By a Narrow Majority (20 page)

Frank sat down abruptly on the raised bed nearest to him, crushing some pink and purple polyanthus under his fat
backside
. He looked as if he were about to cry – a sight that would be enough to unnerve anybody. ‘He was going to set me up for it, wasn’t he? If it all went pear-shaped?’ Frank shook his head. ‘The bastard.’

‘Don’t have kittens just yet, Frank,’ Hillary said sourly. ‘What exactly did Donleavy ask you just now?’

‘Just the usual. Going over the night again. I told the same story Raleigh told. What does Donleavy know?’

‘Enough to put Raleigh in the frame. And you too, if you stick to the same story. Which is why you’re going to change it, right now. You’re going to go upstairs, tell Donleavy me and you had a chat, and that I recommended that you tell the truth this time. Then you tell him that you weren’t there when the shot was fired, but that Raleigh asked you to say you were. You agreed because he was your superior, and Raleigh gave you some cock-and-bull about how it would help speed up any investigation if you and he could back each other up.’

Frank swallowed hard. ‘I’ll be suspended. Almost certainly fired. I’ll lose my pension for sure, maybe even be had up for aiding and abetting, and who the hell knows what else, if they charge Raleigh with it. Guv, I can’t go inside!’

‘I don’t think it’ll come to that,’ Hillary said, quietly, but with something so sure in her voice that Ross quickly looked up at her, sudden hope flooding his face.

‘Guv? You think they’ll cover it up?’ Ross asked. Then went on before she could answer, ‘Yeah, course they will. I mean, who cares that Fletcher’s dead? They’ve got reasonable evidence that someone in his gang did it, right?’

Hillary turned away, feeling sick to her stomach. That Ross could also be so sure that their senior officers would be so
quick to do a whitewash made her feel ill. She herself was almost convinced that Marcus Donleavy for one wouldn’t let it happen without at least some sort of fight. And if he asked her to, she’d back him up. If she really had her back to the wall, she’d have no other option. She just didn’t think it would come to it. But why tell Ross that, and let the miserable little worm off the hook just yet? Let him wriggle.

When she got back to her desk, she re-read the Dale file from front to back for a second time, but it was hard to
concentrate
. Mel came out and started across towards her, but the look she gave him cut him off at the knees and he went back to his office again.

Ross, after speaking to Donleavy and amending his
statement
, had probably made tracks to the nearest pub, because he had the good sense not to show his face back in the office. Janine came back, with nothing to report on the GP and her husband and within a quarter of an hour, Tommy too came back empty-handed. But then she hadn’t really expected anything.

Hillary sighed and closed the file, glancing at her watch. Just another hour and then she could reasonably go home. Who knows, if she slept on it, she might dream who the killer of Malcolm Dale was. Wouldn’t that be nice? Even though her conscious mind hadn’t been able to pay much attention to the file when she’d been reading it, her subconscious mind might have been paying attention and miraculously come up with the answer.

It had happened before.

‘I think we’d better …’ Hillary heard herself say, then suddenly stopped. A queer feeling hit her at the back of her neck, then took the breath out of her lungs. ‘Well, for pete’s sake,’ she heard herself say and then laughed.

Because, suddenly, she did indeed know who had killed Malcolm Dale. And why. And she could probably make a good guess with what.

It was, when you thought about it, so bloody obvious. So obvious, she simply hadn’t seen it.

‘Boss?’ Janine said sharply.

Hillary slowly shook her head. ‘I’m a bloody idiot. Tommy.’ She looked across at him and told him who to bring in.

Rita Matthews watched and listened as Hillary set the tape running, going through the usual spiel. Beside her, Janine sat quiet and incredulous. Tommy, she knew, was watching through the one-way glass, as was Mel.

‘Mrs Matthews, you have the right to speak to a solicitor,’ Hillary said for a second time, even though she’d already read Rita her rights for the tape.

‘I know that. Can’t afford a solicitor.’

‘One can be appointed for you,’ Hillary said.

‘We’ll see,’ the old woman said, glancing at her watch. ‘Is this going to take long? Only, you know what my husband’s like. I don’t like leaving him alone.’

Hillary nodded. ‘We’ll try and make it quick,’ she said
enigmatically
. She felt, at that moment, utterly calm.

‘We know that on the night that Mr Dale was killed, your husband was at his usual poker night. But where were you, Rita?’

‘At home. Watching telly, like always.’

Hillary nodded. ‘But that isn’t true, is it, Rita?’

Rita Matthews said nothing. Her greying hair was tied back in a typical old lady’s bun, and she was wearing a grey skirt and a hand-knitted, sky-blue jumper. She’d probably knitted it herself. Her large, red and work-roughened hands lay lightly clasped together in front of her on the table. She looked as relaxed as Hillary.

‘Tell me about Wordsworth,’ Hillary said.

Rita Matthews shrugged one bony shoulder. ‘He was a cat. You ever had a cat?’

‘My mother always had a cat, down the years. I remember
one called Smudge best. He was black with a single white smudge on his nose.’

Rita Matthews nodded. ‘You know one cat, you know them all.’

‘So he was your husband’s cat then, more than yours?’

‘No, he weren’t,’ Rita said, just a shade testily. ‘Oh, after he got killed, all the fuss he kicked up, folks probably thought that. But I was the one that fed him. I gave him his worm pills and cleaned up after the little bugger if he was sick. More often than not, it was my lap he used to curl up on. Percy could never sit still long enough. He always had to be up and about, fidgeting.’

Hillary nodded. ‘So Wordsworth used to sit on your lap, right. When you were knitting, maybe?’ She nodded at the jumper the old woman was wearing. ‘That’s cable stitch, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Rita Matthews agreed. ‘He used to like batting my wool about. Not that I’d let him chew on it, of course.’

‘Right.’ Hillary smiled. ‘And how old was he? Before the dogs got him, I mean.’

‘Twelve,’ Rita said shortly.

‘You’d had him a long time then.’

‘Yes.’

‘They get to be like a member of the family, don’t they, when you have them so long, especially?’ Hillary said softly.

Rita Matthews said nothing. It was hard to tell if the old girl was rattled, or merely curious, or neither. She had that flat-faced kind of patience that could stymie many an
interviewer
.

Hillary merely nodded. ‘So, you looked after the cat, and loved him the most. It must have broken your heart that day, when the hounds came, and you couldn’t save him.’ Her voice was quiet now, and genuinely sincere.

‘It did, yes,’ Rita Matthews said flatly.

‘But you didn’t get to grieve for him, did you?’ Hillary mused. ‘You didn’t get to bury him, and mourn him, and
then, after a while, forgive yourself for the way he died, and move on. You couldn’t do that, because your husband wouldn’t let you, would he?’

Rita Matthews sniffed, but said nothing. Her eyes went to Janine then back to Hillary.

‘Because your husband became obsessed with Malcolm Dale, and what he’d done. It wasn’t really about Wordsworth, was it, all that palaver he made? If it had been left up to him, I daresay you could have got another cat and it wouldn’t have made any difference to him one way or the other.
You
were the one who loved Wordsworth. He was a good cat, wasn’t he, affectionate, like? And your husband went on and on about the man responsible for killing him. Tell me, when did he first start talking about murdering Malcolm Dale, Mrs Matthews?’

‘About a couple of weeks after it happened.’

Hillary nodded. ‘And he went on and on about it, didn’t he? Day after day, week after week, month after month. For years, even. Keeping Wordsworth’s death alive and well, so to speak. Never letting you forget it.’

‘Daft bugger,’ Rita said, her voice just a bit shaky now.

‘Until, finally, you’d had enough of it. Hadn’t you, Rita? Enough of listening to your husband going on and on about Malcolm Dale, and how he was going to make him pay for killing Wordsworth – but never actually doing it. All that talk about how hard it was to kill someone and get away with it. All that endless research about brakes and how to fix a car so that it would crash. All that stuff about how hard it was to get hold of a gun. How impossible it was to kill a man.’ Hillary sighed. ‘But, in reality, it was easy wasn’t it, Rita? What did it really amount to? You waited until your husband was at his poker night and then what? Grab your coat and the poker? Or maybe a walking stick with a nice knobbly end to it? A quiet stroll through the village, careful to get out of sight if a car came by? Then you knocked on the door. Dale answers, and you tell him you need to talk. He’s reluctant, but
he lets you in. He sees you in the kitchen, of course. He’s not going to invite the working classes into his drawing room, is he, not someone like him. And then what? The moment he turns his back – WHAM – a quick bash on the head. Maybe another one or two to make sure, when he’s down. Then stick the poker or whatever back under your coat and walk home. Wash up at the sink. Wait until hubby comes back, make some cocoa and off to bed. That simple, that easy. It wasn’t hard at all was it? It went something like that, didn’t it, Rita?’

Rita Matthews blinked, but said nothing. Her knuckles were white now, but her hands remained folded demurely in front of her. The room was deathly quiet, with only the faint hiss of the tape recorder as background.

Hillary looked at the old woman in front of her, looking for a way in. Searching for the crack that would open her up. Not the cat – that hurt too much and went too deep. She’d just clam up harder if she tried using the cat. The husband maybe. She must bitterly resent him, deep down. But then, she was his primary carer, and she’d been looking after him for years. Washing, cooking, putting up with his ways. No, not the husband. She’d just get defensive.

Her eyes wandered over her, thinking furiously. The clean but shabby clothing, the grey hair, held back in the bun. Her mind went back to her file. What did they know about her? She was the daughter of a farm labourer, and had done other people’s domestic work for years. She and her family had probably thought of Percy Matthews as a real catch. Then her marriage, the little cottage, the raising of children. All as law abiding and working class as you could get.

And suddenly, Hillary knew the way in.

She sighed and leaned forward across the table. ‘You know, Rita, we can’t have people getting away with murder,’ she said softly. ‘I know, when you read the papers and watch the news, it seems as if people do get away with it all the time, but that’s mostly just hype. Nine times out of ten, we police get the killers. And that’s as it should be. Isn’t it?’

Rita Matthews blinked, her lower lip wobbled a bit, then she sat up a bit straighter in the chair and said flatly, ‘It was the rolling pin. Not the poker. The rolling pin wasn’t so long and fit under my coat better.’

The next morning, Hillary went in to check on the paperwork that would have been processed on Rita Matthews overnight. She’d left the formal arrest and charging to Janine, who’d deserved it, and gone home early, using an aching hip as an excuse to leave the mopping up to Mel. Personally, she hoped the Crown Prosecution Service could work out something for the old gal. Sure as hell, any decent QC could make out a case for diminished responsibility.

She hadn’t sat down at her desk five minutes before a sergeant from two desks over rolled his chair across to her desk and asked her if she’d heard the latest. Apparently Superintendent Jerome Raleigh had gone AWOL. No-one had seen him since yesterday lunchtime. His civilian secretary was in a bit of a tizzy, being unable to locate him, and they’d even sent some uniforms to his house to see if he was ill.

‘But it looks as if he’s just packed up and gone.’ The sergeant, a lanky, sandy-haired man who preferred to work burglary, nodded sagely. ‘Maud from Fraud is running a book. Odds-on favourite he’s had some sort of breakdown and done a runner. Wild-card betting has it he’s been bumped off and his body dumped by one of Fletcher’s gang in
retaliation
. Fancy putting some money down?’ he asked, eyeing her carefully.

Hillary felt abruptly sick, and just managed to shake her head and smile. Because suddenly she was remembering that missing Dick Francis book. When it had turned up again, she’d come to the conclusion that the only one who could have taken it was her stepson. Ronnie’s boy by his first marriage. Frank wouldn’t bother to return it: why should he? He’d like to think of her fretting over it, But Gary respected and liked her, and might not want her to realize that he’d
figured out his father’s hiding place. And she’d been prepared to let it slide. After all, it could be argued that the money was his inheritance. Moreover, it very neatly solved her problem of what to do with it. But now, with a hollow feeling that made her feel as if she’d suddenly shot several hundred feet up in the air, she knew that there was a second explanation for that book going missing so briefly.

She waited until her heart had stopped thumping, and she was sure she wasn’t about to throw up, then got up and tapped on Mel’s door, sticking her head around it without waiting for a summons. ‘I’m just going out for a while. Everything OK on the Rita Matthews thing?’

‘Yep. She’s got a brief, and he’s trying to get her confession thrown out, but it’ll stand. Did you hear Raleigh’s gone missing?’

‘Yeah, I heard,’ she said, and held out her hands. ‘Don’t know, don’t care, don’t ask me,’ she said and closed the door hard on her way out.

She drove straight to the internet café and logged on. As the computer hummed and hawed, she felt like biting her nails. Part of her didn’t want to know. If all that money was gone, she really didn’t want to know.