Pascoe regarded the small, slight man who returned his gaze trustingly and hopefully.
'I think we might arrange that, sir,' he said gently. 'What I would like you to do now is…'
There was a perfunctory tap at the door and it burst open to reveal Sergeant Wield.
'Mr Pascoe,' he began.
'Later,' said Pascoe trying to combine the casual and the imperious in his tone.
'I'm sorry, sir, but…'
'I said later, Sergeant!' snapped Pascoe, abandoning his attempt at the casual.
But Wield stood his ground. 'We tried to ring, sir, but there was no answer,' he said. 'It's your wife.'
'What about her?' said Pascoe, standing up now and facing the sergeant. Wield's features, he noticed with a tightening of the heart, were softened to a recognizable anxiety.
'She's had to go to hospital, sir. They rang not long after you'd left. Like I say, we tried to telephone here…’
'What's happened to her?' demanded Pascoe.
'I don't know, sir. But I knew how worried you'd been, so I thought I'd better…'
Pascoe glance from the sergeant to Greenall who was looking musingly out of the window, as though none of this had impinged upon him. Perhaps it hadn't. Perhaps Perhaps… but this was no time to be perhapsing around here. Not with Ellie… oh Christ!
'Excuse me, Mr Greenall,' he said and pushed Wield through the door, closing it behind them.
'Listen,' he said, putting the notebook into the sergeant's hand's. 'It's him. It's all there. Get him to read it. Get him to sign it. Every last bloody page. That first. That most certainly first. No pressing. No taking him down town. Do you follow me?'
'Yes, sir,' said Wield. 'And then?'
'Get his name on that and then you can put him in irons for all I care,' snapped Pascoe. 'Do it. I'm off.'
'I hope Mrs Pascoe's OK,' called Wield after him but he doubted if the inspector heard.
Slowly he turned and quietly opened the door.
'Hello, Mr Greenall,’ he said.
Chapter 26
'And is that the verdict of you all?'
'It is,' said the foreman of the jury.
The Judge nodded and turned towards the figure in the dock.
'Austin Frederick Greenall,' he began.
Outside the sun still looked down from clear skies but it was no longer the burning orange of midsummer but the pale lemon of autumn. There were dry brown leaves from the municipal plane trees patterning the steps of the court building as Pascoe emerged. He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and stared moodily at the medieval guildhall across the way.
Wield came out behind him.
'I'm sorry, sir,' he said.
'Not your fault, sergeant,' said Pascoe. 'Even if he'd signed that statement, it would probably have been tossed out as inadmissible.'
'All the same…'
'Lawyers, I've shit 'em!' proclaimed Dalziel's voice. Pascoe looked round. The fat man looked as if he'd just emerged from a battle. In a way he probably had.
'I had a word with that fellow prosecuting. Told him I'd seen better cases presented at the left luggage.'
'What did he say, sir?'
'Threatened to report me. I said if he made complaints like he cross-examined, I'd likely get promoted.'
'It was all circumstantial, sir,' defended Pascoe. 'When you got down to it, there was precious little hard evidence.'
'There was enough, rightly put over,' said Dalziel. 'And I'd have cracked the bugger wide open if we'd got another postponement.'
Pascoe and Wield exchanged glances.
Four months had passed. Dalziel had used every delaying tactic in the book. There had been remands before the committal proceedings. Here there had been reporting restrictions imposed, not (as the general public believed) to conceal horrors which should not be allowed to fall twice on human ears but (as Wield cynically asserted) to conceal from the general public the flimsiness of the case. Fortunately (or not), examining justices are swayed as much by police certainties as police evidence, particularly where crimes like the Choker's are involved, and Greenall had been committed for trial, which should have commenced within eight weeks according to law. Two postponements had been achieved, but even justice gets impatient and on the threat of a writ of habeas corpus from the defence counsel, the trial had gone ahead.
There had been only one charge – the wilful murder of Mary Greenall also known as Mary Dinwoodie. This was where the prosecutors felt at their strongest. They could prove motive and opportunity. They could point to Greenall's record of breakdown, they could make great play of his odd behaviour in not coming forward after the death. They could do many things except prove that he was outside the Cheshire Cheese on the night in question.
Defence challenged the admissibility of medical records, pointed out that Greenall had been performing a responsible and demanding job in civilian life for more than three years without exciting any adverse comment, and tried to explain his silence after his wife's murder by getting their client to admit freely that he was dismayed and numbed by the news and in any case had no reason to believe the police wouldn't rapidly track down his connection with the dead woman. 'In the event, he overestimated their speed and efficiency, but that is a fault we must lay at the door of the investigating officers, not of my client,' said counsel for the defence blandly.
Desperately the prosecution had tried to bring the linguistic evidence forward. Gladmann had put on his best suit ('the one stained with Beluga caviare,' said Pascoe) but his hopes of fame were dashed.
The first telephone call had not been made till after the death of June McCarthy, argued defence. The first recorded telephone calls had not been made till after the death of Pauline Stanhope. To prove that any of those four voices was the same as the earlier voice would be difficult. But that was beside the case anyway. Their client was not accused of any of the subsequent killings. Indeed, although the subsequent killings had some prima facie connection in that they all involved young women, the murder of Mary Greenall or Dinwoodie must be taken as distinct and separate, unless the police had concrete proof of a connection.
The disposition of the body, suggested prosecution.
Very slight, replied defence, and explicable in terms of straightforward imitation. The Cheshire Cheese killing had been widely reported, after all.
The Judge before whom this argument had been conducted in the absence of the jury agreed with the defence. He wondered whether he should make his sternly rebuking speech about the waste of the court's time now or save it up till after the acquittal he now anticipated. In the event he never made it. After all, it was the kind of thing that the papers would quote gleefully if this fellow went out of court free and then was found in the act of strangling some other poor girl. You couldn't be too careful. Judges were not accorded the respect that was once their due, not even in obituaries.
In fact, he was surprised by how long the jury took. Five hours. Prosecution hopes had begun to rise. But then they had filed back in, twelve good men and true, and Austin Greenall had stood and regarded them neither defiantly nor fearfully, and nodded in quiet agreement as he heard the words Not Guilty.
'There he is,' said Wield suddenly.
Greenall emerged into the pale sunlight surrounded by reporters. They pressed and jostled around him but he moved steadily forward, the calm centre of their turbulence. He glanced across towards the group of policemen on the steps but did not pause. Pascoe caught the words ‘.. get back to work…' and then the slight, dapper figure passed out of earshot and, soon after, out of sight.
A reporter detached himself from the group as they passed and said, 'Any reaction, Super?'