The Wood Beyond

He believed her, but that didn't make her innocent. Cap Marvell's extremism would be the kind that required unquestioning obedience, not individual acts of derring-do.

She went on, 'So what happened, Andy, that got me from being Wendy's way in to being number one suspect?'

He said, 'Summat happened that night at Wanwood. When I first saw you, you were the one being all aggressive, Walker was meek and mild and cooperating like mad. I've read the TecSec statements. Seems like you were the one wanted to take the guards' heads off with your wire cutters. In fact it was Walker stopped you doing serious damage.'

'They said that?'

'Yeah. Not true?'

She shrugged and said, 'Not the way you put it. That one with the scar, he just stood there with a macho fancy-your-chances sneer on his face. I don't deny it would have been quite pleasant to wipe it off. But even without Wendy's interference, I'd have banged him in the goolies, not tried to split his skull.'

'You're all heart,' said Dalziel.

'I see it's been a mistake,' she replied. 'So the theory is that somehow I let it slip that I was the mad killer of Redcar and decided that Wendy had to be silenced before she could spread the word? It would make a lousy movie. I mean, first of all, I'd have had to find out what Wendy was really up to, wouldn't I? How did I manage that?'

'She said something that got you thinking.'

'Oh yes. And that was enough?'

'Enough to set you off checking her out a bit more thoroughly than you'd done before.'

'The next day, you mean? Well, I have an alibi for most of that if you recall, spending it as I did in the company of a pillar of the community … oh shit, Andy. You think that's what I was doing with you? You think I opened my legs to get you to open your mouth? Oh shit.'

Her distress nearly got to him. He wished he had a drink, even the paint stripper. But this was no time to relent.

'You wanted to get me talking about her, I recall. And she'd just been to see you and you'd had a row. But you didn't dare try to get the truth out of her then and there 'cos you knew I might turn up any moment.'

She regarded him with amazement.

'You heard that?' she said. 'But you said nothing. '

'Nothing to say,' he replied. 'Then, I just thought it were girls' talk

'And now it's all down to her suspecting I'm her brother's killer. And me suspecting that she's on to me…. so how am I supposed to have found out the truth about her? If you were eavesdropping, you know that nothing was said about Redcar and Mark Shufflebottom, nothing at all!'

Aggressive defence, often a sign that you were getting there. But also a natural reaction, he reminded himself. Reassured himself.

'That's true,' he admitted. 'You can't have been certain. Not by a long shot. You'd have needed to talk to her again. When you learned she was going to have a heart-to-heart with Ellie Pascoe, could be the alarm really started sounding.'

'I don't believe this,' she almost whispered. 'Andy, you're talking as if you're certain that — '

'Nay, lass, don't take on,' he said. 'It's just a way of putting things. I do it all the time. It's routine, this is all routine. I'm just covering myself, covering both of us. I've got to be thorough. Like the first time I came here, I asked where you were the dates of the Redcar raid and the first raid on Wanwood.'

'Yes, and I told you.'

'I know. Only now I need lots of detail of dates, times, witnesses. For the record.'

She rose and left the room returning a moment later with her diary. He smiled at her encouragingly. It was half sincere, half an act, and he couldn't tell the boundary line. Surely it was better to play the right bastard rather than continue with this hot/cold pressure?

She looked quite relaxed for a moment as she flicked through the pages of her diary. Then she looked up, eyes huge with bewilderment, and said, 'Andy, why are you making me do this? I know you say it's your job, it's just routine, but I still can't really believe that even for the sake of appearances you've got to act as if it were truly possible that I tried to kill Wendy Walker the other night. For God's sake, we were at the university party together.'

'You left early.'

'To watch the telly interview. I asked you to come with me.'

'You knew I wouldn't.'

'How the hell did I know that?'

He gave her a conspiratorial grin and said, 'It's easy done when you've had the practice.'

She said, 'You mean, I manipulated you?'

'Why not? You've a way with words. Like if you hung around outside till you saw Walker arrive, I doubt you'd have had any problem persuading her to get into that van of yours for a little chat to sort her doubts and difficulties out. Plenty of room for the bike too.'

He dropped the bike in casually. The bike was a bit of a puzzle. Walker had told Ellie she was coming to the party by bus and would like a lift home. If she did come on the bus, then Cap would have had to go back to her squat to pick up the bike. Questions had already been asked there with the kind of result to be expected from folk who trusted the police like they trusted politicians. The driver of the bus whose arrival most closely coincided with Cap's departure from the party thought he did recollect someone answering Wendy's description, but as further questioning elicited the judgment that all female students wore jeans, cagoules and trainers, and most of them were skinny and pale and undernourished, this was far from conclusive.

So he watched Cap carefully to see if she reacted at all to his assumption that Wendy had come to the party on her bike. She didn't.

She said, 'And having got her into the Discovery and realizing she knew my guilty secret, I'm supposed to have knocked her unconscious, then driven out along Ludd Lane where I staged an accident and left her in a ditch to drown?'

Drown. She said drown, not die. Had he talked to her about the stream in the ditch and the way Walker's waterproof had formed a dam and saved her from drowning? It was possible. There'd been no reason not to. He'd been deep into trust then. He recalled another bit of Wally's wisdom. Trust no bugger save your own mam. And not till you've checked her record first.

He said, 'If you didn't do that, what did you do?'

'What I've told you, of course. I went straight home and poured myself a drink and sat and admired myself on television.'

'Any witnesses? You didn't stop off for petrol on the way home? Or pop out to buy a bottle of yon Mex ale or a packet of crisps?'

Here was her chance to trump his hidden ace before he even played it, to offer some explanation as to how ten minutes after the programme she'd allegedly rushed off to see had ended, he saw her coming from her garage and going into her unlit flat.

'No, Andy. I went straight home, settled down in front of the box, and that was it.' She spoke with a fervour that might almost have convinced him if he hadn't had the personal ocular proof that she was lying.

Part of him was tempted to challenge her straight away, but that was the part that wasn't a cop, and while not totally disenfranchised, it had certainly been a minority vote for longer than he could recall.

No, this was one you saved up for court, or at least for when you'd got her in an interview room with the tape running.

There was a double ring at the doorbell.

He said, 'That'll be for me. We'll need your garage and car keys.'

She looked at him sadly and said, 'Oh Andy. Isn't this where you say something about only obeying orders?'

'Nay, lass,' he said holding out his huge hand. 'Giving them. Now let's be having them keys.'

ix

'Before you switch that thing on, I thought we had a deal,' said Jimmy Howard.

'That was before we found this,' said Wield holding up the plastic bag containing the envelope from Howard's car. 'Press the switch, Shirley.'