Verdict Unsafe (40 page)

She shook her head. “You asked the question,” she said. “Why didn’t she lock herself in the bathroom?”

“Why didn’t she?”

“Because she wanted to get to the bedroom, that’s why. Because that’s where she thought the gun was. In the drawer—it was open, remember? She went to get the gun, but it wasn’t there anymore, was it, so he overpowered her.”

Lloyd shook his head, still looking slightly puzzled. “And?” he said.

“And I thought she had been raped and murdered on her own bed. Only it wasn’t her own bed, was it? It was Bobbie’s gun. It was Bobbie’s room.”

“It was Bobbie’s bed,” said Lloyd. “It’s Bobbie’s hair.”

“Yes,” said Judy. “And it’s Bobbie’s blood on Drummond’s jeans—that’s why they match.”

Lloyd sat back, nodding. Then they were on their way to the Ferrari, and Bobbie, still flintily coping with grief.

She hadn’t been back to the flat at all; she had had no idea that Marilyn had been anywhere other than her own room. She
confirmed that her bedroom was the last door on the left along the corridor, and that she had indeed kept the gun in the top drawer of her bedside cabinet. It hadn’t occurred to her to tell Marilyn she’d given it away; she hadn’t thought that Marilyn would care what she’d done with it. She would give them samples of anything they liked, if it would prove that Drummond was the rapist. Even if he was dead. It would be a sort of full stop to it all.

“One puzzle’s been cleared up,” said Lloyd, as they got back into his car. “The rest will get much easier—you’ll see.”

Judy certainly hoped so, in view of her less than secure position. Her prospects seemed even less bright when they got back to the station to find DCS Case apparently waiting for them on the doorstep, like an irate father waiting up for his daughter.

“Just on my way to HQ,” he said. He looked at her. “I owe you these,” he said, giving her twenty cigarettes, and her lighter. “And an apology,” he added, in the manner of one who didn’t make them too often.

“Don’t apologize too soon,” said Judy. “I’m still in the frame for murder.”

“I don’t care if you
murdered
the bugger,” he said. “And I owe you this, Lloyd.” He tossed a penny to him as he spoke.

Lloyd caught it. “Thank you,” he said, unsmiling.

He refused to tell her what that was all about, as Case walked off to his Range Rover, but she would get it out of him. Sooner or later.

Once they actually got inside the building, Tom had news for them. More negative news, as ever. “It isn’t Drummond’s blood in the Transit,” he said. “They want to know if they’re to give it back to the owner, or what.”

“Oh, why not?” said Lloyd, frustrated at every turn. He sat down on Marshall’s desk. It made a change from hers, thought Judy. It was a mystery to her why he didn’t just sit in chairs. “Maybe it is Ginny’s. Maybe he did beat her up in there.”

“You don’t believe that,” said Judy.

“No, but if it isn’t her blood and it isn’t Drummond’s blood, who the hell’s is it?” he demanded.

Judy had had enough of blood, and said so. “I seem to have spent my every waking moment discussing blood, asking people for blood, analyzing blood, mopping up blood—I wasn’t cut out for all this blood. I even sent you to the GBH,” she said to Marshall. “Because I was sick of the sight of—” Her eyes widened. Hangovers sharpened her faculties, it seemed.

“What did you say Mr. Evans did for a living?” she asked.

“I KNOW WHOSE BLOOD’S IN YOUR TRANSIT,” SAID Inspector Hill.

He had known, really, that he would never get away with it. Lennie stood to one side. “Then you’d better come in,” he said.

Ginny was in the sitting room, watching television. Lennie closed the connecting door.

“His name’s Monty Evans.”

Lennie invited her to sit down, and offered her a cigarette; she smoked. He’d liked that about her when he’d found out. She might be the only police officer in the known universe that he actually liked. “I didn’t know him by any name,” he said.

“You’re not still saying he was a punter, are you? Because he’s got girls of his own working the streets in Malworth, so I don’t—”

“Don’t I know it,” said Lennie. “Only I was too stupid—” He broke off, feeling the tears hot behind his eyes again. He cried every time he thought of that brute with Ginny. Every time. He wiped his eye with the heel of his hand. “I’m an amateur,” he said. “Rosa, Ginny. Just, you know. Keeping an eye out for them. Making sure no one but me takes advantage of them,” he added, in an attempt at a joke. “I’m not in that league. Don’t want to be.”

“Are you going to tell me about it?”

Lennie looked around the kitchen, every surface gleaming, everything put away where it belonged. He’d been very careful to tidy up after he’d made Ginny something to eat.

“We moved in here six months ago,” he said. “And about
three weeks later, I come home to find some guys unloading a three-piece suite, taking it in here. I said they’d got the wrong address, but they showed me the docket, and said there was loads more in the van. It was from the Co-op. Everything. Television, video, rugs, tables, lamps, computer games—you name it.”

Inspector Hill leaned over and tapped her ash into his ashtray. Lennie put it in the center of the table.

“So I told them it would have to go back—we couldn’t pay for it. Paid for, they said. Gave me all these receipts. I asked Ginny what was going on, and it turned out she’d met some bloke in the Ferrari, told him about her new house, and he’d said that he could lend her the money to furnish it.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” said Lennie. “Oh. And I was going to get the furniture taken back, pay him off, only—I couldn’t.” He drew on his cigarette, and looked away from the brown eyes that watched him so closely. “She was happy,” he said. “I’d never seen her look really happy. I mean—you know how she lived. You know what sort of background she had. I couldn’t take it away from her.”

“And you couldn’t keep up the payments?”

“It was all right to start with. Then things got a bit tight, but I got this deal with the cab—God knows how Jarvis survives, because he’s got no idea. I made a lot of money with that cab, one way or the other. But things got slow again—they do. And I stopped paying other things. The phone got cut off last week—the electric and gas’ll be next. But I still couldn’t meet the payments. And I went to him, expecting threats and God knows what, but he says not to worry. Pay him when I’ve got it. All the more interest for him. Didn’t lean on me … just let it drift. And so did I. I’d pay him when things picked up, I thought.”

The inspector nodded slowly. “He was selling the debts, wasn’t he?” she said.

“I know that now. But I’m an amateur, like I said. People think I know all the angles, but I’m—” He sighed. “I just don’t
get involved in things where people get their heads broken,” he said. “Then on Wednesday, I picked up this guy. Flash suit, cigar, muscles. He’d bought the debt, and he wanted to make an example of someone.”

He told her of his desperate attempts to raise the cash by Friday, about his reprieve, about his dream punter. He assumed it was off the record; he didn’t care much if it wasn’t. “I owe you a thank-you for searching this place,” he said. “If you hadn’t, I’d have got my money, and gone to meet him. And then sat outside his house like a berk while he was—” He drew in his breath, held it for a moment, released it. “As it was, he’d only just started, and look what he did to her. It was because I’d told him what she did. He saw where he could make an example of me and get rid of the competition all at the same time.”

“What happened?”

“When I came in he was at the top of the stair with her. He-he was hanging on to her, smashing his fist into her face—I grabbed a chair, and ran up. I sort of fended him off with it, told Ginny to run. Hide. I didn’t think I could hold him too long— I thought he might go after her, and I couldn’t even call your lot, because the bloody phone was—” He wiped the tears. “I don’t expect you to believe this,” he said. “But he pushed the chair away, lunged at me—and he fell downstairs. His head was cracked open. I thought he was dead. I didn’t know what to do.” He had just sat on the stair and looked at him. He might still have been there, if someone hadn’t knocked on the door, frightened him into action. “In the end, I got the Transit right up to the door, and I managed to get him in there. I was going to dump him, but he was still breathing. So I drove him to casualty, pushed him out in a side street. Then I got home and started trying to clean up the van—that’s when you brought Ginny home.” He looked bleakly at her. “Is he dead?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “And he’s confirmed that he fell down stairs—can’t remember where. Memory loss. Very common, apparently.”

Lennie felt as though a huge rock had rolled off his shoulders. “I’m not going to be arrested?” he said.

“No. He might sue you for damages, but …” She smiled.

Lennie was almost laughing with relief. “I thought he’d die. I thought I was going to get done for murder.”

“Ginny could have him charged with grievous bodily harm,” she said. “That’s a possible five years. Why don’t you pay him a visit, and see if he’s prepared to swap that for what you owe him?”

Lennie’s eyes widened with surprise. “Are you supposed to say that sort of thing?” he asked.

“No, I don’t suppose I am. But I’m quite sure Ginny would rather have her furniture than have to give evidence in court again.”

She was OK, DI Hill. Ginny was right. Not
all
cops were bastards.

“You can go,” said the custody sergeant.

Matt got off the bunk, and saw Lloyd. The sergeant left, and Matt looked warily at his visitor, who blocked the cell door. “Come to duff me up for being rude about your girlfriend, have you?” he asked.

“No,” said Lloyd. “I’ve come to tell you that we will not, in all probability, have to use your saliva sample. It will be destroyed within five days of confirmation of what we now believe to be the case. You may witness its d—”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll trust you. Thanks.”

“It’s not me you should be thanking,” said Lloyd. “It’s Judy.”

“Well, I’ve got her to thank for everything else, so maybe she owed me.”

Lloyd’s face grew dark, his eyes bright. “She owed you nothing,” he said. “She came within an ace of losing her own job trying to keep you out of this.”

“Pity she didn’t.” Matt walked out, went to the desk, and went through the process of being unarrested. “Thank you, my man,” he said, as the custody sergeant gave him his belongings. He signed for them with a flourish.

Lloyd escorted him to the door, and spoke quietly in his ear.
“You,” he said, “are a worthless, sad little man. I wouldn’t have done you a favor if my life had depended on it. But if it gets you off Judy’s conscience, then it was worth it.”

Conscience? Matt doubted that she had one.

Lloyd was joined by Judy in the canteen, but then she just toyed with her food.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. “I thought you’d be pleased. You’ve got your rapist, Marshall’s got his burglar, Burbidge gets to keep his grubby little secret, and even when you get it wrong, you get it right. You stopped Ginny ending up in intensive care. Not bad for a couple of days’ work.”

“And you’re left with your murderer,” Judy said. “You’d better arrest me, because I don’t see how anyone else could have done it.”

“But in a few days you’ll have proof that Drummond raped Bobbie,” Lloyd said. “Your motive’s gone.”

“No,” she said. “It hasn’t.”

No. Now that he thought about it, it hadn’t. The only way she had ever been going to prove that Drummond had raped Bobbie was if Bobbie told the truth. And the only way Bobbie had ever been going to tell the truth was if the threat was removed. And someone had removed it.

“Lennie was manhandling Evans into his Transit,” she said. “Jarvis was burgling a house. Matt Burbidge was paying for petrol. Carole Jarvis was with her boyfriend and sundry others. Only one other person had access to that gun and could have used it. It’s obvious, Holmes,” she said. “I did it.”

“You’ve missed out Ginny,” he said.

“Ginny was semiconscious.”

Lloyd nodded, ate, thought, ate some more, then aired his absolutely final theory. “It has to have been Lennie,” he said. “He did know the gun was still there, that Ginny had never taken it back. He took it, earlier in the day. Arranged to meet Drummond. And killed him
before
he got home.”

“Why?”

“Because he raped Ginny.”

“Mm.”

“Ginny was beaten up by Evans, and the reason she knew the gun had gone is because she went to get it—that’s why she ran upstairs. But it wasn’t there. He fell, and she ran away from him, hid in the underpass, Lennie found her, and rang us on Drummond’s phone—he might have been ringing you, so you’d get help for her—he trusts you. He found himself on the queuing system, and rang nine-double-nine instead, before running away. Chat’s what you heard.”

She didn’t look convinced.

He pushed his half-eaten pudding away. He really ought to think about a diet. You didn’t want to put on weight if you had a dodgy back. And he didn’t want to be fat and bald and have a bad back with men like Harper lusting after Judy.

“Come on,” he said, “Let’s pay Mr. and Mrs. Fredericks another visit.”

The Sunday traffic was building up now; the cars with roof-racks piled high with bicycles and dinghies and other things with which he was blessedly unfamiliar. He tried to take the wait at the turnoff like a man, but he was soon muttering.

When they finally made it to Parkside, Ginny was on her own.

“Where’s Lennie?” asked Judy. “I thought he was supposed to be keeping an eye on you?”

“I’m all right!” protested Ginny. “He said he had to visit someone in hospital.” She looked puzzled. “I didn’t think he knew anyone in hospital,” she said.

Lennie going hospital visiting was indeed a difficult concept to grasp. Lloyd was aware of only one person recently connected with Lennie who was in hospital. He detected Judy’s hand in Lennie’s sudden concern for the sick, and chose to ignore the whole thing.

He sat down at the kitchen table, and motioned to Ginny to do the same. “When this man attacked you,” he said, his voice very deep, very Welsh, and very stern, “what did you do?” Ginny seemed totally unmoved by stern Welshmen with deep voices, so he decided to abandon that.