Brian Freemantle - Dead End

‘You’ve got more to be suspicious about than the fact that the house was too tidy,’ challenged Jackson. ‘That’s not even forensic. That’s soap-opera bullshit.’

Dingley smiled, bleakly. ‘Not quite, sir. There wasn’t an item of furniture, an article anywhere, that hadn’t been lifted, looked at, and replaced. But not exactly put back in the right place where it had been before it was shifted: just off-centre marks in the carpeting, that carpeting not properly re-secured where it had been lifted, to look beneath. Off-centre again where kitchen appliances had been replaced. Like I said, too neat – always too neat.’

‘Was Ms Lang particularly neat?’ asked Benton.

‘Not particularly,’ remembered Parnell. ‘She didn’t live in a mess but the house was lived in.’

‘Magazines, newspapers, wouldn’t have been carefully stacked and aligned? Books always in the shelves for the titles to be read, none with dust-cover flaps used as bookmarks?’ said Dingley.

Parnell shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘And?’ persisted Jackson.

This time Dingley looked back at the FBI lawyer, who nodded and said: ‘OK.’

Dingley said: ‘There wasn’t any personal mail. Forensics are thorough. Suggested we check the mail drop, for the Monday Ms Lang was found murdered. Mailman remembers three, one package bigger than the other two, which were ordinary letter size. There wasn’t any mail when we got there. Or any that our forensics guys could find.’

‘And?’ repeated Jackson.

Benton said to Parnell, ‘You ever write to Ms Lang? A note, a proper letter maybe?’

Parnell didn’t respond at once, thinking. ‘No,’ he said, almost surprised. ‘I never did – never had to, because we worked in the same place – not even a note. But why?’

‘There wasn’t a single personal letter in the house,’ said Dingley. ‘Utility bills, credit card receipts, all carefully filed. But not a single personal note, from anyone listed in the address book we found…’ He looked back again to Edwin Pullinger, for another permissive nod. ‘And the telephone answering equipment in Ms Lang’s machine was brand new. Hadn’t been utilized before, on any call.’

‘What’s the significance of that?’ demanded Parnell.

‘Answering-machine loops are used and rewound to be wiped and rewound and wiped again and again and again,’ said Dingley. ‘Our forensics guys can recover things from loops that are supposed to have been wiped, like they can with computer hard disks. Ms Lang’s loop had been taken, a new one put in its place.’

‘It was her call on my machine that saved me,’ remembered Parnell, softly.

‘Which brings us to another request,’ chimed in Benton.

Parnell stared at the man, refusing the ventriloquist’s-dummy role.

Finally Benton said: ‘Would you come to Bethesda, to the house, with us – look for anything you think might be wrong, anything that makes you curious… anything out of place…?’

Jackson said: ‘That’s a hell of an unusual request.’

‘This is a hell of an unusual case,’ said Pullinger, coming into the discussion for the first time. ‘You can refuse, of course.’

‘No!’ said Parnell, hurriedly. ‘Of course I’ll come: try to do whatever you want me to do. But I didn’t – don’t – know the house well – know where Rebecca kept things. What might be missing or what might not. Sure I stayed there, but it wasn’t my place, not with my things in it. I’ve told you, it was all too new. We hadn’t… we hadn’t got that far…’

‘We’d appreciate it,’ said Dingley.

‘Unannounced!’ insisted Jackson. ‘My client will not go to Ms Lang’s house as a media exhibit.’

‘The investigation is out of the hands of the DC Metro police,’ reminded Pullinger pointedly.

‘I’ve got to have your guarantee, Ed,’ insisted Jackson. ‘We pitch up to a media reception and blinding lights, we ain’t stopping the car. I’m not having my client publicly exposed or compromised in any way.’

‘We’ve no intention of publicly exposing or compromising your client in any way,’ retorted the other lawyer, stiffly.

‘That’s good to hear,’ said Jackson, unrepentant. ‘When we pull up, I still want to see the surroundings to Rebecca Lang’s house emptier than a Kansas prairie in December.’

It was going too fast and in the wrong direction, Parnell decided, with things still unresolved in his mind irrespective of everyone else’s uncertainties. ‘I still don’t understand the Air France flight number.’

‘As I told you, that’s our biggest problem, too,’ said Benton.

‘How’d you check that flight didn’t carry anything for Dubette in the last six months?’

‘Air France dispatch, here and in Paris,’ said Dingley. ‘We’re as thorough as our forensics people, in our own way.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ said Parnell, unconcerned at getting under the other man’s skin. ‘You double-check, with Dubette… with their security division, I guess?’

‘That’s who are responsible for the Dulles airport collection, security,’ agreed Benton.

‘That isn’t the answer to my question,’ said Parnell.

‘Dubette security have no record of any Dubette-addressed consignment on AF209 in the last six months,’ recited Dingley.

‘There is another inconsistency, here, Mr Parnell,’ said Benton. ‘One we were coming to. You told us that Ms Lang didn’t understand why she was being bypassed by something from Paris? But that, whatever it was, it hadn’t worked out in the laboratories at McLean, anyway?’

‘Yes,’ said Parnell, glad he had not needed to be more direct.

‘That’s not the impression we’ve got from the people we’ve spoken to at Dubette so far,’ said Benton.

‘How not, specifically?’

‘Seems the French research wasn’t a failure after all. According to Mr Newton, it’s being incorporated into some of your existing products.’

‘I didn’t know that.’ But now he did, Parnell accepted.

‘You must have been mistaken.’ suggested Dingley.

‘Obviously,’ said Parnell, who knew he hadn’t been. ‘I hope that didn’t mislead you.’

‘It made us curious, along with everything else.’

‘I can understand that. I’m sorry. It’s been a difficult time…’ He let the apology trail.

‘We understand that,’ said Benton, in what sounded to Parnell like mockery.

It created something else for him to understand, too, decided Parnell. ‘What about Dubette security? And the Metro DC officers? You talked to them yet about knowing my car was damaged, before we went out into the lot?’

‘Only to the security chief, Harry Johnson, so far,’ said Dingley. ‘He told us he didn’t know anything about your car until you all got to it that morning. That he hadn’t had any conversation with the Metro DC guys about it. Wasn’t even sure what your car was.’

‘Looks like another mistaken impression,’ said Benton.

Parnell curbed the instinctive reply. Instead he said: ‘I guess it does.’

‘Why don’t we clear a few things up?’ unexpectedly suggested Barry Jackson. ‘We’re happy to provide fingerprints and come out to Bethesda. Why don’t we do both right away?’

‘I told you no media leak would come from here,’ said Dingley.

‘Is there any reason why we can’t do it right now?’ persisted Jackson.

‘No,’ said Dingley.

‘So?’ said the lawyer.

‘Let’s do it now,’ agreed Benton.

They’d driven to the FBI field office in Barry Jackson’s car, so they went in convoy to Rebecca Lang’s Bethesda clapboard, the most direct route to which was through Rock Creek Park past the gorge into which Rebecca’s car had plunged. When he realized the way the FBI agents were going, Jackson said: ‘You all right with this? I could use different roads.’