Shades of Evil (12 page)

The Mill, one of Harrington’s most attractive restaurants, was enjoying a brisk pre-Christmas trade. The dining room was decorated with greenery. Candles, surrounded by logs, pine cones and sprigs of holly, burned in the windows. Some diners oohed and aahed at the sight; all Max saw was a fire hazard. But he was in that sort of mood.

He needed to eat, and he needed to see his sons before they forgot who he was so this meal, arranged at the last minute by Jill, was the ideal chance to do that. It was supposed to be a treat for his mother-in-law. Kate was flying out to the States in the morning so it was the only chance they had to wish her bon voyage.

Red candles, sitting in bowls filled with gold baubles, flickered on their table. Everyone had crackers and the chance to wear paper hats. Max wasn’t in the mood for any of it. He would far rather be dragging a confession from Steve Carlisle.

‘Did I hear you say you were going back to work tonight, Max?’ his mother-in-law asked him, disapproval evident.

‘’Fraid so.’ And now he felt guilty. ‘Sorry, folks, I know I’m not seeing a lot of you right now, but I need to get this case sorted.’

‘Have you found the man who did it?’ his youngest son wanted to know.

‘I have, Ben. I just need to prove it now.’ And that wouldn’t be easy.

‘Let’s not talk work,’ his mother-in-law suggested. Max knew Kate liked to keep the less attractive parts of his job from her grandsons. ‘Tell us what your new car is like, Jill.’

‘It’s perfect. Bring on the snow, I say!’

At least the Mill was the closest restaurant to headquarters. Max would eat his turkey, have a quick coffee and then head back to question Carlisle.

‘Jill was on the telly the other night,’ Harry told his grandmother.

‘I know. I saw her and thought she sounded great.’

‘Great wasn’t how I would have described it,’ Jill said with a chuckle. ‘I was unbelievably nervous.’

‘Is one of your horses paying for this, Jill?’ Ben asked, and she grinned at him.

‘It is, but I’m not allowed to encourage you to gamble. It’s a mug’s game and you must never ever go near a betting office. You hear me?’

‘I hear you,’ the lad agreed. ‘But I can bet on there being a white Christmas, can’t I? That’s not really gambling, is it?’

‘Of course it’s gambling,’ Max said sternly.

‘But if Jill puts the bet on for us—’

‘It’s still gambling,’ Max retorted.

Max winced as Jill’s heel made contact with his shin. He read the look she gave him easily. It said: ‘You’re a miserable git, Trentham, and it wouldn’t hurt you to be sociable for a change.’ At least, that was the polite version. He gave her what he hoped was an apologetic smile, shoved a paper hat on his head and joined in the age-old custom of pulling crackers …

‘I’ll come back to headquarters with you,’ Jill said.

‘Oh? Well, yes, why not? It’ll be hard work, though. Carlisle’s told his story, such as it is, and he’s sticking to it.’

‘Perhaps it’s true.’

‘No. He’s lied all along.’

‘Maybe.’

‘You still think he’s innocent?’ he asked.

‘Of murder? Yes.’

They would have to agree to disagree on that. Until they could get a confession from him, at least.

‘He is hiding something though,’ she added, frowning. ‘That’s why I thought I’d come back with you, to see if we can find out what it is.’

‘Fine. But don’t think that, just because he’s your neighbour, he can’t be a killer. None of us know our neighbours as well as we like to think.’

‘True,’ she agreed, ‘but I know more about him now than I did this time yesterday.’

Max didn’t have a clue what she meant by that and he was prevented from asking by the arrival of the waiter. It took too long to choose desserts and then too long for Max and Jill’s coffees to arrive.

Finally, however, escape beckoned. First Max had to remind Kate that it was snowing again. She was driving his sons home and for that he was grateful. It was only a couple of miles, but he knew she hated driving in bad weather.

‘We’ll be fine,’ she promised him.

Then it took Jill at least five minutes to say goodbye to Kate.

But then they were walking back to headquarters. It was a brisk walk, too, with the wind gnawing at their bones. Max lit a cigarette, but it burnt away too quickly to be enjoyed.

They went straight to the interview room where Steve Carlisle still looked to be in a state of shock. He did look pleased, and somewhat relieved, to see Jill though.

‘I saw your mum today, Steve,’ she began. ‘Oh, she’s fine,’ she added. ‘A bit worried about you, but that’s understandable.’

The way Jill spoke, they might have been chatting at a village fête.

‘Well, when I say a bit worried,’ she went on, ‘she’s
very
worried. It’s a shame that, isn’t it? I’ve always liked your mum. I remember my first day in the village. She called on me, brought me some gorgeous flowers from her garden and left me her address and phone number just in case I needed anything. I was really touched by that.’

Carlisle seemed unsure what to make of this.

‘She’s that sort,’ he replied uneasily. ‘Always willing to help anyone.’

‘She is. It’s awful to think of her having to go through this, isn’t it? After all, she’s no spring chicken, is she? And no doubt the press will soon be camped out on her doorstep. That’s always hard to deal with. It’ll be very embarrassing for her, too.’

He nodded again, his face filled with all the sorrow imaginable. It wasn’t making him confess, though, Max thought grimly.

‘Tell me about Maisie,’ Jill suggested with an encouraging smile.

Max didn’t have a clue who the hell Maisie was. Typical of Jill not to discuss anything with him. He did see that mention of her name touched a nerve with Carlisle, though.

‘Maisie …’ He cleared his throat. A vein was throbbing at his temple. ‘Maisie was our daughter. She, um, she died.’

‘A cot death, wasn’t it?’ Jill said.

‘Yes.’

‘It happened when you were looking after her, didn’t it? Wasn’t Alison away at the time?’

‘That’s right.’

Jill leaned back in her chair. ‘Tell us about that night, Steve.’

‘Oh.’ He looked as if he couldn’t bear to relive a single second and Max couldn’t blame him for that.

‘It was this time of year,’ Carlisle began reluctantly. ‘A bit earlier. The twentieth of November to be precise. As you say, Alison was staying overnight in London. Maisie was four months old.’

His hands shook as he clasped and unclasped them on the desk.

‘I used to smoke then and I’d run out of cigarettes. I checked on Maisie and saw that she was fast asleep so I decided to nip out and get a pack from the shop. It was a five-minute walk at the most. When I got back—’

His voice was so low that Max wondered if the recorder was catching it all. He also wondered if this was relevant to the case.

‘When I got back to the house, I ran upstairs and she was – gone.’

‘That must have been hell,’ Jill said softly. ‘I suppose you blamed yourself, too.’

He nodded.

‘It wasn’t your fault though, was it? It was a cot death, one of those inexplicable tragedies that could have occurred on any night at any time.’

He nodded again, but he looked like a man who had been to hell and back many, many times.

‘How did Alison react to that?’ Jill asked him. ‘Was she understanding? Supportive?’

‘Yes. Yes, of course she was.’

‘Really?’ Jill sounded surprised. ‘Your mum thought she might blame you.’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps. A little. I was in charge, you see. That night, little Maisie was my responsibility.’

‘A terrible thing to happen,’ Jill sympathized. ‘How old would she have been now, Steve?’

‘Twenty.’

The soft, almost inaudible reply shocked Max to the core. Twenty. If she’d lived, Carlisle’s daughter would have been the same age as Lauren Cole.

‘You must think of her often,’ Jill said. ‘Especially when you see others of her age. When you used to meet up with Lauren Cole, for example.’

‘No!’ He knew what Jill was driving at and he was having none of it.

‘Oh, come on, Steve, you must have resented her a little. After all, she was alive and your Maisie wasn’t. She had her whole life ahead of her and Maisie didn’t.’

‘No.’

‘Lauren Cole was wasting her life, too. She’d lost her job, got mixed up with a bad crowd, messed around with drugs. Your Maisie wouldn’t have done that, would she? She wouldn’t have wasted her life.’

Steve said nothing.

‘You must have been very angry,’ Jill said in the same matter-of-fact way. ‘She was throwing her life down the drain when your poor little Maisie never had the chance to shine.’

Steve thumped the table, then banged his head against it and began to weep.

‘Is that why you killed Lauren Cole?’ Max demanded. ‘Because she had a life and Maisie didn’t?’

‘No! No, no, no!’

‘So why did you kill her?’

‘I didn’t!’

Apart from Carlisle’s sniffles and the whirr of the recording equipment, all was silent.

‘I didn’t,’ he said again, lifting his tear-wet face. ‘I swear to God I didn’t kill her. I swear on my mother’s life even.’

He was damn good. For a moment, he almost had Max convinced of his innocence.

‘I did see her, though.’ Carlisle’s voice was little more than a whisper.

‘What do you mean?’ Max asked.

‘That morning,’ he said, ‘I saw her. I used to look out for her. She was—’ He broke off.

‘What?’ Max demanded. ‘Young? Pretty?’

Carlisle didn’t answer.

‘You gave her the creeps,’ Max said. ‘That’s how she described you to her friend. As someone who gave her the creeps.’

‘Did she?’ He looked saddened, but not too surprised. ‘Well, why not? I’m old enough –
was
old enough to be her father.’

‘Exactly,’ Jill said. ‘Was that what attracted you to her? The fact that she was Maisie’s age?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘She was – young, I suppose. Too young to have been knocked about by life.’

‘To get back to that morning,’ Max said with all the patience he could muster. ‘You claim you saw her?’

‘Yes. When you’re stuck in a house alone all day, any company is something to be welcomed. Some days, I don’t see a living soul. Alison has lots of jobs around the house lined up for me, but, surely, there has to be more to life than that?’

Neither answered his question.

‘So yes,’ he continued, ‘I used to watch out for her. Some days, we’d walk together for a while. Our dogs used to play together. Funny that, because Cally can’t usually be bothered but she took to Charlie, the dead woman’s dog.’

He cleared his throat.

‘She was pretty, yes, but it wouldn’t have made any difference to me. She could have been fat and seventy years old and I would still have looked out for her. It was someone to pass the time of day with, that’s all. Someone to walk with for a while.’

‘So you walked together last Monday?’ Max asked.

‘Yes.’ Carlisle’s hands were shaking, and his teeth had started chattering. ‘The previous afternoon, Sunday, I’d seen a branch that had been blown down by the wind so, that morning, the Monday, I took – I took my axe along with me. I’d chopped up the branch and, because it wasn’t particularly big, I put it, with the axe, in the sack. I was on my way home when I met up with Lauren, but I decided to walk with her for a while.’

He took a breath.

‘After a few minutes, we suddenly realized that, although Cally was trotting beside us, her dog Charlie was nowhere in sight. She loved that dog and she – well, she panicked. I tried to calm her down, told her that he would have been chasing a rabbit or something. I suggested we split up to look for him and then meet back at Clough’s Shelter. I left my sack there and we set off.’

He was silent for so long that Max longed to shake the truth from him. He knew, though, that the silence might force Carlisle to talk.

‘It was funny,’ he continued at last, ‘but there was no sign of him. He’d simply vanished. He could be a bit noisy. If he was chasing a rabbit or something, he would have been yapping in that excitable way he has. But I kept shouting to him and, for a few minutes, I heard Lauren calling. Then, I could no longer hear her. I assumed she was out of earshot.’

Max saw the pulse throbbing in Carlisle’s neck. The man’s heart was racing at one hell of a pace.

‘After about fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, I went back to the shelter.’ His throat seemed to be giving up on him and he stopped speaking to look straight at Max. ‘She was dead.’

‘Describe everything,’ Jill ordered him. ‘Tell us everything you saw, heard and felt when you got back to the shelter.’

He nodded, seeming grateful for Jill’s calm tone.

‘Cally had trotted on ahead,’ he said, giving the impression of concentrating hard, ‘and it was the dog who found her lying there. I didn’t hear anything. Charlie was there, pawing at her arm.’

As yet there had been no mention of the axe.

‘You claim you left your sack – the one with a pile of wood and an axe inside it – at the shelter,’ Max reminded him. ‘How close to that was Lauren Cole’s body?’

Carlisle swallowed as if he had a golf ball stuck in his throat.

‘She was lying right by the sack,’ he said.

‘And your axe?’ Max asked.

‘It was – someone had …’ He balled his hands into fists and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Oh, God. Someone had killed her with my axe.’

He began sobbing again.

‘Right,’ Max said, losing patience, ‘let me picture the scene. You’ve been walking with a friend, acquaintance, call her what you will, and you return to discover that she’s been killed with your axe. So you what? I don’t suppose you would check for a pulse or call an ambulance? Not much point really because that one single blow would have killed her instantly, wouldn’t it? So what would most people do in that situation? They would call the police, wouldn’t they? So, Mr Carlisle, tell me exactly what you did when you saw the young woman lying there. Come on, tell me.’ He longed to shake him until his teeth rattled. ‘What did you do?’

‘I panicked.’ Still the sobs wracked his body. ‘I mean, I knew how it would look. It being my axe and everything. So I took a handkerchief from my pocket and wiped all fingerprints from it. I picked up the sack of wood and I – I ran.’