Verdict Unsafe (21 page)

“You don’t know where she is?” said Tom.

“No. I knew that’s what she was going to do, and I couldn’t stop her. I got back to the car, we chased Drummond, and when he started mouthing off about the rapes, that was the last straw.”

“What did Drummond say?”

“I couldn’t catch the rapist if he was standing right in front of me, maybe my wife needed a seeing-to from him—all the stuff I told the court. Nothing we could get him on. Just hints.”

“He didn’t have time to say much while Baz was walking back to the car,” said Tom. “And that’s the only time he could have been out of earshot.”

“I maybe embellished it a bit. I was trying to stay out of jail.” He looked up at Judy Hill. “Without success.”

“Why did you hit him?” she asked.

“Christ, woman, I’ve just told you why!”

“No,” she said. “You’ve told me why you should have brought him in for questioning. There’s more to it than that, Why did you hit him?”

“Was it because you knew Lucy Rogerson?” asked Tom.

The pincer movement threw him. He masked his discomfort by blowing steam from his coffee, and looked at Tom. “I’d met her,” he said. “I’d worked undercover on her dad’s farm. I worked on a farm for years before I joined the police. Expensive kit was going missing, and they put me in because I knew one end of a tractor from the other. I worked there for a month. Lucy was seventeen—full of life, happy—she was a nice kid. And then I read her statement about what some vicious bastard had done to her. And when Drummond started going on about the rapes, I thought we were never going to get him for them. He didn’t even have to give a blood sample if he didn’t want to— What was the point of bringing him in for questioning? I just saw red—all right?”

“Why didn’t you tell the court you had known one of the victims?” she asked.

“Because the last thing I wanted was that kid thinking she was the cause of my going to prison, on top of everything else,” he said. “She didn’t know me. I was just one of the temporary farmhands. She didn’t know my name, didn’t know I was a copper. So there was no reason for her to know it had anything to do with her. I wanted to keep it that way.”

She didn’t believe him; you could see it in her eyes.

“You don’t have the monopoly on compassion for rape victims!” he shouted.

She raised her eyebrows a fraction. “It might have kept you out of prison,” she said. “That’s what I call compassion above and beyond the call of duty.”

“Well, you should know. You’re very hot on duty.”

“Baz told us something else,” said Tom. “He says a roll of adhesive bandage went missing from the first-aid kit that night and was replaced next morning. Do you know anything about that?”

“Yes,” said Matt. “I know about that. I cut myself on the little sod’s belt buckle when I punched him in the stomach. I used some of the bandage and forgot to put it back until the next day. What of it?”

“Would you be prepared to give us a saliva sample for DNA testing?”

Matt stared at him, then turned his hostile gaze on Judy.

Judy was sick with disappointment. Matt had cut himself on Drummond’s buckle. The blood on Drummond’s jeans was Mart’s. It was only Mart’s. Her one hope, her one piece of tangible evidence, had vanished.

“You bitch,” Matt was saying, getting to his feet. “You
bitch.”

“Calm down, Matt,” said Tom, his hands held up in front of him.

“Calm down? Calm
down?
Do you think I don’t know what all this is about? She’s not content with grassing me up—now the slag’s accusing me of rape!”

“I’m not accusing you of rape,” Judy said, unmoved by the description of herself. “These things were brought to our attention, and had to be investigated. You’ve given us an explanation— that’s fine.”

Matt shook his head. “Oh, you’re so cool, aren’t you, Detective Inspector? So cool and calm and collected that it hurts.” He looked at her with sheer loathing, and walked toward her. “What have I ever done to you?” he said, pushing her, making her stumble backward.

Tom was there instantly. “No,” said Judy, holding up a hand. “It’s all right.”

“Well?” Matt repeated, his heavy face close to hers, pushing her again. This time she stood her ground, prepared for it. “What have I ever done to you, that you come here accusing me of rape?”

“I’m not accusing you of anything,” she said, a little surprised that her voice wasn’t shaking like her legs were. “Bobbie Chalmers can still bring charges against Drummond, and you saw him ten minutes after he had raped her. I believe you hit him because he said something that made you
know
he’d just raped someone. Not hints and jibes. Something much more. Something you couldn’t admit to, not after you’d lost your temper and beaten him up.”

“Sorry,” said Matt. “You’ll have to solve your own cases, Detective Inspector. I can’t help you.” His face was still thrust into hers. “Still, you don’t need to solve cases, do you? You can make Superintendent the same way you made Inspector—on your back.”

“That’s enough,” said Tom.

“It’s nowhere near enough. She knows what I’m talking about.”

“I just need something I can give my boss to persuade him that it’s worth pursuing,” Judy said.

Matt gave a forced laugh. “Your boss?” he said. “Just keep shagging him, sweetheart, and you’ll persuade him. He’ll swallow anything you say, like he did the last time.”

“I don’t mean Lloyd,” Judy said steadily. “I’ve got to convince DCI Case now. Do you know him?”

Matt nodded, his eyes still six inches from hers. “The Hard Case, they call him. You’ll have your work cut out with him, darling—he hates women.”

“He’s all for letting sleeping dogs lie,” Judy said. “So if Drummond said anything at all about Bobbie, I need to know what. He’s murdered her flatmate, Matt. I
need
to know.”

Mart’s eyes widened slightly, then dropped from hers, and he sat down.

Judy wished that she could. But dearly gained advantages had to be held. She didn’t speak, offered up a silent prayer that
Tom wouldn’t, either. There was a long silence, but Matt did speak again. It wasn’t what she had wanted to hear.

“I really
can’t
help you,” Matt said heavily. “Drummond didn’t say anything about the rapes. Baz told you the truth.”

“Would you be prepared to let us take a saliva sample for DNA testing?” asked Tom again.

“No,” said Matt.

“Will you come to the station to answer further questions?”

“No. You’ll have to arrest me if you want me to do that.”

“Right,” said Judy. “Let’s go, Tom.”

Tom frowned, clearly unhappy, but he left with her. He didn’t speak until they were back in the car, when he sat at the wheel, making no attempt to drive off. “Judy,” he began. “Ma’am,” he amended. “We should be taking him in for questioning.”

“Why?” said Judy.

“You know why! His wife’s whereabouts are conveniently unknown, so we can’t check his alibi for the night Bobbie was raped. And why was she leaving him, anyway? He lied about what Drummond said that night—all he did was get up Matt Burbidge’s nose, but he tied him in with the rapes. And his alibi for last night is Ginny Fredericks, who helped set Drummond up in the first place! He knew about Rosa, he won’t cooperate with the inquiry—you can’t walk away from all of that.”

“I can.”

“Guv.” Tom ran a frustrated hand through blond curls. “Inspector,” he tried. “Judy. You
can’t.”

She looked at him. “The issue’s quite simple, Tom,” she said. “Either you believe that Drummond gave me a description of raping Bobbie Chalmers that will stay with me for the rest of my life, or you believe that he was innocently bombing around in the fog without lights, and I wrote it all down for him and told him to sign it or I’d have him beaten up. That’s his version. If you believe it, by all means, go and arrest Matt.”

Tom’s shoulders sagged. “Oh, this isn’t fair, guv,” he said.

“I know.”

She knew. But she had done enough to Matt Burbidge, and
she certainly wasn’t going to arrest him on suspicion of committing rapes she knew damn well Colin Drummond had carried out.

Tom reluctantly started the engine, and she could feel the waves of perfectly understandable resentment as he looked at her. “Can we at least check with Ginny and Lennie about a couple of things?” he asked, through his teeth. “Or are they off-limits, too?”

“No,” she said. “We’ll talk to Ginny first.”

Ginny, too, had to get out of bed to answer the door to the police, but she hadn’t been sleeping. She pulled the negligee around her slight body, and ran downstairs as the knocking echoed through the house. She opened the door on the chain.

“What the hell do you want?” she said through the crack to the man with the fair curly hair who stood on her doorstep, and then saw Detective inspector Hill. She wasn’t too bad, for a copper. Not as bad as some. “Oh—it’s you,” she said, and closed the door over, releasing the chain, opening it again more fully.

“Did you see Matt Burbidge last night?” the man asked.

“What’s it to you?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Yeah.”

“When? How long for?”

She looked at Di Hill. “About ten,” she said. “For half an hour.”

DI Hill smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “Is Lennie here?”

“No,” said Ginny. “He drives a cab—I told you.”

“Whose cab? We need to speak to him.”

Oh, Jesus. She couldn’t very well not tell them. They’d find out anyway. But Lennie would skin her if he knew she’d sent them. Still—Inspector Hill was all right. She would keep it to herself. “ABC Cabs, they’re called,” she said. “But there’s only the one cab really. Don’t tell Lennie you got it from me. I’ve got to go,” she said, closing the door, putting the chain back on, and shivering as she ran back upstairs to the by now quite worried man who lay handcuffed to the bed.

*   *   *

Rob was also being visited by the police, which wasn’t something he really wanted right now. Detective Constable Marshall was an amiable Scot with a slow delivery who explained that he was checking up on Stansfield cabs which had had runs into Malworth yesterday evening. Would he be right in thinking that Mr. Jarvis had had one?

“Last night? Yes,” said Rob. “I was there twice. I took a fare there early in the evening, and was asked to go back to pick her up at ten-thirty.”

“Whereabouts in Malworth, sir?”

“Parkside. Lloyd George House.”

“And … how long were you there?”

“Forever. I arrived, went to the door. Some bloke asked me to wait, so I waited, then I went to the door again, he asked me to wait again, and then he came out, gave me a fiver for my trouble, and said the lady wouldn’t be leaving after all. I was there about twenty minutes.”

He gave Marshall the flat number.

“And did you see anything while you were waiting? Anyone else around? Any other traffic?”

“No.” Rob shook his head.

“About ten minutes after that, a taxi was seen in the vicinity of Stansfield boating lake,” said Marshall. “Would that have been you, by any chance?”

“Might have been,” said Rob. “I come in from Malworth on that road, and turn left for the rank.”

“Did you see anyone in the vicinity of the bonfire?”

“No, sorry. But I wasn’t looking at it.”

“No. Well—thank you for your time, Mr. Jarvis.”

“That’s all right,” said Rob, seeing him out, closing the door.

Most of what he’d told him wasn’t true, but Marshall wasn’t to know that.

“Can you pick up at the rear entrance to …”

Lennie listened to his instructions, and acknowledged that he was on his way. Jarvis was in some sort of cooperative where individual cabdrivers clubbed together to pay for a radio
control. Whatever number people dialed, they came through to it, and the appropriate cab was sent. But if it couldn’t go, one of the others did, so you hardly ever had to tell a customer you were booked up. It was a pretty good system, really, because you got bookings as well as being hailed, and they were sometimes long-haul, on which Lennie could make a lot of money.

He pulled up and saw a couple walking toward him. They were in the back before he recognized them; they had looked like real people, at a distance. “Bloody hell,” he said.

“And a very good afternoon to you, too,” said Finch. “We want to ask you a few questions, Lennie.”

“Is it going to take long? Only F ve got a job to do.”

“I know,” said Inspector Hill. “I still can’t get over it. What do you know about a prostitute called Rosa, Lennie?” She sat down directly behind him, on one of the folding seats.

“Never heard of her.”

Finch smiled. “This can take a very few minutes in your cab, or a very long time at the station,” he said.

“OK, I’ve heard of her. She worked up the Ferrari for a while a couple of years back.”

“What was her surname?”

“I never knew.”

Inspector Hill tapped him on the shoulder, and he twisted further around to look at her.

“Lennie,” she said. “We’re very short staffed at the station. We’ve got a murder on our hands, and it could take simply
hours
to get around to interviewing you. We know you pimped for her, we know you denied all knowledge of her before, and we don’t care. Just tell us all about her now, there’s a good boy.”

“I don’t
know
all about her! I saw her one night, walking up and down by the park railings, and she had no idea. I mean, she just didn’t know how to go about it. So, I had a word. Took her to the Ferrari, showed her off a bit, told her the do’s and don’ts—I looked after her.”

“You’re an example to us all, Lennie,” said Finch.
“What was her surname?”

“I don’t
know
. She told me to call her Rosa, and I don’t suppose
that was her real name. And that was all I ever knew about her. I don’t know where she lived, I don’t know zip. She’d see me at the Ferrari, and I’d keep an eye on her when she was with the Johns. She was only on the game a few weeks—she wasn’t a pro.”

“Did she give up because of the rapes?”

“Maybe. Or maybe because of me. One night she tells me she’s done a punter without a condom because she’d run out. Well—I had to give her a talking-to, didn’t I?”