‘How, Nigel?’ I insisted. ‘How did you withdraw it?’
‘Inspector Adey was on duty. He signed it out for me.’
‘Off his own bat?’
‘No. He rang Force Control. The officer in charge sanctioned it.’
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘Yes. It’s all right, Charlie. We did it by the book.’
‘Thank Christ for that,’ I sighed. Good old Nigel had played it by the book. I should have known better than to imagine he’d do it any other way. Suddenly, I felt weary. I sat down on the grass and stretched out, lying on my back staring at the moon. I could have lain there all night, except the revolver was sticking in my kidneys, and the helicopter was chomping in over the treetops, flashing and banking like something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
K. Tom survived. Considering the range, and the bad light, it was good shooting by Nigel, but outside the normal parameters for taking out an armed assailant. By the rules of the game Davis should have been dead. I spent Tuesday morning giving evidence to the investigating officer brought in from another division to look into the shooting. He shook his head once or twice, but nothing worse.
After that I needed a cup of tea and a pork pie, badly. I was running down the stairs when I met Inspector Adey.
‘Hi, Gareth,’ I said as I passed him.
‘Everything OK, Charlie?’ he called after me, concerned.
‘I think so,’ I shouted back over my shoulder.
‘Charlie!’ he yelled.
I stopped and looked up at him.
‘Thought you might like some good news,’ he said.
‘That would be most welcome. What is it?’
‘This morning Fingerprints rang us about a match they’d made. We’ve just arrested a youth for killing the swans in the park, thanks to that beer can you found there.’
‘Hey, that’s great. Is it anybody we know?’
‘We don’t know him,’ he replied, ‘but apparently he’s an old friend of yours.’
‘Oh,’ I said, taking a step back up towards him. ‘I think you’d better tell me all about it.’
In the afternoon Superintendent Les Isles and I held a case review meeting in his office. Makinson was with us, too, but he didn’t have much to contribute. K. Tom Davis was in Heckley General, under armed guard. He was sitting up and had been charged with attempted murder.
‘First of all,’ Les began, ‘let me tell you about Michael Angelo Watts. I have a miracle to report — his memory has returned. We fed it to him that Davis had been arrested and the remainder of the gold recovered, and he decided that it might be helpful to us if he made a statement. The gist of it is that he’d left his portable telephone — more correctly, his father’s telephone — at K. Tom Davis’s house on the Wednesday before Lisa was killed. I asked him if there was anybody who could corroborate that and he suggested Mrs Davis. I told him that was a no-no. She denied ever seeing the phone, and he looked uncharacteristically glum. He brightened a little when I disclosed that I had a witness who might help him.’
‘Me,’ I said.
‘Mmm,’ Les continued. ‘I told Watts that you had made a statement saying how you saw him visit Davis at the appropriate time, and suggesting that his behaviour indicated that he had taken the wrong phone with him. In other words, you’d got him off a murder rap.’
‘Did he express his gratitude?’
‘Not exactly — don’t forget you had helped put him behind bars for dealing. I made it plain that we’d been fair with him, and that making threats against your girlfriend was bang out of order. I’d be lying if I said he looked sheepish, Charlie, but I think he took it onboard.’
‘Great,’ I said. ‘That’s good news. It was worrying me.’
‘I’ll bet it was. Now let’s have a look at Davis. I’m afraid the outlook is not so rosy from now on. We’ve only recovered the one bar of gold, for a start. Either he spread it around, or that’s all there is left.’
‘Twenty kilograms, or one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds’ worth, out of ten million quid. That’s not bad going.’
‘These drugs barons have expensive tastes. Mr and Mrs Davis — K. Tom and the desirable Ruth — have had sudden pangs of remorse, too, and they have both decided to fully cooperate with us. Their tales, sadly, differ in one important area. He says that he stayed in on the night Lisa was killed, but that she stormed out in a paddy. Ruth Davis says more or less the opposite.’
‘What are the stories?’ I asked.
‘Well, according to K. Tom, Lisa rang him about her business, as previously stated. Ruth was insanely jealous, he claims, convinced they were having an affair. After the second call she dashed out of the house, saying she would settle things — wait for it — “once and for all.”’
I said, ‘Gosh, well, that proves it. Did he mention the phone?’
‘Reckons he never saw it. She must have found it and planned the whole thing to put the blame on poor old Watts.’
‘So he claims that her motive was jealousy, and the desire to protect her loveless marriage.’
‘Cor-rect.’
‘And what’s her story?’
‘Ah. Mrs Davis wants to eat her cake and have it. Her tune has changed since she learnt that, whatever happens, she keeps the conservatory. She claims she was in bed with migraine…’
I chipped in with ‘Not DC Migraine from Huddersfield?’
Makinson scowled while Les smiled and went on. ‘That’s the one. Her loving husband brought her a cup of tea and two aspirin, at about ten thirty, and said he was popping out for the last half hour in the pub.’
‘The woman’s a living lie,’ I stated. ‘Can’t accept that they hate each other’s guts. They’re held together by mutual greed. You said she hadn’t seen the phone, either.’
‘That’s right. Says he must have found it and planned the whole thing…’
I finished it off for him. ‘To incriminate poor old Michael.’
‘That’s right. And then there’s the problem of motive. We believe he killed Lisa to stop her spilling the beans about the gold, but we’ve only your word about that, Charlie.’
Makinson shuffled in his seat and was about to speak when a PC came backwards through the doorway, carrying a tray with coffee and biscuits.
‘About time,’ Les said, jovially, pushing papers aside to make room on his desk.
We shouted our thanks after the departing uniform and I looked for the sugar. There wasn’t any. I took a sip. It was like drinking neat creosote.
When we were ready again Les asked Makinson what he’d been about to say. He was called Tim. He wiped a crumb of chocolate digestive from his chin and sat back. ‘I was just about to make an observation,’ he mumbled. ‘As I see it, we have two suspects, and one of them almost certainly killed Lisa Davis. Unfortunately, we can’t present them both to the court and say, “Take your pick.” We have to decide which case is the stronger, and go with that. The evidence against him is minimal. She has the stronger motive, but would come across as a harmless housewife. Taking them individually, I’d say we didn’t stand a chance of a conviction.’
‘Mmm. What do you think, Charlie?’ Isles asked.
I lifted the cup to my lips and decided I didn’t really need it that badly, so I lowered it again. ‘I’d say that Tim has just made a very fair assessment of the situation,’ I admitted. ‘But I’m not leaving it at that. K. Tom Davis might be going away for a long time, but that doesn’t help Justin Davis. He wants a conviction. He needs someone to blame, to focus his hate on. He needs to make sense of what happened to his wife. If this goes to court on a not guilty plea, Lisa’s reputation will be dragged through the mire, laid open for the vultures to pick over. How’s that gonna make her husband feel?’
‘Not to mention,’ Les added, ‘the suspicion that his mother killed his wife. It’s like bloody King Lear.’ His Shakespeare was worse than mine but I know what he meant. After a sip of coffee he dunked a biscuit, saying, ‘Aah. It’s taken a long time, but I’ve got them making it just how I like it.’