by J M Gregson
‘Well, as I said, love, that was what I thought at first, but I’m not quite so sure now.’ Steve glanced quickly at Carol, who was staring into the bottom of her glass again. ‘But I’m afraid we’ve got to face the fact that Jemal is overwhelmingly the most likely candidate.’
Carol felt a powerful urge to scream at this smug, self-satisfied man who was so happy to pile the blame on her husband. Despite him talking about a husband whom she had wanted rid of, a husband she now knew was a serious criminal at the very least. Perhaps she should have been glad that a man with a cool head like Steve should be taking over their thinking, should be directing them forward towards the paths on which their lives were going to develop. Instead, she felt a deep resentment that this man she had always dismissed as a dull and dutiful worm should be emerging as something much more dynamic since the death of her father.
She was saved from the outburst which was coming by the faint sound of a doorbell from somewhere far beyond the firmly shut door of the sitting room. The three of them looked at each other without speaking for a couple of seconds which seemed much longer.
Louise said, ‘I’ll get it. I don’t want the children disturbed.’ The silence seemed to stretch after she had left the room. ‘I don’t know who it can be, at this hour on a Sunday night,’ Steve said. ‘We weren’t expecting anyone.’
DCI Peach did not erupt into the room in his normal energetic manner. He came in quietly behind DS Blake. He looked round the room to see who was present, then watched Louise Hawksworth as she shut the door carefully behind her. She stood for a moment with her back against it before she moved into the centre of the room and stood very close to Lucy Blake.
Peach ignored her husband’s gestured invitation to sit down and remained standing with Blake at his shoulder. He addressed himself first to Carol Bilic. ‘I believe you have been informed that your husband was arrested this morning in Glasgow. I have to inform you that he has now been charged with serious offences under the Immigration Acts. In view of the nature of the charges, it is unlikely that he will be allowed bail. I must tell you that I expect him to be kept in custody until he comes to trial.’
‘You have no need to be apologetic about that, Chief Inspector Peach. I should not want Jemal in my house if you released him. I hope that he will never set foot there again.’ Steve Hawksworth made a move to comfort her, but Carol shrugged his attentions angrily away.
It was Louise who voiced the question the three of them had in mind. ‘Has Jemal been charged with the murder of my father?’
‘No, Mrs Hawksworth, he has not. If he is found guilty of the charges brought against him, he will be in prison for a long time. But he will not be charged with murder.’ Louise glanced quickly at her sister, wondering how much the avoidance of this final horror would mean to her, but saw a face which might have been carved in stone. She had remained standing since she had ushered the CID pair into the room. It was Lucy Blake who now turned to her and set her old friend down not where she had been sitting on the sofa, but in an armchair beside the one occupied by her sister. Louise looked up at her with wide eyes, which were now filled not just with enquiry but also with fear.
Peach’s dark-eyed, penetrating gaze ran round over the three very different faces which looked up towards his. He said, ‘Jemal Bilic isn’t the person who committed this vile act. That person is in this room.’
Steve Hawksworth looked at the horrified faces of the two women and said with his new-found authority, ‘You had better be very certain of your ground here, Chief Inspector.’ Peach transferred his attention from husband to wife. ‘Mrs Hawksworth, I know that you’ve already told us this once. But will you please recall to me in detail what happened in this house on the night of your father’s death?’
Louise Hawksworth flicked her gaze from her husband to her sister and finally to her friend Lucy Blake, who gave her the slightest encouraging nod.
Louise’s gaze transferred to the carpet, where it remained unwaveringly through an account she delivered almost like one in a trance. ‘I came back here before Steve, because I didn’t want to leave the children any longer than was necessary. They were fine, but a little overexcited, as I knew they would be. Michael in particular was on a bit of a high, almost feverish. I calmed them down a bit once I was on my own with them. They were going to be later than usual to bed, but I knew they wouldn’t go down easily unless I let them wind down before they went. Steve came home a little later and helped me get them into bed.’
‘What time was this, Louise?’ The question came not from Peach but from Blake.
Louise looked up for a moment, not at her husband, but at her friend Lucy, whom she was surprised to see making notes. ‘About half past eight. As I say, we usually have them in bed before that.’ Correct domestic discipline suddenly seemed of pressing importance to her. ‘Steve made sure Daisy had her bath and then got her into her pyjamas. I was still busy bathing Michael and trying to get him into his pyjamas - when he gets tired, his physical co-ordination isn’t very good. Daisy was burbling happily enough in bed, so I said I’d read stories for both of them. Steve said he was pretty tired himself after his speech and the shock of Dad’s news. He went down to get drinks for us ready for when I’d finished.’
‘Time, Louise?’ Lucy Blake’s prompt came very quietly.
‘Just after nine. I remember because the children hadn’t been up so late since Christmas. It took me a long time to get Michael into his pyjamas and into bed. He wasn’t very co-operative, but he couldn’t help that, poor mite. He’d had a very long day. I read him a little story, but he was really past that. But I crooned little lullabies to him for quite a time and stroked his head, because I wanted to make sure he was asleep before I left him. I thought Daisy would have gone off by the time I was done with Michael, but she was still awake. I think she was determined to get her story. She’s a lively little girl and once she’s set her mind on something she doesn’t let it escape her.’ Her face shone with nostalgic pride as she recalled Michael’s innocence and Daisy’s mischievous will power.
‘So what time did you get down here?’
Still she looked at Lucy with her small gold ball-pen poised over her notebook, not at Steve. ‘It was just after half past ten. I remember saying to Steve that we’d be pushed to get half an hour to ourselves before we went up to bed.’
Peach had been silent, watching not the speaker but her husband’s reactions to what she said. Now he said, ‘And did Mr Hawksworth have that drink ready for you, after your marathon session with the children?’
For the first time, she faltered, as if this information had not been in her monologue. ‘I - I don’t think so. He poured me a gin and tonic when I slumped into a chair, I think.’ Peach looked at Hawksworth, who simply said, ‘That’s right, I think. It’s difficult to remember details. None of us thought at the time that—’
‘And where had you been whilst your wife was upstairs with the children, Mr Hawksworth?’
‘Me? Oh, I’d been in this room, I think. I was pretty jaded after the day we’d had, as Louise told you. I was more mentally tired than—’
‘Had you been out of the house?’
‘Out of the house? No, certainly I hadn’t. I might have gone to the kitchen perhaps, but certainly not out of the house.’
‘Then why didn’t you answer the phone?’
For the first time, something like panic flashed across the thin, alert features. ‘There were no phone calls, I can assure you. I should certainly have answered them if there had been.’
‘There was at least one phone call during that time. You did not answer it because it was made whilst you were out of the house.’
The two women as well as Hawksworth started at that bald, uncompromising statement. Steve repeated carefully, as if clarity could make it true, ‘I wasn’t out of the house at that time. There were no phone calls.’
Carol Bilic couldn’t stand the tension any longer. She said, ‘There was at least one call, S
teve. I rang here during that time, but there was no answer, so I just left a message for you. I told them that on Thursday. I didn’t think it mattered, at the time.’
Steve bathed her in the smile of his newly discovered urbanity. ‘You’re mistaken, Carol. We’re all a little overwrought, but that’s hardly surprising. I’d have answered if you’d called. I was certainly here at that time.’
Peach kept his eyes firmly on his man as he said, ‘Mrs Hawksworth, do you usually clear your messages?’
‘No. I don’t even listen to them every day, and when I do, I don’t usually clear them. I’m a bit of a slut about that. I’m afraid!’ Her brittle laughter rang like a knell around the quiet room.
Peach walked very deliberately across to the phone, his eyes still upon Hawksworth. He tapped in the 1571 number and pressed the volume button so that everyone in the room could hear. The announcer’s calm but slightly distorted voice said, ‘You have six saved messages.’
The first one was a friend from the Down’s Syndrome Association asking Louise to phone her back about an outing. The innocent words and the nervous social giggle at the end of the message played oddly against the tension in the room.
Then came the announcer’s measured tones again. ‘Second saved message. Message received on Saturday the thirtieth of June at nine fifty-eight p.m.’ There was a click and a slightly distorted, metallic voice said, ‘Louise, this is Carol. We need to talk about the Williams woman and Dad’s announcement today. What can we do about it? Ring me back tomorrow.’
Peach put down the phone and came back to the centre of the room. ‘Nine fifty-eight, Mr Hawksworth. Where were you at that time?’
‘I - I must have dozed off. I told you, I was tired at the end of that Saturday.’
‘You don’t doze, Steve. And you’re a light sleeper. You’d never have slept through the phone.’ This was Louise, looking at him with her eyes widening in horror. ‘You were out killing my dad.’
He looked at her for a moment as if she was Judas. Then his resistance crumbled. This was the woman he loved, being only her usual honest, uncomplicated self. A woman incapable of deceit: he’d always loved Louise for that. He said hopelessly, ‘I did it for us. For Daisy and Michael. To give them a better life. I knew you wanted that.’
Louise looked at him as if he was a stranger in her husband’s familiar skin. Was this the man she had slept with, whose children she had borne? The man with whom she had shared all kinds of aspirations, all kinds of intimacies over the years? Her voice was leaden as she said, ‘Dad would have given us all of that. He was a good man, my dad.’
‘He wouldn’t, love. I saw him after his speech. You know he was going to set me up in my own firm.’ He glanced guiltily at Carol: she hadn’t known anything about his plans. ‘Well, he said he couldn’t make any commitments now. That Pam had brought a new dimension to his life and he’d have to consult her about anything new. I knew what that meant.’
‘You didn’t know anything. He’d have done anything for me, my dad. And you were wrong about Pam Williams. We were all wrong. She wouldn’t have stopped Dad helping you.’ He stared at her with the ultimate horror dawning for him. It must be so, if Louise said it was so. It had all been for nothing. It had all been unnecessary.
He looked at Peach. ‘I’d arranged to meet Geoff at quarter to ten at Marton Towers. I knew it would be very quiet out there then. I don’t think I intended to kill him when I arranged that meeting.’
‘But you took a murder weapon with you.’ This would all go into a statement later. It might be the difference between manslaughter and murder, when this came to court.
‘I took a piece of cable from our garage, yes. You won’t find it now, though.’ For an instant his old pernickety pride in the detail of his performance came out. Louise gasped with horror, but this time he did not look at her. It was suddenly important to him that he had the minutiae of this out of the way without distractions.
As carefully as if he had been describing a minor road traffic accident, he said, ‘Geoff still had various presents and souvenirs which people had given to him during the afternoon on the front passenger seat so I slid into the back of the car and talked to him from there.’
‘And what did you say to him, Steve?’ For the first time in the investigation, Peach used his forename: it was an acknowledgement that this was over now, that there was only the relief of confession left to him.
‘I said that we needed money. That we’d planned a new house with all the things needed for the children, all the things needed to make life easy for Louise. He said all these things might still be achieved. At that moment, I thought everything might still be all right.’
‘But it went wrong, Steve, didn’t it? How did it go wrong?’ Peach’s voice was gentle as a therapist’s. His attention was totally upon the man purging himself of his awful secret, and not at all upon the faces of the two appalled women who watched this tragic cameo.
Steve Hawksworth nodded, eager now to complete his tale and be honest and open again with his wife. ‘I said he’d promised to set me up in my own business, that once I had that there would be no need for any more help from him. Geoff said that he’d never promised that, that it was an idea we had discussed but nothing more than that. He - he was very worried that night about Pam Williams. He said he’d upset her by what he’d said at the meal, that he needed to talk to her. He said that was far more important to him at that moment than any aspirations I might have for my own business. That’s when I threw the cable round his neck.’ He said it wonderingly, with a tiny smile, as if he could not believe that a man like him could have done anything so decisive.
‘Did he struggle, Steve?’
‘Not much, no. He told me not to be so ridiculous. I’m afraid that’s when I lost it.’ He might have been a man apologizing for spilling his tea. ‘I tightened the cable around his neck, used both hands on it. I suddenly didn’t want to hear any more words from him, you see.’
‘And what then, Steve?’
‘I realized he was dead, that I had to get out of there quickly. I’m not stupid, you see.’ There was an awful bathos in this man sitting more alone in the world than he had ever been, protesting his efficiency as the man of action which he should never have tried to be. ‘I’d worn gloves anyway, but I gave the door handle of Geoff’s Jaguar a quick wipe before I left. Then I drove back here, as quickly as the law allowed.’
Everyone in the room save Hawksworth noted the awful irony of his care to observe driving decorum.
Peach said quietly, ‘You were back before Louise came downstairs. But not quite in time to pour the drink you had promised her.’
‘I was, you know. It slipped my mind, that’s all. I suppose I was still preoccupied with what I had done.’ He nodded a couple of times to himself, as if happy to have a rational explanation for his omission. He was cocooned now in that dreadful isolation which sometimes engulfs those who have set themselves apart from their fellows by the worst of all crimes.
Peach had remained standing through all of this. He now stepped across to Hawksworth and uttered the formal words of arrest. Lucy Blake made a small move towards the woman with whom she had shared so much in her school days, then thought better of it.
They did not handcuff their prisoner until he was outside the house, in deference to those who remained within it. The sisters stood as the bemused Steve Hawksworth was led from the room. He stopped for a moment in front of his wife, looking at her as if he had forgotten until that moment that she was there. ‘I love you, Louise,’ was all he said.
They left the two sisters clasped in each other’s arms on the sofa, their shoulders shaking with the first soundless sobs of shock.
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