Curtis paused. ‘Section Three,’ he said. ‘The police are anxious to speak to anyone who was in the vicinity of Bailey’s farm between the hours of eight p.m. on Sunday, and ten a.m. on Monday. The area is known to be something of a lovers’ lane, and the police stress that all information will be treated in the strictest confidence. I spoke to Detective Chief Inspector Lloyd, the man leading the murder hunt, and asked him if he thought that there was a link between the murder and the death threats which Mr Bailey had been receiving.’
He took a deep breath. Almost there. ‘Section Four. I was at the murder house this morning, and I saw the security for myself. Windows locked, shuttered. Alarms set, cameras on. Documents and cash sat in Mr Bailey’s open safe, so certain was he of his security systems.
‘But those systems were breached, and, at forty-seven, Bernard Bailey, who lived what many thought to be an eccentric life, died a shocking and puzzling death. How someone got in past the high-level security remains, for the moment, a mystery, and Bernard Bailey’s death could turn out to be as much of an enigma as the man himself.’
He paused again. ‘Curtis Law,
Aquarius 1830
, at Bailey’s farm, Harmston, Bartonshire,’ he said. ‘ Voice-over ends.’ Then he lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and blew out the match with a stream of smoke directed at the no-smoking sign.
He’d done it. But he had a long night ahead of him still. He had to collect his car, and
Mr Big
went out tonight; he had to go in for the final editing, and they wanted him to stay until after the programme had gone out, to deal with reactions. Then, with any luck, he’d get some sleep.
Lloyd was in Judy’s car, waiting for a call on his newest gadget. It still tickled him to death that he could make and take phone calls almost anywhere he chose. He had asked Stansfield to check out Mrs Bailey’s story about the hotel, and Sandwell was going to ring him back. In Judy’s car. It was unbearably hot, even with the windows and the sunroof open, but it was the only place they could find to talk without interruption.
‘I think I’d like to have another word with Nicola Hutchins,’ said Judy, as she checked through her notebook. ‘Rachel stopped her just when she was going to tell me something. I think I ought to find out what, without Rachel in attendance.’
Lloyd nodded.
‘But I suspect that Nicola and her husband will have a lot to discuss,’ Judy added. ‘Maybe I should leave it until tomorrow. What do you think?’
‘It’s up to you,’ said Lloyd.
Judy frowned a little. ‘I think I’ll leave it till tomorrow,’ she decided. And I’d better have a word with Mr and Mrs Melville. I can’t pretend the death threats didn’t exist – and their committee might have the resident psychopath on it for all we know.’
‘If you ask me,’ Lloyd said, ‘the resident psychopath’s the victim.’ He thought of those photographs of what Bailey had done to Rachel, of his treatment of Nicola, of what he had been hearing from the villagers about his first wife’s constant, dangerous pregnancies. ‘The man was a monster.’
‘Yes,’ said Judy.
There was a little silence then, which Lloyd broke. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you want to see the Melvilles, I’d better let you do that.’ He made to get out of the car.
‘Why does Curtis Law make you nervous?’ she asked, just when he least expected it.
He closed the door again. How like her. No preamble, no working up to it. Let him believe he had escaped interrogation, then ask the direct, unequivocal question. It had taken him several minutes to steel himself to go out and give Mr Law his interview, and of course Judy hadn’t missed a thing.
He thought about the question. Did Law make him nervous? Yes, he supposed he did. Not so much because of what Curtis Law had done to
him
, though the thought of that programme going out tonight did fill him with dread, but because of what he wanted to do to Curtis Law. He wanted, quite simply, to get him back. He really was thirteen again, wanting to strike back at those who mocked him. He had never resorted to physical violence unless he had had to in the line of duty, and then only very rarely, and purely in self-defence. His form of revenge for a hurt was more subtle, and less easily understood by either him or his victims.
With Judy, it was instant; he would say something to hurt her, and it didn’t matter how unfair, how untrue it was, as long as she believed that
he
believed it, if only for a moment. With someone like Curtis Law, it was different. The resentment lodged itself inside him; he would seek an opportunity to avenge himself, and there would still be no room for moral principles. He knew what he was like, and he was afraid he would try to get Law up a metaphorical dark alley.
And now, he might even have begun to do it. Had Curtis Law really resembled the figure on Bailey’s security video when he had seen him in the courtyard? Or had he just made himself believe that, in the hope that he could turn the tables on him? Was he capable of that sort of distortion of judgement, that amount of self-deception, in order to get his own back? Judy was the only one who would tell him the truth if he was. But he didn’t want to know the truth.
‘I just don’t like him,’ he said, eventually, not looking at her. Looking instead out of the window at the courtyard, at the fields, at the people looking for evidence, stopping to flex their backs and mop their brows, then stooping and carrying on. That was a thought. Just who did that land belong to, now that Bailey was dead? He’d have to have a word with Rachel Bailey about that.
Judy repeated the question, just as she did with those from whom it was her job to get answers. No hint of its just having been asked. The same wording. No impatience. No slight raising of the voice. It was absolutely infuriating, and unless he told her, she would ask again. But his call came through, and rescued him.
Rachel Bailey had checked out of the hotel at eight o’clock this morning, Sandwell told him. But she had been staying there with someone calling himself Mr Bailey, who had left last night, having ordered a taxi for eleven p.m. to take him to St Pancras. Staff couldn’t give him much of a description, but it certainly wasn’t her husband. Thirtyish. Well dressed. Maybe fair, maybe dark, depending on who you talked to. Maybe tall, maybe average. Slim. They were all agreed on that. Mrs Bailey had rung for room service at around half past three in the morning; the night porter had taken her a pot of tea. She had given him a large tip, though it seemed that seeing her in her negligee would have been tip enough.
So it hadn’t been Rachel on the security video. London was at minimum two hours away from Harmston, even the way Judy drove. ‘The plot thickens,’ said Lloyd, and opened the car door again. ‘See you later,’ he said, and escaped.
Judy drove off to go and talk to the Melvilles, and Lloyd went back up the steps to the house, knocking quietly on the open door. When no one came, he went inside, back into the office, where he and Judy had left the unrepentantly non-grieving widow, but there was no one there. There was, however, a voice. A voice as devastating as ever, even when it was travelling, as Lloyd eventually realized, down a chimney breast.
‘… this morning. Just wondered if anyone had found a gold pendant, maybe?
‘Gold. Looks sort of like a coin. Not too big, but thick. Thick chain, too. Heavy. It’s a man’s, really. It’s got some writin’ on the back, but it’s in Swedish, I think. Don’t know what it means.
‘Maybe you could take another look? Don’t suppose you clean everythin’ every time, do you?
‘Well … no, didn’t mean no offence. Just didn’t think things would
need
cleanin’ every time. Yes. If you wouldn’t mind takin’ another look. Yes. I’ll be here. Thank you. Bye.’
Lloyd looked at the chimney which had conveyed so much of Bernard Bailey’s business to his wife, and tried to recall exactly what they had said in the office that morning, because Rachel Bailey would have heard every word, he was sure of that. He wandered back out, and stood just inside the front doorway, waiting for her to come downstairs.
When she did, she smiled her slow smile at him, and he felt that if anyone should make him nervous as to the suitability of his conduct in this case, it was Rachel Bailey. But they were already engaged in a sparring match; she knew he suspected her, and she didn’t care. Because she was innocent? Or because she believed she could win?
‘I’ve tidied up in here,’ she said, leading the way into the sitting room.
Tidied up was hardly how he would have described it. In the hour or so since the sofa had left, she had rearranged the room; it was as if the sofa and Bernard Bailey’s body had never been there. The windows were open to admit fresh air; the vertical blinds were also open, and slatted sunlight fell across the room, highlighting the damp patch on the carpet, drying it out. Even the sun was prepared to help. A fan whirred quietly in the corner where an armchair had been, and the armchair and coffee table were where the sofa had been. She sat down, and looked up at him. It was, Lloyd thought, sitting down in another armchair, as if Bernard Bailey himself had never been there.
‘Mrs Bailey,’ he began.
‘Why don’t you call me Rachel?’ she asked, and there was pure mischief in the blue eyes. ‘ Your lady inspector does.’
He smiled. ‘I think we’ll keep it formal, Mrs Bailey.’
‘So what do I call you?’ she asked, her voice lazy and quiet. ‘Chief Inspector? Mr Lloyd?’
‘Whichever you feel comfortable with,’ Lloyd said.
She smiled again, the long, long dimple appearing. ‘Reckon I like Mr Lloyd best,’ she said. ‘It’s more friendly. Your lady inspector calls you Lloyd, don’t she? You got no first name?’
‘No.’
She stood up. ‘ Would you like a cold drink, Mr Lloyd? Lemonade all right?’
‘That would be very nice,’ he said. ‘ Thank you.’
She went down the hallway to the kitchen, coming back after a few minutes with long misted glasses in which the ice rattled, handing him his, sitting down again in the big armchair, kicking off her shoes, curling her legs underneath her. ‘You wanted to talk to me about somethin’,’ she said.
Lloyd sipped his drink, and smiled. ‘ Is this homemade?’ he asked.
She nodded.
It was delicious. ‘Did your husband make a will, Mrs Bailey?’
‘Left everythin’ to me,’ she said. ‘Part of the deal.’
‘What about his daughter?’
‘Said he’d set her up in the practice, and that was enough. Reckon he only agreed to me havin’ it ’cos he knew it wasn’t worth nothin’ then.’
Lloyd couldn’t help but admire her cool detachment from it all. ‘But it is worth something now,’ he said. ‘You will be selling to Mr McQueen, I take it?’
‘If I don’t, the loan company’ll take it off me,’ she said. ‘ No way I can pay them.’
‘And at four times its market value, you will have more than enough to pay off the debts, and come out of this with even more money than you would have got by giving your husband his son, won’t you?’
She took a sip of her lemonade, looking at him over the rim of the glass. ‘Reckon that makes me suspect number-one squared, don’t it?’ she said.
Lloyd smiled back, and his eyes held hers for a moment. ‘Reckon it does,’ he said.
There was a silence then, broken only by the whirring of the fan as it attempted to bring the temperature down to a more comfortable level. Lloyd stood up and toured the room, looking at the paintings, big and bright and flamboyant. And good. They must have cost a great many of the pretty pennies that Bernard Bailey hadn’t really had. She patronized an artist from her own neck of the woods, he realized, as he put on his glasses and read the signature, a bold, black ‘Trelawny.’ He liked the paintings. He liked the lady who had chosen them. He liked her directness, if that was what it was. He liked her philosophy. He liked her speech rhythms, which seemed almost as though she was counting out the syllables, keeping to a complex metre that didn’t allow for interruption.
He had always held very firmly to the view that no one had an excuse for committing murder in cold blood, whatever their reason. And that was precisely what he thought Rachel Bailey might well have done, and not because her husband was sadistically violent towards her, but because she would come into property worth a great deal of money to a third party if he were to die. The problem was that he was finding it difficult to care.
He sat down again. ‘You weren’t in London alone, Mrs Bailey.’
‘Who I was with in London don’t have nothin’ to do with what happened here,’ she said.
He didn’t want to throw Curtis Law’s name in just yet, not even to see her reaction. Not until he was sure of his own motives. ‘Your friend left the hotel yesterday,’ he said.
‘He had to get back.’
‘But you stayed until this morning. Why was that?’
She sipped her drink. ‘Bernard didn’t want me comin’ back on Sunday. They said there was going to be a demonstration here. He didn’t want me gettin’ hurt.’ Again the smile. ‘Wasn’t me he was bothered about.’
‘Someone tampered with your security video in the early hours of this morning,’ he said.
‘I heard. And you think I did it. I heard that too.’
‘I theorize, Mrs Bailey. I do it all the time. You overheard one theory. But I do have another.’
‘What’s that, then?’ she asked, as the phone rang.
Lloyd smiled. He had no intention of telling her his other theory. He just wanted her to know that he had one, just as she had wanted him to know that his private conversations had been overheard. His first theory, as ever, had bitten the dust. His other theory, if it could be dignified by the name of theory, was that her boyfriend had come back on Sunday night in order to kill her husband, while she was establishing an alibi for herself by ringing room service at a time which made it impossible for her to have been the figure on the video. And
was
that boyfriend Curtis Law? That was a huge conclusion to jump to without any evidence of a liaison, and a description of her boyfriend that fitted half the men in the country.
And whoever her boyfriend was, she might genuinely be unaware of what he had done, even if that was what had happened. It needn’t have been a conspiracy, despite the neat alibi. It certainly needn’t have been Curtis Law. No. This theory, not even tested on Judy yet, was quite possibly the product of a desire for revenge, and he wasn’t going to air it just yet. Besides, Finch had said that McQueen had clearly not been telling him everything he knew about it all. But it wasn’t the sixty-year-old McQueen who had let himself out of that gate at two-forty this morning; that much, at least, was certain.