[Lambert and Hook 20] - Something Is Rotten

by J M Gregson

  ‘I suppose God does know, if He exists at all, which I very much doubt. He’d also know whether I killed him, wouldn’t He?’ He grinned at the mouthpiece, enjoying his teasing, visualizing the puzzled face above that other phone. Then he said seriously, ‘As a matter of fact I didn’t. Murder’s not my style.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  ‘Are you? Yes, I suppose you are, really. Though to be the friend of a murderer would give you a certain cachet among your circle, wouldn’t it? But I suppose you will have to consider the fact that even if I had killed him, I’d be bound to declare to you that I hadn’t, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I have to go now. My friends are waiting.’

  ‘Run along then. Must be nice to be a gregarious soul and have friends to support you.’ Michael put the phone down and smiled.

  The call from the police still didn’t come, though he waited for it all through the afternoon. Nor did anyone at work yet realize how close their talented and rather secretive young colleague was to the sensational event which they were all talking about at breaks. That was almost a disappointment, he thought, as he drove home in the reliable old Fiesta.

  He went for a run in the dark, using his torch to light his path along the deserted lane, exulting in the physical release which came with vigorous exercise. He was getting very fit, he realized with a delicious surprise. Even when he stepped up the pace and pounded hard over the last four hundred yards of his two-mile stretch, his breathing remained even, the movement of his limbs rhythmical and steady. He breasted an imaginary tape and slowed to a walk, watching the long funnels of his breath disappearing into the darkness above the hedgerows as he turned into the drive and made for his flat at the end of the house.

  The phone was ringing as he turned his key in the lock. He loped quickly across the room to it and said, ‘Michael Carey.’

  ‘It’s Bert Hook, Michael. Polonius. Detective Sergeant Hook now, I’m afraid. You’ve no doubt heard about Terry’s death. We’d like to speak to you about it in the morning.’ It was almost a relief that the call he had been waiting for all day had finally arrived.

  DS Hook was wondering quite how to play out a situation with a very different suspect. He was aware that he had something of a special relationship with Becky Clegg, as a result of sending her out of the station when they could clearly have held her on a shoplifting charge. He smiled at her and said tentatively, ‘Thanks for coming in here.’

  ‘It suited me. I didn’t want big ears listening to pigs questioning me in my pad. And I didn’t want CID men coming into my place of work, when I’ve only been there two days.’

  ‘You got the job, then.’

  ‘I’m giving it a try.’ She wouldn’t tell him that she was delighted with the work and with herself or thank him for his encouragement. Old habits die hard, and police stations made her nervous. So the man she had rehearsed with last night was back to being a copper. It was the first time in her life that she had volunteered to come into a police station and she was reverting to type; her instinct was to call these people pigs and give them nothing.

  Hook grinned at her. ‘It’s working, isn’t it?’ She looked at him and felt suddenly guilty. He didn’t look like a copper, with his slightly out-of-date sweater and his brown shoes and his innocent, open, lived-in face. Bert Hook might be a soft touch, as she’d boasted to her friends at the time, but he’d given her a chance and set her off on a new road which she was finding quite exciting. ‘Yes, it’s working. I like the job and so far they seem to like me. I’m moving out of my flat at the end of the month. Everything was going fine, until I became a murder suspect.’

  She waited for him to deny that and tell her that she had nothing to worry about, that this was just a tiresome formality. Instead, he nodded his head thoughtfully. Perhaps he wasn’t a soft touch after all.

  At that moment, a tall man with a long face and grey, speculative eyes came into the little box of the interview room, and she suddenly felt hemmed in and under threat. Hook introduced the newcomer as Chief Superintendent Lambert and Becky Clegg was back in that familiar world where the barriers were up and the police were the enemy.

  ‘You were very close to a man who was murdered last night,’ said Lambert. ‘Tell us about the latter part of your evening, please.’ Becky glanced at Bert Hook, who gave her the slightest of nods. ‘There isn’t much to tell. I spent the last hour of the rehearsal with Jack Dawes and with Bert here. We were concentrating on what we were doing.’

  ‘And what you were doing was being directed by Terry Logan. Did you notice anything abnormal in his conduct or his attitude?’

  ‘No. I wouldn’t know what was normal for him, would I? I hadn’t seen him before last night. Well, not since I was at school.’ She glanced nervously at Bert Hook, hoping that he would confirm that all three of them had been too anxious about the scene to observe their director. They had been concerned only with doing what he wanted them to do on stage, concerned a hundred per cent with their own actions, anxious only not to make fools of themselves. She had sensed at the time that they were all preoccupied with themselves, even this older man who seemed so unlikely a candidate for amateur dramatics.

  Lambert studied her for a moment before he said, ‘You didn’t notice any sign of fear or nervousness in Mr Logan?’

  ‘No. You must already have asked Bert about this.’ She was delighted to see Hook a little discomforted when she threw in his first name again.

  ‘I have. Now I’m asking you, Miss Clegg.’

  ‘And I’m telling you that I didn’t see anything strange in old Logan - sorry, that’s what we called him at school. But I was concerned with making sense of my lines, of trying to be the naive girl Logan said he wanted me to be, not with looking at him. He was in charge, and he knew what he was doing. We didn’t: we were scared stiff we’d make a bollocks of it.’

  ‘And did you?’

  That threw her. He surely couldn’t be interested in the quality of the rehearsal. Becky realized with a pang of fear that what he was interested in was her. ‘I don’t know.’ She glanced desperately at Bert Hook and received no help there. ‘We were muddling through. It seemed to go reasonably well, I suppose. Terry Logan said it was good for a first reading. Very promising, I think he said.

  The time seemed to flash past very quickly. I couldn’t believe it when he said that it was well after ten and we must finish for the night. Terry was full of himself and Hamlet - quite excited, I’d say, but only because of the play. We were all pretty excited, I suppose, but only on account of having got the first night of rehearsals out of the way.’ She looked again for Bert Hook to confirm that, and this time he nodded and gave her a small smile.

  ‘Tell us what happened then.’

  Lambert had never taken his eyes off her; Becky felt that he didn’t believe a word she was saying. And yet so far she had told him nothing but the truth as she recalled it. She said carefully, ‘We all left more or less together, as I remember it,’ and looked again at Hook.

  ‘To be accurate,’ Bert said, ‘I think that you and I left before the other two, Becky. Mr Dawes stayed behind with our director. I offered you a lift, but you said you’d arrived with Jack and you’d wait to go home with him.’

  ‘That’s right. I watched you drive away. Then Jack came out and we put on our helmets and went off on his motorbike.’ Hook nodded slowly. ‘How long was it before Mr Dawes came out?’

  ‘No more than a minute or two after you’d gone.’ She kept her eyes steadily on Bert’s face, preferring that to the cold, unblinking scrutiny of his companion.

  ‘And did Terry Logan come out with Jack?’ She pretended to give the matter some thought. ‘No, I don’t think he did. We’d have seen him when we were putting on our gear for the bike, wouldn’t we? I’m sure he was still in the hall when Jack started the bike and we roared off.Yes, I remember, the lights were still on in there when we pulled out of the car park.’

  Lambert said, ‘Did you see anyone e
lse in the car park or the surrounding area?’

  It was an advantage having been interrogated by the police so many times in the past. This might be more serious, but it wasn’t a new situation for her. Again she made a pretence of considering the question very seriously, a small frown momentarily creasing her smooth forehead. ‘No. I’m sorry, because I realize how important it would be if I had. It was very dark, of course: the only real light was the bit spilling out from the hall.’

  ‘I see. Who do you think might have killed Mr Logan?’

  She felt her pulses racing at the sudden rawness of the question. This is where she must keep her head. ‘I don’t know. Not Jack or me, obviously.’

  ‘You mean you alibi each other.’

  ‘If you want to put it like that. I prefer to think that we are fortunate to have arrived and left together.’

  ‘Indeed. An alternative theory would be that two people with a previous history of crime carried out a murder together and are now providing each other with convenient alibis. But then I’m an experienced CID man, and experience tends to make you cynical.’

  Lambert delivered this almost affably, but that did not affect her rage. ‘You’re a pig, you mean. And with pigs, it’s once a villain always a villain, isn’t it? You never give the benefit of the doubt to anyone, do you?’

  Lambert gave her a grim smile. ‘It’s our business to investigate any doubts we have, not to give or deny benefits. I didn’t ask you to deny your own guilt. I asked you to tell me any thoughts you had about who killed Terry Logan. If it wasn’t you, you must have been thinking about who it was.’

  She knew she must control her anger. Anger, like any other emotion, made you vulnerable with men like this. When you were emotional, you were not rational: you needed to keep your cool with the pigs. ‘If I have thought about it, I haven’t come up with anything useful,’ she said calmly. ‘It could have been someone not involved in the rehearsal at all, someone who knew Terry was going to be there and just waited for him outside.’

  Lambert gave her again the thin smile she was beginning to hate. ‘Which would be very convenient for you, of course. But I have to agree that it is a possibility; we shall need to investigate it. Nevertheless, the probability remains that it was one of the people who had been working with Mr Logan during the evening who waited for him in the darkness outside.’

  Becky was beset by a sudden involuntary shiver. She thrust her hands against her sides, seeking control of her slim body. ‘Some of the others who were there knew him much better than me. I think they did, anyway, from odd things they let drop when we were talking to each other beforehand.’

  Lambert, despite the stress he had put upon her, had decided by now that this was a shrewd and resourceful young woman. He said tersely, ‘Two pieces of advice, Miss Clegg. First, you should go on thinking about last night, trying to recall any remark or action which might seem to be significant in relation to this murder: that is in your own interest. Secondly, if you are in any way acting to protect Mr Dawes, you should immediately cease to do so.’ He stood up. ‘We shall need to speak again, in due course.’ He made it sound like a threat.

  Becky Clegg wandered along the street outside the police station, which was still busy with the last of the rush-hour traffic. She was happy to lose herself amongst the other pedestrians, to recover the anonymity which suddenly seemed so necessary to her. She looked at the displays in the brightly lit shop windows without registering them, walking slowly until she was a good quarter of a mile from the police station.

  Only then did she take the mobile phone from her bag. Turning a corner into sudden darkness, she listened to the ring of the other mobile phone, and gave her first smile in a long time as the familiar voice said, ‘Jack Dawes here.’

  ‘I’ve just spoken to the filth. They’ll be round to see you before long. I told them we left together as soon as you came out. Make sure you tell them exactly the same story. Keep it simple, Jack. Whatever they think, they won’t be able to break that one down.’

  Thirteen

  ‘You need to eat properly. I know you’re upset, but things will only get worse if you don’t eat.’

  The mother’s perennial advice. The advice and sympathy you had to give, even when you knew they wouldn’t be welcomed. Christine Lambert had been determined to say nothing, and yet the words came tumbling out as if propelled by some unseen force within her.

  ‘I’m doing my best, Mum. I’m afraid I’m just not very hungry.’ Jacky stared at the table and spoke like one in a trance.

  ‘You’ll be telling her to eat her sprouts up next, to make her big and strong!’ John Lambert glanced conspiratorially at his daughter, and won a wan smile in response, though she did not look at him either.

  Christine told herself grudgingly that her husband was trying to help. But she resented the old partnership between father and daughter, was taken back twenty years to the small defiances which had undermined her attempts at discipline. She stacked Jacky’salmost untouched meal on top of the two empty plates, watching her stricken daughter carefully whilst pretending not to watch her at all.

  ‘There’s strawberries and cream to follow.’

  ‘Not for me, Mum. Sorry.’

  Christine wanted to scream at her, to tell her to make an effort, to respond to the other efforts that were being made all around her. It was her daughter’s favourite dessert and she’d paid a lot for the out of season strawberries.

  ‘I’ll have yours, then!’ John said with desperate cheerfulness.

  Christine threw him a withering look and went silently into the kitchen.

  The flushed and artificial excitement of yesterday’s shopping expedition hadn’t carried over into today. That laughing daughter had departed; Jacky was listless and isolated again, retreating into that cave of depression where no one would be able to reach her.

  In the dining room there was a silence which father and daughter understood, which both of them accepted as being better than useless speech. They listened to the sounds from the kitchen. John Lambert eventually said, ‘Your mum’s not used to being unable to help. It’s in her nature to offer distressed people comfort and she’s usually been successful.’

  ‘She won’t be successful this time.’ She spoke like one determined upon her misery. John Lambert wanted to take her on his knee as he had done when she was a child, to make her laugh against her wishes, to banish her depression with a fit of the giggles he had once been able to induce. But those days were gone: this was a more crushing and dangerous blackness than those childish heartbreaks which had passed so quickly.

  He said with all the confidence he could muster, ‘What you need is a whisky!’ and went to get the bottle from the cupboard in the sideboard. He poured two generous measures, splashed in a little water to disguise the depth of the whisky, set the glass down firmly in front of her, and took a sizeable mouthful of his own allocation. He was surprised how welcome the taste was upon his tongue; when you were out of your depth, the patient wasn’t the only one who needed a crutch.

  He wasn’t sure how many of his words Jacky had heard. She looked at the glass as if she didn’t understand how it came to be in front of her, then raised it to her lips and took a stiff pull at it. Her face puckered in distress, for a moment, as if this was a sour-tasting medicine, and Lambert was reminded again of the little girl who had gone for ever. Minutes later, the glass was empty, and she slid it towards John and the bottle at his elbow.

  She hadn’t looked at her father’s face throughout all this, and she did not do so now. He hesitated for a moment, then poured another stiff measure into the glass. Before he could add water, she raised it to her lips and drank half of it immediately. Again there was that wincing of the cheeks which denoted pain rather than pleasure, and a part of John Lambert thought that this was a terrible way to treat good Scotch. Jacky downed the rest of the spirit, with determination but no sign of enjoyment, and slid her glass towards him again.

  He gave her an
other measure. They weren’t coping with her despair, any of them, and oblivion might be better than consciousness for her, at this moment. He put the bottle back in its cupboard, sensing that she would not stop until he halted this. He sipped at his own drink, feeling the helplessness about his shoulders like a heavy blanket. He could no longer think of anything to say; even the clichés wouldn’t come now.

  Jacky emptied her glass, pressed her palms upon the table, stood up, and looked at her father in puzzlement, as if he was a stranger and she was in a strange place. Then she staggered, would have fallen if he hadn’t leapt to support her. John Lambert, caught in this strange mixture of tragedy and farce, glanced at the door to the kitchen, wondering what Christine would say to him when this strange, unreal interlude was over.

  He said, ‘I think you’d better have a lie down, love, don’t you?’ and draped Jacky’s arm around his shoulders.

  She did not giggle, as other drunks had done in the past, as he half-hoped she would do now. They made a difficult and halting progress along the hall, lurching against first the wall and then the telephone table as he fought to ensure that she did not fall backwards. ‘Good job there’s no stairs in a bungalow!’ she slurred, and became even more helpless with laughter.

  Her room was untidy, with her purchases from the previous day spread across the floor, a bra across the back of a chair, and unused cosmetics and hairbrushes upon the dressing table.

  John Lambert felt a searing moment of pain and helplessness: Jacky had always been a tidy girl; even in adolescence, she had kept her surroundings meticulously neat, sometimes to the irritation of those around her. How had that well-organized and loving daughter been replaced by this creature so heavy upon his arm, by this suffering, desperate, drunken woman?

  He slid his shoulder from beneath her torso and put her head gently upon the pillow, then lifted her feet carefully on to the bed. Perhaps he would send Christine up to undress her; but even as the thought entered his mind, he knew that he would not do that. Jacky opened her eyes briefly, but she did not look at him. She stared at the ceiling for a moment with a little private frown, then shut them with a soundless sigh.