"A photograph proves nothing. She was black. You can't say what's a bruise and what's not."
"These are color photos," I pointed out mildly, "so unless you're blind you can certainly see the bruising."
He shook his head angrily. "What difference does it make? The accepted version was given by the man who performed the postmortem and he said her injuries were caused by a glancing blow from a truck."
"But not fifteen to thirty minutes before I found her. Two or three hours perhaps. And that means the people who say they saw her staggering about the road were probably looking at someone with severe head injuries."
His eyes flickered unwillingly toward the pictures again, as if he were both repelled and fascinated by them. "Even if that's true, you can't blame them for assuming she was drunk."
"I don't."
"Then what the hell is this in aid of?"
I licked the inside of my treacherous mouth again. "I'm going to have the case reopened," I said. "I want the way you handled it investigated. I want questions asked about why a rookie cop with a half-assed degree in sociology could see that something was wrong ... but you couldn't. I want to know why, when he tried to raise it with you, you had him thrown off the case."
He tore the photographs in half and tossed the pieces across the bar to flutter at my feet. "Problem sorted. And if that's all you've got to show for the last twenty years then you've been wasting your time."
Danny stooped to retrieve the bits. "You don't want to let him get to you," he said as he handed them back to me. "He's a bully. It's the only way he knows how to control people. He's busting a gut to change the subject rather than explain why he did fuck all about this poor black lady having her face smashed in."
Drury stared him down. "What would you know about it, shithead? You were still in nappies." He jerked his chin at me. "And you're backing the wrong horse if you back her. It was your dad she wanted locked up ... your dad she accused of murder. No one else."
There was a long silence.
Danny cast me an uncertain glance. "Is that true?"
"No," I said honestly. "Mr. Drury asked me if I knew of anyone who had a grudge against Annie, so I named your father, mother and Sharon Percy. I never at any point suggested they'd murdered her. That was Mr. Drury's interpretation."
Drury laughed. "You were always good at twisting the facts."
"Really? I thought that was your speciality."
He held my gaze for a moment, searching for chinks in my armor, then crossed his arms and turned to Danny. "Ask yourself why she brought you here and why she wanted you to see those photographs. She's planning to use you to get at your family, preferably by turning you against them first. It's what she's good at-manipulating people."
Danny hunched his shoulders unhappily as if all his worst fears had been confirmed, and my son's voice echoed uncomfortably in my ear. I'd be sodding mad if it happened to me...
"Your father had an alibi from five o'clock until midnight," I told him, "and it was Mr. Drury who established it. He knows as well as I that Derek couldn't have killed Annie."
"Then why am I here?"
"Because Mr. Drury lied about me to your family. He told your parents I was saying things that I wasn't ... and I need you to pass on to your mother and brother that all I ever accused them of was racism. And that was true, Danny. They were racists-probably still are-and they weren't ashamed of it."
I touched a hand to his shoulder by way of apology because it was cruel to associate him with his family's hate when he'd stated so often in his e-mails to Luke that he didn't approve of white people living in South Africa. "But my argument isn't with the Slaters," I told Drury, "it's with you." I stirred the torn photographs with the point of my finger. "Because when I accused you and your colleagues of the same thing, it frightened you so badly that you manipulated every piece of evidence to support the theory that Annie had died in an accident. And I'd like to know why you did that."
Did I imagine the flicker of fear in his cold, reptilian eyes or was it real? "We didn't have to manipulate anything," he said sharply. "We accepted the inquest verdict ... accidental death after stumbling under a truck some fifteen to thirty minutes before you found her."
"But you didn't know what the verdict was going to be when you began the investigation into Annie's death."
"So?"
"So you can't claim it as justification for your refusal to make proper inquiries. The only evidence you put forward was a description of Annie's house after she was dead, but it didn't stop you weighing in with a conclusion that she was a chronic drunk, an abuser of animals and a mental incompetent who neglected herself. I even remember your words. You said that in view of 'Mad Annie's' numerous problems your only surprise was that she'd lived as long as she had."
"Which was a view endorsed by everyone except you."
"Her doctor didn't endorse it."
He looked beyond me toward the door. "Your husband did," he murmured. "He and Mr. Williams described Annie as paralytic outside your house when they came home an hour and a half before you did. They also implied it wasn't unusual."
I followed his gaze to where Sam was hovering uncertainly in the doorway. We'd tarried too long, I thought. In the end everyone's patience ran out, even the guilty's. "They were lying," I said flatly.
"So you kept saying in '78."
"It's the truth."
"Why would they want to? If anyone was going to back you it ought to have been the man you married."
Once upon a time that had been my view, too, but only because I'd believed that truth was simple. "He was trying to protect his friend," I said carefully. "The two people I saw under the street lamp that night were Jock Williams and Sharon Percy. I suppose Jock was afraid I'd seen him ... and didn't want his wife finding out he'd been with a prostitute. So he and Sam concocted their story about going back to our house for a beer."
Drury glanced toward the door again, but Sam had disappeared. "Why didn't you tell me this twenty years ago?"
"I did. I gave you Jock's name as the man I thought I saw."
"But that's the point," he said sarcastically. "You only thought you saw him ... and you didn't say he was with Sharon Percy."
"At the time I didn't know who she was."
He gave a dismissive shake of his head. "Sharon had an alibi and Mr. Williams was ruled out when your husband vouched for him."
"But you never even questioned him," I said, "just accepted Sam's word against mine. But why? Wasn't a woman's word as good as a man's?"
He leaned his hands on the counter and shoved his face close to mine. "You were 'round the bend, Mrs. Ranelagh. Nothing you said was believable. Everyone agreed with that ... even your husband and mother. And they should know because they had to live with you."
If I'd had a gun at that moment, I'd have killed him. Bang! Straight between the eyes. How dare he quote my family at me when he had been the cause of their distrust? But hatred is a futile emotion which damages the hater more than the hated. Yes, he'd have been dead ... but so would I ... to everything that mattered to me. Perhaps my expression said more than I realized because he straightened abruptly.
"Sam and Jock invented their story to conform with what you told Jock's wife the next morning," I said evenly. "You told Libby Williams, and anyone else who was interested, that Annie had been seen staggering about the road an hour before she died, you also mentioned the outside time she could have stumbled in front of the lorry. All Sam and Jock did was recycle that information to give you what you wanted-a stupid, drunk nigger lurching around from 7:45-and the fact that none of it was true didn't bother you one little bit."
"Why would your husband and Mr. Williams do that?"
I shrugged. "It was easier for everyone if she died in an accident. For !he police, too. It meant no one had to address the issue of racism."