‘You can’t talk to me like that.’
‘We can and we will. You had the motive, and you had the place, even the strength, to kill him. Now, once again, did you kill him? Are you going to tell us the truth?’
‘I need a lawyer.’
‘We’ll halt the interview. Do you have someone we can call?’ Isaac said.
‘My sister. She’ll come for me.’
‘Please phone her. Sergeant Gladstone will arrange transport for her, allow her time to talk to you. For your sake, I hope she’s competent.’
‘I’d trust her with my life. She can’t be here until tomorrow.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s busy.’
‘If that’s the case, you’ll be spending the night here. Is that what you want?’
‘No.’
***
Wendy would have said that Isaac had been badgering Christine Mason. Not strictly by the book, but she had seen him use the tactic before. A woman in love was a formidable force to break and broken she had to be. Her being in Hyde Park at the place where the man had died was damning. In the hands of a skilled prosecution lawyer, and if it was found that the dead man had been playing the field and Christine Mason had known, the circumstantial evidence could be enough to sway a jury. If the woman didn’t clear up the doubts at Challis Street, it would go against her. And what if she had confronted the man that day that Adrian Clark had seen her? If she had, then why was he still running that same path?
‘Sorry about that,’ Isaac said. ‘I had to do it, you know that.’
‘Not that she’d agree, but yes, it had to be done. I’ve been trying to get her to be honest. I don’t believe she did it, though.’
‘A woman’s intuition or police evidence?’
‘Both, I suppose.’
‘Her husband, where is he?’
‘He’s still in the country. Is it time to call him?’
‘Not yet.’
Larry sat with Roy Eardley and Adrian Clark. Clark was looking better, and he gladly accepted a coffee from the machine that dispensed something with a taste resembling treacle. At least, that was how Bridget described it. She had an espresso machine in Homicide, but the three men were sitting in a room on the ground floor.
‘Anything else before you sign your statement, Roy?’
‘Nothing from me.’
‘Adrian? Did you see her more than the once?’
‘Not that I can remember. Strange, her being there.’
‘She’s in the station, upstairs. We need her to open up.’
‘A woman scorned, and all that?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘It stands to reason. A man’s murdered, the woman had been looking for him. She did it, I’m sure.’
‘Speculation,’ Larry said. ‘No proof, no evidence, that’s the problem.’
‘If she saw me, she might remember me.’
‘Why? Any reason?’
‘None that I can think of. I looked over at her as I ran past, nodded my head. I certainly had no intention of stopping for her, not with the time I was making.’
‘Would you have at another time?’
‘Damsel in distress. I like to think I would, but no. Just talking out loud. You seem to want more from us, but we can’t help.’
‘It would help if we could be sure that she saw Young in the park.’
‘Did she kill him?’ Eardley asked.
‘We’re not even sure that’s his correct name. We call him Colin Young because that’s what the woman called him, and what he signed in at the Fitzroy as.’
Eardley and Clark left the station soon after. Larry had exhausted what he was going to get from them. He took the lift to the third floor and sat down at his desk.
‘Long face,’ Isaac said as he sat down beside him.
‘Who is this man?’
‘The credit card? Any leads?’
‘He used it at the Fitzroy each time he stayed there, nowhere else. It’s the same with the phone calls he made. The man was either an inveterate womaniser or a villain of the first order.’
‘It’s too contrived, too much skulduggery. The hotels, how’s the checking going?’
‘That’s Wendy’s responsibility. You’d better ask her. I went with the jogger angle, trying to find out where the man could have run from. He entered from Bayswater Road, I’m certain of that.’
‘Why?’
‘If he entered on the south side of the park, he would have chosen another route around the park, and Christine Mason was there and waiting for him near the statue. Has she opened up?’
‘We’re getting her legal representation. She’s going to need it.’
***
The two-hour delay before the interview extended to four. Christine Mason’s lawyer, her sister, had been in court – a messy divorce. The team at Challis Street knew that they would have to agree to the delay.
On the dot, four hours as stated, the sister walked into the station. ‘Homicide, DCI Cook,’ she said at the desk on the ground floor. Wendy went down to meet her, escorting her up to where her client sat.
Gwen Hislop was an efficient woman, Wendy could tell. She had entered the station dressed in a blue suit with a white open-necked blouse. She was older than her sister, and no ring on her finger. If Wendy didn’t know otherwise, she would have said she was not the sort of woman who wanted a man, not like her sister. Not that it reflected badly on the lawyer, and her manner and the way she carried herself, proud and haughty, indicated somebody who’d be a formidable adversary in a court of law. Or maybe she was a woman in a man’s world, pushing that little bit extra, to not let the men’s club ride over her, male chauvinism still in existence. Regardless, she was Christine Mason’s lawyer, and she was entitled to
