The Pursuit of Truth Page 9

  Instead, he asked about these ‘problems’. Did they really exist? Wright replied that he was sure they did but he didn’t know why Crouch accused her as he had. Nor did he know how long it had been going on. He had been completely absorbed in his studying for the MA. It was not as easy as some might imagine to complete an MA in nine months. But yes, he had visited the Crouches occasionally over the previous months, though he hadn’t noticed tension of any kind between them. When Healey observed that he didn’t seem to be very good at noticing things, Wright smiled briefly, revealing more teeth than there seemed room for in even such a wide mouth. ‘It’s not my job,’ he said. ‘I’m not a policeman.’

  Not rising to the bait, Healey switched his questioning to Wright’s days in Manila. Wright told him that he had worked in the same British Council language school as Crouch for three years before Crouch got the job in Reading. They had always got on well and it was Crouch who had encouraged him to do the MA at the University of Berkshire. Healey asked how Crouch had met his wife. It was through Teresa’s younger sister, who was one of Crouch’s students at the school and to whom Crouch had taken quite a fancy, according to Wright. Crouch had a thing about young oriental women, not that he had done much about it, as far as Wright knew. But when his student invited him to her apartment and he met Teresa there, that was it, so to speak. They latched onto each other immediately and six months later they were married.

  ‘Was Teresa a student too?’ asked Healey.

  Again he was treated to a brief smile. ‘No, certainly not. I mean she had been a student – she trained as an English teacher – but she was working in a bar at the time he met her.’

  ‘In a bar?’

  ‘As a hostess.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘That she made a lot more money than she would have earned as a teacher.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘No, but it tells you what you want to know, doesn’t it?’

  Healey wasn’t sure that it did but he let it pass. ‘So Crouch changed her world?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Was she grateful to him?’

  ‘I’m not sure that she thought in terms of gratitude. But she appreciated what marriage to him had done for her.’

  ‘When was it they got married?’

  ‘Seven or eight years ago. It must have been around seventy-six, I suppose.’

  ‘Since they got married, was she tempted, do you think, to find someone, well, more attractive. I mean, she’s a very good looking woman, and he was, how can I put it, rather unprepossessing.’

  ‘I really don’t know about that. Though I doubt it. You know, you’ve got to look at him the way she did to know that. Through different cultural eyes.’

  Healey did not like being told this by a man not much more than half his age. ‘So why did he accuse her of being a whore?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Wright looked at his watch. ‘Is this going to take much longer? I’ve got to be at a lecture at nine.’

  ‘Did she ever try anything on with you?’ Healey was deliberately crude.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Not at all?’

  ‘No, not at all. Look, what’s the point of these questions?’

  ‘Well, think about it. You arrive in the country. Visit their house off and on. You’re young and good looking. He gets suspicious and accuses her of carrying on with … someone. He suddenly falls out of a window at a time when the lady says you were with her but really you were still in the Hall …’

  ‘But I wasn’t.’

  ‘Wasn’t what?’

  ‘In the Hall.’

  ‘Where were you then? Why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘I was with Mrs Crouch.’

  ‘Oh yes. Of course.’ Healey looked intently at Wright for a few seconds before saying, ‘You played cricket with Dr Crouch on Friday afternoon, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When Dr Crouch was hit by the ball and left, do you know where he went?’

  ‘No. I was batting myself at the time.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t have noticed whether he took his bat with him?’

  ‘No.’ Wright stood up, yawned noisily, and walked to the window. He picked up a guitar that was leaning against the wall, turned towards Healey and lightly brushed the strings.

  ‘Where did you go after the match?’ asked Healey.

  ‘To the Hall.’

  ‘How long did you stay there?’

  ‘Until I left the party to go to Teresa’s.’

  ‘What did you do between arriving at the Hall and leaving the party?’

  Wright went still for a moment, his brow furrowed. Then he smiled. ‘I had a shower, went to bed, had a snooze, got up to have supper, and then it was the party.’

  ‘There is another thing,’ said Healey, who remained seated. ‘There’s a Filipino on the course.’

  ‘Reyes.’

  ‘Do you know him?’

  ‘Yes, we taught in the same school. Why?’

  ‘So his English must be very good, to teach for the British Council.’

  ‘It’s excellent. As good as yours or mine.’

  ‘Really? Do you know where he is right now?’

  ‘I’ve absolutely no idea. Why should I?’

  ‘Who’s his tutor on the course?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘But you don’t know where he is?’

  ‘I’m not his keeper.’

  ‘Was he there on Friday morning?’

  ‘I think so. Yes, I’m sure he was.’

  ‘Did you see him at the party on Friday evening?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Think.’

  ‘No, I don’t remember seeing him, but he could have come later, after I left.’

  ‘Of course. Do you know where I might get information on Mr Reyes? His background, that sort of thing?’

  ‘You could try the British Council in Oxford. All the applications come through them. They should have something on him.’

  Healey ignored this suggestion. ‘Did Dr Crouch and Mr Reyes work at the school at the same time?’

  ‘They must have.’

  ‘Did they know each other well?’

  ‘I can’t say. Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Did Mr Reyes know Mrs Crouch? Before she was married?’

  ‘I really don’t know. I think it’s unlikely.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Ricardo Reyes is an old-fashioned catholic, a God-fearing man. Not at all the sort of person to frequent bars of the kind that Teresa worked in.’

  ‘I see. Well, thank you for your time, Mr Wright. At some point we’ll ask you to describe your movements again and make a formal statement. But that’s all for now.’ Healey stood up and turned towards the door. Without looking round he said, ‘Nice car you’ve got.’

  ‘It’s not bad.’

  ‘Must be expensive to run.’

  Wright did not reply.

  ‘Especially on a teacher’s salary.’

  ‘My parents help.’

  Now Healey did turn towards Wright. But he resisted the temptation to say anything.

  Healey sat with his chin in his hands at the end of a row near the front of the room as the lecturer, a tall bald man with a pronounced squint, droned on about the play, Othello, which the participants were going to see at Stratford the following evening. It took a special talent, thought Healey, to make a play like Othello sound so boring. He looked round to see if the participants showed signs of sharing his puzzlement but, as far as he could see, they seemed fascinated by what they were hearing.

  Healey’s thoughts turned to the case. After talking to Wright, he had telephoned the British Council to ask about Reyes. All the information they had on him, said the young lady he spoke to, was on the forms that they had sent to the Course Directo
r in Reading and they hadn’t kept copies. She was sure that Dr Farrell would still have them. When Healey explained the seriousness of the case, she volunteered to get in touch with the British Council in Manila, since they were his employer, to see if they could say more about him than was on the form. Healey was tempted to say that he would call them himself and ask his own questions but for the moment decided to let them do it for him.

  His next task would be to interview Mary Walters. He was pretty sure he knew who she was, sitting just in front of him, with a wicker basket containing books and papers balanced incongruously on her knees, and wearing an equally inappropriate pink woolly hat. When the lecture ended she was the first person to ask a question. Something about Desdemona being treated as property, the fate of all women until very recent times. Silly woman, thought Healey but the lecturer, to his surprise, thanked her for a good question, took up the point and expanded on it at some length.

  Healey looked around the room for Farrell, from whom he hoped to get the form for Reyes, but didn’t see him. But then he had said he was giving a lecture himself at nine? Where could that be? Eventually there were no more questions, the lecturer thanked the audience for their attention and interesting questions, and they clapped him. There was a rustling of papers, banging of seats, and a general movement towards the door. Healey leaned forward.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said. The woman turned round. She looked younger than Healey had expected, no more than thirty at the most. Her face was plain and covered in freckles.

  ‘Is it Ms Walters?’

  ‘Yes.’ She managed to answer in a tone that suggested he had been impertinent to ask.

  ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you. I’m Chief Inspector Healey. I’m …’

  ‘I have a class now.’

  ‘Yes, I know, but this won’t take long. Couldn’t you give them something to do while we talk?’

  ‘Can’t this wait?’

  ‘I don’t think so. If you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Oh very well. Where do you want to talk?’

  Healey looked round the room, which was now empty. ‘Here is as good as anywhere.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  When Ms Walters came back, she no longer carried the basket and had removed her hat, to reveal straw coloured hair held in a blue crocheted snood. She was wearing a flowery short-sleeved blouse which hung outside her jeans. After taking a seat in the same row as Healey but a few feet away, she was the first to speak. ‘You probably want to ask me again where I was on Friday evening.’

  ‘I do actually.’

  ‘I was in the Hall.’

  ‘But you said …’

  ‘Yes, I know I did. I was foolish.’

  ‘But why …’

  ‘I thought I was protecting someone. It seems I needn’t have bothered.’

  ‘One of the participants?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know that another participant told us you were in the Hall on Friday evening?’

  ‘Yes. She told me herself.’

  ‘And the person you thought you were protecting?’

  ‘Was with me.’

  ‘In your room?’

  ‘No. Hers.’

  ‘And who was that?’

  ‘Do I have to say?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Helga Braun.’

  Healey wrote Helga Brown in his notebook and snapped it shut. ‘And why did you think Miss Brown might need protecting?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s from the GDR. I thought it might be something that could be used against her once she got back home.’

  Healey chose not to ask what they had been doing in the room. ‘So you preferred to lie to the British police?’

  A small pink patch appeared above Miss Walters’ breastbone and spread up her throat. She said nothing.

  ‘Thank you, Ms Walters,’ said Healey. ‘I think you can go back to your class now.’ As she went out, he opened his notebook and added the word ‘check’ to the name Helga Brown.

  After talking to Mary Walters and searching, unsuccessfully, for Peter Farrell in the same building, Healey drove to the University of Berkshire site on King’s Road. He quickly found Chris Carter’s office, the door of which was open. Carter, his back to the door and hunched over his computer keyboard, was tapping away at what to Healey seemed phenomenal speed. Healey knocked but Carter did not respond. Healey coughed loudly and stepped into the room but it was only when he spoke that Carter turned round. ‘Well, Richard, how nice to see you again.’ He smiled expansively. ‘What can I do for you?’ Healey asked if Peter Farrell happened to be around. It seemed he had been there but had left just a few minutes before. Healey then said that he would like to look in Crouch’s office, if that could be arranged.

  Five minutes later Healey was sitting at Crouch’s desk, which faced a window through which the sun shone brightly. He loosened his tie, opened the top button of his shirt, and ran a finger round the inside of the collar; it was only 10.30 yet the room was already uncomfortably warm. On the desk were two framed pictures: one of Crouch’s wife and one of his daughter, both of which Healey picked up and inspected closely, before putting them back in the positions where they had been standing. He then began to look through the drawers of the desk. They contained only stationery, an internal telephone directory, and an unopened pack of cassettes for the kind of mini-recorder that Healey had taken from Crouch’s room. After looking briefly at the titles of the books on the shelves that lined one wall of the room and seeing nothing of interest, he went to the filing cabinet standing against the opposite wall.

  Above the cabinet was a notice board, empty except for a child’s crayon drawing of a man, to which someone had added the word ‘Daddy’. Without warning, tears came to Healey’s eyes. He had found himself crying more and more often lately, something which hadn’t happened to him since childhood. It was often provoked by an item on the news, the death of a child, pictures from the Falklands war the previous year, or even a sentimental scene in a film that he knew was nonsense. Tears came before he even thought that something was sad. Not a good sign. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his eyes.

  Sniffing, he opened the top drawer of the cabinet, which had hanging files relating to departmental and faculty meetings. The next drawer down contained what appeared to be files devoted to lecture notes. Healey slid these towards him, one by one, looking briefly inside each of them. As he reached the ones towards the back of the cabinet, however, they did not slide easily along the rail that they were hanging on; their movement was obstructed by something beneath them. He forced two of the files apart from each other and slipped his hand down between them. At the bottom of the drawer he felt a sheaf of papers which he drew out and looked at.

  They were statements from a bank in the Isle of Man. Unlike those he had found at Crouch’s house, these were in his name only, and they were for a deposit, not a current account. Healey went through the statements carefully, beginning with the earliest, from six years before, which were at the top. The statements showed more or less regular three-monthly payments into the account of amounts which began as a hundred pounds but which during the last year had increased to two hundred and fifty. All were in cash. The balance of the account, from which nothing had ever been withdrawn, was now over four thousand pounds.

  Folding the statements and putting them into a large manila envelope taken from Crouch’s desk, Healey took one last look round the room, noticing for the first time a computer on a table in the far corner, before leaving and locking the door behind him. He took the key, as he had been asked to, to Carter’s office. There was no one there. He put the key on the desk. As he left, he paused at the door, sniffed the air, pulled a face, and then went on down the corridor.

  Sitting in his car, he leaned towards the passenger seat to pick up the sunglasses he’d dropped there when he arrived, and cursed. They had slipped between the seats, and wedged beside them he saw the disk with the fi
le that he’d copied from Crouch’s home computer, which hadn’t fitted in his own computer and which he’d intended to give to Teague to try in one at headquarters. He’d give it to him when they met for lunch.

  It was ten to one and Teague hadn’t arrived at the Queen’s Head yet. Healey bought an orange juice and tonic, sat down at an empty table by the window, and flipped open his notebook. The morning had gone well, he thought. He’d done everything he’d set out to do and he’d made the discovery of the payments into Crouch’s deposit account. But he had already forgotten about the disk that he had left in his car.

  He didn’t believe that Wright had spent Friday night at Falstaff Avenue, but neither did he think that he was responsible for Crouch’s murder (suicide was no longer considered a possibility, at least not by him). But he had something to hide. What could that be? Where had he been that night? Thinking of Wright reminded him of the smell, almost hidden by the scent of deodorant or whatever it was, which he noticed as he left his room. Was it marijuana? Could have been. If Wright had been smoking the stuff, he might have tried to hide the smell by spraying deodorant about. But it wasn’t something, surely, that he’d go to the length of creating an alibi for.

  And there was the other smell of the morning. The acrid body scent in Carter’s office. Again. He may be a very clever man, thought Healey, but he’s got one problem he doesn’t seem to have solved. Or perhaps he doesn’t notice. Or care. His wife would though, surely.

  Then there were the bank statements. He had put the envelope that contained them onto the table in front of him, and was in the process of taking them out when he saw Sergeant Teague walking jauntily towards him, a grin on his face and a brimming pint glass in his hand. ‘What’s he got to be so pleased about?’ wondered Healey. To judge from what Teague told him, not a lot.

  He had been unable to find Reyes. He had spoken to the porter, Bird, who was pretty sure that Reyes hadn’t been around at all over the weekend (which could not have been the case, since Teague had interviewed the man on Saturday afternoon). A cleaning lady had said that his bed hadn’t been slept in since, she thought, Thursday. So why was he around on the Saturday?