Murder of a Dead Man (31 page)

He pushed his plate aside.

‘You didn’t confront her because you were playing around too?’

‘Yes,’ he sat back in his chair. ‘It was a Wednesday. We were due to go down to the cottage at the weekend. I’d finished filming at midday, and the costume fittings for the next series had been put off until Thursday and Friday. I turned up at the flat to find Laura packing. She told me she was going to the cottage. I was furious because Hannah had a couple of days left at school. She wanted Laura and me to see her in the end of term concert that Friday.

I suspected that Laura was leaving because she wanted to screw her lover. We argued. I’d had a couple of drinks to celebrate the end of the series –

to cut a long story short, I hit her.’

‘Hard?’

‘Hard enough. She stormed out, telling me I’d never see her again as long as I lived. She also said she’d fight to get custody of Hannah, and given my record of drinking and violence she’d get her. That was the last time I saw Laura alive.’

‘You didn’t follow her?’

‘I told you, I’d been drinking, certainly too much to drive.’

‘The police found mud on your car.’

‘I’ve never cleaned a car in my life. You know that.’

‘Mud, in London?’

‘We’d spent all week filming on Wimbledon Common. It could have been from there.’

‘You didn’t go anywhere near the cottage?’

‘I had no reason to. I didn’t believe Laura had gone there after our argument. I assumed she’d go to his place, wherever it was. If you’ve read the files on the case you know the police didn’t find a shred of evidence in that cottage to prove I’d been there that night. They couldn’t even match the mud on my car to the mud around the cottage.’

‘You’d played a detective for close on six years. You had enough knowledge and sense to wear gloves – over-boots –’

‘If I did, where were they when the police searched the flat and my car?’

‘Bottom of a lake, a pond, a river.’

‘You don’t want to believe me.’ He poured out the wine with an unsteady hand.

‘Damn it all, Adam, I do want to believe you.

That’s why I’m sitting here, asking you questions instead of phoning my super.’ Using the heel of her palm she pushed her wine glass towards him. He filled it. ‘But you did leave the flat that night?’ she continued.

‘After Laura left, I lay on the bed and slept. I woke in the dark, then I telephoned Hannah to wish her goodnight.’

‘Where was she?’ Anna already knew from the files, but she wanted him to tell her.

‘With a friend from school. It was a special occasion; a birthday.’

‘And after you phoned?’

‘I showered, and changed. But you know that already. The prosecution lengthened my trial by two days by concentrating on the importance of my changing clothes.’

‘You changed because they were covered in mud?’

‘From Wimbledon Common,’ he replied. ‘I had a hangover from the afternoon’s drinking and I decided to go for the hair of the dog. All I could find in the flat was half a bottle of wine. I wanted something stronger, so I walked to the off-licence.’

‘No one saw you go out?

‘The porter, he testified at the trial.’

‘But he couldn’t put a time on when you left, and he didn’t see you return.’

‘And I was convicted on the deficient memory of a geriatric.’

‘You were convicted on the evidence put forward by the prosecution.’

‘All circumstantial.’

‘How far was the off-licence?’ she questioned.

‘Ten minutes.’

‘And you saw no one?’

‘Of course I did. There were people around. It wasn’t that late.’

‘But not one of them could recall seeing an actor who was a household name.’

‘I can’t explain that, other than to say it was dark. The weather was foul. I’d turned up the collar of my coat. I was carrying an umbrella.’

‘TV personalities complain that they can’t step out of doors without being mobbed.’

‘For once I wasn’t.’ His voice was brittle with irritation. ‘I bought a bottle of whisky.’

‘What brand?’

‘How in hell should I remember?’

‘Because it’s important.’

‘It wasn’t at the time, because I didn’t know I was going to be charged with killing my wife.’

‘The assistant didn’t remember seeing you.’

‘No, but I was able to testify that he’d had his nose glued to a book.’

‘But you couldn’t say what that book was.’

‘Because it was opened out flat on the counter.

He took my money, gave me my whisky and change…’

‘But no receipt.’ Anna had studied the files thoroughly. ‘And it was company policy to give all customers receipts.’

‘Maybe I dropped it.’ He felt as though she had placed him in the dock again.

‘There were no receipts found in the rubbish swept from the floor of the shop that night. None in the flat, in your car…’

‘But a half-full bottle of whisky with a price tag bearing the name of the off-licence was found on my coffee table.’

‘A bottle which could have been bought at any time.’ She played devil’s advocate. ‘You were seen leaving the flat. No one remembers seeing your car in the garage of the flats that night…’

‘No one remembers not seeing it. Half the people who lived in that apartment block were dead from the neck up. They’d do anything not to get involved in a scandal.’

‘No one saw you walking to the off-licence.

The assistant didn’t remember serving you. No one saw you walking back,’ she continued mercilessly.

‘I watched television. I told the police what I saw.’

‘A four-year-old film. You could have seen it in the cinema or on video…’

‘I’ve been through all this a hundred times.’ He sank his head down on his arms.

‘You have no idea who Laura went to meet that night?’ she asked, when the silence grew too much to bear.

‘Do you think I’d have gone to prison if I had?’

he mumbled miserably.

‘You must have had some idea who her friends were.’

‘She claimed she spent time with Blanche. She had lunch with friends in London now and again, but the police checked everyone I knew. They were all in her address book. Laura was offered very little work after Hannah was born. The naïve young girl roles she’d been landed with dried up as she grew older.’

‘On what little you’ve told me we stand no chance of finding Laura’s murderer.’

‘I have to try!’ He crashed his fist down on the table, sending the crockery rattling. ‘If I don’t, I’ll be sent back to prison, and I’d go mad. I wouldn’t last there a week. I’d kill myself! I’d kill myself.’

His voice dropped to a whisper.

Such was Adam’s emotional intensity, Anna believed him capable of anything at that moment –

even murder. He’d admitted that he’d hit Laura –

had he gone further –?

She thought guiltily of her colleagues, the resources being expended on the search for Adam. If any of them ever found out she’d sheltered him, it wouldn’t just be her job on the line. She’d end up in a cell. As she pushed her empty glass back towards him she made a note to check the maximum penalty for harbouring a felon.

Trevor and Peter weren’t the first police officers to reach the General Hospital. Andrew Murphy and Chris Brooke were already there, dealing with a fracas in reception.

‘A domestic, sir,’ Chris shouted to Trevor above a sea of heads, as he handcuffed a fair-haired, stocky man with blood streaming from a cut above his eye.

‘No wife of mine is sleeping around. Not while I’ve breath in my body,’ the man roared.

A woman with a bruised mouth and a bloody gap where her front teeth should have been screamed at him from Andrew’s restraining arms. ‘I divorced you six months ago, you bastard.’

‘Happy families,’ Peter grumbled. ‘Why can’t they beat up one another off my shift?’

‘The wife’s boyfriend is in theatre.’ A sister bustled in with a tray of plasters, sutures and scissors.

‘Three of them did this?’ Trevor looked at the upturned chairs and puddles of blood.

Two paramedics crashed along the corridor behind them wheeling a trolley.

‘You know what Saturday nights are like here.

Couldn’t you have taken this one up the road?’ the sister pleaded.

The paramedic took the sister to one side and began relating as much of the case history as he knew in an urgent, low-pitched whisper. After glancing down at the elderly man, the sister called for a nurse to escort them into a treatment room.

‘Do you want us to take this lot down the station and charge them, as soon as they’re bandaged up, Sarge?’

‘Please,’ Peter answered Chris. He turned to Trevor. Glad to leave the chaos they headed for the door. Halfway along Trevor realised Peter was no longer with him. Looking back, he saw his partner standing in the entrance to the treatment room that the elderly man had been taken into.

‘It’s Marks,’ Peter told him.

‘Brian Marks, the solicitor?’ Trevor asked.

‘Yes,’ Peter looked up. ‘Where did that sister go?’

Anna had drunk too much. The one bottle of wine had become three. She’d barely touched the casserole Adam had cooked and the alcohol, mixed with the painkillers she’d taken to see herself through the day, had muddled her senses to the point where she was no longer capable of evaluating anything Adam said to her.

The room swam around her as his exquisite voice droned on softly. She was conscious of its soothing resonance, the contrived poetic harmony, but she could no longer decipher the meaning behind his words. All evening they’d talked, but she was more confused than when she’d left the station that afternoon.

The trained detective in her knew that Adam hadn’t given her a single fact to support his innocence. His alibi for the night of his wife’s death sounded no better now than it had done two years ago. His explanation for changing clothes with the army deserter, who’d subsequently burnt to death, was risible. If the red boots had worried him that much, why hadn’t he dumped them and salvaged another pair from a charity clothing skip? And she’d seen him in the factory before the fire with her own eyes. Just as she’d seen him when Peter had been shot Peter was right. Adam had received his day in court and been convicted. And since his escape from prison he’d wrought death and destruction on everyone and everything he’d touched. Why was she sitting here, listening to him when she should be on the phone to the super?

Was it because of an old love that should have died years ago? Or was there an innocence in Adam that she sensed against all logic?

‘Do you realise that I’m committing a crime?’

she interrupted harshly. ‘It’s called harbouring a felon. I could go to prison, lose my job…’

‘As a cop?’

She detected the sneer. ‘I’m a good officer,’ she said in a slurred voice. ‘Going undercover is not that different from acting. It’s taken me a long time, but I’ve found something I’m good at. My work is everything. I’ve built a life around it. Not much of one by your old standards,’ she gazed defiantly around her shabby living room, ‘but it’s all I’ve got.

If I could see a way to help you prove your innocence, I’d say stay here and I’ll help you. But from what you’ve told me, I can’t see any point.’

‘Blanche might have some idea who Laura was having an affair with,’ he continued unrelentingly.

‘She’s already told us she didn’t. It’s not that I don’t believe you, Adam. It’s more like I can’t. I’m not the same person you used to know. I’m police officer first now, Anna second.’

‘You’re not that different.’ He dumped the used plates on the draining board and turned to face her.

She rose from her chair and moved towards him.

Wrapping his arms around her shoulders, he bent his head and kissed her gently. His lips –

Anthony George’s lips, grazed her own. She closed her eyes so she didn’t have to look at his face. It was too familiar – too dangerous. She pushed him away.

‘I’m sorry, Anna. I hurt you once and I’m hurting you again. I have no right to ask anything of you. I’d better get going, but, before I do, I want you to know that whatever happens, I won’t reveal to anyone that I was here, or that you helped me.’

‘Where will you go? No, don’t tell me.’

This time she was the one who kissed him. The kiss led to another – and another. Slowly they climbed the stairs. She felt too tired, too muddled by a heady mixture of wine and emotion to think clearly.

Tomorrow – she would think in the morning.

Things always seemed better in the morning. One night couldn’t make any difference to the police search, and for the first time in years, Adam was entirely hers. She had the night and she had him. For now, she would shut out everything else except that.

‘You sure that was Brian Marks?’

‘I interviewed him.’ Peter paced the length of the side room the sister had shown them into. The door opened and a young woman walked in wearing a doctor’s coat.

‘You waiting for news of Mr Brian Marks?’

‘Yes.’

‘Relatives?’

‘Police.’ Peter pulled out his ID.

‘I’m the houseman. If Mr Marks has a family they should be contacted.’

‘He hasn’t a family in the UK,’ Peter said.

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Paracetamol overdose.’

‘Serious?’

‘Fatal. But for the moment Mr Marks is lucid.

He told us he booked into a hotel room three days ago, and swallowed an entire bottle of forty tablets.

He’s surprised to be still alive, and frankly so are we. But as the drug has been in his bloodstream for more than forty-eight hours, the damage to his organs is irreversible. There’s little we can do except make him comfortable and wait for the inevitable.’

‘How long?’ Peter asked.

‘Any time. He obviously knew what he was doing. And, in my experience, if someone is serious about suicide, they generally succeed. He wouldn’t be here now if it hadn’t been for the efforts of a persistent chambermaid who opened his door with a master key.’

‘Is he capable of answering questions?’

‘For the moment, yes.’

‘Can we talk to him?’

‘Only if he wants to talk to you. We’re going to move him up to a ward shortly. But with such massive internal damage, his condition could deteriorate at any moment.’