by Jill McGown
Nicola? Physically abused from childhood. Had she gone back that night to kill her father? Why? Why now?
Gutless Gus? Could be. Perhaps he found out about Bailey’s treatment of his wife, and wasn’t so gutless after all.
But not Rachel, who was ordering tea in an hotel in London less than an hour after that figure slipped through the gate. And that seemed much too handy to be a coincidence. Rachel seemed much too aware of what she was doing to have gone home to certain retribution sooner or later. Rachel was as difficult to work out as she had been the day she met her.
Judy parked in the nearest street in which she was allowed to park, which was some way away from the flat since all the people who worked nice set hours had parked in the closer ones, locked up the car, and walked through the hot, still evening to her flat, letting herself in with a sigh of relief. This was a town. With traffic. And people. And this was her flat. With no enigmatic young women or smelly dead bodies in it. It did, however, have Lloyd in it, which startled her, as she opened the sitting-room door.
‘What are you doing here?’ she said, horribly aware of the package in her bag.
‘I have had more enthusiastic welcomes.’
‘You never come here.’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘ Sometimes. This is one of the times. I thought I’d make us a meal.’
‘Why?’ she asked. He didn’t know, did he? He couldn’t. Even Lloyd couldn’t have guessed, for God’s sake. She didn’t even know herself for sure; that was why she had bought the damn thing that was burning a hole in her bag, which she now tossed on to the sofa. But she was pretty sure she didn’t want to know. Which was why she hadn’t told Lloyd yet.
‘Do I have to have a reason to be here? I thought my having a key meant I could come when I pleased.’
She laughed, a little uncertainly. ‘ It was just when you weren’t at the station, I thought you must be off chasing up leads,’ she said. ‘This was the last place I expected to find you.’
‘We do have to eat, murder enquiry or not.’ His voice was sharp, the smile gone. ‘Are you going to report me for dereliction of duty?’ He walked past her, out into the hall, and went into the kitchen.
She followed him. ‘I’m not complaining,’ she said. ‘It’s just that when we’ve got a serious crime to investigate, it’s usually all I can do to get you to stop work by midnight.’
‘Yes, well, it’s a major enquiry, isn’t it? And I’m not really all that good at them, according to the infant who gave me a dressing down this morning,’ he said. ‘So I’ll stick to minor ones. What do you want to eat?’
‘Nothing. I want to know what’s wrong.’ It couldn’t possibly be getting chewed out by the ACC. Lloyd spent half his life being told off by senior officers, and it had never bothered him before. This wasn’t like him. It wasn’t like him at all. He had been behaving oddly all day, and it had something to do with Curtis Law. ‘So tell me,’ she said.
‘Nothing’s wrong! For God’s sake, can’t I knock off work early without starting a nationwide scare about my state of mind?’
He had hardly looked at her. He was standing staring into the fridge, and she knew he wasn’t even seeing what was in there. ‘Lloyd,’ she began, but she got no further.
‘Aquarius news will be on in a minute,’ he said, closing the fridge, putting on the portable. He sat down at the table, and watched the end of the Australian soap that preceded it as though every deathless word of dialogue was of intense interest to him, and the weather forecast and advertisements likewise. Then Aquarius 1830 came on, leading, of course, with the murder.
Over pictures of the farm, the newsreader’s voice, barely able to contain its excitement, intoned: ‘Bernard Bailey, the man at the centre of the Rookery development row, is found murdered at his Harmston farmhouse. That report coming up in a moment. Also on tonight’s programme: local council says dispose of your own rubbish. We get the reaction of townspeople to the Lunston District Council’s proposal to axe collection services and set up neighbourhood tips. And we meet the guard-cat who saw off would-be raiders at this Welchester sub-post office.’
The newsreader came on screen. ‘Good evening. Bernard Bailey, the farmer who refused to sell his land to make way for a road, was today found dead from knife wounds at the farm which earlier in the year became the centre of a dispute which united the Bartonshire village of Harmston against him. Police say a murder enquiry has been launched. This report from Curtis Law.’
Over more pictures of the farm, Curtis Law’s report began.
‘In a bizarre and tragic twist to the saga of Bailey’s farm, Bernard Bailey was found dead in his own home this morning when his wife returned from a weekend shopping trip to London. Police say he …
Judy frowned a little, then stopped listening; something was worrying Lloyd, bothering him so much that he couldn’t even slip into another mode for her benefit. He had temporarily lost that facility, and she wanted to know why.
‘Bernard Bailey had been in the news almost constantly over the last six months, because of his stand against …’
She sat down at the table, and tried to work out if she could have done something to upset him. She constantly did things which annoyed him, and sometimes did things that made him angry. But she had never done anything, not even inadvertently, that had made him unhappy, and Lloyd was unhappy, something she wasn’t sure she had ever seen before. She looked back at the television. The pictures were now of the slashed tractor tyres, from last December. ‘Tom thinks McQueen was behind the vandalism,’ she said.
‘Does he?’
Pictures of the alarmed fence, the cameras, the electronic gate and its high camera tower. ‘I was at the murder house this morning, and I saw the security for myself. Windows locked, shuttered. Alarms set, cameras on. Documents and cash sat in Mr Bailey’s open safe, so certain was he of his security systems. But those—’
‘Cash?’ said Lloyd.
Judy shook her head. ‘No cash,’ she said. ‘Just documents and correspondence.’
‘And his daughter says the alarms were switched off when she arrived at the house?’
‘Says,’ said Judy. There was something about Nicola Hutchins’s account of that visit that didn’t ring true.
‘If she’s right, it could have been a burglary.’
‘If she’s right. And if Law’s right that there was money there.’
‘Yes,’ said Lloyd. ‘Perhaps he just assumed a safe would have cash in it.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Judy. ‘We’ll be seeing him in the morning anyway, to look at the videos. We can ask him then.’
‘You’re seeing him in the morning.’ Lloyd got up, and opened the fridge again. ‘ Did you say what you wanted to eat?’ he asked, the brief discussion at an end.
‘Whatever you fancy,’ she said.
She couldn’t remember ever having eaten a meal with Lloyd in silence, and she wasn’t eating one now. Neither of them was. They were shifting the food about the plates while Lloyd watched the cat who had launched herself, all claws and teeth, at the youths who had demanded money from the post-office till, and everything else that came on. They had sat through a whole episode of another soap opera, and now it was some game show that she would normally have run a mile from, but tonight she was grateful for it, grateful to it, for filling up the spaces. She made coffee. Real coffee, which she ground up in the real coffee grinder, and made in the real percolator that Lloyd had given her, taking great care to do it right.
‘Shall we take it through?’ she asked, and her voice sounded odd, and unnatural, as though she were a bit-part player in an amateur production.
‘Sure,’ he said.
In the living room, Judy put on the television again, going on with the pretence that Lloyd was actually watching it. When the programme finished, a trailer came on, and it was suddenly snapped off. She looked at Lloyd, who put down the remote control, and looked back at her, taking a breath, opening his mouth, then saying nothing.
A terrible storm of possibilities came into her mind. Her mother had died. He had some incurable, fatal disease. He’d been sacked. She had been sacked. He had run over a child.
‘I’m going to be a laughing stock tomorrow,’ he said.
Judy checked her huge sigh of relief, smothered her instinctive ‘Is that all?’ and reordered her thoughts. As far as Lloyd was concerned, this was serious. He would sooner no one ever spoke to him again than be laughed at. ‘Why?’ she asked.
‘That programme is on tonight,’ he said. ‘ I’d …’ He paused. ‘I’d much rather you didn’t watch it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because …’ He put down his coffee again. ‘Because he’s made a fool of me,’ he said, the words coming out in a rush. ‘It’s bad enough knowing it’ll be watched by people whose opinion of me doesn’t matter a damn, but—’ He broke off. ‘Don’t watch it,’ he said. ‘Please.’
Judy considered her reply carefully before she spoke. ‘Don’t you think it would be better if I did?’ she said. ‘Everyone else will have seen it. It’s going to look a bit odd if I haven’t.’
Lloyd’s ego was usually fairly robust, and it needed to be dented now and then. But it had to remain intact; it was essential to him, because without it he just wasn’t Lloyd. It had clearly been given a very severe knock, and she was trying hard to find words that wouldn’t damage it further, because the truth was that she doubted very much that the programme revolved round him, as he seemed to imagine it did.
‘It might not be as bad as you think,’ she said gently. ‘ Maybe you need a second opinion. You don’t have to be here. There’s a nice pub just down the road.’
‘They have televisions in pubs,’ he said miserably.
Judy smiled. ‘When was the last time you saw a documentary in a pub?’ she asked. ‘It’ll be on some sports channel, showing foreign women playing some obscure sport. Or on some interminable pop programme.’
‘It’ll close at eleven,’ he said.
‘There’s drinking-up time. And you can walk back slowly. But you do have to come back,’ she warned him: ‘Don’t go sloping off home.’
He smiled a little. ‘All right,’ he said.
So, in the fullness of time, he went out, and Judy watched the programme that she found to her surprise and mounting anger did indeed revolve around Lloyd, did indeed try to make a fool of him. She allowed his echoed voice to die away, switched off the television, and Lloyd’s key turned in the lock. He had been hanging about on the landing, waiting for it to finish.
She got up when he came in, put her arms round his neck, and touched his forehead with her own. ‘ No one will be laughing,’ she said firmly.
‘Huh.’
‘They won’t, Lloyd. Everyone who’s ever walked a beat knows perfectly well why that happened. If you had his budget, and all the people he had at his disposal, and nothing at all to work on but one problem, and no need whatever to observe the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, you’d have not just got Mr Big, you’d have worked out who Jack the Ripper was and what happened to the Marie Celeste while you were at it.’
He smiled. ‘The Mary Celeste,’ he said. ‘ ‘‘Marie’’ is a popular misconception.’
She smiled back. That was more like it, even if it was an act.
‘But he did make a fool of me, didn’t he? You thought I was just being oversensitive.’
‘Yes, I did,’ she admitted.
And why me?’ he asked. ‘There were three forces involved in the end. Two other heads of CID who missed the connection. He didn’t even mention the others.’
She thought perhaps she knew. Lloyd could be infuriatingly patronizing. She was used to it; Curtis Law wasn’t, and he had done it for nothing more than spite, as far as she could see. But she didn’t say that. She just shrugged.
‘It’s going out on the network,’ Lloyd said, in a small voice. ‘Everyone will see it.’
‘Lloyd,’ she said. ‘It will be watched by about five per cent of the population if he’s lucky. Half of them will fall asleep, and the other half will all have forgotten what it was about the next morning.’
‘Yes,’ he said, with a little smile. ‘ You’re right.’
And you are going to come with me tomorrow to Aquarius?’
He looked at her from under his lashes. ‘Do I have to?’
‘The sooner you see him the better. You can act as though nothing’s happened, you know you can.’ She had restored some of his self-esteem, but that wasn’t what was worrying him. She led him to the sofa, and sat down with him. ‘Tell me what’s really wrong,’ she said.
He put his arm round her. ‘ How much do you love me?’ he asked.
She smiled, not sure of the connection. ‘I don’t think love’s something you can quantify,’ she said. ‘You either love someone or you don’t. I love you. That’s it.’
‘It’s just that I keep seeing this scenario,’ he said. ‘Where Curtis Law goes off to London with Rachel Bailey, leaves her there on Sunday night and Monday morning to establish a watertight alibi for herself, then either with or without her knowledge, comes back, goes to Bailey’s farm, gets in on some pretext or other, and stabs him to death.’
‘And?’
‘And I think I’m being dangerously less than objective. That figure going through the gate could be one of at least three people I met today, all of whom loathed Bernard Bailey, but it wasn’t when I was talking to any of them that I actually thought about it. It was when I saw Curtis Law, and he was just there to report on the murder. That’s crazy, isn’t it?’
‘No,’ she said.
‘It is! I’m trying to pin it on him, for God’s sake, Judy! I doubt if he has any feelings about Bernard Bailey at all, and I have no evidence whatever that he and Rachel Bailey are anything more than acquaintances.’
He took a breath. ‘ I just wondered if you loved me enough to tell me if you thought I was paranoid.’
Judy smiled. Lloyd’s scenario might be quite wrong, but it wasn’t one conjured up out of thin air and injured pride. She too had met people who could have been the figure at the gate, but it was when she had seen Curtis Law that she had involuntarily thought of that figure, and only then. She hadn’t known Lloyd had, and he hadn’t known she had. They had each independently thought of it because it looked like him, it was as simple as that. And crime reporters knew how the police operated; when one half of a marriage was found murdered, the other half came under immediate and detailed investigation. She had never known a reporter not to ask, off the record, if the spouse had an alibi, because if not, suspicion was automatic, and if so, that alibi was subjected to scrutiny. Curtis Law hadn’t asked, which was odd. But odder still was the fact that, on that report, he had given her an alibi, one that no one on their side of the fence had mentioned to him.
‘I do love you enough,’ she said. ‘And I don’t think you’re paranoid.’
‘Good,’ he said, kissing the top of her head. ‘Now you can tell me why I’m not, and bring me up to date with your enquiries.’ He stood up. ‘Do you fancy a sandwich? I’m starving.’
It was after midnight, and he was all set to work. Judy yawned. ‘If I’m going to be up all night, you have to come with me to see Curtis Law tomorrow,’ she said. ‘ Is it a deal?’
‘Done!’ he shouted from the kitchen.
Chapter Six
Curtis looked up from the draft of his lunchtime bulletin on the murder as Chief Inspector Lloyd and Inspector Hill were shown in, and got to his feet, stubbing out his cigarette. He tried to gauge Lloyd’s mood, but he couldn’t; he thought it best if he mentioned Law on the Law first.
‘I don’t suppose this is a social call,’ he said. ‘Not after last night’s programme. I’m sorry if it – well, you know. But …’ He shrugged. ‘ That’s show business.’
‘Oh, I quite understand that, Mr Curtis,’ said Lloyd. ‘Don’t give it another thought.’
He looked as though he really didn’t mind, but Curti
s doubted that.
‘We’re here to see the videos,’ Lloyd went on, handing him the one that Sergeant Finch had confiscated. ‘ But first I would like to ask you some questions about your report on the murder, if I may.’
Curtis smiled, despite feeling a touch apprehensive. He had been expecting this, and he had his answers ready. ‘Of course,’ he said, waving a hand at the two vacant chairs. ‘What did you want to know?’
‘When you used the expression ‘‘documents and cash’’ about the contents of Mr Bailey’s safe, was that just poetic licence?’
Curtis frowned. That had not been the question he had anticipated. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Journalists don’t use poetic licence.’ He saw the raising of Lloyd’s eyebrows, and ducked his head a little in acknowledgement of his naive answer. ‘I don’t, anyway,’ he said.
‘You actually saw cash in Bernard Bailey’s safe?’
‘Yes. Quite a lot, I think. Notes. In bundles. Why?’
‘We didn’t find any cash.’
Curtis stared at him. ‘You must have done,’ he said. ‘It was there, on the top shelf.’
Lloyd shook his head.
‘Well,’ Curtis said. ‘ Perhaps Rach— Mrs Bailey removed it,’ But that made no sense, he thought, even as he spoke the words. Rachel had been half out of her mind; she wouldn’t have been able to think straight enough to remove money from the safe, unless she’d done it before she’d found Bailey. But why would she remove it at all? She wouldn’t, was the answer. Paxton seemed the only possible explanation for its disappearance. ‘Perhaps that foreman bloke helped himself to it,’ he said.
‘Unlikely,’ said Lloyd. ‘Our officers arrived to find him coming to blows with your cameraman, and they were on the premises from then on.’
‘Yes, but one of them was attending to Mrs Bailey, and the other was throwing us out. Where was the foreman while all that was going on?’ That had to be the explanation, Curtis decided. Perhaps Paxton had already known the money was there, and had realized that in all the confusion, he could take it without anyone noticing.
