A Narrow Return (20 page)

Hillary smiled grimly and felt the childish desire to give him a Nazi salute. No doubt about it, the man was getting under her skin. She had to admit it, he was damned sexy when he got all commanding.

‘Hillary?’

Hillary blinked. ‘Yes, sir?’

Her amber-coloured gaze met his, and suddenly he found it hard to breathe. Steven Crayle felt, in fact, the unmistakable yank of sudden, explosive sexual tension, and froze in his chair.

For a moment, he opened his mouth to say something to her – he wasn’t sure what – but suddenly she got to her feet and headed for the door. ‘You’ll want to sit in on the interview, sir?’ she reached for the handle and opened the door quickly. She looked suddenly all business, and he felt grateful that he hadn’t made a fool of himself by blurting out something … well … embarrassing.

‘Yes, of course,’ he cleared his throat. ‘Let me know when it’s set up. I’ll be in obs.’

Hillary nodded, stepped through into the deserted corridor and shut the door after her.

Then she took a deep, somewhat shaky breath.

‘Bloody hell, Hill, get a grip,’ she muttered to herself. Had she really been on the verge of jumping over that oh-so-neat-and-tidy desk of his and sitting in his lap?

No two ways about it, she definitely needed to find herself a lover.

The trouble was, she already knew there was only one real contender.

But did she really want to sleep with her boss?

Phil Cleeves stepped into interview room three and saw the red-headed woman rise to her feet. The older man who’d come to pick him up followed him inside and indicated a chair – the younger one had parted company with them in the main lobby.

He’d never been inside a police station before, because he’d always been very, very careful, and he didn’t like being in one now.

‘Please, have a seat, Mr Cleeves,’ Hillary said pleasantly enough.

He tried to smile confidently, as he pulled out a wooden chair.

Hillary was very much aware of Crayle’s hidden presence behind the two-way mirror on the wall, and she told herself firmly to concentrate on the matter in hand.

Luckily, she felt herself slipping very easily into the old routine. She set up the tape recorder, identifying herself and those others present, and stating the time.

Cleeves became more and more pale as the procedure progressed, and now he could feel himself actually sweating. He reminded himself that he didn’t have a thing to worry about. This was all about Anne McRae, and he knew next to nothing about the woman, but even though all that was true, it didn’t stop him from sweating.

‘I don’t understand what this all about. I was in class, for Pete’s sake,’ he heard himself say, and winced at the panicky petulance of his tone.

Hillary nodded. ‘Yes. I’m sorry about that, sir. But there have been developments, you see, and we need to sort them out quickly.’

‘Developments?’ Cleeves felt a coldness snake up his spine. He licked lips that had gone suddenly dry. ‘What kind of developments?’

Who had talked? How? Why?

‘You remember you very kindly volunteered to give us a DNA sample, sir?’ Hillary said, very cannily getting it down on tape that Cleeves had volunteered the sample.

‘That’s right,’ he confirmed, making Hillary nod in relief.

Good. They now had irrefutable proof of that, should a barrister or solicitor try and cry foul later on.

In the obs room, Steven Crayle sat forward on his chair and nodded in silent approval.

‘Well, sir, it seems as if it was a match, and we were wondering if you could explain that.’

Cleeves’s lower jaw fell open. He looked, literally, stunned. Stupefied, in fact.

Hillary, watching him, felt all her old unease stir uncomfortably in her stomach. As before when talking to this man, she had the nasty feeling that she wasn’t seeing the whole picture. Or, even worse, that she wasn’t seeing the right picture at all. Because unless the man was in the same class as Olivier and Orson Wells, he was genuinely stunned by what he’d just heard.

‘What do you mean, a match. A match for what?’ Cleeves whispered. All the blood had drained from his face now, and he stared at Hillary with a look of horrified panic in his eyes.

‘A single human hair was retrieved from Anne McRae’s clothing on the day she was murdered, sir. We were never able to match it to anyone in her family or circle of friends, or with anyone who might have access to the house. The man who read the electric meter, say, or workmen who called to fit a gas boiler the week before.’

‘I still don’t understand,’ Cleeves whispered.

‘The hair matched your DNA, sir,’ Hillary said calmly and firmly. ‘On the day she died, Anne McRae had one of your hairs on her body. Can you explain that, please?’

Cleeves looked from her, to Jimmy, then to her again. His face worked silently for a minute, and then he managed a near-sneer. ‘I don’t believe this. You really do that, then?’

‘Do what, sir?’

‘Fit people up for things. I mean, I heard about it, you know, criminals and that, they’re always saying that the police plant evidence to get a conviction, but I never believed it. But you really do, don’t you?’

Hillary watched him closely. She was still feeling both puzzled and non-plussed, which was not something that often happened to her. Usually, interviewing was her speciality, if it could be said that anything was. Normally, she had a feel for people, and with a mix of instinct, experience and ingenuity, got a handle on a witness fairly quickly.

But Cleeves was throwing her.

Perhaps she’d been away too long? Perhaps she should have stayed retired.

In the obs room, Steven Crayle listened to the silence stretch, and wondered how she was going to play it.

Hillary slowly leaned back in her chair. ‘Do you really believe that, Mr Cleeves?’ she asked steadily. ‘Do you really think that I, my colleague here, the technical lab personnel, my superiors, the CPS staff and everyone else involved, are all in one giant conspiracy to send you, Mr Phillip Cleeves, to jail?’

Cleeves opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, then closed it again.

Finally, he shuddered.

‘I don’t know,’ he croaked.

Hillary nodded, and leaned forward in her chair. She put her hand on the table in between them, not actually touching him, but implicitly offering comfort.

‘All right, sir. Let’s take it steady, shall we, and see if we can’t work this out. Do you still maintain that you don’t, and didn’t, know Anne McRae?’

‘Yes. That is, I may have met her, but I don’t, I didn’t know her. Not like you mean.’

‘You weren’t lovers?’

Cleeves laughed bitterly. ‘No.’

Hillary shot a quick look at him. There’d been something ironic in that laughter. For a second something seemed to nibble at her mind but then was gone again. She forced herself to relax, and not to try and chase it. It was important to keep focused.

‘Do you still maintain that you never went to Mrs McRae’s house? Please, think about that before you answer,’ she said, and carefully recited the address to him. ‘You never had occasion to go there – perhaps to discuss one of her children? Perhaps to drop off something important that needed signing – a school report, a permission slip for a school trip that one of the children forgot to bring in, anything of that kind?’

‘No, of course not,’ Cleeves said at once. ‘Teachers don’t go traipsing around after students like that. If something needed to be signed and it wasn’t, then that was that. We wouldn’t go to somebody’s house, for Pete’s sake.’

Hillary nodded. But she didn’t like that answer. For a start, she was offering him – or seemed to be at any rate – a way out. If Cleeves was guilty, why hadn’t he pounced on it? Gabbled out that yes, that must be it? Of course, she would then be able to reel him in, and point out to him exactly what he had just pointed out to her. That teachers didn’t do that sort of thing.

Of course, it was just possible that Cleeves was clever enough to realize the trap. But he didn’t strike her as having a particularly cool head right at that moment.

And there was another thing that worried her. When he’d spoken, he’d sounded genuinely angry and petulant. And in her experience, witnesses only tended to sound like that if they felt they had a genuine grievance.

‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me, Mr Cleeves?’ she asked gently, surprising not only Cleeves, but also Jimmy and Steven Crayle.

The man opposite her shied away like a horse spotting a snake in the grass. ‘What? What do you mean? About what?’

Hillary shrugged elaborately. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Mr Cleeves. You seem to me like a man who has something to hide. I thought it might be easier for you if you just got it off your chest.’

‘Well I don’t,’ Cleeves said. ‘And I want a solicitor.’

Hillary stiffened for a moment, gave an inner groan, then smiled. ‘Certainly, sir. Mr Jessop, perhaps you can show Mr Cleeves to a telephone?’

She suspended the interview for the tape, gathered her folders together and left the room. Once outside, she stepped straight into the obs room, and watched from behind the protective glass as Jimmy led the geography teacher out.

Crayle was still sitting on his chair, and watched her as she came in.

‘It was almost inevitable he’d call for his brief the moment things started to get hot,’ he said, by way of consolation.

Hillary nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said absently.

Crayle watched her curiously. He’d heard from many people the various stories about Hillary Greene – from Marcus Donleavy, of course, but also from members of her old team, and Sam Waterstone, the newly promoted DI who’d taken over her case load. All of them had mentioned how good she was with witnesses. But from what he’d just seen, that reputation didn’t seem to be justified.

Unless she knew something that he didn’t.

‘Something’s bothering you?’ he said, offering her the chance to talk.

Hillary sighed, and took the seat opposite him.

‘Something’s off,’ she said, then waved a hand quickly in the air. ‘I know, I know, that’s not very helpful. But something just doesn’t ring right about all this.’

‘You actually believe him?’ Crayle asked, trying not to sound incredulous. ‘Come on, Hillary, he can’t explain how his DNA got there. He flatly denies being in the house, when we know he must have been. We need to dig around some more – if he and Anne McRae were lovers, we’re bound to find someone who remembers them being together. Her kids maybe? D’you think they could be deliberately keeping quiet about it? Didn’t you say you thought that Lucy McRae in particular was hiding something? Perhaps she knew about it.’

Crayle suddenly leaned forward, his eyes shining with excitement. ‘That’s it! She knew about them, and has been blackmailing Cleeves – that’s where her sudden windfall came from. And that’s what Cleeves is sweating about now. He knows that once we find out he’s been giving her money, it’s all up.’

‘Maybe,’ Hillary said.

A knock came at the door and Jimmy poked his head through. ‘Guv, he’s made his phone call.’

Hillary nodded. ‘All right. Put him back in the chair. We’ll start again, once his brief turns up.’

But half an hour later, they were still waiting.

And another ten minutes after that, they were still waiting.

‘I’m going to go back in,’ Hillary finally said.

Crayle nodded slowly. ‘OK. But be careful. You know once he’s asked for his brief, anything he says now, even on tape, can be contested in court.’

Hillary nodded. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll just get the name of his brief from him and see if we can find out what the delay’s about.’

Somewhat reluctantly, she went back into interview room three. She’d been glad of the respite, if truth be told, but although she’d had time to think things through, she still hadn’t any clear idea of just how to handle Mr Phillip Cleeves.

Jimmy, restless in his chair beside their suspect, looked up hopefully, and seemed surprised to see his guv’nor come back alone. She sat down and set up the tape again.

‘Your solicitor seems to be lost or delayed in traffic, Mr Cleeves. Perhaps if you’d give me his name I can chivvy him along?’

Phil Cleeves looked exhausted. He’d spent the last forty-five minutes slumped in apparent despondency on his chair. Now he glanced at her and smiled somewhat grimly.

‘I didn’t call a solicitor,’ he said with breathtaking calm. ‘I changed my mind.’

‘I see.’

She wrote down on the pad in front of her. DID HE MAKE TELEPHONE CALL? IF SO, TRACE IT. She then pushed the pad towards Jimmy, who read it, stood up and left.

For the tape she said, ‘Mr James Jessop has just left the room. So, Mr Cleeves, perhaps if you don’t want a solicitor after all, you can tell me what you did on the afternoon Anne McRae died?’

‘I was at school, wasn’t I?’

‘Yes. But school got out at, what, 3.30? You could have driven to Chesterton and got there long before the school bus arrived.’

‘Well I didn’t. There was a staff meeting, which I attended, along with many others. I didn’t get home till gone six. I remember because there was a bulletin about it, the murder I mean, on the local evening news.’

Hillary glanced quickly towards the mirror, but needn’t have worried. Crayle was already out the door.

He used his mobile, and got on to Sam Pickles in the office. He told him tersely to get back to Bicester School pronto, and try to find out if any meeting had been held on 6 of June, 1991, and if so, who had attended and when it had broken up.

Back in obs, he was in time to hear Hillary Greene saying, ‘And was there anyone at home who could verify the time you arrived?’

‘No. I’m not married.’

‘You’ve never been married, sir?’

‘No,’ Cleeves flushed. ‘Why is that a crime too?’

‘Not the last time I checked, sir,’ Hillary said mildly. And again she felt a vague little niggle. Something was staring her in the face here, and she was too wound up to see what it was. Or too far down the garden path, going in the wrong direction. If she could just clear her head a bit, she was sure that Cleeves was telling her something important, whether he realized it or not.