A Question of Guilt Read online

  A smile. The only response to long and gruelling pressure. The kind of love which could inspire such hatred in a Mrs Cartwright was beyond Helen West, so far beyond her as to inspire fear and revulsion, an uneasy restlessness far removed from the usual sad acceptance of yet another tragedy. Vague, uncomfortable awakening of curiosity and anger and a need for air. Pushing aside the grey net curtain, least aesthetic or effectual of security precautions, she opened the grimy window. Looking down into a grimier basement, she felt a soft rain, and noticed for the first time the beginnings of spring.

  ‘Give us a break, sir. I haven’t had time to get all the stuff out yet. And I don’t want help.’

  Bailey smiled. It was worrying when he smiled. ‘All right. I’ll go away for a few minutes. You might move faster if I’m not watching.’

  ‘That’s right, sir. Go and get a cup of tea. Do the crossword. I won’t be long.’

  Geoffrey Bailey, known as Geoff by his colleagues, most of whom seemed to bear the same shortened names, was indistinguishable from most of comparable rank in his dress, deportment and manners. Like them, but quite unlike them, he had moved through the phases of Detective Constable and Sergeant as a walking tribute to Messrs John Burton, tailors, embellished with street-market leather, and like them, now owed his sartorial elegance to Marks and Spencer. The few who espoused sober silk ties, as opposed to those bearing the pictorial legend of some previous crime squad, owed these to the same source. They were beyond corruption in the main; spoke within the parameters of rank, about their children, gardens, homes, cars and work, frequently in that order, careful, if occasionally wildly indiscreet, in the giving of confidences. A reserve born of the knowledge that secrets are never secret in the course of a police career, which had always involved a kind of clumsy dance. Two steps forward, three sideways, to protect one’s back – from one’s friends.

  Here the similarities ended. Geoffrey Bailey had not waltzed in this, or any other fashion for some time. Whilst it was a reasonable bet that a man obtained his recommendation for promotion in this organisation through the ability to take and execute orders in a fashion which obliged but never outshone his immediate superior, Bailey’s upward rise had been more circuitous. He had been nudged onwards in the last ten years through his sheer indifference to the prospect, coupled with the acute discomfort he caused in any man unlucky enough to be his supervisor. An alternative route to higher places, this unnerving presence of his, certainly never calculated to achieve what it had. He was liked, well enough: respected, certainly, but rarely loved, never greeted with more than the hollow hail-fellow-well-met enthusiasm, and a kind of flattening against the wall. In return, he gave respect where it was due, courtesy whether due or not, and kindness whenever he could make it anonymous. Enigmatic, unglamorous, dry-witted, careless with protocol, good to other ranks, suspiciously bookish, but not a theorist, not at home in this or any other army.

  Ryan he respected as the invaluable legworker, door-to-door questioner in the Bernard case, and Ryan wished he could emulate such an apparently easy rise in rank, putting it down to Bailey being long, thin, and therefore suitable for the uniform of a suit.

  ‘You know,’ he had said, explaining Bailey’s enigma to general disinterest in the canteen. ‘It’s the lean and hungry look. Thinking too much. Makes a man dangerous. Also gets him promoted. People don’t want him around. Too good to push down, so he has to go up. Not that he cares. Not about anything really.’

  ‘Go on …’ More polite than curious over the chips.

  ‘Nothing I can think of. Not a car, nor nothing, except books. No kids, or none around. No woman. Not one that phones him at any rate.’

  ‘He had one once, you know. They reckon she went mad.’ Guffaws. ‘Mine’s mad already … Wish I didn’t have one. That he should be so lucky.’

  Conversation turned, with the easy inevitability of a tide, the way it did whenever Bailey was discussed. He had overheard such snippets before and knew they entirely misunderstood the nature of the subtle aversion he aroused by his unconventional life and his less predictable reserve. A little hurt was inflicted by the isolation: something more in the nature of actual bodily harm rather than grievous. Bailey knew that his was a mild form of leprosy, unlikely to get worse.

  Today was a bright spring morning, but his mood, normally as reactive as a barometer, remained low. ‘See Ms West, her office 10 a.m.,’ was the terse note in his diary. Ryan, bag-carrier, was finally ready: they collected the neat box files for the appointment, both slightly apprehensive. Geoffrey never knew what to expect, while Ryan always expected the worst and voiced his thoughts.

  ‘Trouble with solicitors,’ he announced, steering his new car through the Upper Street traffic with more than his normal care, ‘is that some of them are good news, and some of them are bad. I mean, some you can get on with, some you can’t.’

  ‘I couldn’t have put it better.’

  Encouraged by this response, Ryan drove faster, and added more. ‘I’ve heard this one’s all right, though. Quite sharp. Nice.’

  Bailey nodded again. He had heard nothing of the kind, in fact nothing at all concerning the solicitor on whom they were obliged to impose their large presence, his height, Ryan’s bulk, and he was in any event quite resigned to having to take whoever or whatever was imposed on him. Ryan’s wisdom was perfectly sound: some were good, some were bad, but they couldn’t help the fact that they were all lawyers. In Bailey’s eyes, criminal law was a good deal more adversarial than it seemed. War games were played for real between police and criminal: played again in as deadly, if more leisurely fashion between defence and prosecution, but law enforcers and law breakers would always be at war with lawyers, and the first two categories would always have more in common with one another than they could ever have with their legal allies. Not that the bonds tying them were unaffectionate, or even disrespectful: simply bonds which exist between differences of kind who need each other, like a parent to a disappointing stepson. Bailey had realised a long time since when he had first brushed his only suit and presented his case papers to his brief, why such an occasion did not involve a meeting of minds, however common the objective may have been. Despite all he had gained since then in rank and experience, he still saw his policeman’s arena as the street, the raw material of life, while the lawyer’s was the courtroom and the preparation for it. Shuffling and evading, joking and pretending, protecting the professional man from too much truth, Bailey had eased his way enjoyably through many a conference with solicitor or barrister, always aware of the difference, always hating his necessary abdication to their forensic skills. They were the ones who would carry the street into the courtroom and revive it there like a play. They never picked up the pieces. They could hardly know better.

  He hated it less now because, like everything else, it mattered less, but he still loathed the first interview with the new lawyer, always feeling he was buying their time without paying. They rendered him helpless, these interpreters, until he knew them well enough to judge what level of reserve he should maintain, and he disliked wondering what kind of sympathy, what kind of service he was going to get. The days were long gone when a police officer could complain that he had spent his life looking up life’s back passage without being able to afford the mortgage on a solicitor’s garage, but the divisions were the same. Even with his own law degree, and his self-imposed education, Bailey knew it. Lawyers breathed a different kind of air.

  ‘Could do with a wet,’ Ryan grumbled, closer to earth as usual. ‘Sat with two of them wallies up here for more than four hours once, going through this and that. Never put the kettle on once.’

  A diplomatic error Miss West was unlikely to commit. She was in the kitchen room, removing the fungus from inside her battered coffee mugs when Bailey and Ryan, larger than life, discreet as nuns, made their way into her office.

  To Ryan’s surprise, Bailey sighed slowly, an outward breath of relief, scenting in the stuffy room a whiff of familiar
ity, a mildly rebellious, non-institutional air, a comforting untidy anonymity.

  ‘God, what a mess,’ said Ryan, casting around to find a few inches of floor space for his boxes of paper, incredulous at all the other paper, instantly suspicious, but it was precisely the mess Bailey liked, a kind of organised chaos close to home, reminiscent of his own cramped office quarters, but worse, badly lit, badly furnished. Files lay everywhere in drunken heaps on the desk, on the floor, on the cabinet, allowing only a narrow path from the entrance to the room. Clearly the phone had been used as a football. There was a brown plant decked with the plastic ribbon it had worn on presentation, still unaware of impending death by neglect, a couple of equally dead milk cartons, a tray full of correspondence, an out-tray similarly full, and a crammed waste-paper basket. Cleaning ladies and others appeared to have given up on Miss West, who was ignorant or careless of the fact, indifferent to the décor and any impression it might create, struggling a little to stay abreast. So far, Bailey thoroughly approved. The tasteful prints, tidy offices with greenery peculiar to lady solicitors and estate agents had never appealed to him. Besides, the view he received from the door of the room told him she was not pretending overwork, and he had always known that the best means of ensuring that a task was done was to give it to the busiest person he could find. The factory room was all the better since he could sense the order which Ryan could not, the same order which existed in his own stable, hidden to all but his own eyes, a kind of secret efficiency which discouraged close scrutiny and prevented interference.

  They waited, standing politely. Bailey still finding impressions in the place of a person who did not wish another to be able to inhabit it, who had several methods of working, not just one, and who wished to remain unknown. Miss West, should she choose to appear at all, was not important enough for Bailey to have formed a picture of her beforehand. She was merely a cog in a process. He had only hoped she would be something other than pompous in offering a minimal level of usefulness. Nothing more. It was the room itself which had mellowed him, so that when she appeared, bearing coffee in chipped crockery, slightly overflowing and sugared not to his taste, he, like Ryan, found the introduction a pleasant surprise. Ryan almost showed her to her own seat, and being a tidy man, watched fascinated as she removed a pile of documents from beneath it and transferred more to the window-sill to make room for their own. Bailey did not offer to assist in this resettling process, but admired the way she achieved it.

  ‘Well,’ she said finally, lighting and offering a cigarette simultaneously, producing an ashtray from a drawer. ‘This is a fine piece of investigation, if I may say so, raising quite a few problems.’ Not original, but true. ‘Before we go any further, I take it we all accept the truth of Jaskowski’s story, at least in all its essentials?’ There were vigorous nods of assent. ‘That being so, you want to know how soon you can arrest Mrs Cartwright, the real murderer. If I can put it like that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ryan.

  ‘And you probably know the answer to that, although you may wish it was different.’

  Bailey did, and certainly wished it was otherwise. Ryan, the eternal, if selective, optimist, even in his pessimism, had hoped vaguely that legal advice might wave some magic wand, produce some unknown avenue which would allow incarceration of Mrs C, that horrible woman, the same afternoon. Galling for him to arrest her once only to deliver her home again. Sensing his frustration, Helen spoke to him rather than to Bailey, whose better understanding she could take for granted.

  ‘Well, in case you doubted it, we can’t charge Mrs Cartwright until we have evidence capable of convicting her. As things stand now, there’s not quite enough to commit her for trial, or at least not enough without Jaskowski’s contribution. He’s a co-defendant until convicted himself, and the evidence of a co-defendant can’t convict without substantial corroboration. You know that. Nor can he be asked at this stage to open his mouth, because he can’t be presented as a witness of truth until he has nothing to gain. Until he’s convicted, he has plenty to gain – by lying. The evidence of an accomplice can be destroyed so easily: you can imagine defence counsel’s line, “Oh yes, Mr Jaskowski, were you hoping for privileges in prison by telling us all this?” But even that’s not the main problem: the main problem is the fact that we can’t introduce the corroboration for his evidence without introducing the evidence itself.’

  ‘You mean we can’t produce those statements about the smelly pound notes?’ Ryan demanded belligerently. ‘Can’t we point out that the only way he would have been able to describe her house so well was by having been there? Can’t we tell the jury about the gloves we found in there? With respect, miss, what the hell’s all that if it isn’t corroboration?’

  ‘It’s corroboration, good corroboration, but none of it will make any sense without him giving evidence first, because it all hinges on what he has to say. He’s got to give the evidence before it can begin to be supported by all these other facts, and he hasn’t any status to give it at the moment. He’s the lynchpin. I only hope he doesn’t know how important he is. Without him being a competent witness, in the legal sense I mean, what have we got?’

  Ryan shuffled. No magic tricks, and he did not understand it, not at all, although he was old enough to know that law, morality and common sense meet at few crossroads. All he knew was that there was a wicked old woman sitting at her own fireside, five thousand pounds poorer maybe, but still free. Murder as the result of middle-aged passion was beyond him. Himself, he did not expect to have that kind of energy at that kind of age, and could scarcely have raised it now as he cruised dangerously close to his first divorce in the knowledge that if he followed the regular CID pattern, he would not be in a position to pay anyone such a sum for the disposal of a girlfriend or anything else in his geriatric years. All gone in maintenance payments to former wives. His coffee cup was empty. Gloom hung over him like a cloud of insects, rising slowly as Helen went on speaking gently, still addressing her remarks to him, which was more than a little flattering.

  ‘It doesn’t mean we’ll lose her, you know. Your report, Mr Ryan, shows that she has no intention of moving anywhere. She’s sitting still and calm as a cucumber. As soon as Jaskowski pleads guilty at the Crown Court, and his solicitor says he wants to get it over with as soon as possible, he becomes a competent witness. Mrs Cartwright can be arrested immediately, charged and battle commences. Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr Bailey, but I don’t see this woman giving an inch. She’ll fight from every ditch, and Jaskowski will be easy to discredit. She’ll also spend rather more than the other five grand she didn’t have to pay Stanislaus on hiring the best legal talent she can find.’

  Bailey nodded agreement. ‘Good. I like a fight.’

  To his surprise, she grinned, transforming her serious face into that of a girl. A mischievous grin, full of disrespect, crumpled, likeable, acutely intelligent. In the same moment, he decided he could trust her more than average and politely dismissed Ryan to collect the photographs which he had deliberately left in the car.

  ‘There’s just one matter,’ he began, as Ryan’s steps retreated away down the corridor, ‘and you might know full well what concerns me.’

  ‘I think I might, but go on.’

  He hesitated, wary as ever of trust, however minimal. ‘I know we can’t arrest her. We’d only have to release her again, having shown our hand, and, as you’ve guessed, I don’t really think she’ll fly. She may think we don’t take Jaskowski seriously; she has such utter contempt for him herself, you see. If she knows what she faces, she chooses not to believe it. Yet. She’s being watched, of course, but we have no legal right to prevent her skipping, just supposing she should try. What on earth do I do if she does? She can afford it.’

  This time her gaze fastened itself firmly to a point on the wall beyond his shoulder.

  ‘Officially, Mr Bailey, you should inform me immediately. Officially, I shall then bang on the closed doors of my ever-cautious superiors, who
will tell you with more clout than I can muster to let her go, because the law is the law even for Mrs Cartwright. That much you knew very well before you asked. Unofficially, you must do as you think fit, but please give me some kind of notice. Then I can arrange to be out of the office for as long as necessary. What you do with her, Mr Bailey, if she tries to slip the net, depends on the risks you are prepared to take. Personally, I hope these are many, and I shall help as much as possible, but you have to remember, my back is only slightly broader than yours.’

  ‘I understand.’ He smiled back. ‘I hope it won’t come to that. I don’t think it will.’

  She relaxed. A slim hand with short, unpolished nails, took the cigarette he offered before she continued.

  ‘Now, I should like you to tell me what I want to understand for myself, but don’t strictly need to know, which is, what the hell’s she like, this woman? In detail if you can. Is it madness, sadness, or what? I don’t know why, but I have the feeling she’s already justified this, won’t regret any of it: she has this sinister kind of confidence. Tell me about her. What do you really think of her?’

  The wall clock ticked as he paused, hand trembling slightly around the cigarette as its smoke curled towards the ceiling.

  ‘It doesn’t signify what I think. Whatever I may think is irrelevant.’

  ‘Of course it signifies, and it’s entirely relevant to me.’ She was quick and certain.

  ‘Very well. Where do I start?’

  ‘That depends on you. You could begin with the fact that she frightens you.’

  A pair of tired eyes met her own, brown eyes, too blank to register the alarm he felt at such baldly stated discovery, while hers showed him not prurient curiosity, but a genuine need to understand. He noticed the vivid intelligence of the face, resented and liked at the same time the uncanny sensation of being understood, and felt a brief shame at his surliness. That, and a desire to confess. He wondered briefly if she had also understood his quiet passion for talking, the articulacy so rarely exercised for lack of a listener he could respect, an equal in understanding. Too old at forty-six, too sceptical, too reserved through his dislike of wasting time, Geoffrey Bailey could not have fallen in love so summarily, but he did fall into liking, and he did, as far as he was able at the time, speak a little of his own mind.