Picture of Innocence

by Jill McGown

  When Mike had returned with her beer, she had been as she was now, sitting on the edge of the table, her long legs crossed at the ankles, her bare feet on the bench. He had put the can and a glass on the table and had sat down, his hand resting on her feet, absently stroking them in an unconscious gesture of ownership as she told him why the money that the land represented was so important to her.

  He had thought that he had been poor, because his parents had struggled, like so many people in the north-east, in the depression. He had been three years old when the war had widowed his mother; she had had to bring him and his sisters up as best she could until they could leave school and get jobs. But poor though they were, he had always had shoes on his feet, and a roof over his head; Rachel had been born into a peaceful, affluent society, and she had begged in the streets. The world made very little sense to him.

  She was playing with him, of course. Not literally, as she had done ten minutes ago, briefly and agonizingly, but just as she had for the last twelve months. And he let her talk until the sun was all but gone, until she leaned over to drop the can into his refuse bin, and the expanse of suntanned thigh exposed by the movement was too much for him.

  ‘I’ll buy your land,’ he said, his voice thick, and stood up. ‘Can we go to bed now, for God’s sake?’

  She uncrossed her legs, placing them one either side of him on the bench, inviting him to take her there and then, in the dark privacy of his walled terrace.

  Her unused beer glass swayed and toppled, rolling slowly over the polished, varnished timbers of Shirley’s rustic monstrosity, and in as many moments as it took for it to reach the edge and shatter on the paving, years of denial and months of sheer lust were emptied into that golden body.

  Rachel kicked off the pants he had dragged down out of his way, and slid off the table, smiling at him. ‘Now let’s go to bed and do it right,’ she said.

  Rachel would be frantic with worry by now. The police had frightened her, barging into the bedroom like that; they’d frightened him, too, looking as though they wouldn’t think twice about putting the boot in. But they had merely escorted him to Barton’s main police station, and then he had been taken to his own house while a couple of DCs searched it, then he had finally been brought here. But this wasn’t supposed to be happening.

  He smoked quickly, stubbing cigarettes out half smoked, lighting new ones. So far, he had denied ever seeing the knife in his life before, denied that he had bought the paper in London, denied that he had been on a train on Sunday night.

  Lloyd tipped his chair back, and Curtis watched as it balanced precariously on its hind legs.

  ‘You helped Mr Bailey install his closed-circuit television system?’ he asked. ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So you’ll know where all the cameras are, I suppose.’

  ‘I didn’t put them up personally,’ said Curtis. ‘I helped him decide how best to employ them.’

  ‘Which included where to site them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you do that? Aren’t there professionals who do that sort of thing?’

  ‘Mr Bailey was a very prudent man. He preferred to have my advice for nothing.’

  ‘Why did you offer to help him?’

  ‘I would have thought that was obvious,’ Curtis said. ‘I wanted to be near Rachel.’

  ‘I think you wanted to get to know his security systems,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘Because you wanted his wife. And doing away with Bailey would clear the field, wouldn’t it? Apart from anything else, she’s going to come into a tidy bit of money when she sells.’

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about the money!’ Curtis shouted, stung into a genuine response.

  ‘Mr Law,’ Lloyd said, in a sing-song tone both bored and disapproving.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Curtis said, and looked at Inspector Hill. ‘I’m sorry,’ he repeated. ‘But the money doesn’t come into it.’

  Lloyd let the chair down suddenly, making him jump. ‘ Doesn’t come into what?’

  ‘My feelings for Rachel.’ Nice try, thought Curtis, but it didn’t work.

  ‘We know the paper was purchased in London on Sunday night,’ Lloyd said. ‘We have a security video which shows that you left Barton station at around half past twelve on Monday morning. And this was found in your house, Mr Law. I am showing Mr Law the cancelled return ticket from St Pancras to Barton,’ he told the tape, and placed a plastic bag marked AM2 on the table. ‘The seat was reserved,’ he said. ‘ Smoking, facing, on the eleven-thirty train. Which arrives in Barton at twelve-thirty in the morning,’ he added. ‘Give or take the odd cow on the line.’

  Curtis looked at it, then at Lloyd.

  ‘It was in your expenses folder,’ he said.

  ‘Perks,’ said Curtis.

  ‘The person calling himself Mr Bailey left the hotel to catch an eleven-thirty train from St Pancras,’ Lloyd said. ‘Was that you?’

  ‘Yes, it was me.’

  ‘Then are you trying to tell us that it isn’t your paper? That this is not your crossword?’

  They knew it was his paper, and it would take a handwriting expert two seconds to confirm that it was his printing in the crossword grid, his scribbled workings-out in the margins. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s my paper. And I did buy it at King’s Cross station on Sunday night. But I dropped it at the farm when I went up there on Monday morning, that’s all.’ It was a lie, and it was barely spoken before it was spotted by Lloyd.

  ‘If you already had the paper, why did you buy another one?’

  ‘I hadn’t got mine with me.’

  ‘Either of them?’

  Curtis looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘You get it delivered to your home. And you’d bought one at King’s Cross. Two newspapers. And yet you bought a third.’

  ‘I had to take my car in for a service,’ he said. ‘I had to meet Gary because he was giving me a lift into Harmston, and I knew I’d be leaving before the paper came. That’s why I bought one in London. Because I like having it with me at work. There’s a lot of hanging about.’

  ‘But then you didn’t take it with you to work? Why not?’

  Curtis shrugged.

  ‘I think you didn’t have it with you because you’d dropped it while you were stabbing Bernard Bailey,’ Lloyd said.

  Inspector Hill took over then. ‘Someone tampered with-the CCTV at Bailey’s farm,’ she said. ‘Someone ran the tape back thirteen minutes, and shortly afterwards, someone left. Someone who knew how to avoid the camera on the roadway. Someone who looked very like you.’

  Curtis shrugged again, and tapped his fingers quickly on the table for a moment or two, before taking another cigarette from the packet. They couldn’t be certain it was him, not from the view he’d presented to the camera. They had to have more on him than that.

  ‘We know you made an earlier visit to Bailey’s farmhouse than the one you made at ten-thirty on Monday morning,’ Lloyd said. ‘Because you saw money in the safe, and that door was closed while you and your cameraman were in the house.’

  Curtis smiled. ‘ You wouldn’t dare use that,’ he said. ‘Your mates would swear black was white if it meant they could get back at me for Mr Big.’

  Lloyd looked surprised. ‘You have a very high opinion of my popularity rating.’

  ‘No,’ said Curtis. ‘I have a very low opinion of your colleagues.’

  ‘There were Coca-Cola cans and cigarette ends found on the road outside Bernard Bailey’s property,’ Inspector Hill said. ‘You know if they were yours, and we can find out. The cans have fingerprints on them, and we can have the cigarette ends tested. We can get a DNA profile from saliva.’

  ‘Then maybe you’d better do that,’ said Curtis.

  ‘I think we’ll leave you to think about the wisdom of that,’ Lloyd said, getting up. ‘Interview suspended, 20.55 hours.’

  Curtis was taken to the cells, and
asked if he wanted a meal. He did; he hadn’t had any lunch, and he was starving. This wasn’t supposed to be happening, he thought, as his meal came, and he forced it down to give himself strength for the next session. But it was, and all he could do was try to keep Rachel out of it.

  He sat back on the bunk when he had finished eating, and did what Chief Inspector Lloyd had suggested. He thought about it, thought about it hard, until they came for him again.

  Lloyd listened and watched as Judy briskly reconvened. ‘Interview with Curtis Law resumed at 21.30 hours, Tuesday twenty-ninth July,’ she said. ‘ Present are …’

  Curtis Law had been fed and watered, and given a rest from questioning. The book was being observed, page by page, paragraph by paragraph. There would be no suspicion of Law’s treatment being other than exemplary. Now he was back, he was reminded of his rights, and he still didn’t want a solicitor. Judy even advised him that he should reconsider that, but he refused.

  Then she asked him if he had anything to tell them about Bernard Bailey’s death, and he nodded, taking a moment before he spoke. When he did, his voice was quiet, and resigned.

  ‘I spent the weekend with Rachel in London,’ he said. ‘The last time I had been with her, she had had bruises, like she always did, because that bastard used his fists on her all the time, and that was bad enough. But there were other bruises. Old ones. All over her body. None on her face, or her neck, or her legs. Just her body, so that when she was clothed, nothing would show.’ He looked away from them, blinking away the tears that had sprung into his eyes. ‘Uncontrollable temper is one thing, but that – that was like some sort of torture, like the Gestapo or something.’

  That was exactly how Judy had described it, Lloyd thought.

  Law got himself together before he carried on. ‘He had been going to do that to her again, and she had told him she was pregnant in order to stop him. When I left her on Sunday, I kept thinking what was going to happen when she went home. The baby should have begun to show, and it wasn’t going to, was it? Bailey was certifiable, but he wasn’t stupid. I bought a paper, caught the train, and tried to do the crossword to take my mind off it, but I couldn’t, because I kept thinking about what he would do to her when he found out she wasn’t pregnant.’

  Law had been directing his statement at Judy, but now he looked at Lloyd. ‘I just went there to tell him that I was in love with Rachel, and I was taking her away,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him. I didn’t mean to do anything. I just wanted to tell him, so that she couldn’t go home. She was determined to hang on, to divorce him, and get the money he owed her, but I couldn’t let her do that. I had to make her leave him. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lloyd said. ‘But you did kill him, didn’t you?’

  Law nodded.

  ‘For the tape, please,’ said Judy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Law. ‘I did kill him.’

  Lloyd wasn’t doing his usual thing of taking a turn round the room, reading notices, standing on tiptoe to look out of the high window, wandering off to get coffee. He did that when he wanted to catch them out. But this was a confession. And a kind of hollow victory, because it had been so easy. He just wanted it to be over. He still had a bit of a headache, he was tired, and thirsty, and fed up.

  ‘When I got there, he was drunk. I mean really, really drunk. I don’t know how he made it to the phone. I said it was me, and he let me in, but I’m not convinced he really knew who I was. And I told him about me and Rachel. I told him everything. I told him I loved her, I told him I knew what he’d done to her, I told him I was taking her away – and do you know what he did?’

  His mastery of the pause was almost up to Lloyd’s own standard.

  ‘He fell asleep on me. Just lay down on the sofa, and fell asleep. And I couldn’t believe it. He hadn’t even taken any of it in. That bastard had—’

  Lloyd saw the tear fall before Law felt it; he flicked it away, and tried to go on, but he couldn’t, not for a moment.

  ‘Would you like a glass of water or something?’ Lloyd said.

  Law shook his head.

  Pity. Lloyd did.

  ‘I looked at him lying there, and … and I thought of what he’d done to her, and there was a knife on the table, so I picked it up and … and – I stuck it into him.’ He had mimed the action, and the tears came again, unchecked. ‘ I don’t know how often,’ he said. ‘Three, four times. Then I tried to cover up the fact that I’d been there.’

  Lloyd asked again if Law would like some water, and this time he nodded, thank God. He stood up. ‘ I’ll get us all some,’ he said.

  ‘Chief Inspector Lloyd leaves the room, 21.43 hours,’ said Judy.

  Lloyd went along to the water dispenser that thankfully they had had put in, though he had thought it a complete waste of money at the time. There was nothing wrong with the water out of the taps, he had said, he had yet to hear of a policeman dying because he’d drunk unfiltered water, they had much better things to spend their money on than quite unnecessary pieces of equipment, and so on. But the dispenser was much closer than the taps, the water was chilled, and tonight it tasted like wine, like the water from the streams at home had tasted. He smiled tiredly. He hadn’t thought of that for years. He drank two cupfuls, wishing that they had put in an aspirin dispenser while they were at it, then filled three more, and made his way back to the interview room.

  ‘You doctored the tape,’ Judy said. ‘ Then what did you do?’

  Law rubbed his eyes. ‘I let myself out of the house, threw the knife into the bushes, and I left the farm. I dodged the camera on the roadway – it’s not difficult. But then I realized that I’d lost the newspaper, and I couldn’t get back in to get it.’

  ‘Does that mean the alarms were on?’ asked Judy.

  ‘Yes,’ said Law. ‘ Why wouldn’t they have been?’

  ‘No reason,’ she said, wondering if Finch had got to the bottom of Nicola Hutchins’s strange story yet, as the door opened slowly, and she turned to see Lloyd carrying three paper cups of water, easing his elbow off the handle.

  ‘Chief Inspector Lloyd returns 21.50 hours,’ she said, getting up and relieving him of two of the cups, handing one to Law. ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I had the idea about doing the crossword in my own newspaper where people could see me, and getting up to the farm somehow so it would look as though it was the one I’d dropped. But I realized I couldn’t use my own paper, because Gary was picking me up. But he always goes to the cafe for breakfast when we’re in Harmston, so I thought that if I could get another paper there, and if I could get to the farm once the news broke, I could try to make it look like I’d dropped it then.’

  Judy sipped her water, and made a note.

  ‘When Paxton told us what had happened, I put the paper in my pocket, and when we got to the farm, I waited until Gary had got out of the car, and I hid it under the seat.’ He looked at Lloyd. ‘I went into the house after Gary, not before,’ he said. ‘You were right. He went in there and pointed his camera straight at Bailey, and the newspaper. I didn’t know he’d be filming everything.’

  Judy looked back through her notebook, at the places where she had put query marks.

  ‘Why did you go to see Bernard Bailey at a time when you had every reason to suppose he would be in bed?’ she asked.

  ‘I … I wasn’t thinking straight. I just wanted to stop Rachel going back to him. I wanted to get it over with.’

  ‘You wanted to get it over with? So why didn’t you get there until twenty past two? It takes less than half an hour from Barton station to Harmston at that time of night.’

  ‘I got there at about one,’ Curtis said. ‘ I sat in the car’

  ‘Why? I thought you wanted to get it over with?’

  He looked at her for a long time, then nodded. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I meant just to talk to him. When I left Rachel, I didn’t tell her what I was going to do, but I meant just to talk to him, maybe early in the morni
ng, when Gary and I got there. But then I realized that I couldn’t do that. She couldn’t have gone home, and she would have lost her money. She would never have forgiven me.’

  ‘So you decided to kill him?’

  ‘I don’t know what I decided. Yes. Yes, I did. I thought if I could get him to let me in – I knew he had a shotgun somewhere, thought maybe I could get hold of it. So I drove out to the farm, and then I sat in the car trying to work up the courage to do it. And I emptied my ashtray because I smoked so much I couldn’t get any more cigarette ends in there, and I didn’t want to throw them out lit. It was so dry – I didn’t want to be responsible for starting a forest fire or anything. And when I did finally get out and use his entry phone, I don’t know how he managed to answer it. He let me in, but he was so drunk he couldn’t stand up. He’d thrown up on the carpet and all over himself. I don’t think he even knew who I was. He fell on to the sofa, and passed out. I saw the knife just sitting there, and I just – stabbed him with it.’

  ‘And you did intend killing him when you stabbed him?’

  He nodded.

  ‘For the tape, please, Mr Law. Did you intend killing Bernard Bailey when you stabbed him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me why you left the hotel a day before Mrs Bailey?’ Judy asked.

  ‘I had to. The first train on Monday morning wouldn’t have got me back early enough to take my car in and be in time for Gary picking me up. So I got the last train on Sunday evening. She knew nothing about it. Nothing at all. The whole thing was my idea from the start.’

  ‘From the start?’

  He closed his eyes, letting his head fall back.

  ‘You didn’t get this idea on the train, did you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, his voice flat.

  ‘This demonstration that was supposed to be taking place in Harmston on Sunday – you invented that, didn’t you? So you and Rachel could go away for the weekend?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was a pause, then he carried on. ‘I had to get Rachel away, so I could kill that bastard before he killed her.’ He brought his head up again, and sat forward. ‘I had to do it!’ he shouted. ‘She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t take any more punishment like that, but she would have done. I swear, she thinks she’s indestructible. She knew he was in financial difficulties, that he might have to sell before he realized she wasn’t pregnant – I didn’t! All I could see was someone who had no intention of selling, and who would beat her to a pulp when he found out she’d been lying to him! I had to do it. I had to!’