Limelight, p.27
Limelight, page 27
‘Don’t worry, my darling.’ Tony’s hand has closed over mine. ‘These are early days.’
The next episode of this developing nightmare takes place mid-afternoon. Bullivant and a different detective join us in the interview suite. This is a face I haven’t seen before. She’s young, and overweight, with a fall of reddish hair and rather fetching dimples. Lose a few pounds, I think, and you could transform your prospects. Bullivant introduces her as DC Annie Leadbetter.
‘Do you recognize this item of furniture, Ms Andressen?’ he says.
I’m looking at a photo of Bill Penny’s exquisite chaise longue. My instinct is to say yes but Tony Morse has his shoe on my foot.
‘No comment.’
‘Have you seen it before?’
‘No comment.’
‘Are you aware that it used to belong to Sir William Penny but ended up in Andy McFaul’s bungalow?’
‘No comment.’
‘I’m asking these questions, Ms Andressen, because we believe this chaise may have been a crime scene. We recovered more dog hairs, and there were also traces of Ms Beaucarne’s DNA. Might you be able to account for those? Given that the chaise ended up in McFaul’s bungalow?’
Bullivant’s use of Christianne’s surname chills my blood – so formal, so cold. But far more important is the chronology here.
‘He’s got it wrong,’ I whisper to Tony. ‘I need to tell him.’
‘No way.’ Tony shakes his head.
‘But—’
‘I said no.’
I stare at him, and then blink. Just whose liberty is on the line here? In the interests of the next fourteen years of my life, shouldn’t I correct this gross mistake?
‘My client declines to answer that question,’ Tony murmurs.
‘Ms Andressen?’ Bullivant’s eyes haven’t left my face.
‘No comment.’
‘So be it.’ Bullivant writes himself a note. Tiny handwriting. Each letter perfectly formed. Anal bastard. ‘Our point is this, Ms Andressen. We think your friend may have died on that chaise, and our working assumption is that the dog would also have been put to sleep. There was obviously a coffin readied for the two bodies. I think we can say that with some assurance. Can you confirm that, Ms Andressen? Was the coffin delivered to the bungalow on that Saturday night? Under cover of darkness? And were you in attendance when Ms Beaucarne, the victim, died? That letter she left you suggests a very close, a very warm relationship. You tell us you only knew the victim for a couple of days. I’m afraid we only have your word on that. Might you care to explain how long you’d really known her? And why you lied to us in this regard?’
The word ‘victim’ does it for me. I scarcely heard the rest of the question.
‘Victim is right,’ I say. ‘Much more right than you know. Was she suffering? Yes. Was she picked on? Again yes. But by MND, motor neurone disease, not me, nor anyone else. Do you understand that distinction? Or should I try again?’
‘By all means, Ms Andressen. And why not tell us a little more about you and Ms Beaucarne, while you’re at it.’
I’m angry now, and he knows it. So does Tony Morse. The pressure of his foot on mine is nearly unbearable. Button your lip. Wind your neck in. Like I told you before, this man is playing games with you.
‘Well, Ms Andressen?’ Bullivant is still waiting for an answer.
‘No comment,’ I mutter, ducking my head.
The next flurry of questions pass in a blur. Tony’s right. By losing what little cool I have left, I’ve fallen into this man’s trap. He’s touched a nerve that matters to me, and from my point of view, this second session has turned into a car crash.
Over the next few minutes, while I stonewall every question, Bullivant tries to wind me up again. How difficult it must have been for me to watch a close friend dying. How I may have rationalized what remains a crime, told myself I was doing what I was doing with the very best of intentions. How, indeed, I’d taken up the cudgels against the law of the land on my friend’s behalf.
‘Might any of that be the case, Ms Andressen? Couldn’t you feel her pain? Feel it your duty to send her on her way? Wasn’t that, dare I say it, a Christian thing to do?’
This, I know, is deliberately provocative. Evelyn would be over the table by now, scratching his eyes out.
‘No comment,’ I mutter.
‘That’s a shame.’ It’s Leadbetter this time, her first contribution to the interview, her first stab with her little banderilla. ‘Was it guilt you felt? Or sympathy?’
‘That’s an absurd question.’ It’s Tony’s turn to be angry. ‘Your assumptions are grotesque. My client deserves an apology.’
Leadbetter says nothing. Another hint of a smile from Bullivant.
‘Let’s recap, shall we?’ Leadbetter is studying the notes she’s made. ‘Our contention is that you knew Ms Beaucarne a great deal better than you’re prepared to admit. Quite how you first met her isn’t clear, but no one I know would write a note like that on the basis of a single weekend. So, we think the friendship goes back a while. And we think you also knew about her illness, about the MND. And even if you didn’t, our understanding is that you should have been looking harder because – by all accounts – the evidence was there in plain sight.’
I duck my head, partly in shame. By all accounts is a killer. Leadbetter might be young, she might take better care of herself, but she’s right. They’re obviously talking to other people they’ve arrested – Bill, Beth, Nathan – and all of them probably knew the truth about Christianne. That she had this terrible, terrible disease. And that she was doomed.
‘You’re right,’ I whisper. ‘I should have realized from the start.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘No comment.’
This is getting ugly. For once my assigned role couldn’t be simpler – just two words – but I keep losing my place in the script. Tony’s foot is back on mine. He’s fast losing patience.
‘Let’s talk about Ms Beaucarne’s partner, Ms Andressen.’ Leadbetter again. ‘I imagine you must have known him pretty well, too.’
‘No comment.’
‘Would you describe yourself as friends?’
‘No comment.’
‘Did you think it was your duty, your responsibility, to give him support? Lend him a hand when the time came?’
‘The time?’ I can’t help myself.
‘Yes, Ms Andressen.’ This from Bullivant. ‘When the time came to end it all. And that, of course, is where we get to the real nub of what happened. No one’s pretending for a moment that this wasn’t a deeply tragic situation. No one would deny that for a second. But the law’s the law and it’s our job to gather evidence when we think the law’s been flouted. Is this one of those occasions? We suspect it is. Might there be mitigating circumstances? Of course, but that’s not for us to judge. You might think that all of this serves no purpose, all our questions, the precise circumstances we’re trying to establish, but you’d be wrong. The reason we’re here, the purpose served by your arrest, is to try and tease out the truth. And once we’ve done that, it will be for you to have your say in front of a jury.’
This is like being back at school, I think, listening to one of those kindly lectures from the teacher who’s about to make your life a misery. I so want to have my say here and now. I so want to explain to these people just how wrong they are, but the fact that I can’t just makes me feel even more helpless.
I reach for Tony’s hand, shake my head, fight the tears. Not of pain but of frustration. Tony, bless him, asks for a brief recess, a private moment or two, and after an exchange of glances my tormentors agree to leave us in peace.
‘Ten minutes.’ Bullivant is at the door. ‘I’ll arrange for coffee to be sent in.’
Coffee is the last thing I need. Tony Morse is being stern, telling me to get a grip, telling me simply to obey orders for once in my life, but I barely hear him. Nothing computes any more. Not the setting, the airlessness of this hideous room; not the memory of the faces at Evelyn’s front door pre-dawn this morning; not even the knowledge that two grown-ups who should know better seem to believe I’m capable of murder. Just how do I draw this nightmare to a close? And what does this surreal script have in store when the curtain rises for the next act?
It gets worse. Bullivant and Leadbetter return. Leadbetter has the coffees, which she seems to regard as a peace offering, but I ignore them. Bullivant starts the recording machine again and announces the resumption of the interview. With a voice as flat and colourless as his, he’ll never make it as a DJ, but I expect he knows that already. In any event, he has a new word to table.
‘Fentanyl?’ he asks. This appears to be a question.
‘No comment.’
‘We’ve been able to access your medical records, Ms Andressen. Fentanyl is an opiate. It’s a very powerful painkiller. But you’d know that, of course, because it was prescribed when your condition was at its worst. Am I right?’
‘No comment.’
‘You used it after the operation to remove your brain tumour. You had savage headaches for a while. We understand Fentanyl took the edge off that pain but after a day or two, according to your consultant’s notes, you stopped using the drug. True?’
‘No comment.’
‘In the first place, you were given a month’s supply. We estimate you used only a tiny fraction of that prescription, yet a search of your flat at …’ He peers down at his notes. ‘Four hundred and three Greyfriars Court failed to find any trace of these tablets.’ He looks up. ‘What happened to them, Ms Andressen?’
Once again, I’m trapped. The truth is that the presence of the Fentanyl coincided with the lowest point of my son’s life. Malo was in his late teens. He was truanting full time, hanging out in very bad company, and getting stoned on whatever came his way. Fentanyl, from what I knew of the drug, would have been the end of him. And so I got rid of them.
I’m looking at Tony. He’s not interested in any explanation, just shakes his head.
‘No comment,’ I mutter.
‘Fine. At this point, for all our sakes, I’m afraid I’m obliged to reveal the findings of the post-mortem carried out on Ms Beaucarne. This took place at Wonford Hospital on the fourteenth of December. According to the pathologist’s report, Ms Beaucarne’s stomach contents were still intact. They revealed significant traces of Fentanyl.’ Bullivant looks up. ‘In other words, Ms Andressen, Fentanyl killed your friend. It also, I’m afraid, put paid to the dog. Do you have any comment?’
‘None.’
‘That might be something you regret. You can, of course, obtain Fentanyl via the internet. As you might imagine, we’ve been through Mr McFaul’s laptop and found no trace of even a Google search, let alone an order. He doesn’t have a smartphone, so he couldn’t have used that. Neither has his doctor or Ms Beaucarne’s issued any prescription for the drug. So, short of obtaining it from a street dealer in Budleigh Salterton, there has to be another source. You’re following this, Ms Andressen? You understand where this might lead us?’
‘No comment.’
‘I’m not sure I blame you. Let’s just pause a moment. Let’s try and assess exactly how bad this is looking for you. Annie?’
Leadbetter has been keeping score. She tallies the case against me, item by item. That I probably knew Christianne far better than I’ve let on. That I was naturally a good friend of Andy’s. That I was aware of her favourite clifftop spot. That I had dealings with the bloody dog. That I had access to the chaise longue on the night Christianne probably died. And that, in all probability, the drugs that killed her came from my private stash.
Most of this is nonsense, and I think I can prove it. Bill Penny’s chaise, for instance, was delivered to McFaul’s bungalow a couple of days after Christianne’s disappearance. And when I was wearing Christianne’s plastic mac, I never went near the bloody dog. Yet without the chance to answer back, to make my case, to dispute all this crap, I’m totally helpless.
Alas, it isn’t over. Once Bullivant is certain that I’ve registered the gravity of the situation in which I find myself, he raises one last issue, a hanging thread which might just need a tug or two before I break down and confess all.
‘We need to talk a little more about your friend, Andy McFaul. As I’m sure you know, he broke his bail conditions and absconded. To be specific, he was due to report to Exmouth police station as part of his bail conditions on the twenty-fifth of September, but failed to do so. You’re aware of this?’
‘No comment.’
‘We’ve been looking for him ever since, of course, but we now have grounds to believe that he may have left the country. Without a passport, that would present difficulties, as I expect you can imagine.’
‘No comment.’
‘We understand you went for a flight yesterday with Mr Nathan Kline. True?’
‘No comment.’
‘Fine. According to an account from a witness at the airfield yesterday, you were certainly present in the aircraft. That would suggest to us that you know Mr Kline well, and that you might have approached him on McFaul’s behalf with a view to getting out of the country.’
‘No comment.’
‘We’re not suggesting for a moment that Mr Kline flew McFaul himself, but we’ve made enquiries and we’ve established that McFaul was probably in a light aircraft that took off from a private strip in mid-Devon on the morning of the …’ He checks his pad. ‘Twenty-fourth of September. All cross-Channel flights are mandated to file a General Aviation Report and land at entry airfields in France. This one didn’t. We have grounds to believe that it landed at a private strip inland from the Brittany coast. It would have refuelled there before the aircraft took off again and returned to the UK.’ Bullivant looks up. ‘Our belief is that McFaul was a passenger on the southbound leg of that journey, and that he was dropped off at the private strip. The nearest hamlet is called …’ He glances down to find the name. ‘Poullaouen Le Stancou. Do you know it?’
‘No comment.’
‘Let’s assume you do. It’s a tiny place, just a handful of inhabitants, but that’s not the point because it’s only thirty miles from Perros-Guirec. We understand you have family connections in Perros-Guirec. Is that true?’
‘No comment.’
‘Your mother still lives there?’
‘No comment.’
‘We suspect McFaul had been in touch with your mother, or perhaps you had. We think she arranged for someone to meet him at or near the airstrip to help him on his way. With a car, or even a motorbike, he could be anywhere in Europe. In the Schengen Area, borders are porous. Few checks. Little paperwork. In other words, Ms Andressen, thanks to help from you and your family, Mr McFaul thinks he’s home safe. That may turn out to be wildly optimistic, of course, but for now we think it serves as an explanation.’
I hold his gaze. The only thing that can make this nightmare worse is the involvement of my lovely mum, and now it’s happened. I want to find out whether they’ve been to knock on her door, or whether they’ve alerted the French police, or taken any number of other measures that would make her life a misery. Under certain circumstances, French bureaucracy can be unforgiving and this might well be a case in point.
‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ I say softly.
‘About McFaul?’
‘About everything.’
The interview, mercifully, comes to an end. Both Bullivant and Leadbetter leave the interview suite without a backward glance, and Tony returns from a brief chat with the custody sergeant to confirm that the time allowed for detention has been extended to thirty-six hours. By seven o’clock tomorrow evening, unless they apply to the magistrates for yet another extension, Operation Bulldog must release me.
‘Given today’s developments, they may decide to bail you,’ he adds.
‘Like McFaul?’
‘Exactly. Take a hint, my darling. Find yourself a private pilot and go home.’
‘You mean France?’
He shakes his head. He’s joking, he says, but I don’t find it the least bit funny. The day the consultant told me I had a tumour in my brain rapidly became surreal. Not me. No way. Not at my age. This, years later, isn’t life-threatening but I feel exactly the same sense of dislocation, of fragments of the world I thought I knew whirling away in some cosmic wind. Helplessness is too small a word. A bunch of strangers have taken a very close look at Christianne’s departure and decided that I’m to blame. Telling them they’re wrong, trying to point out that the whole thing is absurd, simply confirms their suspicions. And now, the one man who might – just conceivably – make a difference is about to climb in his car and hit the road.
‘Are the rest still banged up as well? Are you allowed to tell me?’
‘All but one. Beth. They released her an hour ago.’
‘On police bail?’
‘It seems not.’
I nod. She must have painted the inside of that coffin. How on earth did she explain that?
Tony is itching to get away. He’s made some calls and a solicitor called Andrea Gifford will be down to the custody centre first thing tomorrow morning. She’ll press for fresh disclosure from DI Bullivant, and Tony has already briefed her on the thrust of today’s interviews.
‘I’m guessing that was a long conversation.’ I’m trying to muster a smile.
‘You guess right. Did today go well? Not really. Do we now know where they’re headed with this thing? Absolutely. And can we head them off at the pass? No question about it. Andrea’s good. Take her advice, my darling. Who knows, it might come better from a woman.’
He gives me a brief hug, wishes me all the luck in the world, and consigns me to the care of a hovering turnkey. My last image of him is that trademark way he flips up the collar of his cashmere coat as he steps into the gathering dusk.
