Design for Murder (7 page)

Gary Lawson glared at her. ‘I
saw
him!’

The room was suddenly very quiet. Charlie frowned, glancing at Elaine. Then he leaned forward, rubbing his thumb against his mouth. ‘What do you mean, you saw him? You mean you saw Conroy in the act? That can’t be so!’

‘I saw him,’ Lawson insisted stubbornly. ‘I was supposed to meet Irene—’

‘That would be Irene Dixon, one of the victims,’ Elaine intervened.

‘That’s right. I was going to meet her, the night she disappeared. I was waiting for her outside the Green Man, near the bus stop. And I saw her. The car came past me, I saw her face, her eyes were wide and she was shouting something. He must have picked her up, offered her a lift and because she was late she accepted. That was the last time I saw her. Two weeks later they found her body.’

‘You
saw
the driver?’ Elaine asked, puzzled.

‘I saw him.’

There was something odd about the man’s insistence. Charlie stared at him. ‘You say you caught a glimpse of the driver … and it was Conroy.’

‘It was Conroy,’ Lawson snarled.

‘When did you tell the police about this?’ Elaine asked quietly.

There was a brief hesitation. Lawson grunted, then lowered his head. ‘After he was arrested.’

Charlie glanced at Elaine and raised his eyebrows. ‘How long after he was arrested did you make the identification?’

‘What does it matter?’ Lawson snapped. ‘It was after his first appearance before the magistrates. I was there. I recognized him in the courtroom. It was Conroy. I knew it. I
knew
it!’

There was a short silence. Lawson glared at his clenched fists. Charlie sighed. ‘The prosecution didn’t use your …
so-called
evidence.’

Lawson ran an angry hand over his shaven skull. ‘They were blind, biased. They didn’t believe me!’

‘What about the car?’ Elaine asked softly. ‘Were you able to describe it?’

Lawson raised his head. Something flickered in his eyes, a wild, unreasoning fury. ‘I didn’t pay attention to the car! I saw her face! I recognized her. I waited, and when she didn’t
turn up I knew something bad had happened!’

Elaine touched her lips with her tongue. She leaned forward. ‘What was your relationship with Irene Dixon?’

‘We were … close.’ Lawson frowned, fidgeted, and seemed suddenly reluctant to explain further. ‘I … if things had been … we could have got married.’

‘Were you going out together?’ Elaine asked.

Lawson wriggled. ‘We hung out in the pub, like, with mates, and….’ His voice died away, furiously.

‘And you were to meet her that night,’ Elaine pressed.

‘Well, I knew she was going to be at the Green Man. There was darts going on and, well, I stood outside, waiting….’

To intercept her. Chat her up. There had been no
arranged
meeting. Charlie got the picture. Like him, the Midlands officers would also have got the real scenario. Not the one churning around in Lawson’s fevered imagination. Charlie had come across men like Lawson before. Inadequates in one sense, men who felt they had achieved a relationship with a woman without ever really realizing it was no more than a casual friendship. And when the possibility was taken away, the relationship would have become greater, more intimate in the man’s mind, with infinite possibilities, and there would be a black rage rising, a rage that could lead to violence. The prosecution had not used Lawson because they knew his evidence was unsafe. He had probably been a mere acquaintance of Irene Dixon, and there had been no close relationship other than in his own mind. They would have realized he was a fantasist. There were certainties there in his head, but they probably never had a basis in reality.

‘So you’ve followed this case closely,’ Charlie suggested.

‘I’ve watched that arrogant bastard all through this,’ Lawson growled. ‘I’ve watched him standing there, preening, so full of himself, and I told myself that if I ever
got my hands on him, I’d tear that arrogance out of him. The things he did to Irene—’

‘And you came up here to Newcastle just to follow the case.’ Charlie scratched his cheek. ‘Time on your hands? What do you do, Lawson? What’s your job?’

Lawson lowered his head. ‘I was working on a building site. I’m unemployed now. I was turned off.’

Charlie could guess why. His obsession would have overcome him. Elaine sighed. Charlie knew she was already up to speed with this. ‘You were there in the courtroom when the judge threw out the case against Conroy.’

‘Him, and that bloody lawyer. She thought she was so smart but it’s all legal tricks. I know that bastard Conroy did it. Did it to Irene, and those other girls as well. I know it, like Jack Capaldi knows it—’

‘Jack Capaldi? Who’s he?’ Charlie asked.

‘He’s Jean Capaldi’s old man.’

‘You’ve talked this over with the father of the first woman to be killed?’ Elaine queried.

‘Why the hell not? We had things in common! We’d both lost someone we loved. And we both know it was Conroy who used that bloody scalpel!’

Charlie rose to his feet, scraping back his chair. He was suddenly irritated. He was himself of the view that Conroy really could be the man who had killed the three women, but it was one thing to suspect, another to be as certain as the man facing them in the interview room. He walked across the room and stood against the wall, hands thrust into his pockets. Elaine glanced at him, frowned, and then continued with her questioning of Gary Lawson. She made no attempt to start the recorder again.

‘So you were in court when the judge threw out the case against Conroy. How did you happen to come across him
again last night?’

A confident sneer crept across Lawson’s mouth. He shook his head contemptuously. ‘It was no accident. I know how things work,’ he snarled. ‘Police, lawyers, corruption … you all think people like me and Jack Capaldi are stupid. It suits you to think that, doesn’t it? It masks your own stupidities. It was no big deal, finding out where Conroy would hide himself, like a rat in a sewer. Capaldi and I were in court. We’d already agreed that if things went wrong, we’d work together. So while he was out front in that mob, watching what happened, I stayed away, near the back exit from the tunnel, waiting. And it was the way I’d guessed. Capaldi saw the police car out front, the decoy, but me, I saw that pair of bloody corrupt lawyers drive out with Conroy in the back of their car. It was easy enough to follow them, watch as they dropped the bloody killer at the hotel in Gosforth.’

‘You must have been on foot. So how—’

‘I was waiting, with my motorbike. I followed the lawyers in their car. Easy. I saw them drop Conroy at the hotel. After that, it was just a matter of waiting for the murderous bastard to show himself.’

‘You waited all evening until he came out into the street.’

Lawson’s mouth was hard. ‘He came out. Like always. Careless. Confident. Sneering. Arrogant. But I saw the look in his eyes when I went up to him. He knew what was about to happen. And if there hadn’t been other people about, shoving their noses in, I’d have cracked his bloody skull!’

Elaine looked at the notes provided by the arresting officers. Students passing by had intervened, preventing Lawson completing the assault. ‘So you admit to attacking him, in an unprovoked fashion,’ she stated flatly.

‘Unprovoked? He was a murderer. He killed Irene, and Jean Capaldi and that other girl, and he thought he’d got
away with it! I’d do it again, if he was here in front of me! I wanted to smash his face in, make him feel some of the pain Irene must have felt before she died. I wanted it to be slow, a pounding of his face, feeling his nose break, tasting the blood spraying around—’

‘Like blood, do you?’ Charlie asked.

Lawson glared at him in subdued fury.

‘We found a knife in the bushes beside the hotel front,’ Elaine said quietly.

Lawson’s features stiffened as he seemed to retreat, his eyelids lowering. ‘Nothing to do with me.’ He hesitated. ‘There was a crowd gathered straightaway. It was the wrong time to go for that bastard, I know it now. Too many people. But if I had the chance again…. The knife, that could have come from someone hanging around, that was nothing to do with me. I wanted my fists in his face.’

Elaine glanced at Charlie; he grimaced in distaste. The interview was taking them nowhere. He guessed there was no solicitor present because Lawson didn’t want legal representation, didn’t trust lawyers. He’d have form, no doubt, would know how the system worked. So what were they dealing with here anyway? Breach of the peace? Assault? They would find difficulty linking the knife to Lawson unless there was clear DNA available. And even then, it hadn’t been used.

It would be up to Conroy, he thought. And if Charlie was in Conroy’s shoes he wouldn’t press charges. He wouldn’t want further publicity. Charlie stood away from the wall, grunted, then nodded to Elaine. ‘I’ll send the constable in again.’

For Lawson, maybe another night in the cells and probably a warning, if Raymond Conroy pressed no charges. Even so, he wouldn’t give much for Conroy’s
chances if Gary Lawson ever managed to catch up with him again.

Raymond Conroy needed to fade into the background, keep his head down, and hope that in the end everything would all blow over. Assuming he was not the homicidal maniac the public seemed to think he was. In which case Charlie hoped the man would clear off back to the Midlands.

Rather than seek fresh fields to conquer on Tyneside.

At the door Charlie paused. ‘You got a dog, Lawson?’

Suspicion flared in the man’s eyes. ‘At home. Doberman.’

Charlie could have guessed.

Eric reached Alnwick at three in the afternoon.

He drove down to the walled town, seat of the Duke of Northumberland, and left his Celica in the small car park outside the city walls. He picked up his briefcase and strolled into the town through the fifteenth-century Hotspur Gate. He found the offices of Strudmore and Evans easily enough in Bondgate: based in a solid red-stoned building with mullioned windows in the main street, overlooking the nineteenth-century marketplace. He had never had dealings with this particular firm of lawyers but from the confident style of their offices the partnership would seem to be a relatively flourishing one. A bit of commercial work, perhaps, but more likely relying upon business undertaken for some of the landed gentry in Northumberland. Estate management could be lucrative enough, as he knew from the period he had worked for his wife. Ex-wife, he grimaced. He pushed open the door and announced himself to the
receptionist. A few minutes later he found himself in an office on the first floor, overlooking the narrow gateway to the city walls. The wooden flooring creaked and groaned, proudly proclaiming its age.

Mr Strudmore was short, plump, middle-aged,
self-satisfied
and friendly. He was dressed in a tweed suit of some longevity as though to announce his country leanings; a somewhat flamboyant bow-tie demonstrated his confidence. His moustache was grey, neatly trimmed and contrasting in colour to the bushy red hair that sprouted above his ears. Red, fading to an odd kind of orange. Bottled youth.

He rose from behind his desk, advanced upon Eric and extended a fleshy, damp hand. ‘Mr Ward. We’ve not met previously, but you’ve been pointed out to me at Law Society dinners. You used to represent and act for Morcomb estates.’

‘I did. Some years ago.’

Strudmore bounced on his heels reflectively, in a curious rocking motion. ‘Ah, yes … I’ve met your … ah … ex-wife, of course, on estate matters. But now you’re here looking after the interests of Miss Owen.’

‘Sharon has asked me to represent her, that’s right,’ Eric agreed.

Strudmore waved Eric to a chair and sat down himself, behind a polished desk. In front of him was a thick pile of documents, the file cover tied with pink string. He smiled. ‘I’ll be more than a little relieved to hand these papers over to you at long last. It’s been a long-running business, the Chivers Trust.’

Eric nodded in agreement. ‘Miss Owen had more or less suggested that was so.’

‘Goes back three generations,’ Strudmore mused, ‘and it
gave rise to certain complications. Unfortunately, we weren’t involved in the matter immediately, and certain mistakes were made by the previous solicitors, papers lost, that sort of thing. It was my father who sorted it out sensibly,’ he added, ‘when the matter was handed over to us at last. By Mr Peter Chivers.’

‘I’m not at all familiar with the details of the case,’ Eric admitted.

‘Ah, well, perhaps I should fill you in a little before you sign for the papers,’ Strudmore replied, putting the tips of his chubby fingers together. ‘A coffee, while we talk?’

Eric nodded, then waited while Strudmore phoned down to his secretary. ‘Now then, where was I?’ Strudmore said, smiling. ‘Ah, yes, the Chivers Trust.’

Eric leaned back in his chair. He had the feeling that though he would have been able to work out the details for himself by a perusal of the files, Strudmore was anxious to tell him all about it. Perhaps he had little else to do.

‘Now, let me see,’ Strudmore said, putting his head back on his leather chair and staring at the ceiling, ‘I’ll indulge myself, if you don’t mind, by recalling the details without reference to the files. A good procedure, I believe, testing the memory. Don’t you agree? In legal matters a good memory is important, recalling details. Yes. Right, as I recall, the trust was originally set up by one George Chivers, bypassing the interests of his son and daughter, whom he provided for separately. But let’s start at the beginning.’

Eric thought that would have been the beginning. He sat back in resignation and awaited the arrival of the coffee.

‘From what I’ve been able to ascertain, not being in possession of all the facts, George was an interesting, somewhat mysterious character. He was born about 1920 and became quite wealthy as a result of his activities in the
Second World War. Ostensibly, the wealth came from his business in the munitions industry. He never served in the armed forces, but on the other hand there were a number of unexplained absences from home during the forties and a few hints among the extant papers that would lead me to believe he was involved to some extent in intelligence activities. Be that as it may, there is no doubt he accumulated a great deal of money from his factories. Government contracts, it seems. A favoured client. As for his various
escapades
, well, they are lost in the mists of time and official fudging of details.’