A Life for a Life

by Andrew Puckett

  It took longer than the minute Fraser had thought, although not much, then he was allowed to kiss Frances before being led away. The bride glowed.

  *

  Leo, realising that Brent Holman wouldn’t hesitate to hang him out in the breeze to save their own reputation, didn’t try to deny buying and selling the Parc-Reed shares. Ian admitted it too (Brent Holman’s name in his address book made it hard for him to dispute) but both denied suppressing the truth about Alkovin in order to help the price up. They’d been convinced the drug was safe, they insisted. Both also strenuously denied anything to do with the deaths of either John Somersby or Connie.

  Fraser was sent to Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight where at least he had a cell to himself and could phone Frances more easily. He wrote to Ilie and Petru thanking them and hoping they hadn’t got into too much trouble. He asked Agnes to act for them, and she said she would.

  Tom went back to London where he tried putting all the information he had through HOLMES, the Home Office Large Major Enquiry System. The results were inconclusive. This didn’t altogether surprise him, since the system was, as its name suggested, designed for large enquiries with numerous suspects. Then he constructed a flow chart of all the people involved, their motives and movements, but this didn’t help much either.

  Lateral thinking was called for.

  There were, he realised, four questions he needed answers to:

  Were John Somersby and Connie Flint killed by the same person?

  If so, who benefited from both their deaths?

  If not, were the two killings connected, e.g. by Alkovin, or were they entirely separate?

  Who, separately, benefited from each of the deaths?

  The trouble with lateral thinking, he thought, was that although the answer was so easy and obvious once you’d seen it, seeing it in the first place required… well, thinking that was lateral.

  What about Terry Stroud? A repressed and probably disturbed man who, if he’d known about Somersby’s intentions for him (which he almost certainly had), would have definitely benefited from his death – but from Connie’s as well?

  Had she somehow found out that he’d killed him…?

  What about Charles Flint? Arrogant, irascible, probably short of money – he might have benefited from Connie’s death in some way – but from Somersby’s as well?

  He thought about cars, cars in general, and the type that had been used to kill Somersby in particular, then he went back to Avon to look at some of them. This gave him another idea, which he tested out with the help of Agnes.

  He thought about fingerprints, especially all those on the stick that had killed Connie. Again with Agnes’ help, he set about acquiring prints from everybody involved, however remotely.

  24

  They met in Portsmouth and went over in Tom’s Cooper. On the ferry, Agnes said, ‘I wish it didn’t have to be this way.’

  ‘No,’ Tom said.

  It took less time to drive from Fishbourne to Parkhurst than to get through all the security at the prison, but by midday they were in a glass-walled room with Fraser. A prison officer sat outside the door.

  Fraser said, ‘You’ve got some news for me?’ He was growing his beard again and it had just reached the stage where it was beginning to look like one.

  ‘Yes,’ said Tom. Agnes had difficulty in meeting his eyes.

  ‘Important?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom said again. He cleared his throat. ‘In all our efforts to find out who killed Connie Flint, we rather lost sight of Dr Somersby. I include you in that – you seemed to forget about him as well.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘You didn’t ask Farleigh about his death at all, only about Connie’s, even though Farleigh had a strong motive for killing Somersby.’

  Fraser shrugged. ‘Connie’s was more important, the one I’d been accused of, the one I thought Leo guilty of. D’you know who killed him, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, who?’

  Tom said, ‘When Somersby was killed, the only facts that the police had were that it was deliberate, and that it was done with a low-chassised car such as a sports car. You own a sports car, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do, an MGB…’ Realisation crept into his face. ‘You’re not accusing me, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying you killed him… but that’s not the same thing as saying your car wasn’t used to do it.’

  Fraser stared at him in disbelief. ‘Are you saying it was my car?’

  ‘No. Let’s look at the other cars on the scene for a moment, Charles Flint’s Merc, for instance.’

  ‘Are you saying he did it?’

  ‘I’m saying that his car did – but him? What’s his motive? There are reasons he might want Connie dead, but Somersby?’ He leaned forward. ‘Who actually benefited from Somersby’s death?’

  ‘I suppose Leo and Ian, because John wouldn’t take on the Alkovin trial.’

  ‘I’d wondered about Terry Stroud, because Somersby wanted to get rid of him.’

  ‘Yes, he did, didn’t he?’ Fraser said thoughtfully. ‘Was it him?’

  ‘There’s someone we’ve both left out, someone else who benefited from Somersby’s death.’

  Fraser shrugged. ‘I can only think of Connie herself, but she’s…’ He looked from one to the other of them. ‘D’you mean Connie?’

  Tom slowly nodded.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘The first thing is that although this was a deliberate crime, it wasn’t a premeditated one. Connie might have bitterly resented Somersby, but she hadn’t seriously considered harming him.’ He paused. ‘But she did hate her husband, as you know. And with some reason, as I know – I’ve met him.’

  ‘But what does that…?’

  ‘Connie’s son, Sebi, had been staying with his father, but then, when Charles went on holiday with his girlfriend, Sebi went to stay with his mother. Now, Charlie dotes on his son, to the extent of letting him occasionally borrow his pride and joy, his car. He gave Sebi the keys before he left.

  ‘But then Sebi fell ill, with flu. Connie nursed him, found the keys – and had an idea… Why not hit Charlie where it would really hurt him, in his surrogate scrotum. Steal his car and set fire to it.

  ‘Sebi was delirious, we know that, although he does remember his mother giving him some pills. I think she gave him some sleeping pills. She drove to a garage to buy some paracetamol as cover, then went and took Charlie’s car. Now, if you look on the map—’ Tom took one out and spread it on the table – ‘you’ll see that Charlie lived not so very far from Somersby, which is also the nearest lonely spot where she could set fire to the car and walk back to where she’d left her own.

  ‘So she drives down the lane, here, and suddenly, there in front of her’s the man who’s spoiled her other chance at getting even with Charlie, not to mention making a name for herself – John Somersby… and on impulse, she hits him. Just a twitch of the wheel.’

  ‘But then she ran over him again,’ said Fraser. ‘That must have been deliberate.’

  ‘Yes, it was. Maybe she panicked, maybe it was in cold blood, we’ll never know. But then, when she’d taken the car to where she had intended to fire it, she realised that it was hardly marked. She also realised that where a burnt-out car might be regarded suspiciously in Somersby’s death, there would be no reason for the police to suspect Charlie’s car. She, Connie, might be suspected, but not Charlie. So she drove it back to the garage, rubbed off what marks there were and left it.’

  After a pause, Fraser said, ‘Can you prove any of this?’

  ‘Difficult, especially with Connie dead. But the exhaust pipe and other protruberances on the Merc match exactly with the injuries on Somersby’s body, and Charles Flint does now remember some slight marks on the car when he returned. There was also a can of petrol in the back that he didn’t put there. At the time, he assumed Sebi was responsible. The timing fits as well.’

  Fraser paused while
he absorbed this, then said, ‘Do Sebi and Charles know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Poor Sebi.’

  ‘Yes, poor Sebi. You have no difficulty in believing it yourself, then?’

  ‘Not as I think about it, no. She did hate her husband, she told me. She was very eager, desperate almost, for some sort of professional achievement to hang up in front of him, and she did resent JS for not going with her over Alkovin.’ He looked up at Tom. ‘And she became unstable after that, irrational – not to mention the boozing… Aye, I can believe it.’ He looked at Agnes, then back at Tom. ‘But who killed her?’

  Agnes looked down at the table in front of her. Tom said, ‘There we have another problem. Farleigh, as you have repeatedly told us, had both motive and opportunity – but he didn’t do it—’

  ‘That’s what you say,’ interrupted Fraser. ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘When people are in extremis, as Farleigh was under your attentions, you can usually tell when they’re telling the truth.’

  ‘That’s subjective, to say the least.’

  ‘So it is, but for now, you’ll have to accept it. Moving on… Terry Stroud had a motive for killing Somersby, but not for killing Connie. Ian Saunders had a motive for killing Connie, but no opportunity. The same applies to Charlie.’

  Fraser stared at him. ‘You don’t mean Sebi…

  ‘No.’

  ‘For God’s sake – who?’

  ‘Frances.’

  Fraser smiled and shook his head. ‘Now you’re being stupid.’

  ‘Her fingerprints are on the stick that killed Connie, and also in Connie’s hallway.’

  ‘So what? She must have gone round there at some time.’

  ‘Not so far as we can ascertain – Connie wasn’t in the habit of inviting lab staff to her house. And there are microdots of Connie’s blood on the clothes she was wearing that day. I’m sorry.’

  ‘But her motive…’ He looked from one to the other of them. ‘What motive could she have?’

  ‘I phoned Dr Weisman in New York again, he probably being the world expert on the side-effects of Alkovin. He told me that it would be perfectly possible for someone who’d been on Alkovin for a while to commit an act of extreme violence and then completely wipe it from their memory. That’s what Frances did. She has absolutely no idea of what she’s done.’

  ‘You – you can say that,’ Fraser stuttered, ‘b-but you got no proof an’ I don’ b-believe you…’

  ‘Her car’s been checked and there’s gravel from Connie’s drive in the tyres. And the timing fits exactly.’

  ‘What timing?’ Fraser said, although as he said it, he knew.

  ‘She left your house at ten thirty. Connie rang you at ten forty and asked you to come round. Connie’s house is on the route to Mary’s – look…’ He pointed it out on the map.

  ‘Frances, on a whim probably generated by the drug, decided to call on her, to plead your case with her perhaps – we’ll never know. Whatever it was, it went wrong. Connie made Frances lose her temper, and you know what Frances was like at that stage when she lost her temper. Perhaps Connie said something detrimental to you, perhaps she tried to chuck her out. Whatever happened, Frances grabbed the stick in the hall, hit Connie with it and ran out, dropping it on the steps. She drove off and on the way to her mother’s, somehow expunged it from her mind.’ He looked at Fraser. ‘She’d done that before on Alkovin, hadn’t she? Wiped things out of her memory?’

  Fraser reluctantly nodded and Tom continued:

  ‘You, meanwhile, rang Mary and she told you that Frances was just arriving. You decided not to speak to her and went to Connie’s where you found her body. The rest, you know.’

  Agnes looked up, found his eyes and put her hands on his. ‘I’m so sorry, Fraser.’

  Fraser sat like stone.

  ‘Does Mary know?’ he said at last.

  ‘Not yet,’ Agnes said. ‘She’ll have to at some stage, though.’

  Fraser opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, his lips twitching and trembling. ‘Does Frances have to know?’ he said at last.

  ‘That,’ said Tom, ‘is the problem. I’m sorry to have to ask you this so bluntly, but is she going to survive?’

  Fraser closed his eyes and compressed his lips… then he opened them and said, ‘Probably not.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I’ve no idea, man – it could be months, it could even be a year… Whatever it is,’ he beseeched them, ‘she needs me. She can’t know, mustn’t know, but how am I going to get out of here if it doesn’t come out…?’

  Agnes took over. ‘We’ve been looking into it, Tom and Marcus and I. Marcus has high level contacts in the Home Office and we’re as sure as we can be that we can get you out on bail.’

  But Fraser had sunk his head into his hands and started crying.

  Agnes said, ‘Go, Tom – leave him to me. Please.’

  Tom nodded, stood up and let his hand run over her shoulders as he passed behind her.

  Outside, the prison officer said, ‘You got a problem in there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘But it’s better if you leave him with his solicitor for now.’

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