A Clear Conscience Read online

  ‘You must have known you’d have given him a nice little scar, Cath. Like he gave Damien.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed, nodding vigorously, then clamped her hand over her mouth.

  ‘And like Damien gave you, all that time ago?’

  She was suddenly more composed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. That policewoman, Mary, she told me I could get that fixed, but I didn’t believe her, not really.’

  Bailey was silent, his mind running on again to the report. They would move him soon, he knew they would, to a life well above street level, full of endless reports. Reports which could not even begin to place reliance on what a suspect said under the unfamiliar influence of alcohol, without being given the formal words of caution. You do not have to say anything, but what you do say can be used against you. The woman talked in code.

  ‘I think I sort of knew about Joe and Damien,’ Cath continued chattily. ‘You know, things Joe would let slip when he hit me. You and your brother, bad as one another, that kind of thing. He had to go, he would say: he can’t do that to you, and not go. Thought he meant Damien not being around when I was pregnant. He never knew it was Damien’s baby. I didn’t know for certain how he’d killed Damien until I saw him with that knife last night. I kept thinking, why didn’t he use a proper knife? But I don’t suppose he could. I would have noticed if he took things from the kitchen. I knew when I saw that old dagger thing. He would never have used anything new. He couldn’t. It would have spoiled it.’

  Bailey poured more strong tea into her cup. Both were orange in colour. He ladled into it three teaspoons of sugar.

  ‘Damien got you a fine scar on your belly, didn’t he? Then Damien is cut apart, the same way you were. No anaesthetic though. Joe did that. Did you kill Joe for revenge, Cath? For Damien, or for all the beatings he gave you?’

  ‘Kill him?’ Cath was wide-eyed, shaking. ‘Kill him? I would never have wanted to kill Joe. Didn’t cross my mind. I loved him. I loved him. You don’t seem to understand anything. Someone else killed him. I loved him.’

  ‘We’ll have to go, Cath. May take a while. Do you want to bring anything with you?’

  She looked around in a state of total confusion.

  ‘I can’t, can I? It’s all gone! and I … anyway, I haven’t got a bag.’

  Bailey led her out of the house with the deference of a ballroom dancing partner, his mind still running ahead, going into overdrive. Get this place watched and turned over in the morning. Nothing doing, been burgled by an expert. Formal interview under caution, get a woman to do it. Even halfway sober, Cath could clam up in response to sympathy, couldn’t blame her, really. Yeah, she’d done for her old man just like he did for her brother, but what if she said nothing, said she’d gone home alone? What he knew already showed she’d left some pub or other long before Joe. It would be, at best, a formal prosecution, with a bit of public attention because it had all happened on a bus. They wouldn’t even get near a conviction for manslaughter, not with a battered wife, not with this kind of history. Formal result. A fable of the times, discussed in newspaper editorials for a day. At least that little boy on a murder charge might not go down for long enough to really learn how. He supposed that was something of an achievement, the best he was going to get.

  ‘One more thing,’ he said once they were inside his car, while she patted and stroked the seat, like a pet. ‘Did you keep on going with your brother Damien, making love to him, I mean, after you married Joe?’ It was a casual question, ending with a click of seat belt. Nothing said in cars would do as evidence these days; there would be nothing he could do with the knowledge. Cath’s eyes beneath the street light shone like pools of rain on a white pavement.

  ‘Oh yes, whenever he wanted. He was my brother. He would have told Joe about how I used to sleep with him before if I didn’t. Joe loved Damien, you see, and anyway, I loved Damien, too. Most of my life, see, he was all I ever had.’

  She settled back, a child on an outing. ‘So I never wanted it to stop, not really,’ she continued. ‘Not even when he came to meet me in the park. Sometimes he frightened me, doing that. He liked to play games. Hide-and-seek in the park, in the dark.’ She giggled, softly. ‘He liked that.’

  Close on midnight, Alistair Eliot phoned Helen West. He was as far out of Emily’s earshot as Helen was herself; still both of them spoke in low voices, as if afraid of being overheard.

  ‘Sorry to bother you.’ Alistair so often prefaced statements or requests with an apology.

  ‘Alistair, don’t do that. I’m having an argument with Emily, not with you.’

  He sighed. ‘Yes, I know. Me and you, both. About Cath. That’s what I wanted to ask about. Look, I think one of us should go and see her. Emily says she never knew where she lives. Do you?’

  Shame came back and hit her like a punch.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I’ve found it on a set of papers. Do you think I should go and see her? I feel so guilty about what we did to her. And then I saw her last night, outside that pub her husband runs. I walked straight past. She was looking smart, but so sad, Helen, and I didn’t even wave. I went back today. There was an old man outside. Told me Cath’s husband had ignored and abused her, dragged her away, later. Drunk. I could have saved her from that, Helen. I could have saved her, and I just walked on by.’

  Helen had a strong mental picture of Cath, truculent and defensive earlier on. Got a better picture than she had ever imagined of that grand evening out. She took a firm grip of the phone.

  ‘No, Alistair, I wouldn’t go and see her. Not yet. There’ve been a few developments.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Theft, wasn’t it? Perfume? Well, I doubt if Cath would ever steal anything new, but she would take something second hand. And she can lie. Probably only when she’s driven to lie, but all the same …’ Gabbling. Wanting this kind man to understand something without giving him any information which might enable him to understand. Trying to talk in code, like Cath. Like Bailey did to her so much of the time. Alistair was suddenly cold. He sounded both puzzled and sad.

  ‘You’re like Emily,’ he said. ‘You’ve been talking to Emily. You sound like our judgemental judges. No imagination. They don’t always listen, either.’

  There was a full glass of red wine next to the phone in the hall. Helen watched it topple, did not move as it seeped away into the old carpet.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  On the tenth day of September, the charge against an eighteen-year-old boy was reduced from murder to one of affray and assault. The youth had grown fatter on remand: he was never going to play pool again. There was no member of the murdervictim’s family in court to complain how this was a travesty of justice, and the family of the boy was too relieved to care. No public explanation was made, save a brief statement that the Crown accepted that there had been an intervening human cause in between the fight and the death; a man unconnected with this defendant in any way. Constructing a balance sheet which included almost six months in custody and a few minor convictions from the recent past, the judge gravely sent this miscreant down for a further nine months. An adequate gestation period, Bailey thought. In his pocket he had the letter picked up from his desk that morning, ordering his own transfer to penal servitude. From now on, he was handling complaints against police, and he would never be able to stop looking at his watch.

  First thing in the morning, Cath lay in her own bed, curled like a snake in a warm burrow. A little snap in the air today: no incentive to get up. Better to lie where she was and open her eyes slowly, stroking her belly, moving her legs and arms to get the energy going, look around. This room was as far as she had got. She had painted the walls yellow, moved in the daisy print from the kitchen, bought, without a hint of guilt, a brand-new bed-cover the pristine white of snow. It was not the old alarm clock which had woken her, but this voice inside her head, Is that you? Is that you? Is this really you, lying idle?

  Yes, th
is was the way she liked it. Bare and clean, like the living room. Mickey Gat said she was doing up the Spoon shortly, throwing out a set of table and chairs, as well as all the carpet. She did it each year, she said. Cath had told her, don’t chuck the furniture: I’ll have it. There was bound to be paint left over as well. Cath liked working in the Spoon: she was good at it, a quick learner. Mickey said, Yes, she would do. Better than Joe, as it happened. Mickey Gat knew all about women being better than men, especially if they had the guts to take over a man’s job. Poor old Joe, always did have bad luck or judgement, but they had given him a good funeral. What a way to go. Some thug doing you in on the bus. Must be a loony, thrown out of one of those homes they kept closing down. Somehow, by an obscure and logical route, it came back to another version of ‘them’ and ‘us’.

  ‘We don’t have to be friends,’ Helen said carefully to Mary Secura. ‘It isn’t a necessary part of the arrangement and probably doesn’t even help. But we have to be able to communicate. My boss says so.’

  She grinned with a shrug as she spoke. Mary rewarded her with the ghost of a smile. There was more than a hint of the apology she could not bring herself to make. All that money Cath had. Of course Helen West had paid her. Mary was subdued, respectful even, she seemed to have lost some of the fire, like someone recovering from an illness. Despite the volatility of Mary in health, Helen was hoping that this convalescent state was temporary. The woman firing off in all directions was distinctly preferable. All Mary was thinking, in a state which bordered on guilt, still-remembered shock now overlaid with defensiveness, was how Helen West’s ability to turn the other cheek was infuriating. Mid-thirties burn-out: that was Helen West. She did not want to be like that.

  ‘This Rix case. I can hardly believe it. Shirley scarcely cold, and he’s got another woman and the other woman has made a complaint. Incredible. He must be out of his mind.’

  ‘It isn’t the new woman complaining, it’s her sister. And he had her before he got charged with hitting Shirl. Sort of a sideline, really. I’ve got a feeling Shirl found out. That was the first cut-off point, I reckon, with the kid the final straw. Not the beatings.’

  ‘Well, we’re going to need some corroboration. We can’t run this on a medical report and a complaint from the sister. Hearsay, all of it.’

  Mary shook her head. ‘We’ll have to wait for the repeat performance then, won’t we?’

  ‘Unless the victim gives us a statement, yes.’

  ‘OK. Next?’

  It was not much of a mystery why Redwood was instigating meetings between police and Crown Prosecution Service (in their offices, of course, God forbid his staff should go to police premises), at an earlier stage in the case. After that mêlée next door, the police were suddenly allies. He had waxed lyrical in a meeting. You will all have seen the fight in the offices over the road, he had announced to the assembly. At least, judging from the crowds at the windows, most of you did. Two women scrapping, pulling hair, biting, actually drawing blood. Men joining in, if you don’t mind; you could hear the shouting from here. Some fool on our staff, a young blood whose name I shall not mention, went over the way, to help, he said, because a poor man in spectacles seemed to be getting the worst of it. He received a black eye for his pains, so you see, we must have a policy. Which is, if you do happen to see nasty things occur either at court or in your daily lives anywhere, don’t intervene; call the police immediately. The police are made for this kind of thing; they smoothed the situation in no time. They are there to control breaches of the peace, not us. We work in the interests of justice, which is a very different thing altogether.

  Redwood had not seen the crowd in his room stuffing handkerchiefs in their mouths to restrain ribaldry, Helen, doodling in a corner. She wondered if she would feel violent if, after the recent absence, she heard rumours of Bailey with another woman. Among a phalanx of men in grey clothing, Helen missed Bailey. Would jealousy, however futile, make her want to scratch the face of another woman? She had closed her own eyes and felt savage. Yes, it would.

  Mary was gathering files and photos, stuffing the notebook back into the bulging handbag, looking for escape. She was uncomfortable with the proximity of so many lawyers padding about, bloodsuckers in uniform.

  ‘Sit down a minute.’ She sat.

  ‘Cath killed her old man on the bus, didn’t she? You were in on the interview as the only female officer she knew. Tell me.’

  ‘Nothing to tell. I gave her her rights, told her she didn’t have to say anything, and she didn’t. No-one remembers her being on that damn bus. The conductor refuses to remember what day of the week it was. Witnesses in the last pub they went to said she left before him, a good half hour before, distressed because he was drunk, spilt whisky on her skirt. There isn’t anything to say they even travelled together. She went back to her brother’s place, went out next day as usual. Place got burgled. So she goes back to the old man. Again. Only he was dead already and the first she knew was when Bailey told her. That was when she showed him the knife.’

  ‘Bayonet?’

  ‘That’s it. Been chatting to Mr Bailey?’ A note of anxiety entered her voice.

  ‘No. Not much. More guesswork, really. And your friend Ryan.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Never mind. Are you going to tell me what you really think?’

  Mary remained seated, wanting to leave. Perhaps she did actually owe this woman something, for her own misjudgement. For the fact they had once got on so well and needed to do so again. And because she was Bailey’s bird, and Mary still wanted to work for Bailey; but chiefly because she already seemed to know so much.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ she said. ‘But yes, I think you could be right. She could well have killed him. Poor bitch. I also think it doesn’t matter. He deserved it.’

  ‘That bayonet …’ Helen began, then stopped. She knew enough about that bayonet. Ryan, when bumped into accidentally in a court corridor, was always pleased to see her, assumed she knew everything Bailey would know, and chatted with an amazing lack of discretion. All about this crazy bayonet which Joe Boyce had hidden from his wife and Bailey had found in a cutlery drawer. What an odd place to put it.

  ‘Any large knife could have done the damage to Joe Boyce,’ Mary said flatly. ‘Nothing suggests that the bayonet ever left the house, or that it was ever used at all, except by Joe Boyce. Cath said she would have no idea how to get such a thing sharpened. It would need to be done by a powerful grinder in the first instance, I suppose. Joe played with things like that. It simply moved into the cutlery drawer after Cath had left. Cath said it repelled her, all Joe’s military stuff repelled her. Let’s face it, every cutlery drawer has a murder weapon in it.’

  She stood again, looked out of Helen’s window to the workers opposite. ‘Close, aren’t they? At least offices are safer than houses.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Helen murmured.

  ‘Did you complete all that decorating you were doing?’ Mary asked by way of ending on a casual note. ‘Yellow, wasn’t it?’

  ‘All over. How’s life at home?’

  Mary was halfway out of the door. ‘Fine,’ she said airily. ‘Just fine. I thought about getting rid of dear old Dave, but it isn’t worth the hassle. A woman on her own. You know.’

  Mickey Gat levered herself out of the Jag, bounced across the cobbles of the Mews and into the Spoon. The place shone like a new pin, whatever one of those was, Mickey was not into needlework. Cath could get a fair old shine on that bar: you could see your face in it, and Cath’s face wasn’t the kind of mug to keep custom at bay. Mickey hadn’t been so sure at first, but now she was. Cath turned exactly the right kind of blind eye to all the boxes of counterfeit perfume in the back room, too: she didn’t even dust them. It was about the right time of year to start stockpiling for Christmas. Mickey was on her way to Harrods after this, to get a few ideas. She wafted indoors in a cloud of Poison, the real thing, not her own brand, and almost collided with
an old gent coming out. He wore a cap, raised it. Mickey reckoned only people drinking half pints did that.

  ‘You want to be careful with these old lags,’ she told Cath. ‘Sit around all day, take up space and don’t spend nothing. We want them yuppy types, that’s what we want.’

  Cath shook her head. ‘I know,’ she agreed. ‘But yuppy types like seeing the old ones hanging around, see? Gives the place a homey feel. Besides, some people won’t go into a pub if it’s empty. You need a couple of ornaments to fill up the corners.’

  For a moment, Mickey did not know if Cath referred to the custom or the decor.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Suppose you could be right. I’ll have an orange juice.’

  ‘I thought we could get a coffee-machine,’ said Cath. ‘People think it sobers them up, so they have a coffee, then they have another drink.’

  ‘Steady on, girl,’ said Mickey admiringly. ‘Steady on. Think I’m made of money?’

  She was looking at the takings. Not bad, not bad at all, for the tail end of summer.

  It was time to mend fences. Alistair had said so. You can’t just lose friends, he said: they are too rare and too valuable. Please, make it up and ask them for supper.

  ‘Whoops!’ Emily sighed, voice a little high, body a little drunk, deciding that this was all so difficult she deserved another drink. Her mind was full of fearful imaginings, something to do with this direction about friend Helen West who was, after all, very easy to look at, admired by Alistair in his distant way and mentioned twice, obliquely, in the last week or three. Better get in there first. It did not do for a dedicated wife to have her man distracted the way hers had been. Such men were like a viral culture looking for a new plant: there was no telling what they would let grow on them. Besides she did have a conscience, even if it was not troubling her.