Verdict Unsafe (24 page)

“If anything ever happens to me, you’ll remember what I’ve told you, won’t you?” he said.

Ginny thought furiously. “What about?” she said, anxious not to annoy him.

“About taking care,” he said. “Looking after yourself.”

“What’s going to happen to you?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “If I did, I’d go in for fortune-telling.”

“Yeah, but what made you say it?”

“Nothing.” He crouched down, pulling the jogging pants down, getting her to step out of them. “That’s better,” he said, standing up and squeezing her bottom, like she’d known he would. “You’ve got no bum, either,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her again, for a long time.

“You’re supposed to be working,” said Ginny.

“No,” he said. “I’m supposed to be having a ciggy and a read of the paper.
You’re
supposed to be working.” He drew back, looked her up and down. “Four hundred quid’s worth,” he said. “It’s a shame to waste it.”

“Don’t you want your tea?”

“Later.” And he hooked one arm around her shoulders, the other around her knees, and carried her upstairs.

WHEN JUDY GOT BACK TO THE STATION, IT WAS TO find the complaints investigation team waiting for her. She was taken to an interview room; the proceedings were taped. A superintendent and a chief inspector from an outside force were conducting the interview; a member of the Police Complaints Authority sat in, observing.

The preliminaries over, the DCI told her Colin Drummond had alleged that she had taken a statement from him in which he had made it clear that he knew nothing about a rape, that he had not been in that particular place at that particular time, and that he could not be of assistance in her inquiries. She had apparently written down what he was saying, but that she had then left the room, and had returned with a typewritten statement describing a rape that he was supposed to have carried out, and indicating that he was a witness to certain things which he had not seen. She had asked him to sign it and had pointed out that he had little to lose by helping her out in this way; charges would not be brought in respect of that assault, and that since he had confessed to four, he might as well throw in a fifth. It had been intimated that if he did not, there could be repercussions.

Judy listened, shaking her head slightly. “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say in reply,” she said. “What else can I say but that he did give me the statement that he signed, that I did not in any way interfere with it, and that he can’t possibly produce any evidence to indicate that I did?”

The DCI nodded. “That would have been our reaction,” he
said. “Your word against his, and all that. But it isn’t, because he appears to have given you a statement about a rape that quite simply
never happened.”

“Of course it happened,” said Judy. “Everyone knows she was raped, and why she refused to make a complaint. It’s all on record,” she added. “She was unwilling to go to court. But her flatmate reported the assault, and she was admitted to hospital—”

“Suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning,” interrupted the Superintendent. “Hardly the usual result of a sexual assault, Inspector.”

“She was raped at the rear of her car, which was pumping exhaust fumes into her face!” said Judy.

“It was the result of a faulty gas boiler, according to her statement to us,” he said. “She maintains that she was never raped, and that she at no time indicated to you that she had been.”

I wasn’t raped. And I never said I was
. Judy sighed. She hadn’t realized the implication of that last sentence, not when Bobbie had said it. She did now.

“You went to see Miss Chalmers on Wednesday, didn’t you? Why?”

“To ask her to let us have a blood sample,” said Judy. “There was blood on Drummond’s jeans when Stansfield brought him in for questioning—I thought it might be Bobbie’s. I now know that it was Matt Burbidge’s—the officer who assaulted him that night.”

“So there was little point in asking Miss Chalmers for a blood sample, was there?”

“I didn’t know that at the time,” said Judy. “I believed it to be her blood.”

“Miss Chalmers maintains that you went there to ask her to change her story—to say that she
had
been raped. Is that untrue?”

“No,” said Judy. “Of course I asked her to admit it. She told me that Drummond had been intimidating her. What he did to Marilyn Taylor was part of that intimidation process,
and it has obviously worked. He has a mobile phone—I suggest you look at the calls he’s been making. He’s been ringing me, too. His last call more or less advised me that something like this was going to happen.” She took out her cigarettes, and lit one.

“Oh, we have checked,” said the DCI. “Chief Superintendent Case informed us that he had been making nuisance calls to you, and we investigated that. He says he was indeed warning you that he intended taking action.”

Judy crushed out her barely smoked cigarette. “Then why didn’t he take it before now?” she asked. “Why didn’t he take it at the time? I’ll tell you why—because until now he had no way of getting to Bobbie Chalmers. He has been ringing her up—hasn’t he?”

“He has rung the club where Miss Chalmers works several times. He says he was attempting to get information on a prostitute who used to pick up custom there, and whom he is anxious to trace. Miss Chalmers maintains that was all that passed between them.”

“Where does all this leave me?” asked Judy.

The Superintendent smiled. “At the moment, the hospital is unwilling to release information about Miss Chalmers’s admission mat night,” he said. “But clearly, if an attempt is being made to pervert the course of justice, they will have to. So, providing Miss Chalmers
was
raped, you’ll be in the clear. You know better than I do where that leaves you.”

The interview was terminated, and Judy was left to wonder just how much Drummond had cost, was costing, and would cost Bartonshire police before he’d finished. It was late, but through the glass of his door, Judy could see Lloyd still at his desk. She gave him the gist of her interview.

“So it’s all a matter of injunctions and legal moves,” said Lloyd.

She nodded. “In the meantime I’m stuck with the burglaries,” she said.

Lloyd smiled. “How did you get on spinning Fredericks’s drum, as Tom would have it?”

“It was no go.” She sighed. “I still think it’ll be him, though. But none of the stuff in the house is stolen—Ginny showed me a whole sheaf of receipts. The trouble is, no one finds out about the burglaries until at least two weeks after they’ve been done—getting the goods before they’ve disappeared isn’t going to be easy.”

Lloyd gave her an I-told-you-so look, then smiled. “I thought you could do with cheering up,” he said. “So I stayed to invite you to dinner. Assuming you have nothing else on,” he added.

“No. I’d love dinner,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic, though in truth she was rather dreading this celebration now. The continuation of the row was hovering, despite appearances.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw DCS Case appear in the corridor. He knocked, and popped his head around the door. “My office,” he said to Lloyd, and glanced at Judy. “When you’re finished,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” said Lloyd. “I’ll be right there.” He watched Case’s figure retreat. “Bloody glass doors,” he said. “You go to the flat. I don’t know how long this is likely to take. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

Judy drove to Lloyd’s, trying not to think about the further complication to their already complex relationship. She could have told him why she hadn’t been taken by surprise by Drummond’s allegations—Hotshot had told her that had been his intention all along. She wondered a little about him inviting himself to lunch with her; had he been spying on her? Or warning her? Either way, it was a little unethical. But she hadn’t told Lloyd about having lunch with him at all, and telling him now would just start another row. And thinking about that just made her start wondering
why
she hadn’t told him about it, and …

It was easier to think instead about what Marshall had said. She did rather seem to be marching the opposite way from everyone else. Case, Harper, Tom Finch, Marshall, Matt Burbidge—even Lloyd, probably, though he hadn’t said so—all seemed convinced that Ginny really had set Drummond up.
And Tom and Alan had both pointed out that Ginny’s stray-cat existence would have made a cash payment irresistible. But Judy still couldn’t believe that Ginny had been lying in the witness box.

She couldn’t be that wrong about her.

Matt Burbidge didn’t bother with an evening meal. He had slept badly; the whisky he had drunk instead of eating had made him wake up with a hangover, and he felt nauseous at the thought of food.

It was all her fault, like every other miserable thing that had happened to him since that night. Well—she wasn’t to blame for his wife leaving him. But everything else. Losing his job, going to prison. He hadn’t been able to find a job when he had come out. Eventually he had got this one, despite his record, or maybe because of it. They liked people who could use their fists, and only crimes of dishonesty were regarded as barring you from service with Wainwright Watch and Ward. He had thought it was three people, when he’d answered the ad. It turned out that “Watch and Ward” was what Wainwright did. The logo was three double-yous interlocking to form a barrier around a fort. So if gun-wielding commando-style raiders came crashing through to the Northstead vaults from the cellars of the liquor store next door, Matt would fight them off single-handed, presumably, in view of his excellent criminal record. They paid just over subsistence level for a forty-two-hour week; the system was four days on, three days off. He’d never met his opposite number—WWW didn’t go in for staff parties.

But when he’d found out where Northstead Securities was, he had almost turned it down. Right across the street from her flat, where she could gloat to her heart’s content every time she looked at the fascia, with its three brass balls. Discreetly stylized, but there. He was nothing more nor less than a night watchman at a pawnbroker’s. It might be one which only dealt with very large sums of money, but it was still a pawnbroker’s. And he was still a night watchman.

And it was all her fault.

*   *   *

“You’ll understand if I prefer to take Inspector Hill’s word for it without waiting for the hospital to release its records,” said Lloyd.

“Yes,” said Case. “But it might not be a good idea to be too obviously in her corner. In case those records reveal that Bobbie Chalmers was
not
the victim of a sexual assault.”

Lloyd leaned forward a little, and spoke quietly. “As I mentioned before, sir, you don’t know Inspector Hill. I can assure you that anyone who does would give no credence whatever to the ramblings of a very unstable young man—you told me yourself that the ACC had no doubt that she would be exonerated if Drummond insists on pushing this to the limits.”

Case shook his head. “Lloyd,” he said. “You’re not listening to me. I’ve also told you that her name is being bandied about by those of the Malworth Mafia who are cooperating with the investigation. They seem to admire what she did.”

“I’m listening,” said Lloyd. “But all you’ve told me is rumor and gossip, and I’m telling you to ignore it.”

Case inclined his head a little. “But it isn’t rumor or gossip that she was transferred out of Malworth the day before that arrest took place,” he said. “And that was more than a little convenient, don’t you think?”

Lloyd controlled his temper with considerable effort. When he spoke, his voice was low, Welsh, and angry. “Judy Hill was transferred out of Malworth because of the hostility of a group of officers—presumably those you call the Malworth Mafia— who held her responsible for two of their number being suspended and subsequently dismissed,” he said. “In what way do you find that suspect?”

“They were ‘suspended and subsequently dismissed’ for beating up Drummond,” said Case. “Who was then arrested in as blatant a piece of stage management as you could imagine.”

“What had that to do with Judy? She was here, working on a murder investigation by then!”

“I know. And once Drummond had been arrested, he confessed to four rapes, and then to a fifth that just happened to clear up that murder investigation.”

Lloyd realized his mouth was open. “What are you suggesting?” he asked.

“I’m not suggesting anything. But the Mafia is. They’re saying the whole thing was invented to net her an arrest.”

Lloyd shook his head. “I don’t believe I’m having this conversation,” he said.

“Believe it.”

“I don’t know the extent of the corruption at Malworth,” Lloyd said. “But it didn’t extend to Judy Hill. If she says she took that statement, then she did.”

“You’ve spoken to the alleged victim of this rape once or twice, I believe—has she ever told
you
she was raped?”

“No, but—”

“Has she told you she
wasn’t
raped?”

Lloyd opened his mouth, and closed it again.

“I see she has.”

“She had reasons of her own for denying it,” Lloyd said. “But you don’t just have DI Hill’s word for it. Bobbie Chalmers managed to get home and take a bath before she passed out. Her flatmate saw the injuries when she found her unconscious on the bathroom floor, and she reported that her friend had been the victim of a sexual assault.”

“Reported it to whom? Malworth, naturally. And we can’t go and ask her if she really did report an assault, can we? Because she’s lying in the bloody morgue!”

Lloyd blinked at him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I believe Drummond was fitted up. That whoever really raped those women knew that Marilyn Taylor could prove the extent of the corruption at Malworth, and removed her before she could be asked any questions. I’m saying that he has a thorough knowledge of the rape investigation, and that he was in a position to lay the blame at Drummond’s door.”

“You’re saying it’s a police officer,” said Lloyd. “And that the others are covering up for him?” he said, incredulously.