by J M Gregson
Lambert ignored him. ‘We shall be interested in due course in what it was you thought it so important to conceal. Something which might well interest us, since it warranted a large payment to a blackmailer. In the meantime, it is my job to arrest the man who killed Walter Keane last Friday night.’
‘A time for which I have a watertight alibi. You would be well advised not to offer me further material for a defamation suit.’
Bert Hook said quietly, ‘An alibi provided by your present partner. We don’t like alibis provided by wives and partners which are otherwise unsubstantiated.’
It was the first time he had spoken. Seagrave looked at him as if he were something scraped off his expensive shoe. ‘I’m sure you don’t, Detective Sergeant. Alibis make it difficult for you to frame innocent citizens.’
Lambert had a severe problem with this man. Seagrave and his firm were being investigated by the Serious Crime Squad and very dark things were suspected of him. But that investigation was ongoing and secret and he must not damage it by providing any prior warnings to the man at the centre of it. But he had a murder on his hands here, the most serious crime of all. Seagrave was certainly capable of killing a frail man of sixty and they now knew that he had ample motive. Lambert said tersely, ‘Where were you between nine o’clock and eleven o’clock on Friday night?’
‘With Vanessa Norton. We told you that on Sunday and it isn’t going to change, for the simple reason that it’s the truth.’
Richard Seagrave managed to look very complacent. A man could smile and smile and be a villain, as Hamlet said. He liked that comparison. He was, after all, an educated man.
SIXTEEN
Geoffrey Tiler and Michael Norrington were engaged in a serious dispute. That did not happen very often.
It had been inevitable that it would happen, sooner or later, Geoff told himself. It was adolescent romanticism to think that any couple wouldn’t have little spats. And he and Mike were well beyond adolescence, he thought ruefully. Sometimes he wondered what might have happened, if they’d met at that age. But this wasn’t the moment for that sort of self-indulgence. The death of Wally Keane had changed all sorts of things, far more than he had thought it would. Ironically, it was that death which was now accelerating life, moving it on much more quickly than he would have wished, threatening to take it out of his control. He didn’t like that.
Geoffrey Tiler was a man used to exercising control.
He said, ‘I think you should tell the police what happened. I think you should give them your real name. They’ll find everything out for themselves, if you leave them to it. They have a big team on a murder enquiry. They pry into all kinds of things, just in case they might prove to be relevant.’
‘My past isn’t relevant.’
‘You know that. I know that. But at present those CID men don’t seem to know very much, so they’re investigating everything. They’ll turn up the details you don’t want them to have, eventually. And then they’ll ask why you needed to conceal them. And what else you might be hiding from them. It will concentrate their attention upon you, in exactly the way you are trying to avoid.’
‘You’re ashamed of me. You don’t want to be associated with—’
‘That’s rubbish and you know it is! I’ve known all about it for months, and it hasn’t made a blind bit of difference between us. Now has it?’
Michael Norrington looked gloomily out of the window. ‘I wouldn’t blame you for being ashamed of me. I was ashamed myself. I wish it had never happened. I wish I could turn the clock back and handle things differently.’
The perennial and impossible desire of the weak, thought Geoff. But he didn’t mind this weakness. This weakness was dependent upon him for reassurance and rescue, and he wanted to be the man who offered those things to Mike. ‘You can’t change a single thing, Mike, and you know it. That’s life and we can’t make it other than it is. But you were a different person then. We both accept that. I’m sure everyone did things thirty years ago which they wish they could undo now. I think you’d be much better to be honest with the police.’
‘Make a clean breast of it, you mean? As we were told to do when we were schoolboys? But I can’t go to confession and be absolved of my sins. The police don’t work like that.’
‘No, they don’t,’ agreed Geoff grimly. ‘They’re not in the business of forgiveness. They accept confessions, but they also detect things. They’ll find out about your past, whether you like it or not. And when they do, they’ll throw it at you. You’d be much better taking the initiative.’
Mike wasn’t used to taking the initiative. He hadn’t done it many times in his life, and when he had, it had often been disastrous. As it had been in this thing which he wished to consign to oblivion and which Geoff kept bringing up. Sometimes he wished he had never told him. He said sullenly, ‘You may be right, I suppose. But I can’t bring myself to go parading my sins in front of policemen. It would be inviting the homophobic bastards to laugh at me and persecute me.’
Geoff Tiler came and stood beside him, looking out of the window at the wide, still waters of the lake and the swans and the waterfowl which moved so innocently upon it. His forearm was almost touching the longer and more slender one of the man he intended to marry. He could feel the warmth and it made him wish for physical contact. But something told him that this was not the moment. If Mike shied away from him, that would drive them further apart, accentuate the rift which this stupid dispute had created.
Geoffrey Tiler was a man used to controlling and directing the things and the people within his world. But now he forced himself to say sadly, ‘I’ll go along with whatever you decide, Mike. Of course I will.’
Jason Ramsbottom came looking for the police. Not many people did that.
He said to DI Rushton in the murder room, ‘I understand Mr Lambert wished to speak to me. I can’t think why that would be, but I’m here.’
The police had now occupied a second holiday unit, adjacent to the first one which had been designated as the murder room. Lambert had improvised an office in there, with the help of furniture lent to him by Jim Rawlinson. The site manager at Twin Lakes was understandably anxious to keep police activity as invisible as possible.
The chief superintendent sat behind his desk with Bert Hook beside him and regarded Ramsbottom for a few seconds before he spoke. ‘Good of you to come here, sir. I expect your wife told you that we’d been looking for you. You didn’t fancy doing this alongside her in your own home.’
It was a statement rather than a question. Jason did not know how he should react to it. Perhaps that was what this gaunt, experienced interrogator had intended, he thought. He’d no idea how much the man knew, so he’d need to play this by ear. That wasn’t easy, when the CID men seemed to be following his train of thought without apparent effort. Jason said stiffly, ‘I thought it best to come to see you as soon as possible, when I heard that you’d been looking for me. Is there something wrong with that thought?’
‘Nothing wrong at all, sir. A commendable promptitude, indeed. And I can quite see why you wouldn’t want Mrs Ramsbottom to hear this.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by that, I’m sure. I was hoping that you might have at last discovered who sent us those awful notes, but I suppose that’s too much to hope for.’
He was trying to take the initiative, to put them rather than him on the back foot, and he tried to deliver this with a sneer. He stared hard at the impassive Hook, who had been the man invoked by his wife to solve the problem of the notes those many weeks ago. Lambert said, ‘We, or rather DS Hook, seem to have solved the problem of the notes, in that they ceased to appear after his visit here two months ago. I understood that because they had ceased you did not wish us to allocate resources to the matter. Am I mistaken in that?’
‘No, of course I don’t see any point in trying to discover who sent us those notes, since we are no longer being persecuted by them. Naturally I’m still curious about who was cruel
enough to threaten us in that way, but I’m sure that your investigation should be abandoned in the face of the much more important matter of a murder investigation.’
‘Good. It’s always helpful when the public accept that we have finite resources and must allocate them as we see fit. Murder, as you say, has a high priority.’ Lambert stared at him evenly. There was the suggestion of a smile on his lips. Jason sensed that the preliminary word-fencing was now concluded. It had not gone his way.
It was Hook who now said unexpectedly, ‘We have a very good idea of who sent those horrid notes, but no absolute proof, Jason. We haven’t sought out the proof, in view of the fact that they have ceased to be delivered and that we now have a murder on our hands, as you helpfully acknowledged.’
Jason wanted to leave it at that, to tell them that he was well content to let the sleeping dog of the notes lie. But that wouldn’t sound natural. Normal curiosity would demand that he responded to what Hook had just said. He heard an annoying tremor in his voice as he spoke as brightly as he could. ‘Who do you think sent them, then, Bert?’ It took an effort for him to use the sergeant’s first name, but he wished to invoke him as a friend and a neighbour, not a policeman.
‘I’m sure you have a view on that yourself, Jason.’ The weatherbeaten, outdoor face was irritatingly deadpan.
‘Well, I suppose I thought it might be Wally Keane. Debbie’s a nosey old besom, but not vicious, I’d say. Wally always struck me as darker and more malicious than Debbie. I think he might have been capable of it.’
‘Always tempting to blame a dead man, isn’t it? We find people do that quite a lot. I suppose that’s because the person accused is not able to come back with a robust defence and a threat to sue.’
Jason glared at him, feeling let down. It wasn’t the sort of aggressive retort you expected from a friend and neighbour. ‘I didn’t say it was Wally – not necessarily. I was just speculating. It seems preposterous that it could be anyone around here, and yet it must have been. Wally was secretive and mysterious and perhaps a bit mad. He seemed the likeliest candidate to me.’
‘There is one likelier, don’t you think?’ This was Lambert, his cool voice striking a note which chilled Jason Ramsbottom.
They knew the truth. He was certain of that now. But he had to carry on, as if he was setting up a surprise in some creaking play. ‘None likelier that I can think of. Otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested Wally.’
‘The homes here don’t have letter-boxes, I’ve noticed.’
‘No. They’re not necessary. Most people’s mail goes to their home addresses. We collect any post here from the office near the entrance. Mr Rawlinson says its more secure that way, and certainly no postman would enjoy trying to deliver to identical units without numbers.’ He repeated the manager’s explanation mechanically, racing through it lest he should be interrupted.
‘So how did these messages arrive?’
‘They were pushed under the door. It’s tight, but it’s possible.’
‘Maybe. But it’s much easier for the home-owner to put them there himself. And in our view that is almost certainly what happened.’
For a wild moment he thought of suggesting that it could have been Lisa. Then he said desperately, ‘And why on earth would I want to do that?’
‘I can think of a variety of reasons. To alarm your wife, perhaps? You certainly succeeded in doing that – hence her invocation of DS Hook, which you didn’t expect. As a diversionary tactic, so that if Wally Keane revealed what he threatened to reveal to your wife, you could discredit him as some sort of unbalanced maniac? You tell us, Mr Ramsbottom.’
The game was up. Jason felt his world collapsing around him. In his head, he could almost hear the sound of walls physically falling. He had known it would come to this. Over the years, he had told himself repeatedly that sooner or later it was bound to happen. For three days, he had thought that with his tormentor dead all might yet be well. He was a fool who couldn’t help himself: how many men before him had offered that lame and hopeless explanation of the conduct which had shattered their worlds?
Ramsbottom said in an even, hopeless tone, ‘He was threatening me. He’d had money from me. I couldn’t afford to go on paying him. But he said he was going to tell Lisa all about my other life if I didn’t. He had chapter and verse, he said. I was afraid that he’d speak to her at any moment. I thought if I could convince her that it was Wally bloody Keane who was sending those notes, she wouldn’t take him seriously if he talked to her about me.’
Hook said gently, almost therapeutically, ‘And what was it that he was going to tell her, Jason?’
Jason stared at the comfortable, persuasive face with his mind racing. Eventually he said dully, ‘You know, don’t you?’
‘We know about Anna Riley, yes. We know her address and we know some of the dates on which you’ve visited her. Walter Keane had recorded them on his computer.’
‘He told me that. He was threatening to tell Lisa. I couldn’t allow that.’
‘Walter Keane had the names and the addresses of previous women, too.’
Suddenly and without warning, Jason Ramsbottom buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook and a series of tearless sobs wrenched at his head. His questioners said nothing, offered no words of understanding or consolation. Emotion makes people vulnerable, and extreme emotion makes them most vulnerable of all. This was a murder suspect; the more disturbed and off balance he was, the more he was likely to reveal. They waited silently until he made some sort of recovery and dropped his hands to his lap. ‘I’ve been an utter fool! I know that.’
‘You were a blackmail victim. We don’t like blackmailers, but Walter Keane has the same rights as other citizens and his death must be investigated just as vigorously.’
‘I’m on the road for a lot of the time. My work takes me away from home. There have always been women. Never more than one at a time.’ He sounded like a man offering mitigating circumstances in court. ‘Wally was demanding more money. I couldn’t afford to go on paying him. Not the sums he was demanding. And Lisa would have realized: she’d have wanted to know where the money was going. I’d already given him ten thousand pounds six months ago. I told Lisa that I’d lost my bonus because of the recession and the firm’s loss of sales when I paid him that, but I couldn’t have explained away any more.’
‘So you were anxious not to lose your wife.’
‘She means the world to me, does Lisa. She and Ellie. I couldn’t bear to lose my daughter.’
Bert Hook said quietly, ‘Then why play away? Why leap into bed with a succession of women, if your family means so much to you?’
Ramsbottom shook his head desolately. ‘It’s a compulsion. I’ve always had other women. Never more than one at a time, but I’ve always had them. Monogamy has never seemed a natural human state to me and I’ve needed the passion.’ Now he was reiterating the arguments he’d put to himself many times to this most unlikely of audiences. It was ridiculous, but in his confusion he did not recognize that: he was speaking more to himself than to his hearers. ‘And yet still the most important thing in the world to me is my family. The most important people in the world are Lisa and Ellie.’
‘And Wally Keane was threatening to destroy that world for you.’
Jason didn’t see the implication of that statement. He was far too preoccupied with his own wretchedness. ‘Will you have to tell Lisa about this? It will destroy me if you do.’
Lambert didn’t answer that. He said instead, ‘You said a few moments ago, “He was threatening to tell Lisa. I couldn’t allow that.” So what steps did you take to prevent it happening?’
Jason Ramsbottom’s eyes widened with horror as he confronted the question. ‘I didn’t kill Wally. I wanted him dead, if that was the only thing that was going to stop his antics. But it wasn’t me who strung him up.’
They let the silence stretch, allowed him to hear how lame his protestation sounded after what had gone before it. It was Hoo
k who eventually said, ‘I think you should tell us again where you were last Friday night between the hours of nine and eleven, Jason. It may be that you wish to make adjustments to what you told us on Saturday.’
Jason tried to ignore the air of menace which had somehow descended upon the burly, unremarkable figure of DS Hook. ‘I was with Lisa. For those hours and throughout the night. She told you that on Saturday.’
Bert flicked over a page in his notebook, though he knew the facts of the matter perfectly well. ‘Correction. You told us that. Lisa did not deny it. The difference may be unimportant; it can also on occasions be significant.’
‘Well, that’s where I was: in our holiday home with my wife. I didn’t kill Wally Keane. I’m not a violent man.’
‘Yet you put a man in hospital after a violent brawl. You were lucky he wasn’t more seriously hurt. You could easily have been facing a manslaughter charge.’
This felt worse coming from a neighbour and a man with whom he’d had an agreeable round of golf two hundred yards from here, even though it was Lisa and not he who had brought in Hook. Jason said bleakly, ‘That was sixteen years ago. I was wilder then. It was before I was married.’
‘You were in fact twenty-four. Scarcely a teenager led astray by others.’
‘But more stupid and more brutal. I got in with the wrong set.’
Hook gave him a grim smile. ‘We never meet anyone who got in with the right set, Jason. We don’t accept it as an excuse. If you’re into clichés, try the one about the leopard not changing its spots. We find that men who use violence at twenty-four usually still see it as a solution when they’re forty.’
Jason said dully, ‘I didn’t kill Wally Keane. Please don’t tell Lisa about Anna Riley and the others.’
It took Jason Ramsbottom a long time to walk back to his home by the lake and the cheerful, unsuspecting wife who awaited him there. His face was grim as he told Lisa, ‘You may need to stress to them that I was with you on Friday night.’
