“Ridiculous,” said Bristow breathlessly. “You ought to give up detecting and try fantasy writing, Strike. You haven’t got a shred of proof for anything you’re saying—”
“Yes I have.” Strike cut across him, and Bristow stopped talking immediately, his pallor visible through the gloom. “The CCTV footage.”
“That footage shows Jonah Agyeman running from the scene of the killing, as you’ve just acknowledged!”
“There was another man caught on camera.”
“So he had an accomplice—a lookout.”
“I wonder what defending counsel will say is wrong with you, John?” asked Strike softly. “Narcissism? Some kind of God complex? You think you’re completely untouchable, don’t you, a genius who makes the rest of us look like chimps? The second man running from the scene wasn’t Jonah’s accomplice, or his lookout, or a car thief. He wasn’t even black. He was a white man in black gloves. He was you.”
“No,” said Bristow. The one word throbbed with panic; but then, with an almost visible effort, he hitched a contemptuous smile back on to his face. “How can it be me? I was in Chelsea with my mother. She told you so. Tony saw me there. I was in Chelsea.”
“Your mother is a Valium-addicted invalid who was asleep most of that day. You didn’t get back to Chelsea until after you’d killed Lula. I think you went into your mother’s room in the small hours, reset her clock and then woke her up, pretending it was dinnertime. You think you’re a criminal genius, John, but that’s been done a million times before, though rarely with such an easy mark. Your mother hardly knows what day it is, the amount of opiates she’s got in her system.”
“I was in Chelsea all day,” repeated Bristow, his knee jiggling up and down. “All day, except for when I nipped into the office for files.”
“You took a hoodie and gloves out of the flat beneath Lula’s. You’re wearing them in the CCTV footage,” said Strike, ignoring the interruption, “and that was a big mistake. That hoodie was unique. There was only one of them in the world; it had been customized for Deeby Macc by Guy Somé. It could only have come out of the flat beneath Lula’s, so we know that’s where you’d been.”
“You have absolutely no proof,” said Bristow. “I am waiting for proof.”
“Of course you are,” said Strike, simply. “An innocent man wouldn’t be sitting here listening to me. He’d have stormed out by now. But don’t worry. I’ve got proof.”
“You can’t have,” said Bristow hoarsely.
“Motive, means and opportunity, John. You had the lot.
“Let’s start at the beginning. You don’t deny that you went to Lula’s first thing in the morning…”
“No, of course not.”
“…because people saw you there. But I don’t think Lula ever gave you the contract with Somé that you used to get upstairs to see her. I think you’d swiped that at some point previously. Wilson waved you up, and minutes later you were having a shouting match with Lula on her doorstep. You couldn’t pretend that didn’t happen, because the cleaner overheard it. Fortunately for you, Lechsinka’s English is so bad that she confirmed your version of the row: that you were furious that Lula had reunited with her freeloading druggie boyfriend.
“But I think that row was really about Lula’s refusal to give you money. All her sharper friends have told me you had quite the reputation for coveting her fortune, but you must have been particularly desperate for a handout that day, to force your way in and start shouting like that. Had Tony noticed a lack of funds in Conway Oates’s account? Did you need to replace it urgently?”
“Baseless speculation,” said Bristow, his knee still jerking up and down.
“We’ll see whether it’s baseless or not once we get to court,” said Strike.
“I’ve never denied that Lula and I argued.”
“After she refused to hand over a check, and slammed the door in your face, you went back down the stairs, and there was the door to Flat Two standing open. Wilson and the alarm repairman were busy looking at the keypad, and Lechsinka was somewhere in there by then—maybe vacuuming, because that would have helped mask the noise of you creeping into the hall behind the two men.
“It wasn’t that much of a risk, really. If they’d turned and seen you, you could have pretended you’d come in to thank Wilson for letting you up. You crossed the hall while they were busy with the alarm fuse box, and you hid somewhere in that big flat. There’s loads of space. Empty cupboards. Under the bed.”
Bristow was shaking his head in silent denial. Strike continued in the same matter-of-fact tone:
“You must have heard Wilson telling Lechsinka to set the alarm to 1966. Finally, Lechsinka, Wilson and the Securibell guy left, and you had sole possession of the flat. Unfortunately for you, however, Lula had now left the building, so you couldn’t go back upstairs and try and bully her into coughing up.”
“Total fantasy,” said the lawyer. “I never set foot in Flat Two in my life. I left Lula’s and went in to the office to pick up files—”
“From Alison, isn’t that what you said, the first time we went through your movements that day?” asked Strike.
Patches of pink blossomed again up Bristow’s stringy neck. After a small hesitation, he cleared his throat and said:
“I don’t remember whether—I just know that I was very quick; I wanted to get back to my mother.”
“What effect do you think it’s going to have in court, John, when Alison takes the stand and tells the jury how you asked her to lie for you? You played the devastated bereaved brother in front of her, and then asked her out to dinner, and the poor bitch was so delighted to have a chance to look like a desirable female in front of Tony that she agreed. A couple of dates later, you persuaded her to say she saw you at the office on the morning before Lula died. She thought you were just overanxious and paranoid, didn’t she? She believed that you already had a cast-iron alibi from her adored Tony, later in the day. She didn’t think it mattered if she told a little white lie to calm you down.
“But Alison wasn’t there that day, John, to give you any files. Cyprian sent her off to Oxford the moment she got to work, to look for Tony. You became a bit nervous, after Rochelle’s funeral, when you realized I knew all about that, didn’t you?”
“Alison isn’t very bright,” said Bristow slowly, his hands washing themselves in dumb show, and his knee jiggling up and down. “She must have confused the days. She clearly misunderstood me. I never asked her to say she saw me at the office. It’s her word against mine. Maybe she’s trying to revenge herself on me, because we’ve split up.”
Strike laughed.
“Oh, you’re definitely dumped, John. After my assistant rang you this morning to lure you to Rye—”
“Your assistant?”
“Yeah, of course; I didn’t want you around while I searched your mother’s flat, did I? Alison helped us out with the name of the client. I rang her, you see, and told her everything, including the fact that I’ve got proof that Tony’s sleeping with Ursula May, and that you’re about to be arrested for murder. That seemed to convince her that she ought to look for a new boyfriend and a new job. I hope she’s gone to her mother’s place in Sussex—that’s what I told her to do. You’ve been keeping Alison close because you thought she was your fail-safe alibi, and because she’s a conduit to knowing what Tony, whom you fear, is thinking. But lately, I’ve been getting worried that she might outlive her usefulness to you, and fall off something high.”