A Walk With the Dead (32 page)

Liz Duffy's mood changed again, and she slammed her hands down on the table.

‘I'm
not
ashamed,' she said. ‘I'm not! I'm not!'

‘Then why don't you tell us all about it?' Paniatowski challenged.

‘All right,' Duffy agreed. ‘I will.'

‘I should remind you again, at this point, that you have the right to have a lawyer present,' Paniatowski said.

‘Why would I need a lawyer?' Liz Duffy asked. ‘It's not as if I've done anything wrong.'

George Baxter would already have left Dunston, had it not been for the telephone call from the sergeant at the local police station, who had told him that an Inspector Grimes was already on his way to the prison, and would like to speak to him.

Grimes probably had some paperwork he wanted signing – because there was
always
paperwork that needed signing – Baxter thought, as he looked out of the window at the approaching police car. Still, that shouldn't take long – probably no more than five or ten minutes.

He was not expecting anything like a hero's send-off from Dunston Prison. Ever since the police had taken Chief Officer Jeffries away, all the other prison staff had acted as if he wasn't even there. But then, that sort of thing went with the job, and he wasn't about to let it get to him.

He wondered what sort of reception would be waiting for him when he got back to Whitebridge, and suspected that it wouldn't exactly be a warm one, either. Well, he couldn't, in all conscience, complain about that.

He'd been unfair to Jo, he told himself, and that was not just a recent occurrence, either – he had been unfair to her right from the start.

He had proposed to her because he knew she had wanted him to, and because – as things had stood between them at the time – he'd been getting all the comforts of being a married man, and she'd been getting none of the status of being a married woman. It had been the logical thing to do, the civilized thing to do – but it had been so wrong.

If only Monika had wanted him . . .

‘You can't go blaming Monika for your own mess,' he said aloud.

And that was quite true, but the fact remained if Monika had wanted him, he would never have courted Jo, and she would have been free to find a man without baggage – a man who could really appreciate her for the wonderful woman that she actually was.

He heard a knock on the office door, and looked up to see a uniformed inspector standing there.

Baxter smiled at the new arrival. ‘Inspector Grimes?' he asked.

‘That's right, sir,' the inspector said – though he did not return the smile.

‘So what can I do for you?' Baxter asked. ‘Is there something you want me to sign?'

Grimes shook his head. ‘No, sir, it's nothing like that.' He paused for a moment, then continued, ‘I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you, sir. Your wife's been in an accident.'

‘I followed Jill Harris from her aunt's wedding reception to her home, because I wanted to see what she was going to do next,' Liz Duffy told Paniatowski, as the rain continued to beat against the skylight. ‘I wanted to give her a second chance, you see.'

‘A second chance to do what?' Paniatowski asked.

‘You really are rather dense, aren't you?' asked Duffy, with a return to the arrogance she had displayed at the beginning of the interview. ‘If you ask me, it's a miracle you ever became a chief inspector.' She waved her hand through the air. ‘But then, I suppose, in a place like this, anyone can rise to the top.'

‘A second chance to do what?' Paniatowski repeated.

‘A second chance to prove to me that she was a decent girl, of course. But when she came out of the house again, she was wearing a rather tarty top – so I knew I'd been right all along.'

‘You followed her to the park?'

‘She should never have gone to the park,' Liz Duffy said, with sudden vehemence. ‘That was a big mistake.'

‘Tell me what happened in the park?'

Liz Duffy shrugged. ‘What's to tell? I persuaded her to step off the path. How I did it doesn't really matter, does it?'

‘No,' Paniatowski agreed, ‘it doesn't really matter.'

‘And once I was sure that no one could see me doing it, I strangled her. It was all very quick. She must have lost consciousness almost immediately – so, all in all, it was a much kinder death than she deserved.'

‘Tell me about Dolly.'

‘Who?'

‘The second girl you attacked.'

‘Oh, her! I went back to the park the following night.' Liz Duffy frowned. ‘I don't really know why I did that.'

‘Perhaps you did it to see if you'd left any clues behind,' Paniatowski suggested – though she strongly suspected that wasn't the real reason at all.

‘No, it wasn't that,' Duffy said airily. ‘I'm the police doctor. I know all about clues, and I was already certain I hadn't left any.' She paused, obviously still puzzled as to what her motivation might have been. ‘At any rate, I saw the girl – Dolly, did you say it was?'

‘That's right.'

‘I saw her disappear into the bushes with a man.' Another pause. ‘You really ought to arrest her, you know – the man she was with was
much
older than her.'

‘I ought to arrest
Dolly
?' Paniatowski asked.

‘Yes, that's what I said. Are you having trouble keeping up with me again?'

‘That second attack didn't go as planned, did it?'

‘No, it didn't. The little bitch managed to kick me on the knee, and it hurt a great deal. It was as much as I could do to escape.'

‘Tell me about Maggie – the third girl.'

‘Now that
really
wasn't planned at all – I was just out doing a little innocent shopping – but the moment I saw the way she acted with that man in Woolworths, I knew she had to die.'

‘How did you detach her from her friends?'

‘I didn't need to. They'd run off, and she was sitting on a bench, all alone. I said I'd got a gentleman friend who'd like to meet her, and if she'd come to the park, I'd give her five pounds. She jumped at the chance.'

‘You went to the park together?'

‘No, I didn't want to be seen with her, so we went separately, and met up in the bushes.'

‘And this time, after your experience with Dolly, you made sure your victim didn't have a chance to fight back?'

‘That's right. I said something like, “Oh, there he is now,” and when she turned to look, I hit her over the head.'

‘You killed her in the afternoon, but when I asked you for an estimated time of death, you put it much later.'

‘Yes, I did, didn't I?'

‘And by establishing the time of death as much later, you were able to use Jack Crane as your alibi.'

‘You're quite correct.'

‘Did you plan that in advance?' Meadows asked, with unexpected harshness. ‘Did you
always
intend to use him?'

‘Not
always
, no,' replied Liz Duffy, clearly amused at having got such a strong reaction from the sergeant. ‘Always is
such
a long time, isn't it? So let's just say that when I saw him with Monika at the mortuary, I realized what a great opportunity I'd been presented with.'

‘An opportunity to do what?' Paniatowski asked.

‘To find out how the investigation was going, of course. After all, I did have a certain interest in knowing how close you were to catching the killer.'

‘And you thought Jack Crane would give you that information?'

‘I knew he would. As long as I could convince him I was the girl he wanted me to be, he was putty in my hands.'

‘And by “the girl he wanted me to be” you meant a girl who was falling for him as he was obviously falling for you?'

‘Spot on.'

‘Didn't you feel guilty about using him in that way?'

‘Not at all. He had his chance with me a long time ago, and he threw it away,' Liz Duffy said indifferently.

‘How did he throw it away?'

‘It made him uncomfortable that I cared for him so much. Then I met Simon. I didn't make
him
feel uncomfortable. He relished what I had to offer. And that's when I realized that I'd been no more than
fond
of Jack. You can only really – truly – love one man in your entire life, you know, and I love Simon.'

‘You
loved
him,' Paniatowski corrected her.

‘I
love
him,' Liz Duffy said passionately. ‘He's still with me – and I still talk to him.'

‘And does he answer?'

Duffy looked at Paniatowski almost pityingly. ‘Do you think I'm some kind of lunatic? Of course he doesn't answer me! But we were so close that I know what he'd say if he
did
answer.'

‘And you know he would have said you should kill Jill?'

‘Yes.'

‘Why would he have said it?'

‘Don't you know?'

‘I think so, but I'd still like you to explain it to me.'

‘We used to go to a golf club in Birmingham, and sometimes – at the dinner dances – Simon would chat to a girl called Susan Williams. He didn't particularly want to chat to her, of course, but he sensed she was a lonely little girl, and he was a very kind man. As it turned out, his kindness wasn't enough for her. She wanted much more. So she tricked him into meeting her in Sutton Park.'

And that was why it had to be the park, Paniatowski thought – that was why it
always
had to be the park!

‘What happened in Sutton Park?' she asked.

‘Susan seduced my Simon,' Liz Duffy said. ‘It was a moment of weakness on his part, I freely admit that, but he's not to blame. It would never have happened if she hadn't
made
it happen.'

Paniatowski glanced down at the notes she'd taken down when talking to Midlands Police, an hour earlier.

‘There was no seduction,' she said. ‘The girl was raped.'

‘No, she wasn't. She only
claimed
she was raped later.

‘Why would she have done that?'

‘Because Simon realized his mistake almost immediately, and said he wanted nothing more to do with her. Well, she was heartbroken, wasn't she? Who wouldn't be heartbroken about being turned down by Simon? And she decided that if she couldn't have him, no one could, so she said he'd raped her.'

‘For God's sake, all the evidence was there, and it was an open-and-shut case,' Paniatowski exploded. ‘And when he'd finished raping her, he sodomized her with a bottle!'

‘I don't think it's true that she was sodomized,' Liz Duffy said firmly.

‘According to the police surgeon, there's absolutely no doubt about it. Are you doubting the word of one of your colleagues?'

Liz Duffy shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

‘Well, maybe I'm wrong about her not being sodomized,' she conceded. ‘But if she was,' she added, as a new thought came into her mind, ‘then that only proves my point, doesn't it?'

‘And what point is that?'

‘That she was the kind of girl who would stoop to anything. I expect some other man did that to her – I expect she
asked
him to do it.'

‘The Birmingham police found the ski mask that your husband had been wearing.'

‘They planted it on him. They had to arrest someone, you see, and if that “someone” was a good-looking man who they were probably all jealous of, then so much the better.'

‘It wasn't just one rape he committed – the police believe he was responsible for a string of them.'

‘They
believe
! Then why didn't they charge him with more? Why did they send him to prison only for what he was supposed to have done to Susan Williams?' A single tear leaked from the corner of Liz Duffy's eye. ‘I did everything I could to help him. I hired the best lawyers money could buy. It didn't do any good. I failed him.'

‘So you killed Jill as some kind of warped revenge on Susan Williams?' Paniatowski asked, though she knew that wasn't the case at all.

‘Of course not,' Liz Duffy said scornfully. ‘I'm not so mean, petty or spiteful to have done that.'

‘Then why
did
you kill her?'

‘Jill was dancing with her new brother-in-law, and she started pressing up against him, and . . .'

‘And . . .?'

‘And that's when Simon spoke to me.'

When the phone rang on the desk in Baxter's prison office, it was Inspector Grimes who picked it up.

‘Yes?' he said.

‘This is the switchboard operator at Whitebridge Police Headquarters,' said the voice on the end of the line. ‘Could I speak to Chief Constable George Baxter, please?'

Grimes looked across the room at the big ginger man, who was sitting on the camp bed and staring at his hands.

‘I'm afraid Mr Baxter can't come to the phone at the moment,' he said. ‘Can I take a message?'

‘Not really,' the switchboard operator replied. ‘It's this girl, you see.'

‘What girl?'

‘She's calling from Birmingham. She says she has Mr Baxter's business card.'

‘I expect a lot of people have Mr Baxter's business card.'

‘Yes, but she says he gave it to her last night. She says he told her if she felt the need to talk, she'd only to ring and he'd drop whatever he was doing and have a chat with her.'

Grimes glanced across at George Baxter again. The big ginger man was still sitting as rigid as a statue. He didn't seem to know this conversation was going on. He probably didn't even quite realize where he was.

‘He can't talk now,' the inspector said. ‘Tell her to ring him again in a few days.'

‘Only she seems very upset,' the switchboard operator persisted.