Death on the Eleventh Hole

by Gregson, J. M.

  The priest’s enthusiasm rose as he spoke about the work of the centre, but Chris Rushton had a feeling of moving further and further out of his depth. He was full of admiration for people who did work like this, but he had joined the police force because he had a passion for order. All policemen had to play things by the book, and Chris found that an advantage, not a restriction. Lambert had spotted a strength in him when he put him in charge of the administration of serious crime cases: Rushton felt most at home filing information and cross-referencing on his computer.

  Now, looking at the work of St Anne’s House, he felt the panic all of us feel when we contemplate good work we could not possibly achieve ourselves. He took a deep breath and said, ‘And you feel that one of your visitors might have strangled Kate Wharton and dumped her body on the golf course?’

  The old-young, experienced face above the dog-collar clouded. ‘I’m not sure I’d put it as strongly as that. It’s more that I don’t know what to think. Let me explain. The boy I’m talking about is Joe. I don’t even know if that is his real name: it was the one he gave us and stuck to, and we never pry. Joe was an addict. Cocaine first and then heroin. I think he’d have been dead before he was thirty, if the progress of his addiction hadn’t been arrested.’

  ‘But it was.’

  Father Gillespie nodded, his face brightening a little at the recollection. ‘We can’t claim all the credit. He says there was a girl involved.’

  ‘Kate Wharton.’

  ‘I don’t know. I think it might have been.’

  ‘Father, you have to understand, this is a murder inquiry. You must tell me all you know, even if it comes from within the confessional.’

  The priest almost laughed aloud. ‘There was nothing like that involved. We don’t even ask about religion, here. If the question is raised, it comes from our guests. Joe never raised it.’

  ‘So give me the full story.’

  The priest sat down and put his hands together; even the act of sitting still seemed to be an effort for this constantly active man. He nodded three or four times, but not at DI Rushton; it was as though he was convincing himself once again that he should speak about this. ‘Joe presented himself here about two years ago. He was brought in by another boy. He was tooting — smoking heroin — every day, and sometimes snorting and injecting as well. He was stealing to support the habit and spiralling rapidly downwards. He stayed here for a little while.’

  ‘And you were able to get him off the heroin?’

  Jason Gillespie smiled at the drastic over-simplification of six fraught months in a young man’s life. ‘Not completely. And not me. I put him with people who were already kicking the habit, people who had gone through the sickness and diarrhoea and all the other humiliations of reform, and come back here to help others. Eventually Joe listened. He registered as an addict and got his supplies at the medical centre. The first and the biggest step towards getting rid of addiction.’

  Chris Rushton tried not to show his impatience with this earnest elf of a man. This Joe might be the murderer they sought, revealed by Detective Inspector Rushton on the first real day of the investigation, without any help from the vast police machine of a murder hunt, without the famous intuition of bloody John Lambert. ‘So where is Joe now, Father?’

  ‘I don’t know. He stopped coming here about a year ago. At first I thought he might have slipped back into his old ways, but other lads who came in here said he hadn’t. He came in once more about six months ago, told me he’d got a girl, that he was going to take the cure course, that he was going to be all right. He looked a lot better, but we take nothing for granted; we’ve seen too many people slip back to the depths.’

  ‘But something must have happened since then, or you wouldn’t have rung me this morning.’

  ‘Yes. Joe turned up here unexpectedly last Monday afternoon. He was in a bad state. He’d been on the heroin again. I think it was a one-off. I think he’s kicked the habit, but under stress he’d smoked a bit of horse again.’

  Chris tried not to show his impatience. Father Gillespie might be concerned about the reversion of an addict he thought he had reclaimed, but this sounded more and more like his man. Whether the violent little sod had kicked back into heroin was a minor matter, in the face of a murder charge. ‘What did he say to you which made you suspicious, Father?’

  ‘Nothing, at the time. I didn’t know about the death of this young girl, then. Joe was raving about the row he’d had with his girl, about the awful mistake he’d made. He wasn’t very coherent, because of his emotion and the horse he’d smoked. I didn’t press him for information, just tried to calm him. But when I read about the discovery of this body, I had awful thoughts about Joe. He shouted the girl’s name at me when he was in tears. I’m sure it was Kate.’

  They stood staring at each other across the shabby room, the priest aghast at the revelation he had finally prised from himself, the inspector trying not to show his rising excitement. Chris kept his voice even as he said, ‘Where is Joe now, Father?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since Monday. I wanted him to stay for a meal, but he disappeared and—’

  ‘What’s his address?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s one of our rules that we never press the people who come here for information. They have to trust us. If they choose to—’

  ‘Is there anyone around who would know where he is now?’

  Jason Gillespie thought furiously for a moment, weighing his role as priest and the man in charge of this refuge for derelict lives against a crime more serious than anything even he had come across before. Murder won, as it had to in these circumstances. He produced an unexpected grin as he said to Chris Rushton, ‘How are you with washing up, Inspector?’

  ‘Well used to it. I live on my own.’ For just an instant, the divorced and lonely man felt the attraction he would never admit to of a place like this, with its offers of casual camaraderie, of support without commitment.

  ‘Come with me, then.’ The priest was suddenly back on his own ground and confident again. He bustled out of the room and down two flights of stairs, to a large, stone-flagged kitchen with a huge earthenware sink and long wooden draining boards on either side of it. Rushton realized that this must be the original kitchen of the Victorian house, where a head cook had once presided and the servants had gathered to eat and relax.

  A man with a string vest above paint-smeared denims was washing crockery and piling it along the draining boards, more quickly than the peroxide blonde woman of about thirty could dry them and stack them on the table behind her. The youth at the sink had the puncture marks on his inner arms and the woman had the livid bruising of her forearms that spoke of drug injections. Father Gillespie said, ‘You need help with that, Ally,’ picked up a pot towel himself and handed another one to Rushton, who hung his jacket carefully behind the door and donned a glassy smile.

  They wiped plates and dishes assiduously for a few moments. Then the priest said, ‘Chris is a copper.’

  Both of the drug users glanced sharply at the inspector in his immaculate white shirtsleeves, but they plainly trusted Jason Gillespie, who said with a grin, ‘The way you two go on, you could do with a friend at the nick!’

  Nothing was said for a few minutes. Rushton had the sense not to try to ingratiate himself. He said nothing and waited for the priest to make the next move. Father Gillespie polished a plate assiduously, set it on top of a pile on the table, and said, ‘Ally knew poor Kate Wharton, didn’t you, Ally?’

  The woman glanced at Rushton from watery blue eyes. ‘She was a good kid, Kate. It wasn’t her fault she had to earn her living the way she did. Going to get the bastard who did for her, are you? Or do toms not count as victims?’

  So the dead girl had been a prostitute. It didn’t surprise Rushton, but he registered it as another fact in the dossier they were building about the dead girl. An important one, in all probability. ‘We’ll get whoever did this,’ he said, ‘howev
er long it takes, Ally.’

  He meant it, and his voice must have carried conviction, for the peroxided woman, who was obviously herself a prostitute, gave a nod of satisfaction and went back to her drying. Priest and inspector found themselves spinning out the task to allow the conversation to continue, assessing the diminishing piles of crockery on the draining boards to allow themselves time for the exchanges they needed. After another couple of minutes, Father Gillespie said, ‘Joe Ashton was in here on Monday. Did either of you see him?’

  The young man and the older woman both said promptly and with some relief that they hadn’t been at St Anne’s House on Monday afternoon. There was a further interval before the priest said, ‘Does either of you know where Joe’s living, now?’

  Both of them turned abruptly to look at him. They didn’t like questions, about themselves or other people like them, and this was a direct one, with a copper standing there beside the questioner. But the trust the priest had built up over the months held. He looked the woman steadily in the face and said, ‘This is murder, Ally. We need to give people like Chris our help if they’re to find out who killed Kate.’

  She looked at him white-faced, then gave the briefest of nods and went back to her drying. It was the man with his back to them and his hands in the grey and greasy water of the sink who spoke. ‘The last I heard, Joe Ashton was in a squat in the city. Sebastopol Terrace, I think it was.’

  Seven

  Julie Wharton had taken the whole day off from the firm in Cheltenham where she worked.

  The men who controlled the small firm of insurance brokers were naturally sympathetic to a woman who had lost her daughter in such awful circumstances. She had always taken care that they knew little of her home circumstances. She ran the office and organized the three girls who worked under her with calm efficiency; the men were glad of that, and didn’t want to know about how she lived outside the place, as women might have done.

  She wondered if there were many other women like her, who found that the ties of blood were very slight. Kate had been all right as a small child, when she had done charming, unconscious things and worn pretty dresses, which allowed Julie to show her off to her friends. And there had been a mild pleasure in her achievements at school, until the trials of adolescence had begun to outweigh them.

  But Julie had always been bored by children talk, by those mothers who built their lives around their progeny. You had your own life to lead, and that was difficult enough. If your children couldn’t stay at heel, best be rid of them. Certainly once you had a serious row, you might as well split up for good. She had never subscribed to that foolish saying which people quoted so unthinkingly that blood was thicker than water. Once things had been said that couldn’t be forgiven, you were much better living apart for good.

  She had rather enjoyed the way she had handled herself this morning, with the identification of Kate’s body. She had not thought she could be quite so calm about the whole business. She had enjoyed the feeling that that stolid, conventional sergeant was watching her, waiting for the first signs of a maternal collapse, and failing to find them.

  She felt a little empty, a little incomplete, with Kate gone. The world seemed starker and bleaker, and she realized now that she had always assumed that mother and daughter would get together again, eventually. But though she wasn’t good at analysing her own feelings, she told herself that she was not so very upset. The bonds of parent and child were, to her mind, largely a creation of a sentimental society.

  Not at all like those of sex. Sex was a very different, more animal kind of feeling. She knew how strong its ties could be, but she hadn’t fully worked them out yet. Perhaps—

  The phone shrilled suddenly, startling her in the quiet house, making her spill the tea she was sipping into her saucer. She knew who it would be, what he would want to know.

  ‘No, there’s nothing much to report, really. That Sergeant Hook, the one I told you about, came and took me, and dropped me back here afterwards… No, of course I didn’t… You needn’t worry, I don’t think the poor man found out anything at all. I was perfectly calm. Unnaturally calm, I’m sure, in the eyes of Sergeant Plod… Yes, I’m sure the police will come and see me again, but they’ll ring first. They handle bereaved mothers with kid gloves, it wouldn’t be good public relations if they didn’t… No. I don’t think so. So far, they don’t even know you exist… Of course they will, in due course, it’s their job to find out things. But I don’t see why you’ve any reason to fear them… Yes, I’m sure you could come here… All right, but I think you’re being a bit paranoid… Can’t wait to see you! It seems a long time… I know, but it seems longer. I’ll look forward to that… And that too, you randy sod! Bye, then.’

  She mouthed a kiss into the mouthpiece, then sat looking at it for a moment after he had rung off.

  Sex was definitely different.

  ***

  Chris Rushton was back in the murder room beside the Ross golf course by four thirty. There was a note to tell him that Superintendent Lambert had gone home, but should be contacted there if anything urgent came up. It wasn’t like John Lambert, that, not with a murder investigation gathering pace.

  DI Rushton, full of the importance of the breakthrough he had made at St Anne’s House, felt cheated by this absence. He had been looking forward to demonstrating that he wasn’t desk-bound, that he could use his judgement and initiative when the occasion offered. He decided not to ring the chief at home. It would sound like boasting, and he had too much experience of Lambert’s gentle irony to risk offering him an opportunity.

  He had found the squat at Sebastopol Terrace in Gloucester, but neither Joe Ashton nor anyone else had been there in mid-afternoon, though there were signs of occupation about the place. He logged the information he had acquired on a new file in the computer. Then he looked at what had come in during his absence. There were a few sightings of vehicles on the quiet road by the golf course where the body had been found, but no one yet knew the time when the body had been dumped. There was a note to say that the full PM report would be delivered by hand the next morning.

  Chris felt a rather guilty satisfaction in the knowledge that there had been no discovery throughout this busy Wednesday which rivalled the importance of his own contribution.

  It was quiet in the Terrapin hut that the police had brought here to provide an incident room. Most of the hastily assembled team were out on the leg-work of routine which always occupied the first days of a murder case. Rushton liked it like this. He set about organizing the material which was accruing into the most logical order, trying to ensure by his cross-referencing that any connections which might emerge as significant would not be missed.

  He was thoroughly immersed in the work when a voice almost in his ear said, ‘Still keeping your nose clean, Inspector?’

  Rushton looked up into an unshaven chin, which had a crooked smile and twinkling blue eyes above it and a shapeless sweater below it. For a moment, he did not recognize the face which had appeared unbidden in hideous close-up, not six inches from his own carefully shaved visage. But the twisted, slightly mocking smile gave the identity away.

  ‘Danny Malone!’ he said. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  ‘If I didn’t know you better, me old mate, I’d think that didn’t sound very welcoming.’ The Irish accent, which had been strong twelve years ago, was only just discernible now. He pulled up a chair, sat down and crossed his legs. ‘And anyway, it’s not just Danny boy any longer. It’s Sergeant Malone, of the Drugs Squad.’ He thrust out his chest beneath the sweater in mock pride.

  Rushton nodded and grinned. ‘I heard.’ They had trained together, chalk and cheese in temperament, but thrown together by a common suffering as cadets. Rushton had been the model trainee, serious in intent and heedful of all advice, Malone had been the gifted but wayward recruit, full of potential but with a tendency to use his own initiative where the system did not allow for it. He had sailed pretty near the
wind at times, but the strain of the chancer in him was allied to a shrewd intelligence, and it was to the credit of the police service that someone had seen his potential. Malone had got into CID very quickly, three years before Rushton made the transition from uniform. But he had subsequently volunteered himself for the dangerous role of an undercover drugs investigator. The combination of high excitement and high risk, which would have undone Rushton in a week, was much to Danny Malone’s taste.

  This thought passed through both of their minds as they sat looking at each other. So did the thought that it was Rushton, careful and career-conscious, who had made Detective Inspector, while the maverick Malone, who lived his life in danger and took physical risks his contemporary would never have countenanced, had stuck at Sergeant.

  They exchanged a few thoughts about the modern police service, savouring the language of old sweats now, throwing in a little professional cynicism to show how far they had left the trainee days behind them. But the common bond of being cadets, at the mercy of the same training officers, was far behind them, and there was little in their personalities to make them soulmates. Danny Malone, who had always found it easy to win the attention, even the devotion, of girls, was still unmarried, despite a string of relationships. Chris gave the briefest of details of his own marriage and divorce, smiled sourly at the suggestion that he was a newly released Lothario among the women of the district.

  After an awkward silence Chris said, ‘Do you fancy a quick drink? We can go into the golf clubhouse; they said we’re welcome to use the facilities.’

  Danny glanced down at his soiled jeans and grinned.

  ‘Not dressed for it, am I? This is working dress for me, but I don’t think the Establishment of the golf club would welcome me in.’ He looked round to make sure that even police ears could not overhear him; secrecy was a habit with him by now, one of the tools of survival. ‘Anyway, I didn’t come just for a chat, though it’s nice to see an old mate getting on so well.’