Murder... Now and Then (50 page)

‘No, not me! I know him. He slapped her, for God's sake! He didn't punch her, or kick her. He slapped her, when he was ablaze with anger at what she had done to him. Because that had to be the ultimate in violence towards a woman as far as Max was concerned. Of course he didn't murder Valerie!'

‘Of course not,' said Lloyd again.

‘Your interest in politics didn't last, Dr Rule,' said the inspector, looking up from the notes she was taking of the interview, her brown eyes looking frankly into his.

‘No.'

‘When you went out – on the knocker – is that the expression?' she asked.

‘Doorstepping, sometimes,' said Charles. ‘ Probably not back then. Canvassing. Campaigning, I call it.'

‘Do you?' said Lloyd. ‘I call it murder, Dr Rule.'

Right. Keep cool. They have no proof. They don't have a shred of evidence. ‘ I'm afraid I don't follow,' he said.

This was the first time he had ever been in a police interview room. Mean little places, with notices about AIDS and your rights. A tattered copy of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act guidelines hung from a drawing pin on the wall. He had been told he could read it at any time.

‘Let me explain,' said Lloyd. ‘You became a campaigner for your friend, the candidate. You got yourself on to the team that was doing the road where the Scotts lived. You told the others not to bother calling on the Scotts – they were Labour voters, so it would be a waste of precious time. Right so far?'

Charles nodded. ‘It was quite usual – no point in trying to change hearts and minds that are committed to another party.'

‘Quite. I understand that the Labour party didn't campaign there at all – solid Tory vote. Anyone who wasn't Tory would be voting for them anyway. No point in wasting time. So the Conservatives had a clear field – just urging the faithful to vote in a town where they believed they stood a chance.'

Charles indicated that that was what he had just told him, with an inclination of his head.

‘But a second team went to the same street,' Lloyd said. ‘ Hot on your heels.'

‘Yes. Some sort of cock-up.'

‘Possibly caused by your switching your team from one area to the other?'

Think. Think. This has to be guesswork.

‘Did you, Dr Rule?' asked the inspector.

He had made it perfectly dear to the tool in the office that they were swapping areas with the other team. But the team originally designated had come huffing and puffing round behind them. In a way, that would work to his advantage now.

‘Did you switch your team, Dr Rule?' she asked again.

‘Yes. I wanted to … I hoped I would get the chance to speak to Valerie.'

She gave him an old-fashioned look. ‘You and her husband were best friends,' she said. ‘You could have spoken to her any time at all.'

‘I … I didn't want to go there specially about Gerry. Valerie and I weren't on the sort of terms that meant we called in on one another, and I didn't want Valerie to think that I regarded the affair as that important. The only reason Max didn't bed Gerry sooner was that there was ninety miles between them – girls left me in droves to go with Max. I was used to it, to be perfectly honest – and so was Valerie. She was making a ridiculous fuss about nothing. So I thought if I could … just be there on some other pretext, she would realize how unimportant the whole episode was.'

‘Are you saying that you didn't mind your wife having an affair with your best friend?' asked Lloyd.

‘I didn't know it was happening, until Valerie told me.' Charles ran his hand down his face, and tried to explain. ‘But when she did, I knew it would have meant nothing at all to Max. He had slept with Gerry just as he'd slept with countless women before her. Valerie was saying that he was in love with Gerry, but that was nonsense.' He had been embarrassed, annoyed. No more. ‘And … we had just been told that the chances of my fathering a child were extremely slight,' he said. ‘Gerry was shattered – she was immediately trying to make me ring adoption agencies, and clinics – she even talked about artificial insemination with donor sperm! I told her I would countenance none of these things, and she was very upset. Vulnerable. Women turn to Max with their problems, and Max invariably turns that to his advantage.'

‘And that made it all right?' asked the inspector, genuinely puzzled.

‘No. Well, yes – yes, in a way. Because I think all that really happened was that Gerry hoped that Max would give her a baby, and that I would never know it wasn't mine. Because there was this infinitesimal chance.' He unconsciously indicated just how infinitesimal with his thumb and forefinger. ‘I told Valerie that. Max was just a means to an end. And it didn't even work.'

‘So you did go to see Mrs Scott?'

‘Yes. I told the others not to bother, and when we moved on to the next street, I went back to call on Valerie, as though I was just canvassing her. And I told her that she had nothing to worry about. It was over – I knew it was, as soon as she told me that it had been going on in the surgery. Gerry had been staying late after surgery to sort out some system for periodical checks on blood pressure and weight – until she wasn't any more. He had obviously stopped seeing her. I told Valerie that too, but the woman was mad with jealousy. Max had moved to Stansfield to be with Gerry, according to her. I told her that he'd moved away from the girl who worked for him in London, but she just laughed, and said that Max didn't go in for teenage girls.'

‘When did it turn violent, Dr Rule?' asked Lloyd.

‘It didn't. I persuaded her not to make a complaint about Gerry, and I left.'

Lloyd's eyebrows shot up. ‘How?' he asked. ‘According to you, she was mad with jealousy, wouldn't believe you that the affair was over, wouldn't believe you about Catherine … How did you persuade her, Dr Rule?'

‘I just kept going until I did. If you check, you'll find that she was alive and well when the second lot of canvassers went round at five forty-five.' God bless the cock-up.

Lloyd shook his head. ‘ Max Scott left the office at five thirty, and went home. He had a brief but voluble row with his wife which a couple of your fellow campaigners heard – they pointed out that they would have been unlikely to call on them anyway. He didn't leave until after the campaigners had moved on. So you didn't call on Valerie until after
he
had left, obviously.'

Charles frowned. ‘No,' he said. ‘I don't think that anything I've said contradicts that.'

‘And you persuaded her to give up this ridiculous notion, and left her alive and well, and resigned to the situation?'

Charles wanted a cigarette. He hadn't smoked for twenty years, and he wanted a cigarette. He had dedicated his career to healthy living, and now he wanted nothing more than to draw nicotine and tar into his lungs, and poison himself.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘You can check – I've just told you.'

‘The next team came round almost immediately after Max Scott had left the house,' said Lloyd. ‘Naturally, they discovered their mistake as soon as the householders told them, and left straight away – no point in wasting time on people who had already been doorstepped. Except one, who spoke to Mrs Scott.'

‘I – I'm sorry. What has this to do with me?'

‘You had ensured that no one called at the Scott house from your team – so it must have been a bit of a shock when Valerie Scott told you she had already had one of your lot round.'

How did they know that? That was precisely what she had said, and then walked away, back into the sitting room, leaving him standing there. Then she'd come back, and said that he had better come in, because they had things to discuss.

‘No other campaigner from any party standing in Stansfield was in that street at that time on election day,' said Lloyd. ‘But someone called on Mrs Scott, sporting a blue rosette, some time after six o'clock. It was the second such person she had seen. The first was the lady from the second, erroneous team. And the second was you, Dr Rule.'

Charles stared at them. ‘No. No – someone posing as a campaigner, perhaps—'

‘You. You've just told us it was you. If not then, she would have been even more cross – and would have pointed out that this person was the third such that she had seen. And she would not have immediately terminated her phone call in order to speak to him. We have a witness, Dr Rule. The person who was on the phone to Mrs Scott that day has made a statement.'

Charles didn't speak. He had known, from the moment Valerie had telephoned him about Max and Gerry, that she would ruin everything unless he stopped her. If he could have stopped her any other way, he would have; he had tried. But she had been determined to bring Gerry down, and he couldn't have allowed that to happen. Everything would have gone; everything he and Gerry had worked so hard for, everything, they had saved for, all their dreams.

All his dreams. For they had never been Gerry's dreams, he knew that now. And yes, he had killed Valerie Scott for them, but he had killed Gerry too. No. Not Gerry. Geraldine. He had killed Geraldine a long, long time ago, and she had been the real victim of his dreams. Valerie Scott had merely been a threat to them that he had removed, and now, at last, he had been found out. In a way, it was a relief.

‘She … she was going to destroy everything before it even got started,' he said.

‘So you destroyed her?'

‘The clinic. I'd dreamed about it. I'd worked so hard for it. It was beginning to happen. We were just about to buy the private practice – I was building up the private patient lists. I'd bought the farmhouse, and the land for the clinic. Mark Callender was my friend, and he might be going to be our MP! She was going to ruin all that. Sex in the surgery, for God's sake! You
know
what the tabloids are like about these cases! And she was going to do it – make no mistake, she was going to do it!'

Lloyd just looked back at him. The inspector was writing everything down.

‘I told her! I said even if Max was in love with Gerry, which he wasn't, making a complaint about her wasn't going to cure him of it! And she said she didn't pay her NHS subscriptions to provide facilities for doctors to have sex with the patients, and she meant it – she was going to do it! I tried to reason with her, I swear to you, I tried! She wouldn't see reason, she – I … I found my hands round her throat … I just …' He bowed his head. ‘I didn't go there to murder her,' he said.

‘It looks planned to me,' said Lloyd.

‘It … it wasn't. It was a last resort. I … didn't go there to do that but I did it because there was no other way.' He looked up. ‘But I never, never, meant Max to be suspected. That was dreadful. I put him through all that – I had to prescribe tranquillizers and sleeping pills for Max, of all people. And people who didn't know him thought he'd done it. Zelda thought he had – she had only known him a few months, or she would have known that he couldn't … she always said she believed him, but she didn't. That's why she wouldn't promote him. And it was all my fault. All my fault. I tried … I tried to put that right, at least.'

Lloyd stood up. ‘Charles Rule, I am arresting you for the murder of Valerie Anne Scott on the …'

Yes, yes, yes. He'd been waiting for that. For almost thirteen years.

Catherine looked round the interview room. She was under arrest. That was different from last time. But she was in an interview room, waiting to be interviewed. Again.

She came in then, and set up the recorder. ‘This interview is being tape-recorded,' she said, as she opened new tapes and put them in. ‘Interview with Catherine Elizabeth Scott,' she said, then her name, and the date. ‘Interview commences …' She glanced at the big clock with the sweep second-hand.

That had been there last time, Catherine realized; it had a V-shaped scratch on the plastic. She must be in the same interview room.

‘Ten twelve a.m. on Saturday, 4th April.' She looked across the table at Catherine. ‘ Mrs Scott, you understand that you are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in evidence. We wish to put questions to you concerning the murder of Victor Holyoak on Wednesday, 1st April …'

A lot of things had changed. They hadn't taped the interviews then. The caution was different. There had been a silent uniformed policewoman, there to protect the male detective against any allegations, but there hadn't been a woman actually asking the questions. But that clock was the same, with its second-hand crawling round while they had asked her question after question.

The inspector looked up from her notebook. ‘Mrs Scott,' she said, ‘I have to put some questions to you about the events of Wednesday night which you may find distressing. Is there someone – other than your husband – whom you would like to have present? You may also have a solicitor present if you wish.'

‘No,' said Catherine. ‘ No.'

‘You told me on Thursday morning that you had spent the night in your car, in a lay-by, and that you had come directly to Holyoak's as soon as the gates opened, in order to wait for your husband.' She looked at Catherine, her face serious, a little sad.

‘That wasn't true, was it?' she said. ‘No vehicle entered Holyoak's gate before the cleaners arrived at six in the morning. And I now know that your car didn't enter at any time on Thursday, up to the time that you spoke to me. Because it had never left the day before. You had never left. Had you?'

‘No,' said Catherine. ‘Charles and Geraldine took me up to the penthouse after I fainted. I went down to the car park, hid the car behind the stair wall, and went back up.'

‘You wanted people to believe you had left?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘ I want to make a statement.' They had agreed, she and Max.