Peter Lovesey - The Last Detective

Peter Diamond so completely identified with the question that he started to say aloud, 'Speak up'. He clapped a hand to his mouth.

Buckle was saying, 'You've got me totally wrong. I didn't kill Gerry Jackman. Before God I didn't.'

'You put her in the lake.'

He hesitated.

'You put her in the lake,' Mrs Bargainer insisted. This had become a contest of wills.

Buckle stared around the court. In the dock, Dana had put her fingers to her throat.

'Do you deny it?' Lilian Bargainer demanded.

He capitulated. 'AH right, I did. I put her in the lake.' As a murmur from all sides of the court broke the tension, he added more loudly, 'But I didn't kill her.'

Mrs Bargainer frowned, put her hand to her face and let the fingers slide down to the point of her chin in an attitude of incomprehension. 'You're going to have to help me, Mr Buckle. What you are claiming now is curious, if not incredible. Let's have this clear. On the night of 11 September you drove to Chew Valley Lake with the body of Mrs Jackman and deposited it in the water, and yet you didn't kill her. You insist on that?'

'Yes.'

'Why? Why behave in such an extraordinary fashion?'

He was silent.

'You must explain, Mr Buckle, you really must if we are to believe you.'

His mouth remained closed.

Mrs Bargainer said, 'Let's approach this another way. You didn't kill her. Did you know she had been murdered?'

'No,' said Buckle, freed from his constraint. 'That's the point.'

'Good. I'm beginning to understand. You found her dead, is that right?'

'Yes.'

'You didn't know she'd been murdered, is that right?'

'Yes.'

'You thought she'd overdosed.'

'Yes – I mean no.' Buckle stared about him. He'd been snared, and he knew it.

Lilian Bargainer said without even a hint of irony, 'You said yes and you meant no. Which is it? I put it to you that your associate Andy Coventry was supplying Mrs Jackman with cocaine that he got from you. You're the importer and he was the pusher. Am I right?'

Sir Job sprang up, but the judge gestured to him to be seated.

'You had better consider your position, Mr Buckle,' said Lilian Bargainer. 'It's too late now to deny your involvement in drugs. If you do, you lay yourself open to suspicion of murder. Which is it to be?'

Buckle swayed slightly in the witness box, sighed heavily, and then the words tumbled from him. 'What happened was this. Come September, Andy bunked off to Scotland on some course. He was her supplier, like you said. I got word from my contacts that she was shouting for the stuff. She was making trouble about Andy being unavailable. Big trouble. She was threatening to blow the whistle on us. So I went to see her on the Monday.'

'Monday, 11 September?'

'Yes.'

'What time?'

'About lunchtime. When I got no answer at the front I went round the back. The kitchen door was open. People with the habit aren't too clever about things like that. I called out and still got no anwer, so I tried upstairs. She was dead on the bed. It got to me, I can tell you, finding her like that. She's overdosed, I thought. They say cocaine can kill you, just the same as heroin. I could see real trouble ahead if the doctors opened her up. So I decided to move her. That's what I did. Carried her downstairs and put her in the car. That night I dropped her in the lake.' He closed his eyes and added, 'I was hoping that would be the end of it.'

'And the Jane Austen letters?'

'They were stuffed down the front of her nightdress, like she was hiding them. I thought it must be something she meant to trade for the coke, so I took it. I didn't even look at them till later.'

'And what happened when the body was found in the lake?'

'I was really scared – but not a word was said about drugs. She'd been smothered, the papers said. I realized what I must have done – I'd moved a murdered corpse. The next thing, they arrested Dana – my driver – and it was all too close to home for my liking. I could be done as an accessory. So when the chance came, I switched the linings, just like you said. I only did it to cover myself. Dana had been stupid enough to kill her, I thought, so I wasn't causing her any more aggravation than she deserved.'

'What happened to the log?'

'I burnt it, obviously.'

'Obviously?'

'Well, every trip was accounted for. If the police had seen it, they'd have found out that her car wasn't used to move the body, wouldn't they?'

'And presumably you falsified the log in your car?'

He nodded. 'It's a simple matter when you're behind with the entries, as I was.' Then Stanley Buckle drooped like a bull pierced with bandilleras.

But Mrs Bargainer had another ready. 'Let's turn to something else that was brought to the court's attention. I put it to you that when you heard Coventry had been arrested, you broke into Mrs Didrikson's empty house and taped the letters into her dressing table as another diversion.'

Buckle hesitated.

'Why did you do that?' said Mrs Bargainer gently, as if he had made the admission already.

He dipped his eyes. 'As a kind of insurance. I was dead worried the drugs would come up at the trial, and they did – on the first day. So I needed to switch the interest back to the letters. I phoned the police and told them to look in the house. Until today I believed Dana was guilty. I wouldn't have done it otherwise. Have I said enough?'

'More than enough for me,' the judge acidly commented. 'Does the prosecution propose to re-examine?'

Sir Job declined. 'And in view of the testimony we have just heard, we shall not be calling any further witnesses, m'lord.'

'The prosecution case is closed?'

'Yes, m'lord.'

Up in the public gallery, Peter Diamond sat back in his chair, mentally spent.

Lillian Bargainer rose again. 'I submit, my lord, that the case we have heard from the prosecution is not strong enough to lay before the jury.'

The judge agreed and directed the jury to acquit Dana Didrikson.

Dana covered her face and sobbed.

'YOU LOOK LIKE A PIECE of chewed twine,' Stephanie told him that evening after they'd eaten. 'And no wonder. Why don't you get an early night?'

'Presently.'

'If it's the news you're waiting for, I saw it all at 6.30. She appeared at the press conference and scarcely said more than a couple of words. She didn't even smile. The papers are offering terrific money for her story, but she's told them what to do with it. You've got to admire her.'

'Yes.'

'That QC of hers was a woman, I noticed. She must have been brilliant to fathom what really happened. You can't put that down to feminine intuition.'

'I don't,' said Diamond.

'What a brain!"

'Lilian Bargainer?'

'Well, yes. That Inspector Wigfull was way off beam and so were you.'

The injustice wounded him less than being coupled with Wigfull. 'Off beam? What about?'

'The cocaine. You should have been on to that from the beginning.'

'We got diverted. The forensic tests were negative. They didn't show Geraldine Jackman was using the stuff. Yes, I know,' he added sheepishly. 'I'm the one who says never rely on bloody scientists.'

'What went wrong with the tests?'

'She hadn't taken any of the stuff before she was killed. Not for some days. She was desperate to get some, which was how Buckle was drawn into it. The irony is that she had several packets in the house, the ones I found. They must have been left over from one of the parties she gave, and she forgot they were there. She focused totally on her supplier.'

'And he killed her.'

'Oh, no,' said Diamond.

'I mean Buckle. He's been arrested.'

'Yes, but on a drugs charge.'

She frowned. 'Isn't he the killer, then?'

After he declined to add any more, she said, 'I suppose you know who it was, cleverclogs. You ought to be back in the police.' As if instantly regretting the remark, she reached out and squeezed his hand. 'But I'm glad you aren't. I see more of you.'