Malice Aforethought (16 page)

‘Or perhaps he was just ultra-cool. He’d got rid of the car, only a few miles from where he’d attacked Zoe. When he left it at the roadside with the keys in, there was a fair chance that it would be stolen again. It was only eight o’clock on a dark November night when he left it there.’

Or perhaps, thought Lambert, he was so excited by the punishment he had just inflicted on a helpless woman that he was on a high, wanting a drink to celebrate and feeling invincible at the same time. Violence often had the effect of a drug on those who used it: it was that effect as much as the financial rewards which made some people choose to live by it. Whatever the reason for his conduct, the fact that he had been observed by a dutiful bystander was a bonus for the police. ‘So what happened in the pub?’

‘He had a pint and a whisky chaser. Then another whisky: perhaps a double, but our man isn’t sure. All downed within about fifteen minutes. Then he rang for a taxi, and left when it arrived.’

‘You’re going to tell me our witness heard him ask the driver for an address.’

Rushton smiled. ‘No. All good things come to an end, I’m afraid. Except in fairy tales. Our man stayed in the pub when his quarry left. But we’re checking with the publican: he might know the taxi firm which was used. If he does, we can soon find the driver and quiz him.’

‘When did our witness come forward?’

‘Last night. When he left the pub, he walked back past the black Escort and saw the keys were still in it. So he extracted them, took them into the police station at Ross, and reported a suspected stolen vehicle and what I’ve just told you about it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I came in this morning and got DC Cox’s account of the attack on Zoe Ross that the two were connected. I’ve had our witness brought into the station. Got him out of bed, in fact; he’s been here about twenty minutes. He’s a retired civil servant. He reckons he got a very good full-face view of our car-dumper in good light, at the bar of the Wilton Arms. No more than four yards away, he says, and there weren’t many other people around: Wednesday’s a quiet night, and it was still only just after eight o’clock.’

‘So where is he now?’

‘In an interview room. We’ve shut him away with the books of mug shots of men with GBH records.’

‘Good work, Chris. Back to our murder for a moment. We still don’t have an exact location established, do we?’

‘No. Only negatives. Jack Johnson and his SOC team checked out Ted Giles’s flat carefully: they’re pretty sure he didn’t die there. Forensic are quite certain that Aubrey Bass’s van was used to dump the body, but they don’t think he died in the vehicle —there’s no evidence of any struggle. Jack Johnson went and had a look round the spot where Bass says it was parked on that Saturday, but he didn’t find anything.’

Lambert nodded. ‘Get Jack and his boys to have a look around the rear exit of the flats to the car park. There might have been a bulb off there on that Saturday night: the porter was replacing one when we went round to Giles’s flat on the Tuesday. That would have made it conveniently dark for anyone taking Giles by surprise as he came out. He was supposed to be visiting Zoe Ross that night, according to what she told us.’

The switchboard came through at that moment with a call for Superintendent Lambert from the Irish Garda station in Killarney. The PC who had given them the information about Sue Giles’s and Graham Reynolds’ stay at the Lakeside Hotel was back on duty. Lambert outlined the questions he wanted asked to the Inspector: protocol wouldn’t allow him to speak to a junior officer in another country’s force directly. ‘Leave it with me,’ said a rich Irish voice.

In five minutes, Inspector O’Connell was back on the line. ‘You’d better speak to him yourself,’ he said grimly.

Lambert could tell from the subdued tone of the thick Irish brogue that a severe bollocking had been administered. He suspected he knew why, and when he had asked the young officer his questions about the weekend of November 10th, he knew he was right. Another piece in the picture. It was complete enough now for him to make his move.

***

After the noise and bustle of the CID section, the hospital seemed very quiet in the late morning of a still November day.

The small figure in the bed still looked very vulnerable, as though it was kept going only by the mass of medical technology which surrounded it. He sat down gingerly on the straight chair beside the bed; he felt as though his very presence might upset the delicate machinery, if he did not move with extreme care. But he must have made some small sound, for the head he had thought unconscious turned towards him and smiled. The mouth said softly, ‘I’m still here, you see… I told you I was a tough old bugger!… I’m glad it’s over, though. I expect you are, too.’

When the mouth spoke, it became Christine’s mouth again, instead of the atrophied lips of someone very ill and beyond his help. But her voice was deep and hoarse. He said, ‘Yes. Is it very…’ He gestured helplessly towards her chest, an articulate man suddenly bereft of the power of speech.

She turned her face towards him, became his wife again, alive, struggling for breath a little, but miraculously articulate. It’s a bit painful, yes, at the moment. As though someone’s dumped a heavy weight on it. But that’s to be expected, they say. Should ease in a few days.’ Her brow puckered as she tried to ease her position and sent a dagger of pain shooting through the small torso under the blankets.

‘Shall I get a nurse?’ said Lambert, preparing to panic, half-rising from his seat. The line pulsing across the green screen behind his wife didn’t seem to have speeded up its soft bleeping; he wished he knew what on earth it signified.

‘Certainly not. If I can’t even grimace without you sounding the alarm, you’d better go.’

He smiled with her at his own foolishness. ‘I’ll have to go soon, anyway. The Sister said I was only to come in for a few minutes.’ Guilt that he should be so relieved about that surged through him and with infinite care, he gathered the small hand on top of the bedclothes between his two larger ones. It was reassuringly warm. Christine was still in the special care room at the end of the ward; he looked through into the larger world of the ward beyond her open door, saw the vases filled with colour, and said, ‘I didn’t bring you any flowers.’

‘Last thing I want, at present. I’ve only just stopped sicking up the anaesthetic. At least, I hope I’ve stopped. Hurts me a bit when I do that, I can tell you.’

He let go of her hand and stood up, an awkward, shambling figure, wondering how to take his leave of his own wife, when it should have been easy and spontaneous. ‘Better be on my way. Don’t want them coming in to throw me out. The girls send their love — they’ll be in to see you later, as soon as I give them the go-ahead.’

‘You can bring me some fruit in a day or two. Then you can sit and eat it. It will give you something to do when you’re visiting.’ Her speech was slow, but she grinned up at him with a flash of her old spirit. He bent and kissed her swiftly on her forehead: the skin felt very warm and dry when his lips brushed it. He looked back when he got to the door of the room, but her eyes had shut in exhaustion and it seemed that she was already asleep.

The Sister looked up from her papers and said with a quick smile, ‘She’s going to be all right, you know. We have people in here much older than her who make perfectly good recoveries from heart surgery.’ He decided he must look very anxious: everyone seemed bent on reassuring him about Christine today. As if he had ever had any doubts about it.

He became Superintendent Lambert again when he asked her for directions to the ward where Zoe Ross lay. He found her easily enough, guided by the figure of the policewoman who sat patiently reading a magazine just outside the door of the ward. A police presence nowadays is kept low-key and as far as possible invisible to other patients.

He listened to her report, found that she hadn’t yet been allowed in to speak to the recovering Ms Ross, and sought out the Ward Sister. She was a stocky fifty-year-old of the old school of nursing, trained in the days of porcelain bedpans and visiting hours strictly limited to an hour a day. ‘I’m afraid she mustn’t be disturbed yet,’ this formidable figure in blue told him. ‘Perhaps this evening, if she continues without setbacks. Whatever she’s done, Superintendent, she remains a patient while she’s in my care, and I shall treat her accordingly.’

Lambert smiled. ‘She hasn’t
done
anything, Sister. She’s a victim, not a criminal. I only want five minutes with her. We’re trying to find out who did this to her, and she may be able to help me.’

He saw her resolution weakening. But she did not relinquish the field to him without an assertion of her rights. ‘As you say it’s so important, I’ll go and see for myself whether she is fit to talk to you for a few minutes. But you will have to abide by my decision.’

While she was checking her patient, he made a phone call from her room to Rushton in the CID section. The DI told him with satisfaction that his retired civil servant had picked out a face which he thought belonged to the man he had seen in the Wilton Arms on the previous evening. It’s a man who goes by the name of Walter Smith, among several others. Started as a heavy with a night-club operator now in prison, for supplying drugs in his clubs. Wally Smith is now a freelance, specialising in contract violence. Contract killing, they think in Birmingham, but that’s never been pinned on him. All he’s got is three years for GBH at the end of the eighties. Sounds like our man.’

‘Sounds very like our man,’ said Lambert. He saw the sister nodding at him through the glass. ‘I’m about to speak to Zoe Ross now. I’ll get what I can from her and see you later.’

He could see from her eyes that she recognised him. He was not sure that he would have recognised her. Her nose had obviously been broken and reset; it was grotesquely swollen and discoloured. It looked like an overripe beetroot — as if blood would well out of it if you merely touched it. She had scores of tiny butterfly stitches in the torn skin of the upper part of her face and around the line of her jaw; the pupils of her eyes peered out from blackened circles.

But curiously, her mouth and lips seemed almost unharmed. They smiled at him and said, ‘The nurse says I look like a bad-tempered panda. She won’t let me have a mirror.’

‘Very wise,’ he said. ‘But you’ll look a lot better in a day or two. Facial injuries are among the quickest to mend.’

‘You speak like an expert. I suppose you see a lot of bad injuries.’

‘More than I want to. Used to see a lot more, years ago. When I was a PC and attended road accidents.’ More years ago than I care to remember, he thought. The worst he had seen thirty years ago were still vivid in his imagination, despite his attempts to obliterate them. ‘Miss Ross, we think we may have identified the man who did this to you. If we’re right, we’ll have him arrested before long.’ He spoke more confidently than he felt. He was hoping they would be able to arrest that sadist Wally Smith before he realised they were on to him: if they had any warning, loners like him tended to disappear to another city, under another name. After two thousand years of exhortations to turn the other cheek, there was a greater demand than ever for his sort of brutality.

Zoe Ross’s brain must have been working as sharply as ever, whatever her injuries and her post-traumatic shock, for she anticipated his first question. ‘I can’t help you with any identification, you know. I never even saw him. He threw some sort of bag over my head as I got out of my car. Then he just started hitting me. I — I thought he was going to kill me.’

For a moment, her lower lip quivered at the recollection, and Lambert said hastily, ‘Then there’s no point in taking you back over it. Hopefully we’ll get a confession out of the man, or find some trace of him at the scene of the crime — we had a team out there as soon as you’d been put in an ambulance to be brought here.’

‘Yes. I was lucky in that way, wasn’t I? They said it was a policeman who found me and called the ambulance on his mobile. How come he was there so quickly? I couldn’t have lost consciousness for more than a few seconds, but he was there before I could even try to get to my feet — and was I glad to see him!’

Her brain was normal, whatever the state of her face. A sharp girl, this one. Even if unlucky in love. But he had too much experience of pretty and intelligent girls choosing awful men to be surprised by her choice of the duplicitous Ted Giles. He took a quick decision that there was no point in deceiving her about this. ‘The policeman was actually under orders to follow you. When you turned into the car park behind the Hare and Hounds, he waited five minutes before he followed you in. It’s standard practice when people are under surveillance, to try to prevent them discovering that they’re being tailed. He saw the man we think was your assailant driving away, but of course he didn’t know you’d been attacked until he found you lying beside your car.’

‘I suppose I ought to be thankful that he was there. But why on earth was he following me?’

Lambert smiled grimly. ‘Because you’re involved in a murder inquiry, I’m afraid. You know a man called Aubrey Bass. His van was used to dispose of the body of Ted Giles. We had him in for questioning about it. Held him for almost twenty-four hours. He claims he knows nothing about it — that his van must have been taken away without his permission. But he’s a dubious ruffian, our Aubrey, and my Inspector thought it was worth keeping an eye on him when he was released. Within an hour, you paid him a visit. Not surprisingly, he put you under surveillance after that.’