Element of Doubt Read online

  Thanet knew from past experience that a criminal pulled in on suspicion of one crime might well prove guilty of another.

  ‘Surely he wouldn’t have stashed any stuff in his room? He’s too old a hand for that.’

  ‘You never know. He hasn’t been out of prison that long, he might not have built up enough contacts yet to have been able to dispose of everything. It’s a long shot, of course, but worth a try.’

  ‘I’ll get on to it right away.’

  On the way up to his office Thanet ran into Doc Mallard, coming down.

  ‘Ah, Luke. I heard you were back. I’ve just been looking for you.’

  ‘The PM results?’

  ‘Verbal report, yes.’

  ‘Come along to my office.’

  Someone had come in and shut the window while Thanet and Lineham were out, and the room was stifling, airless. With an exclamation of annoyance Thanet went to open it. ‘Place is like an oven.’ He took off his jacket and slung it on the back of his chair. ‘Well Doc, what’s the news?’

  SEVENTEEN

  Mallard perched on the corner of Thanet’s desk, picked up a report and began to fan himself with it. ‘If you’re hoping for a sensation you’re going to be disappointed. We didn’t learn anything we hadn’t already guessed. She was in very good shape, vital organs all healthy. Cause of death, as we thought, fracture-dislocation of the cervical spine – or, to put it in layman’s terms, a broken neck.’

  ‘No signs of a previous struggle?’

  “Fraid not. Sorry to be so unhelpful.’

  Thanet sighed. He was longing to flex his back, which was beginning to ache again, but he tried never to draw attention to his weakness in front of other people. ‘Not your fault. Ah, well … Not that I really expected anything, but still …’

  ‘How’s the case going?’

  ‘So-so. It’s early days yet, of course.’

  ‘Has the boy turned up yet? What’s his name? Damon? Damon! What an outlandish name. Fancy saddling any child with a handle like that.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. There’s been not a sight nor sound of him.’

  ‘But you’re not worried about him, are you? In the sense that he could be in danger? I understood he was seen leaving of his own accord.’

  ‘That’s right, yes, he was. But I’d give a lot to know why he went. He’s not in any of his usual haunts.’

  ‘Didn’t you say he was up on a drugs charge, recently? You’ve talked to his probation officer, of course.’

  ‘Yes, we have.’

  Mallard frowned at Thanet’s tone. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to tell you how to do your job.’

  ‘Oh no, Doc, please don’t misunderstand me. It’s just that … well, his probation officer is Joan.’

  There was a brief silence while Mallard took in the implications. ‘Ah,’ he said at last, heavily. ‘I can see that that might cause … complications.’

  So there it was, the opportunity Thanet needed, to unburden himself. Should he take it?

  Thanet himself had often been the recipient of confidences. He liked people and it showed. He was approachable, sympathetic and percipient and inevitably he had found himself in the position of having to try to sort out the all-too-frequent marital difficulties of his men. Despite his apparent openness, however, he was really a very private person and the prospect of discussing his relationship with Joan with an outsider, however trustworthy, appalled him. Over and over again, presented with an apparently insoluble marriage problem, he had given the same advice: talk about it with her (or him), as honestly as you can. Sooner or later, he realised, he and Joan were going to have to do just that.

  ‘It is a bit tricky, yes. We’ve never encountered this particular problem before. In the circumstances, I suppose we’re lucky to have escaped up to now. Still, we’ll cope, no doubt.’

  Mallard took the hint. ‘Yes.’ He put down the report with which he had been fanning himself and slid off the edge of the desk. ‘Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more help. Let me know, if there’s anything I can do.’

  Left alone, Thanet stood up, crossed to a filing cabinet and grasped it firmly with both hands, at shoulder level. Then, feet apart, he raised himself on his toes and slowly, carefully, arched his back, clenching his teeth as the dull ache sharpened into an edge of pain. Then he straightened up, relaxed. He repeated the exercise five times and returned to his chair, careful to sit upright, with the base of his spine hard against the back of the seat. Then he lit his pipe, closed his eyes and began to think.

  He was convinced that Damon was somehow at the root of the problem. What had caused him to shoot off like that, ‘like a bat out of hell’, as one witness had put it? It was possible, of course, that there was some perfectly innocent explanation, that he had gone away by previous arrangement and had left in haste because he was late. But with every day that passed this possibility seemed less and less likely and in any case smacked too much of coincidence for Thanet’s liking. There was that missed appointment, too.

  The other explanation was that something had happened to make him run away.

  But what?

  Thanet ran over the alternatives. One (the most obvious): Damon had killed his mother and was in hiding from the police. But if so, what could have driven him to it? There must have been a quarrel, obviously, but what about? Any of the usual things, Thanet supposed: late nights, loud music, girls, rudeness, inconsideration … But a row over any of these would escalate into violence only if there had been a long, accelerating history of clashes, and surely somebody, at some point, would have let slip a hint if Damon’s relationship with his mother had been as stormy as that. No, if there had been a quarrel, it must have been about one specific issue.

  What?

  Of course! Thanet’s eyes snapped open as a possible explanation occurred to him. Damon had been in the house all day. Which presumably meant over the lunch hour. What if, by chance, he had happened to come downstairs at the wrong moment and had seen Tim, his friend, emerging from his mother’s bedroom?

  Thanet considered the idea. How would Damon have felt? Knowing so little about him, it was difficult to tell. Would he have been shocked, censorious, disgusted, or amused, resigned, even titillated?

  In any case, Thanet simply couldn’t believe that the shock would have been enough to cause an eighteen-year-old to leave home and to stay away despite the considerable publicity surrounding the murder. Nor would he have hung around for hours before departing in a hurry.

  So what would Damon have done? Thanet felt that his most likely reaction would have been to say nothing. Or, if he decided he must speak, to have blurted it out immediately.

  But just say, for the sake of argument, that Damon decided to tell his mother what he thought of her behaviour but found he needed time in which to pluck up his courage to do so. Why take so long about it?

  Tim had left High Gables at around ten to one. Nerine had been in the house for another hour before leaving for the hairdresser’s, had returned at half past three and had been around for another couple of hours (dead or alive) before Damon’s departure. Surely the most likely time for Damon to have tackled Nerine would be as soon as she got back from the hairdresser’s. Why wait a further two hours? And if Damon had in fact killed his mother soon after her return at half past three, surely he wouldn’t have hung about so long before departing in such a hurry?

  No, Thanet decided. It hadn’t been such a brilliant idea after all. The timings were all wrong. If Damon had had a quarrel with Nerine, it must have been about something else.

  But what?

  There was no way of telling.

  Thanet abandoned this line of thought and moved on.

  Why else might the boy have run away? Thanet couldn’t imagine that it was simply because he had found his mother’s body. In that case he would have been shocked, yes, but surely his natural reaction would have been to assume an accident and call for help? No, if Damon had not committed the murder himself, and if
he yet knew that a murder had been committed, the only possible reason why he could have disappeared was because he knew who had killed his mother and wanted to protect that person.

  So, who would Damon wish to protect?

  His father?

  If Roland Tarrant had committed the murder, it must have been later on in the afternoon. Nerine had certainly been alive and well until half past three and there were witnesses enough to confirm that Tarrant had been fully occupied at the hospital until he left at a quarter past five. No, if Tarrant had done it, it must have been after his return home at twenty to six, and Damon couldn’t have known; he had left the house just before his father arrived. Did this mean that Tarrant was in the clear? Not necessarily. Thanet still had to allow for the fact that Damon’s departure might have nothing to do with the murder.

  So who else might the lad have been trying to protect? Certainly there was one obvious person, much as Thanet disliked the idea: Damon’s grandmother. She had had both motive and opportunity. And it sounded as though during that second rest period from four thirty to five thirty the old lady had seen something, heard something, done something that had frightened her badly. Why else, when Marilyn went to get her up from her rest, should she have been crouching in the corner of her bedroom, like a terrified child? Had she just returned from her daughter-in-law’s room after a quarrel which had got out of hand and resulted in an outburst of senile frenzy?

  Thanet’s neck prickled as he remembered Lavinia’s face when she had whispered, ‘Death’.

  Thanet shook his head. So much speculation, so much frustration, in not being able to follow up essential lines of enquiry. If only Damon were available, if only Lavinia were rational, her memory undimmed by the disease gnawing away at her brain … But if it was a sense of loyalty which had driven Damon away, there was no doubt about it, Lavonia was the most likely candidate to have inspired it.

  Who else had been on the premises during the afternoon?

  Thanet mentally checked them off.

  Beatrix Haywood had been in the attic sorting out things for the jumble sale, until just after the quarrel between Nerine and Lavinia over the mess in Nerine’s bedroom, at half past three.

  Vicky Cunningham had returned from her shopping trip at three and had been working in the kitchen until four.

  Daphne Linacre had arrived back at the coach house at twenty to five and claimed to have gone straight to bed, with a migraine.

  Then there was Marilyn Barnes, who had been in the house all afternoon. There was, too, Thanet reminded himself, one other person: Nicky, Marilyn’s ten-year-old son. Perhaps he should be questioned again. Children were astonishingly observant and Nicky had been in the house or out in the garden from a quarter to four right up until the time the murder was discovered.

  Thanet considered the list. Of all these, the only other person he thought Damon might have been tempted to protect was his aunt, Daphne Linacre. She seemed to be fond of the boy …

  The door opened and Lineham came in, glowing with satisfaction.

  ‘All fixed, sir. DS Bristow was very keen to cooperate. As he said, we’ve nothing to lose by taking a look and maybe a lot to gain. We managed to contact a JP and she’s satisfied that there are sufficient grounds for a search warrant.’ He plumped down at his desk, and looked eagerly at Thanet. ‘Anything new? Have we heard about the PM yet?’

  ‘Yes, but there’s nothing of any use to us. Cause of death a broken neck.’

  Lineham pulled a face. ‘Pity. So where do we go from here?’

  ‘I think it’s time we put our heads together, tried to thrash things out.’

  ‘OK. Where do we start?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking about Damon.’ Briefly, Thanet summarised his conclusions.

  Lineham said slowly, ‘You could well be right, about him disappearing so that he couldn’t be questioned. But it’s a pretty short-sighted thing to do, surely? I mean, he couldn’t hope to vanish permanently.’

  ‘Maybe not. But that hasty departure smacks of impulse, of panic, even. And if he had in fact seen his mother murdered by someone he knew and loved, his grandmother for instance, he would have been in a state of shock. But he’d know that if he stayed he’d be questioned and might well have felt that he wouldn’t be able to lie convincingly. Perhaps he hoped we’d simply accept that it was an accidental fall. In any case he’d have hoped that if he kept out of the way long enough the thing would be resolved without his evidence being instrumental in bringing about the arrest of someone close to him. In which case he’s lying low until it’s all over.’

  ‘If that’s what happened we ought to be concentrating on the latter part of the afternoon. I can’t see him hanging about for hours after witnessing a murder, before taking off in that kind of a hurry.’

  ‘If.’ Thanet sighed. ‘The trouble is, it’s all speculation and doesn’t get us any further.’

  ‘And there’s still a possibility that he took off for some reason unconnected with the murder.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Well, the one thing that seems pretty certain, unless Buzzard did it, and I think we both tend to agree that that’s unlikely, is that it was an unplanned murder. Someone with a grievance against Mrs Tarrant had a quarrel with her and it got out of hand.’

  ‘That seems the most likely explanation, Mike, I agree.’

  ‘The trouble is, there are so many candidates. If it was old Mrs Tarrant, it must have been because of the threat either to put her in a nursing home or to get rid of Miss Barnes.

  ‘If it was Marilyn Barnes, it was either because she wanted Roland Tarrant for herself or because she was afraid of losing her job – which in her case means losing her home, too. And she has her son to think of.

  ‘If it was Mr Tarrant, it was because he’d finally snapped, after overhearing his wife entertaining her lover – especially if he realised it was Tim Speed in there. Tim is Damon’s friend. Mr Tarrant might well have recognised his voice.’

  ‘I don’t know, Mike. I’m inclined to believe him, when he says he thought it was Tim’s father. Their voices are very alike, you know.’

  ‘True. All the same, I’m still not convinced about all this turning-a-blind-eye stuff. And it’s one thing to know it’s going on, another to have your nose rubbed in it.

  ‘Then there are the Speeds. Now there are two juicy motives, if you like. It can’t be easy for an ageing Romeo like Speed to realise he’s been chucked out of his mistress’s bed by his own son. And as for Mrs Speed … Well, I know she seems inoffensive enough, and she’s generally well liked and all that, but even if she managed to come to terms with the fact that her husband was having it off with Mrs Tarrant, when it came to finding out that the woman had now got her claws into young Tim … Mrs Speed’s only got the one chick, sir, and it’s generally accepted that even the mildest of mothers can turn into a tigress when defending her young. We only have her word that she didn’t actually go into the house and see Mrs Tarrant, that second time. I’m not saying she necessarily went there intending to kill her, but I can just imagine the sort of a scene there might have been between them, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Thanet could imagine it, quite clearly: Nerine, cool, elegant, amused, scornful, and Celia Speed, dowdy, hot with anger, frustration, humiliation … ‘There’s Nerine’s sister Daphne, too, don’t forget, Mike. We might yet turn up some reason why she could have done it.’

  Lineham frowned. ‘It’s difficult to see what could have triggered it off in her case. She wasn’t even there until late afternoon. And she and Mrs Tarrant did seem to live pretty separate lives. Unless we’re wrong about thinking it was an unplanned murder, and Daphne Linacre had just been waiting for the right opportunity to come along. Bit of a coincidence though, in that case, that she just happened to hit upon the very afternoon when her sister had seriously upset a whole lot of other people, don’t you think?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Thanet felt dispirited. All that seemed to be happening at t
he moment was that the list of suspects was growing longer and the chances of nailing any one of them seemed to be becoming more remote. ‘What we really need is just one little bit of hard evidence, Mike.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to keep hoping forensic come up with something.’

  ‘Yes. Meanwhile, I think we ought to have a word with Nicky Barnes. It occurs to me that he was around in either the house or the garden from a quarter to four right up to when the body was discovered.’

  ‘Carson seemed satisfied that the boy hadn’t seen anything suspicious.’

  ‘I’m aware of that. All the same, you never know. It might not have seemed suspicious to Nicky, but with what we now know about the comings and goings in the house that afternoon …’

  ‘You think we ought to try and talk to him today, sir?’

  ‘Might as well. Come to think of it, it’s odd that we didn’t see him around earlier on, when we were out at the house. It’s Saturday, he wouldn’t be at school.’

  ‘Perhaps Miss Barnes is still keeping him out of the way, sir.’

  Thanet grinned. ‘If so, I can’t imagine he’ll be very pleased about it. If he’s anything like Ben he’d want to be where the action is.’

  But apparently Nicky had gone on a school trip to Windsor Safari Park and wouldn’t be back until late. Marilyn Barnes was not keen on the idea of the boy being interviewed at the end of such a long day.

  Lineham arranged to see him at ten next morning.

  EIGHTEEN

  Talk it over with her.

  All the way home snatches of Thanet’s own advice to those with marital problems kept coming back to him. He’d always known, of course, that it is far easier to give counsel than to follow it. Now, for the first time, he was on the receiving end and a very uncomfortable sensation it was.

  It was a quarter to midnight and in the centre of town there were still people about. It was, after all, Saturday night. But the suburban streets through which Thanet was now driving were virtually deserted, most of their windows in darkness. He turned left, catching up with an old Vauxhall which was limping along at twenty-five miles an hour. Thanet was about to overtake when without warning it swung out in a curve before turning into a narrow driveway. He considered stopping, to remonstrate, but couldn’t be bothered. He was too tired, too preoccupied, too engrossed in his private dilemma to have any energy to spare for minor misdemeanours. He drove on.