Unlucky For Some (26 page)

“Do you have a theory as to what this challenge is all about, if it isn’t someone with a score to settle?” asked Tom.

“Hardly a theory. But it seems likely that the perpetrator is local, and it could be from someone who resents Mr. Baker, not because he solved a series of murders twenty years ago, but because he is in some way interfering with the perpetrator’s life here and now. But it would have to be resentment to the point of obsession to cause the murder of three innocent people.”

Judy looked up from the notes she was making. “I’m not clear on how murdering three people who have nothing to do with Tony Baker means that the perpetrator is getting some sort of satisfaction, whether it’s a personal or a professional resentment. How does that affect Tony Baker? No one expects him to solve these murders—not even the press. We’re the ones who are getting it in the neck for making no progress. So what’s the point of this duel?”

“We’re dealing with a disturbed mind,” said Castle. “He possibly feels that it will diminish Mr. Baker in the public’s eyes if he can do nothing to prevent murders being committed ‘right under his nose’ as the letter says.”

“I understand Baker
is
actually trying to solve these murders,” said Lloyd. “If the perpetrator knew that, once challenged, Baker would feel compelled to do that, would it make any more sense?”

Castle shook his head. “Not to me,” he said. “Not as things stand. It can’t harm Mr. Baker if he fails to apprehend the murderer, and can only raise his stock if he does. But, as I said, we are dealing with a disturbed mind, and the logic of it might have no bearing on his actions. My personal belief is that the challenge will have a purpose, and that discovering that purpose might lead you to the perpetrator.”

“Could Baker himself be writing these letters?” Judy asked.

“Well, that’s obviously a possibility, but I come back to the fact that I believe the duel will turn out to have a specific purpose. The murderer carrying on a duel with himself would seem to be even more pointless.”

“It’s got him on the TV a lot,” Tom said.

Castle nodded. “It has, but it did that as soon as the first letter was received—there would have been no reason for him to kill again, if that was the motive. And Baker is a very successful man—I doubt that he was in need of a career boost.”

“What about the disposal of the weapons differing each time?” asked Judy.

“I’m inclined to think that expediency rules the day with this man,” said Castle. “If I’m right that the first murder wasn’t part of this challenge, he may not have taken the elaborate precautions he took with the subsequent murders. He may have been fearful of fingerprints being found, so he removed the weapon from the scene. In the second incident, it was undoubtedly expedient to leave the choke-chain in situ, rather than run the risk of it being found on his person, should he be seen in the vicinity of the murder. A choke-chain minus a dog would be hard to explain away, and could easily be matched to the injuries received by the deceased. It was definitely best to leave it where it was.”

“Then why put the knife in a padded bag and dump it in a bin that he must have known would be searched, rather than leaving it where it was?” Judy asked. “He was seen putting the package in the bin, and that was a risk he needn’t have taken.”

“That point is significant, I am sure. Why it should have been a more desirable thing to do than leaving the knife with the body, I don’t know. But I think he believed that it was. Everything about this man says he does nothing without a purpose, and never acts without thinking, which is why I’m certain the duel itself has a purpose. He makes meticulous plans, and follows them, I’m sure, without deviation, no matter what. Indeed, your best chance of catching him might well be if something goes wrong with his plans that he was unable to foresee—I don’t believe he’s someone who can think on his feet all that well. Everything has been carefully thought out beforehand.”

“But the first murder is different, isn’t it?” said Lloyd. “Whatever its motive, it seems to have been opportunist, spur-of-the-moment. You think that he had to remove the weapon because it would have his fingerprints on it. Would a man such as you describe—one who does nothing without a reason and without careful forethought—would such a man commit such a crime?”

“Now you come to mention it, Mr. Lloyd—no, I doubt very much that he would.” He looked irritated at having been caught napping. “This is the sort of thing that I thought might happen if I had to report to you earlier than I would choose.”

“So the first murder probably wasn’t committed by the same person at all,” said Lloyd.

“Two murderers?” said Judy. “We’re having enough trouble finding one.”

“But it makes sense, doesn’t it?” Lloyd turned to her. “You said yourself that it looked like a mugging gone wrong. Freddie said that the assailant was very unlikely to have intended to kill Mrs. Fenton. So what if that’s just what it was? What if the mugger was scared off by Tony Baker, and did just drop the money, which happened to fall the way it did?”

“Well—I did concede that the money falling the way it did was about as likely as a yellow blackbird, but go on,” she said.

“Tony Baker tells his editor that he’s witnessed a murder, and something that would have been strictly local news is splashed all over the front page of a national. And then . . .” Lloyd tipped his chair back, swaying gently as his theory evolved. “And then someone who might never have heard of the South Coast murders, or of Tony Baker, reads all about it, and is excited by the idea—Baker says that serial killers are born, not made. Something triggers it, he says. What if that was the trigger?” He swayed gently back and forth as he thought. “This person thinks what fun it would be to kill people right under Tony Baker’s nose, and that’s what he does. He kills people when he knows Baker is in the vicinity, making it look superficially like Mrs. Fenton’s murder by not stealing whatever money he finds, and making that obvious by scattering it on the body. When he writes to Baker, he takes the credit for the first one while he’s at it, so that it looks as though he knew Baker was there all the time, and was already one step ahead of him.”

It was true, thought Tom, that neither Judy nor Freddie had been happy with the first one being deliberate murder. His own theory had been that since one blow had done the job, the assailant didn’t bother hitting her again, and in view of subsequent events everyone had gone along with that, but murderers generally preferred to make certain. Lloyd seemed to be on to something.

“He might not even be local,” said Lloyd.

“No,” said Judy, the flaw-spotter. “He has to be local. If he didn’t commit the first murder, how did he know to leave the money on the victims’ bodies? Someone must have told him about how Mrs. Fenton was found.”

“It’s certainly more than possible that someone else committed the first murder,” said Castle. “In which case, the Waterman connection could be quite spurious—the locations being chosen simply because they mirror the original murder.”

Judy nodded. “So . . . to sum up?”

“Well, it’s summing up in the middle of the trial,” said Castle. “But you could—I stress
could,
particularly in view of Mr. Lloyd’s contribution—be looking for someone—perhaps, but not necessarily, a Waterman employee or customer—who works or engages in recreation in the evenings, in all three towns, who is literate, with a knowledge of killing, possibly as a participant in field sports, and with what amounts to an obsession with Tony Baker. But it’s quite possibly nonsense, I warn you.” He closed the file in front of him, and sat back.

“Well, thank you, Dr. Castle,” said Judy. “That’s been very thought-provoking.”

“If you have any other questions, I’ll be pleased to try to answer them, but what we have discussed covers everything I have in my notes. And I beg you not to act precipitately on anything that we have discussed here today, because this is a crude, fuzzy snapshot, and it could be a snapshot of the wrong man.”

Tom left the meeting finding it quite difficult to come to terms with the fact that he thought Dr. Castle had made a useful contribution to the investigation. Damn it, he’d be worrying if he was sufficiently highly customer-oriented any minute.

“So that puts Scopes back on the list,” said Judy, as they walked along to their offices. “Though I hardly think he’s serial-killer material, and only half the snapshot applies to him. Tom, I think you should speak to him and Tony Baker tomorrow. Lloyd’s volunteering to spend the day going through the staff records with me to see which of our colleagues worked on the South Coast murders, aren’t you, dear?”

“If you’re sure I’m not too humble for that job, ma'am,” said Lloyd.

“I’m going to get this all weekend,” she said to Tom. “Because he feels miffed. Can I come and stay with you?”

“Actually,” said Lloyd, “I’m feeling rather smug.”

“Why? Because the psychological profiler agreed with you, or because he didn’t realize how very rude you were being to him earlier?”

“Neither. Because didn’t I tell you years ago that you’d end up as my superintendent?” He beamed. “And I’m always right.”

“He’s always right,” said Tom.

“I’ll come straight to the point,” said DI Finch, as he came into the sitting room.

Tony felt a little apprehensive. A Sunday afternoon visit must mean that something was up, and Finch seemed very serious. Of course, what they were investigating
was
very serious, but his relationship with them had been almost colleague to colleague. This felt much more like a visit from the police than any of the previous interviews had.

“Please do,” he said.

“Have you told anyone at all about the money being scattered on Mrs. Fenton’s body?”

Ah. They must be working on the idea that the subsequent murders were copycat affairs. Tony wondered if he should lie, but decided that it would be pointless. “Yes,” he said. “I’m very sorry—I know I promised. But I did tell Grace.”

“Why?”

“It was because you took Stephen in for questioning over the Fenton murder. She was worrying herself to death about it. He wouldn’t tell even her where he was at nine o’clock that night, and that was really bothering her, because she thought he must have done something wrong.”

“And how did telling her about the money help?”

“She was actually beginning to think that Stephen might have mugged Mrs. Fenton, and—I didn’t really mean to say it, but I told her I didn’t think it
was
a mugging. I told her I thought the murderer had some sort of personal grievance with Mrs. Fenton, which
is
what I thought at the time. And I told her why I thought that. But I said that I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, and I’m certain she won’t have mentioned it to anyone else.”

“If you’ve told Mrs. Halliday, how can we know that you haven’t told anyone else?”

Tony thought, much as he had with Waterman, that he had better tell them about his altered circumstances, in the hope that it made his betrayal seem less idiotic, which it had been. There had been no need to tell her at all, but he had thought that she might calm down a bit if he did. “Things have changed since I saw you last,” he said. “Grace and I have begun a relationship. I think it was brewing all along, to be perfectly honest. I was protesting too much, now I come to think about it. And—well, I suppose I told her as one does when one is close to someone, and has knowledge that will make them feel better. I didn’t want her worrying about Stephen.”

It had been true at the time, at least to the extent of wanting to stop her going on about it all the time. He had genuinely believed that Stephen had had nothing to do with it. Now, he wished he’d kept his mouth shut, for two reasons: one, his reassurance had been badly misplaced, and two, he had put himself in bad odor with the police. “She is absolutely the only person I told,” he said, and that much was entirely true.

“Then we’d better find out how many people
she
told, hadn’t we?”

Grace was asked to come in, and she assured Finch she had told no one at all. “Tony said that it was important that no one knew,” she said. “I didn’t tell anyone.”

After Finch had gone, Grace looked at him, her face worried, an expression that he had had lots of time to get to know, and which grew no less irritating with the passage of time. “Are you in trouble over that?”

He took her in his arms. “It’s not against the law to tell someone something you saw with your own eyes,” he said.

She moved closer to him, and he wanted her, instantly. Her ability to do that to him irritated him a little; it put her in control, and he didn’t like that. But he had been celibate for some months before his great sacrifice, and perhaps his libido was just making up for lost time.

“By my reckoning,” he said, looking at his watch over her shoulder, “we’ve got two hours before you have to open up again.”

She smiled. “You’re awful,” she said. “I’ve got things to do. You can keep me company while I do them.”

“Leave them.”

“It’s half past three in the afternoon, Tony.”

“I know. And Stephen is safely at work, and will be until seven o’clock, so you don’t have to worry about him hearing anything.”

“I’m sure he
can
hear us—that bed squeaks. I’m certain that’s why he’s been so moody.”

“It very probably is why,” Tony said. “So let’s go up now, and then tonight we can lie asleep in virginal purity, and not disturb Stephen at all.”

“But we won’t! I know you.”

“Go on. Up those stairs, woman.” He playfully smacked her, and she led the way upstairs.

At the top, she stopped, and turned. “I forgot,” she said. “Jack Shaw knows.”

Tony frowned. “Knows what?”

“About the money.”

He stared at her. She had forgotten telling someone about the money? He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He really had impressed on her the importance of keeping it to herself. And why would she tell Jack Shaw, of all people?

“What on earth made you tell him?”

“I didn’t. But he was working on the fruit machine when you told me—I only realized he was there after you’d gone. So he must have heard what you said.” She bit her lip. “Should I ring the police and tell them?”