Dead on Arrival Page 18

  There was only one armchair free of clutter, the one nearest the fireplace, and Hunt quickly disentangled two small upright chairs from the nearest pile and set them down in the little island of clear space. ‘The best I can do, I’m afraid,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  They all sat down, Hunt perching on the arm of the easy chair. A hint that he couldn’t spare much time? wondered Thanet. Or a desire not to have the two policemen looming over him?

  Hunt looked at him expectantly. ‘How can I help you?’

  He looked tired, Thanet thought. There were hollows in the thin cheeks, as if the flesh had melted away, and his eyes seemed to have sunk back into the dark shadows of the eye-sockets.

  ‘I can see you’re very busy, so I’ll come straight to the point. When we last saw you, you told us that on Sunday evening you went to see your brother Steven, to wish him a happy birthday. We know that you took him a card, because we saw it on the mantelpiece in the flat, but we understand you also took him a present. Could you describe that present to us, please?’

  Silence. Hunt stared at Thanet, the tiny movements in the muscles of his jaw betraying the fact that he was clenching and unclenching his teeth. It was clear that he not only appreciated the significance of the jacket, but that he had not been prepared for this particular line of questioning. He was now torn between veracity, which would brand Steve as a murderer, and denial, which might well lead to even more trouble for himself, if it could be proved that he was lying.

  The instinct for self-preservation won.

  ‘It was a jacket,’ he said reluctantly, at last.

  Thanet, fully aware of the power of silence, said nothing, waited.

  Hunt shifted uncomfortably on his perch. ‘I bought it when I was on holiday in Wales. I only wore it once, and Steve saw it, took a real fancy to it.’ He shrugged. ‘So I decided to give it to him for his birthday.’

  ‘He was pleased with it?’

  Geoffrey Hunt attempted a smile. ‘Delighted.’

  ‘Could you give us a more detailed description, please?’

  A small pause. ‘It …’ Hunt cleared his throat. ‘Er … it was a leather jacket.’

  ‘Colour?’ put in Thanet sharply.

  Hunt blinked. ‘Er … grey. Yes, grey.’

  ‘Plain grey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All over?’

  Another silence. Then Hunt jumped up, began blindly to blunder his way through the jumble of furniture and household objects towards the patio doors. Lineham half-rose, but Thanet put out a hand, shook his head.

  When he reached the tall expanse of glass Hunt stopped and shoved his hands into his pockets in a gesture of anger and frustration. ‘Oh, what’s the point of trying to cover up any longer?’ he burst out. ‘It’s obvious, from the questions you’re asking, that you know, anyway. And Steve’s dead, the truth can’t hurt him now.’

  Hunt swung around to face Thanet across the cluttered room. ‘Yes, it did have the design of a dragon’s head, in red, on the back. And the very fact that I am aware of the importance of this information does show that yes, I did see the TV appeal on Tuesday and recognise the description and yes, I did go straight round to warn Steve not to wear the jacket again and that therefore yes, I suppose I am guilty of obstructing the police in the course of their duty, or whatever you call it …’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Thanet. ‘And now, perhaps we could discuss this a little more calmly. Come and sit down.’

  Hunt threaded his way back and flopped down into the armchair. ‘In a way I’m glad it’s out,’ he said. ‘It’s been an awful strain, wondering if you’d find out.’

  ‘Tell us exactly what happened on Tuesday.’

  ‘Yes … Well …’ Hunt passed a hand over his forehead, rubbed his eyes and shook his head, as if to clear it. ‘Like I said, I saw the TV appeal. There was no mistaking the jacket, they’d even done a drawing of it and you’d have recognised it anywhere. Anyway, it was the first item on Coast to Coast, and I didn’t wait to see any more. I went straight round to see Steve.’

  ‘Arriving at his flat at about a quarter past six?’

  ‘Something like that, yes.’

  Thanet sensed Lineham shift beside him. The sergeant was obviously thinking the same thing. Nowhere, in any of the reports, had there been any mention of a Scimitar parked in Hamilton Road. And such a distinctive car would surely not have escaped notice.

  ‘You went by car?’

  ‘Yes, sure,’ said Hunt impatiently. ‘How else would I have got there so fast?’

  ‘Where did you park?’

  ‘In the driveway of a friend of mine, in Beech Avenue.’

  ‘Why not in Hamilton Road?’

  ‘Various reasons. For one thing it’s often impossible to find a parking space, there’re so many flats, and for another I don’t like leaving the Scimitar there. Some vandal snapped off the aerial when I parked there a few months ago, so ever since I’ve left it around the corner in Beech Avenue.’

  ‘Your friend’s name and address?’

  Hunt told him, and Lineham wrote it down.

  ‘Right, so you arrived at Steve’s flat at about a quarter past six. He was in?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What was he doing?’

  ‘Watching TV.’

  ‘He’d seen the appeal himself?’

  ‘Oh no. No. I asked him if he had, but he didn’t know what I was talking about. He’d only just got in, he said, and he’d missed the beginning of the programme.’

  ‘So what did he say, when you told him about it?’

  ‘At first he pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about, but I said, “Oh come off it, Steve. There’s no need to put it on with me. If you’d seen the drawing of the jacket – your jacket, which I gave you – you’d know there’s no point in trying to pull the wool over my eyes.”’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He got very upset. Said he hadn’t known she was dead, not until the next day, the Monday, when he heard it on the radio …’

  Hunt was very pale now, and starting to sweat.

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hunt’s voice had the ring of conviction in it. ‘He told me all about it. He said he’d picked this woman up and they’d quarrelled, and he’d … he’d made her get out of the car. He said she must have tripped and fallen, banged her head on something. She had very high heels on, he said. It was the only explanation he could think of, for what happened later. After he put her out of the car he didn’t look back, and of course it was pitch dark, anyway …’

  ‘He didn’t tell you he’d almost strangled her, first?’

  ‘No! I don’t believe that!’

  ‘Post-mortems do not lie, Mr Hunt.’

  ‘I … I didn’t know that. But if it’s true, then there must have been a very good reason …’

  ‘Have you any idea what it was?’

  Hunt shook his head.

  ‘So after he’d told you all this, what did you do?’

  ‘I advised him to go to the police, of course. I said they – you’d – only find out in the end. He told me he’d picked her up in a pub, and it had been crowded. He’d been wearing the jacket and it’s very striking. It was pretty obvious to me that someone would have been bound to notice it, quite a lot of people, probably. I told him it would be far better to own up himself, first, than wait until he was caught. All he had to do was tell the truth, and he’d come out of it far better in the end.’

  ‘Did he agree?’

  ‘Yes. He said he could see my point. There were a few things he wanted to do first, then he’d go down to the police station and give himself up. I had a date, as you know, but I offered to cancel it, stay with him, but he said no, he’d prefer to do it alone.’

  ‘Then you left?’

  Hunt nodded, then buried his head in his hands. ‘I should have stayed,’ he said. ‘If I had, then Steve would still be alive.’

  ‘Isn
’t he?’ said Thanet softly.

  Hunt became quite still and for a long moment there was silence. Outside, in the hall, one of the removal men could be heard shouting instructions, his voice unnaturally loud. Then, slowly, Hunt raised his head.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think you know very well what I’m talking about, Mr Long.’

  Thanet glanced at Lineham and nodded.

  Lineham stood up. ‘Steven Long, you are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so but what you say may be put into writing and given in evidence.’

  The man was chalk-white, but still in control of himself. He attempted a smile. ‘I think you’re becoming a little confused, Inspector, unless that was a slip of the tongue, just now. I’m Geoffrey Hunt, remember.’

  ‘No slip of the tongue, Mr Long.’

  ‘This is preposterous! And would you mind telling me what I’m supposed to have done?’

  ‘Why, murdered your brother Geoffrey, of course.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  Steven Long stared at Thanet with such intensity that his thoughts were almost audible. How much does he know? How much of this is guesswork?

  He gave a strange little gurgle of laughter, quickly choked off, as if a tiny bubble of hysteria had escaped against his will. ‘You’re out of your mind,’ he said. ‘Crazy.’

  ‘Am I?’ Thanet gave him a long, assessing look, then smiled. ‘It must have seemed the perfect answer, the perfect way out of all your problems: get rid of the one person who knew you owned the jacket; ensure that if by any chance we, the police, did manage to trace it to Steve, then Steve would be conveniently dead; and, best of all, step into Geoff’s shoes, inheriting his money, his new job – which you were sure you’d be able to cope with – his new life, waving goodbye to all your own problems for ever. Truly a stroke of genius.’

  ‘No! No, I …’

  ‘All you had to do,’ Thanet went on, implacably, ‘was kill your twin brother.’

  ‘I’m not listening to any more of this crazy nonsense!’ said Long, erupting out of his chair. ‘I’m going to …’

  ‘What?’ interrupted Thanet. ‘Ring the police? Complain to my superiors? Is there really any point? You’ll only be putting off the evil hour. Because sooner or later you’d still have to face it all, wouldn’t you?’ Thanet paused. ‘Aren’t you in the least interested to hear what went wrong with your beautiful plan, Mr Long?’ He folded his arms and sat back in his chair. If you’re prepared to listen, then I’m prepared to tell you. Long, he was sure, would find the lure irresistible.

  He was right. Long hesitated for a moment and then gave an exaggeratedly nonchalant shrug. ‘My beautiful plan, as you call it, Inspector, does not exist. But I am interested in the twisted “logic” which has led you to make such wild accusations.’ He sat down, crossing his legs and folding his arms in deliberate imitation of Thanet. ‘So go ahead. Let’s hear this beautiful theory of yours.’

  Thanet noted the echoed mockery and reminded himself to be careful. Whatever else he was, Steven Long was no fool. At the same time Thanet was, he realised, enjoying himself. He relished a worthy adversary and besides, this was in many ways a unique encounter. In his work Thanet frequently found that during the course of an investigation he came to know the murder victim very well. Never before, however, had he actually met him, in the flesh.

  ‘Well, you’ll realise, of course, that we’ve spent a considerable amount of time talking to the other members of your family, and gradually a picture of you began to emerge. We learned, amongst other things, that you were very good at impersonating Geoff, “taking him off”, as Debbie put it. We also learned that as a child you were naturally left-handed – and I had noticed, when we first interviewed you, that it was with your left hand that you grabbed for something you knocked off the table by the door there. We learnt that your case was typical in that when twins are separated, it is usually the mother who keeps the weaker, lighter-born twin, and that that difference in weight usually persists into adulthood – and I had noticed, when I first met you, that your clothes were rather loose. At the time I assumed that you had recently lost weight, perhaps through grief over the death of your adoptive mother, but later I began to wonder …’

  Steve waved a dismissive hand. ‘There’s nothing in all this. It’s all guesswork. Admit it, Inspector, you’re just clutching at straws.’

  ‘I haven’t finished yet. Far from it. Now we come to the discrepancies …’

  He paused, but Steve said nothing.

  ‘There were several of these. One was to do with “Geoff’s” attitude to your separation from your wife. He was the only person in the family who told us that Steve hadn’t really been too upset by that separation, and had no interest in getting her back. Everyone else told us a very different story. Steve, they said, had been pretty shattered by Sharon’s departure and was still making a determined effort to get her back – to the extent of going to see her regularly and even giving her expensive presents. Of course, this discrepancy wasn’t necessarily significant. As Debbie said, Steve might not have wanted to lose face in front of Geoff, and might have put on a show of not caring, so that Geoff could genuinely have believed that Steve hadn’t wanted to get Sharon back … But I don’t think that was so, was it, Mr Long? I think you couldn’t bear to reveal to someone as impersonal as the police what Steve’s feelings towards his wife really were – because they were your feelings, and to you they were private, not to be bandied about in front of a lot of unfeeling coppers …’

  Steve had again folded his arms in apparent insouciance, but Thanet could tell that his muscles were rigid. The fingers of his visible hand were white with tension, hooked deeply into the flesh of his upper arm. Briefly, Thanet experienced a twinge of pity for the man. There was no doubt that Steve still cared deeply for his wife, and the loss of her must have been the one great sacrifice he had had to make in the course of action he had chosen to take.

  ‘Another thing that puzzled us was why Steve had apparently not driven to Chris’s house, when he went to see him on the evening of the murder. We were pretty sure that his car had been in working order, and everyone agreed that Steve wasn’t the man to leave his car at home without a very good reason, so we were bound to ask ourselves, what could that good reason have been? I’ll tell you the answer we came up with in a moment, when I get on to events on the night of the murder. But meanwhile, this was something that nagged away at us – like the anonymous phone call.’

  ‘What anonymous phone call?’ said Steve, sullenly.

  Thanet sighed. ‘If you must persist in this charade … At ten twenty-five on Tuesday night we had an anonymous phone call, informing us that there had been a murder at number 3 Hamilton Road. It was a man’s voice – your voice, Mr Long.’

  ‘Nonsense. I was here, with Caroline.’

  ‘Not at ten twenty-five, you weren’t. I checked. Oh, you were both here in the house, all right, but for approximately five minutes, at that time, she was in the bathroom. You had plenty of time to make that call.’

  ‘Speculation again.’

  ‘Maybe. But it all fits, doesn’t it?’

  Now that they were no longer talking about Sharon, Steve seemed more relaxed, and he shook his head in apparent disbelief.

  ‘The point was, Mr Long, as we later realised, that it was essential that “Steve’s” body be discovered while you still apparently had an alibi. You simply couldn’t risk it not being found for perhaps a day or two. So you made quite sure, by informing us yourself. You wanted to make absolutely certain that you, as Geoff, would not be suspected of the murder. You had already gone to elaborate lengths to ensure this, earlier on in the evening … But I’ll come back to that later.

  ‘So, our investigation progressed. There certainly wasn’t a lack of suspects. You’ve always had a knack of stirring people up, and just lately you seemed to have excelled yourself. And there was one person outside your family
on whose life you had a disastrous effect.’

  Long’s eyebrows rose in polite enquiry. He seemed fully in control of himself again now.

  ‘Mr Carpenter,’ said Thanet. ‘Ah yes, I see you recognise the name. Were you aware that his daughter’s life support machine was switched off on Tuesday? You wouldn’t have realised, but he spent most of Tuesday evening sitting outside your flat in his car, trying to get up the courage to kill you.’

  For the first time emotion flickered across Long’s face, so fleeting that Thanet almost wondered if he had imagined it. What had it been? Remorse? Fear? Regret? Or had it been triumph, elation? Thanet wondered if he had perhaps been indiscreet in telling Long about Carpenter, thus handing him a defensive weapon. But no. Thanet was certain that his case was watertight and that despite Long’s apparent coolness sooner or later the man was going to have to admit it.

  ‘But despite a plethora of suspects, except for Carpenter I just couldn’t bring myself to believe that any of them had hated you enough to kill you. The one person who had apparently had no motive and who appeared as white as the driven snow, was Geoff. Now this might sound very strange to you, Mr Long, but that very fact made me look at him more closely. It is, occasionally, the most unlikely person of all who turns out to have committed a murder. But in this case everyone seemed to agree that Geoff had no possible motive. They thought he probably felt very guilty at having had so much the best of the bargain, and they all agreed that you, Mr Long, were bitterly jealous of him, even though you tried to cover up the fact by making jokes about it.’

  For the second time Thanet had caught Steve on the raw. Again so briefly that if Thanet had not been watching closely he might have thought that he had imagined it, a fierce flash of emotion sparked in the navy-blue eyes, like phosphorescence in a midnight sea. Then it was gone.

  ‘If you’ve nothing better to do than listen to a lot of gossip …’

  Thanet ignored him. ‘And I couldn’t help thinking, now if it had been the other way around, if I had been investigating Geoff’s murder, not Steve’s, I could have understood it … I mean, it must have been truly galling for you, all those years, to see your twin getting so much more than you – not only materially, but in the way of affection, love … So that whereas Geoff would have had nothing to gain by killing Steve, this certainly wasn’t true the other way around. Except that at that point there seemed to be no precipitating factor, no reason why Steve should suddenly have decided to kill his brother, after all these years …’