And Justice There Is None

The shop door opened and a heavyset, dark-haired man stared out at them. He wore a leather apron, and had pushed safety goggles up on his forehead.

'Well, well, well,' said Farley, as jolly as one of Father Christmas's elves. 'To what do I owe the honor? I'd invite you to come in and make yourselves comfortable, but as you can see…' His gesture swept the small room.

The smell of resin caught at Cullen's throat. He looked round the room, making out several different saws of incomprehensible purpose, a good deal of raw wood and sawdust, and shelves full of Farley's 'objects.' Cullen found himself hoping not to be a recipient of Farley's generosity, and wondered why the veterinarian chose to makes boxes rather than representations of the cats and dogs he knew so intimately. Perhaps Farley didn't really like animals all that much.

'We'll manage,' said Gemma, easing her way into the room without touching anything. 'It's about Dawn Arrowood, Mr. Farley. On the afternoon of the day she died, she told a friend that she'd had an unpleasant encounter with you that morning. An argument.'

'That's nonsense. Why would I have had an argument with Mrs. Arrowood- although I did remind her again that she must keep her cat in the house, regardless of her husband's preference.'

'That's not what she said. She told her friend that you came on to her, that you were sexually offensive, and that when she told you to stop, you were abusive.'

'The woman must have been imagining things. I never did any such thing, and I'll thank you not to malign my professional reputation.' Farley's protest seemed just a bit too polished, as if he'd been expecting the accusation.

'She can't very well argue with you now, can she?' Cullen pointed out, then added, 'What about the client who brought sexual harassment charges against you two years ago, Mr. Farley?'

'Those charges were dropped! The whole thing was a complete fabrication, and I was exonerated!' Farley took a step back and pulled off his safety glasses. The rubber had left a red imprint like a brand against the pasty skin of his forehead. 'She had a grudge against me. Her dog had died and she couldn't deal with it. The judge accepted that.' Lowering his voice, he said confidentially, 'Look, Dawn Arrowood did flirt with me, I'll admit that. She was one of those women who think every man on earth should fall at their feet. But I never crossed the line with her.'

'Then you won't mind telling us where you were from the time you left the surgery that day until you arrived home,' said Gemma.

'But I-' Farley glanced from Gemma to Cullen. 'I went for a drink. At The Sun in Splendour. You must know it,' he added, as if that somehow gave his story credibility.

Cullen had met friends there for a drink. It was a yuppie pub, frequented by well-dressed, well-off young men and women, like Dawn Arrowood. 'So you left your surgery before five o'clock, checked out the action at the pub, then arrived home about, what, half past six? Then what did you do?'

'I- I'm not sure exactly what time it was. I worked out here for a while, until my wife called me for dinner.'

'And do you always shower before you begin working in your shop, Mr. Farley?' asked Gemma.

'What? I don't understand.'

'Shower.' Gemma pointed at the cubicle, just visible at the back of the room. 'Your wife said you were showering when she came in at half past six. That seemed a bit odd to me- I thought the idea was to shower when you'd finished your project.'

The whites of Farley's eyes glinted. 'It was my wife. She doesn't like me going to the pub, so I showered to get rid of the smell.'

Had he washed away the smoke and perfume from the bar, wondered Cullen? Or Dawn Arrowood's blood? 'You didn't tell your wife you'd been to the pub?'

'No. I- I said I had to work late. You're not going to tell her, are you?'

'Oh, I'm afraid you've worse problems than that, Mr. Farley,' Gemma said with a sigh. 'Such as explaining to your wife why the police are searching your workshop and your car.'

***

'Another house-to-house inquiry, then?' Doug asked as they drove back to the station an hour later. They had waited for the forensics team to arrive, then cautioned Farley to keep himself available for further questioning.

'For a sighting of the Astra? Yes. And it won't be popular on Christmas Eve, I can tell you.'

'Arrowood made the nine-nine-nine call at six twenty-two. Would Farley have had time to kill Dawn, then get home and into the shower by half past?'

'That's making two assumptions,' said Gemma. 'The first is that Farley's wife is telling the truth about the time. For all we know he's primed her and she's lying through her teeth.'

'And the second?'

'The second is that Dawn had just died when Karl found her. She might have died five, ten, even fifteen minutes earlier. Her body was in a sheltered spot, which could have delayed cooling, and the pathologist certainly won't swear to an exact time on the stand.'

'One thing you can say about Farley,' Cullen mused. 'He would certainly know how to wield a scalpel.'

Gemma frowned. 'I've just remembered. Bryony told me the surgery was burglarized recently. She said some supplies and instruments were missing. I wonder…'

'A scalpel?'

'It's possible,' Gemma said. 'I'll ask Bryony. And I'll have forensic pick up some of the surgery's scalpels for comparison, just in case we do turn up a murder weapon. It is the season of miracles, after all.'

Cullen was silent, concentrating on his driving. Then he said, 'How do you manage to keep your patience? Sometimes I think it will drive me bonkers, the waiting.'

'Me? Patient?' Gemma gave a snort of derision. 'Kincaid would fall over himself laughing if he heard that. He's the one never gets his feathers ruffled, while he's always on at me about staying calm. But…' Her smile faded. 'It gets easier as you go along, somehow. There's a place you get to, if you can put your mind in neutral, where sometimes things click into place.' She gave a little shrug. 'I know that sounds like rubbish… And of course you have to have the right bits of information floating round in your head for it to happen…'

'Trust the process, rather than forcing it? Is that what you're saying?'

'Yeah, I suppose so.' She gave him a conspiratorial smile. 'But in the meantime, I'm going Christmas shopping.'

***

How had she ended up in the last-minute Christmas crush, just like any man? Gemma wondered, but she suspected that indecision had fueled her procrastination as much as busyness. She shoved and elbowed her way to the nearest department store, riding the escalator up to the toy department with a torrent of shoppers.

She saw the perfect gift for Toby immediately. It was a fireman's kit, complete with a little bunker coat and hat, and a set of bright red, two-way radios with a base station. Toby would love it, she knew, but then she'd never expected any difficulty finding something that catered to a four-year-old's interests.

Kit, however, was a different matter. Teetering on the edge of adolescence, too old for most toys, but not yet ready to graduate to the teenage realm of music, clothes, and cash. She wandered through the aisles, chewing on a fingernail as she deliberated, rejecting one item after another. At last something caught her eye- a boxed set of science questions. It contained hundreds of cards (hours of fun for home or car, the label promised her) and it was just the sort of thing Kit would find irresistible.

But was that enough, she wondered as she rode back down to the ground floor with her purchases. Then a thought occurred to her and she stopped at the bottom of the escalator, blocking the traffic behind her until someone gave her a not-so-gentle nudge. In one of the boxes Kit had brought from Grantchester, she'd glimpsed an unframed photo of his mother. The lens had caught Vic laughing into the camera, full of life and energy.