A Shred of Evidence (37 page)

Judy nodded.

“And last night,” Finch said. “You’re not saying Hannah did all that to herself, are you? She’s covered in cuts and bruises that the doc says are consistent with what she says happened. You can’t fake that sort of thing!”

“No. But she would be covered in bruises, if Mrs. Cochrane was fighting for her life,” said Judy. “Hannah Lewis went voluntarily to that flat, and took a knife with her.”

“She’d seen the woman attacking Natalie! She came to in her car, in her company, whether she liked it or not. She just made sure she could defend herself if the worst came to the worst, and it did. And,” Finch added, “she could have said that Erica Cochrane took the knife, couldn’t she? But she didn’t.”

“Only because I’d have wanted to know how come she tried to strangle her, in that case,” said Judy.

“She’d already had one run-in with her in the office—the
head’s confirmed that. He heard Erica Cochrane yelling at her to get out. He had told her not to come back to work until she got herself sorted out.”

It was, as they said, good end-to-end stuff.

“Why would she take her intended victim to her own flat in order to murder her?” Judy asked. “It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense, if you really look at it.”

“She wasn’t going to leave her there, was she?” said Finch. “She’d have dumped her somewhere.”

“How was she proposing to remove her? Bump her down two flights of stairs? Prop her up in the lift?”

One all.

Finch gathered himself for his next attack. “Hannah knew that Murray had borrowed Cochrane’s car,” he said. “Only Murray himself knew that—and he has never spoken to Hannah. Hannah saw him with Natalie, like she said.”

“That hardly proves that Hannah didn’t kill her,” countered Judy.

“It takes away her motive—she knew that it hadn’t been Cochrane. Unlike Mrs. Cochrane, who thought it
was
him until Murray told her different.”

Two one.

“Do you seriously believe that someone of Hannah Lewis’s intelligence saw what she says she saw, and didn’t
tell
anyone? Didn’t tell Murray when she saw him—while it was going on, according to her—didn’t tell her parents, and even once she knew that Natalie had been murdered, didn’t tell the police—because she would be found out in a lie?”

It did seem unlikely, and even Finch had to shrug a little.

“It wasn’t the lie that worried her,” he said, after a moment “It was those letters. She was scared of her mum finding out about them. When you’re fifteen you get things out of perspective, and I’d be scared if my mum found letters like these now!”

“Quite. So who was more likely to get Natalie out of perspective? A mixed-up, sex-obsessed, fantasizing teenager or a mature woman?”

Foul. “We’re not in the business of more likely,” said Lloyd.
“You’re the one who insists that logic can get you anywhere, and logic says that she knew Natalia hadn’t been with her idol after all, so there was nothing to get out of perspective.”

“Did she know that?” said Judy. “We only have her word for it that she saw Murray. Mrs. Cochrane could have told her it was him.”

She could. Perhaps that last goal was offside. But Judy obviously hadn’t marked that bit of information down as a probable lie, or her response wouldn’t have been delayed. If she had believed Hannah at the time, then it was probably because she was being told the truth.

“And what about Natalie’s blouse?” said Judy.

“What about it?”

“Why hadn’t she even begun to button it again?”

“Because she was being chased by someone who wanted to kill her!” said Finch.

“So we’re being asked to believe. But Natalie had no reason to expect Mrs. Cochrane to run after her, did she? What she was doing had nothing to do with Mrs. Cochrane. The natural thing to do is to walk away from an embarrassing situation—and you would button yourself up as soon as you could.”

Lloyd sighed. Once, they had believed that all they needed was a suspect. They had enough physical evidence to bury anyone, they had thought. But all that physical evidence was on Murray. The fibres were from his suit and shirt, the hair was his, the fingerprints were his, the unnecessary DNA test that was being done would prove that he had been with her. And while Lloyd regarded the man as beneath contempt, it was clear that he hadn’t murdered Natalia. His heart was heavy as he prepared to blow the whistle for time-up.

“I think we’re going to have to let Hannah go,” he said to Judy.

“Hannah Lewis murdered Natalie,” said Judy. “And she murdered Mrs. Cochrane. She did, Lloyd, as sure as I’m sitting here. I know she did.”

Lloyd nodded slightly. “Could be,” he said. “But knowing isn’t enough. Unfortunately, we don’t have a shred of evidence.”

Finch was trying hard to score again before the final whistle.

“We’ve got plenty of evidence on Erica Cochrane, though,” he said. “She saw what she thought was her husband giving Natalie one right in front of her eyes. Then she was face to face with the girl. We have an eye-witness to her attacking Natalie.”

“An eye-witness who just happens to be besotted with Erica Cochrane’s husband, and who failed to mention seeing anything at all until now,” said Judy, almost absently, as she leafed gloomily back through her notebook. “An eye-witness who just happens to have killed Erica Cochrane before we could hear her side of it.”

Finch shrugged off the tackle. “When we arrived on the Green, Mrs. Cochrane was in a right state—she looked like she’d gone three rounds with
someone
, that’s for sure. You saw her yourself.”

“But Natalie didn’t look like that,” said Judy. “She looked as though someone had just suddenly hit her head against the piping without any warning. Why would Mrs. Cochrane get all messed up if Natalie didn’t fight back?”

“She got like that trying to get away. And she lied to us about what she had actually seen. And last night, Hannah was quite definitely unconscious when the area lads broke in, with a pair of tights still round her neck!”

“And a superficial injury to the back of her head,” said Judy. “Natalie’s head injuries weren’t superficial.”

“Mrs. Cochrane didn’t have a handy piece of concrete piping in her living room,” said Finch.

Lloyd rubbed his eyes. “I always thought that if you cleared up the little puzzles,” he said, “the big one wasn’t as puzzling as you thought it was. But we’ve cleared up the little puzzles, and it’s got us nowhere.”

Judy frowned a little. “All of them?” she asked.

“I think so,” said Lloyd. “We know why her shoes were where they were, we know why Cochrane was twenty minutes late, we know why Natalia’s sexual encounter was nonviolent, despite the murder. And none of it helps.”

Finch sighed extravagantly. “Erica Cochrane had the means,
the motive, and the opportunity, as any Perry Mason would tell you,” he said.

“We don’t have to prove motive,” murmured Judy, checking her notebook once more. She looked up. “And the means was a pair of tights,” she said, just a hint of triumph in her voice.

The moment Lloyd had seriously doubted would ever come was here; his gun-dog was pointing at last.

“You forgot Freddie’s little puzzle,” she said. “The tights.”

Lloyd frowned. Surely she wasn’t going to let him down? “We’ve solved that one,” he said. “That only puzzled Freddie because he thought it was a quickie out in the open,” he said. “Natalia was in the car with Murray for about an hour. She could have done a long, slow strip tease for him for all we know.”

“She could have,” said Judy. “But if she did, she didn’t take off her tights.” She smiled. “And we do have a shred of evidence,” she said.

A shred of evidence, Lloyd discovered as she explained, wasn’t a figure of speech; it was precisely what they had got and nothing more. Judy’s last-minute goal hadn’t won the match; it had merely saved it. This game was going to end in a penalty shoot-out.

And they would find out how good a goal-keeper Hannah Lewis was.

Hannah had done what the inspector had suggested; she had thought about her statement.

She didn’t think she had gone wrong anywhere, but now they were in the interview room again, waiting for more questions. Detective Inspector Hill was going to try to catch her out. She had known that she wouldn’t leave it there; she had felt the waves of disbelief, which at first had unnerved her, then had presented a challenge that she had taken on, eye to eye.

The only bit that had really bothered her was when DI Hill had gone on about the letters. She had thought she might tell her mum what was in them, but she hadn’t. Now, she wanted
to get this bit over with; she had had three sleepless nights, and had no desire to toss and turn through a fourth.

“This is Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd,” said Inspector Hill, and looked at Hannah’s mother. “He is my senior officer, Mrs. Lewis,” she said. “If you have any complaints about me.”

Her mother didn’t make a complaint. She just looked huffy.

This was the last lap. Not one she had envisaged during the first wakeful night. Then, fear of discovery had been almost overwhelming.

Colin’s plight had claimed the next night, when she had devised her new letter to try to get him off the hook. By the next day, discovery had seemed inevitable because Kim was actually going to tell Murray that she
knew
it wasn’t Cochrane who had been seeing Natalie, that she could prove it. Murray would have had no option but to go to the police before they came to him, and he would have told them that Hannah had been there. And she hadn’t got there in time to stop Kim talking to him.

Everything had seemed hopeless, and even more desperate when Murray had called her name from the staff room. Sheer panic had claimed her once more, and all she could do was run. She had never in her life been so glad to see anyone as she had been to see Erica Cochrane, of all people. And then, in the Cochranes’ kitchen, a whole new solution had dawned, one that would leave Hannah free of suspicion, clear poor Colin, and get rid of his wife, all in one go.

Inspector Hill was going through the rigmarole with the tape, reminding her that she was still under caution, telling her her rights all over again.

“I’m not entirely happy with this statement, Hannah,” she said when she had finally got the preliminaries out of the way.

Hannah was. Oh, she could have cried, she could have been upset and afraid—she had thought about doing it that way. But her drama teacher had always said that you should use as much of yourself as you could in a part, especially if you were improvising. Being as much herself as possible was what she had finally decided. It was less easy for anyone to catch you unawares.

She was glad of that decision now, as she looked back at the cool inspector, whose watchful eyes missed very little, Hannah was certain.

And she had felt calm, once she had known what she was going to do, once she had realized that she could get Erica Cochrane out of the way for good. Not at all like she had felt after she had killed Natalie. That had been quite unprepared for, and sheer panic had claimed her. But this, though it had been devised in Erica Cochrane’s kitchen in a split second, and carried out with only seconds to spare, had been thought out very carefully all through her third sleepless night, at the hospital, and no one was going to catch her out.

Not even you, she thought, looking back at the inspector without even trying to disguise the fact that it was a game that she was going to win. It was going to work, it really was, because Erica Cochrane couldn’t refute one word of it. She was dead. She was dead, and Colin was free of her at last.

The brown eyes that looked directly into hers were just as uncompromising as before, but Hannah was confident now, despite that. It didn’t matter whether or not she believed her, because it
could
be true. It
could
all be true, and there was nothing the inspector could do to disprove it.

She still hadn’t asked her anything. Hannah could play at the game too, but her mother couldn’t.

“Well?” she said. “What aren’t you happy about? Don’t just sit there.”

The brown eyes widened very slightly, and her mother was put in her place once again.

Hannah smiled a little.

“I had hoped you might tell me the truth this time,” said the inspector.

“I’ve told you the truth,” Hannah said.

“Have you?” she asked. “Let’s go back to yesterday when you went over to the school,” she said. “You told us that Erica Cochrane shouted at you.”

“She did.”

“Yes, we’ve had that confirmed. What …” The inspector paused. “What puzzles me is why you were in the office.”

“I wanted to know if Kim was there.”

“But you had stayed away from school, hadn’t you? Because you were afraid of Erica Cochrane?”

Hannah had to think for a moment. “No,” she said. “Not because I was afraid of her. She hadn’t seen me—I was just upset about it all.”

The inspector nodded. “So it didn’t worry you—going to see her?”

“I … I knew other people would be around. The headmaster’s always there. And Mr. Murray works late—Kim said.”

The inspector’s boss didn’t seem very interested in any of this. He had tipped his chair back while they had been speaking; he sat poised on the chair’s two back legs now, not looking at her, apparently lost in contemplation of something on the ceiling.

“Then, later, she took you to her flat.”

“Yes.”

The inspector frowned a little. “Did she force you to go to her flat with her?” she asked.

Hannah shook her head.

“So you went with her to her flat, despite the fact that you had witnessed her murdering Natalie?”

“I didn’t see her murder her!”

That had been carefully thought out too. If she said she had actually seen the murder, no one would believe that she hadn’t told Mr. Murray when she ran into him, or her parents, when she got home. But a quarrel, a fight … that was different.

“Neither you did. You saw her assaulting Natalie, though—that didn’t worry you?”

Hannah had foreseen this trap, had been surprised that it hadn’t been sprung during the previous interview. She had anticipated the question, and she had the answer. She had been quite disappointed before, but now she had the chance to show how clever she had been.