Amendment of Life (16 page)

*   *   *

The interview room at Berebury Staion was deliberately bare. There was a window, but it was high up in the wall and there was no view to be had from it. Also high up on the wall was a video camera and, on the wall opposite it, was a clock with a clear face. The furniture was minimal – a small table and four chairs.

On two of these were sitting Captain Prosser and a middle-aged man, who introduced himself as the Captain's solicitor. ‘I felt it appropriate in the circumstances, Inspector,' he said, ‘having advised my client to make a statement, to accompany him while he did so.'

‘We're ready when you are,' said Sloan, who was well aware why solicitors deemed it prudent to accompany their clients to the police station. This one was not local and thus a stranger to him.

Captain Prosser sat upright in his chair, looked straight ahead of him and said, ‘I wish to state quite categorically that I did not have anything whatsoever to do with the death of Mrs Margaret Collins.'

‘Make a note of that, Crosby,' said Sloan without any inflexion at all.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I think my client might be a little more specific about his relationship with the deceased,' said the solicitor into the silence which followed.

The Captain flushed a deep red. ‘I am prepared to admit that we knew each other very well.'

‘Make a note of that, too,' said Sloan.

‘I mean,' said the Captain, irritated, ‘that we had had an affair.'

‘But you're telling me now that it was all over long before she died, are you?' suggested Sloan genially. There were those in the Force who thought it rattling good sport to sit at the back of the Court and laugh aloud at the evidence of the accused, but Sloan was not one of them. There were other ways of casting doubt on what was said by the guilty, but only after that guilt had been firmly established and not before. Fair was fair, even at the police station.

‘Yes.'

‘How long ago?'

‘About six months.'

‘Might I ask when and how it terminated?' Every policeman knew that it was the end of the affair that was the moment of danger. Usually for the woman. But not always.

Captain Prosser didn't hesitate. ‘The day after James's eye condition was diagnosed we broke it off—'

‘We?' echoed Sloan gently.

‘She—' said Prosser.

‘I see.' And Sloan thought he did.

‘She – Margaret – said that there was no room in her life just then for anything but James.' He licked his lips. ‘I could understand that and we stopped seeing each other except when I met the Collinses socially in Nether Hoystings. We remained neighbours, of course.'

‘But you were still seeing her husband at Aumerle Court, too.'

Prosser relaxed a fraction. ‘Oh, yes. That was no problem. I'd always known David as well as Margaret and Double Felix is a very good firm. The best.'

‘And how did he feel about being cuckolded?' asked Detective Inspector Sloan. If there was one thing for sure, it was that Crosby wouldn't know how to spell the word, still less remember its meaning.

Captain Prosser understood what he meant all right. ‘I have no reason to think that David knew about our affair,' he said stiffly. ‘Margaret said she was sure he didn't. We were always very discreet. For James's sake.'

‘This affair,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, trying to keep what he thought about affairs with married women out of his tone, ‘how long had it lasted?'

Captain Prosser shot a swift glance in the direction of his solicitor, who nodded almost imperceptibly. ‘About three years,' he replied uneasily.

‘And James is – let me see now…' murmured Sloan. It had once been a cardinal principle of English law that children born within wedlock were the sons and daughters of the husband of the marriage, but now a mysterious substance called deoxyribonucleic acid had upset all that. DNA and genetic fingerprinting had taken over and you were what the results of those tests said you were. He, Sloan, didn't know whether that was good or bad, but as someone else had said, ‘A man's a man for all that.'

‘Two,' said Prosser shortly.

‘So…'

‘I have no actual reason to suppose that James is my son,' said the Captain. ‘Nor did Margaret ever suggest otherwise to me, but.…', he swallowed, ‘the trouble is we couldn't be absolutely sure.'

Detective Inspector Sloan wasn't listening. He was trying to remember what Dr Chomel had told him about the difficulties of the genetic counselling of parents of children with retinoblastoma without a full DNA analysis. And Dr Browne had said something important, too. He must check on that as well.

‘No reason whatsoever,' repeated Prosser.

Sloan still wasn't listening.

He was thinking that David Collins, though, might well have excellent grounds for not just thinking but being absolutely sure that little James was not his son.

Which was something very different.

Chapter Sixteen

‘You've arrested Prosser, I take it, Sloan,' said Superintendent Leeyes.

‘No, sir.'

‘I've said before and I'll say it again, Sloan, that you're not quick enough off the mark in the way of arrests.' The Superintendent's eyebrows came together in a ferocious glare. ‘The fact that he'd got his solicitor with him shouldn't have made any difference at all. You've only got to go by the book and you're all right.'

‘It wasn't that…'

‘Did he have an alibi for yesterday evening, then?' He grunted. ‘Granted you've got to check that out first or we'll have the human rights people round our necks.'

‘No, sir, as it happened he didn't.' Sloan wasn't quite sure where human rights came into the frame – or whether they should be lumped with all the other do-gooders the Superintendent so disliked – but he did know that Leeyes was all against them whenever they did crop up. ‘Captain Prosser tells me that he went for a good long walk over the Bield after Aumerle Court closed for the day.' The Bield was a low mound, crisscrossed with footpaths not far from Berebury Golf Course.

‘What he tells you, Sloan, isn't evidence until it's proved.'

‘He says he went alone and saw no one except for a few golfers leaving the clubhouse as he came down the path off the Bield that's near the eighteenth fairway.'

‘And did they see him?' asked Leeyes pertinently.

‘He doesn't know – the last of the light had nearly gone by then.'

‘At least the husband's got an impeccable alibi,' grunted the Superintendent. ‘Even in this secular day and age, the word of a Bishop and a Dean should carry some weight.'

‘And a goat…'

‘What's that, Sloan? What's that?' The Superintendent frowned. ‘Where does a goat come in?'

‘I only wish I knew,' said Detective Inspector Sloan, rising to his feet. ‘I'll get back to you as soon as I can, sir.'

He left the Superintendent's room and was making his way back to his own when he encountered his old friend, Inspector Harpe from Traffic Division, in the corridor. ‘Just the man I wanted to see, Harry.'

‘What about?' asked that worthy cautiously. He was known as Happy Harry throughout the Calleshire Constabulary because he had never been seen to smile. For his part he maintained that there had never ever been anything in Traffic Division at which to so much as twitch one's lips, let alone smile. ‘If it's about that Constable of yours wanting to transfer to Traffic you can forget it. He only gets to come over my bod deady. Understood?'

‘Understood,' said Sloan pacifically. ‘No, Harry, I was wondering what you thought the odds are on whether a van could be driven from Calleford to Staple St James and back without being seen after dark.'

‘And parked?'

‘Yes.'

‘How long parked for?'

Sloan leaned back on his heels and thought. ‘Long enough for a man to trundle an industrial-sized rubbish bin all the way round a maze, tip a woman's body out in the exact middle and retrace his steps to his vehicle.'

‘No.'

‘No what?'

‘No way that it could be done without somebody spotting it somewhere.' He hunched his shoulders. ‘Especially when it was parked. Seeing unfamiliar vehicles in unfamiliar places seems to bring out something primitive in people.'

‘This was a Sunday evening.'

‘Then they'd have been even more likely to notice a commercial vehicle,' said Happy Harry. ‘By the way, how did your chummie get to the middle of a maze in the dark? I can never do it even in daylight.'

*   *   *

Detective Constable Crosby was in Sloan's office when he got back there. ‘Your wife rang, sir, while you were out. She wants to know when you're coming home. If you are, that is.'

Sloan sat down and pushed his hands through his hair. ‘Might as well go home,' he said, ‘for all the good we're doing here. It's getting late, anyway.'

‘She said, sir, to say she wondered', continued Crosby, unsure of the wisdom of delivering this part of her message, ‘if you were ever coming home again.'

Sloan gave a great yawn. ‘I am, but before I went home I had wanted to work out who it is who had killed Mrs Margaret Collins and why.'

‘And how they did it, sir. Don't forget that.'

‘We know how, Crosby. You know that. Dr Dabbe said she died from an overdose of a sedative called Crespusculan. How she ingested it, of course, is for us to establish.' The Crown Prosecution Service would want them to prove beyond reasonable doubt that it wasn't by accident, but that would have to wait. ‘Me, I reckon she was slipped a Mickey Finn.' He grimaced. ‘Always plenty of those around at the hospital, too, as well as in the home as in her case…'

‘I didn't mean that sort of how, sir.' Crosby screwed up his face in an effort to express himself better. ‘I meant how did whoever kill her get her to where she was found in the dark. She wasn't going to walk in there herself if she wasn't planning on committing … what is it they call suicide now?'

‘Voluntary death, but what's in a name, Crosby?'

‘You tell me, sir.'

‘I reckon she went in inside one of those big bins, all right.' He pushed his notebook away. ‘Forensic think they'll be able to confirm that by morning.'

‘I didn't mean that either,' Crosby said awkwardly. ‘I meant how did whoever did it get about in the maze in the dark, let alone to the very centre. Light from a torch would have shown up and, for all the murderer knew, the old lady at the window would have spotted that.'

‘True, very true.' Sloan gave another, even bigger yawn. ‘Perhaps', he said lightly, ‘he used a ball of wool like that lady statue. Ariadne, did Miss Pedlinge say she was called…' He sat up, his tiredness dropping away. ‘A good length of string would have done, Crosby, wouldn't it?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘The only person in the maze with a reason for using string or anything else like it to measure the maze was David Collins.'

‘Who was measuring up for Double Felix's estimate,' said Crosby, light dawning.

‘Before their very eyes, so to speak, although', said Sloan fairly, ‘anyone else could have seen that it was there, too, and used it. Or brought their own.'

‘Collins was the only one who could count on it being there, though,' pointed out Crosby.

‘And David Collins is the only one with a solid alibi,' said Sloan ruefully. ‘I ask you, Crosby, a Bishop and a Dean…'

‘And a goat, called Aries,' put in Crosby, ‘which he told everyone he'd heard and which he couldn't have done if he hadn't been there.'

Detective Inspector Sloan pulled his notebook back towards him. ‘Not so fast, m'lad. He could still have told everyone he'd heard it even if it hadn't been there, couldn't he? Just you take another look at what the goat lady said, will you?'

The Detective Constable leafed through his own notebook. ‘She thought she would have noticed if Aries had been missing at the seven-thirty feed, but she couldn't swear to him having been there.'

‘The goat could have been stolen later on in the night – nobody else said they heard him until this morning.' Sloan flung his pen down on his desk. ‘It doesn't get us anywhere, though. At the time Collins was miles away from where the action was to boot and he couldn't have got there by walking. He had to have pushed the body up to the Minotaur before Milly Smithers locked the postern gate.' He must be more tired than he had realized if he had taken to mixing metaphors like this. ‘Inspector Harpe is finding out if anyone on duty in Traffic saw a Double Felix van anywhere on Sunday evening except at the Close, where the Security people say it was all evening, but I'm not very hopeful. Murderers don't drive around with vans with their names on.'

‘You'd have thought that fellow Bevis Pedlinge could have done better than saying he'd driven over to the hospital, but that the sister he's sweet on was off-duty, wouldn't you, sir?'

‘I'm not sure which is best, Crosby, no alibi like Jeremy Prosser, half an alibi like Bevis Pedlinge or a rock-solid one like the man Collins.' Perhaps the Superintendent hadn't been so far off the mark as Sloan had thought when he'd quoted that old choosing chant ‘Eenie, meanie, miney, mo'. ‘By the way, Crosby, Inspector Harpe tells me that he's had a complaint from the rider of a Harley-Davidson about being cut up by a speeding police car.'

‘Some people can't take a joke,' responded Crosby heatedly. ‘You can't tell what a man's like under one of those great crash helmets, let alone who he is…'

Sloan went suddenly still. ‘Suppose – just suppose, Crosby – that Collins had gone from the Minster at Calleford to Aumerle Court by motorcycle after the vehicle gates had closed and got in through that little postern gate and then pushed his wife round to the maze, tipped her out, replaced the bin in the bothy, and gone back to the Minster. Who would have noticed?'