Peter Robinson - Careless Love

‘If you want to bring charges against Mr Kelly, sir, that’s your prerogative,’ Winsome went on. ‘But it’s not our department.’

Vernon glanced from one to the other. ‘Who’s the organ grinder and who’s the monkey here?’ Then he put his hand to his mouth. ‘Good God, that’s not what I meant. I mean to... I didn’t mean any offence. I—’

Banks looked towards Winsome, who simply raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps if you would just stop blathering for a minute and listen to us’ he went on, ‘then you wouldn’t put your foot any further down your throat.’

Vernon bridled. ‘Yes, of course. I assume you’re at least going to have the car moved to my garage for repairs? I can’t seem to get anyone there to commit to a pick-up time. That’s unless you need to take it in for forensic examination first.’

‘Forensic examination?’ Winsome echoed. ‘Why would we need to do that?’

‘To find proof. Evidence. Do you need me to tell you your job?’

‘Evidence of what?’

‘That it wasn’t my fault, of course. There must be something you can find, some scratch or dent that will prove his culpability.’

‘I don’t think we’ll be checking for anything along those lines,’ Winsome said. ‘But we will be taking the car in for forensic examination.’

‘But you just said... I don’t understand. Why? When will I get my car back. When can I get it fixed?’

‘We’re not a garage,’ Winsome said, ‘and we’re not in the tow-truck business.’

‘And from what I’ve seen,’ Banks added, ‘the only place that car is headed is the scrapyard.’

‘So what am I supposed to do?’

‘We’ll be in touch when our forensic experts have finished with it,’ Winsome said. ‘Then you can call your garage and make arrangements.’

‘You’re telling me now that I have to pay to get my own car back after you’ve taken it away?’

‘That’s usually how it works, sir,’ Winsome said. ‘Besides, I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick here. There’s no evidence of dangerous driving in this case and, as I tried to tell you earlier, we’re not Traffic. We’re Homicide and Major Crimes.’

Vernon’s mouth flapped open. He stared aghast at his wife, who shook her head slowly. ‘H-homicide?’

‘And Major Crimes,’ Winsome added.

‘I don’t understand. I mean, it was an accident. I don’t think the other driver intended to crash into us. He was just going too fast, wasn’t he, love? And nobody died. It wasn’t attempted murder or anything like that.’

‘We know that,’ said Banks. ‘As I suggested earlier, perhaps if you were to take your mind off the problem of your car for a moment and listen to what we have to say, we might get somewhere. Winsome.’

First Winsome got the minor details cleared up: that the car did belong to Trevor Vernon, and that he had been involved in an accident with a white van on Belderfell Pass last Friday evening at 10.37.

‘Yes,’ said Trevor Vernon. ‘We were on our way home from Richmond. A rather fine production of The Importance of Being Earnest at the Georgian Theatre, as a matter of fact. That’s what I thought you were here about, the accident, but I don’t understand now why you are here.’

‘Bear with us a while, and I’ll explain,’ said Banks. ‘Earlier today,’ he began, ‘we had a call from some patrol officers from the site where your car was left. A woman driving by noticed something she thought was odd and stopped to see what it was.’ Banks paused for effect. ‘She found a dead girl sitting in the driver’s seat.’

The Vernons looked at one another.

‘ A dead girl ?’ said Nancy.

It didn’t come out quite like ‘A handbag?’ but it was close enough. Their shock and surprise was certainly genuine, though, Banks thought. Trevor Vernon had turned pale.

‘Yes. You didn’t have a passenger with you at the time of the accident, did you?’

‘Passenger?’ echoed Vernon. ‘Good Lord, no, of course not. The children were at home with the babysitter. Are you suggesting that we had something to do with this?’

‘I’m not suggesting anything yet,’ Banks said. ‘Just trying to get a few things straight. Though I suppose one could say you definitely did have something to do with what happened. The dead girl was found in your car, after all.’

‘But that was just a coincidence,’ said Vernon. ‘It could have been any car, surely?’

‘Perhaps. That’s something we need to find out.’

‘There was certainly no sign of any body in or out of the car when we were taken to Eastvale General,’ said Vernon. ‘Your men were there. They can verify that.’

Banks nodded. ‘Oh, they do. When the car was moved into the lay-by and the notice put in the window by the police officers, there was definitely no body.’

‘Well, then? Doesn’t that prove it? However she got there, she got there after we’d gone.’

‘If you do know anything, it would be best to speak now.’

‘What do you mean, if we know anything?’ said Nancy Vernon. ‘How could we know anything?’

‘Something could have happened,’ said Banks. ‘Let’s just say, hypothetically, that you hit someone on the road earlier and stopped to help then realised that it was too late, the girl was dead. People get scared in these situations sometimes. They don’t always realise that the best course of action is to come to us. They panic. PC Knowles didn’t open the boot.’ Banks knew the girl hadn’t been run over — at least Dr Burns had found no obvious signs of it — but the Vernons weren’t to know that, unless they had also seen the body.

‘I don’t believe this,’ said Vernon. ‘You think we had a body in the boot all along? This is absurd. Assuming we did what you say, which we certainly did not, why would we want to move a body from the boot of our car to somewhere more open, and how do you think we got back to Belderfell Pass to do all this without a car?’

‘All I’m saying,’ Banks went on, ‘is that people tend to act irrationally in such situations. I just want to know if there’s anything you’re not telling us.’

‘We’re not criminals,’ said Nancy Vernon in a tremulous voice. ‘This is complete madness. We’ve never hurt anyone in our lives, have we, darling?’

‘We certainly have not. And I resent the insinuation.’

‘Do you have any enemies, Mr Vernon? Anyone who might want to cause trouble for you?’

‘You mean by implicating me in something like this?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then, no, I’m pretty sure I don’t have that kind of enemy. And neither does Nancy. This whole conversation is unreal. I’m a wages clerk, and Nancy works part time at Boots. Our children go to Eastvale Comprehensive. We live a quiet, ordinary life. Things like this don’t happen to people like us. We’re decent folk.’

Often the worst, in Banks’s experience, but he didn’t say anything.

Winsome showed them a photograph of the victim that Peter Darby had taken at the scene. Fortunately, she hadn’t needed any touching up, just a little help with the lighting. She still looked dead, Banks thought. ‘Do you know this girl? Have you ever seen her before?’

They shook their heads.

‘Is she the... you know... the girl in the car?’ asked Nancy Vernon.

Winsome nodded.

Nancy touched the photo. ‘Poor thing. She seems so young.’

‘Yes, she does,’ said Banks. He gave Winsome the nod to leave, and they both stood up. ‘Sorry to have bothered you at dinner time. And I apologise if some of our questions caused you discomfort. Cases like this are difficult for everyone involved. We may need to talk to you again as the investigation progresses, so please make yourselves available. There’s no need to see us out.’