‘Anything’s possible, Kirsty,’ he said gently. ‘And so the sooner we find him the better.’
‘But you think it was him, don’t you? You and Geoff?’
There was no answer to that, at least not one that held the smallest crumb for her comfort.
He cleared his mobile. Patsy was standing before the flip chart, reading the last completed sheet. She sighed. ‘I feel sorry for Julia. She must have been in an awful state to break down the way you said she did. She must have been crazy about Donna. I can see it all. No one could play the sweet little innocent like Donna. I always had an idea she attracted both sides. I wonder who the other J could be.’
Crane shrugged. ‘I don’t think it matters any more. Another married bloke, maybe, just keen to keep his head down.’
‘I wonder if Donna let anything slip about anyone else,’ she said, in a musing tone. ‘I know she was secretive, but two women together, pillow talk, all that. Something Julia might have written in her diary, seeing as she kept a proper one. It might help put Hellewell away, mightn’t it?’
‘Julia wouldn’t have wanted to know, Patsy. She hated hearing about Donna and men. I’m sure the bad dream was an exception. And if—’ He broke off abruptly, stood staring at the flip chart. ‘Christ, maybe you’re ahead of both me and Geoff.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘If Hellewell’s seen the flip chart he knows about the diary too, knows about Donna’s affair with Julia. What if he had the same idea as you and thinks the diary could implicate him? He might think Donna really did let his name slip at some point, that there might even be a mention somewhere that she was seeing him the Saturday she died.’
She paled, watched him a little open-mouthed, not quite understanding. ‘Look, Patsy, let’s say he saw off Ollie, or tried to, because he found out Ollie had been talking to me. So what if he’s aiming to do the same to Julia and then destroy the diary? He doesn’t know she took the number of his car that night at the Raven, because I wasn’t going to put it on the chart till Benson had checked it out. In other words, he just thinks Julia saw someone at the Raven who might have been him. But if she’s out of it and he and Hebden stick to the story he was with him the night Donna disappeared, well, he could decide the evidence is too flimsy to do him any real harm.’
‘But … what if Hellewell and Julia really were in it together, like Geoff thought they might be?’
‘Geoff had a good point. So what if Julia had killed Donna, and Hellewell thinks if she’s taken in for questioning he might be fingered for colluding with her? That’s a very serious offence in a murder. He’d go inside, his business and reputation could be ruined. But if Julia could be made to disappear …’ He paced up and down the little room. ‘I think I’d better go over there. Warn her to be on her guard. Whether she’s in the frame or not it’s essential the police get her in one piece. I’m really worried now, Patsy, she’s isolated and she lives alone and I’m pretty sure the staff only come in the daytime. I’ve got to go. I’ll call in on the way back. The locksmith should be here any minute.’
It was dark now after a day of low cloud. He drove to Ilkley on the quicker route this time, along the valley road, through Guisely and Burley and then along past the silently flowing Wharfe. When he reached Cheyney Hall he pulled up on to the verge, took out his mobile, keyed her number. She’d not want to open the door without knowing who was going to be out there. When he got through, there were odd grating sounds, as if the phone were being picked up uncertainly. There was a brief, breathy silence and then words that came out almost as a sob. ‘Help me …’
‘Julia? What’s the—’
Then she screamed. A scream that seemed curtailed. It made the hairs on his neck prickle. He heard a dull sound that could have been a blow, followed by a crashing noise that had to be the fall of a body. The connection was carefully broken.
ELEVEN
Crane scrambled out of his car and ran towards the arched entrance. The gates stood open as before. There was a car on the drive, just within the gates. He’d grabbed a torch on leaving the Megane. Its glow identified the car as a Honda. An Accord. His heart lurched. He ran on to the great front door. It was locked. He moved cautiously to the right, as it was so dark, and round to the back of the house to where the wide terrace overlooked the vast rear garden. He had to locate the room that had been filled with flowers.
She lay on an oriental rug before an ornate fireplace. The room was dimly lit by a single table lamp, but it looked to have been overturned in a struggle, so that its light was concentrated on her body in its black clothes, and left the man’s features in shade. But he caught a glint of fair hair and the outline of a strong frame and he knew it was Hellewell. He tried the handle of the french window. It gave. Perhaps she’d been out on the terrace earlier. That must have been how he’d got in.
As the french window opened, with a faint whine, Hellewell fled through a door that Crane knew would take him into the big hall. Crane dropped to his knees at Julia’s side. She’d been given a blow with some object, possibly an ornament, and the wound extended from her left temple into her hair, which was matting with blood. She was breathing, but unconscious. He heard noises in other parts of the house. Was Hellewell trying to get out? And finding the doors deadlocked?
There was an antique chest of drawers on cabriole legs to the left of the door. It was heavy but not too heavy to drag in front of the door and block his return. Crane needed to do two things urgently: disable Hellewell’s car and get help. It wouldn’t be too long before Hellewell found a way out of the house, even if he had to break windows.
Crane went out to the terrace, then returned along it as rapidly as he dared in the pitch darkness. He’d seized a heavy silver candlestick from the fireplace mantel and now smashed in the headlamps and taillights of the Accord. He’d not get far without lights. He then took out his mobile and began to key 999. Hellewell appeared from nowhere, snatched the phone from his hand and flung it in the basin of the fountain. As Crane began to turn, a very hard fist struck his cheekbone in a glancing blow.
He began to run. He was a strong man and tall, but he knew Hellewell would have the edge over him, working daily on his land. He’d had one glancing blow from a fist that felt like granite, if he took a full-on blow coming out of nowhere in this darkness it could disable him. At least he still had his torch and he made his way along the side of the house and round to the terrace again, then ran down the wide steps and on to the path that skirted the pool and led into the formal garden. He’d rarely known such darkness as that which enveloped Julia Gregson’s immense property, standing as it did in the lee of unlit moorland terrain.
Beyond the formal garden the land was broken, as he remembered it, by smaller gardens, the gazebo, lofty hedges, pleached archways. Beyond all this again was the boundary copse. Maybe he could make for that, then scale the perimeter wall? He moved as rapidly as he dared, with short bursts on the torch to light his route along one of the main walkways. It seemed to take for ever, but he finally reached a strip of open, well-cut lawn. He was able to race across this, as the land was even, and to reach, with a sigh of relief, the dense forest trees of the copse. He moved warily into an even denser darkness, feeling his way past the massive trunks of the ancient trees, not daring to use his torch now in case Hellewell had somehow caught up with him and spotted the brief flashes of the torch’s glow.
But he knew he was becoming disoriented as he picked his way along, with many slight changes of direction. He wondered where Hellewell was. He’d not given instant chase and Crane had heard no sounds at all of pursuit as he’d made his way the entire length of the garden. It made him very uneasy. Had he done a runner? But his car now had no lights. Would he risk using it? Maybe he’d gone off on foot. He didn’t want to think he might have gone back inside the house to finish the job he’d come for.