Picture of Innocence (38 page)

Mike smiled. ‘And I was looking for Hawthornes,’ he said. ‘But at least we’ve found one another now.’

She looked at him. ‘You might wish you hadn’t.’

‘I doubt that.’

‘You ought to know that my husband left me today,’ she said. ‘And both he and the police think I murdered my father. And I stole four thousand six hundred pounds from my father’s safe, but I’ve given it back now, so I’m broke.’

Oh. Well, he hadn’t supposed this would be straightforward. Mike took her hands in his. ‘ You mustn’t worry about any of it,’ he said. ‘ You’re not broke any more, for a start. You’ve got a grandfather with more money than he knows what to do with. Except now he does know what to do with it, and you don’t ever have to worry about money again.’

Nicola almost smiled. ‘I don’t think money’s going to help, though,’ she said. ‘Not if I murdered my father.’

‘Money always helps,’ Mike looked at her worriedly. ‘
Did
you murder your father?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I did.’

Mike frowned. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked hesitantly.

‘I just wanted him to die. I just wanted not to be frightened of him any more.’

‘Why were you frightened of him?’

And he listened, appalled, as she told him why. He had beaten her all her life. He had beaten Margaret. He had once beaten Rachel so badly that she hadn’t been able to walk unaided.

‘He never did anything like that to me or my mother,’ Nicola said, by way of making him feel better. ‘Just … you know.’

No. No, he didn’t know. He couldn’t imagine it. Margaret, who had been cosseted and cared for all her life, had suddenly found herself at the mercy of some bully’s fists. And Nicola. A child. A baby. His mind shied away from that altogether. ‘Why didn’t she leave him?’ he said. ‘Why didn’t she come home?’

Nicola gave a short sigh, and looked down at the table. ‘ I told someone the other day it was because she was frightened to,’ she said. ‘But it wasn’t just that. She blamed herself. She thought if she gave him a son everything would be fine. She loved him when she married him. Maybe there was still something there.’

But she must have known that he had been here in Harmston, the day her husband let the shotgun off at him. He had thought she had chosen to remain upstairs, but Nicola had been right the first time. She had been too frightened of her vicious husband to defy him. Rachel wouldn’t have been, he thought. Rachel wouldn’t have let anyone or anything keep her from her father. But Rachel didn’t even know who her father was. Life really was very odd indeed. He wasn’t looking forward to telling Shirley any of this, and it might be worse even than that, if Nicola had killed the man. ‘
Did
you kill him?’ he asked again.

‘I suppose I did.’

Oh, God. Mike was way out of his depth.

‘I was there,’ she said. ‘ I took the money. I remember wanting him to die. But I didn’t think I’d
murdered
him. I said Rachel had been there, but she couldn’t have been. She was in London. The police know she was.’

Oh, he wouldn’t put anything past Rachel Bailey. Not even being in two places at once.

‘I think I made that up. Imagined it. Said I’d seen her car, because she’s a gypsy, and I used to blame …’ Her fingers were being tied in knots as she spoke. ‘It was stupid. I just got punished twice. But I really believed I’d seen them. I thought I saw Rachel’s car, but I couldn’t have. I suppose I did murder him. Rachel wants me to go to the police, tell them what I did.’

‘Does she, indeed?’

‘But I think I should stay here. Rachel’s livestock’s being moved, and I should be here. The RSPCA like a vet in attendance. It’s terrible – everything’s being repossessed. Everything. But she says you’re letting her rent the house from you. That’s kind of you.’

‘Aye, well …’ Mike felt a little ashamed of the interpretation she was putting on his arrangement with Rachel.

‘Do you think I should go to the police?’

‘We’ll see. Look – just you take it easy. Don’t worry about anything. Everything’s going to get sorted out. All right?’

‘All right,’ she said, as trusting and defenceless as a puppy.

He wasn’t sure what to do with her. ‘I’ll just have a word with Rachel,’ he said grimly. ‘You wait here, pet.’

‘I don’t really think I
did
murder him.’

No. Neither did Mike. He strode into the house, found Rachel sitting behind Bernard Bailey’s desk.

‘She’s having some sort of breakdown,’ he said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the porch.

Rachel shook her head. ‘ That’s what Gutless Gus said in his note. But she’s not havin’ no breakdown. Just the opposite. Bernard Bailey broke her down years ago. Now she’s tryin’ to start herself up.’ She smiled. ‘Like our old camper when we got it,’ she said, and nodded towards him. ‘You’ll need a lot of patience, if it’s anythin’ to go by. But it went in the end.’

He nodded back, and looked at her, trying to make her out. ‘ Did she murder her father?’ he asked.

Rachel shook her head.

‘Did you?’

‘You don’t ’spect me to answer that,’ she said, with a slow smile.

‘She says you want her to tell the police that she killed him.’

‘No, I don’t. Nicola didn’t kill no one. But she won’t tell me nothin’ ’bout what went on in here that night. That’s why I want her to go to the police. There’s a lady inspector there’ll
make
her tell the truth. Not all this stuff ’bout gypsies and chickens.’

Mike hadn’t heard the bit about the chickens. He frowned. ‘ Won’t that be a bit risky?’ he asked.

‘She’s got to tell someone. Doin’ herself no good keepin’ it all bottled up, you can see that for yourself. Inspector Hill won’t frighten her or nothin’. She’ll just make her sort out the truth from the other stuff, once she knows she’s got somethin’
to
tell. She’s got a knack of gettin’ under Nicola’s skin.’

Mike smiled. ‘I meant risky for you.’

‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ She shrugged. ‘I got to stay here,’ she said. ‘Don’t know if you’ve heard, but all my worldly goods are bein’ repossessed today. If she’ll go with you, will you take her to the police? Ask for Inspector Hill, and don’t accept no substitutes. Nicola’s got pretty good at stonewallin’ everybody else. Got so good at it with Gutless Gus that he ran home to Mummy and Daddy. Thinks he’s married to a murderer.’

Mike looked at her for a long time, trying to gauge whether or not he was being manipulated once again, and decided that he really didn’t care. She had probably murdered her husband, and he certainly didn’t care about that, not any more. And she was right; Nicola had to tell someone what had happened to her on Sunday night, whatever it was. He had a strong suspicion that there was something more to Rachel’s advice that Nicola go to the police than that, but whatever it was, he was still a sucker for those eyes, and that voice, and he would do her bidding. ‘Aye, all right, pet,’ he said. ‘You’ve talked me into it.’

Nicola agreed, with some gentle persuasion from both of them, to go to the police, complete with her pathetic shoebox. Mike drove off with her in the Cherokee, aware that he was taking on a very big project indeed for his retirement. But he and Rachel could take care of things in the short term, and Shirley would come home now. Then they could think of the long term.

That might be very long indeed if they were to undo twenty-five years of abuse, but they would cope with it, and Nicola would get better. He would see to it that she did.

They were in Judy’s office, and the sequence of events had become clear, at last.

McQueen had visited Bailey, and had told him that he had been within an ace of his multimillion-pound prize, and that Rachel had snatched it from him, and Bailey had thought that he was talking about the baby Rachel had told him she was expecting. As he had done the last time he had lost a great deal of money, he had sought solace in the whisky bottle.

Then Melville had come to give him this month’s loan instalment and wages, and had been treated to what Bailey intended doing to Rachel as a result of what he had learned, something Lloyd was profoundly glad he had not been able to carry out. There was no pregnancy, no baby to abort, not this time, but it came to the same thing in the end. Bernard Bailey
would
have broken every bone in Rachel’s body, if Nicola hadn’t seen fit to do away with him first.

‘It has to have been Nicola,’ Lloyd said, but it was as much to convince himself as Judy. ‘ We’ve completed our other enquiries, and all the evidence points to her. The drugs, the time of death, her story about the sheep, her nonsense about the alarms, saying she saw Rachel’s car – everything. She must have killed her father.’

‘Why?’

‘Just because she wanted to, and who can blame her? It’ll be a plea of diminished responsibility. But it has to have been her, or someone who was there before her. And neither of the ones we know about murdered him, even if they could have procured the means, because they had both wanted Bailey alive. So unless someone else altogether visited Bailey between Melville’s leaving and Nicola’s arrival, then it has to have been Nicola. And the only other person with half a motive is Mrs Melville, who was at a committee meeting with a dozen witnesses.’

‘Killing him because she just wanted to is all very well,’ said Judy. A spur-of-the-moment thing. But she didn’t have a motive for planning it, for producing an elaborate story about a sheep! She just didn’t. And I doubt very much if she has the cunning to do that, anyway.’

‘There are no other candidates,’ Lloyd said. ‘Even if Rachel Bailey could have been in two places at once, her only hope of getting her hands on some money was if Bailey stayed alive, and she knew it. That’s why she had hysterics when she found him dead. Law was frightened for her safety, tried to kill Bailey, but he was too late, because Nicola Hutchins had already done the deed.’

‘But
why
had she done it?’ asked Judy, for the umpteenth time. ‘What had happened that would have made her kill him now? This was premeditated murder. She had to have a motive.’

‘There is a motive,’ said Lloyd. ‘She knew about Rachel and Curtis Law. And then she saw Law’s programme, all about drugs. Drugs that
he
could pick up any time he liked, and which
she
had access to every day.
She
wasn’t in her father’s will, but she knew that Rachel was. And she believed that that land would be worth a fortune to McQueen. If she could kill her father and make it look as though Rachel had done it with Law’s help, Rachel wouldn’t inherit, and she’d get the land as his next of kin, whether she was in the will or not.’

Judy was shaking her head. ‘ She isn’t capable of that, Lloyd.’

‘Not now,’ said Lloyd. ‘Not now she’s done it. Now she’s backtracking, saying she made it all up about Rachel’s car, because it’s got too much for her to handle. But she indicated right from the start that Rachel had been there, and then she reluctantly told us about Rachel’s affair with Curtis Law. And we arrested Law, but we let him go. So she had to remind us that he had access to drugs.’

Judy got out her notebook.

‘The first thing she said when I told her Law had been released was ‘‘What about Rachel?’’ ’ Lloyd reminded her. He didn’t need a notebook to remember what people had said. ‘And then she said she had seen Rachel’s car. Because Rachel
herself
had to be guilty of murder, if Nicola was going to get anything. That’s why she bungled the injections and used more drugs than she needed, so it would look like an amateur’s work. And it could perhaps have come off,’ he said. ‘ If that car park hadn’t had surveillance cameras.’

‘Mm,’ said Judy.

‘She may even have convinced herself that she didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘ Like she did when she was little. But there was her obvious confusion when she discovered that her father had been stabbed,’ he said. ‘You mentioned that yourself. And no surprise at all when we told her that he’d died from an overdose.’

‘I know,’ said Judy. ‘But I think she really believed he had committed suicide. She wasn’t surprised about the overdose itself, but she was surprised that we thought
she
had given him it. I think she
still
thought he’d committed suicide, until you mentioned that the hypodermic was found on the road outside. And that’s when she began not to understand, and blamed the gypsies.’

‘But
why
would she think he’d committed suicide?’

‘Because he’d tried to do it before, and he was drunk, and she thought that must be because he’d found out about Rachel and Curtis Law.’

‘Oh, come on!’ said Lloyd, getting up, restless, as he always was when the solution seemed just beyond his grasp. ‘She was the only one who knew about Rachel and Curtis Law! How
could
he have found out, except from her?’ He looked out of the window at the summer sunshine glinting on the cars, and sighed. ‘Perhaps Bailey went to see her, forced her to tell him, and she went to the farm and killed him before he got to Rachel, like Law tried to do. That would explain why she would make up the sheep business. But when we faced her with it, she knew she had done something very wrong, and blamed Rachel. I’m not saying she’s responsible for her actions, Judy. I’m just saying that she must have done it.’

‘I still don’t like it,’ said Judy, continuing to leaf through her notebook. ‘ You’re the one who says if you clear up the little puzzles, you’ll get to the big one, and if it was Nicola, that just gives us more puzzles.’

Lloyd continued to look out of the window as she went through the puzzles.

‘Why would Nicola say she saw Rachel’s
car
, rather than Rachel herself, if she wanted to shift the blame? Why mention suicide, if she knew she’d ditched the hypo outside the farm? Why didn’t Bailey ring a doctor, if he was conscious from when she left until Law arrived? And we don’t even know who took the money,’ she concluded.

Lloyd continued to look out of the window as he spoke. ‘ Rachel Bailey’s car is considerably more of a puzzle if Nicola Hutchins really did see it,’ he said, watching as a big, expensive off-roader tried to find a space in the car park. ‘ Since it didn’t move from the hotel car park. She said her mind plays tricks on her. I don’t suppose she can pick and choose what she imagines she sees.’ The off-roader squeezed into a space, inching past someone’s wing mirror. ‘Bailey didn’t call a doctor because he was too ill. She mentioned suicide, because she really hadn’t meant to get Rachel into trouble, but she had.’ He mentally checked off her objections, and thought he’d pretty well covered them, except one. ‘Nicola killed him, and then
she
took the money,’ he said. ‘Alan says she’s operating on a shoestring. She needed money, and there it was, in the safe. So she took it.’