Unlucky For Some (36 page)

Lloyd was still swaying. “The blackmailer didn’t find the knife, so once again he wasn’t put off. Another murder had been committed, and he doubtless upped his demand once more.” He let his chair fall forward. “And I’m willing to bet that this letter said that the money had to be left in the summerhouse at the Grange, which is why Baker left the rifle there, knowing the blackmailer would be there in the hope that this time he was going to collect.”

“But it was Stephen’s rifle,” said Tom. “Does that mean he thought it was Stephen who was blackmailing him?”

“Well, Stephen was the last person to be seen with Wilma, and he wouldn’t tell anyone where he was when she was killed,” said Judy. “And Baker didn’t know that we had witnesses who saw Stephen leaving the alleyway twenty-five minutes before the murder took place, so as far as he was concerned, Stephen could have been in Wilma’s flat all along. And Stephen was working in the appropriate towns on the appropriate nights . . . yes, I’d say he could easily have come to the conclusion that it was Stephen.”

“Of course you know who else was working in the appropriate towns on the appropriate nights, and turned up for no apparent reason at the summerhouse, don’t you?” said Tom. “And Stephen couldn’t have been Headless, because he was still in the bingo club when Headless was doing his rummaging. But Keith Scopes was out having a so-called smoke. If he isn’t Headless, I’m a monkey’s cousin.” He scratched his head. “But Scopes didn’t kill Wilma, so it makes no—” He broke off, and tapped his head. “But Wilma
wasn’t
killed at nine o’clock, was she? Baker lied about that too.”

Of course, thought Judy. The missing half hour. That was another bit of window dressing—another way to confuse the investigation.

“It happened the moment Stephen left her, before she had time to go into her flat,” Tom said. “Scopes hit her, and stole her money. And Baker saw it happen as he went into the alley from the bingo club, so when Scopes ran away from him, he would run toward Waring Road, not Murchison Place. Baker had us looking for witnesses in the wrong place at the wrong time. No wonder we came up empty.”

Judy nodded, and crossed off the second to last puzzle. “And as far as Baker was concerned,” she said, “he had seen Stephen go into the alleyway with Wilma, and when he got there two minutes later, he saw the person with her attack her. No wonder he thought it was Stephen.”

“Why would he want to give Stephen an alibi?” asked Tom.

“Because he could.” Lloyd let his chair fall forward. “That’s all the reason he’d need to do that. But this is all conjecture, of course.”

“I know.” Judy looked at the ticks she had made against the puzzles in her notebook. “There’s no proof. But it answers all the little puzzles, except why Jack Shaw wasn’t killed.”

“Ah—you’re fallible after all. You’ve got that one wrong. I asked why Jack Shaw wasn’t
dead,
not why he wasn’t killed.”

She looked up. “Is there a difference?”

“Oh, yes. Because Baker must have thought Shaw had seen him, or why would he hit him at all? But the blow hadn’t killed him, and he couldn’t have believed that it had. No one could have thought he was dead. He was very evidently breathing.”

“He couldn’t keep on hitting him,” Judy pointed out. “He’d be bound to get blood on his own clothes if he did that.”

Lloyd got a faraway look in his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “He would, wouldn’t he?” He sighed. “In fact, he almost certainly did. That’s why he so considerately covered Shaw up with his own jacket.”

Of course, thought Judy, Baker knew exactly how to play this deadly game, and right now, he was winning it, because as Lloyd said, it was pure conjecture. They had no proof at all.

“Maybe he just tried to hit him hard enough to affect his memory, guv,” said Tom. “Or at any rate make people believe it might be a bit suspect.”

“Yes,” said Judy. “And he probably succeeded.”

“But then why do the thing with the money?” Lloyd shook his head. “He puts money on his murder victims, and according to Castle, he wouldn’t deviate from that, because that was part of his plan. So he thought he
had
killed him, and yet he
couldn’t
have thought that. I repeat: Why isn’t Jack Shaw dead?”

“Well,” said Judy. “Let’s not tempt providence. He’s still in a coma, remember.”

“So he is,” said Lloyd, the faraway look back. “Oh, yes.” He closed his eyes. “He is, isn’t he?” He opened his eyes again, and they were sad. “And I’m very much afraid I know why he isn’t dead.” He sighed. “But if I’m right—and I believe I am—then he’s as good as dead, and there’s nothing we can do about it, because we can’t prove a thing.”

Judy was about to ask him to explain when Hitchin knocked, and came in. “It’s good news, ma'am. Jack Shaw’s coming out of the coma.”

Lloyd stared at him. “He’s doing what?”

“Recovering,” said Hitchin.

“But that makes no sense! The only thing that makes any sense is if Jack Shaw is
dying.
”

“Well, sorry, sir.” Hitchin looked a little helpless. “He isn’t. He’s getting better.”

Stephen was back in the cell, sitting on the bench, his knees drawn up to his chin, waiting to see what was going to happen next. He didn’t understand about that money. How could Wilma have ended up with Tony Baker’s prize money? He didn’t understand why he was here. He had an alibi for the night Wilma died—wasn’t that supposed to mean they let you go? But they thought he and Ben had made it up between them.

At least he could understand why he was a suspect in Wilma’s murder—he didn’t understand the others at all. They had no reason at all to suspect him of them, except that he couldn’t prove where he was when they took place. They had both happened when he was on his way home from work, on his own, with no witnesses. But that could be true of dozens of people—why did they think he’d had anything to do with murdering these people?

He knew why. It was because the bike had broken down when he was on his way home from Barton that night. It had taken a quarter of an hour to get it started, but they didn’t believe that it had broken down at all. If those women hadn’t held him up for so long, he would have been home before eleven o’clock, and they said that the Barton victim was still alive then. So he would have had an alibi for that one too. But then, he thought, his alibis didn’t seem to carry very much weight, so did it really matter? They would probably have said that everyone was making that one up, too.

And now they thought he’d shot at his own mother, and tried to kill Jack, of all people, and it was hard to see what else they could think, in view of the way they’d found him.

From the moment he’d heard that voice coming out of nowhere, telling him to throw out his rifle, what had been a worrying situation had turned into a nightmare, and he had no idea how he had got caught up in it.

He just wished with all his heart that he could see Ben.

The revelation that Jack Shaw was recovering had thrown Lloyd, until, after ten minutes of wondering if the solution they had worked out could possibly be entirely wrong, he realized why Jack Shaw wasn’t dead or dying. He had spoken to Jack Shaw, and sweet-talked Freddie into doing him a favor, and now at least they had proof of a kind.

Grace Halliday had been at the hospital, and though Lloyd hadn’t been allowed to speak to Shaw at any length, what Grace had told him had prompted him to apply for a search warrant, and now the files, photographs, papers and computer disks found in Tony Baker’s room in the Tulliver Inn were being packed into boxes and taken away.

Lloyd drove out of Stoke Weston, bound for Barton. The afternoon sun shone down, and thanks to Jack Shaw, the village wasn’t in mourning as it would have been if Baker had had his way. Grace Halliday was working in the pub right now, with Ben Waterman helping out, both trying to take their minds off Stephen’s predicament. Lloyd wasn’t sure how Stephen was going to come out of this, not yet.

Baker himself was under arrest for attempting to pervert the course of justice, being the crime for which they had straightforward, conventional evidence, but Lloyd’s Acting Superintendent was grimly determined that he would be charged with considerably more than that before the day was out.

Tony had been puzzled when he’d heard the knock on his door—Grace didn’t knock, and Stephen was in a police cell, where he belonged. It had all gone wrong, but it had turned out reasonably well, he’d thought.

It had turned out to be Ben Waterman, whom he had forgotten was staying there. He’d arrived late yesterday afternoon, and Grace had introduced him. She said he’d had some sort of bust-up with his father.

“There are two police officers downstairs,” Ben had said. “They said they’d like to see you.”

Tony had smiled. “This is getting to be a habit,” he’d said. “When they’re stumped, they come to me.”

But it wasn’t anyone he’d thought it might be. Not the devious Lloyd, or the decorative Hill, or even the deceptive Finch. It was two uniformed constables, who said they were arresting him for attempting to pervert the course of justice, and several detectives who waved a search warrant at him and began to remove all his documents.

He was taken to Barton, to Highgrove Street Station, and now he was in an interview room with Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd and Acting Detective Superintendent Hill, at something of a disadvantage, as the tape wound round slowly and silently, and he was cautioned. There was little point in talking to a solicitor; he
had
attempted to pervert the course of justice, and he wasn’t going to deny it. But he couldn’t work out how they knew what he had done.

“Can you explain how the money found on Wilma Fenton’s body was the money paid out to you, and not the money paid out to her?” asked Acting Superintendent Hill.

That was the last thing he’d thought would catch him out. How did they know? And before he told them it was a fair cop, he would make certain that they weren’t just taking a flyer. “I take it you can prove that?”

“We can. We have the numbers of the notes paid out in each case.”

Well, wouldn’t you just know, thought Tony. But what had seemed so important once was no longer important. Things had moved on.

“Then, yes,” he said. “I can explain it. Her money was stolen. I replaced it with my own.”

“And would we be right in assuming that you also removed any possible fingerprints from Mrs. Fenton’s bag, and altered the time of the murder from a few minutes after half past eight to nine o’clock?”

“You would.”

“Why did you do that?”

Because he had been irritated that he should have witnessed a murder that was nothing more than a sordid little mugging. Because he had wanted to make it just a little more interesting than that. But that wasn’t the reason he was going to give them. “To give Stephen Halliday an alibi.”

“Did you recognize Halliday as Mrs. Fenton’s attacker?” Lloyd asked.

“No!” Tony was shocked by the suggestion. The glimpse he’d got of Mrs. Fenton’s attacker could have been anyone—he had seen only a shadowy figure. “Of course I didn’t—I saw no more than I said. But Waterman and I saw Stephen running after Wilma Fenton and going into the alley with her. I was about two minutes behind them, and when I got to the mouth of the alley, I saw what I described in some detail to you, Superintendent, except that the mugger merely made off with the victim’s bag.”

He saw Lloyd and Hill glance at each other, then she looked back at him. “Go on,” she said.

“I went after him,” he said. “But he was running way too fast for me to catch up. In the car park, I found Wilma’s bag, and I found the discarded envelope. I’ve no doubt he was hiding in the car park somewhere, but I couldn’t see anyone at all. And I knew how bad it would look for Stephen—though I didn’t know him particularly well, I honestly believed that he wouldn’t have done such a thing.”

She shook her head slightly. “You committed a serious offense in order to stop Stephen Halliday coming under suspicion?”

“Yes. Because I know how police minds work. There can be no other explanation than the one that immediately presents itself. Waterman had seen Stephen with Wilma, and if I called the police . . .” He shrugged. “I thought that another innocent man would be gobbled up by the system. My first instinct was simply to carry on to my car, and let someone else find her body. But as I looked at the envelope, I realized that I could make it look less like a mugging. I could replace the money—I could wipe the bag and her purse and everything else, and put them back beside her.”

“And spreading the notes out on her body?” said Lloyd. “What was that all about?”

Tony smiled a little. “A theatrical touch. I wanted it to look as though the motive was something other than theft. Envy, perhaps. Or disapproval.”

He had wanted it to look interesting. He had wanted to have witnessed something that baffled the police. He had wanted the murder that he had witnessed to be one that caused a bit of a stir. He’d wanted it to be a murder of substance.

“And when I’d set the scene, I waited for as long as I could before I rang the police, because I thought that Stephen would be wherever he was going by then, and would have an alibi. I said I’d been working in my car, and had been going back to the club when I saw it, so I had to say it happened the opposite way round from the way it had.”

He was getting nothing back from Lloyd as he spoke; he was just sitting, his eyes cold, listening without reaction. From Judy Hill, he was getting waves of disbelief, but that didn’t matter. His motive was his own business—it made no difference. It wouldn’t lessen the offense. But an altruistic motive might just lessen the disapproval of the press and public. And that did matter.

“What can I say? It was a very stupid and very inappropriate thing to do, but I did it.”

It would have been very stupid and very inappropriate if he really had been trying to save Stephen’s neck, he thought, but it had been purely to make a mundane murder less humdrum. It wasn’t until long afterward that he began to realize that Stephen really had killed Wilma Fenton. And by then his spicing up of that unintentional murder had started something almost unstoppable.