Killing Me Softly (26 page)

‘You can?'

She trotted away and came back with a sketchpad and pencils, and with a few sure, swift strokes produced what she swore was a passable likeness of the intruder. It was a competent sketch, showing a lean face with good bones, only marred by the villainous expression she'd chosen to depict. It was a face Carmody had seen a thousand times in one form or another: looking down from police station walls, identikit pictures, mug-shots of criminals ...

‘Will it help?' the resourceful old lady was asking eagerly.

‘Yes, ma'am, I'm sure it will.' She had signed it with a professional flourish. Rula Brinsley. R-U-L-A, not Ruler, then. The other might be more appropriate.

Carol Busfield came in with the tea, and some digestive biscuits she'd found to go with it. ‘Tell the sergeant what you told me, Miss Brinsley. What you thought.'

‘Do you think I may be right, then?' Rula asked her, looking gratified. ‘Oh, very well.' She focused her sharp glance on the sergeant. ‘Sergeant Carmody, I told your nice policewoman here that I don't believe he was a chance burglar. I think he was looking for something. He didn't steal anything, just rooted around. Well, look at the state of this room.'

Carmody didn't say that, of course, it was the first thing that had occurred to him. The significance of the deaths of both Wishart and his mother hadn't escaped anybody. It was one of the reasons why he'd come here himself, instead of sending a DC. He surveyed the room again. The job bore all the hallmarks of a determined search. But there were still one or two pieces of old silver dotted around, and several decent pictures hanging on the walls, all of which had been there for the taking. The television and VCR were untouched.

‘As far as I can tell, I don't think he took anything at all,' Rula said, ‘unless he had it in his pocket.'

‘Let's have a shufti, then. If he was looking for something specific, let's see what we can find that he didn't,' Carmody said.

The WPC coughed. ‘He'd been rooting through the sugar and the flour in the kitchen, Sarge,' she said meaningfully, ‘so he may've found it.'

‘Ah.'

But what the burglar had been after was, in fact, still there. In the spare room which Rula was occupying at the moment, in a cupboard, the key of which was in the handbag Sybil kept with her in her bedroom. When opened, the cupboard revealed a pair of scales and a plastic bag of some white substance, weighing perhaps half a kilo. Plus bicarb and sugar to cut it with and make it go further, clingfilm to parcel it into wraps. Several sheets of LSD, thousands of Ecstasy tablets. Enough to transport half the population of Lavenstock into Never-Never Land. Not such an amateur as all that, after all, Timothy Wishart.

‘Pretty!' Rula exclaimed, stretching out a hand to the sheets printed with a strawberry motif.

‘Don't touch!' warned Carmody, pulling her back, startling her so much that she drew back as though his hand was red hot. ‘In case your skin absorbs it.' Miss Brinsley thinking she could fly like a bird was a complication he needed like a turkey needs Christmas.

‘So that's what Sybil was referring to,' said Rula later, recovering from the shock of the discovery with another cup of tea, ‘when she said she was helping Tim out. This is the room he always used whenever he stayed here. Poor, silly Sibyl. I won't believe she was a party to what he was doing, although ... I'm sorry to have to say it, but she never did have much sense, especially where Tim was concerned.'

The news of the haul came in just before they began to interview Morgan. There was no shortage of chargeable offences to nail him with. At least three separate counts, possibly four. Abigail and Skellen had decided how to share the interviewing out between them. Morgan looked as though a little of him went a very long way.

Morgan. Long hair, waving to his shoulders. High cheekbones, good teeth, insolent smile. A handsome devil, and devil might be the least of it. Abigail took a very good look. She knew now the link between him and Wishart. The last time she'd seen that face was in a photo, as one of the crew of the
Nancy Norton,
laughing and holding up a glass of champagne.

He'd looked more at home there, on the yacht, with Wishart and Pardoe, than in the company of the motley crowd who inhabited the house at the Bagots. But living there would only be a matter of convenience; he'd only stay until he'd made enough money out of those who trusted him as one of them. Then he'd move on, leaving the destruction of wrecked lives in his wake. It was a familiar, depressing pattern.

‘I suppose you know why you're here, Mr Finch,' began Abigail.

‘Morgan,' said Morgan, looking pleased with himself to have so many big guns present when he was being questioned, names that had been announced to the tape. ‘It's how I prefer to be known, just Morgan.'

‘But not how we prefer to know you,' Abigail said, giving him a look specially designed for smart alecs. ‘And your solicitor – you're going to need one, believe me – won't take kindly to representing you as Just Morgan. Sure you don't want us to get one for you?'

Morgan shrugged. He'd already twice refused. Didn't he realize what deep trouble he was in? Either the extent of it hadn't dawned on him yet, or, with nothing to lose, he didn't care.

Mayo decided not to stay. He nodded to Abigail and strode out. He'd got the measure of Morgan and could safely leave this interrogation to his more than capable detective inspector and to Skellen. Himself, he had other business more pressing than massaging some little squit's ego.

Morgan watched him go, then suddenly said, ‘If I have to have a solicitor, then I'd like my father's. Name of Emma Morrison.'

In with the high flyers, was he? Emma Morrison had a reputation. She was a female crocodile who could slice a witness to ribbons with one snap of her teeth. She didn't come cheap.

‘And your father's name?'

‘My stepfather. Dare say he'll pay for my solicitor, on account of my mum, but don't hold your breath. Carry on, meanwhile, it's all the same to me. Don't expect him to bail me out, that's all. We're not best buddies.'

‘Bail? You'll be lucky! Come on, what's his name?'

Morgan lolled back in his chair and laced his fingers through his hair and behind his head. Pulled back like that, fastened back in a pigtail maybe, you could easily have thought his hair cut short, as Amy had when she'd seen him. The photofit resemblance was now startling. ‘Well, all right then,' he said carelessly, ‘his name's Pardoe.'

Tony Pardoe's stepson. Marianne Pardoe's son. Abigail looked at the strong planes of the face which were too harsh in the woman but were handsome in the son; a likeness which was evident when it was pointed out. Marianne's bitterness against Wishart was explained, if she believed he'd seduced her son into the dirty world of drugs dealing. Though Morgan, with that secret, knowing, self-satisfied smile, those veiled eyes, didn't look as though he'd have needed much seducing. He looked as though he'd been born knowing the answers, she thought as she began the process of questioning him about the attack on Nick.

Timpson-Ludgate was still on holiday, and the post-mortem on Nick had been carried but by a competent woman replacement. She had been of the opinion that there had been more than one adversary, probably several. So, out of all his injuries, which was the one that killed him? And who had struck the fatal blow?

As Abigail had anticipated, Morgan professed to know nothing. There was as much likelihood of getting anything from him as prising the kernel, whole, from a brazil nut. And just as certainly, she knew he was in it up to the neck. Knowing it was one thing, proving it another.

She turned him over to Skellen and was pleased to see his cocksureness drop away as Skellen hammered away at him. He began to sweat. His cover was blown as far as the drugs scene was concerned, and he knew it. He was well aware there'd be too many people willing to identify him to save their own skins. When Wishart's name came up, after some skirmishing around, he finally admitted that the dead man had been his supplier.

‘We know you went to see him on Thursday the fifteenth. You had a row with him. What was it about?'

‘He was getting greedy, trying to up the ante. Every time, the price was more.'

‘You're sure it wasn't because you were trying to cut him out? He brought the stuff over here when he went across the Channel with your father on the
Nancy Norton
– all right, your stepfather, then, with Pardoe. You were dealing for Wishart and thought it would be a better idea to bypass him, get in on the act yourself when you crewed for Pardoe, isn't that it?'

‘Wrong. I've told you, me and Tony ... well, I don't go sailing with him any more. We don't even meet. You ask him, I'm
persona non grata
as far as he's concerned. We had a big row when I wouldn't go into his crappy business with him and he chucked me out. No job, no nothing. That was when Wishart approached me, said he knew someone over on the other side who could get him whatever he wanted, and he offered to cut a deal with me if I could get rid of it for him. I don't touch the hard stuff personally, nothing more than the odd joint,' he admitted, suddenly willing to co-operate now that he had nothing to lose in that direction. ‘I wouldn't.'

‘But you knew plenty kids who would.'

The censure bounced off Morgan. He lifted the corner of his mouth. ‘There'd be some other guy, if not me.'

‘Oh, sure. There's always somebody else. But I think you're lying. I think you've fed us a load of rubbish. I think you got rid of Wishart because he was getting greedy, and you intended to cut him out – whether you would use your stepfather's boat to bring the drugs across or not is immaterial –'

‘I had a row with him, but I didn't kill him, no way! I was nowhere near his house that day, you ask my mother! I went to see her, I was with her, all that Saturday.'

‘Mothers, unfortunately, tend to be biased in favour of their sons, even when they're dirty little toerags. I thought you said you weren't welcome at Pardoe's house – why should I believe you went there?'

‘She'd promised to lend me some money. He didn't see me, he was working.'

‘Short of cash, were you?' asked Abigail. ‘That was why you broke into Mrs Wishart's flat? Looking for the drugs her son kept there?'

Involuntarily, Morgan twitched. His hand went half-way to the long, double scratch on his face, the mark of Sybil Wishart's nails.

‘We can prove you were there, Finch. And that you pulled a knife on two elderly, unprotected women.'

He almost choked. ‘It was in self-defence, for God's sake! They'd have killed me between them, those two crazy old bats and the dog!'

‘You admit you were there, then?'

He might have got away with it, had not Rula – and her dog – not been staying with Sybil. As it was, he knew he wasn't going to walk away from this one. The knife hadn't turned up, but the scratches on his face could be matched with skin found under Sybil Wishart's fingernails. There would be the dog's teethmarks on his ankle, and evidence, possibly, of a blow to his skull from the candlestick. There was also the matter of a positive identification from Rula Brinsley. Abigail soberly lined it all up, and then informed him that Sybil Wishart had died as a result of the stab wounds. ‘So we're going to charge you with her murder, Morgan Finch. And you remain a suspect for the murder of Timothy Wishart.'

His face lost colour. His cockiness left him and he fell silent as he was formally cautioned and charged on suspicion of the murder of Sybil Wishart.

John Fairmile's wife had returned home, having been away longer than she'd intended. She'd gone to stay with her mother to help her redecorate her small sitting-room, a quick emulsion and gloss paint job which was completed in a few days. But Penny had thought the new paint made the old curtains look shabby, and her mother had to agree, and then the new curtains dictated a new carpet ... So Penny's visit had had to be extended to help choose the carpet and run the new curtains up, and John Fairmile had had to fend for himself a few days longer.

‘Was the van there again?' Penny asked after she and the children and their father had been happily reunited, and she'd had time to digest the shocking news about their neighbour that had awaited her.

‘The van? I don't know – yes, it was, now you mention it. I saw it through the trees, where it was before.'

‘Did you tell the police that?'

‘No, why should I? It's Clare's van, after all. No reason why she shouldn't park it on her own property.'

‘No reason at all, but why
there
? Not exactly a convenient spot, is it? And why would she want the van,
and
the car at home? She doesn't normally come home in it.'

‘Maybe she lent one of them to Richie, and wanted the other for herself –'

‘But it was there the other weekend when Richie was away for that geography field trip or whatever it was, remember?'

‘Oh God, we've been over all this before.'

‘I know, but this time I think we should tell the police,' said Penny forthrightly.

Although Morgan was being held on suspicion of the murder of Sybil Wishart, and on the drugs charges, they couldn't break him in the matter of Tim Wishart's death. Jimmy McKeogh was charged with possession. The rest were to be released on police bail.

Abigail was back in her office when there was a call from downstairs. Jeremy Spencer, the one they called Jem, had asked if he could be allowed to speak personally to her.

‘Tell him I'll be down presently.'

She sighed. Any chance to ease off for a minute or two looked like having to wait. As in all life's crises, she needed coffee. More than usually, after the last few hours with Morgan Finch. She made do with a drink of water, splashed her face to freshen up, ran a comb through her hair, dabbed her wrists with cologne and went downstairs.