Jigsaw (24 page)

At the other end of the line, Lindsey surveyed her swollen eyes in the hall mirror. ‘No,' she said thickly, ‘it's just a touch of hay fever.'

‘I didn't know you were prone to that.'

‘I must be, mustn't I? Anyway, which evening would be best, do you think? It makes no difference as far as I'm concerned.' Her voice shook a little, and she coughed to cover it.

‘Sounds more like a cold to me,' her father said.

‘Stop fussing, Pops! Thursday or Friday, perhaps?'

‘Friday would suit me better, I think, but I'll see what your mother says.'

Avril, run to earth in the kitchen, had no preference. ‘Conscience getting the better of her,' she sniffed. ‘I can't remember when we were last over there.'

Tom turned away. ‘Friday would be fine, darling,' he said. ‘Thanks for the invitation.'

‘She must be at a loose end,' Avril said, as he put down the phone. ‘That's the only time she thinks of us.'

‘For God's sake!' he burst out angrily. ‘Do you have to be so ungracious all the time? Why not accept the invitation in the spirit it's offered? No wonder we don't get many!'

Avril stared at him in surprise. Her mild-mannered husband wasn't given to such outbursts. ‘Who rattled your cage?' she asked sourly, turning back to the potatoes, and Tom, already ashamed of his temper, returned to the sitting room.

In her Fairhaven flat, Lindsey felt the tears welling again. She longed above all to speak to Rona, to analyse every word with her, see what she made of it. But she knew the minute she started to speak of the encounter she'd begin crying again, and little would be achieved. Better to wait till tomorrow, when she'd absorbed the first shock. She couldn't, in any case, explain why she'd been so upset; it was she who'd sent Hugh away, she who'd wanted rid of him. He had arranged his transfer to be with her, but, having accepted she didn't want him, he appeared to have found someone who did. She had no reason for complaint.

Having reached that conclusion, Lindsey ran into the bedroom and threw herself across the bed in a renewed storm of tears.

S
ally Bryson had a fringe of jet black hair and was slightly overweight. She remained solidly seated when Rona was introduced, her black eyes wary. It was clear she'd agreed to come only because Lois had arranged it.

Rona said pleasantly, ‘It's good of you to see me, Mrs Bryson. I do appreciate it.'

‘A waste of time, in my opinion,' Sally replied, a Welsh intonation in her voice. ‘God knows, the police went over everything with a fine-tooth comb.'

‘I'm sure, but I'm trying to look at it from a different angle.'

‘To get Spencer off the hook, you mean. Going to see him, aren't you?'

‘At the request of his wife, yes.'

‘Much good it'll do you. He did it all right. Stands to reason, with the kid's death eating away at him, all the time Barry was inside. Barry's blood was on him, and the knife found at his home. Seems cut and dried to me.'

‘Perhaps a little
too
cut and dried?' Rona suggested. ‘As you point out, he was the obvious suspect; the police set their sights on him from the word go, he was charged within days, and I doubt if they bothered even looking for anyone else.'

‘With the murder weapon in their hands,' Sally retorted, ‘who was there to look for?'

‘I don't know,' Rona confessed, ‘but I've been asking myself if anyone else could have had a motive for killing your husband.' She paused. ‘For instance, did his firm keep his job open for him while he was in prison?'

Sally Bryson's eyebrows shot up, disappearing under the fringe. ‘To the best of my knowledge,' she said after a minute, ‘but I wasn't around by then. What possible bearing could that have?'

‘I wondered if it might have caused resentment; someone perhaps who'd been filling in for him, and felt he shouldn't have to step aside when your husband came back?'

‘He wasn't my husband by then; call him Barry, for pity's sake. And it would have to be a damn sight more than “resentment” for someone to stick a knife in him.'

Rona admitted she had a point. She tried another tack. ‘Had he any women friends, do you know?'

‘I do know, and he hadn't. I was the one who kicked over the traces.' She held Rona's eye defiantly. ‘I went through a bad time too, you know. Got a lot of hate mail after the accident; people saying if I hadn't run out on my husband, he'd never have got drunk and killed the kid.'

‘That must have been hard,' Rona said quietly.

Sally shot her a glance, perhaps surprised by her sympathy, and when she spoke her voice was less belligerent. ‘I knew how cut up he'd be,' she said. ‘He loved kids, and we never had any of our own. I wanted to go and see him in prison, but Kevin wouldn't let me. I did write, but he never replied.'

Rona took a biscuit from the plate Lois silently offered. She had almost forgotten she was there. ‘Did anyone ever have a grudge against him?' she asked.

Sally shook her head. ‘I'm sure not. Always popular, was Barry. Got on with everyone. That's what stood him in such good stead at his trial.'

‘How long after his release was he killed?'

‘Ten days.' Her eyes brimmed with tears, which she impatiently brushed away. ‘A mere taste of freedom, then it was snatched away again – for good, this time.'

Rona said gently, ‘Did you have any contact with him during those ten days?'

‘No; I saw in the local paper that he was out, and sent a card wishing him luck. If I'm honest, I was already regretting leaving him. I hoped he might get in touch, but he didn't.'

There was a silence while everyone reflected on what had been said. Rona wasn't sure what she'd hoped to achieve from this interview, but it seemed to have been, as Sally had predicted, a waste of time. She could, she supposed, find out who Barry's employers were and go and see them, though what more they could add, she'd no idea. She was beginning to suspect Spencer was guilty after all, in which case her visit tomorrow would also be a waste of time – except, of course, that it was grist for the mill of her article. She needed to remind herself that that was, after all, the object of the exercise.

Seeing the two women had talked themselves out, Lois gently broached another topic, and a less fraught discussion ended the visit.

‘Thank you,' Rona said at the door. ‘It was good of you to arrange this.'

Lois shrugged slightly and pulled a face. ‘Good luck tomorrow.'

Rona nodded. ‘I might well need it.'

‘Hugh's back in town,' Rona told Max on the phone that evening. ‘Lindsey's just phoned in quite a state about it.'

‘Well, I have to say she brought it on herself,' Max replied crisply. ‘She's been dangling him like a fish for the last three months.'

‘She says he was with another woman.'

‘Is the phrase significant?'

‘How should I know?' Rona snapped. ‘A woman was with him, is that better?'

‘Makes little difference to me, either way. Is this prickliness on Lindsey's behalf, or your own?'

Rona drew a breath. ‘Sorry,' she said contritely. ‘I've a lot to think about at the moment, and to be honest I could have done without a hysterical sister bending my ear for twenty minutes. She's convinced that from now on, she'll see him every time she leaves the house.'

‘What did she expect, when she's been supplying him with creature comforts every weekend?'

There was a pause, then Rona said, ‘Is it too late to take back my apology?'

He laughed. ‘Pax! So tell me, what's on your mind to the extent that you grudge your sister twenty minutes of your time?'

The wife of a murder victim I had coffee with this morning. Tomorrow's appointment with the murderer himself.

‘Oh,' she hedged, ‘nothing specific. Everyone's upset about the old lady, and the funeral's hanging over us.'

‘I'm still not sure why you're staying for it, since you only met her the once.'

Rona crossed her fingers. ‘It's to support Nuala, really,' she said ambivalently. ‘People will be coming back here afterwards, so I offered to help.' She hesitated. ‘I'm sorry about not seeing you tomorrow, love.'

‘Doubtless I'll survive,' he said.

As the prison was at the far end of town, Rona took the car. It was impossible to park anywhere near the high walls, and it took her over ten minutes to find a space in a multi-storey. Alan Spencer would think she'd chickened out.

The security check was as thorough as Beth had warned, added to which a sniffer dog was led past the visitors, no doubt checking for what the authorities called illegal substances. They were then directed to sliding electronic gates giving access to stairs that led up to the Visits Hall, while CCTV cameras covered every inch of their progress.

At the entrance to the hall a prison officer asked for her name and whom she'd come to see, and directed her to table five. The hall was fairly large and furnished with some thirty bench-like tables, each with three yellow chairs on one side and a green one, on which the cameras were fixed, on the other. The prisoners, already waiting on their green chairs, wore orange tabards over jeans and blue and white striped shirts.

Alan Spencer didn't raise his head as Rona sat down opposite him, but his eyes flicked up, raking her face. His own was gaunt and hollow-cheeked, his hazel eyes seeming to have sunk into his skull. Rona could appreciate his wife's anxiety.

‘Mr Spencer? I'm Rona Parish. Thank you for agreeing to see me.'

He straightened then, meeting her eyes squarely. ‘Let me say at once that I've only done so to placate Beth. I've nothing new to tell you. I apologize for wasting your time, but you're free to go now.'

He had a singularly pleasant speaking voice, though its tone was bitter.

Rona leaned forward, then, seeing a passing prison officer pause, hastily sat back again. ‘Your wife told you I'm writing some articles?'

‘You'll be hard pressed to find anything new to say about me. I was a seven-day wonder at the time.'

‘I mean that I'm not here as an undercover lawyer, or an investigator into rough justice.'

‘So don't get my hopes up?'

She saw to her surprise that he was smiling, if wryly.

‘That's about it. Having said which, quite a few people still believe you're innocent.'

‘They'll have a job proving it.'

‘
Did
you kill Barry Pollard, Mr Spencer?'

She saw she'd startled him, and the half-smile faded. He held her eyes for a minute, then said quietly, ‘No, I did not. Oh –' he made an impatient gesture with his hand – ‘I wanted to, all right, when Charlotte died. I could have strangled him with my bare hands.' The words were all the more shocking for being delivered in so calm and measured a tone. ‘But good God, by the time his trial had come up and he'd served his time, it was getting on for two years. You can't keep anger at white heat for that long. The grieving goes on, heaven knows, but by that time we were resigned to it.'

‘Then have you any idea who might have done it?'

‘Obviously not, or I'd have shouted it from the rooftops.'

‘Tell me why you went to Sunningdean that evening.'

He sighed, leaning back in his chair. ‘Didn't Beth explain? I received this letter, allegedly from Pollard. We'd been told he was being released, but I'd refused to let it get to me. The letter came as a shock though, I can tell you. It said something about Lottie still being on his conscience and he'd like to apologize in person.'

He ran a hand over his red-brown hair. ‘Well, I'd no intention of stirring all that up again, so I chucked it. But it lodged in the back of my mind. By all accounts Pollard was a decent enough chap, and much had been made of his grief and remorse. Also, he'd hinted at doing something stupid if I wouldn't see him.

‘So I thought, why the hell not, if it helps him? It might even help me, too, forgiveness being good for the soul. I did wonder why he'd not made it earlier in the evening, but I didn't attach any significance to it. Beth didn't know about the letter – I knew it would upset her, so I told her some lads from work were going for a drink and I'd be late back. Sunningdean's a twenty-minute drive away.'

He stared down at his hands, folded on the table in front of him, and Rona wondered what grim scene he was reliving. ‘I didn't see him at first; he was huddled against the wall, midway between two lamp posts, so the light was dim. I didn't even know it
was
him; I just thought some drunk had fallen over. So I said something like, ‘Need a hand, mate?' and bent down to help him up. But he was a dead weight – literally – and then, of course, I saw the blood. All over my sleeve, in fact. There was a phone box on the corner, so I hared over and dialled nine-nine-nine. And the rest,' he added ironically, ‘is history.'

There was a brief silence while Rona processed the information, lining it up with what Beth had told her. There were no significant differences. She said, ‘It wasn't Pollard who sent the letter, was it?'

‘No. Someone wanted me at the scene.'

‘Then he'd have had a letter too, supposedly from you?'

Spencer shook his head. ‘It wouldn't have been necessary; it came out at the trial that he'd been drinking at that pub every night since his release. Furthermore, he always left at ten twenty, to catch the bus home.'

‘What about that night?'

‘On the dot, as usual.'

Rona said slowly, ‘So the murderer, who knew his timetable, would have time to dispose of him before you arrived on cue.'

‘Exactly. How come you can see that, when the authorities couldn't?'

‘And this selfsame murderer,' Rona continued, ‘was someone who was able to gain access to your kitchen without arousing suspicion, remove a knife, and later, having wiped it more or less clean, hide it in your garage, where it was bound to be found.'