Prey to All (14 page)

‘You know, Guv, this could be one of those impossible ones,’ she said easily, more than tough enough to take his bad temper. ‘Frankly I don’t see how anyone’s going to come up with any realistic suspects without a tip-off or a lucky break.’

‘You could be right. The one almost untraceable kind of murder. Christ! I wish I could get that woman out of my head.’

‘Trish Maguire?’

‘Right. I think I’ll have to see Gibbert. You’re right, we can’t ignore a lead like this, even if it does look like a dead end. Set it up with the prison, will you, Cally? And you’d better come with me. You usually get more out of miserable women than I do.’

She nodded and went off to sort it without another word. Thank God for women like her. He didn’t know what he’d do if she left or transferred to another force. Retire probably. It was time, clearly, but life without the Job would be pretty damn bleak. Freelance security advising? No thanks. Still, if Sue really had buggered off for good, he’d have to sort out his life. Moving on out of the Job might just get rolled up into that.

When Chaze’s killer’s been charged, then you can think of going on to something else. But not yet. Stick with it till there’s a result.

 

Deb Gibbert was sitting in a heap, slumped against the edge of the sticky interview table. She’d had enough. First the news that there was something more wrong with Mandy, even
though she was well out of the coma now. Then, on top of that, Malcolm’s death.

It was beginning to look as though there was some awful fate in store for everyone Deb had ever loved. She couldn’t bear to imagine what might be waiting for Kate and the other children. If she thought about it too much she’d go mad. There wasn’t anything she could do to protect them.

She’d wept for Malcolm, but she was dry-eyed now, and blank-eyed, too. Everything she’d learned of the police since she’d been arrested had taught her not to cry in front of them. She wasn’t even going to try to help this time. She’d follow the lead of all the other fat, miserable, stupid women in this hellish place and offer no more than hopeless apathy.

Once she’d tried to help the police, answering all their questions as fully as possible, offering suggestions, making gallons of tea. All that had got her was arrest, charge, and a life sentence.

She didn’t look at either of the officers, instead concentrating on picking at a break in the plastic laminate of the table in a way that would have driven her to fury if anyone had done it to her.

‘We’re very sorry about the death of your friend Malcolm Chaze,’ said the male officer. Deb didn’t look up. She couldn’t remember his name and didn’t care anyway. ‘We’d like you to tell us everything you know about him and his life.’

‘Me?’ She was so surprised – and so angry – that she had to look up. The policeman’s face was tired but friendly. He even looked trustworthy, but it had to be a trick. She wondered what they really wanted. It couldn’t be her memories of Malcolm. Everyone must know she’d had nothing to do with him for years, except for that one visit two months ago, when he’d come to talk to her about Anna Grayling and the possibility of a campaign to get her out.

‘Even a policeman should have the wit to realise I couldn’t
shoot him from in here.’

‘We’re not here because we think you could have had anything to do with it, Mrs Gibbert, obviously,’ said the woman officer, talking as though Deb might be an intelligent being, worthy of consideration. ‘But we’re talking to everyone who’s seen him in the last six months. One of them is you. He is on record as having visited you here eight weeks ago.’

‘Yes, he did.’

Deb had dreaded the visit. It would be the first time they’d met since the awful day when she’d decided she couldn’t go on with him. She’d been so angry then that for nearly the first time in her life she’d screamed and yelled. Malcolm had looked stunned. If he’d been within reach, she might even have hit him, but he’d kept sensibly out of the way. When she flung herself out of his room, he’d shouted after her, something about talking it through, but she’d ignored him and gone.

In the prison, he’d sat with all the other visitors, looking, in his wonderful suit, so out of place and so disdainful that she’d felt more humiliated than she’d been since the day they convicted her. She’d become even more aware of her fatness than usual. Her clothes seemed especially horrible, and smelly, and her hair stringy and very grey. But as they’d talked and he’d smiled the old, secret smile, she’d realised they could be friends again.

By the time he had to go, they’d got back to something important she’d thought she’d thrown away a long time ago.

‘What did he talk about when he came here?’ asked the woman sergeant.

‘The past mostly.’

She smiled like a friend and Deb felt herself responding. She quickly pulled the apathy back over herself like a blanket. Until she knew what they were really after, she wasn’t going to fall for friendliness, any more than she had fallen for
threats in the old days. Her few remaining stomach muscles sagged under their muffling flesh.

‘There can’t be many people who’ve known him as long as you. Tell us what he was like – as a man, not a Member of Parliament.’

Deb shrugged, still keeping up her show of resistance. But it was hard. She was digging the nails of one hand so sharply into the palm of the other that she expected to see blood. But there was only sweat.

‘Apart from that visit it’s years since I had anything to do with him, let alone cared …’

‘Men – people – don’t change much in eighteen years in my experience,’ said the woman. ‘How would you describe Malcolm when you were going out with him?’

Deb had opened her mouth to answer before she thought. She realised she wasn’t going to be very good at this apathy business. A lifetime of trying not to be angry, to be kind, to be liked, to do what was expected of her, was hard to shed, even now that she’d had to admit how often she’d failed.

‘On the surface he was brilliant, charismatic,’ she started, in her own voice. Sergeant Lyalt’s face lit up straight away. Deb was smiling back before she could stop herself, and adding, ‘But behind the mask, I realised he was incredibly insecure. I think that’s why I … liked him so much, being a bit that way myself.’

‘You and me both,’ said the sergeant. ‘But it was clever of you to spot it in Chaze. No one else we’ve talked to so far saw it. What made you guess?’

Deb’s back was straightening, and her fingers uncurling. She felt better already. ‘I don’t know that there was anything specific, but I cared about him, so I wanted to protect him. I suppose it was that. Of course, he did hate being laughed at or teased.’

‘Who laughed at him?’

‘Oh, you know, other tutors at the university, who thought his extra-curricular seminars on the evils of drugs were naive and silly. And … Well, I suppose some of my friends, who were a bit snobbish.’ Deb considered her past with detached interest, thinking how odd it was after three years in prison and fifteen years of hard labour before that in the horrid little house outside Birmingham to remember the life she’d once lived.

She’d never really been part of the smart East Anglian set, who spent the week in London and then went back to huge cold houses for the weekend, but she knew some of them and they’d invited her to their bigger parties. It had been a blissful relief to be able to take someone like Malcolm with her, both as protection and as an excuse to leave early.

‘He minded snobs, did he?’

‘Yes,’ Deb said. ‘He despised them and their preoccupations, but he wanted to be liked, even, I think, to be one of them. As you probably know, Malcolm didn’t come from a very well-off family. Well, I didn’t either. I mean, we never had any money, but we sort of knew people. That sort of people. Malcolm didn’t, and he wanted to.’

Deb remembered the battles she’d fought to try to make him go home with her for weekends with her parents. Only when she’d understood why he couldn’t bear the idea had she given up hope of seeing her bloody father realise that a good-looking, clever man like Malcolm Chaze could find Despised Deb attractive.

‘He used to make mistakes … what to wear when, how to pronounce things. I mean, there he was, incredibly clever and teaching philosophy and absolutely looked up to by all his students. But sometimes there were things – trivial social things – I knew better than he did.’

‘Like what?’

‘Oh, you know, silly social rules. Names like Featherstonehaugh and Marjoribanks and things like that.’ Deb closed her eyes for a second. She could still remember her own mortification and Malcolm’s when she’d taken him to Siggy and Pog Featherstonehaugh’s party and he’d mispronounced their name when he thanked them for inviting him. He’d only seen it on the invitation and she’d only ever referred to them as Siggy and Pog, so why should he have known? They’d been sweet about it, of course, but some of the other guests had giggled.

‘But he must have been, what …? Thirty-five or so?’

‘Yes, but he’d worked so hard all his life that he hadn’t mixed much outside the trendy lefty academic world. He didn’t like the trendy lefties much, and he wanted to get into Parliament and kind of join in a more conventional kind of world, and so …’

Was that what he saw in me? she asked herself suddenly, much too late. Was it my few connections to a kind of moth-eaten sub-aristocracy that made him think I was worth having? That could explain a lot.

‘You said the other tutors mocked his anti-drugs work. He must have felt very strongly about it if he hated being laughed at as much as you say,’ said the sergeant.

‘He did. At the time I used to think he must be incredibly brave to go on with it. I admired that.’

‘Right,’ said the male officer, leaning forward. ‘Do you think he could have been doing something similar before he was killed? You know, standing up to someone with a strong enough vested interest to have him shot?’

Deb stared at him. He seemed to be serious. But why was he asking her? How could she possibly know? She said as much.

‘I wondered if he’d talked to you about his work. Said something maybe about a secret campaign, or an enemy he
was stalking. Anything like that. Anything he was trying to do that might have frightened someone.’

‘Only the person who really killed my father,’ she said drily. Then, catching the officer’s expression, she felt little bubbles of hope fizzing through her blood. ‘Is that why you’re here? Has someone finally realised that I didn’t do it?’

Femur looked serious. ‘It has been suggested as a possible motive for the murder, yes.’

Deb felt her whole body lightening, as though the bubbles might make her levitate right off her chair. ‘Who by?’

‘You must’ve heard about this film that’s being made,’ Sergeant Lyalt began, as the bubbles burst and Deb slumped back against the edge of the table.

‘I thought you meant someone official was taking an interest.’ Tears – stupid and humiliating – welled up in her eyes. She bit her lip to try to stop them. It didn’t work. They spilled over on to her face and dripped down towards her chin. She wiped them off with both hands, but she couldn’t stop them. More and more chased themselves down her cheeks. She pulled up her T-shirt to wipe her face, then let it drop as she felt a draught on her gut.

She was making a noise now, too, and she couldn’t do anything about that either. A thin, strangulated, hoarse shriek came out of her mouth, broken by syncopated gasps.

The man turned away, but Sergeant Lyalt pulled a packet of Kleenex out of her bag and opened it for her. Deb grabbed a handful and tried to blot the tears, but the paper was soon soaked. Her nose was running with disgusting thin snot. It was all over her mouth and chin. Still she couldn’t stop, howling for Malcolm and Mandy and herself and Kate and everyone. Her head hit the table as she gave in to it. She felt as though she was sicking up all her grief. And anger. A gentle hand stroked her back, but that only made it worse.

Only when they started to ask questions about Mandy did she begin to recover. Talking about Mandy and the drugs and who could’ve brought them into the prison helped. Half an hour later, Deb was almost in control of herself again.

It was only when she was talking about Mandy’s last visitor, Spike Hamper, that she realised how they’d tricked her, suckered her in by making her believe they might help her. God, she’d been a fool. She told them she was going back to her cell and there wasn’t anything they could do about it. That was her only satisfaction, that and the look on their smug faces.

 

‘Phew.’ Femur looked up at the sky. ‘Thank God we’re out of there. You did well, Cally. I couldn’t have coped with all that without you. And I’d have run as soon as she cracked up and we’d never have got the name of the pusher-pimp. I suppose you’d better get on to IR Two and pass it on,’ Femur said, sounding too tired to give any more real orders.

‘Must I hand it over? It’s a much better line of inquiry than following up all the players in an obscure domestic murder. Even if the wrong woman is inside for that.’

‘Cally, don’t do it to me.’

‘Guv?’

‘Don’t tell me you think Gibbert really is innocent.’

‘How could I not?’ she said, with surprisingly archaic formality. She must have been listening to her Jess again. ‘You do.’

‘You know me too well,’ he said, sighing. ‘Still, that’s not our problem. That belongs to Norfolk and maybe the Criminal Cases Review Commission. Chaze and whoever put the contract out on him are the only people we’ve got to worry about.’

‘Maybe, Guv. But you know what struck me most in there, apart from Gibbert’s almost certain innocence?’

‘No. What?’

‘That there had to be something personal in Chaze’s antidrugs campaign, and that would make it our business.’

‘Why personal?’ He wasn’t that interested, and Caroline’s energy made him feel tired, but he sympathised with her resentment at the thought of handing over good information to another incident room.