Murder of a Dead Man (28 page)

He turned and she leaned against the wall and took a deep breath. The telephone faced her. She knew what she should do. Pick it up, telephone the station and ask to be put through to Bill. She walked across to her wall, read the numbers that were written on her reminder board, memorised the number of the local pizza house, and dialled.

Trevor lay next to Daisy in the small bed and listened to the whine of ambulance sirens heading for A and E. A door slammed further down the corridor and footsteps echoed past. He raised his arm and glanced at his watch.

‘You have to go?’

He turned his head on the pillow and faced Daisy. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I.’

‘I wanted it to be wonderful – special – between us.’

‘You wanted too much, Trevor. I’m an ordinary woman and, at the moment a rather tired one.

Hardly the dream person you built me into.’

‘I love you, Daisy. I always have, I…’

‘No, Trevor,’ she laid her finger across his lips again to silence him. ‘You were in love with the idea of me. You don’t know me. But you do know Lyn, no – let me finish,’ she said when he tried to interrupt her. ‘You’re an honest and decent man.

You wouldn’t have asked her to move into your house unless you were in love with her.’

‘She helped me, she was my nurse. I was grateful to her.’

‘You didn’t love her?’ she asked in surprise.

‘I thought I did at the time,’ he admitted.

‘And you don’t now?’

‘I’m not sure what I think any more.’

‘And your uncertainty set in when the honeymoon period ended and boring, mundane day-to-day living began?’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I used to shout at Tim every time he failed to organise his free time to coincide with mine. Because I know how foul it is to love someone, really love someone the way that girl loves you, and not be able to see them for more than a few minutes from one week to the next. You couldn’t make love to me because you feel guilty about her. And that means you still feel something for her. I was a fool to drag you back here, and a bigger fool to suggest climbing into bed. I should have made my own way back from that restaurant.’

He sat up and swung his legs out from the tangle of sheets. Running his hands through his hair he turned to look at her. ‘It’s not your fault. It’s mine. I’ve made a right bloody mess of things.’

‘Perhaps if we try laughing about it we can at least salvage our friendship.’

He smiled. ‘I was right. You’re a very special lady. Whoever gets you is going to be a lucky man.’

‘No he isn’t,’ she replied soberly. ‘Everything I have, everything I am, I’ve invested in my career.

There’s nothing left for a private life.’

‘One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that a career isn’t enough of an excuse for living.’ He reached for his trousers.

‘It’s had to be for me since Tim died. I don’t feel sorrow or joy, not even for the patients. Only professional satisfaction when an operation is a success. I never talk to another man, let alone go out with one, without thinking of Tim. Even when I was with you tonight in the restaurant, I watched every move you made, studied the way you ate, your conversation, the way you comb your hair –contrasting everything with Tim, and the way he used to do the same things.’

‘Just as I’ve done with every woman I’ve spent time with since I met you.’

‘And now?’

‘Now?’ He looked at her in confusion.

‘Have we succeeded in finally laying this ghost from your past to rest?’

He left the bed and pulled on his shirt. ‘It was a comforting ghost. It gave me something to cling to, something to hope for. A reason to go on when I felt low.’

‘Go and see your Lyn, Trevor. She’ll give you a better reason. One made of flesh and blood, not wishful thinking.’

‘Where the hell have you been?’ Peter demanded when Trevor pulled up outside the Catholic hostel in Jubilee Street.

‘Checking out leads.’

‘You’ve lipstick on your face.’

Trevor looked in the rear view mirror of his car and rubbed his cheek. ‘Any sign of our man?’ he asked in an attempt to divert Peter’s attention.

‘None. Andrew and Chris are fed-up to the back teeth…’

‘Aren’t we all?’

‘Apparently not you. Which one did you lay?

The doctor or the nurse?’

Ignoring Peter’s question, Trevor left his car.

‘There has to be somewhere else we can search.’

‘Wherever the bastard is hiding would be a good start, but you tell me where that is. He could be in any bloody street in town. If he saw someone leave their home in an airport bus he could be holed up with all mod cons. Food, fridge, freezer, heating, television…’

‘Sooner or later he’s going to have to come out.’

‘For what?’ Peter demanded.

‘To vacate the place when the people come back.’ Trevor locked his car.

‘I suppose we could interview Sam’s guests.’

‘Again?’ Trevor made a face.

‘Let’s start with Tom Morris’s place for a change.’ Peter fell into step alongside Trevor as he crossed the street. ‘Tell Uncle Peter all. You make it up with Florence Nightingale, or not?’

Trevor filched a cigar from Peter’s top pocket.

‘Haven’t seen her.’

‘Then you’ve finally succeeded in bedding the delectable Daisy?’

‘Mind your own damn business.’ Trevor walked towards the council hostel.

‘She’s way out of your class,’ Peter needled him. ‘Women like her marry into money or their own kind. Tim Sherringham qualified on both counts. You haven’t the one and you certainly aren’t the other.’ He pulled a lighter out of his pocket and lit the cigar in Trevor’s mouth. ‘You’re even more of a bloody fool than I took you for. You’ve exchanged the domestic bliss every man dreams of for a quick roll in the hay.’

‘What I do is my own affair.’

‘Not when it affects your moods and I have to work with you. You shouldn’t be allowed out without a keeper. There’s no way this thing with Daisy can last. You’ve turned her into a goddess instead of a flesh and blood woman. Once the sex wears off, always supposing you can bring yourself to do anything carnal to her in the first place, there’ll be nothing left. Lyn Sullivan picked you up when you were in pieces, glued you back together and when she understandably buggered off because you failed to spare her ten minutes in as many days, you didn’t even bother to go after her.’

‘Damn it all! We’re in the middle of a case,’

Trevor shouted, furious with Peter for coming so close to the truth.

‘That’s the bloody trouble with us, Trevor.

We’re always in the middle of a fucking case.’

‘More pizza?’ Anna sat next to Adam on her bed, and looked at the television set flickering silently in the corner. They were waiting for the late evening news.

‘No, thanks.’ Adam wiped his hands on a paper napkin and leaned against the headboard. He kicked his feet up on to the bed. Despite the bath and shower afterwards, his legs were still grey with ingrained dirt. The clothes he’d stolen from the washing line were whirring around in the machine downstairs with a double dose of powder liberally laced with disinfectant. He felt that Anna would have pushed him in alongside them if it had been possible.

‘I couldn’t eat another bite.’ He dumped the last crust on his plate and looked around the bedroom. ‘I take back what I said about this place. This is quite civilised.’

‘If it is, the civilisation only extends as far as the bathroom and bedroom.’ Anna closed the pizza box, and carried it and the dirty plates downstairs.

She returned with two cans of cold lager. She handed one and a glass to Adam.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘We always used to drink out of the cans.’

‘I’ve grown up.’ She sat at the foot of the bed and faced him. ‘We have to talk. Do you know what I do for a living now?’

‘Let me guess. You’re a reporter?’

‘Try again.’

‘You were hanging around with the police last night.’

‘You were close enough to see us?’

‘Us? You’re with the police? Shit!’

‘I was fed-up with always being broke. Not all actors get as lucky as you.’

‘Lucky!’

‘You had your own series.’

‘Oh yes, I had it all, didn’t I?’ he countered bitterly. ‘Fame, fortune, a beautiful child, a sexy wife…’

‘Did you kill her?’ Anna interrupted. He stared at her through dark eyes flecked with gold. Eyes she remembered so well.

‘No, Anna,’ he spoke resolutely, telling her what she wanted to hear. ‘I didn’t kill Laura.’

‘The jury convicted you.’

‘Because someone set up the evidence to point my way. I was the fall guy.’

‘You had no alibi.’

‘I wasn’t anywhere near that cottage when it happened. I was in London, drunk and alone for most of the evening, in the flat. If I’d known I was going to need an alibi I’d have provided myself with one. Gone somewhere other than an off-licence where the assistant was more interested in the book he was reading than the customers he was serving.’

He smiled grimly. ‘Come on, Anna, give me credit for some intelligence. If I’d wanted to kill Laura I would have planned it better.’

She considered what he’d said. It made sense –

unless it was as the prosecution had successfully argued. A premeditated crime, made to look as though it was committed in a murderous moment of insanity. The doubt remained, gnawing at the back of her mind.

‘Laura was having an affair,’ he added.

‘I read the transcript of your trial. Who was he?’

‘I wish I knew. She taunted me with all the sordid details except his name.’

‘You must have had your suspicions. There was gossip about that game show host she worked with…’

He laughed mirthlessly. ‘Seb? I introduced him to his boyfriend.’

Anna forced herself to meet his gaze, hoping she still knew him well enough to tell if he was lying. ‘Did she start an affair in retaliation for your own exploits?’

‘How well you know me,’ he said acidly, ‘even after all these years.’

‘I do know that when we lived together, only one of us was faithful.’

‘I’ve never made a secret of the fact that I consider monogamy a swine of an institution to impose on a healthy male.’

‘This is one situation your naïve, boyish charm won’t get you out of, Adam. But then you always were too good-looking for your own good.’

‘Not any more,’ he retorted savagely.

‘So you were both having affairs,’ she attempted to draw the full story from him.

‘Yes. But you have no idea what it was like after I started filming that series. It all came so quickly, so easily. One minute I was broke, living with Laura and the baby in a grotty rented flat, the next I had everything I’d ever dreamed of and more.

Champagne, caviar, vintage cognac, women throwing themselves at me wherever I went. I won’t deny I loved every minute of it, but then there was Laura,’ he looked into her eyes. ‘I should never have left you, Anna.’

His reply grated on her, like a speech from a bad soap opera. ‘I was an actress too, Adam. I can see through a hollow performance.’

‘The bottom line. After my career took off it went bad. Very bad. The only thing we had in common was the desire to torment one another, and Hannah.’

‘Your daughter.’

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Yes.’

‘How is she?’

For the first time Anna sensed real anguish.

‘Remarkably sane and well-adjusted considering what she’s been through. Blanche told us that she still talks about you. She saw you watching her in the playground.’

‘I tried to keep out of sight, but one of the kids spotted me.’

‘They thought you were a dirty old man.’

‘That’s understandable given what I was wearing.’

‘How did you escape from prison?’

‘You have no idea what it’s like in there…’

‘I have every idea,’ she said, irritated by his self-pity. ‘I’ve toured enough of them.’

‘You’ve walked down the corridors. Seen the spy holes the warders use to watch every move the prisoners make. You have no dignity – no privacy. I couldn’t piss without someone watching me, Anna.

Can you imagine what that’s like? Or how the cells reek after hundreds of men are locked up for hours on end like animals.’

‘I told you I’ve been in them.’

‘For a couple of hours,’ he sneered. ‘But all the time you breathed in the stink of sweat and urine, you knew that, any time you wanted, you could go outside into clean air. It’s not the same, Anna. A tour can’t tell you what it’s like to be locked up for hours, days, weeks on end, with only a cellmate to talk to. A cellmate you can’t even choose. And, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, you have to put up with an endless parade of shrinks trying to get inside your head.’

‘Who helped you escape?’

‘I don’t know.’ He left the bed and walked to the curtained window. ‘Do you have a cigarette?’

‘I don’t smoke. You must have seen someone unlock your cell door?’

He opened his can of beer. ‘One night after lock-up, not quite a year into my sentence, a warder came and took me out of my cell. I asked him where we were going, and he said solitary. I asked him what I’d done, and he said the governor would explain in the morning. There wasn’t a morning.

Not one that I can remember, and crazy as that sounds, I swear it’s God’s own truth.’

‘So one of the warders let you out? Who was he?’

‘I don’t remember a name. He was just one of the screws. I looked at my watch; it was early in the morning. One-two o’clock, somewhere around that time.’

‘How long were you in solitary?’

‘I’m not sure. A doctor came to see me just after the screw left. At least I think he was a doctor.

He was wearing a white coat.’

‘The prison doctor?’

‘If he was, I hadn’t seen him before. He reminded me that I’d volunteered to take part in a research programme and asked if I’d had second thoughts. I told him I hadn’t.’

‘What kind of research programme?’

‘Medical. Colds, drug testing, that sort of thing.

One of the old lags suggested I volunteer. He said it would gain me brownie points with the screws, and better and extra food. I thought ‘why not?’ I had nothing else to do with my time.’