Lambs to the Slaughter (24 page)

‘Why don't you tell me about the case that you've built up against Susan Danvers?' she suggested.

‘I'd be delighted to,' Beresford told her.

He outlined the whole thing – Len Hopkins' rejection of Susan, her trip to Accrington, the spiking of the cocoa – which had now been confirmed by the lab – with laxative, and the fact that Susan had a key to Len's house.

‘We should have thought of her from the start,' he said, as he drew to a close. ‘After all, she found Len's body, didn't she, and how often has it happened that the person who “found” the body turns out to be the killer?'

‘That is quite common,' Paniatowski admitted, cautiously.

‘There's a few “i”s to dot and “t”s to cross, so we'll probably be here in the village for a couple more days, but essentially, it's in the bag,' Beresford said confidently.

He was so pleased with himself that it was pity to burst his bubble, Paniatowski thought – but it had to be done.

‘You are aware that all the evidence is circumstantial, aren't you, Colin?' she asked.

‘Yes, as it happens, I am,' Beresford said, bristling slightly. ‘But you have to admit, it's a classic case of means, motive and opportunity.'

‘Yes, it certainly is,' Paniatowski agreed.

But she was still thinking, It doesn't feel quite right, it just doesn't feel quite right.

‘So is there a problem?' Beresford asked.

‘Probably not,' Paniatowski said. ‘But it does seem to me that the prosecution might be a little bit happier if he had something more concrete to take into court with him.'

‘And by the time we finish up here, we'll probably be able to
give
him something more concrete,' Beresford said confidently. ‘But even if we haven't, we'll have Susan's confession – and that's all we really need.'

‘And you're sure she'll confess?'

‘No doubt about it.'

Paniatowski turned to Crane. ‘What do you think, Jack?'

Jack Crane looked distinctly uncomfortable again. ‘Inspector Beresford's got a lot more experience in these matters than I have,' he said, ‘and he certainly thinks she'll confess.'

Which, on one level, wasn't answering the question at all, Paniatowski noted – although, on another, it most certainly was.

‘She didn't even want to admit that she'd been to the brass band competition at first,' Beresford said, ‘but I soon got that out of her. Of course, I started the interview rather cleverly, I think, by tricking her into a false sense of security.' He reached into his briefcase, took out a sheet of thick paper, and laid it on the table. ‘And this is what I used.'

‘What is it?' Paniatowski asked.

‘It's the man who never was – Len Hopkins' mysterious visitor. I got the police artist to draw it from Susan Danvers' description, and she was so intent on creating her fake that she had no idea what was coming next. That's right, isn't it, Jack?'

‘It certainly is, sir,' Crane agreed, and this time there were no reservations in his tone at all.

Paniatowski took a glance at the sketch of the young man, and felt an unexpected shiver run through her entire body. There was something familiar about him, she thought – something
unpleasantly
familiar – but she couldn't quite pin down what it was.

‘It's a very detailed sketch for somebody who Susan simply made up,' she said.

‘Oh, she probably didn't make him up entirely,' Beresford said airily. ‘Chances are, it looks very like someone she knows.'

But it didn't look remotely like anybody she'd seen in the village, Paniatowski thought – and
they
were the only people who Susan really knew.

‘And you're sure he's nothing more than a figment of Susan's imagination?' she asked.

‘I'm absolutely convinced of it. She needed to blame someone else for the murder, you see, and who better than a man we'd never find because he never actually existed?'

Paniatowski cast her mind back to the conversation
she'd
had with Susan about the man.

‘What did Mr Hopkins tell you about him?'

‘Not a thing. He refused to discuss it. But while I was making his tea, he kept muttering the same thing over and over to himself.'

‘And what was it?'

‘He kept saying, “It's all true. You read about it, and you think it's an exaggeration – but it's all true.”'

‘And you have no idea what he meant by that?'

‘Not a clue.'

Why would she have complicated her story – if a story was what it was – by adding to it something she couldn't explain herself?

Wouldn't it have been far simpler to invent something that would strengthen her case, rather than distract from it?

She could have said something like, ‘
He told me the man wanted him to do something – he wouldn't tell me what it was, only that he'd refused – and then the man had said that if he didn't do it, he'd kill him
.'

But she hadn't said anything like that. In fact, she'd gone out of her way to suggest that the man wasn't the murderer.

‘Do you think the young man might have been responsible for Len's death?'

‘Good heavens, no.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because if he'd killed Len – and I'm not saying he ever would have, but
if
he had – he'd have shot him, or maybe strangled him. I didn't see much of him, but I saw enough to know that he'd have thought it far too messy to smash his head in with a short-handled pickaxe.'

Of course, if the man did really exist – and Paniatowski was
convinced
that he did – it was still perfectly possible that he had had nothing at all to do with the murder, and that Susan was, in fact, the killer.

So perhaps Colin had got everything right. Perhaps, when they got back to Whitebridge, Susan Danvers would be ready to confess that she had killed Len Hopkins in a jealous rage.

Paniatowski's gut told her that wasn't going to happen, but it was Colin's investigation now, and she had no right to interfere.

Besides, she had another concern at that moment – the concern that had brought her to the village in the first place.

‘The chief constable's willing to launch an investigation into what happened to Louisa, but, naturally enough, he doesn't want me involved personally,' she told Beresford.

‘That's sensible.'

‘He suggested that when you could spare her, the job could be given to DS Meadows.'

‘I can spare her now,' Beresford said airily.

‘Are you sure about that?' Paniatowski asked – hating herself for saying it, but feeling obliged to anyway. ‘Susan Danvers hasn't been charged yet, so the investigation's still—'

‘I can spare her,' Beresford interrupted, ‘and, to tell you the truth, I'd rather not have her around until she's prepared to apologize.'

If you're waiting for Kate Meadows to apologize, you'll be waiting a long time, Paniatowski thought.

K
ate Meadows thought she knew something about the penchants of middle-aged academics, so even though it was a cold night, she was wearing a short skirt under her coat – and as she walked up the path to the front door of Dr Sutton's detached house, she began unbuttoning the coat to reveal the treasures beneath.

It was Dr Sutton himself who answered the bell.

‘Well, well, what have we here?' he asked, running his eyes appreciatively up and down her body. ‘A door-to-door salesperson, perhaps? Or a young lady with a survey which she'd like me to complete?'

‘I'm afraid I'm neither of those, Dr Sutton,' Meadows said, producing her warrant card.

Sutton groaned.

‘I thought I'd made it quite plain to your DCI Paniatowski that if she wanted my daughter to talk to the police, it would have to be by appointment, and only in my solicitor's presence,' he said.

‘You might have made it plain to her, but she certainly didn't make it plain to me,' Meadows said. ‘So I've wasted a journey, have I?'

‘It would appear so.'

Meadows stamped her foot angrily on the path. ‘She doesn't listen, does she?' she demanded, of no one in particular. ‘The bloody woman never listens to anybody. So not only am I sent out to investigate something that should never have been investigated in the first place, but I'm going to have to do the whole thing again tomorrow.'

‘You don't think that it should be investigated?' Sutton asked interestedly.

‘Of course not. The bloody kid runs off – and if I was Paniatowski's kid, I'd run off, too – and when she's caught, she spouts out the first crappy little excuse which comes into her head, and her stupid mother swallows it wholesale.'

‘Yes, that is probably what happened,' Dr Sutton agreed.

‘And as a result of that, I end up on a cold street in the middle of winter, when I could be snugly tucked up at home with a nice glass of wine,' Meadows ranted. She stopped suddenly, as if she'd realized she'd said too much. ‘I'm sorry, Dr Sutton, I should never have let my feelings show like that. But when you're working for
Ma'am
, it can sometimes be a bloody hard life.'

‘I'm sure it can,' Sutton agreed, sympathetically.

Meadows sighed. ‘Well, I suppose we'll just have to play it by the book,' she said. ‘I'll contact your solicitor in the morning, make an appointment, and we'll wrap things up then.'

She turned, and began to walk down the path.

‘Just a minute,' Sutton called after her.

‘Yes?'

‘Am I right in assuming that if I agreed to you talking to Ellie now, we could get the whole thing over with tonight?'

‘I don't see why not.'

‘Then you'd better come inside.'

The Suttons' living room was what Meadows immediately christened ‘socialist cool', which was another way of saying that it was furnished in the style in which an average worker's living room might be furnished, only much more expensively.

‘Please take a seat,' Sutton said, indicating an armchair modelled on mass-production lines – but covered in soft, luxurious leather – which was positioned opposite the sofa on which his daughter was already sitting.

Meadows sat, and took out her notebook. ‘What a lovely home you have,' she said enthusiastically.

‘I'm glad you approve,' Sutton said. ‘Could I perhaps get you a glass of wine?'

Meadows shook her head, with a show of reluctance.

‘Better not,' she said. ‘I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and find Paniatowski standing over me with a breathalyser.'

Sutton laughed, then crossed the room and sat down on the sofa next to his daughter – from where he would have an excellent view of the detective sergeant's legs.

The daughter was even easier to classify than the room, Meadows thought. She was one of those quite pretty girls – though nowhere near as pretty as she thought she was – who seem to have been issued with discontented mouths and greedy eyes at birth.

‘I suppose I'd better start by asking you why you made friends with Louisa Paniatowski in the first place, Ellie,' Meadows said.

Ellie shrugged. ‘I felt sorry for her. Who wouldn't feel sorry for her, with a mother like that?'

Meadows laughed. ‘You're telling me,' she agreed. ‘So when you decided to have a party on Monday, you thought you might as well ask her.'

‘That's right.'

‘Hang on a minute,' Meadows said. ‘The party wasn't going to be on Monday, was it? It was planned for Friday. Or have I got that wrong?'

‘Does it really matter?' Dr Sutton asked.

‘Not to me,' Meadows replied. ‘But if Paniatowski asks about it, I'd better have an answer ready.'

‘The party was originally planned for Friday,' Sutton conceded.

‘So why was the date changed at the last minute?'

‘Some of Ellie's closest friends simply couldn't make it on the day we'd planned.'

‘Good,' Meadows said. ‘Now, when Paniatowski tries to twist the fact that you changed the date into some kind of evil conspiracy, I can nip it in the bud. The next thing I'd like to ask you—' She stopped, suddenly. ‘Oh my God! Is that ring you're wearing from the Queens of the Nile range, Ellie?'

‘It certainly is,' the girl said complacently, holding out her hand so that Meadows could get a better look at it. ‘It's the Nefertiti.'

‘It's beautiful,' Meadows said. ‘I'd love to have one myself, but they're rather expensive.'

Sutton laughed uneasily. ‘They're
very
expensive,' he said, ‘but if you can't spoil your own beautiful daughter, then who can you spoil?'

‘So, to get back to the party,' Meadows said. ‘I assume you gave Louisa strict instructions not to take a lift with anyone else, but to wait until you could drive her home, Dr Sutton.'

‘Naturally.'

‘But by the time you returned home, of course, the wilful child had already gone.'

‘That's right.'

‘When did she leave, Ellie?' Meadows asked.

‘I don't know,' the girl said carelessly. ‘I didn't even realize she had gone until Robert started looking for her.'

‘So one of your friends must have taken her home,' Meadows said.

‘No, it was definitely not one of Ellie's friends,' Sutton said firmly.

‘How can you be so sure of that?'

‘Because after DCI Paniatowski burst into my office and had her rant, I rang up all Ellie's friends and asked them.'

Meadows consulted a blank page of her notebook.

‘I know it's here somewhere,' she muttered to herself. ‘Ah, yes. I thought you told
Ma'am
that you didn't even know the names of half the people at the party, Dr Sutton.'