An Academic Death (Lambert and Hook Mysteries Book 14)

by J M Gregson

  Her father hadn’t had a meeting with Matt arranged, as he had claimed to her and to the police.

  He had driven down there to seek Matt out and kill him.

  *

  Lambert was in his office, going over the evidence again, trying to isolate the one statement which did not ring true, striving desperately to find the one significant thing they might all have overlooked, when the call was put through to him.

  He thought when the phone rang that it must be something connected with the case. It took him a moment to refocus his attention on to what the cool, businesslike female voice at the other end of the line was saying. ‘It’s the Oldford Medical Centre here. Mr Lambert. Dr Cooper would like a word with you, if it’s convenient.’

  For a moment he could not place the name. Then he remembered that Dr Cooper was his GP; it was so long since he had seen him that he had almost forgotten the name. He said, ‘Yes, it’s convenient. I’m on my own at the moment.’

  The efficient, unemotional female voice, so used to speaking into the mouthpiece all day, said, ‘Hold the line for a moment, please. Dr Cooper will be with you shortly.’

  He could picture Cooper now: perhaps ten years older than he was, grey-haired, avuncular, comfortably padded, with an old-fashioned GP’s panache. This must be about the results of the ECG test at the hospital. But this call wasn’t from the young girl who looked scarcely old enough to be a doctor who had sent him there. This was his own GP. Perhaps that was the protocol in these matters.

  Or perhaps they thought it only right to let the older man convey bad news. News that he needed serious surgery! Worse news than that, perhaps — that surgery was useless in his case. That his heart was paying the penalty for all those years of smoking and junk food taken at irregular intervals. That he must retire now and live like an invalid. That he couldn’t expect to live for very long. That he should prepare himself for the worst! That death might come at any time!

  He could hear the sounds of papers being shifted in the background when the phone crackled again in his ear. Then a deep, gravelly voice said, ‘John Lambert? The results of your ECG are through from the hospital. Sorry to trouble you at work, but I thought you’d like to know as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Very thoughtful of you.’ Lambert found his mouth suddenly very dry. Why didn’t the old fool tell him and get it over with, instead of trying to break things gently?

  ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with your heart. Nothing wrong at all… Mr Lambert, are you still there?’

  He was. He was staring dumbly into the mouthpiece of his phone, trying to get words from a tongue which seemed suddenly atrophied. ‘Th — thank you. Doctor. You’re sure there’s nothing wrong, then?”

  A chuckle at the other end of the phone, from a man who was delighted to be giving good news. ‘Nothing at all. And you don’t have to trust an old fool like me: ECGs are quite objective, you know! Designed to show any irregularities in the way the heart is functioning.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’ Lambert took a great, silent breath of deliverance and managed to resume in his normal voice. ‘Well, that’s a relief, I must say. I wasn’t really worried, of course, but I suppose one is bound to get a little anxious. At the back of one’s mind, you know.’

  Another chuckle. ‘Yes, one is. Bound to get a little anxious, I mean. Well, as I say, there’s nothing seriously wrong with your heart.’

  Lambert was suddenly fearful Cooper might ring off. ‘What do you think it might be, then? I’m sure it’s not indigestion, I’ve never suffered from that.’

  Another chuckle. Dr Cooper seemed to find his non-serious predicament quite amusing. ‘I don’t do diagnoses over the phone. You should come in and see me. But in my view the most likely explanation is a touch of fibrositis — inflammation of muscle tissue. Do you get it when you’ve been in one position for long periods? Or when you make a sudden movement?’

  Lambert found he could suddenly think quite clearly about what was now a minor problem. ‘Yes. Both of those. It feels like a severe attack of cramp, in the chest.’

  ‘That’s the fellow. Get a touch of it myself at times. More in the neck than the chest, in my case. Pop in to see me, when you’ve got the time. Give you a few exercises and a prescription for some gunge to rub on it. Must go.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, thank you very much for ringing me so promptly, Doctor.’

  He stood up, looked out into the deserted corridor, and shut the door carefully. Then he allowed himself a schoolboy shout of triumph and punched the air so exultantly that his knuckles touched the ceiling.

  Only fibrositis! How wives would insist on fussing over nothing. He’d known all along that there was nothing serious.

  *

  Bert Hook had never been a great theatre-goer. Few policemen are. But this time it was he who had booked the tickets, he who had assured a rather doubtful Eleanor that she would enjoy the performance.

  Eventually, she had silenced her doubts and brought her mother in to babysit their boisterous boys, who felt they were quite old enough to be left on their own but weren’t. Bert would never have wanted to see Hamlet before he had done his Open University degree, but that didn’t mean this wasn’t a worthwhile expedition. In any case, she got out so little these days that any evening at the theatre was to be savoured. Eleanor dug out the posh frock and the intelligent expression, put on her face, and sallied forth to a night at the theatre.

  She was surprised how much she enjoyed the play. The acoustics of the splendidly restored Festival Theatre at Malvern were good, and the familiar, proverbial phrases came floating up to her with great clarity. The Hamlet was short and stout, not at all the image she had carried from the picture on her classroom wall at school of a young John Gielgud, but she soon forgot her reservations as she watched the actor’s intelligent, intense delivery. The only embarrassing moment came when Bert leaned close to her ear and said in a highly audible whisper, ‘They’ve cut out Fortinbras altogether!’ which caused a flurry of turning heads and scandalised looks from the row in front.

  Even without the warlike Fortinbras, Hamlet is a long play, and the interval came quite late in the evening. There was such a long queue for drinks that Eleanor suggested they walk outside for a little while instead, and enjoy the twilight of a splendid day. Bert readily acceded, glad of the opportunity to stretch his legs after two hours of confinement. They went down the broad flight of steps which set off the rear of the theatre so impressively and into the park below, where the soft amber light of the Victorian lamps switched on as they arrived, providing an agreeable glow through the trees and making it seem a little darker than it actually was.

  While Bert explained to a secretly amused Eleanor what a perfect example of the Oedipus complex Shakespeare had set out in the character of Hamlet, three hundred years before Freud, they strolled through the still warm half-light and dropped down through the trees to the small ornamental lake. They were on the bridge which spanned its still waters, with the dark mass of the Malverns dramatically outlined above them, when they heard the distant, insistent shrilling of the theatre bell, telling its patrons that the second half of the performance would begin in five minutes.

  It was as they turned to complete the circuit of the lake and climb the path back to the theatre that they passed a couple sitting on one of the benches beneath the tallest of the trees. The man made a sudden movement as they approached, embracing the woman, putting his face above hers to kiss her. She seemed at first startled by the movement, which obscured both her face and the man’s from the passing couple, but then she responded, putting her arms round the broad shoulders, sliding her hand into her partner’s dark hair and holding his head against hers.

  The man’s move had been swift, and effective in its purpose. But it had come an instant too late. Bert Hook’s observant policeman’s eyes had recognised the man as Charlie Taggart and the woman as Liz Upson.

  Eighteen

  In the bright morning light through the l
iving-room window, Kerry Rees stood her ground and glared back at her furious father. But she held on to the back of an upright chair, for she felt her knees trembling as he shouted at her.

  ‘You had no right to be in the room! And certainly no right to be reading my bloody letters!’

  She had heard him swear often enough before, but never at her. She tried to keep her voice steady as she said, ‘This is more important than manners, Dad, and you know it! I cleaned the room to help Mum, and because I wanted to please you. I found the letter by accident. You couldn’t expect me not to read it, when I saw the University of Gloucestershire logo on it!’

  ‘You shouldn’t have read it!’ His voice rose to a shout of frustration as he repeated himself. She could see his brow like thunder, feel the set of his mind behind it, refusing to consider any argument from her.

  ‘Well, I did read it, Dad! And it told me that you never had any meeting arranged with Matt. In fact, it told me that he had refused to meet you! Did you find him, that day when you drove down there, Dad? Found him and killed him, did you?’

  Suddenly, when she had least expected it, she was in tears, sobbing uncontrollably, full of grief, not for the dead man but for the clumsy, loving, helpless father who had killed him, who stood before her now roaring like a captive bear.

  It was her tears which broke the tension which had held them apart like a rod of steel. Before either of them knew it, he was at her side, his huge arm round her shoulders, her face against his chest, his throat muttering the wordless comfortings he had used when she was an infant upon his knee. Gradually her shoulders moved less violently and she gained a measure of control over her breathing. Finally she turned her tear-wet face up towards those heavy features she knew so well. There was still a huge gasp in the middle of her question as she said, ‘Oh, Dad, why did you do it?’

  ‘I didn’t, girl! God knows I’d have liked to, but I didn’t. There’s phones, you know, as well as letters! I may not like ’em much, but I use ’em, when I ’ave to, don’t I? I rang lover boy up, as soon as I got that poncy letter. Told him I was coming down, didn’t I? Told him he was going to see me, whether he wanted to or not. That I’d make sure I saw his boss, if he didn’t meet me! That’s when he said he’d meet me in that pub! Which he never did, God rot his soul!’

  Kerry Rees looked up into that face so full of experience and love and believed him. She began to laugh, and went on uncontrollably until her father smiled, and shook her like a doll to stop her.

  *

  John Lambert was already in the Murder Room, looking over DI Rushton’s shoulder at his computer monitor, when DS Hook arrived in Oldford CID at eight thirty on Thursday 1 July.

  Perhaps, Hook thought, twenty days after Upson had gone missing, ten days after the discovery of his body, he had the breakthrough which had seemed so elusive even twelve hours earlier. Or perhaps he was bringing nothing of any significance: he reminded himself as he had done throughout the night that seeing Taggart with Liz Upson could either mean nothing at all or be the missing piece of the picture they had been seeking.

  He gave them the new piece of information, the piece which might be the missing one in the jigsaw, or merely part of another and quite different picture. He watched their minds clicking over, digesting this new piece of information, fitting it in with what they already new. It moved Charlie Taggart from a cheerful observer on the fringe of things to a central part in the drama, from a man who had provided them with a little dispassionate information about the dead man and his associates to a lover of Upson’s widow.

  And for John Lambert, who had obeyed until far into the night his own injunction to examine everything they had previously accepted about this case, it had an immediate significance. ‘They’ve deliberately concealed their relationship from all of us, these two,’ he said. ‘That suggests they definitely had some reason for that. A sinister reason, I think, not just one of social embarrassment. Many a widow might like to conceal an affair she had been conducting at the time of her husband’s death, merely because it seemed suddenly in very bad taste, but Liz Upson wouldn’t be one of them. She made no bones about her contempt for her husband. She wouldn’t have thought it worthwhile concealing a lover. Unless she had some particular reason to do so. Some reason connected with her husband’s disappearance and eventual death.’

  ‘They were certainly anxious not to be seen last night,’ said Hook. ‘Taggart was just an instant too late in seeing me. If he’d moved into his clinch a second earlier, I wouldn’t have recognised either of them.’

  Rushton said, ‘I’d be pretty certain this is the first time they’ve been together since Upson died. We had a tail on Liz Upson for six days after the body was found, in view of the opinions she had expressed about her husband. She didn’t meet anyone involved in the case during that time.’

  Lambert smiled ruefully. It was he who had authorised the observation of Liz Upson, and he who had ordered that it be discontinued after six days, on the grounds of economy: surveillance was always the most expensive item in any CID budget. ‘Good thing we had that old fox Bert Hook in our team, then! Never off duty, someone like Bert!’

  Hook made his protestations about this being merely an extraordinary piece of luck when he was out for an evening at the theatre, but Rushton as usual wasn’t sure how far these two old sweats were pulling his leg. ‘It may be no more than an affair between the two of them that we didn’t know about. I can see why she wouldn’t want to go public on it, in the days after her husband was found shot. I can’t see any immediate connection between this liaison and either of the murders.’

  Lambert glanced sharply at him. ‘Can’t you? You should be able to see a possible one, if you do what I suggested last night and review all our information with sceptical eyes.’

  Lambert did not go any further, and Rushton was too proud to ask him where exactly he should look. When the superintendent turned enigmatic, Chris preferred to solve the puzzle for himself rather than ask for the solution.

  And there was no doubt that Lambert was excited. There was a new glint in his eye, a new urgency in his voice, as he said to Mark Whitwell, ‘Get back to the university campus and watch Charlie Taggart. Drop anything else you were following up and just keep your eye on what Taggart’s doing. He hasn’t spotted you, has he?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I haven’t even been close to him. I’ve been mingling with the students, picking up what I could about the drugs scene on the campus. He doesn’t seem to be connected with that.’

  ‘Does he know your car?’

  ‘No. Unless he’s a lot cleverer than I think he is, he hasn’t even realised that I’m on the campus.’

  Lambert shook his head. ‘I doubt that. But he was probably perfectly happy to see you there, so long as he heard that you were following up the drugs situation. Go back there and watch him like a hawk, then. If he leaves the campus, let us know. And follow him.’

  *

  Lambert stayed with Rushton and Hook. With a face like thunder, he went over what he saw as the key facts in the story, the crucial flaws in the evidence which they had used to set up the framework of their enquiries. Chris Rushton, who prided himself on the meticulous checking and documentation of the masses of information gathered in a murder investigation, was appalled that he could have accepted things at face value so glibly. ‘We were all so certain that drugs were behind these killings. It seemed the only real connection between the two murders,’ he said dully, as if trying to convince himself that anyone else would have followed the same path.

  But Rushton was not more appalled than Superintendent John Lambert, who went over and over the facts and tortured himself with the thought of how he might have saved the loss of a young life if he had seen things more clearly a week earlier.

  Within twenty minutes, Mark Whitwell radioed in to say that Charles Taggart was indeed on the site at the University of Gloucestershire. At ten fifty, he reported that Taggart had left the campus and that he was foll
owing the lecturer. Ten minutes later, his radio voice came through a lot of interference from the steeply rising ridge of the Malvern Hills on his right to say that he had crossed the border into Herefordshire, that there was every sign that Taggart was heading towards the house of Liz Upson.

  Lambert and Hook were in the car and through the gates of the police car park at Oldford within thirty seconds. Lambert, still grim-faced as a Soviet statue, said nothing, and Hook, driving swiftly but with due care, had more sense than to try to lessen the strain by speaking himself. Each man spent a tense journey asking himself how he could have been so stupid as to accept things so easily.

  They were within half a mile of their destination when Lambert growled, ‘They fulfilled the first rule of deception: set your one significant lie amidst as much truth as possible if you want to slide it through.’

  *

  Mark Whitwell was parked at the end of the cul de sac where Liz Upson lived. His grey Mondeo was behind a maroon Jaguar, but its wheels were turned sharply outwards, in case he needed to fling his car sideways across the narrow road to prevent an exit by the man he had followed here. He appeared to be reading a newspaper, but they knew by the merest inclination of his head that he was aware of their arrival here. ‘Good lad, that!’ said Bert, without looking sideways at the DC. They were the first words he had spoken since Lambert had tersely outlined their omissions at Oldford CID.

  The whole road was ablaze with the brilliant July flush of roses. Around the big front window of Liz Upson’s detached house, the full pink blooms of ‘Albertine’ blazed in innocent profusion across the brickwork, reaching up exuberantly towards the smaller windows of the bedrooms and the eaves above them.

  Taggart’s MG sports car was parked in the drive. As they walked up the path, they saw the faces of Liz Upson and Charlie Taggart white with surprise and apprehension amidst the myriad pink roses which danced around the window. It was a strange framework for murderers, thought Bert.