‘Caught you at a bad time?’ Laidlaw asked.
‘Who the hell are you?’
It was Stella who answered her mother. ‘He’s the policeman I told you about.’
Laidlaw had walked towards the shelving unit. It was filled with paperbacks, a mix of recent bestsellers and weightier non-fiction collections.
‘I always think you can tell a lot about someone from their bookcases,’ he said. ‘This one, for example, was in the hall a few days back.’
‘So?’
‘You told Ernie Milligan it was because you were getting the place painted.’ Laidlaw made show of studying his surroundings. Monica Carter had settled herself on the arm of the chair her daughter sat on. ‘But this room’s not been touched at all, Mrs Carter.’
‘Started with the downstairs hall.’
Laidlaw began to shake his head. ‘You had the whole house redecorated a couple of months back.’ The teenagers had given up any pretence of reading and their eyes were on him. ‘No smell of fresh paint in here, just in the hall. Yet for some reason you moved the bookcase. It’s a solid bit of wood, too. No cheap rubbish for you. I’d guess it would take at least a couple of people to shift it. Question is: why move it at all?’
‘You tell me.’ Monica Carter’s look was all challenge, as if squaring up for a bar brawl.
Bob Lilley had taken a route around the perimeter of the room and was checking that there were no surprises in the kitchen. He shook his head in confirmation.
‘You really want me to do that, Mrs Carter?’ Laidlaw said. ‘Very well then — either you didn’t have time at first to do the painting, or you managed only the one coat and that wasn’t enough. The shelves were to cover the stains until you could do a better job.’ He paused. ‘By stains, I mean bloodstains, of course; your husband’s bloodstains.’
Suddenly the room was a tumult of noise as Monica Carter and her children began to protest. Laidlaw allowed it for a few seconds, then held up a hand. ‘I need everybody to shut the fuck up!’ he yelled.
The room froze, turning the family into sudden statues.
‘You should engage a lawyer,’ Laidlaw went on, his tone neutral. ‘I can suggest a good one if you’re stuck.’
‘He hit her,’ Stella was saying. ‘Even stubbed out a cigarette on her wrist.’
‘He was a bastard,’ her brother Chris added. He was the youngest, and resembled both his father and older brother, while Stella was more like her mother. ‘A bastard to all of us.’
Laidlaw nodded slowly and solemnly. He had planted his feet in front of fourteen-year old Peter, who was staring into space as if trying to make up his mind about something momentous.
‘How about you, son?’ he asked.
It was as if a switch had been flipped. Peter leaped to his feet, drawing a flick knife from his pocket, its tip aimed at Laidlaw. Laidlaw feinted to one side and as the blade approached managed to wrap his fist around the boy’s bony wrist, twisting until the knife fell to the floor. He shoved Peter back onto the sofa and crouched to pick up the weapon. The room had grown noisy again, and Monica Carter dashed forward to hug her son. She squeezed in next to him and he didn’t shrug her off. All the same, his eyes were trained on Laidlaw, and there was plenty of fire still in them.
‘Looks like we’ve found our killer,’ Bob Lilley commented.
‘It wasn’t Peter, it was me,’ Stella argued, rising to her feet.
Laidlaw waved her back down. ‘This isn’t Spartacus, Stella. Having said which, I’ve seen worse defence strategies than everybody blaming each other. Jury might have a tough job deciding between you all, based on the evidence. You could end up with “not proven”.’ He paused again, his eyes on Monica. ‘But you know what the problem with that is, don’t you, Mrs Carter?’
‘Cam Colvin,’ she answered quietly.
‘Colvin still needs to extract justice. If nobody goes away, you can expect a knock on the door one night. It doesn’t particularly matter to me which one of you wielded the knife — maybe you all took turns. But once the deed was done, you definitely acted in concert, didn’t you? Did the body go into the garage first of all? If so, we’ll find blood there. Same goes with the fresh paint — it might hide, but it never erases. Back of your estate car? Same thing.’ Laidlaw could see that his words were getting through to the widow. ‘What did Colvin want, by the way?’
‘He grabbed a map from the shelves.’ It was Stella who had spoken.
‘Don’t know why,’ her mother added. Then, having come to a decision: ‘It was me, just me and me alone.’ She looked at each of her children in turn. ‘I need you to let me do this, do you hear? I killed him and none of you knew anything about it.’ She turned her attention back to Laidlaw. ‘Is that acceptable?’
‘It’s not me you have to convince.’
‘So do I hand myself in or what?’
‘We can give you an hour’s grace, long enough to sort things out here. If you’re not at Central Division soon afterwards, you can expect us to be back with blue lights flashing and bells ringing.’
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Stella had crossed to the sofa and placed herself next to her mother, so that all four sat in the closest possible proximity, like creatures huddled together for warmth, wary of the coming winter.
‘The lawyer you want is Bryce Mundell,’ Laidlaw said, before gesturing towards Lilley and making his exit.
In the hall, Lilley asked in an undertone if Laidlaw was sure the family wouldn’t make a run for it. Laidlaw shook his head.
‘They’ve been waiting for us,’ he said. ‘Patiently, all this time. We’re what they know needs to happen.’
They had just reached the car when another drew up. Ernie Milligan stepped out, his anger focused on Laidlaw.
‘What did I tell you?’ he said.
‘Never mind that — here’s what I’m telling you. We’re off to make a report to the Commander. That report will detail who murdered Bobby Carter and what happened in the aftermath. It will also flag up that if a real detective rather than a jobsworth with a hard-on had been allowed into that house earlier, this would have been done and dusted and a lot of grief might have been spared. So instead of whispering any further sweet nothings to the widow, I suggest you follow us in your car. Trust me, you don’t want to miss out.’
Laidlaw didn’t wait to hear what Milligan had to say by way of reply. He climbed into the passenger seat while Lilley started the engine. Milligan went from tapping on the window to pulling at the door handle, but Laidlaw had pushed down the lock with one hand while turning the other into a pistol, which he pointed at the road ahead, indicating that Lilley shouldn’t hang around.
As they moved off, they watched Milligan in the rear-view mirror as he scrambled to get back into his own car.
‘Are you really going to land him in it?’ Lilley asked.
‘Every chance I get, Bob,’ Laidlaw answered, leaning back and closing his eyes.
37
Seated behind his desk, Robert Frederick stared at the two detectives. Bob Lilley had taken a seat, on which he writhed and twisted as if racked by doubt. Jack Laidlaw, conversely, stood legs apart, arms by his sides, like an imposing statue erected in honour of some self-confident warrior prince.
Seeing the sceptical look on the Commander’s face, Lilley felt obliged to break the silence.
‘She did confess, sir.’
‘According to Jack here, they all did, more or less.’
‘If we can muster a forensic team to look at the paint-work...’