Final Witness

Chapter 27

The man was dressed in a white paper suit. The police had given it to him that morning to replace his clothing, which had been removed for forensic examination. And it wasn’t just his clothing that the police had taken. They’d also gotten his passport, travel documents, and a neck brace that he had been wearing at the time of his arrest. When on, it had concealed a thick scar that ran down behind his right jawbone into his strong bull neck.

Every police officer worth his salt knew that the paper suit was a sure way of stripping the suspect of his defenses, making him more likely to crack under questioning. But it wasn’t working its magic with this man. He wore the suit as if it were tailor-made, shaking out his thick black hair over its collar. He had his long, muscular legs stretched out in front of him as if he didn’t have a care in the world. And he said nothing. Just stared at Detective Sergeant Hearns with a half smile playing across his bloodless lips, while the big policeman asked question after question and got no reply. Jonathan Barry Rowes was exercising his right to silence.

Hearns knew he was having no effect. It was bloody-mindedness that kept him going, and afterward he had no idea why Rowes started to talk. Perhaps he just got bored. Clearly any advice given by the shifty-looking lawyer sitting beside Rowes in the interview room was entirely irrelevant. He was the type of man who made his own decisions.

“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly, interrupting Hearns in the middle of a question about Rowes’s Mercedes C-class car.

“Detective Sergeant Hearns of the Ipswich Police. I introduced myself at the start of the interview, Mr. Rowes.”

“Sure you did. But it’s not your fucking surname I’m after, Sergeant. What’s the name your parents gave you? Or didn’t you have any fucking parents?”

Rowes’s voice remained soft and slow. There was no increase in volume or emphasis to accompany the abuse and foul language. He kept his small, dark eyes fixed on the policeman across the table.

Hearns looked away for a moment, twisting his stubby-fingered hands together. He was remembering like a mantra the section in the training manual headed “Never lose your temper when interviewing a suspect.” He needed to humor Rowes if he was going to get any answers to his questions.

“Martin,” he said after a pause. “My parents called me Martin.”

“Marty. Funny name for a copper. Well, Marty, you’re trying to tell me something, aren’t you? Isn’t that the truth?”

“No. All I’ve been doing is asking you questions, which you’ve been declining to answer. That’s your right.”

“Oh, come off it, Marty. You’re telling me I’m dead in the water. My DNA matches the blood on the windowsill, and there’s fuck-all I can do about it. I’ve got that moron, Lonny, to thank for that. The idiot pushed me when I was trying to pick the glass out. He’s always been in too much of a hurry. It’ll get him in trouble one of these days.” Rowes laughed harshly.

“Lonny who?” asked Hearns.

“Lonny nothing. Don’t ask stupid questions, Marty. It doesn’t suit you. Now, what was I saying? Yeah, DNA. The scientists have got the better of us. Not just me. You too, Marty. No need for any of your old-fashioned police work anymore, is there? Just grab a blood sample, send it off to the lab, and hey presto, Johnny Burglar gets ten years. You’ll be out of a job soon, Marty.”

“I agree that it’s certainly changed things. Except that in your case we didn’t have your DNA to make the comparison. Not until we found you, that is.”

“Until I dropped into your lap, you mean. You didn’t find me, Marty. The kid did. Get your facts right. You screwed up the investigation. That was your contribution.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion, Mr. Rowes. But the point is you’ve been arrested and this is your opportunity to give your side of the story.”

“Uncle Marty. Always looking after my interests. No, you just want answers for your stupid questions. And you know, thinking about it, there’s really no reason not to talk, is there? I’m going down anyway, thanks to this DNA garbage. So ask away, Marty. Let me satisfy your copper’s curiosity.”

“The murder. Whose idea was it? Yours or Greta’s?”

“Mine. I suggested it because I needed her. And she had to have an incentive for getting involved. She wanted to be Mrs. Big Time, and His Lordship was never going to divorce the lady of the house.”

“So it was your idea. Good. How long before the murder did you and Greta first start talking about it?”

“Conspiring, you mean. Not long. I saw her picture in the paper leaving some fancy restaurant with that creep, Peter Robinson. I did some research, and then I went and talked to her. I hadn’t seen her in over a year.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t like the idea at first. Didn’t want to get her hands dirty. But she soon changed her mind when I threatened to tell lover boy about her and me. I’ve always been one of her best-kept secrets, you know. She wouldn’t tell her parents when we got married. We had to sneak off to Liverpool when no one was looking. So anyway, she signed up to getting rid of Her Ladyship, but then she kept on getting me to wait because she wasn’t sure she’d got His Lordship hooked. I got bored in the end.”

“And whose idea was it to go back to the house before the trial? Yours or Greta’s?”

“Mine. She got mad about it afterward. She loves the little runt, or used to anyway.”

“So what were you going to do with Thomas when you found him?”

“I was going to make him fucking disappear. Give him to Lonny. He’s good at looking after other people’s brats.”

Rowes’s voice was still even, but he had let his anger show through for a moment. It was as if a door had suddenly opened and shut, allowing Hearns a glimpse of something obscene, something he’d never seen before.

“Disappear temporarily or permanently?” he asked.

Rowes smiled and said nothing.

“And Greta had nothing to do with this?”

“Of course she fucking didn’t. Didn’t you hear me the first time? Thomas was the child she never had. Sweet Greta Rose is a crazy woman, but you know that already, don’t you, Marty? Like that locket. What a fucking stupid idea, but she insisted on it. I’d never have given it to her if I’d known what she was going to do with it. Put the bloody thing in a desk and wait for the kid to find it. Lonny could have done better than that.”

The idea of Rowes diagnosing anyone as crazy struck Hearns as ludicrous, but he let it pass.

“What happened to the jewels?” he asked.

“Forget it, Marty. I’m not telling you that. Don’t be stupid.”

“How did you feel about Greta and Peter? Your wife with another man. That can’t have made you happy?”

“Ex-wife, Marty. You don’t know anything, do you? And you call yourself a fucking detective. God help Ipswich. That’s what I say.”

Hearns resisted the temptation to hit back. Rowes was getting angry, and he probably wouldn’t answer many more questions before he clammed up again.

“All right, ex-wife. It still must have upset you.”

“No, it didn’t. I loved the idea of Mr. Big Shot shacking up with his wife’s killer. And him finding out about it at the trial was the best bit of all. Now he’ll have to live with the knowledge of who Greta is for the rest of his life. Serves him right. Fucking creep.”

“Why does it serve him right? What did he do to you?”

“He slept with Greta. Isn’t that enough?” shouted Rowes, finally losing his temper. “She should have stayed with me. I got her away from her pig of a father, and I married her. It’s not my fault she took all those stupid drugs and lost the baby.”

“But it’s never your fault, is it, Mr. Rowes? A woman is dead because of you. A boy has lost his mother. What do you say about that?”

Rowes said nothing, but then again, he didn’t need to. His response was written across his face. Hearns had never seen such concentrated rage, such a devouring hatred in anyone. Not in twenty-five years of police work.

“All right, you’ve got nothing to say,” he said. “And I’ve got no more questions. This interview is terminated. I’m turning off the tape.”

Hearns flicked a switch on the wall and left the interview room almost at a run. He needed to get out in the air.