Life Sentence (9 page)

‘If she isn’t dead already. The part of her that makes her Elise anyway,’ Fran agreed. ‘Personally in her condition I’d want to die. I can understand people like her who still have powers of communication wishing to choose the moment of their dying, but…’ She tailed off, shaking her head.

‘It’s a terrible responsibility – finally ending it.’

‘Which is why the medics have to fight the case in court. I have nothing at all to do with that process, as I said yesterday. All I want to do is track down whoever committed what today is grievous bodily harm, aggravated assault, aggravated rape, et cetera, et cetera, and in a few months may well be murder. Which is where you come in.’ She smiled, but not reassuringly enough.

Swallowing hard, he asked, ‘Should I have my solicitor present?’

‘If you want to. But the DNA tests at the time absolutely cleared you, as I thought you’d been told.’

‘If the case is being re-opened…?’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you’re a decent man who did his best in terrible circumstances. If other evidence comes to light, then of course you may need legal representation, but I assure you I’m talking to you as a witness, not a suspect.’

Although by now she practically had his original statement by heart, not to mention transcripts of the increasingly hostile questionings he’d undergone, she asked him to tell his story once more.

‘Indulge me,’ she said firmly as he protested. ‘Talk to me as a simple acquaintance, not someone who’s desperate to put you in the frame. You? Correction:
anyone
in the frame. To be honest, I’m as interested in discovering who Elise is as finding her killer.’

‘Truly?’

She pondered, focussing on a silver tea caddy. ‘That’s beautiful, isn’t it? I hope you’ve got it insured,’ she said, parenthetically. ‘I don’t think we shall find the killer till we’ve found the victim. Do you?’

‘You mean it wasn’t just a random opportunistic crime?’

She’d decided to be as frank with him as she dared. After all, he was the nearest Elise had to a friend. ‘The modus operandi doesn’t fit anyone on the file at the time, and no one we’ve picked up since has confessed to it. Of course, we’re checking crimes committed since, too. But let’s just say, I have a hunch this guy knew our Elise – in some capacity or other, no matter how slight.’

‘Our Elise
– when neither of us has so much as heard her speak!’

‘Don’t you feel a proprietary interest in her?’

He dropped his eyes, nodding.

‘What do you talk about? The hospital staff say you spend quite long periods at her side.’

‘It’s to assuage my guilt.’ He dropped his eyes to his hands, worrying a wart.

‘Your guilt! For not managing to resuscitate her? Heavens, Alan, most people wouldn’t even have tried.’

‘Or would have left well alone. I’d never done it for real, you see.’

‘You tried. You did your best. Which is all any of us can do in this life.’ That was a thought to reflect on later. ‘Let’s go back a few moments before you found her. Tell me about that.’

He bridled. ‘You want me to tell you about needing a wee!’

Even that was an interesting choice of vocabulary. ‘Even before your bladder needed emptying. Tell me about your drive.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘This is going over old ground, Dr Harman.’

‘Not with me. Tell me about the place you’d left, the journey, where you were going.’

He flung up his hands. ‘Oy vey! Again already!’ In his normal voice he said, ‘I’d been to a physiotherapist in Hythe. She just happens to be the best one I know, that was why I go all the way down there when there
must, as your colleagues were intent on proving, be plenty of other perfectly good ones in Canterbury. Of course it isn’t convenient, especially if the weather is inclement. And the B2067 is far from the most direct route to Whitstable, but I wasn’t returning to Whitstable that evening. I was going to visit a friend in Woodchurch, as your colleagues established.’

She held up a placatory hand. ‘I’m not doubting you or querying what you say in any way. What was the weather like?’

‘Cold. Dark. The clocks had just gone back. Threads of mist. It’s not a nice road at the best of times. I’d been listening to Classic FM till it got too damned relaxing for words and I switched on to Radio Three.’

‘What was on?’

‘Some sort of musical news. I switched back to Classic FM. Ironically they were playing “Für Elise”. And no, Dr Harman, I don’t think that was why I heard her give that as her name. Her lips moved, the sound came out – poor Elise.’

Poor Elise; ‘Für Elise’. With all those teeth broken or missing it must have been impossible to speak clearly, even had she been conscious of having wanted to. Could what everyone thought was her name really be nothing of the sort? ‘This is obviously very upsetting for you—’

‘Irritating, not upsetting. I don’t see how any of this can possibly help.’

‘Neither do I – yet. But it may, Dr Pitt, it may. That’s
why I think it’s important enough to write down.’ She flourished her pad and pencil.

‘Don’t patronise me, woman.’ His eyes blazed. ‘I’m sorry. If only all this wasn’t my fault!’ He pulled himself to his feet and started to pace. Pulled, not sprang – it looked as if he’d needed that physiotherapy and might again.

‘Please sit down, Alan. And get this idea of fault and blame out of your head. The only one to blame in all this is the man who virtually killed and than raped her. In that order.’

The shock tactic worked. He wheeled round. ‘You mean – he…a body…?’

She nodded, face as callous as she could make it. ‘We’re looking for a very unpleasant man, Alan. And one whose back’s in better condition than yours. Elise was no lightweight, was she? I can’t see you socking her and lugging her out of sight and still being able to bend down to rape her. OK, let’s get back to that evening. Without embellishment, if you please. You drove along a narrow and unpleasant road in difficult conditions. What about other traffic? Please, sit down and reflect. Do you recall any lights coming towards you? Having to move over because someone was driving badly or in a hurry? Was anyone parked?’

He shook his head. ‘I even tried hypnotism to help me remember. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Just the removal lorry, that’s all.’

She dredged her memory. Surely it had only been
described as a lorry before? Now it was a removal lorry. But now wasn’t the time to prod his memory any further. As if to stretch her own back – and why not? The chairs might look expensive, but hers didn’t match her spine – she got up and prowled round, pausing by a couple of CDs. They lay on top of a set of neatly labelled drawers; perhaps the mess in his office hadn’t been his.

‘This was the one they recommended on the radio the other weekend, wasn’t it?’ She held up a recording of Mozart violin and viola duos.

His face brightened. ‘I didn’t know you were a musician. What do you play?’

‘Only the CD player. What about you?’

‘The viola. I used to. But my back… I was in constant pain.’

‘They have some very good concerts out at the University. With that wonderful string quartet, the ones who play standing up.’

‘Ah, the Brodsky. Are you a regular concert-goer?’

‘It depends on work. I used to be on the Canterbury Festival Committee, but…’ There were only so many times you could send apologies. Not that it was work that prevented her going, of course, or being a governor at the village school, or being a trustee of a battered wives hostel. ‘Theatre, too,’ she said, trying to make her voice bright. ‘For all the Marlowe has such a small stage, I’ve seen some excellent productions there.’

‘Maybe we should…when this—’ He stopped suddenly, the inviting smile fading.

He’d only been about to suggest they went together, hadn’t he? She suppressed a rebuff. But she took it as another indication of his innocence. Would she do better to interpret it as a sign that he considered himself impregnable? She offered a noncommittal nod. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t remember the name on the removal lorry?’

He pulled a face. ‘Actually, I suppose it was more like a horsebox. A bit nearer the ground than an ordinary removal lorry. But I don’t recall a name. Sorry. Just that there were some curtains over the front window, not the windscreen, the one over the cab. As if people could sleep in it.’

This time she wandered over to a glass-fronted cabinet full of china. ‘Now, I’ve only ever seen this at antiques fairs.’ She didn’t add it had such a huge price on its head she’d left it where it was. In any case, it was the wrong period for the cottage.

‘Ruskin. Made near Birmingham at the turn of the last century. Are you a collector, Dr Harman?’

‘Tunbridge wear.’

She was delighted to see his eyebrows shoot up in recognition. ‘I picked up a work-basket on my last outing. I’m desperate for a spectacle case; I saw one once at a fair, but told myself it was too pricey. It wasn’t of course.’ But her parents, in those days still mobile enough for the occasional day out, had been scandalised by the figures on the ticket, and though she knew she could have haggled for cash, she’d had to leave it. And
of course, when she’d phoned the dealer, it had gone. ‘Were the curtains open or drawn?’

‘They must have been drawn or I wouldn’t have noticed, not in the dark. There must have been some light on, mustn’t there? So it must have been parked facing me.’

That would fit in with the forensic examination of the scene. Suddenly she was very interested in the lorry.

‘When you looked in your mirror, was the tailgate up or down?’

‘Up. I think.’ He bit his lip. ‘Yes, it was just pulling away.’

‘Lights?’

‘The driver’d not got round to putting them on. Not until I’d driven past. They went on when I checked again in the mirror.’

None of this was recorded in any of his statements: she’d bet her pension on that.

‘And then?’

‘I stopped to take the phone call from one of my colleagues – we were worried about one of our students. He thought she might be pregnant.’

‘By him?’

‘Really, Dr Harman! Yes, by him. It happens, Dr Harman, it happens. And before you say anything, it’s not always the lecturer’s fault, believe me. I don’t approve and I never will approve, because it’s a misuse of power if the lecturer takes the lead and can lead to all sorts of accusations of favouritism anyway. But
sometimes – let’s just say that the temptation is very strong.’

She let him talk on. This time she had the strongest feeling he was lying, that the pregnancy was his responsibility. But scaring or antagonising him over a matter almost certainly irrelevant wasn’t on her agenda. ‘So you pulled over to take the call – for which I award you a batch of brownie points, Dr Pitt – and then decided you needed a pee.’

‘I’d just finished watering the hedge, as Shakespeare says, when I thought I heard a noise. I thought it was a trapped animal, I suppose. So I went back to the car and turned the headlights full on – I’d left them in parking mode before, just enough to pick my way through to the hedge. Not enough for anyone to see what I was up to. I didn’t want to be done for indecent exposure, did I?’

Would that worry the average man? But she wasn’t there to concern herself with him. Not this time, at least. ‘So it was pretty brave of you to look.’

‘I’ve never thought of myself as brave. No, more likely I’d have called the RSPCA. What else are mobiles for? Except to call the emergency services when you find a dead woman.’

‘Was it they who suggested mouth to mouth?’

‘I don’t know. No. I was already trying. But it didn’t seem to be doing a lot of good so I asked them if I was doing it right. I kept it up until the ambulance arrived. It seemed forever. I’m sure there’ll be a record of how
long they took. Another statistic for their league tables.’

He was right. Twelve minutes and forty seconds if her memory was correct. The police had arrived almost simultaneously: what would he make of that?

‘While the paramedics worked on her, I stood and watched and wondered how on earth I’d been able to touch her, let alone do what I’d done. All that blood. The police hustled me away but I could still see. The poor woman, decked out in her best suit and new shoes, and she wouldn’t have looked out of place in the worst and most violent movie. Snuff movies, don’t they call them? I knew that whoever had done all that damage, inflicted what even I could see were horrific injuries was sick, Dr Harman. But not – sex after she was practically dead.’

‘I’ll get you some water.’

Without particular haste – she didn’t really expect him to throw up or faint – she located Habitat tumblers in a cupboard. He’d recently gone for a Shaker look, all the fittings new and clean-lined. Good to work in, she surmised, but not particularly in keeping with the rest of the bungalow.

‘Here.’

‘Thank you.’ He sipped fastidiously. ‘You’ve no idea how hard I’ve tried to bury the memory of all this.’

‘Perhaps now it’s truly in the open you’ll be able to get rid of it. Like lancing a boil.’ Far, by now, from needing to know, she asked, ‘What was she wearing?’
Perhaps his answer might illuminate him as much as Elise.

‘A smart suit. The sort I’ve seen women her age wear to interviews. Very conventional – not the sort to offend with the sharpness of its cut. And I remember looking at her feet. She was still wearing one shoe, a smart patent affair. But not as smart as she’d have us believe. You know those shoes for older ladies, with elastic here and there – that sort. And the heel not very high, but shaped to look as if it was.’

Fran hid her feet as best she could. ‘They were brand new,’ she said.

‘I’ve often wondered, what the people at the job interview thought, when she didn’t turn up. Though it was a bit late to be on your way to an interview. Perhaps she got the job and they’re wondering why she never turned up.’

‘What sort of job?’

He shrugged. ‘We’re getting into the realms of speculation, Dr Harman.’

She didn’t jib. She might in other circumstances have used exactly the same words.

‘Of course. But you saw her face, her hair, her clothes…’

‘She’d have been a bit old, come to think of it, for changing jobs. I don’t know. What age do you take on a new pub manageress? Or to come down the food chain, a new barmaid?’