A Shred of Evidence (24 page)

“Yes!” said Tom, punching the air.

Lloyd looked pained. “That, DNA, the trace evidence on Natalia’s clothes … We can’t miss.”

Tom had one last go. “Are we going to ask Cochrane for a hair sample?” he asked. “And prints? She could have been in close contact with two people, remember. The fibres could belong to whoever she was with before she was killed.”

“Yes,” said Lloyd. “They could. But the fibres suggest a suit and shirt, and that doesn’t sound like an old boyfriend to me. But we will leave no stone unturned, Tom.” He grinned.
“Meanwhile, could you tell Inspector Hill to draft out a possible description of the assailant’s clothing from what we’ve got? I’m going to have a word with the Super.”

“Will do, guv,” said Tom.

Lloyd opened his mouth, and shut it again. “Oh, what the hell,” he said. “There are more important things to worry about than being called guv.”

He and Judy should have a reunion more often, thought Tom, picking up the phone as Lloyd left the murder room. He might even forgive a misused comma in this mood.

Colin had never tried to work with a hangover before. It was going now, thank God, but it had been torture first thing. And he hadn’t had any proper kit. All his designer tracksuits were at home or with the police.

That chap Marlow had kept him up late talking, as well. He wasn’t all that sure what he’d told him, but most of it had been off the record. He had wanted to know why the police had been talking to him, so he could put his side of the story, he’d said.

Now that his head was no longer aching, Colin wondered about that. He didn’t suppose Marlow had actually heard anyone else’s side. Oh, well—the whole town knew he had been questioned, so what difference did it make?

He had just seen off his final class of the morning. He showered and changed back into his suit. He hadn’t made his usual pilgrimage to the office for his mail—he hadn’t known how to cope with Erica. Patrick was right—he should just stay out of her way until he could prove to her that he was telling the truth.

But that was easier said than done if you both worked at the same place, and he had better go and pick up his mail, or she might come here with it, and he didn’t want that.

He walked through the maze of buildings that covered what had used to be the cricket pitch, trying to make sense of what had happened to him, but he couldn’t. And now he wasn’t even living at home. The whole thing was more than a nightmare. It was as though he had been sucked into Natalie’s fantasy world and couldn’t escape.

Erica was printing out; she looked up, but then she behaved
as though the printer required her total absorption in order to work.

“Is this it?” he asked, picking up a bundle of letters.

“Yes,” she said, without looking at him. “Your mail from home is beside it. One of them doesn’t have a stamp.”

“Right,” he said, scooping up the fan-mail, a normal-sized bundle today, and putting his real mail in his jacket pocket. He would normally put it in the car, but he didn’t even know if Erica had brought the car, and he wasn’t going to ask.

He didn’t go to lunch with Trudy Kane; he wasn’t hungry, and women were proving too much like trouble at the moment. Instead, he trudged back to his lair, to the gym, where he could be alone. He felt less lonely that way.

Patrick ate lunch alone at a table in the oddly quiet dining hall. Yesterday had been fraught, with the police there mob-handed, interviewing everyone who stood still long enough, but it had been easier to cope with, somehow, than today.

This morning had been both trying and tiring; he had had to think of so many things at once. Still no sign of that girl as he had sat on the stage during yet another assembly of the school, this time to listen to a talk from the police to the students, the female students in particular, about the importance of staying in pairs when going out in the evening, and even during daylight hours in lonely or secluded areas.

The head had said that students who had lessons at the Byford Road annexe could, if they wished, go the long way round rather than cross the Green, in view of what had happened. If they did use the Green, they had to ensure that no one was left straggling, and had to respect the police lines cordoning off parts of it.

Patrick had then gone to his form room to take the register, and there he had told one of his most magnificent lies ever.

He had never known Natalie, was how he had begun, for a start. Always best to get the real lie out of the way as soon as possible, he’d found.

He hadn’t known Natalie, but it was clear from the grief that
pervaded the school that she had been a valued friend to many of her fellow students.

He could, he thought as he finished his salad and reached for his pudding, hazard a guess as to how many, but he had not, of course, thought that when talking to the class. At the time of the magnificent lie, he had been a new teacher, trying to help his form come to terms with the death of a pupil of whom he had known nothing more than her difficult Russian name.

Thank God it hadn’t been Smith, because he would have stumbled over it just the same when he had found himself looking at it. His heart had stopped beating when he had seen Natalie’s name. A schoolgirl? In his school? In his form? And the little bitch hadn’t said a word. Not one word. She had let him find out like that.

He wished, he had told them solemnly, that he had known her, but, sadly, having to ask how to pronounce her name when taking the register had been his only conversation with her.

All he could say to them in their bereavement was that life did kick you in the teeth from time to time, and that all you could do was show it that you wouldn’t give up, that life went on. From what he had heard of Natalie, that was a sentiment with which she would have heartily agreed. She had had spirit, and that spirit would live on.

That last bit was true, he thought. Natalie had had spirit, all right.

He had drawn a neat line through her name in the register, and had got on with his job. That had been easier. The afternoon might not be too bad.

More than six hundred letters to get out, and a printer that only did fifty sheets at a time, Erica thought, savagely pushing the paper in, pressing the key.

She had been interrupted all day, but the last time it had been a policeman, who had insisted that he had to check the files in the word processor. The headmaster, he had assured her, had said it would be all right.

It was all right for him; he wasn’t trying to get these letters out. It would
be
winter before she got them out at this rate.

She was trying not to think about Colin and Natalie, but it wasn’t working, and now here was Colin again, even more haggard than he had seemed before lunch. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Silly question, but that was what she said.

“That letter? The one with no stamp?”

“Yes,” she said. “What about it?”

He held it out, in its envelope. “I think you should read it,” he said, closing the office door.

Erica took it. His hand was shaking. “Colin, I think we—” she began.

“Just read it,” he said.

She pulled it out, recognizing its style before she had even unfolded it properly. She read as much of it as she needed to and looked up at her husband. “What does this mean?” she asked.

“It means,” he said, “that whoever has been writing those letters is still doing it. It means that it wasn’t Natalie. It means,” he added, his voice rising until he shouted the last few words, “that you might actually believe me at last that I had nothing to do with her!”

She stared at him, baffled. She had seen Natalie with her own eyes. “How can I believe you?” she shouted back.

“Because you’ve got that letter in your hands! You got it at the house this morning. And it didn’t come through the post. Natalie didn’t write it. Look at the bloody date, woman!”

She looked at the letter, dated the day after Natalie had died. “So she didn’t write that letter,” she said. “All that this proves is that there’s more than one. I know you were with her, Colin—I know you were there! Stop lying to me!”

“Erica!” he roared. “I
wasn’t
there. I wasn’t with her. I have never had anything to do with her
in my life
!” Colin banged his fist down on the desk with each of the final three words. “And I’m taking a blood test that will prove to you once and for
all
that I wasn’t with her on Tuesday night!”

The door opened, the head came in, and Erica knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Colin was telling the truth.

“Er … Mr. Cochrane, Mrs. Cochrane. I must ask you to … moderate your voices,” the head was saying.

Erica could hear him, but she wasn’t taking it in. If Colin was telling the truth, then …

“I know,” the head went on. “I do understand that you are coping with … with … a considerable crisis, but I’m afraid we do have the … school to consider.”

“Sorry,” said Colin. “It was my fault.”

No, it wasn’t, thought Erica, still shell-shocked by her realization. But surely even Patrick wouldn’t …

“Oh, no one’s to blame. I’ll—I’ll just … let you sort things out. If you could just … you know.”

The head escaped.

“I’m going to the police,” Colin said. “If you won’t believe me, maybe they will.”

Colin was gone; she looked at the closed door, her thoughts racing. She had to tell Colin, tell the police … she had to—

She made herself slow down, think things out. She had to talk to Patrick. But he would be in class now, she thought, looking at the clock.

Which was perhaps a good thing, because of course she should talk to Colin first. She would see him when he came back from the police. She didn’t know if he would ever forgive her, but that was a bridge that she would cross when she got there, and not before.

Hannah woke up with the sun shining into her room; she frowned, and blinked. Didn’t that make it late? She looked at the clock. It was almost two. She had slept all morning.

She hadn’t slept at night; she had done her letter and crept out of the house as soon as it got light, cycling to Ash Road and delivering it. She had only just got her nightclothes back on when her mother looked into her room; she had assumed that she had been up because she was still being sick, and Hannah hadn’t told her any different, so her mother had made a doctor’s appointment, of course, without even telling her.

But it meant that there was no question of going to school; if she could stay away long enough, Mr. Murray would realize that he had nothing to worry about.

And she might be free of this dreadful fear.

* * *

Cochrane had brought them a letter which he had thrust into Lloyd’s hands with the air of one who thought that it exonerated him.

It didn’t; now he was in an interview room with Judy sitting opposite him at the table. Lloyd had wanted her to interview Cochrane, and had been quite prepared to put Tom’s nose out of joint in order that she should do so, but, as it happened, he hadn’t had to.

Tom had got a phone call from the person he insisted on calling his snout, and had begged to be allowed to go and see him, because there was a chance that he could save face over the stake-out fiasco, as it had become known.

Lloyd had made a great play of being reluctant to take him off the murder enquiry, even for that short time, and by granting him permission he now had one sergeant who believed that he owed him a favour, instead of one who hated his guts for bringing Judy in over his head. A nice bit of work all round, really.

Now. Cochrane. A nasty bit of work? That wasn’t how he struck Lloyd, and the evidence certainly didn’t suggest it, but this letter had made its appearance, and Tom could be right. But he was going to let Judy do the talking, and he would be watching her as well as Cochrane. Judy’s opinion of people was something Lloyd valued. He could tell from her body language whether she believed or disbelieved what she was hearing, regardless of what she was actually saying.

“I’m sure you’ll understand that though you are here voluntarily, I do have to caution you,” Judy said. “In view of the contents of this letter.”

Cochrane frowned a little at that, and Judy went through all the stuff that she was required to tell him about his rights; she never forgot any of it, unlike everyone else, because she used a little checklist in her notebook. Her notebook—not her official pocketbook, but a great thick shorthand pad—had once been more than necessary to her, because the trained memory that police officers liked to think they possessed had not been issued to Judy, despite her tidy and logical mind, or perhaps even because of it.

Lloyd’s mind was as untidy and illogical as his desk, his memory an attic in which things got thrown in any old how. But unlike Judy, he never threw anything away. He, as he was wont to point out to her, remembered things without writing them down.

Now, the tape took care of the actual words spoken at interviews, but Judy still took notes, because out of that mass of demi-shorthand and question marks came the answers to questions that often no one had thought of actually asking. She noted everything: appearance, manner of response, lack of response; if the answer was there to be found once she had completed her enquiries into anything, she would find it.

Since cautioning Cochrane, she had said nothing at all; God knew how Cochrane must be feeling, because the silence, broken only by the hiss of the tape going round, was unnerving even Lloyd.

“Aren’t you supposed to be asking me questions?” Cochrane demanded, eventually.

“Am I?” said Judy, looking up from her notebook. “I thought you were going to tell me all about this letter.”

“Tell you what? I’ve told you everything I know.”

“You do realize it’s an alibi?” Judy asked sweetly.

“What?” Cochrane stared at her.

“That’s what this is,” she said, pointing with her pen at the letter. “It makes it very clear where you were and what you were doing at the time of Natalia Ouspensky’s murder—it even specifies the times that you were with the writer. A touch unusual, for a love letter, I’d say. But unfortunately it isn’t signed, so I can hardly check it out until you tell me, can I?”