Design for Murder (6 page)

She grinned. ‘Well, you made a good choice. The fact is, our family is pretty well loaded. Has been for a couple of generations. And that’s where the problems come in.’

‘Inheritance?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so. I mean, my parents – who as you know are both dead now – they left me well enough heeled through general inheritance, but there’s also the matter of a trust fund which was originally set up by my grandfather. It was always separate from the money my parents left me. The trust’s given rise to certain problems among the two beneficiaries. Me and my cousin. I don’t want to go into details over dinner now, but if I gave you the name of the lawyer who’s been handling the estate – slowly, I might add – maybe you’d be able to look into it for me, and bring the whole messy business to an end.’

Eric shrugged. ‘It hardly needs saying that I’ll be happy to do what I can to help.’

‘There’ll be a fat fee, of course,’ she teased.

‘I’ll take it in kind.’

‘I won’t be averse to that.’

The remainder of the evening passed pleasantly. Eric regaled her with some of the more colourful stories about his life before he had become a lawyer, when he had been a police officer on the Tyneside beat, and she asked him about his problems with glaucoma, which he now kept under control with drugs. It was almost eleven before they left the restaurant for the short walk back to the apartment.

There was a police car some hundred yards away, its blue light flashing. It was not an unusual occurrence: with so many bars and cafés in the area there was bound to be a certain amount of drunken behaviour late at night. Sharon glanced back over her shoulder. ‘Trouble?’ she queried.

Eric shrugged. ‘Nothing to bother lawyers, yet. The police can deal with it.’ He turned his head, realized the car was stationed not very far from the hotel where he had arranged a room for Raymond Conroy and wondered briefly whether their erstwhile client had already got himself into difficulties. He shook the thought aside. He gripped Sharon’s elbow firmly, steering her across the road towards his apartment.

‘Come on,’ he said with a smile. ‘Let’s go talk about lawyer’s fees.’ 

When Eric arrived at his office on the Quayside next morning his secretary Susie Cartwright was waiting for him with his appointments book in her hand. He waved her into his room and gestured her to a seat. She sat down, tugging at the hem of her skirt in a manner that suggested she was not at ease, not best pleased with him. ‘So you got that Conroy man off the charges,’ she said as she raised her chin to stare challengingly at him. There was more than a hint of disapproval in her tone.

Eric eyed her carefully. Susie had been with him for a number of years now, ever since he had set up his practice on the Quayside. A widow, she was in her forties, far too young to be his mother, but that did not prevent her trying to develop such a function in their relationship: she was determined to look after him, was not afraid of telling him how he ought to go for a better kind of client, not reluctant to question some of his decisions. Occasionally she acted as his conscience, even when his conscience was not bothering him. And she had never approved of his divorce from Anne.

‘We didn’t exactly get him off,’ he corrected her now. ‘The
prosecution failed to make a case. We simply emphasized that point. Mr Justice Abernethy threw it out.’

Susie sniffed as though she was only half convinced. ‘Whatever. But I have to say I didn’t like the look of that man.’

‘Abernethy?’ Eric teased.

‘Raymond Conroy,’ she snapped, but he noted the reluctant ghost of a smile.

‘Neither did I, particularly,’ Eric admitted candidly, ‘but that’s not the point.’

‘I’m sorry you even agreed to take the case, Mr Ward. Just when you’re getting a better kind of client base as well,’ she murmured with a sigh. ‘Talking of which, the Home Office has been on the phone again. Mr Linwood Forster. There are three more briefs on the way. Immigration cases. And I’ve booked in a few new appointments for you.’

Eric accepted the appointments book she passed him. He nodded, marked two names on the list and handed the book back to her. ‘I can see these people later this morning, but perhaps you’ll have a word with Mr Thurston and Mr Carpenter about these others. See if they can deal with my afternoon appointments.’

Susie pursed her lips. Thurston and Carpenter, the new solicitors who had joined the practice, were young, inexperienced men straight from law school: she felt they needed protecting even more than Eric. She sniffed. ‘They’re pretty busy themselves, you know, and we haven’t seen much of you in the office this last week.’

‘That’s the penalty of success, Susie,’ said Eric smiling. ‘Anyway, will you have a word with my two assistants? I mean, that’s why I employed them: to take some of the burden from my shoulders.’

‘They won’t be happy, Mr Ward.’ Susie hesitated and gave
the appearance of considering the matter. ‘But I’ll see if I can spread the work to them. Will you be out all afternoon, then?’

Eric nodded. ‘I’ll work on these files this morning, see these two clients, and then I’ll have to be off by two. I have to go to Alnwick. I’ve made an appointment with the solicitors Strudmore and Evans. It’s a meeting I have to attend on behalf of Miss Owen.’

Susie’s lips expressed a slight disapproval. It was not that she disliked Sharon Owen: in fact she held her in considerable regard. But she had made it clear she had certain reservations about the developing relationship between her employer and the young barrister. It all went back to Anne, of course. She had always got on well with Eric’s ex-wife. Her glance dropped to the appointments book. She made no further comment now, but there were silent ways in which she could express her disapproval. She stood up, stiffened her back and began to make her way back to her own room. At the door she paused, looking back at him. ‘By the way, did you hear the news about Mr Conroy?’

‘What about him?’ Eric asked vaguely, opening one of the files in front of him.

‘He was attacked last night.’

‘Attacked?’ Eric looked up at her and frowned. ‘I arranged for him to stay at the hotel in Gosforth, the one you suggested to me, and booked him in under an assumed name. So what happened?’

Susie shook her head. ‘Can’t say. Just heard the gossip, that’s all. Apparently he got beaten up as he came out of his hotel. The police were called immediately – there was a patrol car happened to be in the area – and they sorted it out quickly enough, it seems.’

Eric took a deep breath. He recalled the police car in the High Street near the hotel the previous evening. It was just as well he and Sharon had stayed well away from the disturbance. He was finished with Raymond Conroy. He was not surprised the man had been attacked but he wondered how he had been traced. Perhaps another guest in the hotel had recognized him. His photograph had been splashed all over the newspapers, after all. Eric had advised him to lay low, but Conroy had clearly been foolish enough to venture out from the safety of his hotel room only hours after the case against him had been dismissed. He should have had more sense, but Eric knew how arrogant the man was.

‘One other thing,’ Susie added. ‘I had a call from a man called Fraser. Wanted to fix an appointment to see you. Today, if possible. I didn’t put him in the book. I put him off in view of the other pressures on your time.’ Eric wasn’t absolutely certain he didn’t detect a hint of irony in her tone. ‘Anyway, Mr Fraser seemed reluctant to tell me what it was about. Do you know him? He said he’d already spoken to you about an appointment.’

Eric recalled the brief conversation with the somewhat shabby individual in the courtroom at the end of the trial. He thought about it for a moment, then he shrugged. ‘I don’t know what he wants, but … well, if he calls again, fix something up for him. Maybe one of the others in the practice can see him.’

‘Your overworked young colleagues? He specifically wants to talk to you, Mr Ward. He made that quite clear to me.’

Eric shrugged. ‘So be it. But obviously not today. If you can find a time to fit him in, tomorrow or the next day, I’ll see him. Now, I’ll get on with these files, and I’d be grateful
if I wasn’t disturbed.’

‘Until coffee time, I take it,’ she murmured.

Eric smiled, acknowledging defeat. ‘Until coffee time.’

He started immediately on the backlog of files on his desk, but as he worked his mind drifted back from time to time to Raymond Conroy. An attack. There would be many who would think there had been a miscarriage of justice at Newcastle Crown Court. There was a great deal of public feeling that Conroy was indeed the Zodiac Killer. But the prosecution had failed to make their case. That did not mean there might not be someone out there who would want to take the matter into his own hands. Perhaps someone had already tried.

Detective Chief Inspector Charlie Spate was late turning in at headquarters in Ponteland. He had spent the previous night with Detective Sergeant Elaine Start, and the physicality of their lovemaking had left him drained, as it often did, with a stiff back and aching loins. As a consequence he had clung to sleep, stayed in her bed after she had left, and was late rising. It was different with Elaine. Enthusiastic sex seemed to have few after effects on her. It was clear that she had greater stamina than he did, in spite of the reputation as a stud that he had built up when he was with the Met. But that was a few years ago now.

It was his reputation that had been largely responsible for his coming north: getting too close to some of the mob, and even closer with some of the girls on the game. But he had been younger then, he had to admit. And he had never met anyone quite like Detective Sergeant Elaine Start.

He had been attracted to her from the beginning, when he had first arrived on Tyneside. She had a direct look in her eye, she was smart and sassy, and she had a wicked sense of
humour and great breasts. She hadn’t been easy to seduce. In fact, he still wasn’t sure whether it was he who achieved the seduction. He still remained unable to fathom just what made her tick. What had started for him as a slaking of lust had changed subtly over the months they had been sleeping together. He was pretty sure of his own feelings, but she consistently refused to admit to her own emotional needs as far as he was concerned. She was happy for him to visit her in her home in Westerhope from time to time, but had always refused to spend the night with him in his apartment in Wallsend. It was as though she wanted to retain control of the relationship and the situation, enjoy him on her terms and on her own territory or not at all. He resented her attitude, it affected his manly pride, but was not prepared to forego the pleasures that she provided him simply because it was she who decided upon the time and place for their lovemaking.

Apart from the stiff back, he was also irritated that, as usual, when he overslept as a result of their exertions, she never did. This morning, for instance, he had woken to find her already departed for work. And when he arrived at the office he learned from the desk sergeant she was already on duty in the interview room.

‘Who’s she got in there?’ Charlie asked, yawning.

The sergeant looked at him contemplatively. There were rumours around headquarters about Charlie Spate and Elaine Start. Some guys got all the luck. ‘Guy called Lawson.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘Assault and battery.’

Charlie scowled. ‘What the hell is she doing messing about with a piddling thing like that?’

The duty sergeant wrinkled his nose. ‘ACC Charteris
heard we’d dragged the guy in last night, so detailed DS Start for it.’

‘Charteris? Why the hell—’

‘Because this guy Lawson, he gave none other than our friend Raymond Conroy a beating last night.’ The sergeant sniffed, and wiped his nose against the back of his hand. ‘Like a lot of us would have liked to do.’

‘Conroy?’ Charlie was taken aback. He had not been involved with the Zodiac Killer hearing, since the case had been handled by Midlands officers, but he’d heard there had been a lot of noise outside the courtroom, a demonstration in Wesley Square after Conroy had been released and the usual idiots shouting about justice and corruption in the police, taking the opportunity to throw abuse and the occasional bottle. But the violence had been contained, and nothing serious had occurred apart from a couple of broken windows in Dean Street. But now it seemed that someone had got to Conroy, the man Charlie himself was sure was the Zodiac Killer. And from the look in the eyes of the desk sergeant, he was not alone with that thought.

‘And the assistant chief constable has called a conference for senior officers at midday,’ the sergeant added, with a roll of his eyes.

ACC Jim Charteris loved his meetings, Charlie thought with contempt. But … an attack on Raymond Conroy…. Curious, he made his way along the corridor to the interview room. He opened the door and stepped inside. Elaine Start looked up, her eyes widening. She nodded to him and for the benefit of the recording said, ‘Detective Chief Inspector Spate has entered the room…’ She consulted her watch. ‘At 10.30.’

The emphasis she placed on the time made it sound like an unspoken criticism. Charlie shrugged his shoulders and
then winced, aware suddenly of the scratches her nails had left on his back last night. He glanced at the stolid-featured constable standing just inside the door. He nodded to him. ‘OK, son, you can get yourself a coffee now.’

After the constable left, Charlie took a seat beside Elaine and studied the man facing them.

He was perhaps thirty years of age. He was dressed in a worn black leather jacket, jeans and heavy boots. He was burly in build; the hair on his head had been shaved closely, possibly to obviate the signs of incipient baldness, or more likely to demonstrate he was a hard man. Under his heavy, dark eyebrows his eyes were surly. He had placed his hands on the table in front of him: they were thick-fingered, clenched, his right knuckle marked with a red-raw area. His stubbly lantern jaw was set angrily and there were dark pouches under his eyes. Charlie had seen men like this often enough on the streets, men who seethed with a barely controlled rage that could burst out suddenly into a flare of violence. They often had dogs: bad-tempered, big, nasty dogs controlled only by boot or fist.

Elaine switched off the recorder and leaned back in her chair, then folded her arms over her bosom. In his imagination, Charlie could still almost feel the yielding warmth and softness of it under his cheek. ‘DCI Spate, this is Mr Gary Lawson,’ Elaine said. ‘He’s come up from the Midlands, Evesham way, with the precise intention of sorting out all our little problems for us.’

‘Is that so?’ Charlie replied, thrusting away memories of Elaine’s flesh and staring at the man in front of him. ‘And more specifically, I hear, putting his fist in the face of an innocent visitor to our area.’

Lawson’s thick lips twisted in a grimace of contempt. ‘Innocent? That trial was a bloody farce. It was a fix.
Everyone knows Conroy is guilty as hell! And what happens? He’s shifted away from the place where we all know what went on, and he’s given an easy ride by a prick of a judge who doesn’t know his arse from his elbow as far as real life is concerned!’

‘My, my,’ Charlie murmured. ‘Mr Justice Abernethy would be most interested in that view of his capabilities.’ He studied Gary Lawson, observing the anger in his cold eyes. ‘So, bashing Mr Conroy. Why did you feel you have to take things into your hands so personally?’

Lawson’s voice was almost like a growl deep in his throat. ‘That perverted bastard killed three women in the Midlands. And he terrorized a community with his sick-minded actions. He’s round the bend, a lot of people say, but I reckon he’s just twisted, sadistic … look at the way he dealt with the women he abducted. Taking a scalpel, carving loony signs in their flesh—’

‘You sound very certain he was the man who committed those murders,’ Elaine intervened.

‘It was him,’ Lawson snarled.

Elaine glanced briefly at Charlie, then raised an interrogative eyebrow. ‘How can you be so sure? Do you have any information, other than that brought in by the prosecution, that could lead to his conviction?’