‘I didn’t tell the sergeants the whole truth,’ Melville said, glancing at Alice apologetically. ‘I did see Elizabeth on Thursday night. I went to her flat after I left my studio. I wanted to find out if we could be friends. I thought maybe if she’d let me be a friend again, then we’d have a chance of getting back together. I’ve never made any bones about the fact that I loved her, to you. She allowed me in, and that was an improvement, as she’d slammed the door the last time I went to her house. I brought her flowers, freesias, I think. I just wanted to see her, to talk to her, to be in the same room, but she didn’t want anything to do with me, really. She gave me a glass of wine, but never poured out one for herself, so I knew I wouldn’t be there long. She was polite, she kept apologising, saying that she had an important medico-legal report to prepare, but I reckoned that she simply didn’t like having me anywhere near her. She wouldn’t look me in the face, or meet my eyes, kept looking into space, and the only time our eyes did meet, she flinched. If you know somebody well they don’t have to say much for the message to get across…’
‘And then what?’ Manson interrupted.
‘And then nothing,’ Melville replied coldly. ‘I left. End of story.’
‘You expect me to believe that!’ Manson expostulated.
‘No. Precisely because I did not expect your kind to believe “that” I omitted “that” and my expectation has not been exceeded. A woman is murdered, one I loved. The woman who killed my child and I fell out with. The woman seen by me on the night of the killing. Ergo, plod, I done it. I knew that’s how it would seem to you, and lo and behold, that’s how it does seem to you.’
‘I think,’ the Inspector leant over the table in his eagerness to express his theory, ‘that you went to Dr Clarke’s flat, you were determined to re-establish your relationship with her, and when she refused, you lost it, you killed her…’
‘You didn’t need to tell me that, I knew that’s what you’d think. But we live in different worlds, Inspector. Yours drips with blood wherever you look. Mine’s different. In mine, people in love don’t kill each other. I have loved before, you know, I have lost before, you know. No, I haven’t had my unborn child killed before, but I know Liz saw things quite differently, she’s a gynaecologist, for Christ’s sake. She had performed countless abortions. I loved her and so I forgave her. Once she’d loved me, then she didn’t. It happens, it made me sad, not mad. I wish she was still alive, I wish I’d never seen her that night, I wish I had an alibi, but I don’t, and that doesn’t make me her killer, whatever you may think.’
Undaunted by Melville’s impassioned speech, the terrier clumsily attempted to corner his prey again.
‘We know you take drugs, no point in denying it. Did Dr Clarke supply you with them?’
Melville was unable, or unwilling, to conceal his contempt any longer, and shook his head with disbelief before answering.
‘As I said, we live in different worlds, on different planets, in different bloody universes. In my twenties, like nearly everyone else I knew, I took drugs. Since then I’ve taken nothing, so I have no idea, I repeat NO IDEA, where you got your inaccurate, half-baked information. The idea of Elizabeth supplying them…’, he laughed mirthlessly, ‘…is so preposterous as not to deserve an answer. Her entire career was devoted to improving people’s health. Why not go the whole hog and accuse your own Chief Constable of peddling? He’d be as likely, actually, quite possibly more likely. If these are the sorts of flights of fancy you engage in for the purposes of your investigation, Inspector, Elizabeth’s murderer will be at large for ever, laughing at you as you reach out for the next red herring or wild goose. Maybe you should try and keep your big feet on the ground, stick to the facts…’
‘We don’t need any instruction in detection from you, Melville, and you’d better tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth from now on. I’ve met your smart-arse type before…’
Disobeying the express command she had been given earlier, Alice broke into the duel between the two men. ‘The woman who answered your phone on Tuesday, who was she?’
‘Must have been Paula.’ Evidently all co-operation had now been withdrawn, even monosyllables would have to be teased out.
‘Paula, who?’ she persisted.
‘Paula Carruthers.’
‘And your relationship with her?’
‘Occasional sleeping partner.’ Melville had chosen his words carefully.
‘Not a girlfriend then?’
He smiled wearily before answering, ‘No. For me there’s a difference. You asked me, last time, about girlfriends, and I said I’d had none since Liz. I was telling you the truth, although you may think I’m lying. Liz and I were lovers and friends, we didn’t just have sex with each other. Since we broke up I have slept with other women, but I haven’t loved any of them, had any kind of lasting relationship with them or even wanted to. Paula’s no different. The answer I gave you originally was completely accurate by my lights. Anything else?’
As Inspector Manson said ‘No’, Alice said, ‘Yes. Can you tell me what time it was when you left Elizabeth Clarke’s flat?’
‘About eight o’clock,’ he replied.
Alastair had left the draft post mortem report on David Pearson up on the computer screen and Alice glanced at it:
‘External examination-the body was that of a middle-aged white male, measuring approximately six foot one inch in height and weighing approximately eighty kg. The head hair was dark brown, streaked with grey, of moderate length and straight. The eyes were brown. There were no petechial haemorrhages, there was no jaundice. The mouth contained natural dentition in a reasonable state in both the upper and lower jaws. There was no evidence of injury within the mouth…’
She flicked, idly, to the post mortem reports for Elizabeth Clarke and Sammy McBryde, all equally impersonal, couched in the same clinical language; cold, objective, as if describing a cut of meat. Like a painting by Lucien Freud, accurate to the nth degree, but shocking, as if executed by a member of another species, an alien intelligence incapable of perceiving anything beyond the flesh and bones.
‘Imagining your own post mortem report?’ Alastair broke his companion’s concentration…
‘It will state,’ she replied airily, ‘the body was that of a woman in her prime, measuring approximately six foot in height and of appropriate weight for a wonderfully slim build. The head hair was a dark, glossy chestnut, curled luxuriantly and naturally. The eyes were of hazel surrounded by thick, upturned lashes… the full lips contained regular, pearly white teeth…’
‘Internal examination’, Alastair interrupted ‘…the soul, on close inspection, was found to be completely black.’ The phone rang. It was DCI Elaine Bell, croaky as ever and crunching in between sentences another cough sweet. Montgomery, in his caravan at El Alamein, could not have pushed himself harder than the ill little policewoman. They were to go, first thing the next day, to speak to Pearson’s widow. Kid gloves were to be worn and no feathers ruffled as the ACC (Crime) knew her family and was positively chummy with her mother. The press had already been making nuisances of themselves, staking out the place, and if they were still present, as seemed likely, they were to be provided with no titbits whatsoever, however innocuous they might seem. The words ‘serial killer’ had already appeared in an article in one of the tabloid papers, even though nothing had been officially provided by anyone from Fettes HQ suggesting that such a creature was at large. Manson’s report on the Ian Melville interview was now on Holmes, and the suspect already under surveillance.
8
Saturday 10th December