The House in the Woods (Atticus Priest Book 1) Read online

She stared at him, Lamza’s voice fading into an abstract buzz, until Atticus realised what she was doing and angled his head a degree or two so that he was looking at her. He smiled and she turned away, her face reddening, irritated with herself.

  46

  The morning session was spent on Lamza’s background, his present circumstances, a description of his meeting with Ralph Mallender and the relationship that had subsequently developed between them. Abernathy’s examination was only halfway through by the time the court rose for lunch.

  Mack met Lamza on the way to the witness room.

  “How was I?” he said.

  “I can’t talk to you in the middle of your evidence, Freddie.”

  “Did you see how he was looking at me?”

  “I can’t—”

  “Ralph,” he said, not even hearing her. “He hates me.”

  It was heavy on the melodrama, and, despite the wetness in his eyes, Mack could tell that he was over-egging it for effect.

  “If it’s upsetting you,” Mack said, “then look at Mr. Abernathy. Or look at the jury. Don’t look at Ralph.”

  Lamza said that it was difficult—Mack knew that he was fishing for attention—but that he would try. Mack smiled, told him to get a sandwich and eat it in the witness room, and made her way outside.

  There was a sandwich shop near to the court, and Mack made her way to it, enjoying the fresh air and a moment of peace. She bought herself a ham and cheese baguette and a Diet Coke and, seeking somewhere quiet, she took the subway under the roundabout and found an empty wooden bench on one of the paths that led to the other subways. Traffic rushed around the road above the little hollowed-out depression, but at least it was secluded.

  She found herself thinking about Andy. It was Friday today; there was a good chance that Somerville would rise early and, if he did, she might be able to get home at a reasonable hour. She wondered whether Anne, their babysitter, would be available on short notice. It would be good to go out, to do something that normal couples did, to get away from Ralph and the trial and everything else that went along with it.

  She took out her phone and was about to call Andy to see if he fancied it when she felt someone at her side.

  “This seat taken?”

  She looked up. It was Atticus.

  “Can I?”

  She gestured to the half-dozen empty benches all around. “You have a wide choice.”

  Atticus ignored her and sat down. “Interesting morning.”

  She found that she was curious as to his opinion. “What did you make of it?”

  He started to unwrap his own sandwich. “I thought he was a melodramatic queen.”

  “Anything in particular?”

  “He’s clearly a narcissist. Lack of empathy. Very touchy. And the humblebragging…”

  “That can be annoying,” she admitted.

  “I also got the very strong impression that he assumed that everyone that he liked and respected must share his opinions, and those whom he did not like would not. And, of course, I doubt you missed the way he looked at his reflection in the glass panel of the door as he came into the court.”

  Mack hadn’t noticed that, but found—as usual—that she felt the urge to burst his bubble. “You don’t have to be particularly observant to see that Freddie Lamza loves himself. Got anything better?”

  “He’s moved on from his previous ‘employment.’” He spoke the final word with a disdainful little kink of his eyebrow.

  “From the prostitution?”

  “Yes. I don’t think he does that anymore. Can’t say for sure, but I’d lay odds that he has very recently started a business as a hairdresser.”

  Her mouth fell open in surprise, and she was immediately annoyed with herself. She shouldn’t have found his parlour tricks impressive, but she couldn’t help it.

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “Am I right?”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t mentioned in evidence.”

  He smiled and turned his finger in the air to indicate that she should continue. “Go on…”

  “At the risk of inflating your already ridiculous ego? Whatever. Freddie trained as a hairdresser at college. He started renting a seat in a salon two weeks ago. I’ll let you show off—how did you know that?”

  “His dominant hand is his right, yes? He has cuts on the middle finger of his left. That’s often the case for hairdressers, particularly those who lack experience. The dexterity with a pair of scissors takes a little while to develop.” Atticus took a bite of his sandwich. “I suspect that he also has some experience in amateur dramatics. He breathes from his diaphragm and often has his hands behind his back—actors do that to improve projection.”

  “He likes musicals,” she said.

  “Of course he does.”

  “Do you think he’s acting now?”

  “No. Not when it comes to the broad strokes, in any event. I don’t think anyone is going to doubt that the two of them had an interlude together.”

  “An ‘interlude’?”

  He grinned. “The looks Freddie was giving him.”

  She couldn’t help but smile. “The pouts?”

  Atticus pursed his lips and flashed a look at her from beneath lowered lashes. “A lover spurned,” he said vampishly.

  “You didn’t have to interview him for two days.”

  “One of the benefits of being told my services were no longer required.”

  She looked up at him and wondered whether he was making a point.

  “Relax,” he said. “I’m just joking. I’m not bitter.”

  “We never really spoke about it, did we?”

  He held up his hands. “What is there to say? I made a mistake; your husband grassed me up; they sacked me. There’s nothing to speak about.”

  She found that she had the need to explain to him. “It wasn’t my decision. What happened—between you and me… It wouldn’t have made a difference to me being able to work with you.”

  “It would have made a difference to me,” he said and, for a moment, the playful edge to his words was gone, replaced by an honesty and a wistfulness that was immediately disarming. He looked as if he was going to say something else, but then changed his mind. “Look,” he said, “it’s all water under the bridge. You get to interview a hysterical queen, and I get to work for someone who might very well have murdered his entire family. All’s well that ends well.”

  His smile had returned, but Mack knew him well enough to know that he was forcing it.

  “So you think he did do it?” she asked him.

  “I think you have a circumstantial case with a lot of questions to answer, but if you’re asking if he had the opportunity to do it, I think he did. He had the means, too.”

  “And the motive?”

  “The money, obviously. He stands to be a very wealthy man.”

  “But…?”

  He paused.

  She almost didn’t want him to answer, but couldn’t resist it. “Atticus?”

  “The defence has raised some interesting issues. I think Cameron’s problem with anger could be relevant. He makes a reasonably persuasive suspect. I can see why you might have been drawn to him. It would certainly have been convenient.”

  “Convenient?”

  “A murder-suicide would have been a lot easier to clear up than a case as controversial as this one.”

  “But Cameron didn’t do it.”

  Atticus shrugged. “So you say.”

  “And if it wasn’t Cameron,” she went on, “it has to be Ralph.”

  “Not a third party?”

  “There’s no evidence of that at all.”

  “I’m not sure. I read through all of the police notes. It didn’t look like anything was taken, apart from the two handguns from the gun safe—we know where one of those is, but not the other—and Cassandra’s crucifix. The relatives said that she never took that off, yet it wasn’t around her neck when she was found.”

  “True.
The pistols can be explained—we know where one of them ended up, and the other is probably where Ralph—”

  “Or Cameron.”

  “—stashed it.”

  “The crucifix?”

  “We don’t know. But it’s small and would be easy enough to lose. The cleaner couldn’t say for sure whether she was wearing it that afternoon. Maybe she’d lost it.”

  “I don’t like maybes,” Atticus said. He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “What about the figure at the window?”

  “Lennox was wrong.”

  “What if he wasn’t? It couldn’t have been Hugo or Juliet—they would have raised the alarm rather than pacing around the bathroom. How about Cassandra?”

  “The pistol was nowhere near her,” she said. “And what did you mean when you mentioned her this morning?”

  “I can’t say now. But I promise to give you warning if it turns into anything.”

  “But if it’s not a third party, or Cassandra, or Ralph, or the parents…” She paused. “If it’s not them, then we’re left with Cameron.”

  “As Ralph would like you to believe.”

  “Go on, then. You tell me. What happened?”

  “Here’s one possibility,” he said, leaning back. “Cameron takes his father’s pistols from the safe and shoots him in the kitchen.”

  “The others don’t hear anything?”

  “They were watching Die Hard. If the TV was loud, they might not have realised what was happening.”

  She nodded. “Go on.”

  “He goes to the sitting room and shoots his mother and sister. They’re both killed outright. His father is not fatally wounded and tries to call for help. Cameron finds him, but the pistol misfires when he tries to finish him off. The two men struggle—there would’ve been no opportunity for Hugo to fight if the gun had been working correctly. In desperation, Cameron uses the pistol to bludgeon his father to death. At some time shortly thereafter, he hears Ralph at the door and hurries upstairs.”

  “Why? Why not just shoot himself there and then?”

  “Because the pistol is jammed. He’s confused—perhaps the gravity of what he has just done has overcome him. He goes upstairs in a panic to try to unjam it. I’ve seen the ballistics report—there are scratch marks inside the action. I would say it is arguable that he went to find something that he could use to remove a round that had become stuck in the chamber. If it had been my investigation—”

  “Which it wasn’t.”

  “—then I would’ve looked for tweezers that might have matched the scratch marks.”

  “We didn’t find anything like that,” she said.

  Atticus shrugged that off. She didn’t press, because she knew what he would say: just because you didn’t find them doesn’t mean that they weren’t there.

  “Ralph sees his father. He can’t get inside and calls 999. Cameron is still upstairs when Lennox arrives. The window where Lennox thought he saw movement is the bathroom window—perhaps that’s where he found the tweezers. He knows that he needs to finish what he started, so he goes back downstairs to his mother and sister, sits down, and uses his freshly unjammed pistol to shoot himself.”

  She shook her head. “No one heard a shot. Lennox and the uniform were there. Ralph, too.”

  “I agree,” he said. “That’s the main problem with the defence. But shots can be muffled. They can be missed. It’s not impossible.”

  “I don’t buy it,” she said.

  “All right,” Atticus said. “Fine. You say it was Ralph—what about the lack of forensic evidence on his clothes?”

  “He wore something to prevent contamination.”

  “No gunshot residue on his hands.”

  She took a bite of her sandwich and gestured with the half that remained. “Gloves.”

  “So he disposed of everything between killing them and calling 999? The timeline is already tight.”

  “You’ve spoken to him. He’s cunning. That wouldn’t have been beyond him.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. He buried it all in the forest.”

  “Find anything like that?”

  “You know we didn’t,” she said.

  “It has to be somewhere.”

  “It doesn’t matter. There was no residue on Cameron’s hands, either. And there were no marks or injuries on his body that would have indicated a fight with his father.”

  “That’s easy enough,” Atticus retorted. “Hugo had already been shot. He was on his last legs. Couple of bangs on the head and it’s all over.”

  “A couple of bangs on the head? You saw the blood in that room.”

  He shrugged and took another bite of his sandwich.

  Mack found that she was enjoying the banter even as Atticus picked at her evidence. “Got anything else?” she said.

  He swallowed. “I could do this for days. How did Ralph get into and out of a locked house?”

  “The coal hole.”

  Atticus raised his hands and held them a short distance apart. “It’s narrow. Would he fit?”

  “He hasn’t said that he wouldn’t.”

  “A mistake,” Atticus suggested. “I think it would be a tight squeeze. He might not.”

  “You’ll have to account for the pistol if you’re going to prove that it was Cameron,” she said. “We found it too far away from his body.”

  “How careful were the CSIs with the evidence?”

  “Come on,” she protested. “You’re not seriously suggesting that they moved it? You’re reaching.”

  “Yes, but I’d still raise the possibility in evidence. You remember the Baxter murder? The CSI who knocked over the table with the knife on it?”

  “Only too well.”

  “So it does happen.”

  “Only this time it didn’t.”

  “Go on, then,” he replied with a smile. “Your turn. What happened?”

  She nodded and, looking him right in the eye, laid out the prosecution’s case with a little extemporising for added colour.

  “Ralph goes back to the house after the argument. His father lets him in. He pulls the gun and shoots him, then goes through to the sitting room and shoots his brother, sister and mother. Hugo is still alive. The gun jams when Ralph tries to shoot him. Ralph uses the gun to bludgeon him to death. He puts the gun on the floor near to Cameron and locks the door from the inside.”

  “He doesn’t put the gun in Cameron’s hand? Or in his lap?”

  “He makes a mistake.”

  “Now you’re grasping.”

  She ignored that. “He takes off whatever it was that he was wearing to reduce the chance that he picks up any forensic evidence. Maybe he has a shower to make sure he’s clean—the shower tray was damp when we got there. He goes into the cellar to the coal hole, pushes the cover off and climbs out. He hides the gloves and the clothes somewhere and calls the police.”

  “It’s all circumstantial,” Atticus said. “Lots of evidence that suggests it could be him, nothing determinative.”

  “We’ve got Lamza,” she said.

  “You do. And we’ll see how he holds up this afternoon. I suspect the case will be decided by the time we are adjourned for the weekend. Anyway—thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For the conversation. It’s good to have at least one friendly face in CID. Everyone else hates me.”

  She was about to respond when she saw that he was joking. The flippant mask was back, put aside for just a moment before he put it on again. Mack knew that Atticus didn’t like to show weakness, and that he covered up his vulnerability with self-deprecation and sarcasm. It had taken weeks for him to put that aside for her, even when she told him that she could see through the façade. She had told him that he didn’t have to pretend to be someone else for her, and that she preferred the authentic Atticus to the face that he showed to the world. She had wondered if she would ever see that vulnerable side again and, now that she had, she was reminded how attractive she f
ound it.

  A bus rumbled to a stop at the red light above them. The signage on the side of the vehicle was visible from where they were sitting: it was an advertisement for the film that Andy wanted to see. Mack felt a flash of guilt that she had spent lunch with Atticus, and decided it was time to bring it to an end.

  “We’d better go back separately,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t want people talking.”

  She took another bite of her sandwich and dropped the rest into the bin.

  “That was fun,” he said. “Hashing out a case together. Just like old times.”

  He gave her a wink, wished her good luck for the afternoon’s session, and set off for the subway. Mack watched him go, gave him a minute to start up the road, and then followed.

  47

  Atticus watched Freddie Lamza carefully as he made his way back to the witness box. He had been surprised by his appearance when he gave his evidence in the morning session. He looked nothing like his mugshot from the solicitation conviction or his appearance in the BBC documentary that he had watched on YouTube. His clothes were obviously not cheap: the suit looked new, and, given the way it fitted, was likely bespoke; the white shirt looked new, too. His hair had been styled and his skin was fresh and clear. He had been dressed cheaply before; his hair had looked dirty and unkempt, and his skin had looked greasy and unhealthy, scattered with acne.

  Abernathy guided Lamza through the rest of his evidence, eventually settling on the subject of the things that Lamza claimed Ralph had told him about his family. Lamza testified that Ralph had made regular comments about how rich the family was, about how much land the farm had and how profitable it had been for such a long time. The farmhouse, he reported, was worth in excess of a million pounds, and there was a large estate both around it and in the fields nearby. Ralph had said that he would inherit it one day and that he couldn’t wait for that day to come.

  Abernathy gently guided the evidence along, moving Lamza to the central thrust of the case against Ralph.

  “Mr. Lamza,” he said, “I would like to take you back to the conversation that you had with the defendant in your flat in London in October of last year. Would you tell the court what you say the defendant said to you?”