The Cradle in the Grave (16 page)

‘Mrs White, please . . .'

‘The more times he's asked, the more he'll invent,' said Stella. ‘Sorry, I know I shouldn't leap in, but you don't know Dillon like I do. He's very, very sensitive. He can see that people want him to tell them things, and he doesn't want to disappoint them.'

‘He was in the lounge,' said Dillon. ‘I saw him in the lounge.'

‘Dillon, you
didn't
. You're only trying to help, I know, but you didn't see the man in Helen's lounge, did you?' Stella turned to Gibbs. ‘Believe me, if he'd had a black and silver umbrella with him, I'd have seen it. It wasn't even raining. It was bright, sunny and cold – what I call perfect Christmas Day weather, except in October. Most people want snow at Christmas, but I—'

‘It wasn't bright,' said Dillon. ‘There wasn't enough sun to make it bright. Can I watch the horses now?'

Gibbs made a mental note to look up last Sunday's weather forecasts for Monday. Someone cautious might have taken an umbrella with him even on a sunny morning, if rain had been predicted.
And if it hadn't?
Could the gun have been inside the closed umbrella?

‘It
was
raining,' said Dillon, looking up at Gibbs with a hard-done-by expression on his face. ‘The umbrella was wet. I
did
see the man in the lounge.'

 

Judith Duffy lived in a three-storey detached villa in Ealing, on a windy tree-lined street that felt neither like what Simon thought of as ‘proper London' nor like anywhere else in particular. He decided he wouldn't like to live here. Not that he could have afforded to, so it was probably just as well. He rang the bell for the third time.
Nothing
.

He pushed open the gleaming brass letterbox and looked through it, saw a wooden coat stand, a herringbone parquet floor, Persian rugs, a black piano and red-cushioned stool. He took a step back when his view was blocked by purple material with a button attached to it.

The door opened. Knowing that Judith Duffy was fiftyfour, Simon was shocked to see a woman who could easily have been seventy. Her straight iron-grey hair was tied back from her narrow, age-hollowed face. In the photograph of her that Simon had seen, the one the newspapers always used, Duffy had looked much rounder; there had been the hint of a double chin.

‘I don't think I invited you to peer through my letterbox,' she said. It was the sort of phrase that begged, Simon thought, to be delivered with barely suppressed outrage, but Dr Duffy sounded as if she was merely stating a fact. ‘Who are you?'

Simon identified himself. ‘I've left you two messages,' he said.

‘I didn't return your calls because I didn't want to waste your time,' said Duffy. ‘This will be the shortest interview of your career. I won't talk to you or answer your questions, and I won't allow you to do whatever test it is that establishes whether or not I've fired a gun. Also, you can tell your colleague Fliss Benson to stop bothering me – I won't talk to her either. I'm sorry you've had a wasted journey.'

Colleague Fliss Benson? Simon had never heard of her.

Duffy started to close the door. He put out his hand to stop her. ‘Everyone else we've asked has agreed to be swabbed, and cooperated with us in any way they can.'

‘I'm not everybody. Please take your hand off my door.' She closed it in his face.

Simon pushed open the letterbox again and saw purple. ‘There's someone I can't find,' he addressed Duffy's cardigan, the only part of her he could see. ‘Rachel Hines. I've spoken to her ex-husband, Angus. He said she's staying with friends somewhere in London, but he doesn't know where. I don't suppose you've got any idea?'

‘You should ask Laurie Nattrass that question,' said Duffy.

‘I'm planning to, soon as he rings me back.'

‘So it's everyone minus one, then.'

‘Pardon?'

‘Cooperating. Laurie Nattrass can't be cooperating if he hasn't returned your calls.'

Do we have to have this conversation through a letterbox?
‘Mr Nattrass has already been swabbed, alibied and eliminated, as you would be if you—'

‘Goodbye, Mr Waterhouse.'

Simon heard the shuffle of her feet on the wood floor as she moved away. ‘Help me out here,' he called after her. ‘Between you and me, and I shouldn't be telling you this, I'm worried about Mrs Hines.' No matter what the Snowman said, no matter what Sam Kombothekra said, Simon's instincts told him he was looking for a serial killer, or a person with the potential to become one – someone who left cards bearing strange numerical codes in the pockets of his victims. Was Rachel Hines one of those victims? Or was Simon's imagination as out of control as Charlie was always telling him it was?

He let out a heavy sigh. As if in response, Judith Duffy took a few steps towards the front door. Now Simon could see her again, her shoulder and her arm. Not her face. ‘I had lunch with Ray Hines on Monday,' she said. ‘There, I've given you my alibi – and hers – so you can go away happy, and even if you aren't happy, you can go. Neither of us knew that it was the day someone would murder Helen Yardley. At that point it was just Monday 5 October, same as any other Monday. We met at a restaurant, spent the afternoon together.'

‘Which restaurant?' Simon got out his pad and pen.

‘Sardo Canale in Primrose Hill. Ray's choice.'

‘Do you mind my asking . . .?'

‘Goodbye, Mr Waterhouse.'

This time, when Simon pressed the letterbox, he met with resistance. She was holding it shut from the inside.

He went back to his car and switched on his phone. He had two messages, one from a man he assumed was Laurie Nattrass whose message was a strange noise followed by the words ‘Laurie Nattrass' and nothing more, and one from Charlie, saying that Lizzie Proust had rung to invite the two of them for dinner on Saturday night. Didn't Simon think it was weird, she wanted to know, given that they'd known the Prousts for years and no such invitation had been forthcoming until now, and what did he want her to say? Simon texted the word ‘NO', in capitals, to her mobile phone, dropping his own twice in the process, in his eagerness to get the message sent. The Snowman, inviting him for dinner; the thought made Simon's throat close like a clenched fist. He forced his mind away from it, unwilling to deal with the violence of his reaction and the element of fear it contained.

He rang one of the three mobile numbers he had for Laurie Nattrass, and this time someone answered after the first ring. Simon heard breathing. ‘Hello?' he said. ‘Mr Nattrass?'

‘Laurie Nattrass,' said a gruff voice, the same one that had left the message.

‘Is that Mr Nattrass I'm speaking to?'

‘Dunno.'

‘Pardon?'

‘I'm not where you are, so I can't see who you're speaking to. If you're speaking to me, then yes, you're speaking to Mr Nattrass, Mr Laurie Nattrass. And I'm speaking to Detective Constable – and I'm spelling that with a “u” instead of an “o” and an extra “t” between the “n” and the “s”—Simon Waterhouse.' As he spoke, his words rose and fell in volume, as if someone was sticking pins in him and each new jab made him raise his voice. Was he insane? Pissed?

‘When and where can we meet?' Simon asked. ‘I'll come to you if you like.'

‘Never. Nowhere, no-how.'

It was going to be like that, was it? One of those easy conversations. Could this man really be an Oxford- and Harvard-educated multi-award-winning investigative journalist? He didn't sound like one.

‘Do you know where I might find Rachel Hines?'

‘Twickenham,' said Nattrass. ‘Why? Ray didn't kill Helen. Looking to fit her up again, are you? You can't step into the same river twice, but you can fit up the same innocent woman twice. If you're filth.' It wasn't only the volume that varied from word to word, Simon noticed – it was also the speed at which Nattrass spoke. Some sentences spurted out; others were delivered slowly, with an air of hesitation, as if his attention were elsewhere.

‘Do you happen to have an address or contact—?'

‘Speak to Judith Duffy instead of wasting my time and Ray Hines'. Ask her what her two sons-in-law were doing on Monday.' It was an order rather than a suggestion.

Two sons-in-law
. And, since these days the police looked at things from an equal opportunities perspective, two daughters. Were they worth checking out?

‘Mr Nattrass, I need to ask you some questions,' Simon tried again. ‘I'd prefer to do it in person, but . . .'

‘Pretend your phone's a person. Pretend it's called Laurence Hugo St John Fleet Nattrass, and ask away.'

If this man was sane, Simon was a banana sandwich. Nattrass was certainly drunk. ‘We're considering the possibility that Helen Yardley was murdered as a result of her work for JIPAC. As you're the . . .'

‘. . . co-founder, you're wondering if anyone's tried to kill me. No. Next?'

‘Has anyone threatened you? Anyone acting out of character, any strange emails or letters?'

‘How's Giles Proust? Leader of the band now, isn't he? How can he be objective? It's a joke. He arrested Helen for murder. Have you read her book?'

‘Helen's . . .?'

‘
Nothing But Love
. Nothing but praise for dear old Giles. What do you think of him? Cunt, right?'

Simon started to say ‘Yeah,' then turned it into a cough, his heart racing. He'd nearly said it. That would have been his job down the pan.

‘If he thought Helen was innocent, why did he arrest her?' Nattrass demanded. ‘Why didn't he resign? Morally colour-blind, is he?'

‘In our job, if you're told to arrest someone, you arrest them,' said Simon.
Morally colour-blind
. If there was a better description of the Snowman, he had yet to hear it.

‘Know what he did when she got out? Turned up on her doorstep with everything his henchmen had confiscated when they arrested her – Moses basket, crib, bouncy chair, Morgan and Rowan's clothes, the lot. Didn't even ring first to warn her, or ask if she wanted a van-load of reminders of her dead babies. Know how many times he visited her in prison? None.'

‘I wanted to ask you about a card that was found in Helen Yardley's pocket after her death,' Simon said. ‘It's been kept out of the press.'

‘2,1,4,9 . . .'

‘How do you know those numbers?' Simon didn't care if he sounded abrupt. Even at his rudest, he was no competition for Nattrass.

‘Fliss had them. Felicity Benson, Happiness Benson. Except she's not very happy at the moment, not with me. She didn't know what the numbers meant. I chucked them in the bin. Do you know what they mean? Know who sent them?'

Felicity Benson.
Fliss
. Simon had no idea who she was, but she'd just leaped straight to the top of the list of people he wanted to speak to.