Dear Departed (38 page)

‘I still don’t see what this has to do with me.’

‘Oh, I think you do, but I’m happy to spell it out for you. On Monday fortnight past, you were at the plant in Bedford for the opening of the new block. You were both there, in fact,’ he said, gathering Ruth with his eyes. ‘But you were not together the whole time. There was a rather good and rather liquid lunch, and just after it you separated for a very basic reason, and you, Mr Cockerell, went to the gents’ lavatory with one of your fellow directors.’

‘Is this really necessary?’ Cockerell said, with great scorn.

‘Yes, it is. Because while you were in there, perhaps fuelled by the champagne, you talked with rather too much frankness about Cornfeld’s new drug, Codermatol. But in fact, you were not alone. Someone was in one of the stalls and, without intending to, overheard what you said.’

Cockerell looked startled. He stared at Slider in a strained way. Interesting, Slider thought: Simpson’s fears were quite unfounded. Cockerell had not known he was overheard, or, therefore, who had overheard him.

Slider went on: ‘GCC makes a huge amount of money from selling acne treatments, none of which is really more than a palliative. But Codermatol really works. Obviously if it came out, it would kill off GCC’s golden goose, just as the Australian doctor’s findings about the
Helicobacter
would have. That was why GCC was so eager to buy Cornfeld Chemicals – so that it could suppress the new drug and make sure it never came on the market.’

‘That’s preposterous!’ Cockerell said. ‘It’s total rubbish.’

‘It’s exactly what you said in the washroom that you were going to do. You had been in the forefront of the negotiations with Henry Cornfeld. You had to make him believe that you
were interested in the new drug, and you had to make the offer for his company high enough to convince him that you were, because you knew that if
he
knew you never meant to let it reach the market, he would never have let you take over the company.

‘Of course, you had no idea your plot had been uncovered until Chattie telephoned you on Monday last week. The person who overheard you had gone to her with the story, in the absence abroad of her father, knowing her reputation for liberal thinking and charitable actions.’

Ruth snorted at that point, apparently overcome by the praise of the deceased. Slider glanced at her curiously. She changed it to a cough, stubbed out her cigarette and lit another.

‘You arranged to meet her on Tuesday, in the hope that you could persuade her to go along with the plot. Did you offer her money? I’ve been wondering what inducements you used. Well,’ he dismissed the question with a wave of his hand as it was obvious it would not be answered, ‘it doesn’t matter. She refused absolutely to go along with it, and warned you, moreover, that she was going to tell her father as soon as he got back from the States exactly what was going on. And she knew, as you did, that Henry Cornfeld was a man of principle, in this if not in his private life, and that he was immensely proud of Codermatol. He would not allow you to bury it. The sale would not go through – and you had so much to lose, hadn’t you, Mr Cockerell?’

Atherton came back in at that moment, and by nothing more than a blink told Slider that he had been successful. Slider felt a huge rush of relief. They were on the right track. A hideous embarrassment and a writ like a Rottweiler to the goolies were going to be avoided.

‘Sorry,’ Atherton said, sitting down. ‘Have I missed much?’

‘We were just about to calculate what Mr Cockerell stood to lose if the Cornfeld acquisition didn’t go through,’ said Slider. ‘To begin with there were the shares in Cornfeld Chemicals. Mrs Cockerell’s ten per cent, which had been given to her, and the ten per cent you bought very cheaply from Jassy would both show a very nice profit and net you a huge lump sum. And then there was your job at GCC, the promotion, share options and golden eggs you could expect from a company
whose continued prosperity you had assured. So Chattie had to be stopped. You were heard to say, when you got back from the meeting with her, thank God there were a few days left – which meant, of course, before Henry Cornfeld came home. Once she’d had a chance to tell him, all would be lost. She said she was going to wait and tell him face to face. But what if she changed her mind and telephoned him in the States? It wasn’t safe to take the chance. And the next morning, Chattie was murdered.’

Cockerell made a strangled sound, and his eyes flew wide open. ‘Good God! You don’t think—? You can’t possibly think
I
killed her? I’m not a murderer! I could never do a thing like that.’ He stared at them wildly. Ruth was keeping very still, her whole body outlined in tension, still watching and waiting, but poised for sudden action. ‘Come on!’ Cockerell pleaded, almost groaned. ‘I wouldn’t hurt her, let alone kill her. I admit I felt a moment’s relief when I heard she was dead, because – well, you were right about the other thing, and she was going to ruin it for all of us, the stupid girl. I said to her, you stand to gain as much as the rest of us. Everybody wins, you, me, your father, everyone. But she wouldn’t listen. Went all pious and ethical on me, talking about the sufferings of millions. I said to her, it’s only bloody acne, not cancer of the liver, but she wouldn’t budge. I could have throttled her – oh, God, I don’t mean that! That’s just a figure of speech!
Look, I know what we were doing about suppressing the drug was unethical, and I’m owning up to it, but murder’s something different. I could never kill anyone, never. And certainly not for something like this. It’s fantastic!’

Fascinating, Slider thought: he doesn’t even think about his alibi. He wants to convince me that he
wouldn’t
do it, rather than that he
couldn’t.
He still wants to be a nice guy, despite all his greedy, sleazy plottings.

Still, he let him writhe a little bit longer before saying, As a matter of fact, I know you didn’t do it.’

‘You – you do?’ Cockerell was sweating now, and licked his lips, looking at Slider in a slightly dazed way as he heard these words.

‘What time did you leave for work that morning, sir?’

‘That – that morning? I don’t remember. But – wait – I was in the Northumberland Avenue office that day, wasn’t I? So I
would have left at half past six. I always leave at half past six, to be in at eight.’

‘You were in the office by eight o’clock?’

‘Yes. I mean, I don’t remember exactly, but I must have been. I’d remember if I were late. My secretary—’ he began to add, with a flash of inspiration.

‘Yes, she says you were there at eight. And Chattie was killed somewhere around eight o’clock. So we know you couldn’t have done it. Actually,’ he added conversationally, ‘I believe you when you say you wouldn’t kill anyone just for money. But there is someone I think would.’ He didn’t look at Ruth. He kept his eyes on Cockerell as he said, ‘When you went home that night, the day you met Chattie up in Town, you were angry. You told your wife all about it, how that damned girl was going to ruin things for everybody.’

‘Yes, I suppose I did,’ Cockerell said, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe his face, not following where this was going.

Slider turned to Ruth. ‘You look very fit, Mrs Cockerell. Do you like to keep in trim – go jogging, go to a gym, anything like that?’

Her face was immobile. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t.’

Cockerell, the dope, said, ‘Yes, you do, darling. You’re always exercising – I’m very proud of my wife’s figure,’ the poor goop went on, evidently pleased at this less threatening line of questioning. ‘She goes out running most mornings.’

‘Is that so?’ Slider said, with interest. ‘So you’ll have jogging clothes, then. Training shoes, tracksuits, that sort of thing.’

Mrs Cockerell only glared, her face so tense he could see the muscles of her jaw writhing under the skin, but she didn’t answer him.

‘I don’t suppose,’ he said gently, ‘that you have an alibi for that morning, Mrs Cockerell?’

Cockerell stared at him in astonishment, and then gave his wife a quick, flashing glance. He opened his mouth to protest to Slider, but nothing emerged. A look of great sickness came over him, sickness and knowledge at the same time, and from the same source.

‘Mrs Cockerell?’ Slider pressed her.

‘I was out running,’ she answered, unclenching her jaws for just long enough to get the words out.

‘How long had you been planning it? That’s what I’ve been wondering,’ Slider said, as if ruminatively. ‘A long time, I would imagine. She’d been a thorn in your side for years – well, all her life, really. Your mother abandoned for her mother, and treated so badly in comparison with Stella Smart. And then the usurper’s brat turns out to be pretty and clever and everybody loves her, while you – what do you get? Nothing! Your father dotes on Chattie, but he’s got no time for you.’ Mrs Cockerell’s face was undergoing a reaction while he spoke, a look of boiling fury clenching it until he thought her teeth would shatter. And then, to crown it all, there were the rumours that she’d had an affair with your husband.’

‘No!’ Cockerell cried. ‘That’s not true. Good God, what are you saying?’ He looked at Slider, seeming genuinely appalled. ‘How can you say such a thing? There was nothing like that between us. We were friends, that’s all.’ He looked at his wife. ‘I swear it was innocent! I never – we never—!’

‘Shut up, you idiot!’ Mrs Cockerell hissed. ‘Don’t you see what he’s doing? For God’s sake, shut up!’

Slider resumed, looking from one to the other with apparent sympathy. ‘Well, in practical terms, it doesn’t really matter whether it happened or not. The fact was there were rumours. Had you brooded over it, Mrs Cockerell? Thought about murdering her, stroked and cherished the idea of it until it became a possibility, and then an inevitability? Until it was just a matter of how, and when. After all, you wanted her dead, but you didn’t want to get caught. And then the Park Killer turned up, practically on Chattie’s doorstep.’

‘No,’ Cockerell moaned. ‘Oh, no!’

‘Shut
up,
David!’

‘The Park Killer kills joggers,’ Slider continued to Ruth, not looking at him, ‘and you know Chattie goes running every day in the park. But Chattie’s younger than you, and she’s strong. You don’t think you’ll be able just to stab her to death, the way the Park Killer does. You need some way to render her helpless first.’

Now the first chink appeared in Ruth’s armour. She hadn’t known he knew that, that the false stabbing had been detected. Her eyes widened and her nostrils flared, but she closed her lips tightly, as if to prevent anything escaping.

‘You’d worked in a hospital pharmacy, so you knew what you needed. And you knew you’d have the chance to get hold of it at the opening of the new building at Bedford, which you were going to attend with your husband. They made the right sort of drugs there, and you knew your way around. No-one would ever wonder at your presence. You took what you needed, and then it was just a matter of waiting for the right opportunity. But when David came home and told you he had met Chattie that day, and what she had said, you knew you couldn’t wait any longer. It would have to be done right away. You couldn’t let her rob you again of what was your due. Kill her, be revenged for everything, and, as a bonus, break your father’s heart, the way he had broken yours and your mother’s. She deserved to die, she had to die.’

‘Stop it!’ Cockerell said. ‘I order you to stop it! Get out of my house! I won’t have you say those things to my wife!’ He jumped to his feet, but Atherton was up too, and stood between him and Slider.

‘Sit down, sir,’ Atherton said. He could be amazingly menacing when he wanted to, Slider thought absently. ‘Just sit. It has to be done. Sit down.’

Suddenly Ruth spoke, quite calmly. ‘Yes, sit down, David. Don’t make a fuss. This is all nonsense anyway. I didn’t do it and they can’t prove I did.’

‘I’m afraid we can,’ Slider said, with infinite, deadly kindness. He flickered a glance at Atherton, a signal between them. Somewhere upstairs, but just audibly, a telephone started to ring. Again Cockerell, the businessman, made the automatic gesture of looking for his mobile, but neither Slider nor Atherton moved. They were looking at Ruth. She looked faintly puzzled at first, and then her jaw dropped a little as understanding came to her.

‘You know what that is, don’t you?’ Slider said. ‘That’s Chattie’s mobile ringing. She had the same sort of mobile as you, the new, very dinky, pocket-sized Motorola. She dropped it while you were killing her, and you picked it up automatically, assuming it was yours. Perfectly understandable, one of those things one does without thinking – like stubbing out a cigarette. How long was it after you got home that you realised you had two mobiles in your pocket, yours and Chattie’s?’

Ruth Cockerell gave an inarticulate cry of rage, leaped out of her chair and flung herself at Slider. ‘I’ll kill you!’ she screamed, as she tried to claw his face.

Atherton jumped, and between them, though with difficulty, they managed to subdue her, until she fell back into an armchair, hunched and panting. Cockerell remained motionless all through, his hands clasped together in his lap, his head turned away and his fixed eyes staring at nothing, at disaster and ruin.

‘I’m glad I killed her,’ Mrs Cockerell shrieked. She punched the upholstered arm of the chair repeatedly. ‘She deserved it, the greedy, evil, man-grabbing little bitch. She deserved to die. She had everything, everything she ever wanted, she stole my father and my home, and still she had to have my husband and my money as well. I killed her and I’d kill her again if I could. Do what you like! You can’t touch me for it. I hate you all!’

Cockerell moaned softly, closing his eyes, as if that would make it all go away. Slider stood over her, in case she tried to make a run for it, and said, ‘Ruth Cockerell, I arrest you for the murder of Charlotte Cornfeld. You do not have to say anything . . .’

The firm’s celebratory drink had to wait until Wednesday evening. They went to the Boscombe Arms, having had to abandon the Crown since it modernised itself, and Joanna joined them there. Everybody was hungry, and once they had settled themselves comfortably in the snug, Swilley was sent to operate her charm on Andy Barrett, the landlord, for the provision of snacks, which came in the end in the form of packets of crisps, pork pies and some hastily knocked together cheese and pickle sandwiches.