He said, “Mebbe because the law is slow and messy and you get your kicks out of direct action.”
“Is that how you feel about your job, Sergeant?”
“No,” said Wield. “I like slow and messy. Dennis? Anything you want to ask Mrs. Griffiths?”
Seymour, knowing the tape was off and the interview had not been formally resumed, took this as an invitation to sign off. He closed the notebook he’d been studying and set it on the table.
“No, Sarge,” he said.
“Good. Thank you for being so helpful, Mrs. Griffiths.”
“I’m free to go?”
“Of course. Like a hand repacking your case?”
“No. Men can manage unpacking all right, but putting stuff together again is best left to a woman.”
“I think you’re right. Each to his own, eh?”
“Indeed. Which is why it strikes me as odd-during our little chat, you didn’t once refer directly to the fact that Lady Denham was murdered yesterday.”
For the first time a flicker of what his close friends and associates might recognize as a smile ran over Wield’s face.
“No,” he said. “What’s really odd is neither did you. Let DC Seymour know when you’ve finished repacking and he’ll drive you back to Seaview Terrace.”
With the door closed behind them he said to Seymour, “So what do you think, Dennis?”
The DC’s answer was typically prompt and direct.
“Almost certainly responsible for the spray job on the pig farm notice. She probably drove the car, let the youngsters do the climbing. And I’m pretty sure she wrote the letters Lady Denham got. Noticed you didn’t mention them, Sarge.”
“No, I didn’t. She was ready for everything I was likely to ask, so she’d have been ready for that too. Best thing with her was to frustrate expectation. Anything more than gut feeling she wrote the letters?”
“That funny spelling. That notebook I was looking at, nothing significant, just jottings, reminders, that sort of stuff, but I did notice she spelt diet and receipt both with an ei.”
“That is how you spell receipt, Dennis,” said Wield gently.
“Is that right?” said Seymour, unfazed. “I’ll try and remember that, Sarge. But diet’s d-i-e-t. Isn’t it? Not d-e-i-t.”
“Right. So she wrote the threatening letters and we’ve got her at the scene. Why don’t you see her in the frame for the hog roast murder?”
“Don’t reckon her as a killer, that’s all,” said Seymour.
He was, judged Wield, the only one of the DCs who would have ventured such an unsupported judgment. Sometimes, by contrast with Novello and Bowler, he might come across as a bit naive, but what you got from him was always simple reaction without hidden agenda.
“There’s been a lot of cases across the world where animal rights extremists haven’t fought shy of killing and maiming,” said Wield. “And I got the feeling she wasn’t as laid back about losing her eye as she let on.”
“Okay, she might have lobbed a rock down at the old lady. Might even have broken the cliff fence to give her a fright. But strangling her…not a woman’s MO, is it?”
Wield tried to work out if this was sexist or not. Either way, he tended to agree. Could even be that the fence and the falling rock were pure accident. Interfering with the car brakes would have been a serious attempt at causing harm, but the local garage had poured scorn on the notion that anything other than her ladyship’s reluctance to pay for maintenance was needed to make them fail.
“Right, Dennis. Once you’ve got Lady Nelson back to the Terrace, start getting this lot down on paper for the DCI to look at. I’ll be over at the hall talking to the poor relation.”
But when he got across to the hall, there was no sign of Clara Brereton.
“Gone for a swim,” said Bowler, trying for bright and breezy but not getting close.
“She’s what!”
“I told her she had to wait for you and she sat around for a bit, then a couple of minutes ago she suddenly got up, said she was getting hot and would it be okay if she popped down to the beach for a swim and waited for you there? I said I didn’t think that was a good idea, but she was already moving off. I didn’t see how I could stop her without arresting her.”
“So why didn’t you go with her?”
“Thought I’d better let you know what was happening.”
“You’ve got a phone.”
“Yeah, I know. Thing was, Sarge, she’s not got anything with her, so unless she’s wearing a cozzie under her clothes, I thought maybe she wanted to skinny-dip…”
Jesus, thought Wield. What was it with these sensitive young straights? Tongues hanging out at the sight of a scantily clad lass, but overcome with embarrassment at the prospect of seeing one naked!
“That’s her problem,” said Wield. “Come on.”
With a promissory glance at Scroggs, who was discreetly keeping his distance, he set off toward the cliff path.
As they walked, Bowler continued his defense.
“Anyway, I couldn’t see it made much difference, Sarge. I mean, we’ve got the photos-”
“How do you know it was the photos she was after?” interrupted Wield. “She might have left them because they weren’t what she wanted.”
They reached the top of the path and paused. Before them lay the sea, gleaming silky blue under the noon-high sun, stretching away to a heat-smudged horizon. For a moment they were lifted far above the sordid concerns that had brought them here.
Mebbe, thought Wield, letting the peace and beauty of the scene wash over him as he drew in a deep breath of the famous sea air that Tom Parker claimed cured everything, mebbe what we’re meant to do is go down this path and if we find yon lass skinny-dipping, we should strip our clothes off too and join her!
He shook the daft fancy out of his head and started the descent.
Gradual at first, it soon began to steepen, not enough to be a problem unless you had vertigo, for time had worn good footholds in the rock. Nevertheless a wise man concentrated on his footing and forgot the view. Bowler was ahead, moving with the easy confidence of youth, but suddenly he stopped and called, “Sarge!”
Below them the cliff was now steepening to a degree sufficient to cause concern even to the young and active. There was a ledge beyond which it seemed to fall away sheer and here the path turned sharply right to follow the ledge and then descend the cliff face by zigs and zags. Along the ledge and all the way down the remainder of the path, a wooden fence had been built to give protection from the drop.
This was the fence that Lady Denham suspected had been sabotaged. No doubt now, though sabotage was perhaps too subtle a word. The top bar of the fence had been shattered and hung drunkenly from its stanchions.
Bowler leapt down the last few feet, steadied himself against one of the uprights, peered over, and said, “Oh shit!” Then he was off along the oblique path at a breakneck speed.
Wield reached the broken fence and looked down and saw what had provoked the young DC’s reaction.
Below him, sprawled facedown across a huge sea-smoothed boulder, was the body of Clara Brereton.
4
When Charley entered the lounge, Dalziel, occupying one of Tom Parker’s low-slung Scandinavian chairs like the USA occupying Iraq, tried to lever himself upright but had difficulty formulating a satisfactory exit strategy.
“Please,” she said. “Don’t bother to get up.”
“Nay, I’ll not be beaten,” he said. “There! Done it! Good to see you again, Miss Heywood. How are you bearing up?”
“I’m fine, Mr. Deal.”
He took the deliberate mispronunciation in his stride and said, “Nay, lass, let’s not be formal. I’m an old friend of your dad’s. Call me Andy. Uncle Andy, if you like. And I’ll call you Charley, right?”
Uncle Andy! Jesus Christ!
She replied pertly, “Of course, Andy. Any friend of Dad’s is a friend of…my father.”