Verdict Unsafe (10 page)

Colin hadn’t entirely followed everything that had been said in the Appeal Court, as it had all become too technical for him on the DNA side, and a bit academic for him on the legal side. But the judges had said that the DNA evidence had been given much too much weight with the jury, that the DNA scientist had been wrong to say what he did, and that the judge had made serious errors throughout his summing-up.

They had declared themselves quite happy with the method of testing, but had agreed that the odds arrived at were to some extent dependent on the method of calculation, which had not been made clear to the jury.

They had said that even if uncontested, odds of three million to one were not sufficient to convict without corroborating evidence, and that since the corroborating evidence had all arisen from the challenged and dubious circumstances surrounding his arrest for an offense of which he had been found not guilty, it was impossible to say what the jury’s verdict would have been had they been given the true picture with regard to the DNA evidence.

Accordingly all the guilty verdicts delivered in the Crown versus Colin Arthur Drummond had been adjudged to be unsafe and unsatisfactory. And fifteen months after his conviction, just over two years after his arrest in Hosier’s Alley, Colin Arthur Drummond had walked from court a free man.

He hadn’t gone home straightaway. He had spent a few days in London, and his first purchase—before he had looked for anywhere to stay, even—had been a mobile phone. It was a symbol; a symbol of his right to contact anyone, anywhere, any time he chose. They had said he would be connected within twenty-four hours, and he had been. His first phone call had been to his mother, and his mother had made sure that there was money at his disposal. He wouldn’t always be dependent on her for money, because he was taking Bartonshire Constabulary to court, and ten percent of someone’s life didn’t come cheap.

But it was on his mother’s money that for four days and four nights Colin had lived the high life in a way he had never done before, or would again. Until this morning, Wednesday morning, when his lawyer would be making an official complaint about the conduct of the Bartonshire police, and had said that Colin would have to be available for interviews and so on.

He had left a gambling club in the small hours, having lost the last of his ready cash, with nothing but a rail ticket in his pocket. He had found himself alone except for a hooker, well past her sell-by date, who had attached herself to him at the tables and had seen the wad of money he had started out with. She had thought that there was more where that had come from, and that he was wet behind the ears. He had used her, since there was nothing better on offer, then had lain naked on
her bed and watched through half-closed eyes as; she had gone through his pockets. He had given her the beating she had been asking for, then had dressed and left her lying unconscious in her squalid little room. He had walked to the station and had caught the mille train to Stansfield.

Colin Drummond was going home.

“WHAT TIME’S THE TRAIN?” ASKED ROB JARVIS, AS HE swung the black cab around in the quiet predawn street, his muscular arms bare in his heated cab, his fair skin still tanned from the summer.

“Six thirty-five,” said the man, with an anxious look at his watch as they went under a streetlamp. “I suppose the next one would do—they always tell you to check in hours before the flight. But this one would be better.”

“Everything went wrong this morning,” said the woman. “Sorry you had to wait so long for us.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Rob, negotiating one of the mini-roundabouts which dotted the length of the road. “We should make it. There’s no traffic about at this time in the morning.” He looked at them in the mirror. “Going anywhere nice?” he asked.

“Spain,” said the man. “Who needs November in England?”

It was a very pleasant month, in Rob’s opinion; he liked November, when the weather became crisper and the nights clear and frosty, when the trees dressed themselves in flamboyant, defiant colors before masochistically stripping themselves naked to face winter. “Do you go for the whole month?” he asked.

“Three weeks,” said the woman. “It’s a timeshare.”

“And it works out all right, does it? Only you hear all these stories.”

“We’ve never had any trouble. We go most years, but if we can’t, we can always swap.”

Rob kept up a flow of conversation as he made his way to Stansfield railway station, and picked up the luggage when they got there, outrunning his passengers despite the handicap of three suitcases. They followed him onto the platform, out of breath, as the train rounded the curve, and drew in.

“Thanks ever so much,” said the woman, giving him a handsome tip as the train slowed and stopped, and the man opened the door, letting a passenger out.

Rob’s smile of thanks faded when he saw the young man who stepped off the train and walked briskly away. He handed up the suitcases, and walked slowly back over title bridge to his cab, his hand absently smoothing down his sand-colored hair as the breeze ruffled it.

The young man was standing beside Rob’s cab, using a portable phone. “I’m just getting a taxi now,” he said. He pressed a button to terminate the call, and looked at Rob. “Malworth?” he asked.

Rob’s instinct was to refuse, but he didn’t. “Sure,” he said, as though he hadn’t recognized him. Drummond, he was certain, knew who he was, was enjoying this, but he needn’t rise to the bait.

They drove in silence out of the new town, past the light industrial estates which had replaced the heavy industry that had brought it into being, out to the much more venerable market town of Malworth, along its shop-lined High Street, where he was instructed by his passenger to stop outside a greengrocer’s shop, closed and shuttered like all the others. Across the brickwork a banner had been attached:
JUDY HILL IS FORTY TODAY
, it read.

Drummond told him to wait, got out, crossed the road, and stood in the doorway of one of the buildings opposite, his mobile phone in his hand, looking up at one of the flats.

Matt Burbidge rubbed his eyes, ran his fingers through his dark, longish hair, and packed away his stuff to keep himself
awake. His flask, empty now; his sandwich tin. Ten to seven—another two hours before the staff arrived, and his shift would be over. The screens in front of him showed five scenes: the vaults; the rear of the premises; the roof; the doorway; and High Street. Northstead Securities took no chances with the stuff they held as surety, nor with the safety-deposit boxes that they rented to people who didn’t want their considerable assets known to the Inland Revenue, or the police, or anyone else who might be interested.

Thus it was that he had seen two men come and erect the banner for Judy Hill’s birthday. She was two years younger than him, and if life began at forty, he hoped hers went the same way as his had. He had seen the taxi arrive, and had thought she was getting a surprise visitor, but whoever it was had got out and crossed over to this side of the street. And the odd thing was that the taxi hadn’t left. It still sat there, engine rattling. So where had its passenger gone? There weren’t any flats on this side of High Street, and none of the shops and offices were open. He maneuvered the High Street camera to take in less of the street and more of the pavement immediately outside, and his eyes widened.

Colin Drummond was standing right outside the bank. Matt had thought that he would stay away from Malworth, but there he was, standing right outside the building, and he was holding something—what? A gun? Had he done a bank robbing course in prison? No, no. Nothing so sinister. A phone. So what the hell was he up to? He was watching something across the road. A flat, presumably, unless a row of closed shops held some fascination for him.

Judy Hill’s flat, of course. Drummond had had a thing about her, hadn’t he? Said he was going to get her? He’d had one go before, or so they said, but her boyfriend had turned up, and Drummond had had to change his plans; that was how come he’d got caught with the little whore.

Not just any old boyfriend, of course. Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd. That bit of gossip had cleared a lot of things up for Matt. It was Lloyd, of course, who had pulled strings to get her out of Malworth once she’d shopped him and Baz.

Well, well, well. It looked as though Drummond hadn’t forgiven and forgotten anymore than he had. Matt stood up and went to the box on the wall, opening it, killing the alarm, then crossed to the window in whose painted glass he could see his own oval, heavy-featured, defeated face until he snapped the light out. He silently slid the window open. If Drummond intended using that phone, he wanted to hear what was said.

Judy’s hand reached out and felt for the button that would stop the repeated buzzing in her ear. She switched on the bedside lamp, and a moment later the phone rang as if to underline the fact that the working day had begun.

“Hello—Judy Hill,” she said.

“Happy birthday, Detective Inspector Hill.”

Oh, yes. It was her birthday. She hadn’t got around to remembering that. “Thank you,” she replied, with an uncertain smile. “Who’s that?”

“Don’t you recognize my voice?”

“No,” she said. “Who is it?”

“You’ll work it out, Detective Inspector,” he said, and hung up.

She looked at the phone, and hit the keys to get the number of the caller, but no number had been stored. She shrugged, replacing the receiver and walking with a shiver across the corridor to the bathroom. It was an ordinary sort of voice, local accent; young, she thought. Someone from work? Probably. It was her fortieth birthday; her colleagues were possibly planning some sort of horrible surprise.

She had a bath, rather than a shower. She would pamper herself. And, she thought, allow herself a sausage with her breakfast. She always ate breakfast: bacon, eggs, tomato. She quite often didn’t really eat anything else. Lloyd found this life-style inexplicable.

She towelled her short hair vigorously, then put on her bathrobe and headed for the kitchen as a key turned in the lock. She jumped, though there was only one person to whom she had ever given the keys to the flat.

“Happy birthday,” Lloyd said, bringing cold morning air in with him, pecking her on the cheek. He smoothed down the obstinate strip of hair that still grew in the middle of his otherwise smooth scalp, and smiled at her, his blue eyes bright from the chill air.

“What’s going on?” she asked suspiciously, trying not to look as though she had been given a start. Lloyd never got up before he had to, and she had thought that he must have lost her key, so rarely did he use it.

“Nothing. I’ve brought you your present.” He handed her a small gift-wrapped box.

She took it. “Who did you get to ring me?” she asked, going into the sitting room, snapping on the light.

“What?” he said, closing the door, joining her.

She looked uncertainly at him. He looked innocent enough, but she had long ago learned not to be fooled by how he looked. “Someone rang me,” she said. “Wished me happy birthday. Anonymously.”

He shook his head. “Nothing to do with me,” he said. “Aren’t you going to open your present?”

She smiled, sat down, carefully undid the wrapping, then opened the box to see car keys. She looked up at him, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly open. “You haven’t,” she said.

“Go and look,” he said, nodding toward the window.

She went slowly to the window, pulled open the curtains, and looked down at the road to see, parked under the orange glow of a streetlamp, a silver Renault Clio. “That’s Freddie’s wife’s car,” was what she said, idiotically.

“It’s not,” said Lloyd. “It’s yours.”

Lloyd was always trying to make her buy what he called a proper car, and to that ostensible end he had dragged her around to Freddie’s one evening, where they had “discovered” that his wife wanted to sell her car. Freddie, their friendly neighborhood pathologist, worked such odd hours and in such unlovely surroundings and with such unpleasant materials that his wife had threatened to leave him if he didn’t remove his name from the Home Office books. He, however, was deeply
enamoured of suddenly deceased corpses found in suspicious circumstances, and for a while his marriage had been touch and go. But a compromise had been reached which had involved the bribe of a new car, hence the sale of one silver two-year-old Renault Clio with a burst of speed that would turn what was left of Lloyd’s hair gray. But she hadn’t really been able to afford the asking price.

Lloyd joined her at the window. “You were going to buy it, weren’t you?” he asked. “Freddie said it was just the price that was holding you back.”

“But that’s just it!” she said. “You can’t afford to give me it as a present!”

“I live very simply,” he said, with a grin, in his RSC Welsh accent. “I have a good salary, and I don’t spend very much. My children are grown up, my ex-wife has remarried—I have very few outgoings.” He expanded on the theme. “I am what is known as a good catch,” he said. “Or at least I was, until I began buying my fancy woman expensive presents.”

She nodded, still bemused, taking the keys from their box.

“Is it all right?” he asked anxiously, “Only Freddie was certain that you were going to buy it.”

She looked at the car, and then at him, shaking her head a little. “It’s beautiful,” she said, dropping the keys into her pocket.

“So are you,” he said, kissing her, his hands slipping under her bathrobe as the kiss grew more and more amorous.

“Oh, your hands are cold,” she complained. “Anyway—I thought you didn’t go much for this sort of thing first thing in the morning.”

“No, but you do,” he said, smiling. “Anyway, it isn’t first thing in the morning. I’ve been up for hours—I couldn’t very well park the car at the flat, could I? You might have seen it. Freddie and I had to organize all this.” He released her only to steer her out into the hallway, sharp right into the bedroom.