The House on Downshire Hill

by Guy Fraser-Sampson

  “Think what?”

  “That responding with violence is a natural reaction when somebody annoys you.”

  “Anybody would have done the same. She was my girl, wasn’t she?”

  “Well no, I’m not sure they would have done, actually. You see, most people don’t get violent, because they’re able to control their feelings of anger. I think you have problems with that, John, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think you should answer that,” the solicitor said, addressing Schneider but staring at Collins.

  “All right, then let me change the subject,” Collins went on. “Do you remember something else that happened when you were at school, John? The thing you got into trouble with the police about?”

  “Why do I need to tell you? You must have it all on file. All those lies those women told and everything.”

  “What lies, John?”

  “About what I’d done to them.”

  “But it was all true, wasn’t it? Your schoolmates admitted it quite readily, and they all named you as the ringleader. More than that, actually. They said you made them do it.”

  “It was only a bit of fun. Nothing would have happened if those women hadn’t come to the school and made trouble.”

  “It was the police who came to the school, John. Don’t you remember that? They brought some of the women with them, yes, but only to identify you.”

  “But I hadn’t done anything. I keep telling you, it was just a bit of fun. They blew it out of all proportion, made it sound worse than it was.”

  “I actually read the file just yesterday, John, so it’s pretty fresh in my mind. What you did to them may have been a bit of a joke to you, but some of them required counselling. One of them was so badly affected that she became scared to go out of the house; she had to give up her job. Don’t you understand? It wasn’t just the shock and embarrassment of having your hands all over them; they were scared out of their wits. You made them frightened to walk down the road – any road.”

  “Where you going with this, Dr Collins?” the solicitor cut in. “Whatever you’re referring to is obviously a very old police matter and you’ve had plenty of time to bring charges against my client if that was your intention. Why are you dragging it all up again now?”

  “I’m trying to understand your client’s perspective, his attitudes. His attitudes towards women in particular.”

  “His attitudes towards women are his own affair. This is an interview, not a psychiatric examination.”

  “Well then, perhaps I could pose a hypothetical question, or rather two hypothetical questions. John, I know you told us that Susan wasn’t offering herself to other men, but just suppose for a moment that you had seen her – perhaps in Downshire Hill itself outside your own house – propositioning passers-by. Offering them what she wasn’t prepared to give you. How would you have felt about that? You’d have been pretty angry, wouldn’t you?”

  “Don’t answer that,” the solicitor said quickly.

  “All right, then let me move onto my second question. John, suppose it had been you rather than your mother who saw your father burying Sue’s body in the next door garden. What would you have done?”

  “I’m not going let my client answer that question either. This is all just some sort of fishing expedition. If you have facts you want to ask my client about then go ahead and we’ll try to help you, but I’m not going to let you try to get inside my client’s head. That’s not what this is about.”

  “All right,” Willis said in conciliatory fashion, “let’s stick to the facts as you ask. John, when you spoke to us before you told us about the time you tried to see your father. But I’m going to ask you about that again, because you weren’t under caution at the time. Can you tell us what happened, please?”

  “I went to the house and knocked on the door, but there wasn’t any answer. I tried looking through the windows but I couldn’t see anything. I was just walking away up the road when I had the idea of asking the bloke next door if my dad still lived there.”

  “You say you looked through the window but couldn’t see anything. Do you mean anything or anyone?”

  “Anyone, I suppose. I think there were chairs and tables and things, like you’d expect.”

  “But nothing out of the ordinary?”

  “What you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing. Let’s move on. Do you remember what you said to the man next door?”

  “Yeah, I asked him if my dad still lived there.”

  “Did you actually say ‘my dad’ or did you just say ‘Conrad Taylor’. Can you remember?”

  “I’m sure I said ‘my dad’. At any rate I told him he was my father. And I wouldn’t have said ‘Conrad Taylor’ anyway. I still think of him as Schneider. It’s only since I’ve been talking to you guys that everyone keeps calling him Taylor.”

  “Did you recognise him – the man next door I mean?”

  “No, but then I wouldn’t, would I? Not after 20 years or so. Anyway, I think our neighbours on that side changed at about the same time we went away.”

  “Yes, but Mr Rowbotham – that’s the neighbour – says he was coming and going from the house because he was checking on the progress of some building works he was having done.”

  “I don’t remember anything about that.”

  “What, you don’t remember the works? Surely there must have been a lot of noise mustn’t there? And what about when they took the fence down between the two gardens?”

  “Oh yeah, I remember something about the works, but I don’t remember ever seeing that guy before.”

  “When did you last see Sue Barnard, John?”

  “On the Friday, like I said before. It was a school day so we would have met up after classes.”

  “And gone to that service road behind the shops?”

  “I expect so, yeah. We did most days.”

  “And that was when you last saw her? When she left the service road to go home?”

  “Yeah. I think I walked to the bus stop with her and then I carried on up the hill. I used to most days. I usually couldn’t be bothered to wait for the bus, and it’s not that far.”

  “Was anyone else with her when last you saw her at the bus stop?”

  “Some of her mates, I think.”

  “Do you remember a friend called Jill East?”

  “You asked me that before. Yeah, of course I do. She was pretty hot. If I hadn’t already been going with Sue then I’d have given her a go.”

  “So just to be clear, John, you went to the house once and once only, you couldn’t get any reply when you knocked, and you never got to see your father, either dead or alive?”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “I wonder if we could ask you about your time in Canada, John?” Collins asked suddenly.

  “What about it?”

  “Were you happy there?”

  “Yeah, I suppose so.”

  “Really? That’s not the impression I gained from reading what your sister said.”

  Schneider glared at him suspiciously.

  “Why? What’s she been saying about me?”

  “Well, isn’t it true that you dropped out of college almost immediately? And that you’ve had problems holding down a job ever since?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not how you’re making it sound. You know what women are like. They make things up. They make things sound worse than they are. They make trouble for you. They’re women, you know?”

  “It sounds like you don’t like women much, John.”

  “Of course I like them. I’m a normal guy, aren’t I?”

  “I don’t mean physically, John. I’m sure you like having sex with them well enough. But you don’t really like being around them, do you?”

  “I’d rather just have them around for sex, sure. Who wouldn’t? But it doesn’t work like that, does it? They want the whole relationship bit.”

  “And relationships don’t seem to work for you, do they?”

 
“I do all right.”

  “Maybe they’re frightened of you, John. Do you ever stop to think about that? We understand that everyone was scared of you at school. How did that make you feel? Did it make you feel good, strong, important?”

  “Who says so?”

  “Never mind who says so. We’ve got it all on the file. Come on, John, admit it; it makes you feel good when people are scared of you, doesn’t it? Course it does, why shouldn’t it? Did you feel good when you broke that boy’s nose? Did it make you feel good when you assaulted those women? I bet you could see they were scared, couldn’t you? You liked that, didn’t you? Come on, you can tell us.”

  “All those other women too,” Willis interjected. “The ones in Canada. Were they scared of you, John? You must have been sorry you had to kill them in that case. But maybe you kept them alive for a while first, eh? Kept them prisoner somewhere maybe?”

  “Look, what is this?” the solicitor exploded. “You say my client’s a suspect in the Conrad Taylor killing, then you start dragging up all sorts of totally unconnected stuff from the past, and now you’re talking about Canada for God’s sake. I’m sorry but unless you have some direct factual matters to put to my client then this ends right here.”

  They all looked at each other, apart from Schneider who gazed blankly at the wall. Willis found she had been holding her breath, and exhaled gently but deliberately. As she inhaled again, she glanced at her watch.

  “Interview terminated at the request of Mr Schneider’s legal representative at 1204,” she announced, reaching out to turn off the tape recorder.

  CHAPTER 34

  It was a gloomy foursome who gathered to compare notes in the King William IV that lunchtime.

  “Was there really nothing?” Collison asked in despair.

  “Nothing specific that can tie John Schneider to either murder, no,” Willis confirmed, gazing moodily into her mineral water.

  “The really frustrating thing,” Collins observed, “is that now I’ve had a chance to observe Schneider in person I’m more convinced than ever that he’s dangerous. He has very low empathy levels, apparently low anxiety levels, and an obvious anger management issue. He is also quite self-delusional, which is a quality I’ve seen before in psychopaths. People think that they lie automatically to cover their tracks, but I’m not convinced that’s the case. I think a lot of the time they have this ability to weave an instant alternative reality, one in which perhaps they believe themselves as they present it. But Karen is quite right I’m afraid. There was nothing he said that could link him to either murder, evidentially that is.”

  “We know he was at the scene of the first murder,” Collison said doggedly.

  “Actually, Simon, I’m not sure that we do, do we? That only holds good if Sue Barnard was killed at or very near Wentworth House. Whereas we know it’s possible that she could have been killed elsewhere and brought round the side of the house next door quite easily.”

  “True, but that doesn’t sound very likely, does it? And it would still have needed the killer to be somebody who knew that the site was insecure.”

  “I agree. I suppose I’m just raising the sort of points that Schneider’s defence counsel might make. Actually, I have come up with a new hypothesis which allows for John Schneider having committed both murders. If you remember, we’ve been told that at the time of the first killing he was big for his age, both tall and strong. Well, what if it wasn’t Conrad Taylor – or Schneider as he then was – who was seen by his wife burying Barnard’s body? After all, there was no artificial light in the garden and I’ve checked the moon for that date. It was only about a half-moon, so it would have illuminated the scene to some extent, but not totally.”

  “You mean John Schneider might have been seen by his mother as he buried Sue Barnard’s body, but been mistaken by her for his father?”

  “Exactly. So when he was whisked away by his mother the next morning – who, so far as we know had not attempted to address a word to her husband in the meantime – he must have wondered what the hell was going on. And he must have spent the next 20 years assuming that he’d got away with it. That nobody had seen him, and that nobody had discovered the body since.”

  “In which case it must have come as a very nasty shock when his mother made her deathbed confession.”

  “A very nasty shock indeed. But at the same time an insurance policy, don’t you see? After all, she had also told the same story to his sister. So all he had to do was to get rid of his father and then nobody would have been able to contradict his mother’s version of events.”

  “So he didn’t come to England seeking revenge after all?,” Metcalfe asked. “But rather to silence the only person in the world whose version of events could finger him for Barnard’s murder. After all, if it wasn’t the father burying the body, then who was it? We know Rowbotham wasn’t at the house at the time, so John Schneider would have been the only other available male.”

  “Yes, so if I’m right John had a very powerful motive indeed for killing his father. Under my hypothesis I’m assuming that he did actually gain access to the house, where he found his father alone and killed him with a hammer. However, there was a problem. He’d told his sister that he was going to pay the house a visit, so when she heard about their father being found dead she’d put two and two together and assume – correctly as it happens – that he’d carried out his threat, although she would have thought it an act of revenge for Barnard’s killing.”

  “So he goes next door,” Collison said, taking up the thread, “and – naturally without revealing his identity – says that he’s been unable to rouse anyone at the house next door and asking if Mr Taylor still lived there.”

  “Mr Schneider, not Mr Taylor,” Willis said quickly. “He told us that he always referred to his father as Schneider because that’s what he thought of him as. According to him it’s only in the last few days that he’s picked up the habit of calling him Taylor from us.”

  “My word, yes,” Collison agreed excitedly. “So if Rowbotham should remember that he called his father – or rather the man next door, since we are assuming he didn’t refer to him as his father – Taylor rather than Schneider then that’s two lies that we can catch him out on. Not a lot by itself may be, but powerful nonetheless.”

  “You mean because if he deliberately referred to his father as Taylor then it can only have been because he was trying to conceal his own identity?” Willis asked.

  “Yes. After all, if he was a tax inspector, or from the council, or even from the police, he would have called him Taylor because that’s how he’d been known for the last 20 years. Whereas we have the son on tape and under caution saying that he would never have done that because he thought of him as Schneider.”

  “It’s all a bit circumstantial isn’t it, guv?” Metcalfe observed dubiously.

  “Yes, of course it is, but then so is the Crown Prosecution Service’s case against Raj and they seem comfortable enough with that. Suppose that we might be able to put together an alternative scenario supported by equally strong circumstantial evidence?”

  “That might not go down very well with the ACC, guv. After all, the CPS are champing at the bit to launch a prosecution against Raj. If we come up with some other hypothesis that is even half credible, then doesn’t that undermine their efforts? Don’t forget, we’d have to disclose to the defence the presence of any alternative suspects. Right now we don’t have any, or none supported by firm evidence anyway. The Branch couldn’t break Sophie Ho and there’s nothing against Schneider other than his presumed presence at each murder scene at or about the time of the killing.”

  Collison gave him a hard stare.

  “Are you suggesting, Bob, that we should pull back from investigating Schneider just because it might inconvenience the CPS?”

  “I’m not suggesting that we should pull back, guv. I’m just suggesting that we take an informed decision. There could be a trade-off here. By finding out more about S
chneider we might succeed only in weakening the case against Raj. Have you thought of that?”

  “No damn you, I haven’t. Oh, why do bloody politics have to get in the way of everything?”

  The others gazed at each other awkwardly. Characteristically, it was Collins who broke the silence.

  “Surely it’s not so much politics as practicality?” he asked gently. “There are trade-offs inherent in just about every decision we make; it’s just that most of the time we don’t consciously articulate them. I’m not a copper like you chaps, but I can see the force in what Bob is saying. If we can’t make out a watertight case against Schneider, then why not let the CPS proceed against Raj? It’s their decision after all, their responsibility.”

  “I don’t want it to come to that. For God’s sake, Peter, you said yourself the man’s dangerous.”

  “And I stand by that opinion. But you know how the courts will look at it, Simon. They don’t want to hear some expert like me pontificating in the witness box about how Schneider is the sort of person that could have committed these crimes – yes and perhaps other crimes too. They want firm evidence that he did actually commit at least one of the specific murders. And anyway, you know how things go when a case comes down to expert evidence. The other side will simply get another expert to say that I’m completely mistaken, that Schneider is good with animals and children, and that he regularly escorts little old ladies across busy roads.”

  There was another silence.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Collison said determinedly, glancing at his watch. “We’ve got until close of play today to come up with something that may persuade the ACC to put the brakes on the CPS. Well, it’s only just after 2 o’clock. Why don’t we at least have one last go with Jack Rowbotham? If we have him on tape saying that John Schneider didn’t refer to Taylor as his father, and nor did he actually use the name Schneider, then at least that’s something. We can argue that he deliberately tried to mislead Rowbotham into believing that he knew nothing about the man next door, and why would an innocent man do that?”