Picture of Innocence (16 page)

Nicola shook her head.

‘Mrs Hutchins,’ said the inspector.

‘Once,’ Nicola said slowly, reluctantly, ‘he gave her a terrible beating. I mean – really, really terrible. I had to take her to casualty. I thought he might have done that again, or tried to, and she’d got away from him.’

‘What made you think he might have done it again?’

It was still none of her business what Rachel had got up to in the cowshed. Nicola didn’t want to answer her, but she knew she would, sooner or later, and it might as well be now. ‘ I … I think Rachel may have been—’

‘Think I may have been what?’ asked a lazy, almost unconcerned voice behind her.

Nicola turned quickly to see Rachel in the doorway. ‘ Oh, Rachel,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—’

‘It’s all right.’ Rachel smiled slowly, a little sadly. ‘ Can’t tell no one where to get off, can you, Nicola? Reckon he hammered all the guts out of you.’

Nicola felt tears pricking her eyes.

‘Nicky?’ said Gus. ‘What does she mean?’

‘And you just come gutless, didn’t you?’ Rachel said to him. ‘Or you’d’ve been helping her out, ‘stead of lettin’ folk walk all over her.’

Nicola burned a painful red.

Inspector Hill looked up at Rachel. ‘Is Mrs Hutchins right?’ she asked. ‘
Did
your husband hit you?’

‘No,’ said Rachel. ‘He didn’t hit me. Any more’n he hit Nicola. He took his fists to me. Gave me what he called a hammerin’, every time he felt like it, just like he gave Nicola ever since she could walk. Did it to me ’cos I hadn’t given him a boy. Did it to her ’cos she
wasn’t
a boy.’

Tears streamed down Nicola’s face as she looked at Rachel, praying that she would stop. But Rachel’s voice went on remorselessly.

‘Lasted seconds, hurt for days. Wasn’t even anger,’ she said. ‘He knew what he was doin’. Knew where it’d hurt the most, never left no marks where you couldn’t cover them up with clothes. But we all got to take our clothes off sometime, right, Nicola?’

Nicola saw Gus’s horrified face; he got up, pushed past Rachel in the doorway, and left the house, the front door banging shut behind him.

‘You didn’t mention any of this when I spoke to you earlier.’

‘No,’ said Rachel. ‘I didn’t. Because you would’ve thought what Nicola thought. That I’d had enough of it. That I’d stabbed him.’

‘I
didn’t
think that!’ said Nicola sobbed. ‘Truly, I didn’t.’ She hadn’t had time to think of any explanation for it at all.

‘I told
her
this morning,’ Rachel said, nodding over to the inspector, her voice made all the more attractive by being slightly hoarse, ‘and I’m tellin’ you, and anyone else who’s interested – I’m not sorry he’s dead. But I didn’t kill him. I left here on Friday morning, and I didn’t get back until ten
this
morning.’ She looked across at Inspector Hill. ‘And I don’t know nothin’ about dead bodies,’ she said, her voice as slow as syrup. ‘But he looked like he’d been one for a long time ’fore I got back.’

Nicola wiped the tears. Oh, God. This was getting messier by the minute. She really hadn’t thought that Rachel had stabbed him, but now … now, she didn’t know what to think. Her knuckles were white with tension, and she had to talk to Gus. ‘Can … can I go, please?’ she asked.

Rachel looked over at her. ‘You got to start doing what you
want
to do, Nicola,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to ask nobody’s permission. She can’t stop you leavin’ here.’ She looked at Inspector Hill. ‘Can you?’

‘No. You can leave any time you like, Mrs Hutchins.’

‘See?’ said Rachel. ‘Bernard’s gone, Nicola. He can’t do nothing to you any more.’

Nicola got up. Rachel held her eyes for a moment, then moved aside, and Nicola went out to find Gus leaning against the railing of the veranda, staring ahead of him. He didn’t turn round. He didn’t speak. She went down the steps to the car, getting into the passenger seat. It was a long time before he left his contemplations at the rail, and joined her, driving her home in silence. They pulled up in the little surgery car park.

‘Is it true?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

Gus got out of the car and slammed the door.

‘Sergeant Finch, Stansfield CID,’ he said, holding out his warrant card, which Mike had already seen, when the waves created by Stansfield CID’s recent, much-publicized arrest of an acquaintance of his had lapped disagreeably round his feet.

‘I remember you,’ he said. Fortunately, he had been astute enough to bury his less than ethical dealings under so much legitimate stuff that they could prove nothing, except that he had some dodgy friends. ‘Come in,’ he said.

He showed Finch into the study, invited him to sit, but he said he would stand. Mike sat. His legs were shaking. This might be more questions about backhanders to town councillors, or unsecured, unrepaid loans to backbench MPs, but he doubted it.

‘I believe you called on Mr Bernard Bailey yesterday evening,’ the sergeant said.

Mike’s eyes closed, as his fears were confirmed. ‘What’s happened?’ he said, his voice almost failing him, and opened his eyes.

The young man frowned. ‘ Were you expecting something to happen?’ he asked.

‘I … I just—’ Mike broke off, and made himself calm down. ‘Policemen don’t usually enquire into people’s business
unless
something’s happened,’ he said. ‘ The last time you had arrested a friend of mine. What’s happened this time?’

‘Would you mind telling me what your business was with Mr Bailey?’

‘I’m trying to buy his land.’

‘But Mr Bailey already knew that, sir,’ said Finch. ‘Could you tell me what your particular reason was for calling on him yesterday?’

No, he couldn’t. It had been the stupidest, most reprehensible thing he had ever done in his life, and there was no way that he could discuss it with Sergeant Finch. The repercussions had already come about, and he didn’t know if he could bear this.

‘A last-ditch attempt to make him change his mind,’ he said. ‘No particular reason. Just … hoping I could talk some sense into him, I suppose.’

‘So what was he like, when you spoke to him?’

‘Like he always is,’ said Mike, his mind in a fog of panic, startled to hear himself give a comprehensible answer. ‘Surly. Uncooperative. Rude.’ Oh, God, what had he done to her?

‘Had he been drinking?’

Mike shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Were you in the sitting room at all?’

‘No. I saw him in his office.’ He shook his head, bewildered. ‘Why do you want to know that?’

‘Did you notice the alarms?’ said Finch, totally ignoring him. ‘Would you know if they were on or off?’

‘Haven’t the foggiest. On, I should imagine. He had the shutters down, so I suppose all the security systems were on. Look – what’s happened?’

‘When did you leave?’

‘I don’t know! I was there for ten, fifteen minutes. I left at quarter past eight or something!’ He couldn’t stand it any longer. ‘For Christ’s sake, man, tell me what’s
happened
.’

‘Mr Bailey was found murdered earlier this morning.’

Mike’s eyes grew wide, as he stared at the young man with the killer punch. Mr Bailey?
Mr
Bailey?

Oh, Jesus
Christ
, he thought, when it all began to fall into place, to make sense. He felt the colour drain from his face, and he looked down at his desk, at the papers on which he had done no work at all, despite being up since dawn. All that soul-searching. All that guilt. All that panic. For what? Someone who had rolled him over. Jesus Christ.

‘I’m sorry if it’s come as a shock,’ said Finch, not sounding one jot sorry about it. ‘I didn’t think you were particularly close to Mr Bailey.’

‘Close?’ said Mike, looking up again, feeling dazed. ‘ No.’

‘But this news
has
come as a shock to you?’

Mike nodded slowly, then realized that it had been a question which required a rather more vehement answer than that. ‘Of course it does, man!’ he shouted. ‘You don’t think murdered him, do you?’

Finch shrugged a little. ‘ I don’t know who murdered him,’ he said. ‘But I do know that you knew that something was going to happen at Bailey’s farm last night. And I believe, Mr McQueen, that there’s a bit more to all of this than you’re prepared to admit.’

Mike nodded. ‘Maybe there is,’ he said. ‘But that’s my business, Sergeant Finch.’

‘It’s mine now,’ said Finch. ‘ We may want to see you again, Mr McQueen, but thank you for your time.’

Mike rose automatically.

‘No, no, don’t get up. I’ll see myself out.’

Mike sat at his desk for a long time after the sergeant had left. Then he took a cigar from the box, and rolled it between his fingers. He was only allowed to smoke them in here or in the garden, and even when Shirley was away, he did as she wanted, as he had been told. He had always done women’s bidding. He had only vague memories of his father, who had been killed in the war; he had been brought up by his mother and sisters, various aunts and sundry female neighbours, all telling him what to do.

Then he had married Shirley, and he had had a whole new set of regulations, like not smoking in the sitting room, and how to hold his knife, and that he mustn’t spoil Margaret. But he had spoiled Margaret, of course. She had had him wrapped round her little finger, and he had done her bidding too. She had left home the only time he had refused her anything. They had come to live here because Shirley wanted it; the Rookery project had been for her, in a way. But she had had no stomach for the fight in which he had subsequently engaged, and had gone off to her sister’s until it was all over. It was all over now, but he doubted that she would be hurrying back.

And then there was Rachel Bailey … he closed his eyes, and dropped the cigar back into the box. My God, Rachel Bailey. There really was no fool like an old fool.

Rachel had expanded a little on life with Bernard after Nicola had left, and had gone upstairs to get the photographs she had taken of what Bernard had done to her that night.

Through the chimney breast she could hear the inspector talking to the man who’d been in the office earlier, the one who had said he thought she had killed Bernard. The Welsh one. They were talking about her again, and they didn’t sound like colleagues having a discussion, Rachel thought for the second time, as she listened; they sounded like a couple having an argument.

Why, Inspector Hill was asking, would anyone stay with a man who treated her like that? The money she stood to gain, the man said. But he was going to lose the farm, she argued, and no farm meant no inheritance. Perhaps Mrs Bailey didn’t know that he had gone bust, he said. She told you Bailey didn’t talk to her. But she was only going to get the money in any event if she gave him a son, the inspector pointed out, and she hadn’t had a baby of either sex. Well, he said, they would just have to ask her why not. Rachel smiled, and opened the bottom drawer of the dressing table, taking out the agreement.

When she went back down, the man introduced himself as Chief Inspector Lloyd. He was about the same age as Bernard, maybe a little older; not as tall, but dark, like him, though the Chief Inspector had lost most of his hair. Unlike Bernard, he smiled readily and often, and he looked like there would be a quick temper ready to surface if things weren’t going his way. Bernard had never got angry, had never said or done anything he hadn’t meant to say or do. Rachel would bet Chief Inspector Lloyd did that all the time, then wished he hadn’t.

He was wearing clothes that suited the weather, but didn’t exactly suit him or one another. Was he the cool, collected, colour-coordinated woman-inspector’s type? Perhaps not, thought Rachel, but there was a lot more between them than just their shared occupation, her type or not. Fate wasn’t too fussy about mixing and matching.

Rachel handed Inspector Hill the envelope with the photographs in it, then pulled the chair away from the desk, sitting down. The inspector looked up when she saw the first one, her eyes troubled, and glanced at Rachel before she looked through the rest, pushing them one by one over to the Chief Inspector, like you did with holiday snaps. He kept one out when he closed the envelope, and raised his eyebrows. The inspector nodded. A lot of communication went on without words, Rachel noticed. You had to be close to someone before you could do that.

Chief Inspector Lloyd looked over at her then, the photograph in his hand, and took a breath before he spoke, like people did when they were going to tell you something you didn’t want to hear.

‘Mrs Bailey,’ he said. ‘Did you know that your husband was in a very bad financial position?’

Rachel nodded. ‘Oh, he didn’t tell me or nothin’,’ she said, in answer to his surprised look. ‘He didn’t want no one knowin’. Even Nicola thinks he still had money. But I heard someone talkin’ to him.’

‘There are county-court judgements against him. His creditors were threatening to distrain upon his goods,’ he said. ‘And he was almost certainly going to lose the farm.’

‘I know. That’s why he got all them alarms, case he couldn’t make a payment. Said he’d shoot them if they tried to get in.’

‘I take it you overheard that as well?’

She nodded again. ‘ Only way I found anythin’ out was by overhearin’,’ she said. ‘Bernard never told me nothin’.’

‘Do you know
how
he was meeting the payments?’

No. She had no idea how he’d managed it. ‘Just shuffled his credit round, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Reckon that’s why he owed so much to everyone else.’

‘But he couldn’t have gone on like that for ever,’ said Lloyd. And if he lost possession of the farm, he wasn’t going to fulfil the conditions of his grandfather’s will.’

He came round the desk, sitting on the edge of it, looking over at her, and Rachel saw the look in his eyes. Oh, not as naked as it was in Mike McQueen’s. Not as eager as it was in Curtis’s. But it was there. She glanced at Inspector Hill, and she was looking back at her, her face a little speculative. Rachel was right about them, she knew she was.

‘Do I gather that he did this to you?’ he asked, holding up the photograph.

She nodded again.