A Shred of Evidence (13 page)

“I think it’s just the shock, Mrs. Lewis,” he was saying.

It wasn’t shock. It was fear. It was not being able to close her eyes without seeing Murray standing there holding Natalie’s shoes.

“This is a very mild tranquillizer, just to help her get some sleep,” he said. “Just one now, and one this evening if you think she needs it.”

Hannah began to cry at the mention of the word school. Silent tears, cried into her pillow. She couldn’t go to school; as long as she was here, she was safe. He didn’t know who she was, she was sure of that.

“Once she’s had a sleep, and feels more relaxed, try and get her out into the fresh air,” said the doctor. “It can do her more good than I can. And try to make sure that she does go back to school soon. Tomorrow, maybe, or the next day. She’ll feel better when she’s talked about it to her friends.”

No. No. They’d make her go back. But she couldn’t stay away for ever.

Oh, God, what was she going to do?

Lloyd was at the council depot when Judy arrived. Plan in hand, he was pacing out the distance between where Natalie Ouspensky had been found by Sherlock, and where she had been seen by Mrs. Cochrane. Where Sherlock had found the shoes, where her killer might have parked his car.

“Why would he leave her shoes here?” he asked, by way of greeting.

Judy still had no answer to that; she told him Freddie’s findings on the body.

“Mm,” said Lloyd when she’d finished. “What are your thoughts?” he asked.

Judy shrugged. “I haven’t really formulated any,” she said, and looked round.

The Green looked different in the bright, warm sunlight. Last night the building had been black and sinister; today it was a council depot. The adventure playground had been traps for the unwary; today it was an arrangement of tyres and pipes and nets and ropes, perfectly obvious, perfectly innocent. The grass was quite long, and covered with clover and buttercups; the trees that ringed it were green and welcoming, not secret and shifting.

But her notion of how it had been last night was coloured by the fact that it was where a body had been discovered; she tried to imagine it before then, before it had any ominous connotations. Moonlit. Quiet. A balmy evening, solitude.

“She told Mrs. Cochrane to mind her own business,” said
Lloyd. “And walked up there.” He strolled up towards the adventure playground, Judy following.

“Let’s say she was here with someone,” he said. “What happened next?”

Judy looked at him. “Freddie seems to think that she was just standing here talking to someone who suddenly cracked her head against the pipe, then raped and strangled her, not necessarily in that order,” she said.

Lloyd’s eyes grew wide. “
Freddie
thinks that?” he said. “He must have been a great deal more forthcoming than usual.”

He wasn’t half, thought Judy. Aloud, she said that he hadn’t really been himself. “He’s been given an ultimatum by Mrs. Freddie,” she said. “It’s murder victims or her.”

Lloyd smiled. “And Freddie has, of course, chosen murder victims,” he said.

“He hasn’t told her yet, but yes, he has. I don’t think he’s too cut up about it.” She looked sternly at Lloyd. “That wasn’t a pun,” she said.

“Has he made a pass at you yet?” he asked with a smile.

Judy sighed. “Why don’t you just get out your crystal ball, tell us who killed that little girl and save us all a lot of time and money?” she asked.

Lloyd grinned. “It doesn’t work that way,” he said.

“It was a very oblique pass, and he apologized for it this morning,” she said. “And I’m beginning to think I should take him up on it. At least he can’t read minds.”

“It’s the Welsh wizardry,” said Lloyd, melodramatically. “You can have no secrets from me.”

That was probably true, and something she preferred not to think about. “Well, anyway,” she said briskly, “that’s his theory, and if he’s right, then what happened next was an unprovoked attack, probably by a psycho.”

“Well, since he’s obviously not going to say it this time, I’d better,” said Lloyd. “Theories always come to grief. And I’m going on the assumption, for the moment, that she knew her attacker.”

Judy nodded. “I thought that last night,” she said. “But I’m not so sure now.”

Lloyd shook his head. “She didn’t just stand there and talk to a total stranger,” he said. “Not here. Not at night. It’s too lonely. Too exposed. She was with someone she knew and trusted.”

“Being with someone she knew and trusted doesn’t rule out his being a psycho,” Judy said.

“I know,” said Lloyd. “But let’s assume consent, just for argument’s sake.”

If the girl had consented to sex, then they would have wanted privacy, thought Judy. Mrs. Cochrane was around, and they would presumably have wanted to keep out of sight. There wasn’t a lot of choice, really. She looked at the pipe; that was where she had been found, where she had died. But it was hardly somewhere one would go from choice.

“What do you think about in there?” she asked Lloyd, pointing over to it.

“What do I think about it?” he asked, puzzled.

“For somewhere to have sex,” said Judy.

“Sure, if you want,” he said. “But I’d just as soon wait until we get home.”

She hit him.

“That’s a sackable offence,” he said.

“Sorry, sir. But does it strike you as somewhere a girl like Natalie would agree to have sex?”

He shrugged. “It would keep them dry if it started to rain, it’s hidden from view, it wouldn’t be any more uncomfortable than anywhere else. Why not? And what is a ‘girl like Natalie’? I think she might have been a bit hard to control, from what her mother said.”

Perhaps. But Judy just couldn’t see Natalie agreeing to it; her background, her mother, her whole way of life seemed to argue against it. Natalie would like her creature comforts, Judy was certain. “I take it you don’t agree with Freddie,” she said.

Lloyd shook his head. “Whoever it was beat her unconscious and strangled her. I don’t think that any intermediate or subsequent sexual assault would be non-violent in those circumstances.”

Judy felt a little dubious about that. “It depends what sort of
psycho you’ve got,” she argued. “Perhaps he just wanted her acquiescent.”

“Perhaps,” said Lloyd. “But let’s say they were together. Why would it become violent?”

He sat down near the middle of the see-saw, leaning on it and letting go, letting it rock up and down as he thought.

“The attack has to have taken several minutes,” he said. “Which means that any preceding activity can’t have taken very long. Perhaps she said something disparaging about his technique.”

Judy snorted. “If everyone whose girlfriend was less than complimentary about—” she began.

“I know, I know,” he said, interrupting her. “We’d be knee-deep in corpses. But she presumably did or said something to provoke him.”

“But did she?” said Judy. “You’d expect there to have been shouting if he had got so angry with her that he did her that much damage. But no one heard anything at all.”

Freddie could be right. Judy was no keener than Lloyd on the idea, but he could be right. Whoever she was with just … did it. Wanted her unable to resist.

“How did you get on with Natalie’s mother?” she asked, not wanting to entertain Freddie’s theory right now. The physical evidence didn’t really suggest rape to her, either. And if Natalie had consented, then provoked him to violence, Judy wanted to know a lot more about her.

Lloyd rocked up and down on the see-saw. “She started off saying that Natalia didn’t go with boys,” he said. “I had to tell her about her being on the pill so that she would give that up. Then she said that she had had a few boyfriends, but nothing serious.”

Ah. Judy began to rethink Natalie. If her mother hadn’t wanted to admit to boyfriends, then presumably she didn’t think that Natalie had been settling for a goodnight kiss on the front porch. But that didn’t immediately bring you to having it off with someone in a surplus storm drain.

“She had been wondering if Natalia had met someone special,”
Lloyd went on. “Because she had been out a lot over the past six months. She has no idea who, though.”

Judy frowned. “Why keep him a secret,” she said, “if she didn’t do that with the others? Someone Mother wouldn’t approve of?”

“Black?” suggested Lloyd. “Asian? Only I didn’t get the impression that that sort of thing would bother Mrs. O. unduly.” He thought for a moment. “Someone a lot older than her?”

“Married?” said Judy.

“Married seems quite likely,” said Lloyd, pushing himself off the see-saw. “And perhaps it gives us a motive, if she was threatening to tell his wife, or whatever. And there’s the car … Much more likely, if it was a married man.”

Judy had been having to accommodate the idea of a married man having an assignation with Natalie in that pipe, and that had seemed less likely than ever. But the car—yes. She was with him in the
car
, and they had a row.

But the time factor was against that. The car would have had to arrive, Natalie and her boyfriend would have had to have been together for some minutes, at least, however poor a performer Lloyd thought he was; then the row, then the murder. Then he had to get away—all before Mrs. Cochrane came out of the woods.

“Mrs. O. did say that she had found it quite difficult to bring up Natalia on her own,” Lloyd carried on. “She has to work, and Natalia’s been pretty well doing her own thing for the last three years. I got the impression that she wasn’t all that easy to control, as I said.”

“Married brings us back to Colin Cochrane,” said Judy. “I know he’s just a wild guess, but they can be right. And Tom’s not stupid.”

“No, he’s not. But don’t encourage him—he thinks he’s got this all sewn up, and we’re a long way from that.” He looked thoughtful. “I suppose Mrs. Cochrane really did see Natalia alive, did she?”

Judy shrugged. “Well, I told the troops not to take it as gospel,” she said. “But I think she did.”

Lloyd grunted “I think I’ll get back to the station—see what’s been coming in.”

Judy headed up the hill to Oakland School. She was going to talk to Baby Otter.

“What are you doing here?”

Patrick had had more effusive welcomes in his time, not least from Erica. “I just came to see how you are,” he said.

“I thought maybe Colin had sent you,” she said.

“Colin? Why would he send me?”

“To tell me you had to mend his car yesterday,” she said.

Patrick nodded. “I did,” he said.

Erica’s eyebrows rose. “You mean it really wouldn’t start?” she said.

“It was something and nothing,” he said. “Only took about an hour—but I told Victoria it took a couple of hours, so don’t go landing me in it, will you?”

Erica stepped back, inviting him in.

The dog padded over to him immediately, and Patrick tickled its ears. “It was this fella who found her, they tell me?” he said. He sat down, and patted the large head that was laid in his lap. “It must have been a terrible shock for you,” he said.

“Yes.” Erica sat down too.

“It was just when you didn’t come in to work, I was worried. I’m not here to provide an alibi for your husband, if that’s what you thought I was doing.”

She sighed. “I know you’re not,” she said.

“What were you doing there, at all?” he asked. “At that time of night?”

“I had the dog,” she said defensively.

Patrick smiled at Sherlock. “What use would this great lump be if you’d met this nutter?” he asked.

Erica put out a hand and touched Sherlock’s ear. “Well, I didn’t meet him,” she said.

Not quite, thought Patrick. Not quite. But you very nearly did.

“Kim, isn’t it?”

Kim nodded, and stood just inside the door. She had already
spoken to the police, because Mr. Murray had told them that she was a friend of Natalie’s, though what qualified him to judge she didn’t know. Still, he was right. But now she had been called out of class to come and talk to a detective inspector. It was a woman; that had surprised her.

The woman smiled. “I’m DI Hill,” she said. “Have a seat, Kim.”

They were in Mrs. Cochrane’s office, DI Hill behind the desk. She looked all right. She looked cool, in light, smart summer clothes instead of the heavy dark uniform that Kim wore. She was in her thirties, Kim supposed. She had a nice smile.

She had managed the other interview all right. She had said that Natalie had been to discos and things with boys, but other than that she knew nothing. She hadn’t let on how well she had known Natalie, because that way she could get away with keeping her information to herself. She wished, with all her heart, that Natalie had never told her. and it was getting easier to pretend that she never had.

“Please?” The inspector indicated the seat.

Kim edged forward and sat, as requested, ready to be interviewed again, though she didn’t know why. But nothing had prepared her for the inspector’s opening question.

“You’re Baby Otter, is that right?”

Kim’s mouth opened. How could she know about that? It was a private joke, nothing more. She looked at DI Hill in sheer awe.

“No magic powers, Kim. You shouldn’t write things on the back of seats if you want to keep them private.”

Kim still didn’t see how she knew. Was it really only yesterday that she’d done that? And Natalie had crossed out the I. She still couldn’t really take it in; Natalie was dead. Dead. It seemed unreal, impossible. She would be back tomorrow. But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t, because someone had killed her. And she knew something the police didn’t know, and Hannah had said not to tell them.

Kim hadn’t wanted to come to school today, but her mum had said she would probably feel better here with everyone
else than brooding about it at home, because she had to go in to work, and she didn’t want to leave Kim on her own. But nothing made you feel better about your best friend having been murdered.

“This must have been a terrible shock for you,” the inspector said. “And I’m sorry that I have to come barging in asking questions. But I’m sure you understand how vital it is that we know as much as possible about Natalie.”