Shades of Evil (10 page)

Jill drove to headquarters on Monday morning through a world that was frozen solid. Most of the snow had thawed over the weekend, but last night, the sky had cleared and the temperature had plummeted. Icy roads were being held responsible for several accidents in the area.

When she walked into the building, Paddy, who was just about to pick up the phone, shouted across to her.

‘Max wants to see you ASAP, Jill. He’s been trying to get hold of you.’

‘Oh?’ She dug into her handbag and found her phone. The battery had died. ‘What about, Paddy? Did he say?’

‘At a guess, I’d say it was to do with the bloke who’s been arrested for Lauren Cole’s murder. He comes from your village, doesn’t he?’

‘An arrest’s been made?’

‘Yeah.’ He sorted through papers on his desk until he had the name. ‘A bloke called Carlisle.’

‘You’re kidding me. Right, thanks, Paddy. I’ll find him …’

She went to her office, plugged in her phone charger and rang Max. Five minutes later, he burst into her office wearing a face like thunder.

‘What the hell’s going on, Max?’

‘Your chum, Steve Carlisle, that’s what. He’s lying. I want you to step in.’

Jill had hoped for a calm, leisurely start to the week. There was no chance of that now.

‘What’s all this about?’ she asked. ‘Steve’s already told us everything he knows.’

‘Has he hell! A week ago today, when Lauren Cole was murdered, he was seen running from the scene.’

‘He was seen running
home
,’ she corrected him. ‘He’s already explained that.’

‘And given how clever everyone says he is, you’d think he’d have come up with a better story.’

‘But it means nothing.’

‘Tom Canter saw him talking to her.’

‘No,’ she said patiently. ‘Tom saw someone who looked like him talking to her. As Steve said, Tom was clearly mistaken.’

‘OK,’ Max replied. ‘Tom Canter saw someone who looked like him, someone who has a greyhound just as he does, someone wearing a grey hat—’

‘A what?’

Jill remembered Ricky Marshall mentioning a grey hat. He’d said Lauren had spoken of a man with a grey hat who gave her the creeps.

‘Exactly,’ Max said with satisfaction as he spotted her puzzled frown. ‘Your friend is lying. Let’s see if he’ll talk to you, shall we?’

He was wrong, surely. Steve wouldn’t lie to them.

‘OK,’ she agreed, keen to get to the bottom of this.

Max strode off in his usual hurried fashion and Jill followed at her own slower pace. She needed the extra few seconds to think about Steve and how well she actually knew him. Although they’d met five years ago, she supposed they were little more than acquaintances. Yet she trusted him. She’d always considered him an honest, open person. He certainly wasn’t a killer.

Phil Meredith was under pressure to keep crime in the area to a minimum so Max was under equal pressure to find Lauren Cole’s killer. That man wasn’t Steve Carlisle, though.

Max held the door open for her and Jill entered the room. Steve had been sitting with his head in his hands, staring at the desk in complete bewilderment, but a spark of hope flared as he recognized her.

‘Hello, Steve,’ she said. ‘Let’s get this sorted out quickly, shall we? You’ll want to go home.’

She sat opposite him and, while Max set up the machines, she studied Steve. He looked nervous, but she supposed that was understandable. The mere sighting of a police car can make the safest and most law abiding driver anxious. Few people ended up being questioned by police and it could be a frightening experience.

‘Lauren Cole,’ Max began. ‘Tell me how you came to be talking to her.’

‘I’ve told you. I’ve never seen the girl.’

‘You’re lying. You were seen with her.’

‘A case of mistaken identity, I swear it.’

Interview room three was as cold as ever yet Steve, wearing only a shirt, was sweating. His skin, usually tanned and healthy from the time he spent in the fresh air, was pale.

‘Steve, you’ve nothing to fear from telling the truth,’ Jill assured him. ‘Knowing the young woman doesn’t make you a suspect.’

‘I’ve never seen her.’ His voice was little more than a whisper.

‘Right,’ Max said, and Jill could tell he was struggling to keep a rein on his temper. ‘One, we hear that, a week ago today, you were running away from the area in which Lauren Cole was murdered.’

‘I’ve told you, I was worried that I hadn’t locked the house.’

‘Two,’ Max went on, ignoring him, ‘we hear that the young woman spoke of a man fitting your description talking to her when she walked her dog in the area.’

‘It wasn’t me.’

‘Three, someone else sees a man fitting your description in conversation with the girl. It was a good description, too. A man of your height and build wearing a grey knitted hat and a black coat. You were able to show us these items of clothing. This person was even accompanied by a greyhound wearing a tartan jacket.’

‘Yes, but it wasn’t me.’

‘You have to admit that it’s all very coincidental. I don’t know about you,’ Max said, ‘but I find it hard to believe that two greyhounds are taken for walks in that area wearing identical tartan jackets. I find it even more difficult to believe that their owners wear identical grey hats.’

Max had to be right. Whether she liked it or not, Jill had to accept that Steve was lying. But why?

‘Steve,’ she began, ‘you need to tell us the truth. You have to tell us how you knew Lauren Cole. You also need to explain why you’ve lied about knowing her. You are lying, aren’t you?’

Steve simply stared at an invisible spot on the wall.

‘There’s no crime,’ she pointed out, ‘in meeting up with a fellow dog walker, even a young, attractive dog walker, and striking up a conversation.’

‘I realize that.’

‘It only becomes a crime when you attack that woman,’ Max reminded him.

He didn’t have anything to say to that.

‘Why did you wipe the murder weapon clean?’ Max asked.

Steve didn’t say anything, but he was visibly shaking now.

Ricky Marshall had claimed that Steve, or a man fitting his description, had occasionally met up with Lauren. He’d claimed that Lauren said the man gave her the creeps. Why? Because he made it clear he found her attractive? Because he was old enough to be her father?

As far as Jill knew, Steve was happily married. As far as she knew. What exactly went on behind the closed doors of Mason’s Cottage? Was the marriage as solid as everyone in Kelton Bridge believed?

Steve had lost his job twelve months ago. How had that affected him? Did he feel useless, depressed, on the scrap heap? How did Alison feel about it? Did she treat him differently? Did she see him as worthless?

‘Does Alison know you’re here?’ she asked him, and he nodded.

‘How does she feel about that?’

He shrugged as answer.

‘Angry?’ she suggested. ‘Shocked? Upset?’

‘Shocked,’ he said at last. ‘Of course she’s shocked. It’s every person’s nightmare, isn’t it? You hear about innocent people being dragged off by the police but you never expect it to happen to you or to a member of your family.’

It was the longest speech he’d made since Jill had come into the room, but it sounded false and rehearsed.

‘Few people are dragged off by the police, as you put it, when they’re completely innocent,’ she said.

‘I’m sure I’m not the first. I don’t suppose I’ll be the last, either.’

He was becoming less anxious and more antagonistic.

‘Was it Lauren who approached you?’ Jill asked.

As he didn’t comment, she went on, ‘I suppose that makes sense. Perhaps she saw you as someone who might lend her money. We know she had financial problems.’

Still no answer.

‘She was also taking drugs. Well, we think she was. She may have been clean for a few days, we don’t know. But drugs, money – we believe she was quite desperate.’

A tap on the door forced her to break off. It was Fletch. He needed a word with Max.

It didn’t take long and, seconds later, Max was sitting next to Jill again. And he looked furious.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘the axe you own, Mr Carlisle. Where is it?’

‘Who says I’ve got an axe?’

‘Your wife. Where is it? We’ve searched your property, but we can’t find it.’

‘That’s because I don’t have one.’

‘You don’t have one because you left it at the crime scene, didn’t you?’ Max banged his fist on the table. ‘You killed Lauren Cole with that axe. You then wiped any fingerprints from it and ran home to play the out-of-work husband and neighbourly villager.’

‘No!’

‘Yes!’

Steve dropped his head on the table and began sobbing. He shook his head in denial as he wept.

‘Tell us the truth, Steve,’ Jill snapped. ‘Tell us how you knew Lauren Cole.’

She was trying to remain calm, but it was difficult. She felt betrayed. While she’d been trying to convince Max of his innocence, Steve had been lying to her. It wouldn’t take much for her to walk out and leave him to Max’s anger.

Steve was drying his eyes.

‘OK.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Yes. Yes, I knew her. A couple of months ago, I met up with her when I was out walking with Cally.’

Jill leaned back in her chair. Max did likewise, but she could tell he was struggling to remain silent. Silence was the only way to go, though. It encouraged people to talk.

‘She had a dog called Charlie,’ Steve went on, his voice breaking slightly. ‘You get to know the dog walkers. You walk the same route for a few yards perhaps, you talk about the weather and about your dogs, and then you go your separate ways.’

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

Jill was aware of Max fidgeting beside her. His left foot was tapping soundlessly, a sure sign of his irritation. She felt the same.

‘That’s what happened,’ Steve continued. ‘Our dogs played around for a couple of minutes and then I headed for home, back through the spinney, and she carried on up the hill. We talked about our dogs and the weather. Nothing more. I didn’t even know her name until I saw it in the paper.’

He twisted his handkerchief round his fingers.

‘So yes, perhaps Tom Canter did see me with her. My dog, my coat, my hat. But no one saw me with her the day she was killed. I didn’t see her. I swear to you.’

He was still sweating profusely and he looked such a sickly shade of green that Jill expected him to vomit at any moment.

‘Then why lie about knowing her?’ Max asked.

‘Because it looks bad.’ Steve looked up at Jill, his eyes moist. ‘I’m sorry I lied, but it does look bad, doesn’t it?’

‘It does,’ Max assured him.

Steve buried his face in his hands and began to weep again.

Jill was about to speak when Max looked at the clock, snapped out, ‘Interview suspended at eleven-fourteen,’ and stood up, ready to leave the room.

Jill, taken by surprise, joined him.

‘We’ll get you a cup of tea and a sandwich sent in,’ she promised Steve. She didn’t add ‘and think yourself lucky’.

Max was already halfway along the corridor and she ran to catch him up.

‘What are you doing?’ she demanded.

‘Taking myself away from him before I deck him. Why do people insist on lying to me? Hm?’

‘To piss you off?’ she suggested. ‘To make your job more difficult? To give you a coronary? Or maybe,’ she added, ‘and this is a long shot, they lie because they’re scared to death that the truth will have them banged up on a murder charge.’

‘We’ll give him half an hour to calm down. Correction, we’ll give
me
half an hour to calm down. Then we’ll go to town on him.’

‘In what way?’

‘You didn’t believe any of that crap, did you?’

‘Yes. I think I probably did.’

She no longer knew what to believe. She was annoyed with Steve, though. Bloody annoyed.

‘Come on, Jill. Just because he’s a neighbour of yours, a friend even, doesn’t necessarily mean he has to be telling the truth. Even people from Kelton Bridge tell porkies.’

‘For some reason, he lied,’ she agreed. ‘He’s no killer though.’

‘How the hell do you figure that one out?’

‘Trust me, Max, he’s not your man.’

‘So someone else was seen in the area? Someone else who wears a black coat and a grey knitted hat? Someone else who owns a greyhound that models tartan jackets? Someone else who just happens to carry an axe around with them? Get real!’

Put like that, Jill knew he had a point.

‘I know he’s a friend, Jill, and I sympathize, but, like it or not, he’s our man!’

Jill decided to take the afternoon off. Thanks in part to Jason Lyle changing his plea, giving her time to catch up on her workload, she had more time on her hands than was usual.

She’d spent another hour in that interview room with Max and Steve, but Steve was sticking to his story, and Max was still convinced the man was guilty of murder.

Glad to be away from it, she drove out to Kelton Bridge. She gave her cats a brief taste of freedom and then walked through the village towards Mason’s Cottage.

She met several people she knew and stopped for a quick chat with each one. The villagers didn’t take to newcomers easily and she felt privileged to be part of such a close-knit community. Gossip was always rife, and it was impossible to do anything without everyone knowing about it, but, should a crisis occur and help be needed, there was nowhere she would rather live.

The village was even more picturesque than usual with shops decorated for Christmas and lights twinkling on small trees fixed to the buildings.

She was away from the shops when she heard a voice raised in anger. She couldn’t see the owner yet, but it was a voice she recognized.

‘Hello, Pat,’ she said, when the woman and her son came into view. ‘Hi, Jimmy. No school today?’

‘The little devil’s been suspended until after Christmas,’ Pat said, her face red from either cold or anger. ‘I was summoned to explain why he was either late or absent. Well! I knew nothing about it. Little devil.’

‘That’s not like you, Jimmy.’

At fourteen, the boy usually had plenty to say for himself. Now, he simply shrugged and shuffled his feet.