[Lambert and Hook 20] - Something Is Rotten

by J M Gregson

  He placed the duvet over the unresisting body and drew the curtains upon the blackness outside.

  CID pigs were a different proposition from those uniformed tyros who’d been here ten days earlier. Jack Dawes decided that within thirty seconds of their arrival in his mother’s shabbily furnished living room.

  He was confident he could handle Bert Hook, that amiable, ruddy-faced, slightly bumbling man who had made such a good Polonius when they had rehearsed together on the previous night. But he didn’t like the look of the younger man he introduced as Detective Inspector Rushton, who seemed bent on hostility from the moment he entered the room. He was one of the few CID men Jack had met who did not look like a policeman in plain clothes. In his sharply cut dark blue suit, he might have been a senior executive who had come here to inspect the efficiency of his staff. He was probably in his early thirties, Jack decided. He had dark, carefully parted hair, clean-cut features, and brown eyes which glittered with enmity.

  ‘We need to talk to you about last night,’ said Hook.

  ‘Your companion has already been into the station to give her account of what happened,’ said Rushton. He made it sound as if Jack’s failure to do the same thing was already a suspicious act.

  ‘My companion?’ Jack decided that it would be best to deny any close connection with the girl who had ridden on his pillion on the previous night.

  Bert Hook smiled at him. ‘Becky Clegg. She gave Superintendent Lambert and me the distinct impression this evening that there was something between you.’

  ‘We were acting together in the play, that’s all. With some older bugger who was playing my dad. Though I don’t feel any filial attachments with him at this moment!’ Jack tried hard not to smile and look smug; he’d enjoyed taunting Hook, and he was particularly proud of that word ‘filial’. That would show the pigs that he wasn’t just an ignorant yobbo, that they needed to treat him with respect.

  Bert answered his smile. ‘And I’m sure that you won’t expect me to show any fatherly tenderness towards you, Jack Dawes. You’re in the midst of a murder inquiry, lad, and the sooner you realize that the better. At the moment, you’re the last person known to be with the victim when he was still alive.’ Hook looked at him with his head a little on one side and allowed himself the suggestion of a smile at the young man’s predicament.

  ‘You mean the last person other than his murderer, I think.’ Jack tried to remain calm and dismissive, but he realized with a shock what he should have acknowledged to himself much earlier: this was a much more serious affair than anything he had been involved in before.

  Chris Rushton said thoughtfully, ‘The two might be one and the same, of course. We have to consider that possibility.’

  ‘And what happened to innocent until proved guilty?’

  ‘Nothing happened to it, Mr Dawes. It still applies. We simply have to consider all possibilities, as DS Hook has already indicated to you. And it will be self-evident to anyone as sharp as you that someone with a previous history of law-breaking and violence is more likely to perpetrate murder than more law-abiding citizens.’

  ‘So you’re not given a chance if you’ve tangled with the filth before. That’s it, isn’t it? If you’ve got a bit of previous, you’re—’

  ‘Statistics, Mr Dawes. Cold and objective. Much better than emotions, when it comes to making decisions. Statistics tell us that people who have offended in the past are more likely to do so again, particularly when there is a steady history of transgressions.’

  Jack was beginning to hate this composed, self-contained man, with his immaculate hair and his smart collar and tie, who seemed not to feel the heat in this stuffy, ill-ventilated room. He had intended to treat the CID men with contempt, scorning to defend himself, leaving them frustrated by his cold refusal to discuss any involvement in the demise of Terry Logan.

  Now he heard himself saying defensively, ‘I might have stepped out of line a bit, in the past. I don’t have convictions for violence.’

  ‘Oh, but you have, Mr Dawes. I could give you the dates of those convictions, if I wanted to, but we don’t wish to waste our time with that when we have your involvement in a murder investigation to pursue. I will merely remind you that you beat up an innocent shopkeeper, only last week.’

  ‘I didn’t do that. You pricks have already been told that I was here with my mother when old Joussef got what was coming to him.’ He glanced at the kitchen door, knowing that his mother would be listening behind it.

  Rushton looked at him with open contempt, enjoying this discomfort of a sharp rogue who was only around ten years younger than himself. ‘No, that hasn’t been established, Mr Dawes. The case may never come to court. That will depend on Mr Joussef and how much louts like you have managed to scare him. But we know and you know that you were involved in the injuries to Mr Joussef.’

  ‘I told you, I wasn’t there. My mother’s already confirmed to your PC Plods that I was here at the time of that attack.’ He glanced at Bert Hook and found no relief this time in that unthreatening face. The DS was studying him with undisguised curiosity and suspicion.

  Bert said quietly, ‘I think you’d better tell us exactly what happened last night, Jack.’

  ‘You know most of it. I was rehearsing with you and Becky for the last part of the evening. With Terry Logan directing.’ He kept his voice perfectly level. ‘Then we finished and went home.’

  ‘Not quite. Terry kept you behind when everyone else left. I talked briefly with Becky in the car park outside. Offered her a lift home, in fact. She said she preferred to wait for you.’

  ‘And she told you what happened after that. I don’t know why you’re asking me about it when you could be—’

  ‘Because we want your version of how the evening ended, Jack. Just as we are collecting the version of everyone else who was in the Mettlesham Village Hall last night.’

  Jack took a deep breath, forcing himself to be calm, to deal with this on his terms rather than theirs. It was at that moment that the kitchen door burst open and his mother stumbled into the room. ‘He was in here at half past ten last night, my Jack. So don’t you go accusing him.’

  ‘Accusing him of what, Mrs Dawes? I assume that is who you are.’

  This was Rushton, and he threw Sally Dawes off balance immediately. Tall and handsome men usually did, and this one was also unsmiling and hostile. ‘Anything. My Jack hasn’t done anything.’ She looked desperately at her son, then back at the unsmiling official face. ‘You lot are always coming here and saying he’s done bad things when he hasn’t.’

  Hook had not taken his eyes from his young quarry’s face. ‘How long were you in the hall after Becky Clegg and I left?’

  ‘Hardly any time at all. You were just driving away when I came out. I saw your rear lights on the lane.’ They might not believe that, but they couldn’t disprove it. ‘I knew Becky would be waiting in the cold outside and I’d promised her a lift, so I couldn’t be long, could I?’

  ‘Very considerate of you. What were you discussing with Terry Logan?’

  ‘He was giving me a few pointers about my performance. Telling me how Laertes would develop through the play. I haven’t even read Hamlet. I didn’t even know that he kills the hero at the end of the play, until Terry Logan told me.’

  ‘And why did he dismiss Becky and me whilst he did this? Why did he need to have you on your own to tell you these things?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? You’d need to ask him about that. Except that you can’t do that now, can you?’

  Bert Hook did not take his eyes from the boy’s face or change the tone of his voice even fractionally as he said, ‘What time did Jack really come in last night, Mrs Dawes?’ The swift, fearful glance she shot at her son spoke louder than many words. ‘Half past ten. I just told you.’

  ‘It must have been later than that. Unless he broke the speed limit on that bike of his.’ Another significant glance passed from her to Jack. ‘It might have been a bit late
r than that. I wasn’t watching the clock, was I?’

  ‘Was it perhaps much later than that, do you think? Half an hour later? An hour later?’

  Jack almost shouted. ‘No, it wasn’t! It might have been half an hour later, but no more than that.’ He forced himself to speak more calmly. ‘I dropped Becky off and came straight home. I didn’t notice the time, because none of us thought it was important then, did we? Mum likes a drink at night, so she was a bit pissed when I got in. But it was somewhere about the time she said. All right?’

  Rushton studied mother and son for a moment, as if he was reluctant to leave it there. But he knew they wouldn’t get any more out of either of them tonight, that they would merely retreat into their shells and stubbornly reiterate the story he fancied they had agreed beforehand. ‘Who do you think killed Mr Logan, if you didn’t?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I? If I knew anything like that, I’d tell you about it, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘You’d behave like a good citizen and help the police with their inquiries, would you, Mr Dawes? Well, I suspect it would be for the first time in your life, if you did. But I see that you have a high regard for your own miserable skin. You will realize that it is very much in your own interest to come forward with any information you have or any thoughts which occur to you in the next day or two. Until we have other candidates for this murder and some real evidence, you will remain firmly in the frame for this one. Don’t think of leaving the area without informing us of any plans, will you?’

  He nodded the briefest of goodnights to the anxious face of Sally Dawes and led his colleague out of the house.

  At one thirty in the morning, Christine Lambert was still awake.

  She had been thoroughly exhausted when she came to bed, yet she hadn’t slept. And now, two hours later and with her eyes sore and dry within their sockets, she knew that she would be awake for hours longer yet. She switched on the light and tried to read, but her eyes were too tired for that; she was soon rubbing them in irritation and closing her novel in frustration.

  Her mind kept coming back to her daughter and the agony of her isolation. She had felt isolated herself, twenty years ago, when that girl in the next room was a toddler. But she had never had to contend with that bitter and unhinging sense of betrayal which Jacky now felt. John’s mistress had been his work, a faceless and impersonal rival. She had never felt the bitter sense of personal failure and disconnection she had seen in her daughter’s suffering, bewildered face over the last two days.

  She listened to the regular breathing of her husband beside her and felt the sharp, illogical hostility which the sleepless always feel towards the sleeping. It was silly and selfish, she told herself: John needed his sleep to cope not only with the situation at home but with this murder which was already exciting the media. Knife crimes were always more sensational than poisonings or gunshots, he had told her, and it was true that even she was more appalled by the grisly visions of blood and gore which a slash across the throat aroused.

  He should have let her go in to see her daughter before she came to bed, Christine decided. He’d popped in himself, said she was out to the world, that she was sleeping and best left undisturbed. As if Christine didn’t know that Jacky had been drinking too much; as if she needed to be preserved from the reek of whisky or the possibility of vomit. Hadn’t she known much worse? Hadn’t he left her to cope with much worse during the children’s illnesses all those years ago, when she was at the end of her resources and yearning for his sympathy and his support?

  Yet she knew that John had been protecting her not against the possibility of physical mess but the evidence of Jacky’s disintegration. She was grateful to him for his care, surprised by the empathy he had shown for his daughter in her crisis and by the way she had responded to him. But why should she be surprised, and even a little jealous? Hadn’t John always been good in a crisis, even in their darkest days? Hadn’t he always found it difficult to show his love in the routine of day-to-day living, and easiest to show how much he cared for her and for the children when there was some real emergency?

  Christine looked again at the time on the bedside clock; it had crept forward to one forty. Before the idea had clearly formed itself in her mind, she had slid softly from between the warm sheets. The heating had switched off hours ago. She stood shivering in the November chill for a second, then snatched her dressing gown from the back of her door.

  She’d check on Jacky. She’d find her sound asleep, perhaps tidy the sheets a little around her chin, as she had done when she was a child, then come straight back to bed. She’d be able to sleep then. That’s what she needed. John had meant well, no doubt. How little men knew about the way life worked! Christine crept on to the landing, turned the handle on the door of Jacky’s room carefully. She mustn’t disturb her husband: John needed his sleep.

  Thirty seconds later, she was back at his bedside, shaking him roughly awake, shrieking at his insensible, insensitive, ignorant male face. ‘She’s taken pills! I can’t wake her! John, I felt her wrist, and she’s cold!’

  He was dialling 999 before she knew he was awake, saying with authority and apparent calm, ‘Ambulance, please. It’s extremely urgent.’

  Always good in a crisis, John Lambert.

  Fourteen

  Michael Carey had a thought over his breakfast cereal which both amused and excited him.

  He would treat this interview with the police as an acting exercise. He would play the gauche young man who was preoccupied with his own dreams and not very much aware of the world around him. That wasn’t at all how he saw himself. But it would be good practice for an alert realist who intended to make his living from the stage.

  A smile flickered over his face as he cut up his banana and apple with the antique fruit knife he kept specially for the purpose. It was as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel; he always enjoyed slicing through the flesh of the fruit with the effortless precision afforded by this razor-sharp tool. By the time he was finishing his muesli, the smile had taken over his face: he found it difficult not to giggle at the prospect of what he had now designated his little brush with the law.

  When the bell rang and he opened the door, he found the man he had rehearsed with on his doorstep, the man who had made such a good fist of Polonius in the opening court scene. He brought with him a tall man, whose plentiful dark hair was grizzled with grey, whose long, lined grey face looked drawn with tension. Bert Hook introduced him as Chief Superintendent Lambert. Michael was pleased to meet this local detective legend, but surprised to see him looking so pale and strained. The challenges of the job must be catching up with him; the man looked as if he must be due for retirement before long.

  Lambert wouldn’t have argued with that description of himself this morning. He had not slept since his wife had awakened him with the news of his daughter’s condition. You did not get much rest in the brightly lit corridors of hospitals, as the night crawled slowly towards morning.

  It was curious how mental illness of any kind still carried its own taboos. He would have said he had no secrets from his old friend Bert Hook. They had shared much together over the last ten years, in their family as well as their professional lives. Yet he had said nothing to him of Jacky’s crisis and the events of the small hours as they had driven here today. A few months earlier, he had felt Hook’s agony as Bert’s son had almost died from meningitis; now he felt himself unable to speak about the sufferings of his own child.

  He tried to concentrate whilst Bert Hook took Michael Carey through the details of the rehearsal and his movements on that fatal Wednesday evening. He noted a febrile excitement in the young man, an animation in the fresh face beneath the striking golden hair, which might or might not be characteristic, and thus normal behaviour for him.

  Bert concluded the interview with, ‘So you left the rehearsal at around nine o’clock.’

  Michael Carey grinned, as if they were playing a game together. ‘You know I did. Terry Logan gave us some
notes on the scene we’d just rehearsed, and then dismissed us, apart from you, Becky Clegg and Jack Dawes.’ He was pleased that he’d remembered the full names of the two other young people in the cast. ‘Good thing that boy isn’t going into the professional theatre. He might not get far, with a name like Jack Dawes! He could play petty thieves, I suppose. Or perhaps Autolycus in All’s Well that Ends Well, that snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.’ Michael sniggered a little. Whether his mirth was at that thought or at the notion of leading this PC Plod out beyond his depth, he was not quite clear himself.

  ‘I think you’ll find Autolycus is in The Winter's Tale,’ said Hook, without looking up from his notes. ‘What did you do after you left the village hall?’

  Michael tried not to show how nettled he was at being corrected on his Shakespeare by this lumpen figure. ‘I got into my faithful little Fiesta and drove home. Then I took an hour or so to wind down after the excitements of the rehearsal and went to bed to be ready for a hard day’s work on Thursday. My mother would have been proud of me.’ He gave them a modest smile: not too dazzling and not too vacant. He saw himself as a young Kenneth Branagh rather than a Bertie Wooster.

  Lambert had watched the performance without a smile. ‘And are there any witnesses to this admirably dutiful conduct?’

  ‘There are not. Chief Superintendent Lambert. I live here alone.’ He looked with satisfaction around the neat flat, with its prints of Aubrey Beardsley cartoons and the etching of Henry Irving at Stratford on its walls. ‘That is an arrangement which normally suits me well. However, on this occasion, I presume that it leaves me “in the frame” for this killing. Is that still the term you use, Chief Superintendent Lambert?’