Read Unsafe Convictions Online
Authors: Alison Taylor
The snow which seethed across the Pennines from the North Sea had left only a dusting of powdery white in the Midlands, and when Colin Bowden looked from the bedroom window of his parents’ Warwick home he fancied the town was coated with sugar icing. Shadows were sharp on the ground, and between the gables and roofs in his line of sight, the cloudless sky promised a beautiful day. He could not remember when sunshine last broke through the sombre cloud over Haughton’s moors and, when Vicky had telephoned last night from Marbella, he had tried to explain why he needed to escape.
Because
he was not where she expected him to be, she was irritable and annoyed, called him a fool for letting himself be caught up in Dugdale’s mischief, and snappily said he should resign immediately from the force and sue for constructive dismissal. While she nagged into a telephone hundreds of miles away, he imagined the rest of his life at the mercy of that voice, and of the personality driving it like the engine of a car, and for the first time noticed the clanking and knocking. When it occurred to him that he could not simply take her to Craig Newton’s garage for retuning, he laughed.
‘
Are you actually
laughing
, Colin?’ she demanded. ‘Well, really! That’s the last thing you should be doing!’
‘
You laugh, or you cry,’ he replied, incapable of communicating with her.
‘
You’re absolutely
pathetic
! They’re riding roughshod right over you, and you’re letting them.’
‘
I can’t do anything until the investigation’s over.’
‘
I’ve
told
you what to do.’
‘
Being in the police isn’t the same as other jobs.’
‘
We’ll see about that,’ she threatened. ‘I’m back on Wednesday, so you can tell that McKenna to expect me.’
‘
That won’t work, Vicky.’
She
nagged on, but he could only concentrate on the cold lurch in his innards triggered by the prospect of her return. Cutting across her, he said: ‘I might not be in Haughton when you get back. Unless I’m told otherwise, I’m staying here until McKenna’s finished.’ He disconnected then, feeling as if he had sawn through a shackle, and when she called again almost immediately, his mother told her he had just gone out with his father.
Like Haughton’s other children, apart from those marooned in isolated outlying farms, the Dugdale children went to school on Friday morning, baptising their new wellingtons in the snow. When she returned from the school run, Susan took off her own old wellingtons by the kitchen door, and padded through to the living-room in her socks.
‘
I saw Craig at the school,’ she said, warming her legs against the radiator. ‘Fred’s coming out of hospital today. He’s staying with them, of course, for the time being. Could we call round later to see him?’
‘
I don’t know.’ Dugdale frowned. ‘I’ll have to ask McKenna, but don’t be surprised if he says not.’
Perversely,
Susan kept her buttocks pressed against the radiator, even though the heat was smarting through jeans and longjohns. ‘Why must all normal human contact be suspended?’ she asked. ‘Especially with people we’ve known for ever.’
‘
You know why.’
‘
I could go, surely?’ she insisted. ‘Without getting permission first.’
‘
Not really.’ His voice was quite dull, she thought. ‘Linda might say something to you, then you’d repeat it to me.’
‘
What could Linda say that I haven’t already heard?’
‘
You know what I mean.’
‘
I don’t, as a matter of fact.’ Susan moved at last, and sat at the table opposite her husband.
He
sighed. ‘McKenna still doesn’t know if Linda and I fitted up Smith.’ He rose, as if unable to be close to her. ‘D’you want a coffee?’ he asked, making for the kitchen.
While
he filled the kettle, and clinked spoons and mugs, she asked herself when, and how, the tiny rift between them had opened into this terrifying chasm. And all of them were teetering on the edge, she thought, including the children.
Tongue
between his teeth to keep his hands steady, he returned with two brimming mugs and a tin of shortbread stuck under his arm. Despite her misery, Susan smiled. ‘How does sticking your tongue between your teeth stop you spilling things?’
‘
I’ve no idea,’ he said, setting the mugs on small coasters, ‘but it works. Try it yourself.’
‘
Perhaps I will.’ His invitation, and her response, seemed to linger between them, perhaps the first small signs of rescue. ‘Tell me,’ she went on, opening the tin and selecting a crumbly wedge, ‘d’you still think Smith killed Trisha?’
‘
Much as I’d like to,’ he replied, almost brushing her fingers with his as he chose his own biscuit, ‘I can’t ignore the facts, and Father Barclay’s alibi is one almighty fact.’
‘
OK.’ Susan bit into the shortbread, catching the crumbs in her hand. ‘So, if he didn’t, who did?’
‘
I wish I knew!’
‘
Well, if the lonely hearts guys are non-starters, who else
could
it be?’ As he shook his head, she prodded his arm. ‘Think! Who might want her dead?’
He
let his arm stay in reach of her fingers, and said: ‘I keep coming back to Smith and Beryl. Trisha hadn’t offended anyone else. She hadn’t actually offended
them
, but, twisted buggers that they are, they don’t see it like that. From Smith’s point of view, the whole
world
offends him, and Beryl’s too stupid, or too besotted, or both, not to go along with every crazy idea that comes into his ugly head.’
‘
You hate the pair of them, and it’s blinding you. You
want
it to be them, and you can’t get past it.’ Instead of moving her hand, she put the biscuit on the table, making a spatter of crumbs over which she would usually rush for the mini vacuum cleaner, then picked up the coffee. ‘But suppose she knew something about someone else which was so awful they killed her to keep it a secret.’
‘
But what? And who?’ He swallowed the last of his own biscuit. ‘There wasn’t even a whisper about anything like that.’
‘
There wouldn’t be if it was such a secret. In any case, Trisha was awfully good at keeping her mouth shut. She kept quiet about that bastard Smith for long enough.’ She put down her coffee, and reached into the biscuit tin just as he did the same. This time, their fingers touched, and scrabbled together among the wedges and squares and rounds. ‘
What
could someone be desperate to hide?
Who
might have horrible skeletons in the cupboard? You should do a “what could ruin who” exercise.’
‘ “Whom”
,’ he corrected her. ‘Not “who”.’
‘
Are you sure?’ She grinned. ‘Who cares?’ She extracted a round biscuit dusted with caster sugar. ‘Get back to the point. Who did Trisha know, even slightly, who could be harbouring dangerous secrets? Who was in her circle of acquaintances, however remotely?’
He
stared at her, a curious light in his eyes. ‘Julie.’
Her
hand jerked away from his arm as if stung, and she flushed.
‘
You started this, Sue. If you don’t want to carry on because Julie’s cropped up, then say so. Don’t insult her again.’ As she stared back at him, her face mask-like, he added: ‘And quite frankly, I shouldn’t think Julie’s got any secrets left, never mind ones like that.’
True to her threat, Wendy complained about the two nurses who goaded and humiliated her Thursday tea-time, and was decidedly gratified to receive a visit soon after breakfast from the nursing manager, a stout, anxious, grey-haired woman who reminded her quite forcibly, and even poignantly, of Frances. But Frances was miles away, and obviously intended to stay there, whereas this other woman was here, so Wendy let loose the pent-up tide of stress, anger, loneliness, misery, fear, and outraged self-centredness which had carried her to this nadir in her life.
Patiently,
the other woman let the maelstrom of words eddy around her, more than sympathising with her nurses’ uncharacteristic loss of compassion.
‘
Will they be suspended and disciplined?’ Wendy demanded. ‘They certainly ought to be. I’m in this mess for doing nothing. If I spoke to a civilian like they spoke to me, I’d be dismissed.’
‘
Naturally, I’ll deal with it,’ the other woman consoled. ‘But if it comes to a disciplinary hearing, you’d have to give evidence.’ She frowned. ‘I’m not at all sure you’ll be up to anything like that for quite some time.’
‘
What d’you mean?’
‘
Well, you saw the psychiatrist yesterday, and he
is
rather worried. He’s
bound
to be, in the circumstances. You
did
deliberately overdose, and even if you didn’t
quite
mean to kill yourself, you knew you’d make yourself very ill indeed.’ She offered the bland, sympathetic smile she often used to sugar the nastiest pill. ‘Mightn’t it be best for
me
to deal with them? You know, give them the rounds of my office, and make them apologise? There’s enough hanging over your head without you having to fret about somebody else’s disciplinary hearing, and it would get very nasty once the union got involved.’ She rose, puffing with effort, and smoothed down the navy-blue suit which failed to fit her in any meaningful sense. ‘Anyway, dear, you know how it feels to be on the sharp end of the management stick, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to put anyone else through that kind of misery, would you?’
Fascinated by the blue light reflecting off the snow and colour-washing the whole room, Janet stared through the window instead of attending to the thankless routine of the papers on her desk. She saw the canary-yellow car with smoked glass windows cruise slowly past towards the Bull, then, a few minutes later, return, even more slowly. She could not see the driver, nor hear the engine die nor the door click shut, and snow muffled the driver’s footsteps on the pavement, so when the doorbell pealed, she flinched. The security monitor showed the bug-eyed face of a stranger.
There
was an exchange of words, Rene’s rather gruff tones punctuated by a more high-pitched voice with the alien inflections of Estuary English. McKenna’s head jerked up, a little spot of colour staining each pale cheek. He removed his glasses, dropped them on the desk, and went to the door, to find Gaynor in the narrow hall, dressed for the weather in leather jeans, suede walking boots, and a beautiful khaki jacket lined with pale fur. Her skin was like marble.
‘
I need to talk to you,’ she said. Gone was the arrogant challenge of Wednesday night, and she looked almost desperate.
Without
a word, he ushered her to the back room, followed her in, and shut the door. ‘There is nothing I want to say to you. Now, or at any other time.’
‘
Please! Hear me out.’ The plea was echoed in her eyes. ‘It’s about Smith.’
‘
Do you have something new to tell me?’ When, mutely, she shook her head, he added: ‘Are you on a fishing expedition? I see your paper failed to report on his arrest last night.’
Momentarily,
the old challenge flickered in her look, but she merely said: ‘I didn’t know about it, and I don’t want to know. Whatever he’s done, it’ll be bad. He’s evil, and I’m afraid of him.’
‘
Arguably, you woke the monster.’
She
shivered. ‘It’s been awake since he first drew breath. He could barely keep his fists to himself yesterday.’
‘
Really? He sees things rather differently. He claims you terrified him so much he panicked, as a result of which he later found himself in a very disturbing situation.’
‘
I beg your pardon?’
‘
Your behaviour overwhelmed him with unbearable memories,’ McKenna told her. ‘Consequently, beside himself, he ran away from you, and into even deeper trouble. The frying pan into the fire, as it were.’
‘
He’s blaming
me
?’ She was astounded and appalled.
McKenna
nodded, her genuine distress unwholesomely pleasurable.
‘
Where is he?’ she demanded.
‘
I’ve no idea.’
‘
Of course you have! You
must
know!’
‘
I wouldn’t tell you, in any case.’
‘
He’ll come after me.’ She stared at him, eyes pleading. ‘I’m afraid!’
‘
Are you? Then, perhaps you should go back where you belong.’ He paused assessingly. ‘However, as you must remain available, you can’t leave the country.’
‘
Available for what?’
‘
For whatever criminal charges may be put to you.’
‘
I’ve
been
charged. With wasting police time.’
‘
Only where Bunty Smith is concerned. The issue of contempt in your articles is still being examined and, of course, there’s the matter of your admitted access to confidential court records.’
‘
I don’t believe this!’ Her fear was being challenged by anger. ‘You can’t abuse your power to pay me back over a personal matter.’
‘
It’s only personal insofar as the documents you saw, and discussed with Smith, if not others, related to my divorce. Inevitably, your admission begs the question of what other confidential documents and records you’ve seen, and doubtless copied. Make no mistake, Ms Holbrook, you went too far, and you’ll answer for it, as will the contacts you must have in various places.’
‘
You can’t do this! You
can’t
!’
‘
We’ll see, shall we?’ He opened the door, and gestured for her to leave. ‘Your editor can expect a search warrant to be executed on his offices in the near future, and your own premises will suffer the same fate, as will your electronic facilities.’ As she brushed past, he added: ‘Please make sure you remain in Haughton until you’ve given a statement about the incident you witnessed yesterday. My officers will contact you later.’
Stiff-legged,
Gaynor walked to the front door, desperately turning over ways and means of protecting her priceless data. Sure he knew what was racing through her mind, she turned, the old antagonism lighting her eyes. ‘You might have won this little battle, Superintendent, but the war’s still on, and when the local flatfoots find Beryl burned to a crisp in the debris of her posh house, or otherwise very dead, don’t forget I warned you, because I shan’t.’