Silent Witness (A Dylan Scott Mystery) (15 page)

The Conservative Club struck Dylan as an odd choice of meeting place. He couldn’t complain though. It was Neil Walsingham’s choice and that was good enough.

Dylan had offered to call at Walsingham’s home, but the doctor had declined.

“I’ve got something on this evening,” he’d said, “so it will be easier for me to call at the Con Club for a quick chat. If that’s okay with you, of course.”

The building was a couple of hundred years old, solid and timeless, and only a very small blue sign gave any indication as to what it was. It was busy, even at seven o’clock on a Tuesday evening. A lot of young people clustered round the bar or gathered in a side room to play snooker or pool.

Dylan would have preferred to meet Walsingham on his own territory, but he could picture the doctor’s home. It would be uncluttered, spotless and tidy thanks to a cleaner who was sure to be paid well to take good care of it, and there would be the obligatory photos of a happy, smiling Carly Walsingham with her husband.

He bought himself a pint of beer and discovered why the club was so busy. The drinks were much cheaper than in the local pubs. He couldn’t imagine Walsingham choosing this place for financial reasons though.

Dylan sat in one of four comfortable blue armchairs that hugged a circular table. From his vantage point, he could see who came and went through the tall oak door.

He had twenty minutes to kill before Walsingham arrived and he spent the time wondering why the doctor had had a change of heart about talking to him. Whatever the reason, Dylan would heed Sonia’s advice.
Don’t take anything that man says as gospel.

The club was noisy and perhaps that’s why Walsingham had chosen it. People were talking, laughing, shouting to each other. No one would notice two men having a quiet chat.

Or perhaps he was reading too much into the choice of venue.

Dylan was grateful to be away from the hotel, or at least from his computer screen. He’d spent all afternoon staring at it and had started to wonder if anyone had yet invented a more boring waste of time. Watching grass grow would be a thrill a minute by comparison.

At two minutes to seven, Walsingham dashed inside the club—smart suit, expensive shoes, silk tie and a smile—spotted Dylan and came over.

“Sorry I’m late, Dylan. What are you drinking?”

“That’s generous. A pint of IPA, please.”

“Won’t be a second.”

Dylan watched Walsingham at the bar. His smile didn’t slip. He chatted to the barmaid and said something to make her laugh. She blushed, too. Walsingham was a handsome, charming man.

Was he also a killer?

There were smiles and handshakes when Walsingham returned to the table with drinks.

“Dylan—may I call you Dylan?”

“Please do. Neil, is it?”

“Yes, and let me say again how sorry I am about our first meeting.” Walsingham sat in the chair next to Dylan’s and pulled it closer, probably so he wouldn’t have to shout to make himself heard above everyone else’s chatter. “It was the shock, I suppose. When you go through something like that—and believe me, I hope you never do—it takes much longer than you imagine to come to terms with it. You crave peace. You need the quiet. You have to heal, you see.”

“I understand. Thanks, by the way.” He lifted a glass and chinked it against Walsingham’s. The doctor was drinking a large whisky with plenty of ice.

“My pleasure. And needless to say, if there’s anything I can do to help, you only have to ask. I don’t like the idea of it being raked over again, but nor do I like the idea of an innocent man being behind bars. You believe Kaminski’s innocent of my wife’s murder, I take it?”

Saint Neil. The sudden willingness to help and the belated worry about a man being wrongfully imprisoned were making Dylan cringe.

Or perhaps Sonia had tainted his views on the doctor. Maybe, after all, Walsingham was genuine.

“I believe it’s possible,” Dylan said. “He claims he is, and there are several discrepancies between the various stories.”

“Really? Well, yes, I can understand that. Innocent people, as I’m sure you know only too well, don’t assume they’ll need to state their whereabouts for an alibi. People go about their daily business and, half the time, can’t remember where they are at a specific time. Take us, for example. In a fortnight’s time, if asked to tell police where we were at—” he paused to study his watch like a child who had only just learned to tell the time, “—five past seven on the evening of Tuesday, seventeenth April, I bet we wouldn’t be able to.”

Given the way he’d immediately felt obliged to discuss alibis, Megan Cole must have told Walsingham that she wasn’t terribly convincing when confirming his whereabouts on the day in question.

“Probably not.” Dylan gave him an understanding smile, but he resented being treated like an idiot. He knew how innocent people struggled to remember where they’d been at a given time. Just as he knew the way guilty people concocted the most elaborate to-the-second alibis.

“On the day my poor wife was—murdered—”

He broke off and Dylan wished he had an Oscar in his back pocket. He would present the award with a flourish.

“On the day Carly was taken from me,” Walsingham said on a long, suffering breath, “I was asked to tell the police where I was. Well, I knew where I was, of course. We’d all had a long, gruelling shift at the hospital. But when it came to telling them who I was with, well, I couldn’t. Can you believe that? It was so busy, so chaotic, that I couldn’t have said who was working alongside me and who wasn’t. That’s what happens. People get so wrapped up in dealing with the current emergency that they simply don’t take these things in. That day was exceptional, I know. There had been an accident on the motorway.”

“So I believe,” Dylan said. “A coach full of children, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. Girl Guides and Scouts heading off on a camping holiday. Thankfully there were no serious injuries, but you have to check each one thoroughly. Children get easily frightened in such circumstances so you need to tread carefully too.”

“I can imagine.”

“You go from child to child. The nurses go from child to child. You check them over, you fill in paperwork. Everyone else is doing the same, but you’re not aware of them.”

Walsingham had long slender hands. On the third finger of the left hand was the shining gold wedding band that Carly would have placed there.

“So,” he said. “Kaminski is still protesting his innocence, is he?”

Walsingham was nervous. As soon as there was a pause in the conversation, he felt obliged to fill it. Fill it with crap too. He knew damn well that the only reason Dylan was in Dawson’s Clough was because Kaminski was still protesting his innocence.

“He is, yes. He’s adamant he left your wife at three o’clock. Almost an hour before your neighbour claimed to have seen someone in the back garden.” Dylan hadn’t, as yet, spoken to the neighbour. He couldn’t see much point in doing so, but it was on his list. “He also denies threatening your wife during a phone conversation the previous evening. Or at any time, come to that.”

“He would, wouldn’t he, but I know what I heard.”

“His story is that she phoned him to say she was meeting a friend on the Thursday and suggested he call round on the Wednesday instead.”

Walsingham shrugged and tried to conceal his frustration by taking a slow drink of whisky.

“Your wife’s friend confirmed that they’d made a spur-of-the-moment arrangement to meet, I gather?” Dylan said.

“Carly had planned to meet Kirsten, yes.” Walsingham took a breath. He must have reminded himself he was supposed to be Laurence Olivier too. “If Kaminski really is innocent, then no one would be more pleased to see him freed than me. But all I can tell you, Dylan, is what I know. I overheard Carly’s part of a phone call the evening before. She was upset and distressed. She told the caller to stop threatening her.”

“She didn’t tell you who she was talking to?”

“No. To be honest, the mention of Kaminski’s name used to drive me crazy. The man simply refused to accept that his marriage was over. He used to call her all the time. It was embarrassing for her, and I found it infuriating. So no, she wouldn’t have told me who was calling. She wouldn’t have wanted to upset me. Besides—” he smiled a sad smile, “—she was a brave little thing. She would have believed she could handle Kaminski.”

“Who did she say the call was from?”

“Oh, she gave me some nonsense about it being a salesman. She said he was pushy. Well, they are, aren’t they? They need to make sales to earn a living.”

Dylan nodded at the truth of that.

“I didn’t believe her,” Walsingham said. “I even suspected it might have been Kaminski. But I didn’t push it. It sounds silly now, but we were going out for a meal and I didn’t want to spoil the evening.” He put his elbows on the table and made a steeple of his fingers. “Of course, the next day she was gone.”

“Indeed. So you told the police about the threatening phone call?”

“Yes. They checked with the phone company and found that the only call Carly made or received that day was from Kaminski.”

Walsingham looked triumphant as he waited for Dylan to comment. Dylan merely took a swig of beer. He wanted Walsingham to do the talking.

“You see, Dylan, I really can’t think of anyone else who could have done such a terrible thing. At first, I thought perhaps a burglar but—well, nothing was taken. Nothing had been disturbed.”

Walsingham was desperate for Dylan’s agreement, but Dylan still didn’t speak.

“So what have you learned?” Walsingham asked. “Anything interesting? Anything that might help?”

“Not really. It’s odd, though, don’t you think?”

“What’s odd?”

“All of it.” Dylan took another swallow of beer. He was enjoying Walsingham’s discomfort. “If your wife was being threatened by Kaminski, I can’t understand why she’d let him into the house and—”

“She was kind. She would have tried to be nice to him, to try and make him understand that he couldn’t keep bothering her.”

“—why she’d let him in the house and then have sex with him,” Dylan finished. “There’s no doubt that they had intercourse and there was nothing to suggest it was nonconsensual.” He put up a hand to fend off Walsingham’s interruption. “There was a bruise, I know, but Kaminski claims she enjoyed rough sex.”

“That’s an out-and-out lie.” Walsingham laughed at the notion, a strangled sound. “My wife’s sexual appetite was perfectly normal, I assure you.”

“With you, maybe.” Dylan felt like a cat batting a mouse around a room before going in for the kill. “But perhaps she had different preferences with her ex-husband. After all, she’d known him intimately for many years. She had intercourse with him when she was a teenager, and, as we know, youngsters like to experiment. It’s the only way to learn what they like and dislike, isn’t it?”

“Okay, so maybe as a teenager, she did like other things. The Carly I married, the Carly who was murdered, didn’t experiment.”

“She had a selection of sex toys, I understand.”

Again that scoffing laugh. “Name me a woman who doesn’t. They’re just a joke. Silly presents given to her on her hen night.”

“Yes. It’s odd that Kaminski knew about them though, don’t you think? I find it amazing that he can describe them in great detail. If, as you believe, she was trying to get him out of her life once and for all, showing him dildos and handcuffs was a very strange way to go about it.”

Walsingham emptied his glass and Dylan stood up. “Let me get this round.”

He strode off to the bar before Walsingham could claim he needed to keep another appointment. The club was still busy and he had to wait a couple of minutes to be served. At least twenty people were clustered round the pool table in the smaller side room. Two teenagers had cues in their hands. Four young girls wearing six inches of clothing between them drank something blue from bottles and wobbled on nail-like heels.

With the drinks paid for, a pint for himself and a double whisky for Walsingham, Dylan returned to their table.

“Thanks, Dylan. That’s kind of you.” Walsingham took a sip of whisky. “I’ll have to be off in a minute though. I think I told you I had something on?”

“Yes. And I appreciate you taking time out to see me.”

“I just wish I could help.”

“I’m sure you do.” Dylan leaned back in his chair, ankle resting on his knee, as relaxed as someone having a quick chat with his best friend. “Tell me something, Neil. Who were you having an affair with when your wife was killed? Was it Sonia or Megan? I’m getting confused.”

Walsingham’s eyes were like chips of polished steel.

“I wasn’t having an affair with anyone,” he said. “I had, I admit, been involved with Sonia Trueman. A silly mistake that I regretted immediately. When you work together, when you see life and death on a daily basis, relationships are formed. Dangerous relationships. I broke things off between us.”

“A wise move,” Dylan said. “I get the impression Sonia’s husband isn’t a man to upset.”

“Him.” Walsingham pulled a face. “He’s all brawn and no brain.”

“Did you ever have dealings with him? Did he make threats or—?”

Walsingham snorted. “Of course not. I can say with some relief that we don’t mix in the same circles. I’ve never even spoken to him.”

“I see.” It seemed that Walsingham didn’t see Trueman as a possible suspect for his wife’s murder. “So if you weren’t having an affair, who told me—? Ah, yes, it was Megan. She said you’d known for some time that your wife was being unfaithful with Aleksander Kaminski.”

Anger flashed across Walsingham’s face but was gone in an instant. Blink and you’d have missed it. A smile, one that looked as if its forming had caused actual physical pain, replaced it.

“I remember saying something of the sort to her. Kaminski had been bothering Carly, you see, and we’d had a silly row. I’d offered to talk to him, but Carly would have none of it. Believe me, if I’d had a couple of words with him, he would have thought twice about making a nuisance of himself. Anyway, we had a row and I said some stupid things. I even accused her of enjoying his attention.”