‘Eric! That’s enough,’ the DCI reprimanded him, alarmed by the fury in his voice and the ferocious expression on his face.
‘Why didn’t you accompany Heather Brodie home?’ she asked the doctor.
‘I would have… I would have liked to, but I’d have had to stop before India Street anyway, and there’s always the risk…’
‘The risk?’
‘That we’d be seen. It would be awful for Heather, and if the GMC caught just a whiff of it I’d be struck off…’
‘For knocking off a dying man’s wife? Surely not?’ Eric Manson sneered.
‘That’s why you lied?’ Elaine Bell asked, ignoring her colleague’s aside.
‘Of course, I had to. Why else would I?’
‘What do you think, Alice?’ the DCI asked, after they had congregated once more in the murder suite, leaving their interviewee in his room to stew in his own juice, pacing up and down, uncertain what would happen to him next.
‘About Paxton?’
‘Of course.’
‘I think he’s telling the truth this time. He’s petrified. I don’t think he was lying.’
‘But do you think he was involved? In the killing?’ the DCI asked.
Before Alice had time to answer, she added, ‘What I don’t understand is, why? Why would Heather Brodie or Paxton, alone or together, bother to kill Gavin Brodie? If they wanted him out of the way, he was on his way out already. They would hardly have had to wait. And they weren’t really waiting anyway, they were already getting on with their lives together. He couldn’t have lasted more than… what, a couple of months or something? He was wasting away in front of their very eyes. Why would they take the risk?’
‘I don’t know, but something I came across yesterday might explain it,’ Alice replied. ‘In Heather Brodie’s desk I found some insurance policy documents. If Brodie survived beyond early February next year, which is a month or so away, then she would not get a payout of two hundred thousand pounds. If he died before then, she would.’
‘He had to die before then for there to be a payout? Why didn’t you tell me this last night?’ Elaine Bell demanded crossly. ‘It might have been useful to have known that this morning, don’t you think? For questioning Paxton, if nothing else.’
‘Er… I think I thought…’ she racked her brain, wondering why she had failed to pass on the news.
‘Oh, never mind,’ the DCI interrupted in a tired voice, ‘We’ve got him for a bit longer, I suppose. But we’ll still need a lot more evidence, motive or no motive It’s all circumstantial so far.’
‘I don’t know, we’ve a fair amount against them both now, haven’t we?’ Eric Manson commented, wrinkling his nose in disgust as he wiped a spot of something from the shoulder of his jacket with a paper hankie.
‘No, we haven’t, Sir,’ Alice said bluntly, too exhausted from lack of sleep to bother how her intervention might sound. ‘Surely any prints or DNA in the house can be easily explained away? He’ll not have been on the database, but if the unidentified stuff is his, prints or DNA, it was in the kitchen and the bedroom wasn’t it? He’ll account for it on the basis of his role as the man’s doctor. And there was nothing on the knife or anything else, thanks to the river and the rain. We’ve no witnesses. All we’ve got so far, surely, is opportunity, means and now, possibly, motive. Nothing concrete. And what did they do? Poison him and then cut his throat, but why both? And why would they take stuff, then throw it away?’
‘Well, if it was them,’ the DCI answered, ruffling her hair distractedly with her hands, ‘they’d take the stuff just to make it look like an outside job. But I’ve no idea at the moment why they’d do both.’
‘Have we heard from the pharmacy whether there was enough in the bottles for the overdose?’
‘Yup. There was enough – well, enough if we can rely on Paxton’s prescription records. Which, of course, is rather a big if now.’
‘Presumably,’ Alice said, ‘we should discount, for the present, at least, Heather Brodie and Paxton’s evidence about the victim’s ability to take the stuff himself?’
‘Yes, I agree. We’ll go with the old lady and what‘s her name Reid’s version, the children’s too, that he couldn’t do it himself, and he no longer knew what was in the bottles.’
‘One other thing, Ma’am,’ Alice said, tentatively, keen to avoid provoking another outburst, ‘amongst the stuff in Heather Brodie’s desk there were papers, court papers. He had to raise an action to stop some madwoman pursuing him, scratching his car, yelling at Harry and Ella, breaking his windows. It all happened quite recently. Just last year in fact. Should I check the woman out? I’ve done a bit of digging with her neighbours, and apparently she works at the Abbey Park Lodge.’
‘Mmm, does she now,’ Elaine Bell responded, her interest engaged immediately, falling silent as she thought things through. A few trails seemed to have led back to that place. And, remembering the Dyce enquiry and her failure to follow up a possible lead, she nodded.
‘On you go. We’ll leave Paxton to sweat in here for a bit longer. In the meanwhile, we’ll re-do her closest neighbours, and make a start on his. Maybe someone will be able to say whether he left the place with her, when, or have seen the pair of them go into India Street together, anything. Anything to show that he’s still lying. Because if he is, with a bit more pressure, I reckon he’ll break.’
‘And if he doesn’t, then that leaves her, the Brodie woman,’ Eric Manson said, adding grimly, ‘and she’ll be the only one left in the picture.’
‘That’s it then, Detta,’ the manageress of the Abbey Park Lodge said, airily, ‘there’ll be no more raisins sprinkled in the clean underwear, eh?’
‘Em… like I told you, I just spilt them there… the sultanas, like.’
‘Raisins, sultanas, whatever… they all look like rodent droppings, don’t they? And once could be accidental, twice carelessness even, but six times? No, I don’t think so. However, I… no, we, will manage to forget all about this little incident, I’m sure, and you’ll not be going to the lawyers, to the Industrial Tribunal either. Is that right, dear, you’ll give up your claim now, eh?’
Victory, the manageress thought, as she looked into the little Irishwoman’s resentful eyes, was almost in her grasp. It was true, as the manuals said, that management sometimes resembled a game of chess, but, fortunately, every so often one’s opponent turned out to be not a Russian Grandmaster but, as in this case, an ass. And yes, she would admit it, hers was an unorthodox approach, certainly not one recommended or sanctioned by those manuals, but innovation and flexibility were surely the hallmarks of the competent manager? This morning, fortune had favoured the brave, and Julia from H R.’s timid advice could now be consigned to the wastepaper bin of industrial relations. And, as ‘brown cow’ did not always, inevitably, follow ‘How, now,’ Agnes, too, might get nowhere with her complaint.
Detta O’Hare, her head lowered as if in church, nodded mulishly, and then turned to leave the manageress’s office, hitting her elbow on the door frame in her haste to escape.
A few minutes later, and feeling reinvigorated by the routing of the woman, the manageress found herself informing the police sergeant that no Agnes Hart worked in their premises.
‘No.’ She shook her head, replacing the cap on her gold Parker pen with a single assured movement, ‘I’m afraid I can’t help you there. No one with that name works here. As I’m sure you’ll appreciate, I am familiar with the names of all my staff.’