Hugh sat in a corner of the open-sided lounge where he could watch the flow of people strolling through from the foyer. Most were making for the lifts at the back of the hotel but now and again someone came into the lounge itself: a willowy woman with a briefcase, two men talking with forced jollity, a Japanese tourist drifting aimlessly. Hugh had two opposing visions of what Montgomery would look like, one a grey-haired version of DI Steadman, lean and incisive, the other a fleshy pasty-faced figure gone to seed after too much deskwork. Both guesses were wide of the mark. The man who headed unerringly across the room to meet Hugh was well-built rather than overweight, with keen eyes, coarse pink skin, a broad nose, and ginger-grey hair combed over a bald crown from a low side-parting. The guesswork had anyway been unnecessary as Hugh realised he had seen him before.
Montgomery shook his hand. ‘Extremely sorry to hear about Mrs Gwynne. My condolences to you and your family.’
‘Thanks.’
Unbuttoning his jacket Montgomery sank into the adjacent chair and crossed his legs as if to set a relaxed tone. ‘Campaigning groups aren’t always the easiest of people. Tend to get a touch confrontational. But Mrs Gwynne was always most pleasant and professional to deal with. We didn’t see eye to eye on the merits of the Free Denzel Lewis campaign of course but it was never personal. She was a most delightful lady.’
‘You met regularly?’
‘Oh no,’ Montgomery said, as if such a thing had never
been on the cards. ‘No, it must’ve been three times in the last two years. Ah . . .’ Spotting a waiter he lifted a hand and kept it up until the waiter took notice. ‘Would you like a coffee, Mr Gwynne?’
When they had ordered, Montgomery remarked, ‘Don’t often get decent coffee in my line of work.’
Was this why the chief inspector had suggested meeting in a four-star hotel, Hugh wondered: for the quality of the coffee? Or was it out of sensitivity to Hugh’s widowed status, a place away from the clamour and interruptions of the police station? Or was it a desire to keep their meeting away from curious eyes, an extension of the secrecy he’d tried to impose on Ellis?
Montgomery said, ‘DI Steadman and his team completed their investigations, have they?’
Hugh took a moment to frame his answer. ‘They think they have.’
If this reply raised any questions in Montgomery’s mind he made no comment. ‘And the fire brigade have made their report as to the cause?’
Hugh was tired, he had slept even worse than usual, it was all he could do not to snap,
You bloody know they have, you talked to Ellis
. Instead he selected a level tone to say, ‘I believe so, yes.’
‘And it was a tragic accident?’ The conjunction of ‘tragic’ and ‘accident’ was delivered matter-of-factly, like ‘serious incident’ or ‘immediate response’.
‘That’s what they’re saying.’
Montgomery creased up his eyes in a show of sympathy.
Hugh wasn’t sure what he took most exception to, the facile compassion, the ridiculous strands of hair pasted over Montgomery’s shiny pate, or the way he pretended ignorance of the fire report.
With the air of having completed the preliminaries, Montgomery ventured, ‘So . . . what can I do for you, Mr Gwynne? I wasn’t quite clear when you called.’
Nor was I, thought Hugh, but I’m much, much clearer now. Proceed with caution.
‘I’ve come on behalf of the Lewis family,’ he said.
‘Oh? In a legal capacity?’
‘No. Just helping out.’
‘Ah.’
‘It was about the meeting you had with my wife last . . . Tuesday, was it?’
‘Yes. Tuesday morning.’
‘The Lewises wanted to know what the outcome was.’
Montgomery’s eyebrows rose slightly. ‘They know why she came to see me?’
‘Something to do with witness protection, I believe.’
‘Yes . . . Yes, that’s right. Mrs Gwynne wanted to know how the scheme worked, whether it would be available in the event of a new witness coming forward. I wasn’t able to offer much hope.’ A semblance of regret passed over Montgomery’s pink face. ‘Once there’s been a successful conviction, well . . . it takes a lot to reopen a closed case.’
‘She must have realised that, surely?’
‘She did, yes. But she wanted to know if there was any way round it.’
‘And was there? Is there?’
‘I told her it would take strong evidence.’
‘How strong?’
Montgomery had a think about that. ‘A sworn statement, a reliable witness prepared to stand up in court and swear to dates and times. Something along those lines.’
Feeling a duty to argue Lizzie’s corner, Hugh said, ‘That’s Catch-22, surely? You’re not prepared to offer protection until you get the statement, but no witness in their right mind is going to be daft enough to make a statement without a guarantee of protection.’
Montgomery conceded with a dip of his head. ‘Put like that . . .’
‘Very good of you though.’
‘How’s that?’
‘To give time to people who’re out to prove you got it wrong.’
‘If I’ve learnt anything in my thirty years in the force, Mr Gwynne, it’s never to close the door on people.’
‘Even when they’re trying to undo all your good work.’
Montgomery gave a humourless smile. ‘Even then.’ The coffee arrived and he sat forward to select a sachet of sweetener.
‘My wife certainly believed in the campaign.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you don’t think there’s anything in it?’
‘My team put Denzel Lewis away on solid evidence, Mr Gwynne.’
It would have been surprising if he’d said anything else, yet there was no hint of conceit or triumph in his manner. The glib sympathy had given way to an open accommodating manner. He seemed without malice or vanity. Yet he couldn’t have reached the rank of chief inspector without a sliver of steel in his spine, the same steel that was making him conceal his knowledge of the fire report.
‘Solid evidence isn’t necessarily infallible evidence,’ Hugh pointed out.
‘I would never suggest that it was. But it’s sufficient for the justice system. And as you’re aware, Mr Gwynne, that’s all we do at the end of the day, feed the facts into the justice system.’
‘Remind me, what
was
the evidence exactly?’ Hugh asked, not because he wanted to hear it again but because he wanted time to think.
Montgomery gave him an appraising look, as if unsure of the spirit in which this request had been made.
‘I’ve always heard it from the other side,’ Hugh explained.
‘Of course.’ Montgomery made a business of stirring his coffee while he assembled his facts. ‘Well, for some months before the killing Lewis and his gang had been intimidating Jason Jackson for no other reason than Jason was a good,
hard-working, clean-living kid who was an easy target. On the night of the murder Jason was walking home from basketball practice at the local sports centre. At approximately nine thirty he was stabbed three times and dragged into a dark alley. None of the wounds was immediately fatal, but left without medical attention he bled to death, probably within the space of an hour. When apprehended Lewis was unable to provide an alibi and his Nike jacket was found to have bloodstains on the right cuff which DNA tests showed to be a one-in-fifty-million match for that of Jason Jackson. Then of course Lewis had two previous convictions for violence, one of them for ABH with a knife.’
‘The family say the jacket was planted.’
‘That’s what they maintained, yes.’
‘But it wasn’t likely?’
‘My team didn’t think so. Nor did the jury.’
‘And wasn’t Denzel Lewis meant to have been getting his act together? To have got a job and be going straight?’
‘That’s what his defence said, yes.’
‘But there was no doubt as to his guilt?’
‘The verdict was unanimous.’
‘So you got it right, Chief Inspector?’
‘We sincerely believed so.’ Montgomery sipped his espresso and replaced the cup carefully on the saucer. ‘But if any evidence were to come to light that was to suggest otherwise then we’d be anxious to hear about it, Mr Gwynne. Most anxious.’
‘But not so anxious that you’re prepared to offer witness protection?’
‘Not in the first instance, no. But we’d be prepared to provide a halfway house, something reasonably secure.’
This was beginning to sound like a negotiation, though quite what Montgomery was hoping to achieve Hugh wasn’t sure. ‘Well . . . I’ll let the Lewises know. In case anyone comes forward.’
Montgomery gave him an odd, indecisive look. ‘Your
wife didn’t mention anything about having found a witness already?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Just an impression I got, that’s all.’
‘She said nothing about it to me.’
Montgomery eyed him thoughtfully. ‘Well, if you come across anything perhaps you’d let me know?’
I think not, Hugh decided with a bump of antagonism. If Lizzie wasn’t prepared to trust you, then I’m certainly not going to take the risk. ‘We’ve seen each other before,’ he said abruptly. ‘In the entrance to Staple Hill police station on Monday.’
Montgomery said, ‘That’s right.’
‘I’d been to see Steadman.’
‘Yes.’ His tone was neutral.
‘Did he tell you why I’d come?’
‘He made a brief mention, yes.’
‘He told you I wasn’t happy with the investigation into my wife’s death? That I’d made an official complaint?’
Montgomery gave a short nod.
‘Did he tell you why I wasn’t satisfied?’
A hesitation, which was more noticeable for being Montgomery’s first. ‘Not in any detail, no.’
‘No?’ Hugh echoed in open surprise. ‘Though presumably you told him you knew my wife?’
‘It wasn’t my patch, Mr Gwynne. It wasn’t my case. And DI Steadman was having a busy day.’
‘He told you the fire investigators were sticking to their original findings?’
‘He mentioned something like that, yes.’
‘Did he tell you he was intending to close the case?’
‘Not in so many words, no.’
‘Well, he has. But for what it’s worth I believe my wife was killed unlawfully and I intend to get the case reopened.’
Montgomery absorbed this solemnly. ‘May I ask on what basis?’
‘There was an intruder.’
‘I see.’
‘An arsonist. Not necessarily someone who did it often, but someone who’d done his homework very carefully.’
‘You have evidence for this, Mr Gwynne?’
‘I do indeed.’
‘Is DI Steadman aware of it?’
‘Some of it.’
‘Well, if you have any more evidence, Mr Gwynne, then I urge you to take it to DI Steadman without delay. Arson is an extremely serious offence.’
Rankled by Montgomery’s lack of curiosity, Hugh felt driven to say, ‘And the timing wasn’t random either, the arsonist was intent on harming my wife.’
Montgomery pulled his head back in surprise. ‘You’ve got evidence for this?’
‘Yes.’
‘What kind of evidence?’
‘I’m building up a dossier.’
Montgomery gazed at him uncertainly. ‘In that case I can only repeat, you must take it to DI Steadman so he can start making the appropriate enquiries.’
Hugh said pointedly, ‘Not something that would be of interest to you then, Chief Inspector?’
‘I wish I could be of help, Mr Gwynne, but as I explained—’
‘Not your patch.’
‘That’s right.’
Hugh’s coffee wasn’t that good. He didn’t wait to finish it.
He got back to an empty house. Lou and Charlie were in town shopping. The answering machine was blinking frenetically as if to admonish him for the numerous calls he’d failed to return the previous day. There had been a message from Lizzie’s mother, anxious to know the date of the funeral but also
longing to be asked to come and stay, and another from Lizzie’s twice-divorced sister Becky, whose boyfriends got more foreign and youthful by the year, and whose bossy managerial nature had extended to making lengthy suggestions for the funeral service. A cousin and several friends had offered to help in any way they could. They all deserved a proper response, but he didn’t feel capable of speaking to them now. Later perhaps, with a warming drink inside him.
He picked up the mail, diverted from Meadowcroft, and shuffled through it as he made his way to the dining room. The ringing of his mobile had him reaching into his pocket with such haste that he dropped half the letters over the floor. But it wasn’t Slater, it was Tom Deacon again: the fourth time that morning. Tom had left no message the first three times so, deciding it couldn’t be urgent, Hugh let the phone ring till the voicemail kicked in.
Collecting the mail from the floor he spotted an envelope marked HM Coroner and ripped it open, hoping for the full post-mortem report, getting instead a notification that the inquest would be formally opened on Monday and immediately adjourned until further notice.
He had arranged his papers over the far end of the polished oak table, but now he slid the stacks of funeral plans, letters of condolence, insurance and legal documents to one side and, sitting down, took a pad and pen and started to make a list. He headed it
Facts
, though a more accurate title might have been
Evidence of Crime
. He wrote down everything he had gone through with Slater, from the impossibility of a naked flame finding its way onto the sofa to the pair of shoes sitting under the button-back chair. Leaving enough space at the bottom for the scientific findings, he briefly considered calling Slater to ask how they were coming along. But Slater had said he would phone the moment he had anything to report and he wasn’t the sort of man to delay.
On the next sheet of paper he started a second list which he
headed
Facts Open to Interpretation
. By its very nature this list took more thought. He began with
No signs of breaking and entering – L let him into house?
Realising he needed to break this down further he started again, making
No signs of breaking and entering
a subheading and listing the possible explanations below. At first he managed only two.
L invited him in
and
He tricked/barged his way in
. After a while he added a third:
He sneaked in through an open window/door
. Once again he realised he was setting it out all wrong and began a third draft with more space between the propositions to allow for elaboration. Under
L invited him in
, he listed:
Friend of L’s, Friend of family, Neighbour, Trusted acquaintance
. He had an image of Lizzie opening the door to the visitor and welcoming him inside. After that, his imagination stalled. He could think of no reason why anyone they knew should want to harm her. Nevertheless he added a column down the right-hand side headed
Motive?
and, leaving it blank, moved on.
Trying to think of people who might have tricked or barged their way into the house was even less satisfactory because the possibilities were almost limitless. In the end he split the options into two: a nutter who’d chosen the house at random, and someone who’d targeted it specifically; a distinction which, though marginally tidier, was hardly more productive.
Coming to the last proposition, an intruder who might have sneaked his way into the house, he deleted ‘door’ as a possible means of entry on the grounds that Lizzie wouldn’t have left either front or back door unlocked on a dark autumn evening. The kitchen window was a brief candidate – Lizzie sometimes opened it for a few minutes when she was cooking something hot and steamy – but alone for the evening she wouldn’t have cooked anything elaborate, an omelette or stir-fry at the most, neither of them high on the hot-and-steamy scale. Which left an upstairs window. This, however, would have required a ladder or the talents of a cat burglar who, having gained access,
decided not to steal anything and to commit arson instead. Both these alternatives seemed so unpromising that he left the space blank and moved on.
Facts Open to Interpretation
. Subheading the second . . .
There was one obvious candidate, but something made him hesitate to put it down quite yet, as if there was another point that should come first. To jog his mind he traced Lizzie and the visitor from the door to the living room but, when the idea still refused to form, he went for the obvious contender after all.
Subheading the second:
The two wine glasses
.
Proposition the first:
L drank a glass of white wine then a glass of red
. He had argued this idea fiercely in reaction to Steadman’s pathetically predictable assumption that two glasses was evidence of a secret lover. Yet in the cold light of reason, free of the need to defend Lizzie, he considered the chances of her drinking two different wines when on her own for the evening as fairly unlikely.
Proposition the second, therefore, that Lizzie, of her own free will, in the name of hospitality, poured a glass of wine for her visitor.
He saw her in the kitchen, uncorking the wine, taking the glasses from the cupboard, carrying them through to the living room.
To whom? Friend or foe? Both, obviously. Didn’t you realise, Lizzie? With your intuitive nature, didn’t you see?
Ah, easy to say that now
, she told him crossly.
You have the benefit of hindsight. But I sensed nothing in the way of danger. Why should I?
You’re right, he thought, why should you?
Conclusion: The visitor was a friend
. Immediately spotting his error he crossed out ‘Conclusion’ and made it into a proposition. Underneath, he added a second:
Acquaintance on business
. This was quickly followed by a third:
Friend / acquaintance of another member of the family
. By which he supposed he
meant a friend of Charlie’s, since Lou had been abroad and he himself in London. He pictured a mentally unbalanced young man, high on drugs, shaven-headed and saturnine in the Elk mould, who had come to beg money off Charlie. With Charlie absent, he had demanded money from Lizzie instead, and gone mad when she refused, attacking her—
Except that, according to the post-mortem findings relayed to him over the phone by the coroner’s office, she had died of smoke inhalation, no more no less. No marks, no bruises, no signs of a struggle. And Lizzie would hardly have offered a glass of wine to a kid high on drugs, someone she barely knew if she knew him at all. Whenever Charlie brought a friend round, the most they ever got offered was beer.
Nevertheless he wrote
Friend of Charlie’s?
before moving on.
Subheading the third:
Wine glasses placed on draining board, not in dishwasher
.
There was only one possible answer to this, and he wrote fiercely, digging the point of the pen into the paper:
Glasses placed on draining board by intruder
. Having been washed to eradicate DNA and fingerprints, naturally. Organised intruder, then? Or panic-struck intruder trying to cover his tracks? Clever anyway. Or did he mean cunning? Or maybe neither, maybe he was just an assiduous student of crime dramas.
Stupid or clever, I’ll get you yet, he thought with a shudder of savage excitement. I’ll get you if it’s the last thing I do.
Subheading the fourth:
L naked, clothes folded strangely
.
His mind jumped to the rumpled bed. Not ready to go there, he tried to reject the vision, but his imagination had other ideas, and, giving in, he crossed out what he’d just written and substituted under subheading the fourth:
Bed rumpled
. The options were simple. The firemen had simply rumpled the bed while searching for a second victim. Lizzie had been raped. Raped while unconscious. Raped while conscious. Or entertaining a lover.
He considered the last possibility with as much detachment as he could muster. Spur-of-the-moment lover. Hardly. Not Lizzie’s style. Long-term lover. Well, if so, the arrangements had been unbelievably discreet. He remembered Lizzie remarking about an adulterous couple, ‘How did they ever find the
time
? That’s what I can never work out.’ Excellent point, Lizzie. When would you ever have found the time? Quite apart from the inclination, of course, which unless their life together had been a complete fantasy would have been unthinkable. They had trusted each other. They had never had secrets.
He corrected himself with a pang of bewilderment: until now. He clambered to his feet and went to the window to stare out at the leaf-strewn grass. Why didn’t you tell me about the witness, Lizzie? Surely you trusted me to keep a secret like that? Or had you given your word to tell absolutely no one, not even me? Or – he had the sense of grasping at straws – was there some conflict of interest involved, something that touched on my work?
Finally he took refuge in what he had chosen to believe last night – that she hadn’t wanted to burden him, that she’d known he would worry and, once worried, would try to talk her out of getting more deeply involved. She had been determined to pursue this first chance of fresh evidence, and determination was no sin, even if it resulted in a little subterfuge. The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that this must be the answer, and he returned to the table with a sense that his past had been restored.
Conclusion: No lover.
Sorry for even considering it, he told her, but you know I must unturn every stone. It was one of those phrases that had become part of the family’s vocabulary. Whatever was mislaid – passport, book, iPod, keys – the owner was required to unturn every stone in search of it. Gone now, he thought, the sharing of private language, cryptic jokes, our shorthand, our past.
With new anger he scrawled
Rape
.
The word stared up at him, charged with a thousand brutal images. He added in his neatest handwriting:
Conscious? Drugged? Restrained by . . . ?
He gazed at this for several moments before taking a fresh sheet of paper and starting another list headed
Action Points
, under which he wrote:
1) DNA
2) Post-mortem
The house phone began to ring. He waited for the answering machine to pick up before returning to the subject of the rumpled bed and finding he had nothing more to add.
L naked, clothes folded strangely
was now subheading the fifth.
Here at least was one firm conclusion: that at some point the intruder had been in the bedroom. But if not to rape, then why? And what possible motive could he have had for folding her clothes? From the knot of competing ideas that had been clogging his mind for days a half-glimpsed truth finally emerged into the light; he realised it was the clothes, not the rumpled bed or Lizzie’s nakedness, that was the key. Cautiously at first, then with more confidence, he wrote:
He wanted to make it look as though she’d gone to bed of her own accord
. He examined the statement for flaws. It had to be right; the only other possibility was sheer insanity, a nutter with a fetish for tidiness. But there was too much organisation, too much guile in the intruder’s actions for that. Failing to put Lizzie in her customary nightdress had merely been a bad guess on his part.
Conclusion: Lizzie did not go to bed of her own accord. Ergo, either she was forced to get into bed or she was placed in bed while unconscious or otherwise immobilised. But if you forced someone to get into bed, how did you make them stay there while you went downstairs, started a fire and left the house? You didn’t, was the answer. You couldn’t. What victim, realising the house was on fire, wouldn’t try to get out even at
the risk of being attacked? He moved on to the last alternative with a mixture of relief and dread, relief that she might already have been unconscious, dread that she might have been ‘otherwise immobilised’, by which he supposed he meant tied up. But the tied-up scenario fell at the same hurdle as the force argument. If she had been tied up only to be released before the fire started, what would have prevented her from trying to escape? Particularly when the smoke alarm was screaming its head off.
She must have been unconscious. But not, according to the post-mortem, drugged with anything obvious. A date-rape drug then. What was it called? Rohyp-something. Or was it GHB?
Something that left no trace, anyway. Something that could be slipped into a glass of wine.
Sorry it took me so long, he told her. Sorry. But I’m there now.
The urge to reach for the phone and start making calls was very strong, but he resisted it and went back to the window to gaze out at the spiralling leaves while he waited for his thoughts to settle. Even when he was certain what he needed to do, he delayed a little longer, making some coffee, reading his notes again, going over everything a second time, making a list.
Finally he began. His first call was to Isabel to ask if she could find the name and availability of a good forensic pathologist, his next to the coroner’s office to notify them that he wanted to apply for an independent post-mortem and to fix a time to go in and sign the necessary paperwork. Then he called Slater to ask if there was a way of salvaging damaged papers and documents, but Slater wasn’t answering and he had to settle for leaving a message. Lastly he called Ray and asked him to stand by on the legal side.
‘Glad to help,’ Ray cried immediately. ‘God,
any
time. You don’t even have to ask! But can you give me an idea of what you might want me to do?’
‘Probably to lodge information with the police and the coroner.’