by Jill McGown
‘If Mrs Hutchins is right that the alarms were off, anyone agile enough could have got in over the fence and taken it,’ Lloyd said.
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Finch. ‘Law helped Bailey set up the closed-circuit television, didn’t he? So he’d know where all the cameras were, and all that, wouldn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well … if the alarms had been off like Mrs Hutchins says they were, he could have got out the back, couldn’t he? Dodged the cameras, and gone over the fence, like you said. Without being seen at all. He wouldn’t have had to use the gate, and get himself on the video.’
‘What are you saying, Tom?’ Lloyd asked testily.
‘That it isn’t Law on that video? That we’re on a wild-goose chase? He left his paper here!’
‘No,’ said Tom. ‘I’m saying that I don’t think the alarms could have been off when he was here. And from what Paxton says, Bailey seems to have been scared to death someone was going to get him, so I can’t see why he’d have them off at all.’
‘You think Mrs Hutchins is lying?’
‘Well, I’m not convinced she came here about a sheep, guv. No one knows anything about a sheep getting out. Not here nor anywhere else, according to Paxton. I reckon something went on here on Sunday night, and I don’t think it had anything to do with a sheep.’
‘OK,’ said Lloyd. ‘Have a word with Mrs Hutchins, Tom – see what you can get.’
‘Meanwhile,’ said Judy, ‘have you seen anything of Mrs Bailey while you’ve been here?’
‘She went out while I was talking to Paxton.’
‘Was Curtis Law with her?’ asked Lloyd.
‘No. She was on her own.’
Lloyd hit the steering wheel in annoyance. ‘ Where the hell is the man?’ he said.
‘Off somewhere on a story?’ suggested Tom.
‘No. He’s been told to mark time at Stansfield and await developments on Bailey,’ said Lloyd. ‘He’s somewhere with Mrs Bailey.’ Then he smiled, as a thought occurred to him. It meant driving all the way back to Barton, but it would be worth it. ‘And I know where,’ he said. ‘Have to love you and leave you, Tom. Good luck with Mrs Hutchins.’
He drove out of Bailey’s farm, and on to the open road, heading back the way he had just come. ‘A very nice service flat,’ he said, in reply to Judy’s query about where they were going. ‘Where I had to endure young Mr Law’s even younger producer being smug and self-satisfied while he showed me all the gadgets and gizmos they’d set up there. While he told me what lengths they’d gone to to make Roger Wheeler’s identity rock-solid. Like taking the flat on a six-month rent. I expect Rachel Bailey and Curtis Law have made use of it, don’t you?’
He used his mobile to ask for back-up from Barton when they got there to discover both Law’s car and the BMW parked outside. Complete with uniformed colleagues, they effected entry by means of keys obtained from the caretaker, when their knocks had gone unheeded. Curtis Law was apprehended in bed with Rachel, having clearly decided that there would be no developments on the Bailey murder that day. But he was wrong. Lloyd arrested him, then left the uniforms with him while he got dressed, to find Judy looking round the flat, automatically poking and prying, noting down what she found.
She smiled at him as he came into the room. ‘I often wonder if I would have done this sort of thing anyway, whether or not I’d joined the police,’ she said. It’s fun.’
Like watching unsuspecting people on videos, Lloyd thought. They had long ago accepted that they were chalk and cheese, but perhaps they did have something in common after all. They were both exceedingly nosy. And he had done a bit of poking and prying himself. The wardrobe still held the padded-waistcoat affair that Law had worn to help bring off his coup, but nothing else. The flat was clearly just somewhere to meet.
What Judy at first thought, with a squeal, was a small furry animal in a cupboard turned out to be Law’s wig; she put it back where she had found it, then took out his beard, and a mobile phone. ‘ More of his disguise,’ she said.
Lloyd took the phone from her and looked at it. He was an expert on these things now. ‘It’s charged up,’ he said, puzzled.
Judy looked thoughtful, and noted that down. Then she went out into the corridor, and picked up the letters that lay unopened in the bin.
Lloyd frowned, following her out. ‘And why doesn’t he open his mail?’ he asked.
‘It isn’t his mail,’ Judy said, sorting through it. ‘It’s addressed to Roger Wheeler. Mail shots from car-hire places, mostly. A couple from credit-card companies.’ She smiled at him, looking grimly pleased. ‘Law on the Law will have an interesting programme to make this time round, won’t they?’
Curtis Law was led away while Rachel, wrapped in a bathrobe, stood watching, her face pale. They couldn’t arrest her on what they had, not yet, and one thing Lloyd had discovered while he was in Law’s bedroom was that Rachel had told the truth. She had no bruises. And he had been angry, when he’d seen her there with Law. She was worth much more than this sordid set-up. He felt guilty now about how he’d behaved; he would have apologized, but she ran into the bathroom, locking the door, and they could hear her being sick.
And he felt guiltier than ever.
Chapter Seven
‘This is a little early in the ritual for the confession, isn’t it, Jack?’
Terri was in the garden, painting in the late evening sun, trying to capture the long shadows. She was a good artist. Not great. Not like whoever had done those wonderful paintings in Bailey’s hallway. He had made a mental note to ask Rachel Bailey who had done them, if ever he got the chance, but he very rarely bumped into her. He truly hadn’t seen her to speak to since the day she was married.
Everyone had seen her that day. Bailey had spent a fortune that he didn’t have on a wedding that did justice to his stunning bride. It had been the most incongruous thing Jack or any of the other guests had ever seen, especially in the church, as they had turned to see this amazing creature walk down the aisle towards Bernard Bailey, of all people. And when he had been told he might kiss the bride, he hadn’t.
Rising up from the pews like a murmured response had been comments to the predictable effect, and now, he thought, if they were lucky, the congregation might get to see her in her widow’s weeds; there would be even more scope for fantasy when Bernard was laid to rest among the tombstones and slabs of Harmston cemetery, scene of many a youthful indiscretion of his own.
So, he thought, dragging his thoughts back to his present predicament, Terri knew it was a ritual. He hadn’t realized that. ‘Their husbands have never been murdered before,’ he said. ‘I thought you might start thinking I’d done it.’
She looked up from her delicate watercolour of the wild honeysuckle as it trailed down the rough, local-stone wall. It looked like a painting of honeysuckle trailing down a wall. His attempt would look like pink and green paint dripping down grey and beige paint, so he had no right to criticize. But in the hands of whoever had done those paintings, it would look like an untamed creature tumbling on to a lover; it would be alive. Even the wall would be alive.
The ones in Bailey’s house were impressions of the seasons; there were more pictures in the sitting room, but he hadn’t had the chance to see them properly. Just enough to recognize the style, the bold statement, the deep, vibrant warmth of autumn colours. The hallway was shimmering spring, the greens and yellows of daffodils joyfully overtaking the white of melting snow, the pink and white of sunlit, wind-tossed blossom against the rough browns and greys of bark. The silver and blue and black of a rain-pocked stream that filled the canvas, rushing, dancing water that you could feel and taste and hear and smell. Just colour. Just colour on canvas, and you could drown in it.
‘Murdered him?’ she said. ‘Why in the world would I have thought that you had murdered him?’
‘Because I was there. Because I find him – found him – as repellent as you do. Because I couldn’t think of a better lie to
explain my presence in his house than the one which was so obviously disbelieved by you and the Inspector. The truth is that there was an emergency lodge meeting on Sunday evening, and I thought he’d be at it, and I could see Rachel.’
Now, he was telling a black lie. He had no more notion of lodge meetings than she had. But she would believe him. Did that make a lie the truth?
‘But he was there,’ he went on, when she didn’t speak. ‘I had to think of some reason for calling on him, so I told him I wanted to talk to him about the woodland.’
She was looking disbelieving again. And he let you in?’
‘Yes. I went in, all ready to give my speech about the woodland, but he was too busy threatening to kill Rachel to listen to anything I had to say.’
Terri went back to her careful, dead watercolour, with its perfectly formed and shaded blooms, its evening-class correctness. She had been taught how to use her talent; she had never learned how to let it use her.
‘Was he threatening to kill her because of you?’ she asked.
‘I suppose so,’ he said, seizing on the explanation for Bailey allowing him to pass. ‘That must be why he let me in. He’ll tell me to my face. But he was so drunk I didn’t understand most of it. I find his ridiculous accent impenetrable at the best of times.’
‘Has it been going on since before she was married?’ she asked, her voice shaking a little. She put down the brush again, but she didn’t look at him. ‘Has it?’
His talent was for telling lies, and he had been using it and letting it use him for years. Now, he had to decide how long this fictitious affair had lasted. If he said yes, the thought of a two-year affair might be more than Terri was prepared to take; if he said no, she would want details. He shook his head, preferring to err on the side of caution. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That bit wasn’t true.’
‘So when did it start? How did it start?’
He sat down, and made a full and frank confession about something which had never happened, lacing it with dates and events, and he knew it was utterly convincing. But he would lose track if he wasn’t careful.
Arrested?’ McQueen repeated.
‘Yeah.’ Rachel looked up at him, trying to judge his mood. Certainly more receptive than it had been the last time. ‘ So can I come in?’ she asked.
‘What’s he been arrested for?’ he asked, then turned and walked towards the study. ‘I’m out on the terrace,’ he said. ‘I was just having a beer. Can I get you something?’
She shook her head, following him out through the French windows as she had done that morning, on to his terrace, now bathed in rays from the setting sun. He slid into the bench attached to the table, and indicated that she should take the bench opposite.
She smiled, and sat down, watched as he took a long draught of beer, then answered his original question. ‘For killin’ Bernard.’
He didn’t quite choke. ‘My God,’ he said, setting the can down, and his face broke into a smile as he looked at her. ‘You got someone else to do that for you, too. I should have guessed.’
Naturally. And she might be in terrible trouble, but her philosophy was never to meet any sort of trouble halfway. ‘I didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, Mr McQueen,’ she said.
McQueen took another sip of beer to help down the one he’d almost choked on, and shook his head, still smiling at her. ‘Of course you didn’t, pet,’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘Don’t know nothin’ about it,’ she said lazily. ‘Just know they arrested him this afternoon. And if they’ve got Curtis for murderin’ Bernard, they’re not goin’ to think nothin’ about you buyin’ my land, are they?’
He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said.
‘You still think I killed him?
‘No, pet,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you were anywhere near him. Or what would be the point of getting your boyfriend to kill him for you?’
Rachel smiled. ‘Never asked him to,’ she said. ‘Not my fault if he’s hot-headed.’
‘You don’t seem too bothered about him being arrested.’
She was terrified, if he really wanted to know. She had known that Curtis had underestimated Lloyd when she had watched that programme, had known that they should have been making contingency plans, not celebrating anything. They had been lying on the bed, sleeping off the exertions of the afternoon, when the police had walked in on them, and Curtis hadn’t liked it any better than he had when Nicola had found them in the cowshed. He had complained about it, once he’d got his clothes on and hadn’t felt so vulnerable.
They said they’d knocked, but if they had, it hadn’t penetrated. And, she supposed, knocking on the door of a luxury fiat didn’t have quite the same effect as banging on the side of VW camper. That shook the van, echoed. That woke you up, all right. Travellers got the blame for everything, and the scene was one she knew well, with cops invading your privacy, giving orders, silencing protests, acting as though they owned the place. Curtis had looked as bewildered as Lloyd had looked angry, and when one of the uniformed ones had made a remark about her desirability, Lloyd had just told her to cover herself up. And she had thought he was different.
But then, she had been convinced that Curtis really could run rings round the police. Maybe she was losing her touch. The whole thing might be falling apart right now, if they had enough evidence against him. And if they had, how long would she stay out of prison? But she had to take care of her future on the assumption that she had one, and that was just what she was going to do, because McQueen had been panting for it for months. ‘You really not goin’ to buy the land from me, Mr McQueen?’ she asked.
‘I’m really not. And you can drop the Mr McQueen act, because it’s fooling no one, pet.’
She knew that. She eased off a sandal, and smiled, running her bare foot slowly up his leg. ‘You maybe don’t want my land,’ she said. ‘ But you want somethin’ of mine pretty bad: He closed his eyes and groaned as soon as she touched him; after a few moments, she withdrew her foot and sat back, her arms along the back of the bench.
‘Can I have a beer now?’ she asked.
He opened his eyes, and looked at her for a long time. Then he nodded, got up, and went into the house.
Nicola was entertaining another policeman. Sergeant Finch’s angelic looks belied his tough nature, but she found that easier to cope with than Inspector Hill’s unruffled calm. He had wanted to know if she had seen any money in her father’s safe, and she had said no, she hadn’t. He had asked if she had noticed any signs of a disturbance, and she had said no, she hadn’t. He had asked her if she had left any money in her father’s safe, and she had laughed.
Then he had got on to the reason for her visit to her father. She had told him that she had gone to the farm to try to find out about the sheep, that her father hadn’t been there, that she had waited for over an hour, then she had left. She was certain he knew she wasn’t telling the truth, but she felt reasonably confident that she could keep him at arm’s length, and out of her psyche, unlike Inspector Hill.
He had come during evening surgery; Gus had sent the last two patients away, having established that the animals weren’t ill, but merely there for annual inoculations. Now he was sitting listening, his eyes going from Finch to her, as though he were watching a tennis match.
‘Why did your father go out, do you think?’
‘I thought he might have gone to look for the sheep.’
‘Why do you suppose the alarms were off?’
‘I can only think that he went across the fields rather than take the Land Rover. He’d have to put the alarms off. He’d be crossing the beams.’
‘Makes sense.’
She knew that. It was what had really happened that didn’t make sense, not what she was telling Finch might have happened.
‘Problem is, your father’s sheep are all accounted for.’
‘I know.’
‘No one else has had a sheep go missing, either.’
Oh, God, she wished they wou
ld forget about the bloody sheep. There was no sheep. There never had been any sheep. ‘Maybe my father imagined it,’ she said. ‘He was very drunk when he rang me.’
‘There’s a bit of a problem about that too,’ said Finch. ‘You see, there’s no record of him having telephoned you.’
‘Then presumably he wasn’t at home when he rang me.’
‘Everyone I’ve spoken to says your father had no intention of leaving the farmhouse on Sunday.’
‘I don’t know anything about that,’ Nicola said, surprising herself with the assurance with which she was coping with Finch. She could do this. She really could. She didn’t have to cave in. ‘If he didn’t ring from his own phone, he must have rung from a call box or something, which means he must have left the farm.’
‘And then found the sheep.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And then found the sheep.’
‘And the sheep was on the road, so presumably he must have been on the road when he found it.’
‘Yes,’ said Nicola, tiredly.
‘So he hadn’t crossed the fields to look for it? He’d gone out for some other reason, and just … found it?’
‘Yes. Is that so unlikely?’
‘No,’ said Finch. ‘ But according to you, he left the house unlocked and the alarms off, and that seems very unlikely.’
With that, Gus got up and left the room. Again. And now she had to answer Sergeant Finch’s questions with no moral support at all. But then, she thought, wasn’t that precisely what she had been doing all along?
‘He was drunk. I told you.’
‘Then why do you think he went out?’
‘Perhaps he finished the whisky he had in the house, and went to get another bottle.’ Nicola was rather enjoying this fiction. And the quickest way to walk to the village is by crossing the fields. So that might be why he had to leave the alarms off.’
‘Well,’ said Finch. ‘That would be an explanation. Except that no one saw him at the pub or anywhere else on Sunday night.’
‘Then I’ve no idea,’ said Nicola. There was, after all, no reason why she should have.
