The inevitable shattering of control in this patient man came on the sixth green. He caught a tutting from Lambert as he prepared to putt and whirled upon him like a furious gladiator. ‘Look, John,’ he said with ominous dignity, ‘you may not have noticed, but I’m about to go three up, and we agreed there was only time for nine holes before dark. I suggest you get your finger out and give some attention to your own game! If you need any assistance in the way of advice, I’ll give you whatever help I can!’
John Lambert’s expression of shocked incredulity was wasted on his sergeant, who turned his back, holed his four-footer, and marched to the seventh tee. There was a heavy silence as he addressed his ball. His superintendent’s hurt was not alleviated by the nagging thought at the back of his mind that Bert’s outburst might have had a tiny morsel of justification.
But golf, as its literature never fails to remind us, is a strange game, perhaps the most unpredictable one of all. The last three holes were played in a strained silence, with each player trying desperately to concentrate on the matter in hand. Lambert’s game improved. Hook’s, perhaps because he was still a little aghast at the temerity of his uncharacteristic eruption, declined.
Lambert won the last three holes to halve the match.
They shook hands and smiled embarrassed smiles at each other in the twilight on the ninth green. Nothing needed to be said between colleagues who had never quarrelled in a decade of professional work together.
A half, in a contest that had seemed lost. Lambert drove home slowly but happily, his headlights catching the swooping of the occasional bat above the silent hedgerows. The boy in him sang his happiness. That had put bloody old Bert in his place.
Retirement wouldn’t be too bad, really. He would be able to concentrate on raising his golf to still higher levels.
Ten
Industrial chainsaws are efficient but very noisy. They necessitate the wearing of earmuffs and goggles. It was Roy Cook’s use of such a chainsaw that ensured that he saw the CID men before he heard them, and that they were very close to him before he was even aware of their presence.
He was cutting up a pine which the Forestry Commission had decreed must be felled for safety reasons, severing its trunk into manageable lengths for the lorry which would come in later in the week. He was completely absorbed in the task, as anyone handling dangerous equipment must be; concentration had become a way of life to him now. He listened to the muted sound of the saw through his earmuffs, knowing from the lower note of the whine when the saw was working hardest, watching for the moment of maximum danger when the blade leapt through the last section of the log as though it were butter.
He was conscious of the smell of sawn wood, of the rapidly rising pile of resinous sawdust at the edge of his vision. It took him a moment to realize that the two black objects he saw disappearing beneath a patina of yellow dust were human feet, inside what had a minute earlier been the shiny toe-caps of black shoes. He was startled, but his training prevented him from the physical twitch which might have manifested itself in a less experienced operator.
He completed the cut he had started in the bole of the felled pine, watching the teeth of the saw cut steadily through the base of a trunk almost two feet in diameter, enjoying the symmetry of the neat cone of sawdust beneath his handiwork. Then he switched off the tool, slipped on the safety catch, and set it down, feeling the silence of the forest flooding slowly back into his ears as he removed the muffs and turned unhurriedly to confront the men who had interrupted his work.
There were two of them: the man whose shoes he had covered with sawdust, a rubicund country figure with the build and shoulders of a farmer, and a taller, leaner figure behind him, who seemed perfectly content to take in the scene and study the man at the centre of it. Only when the last echoes of the chainsaw had died away among the still tops of the trees did he take a pace forward, produce a warrant card, and say, ‘I’m Detective Superintendent Lambert and this is Detective Sergeant Hook. I take it you are Royston Cook?’
‘Roy Cook, yes. I didn’t think you’d come here.’
‘Saves time, for all of us. Do I gather you were expecting us to contact you?’
‘Julie rang me last night. Told me you might want to speak to me. I won’t be able to help you.’
‘Perhaps not. But as you will know, we are pursuing a murder inquiry. So it’s routine for us to speak to anyone who had a close association with the deceased.’
‘I didn’t have a close association.’
‘You lived in the same house with her for some time.’
For a moment, Lambert thought he was going to deny it. But he must have thought of his conversation with Julie Wharton on the previous evening, when she had presumably passed on to him exactly what she had said about her daughter. For all he knew, the pair of them had spent the night together and planned his response, despite the man’s immediate admission of the phone call.
Roy Cook eventually gave them a curt nod, acknowledging that he and the dead girl had spent time under the same roof. He was a big-shouldered man, taller than he looked at first sight because of his broad build, with thick black hair and bushy eyebrows, which were more prominent as he took off the goggles he had worn while crouching over the saw. The sleeves of his thick checked shirt were rolled up, revealing the power of immense forearms. He had the build of a rugby prop forward, the strength of the miners who had once thronged the Welsh valleys thirty miles to the south-west of here. Bert Hook, who still tended to assess men in cricketing terms, was reminded of the Fred Trueman whom he had watched taking his three hundredth test wicket when he was a boy. The thought also sprang unbidden into his mind that this man could have carried that slight corpse he had discovered four days ago as easily as a dead cat.
Cook now sat down on a newly exposed tree stump and waved his hand expansively at others a few yards away. ‘We’re not often short of a pew, in the forest,’ he explained with a smile. For all the world as if he was welcoming them into his home, thought Lambert. And indeed, this place, with its forest quiet, its small patch of clear blue sky above the tops of the trees, its chatterings of distant birdsong, seemed a natural place for this powerful man, whose muscles were sheened in sweat, even in the moderate temperature of this spring day. The village smithy and its chestnut tree might be gone forever, but its central blacksmith figure had found a place here, beneath other trees.
Lambert said, ‘If you’re straightforward and honest with us, we probably won’t need to detain you for very long.’
Cook looked up unhurriedly at the patch of blue sky and the single bank of high white cloud that was crossing it. ‘Forestry Commission won’t bother about that,’ he said with a thick, soft Gloucestershire burr. Like many big men, he spoke quietly, but his register was low — more basso profundo than Welsh tenor. ‘Reckon they know I give good value, most of the time. They won’t bother about me having a sit for ten minutes.’
Lambert smiled. ‘I’ll keep it as short as possible. How would you describe your relationship with Julie Wharton, Mr Cook?’
Roy shifted uncomfortably for a moment on the raw yellow of the tree-stump. Did they want to know about those frantic rollings in the darkness, when Julie became a different, uncontrolled woman, gasping and screaming, and releasing the primitive dark man from within himself that he had thought hidden now forever? Julie hadn’t prepared him for this.
He said stiffly, playing for time, waiting for his mind to offer him something acceptable, ‘We ain’t married, Julie and me. No reason why we shouldn’t be, mind, but we likes it that way.’
A little different from the way Julie Wharton saw it: she had said they were planning to get married. ‘You’re serious about the relationship, though. You stay at her house, and she at yours.’
‘Yes. Leastways, I stay at her house. Julie don’t come to me, not often. I only have a small place.’ He wouldn’t tell them how he clung to his little house, his assertion of independence; how he resisted Julie’s press
ure to sell up and move in with her for good. That wasn’t their business.
‘But you lived with Mrs Wharton, for a time, a few years ago.’
‘More or less lived with her, I suppose. I din’t never give up me own place, though.’ The Gloucestershire came out more strongly in his voice as he became less certain.
‘The time when Kate Wharton was still living at home.’
‘Would be then, yes, I s’pose.’
‘In other words, you know it was then. So what was your relationship with Kate, Mr Cook?’
‘Din’t see much of the girl, did I? Were the mother I were interested in, not the daughter.’ A lustful grin appeared and just as quickly disappeared, as if he had realized this was not the context for it.
‘I see. Kate would be what age, then? About seventeen or eighteen?’
“Bout that, yes.’
Roy Cook was more intelligent than the shambling oaf he presented as he squirmed now on his temporary seat. But words were not his strong point, and this was an area where he knew he had to be careful. Julie hadn’t let him down, wouldn’t let him down in this. They’d discussed it, agreed the offhand, detached way he must describe him and Kate. But as a man who didn’t trust words, who in a crisis was used to using strong arms and fists, he wasn’t confident about how to hold people off.
It was Hook who now said quietly, ‘Pretty girl, was she, Kate? She was very pretty when she died. I expect she was turning a few heads when she was seventeen or eighteen.’ He looked steadily into Cook’s deep-set brown eyes, until his bull-like subject’s gaze dropped to the bits of shattered bark around their feet.
‘Right enough her was a pretty young thing then, was Kate. But too young for me. Her mother were the right one for me.’ He was unhappy with this, fearing that his voice, so unused these days to answering questions, to conducting a serious dialogue, would let him down. And in a way it did: he sounded as if he were trying to convince himself, as if he were obstinately repeating a line he had worked out before they came here. Perhaps he was aware he sounded unconvincing, for he now added unnecessarily, ‘Her was a real woman, was Julie Wharton. Pretty; good figure; tits every man around wanted to get his hands on.’
He looked at them, wanting to convince them, man to men. But it was an appeal which came straight from the public bar, suitable for men who had supped pints of beer or cider and were ready to get maudlin and lascivious together. Lambert looked at him without smiling. ‘Why did Kate Wharton leave her mother and her home, Mr Cook?’
He tried to ease his big shoulders into a shrug, but could not co-ordinate the unaccustomed movement. ‘Not on account of me. I never touched her!’
He was not a convincing liar, though he had had much practice in the past. His denial was too vigorous, and he sat upright, challenging them to refute it. Lambert said quietly, ‘Neither of us suggested that you did, Mr Cook. It’s interesting that you should rush to deny it, though. But you haven’t answered my question. Why do you think Kate Wharton left home?’
‘I dunno, do I? Best ask Julie why she went.’
‘I’m asking you, Mr Cook. You were living in the house with the girl. You must have an opinion about why she left.’
He resisted the temptation to shout at them, to tell them to piss off and stop bothering him. That was never any good, with the police. He tried to think what Julie would say. They should have discussed this. ‘I dunno why she left. She had other fish to fry, I expect. You should ask her.’ He realized the impossibility of that, and said with a slow, embarrassed smile, Tut you can’t, can you? Well, I can’t help you. Her were a strange girl, were Kate. You’d best ask Julie about her: I could never work her out, myself.’ He shook his head regretfully, as if recalling some eccentricity he would not reveal.
‘We’ve asked Mrs Wharton about her daughter. We got very little information from her. Why do you think that would be?’
Roy Cook stroked his chin thoughtfully for a moment. He was glad to have the focus removed from him and his own feelings about Kate. But he must be careful not to let Julie down; she had done well for him, and he must look after her now. He said cautiously, ‘They weren’t close, Julie Wharton and her Kate. Not for a mother and a daughter.’
‘And why would that be, do you think?’
‘Don’t know. Better ask Julie.’
‘We did, without receiving any satisfactory account of their relationship. That’s why I’m asking you. Sometimes the onlooker sees more of the game.’
Roy Cook hadn’t heard that expression before. He looked puzzled for a moment, then nodded his understanding. ‘I could never work the two of them out. I think Julie had been very close to her dad, who was dead before I knew her. I didn’t want to seem to be taking his place, so I kept out of it as much as I could.’
Lambert nodded. It was a convincing enough explanation of a difficult situation for the new man in Julie Wharton’s life. But it didn’t take them much further into this puzzling limbo of a relationship between mother and daughter. And each time he successfully kept them at arm’s length, Roy Cook seemed to give off a tiny whiff of satisfaction, as if he had scored a small point in a difficult game. Hoping to catch the man off his guard, Lambert deserted the formal language of interrogation and said abruptly, ‘Kate was a pretty girl. Did you try it on with her yourself?’
Cook was flushed and angry as he looked up into the clear grey eyes and the lined, watchful face. ‘No, course I didn’t. ‘Er wouldn’t have looked at me, would ‘er?’
‘I don’t know whether she would or not, Mr Cook, and that isn’t what I asked. I asked whether you tried it on with her, not whether you were successful.’
‘No, I didn’t. And you ain’t got no right to go asking me ‘bout such things.’
Lambert shrugged. ‘I’m trying to find out all I can about a murder victim who isn’t able to tell me these things herself. I’m puzzled about why she suddenly left home at eighteen. This is one possible reason. It’s not the only one.’
‘And it’s not the right one, either. I’m telling you that.’
Cook’s fists clenched and unclenched at his sides as he spoke, and Lambert could feel the physical strain of his self-control coming across the short space between them in that quiet place. He himself sat perfectly still, his only concern being to assess whether the man was telling the truth or not. The sound of a cuckoo came clear and mocking through the still air above the woodland, as if in derision of their efforts. He tried to knock his man off balance with another sudden switch. ‘So who do you think killed Kate Wharton, Mr Cook?’
Cook’s relief was palpable, but he did not rush into a sudden reply. Like many men who earned their living by hard physical labour, he was clearly uncomfortable with words. But Lambert was reminded again that it was easy to underestimate the intelligence of such men. This one took his time, relishing the switch of questioning away from himself, but weighing his words carefully before he spoke them. ‘I wouldn’t know that, would I’? I ain’t been in touch, not since she left home.’ He looked the superintendent steadily in the eye, challenging him to deny the truth of the statement.
‘So you don’t know anything about the life Kate had been leading in the months before her death?’
‘No. I couldn’t, could I, being as ‘ow I ‘aven’t seen ‘er?’
‘So you don’t even know how she was earning a living?’
Again the clenching and unclenching of his fists before he said breathily, ‘Look, how she behaved was nothing to do with me, see?’
‘No, I don’t see, which is why I had to ask the question. But I’m trying to see. Perhaps I shall know a little more when I’ve seen her flatmate.’
Lambert thought he caught a flash of fear in those deep-set brown eyes, but it might have been merely anger. Cook said with heavy control, ‘I told you, I wasn’t in touch. Neither was Julie. If the mother wasn’t seeing her own daughter, it’s hardly likely I was going to interfere, was it? As far as I was concerned, Kate was well out of my li
fe, and it could stay that way.’
‘And you’ve no idea who might have killed her?’
He looked for a moment as if he might say something, might perhaps venture some comment about the life she had led, the life about which he claimed to know nothing. Then he said formally, ‘No, I haven’t. I hope you find him though. Murderers shouldn’t get away with it, or nobody would be safe.’
He sounded his aitches carefully in this, making it sound like the bland, prepared statement of a conventional virtuous attitude. Lambert stood up. ‘If you think of even the smallest item that might be of use to us, it’s your duty to get in touch immediately. We shall probably need to speak to you again in due course.’
If the last phrase had the ring of a threat, so be it. He was convinced that there was more to be had yet from this bear of a man, though he was not sure yet whether he was deliberately concealing information.
Roy Cook stood motionless and watched the pair walk a hundred yards away from him, until the track curved between tall oaks and they disappeared from his view. They were almost back at the car, half a mile away, when they heard the renewal of the raucous whine of the chainsaw and saw the birds wheeling in fright above their heads.
***
Later that Friday morning, Richard Ellacott popped his head round the door of the Secretary’s office at Oldford Golf Club to see if there was any news. He liked to be apprised of any developments before the club became busy at the weekend when its working members arrived.
The Secretary told him there was nothing of note. The elderly member who was dying was holding on in the hospice, so there had been no need to fly the flag at half-mast. One of their youngsters had been selected for the Gloucestershire Colts team. Richard made a note of his name so that he could congratulate him in due course. He was on his way out of the office when the Secretary said, ‘There are a couple of policemen in the lounge.’
Death on the Eleventh Hole Page 9
