by J M Gregson
Rushton always tried to give the least helpful information first. Occasionally he enjoyed presenting something startling with a conjuror’s flourish at the end of their exchanges. ‘No one saw Chivers on Friday evening in Highnam,’ he began gloomily. ‘It rather looks as if he arranged to meet someone at the isolated spot where he was killed. That was his bike which was found at the scene.’
Lambert nodded. ‘If he went there on a bike, he was much less likely to be spotted than if he’d gone there by car. Two cars meeting usually get attention; one car at the side of the road in darkness is assumed to enclose a couple out for a snog.’
‘Friday night seems the likeliest time for this death, when we put the PM report next to other findings. Chivers was seen going into his flat on Friday afternoon - that’s the last sighting of him we have so far. The old lady in the flat next door usually saw him on Saturday mornings. Last Saturday he didn’t turn up.’
Bert Hook looked surprised. ‘He was a drug dealer, Chris. Small-time, but dangerous. You and I know that. When we interviewed him, he didn’t seem the type to visit old ladies.’
‘He used to do a bit of shopping for her on Saturdays, when he was getting things for himself, she says. Apparently he was always very kind to her - sometimes he’d have little chats with her when he brought her shopping back.’
The three of them were silent for a moment, contemplating this tiny window of human kindness in Darren Chivers, the man they had known only as a criminal and a murder victim.
Then Lambert said, ‘Did the team turn up anything useful in his flat?’
‘No. But we think we know why. The place was illegally entered, probably on Saturday night. It was left very tidy - perhaps too tidy to be convincing. The handle on the outside of the door and every significant surface and handle within the flat had been wiped clean of prints. We don’t know what was removed, but it wasn’t an ordinary burglary. Money was left undisturbed in the kitchen drawer, though we’re sure it had been searched. The likeliest time for this break-in was Saturday night. The murder wasn’t discovered until Monday morning, or the team would obviously have been to the flat earlier.’
Lambert sighed. ‘No sightings of an intruder?’
‘No. There are plenty of people in that house, which is a bit of a rabbit warren, but they keep themselves to themselves, especially after dark on a Saturday night.’
‘Did the team come up with any suggestions about what might have been removed from Chivers’s flat?’
‘There was a small one-drawer filing cabinet in the bedroom with the key in the lock. It had been investigated and was empty when our team got to it. Whatever papers were within it were almost certainly removed on Saturday night. The forensic boys have examined it, but found nothing useful.’ Hook said slowly, ‘So it looks as if whoever killed Chivers on Friday night went to the flat on Saturday to remove something which might incriminate him.’
‘Or her,’ said Lambert automatically. ‘But why would someone buying drugs raid the flat of his dealer? What would he be trying to remove?’
‘Evidence of his identity?’ asked Rushton unconvincingly. Bert Hook said suddenly, ‘We’ve been presuming so far that this crime was drugs-related. But Chris and I had tried to scare Chivers off dealing, by pointing out what it might mean if he was caught again. What scanty evidence there is suggests that he’d heeded us. The drug squad have no sightings of him dealing in his usual haunts over the last three weeks. I checked yesterday.’
Rushton nodded slowly. ‘Chivers had no previous history of violence. That implies that he bought that weapon to protect himself, not to attack someone else. Presumably the person or persons who put him in hospital a fortnight ago. Who we can also presume is the person who murdered him.’
‘Probably, but not necessarily,’ said Lambert. ‘We have to ask ourselves why someone who thought a beating was sufficient two weeks ago should think he had to murder the same man only nine days later. How had the situation escalated in that period? You and Bert don’t think he was dealing much in that time. What else could he have been doing?’
‘Blackmail?’ suggested Bert Hook. ‘That’s the sort of crime that drives victims to take desperate action. Chivers was the kind of bloke who might blackmail, from what we’ve seen of him.’
‘Anne, my fiancee, saw him apparently spying on someone near her school.’ Rushton was still a little self-conscious about describing Anne Jackson like that, and he hastened on before the older men could make any comment. ‘She watched him because she thought he might be a paedophile, but he wasn’t at all interested in the children, she said.’
‘So what was he doing there?’
‘He seemed to be checking an address. He made a note of the number and name of a house almost opposite the school, as far as Anne could see.’
‘Did she challenge him at all? Ask him what he was about?’
‘No. Anne’s not a police officer, is she? As soon as she realized that the children coming into school were in no danger, she went back to her classroom.’
Lambert grinned at Rushton’s resentment. ‘Of course she did. She went and got on with her job, and quite right too. Just as a policeman, getting on with his job, would have asked Chivers what he was about. So what have forensics come up with?’
‘They’ve emailed me their findings about the material gathered at the scene of crime,’ said Rushton. ‘Nothing very useful from that pistol, as you might expect, just confirmation that it’s the murder weapon. And nothing from the bike. It’s been identified as belonging to Chivers, but, as with the pistol, there are no prints other than his upon it.’
‘Contents of pockets?’
‘Traces of coke and heroin in the anorak, but probably not recent, the laboratory staff think. It’s difficult for them to be absolutely certain, because the body had probably lain for three nights and two days before it was found.’ He hesitated, then decided to keep until the end the one piece of material which might possibly be significant. ‘His keys, a ten-pound note and a few coins were still in the pocket of his jeans.’ Bert Hook spoke as if ticking off possibilities on his fingers. ‘So there was no robbery motive for the crime, and his assailant didn’t think to take the keys and give himself easy entry to his flat. Perhaps the searching and removal of material from there was an afterthought.’
‘There was a single sheet of paper in the left-hand pocket of his jeans. It looks like a list of names.’
Lambert frowned. ‘And do we know any of these names?’
‘If they’re local, we’ll trace them pretty quickly. One of them at least we already know. The man you interviewed last night is the third name there, the one who claimed never to have met Chivers. Robert Beckford.’
The church was hardly changed from the days when it had been crammed with Victorian worshippers, secure in their faith and contemptuous, as their clergy encouraged them to be, of that Godless man Charles Darwin and his ridiculous theories.
But the high, ivy-clad vicarage which had once housed their pastor in comfortable affluence had been sold ten years ago and converted into luxury flats. The vicar was now housed in a raw brick cube of a detached house, which looked even smaller because it was crammed on to a small plot between the lofty elevations of the church on the one side and the former vicarage on the other. The rows of regimented lobelia and antirrhinums which filled the small flower beds around the square of front lawn seemed to emphasize the regularity which was a feature of the house, as if even colour had to be disciplined here.
The Reverend Peter Lynch was in his study at the front of the house. He saw the police car park outside and opened the front door as the two big men in plain clothes came up the path. ‘I’m Chief Superintendent Lambert and this is Detective Sergeant Hook,’ said the taller and older of the two.
Lynch gave him a firm handshake. Policemen didn’t phase him. He was used to being contacted about fringe members of his congregation and their offspring; you didn’t just minister to the middle classes, and somet
imes he found sinners easier to deal with than the consciously righteous. But his police visitors were usually in uniform, and never before as high in rank as this. He said briskly, ‘What can I do for you, Mr Lambert?’
‘You could tell your wife we’re here, please. It’s her we need to see.’
Now Peter Lynch was shaken. ‘You’re sure about that? I’ve often helped your colleagues before, and if it’s a parish matter I’m sure—’
‘It’s not a parish matter, Mr Lynch. Is your wife at home?’ He had an absurd wish to tell them Karen was out, to deny them access to the wife he suddenly felt was vulnerable. Then reason took over. ‘I think she’s in the back garden. I’ll get her for you.’
He left them in the study and went through to the rear of the house. They observed the room as CID men do automatically, recording anything which would suggest things about the occupants. They noted the cheap, functional modern furniture, the prints of Rome and Venice and St Petersburg on the walls, the wedding photograph of the man who had just left them and a woman smiling in a white dress, holding his arm with shy pride.
It was a full two minutes before Peter Lynch returned with his wife. She limped into the room, smiled at them with what they saw was an effort, and said, ‘I’m Karen Lynch. I believe you wanted to see me.’
Her husband drew up a chair for her and prepared to sit down beside her. Lambert said firmly, ‘I’m afraid we need to see Mrs Lynch on her own.’
‘We have no secrets from each other. I know everything about her past,’ protested Lynch stiffly.
Lambert thought that a curious way to phrase his protest, but he said only, ‘This is standard procedure.’
‘You mean people are more vulnerable on their own. That’s why you don’t want me here, isn’t it?’
Lambert gave the man a small, reassuring smile. ‘Mrs Lynch has surely nothing to fear, if she cooperates with us.’
‘Forgive me, but my experience of the police is—’
‘Leave it, Peter. I’ll be all right. As they say, if I’ve done nothing wrong, I’ve nothing to fear, have I?’ She gave him a wide, reassuring smile, which lasted until he had left the room.
But as the door closed behind him and she transferred her attention to the visitors, she appeared suddenly very tense. ‘Would you tell me what this is about, please?’
‘It is about the death of a local man. A man called Darren Olivers.’
‘The man whose body was discovered on Monday in Highnam.’
‘Correct. What was your connection with him, Mrs Lynch?’ Lambert dropped the quiet words like a hand grenade into the sunlit room.
‘I didn’t know the man. I know his name because it’s hardly been off the news bulletins since Monday.’ She looked very pale and very determined.
‘Then can you explain how your name came to be on a list found in his pocket at the scene of his death?’
‘No I can’t. There must be some mistake.’
‘I don’t think so. I advise you to think very carefully, Mrs Lynch. This is a murder inquiry. The courts would regard any refusal to cooperate with us very seriously.’
She had short dark hair and was dressed neatly but economically in a shirt and jeans. Her clothes, like the furnishings, said that there was little money for luxuries in the modem vicarage. Hook wondered if she was always as pale as she was this morning. There was quite a pause before she said hesitantly, ‘Could - could you tell me anything about this man Chivers?’
Lambert looked for a moment at Bert Hook, then gave him a quick nod.
Bert said, ‘I interviewed him with one of our detective inspectors not long before his death. He was a drug user and a drug dealer. He already had a conviction for dealing and we warned him about the probability of a custodial sentence if he was arrested again on dealing charges. We think that worked as he seemed to have suspended his dealing. He didn’t have regular employment, so he would have had to do something else to support himself.’
‘Or live on benefits.’
Hook smiled grimly. ‘He claimed those, all right; we’ve checked with the employment offices. But he was only drawing unemployment pay for a single man. Yet he had a considerable sum of money in the bank and quite a lot of cash in his flat at the time of his death. And before you suggest it, he had no history of burglary offences.’
She gave this more sympathetic face of the two a thin smile. ‘I wasn’t going to suggest that. I can think of one place where I might have met him.’
‘And where would that be?’
Her leg was aching, the way it often did when she was tired or under stress. She stretched it for a moment, then picked her words carefully as she said, ‘St Mary’s Hostel treats addicts. They are people who have lost out on society, who are at the stage of their lives where they either recover or destroy themselves within a year or two. Unfortunately, only about one in five are brought back, once they get to that stage, but Father Ryan and his voluntary helpers do wonderful work. I give a few hours whenever I can spare them, which is usually on weekday afternoons.’
‘I know St Mary’s. We have to go there on occasion.’
‘To make arrests?’
‘Sometimes to make arrests. Sometimes to question people about what they might have heard or seen.’
‘I don’t blame you for that. I know some of the people there commit criminal offences and your job is to protect the public. Once they’re hooked, they can think of nothing but the next fix and how they’re going to get it. They lose all the concepts of right and wrong which they once had. I know you have to enforce the law, but the real criminals are the drug barons who have reduced them to this state and made millions in the process.’
‘Believe me, we’re well aware of that, Mrs Lynch. These men usually operate at a distance; even when they’re caught, they have the best defence lawyers, so that it needs a cast- iron case to put them away. In the meantime, we have to try to stop dealing on the streets and the back streets and protect the public as best we can.’
Lambert said with a hint of impatience, ‘You say you think that you may have met Darren Chivers at St Mary’s.’
‘I said it’s the only context in which I can think I might have come across him.’
‘But he wasn’t an addict. I would be pretty sure that he was never a resident of St Mary’s.’
‘And I’m not conscious of ever having met him there. But that’s the only place where I have any contact with drug-users, so it seemed possible that he might have picked up my name from there.’
Hook said thoughtfully, ‘Do you think Chivers might have picked up your name from one of the addicts there?’
She gave the possibility a few seconds’ thought. ‘It’s possible, I suppose. I spend a lot of time talking one-to-one with addicts there, trying to get them to undertake rehabilitation. They’re quite unpredictable and, as I said, most of them carry on using. I suppose it’s possible that one of them might have mentioned my name to this man Chivers, if she was getting her supplies from him.’
‘You mean he had you down as an enemy, someone who was trying to destroy his trade?’
She gave a little shiver. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but I suppose it’s possible.’
Lambert stood up. ‘Possible but unlikely, I’d have said. Darren Chivers was a shifty character, but he had no previous history of violence. I don’t think you’d have anything to fear from him, even if he were still alive. Thank you for your thoughts. If you have any further ones about how your name got on to that list, please ring this number immediately.’
The police were gone, almost as abruptly and unexpectedly as they had arrived. Karen Lynch told her husband that it was nothing but a routine inquiry and that she hadn’t been able to help them. She insisted that Peter went back into his study and resumed the work the police had interrupted.
Then she sat alone in the small, aseptic kitchen at the back of the house, considering her options.
Seventeen
Chris Rushton enjoyed demonstr
ating his mastery of the computer and the efficiency of his administration to his Chief Superintendent. Early on Wednesday afternoon, the DI told John Lambert, ‘We’ve pinned down most of the people on the list found in Chivers’s pocket. One of them is proving a little difficult. There are five Mark Rogers who live locally. But one is an infant and another is a pensioner confined to a home. We should have the right man by the end of the day.’
‘Good. Bert and I saw Mrs Lynch this morning but didn’t get very far. She’s slightly disabled and a vicar’s wife; she is also one of those young women who seem instantly likeable. All in all, it’s difficult to think of her being involved in a crime like this, but both of us felt she was holding stuff back from us. Unless one of the other names provides us with an obvious killer, we’ll need to go back to Karen Lynch.’
‘There’s one interesting name on that list. Daniel Steele.’ Lambert frowned, then shook his head. ‘The name rings a vague bell, but I can’t place it.’
‘He used to be in the job. He was CID, in fact. But I can’t see from the records that he could ever have operated with you. He spent most of his career working the Cheltenham area.’
‘Steele.’ Lambert shook his head irritably, then looked suddenly concerned, as some mysterious connection took place in that most complicated of machines which is the human brain. ‘Wasn’t there some talk of corruption?’
‘There was. But there isn’t much on the records, because there was no official inquiry and no court case. Officially, Steele merely retired from the police force. But he left suddenly, and several years earlier than he would normally have done.’
‘And went where?’
‘Like many an ex-copper, he got security work. It was initially quite a humble position, which again suggests he got out in a hurry and was glad to take whatever work he could get. There seems to have been an internal investigation, but because he eventually resigned and the matter wasn’t pursued, not much is recorded of the findings.’
