Oh, please, thought Femur, in disgust.
‘I know Chompie’s no angel, but he’d never have done something like this without being pushed into it.’ Drakeshill took the handkerchief away at last and Femur saw that he’d managed to make his eyes red.
This was a man who was going to work a jury like an expert, Femur told himself. Drakeshill was obviously prepared to sacrifice Spinel, Chompie and probably everyone else to keep himself out of it and he hadn’t been stupid or arrogant enough to leave his fingerprints on any of the physical evidence.
‘This’ll sound mad,’ Drakeshill said, still sniffing and gazing at Femur as though he were a kindly uncle, ‘but it’s going to be harder for me to forgive Barry Spinel for what he did to young Chompie than for the poor woman’s death.’ He shrugged his fat shoulders and sniffed. Then he wiped his nose on the back of his hairy hand. Femur nearly gagged. ‘But, then, I never knew her, and he was like a son to me. They all are, you know, Mr Femur. My lads. They’ve all had their problems and I know they’ve done things they shouldn’t, but treated right they come good in the end. Over and over again I’ve seen it. And now this. I tell you, it’s enough to make a man …’ He whimpered again and mopped his eyes.
He can’t think I’m falling for this load of tripe, Femur thought, while he said briskly, ‘Right. Tony, will you finish up in here? Get a signed statement with all the details and any shred of evidence Drakeshill can offer.’
Tony Blacker, who had been staring at Drakeshill as though he was a Martian, shut his mouth. He was still explaining Femur’s departure to the tape recorder as Femur shut the door behind him.
Two hours later, Femur nodded to Caroline Lyalt. She’d better ask the next question. He felt as though he was on the point of banging someone’s head against the wall, probably his own.
‘So, Sergeant Spinel,’ Caroline said, still smiling, ‘once more for the tape. You never had any sexual interest in Kara Huggate, despite what your friend Martin Drakeshill has alleged, both in a taped interview and in his signed statement. Is that right?’
‘Of course it is. How often do I have to tell you? I can’t think what he’s playing at.’ Spinel was clearly furious, whether because Drakeshill was trying to pin all the blame for Kara’s death on him or whether because of the sexual insult, Femur wasn’t sure.
‘And he’s not a friend. He’s a snout, for Christ’s sake. No one who knew me would think I could ever fancy an old bag like Kara Huggate. He’s living in a world of his own, these days. None of his information’s been any good to me for months. I should have axed him.’
‘If you had,’ Femur said, with wholly deceptive mildness. ‘Kara Huggate might still be alive, mightn’t she?’
‘I had nothing to do with her death.’
‘Oh, come on! You can’t expect us to believe that with your prints all over the photo of the Kingsford Rapist’s victim.’
‘No, listen, sir, you don’t understand.’
‘Too right, Sergeant Spinel. So give me enough to make me understand.’
‘I never thought they were going to kill her. Christ! You can’t believe I’d let myself be involved in anything like that?’
‘So, what did you think?’
‘That they were trying to scare her off. I understood that Chompie was going to dress up like the Kingsford Rapist and crash about in her cottage, perhaps even give her a bit of a slapping and terrify her into leaving Kingsford. That’s all.’
‘Leave aside what that says about your brains,’ Femur said, aware of the rage that was heating up inside Caroline’s slim body, ‘and tell me why Drakeshill was so anxious to frighten Kara Huggate. What did he think she could do to him, a lone social worker?’
‘I’ve never been quite sure, sir.’ Spinel was spitting out the words. ‘But she’d riled him from the start. He’d been picking up rumours from his mechanics that she’d been talking all over Kingsford about how she was going to get to the bottom of whoever it was putting all the drugs into local schools. She’d find out who it was then use all her influence to have him sent down for the longest possible stretch.’
‘And who was he?’ Caroline asked, so that they could have the admission on tape.
‘Drakeshill, of course. But you knew that.’
‘Sure. But we like to have it all clear.’
Spinel muttered something Femur couldn’t catch. He didn’t need to know what it was: the feeling behind it was obvious enough.
‘Even so,’ he said, ‘I can’t see that kind of provocation being enough for what he had done to Kara Huggate. Are you trying to make me believe Drakeshill also thought Chompie was just going to slap her? That the assault and murder were part of some kind of private enterprise of Chompie’s?’
‘Well, they could’ve been, couldn’t they?’
‘If that’s the story you’re planning to tell in court, I’m even more worried about your brains. You’d never have given Chompie a photograph of the Kingsford Rapist’s body if you’d thought he was just going to give Kara a slapping. You knew all along what they were planning. You’re in it up to your neck. Drakeshill’s trying to make you take the rap for it. I know he was the one who gave the order. You might as well save yourself a bit of bother and tell us why.’
Spinel shrugged. The ghost of his old cockiness still hovered around him, but at last he looked what he was: a grounded bully, a fundamentally weak man who’d enjoyed terrorising other people and now didn’t know where to put himself or what to do.
‘It looked like it was something personal,’ he said sulkily, ‘but I could never understand why she pissed him off that much. Then when she started to go after Napton, I found out Drakeshill thought she had more information on him than she’d let on at first. He thought she was going to pick off his people one by one and then get to him.’
‘That makes her sound powerful.’ Femur was puzzled. ‘No one else has suggested anything like it.’
‘Drakeshill thought she was.’ Spinel shrugged again. ‘He wouldn’t listen. I talked to her over and over again a few months back, probing for whatever she had on him, and there wasn’t anything. She was an angry woman, and she hated drugs, but that was all. She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know he had the monopoly in Kingsford. She didn’t know shit. I told him that, but he didn’t believe me. And I still think it was just coincidence she got on to Napton. But Drakeshill wouldn’t wear it. He decided she was just a front for someone else, someone who really did know the whole story, maybe someone who wanted to take over his empire here. So he wanted her dead, for herself because she riled him and for whoever was behind her as a lesson to keep out of Kingsford. That’s all there is to it.’
‘Except that you were prepared to help him. You know, Spinel, if there’s one thing I hate it’s a bent copper. But a copper who’s prepared to go along with murder is something else again. You’re going down, my son.’
‘So long as I take Drakeshill with me, I don’t fucking care,’ Spinel said, through his teeth.
‘Right. Then let’s get down to it. D’you want a brief now, just to get all the formalities sorted so that Drakeshill can’t wriggle out of this one?’
‘OK.’ The big shoulders shrugged up the leather jacket again. ‘But not Bletchley.’
‘Right.’ Femur turned to Caroline with the first real pleasure of the investigation stretching his face into a smile. ‘Get on to it, will you, Cally? And send for some tea for us all while you’re about it. We’ve got work to do.’
Epilogue
There wasn’t much room in the church of St Michael and All Angels when Trish and George walked through the door only two minutes before Kara’s memorial service was due to start. Every pew they could see was full. Heads turned at the sound of their late arrival. Trish caught sight of Darlie, looking tearful and very fragile in her short black skirt and sweater. Just in front of her was a pewful of police officers in uniform. There was an extraordinary range of dress, from the scruffiest of jeans to formal black suits and ev
en one or two hats. There was an almost cheerful buzz of conversation, as though the congregation was waiting for a wedding or, at least, an ordinary service.
An usher came towards them, his shoes squeaking against the stone flags. As he handed each of them a thick white order of service, he whispered that there were spaces near the front. They followed him up a side aisle to the third row.
Trish, constrained by the thought that they must be invading the family’s space, smiled hesitantly at the nearest occupant of the pew, a tall, slim man in a dark suit and very white, very smooth shirt. He moved nearer to the woman beside him and nodded encouragingly at Trish.
‘Is this really all right?’ she whispered. ‘You’re not expecting more family?’
‘No. I’m not family either,’ he whispered back, his accent distinctly Bostonian.
Trish smiled and slid into the pew ahead of George, just as the organ burst into life with a triumphant crashing sound that didn’t seem altogether appropriate. There was a rustle all around the church. She looked back to see the choir processing up towards the chancel, followed by the vicar, dressed in a simple white surplice over his cassock.
The organist stopped playing as the priest reached the chancel steps, where he turned. Holding his prayer book against his heart, he said, in a voice of surprising power, ‘Friends, we are here today not to mourn but to remember, rejoicing, the life of a remarkable woman. Mourning there has been for all of us, and anxiety and anger, but today we must put all that aside. Kara lit up our lives, each one in a different way. She had a gift of friendship that will live as long as the last one of us. She gave freely of herself to all of us and many others. Remember her.’
The man beside Trish shivered. She snatched a glance at him and saw such pain in his face that she had to look away.
‘And now, will you join with me in singing, ‘Love Divine, all love’s excelling’?
As the huge congregation stood, Trish caught sight of Femur and Constable Lyalt in plain clothes in one of the pews on the far side of the aisle. She thought of the last time they’d met, in a grim little crematorium on the outskirts of Kingsford, where they were the only mourners at Blair Collons’s dismal funeral.
There had been no hymns and no address, simply a hurried recitation of the burial service and some tinkly taped music as his plain coffin rolled away through the curtained doorway to the furnace. Trish had watched it go, sick at heart and full of shame.
‘You mustn’t blame yourself,’ Femur had said, when they walked out into the raw cold outside, averting their eyes from the miserable ragged wreaths of earlier services. ‘If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine.’
‘We both failed him,’ she’d answered. ‘And both for much the same reason, I suspect.’
‘He didn’t come across as a good witness,’ Femur said. ‘He didn’t help himself.’
‘I know, but it doesn’t excuse us,’ Trish answered. ‘We were both sure at one stage that he’d killed her and we must have shown it. Given how guilty he already felt for not having saved her, that can’t have helped him find a reason to go on living.’
Femur had nodded, but as they reached the edge of the car-park, he sent Caroline Lyalt on ahead. Standing in the rain beside Trish, his face unhappier than she’d ever seen it he said, ‘Did it ever occur to you that he could have been the original Kingsford Rapist?’
She nodded. The rain trickled through her hair, right over the back of her head and down her neck. ‘But I didn’t think there was any evidence.’
‘There wasn’t. But someone assaulted those women and killed the last of them. And he –’
‘Don’t,’ she said urgently. ‘Don’t decide it was Blair just because he was creepy and made you feel ill. If you think it was him, then find a photograph of him and show it to the surviving victims, then …’
‘Their rapist was masked,’ he reminded her. ‘We’ll never know, since there was never anything to use for a DNA match. But I think that outpouring of apology to Kara meant that he knew it was his fault she’d died like that. He’d got over whatever had driven him to attack the other women – perhaps it was relative success at work, perhaps it was the stress of having been driven to kill the last of them, we’ll never know. But he must have come to understand that, if he’d never done any of it, Kara’s killer wouldn’t have had the blueprint for what he did. You and I both realised he felt guilty about what happened to her. I think this is why.’
‘But you’ve no proof,’ Trish reminded him.
‘No. We’ll never know.’
Copyright
First published in 1999 by St Martin’s Press
This edition published 2012 by Bello an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR Basingstoke and Oxford Associated companies throughout the world
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Copyright © Natasha Cooper, 1999
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