to the moon”.’
Peach studied his reaction for a moment before he said, ‘How did you know how Sunita died, Mr Edmonds?’
David felt the blood draining from his face. He strove to keep the conviction in his tone as he said, ‘I’d picked that up from the papers. The papers or the television. Or possibly the radio.’ He could hear the desperation seeping into his voice as he ranged around the possibilities.
Peach shook his head with a grim smile. ‘The method of Sunita’s killing was not revealed in any of the early media bulletins. It was not even revealed that she was a young woman of Asian blood. We simply said that a female corpse had been found, that a woman had died in suspicious circumstances. In answer to questions, we said that a murder investigation was being mounted. The details of that murder had not been announced when I spoke to you on Sunday. They were revealed that evening, for publication in Monday’s papers.’
‘I must have assumed it then. I—’
‘We shall be happy to let the lawyers investigate that one, if it’s the only defence you can find. I think that they will find your assumption quite significant. It was the first of your mistakes.’
‘And what do you think was . . .’ David stopped, aghast at how he had been led on by Peach’s assertion.
Peach’s smile broadened a fraction, without losing any of its grimness. ‘Why did you feel it was necessary to threaten Matthew Hayward, Mr Edmonds?’
‘I really don’t know what you’re trying to—’
‘We’ve talked to Dermot Stone. He’s as good as admitted to threatening Matthew Hayward in a public house at Rufford on Monday, on your orders. I’ve no doubt that Mr Hayward will pick him out in an identity parade, if we decide it’s necessary.’
‘I don’t know who this man is. You’re barking up the wrong tree if you think that it was I who—’
‘He’s already said it was you who sent him after Mr Hayward. The mention of murder soon opens mouths, even in these violent times, I’m happy to say. You really shouldn’t have employed the same muscle you’ve used from time to time in your business dealings. Too easy to trace back to you, you see.’
He was talking as if it was all over. And David was slowly realizing that it was. He tried to summon up more resistance, but found he was suddenly weary. He said, ‘I thought you’d think it was Swift who’d threatened Hayward. It’s more his style.’
‘Maybe. But he’d have done it more effectively, more anonymously than you, I fancy.’ Peach let his contempt shade the phrases. ‘You might like to know that Matthew Hayward knew nothing which could incriminate you.’
Edmonds stared at him dully for a moment. ‘I thought she’d have talked to him, told him that I’d threatened her. He was her boyfriend, wasn’t he?’
‘Not at the time of your association with Sunita, he wasn’t. That was over.’ Peach wasn’t going to tell him that it was a Roman Catholic nun he should have been threatening. He was pretty certain that it would have been difficult to intimidate the sturdy Sister Josephine in her hospice.
‘I thought he’d seen me coming out of that house in Sebastopol Terrace. He was just leaving the squat next door when . . .’ Edmonds stopped, staring hopelessly from one to the other of the two attentive faces opposite him.
‘When you’d killed Sunita Akhtar,’ Peach quietly finished the sentence for him.
‘I didn’t mean to kill her.’
‘But you did.’
‘She’d agreed to work for me. Had started working, in fact. Then she was frightened off by Wally Swift. And she told him all about my plans, about the ring of dealers I was planning to set up. She shouldn’t have done that.’ His face set in a hard, obstinate frown. They saw him in that instant not as the prosperous property dealer he had become but as the young and ruthless criminal he had been at the time of this death.
‘So you killed her.’
‘I told you, I didn’t mean to kill her. I wanted to frighten her, make her see what she’d done to me. I had her by the throat, shutting her up, making her listen instead of shouting at me. She had a very thin neck.’ He said it almost accusingly, as if it were her fault and not his that she had died.
‘But you killed her.’ Peach was implacable in the pursuit of his man.
‘I found suddenly that she was limp, that I couldn’t bring her round.’
Peach nodded. It was enough. The lawyers could argue it out, in due course. He’d no doubt that a clever defence counsel would go for a manslaughter verdict to avoid the life sentence, then plead that this family man had committed a youthful aberration which would never be repeated. You couldn’t do anything about lawyers, but that was probably just as well.
‘So you carefully hid the corpse behind the chimney breast and went on your way.’ He’d get that into the statement in due course; it would show that this man had taken cool and careful steps to conceal his crime.
‘I thought after all these years that it was done with. That she’d never be discovered.’ Like one or two other murderers whom Peach had arrested, Edmonds sounded as if he thought that life was unfair.
He still had not used the name of his victim. Peach stood up and said, ‘David Edmonds, I am arresting you for the murder of Sunita Akhtar. You do not have to say anything now, but if you conceal anything which you later wish to use in court, it may prejudice your defence.’
They handcuffed him to the uniformed constable to take him to the station. He gazed dully from the window of the police car, like one expecting to awaken from a nightmare. Their route took them past the new office development to the north of the town centre. Past the spot where, thirteen years earlier, Sunita A
khtar had died. Past the spot where, ten days earlier, that gaunt arm had been revealed so dramatically, reaching towards the heavens, as though beseeching justice.
The girl had her justice at last.
