Killing Me Softly (11 page)

‘I hope you'll keep this as quiet as possible, for Clare's sake,' he said eventually, his heavy brows beetling, stress bringing out his Black Country accent. ‘She's had a lot to put up with, for too long, she doesn't need this.'

‘We'll do our best,' Mayo assured him, ‘but it's not easy, things will inevitably come out.'

Sam laughed shortly. ‘There'll be plenty, you can rest assured on that. Don't let his so-called popularity fool you. There's always been summat, as long as ever I've known him ... women, gambling –'

‘Yes. Letters in his pocket suggest he was deeply in debt.'

‘That's what I meant about a mess. He's gambled away more money than most people have ever laid hands on, wasn't particular how he got hold of it, neither. But he's been lucky, somebody else always there to carry the can. Until the Lloyd's fiasco. He was one of those Names, you know, and it damn near finished him off. I blame that mother of his, if she'd taken a firm hand with him when he was young – well, any road, that's water under the bridge.' ‘Where was his office? In Lavenstock?'

‘No, he worked from here.'

‘What about staff? A secretary?'

Sam made a face. ‘Not any more.'

‘We shall require Mrs Wishart's permission to go through his papers –'

‘What for? I'd hardly have thought you'd need to bother her with that.'

‘That's all right, Dad,' said another voice, ‘they can get on with it whenever they want.'

They all turned to see Clare, looking like a ghost, with her pale hair and no vestige of colour in her cheeks. She was in control but she seemed to Abigail to have shrunk, physically, as she went to sit by her father. ‘Amy's asleep,' she told him. They sat together, without touching, but the effect of solidarity between them was overwhelming.

It seemed to be a relief to Clare that she'd already met Abigail, knew, at least slightly, the sort of person who'd be probing into the details of their lives. She was accepting the necessity of this, unlike some people, who found the additional burden to their grief hard to take. Yes, she admitted, she knew her husband had had money worries, but she hadn't realized they were preying on his mind enough for him to have taken his life. ‘In fact, it was only last night that he asked me for money. I wish – God, I just
wish
I hadn't refused.'

‘Clare!' Sam said. ‘You mustn't blame yourself for what he's done.'

‘How can I not?' she returned in a low voice.

Abigail exchanged glances with Mayo and said, ‘I feel I should warn you, there's a possibility it might not have been suicide.'

‘An accident!' Clare's relief was palpable.

‘I'm sorry, I'm afraid that's not very likely, either.'

‘Then ... I don't understand.'

Abigail's explanation was followed by a long, painful silence. She didn't rush things, giving them time to assimilate the news, seeing the dawning comprehension on their faces. ‘I realize how shocked and upset you must be, but there are things we need to know. Do you feel up to answering questions? I can leave it for the moment if you don't.'

But not if she'd any choice, she wouldn't. It was often the best time to talk to bereaved relatives, before the facts had sunk in, before they realized what it was all going to mean, and their lips became sealed as the consequences of what they might say occurred to them. Whether Clare was aware of this or not, she stiffened.

‘What sort of questions?' Sam asked.

‘Anything that might help us establish a reason for his death.'

‘But I've already told you!' Clare exclaimed. ‘He was in deep waters, financially. Though how that ...' She was unable to finish.

‘Apart from money worries, had there been any other trouble lately?'

Sam made a small protesting movement, but quickly checked it and sat back, his hand covering his mouth. Clare reached out and touched his knee gently, briefly. She was sitting upright on the edge of the sofa, without any support, but suddenly she began to tremble. Sam stood up abruptly, and went out of the room.

‘I suppose you mean women,' Clare finally answered Abigail's question. ‘There could have been, there usually was. Our marriage was – wasn't –'

Sam returned with a heavy, crystal glass in his hand, containing what looked like brandy. ‘Drink this.' Clare shook her head, but he insisted and she took a tiny sip. ‘All of it,' Sam instructed.

When she'd drained the glass, she sat quietly for a moment. Its contents seemed to give her courage, for a faint warmth crept into her cheeks. ‘I'd appreciate some time before I answer any more questions. It's been a shock,' she said to Abigail.

‘I understand. I don't want to distress you further just now, but we shall need to talk to you again, and your children. May we call round tomorrow?'

‘Of course. I shall be here. There'll be things to do, things I have to see to.' She gestured vaguely.

‘You yourself run a successful business, Mrs Wishart?' Mayo asked, as they stood up to leave. ‘Was your husband part of it?'

She answered with a quietly spoken negative, but the expression in her eyes was fiercely defensive. The impression left was that Wishart wouldn't have been allowed to dip a toe into the water.

At that moment a car was heard to draw up on the gravel outside. A glance through the front window showed Ellie Redvers's dark blue Fiat. She could be heard speaking to the uniformed constable on the door, then light footsteps tapped across the wide, bare floorboards in the hall.

She stood poised in the doorway like a ballet dancer, her head with its cap of short, dark hair slightly to one side, her brown eyes wide and stricken, a vulnerable, thin, Audrey Hepburn look-alike. During the few hours which had passed since they'd parted, Abigail realized that she'd lost none of her talent for dramatizing a situation.

She looked at no one except Clare, who had stood up. Something was being said between them. Clare knows about Ellie and Tim, Abigail thought, and Ellie knows she knows. They kept eye contact until the silence became almost painful, until at last the tension snapped. Ellie's eyes brimmed and then Clare held out her arms wide while Ellie skimmed across the floor and into them. The two women hugged each other wordlessly.

Now what had all that been about? Abigail wondered. A natural generosity of spirit in Clare? If so, wasn't it a somewhat unnatural generosity in the circumstances? Or had it been a show of solidarity, necessary for some reason – for the benefit of the police, perhaps? Collusion was the word that came to mind.

Maybe, of course, Clare was heaping coals of fire. There were more ways of killing a pig than slitting its throat. More ways of Clare punishing her husband's mistress than cold-shouldering her. She looked at Clare with more interest.

John Fairmile, Wishart's shooting companion, had heard the shot which had killed Wishart.

They had been shooting on his land, just the two of them, and had parted at about half-past three.

‘Where was this?' asked Carmody.

‘By the stepping stones in the valley. I came home by way of the top barley field, Tim crossed the river and took the short cut through the woods to Clacks.' It would, he said, have taken Tim no more than fifteen minutes to get home, himself rather less. Home to Fairmile was the farmhouse not more than a quarter of a mile from Clacks Mill, a comfortable, pleasantly untidy place with children's books and toys much in evidence in the big, family living-room.

They'd had a disappointing day, he went on, the light had been bad and the bag was consequently poor. Fairmile had rubbed down his golden retriever then routinely cleaned his own twelve-bore before returning it to the locked case where it was kept. It had been a raw day and he was cold when he got in, so he'd poured the scotch he'd promised himself and taken it upstairs with him to drink while preparing to shower and change.

‘All this would have taken you some time?' Carmody asked.

‘Twenty minutes, half an hour maybe, hard to say. Could've been more. I took my time, listened to the messages on the answerphone and so on, put a casserole in the oven. My wife's taken the children away for a few days to her mother's and she left it ready, with instructions to leave it on for three hours.'

The savoury smell permeated the room, drifting in from the kitchen. Carmody's mouth watered. It would be some time before he ate, and he'd be lucky if it was a ham sandwich. ‘At what point did you hear the shot?'

‘When I was rubbing Rosie down – it must have been about ten to four by then, I guess.'

‘You're sure it was the sound of a shotgun?'

‘Can't mistake it, heard enough in my time.'

‘Were you surprised to hear it?'

Fairmile was a pleasant-faced young man with a ruddy, outdoors complexion and an easy manner, who'd been badly shaken by the news of Wishart's death. ‘Didn't give it much thought. I suppose it went through my mind that Tim had decided to take a pot at something else, but I can't honestly remember that it did. Could've been someone else out shooting, anyway, though we hadn't heard anything, and the light was fading by then.'

‘Did you know Mr Wishart well?'

‘Only as neighbours. We shot together, we were in the same gun club, and we've exchanged hospitality. But we hadn't much in common, apart from a bit of sport.'

Carmody listened carefully. Not a lot of love lost there, he thought. No obvious signs of animosity, as such, but not bosom friends, by any means.

‘Penny – my wife – knows Clare a bit better, perhaps. They occasionally have coffee together, and Clare's offered to look after the children once or twice. They're boys, seven and nine, bit of a handful, you know what they are at that age,' he added with pride.

Yes, indeed, agreed Carmody with feeling, a family man himself, though his lot were now grown up and thank God he didn't have to live through that stage any more. ‘What sort of mood would you say he was in?'

‘Tim? Not depressed, not
that
depressed, anyway, I wouldn't have thought.' Fairmile broke off and made his way to the drinks table in the corner. ‘What can I offer you? Nothing? Sure?' He hesitated, raised his shoulders, then poured himself a small amount of whisky, adding water. ‘Look,' he said, as he came back, ‘I don't think I'm breaking any confidences, seeing the poor bugger's dead, but he was trying to touch me for a loan. He was out of luck, I'm afraid, it's all I can do to keep my end up, here. I'd have liked to help him, but I've my own family to consider. I hope to God it wasn't that tipped him over the edge.'

‘Shouldn't worry about it. Takes more than that as a rule, sir.' Carmody flipped his notebook shut and uncoiled his length from the depths of the easy chair. ‘Thank you for your help.'

‘Sorry I couldn't do more.'

‘There's just one thing –'

Fairmile didn't look any too pleased when he heard that his guns would have to be taken away and examined.

Wishart, too, had owned several guns.

‘And all present and correct, all locked up, only for the one he had with him,' Carmody reported, having checked Wishart's gun-cupboard on his return from his interview with Fairmile.

They had reassembled round the back of the house while the business of the removal of Tim Wishart's remains took place: Mayo, Abigail and Carmody. The ambulance with the body of the man into whose personal affairs they were now about to be plunged had departed, and the three of them were once more overlooking the place where the tragedy had occurred, their faces an uncertain blur in the murky light.

It was growing late. Any further poking around here tonight would be counter-productive. Abigail hunched herself into her jacket, preoccupied with thoughts of the routine procedures which needed to be initiated.

‘Murder it is, then?' she said.

‘That's my gut feeling, yes. We need a firm result from the PM, and to see what turns up here, but we can't afford to discount the Prof's opinion, until we know otherwise.'

Neither of the others seemed inclined to disagree with Mayo. Accident seemed highly unlikely, and the idea of Wishart as a suicide candidate had fast lost ground.

Mayo stood relaxed, hands in his pockets, but anyone who knew him might have read a hidden urgency behind his prosaic remarks, have sensed the tension, and perhaps the flicker of excitement, which the beginning of a murder case always brought. Abigail, at any rate, with the same sort of keyed-up feeling, glanced quickly at him as he added, ‘Anything strike you, so far?'

‘Yes. He was facing the wrong direction. If he was on his way home when he was shot, you'd have expected him to be either lying on his front with his head to the house, or on his back, feet forwards.'

‘Instead of which, he was slumped against the handrail of the bridge, facing the other way, having fallen back with his head towards the house.'

‘So for some reason he turned back towards the woods and was shot from there.'

‘Stacks, doesn't it? Less risky for the killer to hide there, waiting for Wishart, than hanging around near the house. It's what I'd have done if I'd been him. The path comes alongside the river, and what with the way it turns, and the trees limiting his vision, Wishart wouldn't be a good target until he was on the bridge, with his back to the woods.'

‘How very un-British.'

Abigail's remark was flippant in a way Mayo understood: it was even getting to him, too – this foggy, eerie night, reminders of mortality – and he was a natural sceptic. ‘By fyre and fleet and candlelight, May Christe receive thy soule.' The ancient dirge for the dead dredged itself up from somewhere in his memory, making his skin crawl. He gave himself a mental shake. For Pete's sake!

‘Bad form would have been the least of his worries,' he said, very dry. ‘And shooting him in the back wouldn't be an option, anyway, if it was meant to look like suicide. If. Or did that idea only come to him afterwards? Whichever way, something made Wishart turn round to have got the full blast in his face.'