“If truth be told,” said Banks to Annie over an after-work pint in the Queen’s Arms that evening, “I think it was me being overly optimistic in thinking we can make any charges stick against Clough.”
Annie sipped her pint and settled into her chair. She looked around. The pub was pretty quiet at that time in the evening; most people were at home having dinner and watching the news. Occasionally, a Christmas shopper or two would come in with carrier bags from Marks amp; Spencer’s, Tandy’s or W.H. Smith’s in the Swainsdale Centre across the square, knock back a quick whiskey to warm the cockles and head out again. Christmas decorations hung across the ceiling. The pub’s dim light glowed in the polished wood and brass, the dimpled, copper-topped tables, the sparkling glasses and the bottles arranged behind the bar. Cyril, the landlord, stood chatting to a regular. The jukebox was mercifully silent and Annie could hear the church choir collecting for a refugee relief fund, singing “Away in a Manger” under the giant Christmas tree outside. Poor kids, she thought. It was real brass-monkey weather out there; they must be freezing.
“You don’t think there’s much hope, then?” she asked.
Banks shrugged. “We’ll set up a meeting with Stafford Oakes in the CPS office, but let’s just say it’s pretty flimsy evidence so far.”
“What about the forensics?”
“I’ve never put much faith in tire tracks. Most people don’t know Goodyear from Michelin.”
“But the blood?”
“Might be something there, if the lab doesn’t ‘lose’ the evidence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember that fire at the Wetherby lab a few years ago?”
“Yes.”
“That was started to destroy evidence being kept there. Don’t you think someone like Clough is capable of something similar?”
“I hadn’t thought of that. What about the witness who saw Jamie Gilbert with Courage?”
“Easy meat.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Indeed. I have a terrible feeling that they’ll both walk. Conspiracy’s always a bugger to prove. And as for implicating him in Riddle’s suicide… that was pissing against the wind.”
“It was suicide, then?”
“Not much doubt about it. I had a brief word with Dr. Glendenning after he did the postmortem this afternoon. No signs of a struggle, no signs of restraint or drugs in the system. He’ll run a full tox check, of course, just to be certain. And the note’s been checked by an expert. It’s Riddle’s handwriting. No, I think we can be pretty certain that Jimmy Riddle voluntarily sat in his car with the engine running. We can also be damn certain that the business with Emily and the pressure Clough was putting on him were a big part of what drove him to it, but we can’t touch Clough for that.”
“He’s a slippery bastard, all right.”
“Anyway, I’m getting more and more interested in Ruth Walker.”
“You think she killed Emily?”
“I think she might have. It never really made any sense to me that Clough would have done it, especially after he tried to blackmail Riddle, much as I’d have loved to put him away for it.”
“But Ruth?”
“She certainly had the opportunity, for a start. She was off work, poorly, at the time Emily was killed, or so she says. She could have driven up and back easily.”
“And the means?”
“She said she had a cold, but I think her sniffle might have been caused by something else.”
“Coke?”
“At a guess.”
“What about the strychnine, though?”
“One of the leads I’m following up. As far as I can piece it together, her degree’s in computers and information technology. She’s very bright, got first-class honors and walked straight from university into a good job. She works for a computer software company. One of the employees told me that they custom-design specific software systems for specific business applications.”
“You think she could be connected with Clough’s pirating racket?”
“It is a connection that springs immediately to mind, I’ll admit, but no. That’s not it. This isn’t the sort of thing you could profitably pirate. It’s tailor-made for very specific business functions.”
“So where does it lead us?”
“This employee I talked to, she thinks that Ruth’s working on an inventory-control system for a large pharmaceutical company.”
Annie whistled. “I see.”
“What I’m trying to find out, if I can get hold of the boss there, is whether the job could possibly have given her access to controlled drugs such as strychnine.”
“And if there’s any missing?”
“Yes. But it could have been such a small quantity it wouldn’t be missed. I don’t know how tightly they control these things.”
“Pretty tightly, I’d say. But if Ruth really was working on inventory control…”
“She might have access to the inventory. Yes. And she might also have been in a position to falsify data about quantities. We’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime there’s another couple of things we need to follow up on.” Banks lit a cigarette. “Want something to eat?”
Annie shook her head. “I’ve got some leftover pasta at home. Pub food’s not very appetizing to a vegetarian.”
“They do a nice salad sandwich, I’m told.”
“I know. I’ve had one. A strip of wilted lettuce and a couple of slices of green tomato. What next?”
“First off, I want you to ask Darren Hirst, the boy who was with Emily the night she died, for access to his cellphone records. I just realized last night what was bothering me about the Riddles’s phone records.”
“What?”
“Emily’s call to me the day before she died. It wasn’t listed.”
“She could have used a public box.”
“That’s what I thought at first, with the background noise and all. But Darren has a cell phone and she was out with him and the gang that night. It’s my bet she used his phone, and that she also used it to talk to whoever she set up the drug buy with. It’s hardly likely she’d risk using her home phone for something like that. What I’d like to know is whether she used Darren’s phone to call Ruth close to the time of her murder.”
“That should be easy enough to find out.”
“There’s another thing. I also phoned Craig Newton, Emily’s ex-boyfriend down in Stony Stratford.”
“And?”
“When I went to talk to him, I remember noticing some photographs of Emily that bore a strong resemblance to the one that appeared in the newspaper yesterday.”
“You think he was behind the story?”
“Craig? No. But he confirmed that Ruth also had prints of the photos because they’d been taken at a party they’d all attended.”
“One of Clough’s parties?”
“Not this time, no. Before Clough. The point is, though, that Ruth could have supplied the newspaper with the photograph and the hints about Clough and Jimmy Riddle.”
“But how could she know?”
“I’ve no idea. It’s all speculation so far. She obviously knew about Emily and Clough, probably knew Clough was a bit of a gangster. If she had discovered that Rosalind Riddle was her birth mother and was blackmailing her over it, it’s no great leap of imagination to assume that she knew Jimmy Riddle was chief constable.”
“I suppose not. But why?”
“To cause trouble for the Riddles. She was already black-mailing Rosalind, remember. Perhaps after Emily’s murder Rosalind refused to pay up any more.”
“Are we going to talk to Ruth again soon?”
“Definitely. Up here this time. I’ll have her brought up tomorrow. I hope we’ll have answers to some of our questions before she arrives. There’s one other thing.”
“What’s that?”
“We need to talk to the person who saw Emily get into the car at the Red Lion. So far I’ve been thinking that a light-colored car driven by someone with short blond hair probably meant Jamie Gilbert.”