Dirty Tricks (26 page)

‘Another consequence is that the file on the case will have to be re-examined. Since the Force originally concerned is now the subject of disciplinary action, we in the Thames Valley Police have been asked to take on the task of reviewing the evidence and deciding what further action, if any, to recommend.

He lifted a file from the desk.

‘I have to say that one or two items here appear to corroborate the version of events which Mr Phillips gave at the outset. For example there’s this florist’s assistant who was collecting a Red Star delivery from Banbury station. He remembers seeing two cars parked in the forecourt, one of them a yellow sports car and the other a, quote, red Alfa Romeo, unquote. He was then shown a photograph of a BMW like the one you drive, and he said yes, that was it, he could tell one of those Alfas anywhere.’

I said nothing.

‘Another witness, who was meeting his aunt off the Oxford train, not only confirmed the presence of this second car, but also identified Clive Phillips from a photograph as one of the two men sitting in it having what he described as “a loud argument”.’

‘But none of this was mentioned at the trial!’

‘Quite so, sir. Transcripts of these interviews were communicated by us to our colleagues in Wales, but in the light of the overwhelming evidence of Phillips’s guilt they apparently didn’t consider them relevant to the investigation.’

The door opened to reveal a WPC pushing a trolley laden with styrofoam mugs of tea and coffee.

‘ “Ye blessed souls, that taste the something something of felicity!” declaimed Moss fruitily. ‘Tea for me, please Fliss, since there’s nothing stronger. How about you, sir?’

‘Coffee,’ I croaked.

‘ “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons …” ’

‘It’s a bit early in the morning for Eliot,’ I snapped.

‘A matter of taste,’ Moss replied, patting the woman constable’s bottom as she left. ‘Personally I have excellent taste in poetry, women, music, beer and crime. And I have to say that this business doesn’t do a thing for me. Ah!’

He swooped down on his newspaper.

‘The solution was staring me in the face all along. Simple, really.’

I’d had enough of this cat-and-mouse game.

‘Excuse me, Inspector, but what exactly was it you wished to speak to me about?’

Moss finished filling in his crossword and sipped his tea noisily.

‘Well, sir, the last thing we want to do is waste a lot of time reinvestigating this case when the identity of the murderer has in fact already been established beyond a reasonable doubt.’

He was inviting me to confess! I felt I was going to faint.

‘I’d like to call my solicitor,’ I muttered.

‘What we must remember,’ Moss told the ceiling, ‘is that just because Phillips is being released, that doesn’t mean he’s innocent.’

I stared at him open-mouthed.

‘It doesn’t?’

‘Of course not. All the review board has said is that he wasn’t given a fair trial. It’s entirely a matter of speculation what the outcome might have been if he had.’

‘But that’s ridiculous! You mean a guilty man could be set free because of some technical detail?’

‘Happens all the time. Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that, but we do try and prevent the innocent being persecuted as a result. Now if the case were to be reopened, it would of course be very distressing for everyone concerned, especially yourself. We fully appreciate that. And that’s why I just wanted to check that you’re absolutely
sure
there’s no one who could verify that you were in Oxford on the Saturday in question. If there was, you see, then I could virtually guarantee the matter would go no further.’

I finally understood. As far as the police were concerned, the significance of Clive’s release depended on whether or not the investigation was reopened. If it wasn’t, everyone would assume that Clive had been freed on a mere technicality, in which case the slur on the police would also remain purely technical. They’d got the right man, even if they’d used the wrong methods. So the boys in blue were pulling together. All Moss wanted to do was to bury the case discreetly, to write it off as a botched job with no moral opprobrium attached. If he was to do that, he needed me to have an alibi. So why didn’t I do us both a favour and go and get one, eh?

Fair enough, I thought. I can take a hint.

‘Actually, what I told the police earlier was not strictly true,’ I murmured. ‘I
did
see someone that day, but I didn’t like to mention it because … well, it was a woman.’

Moss nodded sympathetically.

‘To be perfectly honest, I had taken advantage of my wife’s absence to see a dear friend of mine who … There was absolutely nothing between us, but, well, you can imagine how it would have looked at the time.’

‘And the lady’s name, sir?’

‘Kraemer. Alison Kraemer.’

Moss noted it down in the margin of one of the papers.

‘I’ll need to speak to her in the next day or two. It won’t take long, just a formality really. Then we shouldn’t need to bother you again.’

He turned back to his crossword.

‘ “The iceman buyeth not his round.” Five letters starting with a C. A rather over-elaborate clue, I’d say. The trademark of an amateur.’

‘Fine, fine. And you? Really? Good. Super. Listen, I was wondering if we could get together some time soon. There’s something I need to ask you. It’s a bit urgent, actually.’

I was standing in a glass phone booth amid the roar of traffic in the Westgate one-way system. Alison’s voice reached me as though from a great distance. The air was milder there, the vegetation lusher. Somewhere in the background a piano was playing.

‘Can you come to lunch?’

The meal was the same as on the day we first met: omelette, salad, cheese and bread. The food wasn’t quite as good as it had been in France – the best money could buy, rather than just the best – but the real drawback from my point of view was that we were a threesome. It was half-term, and Rebecca was kicking her heels around the house. To try and break the ice which formed whenever she was around, I asked her if she was interested in crossword puzzles.

‘If they’re difficult enough,’ returned the pert gamine.

‘How about this? “The iceman buyeth not his round.” Five letters beginning with a C. I just can’t get it.’

Rebecca wrinkled her nose.

‘The reference to O’Neill is clear enough. Too clear, in fact. Probably a red herring. Oh drat, I shall have to think about it,’ she concluded world-wearily, getting up from the table.

‘Don’t forget your French essay,’ Alison called after her.

‘
J’essaierai!
’

‘Isn’t she amazing?’ I said with feigned warmth.

Alison smiled deprecatingly.

‘They all are at that age. It’s easy to be amazing. What’s difficult is to settle down to being ordinary. I fancy Rebecca may find that quite a struggle.’

She rose to make coffee.

‘So what was it you wanted to ask me?’

I laughed lightly.

‘It’s a bit of a bore, I’m afraid. The thing is, the police have been in touch. It’s quite incredible. Apparently there was some irregularity in the way the case against Clive Phillips was prepared, and as a result he’s being set free. It’s a total travesty of justice, of course. No one has the slightest doubt about his guilt, but because the correct procedures weren’t observed they have to let him go.’

‘How appalling!’

‘What’s even worse is that the Crown Prosecution Service is considering reopening the case. The police very decently warned me about this in advance, and asked if there was anyone who could vouch for the fact that I was in Oxford on the day Karen disappeared.’

‘To give you an alibi, you mean?’

I laughed.

‘Well I suppose that’s the legal term, but it’s just a formality really. I mean no one’s accusing me of anything, least of all the police. But they’ve got to go through the motions, you see, even though they know perfectly well that Phillips was responsible for Karen’s death.’

Alison brought two miniature Deruta cups brimming with espresso coffee.

‘That’s jolly thoughtful of them,’ she said. ‘But how frightful to think that that man is going to go free. Aren’t you scandalized?’

I sighed deeply and shrugged.

‘He’s not going free. He’s just being released into another prison, the prison of his own conscience. For the rest of his life, he’s going to have to live with the knowledge of what he did.’

Alison nodded.

‘How very true.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, the main thing is to avoid the whole unsavoury business being dredged up yet again. I just want to forgive and forget. That’s why it’s so vital to do what the police suggest and find someone who will verify that I was here.’

She nodded again.

‘Of course. Have you spoken to any of the people you saw that day?’

‘That’s why it’s a bore,’ I sighed. ‘You see, when you cancelled our lunch date, I was so depressed I just couldn’t face doing anything else. I’d really been looking forward to seeing you. In the end I sat at home all day and read, did some cleaning, listened to music, that sort of thing. No one called, no one saw me.’

I marshalled the loose crumbs on the tabletop into a neat line.

‘Actually, I was wondering if perhaps you’d do it.’

Alison sipped the last of her coffee and bent over the cup, studying the swirl of grounds on the glazed ceramic.

‘Do what?’

‘Vouch for me.’

‘Me? I wasn’t even here myself!’

‘What time did you leave?’

‘Well, I suppose I left the house about one thirty or two, but …’

‘That’s good enough. Instead of phoning, let’s say you drove over to tell me in person that you wouldn’t be able to make lunch. We had a brief chat, then you went on to Dorset. It would have been on your way, more or less.’

Alison frowned.

‘But I didn’t.’

‘No, but you might have.’

‘But I
didn’t
!’

I nodded vigorously, as though we were discussing some abstract issue such as nuclear power or the poll tax.

‘I see your point, Alison, but I wonder if you aren’t being slightly over-literal about this. Why should we have to go through months of grief and disruption just because fate intervened to break our lunch appointment? All the police want is a token statement. You won’t be under oath, no one is going to cross-examine you. You’ll just be confirming what they already know, namely that I was in Oxford that day and therefore can’t have had any hand in what happened in Wales.’

Alison stared at me for longer than I would have believed possible. Time must have got jammed, I thought, or maybe I was suffering a stroke. Then there was a thunder of feet on the stairs, a thrush gave voice outside the window, and Rebecca burst into the room.

‘Crime!’ she cried.

Alison’s face melted back into an expression of maternal warmth. I realized how unnaturally set and strained it had become.

‘What do you mean, dear?’

The solution to that crossword clue. It’s an anagram. The iceman is Mr Ice.’

I forced a congratulatory smile.

‘And “buyeth not his round”?’

‘Crime doesn’t pay.’

As she strode out to the hallway, I felt a shiver of panic, like one who realizes he is the victim of black magic. In the mouth of that unsuspecting child the phrase resounded like the judgement of the Delphic oracle. I knew that nothing would go right for me now.

‘I don’t know what amazes me more,’ Alison said quietly, ‘that you should be prepared to perjure yourself or that you imagined that I would. Evidently we don’t know each other as well as I thought.’

The Perrier had flowed like water during lunch, but we had consumed nothing stronger. When I tried to stand up, though, I staggered like a drunk.

‘Well thanks, Alison. It’s been real. The police will be in touch some time this afternoon or tomorrow, I expect. A Chief Inspector Moss. I’d keep an eye on him if I were you. Just between the two of us, he struck me as a bit of a DOM. Prosing on about female pulchritude with his hands buried deep in his raincoat pockets, that sort of thing. I have a feeling that you’re the sort of woman he might go for in a big way, Alison.’

She stared at me in shock. I had never spoken like this to her before. I had never been flippant, ambiguous or disrespectful. Above all, I had never mentioned the Wonderful World of Sex.

‘I think you’d better leave,’ she said with quiet dignity.

Quiet dignity, like
omelette aux fines herbes
, was very much Alison’s forte. She did it superbly well.

I walked along the hallway to the front door. The strains of the piano rang out from the living room, where Rebecca was practising. It was the same piece I had heard over the phone, but the effect was quite different now, like a landscape one is leaving for ever.

On the way home I made a detour through the back-streets of East Oxford, just for old times’ sake. I found myself staring out of the window of the BMW with something approaching envy. Yes, there was squalor and despair, but also a range of human contact, a warmth and vivacity quite foreign to the genteel suburbs where I now lived. What violence there was here was only for show, a desperate appeal for help or attention, the uncoordinated flailings of a drunk too far gone to do any damage. But Alison and her kind were kung fu masters, all formal smiles, elaborate politeness and swift, vicious dispatch.

I had thought I was one of them, that was my mistake. I thought my birth and education entitled me to a place among them. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My place was here, among the people I despised. Them I could manipulate, as I had Dennis and Karen. From the moment I tried to move up to Alison’s level I was lost. I’d wanted her because she was the real thing. It had never occurred to me that I was not. But the real thing is not charm and chat but a clinically precise sense of what you can get away with. And that I lacked. Otherwise I would never have made the fatal blunder of trying to seduce Alison morally. I had mistaken her for a jumped-up shopgirl like Karen, to whom the ties of romantic love were sacred and who would sacrifice anything to stand by her man. Karen would have lied to the police for me without a second thought, but to propose it to Alison was as gauche as asking her to give me a blow-job in the Bod.