Plots and Errors

by Jill McGown

  ‘You don’t need a licence for a firearm which forms part of a ship’s equipment,’ said Josh, his face entirely serious. ‘It’s one of the exemptions.’

  Comstock looked a little fazed, and Josh smiled.

  ‘Do you think this is funny?’ demanded Comstock.

  That was more like the thing. That was what Josh was used to. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘You wouldn’t be granted a licence, therefore the exemption wouldn’t apply in your case. And you kept the gun in an unlocked drawer, according to your statement. Plus, it’s almost certainly been used in the commission of a murder. Plus, you’ve got a silencer for it. They’ll throw the book at you, Esterbrook.’

  ‘Sure about that?’ asked Josh.

  In the end, they decided to send details of the firearms offence to the CPS, being unable to decide whether Josh’s boat counted as a ship, and if a handgun in a drawer counted as part of that ship’s equipment, even if his boat was a ship for purpose of law, or if that drawer being unlocked constituted an offence in itself, and whether any or all of that applied to the separate offence of owning a silencer. Not to mention whether any exemption would apply to him in the first place, in view of his criminal conviction. And since all handguns had been outlawed anyway, it seemed more than likely, they said, that he would be charged.

  Josh had smiled. He knew that. He was just winding them up, because it was fun. ‘Am I free to go now?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Comstock.

  Josh found a quiet spot and rang Sandie, told her what had happened, and when he expected to be home. He terminated the call as Comstock came to escort him off the premises, and grinned at him. ‘Just phoning my wife,’ he said. ‘Do I need a licence for that?’

  ‘You won’t think it’s so funny if you go back inside,’ said Comstock, as he saw him back to the car where Lloyd waited, impatient to get back.

  No, probably not. But he had survived it before, and he could survive it again, especially if Sandie was waiting for him on the outside.

  SCENE XXXII – BARTONSHIRE.

  Sunday, September 28th, 9.00 p.m.

  Little Elmley.

  It was dark by the time they got back to Little Elmley, but Lloyd, instead of telling the driver to take him back to Stansfield, got out of the car. ‘I’d like another word with your wife,’ he said.

  Sandie was in the sitting room, and jumped up as he opened the door, only to see Lloyd coming in behind him. She sat down again, and Lloyd sat opposite her.

  ‘Josh rang and told me what you found at Angela’s cottage,’ she said. ‘That’s awful.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lloyd. ‘But that’s not exactly why I’m here, Mrs Esterbrook. You had a word with Inspector Hill this morning, I believe.’

  Sandie nodded. ‘Call me Sandie,’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid DI Hill doesn’t think much more of ex-boyfriends with no surname and no fixed abode than I did of two phantom muggers.’ He suddenly sounded infinitely more Welsh than he had sounded in Penhallin, thought Josh. ‘Apparently, no one in your block of flats remembers seeing any man living at your address.’

  So that was what she’d told them this time round, Josh thought, with a smile. She would stick to it for as long as she could, he knew. He wasn’t convinced that it mattered as much as she thought it did, and the chief inspector’s next statement made her reticence redundant.

  ‘We saw you at about eleven o’clock last night,’ he said. ‘And believe me, we see a lot of bruises in our line of work. Yours had been inflicted much earlier than you told us. I would say you got those injuries at about lunchtime yesterday, and Elizabeth Esterbrook has accused her husband of causing them. Is she right?’

  Sandie looked at Josh in dismay. Paul’s violent temper and Elizabeth’s intimate knowledge of him was going to force her hand whether she liked it or not. It might as well all come out now, Josh thought, and he gave her a little nod.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Lloyd nodded. ‘What exactly was your job with Mr Esterbrook?’ he asked.

  ‘I was his PA, officially. But really, I was a decoy.’

  Lloyd nodded; he didn’t seem surprised, or ask for an explanation. But Sandie gave him one anyway.

  ‘He was sure Elizabeth was having him watched, and he employed me to stand in the spotlight, to be a sort of visible target,’ she said. ‘That way, anyone watching would be busy keeping an eye on me, and not notice what was really happening.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘He was seeing Billy Rampton.’

  Lloyd looked at Josh. ‘You knew, did you, that Sandie was employed in this way?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Josh. ‘That’s how I met her.’ He grinned, genuinely amused by the memory of that day. ‘Paul brought Elizabeth and Sandie to the boat, making it so abundantly clear to Elizabeth that Sandie was my girlfriend that she would be bound to believe the opposite.’ He smiled at Lloyd’s slightly baffled expression. ‘You have to understand that the Esterbrook mind is a very devious and cunning thing,’ he said. ‘The more Paul made it look as though it was his relationship with Sandie that he was trying to cover up, the less likely it became that Elizabeth or anyone she employed to watch him would realize what was really happening. Insisting that she was my girlfriend was part of the deception. But his fiction became reality.’

  ‘How did this subterfuge operate?’ Lloyd asked Sandie.

  She took a breath. ‘When the Saturday afternoon diving began, Paul would go below. Everyone goes down there at one time or another – we use the other cabin for our gear. Billy and I always went down together. When no one else was around, he’d go to Paul, and I’d hang about in the other cabin. If anyone asked where Billy was, Josh would say he was diving, without mentioning who with.’

  ‘I’m the only one who knows exactly who’s in the water at any time, so that was easy,’ said Josh.

  Sandie carried on. ‘When Billy was ready to leave, he’d bang on the wall, and I’d knock back once the coast was clear. He’d change into his diving gear, and no one was any the wiser. As long as the three of us were together, Paul was safe.’

  Lloyd looked like someone playing some sort of parlour game to which everyone knew the rules but him. ‘And how did this result in your being assaulted?’

  ‘My job was to accompany Paul on his weekends on the boat,’ Sandie said. ‘That’s what he paid me to do. But Josh didn’t really want me to go on doing it, so . . .’ She shrugged. ‘He put the boat out of commission for a few weeks.’

  Lloyd’s eyes flicked over to Josh. ‘You holed it on purpose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Josh. ‘Then I persuaded the boatyard to say it needed a complete overhaul. It was supposed to be back in business at the weekend, but I had to be at the diving club, so I told Paul he’d have to use the cottage if he wanted his weekend fix.’

  Sandie carried on. ‘Paul had been getting more and more paranoid – seeing conspiracies everywhere. First, it was his mother and Elizabeth who were plotting against him, then on Saturday, he’d decided that it was me and Josh, because he’d realized that Josh had holed the boat deliberately. I had to tell him why Josh had really done it.’ She pointed to her eye. ‘This was the result. He paid me to work for him, not screw Josh, that’s what he said.’

  Josh felt the anger, just as strongly as ever. Paul was dead, and it made no difference. That bastard hadn’t been content with knocking her about; he had scared her half to death after he’d done it, driving off and leaving her there. Josh had let her down; he had misjudged Paul, mishandled the situation.

  ‘Where did the assault take place?’

  He could feel Sandie’s discomfort at having to talk about it at all. ‘On Bodmin Moor, I suppose,’ she said. ‘He made a long detour. I don’t know where we were – it was deserted and creepy.’

  He took her somewhere quiet and secluded, and abused her. That was what Josh had told Sandie he’d done to the boat, and he had actually felt guilt when he had done that to Lazy Sunday. W
hat had Paul felt after he’d done it to Sandie? Anything?

  ‘That was why I had to tell him,’ Sandie said. ‘He was going to leave me there if I didn’t. He did leave me there after he’d hit me.’ She reached across Josh for cigarettes. Those moments on the moor still made her feel sick, he knew, and he knew she didn’t want to think about it, far less talk about it. ‘But he came back. If he’d done that to me anywhere else, I’d have told him to get lost. But I had to get back in the car, and go with him.’

  ‘And he was going to the cottage to meet Billy Rampton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often did he use the cottage?’

  ‘He didn’t, not really. He only used it twice. The Bank Holiday weekend, and yesterday.’

  ‘Were you there the first time he used the cottage?’

  ‘Yes. It was when Josh holed the boat. Paul sent me off to the cottage, in case someone was watching me, because that way, I’d lead them away from what was really happening. And Josh gave Billy Paul’s hotel key. Billy went to the hotel, and Paul joined him there a little later.’

  ‘How did he end up at the cottage?’ asked Lloyd.

  ‘Something made Paul edgy about the hotel – he had never used his hotel room before. Just the boat.’

  ‘Did anything specific happen to make him edgy?’

  Sandie shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Billy’s a liar, so you can’t place much store by what he says, but he told me that someone had walked in on them by mistake, and after that Paul had told him to get dressed and go to the cottage. All I know for certain is that Billy arrived at the cottage at half past seven on Sunday morning, and Paul came a little while later with breakfast for everyone, and said he wasn’t staying at the hotel, because it wasn’t safe.’

  ‘And did Paul make a phone-call while he was there?’

  ‘I think he rang his mother. He was with Billy most of the time, so I don’t really know.’

  ‘And yesterday,’ said Lloyd. ‘Did Paul pick Billy up, or what?’

  ‘Billy was already there when we got there. I didn’t realize that until I went inside.’

  Sandie told him about her being outside having a cigarette when Paul had come out, agitated. That he’d driven off, saying he would be back for her, and she had gone in to tidy up anything he’d disturbed, to repack what he’d unpacked, and that was when she realized that Billy was there. She told him to go, but Billy refused to leave without being paid; he wouldn’t even get dressed. She had no money, because her bag was still in the car, so she went out to wait for Paul, and when he arrived back, she told him that Billy was still in there. He went into the cottage for a few moments, and when he came out, he told her that he was letting Billy stay there rather than go all the way back to Plymouth, and they had driven back.

  ‘Did that surprise you?’

  ‘Everything was happening so quickly, I didn’t really think about it, but yes. I mean, I wouldn’t have thought he’d have let Billy stay there. But I didn’t see his motorbike, so maybe it really was difficult for him to get back. To be honest, I wasn’t all that interested in Billy. I just wanted to get home.’

  ‘I’m sure you did. Did Paul explain what had gone wrong?’

  ‘After a bit,’ said Sandie, and recounted her ride home with Paul, leaving out the expletives, Josh noticed, with a smile. She’d made him laugh when she’d told him, but Lloyd was getting the serious version.

  Lloyd asked her if she had seen the fax, and she said that she hadn’t. He asked Josh if he had sent a fax, and Josh said no, that he hadn’t had the faintest idea what Sandie was talking about when she had arrived at the diving club.

  ‘She thought Elizabeth was there, but she wasn’t, and she hadn’t been there,’ he said. ‘But Paul was,’ he added grimly. ‘Making sure Sandie did her dive as instructed.’ He sighed. ‘And the rest you know. When we finished the dive, your people were waiting for me.’

  Lloyd’s blue eyes rested on Josh’s for a moment, before turning back to Sandie. ‘You said that Paul took deliberately over-elaborate precautions where you were concerned, Sandie. Making it obvious that he didn’t want to be seen alone with you.’

  Sandie nodded.

  ‘And yet he picked you up on Saturday morning even though you weren’t even supposed to be going to Penhallin. That was hardly in keeping with the secret rendezvous image. Why would he do that?’

  ‘I asked him that,’ said Josh. ‘I thought he’d want Sandie to go down under her own steam. But he said he was being blackmailed. Or, rather, that he had been being blackmailed. Someone had got a video of him somehow. He said he was taking care of it, whatever that meant. And that no one would be following him.’

  Lloyd’s eyebrows rose. ‘When did you have that conversation?’ he asked.

  ‘Friday night. And he said that he’d pick Sandie up in his car.’

  ‘If no one was following him,’ said Lloyd, almost to himself, ‘then he didn’t really need a decoy, did he?’

  Josh stiffened.

  ‘But I presume,’ he went on, glancing over at Sandie, ‘that he just wanted to get you on your own so he could get the truth out of you about why Josh had holed the boat.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right,’ Sandie said. ‘I never thought about it at the time.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us all this in the first place?’ Lloyd asked, as he rose to leave.

  ‘With Paul sitting there?’ said Sandie. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘After Paul ceased to be a threat to you. Why didn’t you tell Inspector Hill this morning?’

  Sandie looked at Josh, then back at Lloyd, and told the absolute truth for the very first time. ‘I thought you’d think Josh had killed him,’ she said.

  Lloyd smiled, nodded a little. ‘Well, thank you for telling us the truth now,’ he said.

  Josh and Sandie laughed about that, after he’d gone.

  Act V

  THE INVESTIGATION

  See you now;

  Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;

  And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,

  With windlasses and with assays of bias,

  By indirections find directions out . . .

  Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 1

  SCENE I – WEST MIDLANDS.

  Monday, September 29th, 9.15 a.m.

  A Forensic Laboratory.

  Judy was at the police forensic laboratory which had been built, to the Bartonshire Constabulary’s lasting gratitude, outside Birmingham, just fifty miles from Stansfield, with the M6 practically door to door. It took her just over an hour in good weather, provided she didn’t have Lloyd in the car. The top sheet of the A4 pad found at Angela Esterbrook’s cottage was to be submitted to an ESDA test, and with luck they would find out what she had written in the letter that she had left for her son to find.

  She was in time to see it being done, and she watched, fascinated as she always was by the process, as the bed on which the paper lay under its clear plastic sheet was tipped up, the toner was sprinkled over the surface, and the writing became visible. She got the same thrill as she had as a child when she had learned that lemon juice worked as invisible ink.

  Most of it showed up; some parts had failed, but the words could be pieced together. Angela Esterbrook’s spacing was a little eccentric, making it sometimes difficult to tell if words had been in the spaces or not. But for the most part, it was fairly unequivocal. It had been written angrily; the impressions were deep, and the handwriting not only legible, but, Judy imagined, recognizable.

  Paul, it began, baldly. I know what’s been going on. You’ve been very good at deceiving me and everyone else, including your wife presumably, but you couldn’t hope to get away with it forever. How dare you think you can use this cottage as some sort of sleazy love-nest? How could you take advantage of me – a space – like that? If you don’t want the world to know all about the – a space that might have contained another word or words, but there were no evident marks – little boy that you keep secret, c
ome home immediately and give me a good reason why I shouldn’t tell the police. Don’t think I wouldn’t do it. Don’t ignore this letter.

  It was signed ‘Angela’.

  ‘ ‘‘Angela’’,’ said Judy, frowning slightly. ‘That seems an odd way to sign it.’

  ‘I suppose she could hardly put ‘‘Love, Mum,’’ ’ said the girl.

  Judy smiled. ‘But Paul Esterbrook called her ‘‘mother’’ whenever he referred to her,’ she said. ‘She could have put that. It’s formal enough. It’s her stepson who calls her Angela.’

  ‘Are you going to send it to a handwriting expert?’

  ‘I don’t know if they can do much with recovered imprints.’

  ‘But if you think it might not be genuine . . .’

  She’d have to see what Lloyd thought. It could certainly be what had brought Paul out of the cottage so suddenly, what had caused him to murder the two people who knew what he had been doing at his mother’s cottage. But not Sandie Esterbrook, who also knew. He had had ample opportunity; why was she exempt from his apparent killing spree?

  ‘Thank you,’ she said absently, and drove back to Stansfield not sure whether the ESDA test had wrapped up this investigation or presented another puzzle. There was something about that letter that bothered her. Nothing specific. Just the odd spacing, and the signature, and the luck with which all these pointers to Paul Esterbrook’s guilt were falling in their laps. Sometimes murders needed no investigation, particularly domestics. But these murders could have presented considerably more difficulty than they had, and she just didn’t like it.

  SCENE II – BARTONSHIRE.

  Monday, September 29th, 10.30 a.m.

  Judy’s Office, Stansfield Police Station.

  When Judy got back, Lloyd came in with yet another of the clues that he already felt were just too numerous. The scene-of-crime people had, as he had instructed, gone through everything in Angela Esterbrook’s study at Little Elmley, and had found a concealed drawer in the antique bureau, in which she had clearly kept things that she hadn’t wanted lying around for everyone to see. A bundle of love-letters from her husband, written in the late fifties, an early, unfinished attempt at a novel, and the clue, the report from the Cope Detective Agency. Lloyd sat on the edge of her desk and read Angela Esterbrook’s letter to Paul while Judy read the report: