26
It took Bernard Long an age to answer the doorbell. Eventually the porch light came on and the oak front door opened a crack.
‘Who’s there?’ The voice was muffled and indistinct. Kathy answered, it’s DS Kolla, sir, with DCI Brock. We’d like a word.’
‘Brock?’ The door opened more fully and the Deputy Chief Constable stared out at them. He was wearing a scuffed pair of leather slippers, and the collar of his dressing gown was half turned in at the neck. It wasn’t the white monogrammed outfit he’d had at Stanhope, but an old tartan item that was coming close to being recycled in the dog’s basket.
‘What the devil?’ He coughed, his throat gummed up with sleep. He adjusted a pair of gold half-rimmed glasses on the beak of his nose and stared at them each in turn in the pool of light cast by the reproduction coach lantern hanging overhead, then past them to the car.
Kathy spoke. ‘We’d like you to get dressed and come with us to Division, if you don’t mind.’
‘What time — ?’
The question was interrupted by a woman calling from inside the house. ‘Who is it, Bernard?’ The voice managed to sound both imperious and frail.
He turned and called back, it’s police officers, Dorothy. Go back to sleep, darling.’
‘Don’t be long.’
He turned back to them. ‘You’d better come in.’ They followed him into a study off the panelled hall, distracted by the way he shuffled because his slippers were too loose. It was only when they were seated in the light that Kathy noticed the tremor in his hand.
‘Who was that in the car?’ he asked, looking at Brock.
Kathy replied. ‘Mr Bromley from Stanhope Clinic, sir. He’s also accompanying us to Division to make a statement. We’ve just come from the clinic. Dr and Mrs Beamish-Newell have been helping us with our inquiries into the murders of Alex Petrou and Rose Duggan.’ She watched the worry lines which had formed around the angles of his face stretch into a taut, pale mask.
Long stared across the room for a moment, then seemed to rally himself. He took a sharp breath and straightened his back. ‘I see.’ He turned to face Brock, and said, ‘You’re not saying anything, David?’
Brock shrugged, without taking his eyes off him. ‘This is a County matter, Bernard. I shall be giving Sergeant Kolla a statement myself in due course.’
Long nodded. ‘I’d better get dressed. Give me ten minutes.’
They sat in silence for a while until Kathy said, ‘In the temple this evening, Laura asked the same thing — for me to give her ten minutes.’
Brock looked at her sharply, and then a muffled crash from upstairs brought them both to their feet.
The thick carpet pile absorbed the sound of their running feet. At the top landing Kathy hesitated, uncertain which door to try. The one in front of her opened abruptly and they were faced by a grey-haired woman, surprisingly large for the reedy tone of her voice. ‘What on earth is going on?’
‘Where did that noise come from?’ Kathy demanded.
‘The bathroom …’ Her head turned towards a door at the far end of a short corridor.
Locked. It gave on the third heave of Brock’s shoulder. He stood back, nursing his upper arm with an oath, and Kathy went in.
Long was sprawled absurdly across the edge of the large, cast-iron bath, a collapsed scarecrow in pyjamas. From a knot around his neck, the cord of his old dressing gown looped up to the frame of a shower curtain, which his weight had brought down from the ceiling. The tiled floor of the bathroom was scattered with fragments of ceiling plaster and screws and plugs from the inadequate scaffold, and blood was smeared on his leg, where he had scraped his shin on the edge of the bath. There was a startled look on his face as he gazed up at Kathy.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘I …’ he gulped, i don’t think I can move.’
‘Not the practical type, are you?’ She went forward to help him, then paused as Mrs Long appeared in the doorway. She stared down at her husband for a moment, eyes wide, taking everything in. Then she said, in a voice brimming with contempt, ‘Do you really think I didn’t know?’ She turned on her heel and they heard the bedroom door click shut behind her.
Brock advised that there be more than one witness for Long’s interview at Division, so they got hold of Penny Elliot, because she was the only one Kathy trusted, and on Penny’s recommendation Detective Sergeant McGregor from Serious Crime. They came into the building from the basement car park, using the stairs and avoiding the front entrance, and met in the conference room on the fifth floor, next to Long’s secretary’s office. It was 4.15 a.m. when Kathy began by formally cautioning the Deputy Chief Constable.
He ignored her. ‘I’m not a people sort of person, David.’ He seemed to feel a need to address himself to Brock, and Kathy let him go on. ‘I’m a systems sort of person. I think you understand that, don’t you? I have a record of achievement in that area of which I believe I can be justifiably proud.’ His posture, like his speech, was stiff and formal. His eyes were bright, but his grey face was in need of a shave. There had been a moment of farce at the house when it had seemed that Mrs Long might refuse to hand over anything for him to wear. Eventually, however, the bedroom door had opened briefly and a pile of his clothes had been dumped into the corridor.
‘I have never seen it as my job to hunt criminals. I leave that to others. Frankly, I find that side of things utterly uninteresting. Some people don’t understand my position on this. But those same people don’t seem to expect the head of British Coal to wield a pick and shovel!’ He gave a stiff little smile.
‘My role has been to set in place the management systems of a modern police force. And that I have done. You really would have no idea, David, how derisory the procedures were here when I first arrived. Now they are leading-edge, I promise you. At the last review we scored more best-practice ratings than any other County force. The figures are in my office. I would like you to see them. I think you would appreciate their significance, something that cannot be conveniently swept aside by those few detractors — Neanderthals, that’s my word for them. Yes.’
He paused, nonplussed for a moment by losing the thread. There was an embarrassed silence in the room, and then Kathy spoke.
‘Mr Long, please tell us what happened on the afternoon of Sunday z8 October of last year.’
Her tone was not harsh or even unkind, but his face flinched as if she had struck him. His hand formed a fist, and he spoke through clenched teeth as he looked pointedly at Brock.
‘David, I wish to continue this with you alone, please. I would consider it a personal favour. Please:
Brock shook his head. ‘No, Bernard.’
Long looked mildly shocked, sniffed and took in a deep breath, drawing together the remnants of his tattered dignity.
‘The afternoon of Sunday 28 October of last year,’ Kathy repeated, and this time they could see from his eyes that his mind had indeed gone back to that day. He gave a little shudder, and when he spoke there was no more protest in his voice.
‘I had arranged to meet Alex in the gym at four that afternoon.’
‘Not three, as you told me when I spoke to you the following day?’ ‘No.’
‘So you met him at four. Was he alone?’ ‘Yes.’
‘Why did you arrange to meet?’
‘To talk. We often talked. We found it easy to talk.’
‘What is your blood group, Mr Long?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Your blood group.’
‘AB, I think. Why?’
‘Do you know if you are a secretor?’
It was clear from his blank expression that he hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about.