“So why would he tell us a pack of lies?” Jackson sneered.
“Because if he saw a chance to give me a bad time, he’d not let it go past him,” Gloria said bitterly. “Especially if he could see a way of turning it into a moneyspinner. You can bet your bottom dollar that the next call he made after he spoke to you was to the Sun or the Mirror. You’ve been had, the both of you. What you don’t realize is that if he had been having an affair with Dorothea, I’d have bought her a magnum of champagne for giving me a twenty-four-carat reason for ditching the sod. Ask my daughter. Ask anybody that was around me then. They’ll tell you the same.”
“You married the man,” Jackson pointed out.
“Everybody’s entitled to one mistake,” Gloria snapped back. “He were mine. Let me tell you, you’ll not find a single person can back up his tale and there’s a good reason for that.”
Linda and Jackson exchanged a look that said they both knew they were backing a loser here. I wasn’t so sure. I’d seen how well Gloria acted off screen. But even if the tale of the affair was true, I couldn’t see Gloria nursing her bitterness for all those years. She was far too upfront for that. If she’d had a bone to pick with Dorothea, it would have been lying bleached in the sun a long time since.
“At the end of the day, we don’t have to prove motive in a court of law,” Jackson pointed out. “Most people think detectives have to prove means, motive and opportunity. But we don’t. All we need is evidence. And we’ve got evidence against you. There’s circumstance — you’re the last person known to have seen her alive, and more often than not the last person to see a victim alive is also the first person to see them dead.”
I opened my mouth to speak and he waved a hand at me. “You’ll get your say in a minute. Let me finish first. But we’ve got more than that, Gloria. We’ve got fingerprints. To be precise, we’ve got your fingerprints on the murder weapon.”
There was a long silence. Gloria stared impassively at Jackson, then lit a cigarette with a hand that showed no tremor. “The crystal ball?” she asked.
His smile was as thin as the line of the new moon. “The crystal ball,” he confirmed.
It was obviously my week for fingerprints. All I needed now was for one of DI Tucker’s merry band to find Gloria’s prints inside Dennis’s shop and then I could swap client for buddy behind bars. Then something occurred to me. “Excuse me, but I don’t remember anyone taking my client’s fingerprints. Where exactly has the comparison set come from?” I asked belligerently.
Linda’s eyes widened and I could see her forcing her body not to react. Jackson scowled. “That’s neither here nor there. Take my word for it, the prints on the murder weapon are a perfect match for Gloria’s here.”
I shook my head. “You’ll have to do better than that.” I glanced at my watch. “Otherwise I’m going to call Ruth Hunter and get this whole shooting match on the record. And I don’t have to tell you how much Ruth hates having her lunch interrupted.” I knew the last thing Jackson wanted now was to get to the “lawyers at dawn” stage. He was relying on Gloria being confident enough to think she could handle this alone, and even with me along to stick a spoke in his wheel, he still thought he was the one holding all the cards. You’d think he’d have known by now. “So where did you get a verified set of my client’s prints?” I demanded again.
“You gave her a glass of water in the green room on Friday night when we had our initial interview,” Linda said. Jackson glared at her, but he must have known they’d reached the point of put up or shut up.
“And you helped yourself to it after we left,” I said, shaking my head in a pretense of sorrow at their deviousness. “So how do you know it’s not my prints on the murder weapon?”
Linda allowed herself a small moment of triumph. “Because you were still wearing your leather gloves.”
OK, so I’d forgotten. I didn’t think Gloria was going to sue me. At least the conversation had provided enough of a diversion for my client to pull herself together. “Of course my fingerprints were on the crystal ball,” she said. All three of us turned to stare at her.
“Gloria,” I warned, stifling a momentary panic that she was about to confess.
“It’s all right, chuck. There’s a simple explanation.”
My favorite kind.
“I’d just had a consultation, hadn’t I? I’d been sat opposite Dorothea, with my fingertips touching the crystal ball. That’s what we always did. I suppose she did it with everybody, but she must have buffed it up between times because it was always sparkling,
I grinned. Usually when I’d been present to watch Jackson get shafted, I was the one doing the shafting, which meant the pleasure was always tinged with a degree of apprehension. This time, the delight was entirely unadulterated. Jackson looked like a man whose cat just ate his prize canary.
“I bet it was just my fingertips on that crystal ball, wasn’t it? Not my whole hand,” Gloria said. She sounded as if she was half teasing, half scolding a naughty schoolboy. “You’ve been trying to get me going, haven’t you? You’ve been stretching the truth to try and get me to confess.” She wagged her finger at him. “I don’t like people that think they’re smart enough to get clever with me. Brenda Barrowclough might have come up the ship canal on a bike, but I’m not so daft. I’m not talking to you again, Mr. Jackson, not without I’ve got my solicitor with me.”
“I can’t believe you tried that on, Jackson,” I said. “Wait till Ruth Hunter hears about this. You better thank your lucky stars that you didn’t drag us down the nick for this bag of crap.”
Jackson turned dark red, his eyes narrowing as I’d seen them do too many times before. Just before the geyser of his rage erupted over us, the door behind him jerked open, nearly tipping him backwards towards the slushy car park.
John Turpin stepped back, not prepared to stand between Jackson and a nasty fall. At the last minute, Jackson grabbed the steering wheel and hauled himself back into the seat. “Jesus,” he exclaimed. “You nearly had me on the floor there, Mr. Turpin.”
Turpin’s broad face was wearing a scowl that matched most of the tales I’d heard about him. “I’m very disappointed in you,” he said, his voice as sharply clipped as a topiary peacock. “I had thought we’d reached an accommodation. We’ve bent over backwards for you and your team. We’ve given you space to work in, we’ve offered you full access to our site and to all NPTV staff. The one thing I asked was that you didn’t disrupt filming.” He shook his head sorrowfully.
Jackson was at a major disadvantage, stuck in the van seat well
Turpin snorted and jerked his thumb at Gloria. “That’s your murder suspect?” he said, his voice a suppressed laugh. “My God, man, you must be grasping at straws. This is the woman who’s so timid she’s hired a private detective because she’s had some hysterical hate mail. Even if she had the nerve to commit murder, I don’t think she’d be doing it when she’s got a minder on her tail. Unless of course you think Gloria hired Brannigan and Co to commit murder for her?” I couldn’t repress my smile. Linda broke into a spasm of tactical coughing, but Jackson couldn’t see the funny side. He probably thought Turpin’s sarcastic suggestion was a promising line of inquiry. “It wouldn’t have hurt to have waited for a natural break in filming. I mean, she’s hardly dressed to go on the run, wearing Brenda Barrowclough’s wig,” the TV executive continued with genial sarcasm. “Did you think she was going to take a cameraman hostage with her handbag?”
“This is a police inquiry,” Jackson said obstinately. “Only the case dictates the timetable I work to.”