Nothing but Trouble (45 page)

Mac came back to his desk and glared at Jess. ‘So is there anything you want to tell us?’

Lorna sat down and shot him a warning glance. ‘Don’t take it out on her, Mac. None of this is her fault.’

‘I’m not saying it is. But she’s seen a damn sight more of him than we have recently. What can you tell us about Harry and
this Aimee Locke?’

‘I don’t know any more than you do,’ Jess said. ‘I mean, I went with him to the casino at Selene’s last night, but then Ray
Stagg threw us out and—’

‘He did what?’ Mac snapped.

Jess was surprised that Harry hadn’t told him, but then again,
he probably had his reasons – one of them being that he didn’t like being pushed around by the likes of Ray Stagg. When Stagg
had ordered him to leave Aimee alone, Harry would have been inclined to do the very opposite. ‘Well, he asked us to leave.’

‘Did he know Harry was there to watch Aimee Locke?’

Jess could see where there this was going and had to think quickly. She didn’t want to land Harry in it. ‘I’ve no idea,’ she
lied. ‘But the two of them have had run-ins in the past, haven’t they? And I don’t imagine Stagg much cares for private investigators
hanging around his establishments – they might see something he doesn’t want them to see.’

Mac gave her a long, cool stare but didn’t press the point.

‘That’ll be why he didn’t mention it,’ Warren said, backing her up. ‘If he couldn’t be sure that his cover was blown, then
why abandon the surveillance? There were only a couple of days to go anyway.’

Jess stepped in with a question of her own. ‘What’s with this stalking thing? I don’t get it. It was Martin Locke who hired
Harry to spy on his wife. You must have the paperwork for that.’

Mac gave a weary shake of his head. ‘Yeah, we’ve got paperwork all right, but we haven’t got Martin Locke’s real signature.
That’s another major problem. It seems that it might not have been him who came to the office last week but someone else entirely.
And he paid with a cash cheque that can’t be traced.’

Jess gazed down at the desk and drew in an uneasy breath. A someone, she realised, who must have been part of a carefully
laid plan.

‘And the only person who saw him was Harry,’ Lorna said. ‘So there’s no proof that anyone was actually here at all. So far
as the police are concerned, he could be making it all up.’

As Lorna’s words sank in, Jess suddenly jerked up her head. ‘I saw him,’ she said. ‘At least I think I did.’

Three pairs of eyes turned expectantly towards her.

‘You were here?’ Mac asked.

‘Not in the office, no. I’d parked the car at the Fox and I was waiting for the lights to change so I could cross the road.
I noticed a man, a middle-aged guy, pacing up and down outside. He kept stopping by the door and staring at the name plate.
I thought he was a nervous client trying to pluck up the courage to go in.’

Mac opened a folder that was lying on his desk and pulled out a cutting from a magazine. ‘Is this him?’ he said, pointing
a finger at a photograph of a thin, white-haired man standing in the middle of a group of businessmen outside a City office.

Jess shook her head. She didn’t need to think twice. ‘No, this other guy was younger, in his fifties. He was broader, too.
And his hair was grey, not white.’

‘Would you know him again?’

‘I think so,’ Jess said. ‘But I couldn’t swear to it.’ She racked her brains, thinking back to last Friday and trying to summon
up an image of the man she’d seen. ‘He had a tan, I remember that. He was tall, about the same height as Harry. And he was
wearing a very smart grey suit.’

Mac slipped the picture back into the file. ‘Trouble is, you didn’t actually see him come in.’

‘But her description tallies with the one Harry gave,’ Lorna said. ‘It has to be the same guy.’

Warren hunched forward, placing his elbows on the desk. ‘Now all we’ve got to do is find him. Shouldn’t be too difficult.
How many middle-aged grey-haired guys can there be in this city?’

‘Very helpful,’ Mac said drily. He rubbed at his eyes, which already looked red and sore. ‘I think we should call it a day.
Let’s all go home and get some sleep. We’ll see where we stand after Harry’s been interviewed in the morning.’

Jess still had plenty of unanswered questions, but she could see that now wasn’t the time to be asking them. She said her
goodbyes and trudged despondently upstairs. After opening and closing the door to the flat, she pulled the bolts firmly across.
Harry wouldn’t be coming back tonight. She put on the light and gazed around. A cold fist of fear suddenly clenched around
her heart. If the treacherous Aimee Locke got her way, he might
never
be coming back.

Harry’s head ached, partly from the blow from the bottle and partly from the interview, which had been going on now for over
two hours. He had spent the night in hospital before being brought to Cowan Road in the morning. It had been a sleepless night,
but that had been down to the shock of what had happened and the throbbing pain of twenty-two stitches criss-crossing his
skull rather than any serious concern about Aimee Locke’s accusations. He had always had faith in the law – he’d dedicated
years of his life to it – and a solid belief that the truth would eventually come out.

That faith, however, was starting to recede. The two officers sitting in front of him, DI Wall and DS Henson, were less than
convinced by his story. He could see it on their faces, in the way they glanced at each other. They had that look in their
eyes. He remembered it well from his own days in the interview room. They already thought they’d got all the evidence they
needed to hang him out to dry.

‘So, this man who you
claim
came to your office last Friday. Describe him to me.’

Harry stared across the desk at DI Wall. He was a thin-faced, hungry-looking guy in his mid-thirties. Hungry for success,
that was. Results meant promotion and promotion meant respect, more money and more opportunities. Harry had met his type before.
A fast-track university graduate who was climbing the greasy pole as quickly as he could.

‘Haven’t we already covered this?’

Wall’s eyes narrowed a little. ‘So I’d like you to go over it again. You got a problem with that?’

Harry gave a shrug. He knew how it worked. You asked a suspect to repeat his story over and over again in the hope that holes
would eventually start to appear. He repeated the description of the man he’d thought was Martin Locke for the third time.

‘And he paid with a cash cheque. Is that usual?’

‘Not unusual,’ Harry said. ‘Plenty of people like to keep their private business private.’

‘And there are no cameras in the office?’

‘No,’ Harry agreed, inwardly cursing the fact that they hadn’t decided to install them until after ‘Locke’ had made his visit.

Wall opened a file and took out a photograph of the corpse of Martin Locke. He slid it across the surface of the table. ‘And
it definitely wasn’t this man?’

‘No,’ Harry said. He stared down at the photograph, reliving the moment when Martin Locke had walked into the room. Those
seconds of confusion, of bewilderment, and then … He drew in a breath.

Wall left the picture sitting there. ‘How do you account for the gun residue on your hands?’

‘I can’t,’ Harry said. ‘It must have been placed there after I’d been knocked out. All he had to do was wrap my hand around
the gun and discharge it again.’

‘He?’

‘Whoever shot Martin Locke.’

‘And the phone? And the fake ID? Did he put your prints on those too?’

Harry recalled his encounter on the Green with Aimee Locke. ‘As I said earlier, I picked up both of those items when Aimee
Locke dropped her handbag.’

‘But why should she go to all that trouble when she could have done it after you’d been knocked out?’

Harry gave a shrug. ‘How should I know. To save time? To make sure the prints were convincing ones?’ He had another theory
too, which he didn’t voice out loud. Aimee Locke, he had realised belatedly, was the kind of woman who liked to live dangerously.
It must have given her a kick to let him pick up the fake ID, to take the chance of him flipping open the wallet and seeing
what was inside.

Wall and Henson exchanged another of their sly looks. DS Henson was an older man, probably smarter than his boss but with
the sense not to flaunt it. It was he who said, with a slightly lascivious edge to his voice, ‘She’s a good-looking girl,
isn’t she?’

Harry could hardly deny it. ‘I suppose.’

‘Keen on blondes, are you?’

Harry stared back at him. He presumed that they already knew about his relationship with Valerie. They would have been doing
a good bit of digging over the last twelve hours. ‘As much as any other man.’

Henson grinned. ‘I prefer brunettes myself. So when did you first set eyes on the lovely Aimee Locke?’

Harry sighed, feeling his head begin to throb even harder. ‘We’ve been through all this. Apart from the picture that Martin
… that the man who
claimed
to be Martin Locke showed me, the first time I saw her was at Adriano’s last Friday.’

‘And afterwards you followed her to her place of work and then back to her home again.’

‘Yes.’

‘And then you went to the casino on Wednesday night?’

‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘That was what I’d been hired to do.’

‘Of course,’ DI Wall said. ‘By the mysterious man who said that he was Martin Locke.’

Harry could see what they were thinking, that he’d made up the story about the fake client in order to give himself an excuse
to follow Aimee around and track her movements for most of the day and night. ‘Yes,’ he said again.

Wall raised his eyebrows, as if he didn’t believe a word. He left a short silence and then said, ‘Right, let’s go over this
encounter you had with her in the afternoon. You’re claiming that
she
approached you on the high street, said that she knew you were a private investigator and that she knew what you were doing.’

‘That’s exactly what happened.’

‘And why should she confront you like that?’

‘Because she was tired of her husband hiring someone to follow her around every time he went out of town.’

‘And then she suggested a cosy chat on the Green?’

Harry nodded. ‘She said she wanted to talk to me.’

‘Wouldn’t it have been smarter to just walk away?’

‘In retrospect.’ Harry had spent half the night wishing he had done just that. ‘But I was curious as to what she had to say.’

‘Curious?’

‘Yes.’

DI Wall steepled his fingers and gazed at Harry thoughtfully. ‘And what did she have to say?’

‘Not much. She seemed scared of him, though, frightened of what he might do next.’

‘And so you agreed to a second chat at her house that night?’

‘No,’ Harry said. ‘I didn’t agree to anything. She asked me if I’d come at nine o’clock, but I didn’t say I would. At that
point I hadn’t decided what I was going to do.’

‘But at nine o’clock you turned up all the same.’

Harry shifted in his seat. ‘I thought she was in trouble. That was the impression she gave me.’

DI Wall’s eyebrows shot up again. ‘And is that common practice, for you to try and help your clients’ partners, the people
you’re supposed to be gathering evidence against? It seems somewhat contradictory, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘It wasn’t exactly professional, no. But I believed that she was afraid of him, terrified even.’

‘So you thought you’d try and save her from this terrifying husband of hers,’ Wall said caustically. ‘Very gallant, I’m sure.’

Richard Morris, Harry’s brief, looked up from the notes he was making. ‘My client is simply trying to explain the reasons
for his actions.’

Harry was starting to sweat. The room was hot and he could feel the perspiration lathering his forehead and trickling down
his spine. He’d always thought that only guilty people sweated, but now, with his own future in the balance, he knew better.

‘Let’s move on to the photographs on the phone and the text messages,’ Wall said.

‘I don’t know anything about them.’ Harry could see where this was all going. They were trying to build up a case based on
the fact that he’d developed an obsession with Aimee Locke, an obsession that had led him to murder her husband.

Wall gazed at Harry from over the top of his fingertips. ‘You don’t seem to know very much about anything.’

‘Inspector!’ Morris warned.

Wall smirked and leaned back in his chair.

Harry was trying to keep calm, but with every minute that passed his situation was growing increasingly dire. If nobody believed
him, he could be spending the next twenty years of his life in the slammer. ‘Look, I did
not
murder Martin Locke. Why don’t you talk to Ray Stagg? Ask him what he was doing last night.’

‘We already have,’ Henson said. ‘He was at his club with hundreds of witnesses.’

Harry’s hopes slumped even further. He’d been convinced that Stagg must have been the killer. Hearing about the alibi was
like another nail in his coffin. Frustration finally got the better of him, and he leaned across the desk, glaring at the
two officers. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he snapped. ‘Can’t either of you see that this is one almighty stitch-up?’

Richard Morris laid a restraining hand on his arm. He looked across at the two police officers. ‘Gentlemen, my client’s tired.
He’s also suffering from a very nasty injury. Might I suggest we take a break now?’

DI Valerie Middleton was sitting in the incident room going through the file on the Becky Hibbert killing. Her eyes gazed
blankly at the information in front of her. Hard as she tried, she simply couldn’t concentrate. Harry’s arrest the previous
night had knocked her for six. She didn’t believe he was guilty, not for one second, but she was still angry at him. Raising
her head, she looked across the desk at Kieran Swann.

‘How could he have been so stupid? I mean, what did he think he was doing going to her house?