The Night Book (32 page)

There was a knock at the door. The desk sergeant came in and addressed the DI.

‘Miss Kidd’s lawyer’s arrived, sir. As per instructions I’ve kept him well away from his client and had him taken up to your office.’

‘Thanks, Sergeant. I’ll be there directly.’

Mark turned to his superior and grinned.

‘I’m going to enjoy this.’

‘Good morning, Mr Probus. Thank you for waiting.’

‘DI Thompson. I would like to see my client. Immediately.’

The policeman smiled. ‘Certainly. We shall see Miss Kidd together. Right away.’

‘No.’ Probus was scowling. ‘I need to meet with her in conclave first. This . . . this missing watch you inform me has now materialised . . . I must discuss—’

DI Thompson rose.

‘You won’t say anything about it to her, at least not until I have done so, in your presence. Otherwise you would be seriously compromising this inquiry and interfering in the course
of justice. I must present this matter to your client without any prior notice from you. Do I make myself plain?’ You pompous, fat bastard, he managed to avoid finishing.

Probus blustered. ‘But I should inform her of this fresh information. I must—’

The detective interrupted him again, with finality. ‘You must do nothing of the kind. You cannot forewarn your client of our findings, which have been disclosed to you in good faith, Mr
Probus. You can only advise her
post eventum.
I have taken legal advice on the point and I assure you I am correct. As I think you actually know.’

The lawyer subsided. It was no good.

‘Very well,’ he said heavily. ‘Then let us proceed, Inspector.’

Ten minutes later Meriel was relieved to see her solicitor entering the interview room behind DI Thompson and a younger detective, who was carrying a small black briefcase. She
was certain Probus would have her out of here very shortly. She’d woken up even more convinced that her arrest and detention was a crude attempt to throw her off balance. And it hadn’t
worked.

She was slightly disconcerted, however, when Probus somehow contrived to avoid meeting her eye as he settled himself on the chair beside hers, and more so when, without a word, the younger
policeman switched on the double-cassette tape recorder on the table between them. The red ‘record’ light glowed.

What was going on?

The senior policeman cleared his throat.

‘I am DI Mark Thompson, and I’m accompanied by DC Gerald Watkins. We are interviewing Miss Meriel Kidd in the presence of her solicitor, Mr Maxwell Probus, on Tuesday the
thirty-first of August, nineteen seventy-six, at Cumbria Police headquarters.’

He paused for a moment.

‘Miss Kidd.’

‘Inspector?’

‘As you know, we have been conducting a search of your house and your motorboat. I have to tell you that, apart from discovering a second copy of your manuscript at Cathedral Crag, we have
found nothing of any significance. Our apparent recovery of evidence on the boat yesterday and your subsequent detention was a grave error, and I wish to wholeheartedly apologise for it.’

Meriel smiled.
That’s
why they were recording this. They’d clearly had second thoughts about the legality of using such obvious scare tactics on her. Probus had them on the
run. Now they wanted to demonstrate they’d apologised and backed off at the earliest opportunity. It might limit any subsequent award against them for damages.

‘Thank you, Mr Thompson. I note your apology. I assume I am now free to leave?’

Probus coughed. ‘Dear lady . . .’

She turned to him. ‘Mr Probus?’

Her lawyer inclined his head to the detective. ‘There is a little more, I am afraid.’

Meriel faced the DI. ‘Please come to the point, Inspector. I want to go home.’

Thompson turned to his junior.

‘DC Watkins? If you please.’

The younger man snapped open the clasps of his briefcase and took out a small, opaque plastic evidence bag. He handed it to his DI, who folded it into his palm.

‘Miss Kidd.’ Thompson fixed Meriel with a calm, steady gaze. ‘You have stated to both the coroner and myself, and to my witness, that on the day your husband drowned you placed
his wristwatch in your handbag and brought it home with you. And that, subsequently, you mislaid it.’

Meriel’s eyes slowly widened and she swallowed twice before replying. Her voice, when it came, was much quieter than before.

‘Yes, that’s right.’

The DI deftly unsealed the evidence bag and shook its contents onto the cheap Formica table.

Cameron Bruton’s gold Rolex skidded across the surface.

‘Do you recognise this watch?’

Meriel stared at it. The second hand was still ticking, still moving, wagging at her like an admonishing finger.

She nodded, almost imperceptibly.

‘Note for the record that Miss Kidd is nodding her head in the affirmative. Please speak your response aloud, Miss Kidd. Do you recognise this watch?’

‘Yes.’

‘Whose is it?’

Meriel’s entire body seemed to be shrinking in on itself. She had wrapped her arms around her sides and her head and neck were beginning to settle into her shoulders.

‘Whose is it, Meriel?’

It was the first time he had called her by her Christian name, and it was a psychologically calculated move.

‘Cameron’s,’ she whispered at last.

‘Cameron Bruton, your late husband.’

‘Yes.’

‘Meriel, can you explain to me why my officers were able to recover this watch from the bottom of Ullswater less than two hours ago, beneath the exact spot where your husband
drowned?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Speak up, please, Meriel. I can’t hear you.’

‘NO. I can’t explain. I thought I’d taken it home with me.’

‘But you didn’t, did you, Meriel? You can’t have done. Because it’s been lying at the bottom of the lake all this time.’

‘If you say so.’

DI Thompson almost felt sorry for the woman who was now hunched in the chair opposite. But not that sorry. He moved in for the kill.

‘The thing is, you’ve been lying to everyone, haven’t you, Meriel? You lied to the coroner. You lied to your boyfriend. You lied to me, yesterday. Always the same lie. That
you’d put this watch into your handbag and taken it home. You never once displayed the slightest doubt about the matter; not once. You never said you
thought
you’d put it in
your handbag, or that
maybe
you’d done something else with it. Yesterday, here at the station, you even told me how grateful you would be if my officers found it during their search
of your home. It’s all been one great big lie, hasn’t it, Meriel?’

She said nothing.

Mark Thompson was an experienced interrogator and he knew the value of suddenly changing tone and body language. He did so now, pushing his chair back with both legs and putting his hands behind
his head. He contrived almost to look bored.

‘Come on, Meriel. You’re in a right mess here, aren’t you? We can all see that, even Mr Probus there. Just look at his face. Your solicitor doesn’t appreciate being lied
to, either.

‘So I suggest you start straightening things out by telling the truth for once. I’ve got all day. In fact, I’ve got all week, if needed. Why don’t you begin by telling me
what
really
happened on the boat that afternoon?’

Meriel shook her head. ‘I have done,’ she said huskily. ‘I have told you the truth about it.’

The DI laughed quietly. ‘Meriel, you’ve been caught out telling whoppers. Surely you understand how that changes
everything
; puts all the other things you’ve told us
in a deeply questionable light? You’re going to have to do a lot better than this, I’m afraid.’

He paused. ‘All right. Let’s try an easy one. We all know now that your last sighting of this watch was NOT as you dropped it inside your handbag. Because that never happened. So
when
did
you last see it? And how did it get into the water?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t remember.’

‘Oh, I think you do. And your unwillingness to tell me about it speaks volumes. Can you imagine how this is going to come across to a jury, Meriel? All of it? Hmm?’

He let the question hang in the air, before continuing: ‘Well . . . perhaps I can help you to focus on your predicament a little more clearly. Let me summarise what a future jury would
have to consider.’

The DI began to tick off points one by one on his fingers.

‘
One
. Far from having the perfect marriage, as you boasted to all and sundry, you had a lousy one.

‘
Two
. You hated your husband so much that you wrote gruesome fantasies about killing him in the most foul ways imaginable. I’m an experienced police officer, Meriel, and I
can tell you they certainly took
my
breath away. I think it’s possible that one or two of the jurors might faint when these chapters are read out in court. That one about pouring
battery acid into Cameron’s eyes is triple-X.

‘
Three
. You embarked on an affair with a much younger man than your husband.

‘
Four
. On the
very afternoon
your husband drowned – indeed, only minutes before his death – you told him you were leaving him. Then—’

Probus interrupted. ‘That is an allegation made by someone who wasn’t even there, Inspector, and which my client vigorously denies. She—’

The DI walked through the lawyer’s words.

‘Come off it, Mr Probus, my witness is of excellent character and has no reason to lie. It’s your client who is the liar, as our discovery of the watch this morning proves beyond
doubt. Who do
you
think a jury will be more likely to believe?’

Probus was silent.

Mark turned back to Meriel.

‘
Five.
After telling your husband you intended to leave him that evening, the two of you had a fierce argument. You volunteered this fact to your lover afterwards, on a number of
occasions.

‘
Six.
Your husband discovered your secret, sordid diary. We know this because he made copies and hid them, to guard against you destroying the original when he told you what
he’d done. I believe the threats he made against you were specifically about the diary. I believe he warned you that if you left him, he’d make you pay. He’d reveal its existence
to the world. Your reputation and career would be destroyed. People would be revolted when they learned what you’d written.’

Meriel had not taken her eyes from the floor. The DI could see her left hand was shaking, and her right was balled into a tight fist.

Probus, who had gone very pale, leaned forward.

‘Inspector, my client is clearly distressed. I would like to request that we take a break at this juncture for her to recover her composure.’

And
I
would like you to stuff that request right up your arse, pal, Mark thought. But all he said was: ‘Request denied, Mr Probus. We’ll take a break when I decide, not
you.’

The detective got up from the chair and cocked one thigh on the table, a move which brought him several feet closer to Meriel.

‘And d’you know what, Meriel? We haven’t even got to point seven yet.’

Probus, still smarting from the put-down, unwisely asked: ‘Well then, why don’t you tell us what it is?’

DI Thompson glared at him.

‘Be quiet, Mr Probus. Keep your interventions relevant. And your irritation to yourself.’

Probus went from pale to puce in a moment, but managed to swallow back a reply.

‘Point seven,’ the detective resumed, ‘is the part about the watch. You see, not only have you consistently and provably lied through your teeth about that, Meriel, but then
there’s this curious business of you “forgetting” to mention that your husband asked you the time, just before he died. It’s nowhere in your original statement.’

Mark slowly and deliberately rapped the table three times with his knuckles.

‘I’d like you to look at me now, please, Meriel. This part’s important.’

She slowly lifted her gaze from the floor and stared at her accuser. Her expression was blank, unreadable.

‘Thank you. You see, Meriel, from the first moment I was assigned this case, I realised you were hiding something. Something very, very important. Your lies about your husband’s
watch, and your failure to mention him asking you the time . . . they’re inextricably connected, aren’t they? Last night I read the transcript of your evidence at the inquest and it was
absolutely clear to me that you were obfuscating on both points. And that was before we found the watch.’

The DI now held his silence, and Meriel’s gaze. It was almost half a minute before he spoke again.

‘I think it’s clear what happened. Your husband left his watch on deck when he went for his swim, as was his custom. I accept
that
part of your evidence at least, Meriel.
Because if he’d been wearing it, it would have still been on his wrist when his body was recovered from the lake.

‘When he called out to you from the water, you were seething over the threats he’d just made. You were very worried about them too, and you couldn’t think what to do. But
suddenly, you saw your opportunity. In fact, I believe that if Cameron Bruton hadn’t asked you the time that afternoon, he would be alive today.

‘You picked up the watch and you threw it at him. You knew it would sink at once and you knew all about the inherent dangers of the icy water that were just beneath your husband. You hoped
he’d go after it – it was a Rolex, after all – and he did. And when he hit the freezing layer, he began drowning, like so many others this summer.

‘And then I think you just watched him drown, Meriel. I don’t think you lifted a finger to help him. Not until it was too late.’

He leaned in towards her, until their faces were only inches apart.

‘Tell me that I’m wrong, Meriel Kidd. Look me in the eyes, and tell me I’m wrong.’

After a long, exhausted silence, DI Thompson slowly rose from the table and looked dispassionately at the lawyer.

‘I’ll offer her manslaughter. But I want a full confession and I want it by close of play. If it’s not forthcoming then your client will be charged with murder and we’ll
let the jury decide.’