Murder... Now and Then (39 page)

And if she was prepared to risk it so was he.

‘Victor Holyoak,' Judy said.

‘I said I wasn't answering any more questions.'

Judy smiled at him. ‘You said you'd never seen him before, Dave. But you had. You booked him for kerb-crawling in Leyford, thirteen years ago.'

‘You expect me to remember that?
And
recognize him after he's been stabbed to death?'

‘Do you expect me to believe this?' she countered, lifting up a copy of his statement. She waited for a moment then turned a page in her notebook. ‘Do you knock your wife and kids about Dave?' she asked pleasantly.

‘What sort of question's that?' he demanded.

‘Do you?' she repeated.

‘Of course I don't!' He had never laid a hand on Jackie or the kids.

‘But you hit Anna, didn't you? After she reported you?'

Bannister flushed a little. He should have known Anna would have told them that once she had started speaking at all. ‘ That little whore had it coming,' he said.

Judy nodded. ‘You wanted revenge,' she said. ‘ Is it true that Holyoak gave you a severe beating in return?'

If he didn't answer, it looked more like a motive for murder than if he did. He sighed. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘I passed out long before he'd finished with me.'

She looked at him, her brown eyes troubled by the thought of that. ‘Did you want revenge again?' she asked.

Bannister smiled. ‘If I'd gone after him with a knife he'd have had it off me and at my throat before I could blink,' he said. ‘ I just wanted compensation.'

She wrote that down. He smiled.

‘There I was,' he said, ‘ watching the early evening news. And I'm looking at little Annabel, dressed up to the nines, doing some high-powered job for a security company, shaking hands with a bloody cabinet minister. Then I see who she's working for. Dressed in his Armani suit – what did they say? He was one of the richest men in Europe?' He leant forward. ‘ You know where I was? I was in a high-rise flat which I'm going to be evicted from any day now. I couldn't keep my job because of what that bastard did to me.'

‘Did you leave the service on health grounds?' she asked.

‘No. Because I'd been offered a job with a security firm, and if I'd done that, they wouldn't have wanted to know. So I just left. But the security firm went bust. I haven't had a proper job since. Thanks to him. So I thought about that, and the more I thought about it, the less fair it seemed. So I came here, I went to that factory. But the jamboree was all over, and I went to the first pub I saw instead. and I met little Annabel again.'

‘And then what?'

‘I got her to tell me how to get in. She was pissed – she'd had a row with him. I thought he'd got some woman up there, and that was why she was so keen for me to call unannounced. She left, I waited until closing time, then I walked to the factory, got in the way she'd told me, and the rest you know.'

‘You weren't afraid to face him after what he'd done to you last time?'

‘He's respectable now,' said Bannister. ‘I didn't think he'd want to explain why he'd got scrambled ex-copper all over his carpet. And I thought he was with someone – he wouldn't do anything to me in front of a witness.'

‘What made you think he'd give you money? Did you think he might feel remorse for what he did to you?' Her brown eyes were amused now.

He didn't answer.

‘Anna said he could have put you in hospital,' she said. ‘How come he didn't? Why stop short? Why weren't you taken away in an ambulance, Dave?'

He smiled again. He had always known that Judy would get on. She was sharp. But he wasn't going to get done for aiding and abetting a criminal or being accessory to murder or any of the other things he had done that night.

‘I admit burgling the flat,' he said. ‘I admit failing to report a murder. Charge me, or let me go.'

She terminated the interview, and sealed the tapes. Then she looked at him.

‘Come on, Dave,' she said. ‘By my reckoning, you still owe me a favour. You had something on Holyoak, hadn't you? You thought you could get money for keeping your mouth shut about whatever he involved you in. Because he didn't give a damn about Annabel, did he? He wanted a policeman in his pocket, and if I knew why, I might find out who murdered him. It had something to do with Operation Kerbcrawl, didn't it?'

Well, well, he thought looking at the switched-off tape-recorder. She broke the rules sometimes, then. And she was half-way there with her guesswork. No tapes, so he could deny saying anything. No Holyoak, so no broken kneecaps. He did owe her a favour.

‘All I had to do was contact him once we were told we were going out on Operation Kerbcrawl. Then I had to watch for his Daimler – if I ever saw it, I had to make sure that I was the one who booked the driver or else.'

‘And did you see it?'

‘Eventually. I nearly broke my neck getting to him before anyone else. It looked like him, behind the wheel. I mean, the beard and the scar and everything.'

Her eyes had widened; there was no way she was going to believe what he was about to tell her, but she had asked, so he was telling.

‘But it wasn't him,' he continued. ‘ It was someone much younger. You could see that, close to. And it was a false scar – you could smell the spirit gum. That was why I had to be the one to book him. And then I realized that I knew who it was – it was a guy by the name of Wilkes. Raymond Arthur Wilkes. He was an actor, of sorts. He was always being done for gross indecency – he'd hang around the Gents looking for pick-ups. I booked him as Victor Holyoak, and my job was done.'

He knew it sounded crazy. It had seemed crazy at the time, and now, actually telling someone about it, it sounded worse than ever. He couldn't look at her. ‘You don't believe a word, do you?' he said.

‘Oh, but I do,' she said.

He looked up.

She smiled. ‘My DCI will be very anxious to talk to Raymond Arthur Wilkes,' she said.

Bannister looked bleakly at her. ‘That's just it,' he said. ‘He can't talk to him. Because two hours later we found him in his car with his brains blown out. They reckon it was suicide.'

‘What do you remember about it?' she asked.

‘Blood on the windscreen,' said Bannister.

He told her what little he knew. ‘If this comes to anything, you get me immunity from prosecution, or you're the one in trouble,' he said.

Judy nodded, and got up to go. Then she turned back. ‘Could it have been the shower, Dave?' she asked. ‘This noise you heard?'

He could hear it like a snatch of a song that you can't catch hold of. He could hear it but he couldn't put a name to it. It wasn't a shower.

‘No,' he said. ‘Sorry.'

‘Raymond Arthur Wilkes was a frequent visitor to the house of a businessman called Simon Tarrant,' said the fairly hostile voice on the other end of the line. ‘His car was seen driving away at speed the night Tarrant got shot. Then a few hours later Wilkes is found, having blown his brains out with the same gun that was used on Tarrant – what are we supposed to have overlooked, Chief Inspector?'

Lloyd sighed. ‘Did you carry out enquiries into Wilkes's death?' he asked.

‘No. He killed his boyfriend and he killed himself – we weren't looking for anyone else in connection with the incident,' he said, switching on an official accent.

‘Why did the inquest return an open verdict?'

‘The pathologist came out with some stuff about that not being how people normally shot themselves in cars,' said the voice. ‘They normally put the gun in their mouths, or whatever. He shot himself behind the ear. And he thought the radio had been turned up to mask the sound of the shot, and why would a suicide do that – that sort of thing.'

‘That didn't seem worth investigating to you, Chief Inspector?' asked Lloyd.

‘If suicides were normal, they wouldn't be shooting themselves in sodding cars at all, would they? And he wasn't normal in the first bloody place!'

‘So he wasn't worth an investigation?' asked Lloyd. ‘Is that it? Warwickshire were happy that they had their man, and you all knew that he hung about public lavatories, so it was easier just to put the file away and quietly forget about any doubts there were, is that it?'

‘Of course it wasn't worth it! He was a poofter who lost his rag with his boyfriend. He went out of his league, and didn't like it when he was shown the door. So he shot Tarrant and he shot himself. Or are you trying to say he was murdered?'

‘I'm saying you had better take another look at it,' said Lloyd. ‘I have reason to believe that on the night in question, Wilkes was impersonating one Victor Holyoak, and getting himself booked in that name by a police officer who was working for Victor Holyoak, and who recognized him.'

There was a silence, during which Lloyd shot a look at Judy. He was none too sanguine about how she had obtained the information about Raymond Arthur Wilkes, but at least he wasn't going mad.

He spoke again to the now blessedly silent chief inspector at the other end. ‘ Holyoak was on the list of known associates of Tarrant that the Warwickshire police would have interviewed, had Wilkes not conveniently turned up dead. I suspect that he would have produced the summons to prove that he was in Leyford rather than Warwickshire that night. But Holyoak's dead too, now, so I can't very well ask him.'

‘Well … wouldn't it be easier just to let sleeping dogs lie?'

Lloyd took a deep breath. ‘It would be easier,' he said. ‘ Just like it was easier to forget about Wilkes than to do any proper investigation of his death. But I have no intention of forgetting about it. A young man died, Chief Inspector. I think he died at Holyoak's hands, and I believe that sheer prejudice prevented the murder investigation which should have taken place at the time.'

He slammed the phone down and glared at Judy. This murder would stay forgotten if Bannister denied what he had told her. But then, he would never have told her at all if it hadn't been off the record.

‘That rather brings us back to Anna, doesn't it?' she said, after a moment.

Lloyd didn't see how. He put on his glasses to read the list that Holyoak's secretary had sent over of exactly who had keys to Holyoak's penthouse. The security was tight; the man had had no intention of being murdered in his bed, but that was exactly what had happened to him. The keys had to be obtained from the locksmith who had provided the locks; three keys to the ground-floor door, and two to the flat door itself had been provided.

‘She's the only other person involved in Operation Kerbcrawl,' Judy said. ‘Unless you killed him, because I know I didn't.'

He looked up, and she blurred. He moved his glasses down his nose, and she came into focus. ‘Why would she kill him?' he asked.

‘They had some sort of row – she's admitted that.'

‘Over her job, according to her. Over her affair with Scott, according to Tom Finch. Over another woman, according to you at one point. It could have nothing to do with Operation KC.'

Judy gave him a look. ‘Lloyd – why did he take her to Holland? Why did he buy her Porsches and jewellery and
objets d'art
that cost as much as I earn in a year? Why does she wear designer clothes and live in a luxury flat?'

Lloyd shrugged slightly. ‘Her services were worth it?' he suggested.

‘But if that's the case – why does she insist that she wasn't sleeping with him?'

That was easy. ‘Because whoever was sleeping with him seems to have stabbed him to death,' Lloyd said. ‘If she wasn't then she would be quite insistent wouldn't she?'

Judy sat back. ‘So – if she
was
, then she's top of the list. And if she
wasn't
– I come back to my original question. Why all the goodies?'

Lloyd took his glasses off. ‘You think she was blackmailing him?'

‘If she knew about this elaborate alibi, she certainly could have been.'

‘Then I'm back to
my
original question,' he said smugly, putting his glasses back on, and returning to the list of key-holders. ‘ Why would she kill the proverbial goose?' He smiled to himself as Judy failed to come up with an answer. ‘And I might just have found out who this mysterious other woman is,' he said.

Judy sat up, trying to read the list upside-down.

‘What sort of person's reputation would have to be protected?' he asked. ‘
Have
to be, as opposed to its being better that way?'

‘Don't know, give up.'

‘A doctor – her livelihood could depend on not getting caught in bed with the patients.'

‘Geraldine Rule?' said Judy, incredulously.

‘It says here that there were three copies made of the key to the outside door to the penthouse. Holyoak had one for each door, and so did Anna Worthing. But a third key to the downstairs door was made.' He looked up from the list. ‘For one Dr Rule,' he said.

Judy's eyebrows rose a little. ‘Freddie seems to think that it was as likely to be Dr Charles Rule as Dr Geraldine,' she said.

Lloyd smiled. ‘Dr G. S. Rule,' he said.

‘But no one went in by that door.'

‘She might not have had to,' Lloyd said. ‘ She was in the car with Scott and Zelda, but perhaps she didn't leave with them. Perhaps she went back up to see Holyoak.'

‘Isn't this just a bit shot-in-the-dark-ish?'

‘Why would she have a key?' Lloyd persisted.

‘I don't know – why didn't she have both keys, come to that?'

‘He didn't want her going in there when he wasn't there,' said Lloyd.

‘Then why give her a key at all?'