Wheel of Fire Page 18

  The paramedics exchanged glances. ‘I don’t like it,’ said the taller one.

  Both women looked doubtful.

  ‘Your car,’ interjected Janice Grey, addressing Vogel with surprising assertiveness. ‘Just you and me.’

  This time she successfully shook herself free of the paramedics, and Vogel proceeded to escort her to the vehicle whilst the medics looked uncertainly on.

  ‘So, what exactly is it you want to tell me, Mrs Grey?’ asked Vogel, once the pair of them were safely ensconced on the back seat.

  The woman no longer seemed quite so sure of herself.

  ‘I’m frightened half out of my wits, I’ll tell you that,’ she said. ‘It’s all gone wrong, you see. The fire, none of it, none of it was supposed to happen. Not like this. And then my George …’

  Her voice tailed off.

  ‘Mrs Grey, you said that before, what exactly do you mean by “none of it was supposed to happen”?’asked Vogel.

  Janice Grey shook her head, very slowly, from side to side. Her voice was quiet when she spoke again, barely more than a whisper. ‘It wasn’t,’ she said. ‘It really wasn’t. Nobody was meant to be harmed. My George wouldn’t hurt a fly, not my George. And now he’s gone. They’ve killed him. Killed my George, that’s what they’ve done.’

  ‘Who, Mrs Grey? Who has killed George?’

  ‘I don’t know, I really don’t know. That’s the trouble. But they tried to do me in ’an all last night. I’m damned sure of that.’

  ‘Mrs Grey, why don’t you try to tell me what you do know,’ encouraged Vogel.

  The woman looked confused. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes. That’s what I want to do. It’s just, well, it’s all such a mess. And I don’t know where to begin.’

  ‘You could try to begin at the beginning, Mrs Grey,’ said Vogel.

  The woman nodded. ‘I must, I must,’ she said, almost as if she was addressing herself.

  ‘It began just over a year ago. My George, well, he knows people, doesn’t he? You know, people who do thing others can’t. Or won’t.’

  Vogel got the picture. After all, George Grey was a petty criminal with a considerable record of minor offences. Additionally, over the years he had probably been involved in all kinds of nefarious activities which had never come to the attention of the law. He almost certainly did know people able and willing to perform all kinds of undesirable services.

  ‘I understand,’ said Vogel.

  And he did. Only too well.

  ‘Yes,’ murmured Janice Grey. ‘Anyway, my George knew a man who knew a man who knew Sir John. George was asked if he might be prepared to look after Sir John. That meant coming down here and setting up home here. Driving, working around the place, gardening, odd jobs, that sort of thing, and a bit of security. But the inference was that George may be asked to do things above and beyond the usual call of duty. However, the pay would more than compensate. And I would be employed too. We didn’t know as what exactly at first. We didn’t know Sir John was ill. That was what this was all about. That and the money.’

  ‘The money?’ queried Vogel.

  ‘Yes. The money. It’s always about money with people like that, isn’t it? Anyway, George and I talked it over. And it didn’t take much talking about. Things was pretty bad for us, well, my bit of trouble didn’t help …’

  The woman paused. ‘It was lies all of it. Like I told you before. And so the court found. But my work, my real work, was gone for good. It’s true enough what they say too. Mud sticks. We managed to get a little house in Stepney, when we got together, but we couldn’t keep up the payments. I still had legal fees to pay, and then George lost ’is market stall. We’d ’ad some good times, as well as the bad, mind. Never a lot of in-between, though, and latterly there’d been only bad times.

  ‘So, we both agreed, if the deal was as good as was being promised we’d have to go for it. We knew it was a bit dodgy, of course, but we reckoned a man like Sir John Fairbrother would know what he was about, that we wouldn’t be at too much risk. And George, well, he was always a bit of a chancer.

  ‘It was arranged that George would meet Sir John, and when he came back, well, I could tell he’d been shocked by something, but he never did tell me what it was. He just said he couldn’t believe his luck. The deal was good all right. We’d have The Gatehouse to live in, rent free, and we’d be paid £1,000 a week each. There’d be opportunity for bonuses too. Big bonuses. “What will we have to do for them,” I asked. “You won’t have to do anything,” George said. “It’ll be all down to me.” Of course, it didn’t work out like that. But George said that’s how it would be, and they wanted me too, because I was a nurse, Sir John had Parkinson’s, and he was determined to keep his condition as quiet as possible. So the bank wouldn’t be harmed. “That was all,” said George.

  ‘Well, I should have realised, even if George didn’t, if something looks too good to be true, it usually is. But when we got here, everything did seem all right for a while. Albeit a bit odd. We didn’t see Sir John for a long time. Or I didn’t anyway. By the time I met him for the first time it was obvious he was a very sick man, badly affected by his illness. He needed me then, didn’t he? His speech was the worst. He’d taken the decision to shut himself off from the world, and our job, George and mine, was to look after him and keep the world out.

  ‘Then one day George came in, looking a bit shaken, and he said Sir John had told him he wanted him to burn the house down.’

  At first Vogel thought he must have misheard.

  ‘Sir John told George what?’

  ‘That he wanted him to burn the house down.’ Janice Grey sounded quite matter of fact.

  ‘With him in it?’ queried Vogel, trying to sound just a matter of fact.

  ‘Well yes, apparently that’s what Sir John wanted so it wouldn’t look like he could have had anything to do with it.’

  ‘Ummm. Rather a high-risk strategy then, as it turned out,’ said Vogel mildly.

  ‘I told you, Mr Vogel, none of that was supposed to have happened. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.’

  ‘Right. And did George tell you why Sir John wanted him to burn down his house with him in it?’

  ‘Yes. It was because he had money troubles. Big financial problems. His own, personal like, and the bank. He wanted the insurance money. That’s what he was after.’

  ‘Mrs Grey, there’s no doubt Blackdown Manor was a valuable property and would have been substantially insured, but in terms of bailing out an international bank the amount involved would be little more than a drop in the ocean, don’t you think?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that, would I? There was a Gainsborough portrait, wasn’t there, worth millions? George said it was all about cash flow. Sir John just needed to keep all his balls in the air for a few more months.’ Janice Grey managed a small smile. ‘He always talked like that, did my George,’ she commented.

  ‘So, it was George who set fire to the house?’

  ‘Well yes, but only because Sir John wanted him to. He told George there was going to be an enormous bonus for him. A six-figure sum, George said.’

  ‘And do I assume then, that there were no armed intruders?’ Vogel asked.

  Janice Grey coloured slightly. She shook her head.

  ‘So how did your husband suffer those stab wounds?’

  Janice looked away from Vogel, avoiding his steady gaze. ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘They were rather unusual injuries, as I am sure you know,’ Vogel said. ‘There was a great deal of blood, but your husband suffered only relatively superficial damage to his body. Extraordinarily fortunate placement, the doctor said at the Musgrove.’

  Janice Grey remained silent and continued to look away from Vogel.

  ‘C’mon, Mrs Grey,’ persisted Vogel. ‘You know perfectly well where I am going with this, don’t you?’

  ‘I do not. I have no idea at all.’

  ‘I think you have, Janice. I believe your husband’s
wounds were inflicted in such a way that as little damage as possible was caused by them. You are an experienced nurse. You would have been able to do that. You would have known how to execute stab wounds so that they actually did far less harm than at first would have appeared. You could do that, couldn’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  Janice Grey’s face was already very pale, her eyes sharply defined in dark wells. She seemed to grow even paler. Just as her husband had done in hospital earlier when Vogel had cross-examined him about his part in the fatal fire.

  ‘I couldn’t stab anyone, I just couldn’t,’ she insisted. ‘Not under any circumstances. And certainly not Georgie. My poor Georgie.’

  She appeared to be choking back tears. Vogel had neither the time nor the inclination to be sympathetic. This was a woman who had already stood trial for murder. In spite of her protestations, who knew what she was really capable of? It was certainly now beginning to look as if both the Greys had been involved to some degree or another in the fire which had razed Blackdown Manor to the ground and taken the lives of two people.

  He ploughed on.

  ‘All right then, Mrs Grey. It’s time you started telling me what did happen that night instead of what you claim didn’t. If you didn’t stab your husband, either in complicity with him or not, and you have admitted there weren’t any intruders, armed or otherwise, then who did?’

  Janice Grey stifled another sob. ‘He did,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ responded Vogel. ‘Who is “he”?’

  ‘George. My Georgie stabbed himself.’

  ‘Your husband stabbed himself?’ queried Vogel.

  He couldn’t keep the surprise from his voice. That was something he hadn’t considered. He could hardly believe it was possible.

  The woman nodded.

  ‘That’s hard to believe, Mrs Grey.’

  Janice Grey narrowed her eyes. ‘Yes, well, that’s as may be,’ she said. ‘But that’s what happened.’

  She shot out the last words with a certain amount of latent aggression.

  ‘Could you perhaps explain exactly how it happened, Mrs Grey?’

  The woman stared blankly ahead. She was clearly very weak. Vogel wondered if he should call the paramedics, but at once dismissed the thought. He needed her story. And he needed it now.

  ‘Were you there, Mrs Grey?’ he asked. ‘Were you with George when he stabbed himself?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The woman’s voice was small.

  ‘So, what happened? C’mon, Mrs Grey!’

  Vogel was a patient man. But he had his limits.

  ‘C’mon,’ he repeated, more loudly. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  Janice Grey turned her head slightly, and looked Vogel in the eye.

  ‘I told George what to do,’ she said.

  ‘What? You told your husband to stab himself?’

  ‘No, no, not that.’ The woman sounded impatient. ‘I’d never have done that. George insisted that I showed him where to stab himself. So that there would be a lot of blood, but not a lot of serious damage. That was the plan. To make it look as if he’d been attacked. George said Sir John was going to make all the pain worthwhile, that the bonus he was going to get would be enough for us to buy our own place again.’

  ‘Didn’t either of you think that setting the house on fire with your employer in it was just a little bit dangerous? Unless you meant for him to die, of course.’

  ‘We didn’t, I swear we didn’t. George knew what he was doing, you see. He trained to be a fireman years ago. He said it was a piece of cake to start a fire which would undermine the structure of the building, but not endanger Sir John in his bedroom. George was careful, he started the fire at the front of the house. Sir John and his nurse were in his bedroom at the back, and it was supposed to be fire-proofed, that’s what George said anyway.’

  ‘But Sir John was endangered, Mrs Grey. About as endangered as you can get. His bedroom may have had fire-proofing, but once that gas tank went off and pretty much lifted the roof from the place, it would have been worse than useless. Sir John died in the fire. Along with his nurse. So what went wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know. It all went according to plan at first. George lit the fire at the front, blocking the main entrance. He piled up some furniture and poured on petrol. I mean, it was always going to look like arson, he suspected that the firefighters would guess that early on, but he didn’t need to hide anything because he was blaming all of it on armed intruders. We knew Sir John and the nurse were going to tell the police there were armed intruders. So, we just thought that would be accepted, and if nobody had died it probably would have been. Anyway, I went over to the house and helped George, helped him stab himself. Then I went back to The Gatehouse, leaving George outside the front of the house on his own. George was sure that the fact that he appeared to be so badly stabbed would shift suspicion away from him. And it would have done, surely, if, if …’

  ‘If the gas tank hadn’t exploded and two people hadn’t died? Is that what you are trying to say, Mrs Grey?’

  The woman nodded. ‘I was in The Gatehouse, looking out through a window. I’d just seen the first fire engine arrive, everything seemed to be going to plan, and then there was this enormous explosion. The entire house just turned into a fireball, instantly. It was pretty obvious it would be a miracle if anyone came out of that alive. I couldn’t believe it. Nothing like that was supposed to happen, you see.’

  ‘Mrs Grey, domestic gas tanks do not readily explode. The fire investigators suspect that the tank had been tampered with. Was your husband responsible for that too?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’

  The woman was clearly agitated, and indignant, somewhat bizarrely so under the circumstances, thought Vogel.

  ‘No. My Georgie wouldn’t have done that. Everybody knows what happens when gas explodes. He just lit a little fire at the front of the house. Just enough for Sir John to be able to claim his insurance. That’s all my Georgie did.’

  Vogel was not at all sure that George Grey hadn’t been responsible for everything which led to the catastrophic fire, but he decided not to push the point. He wanted as much information as he could glean from Janice Grey, whilst her defences were down.

  ‘Did you see your husband again that night, after you’d helped him to stab himself?’

  ‘No, well not here, not at the manor. None of the emergency vehicles could get through at first, could they? So they were all at the end of the drive, right by The Gatehouse. There were armed policemen everywhere too. I stayed indoors, out of the way, only went outside the once, when the house exploded. I couldn’t help myself. But after that, I went back in, like the fireman told me. I didn’t have any choice. It was hours before the fire engines moved down towards the house, and the ambulances.’

  ‘But weren’t you worried about George? You knew he must be lying there injured? You’d been instrumental in that, after all.’

  ‘Only because he made me. And, of course, I was worried. I knew he must have lost a lot of blood. It was terrible, terrible, just sitting there waiting and doing nothing. But George had told me to go home and keep my head down, so that’s what I did. I saw an ambulance leave, and then this police officer came and knocked on the door. He told me George had been injured. He asked me some questions, which I avoided as best I could, then eventually he told me where George had been taken, and I drove in to Taunton hospital after him.’

  ‘Yes, you went to the hospital. You saw George there, and spoke to him, I presume? Because I am told your husband never totally lost consciousness, in spite of his injuries.’

  ‘Yes. I hadn’t been back from The Musgrove long when you and that woman police officer arrived.’

  ‘So, what did your husband tell you that he wouldn’t have told me?’

  ‘Well I don’t know what he told you, do I—’

  ‘C’mon, Mrs Grey, you know exactly what I mean,’ interrupted Vogel.

  ‘All right, all r
ight. Well, George was a bit woozy, they’d sedated him so they could stitch up his wounds. And he was shocked and frightened, frightened he might get done for murder. He said he couldn’t understand what had happened. The gas tank was right at the back of the house, and several metres away from the house. George said they don’t explode easily either, those tanks.’

  Vogel was intrigued. Could it really be possible that George Grey was as puzzled by the exact cause of the explosion as everybody else?

  ‘What did your husband think might have happened, Mrs Grey?’ he asked.

  ‘George thought somebody must have tampered with the tank, so that it leaked, or something like that. That’s what he told me anyway.’

  ‘And who did he think that somebody might have been?’

  ‘He had no idea, no idea at all.’

  ‘Are you quite sure that your husband wasn’t the person who tampered with the tank?’

  ‘Of course he wasn’t,’ said Janice Grey firmly. ‘My George wasn’t a murderer. And he knew how dangerous that would have been, to have gas leaking into the house. He wouldn’t have done anything like that.’

  ‘But, Mrs Grey, you have admitted that it was your husband who set the house on fire. And you were both aware that he intended to do that, and that he had carried out his intention. Wasn’t that dangerous enough in itself?’

  ‘Look, George was quite sure the fire services would get there and put the fire out before any harm came to Sir John or his nurse. And that’s what would have happened if somebody hadn’t interfered. He was sure of that. Told me in the hospital he still believed that.’

  ‘Who do you think did interfere, Mrs Grey?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? No more than George did. But I’ll bet it’s the same people who did for my George, and then came looking for me last night. They’re ruthless murdering scum, it’s because of them Sir John and his nurse died in the fire. Not because of my George.’

  ‘And yet your George chose to execute this plan on a night when the only means of access to Blackdown Manor for fire appliances was blocked by a fallen tree, did he not?’