‘He wouldn’t even let me have my mother stay — he called the immigration people, I know it. It was him who told them her visa had expired…’
Thankfully the journey between stations was a short one, the need for cars little more than necessary affectation, and they were soon disgorged, the lady being processed in reception before being taken to the interview room.
‘A beautiful woman,’ remarked Inspector Glass while waiting in the corridor.
‘Well she would be, would she,’ observed Cori without emotion. ‘Mars wouldn’t have paid all that money to fetch her into Britain if she weren’t.’
They didn’t yet know how much he had paid to ‘fetch her over’, but the point still held for Glass, who said,
‘No need to be jealous though, Sergeant. I’m sure he’d have paid just as much to bring you over, had you come from the same village in the Urals.’
‘That’s very reassuring, thank you,’ she answered so blankly that he didn’t even get the sarcasm.
‘Enough banter, what’s happening?’ The Superintendent had had calls to make and was eager for news.
Glass was still buzzing from his operation’s success,
‘Sir, she’s about ready to finger him for the murder of Sir Thomas More, the sinking of the Lusitania and the St Valentine’s Day Massacre.’
Rose turned to the Sergeant for more sense,
‘She says she’ll tell us “everything you want to know” in return for us keeping her away from him.’
‘And what’s that then?’
‘Not sure yet, though we will do in half an hour.’
‘Right then, Glass, get out to your men in the field. We need to stay close to this fellow — we don’t know what he’ll do when he realises his wife isn’t coming back this afternoon…’
‘If he sees us he’ll be onto us in a flash,’ he said, leaving.
‘We’ll have to tell Mars she’s here sooner or later,’ reminded Cori, ‘if only as he’s expecting us to call her to confirm his alibi.’
‘How are we going to play this?’ the Super asked rhetorically as he headed to the viewing room. ‘We have an hour or two yet,’ he answered himself. ‘Let’s hear what the lady says.’
Chapter 17 — Ludmila Mars
Grey gave the time and date to the tape, before adding, ‘…present are Sergeant Smith, Constable Mills and Inspector Rase; interviewing Lidia Mars, formerly Ludmila Sergeyevna Grechko.
‘How would you like to be addressed?’
‘By my given name, now I’m to be free of him.’
‘Ludmila Sergeyevna…’
‘Just Ludmila: we Russians carry our fathers around all our lives; but I’ve been free of him too these four years now.’
‘Just Ludmila then.’ (She smiled.) ‘Now, this interview relates to a series of crimes that we believe your husband…’
‘Former husband: I’ll never be in a room with that man again.’
You might have to be, and it might be a courtroom, thought Grey. ‘…that we believe Patrick Mars may had been involved in, yet for which he has given us an alibi apparently confirmable by yourself. Ludmila, were you at the house on Mansard Lane during the evening of Monday of this week or the early hours of Tuesday?’
‘No.’
‘Or during the evening of Tuesday of this week and the early hours of today?’
‘No.’
‘Where were you in fact at these times?’
‘I’ve been in London, with my mother.’
‘Her immigration case is being heard this week, I believe.’
‘I’m supporting her.’
‘When did it begin?’
‘On Monday — I travelled on Sunday, and stayed at a hotel.’
‘So you cannot confirm your… Patrick Mars ’ alibi?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know why he might have lied to us to say you were with him?’
‘No.’
‘When were you intending to return?’
‘I don’t know. The case is still going on, and I am keen to get back to it.’
‘So you had no plan to return this evening?’
‘No.’
‘And so how come you have come back this evening?’
‘Because Patrick phoned me and demanded I return that minute and come straight home. He said I’d had long enough with my mother, and that I’d stayed away too long, that I was letting him down being away so long and that a good wife stays at home with her husband.’
‘Did he give any specific reason why you must return?’
‘He said there was an emergency, that I’d caused it by not being here, and that he needed me back right away.’
‘You’d caused it?’
‘Everything’s my fault with him. Even when I’m not there he finds a way to blame me.’
‘What time did he phone?’
‘I’m not sure. Around lunchtime. I caught the first train I could.’
Mars thought fast in his interview, thought Grey: he calculated how quickly he could contact Ludmila, get her back here, and drill her in what to tell the police to confirm his alibi before they tracked her down for themselves.
‘How did you feel about this request to come back?’
‘I was fuming. I knew I had to go back, but I was going to give him hell for it.’
‘Would he have enjoyed that?’
‘Probably not, but then we argue often. We can both live with it.’
‘You said just then that you’re now “free of him”. Why are you glad to be free of your husband?’
‘You ask me that, after what I tell you?’
‘Tell me more.’
‘He’s proud, pig-headed, impossible to live with! He wants the house kept just as it is, everything in its place, everything tidy. He won’t change anything, won’t let me bring friends over: he says we make too much noise and make a mess. He say’s they’re all alcoholics and that we break his precious things.’
‘And what makes him say that?’
‘I have friends — other wives whose husbands don’t talk to them — and when they come over I entertain them: we have food and drinks and laugh. Is that unusual? He hates laughter except his own. When he comes home early and finds us there he gets grumpy and won’t talk to them, and goes to his room.’
Grey noticed her wavering between the past and present tense, as though she still hadn’t aligned herself to the reality that those days may well be over.
‘His own room?’
‘He has his own room where he likes to read: like a study, with a view of the back garden.’
‘And the breakages?’
She looked down at the featureless table, ‘Once he came home and a piece of glass had got broken, a vase on the windowsill. One of us had knocked it — it could have happened at any time, Inspector.’
‘What was it like?’
