Plots and Errors

by Jill McGown

  Judy tried to catch her out with a sudden change of subject. ‘And what about the still from the other video?’ she asked. ‘The one that should have been with the Cope Detective Agency’s report?’ She deliberately spoke as though Sandie knew all about that report, in the hope of trapping her into an error, but once again her technique failed her, because there was no puzzled look, no claim not to know what she was talking about, no unprepared lie that she could latch on to. Just the opposite.

  ‘Oh, that,’ said Sandie. ‘I destroyed it.’

  ‘You destroyed it?’ Judy sighed, as she realized. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘You opened the mail.’ She frowned. ‘And what did you do with the report?’

  ‘Gave it to Angela. Why not? It didn’t matter to me. And if she’d been expecting a report that didn’t come, she would soon get a copy of it. I told her I’d destroyed the photograph.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I didn’t think she would like it.’

  ‘And what did she do when she read the report?’

  ‘At first she wasn’t going to do anything, but then she realized that it had happened after we’d got married, and made Josh promise to love, honour and cherish me and give up people like Billy. Said she was putting the report in her not-for-publication drawer, but if he did anything to shame the name Esterbrook again, she would include it in her autobiography, to show what lengths she had to go to in order to keep her family together.’ She smiled, shaking her head. ‘She was a bitch of the first water,’ she added.

  Judy didn’t know when this girl was lying, but the fact was that she had lied, and the truth had only come out when she was faced with evidence that she couldn’t explain away. ‘Paul Esterbrook was set up,’ she said. ‘Someone left faked evidence to suggest that he was having a homosexual affair with Billy Rampton, and planted the tape of Paul’s message to his mother to make it look as though it had been left the day she died. You and Josh compounded that lie, and I see no reason to believe that you didn’t perpetrate it.’

  Sandie Esterbrook was shaking her head vehemently all the time she was speaking. ‘You don’t think we murdered them,’ she said. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sandie. I only know that you have lied and lied and lied throughout this investigation.’

  ‘Look, I know we shouldn’t have misled you, but all we were doing was trying to stop Josh being cheated out of Little Elmley! And I haven’t lied and lied and lied,’ she said. ‘One lie, that’s all, really. I told you I was a decoy. One lie. We didn’t kill anyone! Why would we? You can’t blackmail a dead man!’

  SCENE XXXIV – BARTONSHIRE.

  Thursday, October 2nd, 3.50 p.m.

  Lloyd’s Office.

  Judy had ordered tea for Sandie, and gone to Lloyd’s office to find Lloyd and Tom already there, Lloyd looking smugger than ever, Tom looking perplexed.

  ‘Well?’ Lloyd said. ‘Didn’t I tell you it was that way round all along? Didn’t I say that Billy thought he was meeting Josh, and Paul thought he was spending the weekend with Sandie? Didn’t I?’

  Judy agreed that he had indeed said that, and they compared notes; Josh Esterbrook hadn’t said much, but he hadn’t denied any of it. And Sandie’s more enlightening interview meant that Lloyd’s remaining little puzzle, not voiced until now, was answered, because the keepsake drawer wasn’t a keepsake drawer, but the not-for-publication drawer of which Elizabeth had spoken, and which had contained Paul senior’s love-letters, Angela Esterbrook’s unfinished first novel, and the Copes’ report that she had kept in order to keep Josh in line.

  ‘But Sandie pointed out to me that you can’t blackmail a dead man,’ said Judy, ‘and I can’t help but agree with her that it would have been a fairly foolish move. Not only couldn’t they blackmail him, but Josh’s chances of getting Little Elmley were reduced by fifty per cent. Paul would certainly have capitulated to the blackmail.’

  ‘But the blackmail plot hadn’t worked, remember.’

  Judy had forgotten that. She picked up her notebook, and started leafing through it. There were a lot of question-marks. ‘But why would they kill Billy?’ she asked. ‘And would you hire detectives to watch you if you were going to murder someone?’

  Lloyd sighed. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘If I were an Esterbrook. What do you think, Tom?’

  Tom didn’t speak, lost in his own thoughts.

  ‘Tom?’ Lloyd looked at Judy, and shrugged. ‘I couldn’t shut him up five minutes ago,’ he said. ‘It’s like having a parrot. Talks nineteen to the dozen when you’re on your own with him, and won’t say a word when the visitors come.’

  ‘Guv,’ Tom said slowly, quite unaware that he had been the topic of conversation, ‘you know you said that the tape we found on Saturday night was planted, and that’s why it wouldn’t play?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘And that the last time that happened was the day Paul Esterbrook actually made that call, the Sunday of the Bank Holiday?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Well – someone must have switched the tape then too, mustn’t they? As soon as they heard it. Otherwise Mrs Esterbrook would have played it when she got home, and that would have been that. It would have got recorded over when the next call came in.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Well – that wasn’t Josh Esterbrook, was it, guv? He was in Plymouth at half-six in the morning, and that call was made at half past nine. Even if he left right after Kathy Cope saw him, he’d only be halfway home by then. And Sandie was with Paul Esterbrook the whole time, so it wasn’t her, either.’

  Judy and Lloyd looked at one another.

  ‘But that only leaves Elizabeth Esterbrook,’ said Judy. ‘And that doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘It’s her prints we found on the tape,’ said Tom.

  ‘Her prints were bound to be on it,’ Judy argued. ‘She put the tape in for Angela in the first place.’

  ‘Yeah, but we didn’t find anyone else’s, did we?’

  Lloyd snapped his fingers. ‘How did I miss that?’ he said, his eyes widening.

  Judy frowned. ‘Miss what?’

  ‘We should have found someone else’s – we should have found Josh Esterbrook’s. Elizabeth Esterbrook said that when she got there on the Sunday morning, she found a message flashing, but she couldn’t make it play. That Josh got the phone working again that afternoon by taking the tape out and rewinding it manually. So we should have found his prints on that tape, but we didn’t, because it wasn’t the tape that he had rewound. Elizabeth Esterbrook had already switched them.’

  Tom frowned a little.

  ‘She heard that message from her husband to his mother,’ said Lloyd. ‘And realized what was going on while he was making it, thought she might be able to use it in some way to prove his adultery. She took the cassette out, and put another one in – that’s why the machine wasn’t working when Angela came home, and why Josh had to fix it. And Josh’s fingerprints aren’t on the one with Paul’s message on it, because he never touched that tape at all.’ Lloyd tipped his chair back as he warmed to his theme. ‘Then she worked out that she could do even more with the tape than just use it as evidence of her husband’s adultery,’ he went on. ‘She could use it in conjunction with that letter of Angela’s to make it look as though her husband had murdered his mother.’

  Tom looked a touch baffled.

  ‘Oh, I don’t believe I missed that!’ Lloyd said, letting his chair fall forward. ‘I was so convinced that Josh Esterbrook was at the bottom of this that I ignored anything that didn’t fit my theory. I didn’t even check her alibi! Anyone could have got that ticket for her – she wasn’t anywhere near London on Saturday. She was too busy murdering people.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘I don’t get it, guv,’ he said. ‘Why would she frame Paul for the murder of his mother? She loses everything that way.’

  ‘No,’ said Lloyd. ‘Don’t you see? She didn’t frame Paul – she framed Josh.’ He sat back, his c
hair balanced on its hind legs once more. ‘She framed Josh by making it look as though he had framed Paul. Josh had no motive at all for murdering Angela and Paul – under the terms of his father’s will, if either one of them died before his time was up, he would get nothing. So if Paul and his mother had merely both been murdered, we would have looked very hard at Elizabeth, who would get everything.’

  ‘But Josh did have a motive for framing Paul for the murder of his mother,’ said Tom, thoughtfully. ‘Because that way he stood a chance of getting Little Elmley.’

  ‘Which Sandie Esterbrook says is very important to him,’ said Judy.

  Lloyd nodded. ‘So Elizabeth made it look as though Paul had murdered his mother and killed himself, but she used Josh’s gun, and told us of its existence. She made it clear to us that Josh had had access to that tape. She used a letter that Josh had found in the first place, and she used Josh’s relationship with Billy, by deliberately making it look on the face of it as though it was Paul who had been seeing Billy, when of course it wasn’t, as she kept telling us. And all those clues pointing to Paul’s guilt – it looked like a set-up because it was meant to look like a set-up, producing just enough doubt to make us dig a bit deeper. And we fell for it. Once we knew the letter was a fake, and the tape had been planted, and that it was Josh who was Billy’s client, we homed in on Josh and Sandie, and overlooked Elizabeth entirely, even though she was going to get everything.’

  ‘She was taking a bit of a chance, wasn’t she?’ said Tom. ‘You had to fight to keep the case open. She was lucky the whole thing wasn’t put to bed on Monday, with Paul as the guilty party.’

  Lloyd shook his head. ‘She didn’t think she was taking any chance at all. She thought she would be able to produce, as she did, a private investigator’s report that cleared Paul of murder, and as long as she could do that, she would collect. What she didn’t know was that Paul had her private eye in his pocket, and that his report would be useless. That’s the only reason it nearly failed.’ He smiled. ‘And you’re the only reason it has failed,’ he said.

  There were a number of things that irritated Judy about Lloyd, but that was one of the very many pluses. Unlike some senior officers, he gave credit where it was due, and didn’t begrudge it.

  ‘Can we prove it, guv?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Tomorrow is another day,’ said Lloyd. ‘We might get the proof we need, if we can trace where that fax came from. In the meantime, someone had better tell Mr and Mrs Esterbrook that they’re free to go.’

  Epilogue

  THE ENDING

  There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

  Rough-hew them how we will.

  Hamlet Act 5, Scene 2

  SCENE I – BARTONSHIRE.

  The following day, Friday, October 3rd, 9.15 a.m.

  Lloyd’s Office in Stansfield Police Station.

  The vital piece of evidence had slotted into place almost as soon as Tom arrived at work. A fax had been sent from Penhallin public library to Angela Esterbrook’s number at two-thirty p.m. on Saturday the twenty-seventh of September.

  And at two-thirty last Saturday, Josh Esterbrook had been teaching people how to dive in Little Elmley, and Sandie Esterbrook had been sitting outside Angela Esterbrook’s cottage in Paul Esterbrook’s Range Rover, examining the damage he’d done to her face. Elizabeth Esterbrook was the only person who could have sent that fax.

  Now he and DI Hill were presenting the evidence to Lloyd, who nodded, and pushed his chair back, rocking gently, worrying Tom, as he always did. Judy opened her notebook, leafing through it as Lloyd spoke.

  ‘She had everything she needed to set the whole thing up,’ said Lloyd. ‘The letter, and that message from Paul to his mother. All she had to do was contact Billy, then bide her time and wait for the opportunity to present itself. She found out when she rang Howard on the Friday night that Josh was taking that night-dive and the boat wouldn’t be available. She knew Paul would use the cottage, as he had obviously done before, the day he really left that message. Unfortunately – or fortunately, depending how you look at it – she was supposed to be going to London, so she got someone else to get her ticket for the concert and went to Penhallin instead, got hold of Billy in Plymouth on the way, and arranged for him to go to the cottage, and wait for her there, in the treehouse, where he wouldn’t be seen.’ He stopped rocking. ‘I wonder what Billy thought he was there for?’ he asked.

  ‘He was half out of his clothes, guv,’ said Tom. ‘And he had no objection to female clients. He probably just thought he was making a few quid with a lonely woman whose husband had been cheating on her for years. Knew she was getting her own back somehow, but didn’t know quite what part she had in mind for him.’

  Lloyd nodded, and resumed rocking, continuing his account of Elizabeth Esterbrook’s movements. ‘She went to Josh’s boat, broke in and took the gun, then went to the library and sent a fax, ostensibly from Josh, telling Paul that he had to go back straight away if he didn’t want to be found out. Then she walked along the shore to the back of the cottage, let herself in while Paul was reading the fax, slipped upstairs and rang Angela Esterbrook’s number so that it would look as though Paul had rung it. She stayed out of sight in the bathroom or wherever, and waited until Paul and Sandie had left, then let Billy in, killed him, left the A4 pad for us to find, and burned the letter.’

  Tom nodded. That was why Sandie hadn’t noticed a smell of burning, he thought. Because nothing had been burned before she left the cottage.

  ‘Then she drove back home, changed for dinner, went to Little Elmley, shot Angela, put the tape with her husband’s message on it in the answering machine, and phoned the police. We arrived, listened to the message, took Paul Esterbrook in for questioning, and left. She knew the tape by itself wouldn’t be enough for us to hang on to him, so all she had to do was wait in his Range Rover until he turned up to collect it, and shoot him too. We would jump to the conclusion that Paul had been seeing Billy, had murdered him and his mother when it looked as though he’d been found out, then killed himself when he couldn’t face what he had done.’

  ‘Then she told me about Josh’s gun, and that it was Josh who had been seeing Billy,’ said Tom. ‘And about how worried her mother-in-law had been about it. So we started looking for evidence of that.’

  ‘But she didn’t know that her mother-in-law had been so worried about it that she had set the Copes on to Josh, for which he should be truly grateful,’ said Lloyd. ‘The idiot played right into her hands by lying about that.’ He sighed. ‘And having made sure we knew about Josh and Billy, she then produced her private investigator’s report, which she believed would be a truthful account of what her husband had really been doing that day. And she knew that whatever else he had been doing, he certainly hadn’t been murdering his mother.’

  Tom couldn’t believe it. He had been working like a dog all week, and all the evidence they needed had been right under their noses all along. ‘I can’t believe we’ve had this whole thing arse about tip,’ he said.

  Judy smiled. ‘Or, to put it another way, we were looking at things from the wrong angle?’

  God. They’d be sending him to finishing-school next. It was all right for them; Lloyd was fifty and bald and Welsh and indisputably male. She was good-looking and well-spoken, but she was female, so that was all right. He had blond curly hair and blue eyes and he really had sung in the choir at school, and despite having a wife and two children, he knew that he looked as though he still did. It was only his working-class background that gave him any obvious street-cred at all. That, and the fact that he could more than hold his own in a fight. And he could hold his own with his DI as well, so she could give over trying to polish him up.

  ‘Yeah, right, guv,’ he said. ‘But we didn’t even think about her, did we? And we knew she could handle a gun, and that she knew where she could get one – damn it all, she told us about it! We knew she had been working on her mother-in-law’s correspondence. We kne
w she’d had access to that message from her husband.’

  ‘It was because I was convinced it was Josh Esterbrook,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Well, her motive was a little obscure,’ said Judy.

  Shares worth over half a billion quid was what Tom called a motive. And her plan had been worthy of one of the Esterbrooks themselves. Judy looked at him a little oddly when he said that, then went back to her notebook.

  ‘I suppose anyone married to a devious and cunning Esterbrook for eighteen years is bound to pick up a wrinkle or two,’ said Lloyd, getting up. ‘I’d better let the Super in on this now that we have some evidence at last.’

  Judy twisted round as he went. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said, but he had gone.

  ‘Do you want me to catch him, guv?’

  ‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I think I must be wrong.’

  But she kept looking through her notebook all the same, Tom noted.

  SCENE II – BARTONSHIRE.

  Friday, October 3rd, 10.00 a.m.

  The Superintendent’s Office.

  ‘Does this mean I can finally put the Copes to bed? Presumably they did just commit suicide.’

  Lloyd hadn’t thought about that. ‘Er . . . no,’ he said. ‘No, I don’t think so.’

  Case fell back in his chair, his hands over his face. He parted his fingers and looked at Lloyd. ‘Tell me if I go wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m just a simple copper. Kathy Cope walked in on Josh Esterbrook and Billy, and his stepmother told him that she knew what he’d been up to, made him promise to give all that sort of stuff up or she would tell the world about it in her autobiography. He had no reason to kill the Copes for that, Lloyd.’

  ‘He was trying to make us believe that it was his brother who had been with Billy,’ said Lloyd. ‘Kathy Cope could have given the lie to that.’