Kill My Darling (24 page)

‘Poor guy,' she said. ‘What a terrible thing to happen. He must be really cut up.'

‘Yes. The head told him right away to take the week off. I must say our head's decent like that. But I don't suppose he'll be back next week either. I mean, apart from what he must be feeling, and his wife, you don't want to expose yourself to the kids at a time like that. Staring eyes and prying questions. Curiosity always overcomes tact.'

‘Not just with kids, either,' Connolly said. ‘It must be really hard to get away from it, even for a minute. I suppose he can't even go down to his usual pub for a bit of relief.'

‘No, especially not in his case. He's famously teetotal,' Rofant said. ‘Disapproves of pubs and the demon alcohol.' He said it lightly, seeming to think, even as he said it, that it was a bit disloyal. He looked uncomfortable for an instant and then said, ‘What was it you wanted to see him for, anyway? Perhaps I can help.'

This was always going to be the danger moment. ‘I heard he did private coaching – out of school hours, I mean.'

‘I think he does. Who told you that?'

‘A neighbour of mine knows someone who knows someone he's coaching. I think she's in the sixth form,' Connolly said vaguely. The coaching would have to be for herself – she didn't want to have to invent a child.

‘Oh. That must be Stephanie, I suppose. Stephanie Bentham. Small, fair girl – lives in Boston Manor somewhere?'

‘I've never seen her. But I think that was the name. Well, I suppose he won't be doing any coaching for a long time now – if ever, poor guy.' She finished her tea, and made leaving movements, eager to get away now. ‘Well, thanks a heap for the tea. That's warmed me up. I can't believe it's so cold – you'd never think it was spring.'

‘My pleasure,' he said, standing too, his eyes on her. ‘It's been nice meeting you. Would you – I wonder, would you like to go for a drink sometime?'

She would, she definitely would, but that was the trouble with what she did. You couldn't start a relationship with a subterfuge; now she had fooled him, she could never get to know him. Besides, it was near impossible to go out with any man who wasn't in the Job. They just didn't understand. While men in the Job understood too well, and were all neurotic bastards anyway. She'd had two bad relationships with coppers that ended in heartbreak and that was enough for one lifetime. As long as she remained a copper, she would have to remain alone.

‘I'd really like to,' she said, putting sincerity into her eyes, ‘but I'm kind of half seeing someone else. I came over here to see if we can make a go of it. Well –' she shrugged – ‘you know. But thanks for asking.'

‘That's me all over, wrong place at the wrong time,' he said self-deprecatingly. ‘Well, if it doesn't work out, you know where to find me.'

‘You've got it,' she said with a smile, and they parted on a handshake.

Isn't that just like bloody life, she thought, heading for her car. You meet a total ride, who's interested in you, who's also available – and how often does that happen? – and you can't do anything about it. Not because you've already got someone, oh no, that'd be too easy, but because you've been forced to make up someone in order to get out of going out with a bloke you
want
to go out with. God was just a big, bloody tease, so he was, and it wasn't
fair
.

TWELVE

Crowd Cuckoo Land

‘
B
ut if there was no soccer practice on Fridays, why wouldn't Mrs Wiseman know that?' Atherton asked. ‘She's been married to him long enough.'

Connolly counted on her fingers. ‘She's confused, she's not that interested, he's told her and she's forgotten, or he's just not told her. You don't get the feeling there's much communication in that marriage. “I'm off out, dear.” “All right, dear.” And she sees he's got his bag with him, so she thinks, oh, he's off to football. Sure, she's not going to say “Where the hell have you been?” when he comes in, not her, not to a man like him.'

‘Yeah,' said McLaren, who had been just waiting for her to finish this, which, to him, was the uninteresting part of the problem. ‘But then where was he Friday evening? Even if it was him phoned Hunter at ten o'clock and arranged a meet, he wasn't with her from after school till then.'

‘He wasn't where he said he was,' Atherton replied, ‘and that's enough for us. Maybe he was driving about, working himself up into a rage, or planning how he was going to do it.'

‘Maybe he was doing private coaching,' Connolly felt obliged to offer.

‘But then why would he lie to his wife about it?'

‘We don't
know
he lied. She's not that bright or on the ball. She maybe just got the wrong end of the stick. Or like I said, he never told her and she just assumed.'

‘Well,' said Slider, ‘we'll have to ask.' He shook his head. ‘Two suspects with stupid, easy-to-bust alibis.'

‘They weren't stupid alibis as long as no one checked,' Atherton said. ‘They were very good, solid as the Bank of England alibis. A stag night and a soccer match – dozens of witnesses to prove you were there. Much better than Fitton's “I was alone at home all evening”.'

‘Right up to the point when it wasn't. What's the world coming to, when villains can't even be bothered to construct a decently professional lie?' Slider complained.

‘What about Fitton, guv?' Hollis asked. The forensic report had come back negative – no traces of blood or tissue in the flat, on any of the objects confiscated, or down the plugholes or in the drains. Nothing to say Melanie Hunter had been murdered on the premises. There had been no large sums of cash knocking about, and Fitton's bank account showed nothing but his benefits going in each month and coming out week by week, so nothing to suggest blackmail. That was not to say he could not have killed her outside the house, or indeed have hidden money elsewhere, but you could only go on what you had evidence for.

‘We let him go,' Slider said. ‘And keep an eye on him. Release him later tonight, when it's quieter around the house.'

‘Ironic, isn't it?' Atherton said. ‘Fortunately we've got another suspect to take attention away from him. Unfortunately, they both live in the same house.'

‘There'll be plenty in the papers tomorrow about Hibbert. They'll have had time to do their homework. Let's hope all the attention will flush him out,' Slider said. ‘Meanwhile, we keep our eye on Fitton. And there's going to be a fingertip search of the woods as soon as it gets light tomorrow, in the hope that, if she wasn't killed at home, she was killed there, and there's something to find.'

‘And what about Wiseman, boss?' Connolly asked.

‘We bring him in and ask him some questions. I'll talk to Mr Porson about it now. I think it would be nice to take him late tonight, give him a night in the cells to unsettle him, and have a go at him in the morning when he's had time to think about the error of his ways. And while he's in here, one of you can go and offer his wife a shoulder to cry on, see what comes out.'

‘And the kid,' Connolly added. ‘Bethany. That one'd have you mortified, the language on her, but she has a useful habit of eavesdropping. You never know what she's found out about her dad.'

It turned out to be an exciting night, not only with the arrest of Ian Wiseman, who was not pleased about it and made his feelings known as vocally as a cat on the way to the vet's, but because late that evening the Bournemouth police found Scott Hibbert.

‘What was it, a tip-off?' Slider asked. He had not been home yet. He was downstairs talking to Paxman about the treatment of Wiseman when the news came in, and hurried upstairs to find Mr Porson in the office, along with Atherton, and Hollis, who was night duty officer and the only one of them who was actually supposed to be there.

‘Better than that,' Porson said. ‘The woman he was lying low with gave him up. She sneaked in the kitchen while he was watching telly and told 'em to come and get him. They went straight round there. Found him in his underpants.'

‘I wonder why they didn't think of looking there first?' Slider murmured. Atherton shot him a look. He shouldn't, he really shouldn't.

Fortunately Porson didn't catch it. He was too full of the wonder of Hibbert. ‘He was watching himself on telly, the dipstick. On the twenty-four-hour news. No wonder she wanted rid of him. He burst into tears, apparently, when the Bournemouth plod came in. Anyway, they're wrapping him up and sending him over to us right away. They've got the woman in, giving her statement, pending our decision whether we want her banged up for obstruction or not.'

‘We'll want to question her, won't we?' Slider said.

‘Got to think of the practicosities,' Porson said. ‘We can't clutter up our cells with all these bodies at the same time. You've already got Wiseman, Hibbert's coming, Fitton's going – it's getting like a murderers' convention in there. Anyway, I want you to have a crack at Hibbert tonight, while he's off balance.'

‘Yes, sir, but I'd still like to get the woman's side of it while it's fresh.' He turned to Atherton. ‘You'd better get down there and interview her first thing tomorrow.'

‘I'll have to have a word with Bournemouth, then, grease the whales,' Porson said, and stumped off to his own room.

‘Why are you here, anyway?' Slider asked Atherton when they were alone. ‘Haven't you got a home to go to?'

‘Emily's in Ireland, covering the euro crisis,' he admitted. ‘I didn't fancy going home to an empty house.'

Blimey, he did have it bad, Slider thought. Atherton had always been the cat who walked alone; now he was so much a part of the Jim-and-Emily combo, the house didn't feel right without her. ‘I wouldn't have thought the house would feel empty with those hooligan cats of yours,' he said.

‘Not the same,' Atherton replied. ‘A cat doesn't keep you warm at night. Well, it does, but – you can't cuddle a cat. Well, you can, but—'

‘I get the picture,' Slider said hastily. He didn't like to think where that litany was going. ‘Hadn't you better go back for a bit of shut-eye before Bournemouth?'

‘I'd sooner see how Hibbert turns out,' said Atherton.

But in the end, they didn't get to have a crack at Hibbert, because he was in too bad a state when he arrived. He had been in tears all the way up, according to the stone-faced Dorset coppers accompanying him; and as soon as he walked in from the dark to the brightly-lit station he started shaking, and rapidly got so bad they had to get the surgeon in to give him a tranquillizer. After that he got a lot happier but it was impossible to interview him properly – his responses had slowed down so much it was going to take them most of the night to process him – so Slider gave it up until the morning. ‘Get the woman's end of it first, then we can tackle him tomorrow from a position of strength.'

‘Tomorrow's getting to be quite a day,' Atherton said as they trod out into the darkness.

‘Today, now,' Slider said.

‘So between Hibbert and Wiseman, which do you fancy more?' Atherton asked. ‘Or is it still Fitton?'

‘
I
don't know. There's something to be said for all of them.'

‘All of them? You mean some kind of
Murder on the Orient Express
scenario?'

‘Each of them, then, if you must be pedantic.'

‘Why are people who are just trying to be accurate always called pedantic?'

‘Beats me. God, I'm hungry.'

‘Fancy going for a curry?' Atherton suggested. ‘I know one that's still open.'

‘At this time of night? You're so young.'

‘All right for you,' Atherton grumbled. ‘You've got a nice warm wife at home, who'll probably leap out of bed and cook you bacon and eggs. All I've got is the sound of my own broken sobbing.'

‘Oh, go on then,' Slider said. As it happened, he felt wide awake and didn't want to go home yet. And it was ages since he'd had a curry. This marriage lark certainly put paid to a lot of the old social habits. ‘We can talk some things through.'

‘Good. There's a question that's really been bugging me,' Atherton said as they turned towards the Uxbridge Road.

‘What?'

‘Who on earth thought of putting an “s” in the word “lisp”?'

In the end, Atherton didn't go to bed: it probably wasn't a good idea to try to sleep on a substantial curry anyway, and he thought he might as well get the journey down to Bournemouth done in the early hours when the roads were quiet. So he had a shower, shave and change of clothes, played for half an hour with the cats, who were querulous about not having seen anyone All Day, and was down in Bournemouth well before breakfast time.

The first thing he learned at the station was that the woman, Valerie Proctor, was no longer there.

‘She insisted on going home,' said the duty officer, one Kevin Bone. ‘She'd come in voluntarily so we couldn't stop her unless we arrested her, and we didn't want to do that, because she'd have clammed up right away and asked for a brief. She's a bit of a stroppy cow, and I reckon you'll get more out of her if you don't rile her.'

‘She's at home now?' Atherton asked. ‘How do you know she won't do a runner?'

‘In her mind she's got nothing to run from. She's turned him in, she's the good guy,' said Bone. ‘Anyway, we've got a uniform on her door. To protect her from the press, we told her, but it cuts both ways, o' course.'

‘Excellent,' said Atherton. ‘Well, if she's safely confined, I've got time to read the reports and have breakfast before I go over.'

‘We do a cracking bacon sarnie up in the canteen,' said Bone.