Silent Witness (A Dylan Scott Mystery) (25 page)

Dylan was taken aback when the front door of Neil Walsingham’s home was opened by a homely, dark-haired woman in her mid-fifties. She was too young to be his mother, but too old for the doctor’s taste and not even close to glamorous enough.

“You’ll be Mr. Scott, yes?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“Mary Bell. I’m Dr. Walsingham’s housekeeper. Please, come in. He is expecting you.”

“Thank you.” Dylan had assumed that, given the doctor’s work shifts, he had reliable babysitters in place. He should have known that, being on call at times, the doctor would need a live-in housekeeper. “How long have you worked for Neil?”

“Coming up to six months.” Smiling, she led him into a vast sitting-room. “Have a seat, Mr. Scott, and I’ll go and tell Neil you’re here. He won’t be a moment.”

The room was as tastefully furnished as Dylan would have expected. Two leather sofas and three chairs didn’t boast so much as a scratch. A large, but not too large, TV shared a wall with various works of art. The oak floor was partially hidden with tasteful rugs. Oak coffee tables were spotless. On a bureau in the corner sat the obligatory framed photo of Walsingham and Carly on their wedding day.

“Dylan, good to see you.” Neil strode into the room, a broad smile on his face. He was dressed casually in open neck shirt and chinos. “Can I offer you a drink?”

“No, thanks. This won’t take long. I just need a couple of things clearing up.”

Neil sat, left ankle balanced on right knee. He gave every indication of being relaxed and at ease. A man with nothing to hide. He gestured for Dylan to sit opposite.

After a moment’s hesitation, he did so. He decided he might as well get straight to the point. “It would help enormously if you told me where you were on the afternoon your wife was murdered.”

Smiling despairingly, Walsingham shook his head. “I’ve told you fifty times. I’ve told everyone fifty times. I was at the hospital. We were busy because—”

“I know all about the children and the accident.” And he didn’t want to hear it again. “But I know for a fact you weren’t there. Where were you, Neil?”

“Who says I wasn’t there?” The smile had slipped a little.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t reveal the witness’s name.” For now, Sonia would have to be elevated to witness. “Where were you?”

Neil looked at him for long moments and all the while his raised foot danced a merry jig.

“Okay,” he said at last. “I wasn’t at the hospital.”

Hallelujah!

Dylan didn’t let him see how surprised he was by the admission. “Where were you?”

“Hasn’t your witness told you?”

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

Walsingham leapt to his feet. “Are you sure I can’t get you a drink?”

“Quite sure. Thanks.”

Dylan regretted that as soon as Walsingham reached for a bottle of Laphroaig, but he needed two things—a clear head and the upper hand.

Walsingham poured an extremely generous measure into a large crystal glass. He took an appreciative sip and returned to his seat. With his legs crossed at the ankle now, he still looked reasonably relaxed.

“I can tell you where I was,” he said, “but you won’t believe me, the person I was with will deny everything, and it will only serve to muddy the water. Do you still want to know?”

“I do.”

“Right.” Walsingham took another swig of whisky. “That afternoon, I was supposed to be meeting Megan Cole. Occasionally, we’d sneak away from the hospital for an hour. The emergency department had been busy, but everything was under control by lunchtime. So Megan went home and I was supposed to follow her. Then I had a phone call.”

Right on cue, a phone rang in the sitting room. Walsingham cocked an ear until someone, presumably Mary Bell, answered it.

“It was Sonia Trueman,” he continued. “There had been no contact between Sonia and me since I broke things off, but someone had told her husband about us, God knows who. She was hysterical when she called me because he’d knocked her about. You won’t know him, but he’s a piece of scum who makes the Incredible Hulk look normal. Anyway, he’d hit her. She’d managed to flee the house and was on her way to the hospital. She was shouting and screaming, telling me—or warning me—that she was going to tell everyone who asked exactly why her husband had half killed her.”

“Had he? Half killed her?”

“Nothing was broken.” Walsingham sighed. “She was a mess, but it was only cuts and bruises. Her lip needed stitches.”

Dylan winced on Sonia’s behalf. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t want her coming to the hospital and spreading more ugly rumours about me so I threw a few things in a bag—bandages, sutures, anything else I might need—and went to meet her.”

“So you treated her injuries?”

“As stupid as it sounds, yes. There’s a small memorial garden behind the hospital. No one uses it. Few people even know it exists. Of course, calming her down was my first priority.” He let out a long sigh. “I managed that, cleaned her up, and then her husband called her. He was crying down the phone, saying how sorry he was, begging her to go home, that sort of thing.”

Dylan wasn’t sure he believed Walsingham’s story or not. At least it was a story, though, and he had nothing better to do with his time.

“Did she go home to her husband?” he asked.

“Eventually, yes. Having made me promise not to tell him she’d called me or seen me.” He rolled his eyes. “As if I was likely to do that. No one would volunteer for a visit from Terry Trueman. Besides, I wanted the blasted woman out of my life. But yes, she went. I gave her money for a taxi—I didn’t think her bruiser of a husband would be too pleased if he saw me drive her home—and she left.”

He drained his glass and stood to refill it.

“So there you have it,” he said. “That’s what happened. What I didn’t know was that while I was dealing with Sonia’s injuries, Carly was being murdered.”

“Okay,” Dylan said. “So when Sonia left you, what did you do?”

“I dashed back to the hospital. I was almost there when my sons’ teacher called me to say she hadn’t been able to reach Carly and that the boys were still at the school. I collected them and drove them home. And Carly was dead.”

Dylan was beginning to believe him.

“But why didn’t you tell the police all this?”

“Before the police had time to question me, Megan phoned to ask where I’d been. She wasn’t pleased at being stood up. I told her what had happened to Carly, and that the police would be asking questions. Once the shock had worn off, she panicked about her job. She’d been at her house waiting for me, remember?”

“What? You lied to the police just because Megan Cole was worried about her job?”

“No. I lied to the police because I knew damn well Sonia would deny all knowledge. I knew she wouldn’t tell the world, or more important her husband, that she’d been with me. The vindictive cow would have made me look like a complete idiot. It was easier to say I’d been at the hospital. It helped Megan out of an awkward situation too.”

“So you and Megan Cole gave each other alibis?”

“We said we’d been at the hospital, yes.” He sat back in his chair. “To be honest, I can’t see it matters where I was, where Megan was or where the hell Sonia was. None of us killed Carly. The important thing, in my mind, was to catch the killer.”

In the same situation, Dylan would have been a lot more concerned with coping with his grief. The shock wouldn’t have allowed him to worry about colleagues who’d lied to their bosses or about ex-mistresses worried about their husbands’ reactions. Not that Dylan had any mistresses, ex-or otherwise.

“Basically, I panicked,” Walsingham said. “It sounds ridiculous, I know, but the police were asking questions and I thought—Christ, I thought they’d got me down as someone capable of murdering my own wife, the mother of my children.”

“I see.”

Dylan would go into a state of shock if he found
anyone
dead in his sodding bath. As a doctor, Walsingham might be more used to dealing with blood and death, but there was a world of difference between treating injured strangers and finding your own wife dead in her bath.

“Is that why you lied about Kaminski threatening her the night before?” Dylan asked.

“What? No. No, of course not. I didn’t lie. Maybe he wasn’t threatening her, but I know what I heard. And I know she was upset afterwards.”

More likely, he’d known she was on the phone and guessed, from some intimate whispering, that she was talking to her lover, Aleksander Kaminski.

“Would Sonia Trueman really lie about being with you that afternoon? Lie to the police, I mean?”

“Yes.” Walsingham had no doubts on that score. “She wouldn’t want her husband to know she’d been with me that day but, more than that, she’d love to see me behind bars. If she could put a spoke in my proverbial wheel, believe me, she would.”

While these people played their petty games, Kaminski was rotting behind Strangeways’ thick walls.

“The night before Carly was murdered,” Dylan said, “I gather you went out to a restaurant in the town?”

“Yes. I told you that. That’s why I didn’t press her about the phone call. I guessed it was Kaminski, but I didn’t want to spoil the evening.”

“Hmm. But I’ve heard, and sorry, but I can’t reveal the name of my source, that you and she quarrelled.”

“What?” Walsingham couldn’t have looked more shocked if the ghost of his dead wife had walked into the room and helped herself to his whisky. “Who said that?”

“Is it true?” Dylan asked.

“No. No, of course not. Well, we might have had words about something or other, like all married couples do, but we certainly didn’t quarrel.”

“You didn’t pick a fight with her?”

“Of course not. For God’s sake, people delight in spreading ugly rumours, don’t they? Sorry, Dylan, but if we did have a tiff about something, I can’t remember it.”

He took a sip of his whisky. The aroma drifted across to Dylan, making him wonder why he hadn’t accepted a drink.

“What about Aleksander Kaminski?” he asked. “How many times had you seen him before your wife was murdered?”

“Only once. Why do you ask?”

“Tell me about it.”

“Carly wanted to go to a fundraiser at that tumbledown animal centre his wife runs. I didn’t know that’s where Kaminski lived. As far as I was concerned, he and Carly were divorced. End of. But we went to this bloody thing and bumped into him. It was then I found out he was married to the owner.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“We passed the time of day, that’s all. We spoke about the weather and the fundraiser for all of two minutes.” A smile curved his lips. “His wife was dressed up as Goldilocks. Can you believe that? She had dogs that were supposed to be the three bears. Anyway, someone reversed into her car. Seeing her race across to inspect the damage dressed like that was one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. There wasn’t much damage done to her car. It was a rust-coloured heap anyway, and one wing mirror was already being held on with gaffer tape.”

“With what?”

“Gaffer tape. You know, the stuff they use to cover cables on stages or—”

“Yes. I know what it is.”

“It was a wreck, that’s what it was. Impossible to know where the paint ended and the rust started. How she had the nerve to have a go at someone for putting a small dent in it, I don’t know.” He chuckled at the memory, then perhaps remembered that Dylan was investigating his wife’s murder and that laughter was out of order. “But, um, yes, that’s the only time I ever saw or spoke to the man.”

“Yet you knew he was in contact with your wife?”

“Yes. Yes, I knew that.”

“Okay. Thanks for that, Neil. You’ve been very helpful indeed.”

“You’re welcome. Now, about that drink? Are you sure you won’t have one?”

“Positive, thanks. I’ll bid you goodnight.”

Dylan wanted a drink, or four, but he wanted to enjoy it in his own company.

It was raining when Dylan left Walsingham’s house and sprinted to the Morgan. This was serious rain, angry rain that tried to beat you senseless.

It wasn’t far to Sonia Trueman’s house, though, so he’d have a quick chat with her, and it would be quick because he wasn’t in the mood for playing games, and then buy himself that pint. He needed to think, and he’d do that a lot better with a drink in his hand.

He parked outside her house. A single light was burning in a ground floor room, suggesting someone was in. With his jacket collar turned up as poor shelter against the rain, he ran from the Morgan to the front door and rang the bell. A light came on in the hall and then he heard the sound of a lock clicking.

She opened the door six inches and gasped when she saw him. “What are you doing here?”

Dylan put his foot in the door to prevent her slamming it in his face. “I’d like a quick word. If you’d rather talk to the police, that’s fine, but it might be easier if you talked to me.”

“The police? Why?” It took her five seconds to make up her mind. “Perhaps you’d better come in.”

She must be alone because she wouldn’t have made the offer if the hulk was at home. Dylan was relieved. He didn’t want a run-in with him.

He was being invited no further than the hallway. She stood in front of him, arms folded in belligerent fashion, barring him further entry.

“So?” she said.

“So I need to know why you lied to me. I have a witness who says you were with Neil Walsingham on the day his wife was murdered.”

Dylan had no idea what she’d expected him to say but it sure as hell wasn’t that. Her eyes widened in shock.

“A witness?”

“Yes.” One lie deserved another.

For some reason, he’d believed Walsingham’s story. He didn’t like the bloke, and he couldn’t warm to anyone who was busy sorting out his alibi while his wife’s body was waiting to be removed from her watery resting place, but he believed that Walsingham had been with Sonia.

“Perhaps you’d like to tell me about it,” he said. “The truth this time.”

Her arms remained folded and she looked at him as if he had dog shit on his shoe. “I suppose Neil’s told you, has he?”

Dylan shrugged. “Is it true?”

“He’s a liar. I’ve told you, only a fool would believe what he said.”

“Look, Sonia, I’m really not in the mood to be pissed about. Just tell me the truth. Otherwise, we can take a short drive to the police station and see what they have to say.”

She glared at him. “Okay, so he was with me. So what?”

“So what?” Dylan had never hit a woman in his life but his fists longed to put that right. “So you’ve been trying to convince me that Neil Walsingham is guilty of his wife’s murder when, all along, you’ve known damn well he isn’t. So a man is currently serving a life sentence in one of the most depressing places on earth and maybe he shouldn’t be there. So people’s lives have been wrecked.”

She had the decency to flush with shame.

“Neil Walsingham couldn’t have killed his wife, could he?” Dylan said. “You know he’s innocent, don’t you?”

She nodded, eyes on her foot that was tracing an invisible pattern in the carpet.

“Then why? Why did you want to convince me he was guilty?”

Her head flew up. “Because I hate him.”

“Why? Because you thought he was going to whisk you off to the sunset and your own happy ever after? Look at yourself, Sonia. You’re so bitter and twisted, you’re willing to accuse a man of murdering his own wife. Who the hell would want to get involved with someone so vindictive?”

Tears sprang to her eyes, but Dylan couldn’t care less. He shook his head in disgust. “I hope you can live with yourself.”

Unable to bear her company any longer, he turned for the door.

“I take it you have nothing more to say? Your husband discovered you’d been seeing Neil and knocked you about a bit. Neil patched you up, calmed you down and gave you money for a taxi home. Is that about the height of it?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

“That doesn’t sound like someone who deserves to be condemned for a murder he didn’t commit, does it?” He yanked open the door. “Don’t worry, I’ll see myself out.”

He ran back to his car and sat for a few moments with the rain beating out a tune on the paintwork.

It always surprised him when people didn’t share his views. If people committed a crime, they should be punished. Whoever killed Carly Walsingham should be given a life sentence, long enough behind bars to consider their actions and what it had done to Carly’s family. Justice was what mattered. It was the only way people could make sense of life.

With a long sigh, he fired the engine and began the drive back to town. He’d park at the hotel and take a taxi out to the Dog and Fox. He needed to think about his chat with Neil Walsingham, and that pint of beer was shouting his name.

He’d driven less than half a mile when he turned into a side street and pulled up. The wipers weren’t coping with the rain so he’d give it a few minutes and hope it eased off.

The driver of the car behind had the same idea. It, too, pulled into the side street. The car slowed a little and crawled past the Morgan. Odd.

It was going slowly but it was impossible to see the colour or even the model through the rain. All he could see was a pair of rear lights.

Five minutes later, Dylan drove off. Rain was still hammering on the Morgan’s bodywork but visibility was slightly better.

Within a minute, he had a car following him. He turned left and the car followed. He continued on to the traffic lights and sat at the front of the queue. He didn’t indicate. The driver behind him wasn’t showing any intention of driving left or right. The lights changed to green and Dylan took a right turn. The car behind followed.

Dylan could see a pair of headlights, but it was dark, the road had no streetlights and the rain continued to lash down, making it impossible to guess at the make or model of the vehicle.

Of course, it could be that he was getting paranoid.

He drove back to the centre of town. Despite the tortuous route he took, the car followed.

He turned into the small car park adjoining the shopping centre. The car drove on very slowly.

The rain has eased off a little but, if he left his car, he’d be soaked through to the skin within seconds. He had no choice. There was nothing to be gained by playing cat and mouse.

He grabbed his overcoat, locked the Morgan and walked slowly in the direction of the unlit side streets.

No one else was about. No one else was crazy enough to be out on a night like this. The rain remained steady, but the wind was increasing. Discarded crisps packets blew by and empty beer cans rattled along in their wake.

Deciding this was madness, and that he really was paranoid, he was about to turn into the street that would bring him out by the cinema when he heard footsteps. Those feet had to be close for him to hear them over the noise of the storm.

He crossed the road and headed down a narrow, unlit alley. Every inch of him was soaked. Rain dripped off his hair and ran down his neck. His jeans were weighing heavy. Even his feet were wet. He needed to confront whoever was following him, sort it out, whatever “it” was, get back to his hotel for clean clothes and order that pint of beer.

The alley was only a couple of feet wide and walls either side offered some sort of shelter from the wind.

Halfway along, he stopped and turned round. He saw a shadow press itself against the wall.

He walked back. The shadow jumped out in front of him.

“Well, well, well.” Dylan shouldn’t have been surprised. “You get your kicks from following people, don’t you, Jamie?”

It was too dark to see the expression on Tinsley’s face, yet Dylan could sense the man’s tension. The alley seemed alive with the other man’s excitement.

“You should have phoned, Jamie. We could have met up for a cosy chat.”

There was enough light to see Tinsley reach deep into the pocket of a coat that, like his trousers, was the wrong length. It seemed unsure whether to stop above the knee, on the knee or at some place between knee and ankle.

It took a second for Jamie to pull out a gun. And slightly longer for Dylan’s brain to register the fact.

It was impossible to guess if Tinsley intended to use it, but Dylan wasn’t a betting man. He hurled himself at Tinsley.

A brilliant white light jolted Dylan’s body. It dazzled him. White-hot, searing light.

It took a second to decide if he was standing on his head or lying down. He deliberately took a moment to think about this. He didn’t think he’d passed out, yet he was lying in the alley and he was alone.

And the bastard had shot him!

He was lying on something. Pain tore through him as he tried to sit up without moving his shoulder.

He’d been lying on Tinsley’s gun, which didn’t make a lot of sense. Nothing made a lot of sense right now.

“Oh, Christ!” Yes, it did. Everything made sense.

Rain was still falling steadily. He put a gentle exploratory hand to his left shoulder. His coat was covered in blood, as was his hand now.

“Right.” He pocketed the gun, staggered to his feet and leaned his forehead against the wet wall until the dizziness subsided. “It’s only a graze,” he told himself. “You’ll probably live.”

It didn’t feel like it.

He took a moment to remember what had happened. At the exact moment he’d launched himself, Jamie must have pulled the trigger. Presumably, Dylan knocked the gun from his hand as he fell. Jamie wouldn’t have hunted for it in the dark. He would have scarpered before anyone heard the shot and came running.

That was a laugh. There wasn’t a soul to be seen. No police sirens were screaming to Dylan’s rescue.

Sweat poured down his face and his spine as he walked slowly back to his car. He kept his shoulder as still as possible, his arm clamped tight against his side.

The effort of unlocking his car and dropping onto the seat had waves of dizziness threatening to send him to some unknown abyss.

It was only a flesh wound, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t take off his coat to inspect the damage. His Arsenal FC scarf was lying in the passenger footwell. He reached for it and spent the next ten minutes trying to use it as a bandage. It wasn’t the most skilled piece of work but it would have to suffice until he could get to the hospital. Or the pub. Before that, though, he needed to pay Pennine View Rescue Centre a visit.