Stephen Booth - The kill call

‘You’re suggesting that we were going to accuse you of being involved in Patrick Rawson’s death? Where did you get that idea from, Mr Widdowson? I’m sure I didn’t say anything to give you that impression, did I?’

‘Well, not exactly.’

‘Was it something one of my colleagues said? Did they give you that impression?’

Widdowson frowned. ‘I don’t know what made me think that,’ he said. ‘It was nothing.’

‘Oh, well.’ Fry gave a hint of a shrug, and smiled. ‘Perhaps it was just something in your own mind, sir? It happens sometimes, doesn’t it? We hear what we’re expecting to hear, rather than what someone actually says.’

With an effort, Widdowson squared his shoulders and met Fry’s stare. ‘I’m here to help. Like I said. If you tell me what you want from me, I’ll do my best. Otherwise, we’re all wasting our time, aren’t we?’

Fry looked down at her notes. Her scrawl was illegible, even to her. To Widdowson, it must have looked like an indecipherable code.

‘It would be helpful, sir, if you could just go over the events of Tuesday morning. Who knows what it might produce?’

‘Like what?’

‘It could be something really useful,’ said Fry. ‘Something that might help us — ’

‘Yes, I know: Help you to catch the killer.’

‘Right. I’m glad we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet at last, Mr Widdowson.’

He looked at her with a puzzled frown. ‘Tuesday morning, I was at home doing a bit of rip and burn on some CDs I’d borrowed.’

‘Any witnesses who can confirm that?’

‘Not unless Bill Gates has managed to sneak some spyware into Windows Media Player.’

‘You didn’t make or receive any phone calls?’

‘No. Besides, how would that tell you where I was? I use my mobile all the time. I don’t even have a land-line at home.’

Fry shrugged. She wasn’t going to get drawn into a discussion on that one. The less that certain members of the public knew about what was possible and not possible, the better. The cleverer ones already knew too much about fingerprints and DNA from watching re-runs of CSI.

‘You didn’t watch any daytime TV?’

‘Nah. I don’t watch much these days, except the football. There’s too much else to do.’

‘So no one else was at home with you?’ said Fry.

Widdowson hesitated, suspecting that he might have detected a trap. ‘Mum, of course. She’s practically housebound.’

‘Your sister was out, then.’

‘I suppose she must have been.’

‘You help her with the horses, don’t you?’

He didn’t like the change of subject. But that was fine.

‘Yes, sometimes.’

‘So you must ride, too. Which horse is yours? Bonny or Baby?’

He laughed scornfully. ‘No way. You wouldn’t get me on one of those things. I do a bit of work to help out, that’s all.’

‘So your sister must have been out riding on her own that morning.’

Widdowson stared at her.

‘I don’t have anything else to say.’

‘Thank you,’ said Fry. ‘That’s all I wanted to know.’

DI Hitchens listened to Fry’s theory carefully. She could tell that he wanted to believe her, and didn’t want to see some huge hole in her case.

‘So Patrick Rawson and Michael Clay were drawn to Derbyshire deliberately, for the purpose of revenge,’ he said, knitting his fingers together, which in him was a gesture of satisfaction.

‘Patrick Rawson, certainly,’ said Fry.

Hitchens looked at her, surprised. ‘These Widdowson people carried out their own sting operation. Having got Mr Rawson into the area, they then intended to kill him. Isn’t that what you mean?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘You think Naomi Widdowson is telling the truth? It was an accident?’

‘I don’t think Miss Widdowson intended to kill Patrick Rawson,’ said Fry carefully.

Hitchens unlocked his fingers. ‘Let me get this straight. She admits that she made a phone call to Mr Rawson, arranging to meet him at the field barn on Longstone Moor that morning at eight thirty.’

‘Yes.’

‘She gave a false name, and claimed to have a number of horses for sale. Unfit horses, unsuitable for riding. But Thoroughbreds, to tempt him.’

‘Thoroughbreds that had clean passports. No Section Nine declaration.’

‘So they could go for human consumption.’

‘Yes.’

Hitchens looked at her interview notes, as if he thought he might be missing something. ‘And her story is that she went to the meeting alone, on horseback.’

‘Because it was more anonymous, and easier to make a getaway.’

‘Right. And all she intended was to give Mr Rawson a scare. In her own words, “to teach him a lesson”. But when she galloped her horse at him, Mr Rawson tripped and fell. The horse spooked and reared, and he got kicked in the head. That’s it?’

‘Pretty much,’ agreed Fry.

‘In her account, there were no witnesses.’

‘No.’

‘And without a witness, it would be difficult to prove that it happened any differently. It could have been an accident.’

Fry nodded. ‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘We started off with the assumption that Patrick Rawson’s killing was the result of some human relationship that had gone wrong.’

‘Well, that’s usually the case, Diane.’

‘Yes. But, in the end, it turns out that Rawson died because of the nature of someone’s relationship with an animal. That’s a new one on me.’

‘And me.’

‘The trouble is,’ said Fry, ‘Naomi Widdowson obviously knows nothing at all about what happened to Michael Clay.’

‘So are we accepting Miss Widdowson’s account?’ asked Hitchens.

‘No, we’re not,’ said Fry. ‘Because we know that she wasn’t on her own.’

‘She’s shielding someone, then. Her brother?’

‘I don’t think so.’

Fry took the postmortem photos of Patrick Rawson’s head injury from her case file and lay them on Hitchens’ desk.

‘Mrs van Doon has completed her analysis of the injury pattern,’ she said. ‘As we can see, the depression in the skull is basically the shape of a horseshoe, which would substantiate Naomi Widdowson’s story. But this area here, where the pattern has been obliterated — that was caused by a later injury. Mrs van Doon thinks a blunt-ended weapon.’

Hitchens examined the photos closely. ‘Interesting. So someone finished Patrick Rawson off.’

‘That’s our murderer,’ said Fry. ‘It’s whoever the second person was who went to that meeting with Naomi Widdowson. It’s the person she’s shielding. And it’s someone who had a reason for making sure that Patrick Rawson was dead.’

Cooper knew only too well how an overnight resolve could dissipate completely by morning. You went to bed with your mind full of determination, and by the time you got up your willpower was as mushy as the muesli in your breakfast bowl. Things seemed so much less important in the cold light of day. Easier, surely, to let it all go by and get on with life.

But that morning, a couple of hours before dawn, he had already been wide awake and planning how he would carry out his intention.

‘You’re getting really good at these interviews,’ said Cooper in the CID room.

‘I always was good,’ said Fry.

‘No, I mean — you really knew how to handle the Widdowsons. They’re going to give more away about what happened at any moment.’

‘If they have anything more to give away.’

Cooper turned. ‘What? Do you think they might be genuine?’

‘I’ve no idea, Ben.’

‘Oh.’

Cooper wasn’t quite sure how Fry had managed to make him feel in the wrong when all he had tried to do was pay her a professional compliment.