“Why didn’t you mention that?”
“I thought it was too long ago to be relevant, Chief Inspector.”
Robin took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. “Why did he leave?”
“The real reason or what he told everyone?”
That sounded encouraging. People who told different people different things featured regularly in Robin’s job. “Both, preferably.”
“Well, the official story was that he’d suffered a couple of concussions and decided to take up something safer, namely darts. ‘Concussion’ would be a bit of an exaggeration. I’d call them simply knocks to the head, but he liked to overdramatize things.” It was said with affection.
“But the truth was . . .?”
“That he got the hump on.” Melanie snorted. “He’d been red-carded in a game because he swore at the ref. He was banned for several matches as a result, and what with that and the stick he got from his teammates, it was all too much for his sense of self-dignity. He never played for Tuckton—or any other club—after that.”
“When did this happen?”
“Oh, let me think. I want to say two years ago but you know how time flies.”
“Is there anything you can use to pin the date down?” That usually helped a witness. It was before we went to Gran Canaria but after the incident with Aunty Clare and the sherry.
“Yes. He got sent off a couple of weeks after we had our car stolen. I think those two combined were the last straw.”
Once he’d put the phone down, Robin called Callum over to check the date of the red-card match against the date of Jamie Weatherell’s fatal accident. If Melanie was to be believed—and Robin saw no reason to doubt her—the game when he’d been sent off had only been a fortnight after the hit-and-run.
“Who attended Osment’s postmortem, by the way?” Robin rarely did that himself these days. He probably had a stronger stomach for it than his old sergeant, Anderson, had possessed, but he’d insisted the bloke attend as part of his development, as Robin had been made to be the officer present by his own boss. Pru always volunteered to be present, although whether out of a personal interest in matters forensic or because she knew Robin didn’t relish the prospect, he didn’t know.
“That was me, sir. Along with Inspector Robertson. He said I needed to get used to being there.”
Robin grinned. “You’ll be telling that to your constables when you’re my rank. I’ve read the report, but you can’t put intonation of voice into the words. What came out that I should know about?”
“Nothing I’m aware of, sir, although I have to admit I zoned out on occasions.” Callum stared at his shoes. “Self-preservation.”
“We’ve all been there, done that. Except Sergeant Davis, of course. Constitution of an ox. Ah,” Robin turned his head towards the door, “and here she is. Time to compare notes.”
Robin got the team together, then allowed Callum to take the lead on explaining what they’d learned from Melanie and Dave, only chipping in to clarify a point or where the constable was put on the spot, for example about what the couple did—or didn’t—get up to in bed. He delivered a reminder that you couldn’t make assumptions about what it meant to be on any particular part of the sexual spectrum.
“Sir,” Sally said, “what if it’s just a case of Nick having a low sex drive? Aren’t we leaping to conclusions by labelling him?” She smiled nervously, clearly unsure about challenging a superior officer.
“You’re quite right.” Robin should have kept more of an open mind on that. Perhaps the prospect of his own lack of sexual outlet for the next few weeks had temporarily blinded him to other people’s varying libidos. “Can you get that clarified, please?”
Sally nodded. “Of course, sir.”
Robin turned to Laurence. “Has anything turned up about Melanie in the files?”
“I’m afraid not, guv’nor. If she was the victim of assault, then she didn’t report it. Nothing else for her, not even a speeding ticket.” Laurence flicked his eyes up from his notes, then down again. “I checked the same question for him too. The sexual-assault-victim angle. Still a no.”
“Thanks. And well done for covering the Nick Osment angle. Lots of officers wouldn’t have thought of that.” He covered over Laurence’s delighted embarrassment by asking, “Find anything for Nick?”
“The only mention of him I can find in the database is when he reported his car stolen, a few years back. We’d had a spate of thefts from vehicles and joyriding at the time, and the idiot had apparently left his car parked outside on the road, with his satnav on view. The vehicle was found a couple of days later, burned out.” Laurence shrugged. “There must have been half a dozen went the same way.”
The car that was stolen a couple of weeks before Osment gave up rugby for good. Robin cast a glance at the incident board. “Could the car thefts have been linked to that hit-and-run?”
“That’s what people wondered at the time, but there wasn’t enough in the way of forensics to link the accident to any vehicle or any of the usual little oiks suspected of nicking them.” Laurence checked his notes. “We caught a couple of lads, and they got sent down for aggravated vehicle theft. Once they were put away—surprise, surprise—the problem stopped.”
“Had they got previous, then, to get a custodial sentence?” Pru asked.
“No, they’d got away with any and everything they’d been doing, up to that point. But one of the vehicles they nicked was owned by a disabled young woman who needed it for work.” Laurence raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, shows you how considerate this pair were. They wouldn’t have known about work, but they must have noticed the adaptations. The judge went mental at them.”
So, it was possible those two lads had been the ones to kill Jamie Weatherell, but short of confession, it was unlikely the police would be able to pin that on them. Time to get back to this victim. “Anything about Osment on social media?”
“Only the usual for both him and Melanie. Holiday snaps. Pictures of the car that replaced the one he had nicked. The usual trivia people fill their profiles with.”
Robin nodded. What a footprint to leave behind: no momentous achievements or works of art, just a stream of posts about after-work cocktails or what people were having for dinner. He tried to shake off his sadness by asking Pru and Sally to update the rest of the team on what they’d found out.
“I’ll pass it over to Sally in a minute,” Pru said, “but I’ll start by confessing to making assumptions. Derek Preese isn’t as old as I expected him to be. I’d built up a mental image that he’d been playing in the seventies, Wales’s glory days and all that. But he’s only early fifties, I’d guess. And what you might call a silver fox.” She gave Sally a grin.
“Stop being sexist, you two,” Callum said. “You wouldn’t like it if we commented on whether Melanie was fit.”
Pru didn’t appear offended at the chastisement; it was typical of what she’d have said if the roles were reversed. “Agreed, but I’d argue it’s acceptable if it’s directly relevant to the investigation.”
“You think it might be?” Robin asked.
“Yes, although I couldn’t link it to the case at present. It struck me that he’s the kind of bloke who has an effect on you, both by looks and force of personality. If he said jump, you’d not just say, ‘How high?’ You’d go and fetch a fence to vault over. Would you agree, Sally?”
“Yep. You can see why his players worship him. He got them all back into training as soon as was decent after the night of the murder and the accident. Said it was the best thing for them, to stop them brooding.”
“‘Get back on the horse, soon as you can,’” Pru said in a gruff Welsh accent that must have mimicked the coach’s voice. Nobody would argue that was inappropriate, given that she was a valleys girl. “Even Dave was there and supposedly as committed in contact as he’d ever been. Takes a lot to persuade somebody to go for it one hundred percent after what happened to Greg.”
“Greg ha
d some input to that,” Sally pointed out. “The players have got a WhatsApp group, and he’d been on there saying there was no point in the team losing two players, especially with this big grudge match coming up against the Tuckton Chiefs the weekend after next. We still don’t know if the timing has any relevance. Anyway, Preese reckons there’s a lot of niggle between the two on the field, although not so much off it. Some of the Hartwood guys played alongside the Tuckton ones when they were still at the local comprehensive school, while others played for the private school the other side of town. They’ve beaten the crap out of each other on the field and drunk each other under the table off it. Sergeant Davis is keen to go and see the match.”
I bet she is. I hope we’ll have got this all done and dusted and be back to Abbotston by then.
“Strictly in the interest of research.” Pru chuckled. She and Sally had clearly hit it off, and while Robin couldn’t quite see yet how this information related to the murder, he’d let them share it, in the interests of harmonious working relationships. “Tuckton’s got a huge, ugly, mean-as-a-wild-dog lock forward who’s caused Greg a heap of problems in the past. He’s told Dave to keep the bloke quiet, by any means foul or fair. If Greg isn’t there to watch, Dawn will be, and she’ll be giving him a full match report.” Pru raised her hand apologetically. “Sorry, sir. You know how much I love my rugby. We’ll get back to the matter in hand.”
“I’d appreciate that.” Robin loved his rugby too, but you didn’t catch him getting distracted by huge, muscular forwards. Not on duty, anyway. And rarely without Adam to compare notes with. A pang of regret that he’d not be able to go home tonight and sit watching sport over a beer, discussing the merits of the players’ thighs, wrong-footed him. He’d need to keep his mind on the matter in hand too. “Does Derek Preese’s account of events match the other ones we have?”
“Pretty much, sir,” Sally said. “Nothing to report there, although this should be of interest. He said there’d been a spate of thefts at the athletics club over the summer, people getting into the changing rooms and the like, so back at the start of this season he’d bought a lockable box. The players put their valuables in it before taking to the pitch, leaving it by the stands during practice and match days, chained to the railings. Then they can keep an eye on it.”
“Isn’t that a bit over the top?” Laurence said. “My dad used to run the fifteen hundred metres at county level and he trained at the ground. He’d leave his stuff in the changing rooms, and they never had any trouble.”
“Your dad wouldn’t have had an iPhone or a smart watch or a wallet full of cards, back then.” Callum rolled his eyes. “My aunt was a member of Hartwood Athletics Club as well. Really useful sprinter, although she reckons she gave it up when she discovered boys. From what she says, those good old days weren’t as innocent as they’re cracked up to be.”
“If we’re talking family experiences,” Sally said, “my gran reckons the reason you get all these thefts now is because there’s more to nick. If you didn’t own anything much in the first place, you could leave your doors unlocked.”
“She’s got a point. That locked box isn’t a bad precaution,” Robin agreed. “It also adds weight to the notion that nobody could have got down the tunnel that evening without someone seeing. The players would always be keeping half an eye on the box. What about the hit-and-run? Any hint of a homophobic element?”
“Preese said the lad who was killed in the hit-and-run wasn’t openly gay, although he suspects he might have been closeted. When we probed him on that, he said someone he knew had seen him in a gay bar.” Pru pursed her lips. “I think he meant he’d seen him in a gay bar. Having said that, Preese didn’t think there was a homophobic element to his death. Simply a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“What about fundraising?” Robin asked.
Sally glanced at Pru; they both raised an eyebrow and then laughed.
Scowling, Callum said, “What’s so funny?”
“Us.” Sally jerked a thumb at Pru. “Remember we said what a charmer Derek Preese is? He’s touched us both for a tenner towards Greg’s fund. We couldn’t resist.”
“I’ll make sure I don’t have my wallet if we have to interview him.” Callum snorted. “Sounds like he’s the man to have rattling buckets.”
“He’d make a fortune,” Pru agreed. “The way Preese talked about Greg—how he’d always been a proud bloke and a generous one, first up at the bar, last out of door after training if any tidying up needed to be done—really got to us.”
“I bet his being fit didn’t hurt,” Laurence muttered.
“I think we’ll put Mr. Film Star Preese to one side for the moment,” Robin said, although he’d made a mental note that he needed to get a gander at this bloke and see what all the fuss was about. “Anything turn up about the current fundraising drive that might be relevant to the case?”
“Only in terms of an insight into Dawn’s character. To quote the coach as near as I can get”—Pru put on the gruff Welsh voice again—“‘I can imagine what Dawn would say if we offered money towards their wedding. She’d tell us where to stick it, probably in the kind of language that would make a prop forward blush.’”
“They clearly grow them tough around here.” Robin gave the team a smile. “What about the previous fundraising effort?”
“He said he’d always suspected Osment was behind the complaints about collecting for a bench. Reckoned the bloke was a trouble-maker and rugby was better off without him. Preese then went on to say the usual stuff about that not meaning he wanted Osment dead.” Pru glanced at Sally, as though encouraging her to chip in.
The constable agreed. “I felt the same. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a touch of personal niggle there.”
“How did he know Osment? The bloke didn’t play for Hartwood, did he?” Callum asked.
“No, but Preese had trained him when he was a schoolboy. Preese used to help with the under twenties, and apparently Osment was quite a promising player when he was young, although he lacked application. Gobby, with it,” Pru added.
“Sounds like the type of bloke who rubs people up the wrong way all round.” Robin changed tack. “Okay. What about Dawn?”
Pru took the lead on this one. “She’s putting on a tough front and she knows it. Says she’d never want to go through an evening like that ever again and reckons in a month or two when everything’s calmed down, she’ll probably give herself a treat and go to pieces for a few days.”
That was entirely understandable. “What’s her account of the time she spent with Melanie?”
“Broadly the same as what we know from the original statements. The wine, Skyping their pal, seeing if she could get somebody to give her a lift to the hospital as she’d had one too many to drive. She reckoned she was beyond filling herself with sugary coffee and borrowing Melanie’s car. Said she didn’t want another accident that evening. Feels a cow for leaving Melanie to get the bad news on her own, but says she couldn’t have known about Nick.”
Callum raised his hand. “I know it’s only a small thing, sir, but somewhere in the statements, it says when Derek Preese rang Dawn from the training ground, she told him she was going to drive. I don’t remember reading about her cadging a lift. I bet one of the players would have been glad to go and get her.”
“Perhaps she didn’t realise how far gone she was until she got off the phone to him,” Pru suggested. “Worth noting, though, sir?”
“Absolutely. Did you get anything out of her about Osment himself? They didn’t get on.”
“If that’s a nice way of saying she couldn’t stand him, that’s right. She didn’t hold back, did she, Sally?”
The young constable, visibly growing in confidence, said, “She did not. Said she wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him and didn’t think he was good enough for Melanie. She’d been ready for months to support her pal if their relationship fell apart.”
“That�
�s not the impression we got,” Callum said. “Any concrete reason why she felt that?”
“We asked but she was evasive. ‘Just a feeling.’ It’s possible she’s been persuading Melanie that he was bad news.” Sally consulted her notes. “She reckoned he’d been up to no good that Saturday he came home with a bruised backside. She was having none of the falling-over story.”
Robin swivelled so as to scrutinise the picture of Nick Osment displayed on the incident board. He had an idea about what had happened to the bloke that Saturday, one he’d sleep on and then test the next day. He turned to find four pairs of eyes fixed on him, clearly waiting for a word of wisdom. He wasn’t sure he had many to offer, though, given how few tangible leads they had in the case and how the people who might have had a slight motive to kill the man all appeared to have unbreakable alibis for his time of death.
“Right,” he said, “we’re building up a picture of the dead man. He was unpopular and seems to have made a nuisance of himself. He must have put other noses out of joint, over and above the ones we know about. Pru and Sally, can I assign you to follow up the Tuckton Chiefs angle? Callum and Laurence, I want you to talk to people at his darts club. I know Sally already did that, but it’s the fresh-eyes angle we need at the moment. If you can’t get to see them today, then spend this afternoon making appointments and collating what we have. Any further anomalies like the stuff about Dawn getting a lift, I want to know. I’m going to go back to the sports ground, now.”
Aware of Pru behind him explaining to the others that Robin liked to get away and think sometimes, away from any distractions, he left the office, got in the car, and headed for the sports ground.
Once in the car park, and having caught sight of the person he wanted to talk to, Robin got out his phone to message Adam. He did his best thinking when at home, and this was the next best option.
Hiya, my favourite deputy headteacher. Things going slowly here. Not optimistic about a swift return home. Sorry.
He had one leg out of the car when his phone registered an incoming call from the man himself.
A Carriage of Misjustice Page 8
