Bold Counsel (The Trials of Sarah Newby) (47 page)

‘Her wrists were taped together, Sarah ...’

‘Were they? Where’s the tape? You haven’t got that either, have you? Or any proof that her wrists were taped at the same time - the same
day
even - that she died? What if she was wrapping up a parcel, and she stuck the sellotape to her wrist while she was folding the paper - have you never done that?’

‘Don’t think so. Not to both wrists, certainly. Anyway, where’s the parcel?’

‘With her publisher, maybe, I don’t know. Maybe she posted a manuscript or something ...’

‘She’d use a Jiffy bag ...’

‘Perhaps, who knows.’ Sarah shook her head furiously, feeling rage overpower her judgement. ‘Look, I haven’t studied the case, you may be right about the tape. The point is, Terry, I’m living in this man’s house, I like him, I’ve trusted him up to now, and just because you’re jealous, you come to me and throw these accusations around, on evidence that wouldn’t stand up for a second in court, not if I had anything to do with it anyway ...’

‘Who says I’m jealous?’

They paused, staring at each other. Sarah’s face was flushed, her eyes blazing with anger. She breathed deeply, forcing her emotions to die down.

‘Well, I don’t know, I thought maybe ...’

‘You’re right, I am.’

‘Really?’ She shook her head, still flushed and angry. She didn’t care how he felt.

‘Yes, of course. To see you with a man like him ...’

‘He’s got a lot of good points, Terry. He’s been very kind to me. Helpful, understanding.’

‘Has he.’ Terry spoke flatly. It wasn’t really a question.

‘Yes, actually, he has.’ Sarah flicked her hair from her eyes, facing him coolly, realising the focus of the argument had shifted. She had no reason to want to hurt him. But this - this was intolerable. She watched him struggle for a response.

‘Well, I suppose I should be glad to hear it, but if we’re speaking the honest truth here, Sarah, I’m not. Because ... well, okay, I admit I haven’t got a lot of proof, but I’m still trying to eliminate possibilities. Detectives do that, it’s what we’re paid for. And for another thing ...’ Terry hesitated, searching for words.

‘Well?’

‘I
do
care about you, as it happens. You should know that. I thought you
did
know that, as a matter of fact. Clearly I was wrong.’

‘No, you weren’t wrong, Terry. You just ... presume too much.’

‘About Michael or you?’

‘Both, I suppose.’ She shook her head.
My bubble is bursting,
she thought.
How can it ever survive this?
‘Look, Terry, this is a difficult time for me. I’m going through a divorce, I’m selling my house, I’m trying to keep my head together, and now you come and tell me the man I’m having a relationship with may be a sadist and a murderer. It’s not easy, you know.’

‘Since when was life easy?’

‘I don’t know, but it should be. Easier than this, at least. Look, if you are right, then I suppose I should be glad you told me. Well, maybe not glad, no, not that. Grateful at any rate.’ She looked at him regretfully. ‘Even if you are jealous.’

‘Better to know before than after.’

‘Yes. What do you suggest I should do?’

He hesitated. ‘Well, there are two answers to that, I’m afraid. The cautious one, and the bold one.’

‘Really? You’ve thought this out then?’

‘To an extent. The cautious answer, the sensible thing for you to do, is to get out now. Leave him, move into a hotel if you haven’t got anywhere to go, come and sleep on my sofa if you like ...’

A bitter, ironic smile flickered briefly on Sarah’s lips. ‘This is objective advice you’re giving me, is it?’

‘A friendly offer, that’s all. Or I sleep on the sofa and you have the bed. Whatever ...’

‘And the bold option?’

‘ ... is that you weigh up the risks, and if you feel safe enough, you check things out. Ask a few questions, look around his house, do a few things that I couldn’t do without a warrant. If he’s innocent, there’ll be nothing to find, he’ll have good explanations. If it doesn’t look so innocent, let me know. I’ll give you the number of my mobile, in case you need help. It’s always with me, day and night.’

Sarah shook her head, astonished. ‘You’re suggesting I spy on my ...’ she suppressed the word
lover
‘ ... landlord?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, I know it’s difficult. But ...’ Terry watched her face closely. ‘I’m afraid I am. I’ll understand if you refuse.’

‘Too right you will.’ Sarah thought about it furiously, thoughts chasing each other around her brain like demented rats.
I can’t spy on Michael, that’s awful. But then, if he has nothing to hide, there’ll be nothing to find, he won’t know. And what if he
was
having an affair with this murdered woman, this Alison - what the hell am I doing renting a house off him? Alone, out there in the country. I should run, leave now. Or is this a ploy of Terry’s, to turn me against him? He’s
jealous
, remember? Christ, men! If I leave, and Michael’s innocent, I’ll ruin my relationship for nothing. But I have to check to prove he’s innocent. Otherwise there’ll always be this suspicion, now Terry’s raised it. Damn, I wish I hadn’t met him. I don’t want this choice. I can’t escape it now.

The memory of the file she had found the other night came unwanted into her mind.
Why was it there? Why did he collect all those old cuttings? Why was he so cool to my questions? What year did Brenda Stokes die?

1991. When Michael and Alison Grey were both here in York.

Just a coincidence, surely. I can’t tell Terry that yet.

But her bubble of love was bursting. In the warm sunlight, she shivered.

Watching, Terry saw her frown, and then that unconscious lift of her chin. She was angry, all right. But she wasn’t going to run away. Not now. Not Sarah Newby.

That didn’t happen.

‘Okay. What exactly do you think I should look for?’

51. Local Bobby

M
URDER IN a country village is a rare event. The local community constable had little experience of it. Most of his time was taken up with community relations - maintaining the neighbourhood watch scheme, getting to know local people. The farms, hamlets and villages between York and Selby were a low crime area, and the residents wanted to keep it like that. They were pleased to see their constable, in his blue and white Range Rover, but they didn’t expect to see him every day, or indeed every week. The area was too large, the villages scattered. Much of the crime he dealt with was minor - quarrels between teenage youths, thefts of garden equipment or farm machinery. The most dangerous offenders he faced were lampers - poachers shooting deer and rabbits at night in the glare of high-powered headlights. These men were armed and well organised - the constable needed back-up to deal with them, and tried to catch them as they were leaving, with the carcases in the back of a van, rather than risk pursuing them through the midnight woods.

But murder, of a woman alone in her cottage, was a different category of crime altogether. It sent a ripple of horror through the countryside. Community Constable George Graham, driving around the farms and villages, found people talked of little else. Who could it be, they wondered - a local or a stranger? Where would he strike next? How could anyone feel safe in their beds until he was caught? What were the police doing? Did the dead woman know her killer, or not? What was she doing, all alone in the country? Was she a wholly innocent victim, as it appeared? Or had she somehow brought her death on herself?

Constable Graham could answer none of these questions, however often he was asked. To his immense chagrin, he’d been off duty on the day Alison Grey’s body had been found, visiting his mother in Scarborough. When he returned, two days later, he felt he’d been sidelined. His local knowledge was ignored by CID, who seemed to feel they already had the answer. All they asked was where the killer might be hiding - a question which seemed to him preposterous, in the dark days of midwinter. It was damp in the country, and cold - surely no one in their right mind would hide in the fields and woods at this time of year.

But then no one in their right mind would break into a middle-aged woman’s house to kill her.

So Constable Graham spent days searching fields, barns and copses where there was a slight chance the killer might be hiding. It was futile, frustrating work, especially since he scarcely believed in it. But he did it diligently nonetheless, partly to cover his back, but also in the faint hope of success - the sort of dogged defiance of the odds which leads people to buy a lottery ticket each week. And also, it meant he could talk to his wife and kids about the murder enquiry he was involved in, however slightly.

His other link with the investigation was the visit he made most days to the crime scene - the house in Crockey Hill.

The house was empty, so the landlord had asked him to keep an eye on it. All he usually did was drive his Range Rover down the potholed track to the house, get out, and look around. Most days he strolled around the building, checking that the doors were still locked, peering in at the windows to see nothing had been disturbed. He sometimes imagined going inside to see if he could find some evidence that had been overlooked; though what that could be, after the SOCOs had spent two whole days lifting every fingerprint, vacuuming up each fibre and speck of dust, he had no idea. Anyway he had no key.

Most days he stood there for a while, thinking, seeking answers to the same questions the locals asked him. Who could have done this, and why? What was the dead woman like, to choose to live here? Constable Graham could see the attraction. For someone who loved peace and quiet, it was ideal. Set back a hundred yards from the road, surrounded by fields and woods, with views in each direction. Perfect for a woman alone with her cat and computer. It would be lovely in the spring, he thought, though she would never see it. Even now, the first tips of daffodil shoots were making a tiny, tentative showing around the edge of the lawn. Later they would be beautiful.

Alison Grey must have liked birds, the constable concluded. All around the house there were bird-feeders, hung high in the branches away from her cat. But they were empty now, the nuts all eaten. He watched a bluetit land on a bird feeder outside the study window and cling there, swinging for a second, before flying off. A pity, he thought, to abandon the birds now, with the cold on its way. He took a sack of peanuts from the boot of his car, bought earlier at the request of his wife. Would it do any harm to feed the birds? Surely not, he decided. After all, since he’d been asked to make these pointless visits, he could at least get some pleasure from them.

It was when he was filling the second bird feeder that he saw the movement. It was somewhere behind him; he only just caught it in the corner of his eye. With his left hand he was holding down the long, whippy branch of a birch tree, while his right twisted the lid of the bird feeder to get it free. Something moved inside the house. Just a shadow inside a window; there for a second, then gone. As if a bird had flown across the sun, but it wasn’t that. A cat, maybe, inside the house - but it had been larger than that. Moving quickly, as though to escape detection.

Inside the house!

Constable Graham might be only a village bobby, but he wasn’t stupid. His early training had been on the streets of Chapelfields in Leeds, where a quick furtive movement like that meant only one thing. Particularly when a uniformed officer was outside the house.

Guilt! Someone trying to escape.

He let go of the branch, which sprang back into the air, the bird feeder swaying wildly above his head. He ran to the window and peered in, staring right and left to see who was there. No one - but it was the kitchen window, and on the table was something which had not been there before.

A plate.
A plate with crumbs on.

If he hadn’t peered through the windows almost every day for the past week, he might not have been so sure; but now he was certain.

Someone was inside the house!

The problem was, the doors were locked and he had no keys. So how had the intruder got in? Constable Graham had already walked round the house and checked the doors -
did this person have a key?
Surely not; that would mean they had legal access and in that case he would have been informed. Or at least he should have been; procedures didn’t always work perfectly, especially when it came to informing lowly rural constables about the details of a murder investigation on their patch. But then if this person had legal access why would he hide? And anyway - the realisation flashed electric blue in his brain -
there was no car outside, so how had he got here?

Or she. It could always be a woman. Less likely though, unless he’d seen the ghost of the deceased. Constable Graham wasn’t superstitious; he dismissed that idea in a second. And even as these thoughts crowded in his mind he was running round the house, peering in a second window and then a third, trying to find a person he’d only glimpsed for a second. Out of the corner of his eye.

No face, no silhouette even. Just a movement.

Another man might have doubted himself, but George Graham seldom did that. He wasn’t superstitious or imaginative. As a young policeman he’d been taught to keep his eyes and ears open and trust his own senses, and that’s exactly what he did. Above all, when chasing a suspect, his trainers had said, don’t just chase blindly,
think ahead
. The suspect knows you’re after him, what’s he likely to do next? In this case, Constable Graham thought,
escape.
He can’t hide in that house, he’s trapped in there. He knows I could call up reinforcements at any time. I will in a moment, if he doesn’t come out. But if he’s looked out the window he knows it’s only me on my own. So his best chance of escape is now. He’ll want to get out of the house and run. And if I can’t catch him he’ll get away. So that’s what he’ll do.