Flawed (17 page)

‘So what do we do?’ he asked. ‘Go and see him again? Invite him to come and see us? Send a Black Maria?’

‘I'm an old-fashioned girl at heart, Charlie,’ beamed Alix Hyde. ‘Let's do it the old-fashioned way. Go to his house and arrest him on suspicion. If you can find a black car you can take it.’

Terry Walsh was a self-made man. All he inherited from his father – or at least, the man his mother said was his father -was brown eyes and the kind of dense, curly hair that never falls out and may not even go grey. Even his name came from the distaff side. He started with nothing but a quick wit and a flexible approach to the law, and now in his fiftieth year was a very wealthy man. It would be nice to be able to report that his ill-gotten gains hadn't made him happy, but in fact they had.

And like self-made men the world over, he had the security of knowing that what he'd done once he could do again. If he lost it all, he wouldn't stay broke for long. This is the difference between self-made men – and women – and their children. It's not, as is commonly supposed, that brains skip a generation. It's that being born with a silver spoon in your mouth leaves little incentive to fight for what you want. Hunger is the best motivation in the world.

In consequence, Terry Walsh was not going to be easy to intimidate. He knew, and Hyde knew, that even if she succeeded beyond her wildest dreams, the worst she could do to him was not enough to destroy him. He could do prison time if he had to. He could lose everything he'd acquired. Some time, and probably sooner than anyone expected, he'd be back.

So there was no fear in his eyes, even deep in his eyes where
anyone other than a police officer would have been too polite to look, as he and Hyde regarded one another across the formica table-top in Interview Room 1 at Battle Alley Police Station. There was anger. Not rage, because his control was absolute, because now more than ever it was important to think clearly and see the situation undistorted by the lightning flashes of fury and the red fog of hate. But anger nonetheless. In another man you might almost have described it as righteous anger: that aura of quiet outrage surrounding him like the God-light in a medieval painting. He wasn't here to help the police with their inquiries. He was here to put them straight.

Alix Hyde was enjoying herself. She was an experienced detective and a realist: she hadn't got Walsh's head on her wall yet but she had got some of her buckshot into his backside. Right here and now, he was stinging and she was holding the smoking gun, and it felt good.

She gave him a friendly smile. ‘He must be a popular man, this brief of yours. You're sure you don't want to start without him?’

Walsh's eyes were frosty. ‘He
is
popular. Because he's good at what he does. He was in court when he got the message.’ Now he smiled, coldly. ‘Knocking holes in what some detective inspector fondly believed was a watertight case.’

Hyde chuckled. ‘It happens. Once or twice. More than that, given a top-class brief. It doesn't upset me as much as it used to. I just wait. Sooner or later the water stays in the bucket.’

There were footsteps in the corridor and Charlie Voss opened the door. ‘Mr Walsh's solicitor, ma'am.’

They hadn't met. Voss performed introductions. ‘Detective
Inspector Hyde of the Serious Organised Crime Agency: Mr Adam Selkirk.’

Hyde waved the big man to the seat beside his client. ‘Good day in court?’ she asked pleasantly.

He shrugged negligently. ‘Some you win, some you lose.’

Hyde looked at Walsh and her smile was positively sunny. ‘A good day for justice, then.’

He was taking possession of the table in front of him by the simple expedient of unpacking his briefcase onto it. He looked up briefly. ‘Indeed, Inspector. Today I won.’

Hyde turned the tape on, told it who was present and what they were doing there, and began the interview.

She and Voss had discussed strategy before they went for Walsh. There was, they agreed, no point laying carefully crafted snares in the hope that he'd stumble into one. He wouldn't be tricked into saying the wrong thing, and he wouldn't be panicked. There was nothing to be lost and valuable time to be gained by laying their cards on the table and letting Walsh worry how to respond.

As expected, the immediate response was a blanket denial. Mr Walsh had never met Achille Bellow. Yes, he was vaguely aware who he was. Yes, he remembered the media coverage at the time of his murder. But Mr Walsh was not then, nor at any time prior to that, either a business associate or a personal acquaintance of Mr Bellow. He had never visited Mr Bellow at his home in Marseilles, nor had Mr Bellow ever joined him for a jolly weekend in Dimmock.

‘So if someone said they'd seen you together, they'd be lying?’

‘Probably not,’ said Walsh calmly. ‘Probably, they'd just be mistaken.’

Hyde considered that. ‘It wouldn't be an easy mistake to make. You're a familiar face in this part of the world. And while Achille Bellow wasn't exactly a household name in Dimmock, in his own way he was famous too. Particularly after he died. You still reckon it would be a case of mistaken identity if someone thought they'd seen you together?’

Walsh remained untroubled. ‘You know better than I do, Inspector, eyewitness testimony is about the least reliable evidence you deal with. Honest upright citizens with no axe to grind make mistakes like that every day – say they've seen someone or something that they haven't. The mere fact that Beulah's face was all over the news…’

‘Bellow,’ Hyde corrected him quietly. ‘Achille Bellow.’ She knew it wasn't a slip of the tongue.

‘Bellow,’ agreed Walsh. ‘The notorious Turkish trafficker, who met a richly deserved end on a French beach and whose face was immediately beamed into every household in Europe in celebration. Every news bulletin, every newspaper. You could just about guarantee that, after that, some local rube was going to think he'd seen him. Ask Interpol. I bet they had reported sightings of him all over the continent.’

She already had, and they had. But the last one that stood up was that one in the south of France on June 20
^th
. She nodded a rueful acknowledgement. ‘Of course that happens. People think they're telling you what they saw, but with the best will in the world they can be wrong. Always we look for corroboration. Some kind of physical evidence. Or a second witness. Or – hey, we can hope! – a third. Or fourth, or fifth.’

For just about as long as a hiatus can be made to stretch, the little room was silent. Voss counted the slow seconds
crawling by. He watched Terry Walsh, waiting for the careful blankness in his eyes to turn to comprehension. To an understanding that Hyde wasn't bluffing. That he'd finally rolled the dice and lost.

Then the two'men across the table turned to one another and continued the conversation as if they were alone.

‘Well, there can't be any physical evidence,’ said Walsh with certainty. ‘You can't have physical evidence of something that never happened.’

‘So they've got another witness,’ said Selkirk.

‘Sounds a bit like it,’ said Walsh. ‘Oh, hang on… They're not counting Susan again, are they?’

For a moment both men looked at Hyde. Then they resumed their private discussion. ‘No,’ said Selkirk. ‘Not after everything that's happened. Nobody's
that
dim.’

‘I don't know,’ said Walsh, grimacing. ‘People get an idea in their heads, and nothing'll do but they try to prove it right however much the evidence is against them. I know you can't trust a word Susan says, and you know that, but Detective Inspector Hyde's new in these parts. Maybe she fell for it.’

‘She must have checked the file.’

Walsh shrugged. ‘Maybe she didn't.’

They pivoted again. Adam Selkirk said, as if explaining to a child, ‘Susan Weekes's allegations against my client have been thoroughly investigated and discredited. I hope you have something more serious than that to put to Mr Walsh.’

Hyde was too experienced an officer to let the pantomime unsettle her. ‘Yes, I know about the history between Ms Weekes and Mr Walsh. Mr Walsh himself was kind enough to fill me in. So naturally I'm treating anything she tells me with
caution. Looking for corroboration. From the sort of witness who
would
stand up in court.’

‘And did you find one?’

‘No,’ she admitted ruefully. Then she smiled. ‘I found four.’

Selkirk gave her the satisfaction of a startled blink. Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't that. Fielding four witnesses is a bit like turning up at Balaclava with a Trident missile: a touch of overkill. ‘Very well, Inspector. You'd better tell us what it is you think you can prove so we can show you that you're wrong.’

Voss kept watching Walsh as Hyde spelt it out. The man's expression didn't flicker. Not by so much as a twitching eyelid did he indicate either that he feared himself cornered or that he had an answer to the charge. He waited patiently, giving nothing away, until she finished.

Then he turned to Selkirk again. ‘Why's that date ringing a bell with me?’

‘June 24
^th
?’

‘Yes. It means something to me.’

‘Good,’ said Selkirk. ‘I hope it means you were in another part of the country, and twenty total strangers can vouch for the fact.’

Walsh's eyes were merry. ‘No, I was definitely on the boat that weekend. And I definitely had a guest aboard. But it wasn't some Balkan brigand. You
know
who it was.’

Selkirk's eyes widened. ‘Was that…?’

‘Yes,’ beamed Terry Walsh. ‘Let's by all means check the diaries, but I'm pretty sure. I had to re-arrange a meeting.’

A slow smile was spreading across Selkirk's heavy features. ‘Well, this is a little awkward. This isn't really why I came.’

Hyde was running out of patience. Her gaze, flicking between the two men opposite, was developing an edge. ‘Any time you're ready you can tell me about the watertight alibi you've got for the last weekend in June.’

Now Selkirk was actually chuckling, a low rumble in the base of his throat. ‘I don't know about watertight. I seem to remember getting quite damp on a number of occasions. Mr Walsh did indeed have a guest aboard his yacht that weekend, Detective Inspector Hyde. But it wasn't Achille Bellow. It was me.’

‘There's a reason they call that man the Teflon Cockney,’ said Voss tiredly, when they had the interview room to themselves. ‘Nothing sticks to him. I don't get it. What went wrong? All those people couldn't have been lying!’

‘Of course they weren't lying,’ said Alix Hyde savagely. ‘Walsh was lying, and his pet brief was lying. Everyone else was telling the truth.’

Voss shrugged. ‘Not according to Selkirk's diary.’ The solicitor's secretary had brought it down to Battle Alley inside fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes that Terry Walsh had spent regarding the detectives with unbearable smugness. ‘It looked genuine. There were no obvious alterations. The same sort of pen was used to make contemporaneous entries.’ If he'd said that to Deacon the Superintendent would have hit him for being clever.

‘Jesus, Charlie,’ said Hyde disgustedly, ‘get it into your head – these people aren't amateurs. Terry Walsh is making a lot of money. He no doubt pays a lot of money to Selkirk to keep him out of places with barred windows. And no doubt Selkirk pays his secretary a fair bit of money to back up everything he says and produce persuasive paperwork. It
all
comes down to money. That's the problem you've had nailing this bastard before. You kept thinking of him as a jumped-up blagger. We
need to think of him as an international businessman.’

‘They forged the diary?’ said Voss doubtfully.
Sailing with Terry,
it had said for Saturday June 24r d to Monday the 26th.
Waterproofs, sea-sickness pills, Archbold.
‘But – how would they know what to write? What dates we'd be interested in? I don't think the secretary could have forged it and brought it here in fifteen minutes.’

Hyde shook her head. ‘She didn't have to. She did it at the time, using the same pen that she used for everything else. Maybe she didn't know it was a lie. Selkirk told her to put it in the diary and she put it in the diary. And the reason Selkirk wanted it there,’ she went on, anticipating his next question, ‘is that Walsh needed to know he had an alibi if anyone ever asked who was on his boat that weekend. See? Businesslike. It might never have been a problem. But an entry in Selkirk's diary made sure it would never be a problem.’

Voss was still coming to terms with the implications. ‘You're saying Selkirk's bent.’

‘Yes,
Charlie,’ said Hyde in exasperation. ‘That's exactly what I'm saying. That Terry Walsh bought himself a bent brief. Don't look so shocked. You know these things happen. You just didn't think they happened in Dimmock. But anywhere Walsh is, that's a crime nexus. You people have got to up your game. You've been training for Accrington Stanley. But you're playing Chelsea.’

‘So that's it? His solicitor lies for him and Walsh walks? In spite of everything we've got on him?’

‘For now he walks,’ said Hyde, tight-lipped. ‘But only for now. That's a bent alibi and we know it. And we'll break it.’

*  *  *

When Daniel asked to see him first thing on Friday morning, Des Chalmers thought that his new job hadn't worked out and he was ready to return to teaching. The Principal was delighted. The newest recruit to the maths department wore Batman socks and told jokes where the punchline was a formula.

‘The answer's yes,’ he said before Daniel had even got in through his door.

‘Oh. Good,’ said Daniel, taken aback. ‘What was the question?’

Chalmers squinted at him. ‘You are here to ask for your job back, aren't you?’

‘No. Sorry, Des,’ he said, and meant it. ‘You know I'd rather work here. But right now…’ He gave an apologetic little shrug.

‘Yeah. I know,’ said Chalmers. ‘Just wishful thinking. So what can I do for you?’

‘It's a bit delicate,’ admitted Daniel. ‘And I'd ask you to treat it in confidence except that a moment may come when you couldn't and I wouldn't want you to.’

‘OK,’ said Chalmers carefully, ‘then let's say I'll use my discretion. What's happened?’