Die Happy lah-24

by J M Gregson

  ‘You’re a police officer.’ It was a statement, not a question. Chris stood upright and looked into a sallow, grey-white face beneath lank hair with wisps of grey in it. Five feet seven; between ten and eleven stones; Age probably between forty-five and fifty. The policeman’s swift, automatic calculations were concluded almost without his realizing it. ‘I am. What is it you want?’

  ‘I need to talk to you. I might have information.’

  A nutter, in all probability. They usually were, when they accosted you in the street like this. Chris wondered how the man had spotted him as a police officer when he was in jeans and a sweater. He glanced quickly at Thomas’s open, inquisitive face within the car. ‘You should go to your nearest police station on Monday morning. Tell the duty sergeant at the desk whatever it is you want to report.’ Neighbour trouble, probably, he thought; that was the most common source of complaint and supposed ‘information’.

  ‘It’s more urgent than that. Least I think it is. You can make up your mind for yourself.’

  A hint of defiance in the last words, an attempt perhaps to arouse CID curiosity. Chris said, ‘I can’t talk here. I have a boy to get home, as you can see.’

  The man hesitated, then produced a card and handed it to the taller man.

  CLIVE BOND. Private Investigator.

  All commissions undertaken. Divorce work a speciality.

  Chris looked at the card, then back into the thin, crafty face. ‘This isn’t the place for this. If you think you have important information, you should go to Oldford police station.’ He climbed into the car and shut the door.

  Thomas wanted to know what this encounter might be about, but he was easily diverted to talk of the match, which was still bright in his mind. Chris kept up his end of the conversation with brief contributions, his curiosity excited despite himself by the unprepossessing figure they had left behind them.

  EIGHTEEN

  Marjorie Dooks said that four o’clock would be the most convenient time to see them on a Saturday. Over many years in the Civil Service, she had become accustomed to having her requests accepted as orders, so that she was not surprised when it was immediately agreed that Lambert and Hook would come to the house at that time. She did not realize as she put down the phone that the time was almost exactly the one they would have suggested.

  Her assumption that she was in control of matters dissipated swiftly with their arrival. She took them into the dining room, which was nowadays infrequently used, and said, ‘I don’t suppose this will take long. My husband’s out playing golf, so we shan’t be disturbed.’ She offered them tea, which was promptly refused. She said, ‘I do hope you’re making progress with this. I wasn’t close to Peter Preston — indeed, we crossed swords on a few occasions — but we can’t allow anyone to get away with murder, can we?’

  Lambert studied the strong, composed face beneath the auburn hair for a moment before he said evenly, ‘Indeed we can’t, Mrs Dooks. That is why we would expect and demand the full cooperation of all innocent parties in our investigation.’

  ‘I appreciate that. I trust you’ve been receiving it.’

  ‘In some cases, yes. In others no. There are implications in that. One of the people who hasn’t cooperated fully is probably our murderer.’

  Marjorie had been perfectly relaxed. She now felt that she was involved in some preliminary fencing. She usually enjoyed verbal bouts, but she sensed that she wasn’t going to come out on top in this one. In the past, and particularly during her working life, her diligent preparation had meant that she was normally better informed than her opponents. That was plainly not the case with this tall, grave figure who was studying her every reaction so intently. She said with uncharacteristic uncertainty, ‘I’m sure I wish to give you all the information I can, but I’m afraid that won’t-’

  ‘Did you know that Mr Preston kept detailed notes on all the people he regarded as enemies?’

  ‘No. But it doesn’t surprise me. It’s the sort of thing he would have done.’ She wondered now what was coming, but she kept her mask of affability.

  ‘We now have access to his files. There is a fairly detailed one on you.’

  ‘I confess I’m surprised at that. Perhaps I should be flattered that Peter thought me worthy of such attention.’

  ‘He kept his ear very much to the ground and picked up a surprising amount of local gossip. He also made regular use of a private detective. He seems to have been well aware of the state of your marriage.’

  ‘I regard that as gross impertinence! I can hardly pursue him for his prying now. I understand that you had to read whatever he had left behind. However, it seems to me an ill-mannered intrusion on your part to raise this now.’ She glanced at Hook, who had his notebook on his knee; he was watching her as closely as his colleague.

  Lambert smiled mirthlessly, feeling a small quickening of his pulse as he saw her losing the coolness she had been determined to retain. ‘Had you not concealed matter which has a bearing on a murder inquiry, there would have been no reason to see you today. As it is, I must point out that you clearly had a motive for wishing Peter Preston out of your life.’

  ‘I agree with that, but I would argue that you’re putting it too strongly. I cannot think that in my case Peter had more than a little malicious gossip on his files.’

  ‘He had more than that, as you know. Perhaps you should know that he also recorded his conversation when he confronted you with his knowledge, which was less than a week before he was killed.’

  For the first time they saw real fear in the strong-boned face. She said in a strange, tightly controlled voice, ‘He knew things that I thought no one knew. Things my husband didn’t know. He said he would make them public unless I chose to “play things his way” on the literature festival committee.’

  ‘And how did you react to that?’

  She paused for so long that Lambert was driven to add, ‘In view of your previous concealments, you would be most unwise to hold anything back from us today.’

  Marjorie stared at him for a moment, then nodded slowly. ‘I agree with that. Please do bear in mind that I have never been in a situation like this before. I’ve never been questioned as a murder suspect, and I’ve never been the target of the kind of prurient pressure to which Peter Preston was subjecting me.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘It’s high time you gave us a full account of what took place.’

  Marjorie took a very deep breath. She was a private person. She hadn’t been pressurized to reveal intimate things like this since she had been a child. And she couldn’t come to terms with it. She had no idea how to begin and she showed her uncertainty by opening with a question. ‘You know about my association with Mr Forshaw?’

  Lambert was deliberately brutal in his attempt to ruffle her. A disturbed subject almost always revealed more about herself than she wished to. ‘We have considerable detail about what Mr Preston described as a full-blown affair with Ronald Forshaw. Including the dates and times of several of your meetings.’

  How strange to hear that name ‘Ronald’ for her Ron. She’d never heard him called that before. She looked past her unwelcome visitors, stared at the wall behind them with its familiar prints without registering anything. She spoke more to herself than to them. ‘It’s the first liaison I’ve ever had. Perhaps it began as a blow against James. My husband has strayed outside our marriage many times. But this quickly became much more than a mere affair. I’ve known Ron for a long time. We even worked together for a year in our Civil Service days. Nothing improper ever occurred then. It was when I met him at a reunion last August. He had a wife who no longer cared for him, I had a perennially straying husband. I suppose we’d always been attracted to each other, but we’d done nothing about it until that point.’

  Hook made a note that the affair had been going on for the last nine months, according to Marjorie Dooks. Then he spoke more gently than Lambert. ‘We’re not here to make any moral judgements, Mrs Dooks. We’re interested i
n your private life only in so far as it impinges upon a murder investigation. You say Mr Preston confronted you with his information. Would you tell us a little more about that meeting, please?’

  ‘He said I should give up any connection with the literary festival and recommend him as my successor in the chair. Provided I did that and supported his plans in the appropriate committees, he would reveal nothing and I could remain on the local council.’

  Bert wondered if she realized how her obvious contempt and bitterness was making her a stronger candidate as the man’s killer. He said gently, almost sympathetically, ‘And how did you react to this?’

  ‘Not well, I suppose. I’m not used to being bullied or threatened. My first reaction was “publish and be damned”. Then he pointed out that if he went public the news would be certain to affect Ron’s future. Ron Forshaw is planning to stand as a parliamentary candidate in the next general election. He has been a local councillor and party worker for the Liberal Democrats for years. He hopes the present coalition government will make the country take them more seriously as a political force. I know he’s a bit long in the tooth to be planning a parliamentary career, but he doesn’t want to be anything more than an MP. He’s always wanted to change the way things work for people and he’s excited by the idea of being involved in policy making. And I’m excited with him; I think Ron will make a brilliant constituency MP.’

  She was really animated now. It was important to her to convince them about the merits of this man they had never seen and might never see. Hook brought her gently back to the matter in hand. ‘And Peter Preston thought he could damage his prospects?’

  ‘Oh, he was quite certain that he could. He said when he’d released the details of an extra-marital affair to the country’s tabloid press, Ron wouldn’t even be nominated as a candidate to contest the election. I had no doubt that he was right. There are always plenty of candidates on offer and appointing committees tend to play safe. They hate any whiff of scandal.’

  ‘Did you believe this?’

  ‘I did. He had dates and times. He said the right papers would run it over several days and make a big thing of it. When I told Peter he surely wouldn’t be so cruel, he laughed in my face. He said I should consider how cruel I’d been to him. I think he really believed that. He couldn’t accept that we’d had an honest difference of opinion. He equated his discomfort in losing an argument to the real suffering he proposed to cause to an able and innocent man.’

  ‘So did you agree to his demands?’

  ‘No. I could never have done that. Peter was in the wrong.’ Then, as if she saw that as stubbornly didactic as it sounded, she added much more quietly, ‘I don’t really know what would have happened. I played for time. I pointed out that even if I acceded to his desire to direct the literary festival, people would want to know the reason why I’d resigned. I’d need time to devise some convincing reason for withdrawing from work I believed in and enjoyed.’

  ‘And did you set about doing that?’

  She looked at Hook’s caring, enquiring face and at Lambert’s grimmer one beside it. ‘No. I suppose it was no more than a delaying tactic, to give me time to think.’ For the first time since Lambert had told her about the contents of Preston’s filing cabinet, a small smile flitted briefly across her strong features. ‘It’s an old Civil Service strategy. When something is sprung upon you unexpectedly, you go away, gather all the information you didn’t have earlier, and come back with better arguments to a meeting a couple of weeks later.’

  ‘And what arguments were you able to muster?’ This was Lambert, acerbic and sceptical, resuming the questioning.

  ‘None. I don’t think there was a solution. If a man is warped, unreasonable and unscrupulous, he doesn’t listen to arguments.’ She produced the adjectives with a surprising relish; they sensed that she had rehearsed them many times for her own benefit but never expected to produce them for others.

  ‘And five days later, Mr Preston was dead.’

  ‘Yes. I don’t think the world has lost much with his demise. Rather the reverse, in fact.’

  ‘Did you kill him, Mrs Dooks?’

  ‘No. I don’t approve of murder, even though on this occasion I shall not be sorry if your investigation is unsuccessful.’

  ‘You have just given us a vivid account of the desperate situation in which you found yourself. You are a woman who prefers decisive action to indirect resistance. Didn’t you see murder as a logical step?’

  She stared at him steadily for a moment before she replied. ‘Mr Lambert, you’re beginning to sound like a lawyer in court. I’ve told you I didn’t kill Peter Preston. Any discussion of the logic of such a course is irrelevant.’

  ‘Where were you last Tuesday evening?’

  ‘I think I told you this on Thursday. I was at home throughout the evening. I understood that my husband had confirmed that.’

  Lambert nodded to Hook, who flicked to a different page of his notebook and studied a note he knew perfectly well, allowing the tension to stretch even tighter in the silent room. ‘Your husband confirmed that you were in the house together at the beginning of the evening. He said that he retired to his own quarters to do some work and that you were at the other end of the house. He says he did not see you between seven forty-five and ten thirty. He pointed out that the television was on in your section of the house throughout the evening, but we have to be aware, of course, that you could easily have left it on when you vacated the house for a time. Do you dispute any of this?’

  Damn James and his petty vindictiveness! Typical of him to call that small study ‘his own quarters’. Marjorie could see him now, pretending priggishly that he had to be honest, allowing them to persuade the information in driblets from his reluctant lips. She and he had existed in an atmosphere that had varied between carefully distanced and unspoken hostility for months now. For the first time, she wondered how much James knew about her and Ron. She said, as if the words had been wrung from her, ‘No. This is a big house, as you imply. And as you might deduce from what you’ve heard from me today, our marriage is no longer close. It’s probably almost over, to be honest. We often choose to spend our evenings apart.’

  ‘So it would have been perfectly possible for you to leave the house without his being aware of it.’

  ‘I suppose it would. As James has no doubt already told you — very reluctantly, of course.’

  The bitter sarcasm of the last phrase made them wonder about the depth of her feeling for the unexpected new man in her life. She’d left them in no doubt that she would be capable of extreme measures to prevent the disclosure of Ronald Forshaw’s affair with her to the public at large. Hook said quietly, as if confronting a sad truth, ‘This house is less than three miles from the spot where Preston was killed. You could have been there and back within twenty minutes, with Preston removed from your life for ever.’

  Marjorie managed a smile. ‘You’re very persuasive. You make it sound an attractive option. And indeed it would have been — if it hadn’t involved murder. I don’t think in those terms, DS Hook. I never left the house.’

  Lambert stood up, made as if to leave, then paused on what might have been an afterthought. ‘Do you or your husband possess a pistol, Mrs Dooks?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t willingly have one in the house and James has never had any interest in such things.’ She seemed for a moment as if she was about to say more, then glanced up into his face and decided against it.

  Lambert said, ‘I believe you supervised the collection of arms during your final Civil Service years.’

  A small smile flitted briefly across the strong features, as if in brief recognition of a point scored by an opponent. ‘Yes. I had overall responsibility for the collection of IRA and Ulster Volunteer arms surrendered after the resolution of the Irish conflict. I suppose it might have been possible for me to acquire a pistol then, had I been so inclined. I did not in fact do so. I directed the staff involved, but I had no direct co
ntact with the collection and disposal of the weapons involved.’

  He studied her for a final moment, then said abruptly, ‘If you have anything further to tell us about yourself or others, please ring Oldford CID immediately.’

  She watched their car turn slowly out of her drive and out of vision, standing at the window until the last sound of it was gone. Then she moved back through the silent house and turned her thoughts to what she was going to say to James when he returned from golf.

  The unprepossessing figure who had accosted Chris Rushton as he left the football ground in Hereford waited until Sunday morning to present himself at the police station in Oldford. He reckoned correctly that the CID people he needed to speak with would not be in the station on Saturday night.

  This man knew his way round police stations and police procedures. It was a bright May morning and spring was advancing rapidly, so he took the major sartorial step of relinquishing the long gabardine overcoat he regarded as his winter uniform. For the first time in the year, he wore the shabby blue anorak, which was his normal summer garb. He shrugged aside the efforts of the station sergeant to make him reveal the subject of his visit. ‘It’s CID stuff, this.’ When the stolid face remained doubtful, he added solemnly, ‘It has to do with the murder your CID people are investigating. I need to speak to the chief superintendent in charge of the Preston case.’

  The uniformed man had his doubts, but with his pension less than a year away, he wasn’t going to risk a rocket from that bugger Lambert or any other senior officer. He directed the man through to the CID section. Three minutes later, after a moment studying the board with its photographs of locations and people in the investigation and scrawled questions from the investigating officers, he was in Lambert’s office.

  ‘Mr Clive Bond, sir,’ the young woman DC announced to her chief. She kept her voice studiously formal, as if to protect some private joke.

  The detective shook the stranger’s hand, installed him in a chair, studied him politely but unhurriedly. The man said with a short, nervous laugh, ‘So I meet the illustrious Chief Superintendent Lambert at last. I never thought I’d do this.’ He tried to settle and take in the details of the tight, disappointingly anonymous little office, with its small desk, its computer, its rather ancient filing cabinet.