The Dead (The Saxon & Fitzgerald Mysteries Book 1) (21 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

It got better. Within the hour, a witness had come forward who could put Nick Elliott at the scene of the crime last night and he was brought in for questioning. I watched him through the glass of the interrogation room, slumped in a chair, weary and unshaven, hands on the table, curling and uncurling his fingers repeatedly as if his body couldn’t settle whilst his mind was making such panicked leaps. There was a cigarette smouldering in the ashtray next to his hands. Fitzgerald sat opposite him, turning the pages of her notes slowly, taking her time, like Elliott wasn’t there, like he hadn’t even entered her thoughts.

A uniformed officer stood watch by the door. A clock ticked loudly on the wall. That and the rustling of Fitzgerald’s notes were the only sounds coming over the speaker connecting the two rooms.

I sat on the wrong side of the glass with Boland and Sean Healy, waiting for her to begin, as impatient as Elliott. She was making him sweat, but she was making me sweat too.

‘Where’s his lawyer?’ I said when another minute had ticked by.

‘He hasn’t asked for one,’ said Boland. ‘He was told it was his right, but he passed.’

‘That surprises me,’ I said. ‘I’d have thought Elliott was the sort to go hide behind his rights at the first sign of trouble.’

‘Probably thinks he can talk his way out of it,’ said Healy.

He took a bite out of a sandwich, and it was only his sandwich which made me realise it was nearly lunchtime already. My stomach didn’t even feel like it could cope with coffee.

‘Or,’ Healy went on, his mouth full, ‘he thinks that not asking for a lawyer makes him look more innocent. I’ve seen that happen before.’

Elliott didn’t look like he had any kind of a plan at that moment, unless obsessively tapping his cigarette to shake off the dead ash could be called a plan, and it was a relief when Fitzgerald finally put down her notes and fixed him with a friendly smile.

‘So help me out, Elliott,’ were her first words. ‘More to the point, help yourself out. What was your relationship with Nikolaevna?’

‘I didn’t have a relationship with her,’ Elliott said. ‘I told you already. I . . . went to her a couple of times.’

‘For sex.’

‘Of course for sex. She was a prostitute, what do you think I paid her for – doing my gardening?’

Scared or not, Elliott obviously hadn’t lost his talent for being bloody-minded.

‘Did you pay for her services often?’ she said.

‘A couple of times.’

‘Elliott.’ She sighed. ‘You know why we’ve brought you in here. Because your number came up on Nikolaevna’s phone records more than a hundred times in the past two months.’

‘OK. I was seeing her’ – he considered – ‘a couple of times a week. Mondays and Fridays mostly.’

‘Always at her flat?’

‘Yeah.’

‘She never came round to your place?’ said Fitzgerald.

Elliott shook his head.

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Of course I’m sure. You think I’d forget?’

‘I really couldn’t say,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘I don’t know how many prostitutes you have sex with. Maybe you stop remembering the details after a while.’

‘There weren’t any others,’ said Elliott.

‘Just Nikolaevna.’

‘That’s right.’

‘This is just so you know we’ll be checking out your house,’ she said. ‘Lifting prints. If she was there, we’ll find out about it soon enough.’ She paused a moment, giving him a chance to rescue himself if he wanted to, but Elliott stayed silent. ‘Maybe find out about any others too.’

He gave an alarmed look.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing,’ Fitzgerald said soothingly. ‘Like you say, you never had any other prostitutes round, so what do you have to worry about?’ Her eyes slid to her notes for a second. ‘You never had sex with Monica Lee, for example. Or Mary Lynch.’

‘What have they got to do with it?’

‘Nothing, according to you. That’s fine. Forget about them. Forget I mentioned them. You never slept with them.’

‘No I didn’t.’

‘Never paid them for their professional services.’

‘No.’

‘Then why are we still talking about them?’ said Fitzgerald, and she gave him a look like she almost pitied his stupidity. ‘Back to Nikolaevna then. How did you first meet her?’

‘I got her number through a friend,’ said Elliott. ‘He’d been to her before. He recommended her.’

‘Are you going to give us his name?’

Elliott hesitated.

‘I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’

‘You’re the one who’s in trouble, Elliott. I wouldn’t waste any energy worrying about anyone else right now.’

He hesitated again, but it was obvious it was coming.

‘Brendan Harte.’

‘Sorry, Elliott, I didn’t quite catch that.’

‘Brendan Harte,’ he said, louder. ‘He recommended her.’

‘The theatre critic?’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Gave you a good review, did he? Of Nikolaevna’s performance?’

‘He knew my situation. He was just being friendly.’

‘Is that what they call it nowadays?’ Fitzgerald leaned back in her chair. ‘Just for the record, what exactly was your situation?’

‘My wife and I . . . it hadn’t been going well. We’d split up.’

‘This would be the wife you only married four months ago?’

‘Am I being interrogated about my marriage problems or about Sadie’s murder?’

‘I’m interested, that’s all,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Interested in why your wife would’ve left you only a couple of months after you married. Just wondering if it’s relevant.’

‘You think I was violent towards her?’

‘Who mentioned violence?’

‘I know what you’re doing,’ said Elliott. ‘You’re putting two and two together and getting five. You’ll have me down as a wife-beater first and say that’s why she left me, and then you’ll say I was some creep who went to prostitutes, and before you know it I’m a killer.’

‘But you’ve got nothing to worry about because it didn’t happen like that, right?’ said Fitzgerald. ‘So that’s fine. Except,’ she added, ‘that you were paying Nikolaevna Tsilevich to have sex with you. That part of the scenario’s right.’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Elliott.

‘It never is,’ she said wryly, but he didn’t take the bait. ‘How long did you say you’d been going to her? Two months, was it?’

‘Two, maybe three.’

‘It’s three now? That would be before your wife left you,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Was that why she left you?’

‘Why don’t you ask her?’ he said.

‘We will. When was the last time you saw her?’

‘My wife or Sadie?’

‘Whichever one you prefer to tell us about.’

‘My wife, two weeks ago. We had stuff to arrange. Financial stuff. We had lunch.’

‘No chance of a reconciliation then?’

‘No.’

‘Sorry to hear it. What about Nikolaevna?’

Hesitation again. He hadn’t been told yet about the witness. Fitzgerald was saving up that little surprise.

‘I don’t remember,’ he said.

‘Two weeks, one week, three days?’

‘I told you, I—’

‘Don’t remember. Yeah, you said.’ She raised her eyebrows.

‘You don’t make this easy, you know that, Elliott? Every detail dragged out under duress. Doesn’t look good.’

‘I’ve got nothing to hide. I didn’t kill anyone.’

‘Think the jury’ll agree?’

‘Don’t start that shit on me!’ said Elliott, slamming his knuckles on the desk. It was the first time he’d really raised his voice, though now he’d raised it he didn’t seem to know what to do with it. ‘Don’t you even think of – fuck. A jury, Christ! You’re not charging me with this. I didn’t kill Sadie. You’ve got nothing says I did. I cared about her.’

‘You cared about her?’ echoed Fitzgerald incredulously. ‘This isn’t exactly Romeo and Juliet, you know.’

‘You can go to hell, Fitzgerald. I did care about her, she was good to me. I would never have done anything to hurt her.’

Boland snorted next to me, but it wouldn’t have been so unusual if Elliott had fallen for Nikolaevna. Men often fall for the prostitutes they visit. They convince themselves that what goes on between them is a sign of real affection rather than a mockery of it. They blind themselves to the mesmeric power of the money they bring with them to the room.

I said nothing, though, because it would’ve taken too long to explain and Fitzgerald was speaking again.

‘If you cared about Nikolaevna so much,’ she was asking Elliott, ‘why didn’t you make it more than twice a week?’

Elliott breathed out hard with irritation.

‘Twice a week was all I could afford,’ he said.

‘She was expensive?’

‘She wasn’t some common street whore, if that’s what you mean,’ he said.

‘Have you got something against common street whores?’

‘I don’t have anything against anyone. I’m just saying there’s a difference. Sadie was classy. I loved her.’

‘First you cared for her, now you loved her.’ Fitzgerald scratched her head with her pen and looked sceptical. ‘How did it make you feel then, that she slept with other men for money?’

Elliott shifted uncomfortably. ‘I didn’t like it,’ he admitted reluctantly. ‘I asked her to come live with me. I asked her to give it up.’

‘On the salary of a man who could only afford her twice a week?’ said Fitzgerald.

‘Things change,’ Elliott said. ‘I’m going places. I had my book out, I had other things lined up, I—’

‘Did you tell her all this?’

‘I tried to.’

A long pause.

‘Elliott?’

‘If you must know,’ he said, ‘she laughed.’

Fitzgerald laughed too.

‘I can imagine,’ she said. ‘That must’ve made you angry.’

‘Don’t start those games again,’ Elliott sighed. ‘Not angry, just sad, just wishing it was different. She was better than that.’

‘Don’t tell me. You wanted to take her away from it all.’

‘I did.’

‘That’s very admirable. We’ve obviously misunderstood you.’ Fitzgerald smiled. ‘You’re a hero, that’s what you are – mild-mannered newspaper reporter by day, saviour of fallen women everywhere by night. I can already see the movie.’

‘It’s easy to sneer,’ said Elliott.

‘I’m not sneering,’ Fitzgerald said. ‘The only thing is, I can’t understand why, if you cared about her so much and wanted to save her from herself and the cruel world, you can’t remember the last time you saw her. Does that make sense to you?’

He was looking down at his hands.

‘What’s wrong, Elliott?’

‘I’m hot.’

‘You want a drink, I can get you a drink. Sergeant, see to that.’

The uniformed policeman on watch went to the water cooler and filled a plastic cup for Elliott. He brought it back to the table and set it by the ashtray. Elliott didn’t touch it.

‘The fact is,’ Fitzgerald went on as Elliott lit another cigarette, ‘we don’t need you to tell us when you last saw the woman you call Sadie, because we know. You were there last night. We have a witness.’

‘You’re lying,’ said Elliott, but I could see the sudden fear in him.

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘It doesn’t make any difference to us; we’ve got prints all over the apartment, her phone records show you clearly had some kind of obsession with her. Add in the witness who saw you arriving, and I’d say we nearly have enough to charge you already. You know a bit about the law. What do you think?’

Elliott sought out understanding in her eyes, but she stayed cold.

‘I was there last night,’ he said at last, ‘but I didn’t kill her, I swear I didn’t kill her.’ He was still looking for that sign that she understood. ‘I phoned her earlier, about seven. The editor had called me into his office that afternoon, he was giving me a pay rise for my work on the Night Hunter case. So I called her. I wanted to celebrate.’

‘Celebrate,’ she said, like the word was alien.

‘Celebrate,’ he repeated defiantly. ‘And how did she react to your suggestion of a . . . celebration?’

‘She said no, at first. She said she’d cancelled all her appointments for that night. Said she wasn’t seeing anyone.’

‘Did she say why?’

‘No, but . . . well, it doesn’t take a genius to work out why now.’

For once, Elliott was right. It didn’t take a genius, as his own insight proved. Nikolaevna must have seen the killer’s latest letter when it was leaked to the Evening News and realised she was a potential target. She’d cancelled her appointments because she no longer felt safe. Elliott’s information only confirmed that the killer must have been well known to her, familiar enough for her to ignore her fears and let him in. As familiar as Elliott, perhaps? She’d obviously been comfortable enough with him to let him come round in the end.