‘A jury? I haven’t done anything.’
‘You’d be surprised to hear that criminals often say that,’ responded Black dryly. ‘Why did your own car need repairing?’
‘I had a bit of a prang. It was very minor.’
‘Where was the damage?’
‘Only a headlamp.’
‘Which one?’
He cleared his throat. ‘Front passenger side. I scraped it.’
‘How did you manage that?’
‘I was driving too fast, okay? I’ll admit that I’m not always the best driver.’ Beth noticed he offered that up easily. In her experience, men rarely did that.
‘I’m a bit baffled as to how you could have scraped the front passenger headlight and not the bodywork,’ said Black.
‘For some reason, the headlight took the brunt of it. It sort of exploded on impact.’
‘What did you hit,’ asked Lucas, ‘when you scraped it?’
‘I honestly can’t remember.’
‘You can’t remember?’ Black asked this as if he had never heard of anything so absurd. ‘You scraped the headlight of the car your daddy-in-law paid for and it exploded, but you can’t remember what on?’
‘I think I blotted it out. I was embarrassed and a bit shocked. I didn’t want him to know, so I figured I’d just fix the damage before he saw it.’
‘Because he’d be angry?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Or because he’d think less of you? You’re marrying his daughter – wouldn’t want him to think you couldn’t handle a car properly.’ Beth knew Black was goading the man, but Nash remained calm.
‘I felt foolish. My other cars have been old bangers. This one really moves.’
‘Handle well, don’t they? Usually, I mean. That famous German engineering.’
‘They do, but I did say I wasn’t the world’s best driver.’
‘Still, I’m surprised you can’t remember where you pranged it.’
‘It was on a country bend,’ he said. ‘They all look alike to me. I must have hit the stone wall as I went around it.’
‘So, you do remember?’
‘I remember what happened more than I recall exactly where it occurred. Shock does that.’
‘It’s a big car, your Beemer?’
‘Yes.’
‘Alice Teale was spotted in a big black car a few weeks back. It sounded very like yours.’
He hesitated before answering: ‘Well, mine is blue, and there are a lot of big cars in the world. I’ve already admitted that Alice has been in my car. I occasionally gave her lifts home.’ He looked at Beth. ‘I told you that.’
‘You did admit that,’ said Black, and he deliberately elongated the word ‘that’, ‘but this witness saw a big car coming out of the old railway station at speed. She said you almost ran over her dog.’
‘That wasn’t me.’ He looked shaken.
‘Sorry,’ said Lucas. ‘Slip of the tongue. She said that the as yet unidentified, young male driver was travelling at speed and almost ran over her dog. He had to swerve to avoid it, then she heard a bang.’ Black let that hang in the air for a while, then said, ‘It sounds like that might have been a front passenger-side headlamp exploding against the edge of the old platform. What do you think?’
‘It wasn’t me,’ he repeated.
‘We’ve already been down there,’ Black told him. ‘We found the pieces. There were fragments of a headlamp on the ground by the platform. They were bagged up and taken in as evidence. If they are analysed and they match your car, then you’ll have a lot of explaining to do, unless you admit it now.’
He said nothing to that. Beth took this to mean he had run out of answers or was desperately trying to think of new ones.
‘You pulled up by the side of the road after you left the school that night, didn’t you?’ she accused him.
‘Erm …’ He frowned and shook his head, as if trying to clear it so he could remember. ‘I may have …’
‘You did,’ said Black, ‘and the car was seen by passers-by and you knew it. You panicked and pretended you were driving a Beemer instead.’
He deliberately looked away from Black then and focused on Beth. ‘As I recall, you asked me what car I drove and, like I said, I own a BMW.’
‘You knew I wasn’t interested in the car you drive most of the time. I wanted to know about the car you were in that night. You lied to me, just as you’re lying now. The only question is why.’
‘Why what?’ he stammered.
‘Why are you lying? Why did you pull over shortly after leaving the school, just moments before Alice Teale disappeared?’
‘I think to make a phone call, because I forgot to tell my fiancée I was on my way home.’
‘She’d back that up, would she?’ asked Beth. ‘If we asked her?’
‘Of course.’
‘We’ll call her and ask her in a minute, then,’ said Lucas, ‘but we’ll be sure to check your mobile-phone records and, if it turns out you didn’t make a call at that exact moment, then she will be prosecuted for perverting the course of justice. You get a year in prison for that, on average.’ He turned to Beth. ‘I suspect that might be the end of the engagement, and I don’t think her daddy would be too forgiving.’
‘Wait, I only said I think I made a call. I’m not one hundred per cent certain. Maybe that was another night.’
‘You didn’t make a call, did you?’ asked Beth. ‘You pulled over by the side of the road to wait for Alice.’
‘No.’ He shook his head violently, as if that would make any difference.
‘You admitted you sometimes drove her home. It’s on your way and a long walk for her when you don’t,’ said Beth, ‘so why not take her home that night?’
‘The headteacher doesn’t like it. He spotted her getting into my car once in the car park and had a word with me about it the next day. He said it causes gossip.’
‘So you never did it again?’ asked Black abruptly.
‘Mmmm.’ Nash acted like he was trying to remember.
‘Or were you just more careful about it?’ asked Beth. ‘Pulling over by the side of the road a few yards from the school so the head couldn’t see you picking up your favourite girl, the one you’d taught for years, the girl who was in your plays, the one with the acting talent you nurtured? The pretty one?’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ But his voice sounded so weak now they both began to think it must have been exactly like that.
‘You pulled over across the lane by the allotments. You didn’t mind blocking it because you knew Alice would be with you in a matter of moments,’ said Beth. ‘I think we can all agree that’s what you did – unless you’re covering for someone?’
‘Covering for someone?’ he repeated dumbly.
‘Your fiancée,’ she said.
‘Maybe Miss Pearce was mistaken and it wasn’t you behind the wheel that night.’ Black knew it was a ludicrous notion, but he wanted to go along with Beth because she had thrown Nash off course. ‘Perhaps she was the one waiting for Alice, but I wonder how she lured the girl into her car?’
‘Did she tell Alice they needed to talk?’ asked Beth, as if this was the most likely turn of events. ‘Did she say she wanted a word with her about you?’
‘No, that’s ridiculous.’
‘Well, if it wasn’t you in the car that night, it must have been her behind those tinted windows. That’s the only possible explanation.’
‘Which makes her a murder suspect,’ confirmed Black. ‘I think we’re done here, Beth. If Simon here is denying it was him, then we need to formally question his fiancée, under caution.’ He turned back to the teacher. ‘She’ll need to engage a solicitor, but I’m sure her father will know some good ones.’
Beth and Black made as if to leave. The teacher looked aghast. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait a minute …’ Was he steeling himself to finally admit the truth? ‘Please sit down …’
‘We’ll sit back down if you actua
lly have something to tell us.’
‘It was me.’ His voice was very quiet now. ‘I was in the car that night. I parked up by the allotments.’
‘To wait for Alice?’
He nodded slowly, as if it were a supreme effort to do even that.
At last, thought Beth. ‘I’d feel more comfortable if you said it out loud,’ she told him.
‘I was waiting for Alice,’ he said. ‘It was me in the car. There, I’ve said it. Now, please don’t involve Karen in this. I’m begging you.’
Beth and Black exchanged a look. They had finally wrenched the truth from him, but not all of it. ‘That depends,’ said Beth.
‘On what?’
‘On whether you tell us everything,’ said Lucas. ‘Like what happened when she got in your car.’
‘Where did you take her?’ asked Beth. ‘What did you do?’
It was Black who asked the key question: ‘And why did you kill her?’
43
Simon Nash became almost frantic then. ‘I didn’t kill her,’ he protested. ‘I swear I didn’t. I didn’t do anything.’
‘You must have,’ said Black gently, as if he were coaxing the truth from a child. ‘You were the last one to see her alive.’
‘No, no, I wasn’t.’
‘Who was, then?’ asked Beth. ‘Where did you drop her off? If you’re going to say you handed her over to someone else, then we’re going to find that very hard to believe.’
‘Particularly as you’ve been so intent on covering up your tracks. Stories don’t get more suspicious than yours, Simon.’
‘I didn’t kill her,’ he said again. ‘I didn’t even see her. I was waiting for her, yes, I admit that. I was going to run her home and we were going to have a talk on the way.’ Then he looked at each of them in turn, as if imploring them to believe him. ‘But she never got in the car.’
‘She refused to go with you?’ asked Beth.
‘No! I never even saw her. I waited. I stayed there, way beyond the time she would have needed to get to me, but she never showed.’
‘You’d agreed between you that she was going to come with you?’ asked Lucas.
‘Yes, in the darkroom I said I’d drive her home, and she agreed. We split up for twenty minutes so no one would notice. I said I wanted to talk to her, and she said she had something to tell me, too, so we arranged that I’d drive down the road and park up, then she would come to me, so no one would see.’
‘And you went through all that subterfuge,’ said Beth, ‘but not because the headteacher disapproved. You did it because you were in a relationship.’ When Nash looked as if he didn’t want to admit it, she added: ‘She wrote about you in her journal. It was pretty clear who she meant.’
The weight of the evidence seemed to overwhelm him then. ‘Yes. I’d been seeing her for a while.’
‘Years?’ asked Lucas.
‘God, no! Weeks.’
‘I get it,’ said Lucas. ‘You were getting married, settling down. You’d have the young wife, the money, the lifestyle and the security you craved, but didn’t you deserve one last fling with a beautiful, besotted young girl before you did it? Was that how you rationalized it?’
‘In the beginning, yes.’ He looked worn out then. ‘That’s exactly how I justified it.’
‘So what happened? Were you about to call it off,’ asked Beth, ‘or planning to run away with her?’
‘I don’t know – neither. I just wanted to talk to her about us. I needed to know how she felt about me, because I didn’t know how I felt about her any more. I was confused.’
‘I bet you were,’ said Lucas. ‘That was quite a choice to make. Choose Alice and you lose everything, including your job, or stick with the fiancée, the cars, the house, the money. Tough call.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’ He spoke in a very quiet voice.
‘Because you loved her?’ asked Beth.
‘Yes,’ he managed. ‘I think I did.’
‘And yet you still claim she didn’t get in your car and drive away with you.’
‘No, she didn’t. I swear to God.’
‘Let’s keep Him out of it, shall we? So what did happen to her, then?’
‘I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I’ve been going through hell ever since she disappeared, and then, when they found her’ – he looked desolate – ‘I couldn’t even admit how I felt.’
‘You could,’ Black told him. ‘You were just too much of a coward.’
‘That’s right,’ Nash admitted. ‘I was.’
‘You hoped it would all go away and you could get on with your privileged life without a pause,’ said Beth.
‘Was that why you killed her?’ asked Black. ‘Was she going to tell the world about her secret lover? Was it all about to come crashing down around you? You had to shut her up, didn’t you?’
‘We know the truth now,’ said Beth. ‘You might as well admit it.’
‘I swear to you, I didn’t see her after I left the school.’
‘But she left at the same time,’ protested Beth, ‘and disappeared after she walked between the cottages. Your car was a couple of hundred yards away, and you expect us to believe she vanished in that impossibly tiny window?’
‘Yes,’ he pleaded.
‘You’ve lied before,’ said Black reasonably. ‘You’ve been lying all along, in fact. Why should we believe you now?’
‘Because I’m not the killer, and that means there’s a madman still out there,’ he said. ‘I’m telling you, Alice did not get into my car that night.’
It was a pub night. They both agreed a drink was sorely needed after a day like this one. Simon Nash’s partial confession, to his affair with Alice Teale at least, if not yet any involvement in her murder, had taken it out of both of them, not to mention the teacher.
Black bought the first round. ‘There’s something on your mind. I can tell.’
‘I thought you might arrest him,’ Beth told her colleague when he placed the drinks on the table. ‘On suspicion of murder.’
‘The evidence is a little flimsy at the moment, and he’ll just keep on denying it. If we arrest him for that, the clock starts ticking and we have thirty-six hours to get enough to charge him or he walks.’
‘We can ask for longer?’
‘If we need longer, then we don’t have a case,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait till we have more on Nash than an affair with a pupil he didn’t want the world to know about. That’s enough to get him arrested and suspended but, really, it’s all we have at the moment. A good defence lawyer would justify his lies and evasiveness on those grounds.’
‘What have you told Everleigh?’
‘The same, and he agrees. He’ll let us run with it till we get more proof. DCI Everleigh is a great believer in means, motive and opportunity, and Nash had all three. He also thinks the most likely suspect is usually the one responsible. He’s right about that, by the way. Forensics will go through his car, and the one he borrowed from his fiancée. Maybe they’ll come up with traces of Alice.’
‘We already know she’s been in his car,’ said Beth.
‘As a willing passenger, sure, and presumably she spent time on the back seat with him, but I’m more interested in the boot of that little red car, to see if he was the one transporting her body that night.’
‘And the tyres,’ she reminded him, ‘to see if there are any traces that match the soil by the coastline.’
‘They’ll examine every inch of it.’
‘Do you think Simon Nash murdered Alice?’
He didn’t answer her directly. Instead, he said, ‘You don’t?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied honestly. ‘Harry is still missing, and he had Alice’s coat and bag.’
‘He could have found them,’ he said, ‘though I am not sure how. He remains a suspect, along with Nash.’
‘Simon Nash loved her, I think, improbable as that sounds.’
‘A lot of women have been killed by men who professed to l
ove them,’ Black reminded her.
‘But if he’s telling the truth, they were thinking of a future together, so why would he kill her?’
‘Lots of reasons,’ said Black. ‘One, he’s lying, and they weren’t planning a future together. Maybe he even wanted that, but she didn’t. It’s a lot to ask of a seventeen-year-old, to go off with an older man and pledge her whole life to him, no matter what the fallout. They were probably both happy enough for a while – forbidden fruit and all that – but if he fell in love with her, maybe she got cold feet. If she panicked and wanted to end it, perhaps he became enraged and killed her.’
‘Do you think that’s what happened?’
‘Well, it could have gone the other way. She might have wanted him to tell his fiancée. Maybe she threatened to do it for him. He had a lot to lose. He’s saying he loved Alice, but he could have still viewed her as his last fling and now she was threatening to undo everything. That’s a motive, right there.’
‘Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.’
‘Most murders do when you look at them closely,’ said Black. ‘You and I aren’t wired like that, but other people will sometimes find the flimsiest pretext to kill, particularly when they feel threatened.’
‘We’ll know soon enough,’ she said, ‘when we get the forensics back from the car.’
44
Happy Harry couldn’t stay missing for ever. He needed to eat, and very much needed to drink, which meant he was forced to beg. He was picked up in the next village along from Collemby, by an alert police patrol responding to Black’s request to look out for the town’s solitary rough sleeper, a man who was known by virtually everybody.
Black got Harry straight in for questioning, and soon regretted that decision. He should have had the man cleaned up first, because the smell of stale sweat, booze and urine clung to him, filling the air in the interrogation room.
Harry turned down the offer of legal representation. ‘I speak for myself,’ he rasped. ‘I’ve done nowt.’
When Black pressed him on this, he continued to resist. ‘You could be in a lot of trouble,’ the detective said. ‘You’ll need a solicitor.’
Alice Teale is Missing Page 25
