A Death Left Hanging (10 page)

She searched her mind for some distraction – anything to steer the conversation away from the fact that she'd tried to trick the old woman and been thoroughly caught out.

‘How . . . how long was it between the second car going away and the police arriving?' she asked.

‘I don't think it can have been more than ten minutes. I might be wrong, of course. Thirty years is a long time to remember something like that, especially . . .' and she gave Paniatowski a look that showed that she had not forgotten and still not quite forgiven, ‘. . . especially for a batty old lady like I am.'

‘I'm sure you're right,' Paniatowski said.

‘But don't take my word for it,' the old lady continued relentlessly. ‘If you want to be certain, you can always read the statement I made to the police at the time, now can't you?'

‘Yes, I suppose I can,' Paniatowski agreed.

At least, I can read it if it's still there, she thought. I can read it if, in the interest of making the case against Margaret Dodds tidier and more straightforward, it hasn't been removed and destroyed by Chief Inspector Sharpe.

B
ob Rutter placed the documents which Jane Hartley's private detectives had prepared for her at the left-hand edge of his desk, and the documentation from Chief Inspector Sharpe's investigation to his right.

The difference between the two sets of papers was striking. The barrister's detectives had produced a small series of concise reports, each one typed (with double spacing) on foolscap paper, and presented in a crisp new folder. There were considerably more documents from the original investigation. They were yellow with age, and thick with dust. Some were typed, some handwritten, some typed with handwritten annotations in the margins. They were stacked in a tower that both dwarfed the newer collection of documents and – given the tower's tendency to sway – threatened to bury them.

Rutter picked up one of the newer files and began to look for something he could cross-reference with similar material from the earlier investigation. It took him no time at all to decide that Harold Brunskill would provide him with as good a starting point as any.

Brunskill himself was long since dead, Jane Hartley's detectives reported. However, they had spoken to the deceased man's daughter. She quite clearly recalled that shortly after Margaret Dodds' arrest her father had gone to the police station, to volunteer the information that he had seen the very same woman some distance away from Hebden Brow at the time the murder was supposed to have taken place.

The daughter had never learned what happened during her father's interview with the police. She had tried to ask him about it on a number of occasions, she told the private detectives, but he had immediately become guarded and insisted that she let the matter drop.

Whatever the result of the interview, Rutter thought, it was significant that Brunskill – whose statement could have raised reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury – had never been called to give evidence.

So what
had
occurred during the interview, he asked himself as he reached across to the perilous tower of the earlier investigation. And would any evidence of it still be in existence?

He was moderately surprised to discover that there was indeed a record of it – to find, in fact, a handwritten report on the subject near the top of the stack.

The signature at the bottom of the page was DCI Sharpe.

It was not a perfect report by any means, Rutter thought. But given that it had been written back in the Old Stone Age of policing, it was not half bad. And it certainly suggested that, whatever Jane Hartley's detectives might have thought, this witness at least had seen nothing that might help her case.

Rutter put the file to one side and began a fresh search, totally ignorant of the knowledge that – some two hundred miles away from Whitebridge – thoughts of Harold Brunskill were simultaneously engaging another mind.

Lord Sharpe stood on the Embankment, his back to the Houses of Parliament. His eyes were fixed on the grey swirling water of the Thames, but in his head he was picturing Brunskill as he had looked on that late afternoon in 1934.

Brunskill had been a scruffy individual – battered boots, darned shirt and a greasy flat cap. He had not even bothered to shave before presenting himself at the police station. And there in the interview room – standing, because he had not been invited to sit down – he seemed so frightened that Sharpe thought there was a distinct possibility he would piss himself.

The man had had no self-respect, the former chief inspector thought – no self-respect at all.

‘So you're here to put Margaret Dodds in the clear for this murder, are you, Harry?' Sharpe asked, deliberately injecting a nasty, threatening edge into his voice.

Brunskill nervously fingered the cap he was holding with both his hands. ‘I wouldn't put it quite like that, Mr Sharpe.'

‘Then how would you put it?'

‘I . . . I just thought I'd better tell you what I saw.'

‘Now that was really kind and thoughtful of you, Harry. And I want you to know that, caught up in the middle of a murder inquiry as I am, I have all the time in the world to listen to toe-rags like you.'

‘Do . . . do you want me to say what it was I saw?'

Sharpe sighed theatrically. ‘Yes, I suppose you might as well, now that you're here.'

‘I saw the woman. She was just comin' out of the phone box in front of St Mary's. I looked up at the church clock. It was twenty-past eight.'

‘How convenient that you chose to check on the time just at that moment,' Sharpe said, disbelievingly.

‘It's the truth, Mr Sharpe!'

‘Now when you say you saw
the
woman coming out of the phone box, I assume that what you mean is that you saw
a
woman.'

‘Beg pardon, Mr Sharpe?'

‘
A
woman, not
the
woman.'

‘No, it was her all right, Mr Sharpe. Mrs Dodds. She was wearing a black an' white check frock, just like the one she was wearin' in the picture of her bein' arrested in the newspaper.'

Sharpe took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, but despite the look of expectation in Brunskill's eyes, he did not offer him one.

‘How far away from her were you, Harry?' he asked, slipping one of the cigarettes between his lips and lighting it up.

‘How far? Couldn't have been more than a few yards.'

‘Were you wearing your glasses?'

‘I don't have no glasses, Mr Sharpe.'

‘So you got only a blurred picture of her at best.'

‘The reason I don't have no glasses is because I don't
need
'em. I've never been one to wear out my eyes by readin'.'

Sharpe took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette. ‘There's one thing I don't understand, Harry.'

‘An' what's that, Mr Sharpe?'

‘Before today, you've never voluntarily entered a police station in your life. Why the sudden change of heart?'

‘I . . . I think it was the birth of my grandson that did it.'

‘Is that supposed to make sense to me?'

‘Probably not. You see, Mr Sharpe, he's a beautiful little kid. He reminds me of his mother at his age.'

‘Very touching, I'm sure,' Sharpe said with a sneer.

‘I never saw much of our Bessie when she was growin' up, like, because I was always doin' time. An' if I go down again with my record, it'll be for a ten stretch.'

‘At least a ten stretch,' Sharpe agreed. ‘At the
very
least. Get to the point, Harry.'

‘I don't want to lose out on my grandson like I lost out on my daughter. I want to take him fishin'. I want to see his eyes light up when I give him his Christmas presents.'

‘Do you know, I'm almost in tears.'

‘So I've got to stay out of trouble, haven't I, Mr Sharpe? More than that – I've got to be a model citizen. That's why I'm here. Because I'm doin' my duty – just like a model citizen should.'

Sharpe nodded. ‘A model citizen,' he repeated. ‘So you've not committed any new crimes recently?'

‘No. I swear I haven't. Not since little Wilf was born.'

‘You haven't done any shoplifting?'

‘No.'

‘You haven't received any stolen property?'

‘No.'

‘How about burglaries?'

‘I told you, I––'

‘Do you know that row of big houses not far from St Mary's Church?' Sharpe interrupted.

‘I've seen'em,' Brunskill said defensively.

‘Must be lots of rich pickings for a burglar in places like them.'

‘Maybe there is, but––'

‘On the night of the murder, one of those houses was broken into. We don't have any suspects for the crime at the moment, but now we know that you were in the vicinity at the time, well . . .'

Sharpe let his words trail off into nothingness. Brunskill, he noted, was sweating.

‘I haven't heard of no burglaries in any of them houses, Mr Sharpe,' Brunskill said.

The DCI nodded. ‘That's because none has been officially reported – yet! But one
could be
reported, Harry, if you get my meaning. You
do
get my meaning, don't you?'

Brunskill bowed his head. ‘Yes, I get your meanin', Mr Sharpe,' he mumbled.

‘So let me ask you again,' Sharpe said. ‘Where exactly were you at eight twenty on the night of the murder of Frederick Dodds?'

‘I . . . I was at home.'

‘You're sure of that?'

‘I didn't leave the house all day.'

Sharpe smiled. ‘That's just what I thought you'd say, Harry,' he told the other man.

The deep groan of a tug's hooter wrenched Sharpe out of his recollections and deposited him squarely in the middle of his present cold reality.

It was thirty years since that interview with scruffy little Harry Brunskill, he reminded himself – long enough for the past to fade almost to invisibility, for words spoken and actions taken to be all but forgotten. In truth, he had thought that was just what
had
happened. And then he'd got that warning phone call from Chief Constable Henry Marlowe, and had felt all the certainties he'd built his life and career on begin to slip away.

The woman had been
guilty
, despite the fact that some of the evidence might have seemed to suggest otherwise. Any policeman who had been assigned to the case would have come to that conclusion. And even if there was a slight, remote – almost infinitesimal – chance that she hadn't killed her husband, did any of that really matter now?

If she'd lived, she would probably have led an unremarkable life, whereas her death had helped him to be elected to parliament, from where he had been able to help hundreds – perhaps thousands – of women just like Margaret Dodds. Yes, it had been a more than fair exchange. If she had, in fact, been sacrificed, then it had all been for a very good cause.

Big Ben struck the hour, and Sharpe looked up at the clock – just as Harry Brunskill must have looked up at St Mary's clock all those years ago.

Even now, there
shouldn't
be a problem. The officer in charge of the case should, by rights, recognize the fact that Sharpe had once been in the Force himself – and thus do him the professional courtesy of granting his investigation a clean bill of health; and no doubt most officers would. But Charlie Woodend – so Sharpe had learned from his contacts in Scotland Yard – was unquestionably
not
most officers.

The mess needed to be cleared up, Eric Sharpe told himself. And it needed to be cleaned up in the
right
way. Because if it were not, it could bring him down. And whatever his personal wishes in the matter – however much he might wish to spare his colleagues – the situation was such that he would not go down alone.