‘This is our weekend retreat,’ Liz Spalding said. ‘Oh, yes, I remember Stephen, who wouldn’t. I was mad for the man, but then he disappeared.’
‘He was murdered,’ Wendy said. The suntan and the perpetual smile did not sit so easy with her as it did with Larry. She could see that he was enamoured of the woman.
‘I was upset when I heard. I never knew the reason he left me.’
‘He left everyone. Did you take it personally?’
‘At the time, but now we know it wasn’t me.’
‘His brother believed you wanted Stephen to marry you.’
‘And you listened to him?’ Liz said.
‘We listen to everyone, not necessarily believe them,’ Larry said.
‘Yes, I wanted Stephen to marry me, although he wouldn’t have unless I had been pregnant.’
‘Why?’
‘Stephen wasn’t the settling down type.’
‘An honest answer,’ Wendy said. ‘Now let’s get down to the basics, find out about you and what you can tell us about Stephen that we don’t already know.’
‘Please don’t read me wrong. Three husbands, another one soon enough, doesn’t make me an empty-headed floozy. I’ve still got a brain in my head, and your inspector trying to look down the top of my blouse isn’t doing either of you any favours.’
Larry averted his eyes, shifted uneasily in his chair. The truth hurt, and he’d been caught out. He was red in the face; Wendy was ready to burst out laughing.
In the end, it was Liz Spalding who defused the situation. ‘I suggest we all have a glass of wine and forget what I just said,’ she said. ‘Shock tactics were needed. I can’t blame Inspector Hill for looking, and I can’t say I mind. I do, however, get upset when I’m judged, openly or otherwise, of being something I’m not. For the record, my first husband died before his time; the second left me; the third left me for his boyfriend. How I would have fared with Stephen, who knows?’
With Liz inside the house organising the wine, Larry and Wendy looked at each other.
It was Wendy who broke the ice. ‘How do you feel? Or is that a silly question?’
‘The woman’s no pushover; hardly Bob Palmer’s type.’
‘She’s manipulative; used to putting people, more likely men, on the spot, and then coming on coy and innocent, wheedling her way to get any man she wants in her bed. Just make sure you’re not one of them, and stop looking down her blouse.’
‘Not so easy when she thrusts her breasts at me all the time. She made sure that the sun was shining on her blouse; I could see straight through it.’
‘If she’s as hard as I just said, then why was she crying her eyes out at Stephen Palmer’s funeral. It makes you think, doesn’t it?’
‘Crocodile tears?’
‘Why not? She had Bob Palmer wrapped around her little finger, making him believe in her sadness. What if it wasn’t?’
‘For what reason?’
Liz Spalding returned with a bottle of wine and three glasses. Larry eyed the wine, a pinot grigio. He wasn’t a wine drinker, only when his wife was entertaining the local social-climbing set at his house.
‘You’d better have just the one glass,’ Wendy said to him. ‘You’re driving on the way back to London, so you’d better be careful.’
‘My second husband had a fondness for drink,’ Liz said, having overheard the exchange between the two officers.
‘Did he stop?’
‘It was either the bottle or me; it didn’t stop him, in the end, walking out on me.’
Larry said nothing, careful to avert his eyes. Wendy could see that the woman was a tease. Larry, even if he had been there on his own, would have left the cottage with no more than a handshake and a sore head. A detective inspector would not have kept her in the luxury that she was accustomed to, although Stephen Palmer might have.
‘There are several questions that come to mind,’ Wendy said as she downed her first glass. Larry sipped at his, his hand shaking slightly: the taste of alcohol was good. The desire to down it in one go and to pour another glass was too tempting. He put his glass back on the table and pushed it to one side.’
‘Not to your liking, Inspector?’
‘I’m afraid the opposite is true.’
‘A beer?’
‘Not for me. I’ll just sit here while you two drink,’ Larry said. ‘Bob Palmer said that you clung to him at the funeral.’
‘He was the nearest there was to Stephen.’
‘And that he had wanted to spend time with you; that he had wanted to ever since you had both been at school.’
‘He was a complete dork at school. Every spare moment, there he would be sitting down reading a science fiction book or Moby Dick or Treasure Island, or something like them.
‘But not you.’
‘Now I thrive on reading and the documentaries on television, but back then, all I wanted was to be with my girlfriends making silly talk, and after I turned fourteen, it was the boys I went for.’
‘You played the field?’ Wendy asked.
‘Harmless kissing around the back of the bike shed.’
‘Harmless?’
‘It wasn’t even a bike shed, and there were plenty of places to disappear if you wanted. Many a young lad found out about the facts of life in that school.’
‘Bob Palmer?’
‘Not with me, he didn’t. There was one girl, a plain-faced girl with horn-rimmed glasses who was after him. No idea what happened to her, no idea what happened to my girlfriends either.’
‘Is this young woman important?’ Larry asked.
‘To Bob, she may be.’
‘Palmer is distraught, his brother’s in the ground, you’re the closest person to Stephen other than him. What happened after the funeral?’
‘I went to Bob’s house after the funeral. Bec Johnson was there, as was the vicar. We had a few drinks, reminisced over his brother. Strange how agreeable those get-togethers can be.’
‘And after that?’
‘I stayed that night with him. Is that what you wanted me to say?’
‘We want the truth,’ Wendy said.
‘Stephen was dead, and Bob was as upset as me. It seemed the right thing to do. I slept with Bob that night, and left him in the morning, a smile on his face. I never saw him after that.’
‘Did the experience help you?’
‘Not really. Stephen was fond of his brother, not that you’d know it. He would have approved of what I did.’
‘Did you approve?’
‘I believe that I left that house calm. I never shed a tear for Stephen again.’
To Wendy, the woman’s action, even if a little extreme, seemed plausible.
How Bob Palmer would have accepted that the woman of his dreams had loved him and left him was not known. However, it didn’t seem relevant; they were there to find what they could about Stephen’s death, how to prove that Hamish McIntyre had killed him. They needed the reason, and Liz sleeping with Bob after his brother had been murdered was not a motive.
‘At the funeral,’ Larry said, taken aback by the woman’s honesty, ‘there was a third woman. She was dressed in black, a wide-brimmed hat, a veil, black stiletto heels.’
‘It was a long time ago, and it’s not a time and place that I choose to remember. But yes, I do remember her.’
‘What can you tell us about her?’
‘She was one of Stephen’s playthings.’
‘Any more?’
‘She was married, about my age, maybe a little older.’
‘How do you know she was married?’
‘She was my rival, I instinctively knew. I knew he had another woman that he was keen on, keener than he was on me.’
‘But why? You were free, attractive, and you wanted him,’ Wendy asked. It was late in the afternoon, and in another hour it would be dark. She was glad that she had put a small overnight case in the back of the car. It was a five-hour drive back to London; she didn’t relish the trip tha
t late at night.
‘Why do we love certain people and not others, why did he? After Stephen’s disappearance, I met my first husband, a doctor. The man could make paint peel off the wall of any room he entered, yet I loved him for his decency and his love for me. It was refreshing after Stephen.’
‘He sounds like Bob Palmer.’
‘Bob was a dreamer; my husband was not. He gave our children and me a great life, and if sometimes I wished he could have been more romantic, there’s something seductive about being comforted in the warmth of a loving family.’
‘You were married when you slept with Bob Palmer.’
‘It was once; no one ever knew, not my husband, certainly not my children. I couldn’t see it as being unfaithful as there was no emotional connection with Bob, no intention to leave my husband or to deceive him. It was a necessary act of compassion in a moment of weakness. Maybe you don’t understand, but it matters little now. My husband died, our eleventh year, and some were good, some were not, but I had no intention of leaving him, and I never looked at another man during that time.’
‘You never answered the question as to why you knew she was married.’
‘I think I did. He was with me, but he wanted her. But he couldn’t have her, the reason was obvious. And there she was at the funeral, the woman that I had despised.’
‘You didn’t confront her?’
‘What for? Time had moved on, I was married, and Stephen was dead. I didn’t want to talk to her, but I couldn’t hate her. To me, she didn’t exist.’
‘We need to find her.’
‘I can’t help you there, and I didn’t study her that closely at the funeral. I’m afraid your trip here today has been wasted.’
Wendy would have said it hadn’t, in that Bob Palmer had lied about him and Liz.
The verdict was out on whether Liz Spalding was a good or a bad person. Wendy would be willing to concede that she was the first of the two; Larry, if asked, would have reserved his judgement for later.
Chapter 12
Hamish McIntyre prided himself on his orchids, and he wanted nothing more than to spend his time with them, ensuring the pH of the soil was just right, the humidity and the temperature of the conservatory were at the optimum, and that he could focus on their colour and variety, and not on the past.
Five years ago he had decided that the aggravation, the stomach ulcer, the high blood pressure, weren’t worth it any more and he’d passed on to a colleague the mantle of leadership of his criminal empire. The clubs, as well as the drug importation and distribution businesses, were no longer his.
McIntyre now preferred to forget his dubious past, but he could not, because it reared its ugly head too often. It had happened twice in the past five years, and now it was happening again.
Gareth Armstrong, the ever-loyal butler, and now confidant of the gangster, had entered the conservatory. ‘Hamish, the word on the street is that the police are sniffing around.’ Whenever there were visitors in the house, Armstrong would not address his boss by his first name, but when it was just the two of them, then a degree of informality ensued.
McIntyre put down the small trowel, removed his gardening gloves, and sat down on an old wooden folding chair.
‘What is it?’ he asked as he raised a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice to his mouth.
‘Does the name Stephen Palmer mean anything to you?’
McIntyre trusted Armstrong with his life, but he could not trust him with the truth, not this time. ‘No, never heard of him.’
‘It’s just that the police have reopened the enquiry into his death; they’ve been asking questions, meeting up with his brother, old girlfriends.’
‘How do you know this, and why should I be concerned?’ McIntyre said nonchalantly.
‘The word is that Palmer was a used car dealer who was murdered twenty years ago. They’re trying to pin his death on you.’
‘The police were always trying to stitch me up for one crime or another, never succeeded. Why bother now? I’ve retired.’
‘Were you involved?’
‘If I were, I’d tell you, but I wasn’t, so that’s that. Anything else?’
‘I thought that if you were involved, I could help in any way I could,’ Armstrong said, purposely ignoring his boss’s denial.
‘Thanks, Gareth, but I’m not. Where did you find this out?’
‘The police have been around to where the man died, where he’s buried, not that there’d be much to see. His death was violent, so they say.’
‘Gareth, don’t be obtuse. How much do you know? Who’s feeding you this information?’
‘I’ve a contact, works with the police, an informer, although he doesn’t tell them anything they don’t already know. Sometimes he feeds them nonsense, gets paid for doing it.’
‘Whoever was involved, and it isn’t me, what were you told, in detail?’
Armstrong pulled up a seat. He wanted to loosen his tie as the conservatory was too warm, but he did not. He enjoyed the respectability that the position of butler at the mansion afforded him. For too many years, he had struggled, wanting to be honest, unable to be so as the cost of living was too high, the life of crime too easy. He knew, even though he was not a smart man, that the mention of Stephen Palmer had hit a raw nerve with his master. He would help regardless.
‘There are plain-clothes asking questions nearby to where this Stephen Palmer lived; who were his friends, who were his girlfriends. It seems the man used to put it about.’
‘What else?’
‘An Inspector Hill and a Sergeant Gladstone spoke to the man’s brother, met with a woman in Oxford.’
‘Sergeant Gladstone was here the other day.’
‘I know. I didn’t like her.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Gareth. You broke the law, and you know that. You were caught, you served your time. Personally, I don’t have anything against the police, bribed a few in my time, frightened a few others, helped a few out for favours received, but hate serves no purpose. Treat them with courtesy and respect; fight them when you have to.’
‘I still don’t like her.’
Gareth had read a few books while he’d been in prison; considered taking the opportunity to complete his schooling, most of which he had skipped, considering that it was basically a waste of time, and crime was easier. To him, breaking into a shop was better than working for a company that sold it the security alarm; selling drugs on the street was more sensible than becoming a chemist. And besides, at the age of fifteen, he was making more money than the headmaster of his school, a thriving business selling uppers and downers, cocaine and heroin. He had purchased them from a Trinidadian, dividing the drugs up into smaller quantities, more in the budget of his contemporaries. His places of choice for conducting his trade were at school or the local youth club, a barn-like warehouse fitted out with some chairs, a table tennis table, a few well-used bats and a shortage of ping pong balls, the place run by a zealous and overactive vicar who thought he was achieving something, but wasn’t.
One of the books that he’d read in the prison library talked of the criminal mind, not that he could understand it, too technical for him, but he had gained something from it, the types of personalities that commit acts of violence.
He wondered as he sat with his boss, not that it would change his respect for the man, what type of personality was Hamish. Was he a sociopath or a psychopath? He vaguely remembered the definitions for both traits; a sociopath had superficial charm and good intelligence, attributes that Hamish displayed in abundance. Also, the antisocial behaviour, but Hamish wasn’t like that, nor did he demonstrate poor judgement and a failure to learn by experience. Gareth ceased his evaluation of his boss; he hadn’t read the book thoroughly, and besides, what did it matter. And as for Hamish’s denial of involvement in the death of Stephen Palmer, he didn’t believe it for one minute.
***
Charles Stanford, previously interviewed as he was th
e owner of the house where Marcus Matthews had died, had been mainly discounted from the investigation. It was not wise to do so, Isaac knew that, but the man had no black marks against him, and he had been well regarded as a judge before he had prematurely resigned from the position. A check of the cases he had presided over, a detailed look at who he had represented as a barrister, showed no correlation between him and Matthews. But there had to be, Isaac knew that, and if not with the dead man, then with someone on the investigation’s periphery.
‘We’ve not been able to make the connection between Marcus Matthews and Charles Stanford,’ Isaac said as he sipped his coffee. It was early morning in the office, and outside on the street, the rain was pouring down and the temperature was unusually cold for the time of year. Wendy’s body ached, Larry’s stomach rumbled, but a lot less than it had a few days earlier. It was only Bridget and Isaac who had no reason to complain.
Life was good for Isaac. His marriage to Jenny went from strength to strength, and now their talk had got around to children, the time for the two of them to become three. He had to admit the idea excited him, and he knew his parents, retired back in Jamaica, would approve.
Bridget also felt that life was good, not that she had any intention of becoming a mother; that period in her life had come and gone.
Larry’s shirt was not as tight as it had been a few days previously, his belt was in one notch, and most noticeably his breath was not smelling of stale alcohol, although his smoking had not reduced, and he had brought the smell with him into the office. Another issue to address with him, Isaac thought, but there were more pressing matters.
It was a phone call later that morning from Wally Vincent in Brighton that had raised further interest in Stanford. As Vincent had put it, Stanford was becoming a nuisance again, shouting at the neighbours, establishing a no-go area on the pavement at the front of the house. The police had been there a couple of times in the last couple of weeks to remove the makeshift barriers, but each time Stanford had put them back. The man showed all the signs of someone who should be locked up for his own safety, and if he wasn’t going to desist, then they weren’t sure what to do. Eccentricity, madness and paranoia were hardly crimes that justified a lengthy period in the cells, and the resultant publicity, hounding a respected judge, an old man, was not wanted.
Six Years Too Late Page 7
