A Narrow Margin of Error (24 page)

‘Right.’ Again, he’d read her mind.

‘OK. By the way, I’ve put back our meeting with Donleavy by an hour.’

‘That’s fine. I’m not thinking of prolonging this. If we don’t get a confession within an hour anyway, we won’t be getting one. And there’s no way we can stretch it out, otherwise any solicitor will have a field day,’ Hillary agreed.

Steven sighed. ‘You’re not looking forward to this,’ he said, a statement more than a question.

‘Not particularly,’ Hillary said grimly. ‘But it has to be done.’

Just then the door opened and Sam and Vivienne came in. Vivienne was looking excited, Hillary noticed. Sam looked far more subdued.

‘They’re here,’ Vivienne said cheerfully.

‘Right. You two, stay and watch,’ she said flatly.

‘Yes, pay attention and learn,’ Steven added, making Sam almost come to attention. Vivienne shot him a hot look. No doubt she liked it when he was coming over all authoritarian. Beside her, Hillary could almost feel Steven give a mental roll of his eyes.

They left the two youngsters in the viewing room and walked into interview room three. They both sat down. A minute or two later, Jimmy Jessop opened the door and ushered in Wanda Landau.

Steven, seeing her for the first time, looked surprised. He knew the landlady was approaching seventy-four years old, but hardly looked it. She was dressed in a smart, mint-green linen suit, with narrow trousers and a jacket with a deep lapel, edged in emerald velvet. Underneath it, she wore a silky cream blouse, and a simple gold chain with a single pearl drop. Discreet pearl studs were in her ears, and her ash-blonde hair had been washed and
immaculately
set.

As she had when Hillary had first interviewed her, the woman barely looked sixty. Indeed, most would probably have guessed her age to be in the mid-fifties. Furthermore, Steven mused, as he pulled out a chair for the older woman to sit down, ten years ago she must have looked even better. She had the classic bone
structure
of a woman who’d always been beautiful.

Hillary set the tape recorder going, introduced herself and Steven and stated the time. Wanda, hearing the words ‘Superintendent Steven Crayle’ went slightly paler beneath the perfect make-up, but otherwise showed no other signs of alarm.

But she must be wondering why she’d been brought into HQ. And now was being interviewed by a very senior police officer.

She sat on her chair with her legs crossed, her handbag on the table in front of her and her hands clasped together neatly in her lap.

This, Hillary thought again, is not going to be easy. She had to try and think of Wanda as a delicate nut that needed cracking, which meant she needed to find just the right pressure points and give some very gentle taps. Setting about her with a crude hammer was definitely not what was called for here.

‘Mrs Landau, thank you for coming in,’ she began with a gentle smile. Wanda glanced at her, somewhat surprised to find that it was Hillary who spoke first. Of course, women of her generation would automatically think that the power lay with the man in the room.

A woman of her generation. Yes, Hillary thought. She had to appreciate just who she was dealing with here. A fairly
well-heeled
, former farmer’s daughter. She’d had a good education, been a wife and a mother, and was a woman who was used to a steady order and a ‘rightness’ about how things were done.

‘That’s perfectly all right, Mrs Greene,’ Wanda replied politely.

Hillary smiled. ‘As you know, this is about Rowan’s case.’

Wanda nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘Since I spoke to you last, we’ve been talking to everyone who knew Rowan: the other students in the house at the time, outside friends and, of course, his poor family.’

Hillary, who was watching her closely, saw the skin around her eyes contract just slightly at the mention of the word ‘family’.

Of course. It would. Her own family had been the major source of disappointment, pain and joy in her life. It was the first little pressure point she needed.

She sighed. ‘I’m afraid Mrs Thompson hasn’t coped well,’ she said regretfully. ‘Her husband seemed much stronger, of course, but then men often are, aren’t they?’ she continued gently, almost chattily. ‘They tend to keep a stiff upper lip, and hold it all in.’

‘It’s different for mothers,’ Wanda said, then cleared her throat. Her voice had sounded tight and artificial to her ears, and she shot Hillary a quick, casual smile. But there was fear in her eyes, and Hillary felt her own nerves stretch tighter. As Steven had guessed, she wasn’t looking forward to this.

‘May I pour you a glass of water, Mrs Landau?’ she said and, without waiting for an answer, poured a glass for the old lady and set it in front of her.

Wanda smiled her thanks but made no move to touch it.
Hillary suspected she wasn’t confident that her hands wouldn’t be shaking.

‘Yes, I’ve noticed that it’s always the mothers who suffer the most,’ Hillary said. ‘As you can imagine, after serving thirty years with the police, I’ve seen my share of horrors. And it’s not only the mothers of the victims who have to pay, either. People tend not to think about it, but the mothers of the guilty parties go through hell as well.’

Wanda blinked. ‘You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.’

‘But in Mrs Thompson’s case – well, as you yourself know, there’s nothing worse than losing a child. In fact,’ Hillary carried on, still in that soft, gently chatting voice, ‘you and Mrs Thompson have a lot in common. You both lost teenage children. Although in your case, I understand you simply don’t know where your daughter is?’

‘No. That’s right,’ Wanda said. ‘Sometimes I think she’s alive somewhere, maybe living a decent and good life with a man. That she managed to straighten herself out, maybe even married and started another family. Other times, I’m sure she’s dead.’

She paused, and then shifted slightly in her seat.

‘Of course, Mrs Thompson at least knows what happened to her son,’ Hillary carried on softly. Then, just when Wanda was nodding, put in deftly, ‘although that’s small comfort to her when she has no idea why he was killed. And to her, the thought that her son’s murderer escaped punishment has eaten away at her all these years.’

Hillary wanted to give time for that to sink in and do its work, so she reached for a glass and poured herself some water. Beside her, Steven sat quietly. His presence grounded her, made her feel less like someone hounding an old woman than someone with a nasty job to do which needed doing. His silent support felt good. Very good.

She’d been self-dependent and self-reliant for so long that the warm glow his support gave her worried her as much as it made her feel better.

She frowned, dragging her thoughts firmly away from Steven Crayle. But she had the feeling that that was going to get harder and harder the longer they were together.

‘I’m sorry to say it, but both my sergeant and I came away with the feeling that Mrs Thompson was very fragile indeed,’ she forced herself to continue carefully. ‘She had the air of a secret drinker about her, do you know what I mean? Nothing of it showed, and yet her husband, for all his bluff and hearty manner, was obviously worried about her. I could sense the desperate effort it was costing her to keep up a good show in front of us. And that made me feel so much worse – by being there, and raking it all up for her again.’

Hillary sighed heavily. ‘But that’s what happens with cold cases, I’m afraid. People try and forget and put the past behind them, and then we come along and open up old wounds.’

‘It does seem cruel,’ Wanda said, with a distinct tremor in her voice now.

Hillary nodded. Time for the next gentle tap at the next
sensitive
pressure point. ‘Yes. But so necessary, don’t you think? People shouldn’t get away with something as awful as murder, should they?’ Hillary mused. ‘Just think – poor Rowan would have been nearly thirty by now. He would have matured, and maybe lost a lot of that reckless cruelty the young can have. He might even have married, and be a young father himself. But all that’s gone now. Mrs Thompson won’t get to nurse any grandchildren.’

She paused, then sighed again. ‘Speaking of grandchildren, how is your grandson? Ferris, right?’

‘Yes, he’s fine,’ Wanda said shortly.

‘Just taking his A-levels then?’ Hillary went on gently.

‘Yes.’

‘So he’s – what, eighteen?’

‘Yes. Just.’ Wanda shifted slightly in her seat again.

Hillary nodded. ‘Not a young boy any more, then, but a grown man. That’s the age they leave you to go off to university, or get a job, or find a girl of their own and move out and on, isn’t it?’

Wanda said nothing.

‘Rowan wasn’t much older, in fact, when he died,’ Hillary said. And wondered. Had she done enough groundwork? Was it time to move in? The thing was, Wanda was an intelligent woman. Pretty soon, she’d begin to realize what Hillary was doing and then the advantage would be lost.

No, it was now or never. She couldn’t keep playing on her vulnerabilities for ever.

‘The trouble with this particular case, Mrs Landau, is that I can’t really find anybody who wanted Rowan dead. I mean,’ she carried on, still in her most soothing, non-threatening voice, ‘he led Darla a bit of a merry dance, but young women don’t go about stabbing their unfaithful boyfriends very often, do they?’

‘Darla was a sweet girl,’ Wanda said stiffly.

‘I thought so too,’ Hillary said. ‘Which is why I ruled her out straight away,’ she lied. ‘And although Marcie was a bit mad at him for trying to come between her and a close friend of hers, it was hardly a motive for her to stab him, was it? So it was hardly likely to be Marcie. And Dwayne was his friend. Now, Barry Hargreaves, of course, was a little different.’

Was it her imagination, or had the older woman tensed up just then? She liked to think so. It was an encouraging sign. If Wanda didn’t want the innocent to suffer, it spoke of a tender conscience. And that’s what Hillary was relying on.

‘He had two twin girls. Fifteen years old at the time, you see. Did you ever meet them, by the way?’ she asked casually.

Wanda managed a smile. ‘Yes. Lovely girls. A bit of a handful for him, I thought. But he adored them.’

‘Of course he did. So when we learned that Rowan, naughty lad that he was, had seduced them, well,’ Hillary shrugged, ‘you can see why we’ve been pressing him very hard.’

‘I’m sure Barry wouldn’t have done it,’ Wanda said. ‘He had a heart of gold.’

‘Yes. Funny, but I had the same impression,’ Hillary lied. ‘And when I talked to his two girls, who admitted to dallying
with Rowan and with no hard feelings or any bad
consequences
, I realized I was on the wrong track yet again. Especially since they both swore that Barry never knew about it. So, you see, I simply couldn’t see who would want to kill him. It was not as if anybody had anything really important to lose,’ Hillary said.

Then she let the silence extend, waiting patiently until Wanda looked up from her studious perusal of her clasped hands, and said softly, ‘Except for you, Wanda.’

Wanda’s breathing stalled a little, and she seemed to lose a little more of her colour.

‘Me? I don’t know what you mean.’ She tried to inject some disbelief into her voice, but wasn’t sure that she’d managed it.

‘You were in the middle of your campaign to get custody of Ferris, weren’t you?’ Hillary pointed out softly. ‘And I can only imagine how hard that must have been. You were not in your first flush of youth, you were widowed, with no partner to help out. The social services would have been very stringent in their
investigation
of you as a worthy guardian.’

Wanda said nothing.

‘And I found myself wondering,’ Hillary carried on gently, ‘what would you have done if you’d thought Rowan could ruin your chances of getting custody of Ferris.’

Silence.

‘And then I thought,’ Hillary carried on, ‘why should that be? Rowan Thompson, from all I’d been able to learn about him, was a somewhat reckless young charmer, a bit of a sexual athlete and predator but nobody had ever called him sadistic, or cruel.’

Silence.

‘And then I realized what the problem must have been. So many people had told me about Rowan’s experimental nature. Especially as far as his sexual exploits went. Barry’s twin
daughters
were an example. As were one or two entanglements with members of his own sex. And then I thought about you, Wanda. You’re still a very good-looking woman even now, if I may say so.
And ten years ago, you were what – merely sixty-four? Nothing, by today’s standards.’

Silence.

‘And if Rowan couldn’t resist seducing Barry’s twin girls, how could he have resisted luring an older, glamorous woman to his bed?’ she asked softly. ‘And who’s to blame you? You no longer had a husband, and Rowan was a young man who would have been most persistent and charming and persuasive. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have mattered a fig.’

Hillary sighed. ‘But yours weren’t normal circumstances, were they?’ she said softly. Sympathetically. ‘You had social workers in and out, checking out every aspect of your life, poking and
prodding
and prying and looking for examples of bad behaviour or bad judgement on your part.’

Silence.

‘What happened, Wanda?’ she asked softly, leaning forward a little on her chair now, inviting confidences. ‘I never knew him, but a lot of people have told me that sometimes Rowan didn’t know when to stop. That he could be thoughtless and stupid. That morning, when you went to his room when all the others had left. Did he tease you? Did he say that he was – what, going to seduce the next social worker who came sniffing around – male or female? Or did he laugh, maybe, wonder out loud what they’d do if he told them that his landlady was another Mrs Robinson?’

Wanda Landau slowly raised her hands to her face, but she said nothing.

‘Mrs Landau, nobody here thinks you are a cold-hearted killer. It’s clear that whoever killed Rowan did so in a sudden fit of madness. The murder weapon being scissors that were on hand and a single stab wound, rather than a frenzied, repeated attack. All of that points to someone driven to a single moment of madness, when pressured beyond their endurance.’