Scene of Crime Page 14

  Tom shook his head, giving up on that. “Go on, then,” he said.

  “I’m just about to break into the Saab when I hear a noise, and then a light comes on—some sort of security light. So I hid.”

  “What sort of noise?” asked Lloyd.

  Ryan frowned. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Like—Like rubble being moved, or something.”

  “Could it have been a pile of bricks collapsing?”

  Ryan’s face cleared. “Yes,” he said. “It could.”

  “Where did you hide?” Tom asked.

  “In the wood. And I hear someone get into the car, and after a couple of minutes it drives off. So I come back out of the wood, and that’s when I found the sack. I fell over it.”

  Tom threw his pen down in disgust. “Oh, right,” he said. “And you expect us to believe that? Someone else conveniently burgled the house for you and dumped the proceeds at your feet?”

  Ryan shrugged. “No. I knew you wouldn’t believe me. But it’s what happened.”

  Lloyd seemed to be taking it seriously. “Are you saying the sack wasn’t there when you went into the wood?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. It could have been. I didn’t see it—I fell over it, like I said. It was tucked under a sort of bush thing. I looked through the stuff, saw the Christmas presents and things, and—well, I reckoned if someone was chucking them away, I might as well have them. I walked through the wood, and that’s when I saw the car I took from outside the house in London Road.”

  “You’re admitting that you took that car now?” asked Tom.

  “Yes. You said you wanted the truth, and that’s what you’re getting.”

  But this was the bit that didn’t quite add up, and he could prove that the little sod was lying. “You took this car at half past eight,” he said.

  Ryan shrugged. “If you say so. I don’t know what time it was.”

  “We know what time it was. It was only parked there for five minutes, from 8:25 to eight-thirty. So you would be about to break into the Saab at about what time in relation to when you stole the car?”

  “Ten, fifteen minutes or so before that.”

  “Around quarter past eight.” Tom leaned toward Ryan. “Dexter was there at around quarter past eight. He says he was in Eliot Way when he heard the window break. And he saw the light come on, just like you did. The problem is—he says he didn’t see you. How could he miss you?”

  Ryan tried to rub the tension from the back of his neck. “He’s just saying that, Mr. Finch! He’s not going to tell you if he saw me trying to break into a car, is he?”

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Tom said. “I think the reason Dexter didn’t see you breaking into a car is that you’re making all that up. When that light came on, you were inside the Bignalls’ house helping yourself to the presents under their tree. A sort of Santa Claus in reverse. And when Mrs. Bignall caught you and threatened to scream the place down—”

  “No! I never went near Mrs. Bignall! I was trying to nick a Saab—it was a four-year-old 9000 turbo, and I can tell you the number, even. I was looking at it long enough.”

  “Then tell us,” said Lloyd. He jotted it down, and looked up. “All right,” he said. “I think we could do with a break, and I suspect that Mr. Braithwaite might want to discuss your position with you, Ryan. Interview suspended 10:50 P.M.”

  Tom stopped the tape, furious with Lloyd for suspending the interview just then. You were always in with a shout when they disregarded their solicitor’s advice, and he’d gotten Ryan rattled before Lloyd had let him off the hook.

  Out in the corridor, Tom took a deep breath so he wouldn’t say anything he would regret, and when he spoke, it was through his teeth. “Sir, why did you do that?”

  Lloyd smiled. “Do you know you only call me sir when you really want to call me something much worse? You forget to do your TV cop act when you’re really fed up. No guv, no boss—it’s ‘Sir, why did you do that?’ It’s a bit of a giveaway.” He started walking toward the dispatch room.

  “So why did you?” Tom demanded, catching up to him as he got to the door. “I was just getting somewhere with him.”

  “Because,” said Lloyd, “I want to check the number Ryan gave us. I think Carl Bignall was still there at eight-fifteen.” He held up the piece of paper on which he’d written the number. “This might prove it.” He disappeared into the dispatch room.

  Tom shook his head. Ryan Chester was as slippery as they came; they hadn’t been able to pin anything on him for over a year, despite the fact that he was very active indeed. He wouldn’t take his word for anything.

  Lloyd came back out. “I think the row that Geoffrey Jones reported was between Bignall and his wife,” he said, “and it wasn’t coincidental to her death, because if it was, why did he lie about when he had left?”

  “You haven’t got the registered owner yet,” Tom reminded him.

  “It’ll be his. Do you want to bet? Carl Bignall put the finishing touches to the so-called burglary by breaking the window, and Dexter saw him.”

  “Why didn’t Jones?” asked Tom.

  “It would take Jones a moment to get into his bedroom and look out of the window,” said Lloyd. “By that time Dexter was at Watson’s gate, so Carl Bignall could certainly have left by his.”

  True. Tom thought about that. Ryan ran into the wood, and Bignall came out of his gate, locked it, threw the sack into the wood, got into his car and left for the theater. He supposed it made sense of a sort.

  “He didn’t get to that rehearsal until twenty-five to nine, and I’d bet my pension that the burglary was staged. You saw it, Tom! Drawers pulled out and upturned for no reason at all that I could see. Two artful presents left beneath the tree—the portable stereo, obviously dropped when the intruder was disturbed. I was looking at a stage set, not a burglary!”

  There was a big stumbling block, though. “You’ve got no evidence, sir,” Tom said.

  “I’ve got a witness, if this car is Carl Bignall’s.”

  “Ryan Chester?” Tom’s voice almost disappeared out of the top of his head with disbelief. “Ryan Chester is a liar, sir. And a burglar. And he had the stuff in his possession—he sold some of it!”

  “I agree that Ryan isn’t the most credible witness in the world,” said Lloyd. “But we might have another one. Watson was there, too, remember.”

  Tom made an exasperated noise. “Guv—that’s not a whole lot better. He’s got a record, and Judy Hill thinks he might have been overinterested in Estelle Bignall, remember. If he tried something on with Mrs. Bignall, and she knocked him back, he could be in the frame for this himself. He spooked Sarah Brightling, and I know her, guv—she doesn’t get the vapors because some guy makes suggestive remarks. And I told you I didn’t think he was giving us the whole strength about what was going down there last night. Anyway—how does an ex-cop who didn’t even get his thirty years in wind up living in a place like that?”

  Lloyd grinned. “That’s better,” he said. “You’ve gone back into tellycop mode. And I agree—Watson’s a suspect, even if he is an outside bet. But I think even you will admit that it would be quite a coincidence if he thought up the same lie as Ryan Chester.”

  A WPC opened the dispatch room door. “Sir—that number you gave me? It’s a Saab 9000 registered to a Carl Bignall.”

  Lloyd beamed at her, and she went back in. “Well?” he said to Tom.

  “Ryan didn’t see it, guv. He’s just trying to give us someone else to suspect—Bignall gives Dexter lifts home from rehearsals, remember. So Ryan would know the number.”

  He had just produced what he thought was his best rebuttal of Lloyd’s theory, but Lloyd was beaming at him in much the same way as he’d beamed at the WPC.

  “That’s why Dexter was there,” he said. “He must have overheard Ryan and Baz arranging to steal Bignall’s car. He went there to try to stop them.”

  There was something wrong with that, but Tom couldn’t put his finger
on it. He frowned. “I don’t know, guv.”

  “It’s possible,” said Lloyd, continuing toward the CID suite. “And one thing’s for certain—Dexter saw something while he was there that he’s afraid to tell us about. Now, I’m sure he wouldn’t tell us in a million years if he saw Ryan doing something criminal, but I don’t think he’d be frightened. And he is. So, I’m going to have a word with Watson. If he agrees that Bignall’s car was there …” He lifted his hands by way of finishing the sentence.

  “And meanwhile Ryan Chester’s being given lots of time to think up a better story,” Tom grumbled as he pushed open the door to the incident room and Lloyd went off to his office. Lloyd would never accept that things were sometimes just not that complicated.

  “Forensics has checked up on the bin bag, Sarge,” said DC Marshall, in his slow Glasgow drawl. “They say it came from a roll of bin bags in Bignall’s kitchen. The perforations match up exactly. So that’s no help. And we’ve had the results on the shoe prints, but you’re not going to like them either.”

  Tom learned with mounting disbelief and irritation that neither Ryan’s nor Dexter’s shoes matched the shoe prints found at the scene. He hadn’t been able to let rip at Lloyd, but he could and did at Marshall. “I don’t want to hear this, Alan! Ryan Chester knows how to get rid of evidence. He’d throw away the shoes they were wearing if he knew they’d left foot marks!”

  “Ryan’s a size ten,” said Marshall stolidly. “Dexter’s a size seven. The shoe prints were left by a size eleven and a size nine.”

  “One’s too big and one’s too small? I feel like bloody Goldilocks!”

  “Well, at least you don’t look like her anymore, Sarge.”

  “Very funny.” Tom ran his hand over his shorn hair. “What about the fingerprints?”

  “No match there either. The fact is, Sarge, there’s nothing that places Ryan or Dexter in the house or the garden.”

  Tom sat down at his desk. “I don’t get it,” he said. “Just how many people were there breaking into Bignall’s property last night?” He sighed. “About the fingerprints—how soon can they start checking them against known villains?”

  These days the process was computerized, and if there was a match to be found, it didn’t take too long to find it. Providing someone started checking them.

  “They say they’ll do it as a matter of urgency,” said Marshall. “But there’s a backlog,” he warned. “They’re not all in the computer yet. Still—we might get lucky.”

  “We’d better. We’re back to square one with this.”

  Marshall nodded, went back to his desk, then turned. “You know, Sarge—I think you were more philosophical when you had your curls.”

  Tom threw an eraser at him, but it missed. He’d better let Lloyd know what was what, he thought wearily. He would be smug.

  “See?” Lloyd said, when Tom told him what Forensics had—or more to the point had not—found. “Sometimes things aren’t the way they seem.”

  Tom looked exceedingly disheartened. “Last night I thought I had this whole thing sewn up. I was up all night—and for what? So I could prove that Ryan Chester is guilty of theft by finding?”

  “And taking and driving away without the owner’s consent,” said Lloyd, offering mock encouragement. “Why don’t you pay Watson another visit? See if he’ll admit seeing Dexter this time. And perhaps he can tell us if Ryan really did see Bignall’s car.”

  Tom sighed and nodded, and walked to the door, then snapped his fingers and turned back to Lloyd. “Got it,” he said.

  “The breakthrough? Or just the answer to the riddle of the universe?”

  “What’s been bothering me, guv. You said Dexter might have been there because he overheard Ryan and Baz planning to steal Bignall’s car, and went to try and stop them, but why would he bother? As far as he knew, Bignall’s car wouldn’t be there. Dexter would think he’d be at the rehearsal, wouldn’t he?”

  Lloyd grinned. “You’ve been taking lessons from DCI Hill,” he said. “Another theory shot down. Well—perhaps it’s just as he said. They were cruising round, and spotted it.”

  “Or perhaps he’s lying his head off, guv.”

  Meg had rung to see if Carl had gone to the surgery; she was worried about him because he went to give the police his fingerprints at half past eight and he still wasn’t back.

  Denis glanced at the clock above his door; it was twenty past eleven. Carl was a grown man; it was up to him where he went and what he did, but he understood Meg’s concern, because the Carl who had sat at their breakfast table was not the Carl they knew.

  He was sure Carl wouldn’t be contemplating throwing himself in the Andwell; people didn’t, not even people who had lost loved ones in this particularly horrific way. Somehow, people just picked themselves up and got on with their lives. That was probably what he was trying to do. And Denis knew Meg; she was kind and well-meaning, but she could be a little smothering. It wouldn’t surprise him if Carl was just keeping out of her way.

  He would be busy, he had told Meg. There was a lot to do; death was a very bureaucratic business.

  It was the American marine again. Eric didn’t like this one bit. Once again he showed Sergeant Finch into his sitting room.

  “I think I told you everything I could last night,” he said.

  “I thought your memory might have improved since then,” said Finch. “You were in your garden after you heard the window breaking. Did you see anyone?”

  Eric sighed. “Is this too difficult for Bartonshire’s boys in blue, or what? I must have said this ten times. I went out to check my greenhouse. So that’s what I was doing. I didn’t see anyone at all.”

  Finch nodded, and looked out of the window. “Your greenhouse has got very large panes of glass, hasn’t it?” he said.

  “Most greenhouses have,” said Eric, puzzled about the observation.

  “I’d imagine one of them would make a hell of a noise if it got broken.”

  “Probably,” agreed Eric. “Do you run a protection racket on the side, or something?”

  Finch smiled. “It’s just that next door’s French window has got small panes. A foot square or so, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Something like that—I can’t say I’ve measured them.”

  “Seems a bit odd that you thought it might be your greenhouse. I mean—how much noise would a little pane of glass like that make?”

  “Enough, apparently. What are you getting at?”

  Finch shrugged. “Seemed odd, that’s all,” he said.

  “Well, if that’s everything, Sergeant Finch …”

  But Finch hadn’t finished. “You employ a schoolboy named Dexter Gibson, don’t you?”

  Eric stiffened. “What about it?” he said.

  “The description we were given of the boy seen running away fits Dexter.”

  “Yeah? Well, I didn’t see anyone.”

  Finch raised his eyebrows slightly. “What do you think of Dexter as an employee?” he asked.

  Eric shrugged, not sure where this was going. “He’s a good kid,” he said.

  “So if you had seen him last night, you wouldn’t tell us?”

  “I might have told you, if I had seen him. But I didn’t see him.”

  “Did you see anyone?” asked Finch. “I’m not talking about anyone in your garden. Did you see anyone or anything on the road when you were checking your greenhouse?”

  Eric wasn’t sure what Finch was getting at. “Like what?”

  “Like a person or a vehicle. Or both.”

  “No, but I wouldn’t.” He jerked his head toward the back window. “See for yourself,” he said. “You can’t see the road—the back wall is too high.”

  Finch wasn’t going to catch him that way. Watson had chased Dexter almost to the gate, but the kid had been too fast for him, haring off down the road, leaving him standing. And there hadn’t been anyone else there, but he couldn’t have known that if he’d just been checking his greenhouse.<
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  “Do people ever park on that road?”

  “Not usually. Visitors tend to park at the front of the houses, and the people who live here park in their own driveways or drive into their garages. Bignall’s car was parked there earlier, because some idiot driver dumped a load of bricks on his driveway, but it wouldn’t have been there when the window broke, because he’d left by then.”

  “You saw him leave? Would you know what time that was?”

  Eric smiled. It sounded as though Bignall might be a suspect, and, now that he thought about it, that was hardly surprising. He’d been married to the mad cow—anyone unlucky enough to be in that position might want to do away with her. “Half seven,” he said. “Same time he always leaves on a Monday night.”

  Finch looked pleased with that, but Eric wasn’t too happy with the situation—it sounded as though they’d gotten Dexter despite his best efforts to keep his identity quiet, and God knew what he’d be telling them.

  “Oh, darling, I’m so glad I caught you in.”

  Since Marianne knew perfectly well that she was working from home, she would have been very unlucky not to catch her in at ten to twelve in the morning, Judy thought. But she’d been hoping for a call from Marianne; she felt there was more information to be gleaned from that quarter. Marianne had said what she wanted to about Carl, but there was something about Estelle that she had perhaps been more reluctant to divulge, and Judy wanted to know what it was.

  “I wondered if you might like to have lunch with me,” Marianne said. “There’s a wonderful restaurant that opened in Chandler Square—too expensive for most people, which is why they had a table at this time of year. I’ve booked it, so you must say yes.”

  Judy hadn’t actually said anything but her name and number so far, and she did indeed feel a little like a prisoner of war about to be interrogated, because she was sure she would be. But she could hold out against Marianne’s interviewing technique, and she might find out exactly what Marianne had been hinting at so heavily last night.

  “That would be lovely,” she said. “What time?”