Damned by Logic (16 page)

‘It's not been all that long since women have been entitled to equal pay and rank in the police force, is it?' he said.

‘Depends what you call “long”. Look, do you mind if I go and have a word with Jill?' She did not wait for an answer and left.

He watched her until she was hidden by other guests. Mary had referred to her as feisty. He would have called her socially abrupt.

Persuaded to come to the party because the company would lighten his life, ironically introduced to someone who was potentially trying to destroy it.

He learned he had underestimated Mary's persistence. When guests were called to dinner in the large dining room whose mahogany D-end table on fourteen legs could have dined a regiment, he was seated next to Belinda.

They could ignore each other or find neutral ground. ‘“There is no armour against fate”,' he said lightly. ‘I read that when young and have remembered it ever since. Can't remember where it came from. Perhaps at the battle of Crecy and they were a French knight's last words, complaining against the English who did not know how to fight like gentlemen, knight on knight, not bowman against knight?'

Belinda merely gave Ansell a quizzical look and then turned back to the person on her other side with whom she was having a rather stilted conversation, it seemed.

The first dish was served. Scottish smoked salmon on one plate, two small wedges of lemon and thin buttered slices of brown bread on the second.

‘Can I pass you the pepper?' he asked.

‘No, thank you.' She barely turned her head to him in replying.

Her tone had been dismissive. He squeezed juice on to his three slices of salmon. ‘I didn't choose to sit near you. You have to blame Mary who doesn't realize what you and your colleagues are trying to do to me, who won't believe I was in Oxford when—'

She interrupted him and spoke sharply. ‘This is hardly the time or place to discuss the matter.' She turned back to her neighbour.

He ate another mouthful, spoke to the woman on his left. He endured lengthy descriptions of what her young daughter had recently said and done.

Belinda entered Frick's room first thing the next morning.

‘Yes?' he muttered. The previous evening, he'd met up with a fellow DS, now with another division, and they had reminisced with the aid of half pints of real ale. Catherine, with whom he had lived since the death of his wife, had on his return offered little sympathy when he had complained how he was suffering.

‘I thought you should know, sarge, I went to a party yesterday evening—'

‘I have as little interest in what you did last night as in what you hope to do tonight.'

‘I met Ansell.' She persevered.

‘You keep poor company.'

‘Mary, the hostess, knows him and thought it would cheer him up if she introduced us and seated us next to each other at the meal.'

‘I have enough work for half a dozen, a team who seem to think they're on holiday, and you want to tell me all about your social life?'

‘I thought I ought to report the fact since he started trying to tell me he did not drive from Oxford on the Saturday.'

‘He's getting rattled.'

‘Drank too much champagne to remember his manners.'

‘Didn't realize the circles you move in. What else did he say? That he couldn't remember Melanie?'

‘I shut him up before he could carry on. Told him it wasn't the time or place to discuss the matter.'

‘That must have got right up his nose and it gets right up mine. You chose to close him down when he wanted to lean on your shoulders and talk?'

‘It was a party, sarge.'

‘So?'

‘One doesn't discuss anything like that at a party.'

‘Pardon my social ignorance. I suppose it wouldn't have occurred to you that there was a chance he'd say something that could help open the case?'

‘I've made a mistake—' Belinda started before being interrupted again.

‘You manage to understand that?'

‘A mistake in thinking I should report the matter to you.' She left.

He opened the top drawer of his desk, brought out a plastic bottle of soluble aspirin tablets and swallowed two. If only he'd stopped after the third or fourth half pint ... The internal phone buzzed. Glover wanted to see him.

When he entered the other's room, Glover had the phone receiver to his ear and was listening far more than he was talking. Only after several minutes, did he replace the receiver. ‘The CI at HQ having a moan.'

‘Because the Ansell case isn't moving quickly enough?'

‘What else?'

‘I can't see why he doesn't understand nothing about it is straightforward.'

‘Ring and tell him.'

Frick was annoyed. He'd only tried to offer a little sympathy.

‘Why haven't I got your report on the Cahill case?'

‘I put it on your desk earlier this morning, sir.'

‘If you had done so, it would be there now.'

Frick belatedly remembered now that after arriving at the station and his office that morning he had needed a brief visit to the men's room. It had been his intention to put the report on the other's desk, but renewed disturbance in his brain and stomach had persuaded him to consider himself, not the work. And then he had got distracted. His brain just wasn't functioning quite as it should.

‘Sorry Guv. I was on my way here with it, but was interrupted and somehow forgot to bring it along.'

‘Provided your memory does not deteriorate much further perhaps you can remember to go and get it now.'

Sarcastic bastard, Frick thought as he left. Back in his room, he wondered whether to take another aspirin, decided that might constitute an overdose. No hypochondriac, he did look after his health. A glass of water should help replenish the dehydration though. After a quick slug of water, he picked up the report, returned to the DI's room.

‘As far as you know and can remember, is everything calm for the moment?' Glover asked as he took the report.

‘Except for someone who's acting stupid.'

Glover put the report down on his desk. ‘Who's doing what?'

‘Constable Draper went to a party given by friends with money – champagne, sit-down meal, servants – and met Ansell there.'

‘That makes her stupid?'

‘She sat next to him at the meal. He started moaning something about not having driven down from Oxford that day and instead of encouraging him to keep talking, she shut him up by saying it wasn't the time or place to discuss the case. If she'd had an ounce of brain, she'd have encouraged him to go on swilling champagne. He could easily have let slip something that would have helped us, the amount of champagne he was probably knocking back.'

‘
If
he was guilty of his wife's death.'

‘You're beginning to have doubts?' Frick looked incredulous.

‘Not necessarily, just trying to stand back and look at the facts again. He's an intelligent man. If he knew the diamonds were in the monkey, wouldn't he have removed them on arrival at home and not left them in the monkey, lying on the bed. Then of what use would they have been to him, a complete novice? As someone unknown in the diamond trade, he should have realized that to try to find out who would cut and polish the stones would have aroused immediate suspicion. How would he have had the nous to leave the security system switched off to indicate a careless wife? There are a lot of unanswered questions.'

‘One can learn a lot of the tricks from the telly.'

‘Yet not gain the skill and nerve to carry them out. However, Ansell has to remain our prime suspect for his wife's death.' He became silent and the minutes passed by.

Frick waited.

‘Josh, do you remember the Arnold case?'

Frick was surprised – and worried – by being called by his Christian name, something which usually only happened when the other was in a good mood because work was progressing well. Was Glover about to ask of him something he would not welcome?

‘Arnold had a hell of a row with a woman which ended in his beating her up. She was in hospital for weeks, he was in jail for years because of previous convictions. During his time inside, he was made to meet the victim, following the theory that to learn the pain one has caused will make one feel remorse and shy away from brutality in the future. Could be possible, but things don't always work out as the experts decide they should. The medical profession prescribed thalidomide to alleviate the distresses of pregnancy after all.'

Frick failed to understand the significance of what had been said. Despite the extra aspirin, drums were still beating in his head and there was a choppy sea in his stomach.

Glover went on to explain his thinking. ‘If at the party, Ansell was chatting away to Belinda, trying to persuade her of his innocence, there is the chance he will welcome seeing her again, hoping to make a further attempt to persuade her he was not responsible for his wife's death and—'

The phone rang. Glover answered the call, listened more than he spoke, eventually replaced the receiver. ‘That was the superintendent, adding his moan. He would like to hear that we are making progress in the Eileen Ansell case before the end of the year.'

‘So would we!' Frick replied with more feeling than his head could bear and the banging increased.

‘He has just read an article in the local rag suggesting that, being a county force, we are not up to handling a case of this magnitude. Failing to achieve the success which would confound such uninformed criticism, he'd have to consider whether steps needed to be taken to ensure efficiency improves in C division's CID.'

‘We're as good or better than any other division.'

‘We're only as good as the last case. We have to start on another tack. Does Draper believe Ansell is searching for someone who'll believe him?'

‘She didn't say that.'

‘It seems very possible. So tell her to contact Ansell and apologize for her attitude at the party; it was just because she automatically wanted to avoid shop talk. She can tell him she's sorry for what she said and doesn't want him to think she begins to believe he was in any way involved in the diamond smuggling or in his wife's death.'

‘Do ... do what, guv?' Frick's surprise was great.

‘You couldn't understand what I said?'

‘You're asking her to be a ... a double agent?'

‘Hardly apposite. If she learns something important which enables us to open the case wide, she'll have done her duty.'

‘What if she gets him to provide evidence which is strong enough to bring him to trial. The defence would claim entrapment.'

‘You may well be correct if he provides direct evidence which is used in court; you are incorrect if she provides information which enables us to find and bring incriminating evidence to court. Then, the accusation of entrapment could not be sustained.'

‘I don't like the idea.'

‘A moment ago, you were blaming her for not letting him talk, now you condemn the idea.'

‘Then, it was of his own accord. What you're suggesting means we would have gone out of our way to persuade him to talk.'

‘Even a lawyer might find that too fine a difference for the average jury to understand. Here is a chance of learning if Ansell did become mixed up in the smuggling game, and whether he did frighten his wife to death as he tried to force her to say where she burned the monkey.'

‘Sir, I appreciate that, but—'

‘You will tell Constable Draper to make further contact with Ansell.'

W
hy? Belinda asked herself as she drove along Huntston Road. She turned into Bracken Lane – and slowed. She had believed she had the right to refuse an order which went against her instinctive and ethical standards, yet she had not done so. Frick had been uneasy when he had told her to make contact with Ansell. Uneasy, she judged, because he considered it an underhand – and potentially career damaging – way to carry out the investigation. So why, knowing he would probably back her refusal to do as ordered, had she not refused?

She braked to a halt. Number thirty-four was no longer guarded by a PC, police tape had been removed, banks of flowers put on the pavement by neighbours had wilted. Other people's tragedies had short lives.

She turned off the engine. Had Glover or Frick given any heed as to how embarrassing this might be for her? Glover probably would not since the DCS was demanding action and that would override any personal concerns. Frick would probably not because embarrassment was a natural female weakness and peculiar to only the weaker sex in his view and therefore not an issue for him to consider.

If it had been a weekday, Ansell might have been at work and she could report no contact. But in the circumstances, what was the likelihood he would be back at work now anyway? Waiting didn't make an unwelcome task any easier. She left the car, crossed the pavement, opened the wrought iron gate, walked up the paved area to the front door. Her mother had said, when she had been a child and had had to swallow medicine, think it tastes delicious and it will. It had always tasted foul.

Mrs Kelton opened the door, a suspicious look on her face.

‘Is Mr Ansell ...?'Belinda began.

‘Not here. Ain't you ever going to stop worrying him? D'you need to be told what it's like, you lot upsetting him when he's mourning?'

‘I wouldn't be here if I hadn't been ordered to be.'

She had spoken with such certainty that Mrs Kelton relaxed. ‘No more would I be if he didn't need someone.'

‘You're very kind to come here on a Sunday.'

‘What day it is don't make no difference for him.'

‘He's lucky to have you to help him.'

‘That he is,' Mrs Kelton answered, foregoing modesty. ‘You say you must have a word with him?'