Verdict Unsafe (41 page)

“What Lennie said. I ran. I just ran—I didn’t even think
where I was going. The park, I suppose. I feel safe there. You can hide in the bushes.”

This last was offered as advice; Lloyd thought he might take it. It would be nice, now and then, to hide in the bushes.

“Before Lennie came in, if he came in,” he said.

She frowned. “I ran upstairs. I thought if I could get to the bathroom, I could lock myself in.”

Lloyd could hardly fault that reasoning. “You didn’t run into your room to get the gun?”

“No!” She turned to look at Judy, who was standing by the door, just out of her line of vision. “I thought this was all finished,” she said. “It had gone by then.”

“How do you know?” asked Lloyd.

Ginny turned back, and looked at him almost pityingly. “It wasn’t there,” she said. “So it must have gone.”

Lloyd nodded. “But how did you know?” he tried again. “If you didn’t look for it?”

“I already knew. It was in the drawer with my work things,” she said. “I had a punter that afternoon. I had to get a new pack of condoms out. And the gun wasn’t there.”

“You had a customer? On Friday? Besides Jarvis?”

“Yeah. In the afternoon.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that?”

“Because you only asked me about ones who could have taken the gun. He couldn’t have. I knew it was gone before he came upstairs.”

Lloyd nodded slowly. “And … this punter. Was that before or after Inspector Hill had searched your house?”

“Before,” she said promptly.

Lloyd heaved a huge sigh of relief and looked at Judy, who was looking similarly relieved. He turned back to Ginny. “Why did you say Inspector Hill could have taken the gun?” he asked.

“I never said that!” said Ginny, aghast at the very thought. She twisted around to Judy. “I never!” she said. “Honest—I never!”

Lloyd thought hard about the interview. “But when Sergeant
Finch asked you if anyone else could have got it, you said, ‘Just Inspector Hill, when they were searching the house’— didn’t you?”

Ginny shook her head, frowning, thinking, then nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I said that. But he didn’t ask who could have got the gun. He said had anyone else been upstairs and not handcuffed to the bed. And she
had
been upstairs,” she said earnestly. “And she wasn’t handcuffed to the bed.”

Lloyd smiled broadly, trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore the image that had sprung inevitably to his mind. No, he thought. She’d never stand for it. Would she? He looked at her, saw her trying desperately not to laugh, so as not to offend the deadly serious Ginny. You never knew. She might, he thought, on a good night with a fair wind. But where in the world could they get hold of handcuffs?

“I was just trying to get away from him,” Ginny went on. “But he got me at the top of the stairs. Lennie came in and got him off me.”

He left Ginny with great reluctance. He really did want to spend his life interviewing her. He envied Lennie.

“There you are,” he said to Judy, as he drove off. “The gun was there after your first visit and gone before your second.”

“Mm.”

Lloyd heaved a great, melodramatic sigh. “Now what?” he said.

“You’ve just proved that no one murdered him,” she said. “Now, that would suit me down to the ground, but I’ve a feeling you would rather catch whoever did it.”

Well, yes. He had given Freddie a lecture on the subject. And, indeed, people couldn’t go around doing that sort of thing willy-nilly. But once in a while …?

Maybe not. “All right,” he said. “Do your thing.”

“What thing?”

“The little puzzles,” he said.

“The little puzzles are your thing,” she said.

“But you list them in chronological order—I know you do. So go through all the little puzzles about any of the people who could have got hold of the gun.”

He now waited for a break in the traffic to allow him to escape from Parkside. Judy was turning pages in her notebook, and almost broke her neck when he shot out into the first available space in a most un-Lloyd-like fashion. Serve her right. She was always doing it to him.

“Right,” she said, as they drove through the quietness of a Malworth Sunday, restored to it by the all-too-successful bypass. In an old town like this, it was almost the way driving used to be, when he was a child, and anyone with a car was godlike, majestically sweeping past, their gleaming chariots stirring up faint clouds of dust on the underused roads. “Why did Rob Jarvis team up with Lennie, of all people?” she asked.

“Ginny.”

“Yes, but if he’d got an honest partner to drive during the day, he could have afforded the going rate for Ginny, and still had a profit to show for it,” Judy said. “So why Lennie? He knew he was being ripped off—he told Marshall he knew.”

Lloyd thought. Jarvis was a burglar, without form. Lennie was someone who had tried his hand at a lot of things, all illegal, until quite recently, and would doubtless be doing so again any minute. “Fall guy?” he suggested.

“But he didn’t even try to use him as a fall guy, did he? I mean—if Lennie had keys to the garage, he didn’t say he had.”

“He couldn’t, really, though, could he? He had the taxi that night, not Lennie. He didn’t bargain for someone calling the police while he was on the premises.”

“True.” She ticked it off. “Why use Bonfire Night as a cover, and then ring nine-double-nine?”

“All right,” said Lloyd, sweeping out onto the dual carriageway, giving that some thought. “It wasn’t the murderer who rang nine hundred and ninety-nine. It was a passerby who didn’t want to get involved.”

“Why did this passerby ring Stansfield first?”

Stansfield looked very pretty at this time of year. It wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a picturesque town—all housing estates and neighborhood shops with flat roofs. But in spring and autumn, its woodland setting and its planted
roundabouts came into their own. The parkland around the boating lake was a wonderful mix of greens and browns, with great orange splashes, and deep red tinges. Yellow leaves were just beginning to lose their grip on the trees, carpeting the grass beneath them.

He signaled left, and tried not to look at the town center, about which he had bad dreams. He didn’t know who had designed it in the first place; he hadn’t thought much of it then. But now …

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t think of any reason. I thought it might be Drummond himself, trying to ring you, but the lab says no. The blood was on the phone before those digits were pressed. Who knows police station numbers?”

“Police officers.”

“Apart from police officers.”

“Informers?”

“Neighborhood Watch,” said Lloyd.

“Solicitors.”

“We’ve got a taxi-driver-cum-burglar, a petty villain, a secretary or whatever Mrs. Jarvis is, and a copper turned security man.”

“And a police officer,” said Judy.

Lloyd ignored her. “I like the last one best,” he said. He thought hard to try to produce a reason for anyone at all ringing Stansfield, especially Matt Burbidge, but he couldn’t. “No,” he said. “Still no answer. Next.”

“Why didn’t Mrs. Jarvis use her car?” said Judy.

Lloyd turned left and left again into the police station car park, and squeezed the car into his space. He switched off, and looked at Judy. “I thought that one had so many possible answers it didn’t constitute a puzzle,” he said, getting out.

“It has,” said Judy, as they walked toward the building. “But maybe we should find out what sort of car she drives. Drove. Whatever. Maybe she did take it—maybe someone saw it at the scene.”

“And maybe all Mr. Morgan’s friends are part of a conspiracy?” Lloyd grinned, and held the door open for her. “You’re getting worse than me.”

In the CID room, Marshall blinked a little, gathering his thoughts slowly, like he did every thing else, as he was asked the question. “I don’t know,” he said, at last. “I didn’t see her car. I can find out for you, sir.”

“No, that’s all right.” Lloyd sat on his desk. “You didn’t see it?” he repeated. “Was the taxi in the garage?”

“No. It was on the road outside the house. There wasn’t a car in the garage. Just all the stolen goods.”

“Was there a car outside, in the courtyard of the garages? Or outside the house, where the taxi was?”

“No. No, because I was the only car there when I parked, besides the taxi. And there was nothing parked outside the garages.”

“And both Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis were there?”

“Yes,” said Marshall.

“Then where was her car, Constable Marshall? The car that sits in her garage while she takes the bus?”

“Sorry, sir?”

“Nothing.” Lloyd got off Marshall’s desk, went into Judy’s office, and sat on her desk, facing her as she followed him in. “She wouldn’t have been able to drive it if it wasn’t there,” he said. “Would she?”

“But who could have taken it? The only likely candidate is her husband, and he was driving his taxi—he couldn’t drive two cars at once.”

No. Lloyd tried hard to think of even the wildest scenario that could include Burbidge getting his hands on Mrs. Jarvis’s car, but it defeated him. “Lennie hasn’t taken to stealing cars, has he?” he asked.

Judy laughed. “That would be too much like hard work,” she said. “Besides, Mrs. Jarvis wouldn’t have had to gather up her courage to open the door—it would have been open.”

Lloyd turned to look at her as she sat down, and shrugged. “I don’t think Mrs. Jarvis’s car can have anything to do with it,” he said. “Lenny must have taken the gun. Ginny must still be covering for him.”

“Why would Ginny keep me out of jail rather than Lennie?”
asked Judy. “She thinks the world of him. If it was a toss-up between me and Lennie, there would be no contest. She would have said she only missed the gun after I’d been there. Like a shot.”

“But she doesn’t know it’s a toss-up between you and Lennie. She thought she was putting the blame on Rob Jarvis.”

Judy nodded. “She wasn’t to know Jarvis was pulling the plug on Keith’s serial at the very moment Drummond got a bullet in his head,” she said.

Lloyd stared at her. “Who’s Keith?” he asked.

She looked up. “Oh, Lloyd—he’s just the husband of a couple who lived next door to Michael and me. Please—don’t start thinking I’m throwing myself at every—”

“No, no,” he said, holding up his hands as though he was stopping traffic. “No—I mean, is that why you wanted to know if I’d recorded it?”

She looked a little guilty. “Yes,” she said. “And I didn’t want to say that I had more friends you didn’t know ab—”

“Judy,” he said. “What you were doing at nine o’clock on Friday night may be a matter for speculation, but not what I was doing. And I can assure you, I wasn’t watching television.”

She frowned.
“Did
you tape it, then?” she asked.

He made a loud, impatient noise. “You’re sounding just like Ginny!” he said. “No, I didn’t tape it. It wasn’t
on
on Friday night! It’s on
Wednesday
nights!”

Lloyd had been defending Judy’s honor at nine o’clock on Friday. He had been in the act of placing a bet with Detective Chief Superintendent Case on that honor when they had heard about Drummond’s murder.

And he’d won his bet. But that had been betting on a certainty—no fun at all. This was much better than that. For once,
he
had the answers to the little puzzles. Even the anonymous Neighborhood Watch call to Stansfield police station.

He stood up, and looked out of Judy’s window at the town center, bathed in autumn sunshine, along what used to be a street but which was now a pedestrian walkway strewn with strange things for children to play on, people to sit on, potted
plants, the odd tree, and a great deal of windblown litter, up to where the taxis formed a U at the top. The taxi rank; one of the places Rob Jarvis had thought he might have been at nine o’clock on Friday night.

But he had been burgling a house, hadn’t he?

“Did you see your friend?” asked Ginny, curled up on the sofa, not watching a program about dragonflies. She switched off the TV as Lennie came and sat beside her.

“Yes,” he said, smiling, putting his arm around her.

“Is he all right?” She assumed it was a he.

“He’s going to be fine,” said Lennie. “And so are we.” He took his arm away, and felt in his back pocket for his wallet, taking out a twenty-pound note and a five-pound note. “That’s our capital,” he said. “But the debt’s been paid off, Ginny. He won’t be back.”

“How could you pay him all that money?”

“It doesn’t matter. It’s settled. This’11 buy food for a bit. And there are some jobs around. Casual work. On the demolition around here, and stuff like that.”

Ginny smiled. “You don’t know how to do anything,” she said.

“I know how to do this.” His hand slipped inside her shirt, and his fingertip brushed her breast. He put his arm back around her again, and she leaned back, her eyes closed, enjoying the gentle tickling.

“I wish I could kiss you,” he said.

“You can.”

“It’ll hurt.”

She shook her head, and felt his mouth gently touch her bruised lips.

“I love you,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

Carole Jarvis opened the door, and smiled nervously at Chief Inspector Lloyd. He had a woman with him; he introduced her as Detective Inspector Hill. She was attractive. Well dressed. Somehow she never thought of policewomen as looking like
that. She thought of them in uniform, and looking a bit butch. Stereotyping. Like her burglar with his bag marked swag. But burglars looked like Rob, and policewomen looked like her.

“Mr. Lloyd. Do come in. I—that is—Steve … Stephen said he’d given you the names and addresses of the people at his flat that night—I’m sure they’ll—”

“That’s quite all right, Mrs. Jarvis,” he said. “It’s actually Mr. Jarvis we’ve come to see.”

Yes. He had eaten his Sunday lunch. He hadn’t wanted it; she could see that. But he had eaten it.

“Is he at home? I noticed his taxi was outside, so I thought …”

“He—he’s doing some work on my car, I think,” she said. “He keeps it in good order—just in case I want to—” She held the back of her hand to her mouth. “He … he’ll be in the garage, I expect,” she said. “If you want to speak to—”