The Hanging Tree (14 page)

'Aye.' The landlord laughed. 'Any man not afraid to put his hand in his
pocket can be sure of a welcome from Sid at least.'

Reassured that there were still some areas of his life under his control,
Llewellyn finished his drink, made his farewells to his new friends and
returned to the station.

Liz Green was waiting for him and they wasted no time in heading for
Burleigh and his interviews with the Dennington and Figg families. If only
everything in life went as smoothly, was his pensive thought as he drove north.

Rafferty's morning, as Llewellyn had predicted, wasn't going quite so
smoothly. Feeling Frank Massey would be more communicative if he questioned him
alone, he had left Mary Carmody in the car. But, as it turned out, Massey
seemed to have no inclination for talking whether it be to one person or
twenty-one.

After Rafferty had explained the reason for his visit, a haunted look
came into Massey's eyes. His body visibly trembled and Rafferty was afraid he'd
collapse. But Massey managed to get himself together. He let go of the doorpost
and, after staring at Rafferty with a mixture of fear and aggression, he turned
abruptly on his heel and left Rafferty to follow or not as he pleased.

Massey had not only gone down in the world in terms of money and social
standing, Rafferty realised as he followed the man into the room and shut the
door. He had also let himself go. Not altogether surprising, he acknowledged as
he sat down on a hard wooden chair. From being a respected academic, a
university lecturer, he was now unemployed and had exchanged a comfortable
semi-detached house for a bedsitter, success for defeat; Rafferty could smell
the sour odour of it in the damp walls, the unwashed body and rumpled, none-too-clean
clothes. The fumes of strong lager and cigarette smoke added to the fetid
atmosphere.

Rafferty knew Frank Massey wasn't yet forty, yet already he looked old. His
hair, what remained of it, hung lank and greying over his shirt collar and his
neck was thin and stringy with the wrinkles from age that were more commonly
seen in a much older man. Even his fingers, long and slender like those of an
artist, showed the decline and were stained with nicotine, the nails bitten to
the quick.

All this Rafferty took in in a few seconds, conscious of a terrible
feeling of pity. He could imagine what a man like Massey would have suffered in
prison and his experiences would be unlikely to encourage him to still view the
police and the judicial system with any confidence.

Rafferty couldn't blame him. The poor sap had been confident of justice
and when the law had failed him he had attempted to supply it himself and had
instead brought that very justice down on his own head. Between them, the law
and Maurice Smith had destroyed him: his marriage, his career, his entire life,
had been smashed to smithereens. Conscious of this, and aware that his sympathy
was already heavily engaged in Massey's favour, he was careful how he proceeded.

'So what do you want?' Massey's voice was rough, scratchy from too many
cigarettes, but underlying the harshness and the rough manner undoubtedly
learned in prison for self-protection, were the well-modulated tones of an
educated man.

The battered collection of books that Rafferty saw on the cheap shelving
confirmed this; there were literally hundreds of them. He squinted and managed
to read a few of the names. There was Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and
The House Of The Dead, Milton's Paradise Lost, and George Orwell's Down And Out
In Paris And London. Rafferty hadn't read any of them, but he found it
unsurprising that such titles should look the most thumbed of the lot.

Into Rafferty's mind flashed the thought that his own determination to
advance further with his reading had come to a grinding halt because his
motives were all wrong. A desire to top Llewellyn's aggravating partiality to
literary allusion was proving an insufficient carrot, whereas Massey, as
appropriate for a one-time university lecturer on literature, obviously loved
books for their own sake. Another unwelcome thought immediately followed; that
Llewellyn, who normally spouted superior quotes at him several times a day,
had, since his mother's arrival, failed to produce one.

Thrusting both thoughts to the back of his mind where they could quietly
simmer, he turned back to Massey and said, 'I'm sorry about this, sir, but I
have to ask you where you were last Thursday evening. In view of your, er, past
association with Maurice Smith, we have to check. You must realise this.'

Massey's throat produced a strangled laugh. 'Only doing my job? Is that
what you're saying?'

Already finding his task as investigating officer repugnant, Rafferty
shifted uncomfortably at Massey's taunt. Before he could attempt a reassuring
reply, Massey asked, 'Have you got children?'

Reluctant to admit another area for possible grievance, Rafferty considered
lying, but as remembered his proven lack of lie-ability, he just shook his
head, Aware he was letting Massey take control of the interview, he tried to
regain it. 'Mr Massey, if you could just—'

But Massey was off on a different tack. 'Do you know, Mr Stubbs – the
Inspector in charge of Smith's case – told me I'd gone about getting my revenge
all wrong. The attack on Smith, I mean. He told me I should have got myself an
alibi organised, then beaten the shit out of him.' Broodingly, Massey stared at
the carpet, as though intent on consigning its faded pattern to memory. Then he
gave a shuddering sigh and looked up, meeting Rafferty's eyes with a tortured
gaze. 'He came and pleaded for me at my trial. Decent chap.'

As he listened to the strange mixture of prison slang and BBC English,
Rafferty found himself agreeing with Stubbs's advice. In Massey's position, if
revenge had been his intention, getting a decent alibi organised first was what
he'd have done. He could, he knew, have relied on any of his family to lie with
the determination of Pinocchio in such a good cause.

But what was the point in telling Massey that Stubbs's advice had been
sound? He was already embittered, why make him feel he had been foolishly naive
as well? 'Look, Mr Massey,' he began again. 'All I want to know is where you
were last Thursday evening and I'll go.'

Massey raised his head. His eyes looked haunted, but beneath that and
the lager dullness, Rafferty caught the gleam of intelligence. 'That's all you
want, is it?' He shook his head. 'I doubt it. When it comes down to it, you're
all looking for the big one that will give you promotion. If you think I'll
provide you with it, you won't let sympathy get in your way.'

Rafferty, aware that he was getting nowhere, broke in sharply. 'Have you
got an alibi for last Thursday evening, or not?'

He was immediately sorry as his sharp tone caused Massey's whole body to
recommence its uncontrollable trembling and, as Rafferty stared, a tic started
up beneath Massey's left eye. His face, already pale, now looked ashen. The man
obviously lived on his nerves to an alarming degree. Rafferty, suspecting his
aggressive tone had brought back ugly prison memories, immediately felt like a
complete heel. He was surprised when Massey managed to pull himself together
sufficiently to frame a reply.

'As-as it happens, I have got an alibi.'

'So, where were you?' Rafferty deliberately kept his tone soft. 'Here?'

Massey shook his head, then winced. 'Have you got an aspirin?'

Rafferty, suspecting Massey was using delaying tactics while he sorted
out his troubled mind, quickly fished a silver foil packet out of his pocket
and handed two tablets over. Massey gulped them down and nodded his thanks. 'You
were about to tell me where you were,' Rafferty reminded him.

-I went to see my daughter.'

'Well, if you were in London and she and your ex-wife can corrob–'

 'They weren't in London. Alice and her mother were at the coast for a
short break. I went there, only we had a row and I left.'

'Where was this?'

'Place near Clacton, called Jaywick.'

Rafferty's interest stirred. The coast? In December? And barely more
than ten miles from Elmhurst? If this was the best Massey could manage in the
alibi line, it was little wonder he had been caught last time. Had the man
learned nothing? 'What time was this?'

Massey shrugged. 'Must have been about half five when I left them.'

'So where did you go after that?'

'I just drove around for a couple of hours, then parked in a layby out
Great Mannleigh way. I—I needed a drink.'

Rafferty stared at him. Was the man a complete fool? If that was his
idea of an alibi... Great Mannleigh was ten miles from Elmhurst. A short enough
drive for a man still looking for revenge.

He began to wonder just how friendly Massey had become with ex-Inspector
Stubbs. Friendly enough for him or Thompson, who was still on the force, to tip
him the wink on Smith's whereabouts? But if that were the case, surely this
time he'd have the sense to take Stubbs's advice and get himself a decent
alibi? Unless, Rafferty cautioned himself, unless Massey was being twice as
clever as his police advisor and had figured that the police would expect him
to have a good alibi this time – especially after his previous experience,
especially if he was guilty.

Anyway, why would Stubbs or any other copper leave it till ten years
after the case to help Massey get his revenge? The man had been out of prison
for eight years. Long enough to trace Smith himself if he'd still been set on
it. But, Rafferty reminded himself, Massey was broke. And even if he had
managed to trace Smith, he had already nerved himself up to give him one
beating; Smith would hardly have opened his door to him.

Massey may have got older, thinner and unkempt, but he hadn't changed so
much that Smith would have been unable to recognise him through his spyhole. Massey,
thin to the point of emaciation, looked as if he wouldn't have the strength to
tear open a milk carton, yet, from somewhere had found the strength, of mind
and muscle, to beat Smith to a bloody pulp ten years earlier. You don't forget
the face of the man who does that to you.

As, for the moment, Massey seemed disinclined to add anything further,
Rafferty asked, 'Still drive the same car, Mr Massey?'

Massey's lashes, long, dark, girlishly beautiful, began to flutter above
the still-frantic tic as he nodded. 'A white Cortina.' He looked at Rafferty,
then quickly away, before adding, 'Some of your boys picked me up and brought
me to the station. That would have been around s—seven, seven-thirty Thursday
night. I spent the rest of the night in a cell.' He stumbled to a halt.

Rafferty looked sharply at him. Massey wore an air half-hangdog and
half-triumphant. He couldn't decide if Massey was lying or playing with him,
deliberately holding back the alibi that would put him in the clear in order to
get some sort of revenge.

Outwardly, he didn't look capable of such tactics, but then Rafferty
glanced again at the mass of well-used highbrow books and realised that the
intelligence that read such heavy novels for pleasure was still there.

If Massey was telling the truth, he couldn't have killed Smith. They had
the testimony of several witnesses, Smith's landlady among them, to say that
Smith had certainly still been alive at seven-thirty that evening.

Rafferty stood up. 'Your story will be checked out, Mr Massey. If you
were picked up by the police, it'll be on record.'

He let himself out and breathed the scarcely less malodorous air on the
landing with relief. Poor bastard, he thought again. Poor stupid bastard. You
should have got yourself that alibi all those years ago. But at least, Rafferty
consoled his uneasy conscience, if his story checked out, he was in the clear
this time.

Mrs Massey and her daughter still lived in the London house the family
had moved to from Burleigh. After stopping for a bite to eat, Rafferty pulled
up in the quiet suburban street. Aware the next half-hour was likely to be even
more trying than the last, he lingered in the car for a few minutes, steeling
himself for the interview in a short review of the facts.

Alice, Massey's daughter, was only eighteen now, but she had been
through a lot; the rape, the trial and Smith's release, her father's trial and
imprisonment, and then the divorce. He was worried about her likely reaction to
being questioned about Smith.

 He had left Detective Sergeant Mary Carmody in the car during Massey's
interview, but he knew he would need her moral support for this one and
finally, he turned to her and asked, 'Ready?'

Mary nodded.

Suddenly, Rafferty was even more relieved he had brought her. At
thirty-four, she had a motherly air, as well as a lot of experience with rape
victims. Rafferty had telephoned Mrs Massey the day before, so they were
expected. In the circumstances, he felt it was a necessary courtesy. It gave
her a chance to get a friend to be with her and her daughter.

Alice Massey let them in. She was small, slender, and looked much
younger than her eighteen years. But, given her dreadful experiences, she
seemed remarkably composed, self-contained, if reserved. Her clothes were
dowdy, mouse brown and dingy khaki and came nearly to her ankles at one end and
just under her chin at the other as though she was determined to make herself
as unattractive to men as possible.

After inviting them in, she offered tea or coffee and, after calling her
mother, served it very efficiently.

Alice and her mother seemed to have exchanged roles, Rafferty noted with
surprise. It was extraordinary, but Alice treated her middle-aged mother as if
she were a child, explaining who they were and mopping her up and calming her
down when she spilled her coffee and became upset.

'I'm afraid my mother hasn't been well for some time, Inspector,' Alice
quietly explained her mother's clumsiness, easy tears and general air of not
quite being with them. 'I had hoped to keep this business from her.'

Relieved that Alice hadn't dissolved into hysterics as he had
half-feared, Rafferty saw no reason why they couldn't at least spare her mother
the upset of questioning. All he needed to do was to check a few facts and
Alice could supply answers for both of them. He told her this and suggested her
mother might like to return to whatever she had been doing before their
arrival.

As though she feared he might change his mind, Alice had her mother on
her feet straight away and steered her firmly through the door, shutting it
gently behind them.

'Poor girl,' Rafferty commented when he and Sergeant Carmody were alone.
'Don't you think her mother ought to be in a nursing home where they have the
facilities to treat her?'

Mary Carmody shook her head. 'I imagine looking after her mother is the
only thing that's keeping young Alice together. I think she'd go to pieces if
her mother was taken away. She probably blames herself for everything, from the
rape through to her parents' divorce; rape victims often do. Can't you see how
brittle, how unnatural that calm manner of hers is? It's as if she's got such a
tight hold on herself because she's frightened of what might happen if she were
to let go.' Sergeant Carmody glanced carefully at Rafferty. 'I think it might
be a good idea if I questioned her.'

Alice came back then. 'We can talk now,' she told them. The unnatural
stiffness of her smile made Rafferty realise that Mary Carmody had been right. Alice
was stretched as taut as an anchor chain. She sat as far away from him as possible,
perching on a hard chair against the wall rather than share the sofa with him.

 He gave Sergeant Carmody the nod to begin. He listened hard as she
began to question Alice.

Alice told them she and her mother had taken a planned trip to the East
Coast the previous Thursday, when her father had turned up on their holiday
doorstep unexpectedly.

'He upset mother. He always does. He gets so angry.' For the first time,
there were signs of anger in Alice's face. Two pink spots of colour brightened
her cheeks, making her appear more alive than at any time since their arrival.

'I suppose he gets upset, too, Alice,' Mary Carmody told her gently. 'I'm
sure he must be concerned about you.'

'He's only concerned about himself.' Alice's voice was cold. 'He feels
what-what happened to me reflects on him. It makes him feel weak, unmanly. His
ego can't take that.' Her gaze hard, her expression scornful, she looked
utterly unforgiving. In a girl so young, it was quite chilling. 'But he
couldn't even protect himself. He was stupid. That's why he got caught when he
attacked the-the man. The policeman told him what he should have done.'

'I'm sorry he upset you.'

'He didn't upset me. I told you. It was mother he upset by bringing it
all back again.'

 She seemed determined to make herself appear calm, as though such untidy
things as human emotions had nothing to do with her. It merely emphasised all
the more how unnatural her behaviour was.

 'I asked him to leave. Things got a bit heated.'

Rafferty had taken it for granted that when Frank Massey had said he'd
had a row and left, he had assumed he meant he had rowed with Mrs Massey, not
Alice. It was interesting that she didn't always cling to her emotionless
stance.

'So, where did you go, you and your mother? You said you went to the
seaside?' He might as well get confirmation of where they had been while he was
here, he thought.

'We went to Jaywick, along the coast from Clacton. A quiet place.' And
no distance at all from Elmhurst, Rafferty thought again as he met Mary
Carmody's eye. 'We stayed in a boarding house.'

'Bit chilly at this time of the year,' Mary remarked with a bright
smile. 'Or are you one of these hardy types who swim in winter?'

Alice didn't return the smile. Her face, gut-wrenchingly solemn for such
a young girl, she told them, 'I never swim. Not since the man.' She paused and
when she went on her voice was less like that of an automaton and more that of
a young woman. 'Mother had been sleeping badly here at home. If we can afford
it, I always try to take her to the coast when she has a spell like that. She
seems to sleep so much better beside the ocean. Sometimes, I can hardly get her
to wake the next morning.'

They left shortly after. They didn't trouble Alice for the name of the
boarding house. As she had said, Jaywick was a small place. It should be easy
enough to trace. Rafferty was half-afraid of what they might discover. Alice
looked a lot younger than her years, small and slenderly-made, unthreatening. Smith
might easily have opened the door to her. But now, Rafferty felt certain that
her outward composure concealed more emotions than she had wanted them to see. He
had sensed her anger; she was full of it. An anger that she appeared to bottle
up. An anger that only the cork of determination kept bottled. Had something
shaken her up so the cork had briefly popped? If so, he felt certain her rage
would be all the more powerful once it escaped that unnatural hold she kept on
it.

'I'd like you to go along to Jaywick when we get back,' Rafferty said to
Mary Carmody, when they were in the car and pulling away. 'Check out her story.
There can't be much bed and breakfast business in Jaywick in December, so if
Alice and her mother were there, they would likely be remembered.'

Mary Carmody nodded and glanced across at him. 'Do you think she might
have killed Smith?'

 Rafferty prevaricated. 'Do you?'

She didn't answer and Rafferty reluctantly admitted, 'She's a possible. She
admits she was in the general area. Of course, she didn't have any transport, but
I've one or two ideas about that and it would have been easy enough for her to
dose her mother with something to keep her quiet so she could slip out.'

As though determined to push him to examine the evidence against Alice,
she asked, 'But how would she know where to find Smith?'

'If ex-Inspector Stubbs or Thompson became friendly enough with Frank
Massey, as, at least to a certain degree, Stubbs must have done to offer to
stand as a character witness at his trial, he may well have tipped Massey off about
Maurice Smith's address on the quiet. Easy enough for her to get it out of her
father when he was on one of his drinking binges.'

'Even if she managed to gain access to Smith's flat and kill him, how
would she get him from his flat to the woods? She doesn't have a car. Can't
even drive, as far as we know.'

'All right,' Rafferty snapped. 'So she had help.' He jammed his lips
tightly together, aware he was being unprofessional and feeling doubly-annoyed
because of it. Why was it, he asked himself, that when other people tried to
manipulate him into facing up to unpleasant possibilities, he reacted so
unreasonably?

Conscious he could evade the issue no longer, he saved Mary Carmody the
trouble of dragging the rest of his conjectures out of him. 'Sinead Fay and her
friends were watching Smith – parked outside his flat in a car. To my mind,
there's damn all doubt about that, even though we're still waiting for proof of
it. From where they were parked on the other corner, they had a clear view
front and back. They could have seen anyone using the fire stairs at the back
of Smith's flat. There was a full moon that night and there's a street lamp
right on the corner, so they'd have had no trouble seeing her. I reckon they'd
have been only too delighted to help her.'

'But I understood that they didn't know her,' Mary Carmody objected. 'Why
should they help her? Why should they even care what she did?'

 Rafferty was cheered a little at the reminder.

'Sergeant Llewellyn told me that none of them had ever counselled her,
so how would they, ten years later, recognise her as one of Smith's victims?'

Unfortunately, Rafferty's brain raced ahead of her and reluctantly, he
added, 'Even if they consider men far from being the greatest thing since
sliced bread, I don't suppose they elect to remain in purdah. I imagine they
visit other Rape Support Groups from time to time. For all we know or are
likely to be able to find out after all this time, one of them met her on a
visit to Burleigh and befriended her. Ellen Kemp's the most likely. She's the
right age to have done so. And even if they didn't help her, there's always her
father. He has a car.'

'But according to you, by that time he'd been picked up by the police.'

'According to Massey he'd been picked up by then. We've yet to check it
out. But did you notice — his car's got two aerials? The betting is he's got a
car phone. God knows why or how he affords it. But there's a phone box on the
corner of Smith's road; maybe, if she killed Smith, she contacted her father from
there and told him what she'd done. Do you really think her own father would
have left her to take the consequences? Especially after he'd made such a hash
of things ten years ago. He'd have helped her get rid of the body.'

Mary Carmody called a halt to her questioning for long enough to filter
her way on to the M25, the ring road around London. It was busy. The rush hour
started earlier and earlier, particularly in the lead-up to Christmas. Rafferty
was thankful to have a respite from her prodding questions. But, the respite
didn't last long and five minutes’ later, they resumed.

'So who moved the body from the wood?'

'Who else but Sinead Fay and her friends? We know full well where their
sympathies lie – certainly not with the police. They'd have been only too happy
to muddy the waters of the police investigation into Smith's death. Even if
they didn't help Alice herself, they must have seen it all, as it's pretty
certain that it was them watching Smith's flat. They were probably hoping to
make sure he didn't do a bunk after he received their “outing” threat and elude
their punishment. If, as I think most likely, Frank Massey helped his daughter
shift the body to the wood, those women would have followed and removed it.'

'So why would they — presuming it was them — string it up again?'

God knows, Rafferty thought. I certainly don ‘t. But, just in time,
instinct came to his aid. ‘'Because they'd acted on impulse, hadn't really
thought through the consequences. Then cold, hard, common sense set in and they
got scared.' Rafferty, aware his thoughts were still muddled, fought for
answers. 'It would only be later that they would have been likely to appreciate
what they’d done; that they had a corpse on their hands, or rather, in Sinead
Fay's car boot. They could hardly leave it there. As Smith
was
strung up
again, I imagine they decided that Massey and his daughter had had the right
idea in the first place. Smith was dead. They might as well get some useful
publicity from his death. Hiding his body served no purpose so they decided to
put it back where they found it. They just took the precaution of removing his
wrist ties and the hood in an attempt to confuse us and protect his killer.

'Unfortunately for them, they didn't realise we already had a description
of how the body had originally been left. Though, even if we hadn't known, the
cord on his wrists had left recognisable marks. I don't suppose they noticed
those as they must have done the necessary in a great hasty panic. I doubt they
even looked at him much. Easy to miss such a giveaway in the circumstances. Easy
too, to miss the fact that he was stabbed, as most of the bleeding was internal
and his tracksuit, being dark, would have meant the blood wouldn't have shown
up too well.'

He glanced quickly across at her, almost asked how he was doing, but
decided such a question was beneath his dignity. Instead, he said, 'Shame we've
no proof one way or the other; no prints, no nothing. Smith's visitor didn't
even shed a hair, according to forensic.'