A Narrow Return (22 page)

Hillary stepped forward, umbrella raised, but kept well out of the way of the flailing limbs. She’d only lend a hand if it looked as if Crayle was in trouble.

Which never happened.

Crayle quickly followed Peter McRae down, neatly turning him onto his stomach. McRae started to back-elbow furiously, but Crayle kept his head reared back and well out of trouble.

Then, from out of his back pocket he brought out a pair of handcuffs and, forcing McRae’s arms behind him, neatly slapped them onto the prostrate man’s wrists.

Hillary didn’t know supers still carried handcuffs in their back pockets. And then she wondered – perhaps it was only Steven Crayle who did so.

And that thought made her go hot all over.

She shook her head and listened to her boss crisply read Peter McRae his rights. Then she turned her attention to Lucy and opened her mobile to order an ambulance.

It didn’t take long after that to sort things out. Crayle and Jimmy went back to HQ with the prisoner to begin the process of serving McRae with a murder charge.

Hillary rode in the ambulance with Lucy.

Lucy had never quite lost consciousness after all, and in the back of the ambulance, with the eye of the paramedic watching over them, Hillary gently questioned her.

‘Did you actually see him kill her?’ she started off quietly, keeping her voice calm, but needing to get to the heart of the matter before shock had a chance to set in, or Lucy became hysterical.

But the middle child of Anne McRae was made of stern stuff – just like her mother, and she was game to talk, even though her throat still felt sore, and her voice was little more than a croak.

‘No. When I got back from the park, I saw Pete out in the back garden. He was running away from the house. I thought it odd, but then just assumed he’d been having another row with Mum.’

She paused and the paramedic gave her a few sips of water to help ease her throat.

‘Then, when I went into the kitchen and saw Mum, I didn’t know what to think.’

She was lying on the stretcher, her head in a neck brace, her face pale, and her eyes haunted and wide.

‘I went out into the back garden and saw that he’d taken his sweatshirt off. It was covered in blood.’

Lucy swallowed hard and winced. ‘Mum’s blood.’

Hillary tensed. ‘What did you do with it, Lucy?’

‘I kept it,’ she said, with a brief, grim smile. ‘I don’t know if Pete even remembers that he was wearing it at the time. I think he took it off and dropped it because, as he was running away, he saw the blood on it and panicked. Either that, or he was clever enough to realize that if he was seen with blood on him, people would put two and two together. Or maybe he was just in shock, and reacted without thinking.’

‘Perhaps he looked for the sweatshirt later and couldn’t find it,’ Hillary suggested, and looked at her steadily. ‘Did you tell him that you still had it? Later, I mean, when you asked him for a loan. It is your brother who’s financing your move to the new flat, yes?’

Lucy smiled. ‘Yes. I mean, yes he did loan me some money. And no, I never told him I still had the sweatshirt. I’m not stupid, you know.’

‘Is it safe?’

‘Oh yeah. I put it in a polythene bag and kept it all these years. It’s in one of the boxes back at the flat.’ Lucy took a gulping breath, half-laughing, half-crying now. ‘It’s funny, but when he started to strangle me, I remember thinking, “That’s no good, big bruvver, because the evidence to nail you for Mum’s murder is right under your nose”. I could actually hear it, like a voice in my head, saying exactly that. Isn’t it odd what you think of when you’re sure you’re about to die?’

She started to cry in earnest then, and the paramedic said quietly, ‘All right, that’s enough for now.’

Hillary nodded and sat back in her chair. She had enough to be getting on with.

More than enough, in fact.

At the Horton Hospital, she hung around long enough to find out what ward Lucy was being assigned to, and had a quick word with the examining doctor, who didn’t anticipate any real trouble. Then she stepped outside and got back on the phone.

First she called Crayle, who was back at his office.

‘Sir, it’s Hillary. Lucy McRae’s going to be all right. The doctor wants to keep her in overnight to monitor her for shock and to make sure that her throat doesn’t swell up and give her any breathing difficulties. But he doesn’t think she’s too badly off. I got a partial statement from her in the ambulance, I’ll fill you in on that when I get back to HQ,’ she added, mindful that she was on her mobile. ‘But we need to get forensics to her flat right away. I have reason to believe we’ll find valuable evidence there.’

‘We were all witnesses to the attack on her, Hillary,’ Crayle pointed out, ‘but forensics are already on their way as we speak.’

Hillary didn’t bother to correct him over the phone. She’d tell him the good news about the corroborating evidence for Anne McRae’s murder when she got back to the office.

Speaking of which, she thought grimly, as she hung up, she was stranded in Banbury without a car. With a sigh, she started to hoof it to the nearest bus stop.

This civilian consulting lark might have its benefits, but right about then she could have done with having her old authority back, allowing her to order up a jam sandwich to take her back to HQ in style.

It was barely five o’clock, when Hillary returned to interview room three.

Inside, looking like a limp lettuce leaf, Phil Cleeves watched her approach the table and his shoulders slumped as she once more went through the routine for the tape.

In the obs room, Steven Crayle watched. Jimmy, Sam and Vivienne were all still in the office, trying to sort out the blizzard of paperwork that the fast-moving case had suddenly generated. Nobody wanted the case to falter now because evidence was mishandled, or warrants weren’t properly worded.

‘Mr Cleeves, I have to tell you that we have, this afternoon, arrested Peter McRae for the murder of his mother,’ Hillary began, and saw the geography teacher go paper white. For a second, she thought he was actually going to pass out.

‘No! You can’t have. I mean, you’ve made a mistake. Peter’s a good boy. He wouldn’t do something like that!’ Cleeves protested.

‘You know him well then?’ she asked casually.

‘No. Yes. I mean, I knew him. He was one of my students, I told you.’

‘But he was more than that, wasn’t he, Mr Cleeves?’ Hillary said, careful to keep her voice flat and unjudgemental. ‘In fact, I think you loved him, didn’t you?’

Cleeves went rigid, and said nothing.

‘He’s a good-looking man now,’ Hillary went on. ‘As a 15-year-old I imagine he was especially golden. Just beginning to fill out, all gangling limbs, still innocent, but with the promise of the mature man yet to come. Am I right?’ she pressed gently.

And the geography teacher folded. ‘He wasn’t that innocent,’ Cleeves finally muttered. ‘He knew what he wanted. And he was golden, yes.’

Hillary nodded.

‘His mother found out about you.’

‘There was nothing to find out,’ Phil contradicted quickly. ‘OK, so I’m gay. But I never laid a hand on Peter.’

Hillary sighed. ‘Mr Cleeves, if we start asking around all your pupils, do you really think one of them won’t eventually give you up? You’ve been lucky so far, flying under our radar, and being careful. And I daresay you were very careful to only choose the boys who made it obvious that they were gay too. Left the really young ones well enough alone, did you?’

Phil Cleeves swallowed hard but said nothing.

‘Right,’ Hillary said, as if he’d in fact agreed with her. ‘But you know as well as I do, that one of them will talk. He’ll be older, wiser, maybe a little bit bitter. Perhaps you and “one of your boys” parted not quite as well as you’d hoped? We only need to find one willing to dish the dirt. What do you do – drop them when they leave school?’

From the way the geography teacher’s hands clenched into sudden fists, she knew she’d scored a direct hit there.

‘Eventually we’ll find some “golden boy” who doesn’t remember you quite so fondly. Someone who’d be willing to get a little payback for the way his life hasn’t worked out quite how he hoped, by making someone else’s life a misery too. Namely yours.’

‘I was always careful,’ Cleeves said sadly. ‘I always made sure they made the first move. And I took it slowly and carefully. It wasn’t about sex, you know, it was about love. All my boys will remember me with affection.’

Hillary was careful to keep her face blank and her voice flat. ‘Yes, sir, I’m sure they will. I dare say Peter will too.’

‘Yes he will!’ Cleeves said, with a spurt of sudden defiance. ‘What we had was special. He was nearly sixteen when we first made love. And I was kind and gentle and he was grateful. It lasted for nearly four months. Four wonderful months.’

Cleeves suddenly slumped back in his chair. ‘Oh, what’s the point. You won’t understand. Your sort never do.’

‘And then his mother began to suspect what was happening, didn’t she?’ Hillary said firmly, ignoring the self-justification and self-pity. ‘What happened? Did she phone you? Did she come to the school to talk to you?’

‘Not the school,’ Cleeves said quickly.

‘Your house then,’ Hillary pounced, and he reluctantly nodded.

‘But she only suspected,’ Cleeves said. ‘I could tell she was on a fishing expedition. I told her that nothing like that was going on. I told her that I thought Peter saw me as something of a father figure. I made her doubt herself, I could tell.’

‘Yes, I’m sure you were very erudite, sir,’ Hillary said dryly. ‘I need you to write out a statement, detailing everything about your relationship with Peter McRae, and everything you can remember about your conversation with his mother, Anne. I’ll leave you alone to get started,’ she said firmly, pushing a large writing pad and a pen in front of him.

And as he opened his mouth to demur, she added firmly, ‘It’s by far your best option, Mr Cleeves.’

‘I want a solicitor,’ Cleeves said.

Hillary nodded. ‘By all means, sir. And I think, when he realizes that you could be facing charges of aiding and abetting murder, he’ll tell you the same thing.’

Cleeves went pale. ‘But I don’t know anything about that!’

Hillary didn’t try and reassure him, although in fact, she believed him – about that, anyway. She simply turned her back on him and left him. But in the obs room, she slumped wearily down into the chair next to her boss.

‘Thing is, sir, I don’t think he
did
have anything to do with the murder. He might, in his heart of hearts, have wondered, when he first heard about her death, whether his golden boy might have had a hand in it,’ she mused. ‘But he’s obviously convinced himself over the years that it was a passing maniac who killed her.’

Crayle nodded. ‘I agree. Still, it’ll be a good lever to use to get him to get cracking on his statement,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘That was good work. You look beat. You want me to take McRae?’

Hillary shot a glance at him. Was he trying to muscle in on her collar?

But as she met his level brown gaze, she realized that he wasn’t.

‘No, sir. I’ll take him,’ she said firmly, and Crayle smiled and nodded.

He had expected nothing less.

‘All right then, I’ll have him brought through. And call me Steven.’

Hillary nodded.

‘All right, Steven,’ she said. And this time, she liked saying his name.

After all, if she was going to drag him kicking and screaming into her tiny single bed, they really did need to be on first name terms.

Commander Marcus Donleavy walked briskly down the stairs and into the foyer, on his way to the interview rooms. He nodded and passed a knowing, cheeky grin with the desk sergeant as he went by and slipped into the obs room.

By now it was all over the station that Hillary Greene had cracked her first cold case, and all those who’d had a bet down, were hanging around and wondering what their chances were of scooping the prize.

A female DI from Juvie was happier than most, since she’d got it down to the day, although several male colleagues were chivvying her that it didn’t count unless Hillary got a confession today as well. They’d both opted for a day in the third week, and were holding out to win on a technicality.

Inside interview room one, Hillary Greene and Steven Crayle sat in front of Peter McRae. Steven, as the senior officer, went through the routine for the tape, and then leant back slightly in his chair, obviously handing the initiative over to the woman beside him.

In the obs room, Marcus Donleavy smiled in approval. He was looking forward to this. Now that she had her first taste of success under her belt, Marcus knew he had her back for good.

Just wait until they all went to her local for a celebratory drink tonight. He’d rib her something rotten about her so-called retirement!

Then he leant forward, concentrating hard, as it began.

‘So, Peter, you might like to know that your sister is going to be all right,’ Hillary began. ‘Or maybe not. I went with her in the ambulance, and she was able to talk to me a bit. Of course, she was still shook up. She couldn’t quite believe that you’d just tried to kill her.’

Peter McRae was sitting forward in his chair, his elbows on the table, his head in his hands. He looked utterly tired and defeated, and he looked up at her as she began to speak, his brown eyes bright with unshed tears.

‘Of course I’m glad that she’s all right,’ he said. ‘I never meant it to happen. None of it. I just panicked, that’s all. When Phil called me and told me about you matching the hair to his DNA I knew the game was up. I had to go and see Lucy, just to beg her not to say anything. I don’t know how it all got so out of hand. I just got so scared. I didn’t want Sebastian to find out you see.’

With that, Peter McRae’s eyes filled with water. ‘I love Sebastian, and he doesn’t know anything about … well, any of it.’

Hillary nodded.

‘Let’s start at the beginning shall we, and get things straight?’ she said gently, determined to get him to stick to the facts. ‘When you were at school, you had a relationship with your geography teacher, Mr Phillip Cleeves. Is that right?’