It is at the point of the hairbrush’s introduction into the interviews-three days after the toddler’s body was found-that the boys confess fully to the crime. It is, perhaps, one of the additional horrors of the murder of John Dresser that when the perpetrators of this ghastly crime confessed, only one of them had a parent present. Rudy Arnold sat by his son throughout. Ian Barker had only his grandmother and Michael Spargo was accompanied only by social workers.
Chapter Twenty-Three
WHOEVER HAD KILLED JEMIMA HASTINGS, AS THINGS TURNED out, was someone who’d worn a yellow shirt to do it. Lynley learned the details of this article of clothing upon his return to New Scotland Yard, where the team was meeting in the incident room and a photo of the shirt-now in the possession of forensics-was newly up on one of the china boards.
Barbara Havers and Winston Nkata had arrived from the New Forest, Lynley saw, and he also saw from Barbara’s expression that she wasn’t happy about being recalled to London, blood-stained yellow shirt or not. She was fighting back a need to speak, which in her case meant fighting back a need to argue with the acting superintendent. Nkata, on the other hand, seemed acquiescent enough, displaying the easiness of disposition that had long been an integral part of his character. He lounged at the back of the room, sipping from a plastic cup. He nodded at Lynley and tilted his head towards Havers. He, too, knew she was itching to walk on the wrong side of whatever line Isabelle Ardery had drawn for her.
“…still unconscious,” Ardery was saying. “But the surgeon indicates he’ll be brought round tomorrow. When that happens, he’s ours.” And to Lynley, bringing him fully into the picture, “The shirt was among the clobber in the Oxfam bin. It’s got a significant bloodstain on the front of it, right side, and on the right sleeve and cuff. It’s with forensics, but for the moment we’re assuming the blood is our victim’s. Agreed?” She didn’t wait for Lynley’s reply. “Right, then. Let’s put a few things together. We’ve two Oriental hairs in the victim’s hand, no defensive wounds on her, a pierced carotid artery, and a Japanese man in possession of the murder weapon and with her blood on his clothing. What’ve you got to add from today, Thomas?”
For the team, Lynley recapped what he’d learned from Yolanda. He added for them, and for Isabelle as well, the details he’d had off Abbott Langer, the bartender Heinrich, and Frazer Chaplin. He knew he was about to devastate Isabelle’s position, but there was no way round it: He concluded by saying, with a nod at the large photo of the shirt, “I think we have two individuals interacting with Jemima in Abney Park Cemetery, guv. There was nothing in Matsumoto’s wardrobe even vaguely resembling that shirt. He wears black and white-not bright colours-and even if that weren’t the case, the clothing he had on that day, a tuxedo, was itself stained with her blood, as you’ve just said. He can’t have been wearing both the tuxedo and the yellow shirt. So with yet another article of clothing bloodstained and with Jemima going to the cemetery to speak with a man, we’ve got two blokes there instead of one.”
“That’s how I’ve got it figured,” Barbara Havers put in quickly. “So, guv, it seems to me that recalling Winnie and me to London-”
“One bloke to kill her and the other to…what?” John Stewart asked.
“To watch over her, I suspect,” Lynley said. “Something at which Matsumoto, seeing himself as her guardian angel, failed miserably.”
“Hang on, Thomas,” Ardery said.
“Hear me out,” Lynley replied. He saw her eyes widen slightly and he knew she wasn’t pleased. He was going in a completely different direction, and God knew she had very good reason for the investigation’s maintaining its progress towards Matsumoto as the killer. “A bloke met her there to hear her hard truths,” Lynley said. “We’ve got this from the psychic and, her profession aside, I think she’s to be believed. If we ignore all Yolanda’s additional maundering about Jemima and the house in Oxford Road, she’s merely relating to us her own encounters with the woman. So from her we know that a man in Jemima’s life needed to hear something and Yolanda suggested a ‘place of peace’ for their meeting. Jemima knew about the cemetery, as she’d been photographed there. That was the spot she chose.”
“With Matsumoto just happening to be there?” Ardery demanded.
“He likely followed her.”
“All right. But let’s assume this wasn’t the only time he followed her. Why would it have been? Why only on this particular day? That makes no sense. So if he was stalking her, he likely was the man who needed to hear the hard truths, those being leave me alone or I’ll have you for stalking. But he anticipates this is the way the conversation will go and, like all mad stalkers, he’s come with a weapon. Yellow shirt or not, bloodstained tuxedo or not, how do you explain that weapon in his possession, Thomas?”
“How do you explain the blood on two kinds of clothing?” John Stewart put in.
Glances were exchanged among the others present. It was his tone. He was taking sides. Lynley didn’t want this. It was not his intention to turn the investigation into a political intrigue. He said, “He sees her meet someone in the cemetery. They decamp to the chapel annex for a more private word.”
“Why?” Isabelle asked. “They’re already in a private spot. Why does it need to be more private?”
“Because whoever she’s there to meet is there to kill her,” Havers put in. “So he makes the request. ‘Let’s go over there. Let’s go in that building.’ Guv, we need to-”
Lynley held up a hand. “Perhaps they’re arguing. One of them gets up, begins to pace. The other follows. They go inside but only the killer emerges. Matsumoto sees this. He waits for Jemima to come out as well. When she doesn’t, he goes to investigate.”
“For God’s sake, wouldn’t he notice the other bloke had blood on his shirt?”
“He may have done. Perhaps that’s why he went to investigate. But I think it’s more likely that the other bloke would have taken that shirt off and stowed it. He’d have to have done so. He can’t leave the cemetery with blood all over him.”
“Matsumoto did.”
“Which is what suggests to me that he didn’t kill her, not that he did.”
“This is bollocks,” Ardery said.
“Guv, it isn’t,” Havers broke in, and her tone declared she was serious this time. She would be heard and damn the consequences. “There’s something not right in Hampshire. We need to get back there. Winnie and I-”
“Oh you two lovebirds,” John Stewart put in.
Lynley said automatically, “That’ll do, John,” forgetting his return from acting superintendent to inspector.
“Sod off,” Havers told Stewart, undeterred. “Guv, there’s more to be looked into in the New Forest. This bloke Whiting…? Something’s not right about him. There’re contradictions all over the place.”
“Such as?” Isabelle asked.
Havers began leafing through her disaster of a notebook. She shot a look at Winston, saying Get involved here, mate. Winston stirred and came to her aid. “Jossie’s not what he seems, guv,” he said. “He and Whiting are connected somehow. We’ve not got to the root of things, but the fact that Whiting knew ’bout Jossie’s apprenticeship suggests to us-to Barb an’ me-that he was behind Jossie getting it in the first place. An’ that suggests he forged those letters from the technical college. We can’t see who else might’ve done it.”
“For God’s sake, why would he do that?”
“Could be Jossie’s got something on him,” Nkata said. “We don’t know what. Yet.”
Havers said, “But we could find out if you’d let us-”
“You’ll stay here in London as you’ve been ordered.”
“But, guv-”
“No.” And to Lynley, “It’s just as easy to work this the other way round, Thomas. She meets Matsumoto in the cemetery. She goes with Matsumoto into the chapel annex. They have their words, he uses the weapon on her, and he flees. The other, wearing a yellow shirt, sees this. He goes into the annex. He comes to her aid but she has a wound that’s beyond aid. He gets her blood on him. He panics. He knows how this is going to look once his history with Jemima comes to light. He knows the cops look hard at whoever first comes upon the victim and reports it, and he can’t afford that. So he runs.”