Garrod shook his head. “I’m sorry, Esther. It looks bad. I don’t see how your father can avoid a manslaughter charge.”
“But it’s ridiculous!”
“To us—yes. To the police—well, they couldn’t have got him more dead to rights.”
“I think you’d better let me decide that, Al,” Morgan put in. He was an aristocratic-looking man in his sixties, immaculately dressed even in the middle of the night. At that moment he was earning his retainer simply by exuding reassurance for Esther’s benefit. “We’ll soon have this nonsense straightened out.”
“Good luck,” Garrod replied, causing Esther to glance angrily at him.
“Mr. Morgan,” she said. “I know that all this has to be a mistake and I want to hear my father’s side of it. When can I see him?”
“Right now—I think.” Morgan opened the door, looked enquiringly at someone outside, then nodded in satisfaction. “It’s all arranged, Esther. I want you not to worry about how things might seem at this minute.” He ushered Esther and Garrod out into the corridor, where a police captain and two other men escorted them to a room at the rear of the building. As they entered the room a uniformed officer gathered coffee cups on to a tray and left. The captain and his two companions had a whispered conversation with Morgan and stepped back into the corridor, allowing him to close the door. Boyd Livingstone, fully dressed in a tuxedo, was lying on a hospital-type bed. His face was unnaturally pale but he gave Morgan and Garrod a wan smile as Esther ran to him.
“It’s a hell of a mess,” he whispered over her shoulder. “Are there any reporters out there?”
Morgan shook his head. “I’ll handle the Press, Boyd,” he said soothingly.
“Thanks, Grant, but we’ll need experts on this job. You’d better get hold of the Party’s publicity agent, Ty Beaumont, and get him to see me immediately. This is going to look bad and it’s got to be handled the right way.”
Listening to the conversation, Garrod was slightly taken aback until he remembered that his father-in-law was the Republican Commonwealth candidate for Portston’s representation of the County Board. He had never taken Livingstone’s belated involvement in small-time politics seriously, but it looked as though Livingstone himself did, and no doubt the ultra-right Republican Commonwealth party would be unhappy about their man being charged with drug-abuse and manslaughter. Livingstone’s particular crusade was against gambling, but he took a strong line on all kinds of vice.
Morgan wrote something in a notebook. “I’ll get Beaumont on the phone, Boyd, but first things first. Were you hurt in the accident?”
Livingstone looked blank. “Hurt! How could I have been hurt?” he bellowed, recovering some of his vigour. “I was driving home from the Opera House trustees’ dinner when I started to feel a bit woozy. So I pulled into the side and waited for it to pass off. I guess I must have dozed off or passed out or something, but I wasn’t involved in any accident. Not me!” His fatigue-reddened eyes surveyed the group belligerently and settled on Garrod. “Hello, Al.” Garrod nodded. “Boyd.”
“All right, we’ll come back to that in a minute,” Morgan said, still making notes. “Was there much drug-taking at the dinner?”
“The usual amount, I guess. The waiters were distributing it like confetti.”
“How much did you have?”
“Now, just a minute, Grant.” Livingstone swung himself upright on the bed. “You know I don’t go in for that kind of thing.”
“You’re saying you had none?” “Damn right, I am.”
“Then how do you account for the fact that, along with the alcohol in your blood, the police surgeon found substantial traces of MSR?”
“MSR?” Livingstone wiped some perspiration from his forehead. “What in hell is MSR?”
“It’s kind of synthetic cannabis—a rather potent variety.”
“My father obviously isn’t feeling well,” Esther said. “Why are you…?”
“All these questions have to be asked,” Morgan said with a firmness Garrod had not expected of him. “They will be asked, and we have to have a good set of answers ready.”
“I’ll give you a good answer.” Livingstone tried to tap Morgan on the shoulder but his spatial judgement was so far off that his fingers prodded thin air. “Somebody slipped me the stuff. It was done on purpose—so that I’d lose the election.”
Morgan sighed unhappily. “I’m afraid…”
“Don’t heave your chest at me, Grant. I tell you that’s what must have happened. Anyway, the drug question is irrelevant. They can’t charge me with knocking this man down while driving under the influence of drugs—because I pulled over and stopped the car before anything happened.”
Garrod moved over beside the bed. “That doesn’t add up, Boyd. I’ve seen the photographic evidence.”
“I don’t care what photographs you’ve seen. I was there, and—even if somebody did half-poison me—I know what I did and what I did not do.” Livingstone caught Garrod’s hand and held on to it, looking upwards into his face. Garrod felt a pang of pity for the other man and with it came a sudden illogical conviction that he was telling the truth, that in spite of all the conclusive evidence there was room for doubt.
Morgan put his notebook away. “I think I’ve got enough to go on in the meantime, Boyd. The first thing to do now is to get you out of here.”
“I’m going to have another word with Lieutenant Mayrick,” Garrod said impulsively. “Think back, Boyd. Is there anything else you can remember that might help?”
Livingstone eased himself back onto the pillow and closed his eyes. “I…I was sitting there at the kerb…and I could hear the engine…no, that can’t be right because I must have switched off…I…I see this man in front of me, and I’m coming up on him fast…the engine’s very loud now…I hit the brake but it doesn’t do any good…the smack, Al, that awful pulpy smack…” Livingstone stopped speaking, on a note of shock, as though he was learning something for the first time, and tears began to leak out from under his closed eyelids.
Garrod got up early in the morning and breakfasted alone because Esther had stayed overnight at her parents’ home. His eyes had a gritty feeling caused by lack of sleep, but he drove straight to the plant with the intention of getting down to work with McFarlane and the company’s patent lawyers.
He found it impossible to concentrate, however, and after an hour of futile trying delegated responsibility for the meeting to his chief executive, Max Fuente. In the privacy of his inner office, he called Portston police headquarters and asked to speak to Lieutenant Mayrick. The attractive-looking operator told him that Mayrick would not come on duty till noon.
It occurred to Garrod that he was being unreasonable. Morgan, with his trained legal mind, obviously believed in Livingstone’s guilt. Esther had accepted it and, in the end, even Livingstone himself—yet something in the evidence seemed to be gnawing into Garrod’s peace of mind. Or was this an example of the intellectual egotism of which he had been accused by Esther? When all others concerned believed that Livingstone had killed a man while driving his car in a drug-laden haze—was Alban Garrod prompted to confound them, and set himself apart, by discovering an unsuspected truth? Even if that’s the case, he decided, the end result will be the same.