Plots and Errors Read online

  Lloyd asked Elizabeth where she had been, and Judy watched him look politely baffled when she told him she had been queuing up for tickets to the one-off reunion concert of a seventies supergroup, asking her to repeat the name as though he had never heard of them. Judy knew that he had given quite long consideration to queuing up for tickets himself, before he decided that he wasn’t quite that keen. Last night the news had shown the people camping out on the pavement, all laughing and joking, and he had looked quite wistful.

  ‘So Mrs Esterbrook would have been here entirely on her own?’ said Lloyd.

  ‘Yes,’ said Josh. ‘That was how she liked it, really.’

  ‘Didn’t she find it difficult being here on her own if she suffered from arthritis?’

  Josh shook his head. ‘The arthritis only stopped her doing fiddly jobs like – well, changing the tape in the answering machine, as Elizabeth mentioned. Chopping vegetables, that sort of thing – she couldn’t hold a knife. But she was all right most of the time, and she never did get used to having servants floating about. She preferred having the family help her out. And she really liked having the place to herself once in a while.’

  ‘That’s why a burglar seems the most likely answer,’ said Paul.

  ‘A burglar who thought the house would be empty?’ said Lloyd. ‘I can’t see why he would be carrying a firearm, in that event.’ He stood up. ‘I think that’s probably all for now, really, but if you would excuse us for a moment?’

  They left the Esterbrooks to their own devices as they went down the hallway to the study, a few doors along from the dining room, and looking out on to a large, glass-sided building, which Tom told them was a swimming pool.

  ‘Any luck with the Copes’ report?’ asked Lloyd.

  ‘No, guv. It isn’t in any of the obvious places.’

  ‘Right. I want everything in this room searched,’ said Lloyd, looking round. ‘I want to find that report, or know for a fact that it’s missing. Meanwhile, I borrowed Freddie’s little memo-recorder thing.’ He took it out of his pocket. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got on the answering machine.’

  Tom took the tape from the answering machine, put it into the player, and they all listened to the only message on it, delivered in an urgent, angry voice. ‘What the fuck are you doing? Are you trying to get me fucking disinherited?’ There was a pause, then he spoke again. ‘Jesus!’ There was a moment before he spoke again, the words being forced out between clenched teeth. ‘I’m at the cottage, I’ve got your letter, and I’m on my way back right now.’ The last word was almost growled, and the call was terminated.

  ‘That’s Paul Esterbrook’s voice,’ said Lloyd.

  ‘The last call made to this number was at two forty-seven this afternoon,’ said Tom. ‘It’s the dialling code for Penhallin in Cornwall. I rang it back, but got no reply.’

  ‘Mrs Esterbrook’s cottage, if I don’t miss my guess,’ said Lloyd. ‘But check it out, Tom.’

  Tom checked it out, and five minutes later, he was leading Paul Esterbrook out to the waiting car.

  SCENE V – BARTONSHIRE.

  Sunday, September 28th, 12.35 a.m.

  On the Road from Little Elmley to Stansfield.

  Judy frowned as Lloyd pulled off the main carriageway down a B-road, and the car transporting Paul Esterbrook to Stansfield police station went off into the distance. ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Little detour,’ Lloyd said. ‘I want to see what cars are in the car park of the Little Elmley diving club.’

  Judy smiled. ‘Because Sandie’s car ought to be there if that story she told us was true,’ she said.

  ‘Did you think it was true?’

  ‘No,’ said Judy. ‘I don’t believe that someone mugged by two total strangers wouldn’t tell the police. And I don’t believe that she just happened to get mugged the day her mother-in-law just happened to get shot dead.’

  There were no cars in the Little Elmley diving club car park, and Lloyd looked almost as smug as he had when they had got the call about the shooting at Little Elmley. ‘So what do you think did happen to her?’ he asked, as they headed back to Stansfield.

  ‘Husband?’ she suggested.

  ‘Did you get that impression?’

  Judy thought about that. The relationship between Josh and his wife seemed quite intense, which sometimes led to violence, but the truth was that she hadn’t got that impression at all. All she had seen had been protectiveness and closeness. She shook her head. ‘But I noticed a lot of animosity between Josh and Paul,’ she said. ‘If anything, I got the impression that—’

  ‘—that Paul beat her up, and Josh is very angry about that,’ said Lloyd. ‘So did I. So where does that fit into this little scenario?’

  ‘An affair?’

  ‘It seems likely,’ said Lloyd. ‘Especially in view of his mother having employed private investigators. Whatever she said to him in that letter, he thought it threatened his seventy-five per cent of IMG. We might understand more once I’ve looked at the will.’

  ‘Why would she put private investigators on to her own son?’

  ‘Who knows? It’s just another little puzzle, isn’t it?’

  Judy already had a lot of little puzzles to work on, and she had a feeling that there would be a lot more before they had sorted out exactly what had gone on at Little Elmley that night, and in what way it had involved Josh’s wife being beaten up and the Copes’ death. Because one impression that she had definitely got was that the Esterbrook family was closing ranks, and she would swear that not one of them had told the truth.

  SCENE VI – BARTONSHIRE.

  Sunday, September 28th, 12.50 a.m.

  Stansfield Police Station.

  Tom Finch took Paul Esterbrook to an interview room. He was sitting in on the interview rather than DCI Lloyd, because Lloyd had got a copy of the will from Josh Esterbrook, and he wanted to get to grips with it.

  They knew now that the call made at two forty-seven that afternoon had been made from Mrs Esterbrook’s cottage; Paul Esterbrook said that he had not been to his mother’s cottage, nor, therefore, had he made a phone-call from there.

  He went over his story again, expanding on it in reply to their questions. He had stopped in Plymouth for lunch, had arrived in Penhallin at about three o’clock, had gone straight to Josh’s boat, and then come straight back to Little Elmley. His mother, he said, had come to the door just as he had inserted his key; their conversation had taken place on the doorstep. He hadn’t gone into the house, so he had no way of knowing if she was alone. His mother had not seemed ill at ease; she had asked if he wanted to join her and Elizabeth for dinner, but he had said that he was too tired after his long drive.

  Judy reached down and picked up the tape from the answering machine, now enclosed in a plastic bag. ‘I am showing Mr Esterbrook an evidence bag marked TF1,’ she said. ‘This tape was recovered from your mother’s answering machine this evening, Mr Esterbrook. A copy has been made of that tape. I am now going to play it to you.’

  Paul Esterbrook’s face grew red as he listened to his own voice, and he avoided eye-contact with Judy, Tom noticed, looking instead at him, and then down at the table. The message terminated, and the ends of other, earlier messages played until Judy switched off the machine.

  ‘Did you leave that message for your mother, Mr Esterbrook?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. Then looked up. ‘But I didn’t make it today.’

  The additional information seemed to Tom to have come a little belatedly. ‘When did you make it?’ he asked.

  ‘A month or so ago. The last time we all went to Josh’s boat.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Judy said, ‘these old answering machines don’t give a date and time. But a month is a very long time for a message to remain on a tape without being recorded over. Did your mother receive very few calls?’

  Esterbrook sighed. ‘No, she received a lot of calls,’ he said, and jerked his head at Tom. ‘But he said the m
achine wasn’t working. She must have changed the tape, like Elizabeth said. Put in an old one.’

  ‘We didn’t find a discarded tape,’ said Tom.

  ‘And according to your brother,’ said Judy, ‘your mother’s arthritis would have made changing the tape difficult, if not impossible.’

  ‘Then I don’t know how it got there!’ Esterbrook shouted.

  ‘Did you go to your mother’s cottage today?’ Judy asked again, just as though she hadn’t asked before.

  ‘No. And I didn’t make that call today. I made it a month ago.’

  ‘Well, we can perhaps check if a call was made from the cottage to your mother’s number – a month ago . . . that would be what?’ She did an admirably quick mental calculation; Tom was still mentally counting fingers. ‘Saturday the thirtieth of August?’

  ‘Oh, no. It was the Bank Holiday. The weekend before that. It was Sunday that I made the call. And I didn’t use the cottage phone. I used a mobile.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Judy. ‘Just let us have the details of your mobile phone, and we can—’

  ‘It wasn’t mine. I didn’t have mine with me.’

  ‘Whose was it?’ asked Judy.

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘You can’t remember?’ said Tom, in an involuntary reaction. He glanced at Judy quickly; she was sometimes less than pleased with his interviewing technique, especially when he just said whatever came to mind. But she didn’t seem to have objected to his intervention.

  ‘No,’ said Esterbrook. ‘I can’t remember. I’d borrowed one. Everyone I know has a mobile phone.’

  Tom saw the suspicion of a smile, heard the note of triumph in Esterbrook’s voice as he managed to come up with a logical reason for being unable to remember whose phone he’d used. He seemed to be less broken up by what had just happened to his mother than he had been, Tom thought, and Judy must have felt the same.

  ‘Well,’ she said sweetly. ‘Don’t worry about that just now, Mr Esterbrook. You might remember when you’ve had a chance to get over the shock of your mother’s death.’

  Esterbrook’s eyes fell away from hers, and Tom grinned at her. He always liked it when she injected some acid into her interviews.

  She gave him a tiny wink, and looked at Esterbrook’s bowed head. ‘Were you at your mother’s cottage today?’ she asked again.

  She could only get away with her favourite trick when lawyers weren’t present; they were always quick to point out that their client had already given an unequivocal answer. But Tom had discovered that by asking the same question over and over again, in exactly the same tone of voice as the first time, Judy Hill very often got an answer where none had been forthcoming, and sometimes even got a truthful answer instead of whatever lie she had been getting. No one else could do it like she did; everyone sounded as though it was the third time they’d asked. She didn’t.

  Esterbrook looked up. ‘No. And I made that call five weeks ago.’

  ‘It’s a strange call, Mr Esterbrook,’ Judy said. ‘A little threatening, I would have thought. Would you like to explain it?’

  ‘I didn’t make it this afternoon.’

  ‘So you’ve said, but that doesn’t make it any less strange, does it? What did you mean about your inheritance?’

  ‘It’s none of your business what I meant.’

  ‘What was in this letter that it got you so worked up?’ asked Tom.

  ‘Nothing! I didn’t even read it. It was a letter from her solicitors that my mother had left there. She wanted me to pick it up and take it back to her.’

  ‘It was a letter to your mother?’ said Judy. ‘We got the impression that it was one from your mother, to you.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t. Why would she be writing me letters at her cottage?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Judy. ‘But I think we can be forgiven for thinking that, because if you had no personal stake in this letter, your reaction to being asked to take it to her seems to have been a bit extreme.’ She glanced down at her pad, and quoted from the transcript of the tape. ‘ ‘‘What the fuck are you doing? Are you trying to get me fucking disinherited?’’ That seems an odd way to talk to your mother.’

  Esterbrook coloured up again. ‘I . . . I was talking to someone else when I said that,’ was all he could come up with this time, and Tom jumped on it immediately.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The person whose phone I’d borrowed.’

  ‘Oh, you can remember swearing at this person, and being with them in your mother’s cottage, but you can’t remember who it was?’

  ‘It was just someone who’d dropped in.’

  ‘We have established that a call was made from the cottage phone to your mother’s phone this afternoon at two forty-seven,’ Judy said.

  Esterbrook’s mouth opened slightly. Judy obviously believed that he was genuinely surprised, either that a call had been made, or that a subsequent call hadn’t removed it from the stored memory. Tom wasn’t sure which, but he did know that was what she thought, because he could read the note she was making. ‘Gen. surp.’ it read. He had got quite good at what Lloyd called Judyscript.

  ‘And that time fits with your message that you were leaving straight away,’ Judy went on. ‘The trip does take about six hours, doesn’t it? And you say you were at Little Elmley at about eight fifty or eight fifty-five.’ She smiled. ‘Were you at your mother’s cottage today?’ she asked again.

  ‘No.’

  Esterbrook was almost as good as she was; his answer was just as patient as her question, just as unemphatic. You couldn’t tell from the way he gave it that she had asked him several times before, and that he had answered her each time. That meant he was working just as hard at it as she was, and that, in Tom’s opinion, meant that he was lying.

  ‘Someone was there,’ Judy said. ‘Someone who rang your mother’s number. Do you know who else might have been there?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But everyone’s got keys.’

  ‘Does the cottage belong to the Trust too?’

  ‘No. No, it was my mother’s. But she thought we all ought to be able to use it.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘Josh and me and my wife.’ He paused. ‘I don’t know about Sandie. Look – this is just a coincidence,’ he said. ‘My mother obviously put in an old tape when the machine went on the blink, whether she has arthritis or not, whether you’ve found a discarded one or not. I don’t know who made the call today, but it wasn’t me. I made that call the last time I was in Penhallin.’

  ‘But you can’t remember whose phone you used?’ said Tom. ‘Did all these people you know who own mobile phones just happen to drop in? Or can’t you remember who it was because you didn’t borrow anyone’s mobile phone, but used the phone in the cottage? Because you made the call on that tape today, not five weeks ago? And did you make that call because your mother had put private investigators on to you and had left a letter for you at the cottage telling you she knew what you were up to? Did that threaten your inheritance in some way?’

  Paul Esterbrook had gone very red indeed during Tom’s bout of rapid questioning, but he hadn’t answered. He didn’t, as Tom had hoped, give himself away by betraying any knowledge of a private investigators’ report.

  ‘If your mother asked you to bring the letter to her,’ Judy said, ‘then presumably she telephoned you at the cottage? We could perhaps check that with the telephone company. That would go some way toward clearing this up.’

  ‘No. That is, she didn’t phone me. She phoned Josh. He phoned me.’

  ‘Well, presumably he can confirm that much, at least.’

  Esterbrook closed his eyes, and shook his head. ‘I think if you intend to continue questioning me, I would like my solicitor to be present after all,’ he said.

  Now it was Tom’s turn to feel triumphant. Esterbrook obviously didn’t think that Josh would confirm his story, and had given up thinking that he could tough this out. His method had won, and he coul
dn’t help feeling pleased about that.

  ‘I don’t think we have any further questions for the moment,’ Judy said. ‘You’re free to go, Mr Esterbrook. Interview terminated . . .’

  Tom couldn’t believe what he was hearing, and watched with dismay as Paul Esterbrook walked away. ‘We had him, guv!’ he said, as soon as Esterbrook was out of earshot. ‘It has to have been him! All that stuff about borrowing a mobile phone off someone he can’t remember! He must have nicked the Copes’ report from his mother’s study, and murdered the Copes to make sure they couldn’t tell anyone what was in it!’

  ‘If he murdered the Copes, why didn’t he remove their file on the case while he was at it?’ she asked reasonably. ‘Then we wouldn’t have known anything at all about a report.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tom. Demolishing Lloyd’s instant theories was Judy’s stock-in-trade; Tom knew he still had a tendency to take them at face-value. Lloyd had told him that they were advanced purely as working hypotheses; they weren’t to be acted upon. But they always seemed so right. Until Judy Hill got her hands on them.

  ‘Besides,’ said Judy. ‘How could we hang on to him? All we’ve got is a phone-call, which even if he did make it today could be construed as abusive, but isn’t overtly threatening. His solicitor would have pointed that out soon enough.’

  Lloyd nodded when they gave him the results of their labours, such as they were. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘We’ll see what Josh Esterbrook has to say tomorrow. I think Tom and I should tackle him, and I think you should have another go at Sandie Esterbrook to find out how she really came by her injuries. And I’m going to take a trip to the seaside. I want to have a look at Josh Esterbrook’s boat, since it’s been broken into, and I don’t believe this crime-wave that has hit the Esterbrooks is all pure coincidence. I’ll arrange for the local SOCOs to take a look at Mrs Esterbrook’s cottage too, see if we can get hard evidence that Paul Esterbrook was there this afternoon.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Yesterday afternoon,’ he amended. ‘I’ll need to get the key from Josh Esterbrook, so we’re all going to have an early start. I suggest we all go home and get some sleep.’