The Frame - from the author of the Sanford Third Age Club (STAC) series (A Feyer and Drake Mystery Book 2)

by David W Robinson

  The statement with regard to Olivia Bradley was quickly taken, after which Rachel read and signed it. But when Sam brought up the need for a statement on the murder of Barbara Shawforth, Hayley Killeen once again protested.

  Sam responded calmly and logically. “I’ve been ordered to reopen the investigation into Barbara Shawforth’s death. Unlike four years ago, your client is not a suspect. All evidence from that original investigation is null and void. However, she is a material witness in the matter, if only because she freely admitted to a blazing argument with Barbara earlier in the day. I need a witness statement, Mrs Killeen, not a suspect’s.”

  Hayley immediately advised Rachel to say nothing, but her client ignored the advice, and on Sam’s prompting, gave them a detailed rundown of the day, which coincided exactly with her original statement four years previously. She had received a text message from an unknown mobile telling her that Barbara would be in the Bellevue at three o’clock that afternoon with Alex Walston, and it annoyed her. She rang Barbara, arranged to meet in The Kettle on the Hob, and once there, they got into an argument, terminated when the manager insisted Rachel leave. She drove home, and stayed there all afternoon – as confirmed by her late neighbour, Grace Chivers – and she only left the house again when Sergeants Larne and Czarniak came to collect her at about seven o’clock. She gave a statement to the police, and was allowed to leave Landshaven House at about half past nine in the evening. She insisted, although Sam did not ask, that she was nowhere near the Bellevue on that date, but she had been there the day before with Alex Walston, which accounted for the stains on the bed linen which yielded her DNA.

  “That lazy bastard, Pearson, didn’t bother changing the sheets.”

  With the statement drafted out, Sam passed it to her, she read through it, signed it and handed it back, then rose to leave.

  “Stay where you are a moment, Mrs Jenner.” When Rachel sat down again, Sam went on. “There’s a gentleman in the observation room who needs see you. He’s not a police officer, but it is important that he speaks you. He’ll tell you why. I’m advising you that you don’t have to speak to him if you do not wish.”

  It was obvious from the look of anger on Hayley Killeen’s face that she was already spooling up for another argument when Sam waved through the glass, inviting Drake to join them.

  Carrying his rough notes, he left the observation room, knocked on interview room door, and stepped in. As he did so, Barker rose to leave, taking Rachel’s statement with him.

  “Good morning, Rachel. I’m Wes Drake. I—”

  Hayley cut him off. “I made it clear on the telephone that my client has nothing to say to you.”

  A chunky brunette with fierce, green eyes, and a small mouth twisted into an angry grimace, she was dressed in traditional, courtroom clothes, a black business suit and white blouse, suggesting a severity which was matched by her voice.

  Drake smiled thinly at her. “I think that’s up to your client, Mrs Killeen.” He concentrated on Rachel. “Are you prepared to talk to me?”

  Hayley spoke again. “If you take my advice, Rachel, you will refuse.”

  Rachel shrugged up at him. “I’ve nothing to say to you.”

  “Not even if I can prove you innocent?”

  It was a bald statement with little to support it, but it had the necessary effect. Hayley’s mouth fell open, and Rachel stared in amazement. To Drake’s left, Sam tutted.

  “You can prove I didn’t murder Barbara?”

  “No. Not if you won’t speak to me, I can’t.” He gestured lazily at Sam. “Chief Inspector Feyer and her colleagues ask questions of you, they take your answers, assess them against available evidence, make a decision. That’s their job. I don’t disapprove. My late partner was a police officer.” He leaned forward to stress his point. “But I’m not.”

  “No. You’re the DCC’s hatchet man, aren’t you?”

  Drake laughed in the face of Hayley’s accusation. “Let me tell you something, Mrs Killeen. I don’t work for Deputy Chief Constable Mullins. True, she commissioned me, but I am my own man. I don’t reach the conclusion she wants to hear. I come to my own, and if she doesn’t like them… well, that’s too bad.” He concentrated once more on Rachel. “I’m a specialist in motivation, and it’s my job to assess whether or not you killed Barbara.”

  Rachel met his announcement with the same ferocity as Hayley. “I didn’t.”

  “You can say that until the cows come home, it won’t make a bit of difference. I can see things which escape most people. For instance, if you sat there insisting that your hair was blonde, even if I couldn’t see it, I would know you were lying. Talk to me, Rachel. What do you have to lose? Your conviction is quashed, and whatever report I put together for Iris Mullins, would be considered as supportive evidence, nothing more.”

  Rachel did not back off. “I had the psychos give me the once over inside. They think I’m in denial.”

  “I’m not a psychologist, and I’m certainly not a psychiatrist. I’m actually a management consultant, a specialist in motivating people, but it also lends me an insight into motives, which is what I’m interested in. I’m asking you to speak to me. If you don’t, if you refuse, then you leave me to draw the obvious conclusion.”

  Rachel was caught in a quandary of doubt and indecision. After a minute or so of silence, she glowered at Sam. “Not while she’s here.”

  Sam gathered together her belongings. “It’s fine. Once you’re through with Mr Drake, you’re free to leave. Wes, can you let me know when you’re finished?”

  “No problem.”

  And with that, Sam left the room, gently closing the door behind her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Drake laid his notes out in front of him, turned over a fresh page on his A4 notepad, penned in the date and a heading, and put down his pen.

  “Just to give you a little further background on me, I’m the son of an MP, the youngest of three children, and my brother and sister are both lawyers. The legal profession never appealed to me, but I do have some insight into it. My report is confidential, and is for Iris Mullins’s eyes only. The Landshaven police won’t see it, neither will you. However, the local CID will be given a verbal overview, and if I decide that you were not guilty—”

  “I’m not.”

  Drake counted mentally to three. “If I decide that you’re not guilty, you and your solicitor will be one of the first to know. If, however, I come to the conclusion that you are guilty—”

  “I repeat. I’m not.”

  This time he sighed. “If I decide that you were guilty, I will say nothing to you. That’s because my report could be detrimental to your case.” He looked to Hayley Killeen. “All right?”

  “I thought I’d made my feelings clear on this matter, Mr Drake.”

  “So you did.” He turned his attention to Rachel once more. “Tell me about Barbara.”

  Rachel’s temper began to spool up. “I just told you, I had nothing—”

  This time he interrupted her. “I’m asking about Barbara the person, not Barbara the murder victim.”

  “Oh.” Rachel backed down immediately, and took a moment to collect her thoughts. When she next spoke, there was a glow about her, the gleam of fond reminiscence. “She was the best friend I ever had. We met in uni, twenty odd years ago. We did everything together. We roomed together and we shared everything. Food, clothes, music, drink, dancing, and boyfriends.”

  “I’ve seen photographs of her before… you know. She was a spectacularly good looking woman.”

  Rachel promptly agreed. “The term is drop dead gorgeous, and you’re right. She looked fantastic. Always immaculate, she wasn’t like these so-called celebrities, who need beauty treatments and airbrushed pictures to keep their looks. Hers was a natural beauty. Small wonder she had men drooling over her, even back then.”

  Drake made a note. “She was also promiscuous, wasn’t she? I mean, I don’t come from Landshaven, but the tales I�
��ve heard say that she was very popular in the town, and yet she was also happy to jump into bed with a man at the drop of a hat.”

  Rachel shrugged. “Fair comment, I suppose. The truth is, she didn’t give a hoot. Oh, sure, she worked hard for this town. Let’s face it, she had to. I don’t like Marc Shawforth, but he’s good for the town, and he was her husband, so she had to pull the stops out when it came to promoting Landshaven. But if she fancied a man… Christ, it was like her knickers were fitted with a ripcord.”

  Drake chuckled at the imagery. “Were you the same?”

  “I don’t see that’s any of your business.”

  “So you were?”

  “No. I wasn’t. I was faithful to John. He was the one who couldn’t keep his pants on.”

  Drake made another note and dropped his pen. “Were you jealous of Barbara?”

  The question presented Rachel with a puzzle. “No. Why should I be?”

  Drake put on a matter of fact air. “A beautiful woman, married to a wealthy man, getting plenty of dick, and what did you have? Married to another copper who was out shagging other women. It would be natural to be envious.”

  To his surprise, Rachel laughed. “Barb was married to an arsehole. I told you, I don’t like him, and the reason for that is the way he treated her. He’s a control freak, Shawforth, particularly where money’s concerned. He’s worth millions, but she had no money of her own. He made her an allowance. About three hundred a month. Aside from that, he dealt with the shopping – online – and all the other household bills. When she went out, he wanted to know where she was going, and who with. And when he was home, rather than in Westminster, and she went out, he’d be calling her every twenty minutes to find out who she was with them what she was doing. I know. I was out with her several times when it happened. That prick wouldn’t even allow her a credit card. She had one, though. It was in her own name, but registered at my address. There were times when she was so short of cash that she borrowed from me.”

  Drake wrote rapidly, noting down keywords which would prompt his memory when he came to assess the session later.

  “Did he beat her?”

  Rachel’s annoyance dissipated quickly. “I don’t think so. At least, I never saw any bruises on her.”

  “Did she charge for sex?”

  Once again, Rachel took the question in her stride. “I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that she did, but I couldn’t swear to it.”

  “I was thinking about the way she might get the money to pay the credit card bill.”

  “You could be right. Like I said, I don’t know.”

  “Did she ever borrow from you to pay the bill?”

  “That’s usually the reason she did borrow from me.”

  “And she always paid you back.”

  “Without fail.”

  Drake forcibly dismissed the dark notions which were gathering in his mind. “Okay. Let’s talk about Alex Walston. You say you were having an affair with him.”

  “I was.”

  “He denies it.”

  “He lied. So did Pearson at the Bellevue. He knew damn well that Alex and I had been in that room the day before.”

  “That’s a matter between you and the police.” For the second time, Drake reverted to a matter of fact, conversational tone. “Good, was he? Walston, I mean.”

  Rachel glared defiantly. “The best. He knew how to take his time and how to satisfy a woman.”

  Drake shrugged off her challenge. “I don’t know Walston. I haven’t met him yet. He has a reputation for bed-hopping. In fact, someone said to me, he’s had half the women in this town. Were you aware of his reputation?”

  “Yes, and it’s true. I know at least half a dozen women he’s been to bed with.”

  He leaned forward once again, his eyes burning into her. “Then why did you get so mad when you learned that Barbara was meeting him on the afternoon she was murdered?” Rachel was stunned into silence and Drake pressed home his advantage. “Here’s a man renowned for bedding as many women as he can, and a woman who drops her knickers for any man she fancies. Why did you get so steamed up about it? You must have known it was on the cards at some point, if not that particular day. Why go storming into The Kettle on the Hob and tackle her in public on it?”

  She remained silent for long moments, so long that Drake wondered whether she was going to answer at all.

  “You see, Rachel, all along you insisted that the argument in the café was about her meeting your – alleged – lover. It doesn’t make sense to me. I think you were hiding the real reason behind the argument.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. That is what it was about.”

  Drake greeted the assertion with complete silence. There was more, and he knew it, and it was better to let her go on as and when she was ready.

  He was right.

  “I’d had an absolute bastard of a week. Coming to the end of the season, we were working twelve, thirteen hour shifts. Usual run of lager louts, street dealers, fights, domestics, and right in the middle of it all, HMRC in need of assistance for a drug bust on an incoming Norwegian timber boat. By Wednesday night, I’d had it, and I asked Neville Trentham for a few days leave, which he allowed. The following day, Thursday, I met Alex at the Bellevue – and I don’t give a fuck what he says. It was exactly what I needed. On Friday, I was up for it again. Let’s be honest about it, I was gagging for it, and he turned me down. He said he had to look after his wife. She’s an alcoholic, you know. Then I got the text telling me that he was meeting Barbara, and when I met her, she admitted it. That’s what the fight was about.”

  It made a kind of sense to Drake. “So why didn’t you say so when you were first interviewed?”

  Rachel delivered a cynical little laugh and gestured at the interview room. “In this place? Can you imagine what CID would make of a confession like that? I’d have been a laughing stock. Randy Rachel, hard up for it.”

  Again, it made a kind of sense. Drake made a few notes, and put down his pen.

  “Not much more now, Rachel, but one thing really does interest me, and we touched on it a moment ago. You insist that you had an affair with Walston, and it went on for a couple of weeks. Right?” He waited for her to nod her agreement. “Why would he deny it? I mean, he has this reputation as a bit of a playboy and you, yourself, said you know a number of women he’s been with. Why would he deny being with you the day before Barbara was murdered?”

  “Simple. He killed her. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. But he must have done it, and then he threatened Pearson, telling him to keep his mouth shut, to deny ever seeing me and him together. That way, I’d be sure to get the blame.”

  Her opinion this time did not make complete sense. “The police ruled him out quite quickly. They had him on traffic cameras, and they insisted that he didn’t have time to kill her and clean himself up.”

  To stress her response, Rachel rammed a finger into the table top. “They saw him arrive and leave. But over an hour passed between him leaving and Pearson discovering Barbara’s body. He could have shifted the car up onto Town Hill, parked in one of the side streets, come back to the hotel, and done it then. He’d have had time to take a shower and warn Pearson off, and then when he got back to his office, he told his staff to say he was back there for four o’clock. Anyone who stepped out of line would be sacked.”

  In Drake’s mind, the theory fell apart of its own weight. Walston, if he really were the killer, could never be one hundred percent certain of his staff.

  He put the issue to one side. “Last thing. Grace Chivers. She gave a statement to the police, but by the time you came to trial, she’d passed away and her statement was dismissed as the ramblings of an elderly woman not quite compos mentis.”

  “There was nothing wrong with Grace’s mind. I know she was well into her eighties, but she was as sharp as a razor. She saw and heard everything that went off in that street, and she knew I was home all day.”

  “I th
ink that’s about it then, Rachel. Thanks for… Oh, sorry, there is one last thing. The bloodstained blouse in your wardrobe. It was yours, you admitted as much, but if you didn’t kill Barbara, how did the blood get on the blouse?”

  “Someone got into the house while I was down here answering Frank Barker’s questions on the night Barbara was murdered.”

  “To do that, they must have had a key. After all, there was no sign of a break-in. Where did the key come from?”

  Rachel shook her head and shrugged. “That is something I’ve thought about every day for the last four years, and I still don’t know the answer.”

  Drake made a final note, and gathered together his belongings. “Thank you for your time, Rachel, and you, Hayley.” He dipped into his wallet, took out a business card and handed it over. “If you need to speak to me at all, if you remember anything about that day, no matter how apparently unimportant, don’t hesitate to ring.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  From the interview room, Drake returned to the second floor and the CID room, where he reported to Sam, keeping his observations vague, and refusing point-blank to come to any conclusions.

  “It’s too early for me to say anything with any conviction. There are other people I need to speak to.”

  She rubbed tired hands across her face and gazed through the windows. Landshaven seafront was short of life on this rainy day, but from here she could just make out uniformed officers dismantling the white shrouds which had hidden the body of Olivia Bradley from view. Involuntarily she recalled times when she had been detailed to such duties, days when she was a uniformed constable staring down upon mangled, crushed, bloodied corpses, forcibly reminding her that these obscenities had once been human beings. Recalling such days reminded her of Don and his treason, and to quell the memories, she responded to Drake.

  “I can’t dismiss her from our enquiries. She’s…” She trailed off as DS Czarniak poked his head round the door. “Paul?”

  “Excuse me, ma’am.” He concentrated on Drake. “A call from DCC Mullins, sir. She’s holding.”