Picture of Innocence (17 page)

This time he nodded too, and there was just the ghost of a smile. ‘My question is simple, Mrs Bailey,’ he said. ‘Why did you continue to stay with him?’

‘McQueen’s offer,’ she said. ‘He was offerin’ him four times what this place is worth, and I thought he’d have to sell in the end. I had to stay with him until he did. She reached into her back pocket, and pulled out the agreement, handing it to Lloyd.

He took out glasses, read it, then looked up at her over the frames. ‘This says that he will pay you ten per cent of his net worth as at the date you quit the marital home,’ he said. ‘If you had this, why didn’t you sue him for divorce as soon as he started abusing you?’ He handed it hack to her.

‘He wasn’t worth nothin’ like he was goin’ to be if I gave him a son,’ said Rachel. ‘Even before he went broke. I didn’t want to divorce him, not then.’

‘But you
didn’t
give him a son,’ said Lloyd.

‘I was tryin’ to get pregnant,’ Rachel said. ‘To start with. Just didn’t happen, that’s all, ’cept he wouldn’t believe that.’

‘What made you stop trying?’

‘If he was goin’ to lose the farm, reckoned I might as well be on the pill. Was gettin’ knocked about regular for it anyway.’

‘Knocked
about
?’ said Lloyd. ‘Is that what you Gall this?’ He held up the photograph.

Rachel shook her head. ‘Reason for that was he hung on like he did. Knew I
had
to be on the pill. One night he drags me out of bed, beats me so bad I can’t stand up. Says he’ll do it to me again if I don’t get pregnant soon.’

Lloyd put the photograph down, pushed himself off the desk, and began to walk round the little room, picking things up, examining them, as though they were far more interesting than anything she had to say. Rachel watched him until Inspector Hill spoke again.

‘The money was that important to you?’ she said, incredulously. ‘You were being beaten, practically held prisoner—’

‘Wasn’t no prisoner,’ said Rachel, with a smile. ‘I could’ve walked out of here any time I liked. Just couldn’t get back in again.’

‘Why would you
want
to get back in again?’ she asked, picking up the photograph.

‘This.’ Rachel held up the agreement in a counter to her photograph. ‘ Had to be there if I wanted my ten per cent when he sold.’

‘What if he hadn’t sold?’ Lloyd asked. ‘What if McQueen had used the other route? What then?’

‘I’d’ve left him,’ Rachel said, with the tiniest of shrugs, looking back at him. ‘ Divorced him. Wouldn’t’ve got nothin’ out of it, though, ’ cos he wouldn’t have had nothin’ to pay me ten per cent of. It was a gamble, that’s all.’ Lloyd understood, a little, she thought. But Inspector Hill didn’t.

‘That sort of beating could have done you lasting damage,’ she said.

Rachel shook her head. ‘He didn’t
want
to do no lastin’ damage,’ she said. ‘He needed me fit. Didn’t put his weight behind none of them kicks – just kept on doin’ it till I couldn’t take no more. Thought he could scare me off the pill.’

Inspector Hill shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’re saying you were virtually
tortured
, Rachel.’ How could you stay after he’d done that to you? How could money
ever
be worth ending up like this?’

Rachel looked at the inspector’s clothes, less expensive than her own, but no less elegant. At her hair, probably just as expensively cut. She smiled at her, and sat forward, her hands clasped on her knees. ‘You wore cut-down rubber boots for one hour, one day of your life,’ she said. A wet day. A muddy day. On a farm. A day anyone with any sense would wear rubber boots, whatever they looked like. And you know how that made you feel.’

The inspector flushed a little, and Chief Inspector Lloyd smiled.

‘I wore ’em every day, all day, on my bare feet. Days like’’ this. In hot, dusty, city streets. Beggin’ for money.’ She paused, and sat back. ‘You never begged,’ she said.

‘I thought gypsies—’

‘Looked after their own? Maybe they do. But look at me,’ she said, with another little shrug. ‘I’m not a gypsy.’ She smiled. ‘Happened at one of them rock festivals. This guy come over to the field where the travellers were, stoned out of his mind. Couldn’t even speak English. Gave my mother some stuff to try, got her stoned too, got himself laid. Never even asked his name. No way she could pass me off, not once her old man realized I was a blue-eyed blonde and I was stayin’ that way. So he threw us out, and we didn’t belong nowhere. I learned to look after myself.’

‘Did you?’ asked Inspector Hill, with a glance at the photograph. She put it on the table, face down.

Rachel nodded. ‘In the end, I got six half-brothers and sisters to look after, too. We’d trail around in an old VW camper, sometimes joinin’ up with other travellers, sometimes on our own. We’d pick up some man, she’d get pregnant again, he’d leave, we’d have another mouth to feed, and I’d have another year of rubber boots and sleepin’ outside and beggin’ in the streets to look forward to. Didn’t own a pair of shoes till I was thirteen years old. But I worked for the money, and I bought them myself.’

Inspector Hill smiled. ‘What were they like?’ she asked.

‘They were gold,’ said Rachel. ‘High-heeled sandals. Put them on, wouldn’t take them off, not for no one.’ She smiled broadly. ‘Cut my feet to ribbons.’ She sighed. ‘But you don’t get rich muckin’ out cowsheds. And I couldn’t do no real job. Can read ‘ n’ write, but that’s ’bout it. Never had no real education. Bernard Bailey offered me a fortune for somethin’ I
could
do.’

‘But it wasn’t going to happen, was it? And I’m told that farm work isn’t all that easy to come by. What would you have done once you finally did leave him?’

‘That pendant?’ Rachel said. ‘ The one I can’t find? My father gave it to my mother. Took it from round his neck and gave it to her ’ fore he left. Had it valued a few years back. Solid, twenty-four-carat gold, they said. My mother couldn’t get over that when I told her. She’d thought it was junk jewellery – only kept it ’cos she liked him. I got it when she died, and it’s my insurance. It’s been in and out of more pawn shops than a burglar, and I always get it back.’

But she might not get it back this time. She must ring the hotel, see if they’d found it. Why hadn’t she had the clasp fixed?

‘But it might as well’ve been junk jewellery, far as he was concerned,’ she went on. ‘Just somethin’ he gave a gypsy girl to remember him by. ’ Cept he gave her more than that. He gave her me. And maybe I got more’n just his blond hair and blue eyes. Because
I
wanted that kind of money to throw away.’

The inspector looked totally baffled. ‘ How many more beatings like that did you intend to put up with in order to get that sort of money?’

‘Few as possible,’ said Rachel. ‘He
was
going to do it again, the day you were here. Asked me if I’d been to the chemist, and I said no, but someone’d seen me. So he knew I was lyin’, was goin’ to give me another kickin’ for it. But I told him I was pregnant. Didn’t dare touch me then.’

Lloyd continued to look at Bernard’s books and files as he spoke. ‘You
pretended
to be pregnant, knowing that he would have to find out you weren’t?’ he said. ‘Knowing what he would do to you when he found out?’

‘Was goin’ to do it to me anyway,’ Rachel pointed out. And he didn’t lay a hand on me after I told him I was havin’ his precious baby, never mind his boot. Not once.’ She gave a short sigh. ‘All the while I was married to him, Bernard Bailey was either trying to get me pregnant, or knockin’ me about ’cos I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t know which I liked least. I got eight weeks free of that. This is the first time in eighteen months that I got no bruises on me.’

Lloyd turned to look at her then. ‘Why did you come back here this morning?’ he asked.

‘I was
due
back this mornin’. Bernard couldn’t afford no more nights in a place like that. No way I could’ve stayed there any longer.’

‘But you didn’t have to come back here,’ said Lloyd. He came over, sat on the edge of the desk again. ‘McQueen had said publicly that he would take the woodland route if he hadn’t acquired this land by the end of July. You had already lost your gamble. And yet you came back here, when you could have gone anywhere.’

‘Why not?’ said Rachel.

Lloyd sighed. ‘Being dragged out of bed without warning and beaten until you can’t stand up is one thing. Calmly walking back into this house in the full expectation that your husband would do it again when he found out you’d lied to him is quite another.’

Rachel smiled. ‘And someone came here and stabbed him to death ’fore that could happen,’ she said. ‘So you reckon that makes me suspect number one, right?’

‘You are an intelligent, articulate woman, Mrs Bailey,’ he said, sounding Welsher than ever. ‘And nothing you have told me suggests that you do anything without careful consideration of the consequences. The risk far outweighed any possibility of gain. It makes you
a
suspect, certainly.’ He got off the desk. ‘I think that’s all for now,’ he said. ‘Thank you for being so frank with us.’

‘Wouldn’t’ve been. If Nicola knew how to stand up for herself. But she don’t.’ She looked at Inspector Hill as she got up to leave. ‘Bernard Bailey did that to her; she went on. ‘And Gutless Gus was lettin’ you walk all over her.’

The inspector didn’t argue with that. She got to the door, and turned back. ‘Rachel,’ she said, a little tentatively. ‘You said her father couldn’t do anything to her now he was gone. Was he
still
abusing her?’

‘Only saw him knockin’ her about the once. Don’t reckon he had to do it too often, the way he’d got her trained. They were in the barn. They didn’t see me.’

She could still see it. See Nicola cowering in the comer as the blows had landed on her head, her shoulders. That had shocked Rachel more than anything else Bernard Bailey had ever done. This time she picked up the photograph, held it up. ‘You want to see lastin’ damage?’ she said. ‘Don’t look at this. Look at Nicola.’

The inspector frowned a little.

‘He never did nothin’ like this to her,’ Rachel said. ‘She never ended up in casualty. But he hurt her. He hurt her every time she tried to speak up for herself from when she was two years old, and he did her lastin’ damage, all right. That’s why she can’t make a decent livin’ out of bein’ a vet, ’cos she’s frightened to make people pay her what they owe. That’s why she married someone who’s so soft he can’t get a job no more’n I can, and he’s a qualified accountant. But she thinks he won’t hurt her.’

‘And you think he will?’

‘Not by punchin’ the back of her neck, he won’t. But he won’t be no use when she needs him. And she would never’ve needed him in the first place if she’d been brought up right.’

‘You seem angrier about what Bernard Bailey did to Nicola than what he did to you,’ said Lloyd.

Rachel turned to him, and nodded. ‘ Bernard and me understood each other,’ she said. ‘I wanted money, and once I knew I could get it without givin’ him babies, that’s what I tried to do. His son had to be legitimate, so he had to try and
make
me start givin’ him babies, and that’s what he did. But I could’ve walked out of here any time I wanted, like I said. Nicola couldn’t. She was just a baby when he started on her. And she couldn’t even stand up to him when she was a grown woman.’ She shook her head. ‘‘That’s why I stopped tryin’,’ she said. ‘When I saw that. I wasn’t givin’ Bernard Bailey no baby of mine to damage like he damaged Nicola.’

They left. Rachel went over to the window, kneeling one knee on the safe as she watched them make their way across the courtyard to where the other policemen stood. They were close. Closer than colleagues, certainly. Closer even than lovers, she thought, though she was certain that they
were
lovers. But she and Curtis were lovers, and that didn’t mean anything. That was just sex. Good sex. Sex that had taken her mind off the near-nightly matings with Bernard, reminded her that it could be fun. But just sex.

Judy Hill and her chief inspector were much closer than sex could ever make people. They were friends.

‘OK, can you hear me?’

Curtis was about to send down the line to Barton his voice-over for the pictures Gary had shot that morning, and the handful of interviews with neighbours that he had managed to get. He rubbed his eyes as his sleepless night began to catch up with him.

‘Voice-over for murder at Bailey’s farm. There are four sections – an introduction and history, a lead-in to interviews with villagers, a lead-in to the interview with Chief Inspector Lloyd, and an endpiece. Ready?’

It would get edited in Barton, of course. One of the irritations about being in a regional office was that there was no editing suite; Curtis had no control over what was shown in the end. He just had to hope they kept in the right pieces.

He began. ‘Section One. In a bizarre and tragic twist to the saga of Bailey’s farm, Bernard Bailey was found dead in his own home this morning when his wife returned from a weekend shopping trip to London. Police say he had been stabbed several times, and that they have no leads yet to the killer, though they are pursuing a number of lines of enquiry.

‘Bernard Bailey had been in the news almost constantly over the last six months, because of his stand against MM Developments who hoped to purchase his land to build a road to the Rookery, an ambitious development just north of the Harmston farm that Bernard Bailey had worked for over twenty-five years, and which his grandfather and great-grandfather had worked before him. The alternative route would take the road through picturesque woodland, and Mr Bailey’s stand, being made over largely fallow fields, met with considerable hostility. Hostility that spawned vandalism, and even brought death threats, which began appearing despite the fact that Mr Bailey had ringed his farm with alarms, and installed closed-circuit television on the advice of the police.

‘Section Two. Now, he has been murdered. Despite the alarms, despite the cameras which kept an ever-vigilant eye on his property, Bernard Bailey has died the violent death promised by those death threats. I asked some of the villagers for their reactions to that.’