Unsafe Convictions (35 page)

Chapter Three

After leaving the Willows, McKenna had driven into Haughton, and sat in a cafe for almost an hour, trying to work out a way to proceed. Ellen’s advice rankled, but he suspected the mildest criticism would today have felt like a whip on bare flesh. The instinct she deplored had already taken him to the Willows, and now urged him towards Ravensdale and Neville Ryman, but only, he thought, because instinct was all he had to follow.

To
get to Ravensdale, he had to make a wide detour around the whole High Peak area, but once in the lowlands, he found the roads cleared, with dirt-splattered snow banked along the verges. Ravensdale’s streets were awash with slush and, when he walked from the car-park to the police headquarters building, the breeze on his face was quite balmy.

Ryman,
he was told, had had a nasty fall on some ice last night, and was at home. Plans thwarted, McKenna returned to his car, then decided that visiting Ryman to wish him a quick recovery would be a civilised gesture. And had he adopted a less confrontational approach at the outset, he realised, he might have made more progress: Ryman believing himself an ally was more use to his investigation than Ryman alerted by hostility.

He
parked on the road outside Ryman’s house, then decided to ignore more of Ellen’s advice, and telephoned Cooper at Longmoor Prison. A silver Volvo estate car suddenly roared up, slewed through the gate without indicating, and skidded to a halt in front of the garage. A large, grey-haired woman, dressed in a grey wool jacket and pleated skirt, almost fell out and, slipping and sliding in the snow, rushed into the house, not even bothering to shut the driver’s door.

‘
I don’t believe it,’ Cooper was saying. ‘I’ll look into it, of course, but I’m sure it’s another fairy story.’ He paused. ‘Now, if you were saying the boot was on the other foot, that’d be a different matter. Smith as a rapist I can take on board with no difficulty whatsoever.’

‘
Anyone pining for him?’ McKenna watched to see if the woman emerged from the house.

‘I
already told you,’ Cooper replied. ‘Everyone was overjoyed to see the back of him.’ He paused again, for so long that McKenna thought the connection had fallen prey to the vagaries of mobile networks. Then he said: ‘About four months after Smith arrived here, a youngster doing life for arson killed himself. He’d spent a lot of time with Smith, which we put down to a natural empathy between fire raisers. The autopsy showed violent penetration, but our investigations got nowhere. However, that’s not to say we’ll come up against the same wall of silence now Smith’s out of the way.’

‘
Are you sure about that? It opens up the prospect of having him back.’

‘B
ut not here,’ Cooper asserted. ‘Not here.’

*

Estelle Ryman, for it must be she, McKenna realised, did not come back out to secure the car. He waited another ten minutes, smoked a cigarette, thought about her suddenly incapacitated husband, then locked his own car and walked up the drive. Large lawns on either side were edged with round, marbled chunks of rock and bordered with shrubs, all under a soft carpet of melting snow. A robin with a brilliant red breast swayed on the twigs of a laurel bush, its teetering and feather-shaking sending tiny showers to the ground.

The
late-Victorian house was double-fronted, bay-windowed, tastefully embellished here and there with stained and leaded glass, and carved barge boards projected over the eaves and framed an imposing porch. The front steps were brushed clean and dusted with grit. He rang the bell, looking around at a pleasant prospect of similar houses lining a wide avenue and, in the distance, a line of trees on the crest of a hill in sharp relief against the sky. He thought he could just discern a glimmer of sunshine trying to break through.

The
door was opened by the grey-haired woman, still in her outdoor clothes. Smiling, he said: ‘I’d like to see Mr Ryman. And by the way, your car’s open.’

‘
You can’t!’ Her eyes darted hither and thither, and her curt words snapped in the air, disturbing the robin, which fluttered away. ‘He’s not well.’

‘
So I believe, but I would like to speak to him.’

‘
Who are you?’ Estelle demanded, suddenly focusing on his face.

‘
Superintendent McKenna.’

‘
You!’ Breath explosively expelled, mouth working, she advanced. ‘Get out! Leave us alone!’

‘
Mrs Ryman!’

‘
Go
away
!’ Hands splayed, she stretched out both arms, and shoved him violently in the chest, her whole considerable weight behind the assault. He stumbled backwards, slipped off the side of the steps and, reaching for the window-sill, tried to stop himself from falling. ‘
Get
away
from
this
house
!’ Arms flailing, she caught him a glancing blow to the side of his head, and knocked him completely off balance. He collapsed in the heap of soft snow beneath the window, while her arms and fists battered his head and shoulders. Then the attack ceased as suddenly as it began. He knelt there, his clothing soaked, and simply waited, as he would when his former wife erupted into violence. Estelle’s feet in their grey suede shoes trampled the hem of his coat, and pinned him to the ground. They looked enormous, and her legs were like tree trunks. He expected her to bludgeon him with those feet, but she merely stood over him, breathing heavily, then shuffled backwards, dragging his coat with her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her reach for one of the chunks of marbled rock, her large hand clasping and lifting as if it were a pebble.

Chapter Four

Summoned back to Church Street to make her statement, Gaynor let her canary-yellow car crunch to a halt against the kerb. Behind the smoked-glass windows, she shook her hair into place and applied fresh lipstick, before stepping out into the cold and, with a flick of her gloved wrist, remotely activating locks and car alarm.

‘
Do sit down, Ms Holbrook,’ Jack invited, as Rene brought her to the office. ‘Would you like tea ? Coffee?’

‘
Coffee, please,’ Gaynor replied, wary of the welcome.

‘
Superintendent McKenna’s out,’ added Jack. ‘Mrs Turner and myself will take your statement.’

She
relaxed, but only a little. ‘Will it take long? I have to get back to London.’ And an editor almost incandescent with rage, she reminded herself. ‘As you may know, Mr McKenna’s asked for search warrants to be executed on my office, and my flat.’

‘
So I understand.’ Jack nodded. ‘It’s not an unusual procedure when a journalist might be in possession of sensitive material.’

‘
It’s an outrage,’ Gaynor asserted. ‘A gross invasion of privacy.’

‘
But can investigative journalists claim the same rights to privacy as members of the public?’ Jack queried. ‘Access to other people’s secrets is your meat and drink — otherwise, you couldn’t do your job — so the occasional official backlash is surely an occupational hazard.’

Ignoring
his remark, she said: ‘Doing something about Smith would be more to the point, don’t you think?
Before
he gets rid of another wife.’ She glanced at him. ‘I’ve never been so scared as I was yesterday.’

‘B
ut no offence was committed, was it?’ Jack said.

‘
That’s a matter of opinion.’

‘
Well,’ Jack said brightly, ‘you could always write about it, couldn’t you? It would make quite a story.’

Chapter Five

In the few moments it took for Estelle’s fingers to gouge out the rock, McKenna felt that a lifetime passed. He could not rise, for her feet on his coat skewered him to the ground. He could not roll out of her reach, for the brickwork under the bay window was bare inches from his face. If he stretched out his hand to grasp her ankle and pull her foot from under her, she might smash her own head on the coping. He had the option of attacking her to save himself, or of letting her do whatever she was capable of doing with a rock in her hand, a victim under her feet, and her control long gone.

Even
as he flexed his ice-cold fingers and thought of toppling her, he knew that if he let his hand snake across that small distance, he himself would cross a chasm, to join the likes of Smith. He desperately wanted to stay where he was, yet, equally desperately, wanted to stay alive and, as she raised her arm, the rock and her hand moving out of his line of sight, he flexed his fingers for the last time.

There
was a flurry of noise and a rush of air, then a blow in the middle of his back, which sent him sprawling face down. Her feet scrabbled, one grey shoe tangled up in the cloth of his coat, and he heard guttural breaths, rending fabric, and a crunching thud, before silence fell. She backed away, feet, legs, skirt hem, torn jacket, and her whole body coming into view. She stood in the middle of the drive, the rock still in her hand, watching from her own vantage point as first one drop of blood, then another, and another, splashed from somewhere above him, making dark craters in the snow. He rolled over and looked up, just as Ryman, a dark hole in the side of his head, fell to the ground.

*

A neighbour must have called for help. Estelle began to scream as she reached the gate, and went on screaming as she ran down the road, drawing people from their houses, and McKenna thought he could still hear her terror even above the wailing sirens of the ambulance and police cars which seemed to arrive even before he could get to his knees and crawl towards Ryman. As the paramedics gently edged him away from the stricken man, he heard a faint crash, when Estelle saw her hand was slimy with her husband’s blood and flung the rock through someone’s window.

Even
after she discarded the stone, her bloody fingers left a trail as red as the feathers on the robin’s breast in the snow on the pavement. She was cornered by three patrol cars where the pleasant suburban avenue, now beginning to swarm with the curious and the fearful, joined a main thoroughfare. The screams had dwindled as she ran, her breath conserved for flight, and it was a silent and breathless Estelle who faced the six officers now cautiously emerging from their cars. The sirens were silent too, the flashing roof lights stilled, and the two policewomen who approached her did not expect to need their long batons. Calmly, the shorter woman said: ‘Shall we get in the car, Mrs Ryman? You look all in. Your jacket’s torn. Did you know? Your shoes look very wet too.’

Estelle
jerked her head to look at her shoes. The grey suede was horribly stained, and the fancy tassel on the left vamp was torn off, like three of her jacket buttons. The pleated skirt hung like a crumpled rag. She clenched her bloody hands into fists, enraged by the disgrace of public dishevelment, glared at the policewoman, and lunged, fists up level with her chin and working like pile drivers. Roaring as she came, she knocked her aside with astonishing violence.

Part Fifteen

Friday, 5th February

Early Afternoon

Chapter One

McKenna
had first met the force’s chief constable at the briefing meeting ten days before. Then, he had been tense and rather defensive. Now, he was numbed with shock.

‘
It took four men to hold Estelle down in the end, and two of them got knocked about before the handcuffs were on. The lass she barged into had her arm broken, while Neville’s fighting for his life.’

McKenna
shivered uncontrollably. ‘Because he saved mine.’

‘
It’s not your fault. No one could’ve foreseen this, even if we’d put two and two together after she was here earlier.’

‘
She was here?’ McKenna tried to light a cigarette. ‘Why?’

‘
Something about a telephone call last night from her daughter. It had to be routed through the control room, so it was recorded, and Estelle wanted the tape wiped. She said it was very personal. She knew the exact time, give or take a couple of minutes, because she’d just begun timing eggs on the boil.’

McKenna
coughed raspingly as smoke bit into his raw throat. ‘It’s absolutely imperative that the call isn’t erased.’

‘
We haven’t even found the right tape yet.’ The chief constable regarded McKenna’s pallid face and shuddering body. ‘You should’ve gone to hospital yourself, at least for a check-up.’

‘
I’m more concerned with the tape.’

‘
So am I, now.’ He stared bleakly at McKenna. ‘God alone knows what’s on it.’

Chapter Two

Unlike the bored token guard outside the ward where Wendy Lewis fretted self-pityingly, the guards outside and inside Estelle’s private hospital room were alert and, to the utter dismay of the medical staff, armed with batons and CS gas. Clad in a hospital-issue flannel gown, she was flat on her back in a high bed, snoring loudly, top lip drawn back in a snarl, and injected with enough sedative to fell a horse.

In
another wing, her husband was flat on his back on an operating table, while a team of surgeons assessed the bloody, trench-like depression in his left temple and fought like demons to keep him alive. Lazarus-like, he was resuscitated three times before the surgeons nodded to each other, glanced at the clock on the wall, and finally downed tools.