Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby)

by Vicary, Tim

  ‘What third possibility?’

  ‘The car the farmer saw in the gateway. A red Nissan Primera.’ Jane pointed out the spot where the car had been parked. ‘Anyone approaching the house from the gateway would either have to walk down the road, where people could see him, or cross the carrot field in the same way as someone coming from the woods. The only faint clue that he might have come that way are a few wisps of straw on the kitchen floor. But as the SOCOs pointed out, they might just have blown in when she opened the back door.’

  ‘But it could have been your intruder?’

  ‘It could have been, sir, yes. Whichever way he approached the house, from the woods or the gateway, he’d have had to cross that carrot field with the straw. And got scraps of it on his shoes.’

  ‘Hm.’ Churchill drummed his fingers on the desk. ‘Any TWOCs on this Peter Barton’s record? Does he have a licence, a car of his own?’

  ‘No sir. He doesn’t seem to be interested in that.’

  ‘You can probably forget about the car then. Got a licence number?’

  ‘Just two letters, sir. Probably XB.’

  ‘Well, check it out of course, but it’s probably just coincidence. Couple of teenage lovers, something like that.’

  That was typical of Churchill, Terry thought. Jumping to conclusions instead of carefully sifting through the evidence; dismissing details before evaluating them. To judge by her expression, a similar thought was passing through Jane Carter’s mind. The longer he had worked with this young sergeant, the more he was coming to appreciate her. She might not be the most charming or decorative of female detectives, but her work rate was second to none. And she was unlikely to forget about that car, until its presence was fully explained.

  ‘Anything else I should know about?’ Churchill asked.

  ‘Well, there is one other thing,’ Jane said hesitantly.

  ‘Yes, what’s that?’

  ‘There’s a barbed wire fence between the garden and the field. So anyone entering the garden from the field would have to climb over it, and back out again too. So I got the SOCOs to check the barbed wire and they found a small scrap of cloth, snagged on the wire. Whoever climbed that fence has a hole in his pants. The lab are checking it for DNA.’

  Churchill nodded approvingly at Jane. ‘Which would nail young Peter if it’s his, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘If it matches the sample I took when I arrested him, sir, yes. But they weren’t too hopeful. It was only a small scrap of cloth, but if he’d been sweating ...’

  ‘Let’s hope he was,’ Churchill glanced at Terry with contempt. ‘Your sergeant’s moving ahead of you, DI Bateson. She’ll have your job next.’

  For a moment no one spoke. Terry and Jane were both embarrassed, for different reasons. Jane was pleased by the praise, but felt it was devalued by the man it had come from. Perhaps she’d joined a duff department, she thought; both her superiors were incompetent. Well, if that was so, it could be an opportunity - if she solved this murder on her own, it might help her a step up the ladder. Unless one of these two snatched the triumph from her, to use in their own private feud. Well, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

  Terry was annoyed that the old rivalry between himself and Will Churchill had surfaced so obviously in front of a promising, young detective like Jane. Churchill had relished humiliating him in front of her, and some of the barbs hurt.

  But there was one great relief. Terry had fully expected Will Churchill to end the interview by taking over the case himself. But he hadn’t done so. Leaving the room, Terry wondered why.

  Perhaps his boss was simply too busy. His real talent, after all, was not detective work but networking, arselicking, climbing the greasy pole to become Chief Constable before the age of fifty. He’d been on far more courses than Terry, had a CV many pages longer. Maybe he was waiting until the case was eventually solved, and planning to take the credit then. Without even getting out of his expensive leather office chair.

  Or could there be another reason? Churchill was devious, but not entirely stupid. All his comments had focussed on Peter Barton. Catch Peter, Churchill seemed to think, and you’d catch the murderer. It had been virtually an instruction. But what if Churchill knew, or suspected, that the case was more complicated than that? What if he was deliberately sending them on a false trail, so that he could take over the case later, when they had definitely got it wrong?

  It’s another possibility, Terry told himself wryly. That’s the thing with a murder enquiry. You shouldn’t rule anything in, or anything out.

  39. Landlord

  IN THE days before Christmas the streets near York Minster were jammed with shoppers seeking last-minute gifts. It was a good area to look, particularly if you had a difficult relative or demanding spouse to please,: the narrow medieval streets were full of shops selling unlikely and quite useless decorative items such as suits of armour, mediaeval swords, and sets of wooden Russian dolls. But it must pay, Terry Bateson thought; the rents in this area were far too high for any failed enterprise to last long.

  He found the door to Alison Grey’s landlord - Town and Country Holdings - squeezed between a trendy internet café and a shop selling elaborate string puppets from Thailand. There was a narrow window beside the door, with photographs of properties to rent, and housing developments in various stages of completion. Terry climbed a narrow staircase, discreetly lit by recessed spotlights and decorated by framed Victorian cartoons. At the top of the stairs a glass door opened into a brightly lit modern suite of offices. A young woman was talking on the phone. She waved him to a seat. After a couple of minutes she put the phone down and treated him to a bright, professional smile.

  ‘Sorry about that, sir. How can I help?’

  Terry showed her his card. The smile faded slightly, to be replaced by a puzzled frown. ‘We’re investigating the death of one of your tenants, I’m afraid. A lady called Alison Grey? She rented a house in Crockey Hill.’

  ‘Oh. I read about that. Terrible. She hanged herself, didn’t she?’

  ‘She was hanged, certainly,’ Terry said. ‘But we haven’t had the inquest yet.’ He took an envelope from his pocket. ‘We found this contract in her desk drawer. That is your company, isn’t it?’

  The young woman studied the contract briefly. ‘Yes, yes it is. I’m so glad you’re here. When I read the story I thought we should do something but couldn’t think what. It’s so hard to take in and - she’s really dead?’

  ‘I’m afraid so.’ Terry watched her carefully, wondering how much of the distress and confusion were real. Most of it, he thought.

  ‘Oh dear. Poor woman. I spoke to her a few times on the phone, and she sounded quite normal. Why would she do such a thing?’

  ‘That’s what we’re trying to find out. Do you have a file on the house?’

  ‘Yes, of course. What do you want to know?’

  ‘When she came, what sort of tenant she was - anything and everything, really.’

  ‘Here you are, then. That’s her - Alison Grey.’ She turned the computer screen so that Terry could see it from the front of the desk. ‘Came - what? - eighteen months ago. Before my time. Regular payment by standing order; we let the house furnished, put in a new damp course, repaired some windows, some trouble with the Aga last year, installed dishwasher and new washing machine - is this sort of thing any use to you?’

  ‘You say you spoke to her on the phone,’ Terry said. ‘What sort of woman was she?’ .

  ‘Ummm - quite a normal, friendly sort of lady I would say. ‘Teacher/writer’ it says here under ‘Occupation’. That’s probably why she chose a quiet house in the country.’

  ‘Was she a sociable person? Did she have any friends, partner, that sort of thing?’

  The young woman shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t know that. It was just, you know, maintenance calls - if a tile blew off the roof, or there was a problem with the plumbing. She’d ring and we’d send someone to fix it.’

&n
bsp; ‘So she never came here, into the office?’

  ‘Hm, not that I remember, no ....’ The young woman touched her cheek with a manicured fingernail, thinking. ‘She may have come in at the beginning, of course, to see what we had, be shown a few properties. But I only started a year ago, so she’d have met my predecessor, Muriel Hartson. See - there’s her signature on the contract. Michael might know more, of course. He usually vets the tenants, you know, to see if they’re ok.’

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘My boss. It’s his agency really. Do you want to talk to him?’

  ‘If I could.’

  The young woman smiled. ‘You’re lucky. He’s usually out on site, while I hold the fort.’ She spoke briefly into an intercom, then pointed to a door. ‘Through there.’

  As Terry walked through the door, the man in the office got up, walked round his desk, and held out his hand. ‘How do you do? Michael Parker. You’re from the police, I hear.’

  ‘Yes. DI Bateson.’ The name meant nothing to Terry. The man in front of him was tall, about his own height, with a square lined face and dark hair greying at the temples. He was in his mid forties but looked fit, as though he worked out regularly and spent a lot of time in the fresh air. He wore jeans, a work shirt and a leather jacket. All of this Terry saw in the first second.

  But what his mind couldn’t quite process, was where he had seen the man before.

  ‘Have a seat.’ The man waved him to a chair in front of his desk, and resumed his own place behind it. ‘Maggie tells me you’ve come about this unfortunate tenant of ours. Alison Grey?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’ Terry sat down slowly, thinking why do I hate this guy so much? He must have done something - what is it? He’s not on the child abuse register, is he? He felt his heart pumping with sudden, unaccountable fury. He took a deep breath to calm himself, before asking: ‘How well did you know her?’

  ‘Know her? Hardly at all.’ The man, it seemed, did not recognize him. His face was calm, quiet, controlled.

  ‘But she was your tenant, wasn’t she? Your secretary said you would have vetted her when she first arrived.’

  ‘Oh yes, well that would be normal. I like to meet new tenants before handing over the key.’

  ‘Presumably you take up references, that sort of thing?’

  ‘Normally we do, yes, unless ...’ He paused, as if thinking. ‘I seem to remember she was a teacher, she’d worked overseas for the British Council - would that be right? And she needed somewhere quiet to write books of some kind - schoolbooks, I think. That seemed quite satisfactory.’

  ‘Yes, she did that,’ Terry agreed. One part of his mind kept up the conversation, while another was searching frantically through a database of faces, thinking where have I met this man before, and why do I have such a strong reaction to him? He must be a conman, a fraudster of some kind; he’s clearly not a common thug, not with a business like this. ‘Did you speak to her often?’

  ‘Often? No - very rarely.’ Something - either the questions or more likely Terry’s cold relentless stare - seemed to be getting under the man’s skin. He flushed, his initial bonhomie fading. ‘She was just a tenant, that’s all. She paid her rent on time, contacted Maggie occasionally about repairs, and ... got on with her life. Look, I’m sorry if that sounds callous. Her death is a tragedy, of course, a terrible thing, but we have about thirty tenants here, and three major building projects ongoing. It’s the tenants who cause me trouble who take up my time, not ladies who sit at home writing books. Not until they kill themselves, anyway.’

  So he thinks it’s suicide as well, Terry thought. That Evening Press article has a lot to answer for.

  ‘Did she have any friends, do you know? Boyfriends, perhaps?’

  The flush faded, to be replaced by a look of cold irritation. ‘Look, inspector whatever your name is, I don’t wish to be rude but I hardly see it as part of my role to pry into the private lives of my tenants. If they pay the rent, and keep the house clean and tidy, then that’s all I ask. This lady Alison Grey, she was a mature person and I’m sure she had friends and romantic attachments like everyone else. But how many and who they were, it’s none of my business to know.’

  ‘I understand,’ Terry said. ‘But she was murdered, you see. So we need to find out.’

  ‘Murdered?’ Michael Parker sat back, shocked, in his chair. ‘But ... that can’t be right. The Evening Press article said she was found hanged. I’ve got it somewhere ...’ He fumbled among the papers on his desk, found a newspaper cutting, stared at it numbly ‘I thought that meant ... suicide. Doesn’t it?’

  ‘No sir,’ Terry said briskly, ‘I’m afraid not. We did suspect suicide at first, when we spoke to the press. But after the post mortem, we’re treating this case as murder.’

  ‘But - how?’ The man had gone quite pale, Terry noted. Clearly this meant more to him than at first appeared. ‘I mean, what makes you think that?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to go into details, sir, I’m afraid. But since this is a murder enquiry, I really do need to know what you can tell us about this lady’s friends and acquaintances.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’ Michael Parker leaned forwards, his fingers nervously massaging his forehead. ‘Poor Alison. What an awful way to go.’ He rubbed his brow for a moment in silence, then looked up, meeting Terry’s eyes in surprise, as if he had forgotten he was there. ‘That was her name, wasn’t it?’ He forced a wry smile. ‘It’s surprising how news like this affects you, isn’t it? I’d quite convinced myself it was suicide, but this - it makes it all so much worse somehow. Though I don’t see why it should. I mean, a death is a death.’

  ‘Murder is a shocking thing,’ Terry said quietly.

  ‘Yes, yes it is. I mean, I didn’t know her well, as I said, but the fact is I was in this woman’s house only what? A day or so before she died. Talking to her quite normally. So of course I wondered why she’d hanged herself but somehow this - it’s a second shock.’

  Terry studied him coolly, his senses on alert. ‘You were in the house, sir? When was this exactly?’

  ‘I’d have to check my diary.’ He pulled a small, handheld computer from his jacket pocket. ‘Yes, it was a Wednesday. Wednesday afternoon.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  ‘She’d rung Maggie to complain about a problem with the central heating. It wasn’t working properly, she said. So I went to check it out. I went all over the house bleeding the radiators and it worked much better. A simple thing but she’d been living in hot countries for years and had forgotten how they worked. She was very grateful. I thought I’d solved her problem.’

  ‘How long did you stay there, exactly?’

  Michael hesitated, thinking deeply. ‘Oh, about an hour or so, maybe more. However long it takes to check the central heating and drink a cup of tea.’

  ‘So you talked to Alison, did you?’

  ‘Yes. She seemed quite happy. Especially when the house warmed up.’

  ‘What did you talk about, apart from the central heating?’

  ‘Oh, how her work was going - quite well, she said. How strange she found it living in England again after all the places she’d been.’

  ‘Did she say anything about her health?’

  ‘Her health? No, I don’t think so.’ He frowned, as if puzzled by the question. ‘Why, was there anything wrong with it?’

  ‘She’d been recently diagnosed with cancer.’

  ‘Really? How terrible. Poor woman, her luck was really out, wasn’t it?’

  ‘She said nothing about that to you?’

  ‘No, she didn’t. But that’s hardly surprising, is it? It’s not something you would discuss with ... just anyone.’

  ‘No,’ Terry agreed. ‘I suppose not. And you were just her landlord, were you? You didn’t have any other sort of relationship with her? A sexual relationship, perhaps?’

  Terry watched the man closely as the implications of his question sank in. He faced Terry coolly, not moving
a muscle. ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘Nothing like that.’

  No strong reaction, no exaggerated protestations of innocence. Was he lying? Terry wondered. It was impossible to tell. Just a simple, blank denial. And those eyes staring at him coolly - the eyes of a man who understood the question, acknowledged it was reasonable, but had answered it and wanted to move on. Terry, however, was not quite ready to drop it just yet.

  ‘So you wouldn’t, for instance, have given her an expensive silk scarf?’

  ‘Scarf?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s what she was hanged with, didn’t you know? A Jacques Rocher silk scarf. I’m told they cost around £50.’

  ‘No, of course not. I never gave her anything.’ The face didn’t move a muscle, but was there the slightest flicker of shock, panic - something anyway - in the eyes? Terry let the silence build, waiting for a further response. To his surprise, none came.

  ‘Very well, sir, since you knew the lady, I have to ask you this. Where were you on that Friday night, 2nd December, from seven in the evening until three the following morning?’

  ‘That’s easy.’ Michael relaxed slightly, turning back to his handheld diary. ‘I was at a farmhouse development we have near Scarborough. There was a crisis there - I’d set up a meeting with the builders to sort things out. I was going to Cambridge next day so it was urgent. I set out from here at about two in the afternoon and was there all evening until about ten. Then I had a meal in Scarborough, walked on the beach for a while, and drove home.’

  ‘Getting home when?’ Terry asked, noting this down.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, about one maybe - pretty late anyway, I know that. For heaven’s sake, you’re not treating me as a suspect, are you?’