Richard stopped with his hand on the door, trying to keep his voice even as he said, ‘What do they want? Nothing wrong with our drinks licence, is there?’
‘No, nothing like that. Just routine, they said. Apparently the police are visiting all golf clubs, in connection with this murdered girl at Ross. It’s because she was found on the golf course there. They think other golfers might know someone who would have known the place to dump a corpse.’
Richard could hear the blood pulsing in his temples. He was surprised how calm his voice sounded as he said, ‘They haven’t got anyone lined up for it, then. They must be desperate, to be casting the net as wide as this.’
‘I expect they are,’ said the Secretary, transferring his attention ostentatiously back to the papers on his desk. He was tired of people popping their heads round the door to ask him about the police presence, anxious only to tidy up everything he could before the weekend.
Ellacott went into the spacious lounge of the club, which at eleven o’clock on a Friday morning was deserted, apart from an elderly lady member who was talking earnestly to two young uniformed constables at the far end of the big room. She caught sight of Richard and said, ‘Ah! Here’s our Captain. I’ve no doubt he can tell you more about the golfing habits of the male membership than I can. I only came in to do the flowers!’
Richard beamed jovially, at the steward raising the shutters of the bar, at the lady who had introduced him, at the policemen, at the large, empty room. There was no end to his bonhomie, his wholesome good cheer, his air of happy innocence. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked them cordially. ‘Richard Ellacott at your service.’
Even the older of the policemen did not look more than twenty-one to Richard: His buttons shone bright on the carefully pressed navy uniform as he looked up and motioned the newcomer to sit down opposite them. He had plentiful, very glossy black hair, a smooth complexion, and clear eyes that must make women turn weak at the knees, thought Richard. Youth was very unfair.
The PC said, clearly repeating a formula he had worked out for this and other golf clubs, ‘It’s just routine, really. This girl Kate Wharton was found on a golf course. She’d been dumped in a ditch there, probably by someone who had spotted the place before as a useful spot to hide a body. We’re asking people in golf clubs if they know of any person who might have been likely to commit such a crime and dump a body like this.’
By the end of his explanation, he was sounding weary of its repetition, as if he was going through a tedious exercise which he expected to produce a nil return. His defeatism gave Richard confidence. He said, ‘You’re casting a wide net, aren’t you? There must be at least fifteen courses within easy range of Ross. With an average of, let’s say, six hundred members. That’s nine thousand people, for a start.’ Richard was proud of his easy grasp of figures.
The constable gave him a bleak smile. ‘That’s true, sir.’ He wished the superintendent who had set them off on this wild goose chase could hear the sensible calculations of this old buffer. He might look like a pompous twit, with his grey moustache and florid face, his old-fashioned sweater with the diamond pattern and the plus twos people wore for this poncey game, but he was talking sense.
But his colleague, PC Warburton, had aspirations. He nursed a desire he could not reveal to his uniformed companion for a transfer to CID. So he explained importantly, ‘We obviously can’t question nine thousand people. But in a murder hunt, we do have to spread the net wide, when there isn’t an arrest within a few days. Information comes from the most unlikely places, sometimes. It’s at least possible — we wouldn’t say probable at this stage — that this killing has a golfing connection. And if we talk to people like you, who have an overview of their members, it’s just possible that we might turn up that connection. I wouldn’t put it any more strongly than that.’
Richard Ellacott tried not to smile at this assumption of gravitas by such a fresh-faced young constable. ‘I see,’ he said solemnly. ‘Well, I’ll give some thought to the matter. But I have to say that at present I can’t think of any member who would fit the kind of profile you’re suggesting. If we had any young rapists in the club with a bent for violence, I like to think we should have got rid of them long ago!’ He laughed heartily at this sally.
PC Warburton did not laugh. He said gravely, ‘Our killer may not be young, Mr Ellacott. May not even be a man, in fact, though that seems the likeliest possibility. And Ms Wharton was not raped.’
Richard was nettled by this correction from his young mentor. ‘I see. So what exactly would you like from me?’
‘Have you members who would know the spot on the Ross-on-Wye course where the body was concealed?’
Richard kept calm, took a moment or two to compose himself before he said, ‘I imagine most of our members would have played at Ross at some time. There are matches between clubs, people have friends in the area who are members at Ross, we sometimes—’
‘Would you yourself know the Ross course, for instance?’
This was becoming too personal for comfort. Richard said, ‘Yes, of course I do. In common with hundreds of other people, in this club alone, as I pointed out earlier.’
‘And you’d know the ditch on the eleventh hole at Ross where the body of Kate Wharton was found?’
Richard wondered if the blood which was drumming in his temples showed in his face. ‘No, I don’t recall the course in that much detail. I can’t even picture the eleventh at Ross, and I certainly can’t remember a ditch there.’
PC Warburton was not even looking at him. It was the reply he had expected, couched in words very similar to what he had now heard a dozen times. The fact that he stopped listening before the response was even concluded meant that he was not suitable for CID work, but he had no inkling of that.
‘If,’ he said, ‘you think of anyone who might know the Ross course well, who might have had a connection with Ms Wharton when she was alive, please let us know. Any information will be treated in the strictest confidence, and the co-operation of people like you will be much appreciated, Mr Ellacott.’
It was a dismissal. Richard tried to be amused rather than piqued: he didn’t think he had ever been dismissed by someone forty years younger than him before. He took the Daily Telegraph over to the other end of the big room and sat in a low armchair, pretending to be immersed in its contents.
He was right about the attractions of the young uniformed policemen. Four middle-aged ladies who had come in for lunch swarmed around them, insisting they were fed, flirting outrageously, massaging the young male egos with their light female banter. They even tried hard to help them with their enquiries into the Kate Wharton murder. But they were not able to produce anything helpful while Richard was listening.
He couldn’t eavesdrop forever. Eventually he laid down his newspaper, waved a cheery farewell to the ladies who had neglected him today, assured the policemen that he would be in touch if he turned up anything of interest to them among his members, and left the club.
Three miles from the Oldford club, Richard Ellacott drove into a lay-by and sat very still for a few moments, unconscious of the birdsong and the bright spring day around him. The police didn’t seem to be making much progress. The fact that they were going round golf clubs might even be helpful, in the end. Because he hadn’t revealed the one vital fact that could undo him.
Eleven
Matthew Street, Gloucester, had been a good address, once. In the years after the house had been built, two thirds of the way through Victoria’s long reign, coaches had dropped off important visitors here, and upper-class ladies had held their weekly ‘at homes’ for other females of their class. Even with the noisy advent of the horseless carriage in the early years of the twentieth century, the street had maintained its status throughout the short Edwardian era, when trade had dared to mingle with breeding in this gracious road.
The slow decline of the street and the area had begun like so many other declines after the
first great world war of 1914-1918. The degeneration had accelerated after the even more wide-ranging cataclysm of 1939-1945, and once the unimaginable crimes of Fred and Rosemary West had been discovered a few streets away, there was no hope of Matthew Street being ever again a fashionable address.
Lambert and Hook parked the car and looked up at number fourteen for a moment before they went to the door. It was no better and no worse than the other high, three-storeyed houses in the Victorian street. Like most of them, it had lost its front garden, which a century earlier had twinkled with geraniums and lobelia, to a carpet of grey concrete, so that the ubiquitous motor cars of the tenants could be partially accommodated.
For these big houses had all now been divided into smaller units. Cars in varying states of repair littered both the road and the house frontages, even early in the afternoon. Lambert and Hook walked past a battered Sierra and the steps which led down to a basement apartment and mounted the stone steps to what had once been a handsome blue front door. It was solid enough still, but scratched and in need of a coat of paint. Hook pressed the button at the side of the door which read ‘Boyd’ and the door was opened a moment later by a girl in clean blue jeans and a black shirt which was tight enough to outline small, neat breasts beneath the patch pockets.
The girl was in her early twenties, carefully made up for their visit. She hesitated a moment, waved aside their warrants, and said nervously, ‘Yes, I’m Tracey Boyd. You’d better come up to the flat. I told you when you rang, we can talk there.’
Most of the rooms in this once gracious house had been divided, so that they had lost their proportions and the high Victorian ceilings seemed further away than ever. Tracey Boyd sat her visitors down in two battered armchairs and seated herself rather primly with her knees together on a sofa with a loose cover. ‘You rent these places furnished,’ she said, as if she felt a need to explain the drab decor. ‘You don’t have the chance to make much of an impact.’
They smiled at her, looking up the walls which needed a coat of emulsion paint to the dusty cornice that was almost invisible, high above the single light in the middle of the room. Hook said diplomatically, ‘You’ve got the place very tidy.’
She sniffed. ‘Your Scene of Crime team did that. Went through everything in the flat.’
Lambert smiled. ‘We couldn’t help that. It’s routine to go through the home of a murder victim, as you probably realize. I understand you shared this flat with Kate Wharton.’
‘Yes. We had a bedroom each, and shared the rest.’
The separate bedrooms were very necessary when they brought men back to the flat, no doubt. ‘Why didn’t you report Kate missing, when she didn’t come back here on Sunday?’
It was a direct attack, with no preamble, and her pale face flinched a little in the face of it. ‘I — I didn’t realize at first that she wasn’t here. We did our own things, gave each other our own space.’ She brushed a strand of fair hair away from her left eye and looked at him defiantly.
‘But you shared this place: you didn’t have separate apartments.’
‘We had separate bedrooms.’
‘But you just told us that you shared this room, the kitchen and the bathroom. You’d know whether someone was in the place, whether you were close friends or not.’
‘I didn’t say we weren’t close friends. I said we gave each other our own space.’
Lambert’s voice hardened. ‘You knew she wasn’t coming back. You advertised for a replacement partner for the flat.’
The pale face flushed beneath the lank blonde hair. ‘That was only yesterday.’
‘Tuesday morning, the shopkeeper told our constable the advert was placed. He puts the date on the back of the postcard.’
‘Bloody pigs! They’ve nothing better to do than persecute girls like me.’
‘There’s been a murder, Tracey. It’s normal for uniformed police to check out the area where the deceased lived. When a young policeman is looking for accommodation himself, he’s more likely to pick up an advert like yours; in this case, it carried a telephone number which he’d been given as part of the briefing for a murder hunt.’
‘Bloody nosy young pig! I was only trying to get someone to share the rent, before old Ma Eastham comes on to me for all of it on my own!’
‘So you knew Kate hadn’t come back. But you chose not to report it. It was left to Mrs Eastham to come and tell us that she had a tenant missing, on Tuesday. You must have known about it before she did.’
‘She’s a nosy old cow, Liz Eastham. Greedy for her rent, too. That’s the only reason she came in to tell you.’
‘We’re not discussing why Mrs Eastham came to report Kate Wharton as missing. We’re discussing why you didn’t.’
‘I didn’t know why Kate hadn’t come back, did I? There could have been all kinds of reasons.’
She was ignoring the point he had just made about her advert in the corner shop. She wasn’t a convincing liar, this one. Maybe she would have been, to people of her own age, but not to experienced policemen. Lambert looked steadily into her glistening blue eyes until they could hold his stare no longer and dropped to the bright white trainers on her feet. He said quietly, ‘How much money did you take from her room, Tracey?’
The young face which had been deliberately so blank when they came into the room was suddenly full of fear as well as resentment and he knew that he had struck home. ‘I neve… Well someone else would have had it, if it wasn’t me. Old Ma Eastham, probably, saying she was owed it for her rent. And who’s to say Kate didn’t owe me money? She’d have wanted me to have it, anyway, would Kate. We were mates, weren’t we?’
‘How much, Tracey?’
‘Two hundred quid. How’d you know, anyway?’
‘I didn’t. It was a reasonable deduction, that’s all. There were only a couple of pounds on the body, and she hadn’t paid anything into her bank account for a week. There should have been cash in her room somewhere, but the Scene of Crime team didn’t find any.’
‘You can have it back, I haven’t spent it. It’s almost a relief, if you want to know. I’d never have stolen from Kate, but I thought that old cow Eastham would claim it if I didn’t.’ Her pale face was flushed with the excitement and embarrassment of being discovered, and there was the relief that came with confession in it now. Lambert wanted to tell her that the money was irrelevant, that all he was interested in was who killed the girl who had shared this flat with her. Instead he said, ‘Is that why you didn’t come forward to report Kate Wharton missing? Because you had taken that money?’
‘Yes. I’d have given it back to her, though, if she’d turned up. I’d never have stolen from Kate.’
‘From your friend, no. You said that before.’ He allowed a note of weary cynicism into his voice. ‘Kate earned her money in the same way as you, didn’t she, Tracey? On the game.’
‘I don’t know why you should say that. Can’t you ever…’
‘Convictions for soliciting, last year, the pair of you, hadn’t you?’
She looked for a minute as though she would deny it, would try to brazen it out. Then she said sulkily, ‘Never give us a chance, do you’? Couldn’t pay for this place and save up for a place of our own, could we’? Not in any other way. If men didn’t bloody want it all the time, we couldn’t sell it, could we’? Bad enough having to make a living that way, without the bloody pigs trying to—’
‘It’s the law, Tracey, and as long as it remains the law, we’ll have to enforce it. We all know that, so save us the persecuted toms argument. Right now, it doesn’t interest me.’ He leaned forward and spoke earnestly into the old-young, experienced face. ‘But the way Kate Wharton earned her living does. And if blow jobs and golden rain and a dozen other sexual tricks got her money from men, I’ve got to be interested! Because every one of those punters is a possible killer, at this moment.’
‘She only did straight sex, Kate. No extras. We used to tease her about that, about the money she was
passing up.’
‘She made a lot of money. We’ve seen her bank accounts.’
‘You can do, if you’re young and pretty. Men will do anything for young meat.’ Her revulsion for the trade which supported her burst out in the contempt of the phrase. ‘She’d have had to be less choosy, if she’d still been on the streets in her thirties. But she won’t be, will she? Not now.’ Tears brimmed suddenly in her bright blue, too-revealing eyes.
Lambert said quietly, ‘You want to help us to find who killed your friend, don’t you, Tracey?’
She nodded earnestly, oblivious of the tears which splashed silently on to her shirt with the movement. ‘Course I do. She was a good friend, Kate. You make bloody sure you get the sod who killed her. Pity he can’t swing for it!’ Like many a petty criminal, she wanted the harshest penalties for people who committed more serious crime, and saw no anomaly in that.
‘Reliable friend, was she?’
She looked at him suspiciously. ‘I just said, didn’t I?’
‘You did. It’s just that when people are shooting up with heroin, I wouldn’t like to rely upon them too heavily, myself.’ He dropped the bombshell in without even raising his voice.
They knew, then. They seemed to know everything, these two. Tracey Boyd said dully, ‘I didn’t do that, you know. We might have shared the rent and patrolled the same patch at times, but we weren’t bloody twins!’ She drew the sleeves of her shirt defiantly back, to reveal the smooth, unblemished skin of her arms, devoid of any trace of puncture marks.
But Lambert’s eyes never left her face. ‘I see. So you wouldn’t be dealing either, then.’
She looked at him quickly, then down again at her feet as she said, ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!’
‘Oh, I think you do, Tracey. We have evidence that Kate Wharton was dealing; we can even deduce when fairly accurately, from the evidence of her bank deposits. At the moment, I’m more interested in who might have been her supplier than in whether you are a user or a dealer.’
Death on the Eleventh Hole Page 10
