“He worked with your stepfather and was a friend of your mother’s after your dad died.” He’d leave it to Claire to explain the intricacies of that relationship, if she wished.
“I couldn’t help but notice your C. S. Lewis books. Did you know they’re quite valuable?”
“They were my dad’s. He named me for Lucy in the stories.” She gazed past Kincaid, and the hand stroking the dog’s head went still. “I always wanted to be like her. Brave, courageous, cheerful. The other children were tempted, but never Lucy. She was good, really good, all the way through. But I’m not.” She turned to Kincaid, and it seemed to him that her eyes held a sadness beyond her years.
“Maybe,” he said slowly, “that was an unreasonable expectation.”
“Looks like we’ve got this one nailed,” said Nick Deveney to Kincaid. They sat in the Guildford Police Station canteen, having a quick sandwich and coffee while David Ogilvie waited in Interview Room A.
“He hasn’t admitted to anything,” Kincaid answered through a squishy bite of cheese and tomato. “And I don’t think we’re going to rattle him by making him wait. He’s been on the other side of the table too often.”
“No way he can wiggle out of Gilbert, after what he’s done. Jackie Temple may be a bit more difficult, if he can prove he was lecturing that evening.” Deveney grimaced. “God, I hate to see a copper go bad. And shooting another officer—” Finding no words to express his disgust, he shook his head.
“He wouldn’t have known Will was a cop,” Kincaid said reasonably, then wondered why he was defending Ogilvie, and why Ogilvie’s ignorance should make what he’d done any less reprehensible. “Any news of Will?”
“He’s in surgery. Fractured femur, they think, and ruptured femoral vein.”
Finishing his sandwich, Kincaid rolled the cling film into a tiny ball. “He was fast. Faster than I was. If I’d got out and called for backup, none of it might have happened.”
Deveney nodded, not bothering to excuse him. “You get slow in CID. You lose your edge. You spend too much time writing bloody reports, sitting on your backside at a desk.”
“I don’t think you’ll find that David Ogilvie’s gone soft at all,” said Kincaid.
Ogilvie looked none the worse for wear. He’d hung his anorak neatly over the back of his chair, and his white cotton shirt looked as crisp as if it had just come from the laundry. He smiled at Kincaid and Deveney as they came in and sat opposite him. “This should be an interesting experience,” he said as Deveney turned on the tape recorder.
“I should think you’re about to have quite a few new experiences,” said Kincaid, “including a very long stay in one of Her Majesty’s finer accommodations.”
“I’ve been intending to catch up on my reading,” countered Ogilvie. “And I have an exceptionally good solicitor, who is on his way here, by the way. I could refuse to say anything until he arrives.”
And why doesn’t he? Kincaid wondered as he tried to read the expression in Ogilvie’s dark eyes. David Ogilvie was highly intelligent as well as experienced in the rules of interviews. Did he want to talk, perhaps even need to talk?
Kincaid cast a warning glance at Nick Deveney—this was definitely an occasion when aggression wouldn’t get them anywhere. “Tell us about Claire,” he said to Ogilvie, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms.
“Have you any idea how lovely she was ten years ago? I could never fathom what she saw in him.” Ogilvie sounded incredulous, as if the years had not dimmed his amazement. “It can’t have been sex—she always came to me starved, and I think she must have kept up her ice-queen façade until after they were married. Maybe she sensed that was what he wanted … I don’t know.”
So that had been the way of it, thought Kincaid. “I take it he didn’t know she was sleeping with you?”
Ogilvie shook his head. “I certainly didn’t tell him.”
“Not even after she told you she meant to marry him?”
“Don’t insult me, Superintendent. I’d not stoop to that.”
“Even though it might have botched things for Gilbert?”
“To what end? Claire would have despised me for betraying her. And I think by that time he was so determined to have her that it wouldn’t have stopped him. She was his porcelain prize, to be shown off as his latest accomplishment. The phrase ‘trophy wife’ might have been invented for Gilbert and Claire, but he underestimated her. I’ve often wondered how long it took for him to realize he’d got a real person.” Ogilvie’s face had relaxed as he talked about Claire, and for the first time Kincaid could imagine what she might have seen in him.
“You had no contact with her?”
“Not until tonight.” Ogilvie sipped from the cup of water on the table.
Kincaid sat forwards, hands on the table. “What evidence did Gilbert have against you?”
“Trying to take me by surprise, Superintendent?” The mocking wariness returned to Ogilvie’s mouth. “I think that’s something I’d prefer to discuss with my solicitor.”
“And the nature of the activities in which you were involved?”
“That as well.”
“Jackie Temple believed you were taking protection money from the big-time drug dealers. Is that why you had her killed?”
“I told you before. I had nothing to do with PC Temple’s death, and that’s all I intend to say on the matter.” Ogilvie’s mouth was set in a stubborn line.
Deveney moved restively in his chair. “Tell us about the day Commander Gilbert died,” he said. “What happened after you went to the bank?”
“The bank?” Ogilvie repeated, sounding unsure of himself for the first time.
Sweat, goddammit, thought Kincaid, and smiled at him. “The bank. The bank where you conned the manager into letting you see Claire’s file.”
“How in bloody hell …” Ogilvie shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, I suppose.” He sipped at his water again and seemed to collect himself before continuing. “The problem with following Claire was that I couldn’t take a chance on her recognizing me, so I could never get too close. I’d seen her make stops at that bank several times, and I knew they did their personal banking at the Midlands in Guildford. For all I knew she was simply running errands for Gilbert’s mother, but I noticed that she always came from work and returned there, and that made me wonder. By that time the game had grown a bit stale, and I was intrigued.
“Oh, it was a game at first, I admit, a chance to use old skills, feel the edge of things again. And it was a challenge—give Alastair enough to keep him off my back, yet not enough to compromise Claire too badly. He should have blackmailed a less biased snoop.”
Deveney rubbed one thumb with the other. “I should think you’d have relished the opportunity to get even with her, after she threw you over for him.”
“And satisfy bloody Alastair Gilbert in the process? He wanted me to tell him his wife was cheating on him. He seemed to get some sort of perverse satisfaction out of it.”
Kincaid leaned forwards. “Was she?”
“I don’t intend to tell you that, either. What Claire did was her business.”
“But you told Gilbert about the bank account.”
“It seemed harmless enough. I called him that afternoon, told him I wanted to talk to him and that I’d meet his train in Dorking. I gave him the information and told him I was finished. In months of watching Claire, that was the only thing I’d come up with, and for all I knew she was saving up to buy him a bloody birthday present. I’d had enough.”
“And that was that?” Kincaid raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“He agreed,” said Ogilvie, his eyes shuttered.
Kincaid leaned forwards and thumped his fist on the table. “Bollocks! Gilbert would never have agreed. I know that for a fact, and I didn’t know him half as well as you. I think he laughed at you, told you he’d never let you off. And you believed him, didn’t you?” Kincaid sat back again and stared at Ogilvie, playing out the scenario in his head. “I think you followed him home from Dorking that evening, hoping for an opportunity. You left your car in the pub car park, where it would be unremarkable, or up at the end of the lane. You rang the doorbell and made an excuse, told him there was something you’d forgotten to mention, while you saw that no one else was home.