A Necessary End

by J M Gregson

  He seemed to have this talent for asking shocking questions as though they were perfectly normal. And Enid had to admit that she had been wondering before he had come here whether he would raise exactly that question. It did not make it any less shocking to hear it asked so baldly, as if he were speculating about the price of milk. She felt very prim as she said, ‘Surely you aren’t presuming that it was necessarily one of our book group? There is a whole range of other possibilities. I’m sure that Alfred Norbury had lots of enemies.’

  ‘Are you indeed? That’s very interesting.’

  Those black eyebrows were moving again. The simple statement sounded pregnant with sinister implications as he set his empty cup back on her tray. She said, ‘I told you he was abrasive.’

  ‘You did indeed. But lots of people are abrasive, Ms Frott. It’s interesting that you think Mr Norbury was abrasive enough to excite the hatred which leads to murder. But I’m sure you know best.’ He stopped for a moment with his head a little on one side, inviting her to enlarge on her account of Norbury, but she remained resolutely silent. ‘Perhaps you should have been a detective. I’m constantly having to remind the officers who will make up my team on this case that they must consider all possibilities, not just the obvious ones. They’re eager and willing lads and lasses, but they haven’t all got the experience of life which you and I can boast.’

  If he was in his late thirties, as she thought, he had a quarter of a century’s less experience of life than she had. But he made her at this moment feel like an infant as far as experience of anything like this went. She said stiffly, ‘I haven’t even thought about who might have done this.’

  ‘Really? Well, that’s remarkable. I should have thought it was only human nature to speculate about that, once you heard that this stimulating and abrasive man was dead. Well, I’d like you to start thinking about it right now, Ms Frott. You knew both Mr Norbury and the people in your group far better than I do at the moment. You are an intelligent, experienced woman and I would welcome your input on this.’

  He stood up and Enid felt immensely relieved that he was going. She said, ‘I’ll give it some thought. I suppose I’m still in shock. I’ve never been involved in anything like this before.’

  He managed to look as if he found that surprising. Then he said, ‘Where were you last night, Ms Frott?’

  She told herself that she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her outraged. It was a question he had to ask, wasn’t it? Part of his job, no doubt. ‘I was here. From about four o’clock yesterday afternoon until this moment.’

  ‘Is there anyone who could confirm that for us?’

  ‘No. I had a telephone call from my great-nephew in Cheshire, thanking me for my Christmas gifts. That was at twelve minutes past nine. I remember checking the time because I thought he should probably be in bed and asleep. He’s only eight.’

  ‘Thank you. That might be helpful, though I have a feeling Mr Norbury was killed well before then. I must take my leave, Ms Frott. Please go on thinking about the people involved in this. I’m sure your views will be valuable. I’ve no doubt that I shall need to see you again in the near future.’

  He gave her the last of his range of smiles, but his final words nevertheless felt much more like a threat than an assurance.

  Sharon Burgess was not feeling the sort of pressure which DCI Peach was exerting on her co-founder of the book club as she drank coffee at the same time with Dick Fosdyke. She was surprised nevertheless by the tension she felt.

  Dick initiated it when he said, ‘We’re all going to be suspects, if this is murder.’

  ‘Do you think it might be?’ He was only voicing what she had thought herself, but it seemed shocking nevertheless to have it spoken aloud.

  ‘The radio bulletin said that a man had been shot. And it spoke of a suspicious death. That usually means the police think it’s murder.’

  She was abruptly very fearful, though she had known in her heart that it must be so. ‘And you think they’ll have us down as suspects?’

  ‘I reckon he was dead within twenty-four hours of our meeting on Monday night.’ He looked into her eyes as they widened apprehensively and added hastily, ‘Or not much more than that, anyway.’

  How could he know that? How could he sound so confident about when Alfred had been killed? For some reason she could not look him in the eye. She stared down at the steam rising slowly from her latte. ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that. I’ve never been a suspect in any crime.’

  ‘We’ll need to watch our steps. Be careful what we say. The police will be eager for a quick arrest.’

  ‘You sound like an expert in these things.’ She meant it to be a joke, but it didn’t emerge as one.

  He didn’t react to it, but pursued his own train of thought. ‘A lot depends upon what Alfred did yesterday. If he was out and about and saw lots of people, that would increase the range of suspects. The police will be investigating his movements now, I expect. They’ll have a big team on this. They always do, when there’s a murder.’

  She wished he wouldn’t keep using that word. She could hear the horror creeping into her voice as she said, ‘And you think it might be one of us?’

  He produced a smile at last. ‘I didn’t say that. I said that the police might think that it was one of us. They’re paid to think the worst of people, and they’re usually rather good at it.’

  Sharon said dully, ‘I suppose it just could be one of that group who drank and chatted together so happily on Monday night. It just seems incredible to me, but I expect we have to consider the possibility.’

  ‘The police will. They’ll be on to us quickly, once their initial enquiries throw up the fact that we met on Monday night. We’ll need to be careful what we say to them.’

  She wasn’t sure whether Dick meant just the two of them or the other three as well. She wished on an impulse that they could all be together again, comparing notes and preparing themselves for interrogation by the police. She didn’t like the idea of someone else implicating her, whether deliberately or unwittingly. She said quietly, ‘Do you think Alfred was shot with his own pistol?’

  He stared at her dully. ‘What do you mean, his own pistol?’

  ‘Alfred told us on Monday night that he carried his own pistol in the car because he feared being attacked. I thought it was over the top at the time, a typical bit of Norbury boasting. He liked to shock and he liked to be the centre of attention.’

  ‘Yes, I remember it now. I’d forgotten all about it. I suppose I thought it was just a typical bit of Norbury braggadocio and didn’t take it seriously.’ He finished his coffee and gave her a taut smile. ‘I must get back to the library and concentrate on other things. I’ve got work to do.’

  Sharon Burgess went back there with him, but they didn’t exchange many more words. She spent a busy hour on the counter, and Dick had left the building by the time she was free again. She went out to her car and drove home very thoughtfully.

  What he said about treating the police with due care made sense. But one thing worried Sharon. Dick Fosdyke had been so alert about everything else that she couldn’t really believe that he’d forgotten all about Alfred Norbury’s revelation that he carried a pistol in his car. So why had he pretended to do that?

  ELEVEN

  Jamie Norris waited anxiously all day for the visit he felt must surely come. He’d heard the early-morning announcement on Radio Lancashire and he’d observed the scene of crime tapes around the area in front of Alfred’s house in Wellington Street. Then he’d gone to Tesco and tried to work through the long hours as if nothing had happened.

  It wasn’t that he wanted the police to come whilst he was at work. Rather the reverse, in fact. It wouldn’t do him any good here if the police turned up and wanted to question him about an event like this. No smoke without fire, people always said. They were mean and ungenerous, those people. But you couldn’t just ignore them. It was a fact of life that once you were linked with
something you were never quite clear of it.

  His apprehension affected his work. He wasn’t his normal reliable self and he wasn’t anticipating the need to replenish the shelves as quickly and accurately as usual. His lack of concentration brought him a rebuke from his immediate supervisor and he thought he also saw Mr Jordan looking at him curiously from the other end of the bread and cakes aisle. He’d had nothing but praise and approval from the manager so far: he didn’t want something like this to affect his retail career whilst it was still in embryo.

  He was glad that the phone call from the police came during his lunch break. It was put through to him in the staff rest room and no one who mattered even knew about it. The police offered to see him after work and he seized upon that eagerly. Half past seven would be fine, he told the female voice at Brunton station. She noted his address carefully and said that Detective Inspector Peach and Detective Sergeant Northcott would be round to see him at that time. He tried not to be as awed as the police officer obviously was by these names.

  He heard the bell ring, but he had to descend the stairs and Mrs Jackson was at the door before him. He experienced the first of his shocks before he had even spoken. The presence filling the front doorway of the old house was massive and very black. You saw lots of Asian faces in this area, but very few black ones. Black men were the perpetrators of violent crime, rather than the solvers of it, in Jamie’s mind. He realized immediately how that mind had been conditioned and rebuked himself silently for allowing that to happen.

  Then he said rather uncertainly, ‘You’d better come upstairs to my apartment. That’s all right, Mrs Jackson, isn’t it?’ His landlady looked highly disapproving of both her tenant and his visitors, but she signified with a nod that it was permitted.

  The black man didn’t look any smaller when Jamie had shut the door carefully on the world outside and invited him to sit. There was scarcely room for Northcott and his chief on the tiny sofa which was the only seating in the room apart from Jamie’s own small armchair, which he now turned away from the television to face them. Peach must have realized Norris was intimidated by his bagman’s size and appearance; he hastened to accentuate that apprehension rather than dissipate it.

  ‘Big bugger, isn’t he, DS Northcott? I like to call him the hard bastard. He’s very useful when things turn ugly – or when members of the public are anything other than cooperative.’ He beamed his approval of this, first at the inscrutable Northcott and then at the fearful Norris. He didn’t say anything further, but looked hard first at Jamie and then at the room around him, as if it was important to him to commit to memory every detail of the place where this man lived.

  After what seemed to Norris a very long time, he said, ‘Nice place you have here.’

  No one had ever said that before, but it didn’t sound like sarcasm. Jamie said apologetically, ‘It’s only a bed-sit. I’m hoping to get something better, once I get established at work.’

  The bed-sit was in fact very tidy and very clean. They saw many scruffy and some outright filthy rooms in the circles where they moved. Peach said, ‘That’s at Tesco, I believe.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve only been there for about a month, but I seem to be doing all right.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it? Especially after a series of jobs which don’t seem to have lasted for very long.’

  They’d done their homework before they came here. That was disconcerting. He wondered exactly how much they knew about his previous life. ‘I was trying to become a writer. A professional writer, I mean. It’s not easy. Very few people manage to live on their earnings from writing.’

  ‘So I believe. Have you given up the idea now?’

  ‘No. I’m planning to go on developing as a writer, but to do that in my spare time. I want to hold down a job – perhaps even develop a career. That can even help your writing, you know. Working full-time keeps you in touch with people and with life. It gives you all kinds of ideas and material which you can use in your writing.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re right about that. Is that what Alfred Norbury told you?’

  It was a brutal introduction to the reason why they were here, the more so because it hit the nail very firmly on the head. Jamie had been repeating almost word for word what Alfred had said to him a fortnight earlier. ‘I think that was his opinion, yes. We discussed things like that a little. But I was already working at Tesco when … when I first met him.’ He’d almost said ‘when he picked me up’. That would have given them exactly the impression he was trying to avoid. It just showed how careful you had to be.

  ‘Recently, was this?’

  ‘Boxing Day, I think. It was snowing at the time. I was standing in the car park and trying to compose a poem about the snow, but I wasn’t having much success. I couldn’t think of anything original.’

  ‘Took you in hand, did he, Mr Norbury?’

  A crude double entendre leapt into Jamie’s mind when he least wanted it: the human brain is a strange and often unpredictable organ. ‘He offered me a bit of advice, yes. As far as I can remember, that is. It was really more that he took me seriously, that he understood what I was trying to do. I was grateful for that. A lot of people just make fun of you, when you’re trying to compose poetry.’

  ‘Do they really?’ Peach tutted noisily. ‘The world can be a very cruel place, can’t it? We see a lot of its cruelty, don’t we, DS Northcott?’

  ‘We do indeed, sir. We see people dying of heroin, whilst the ruthless sod who has supplied them grows fat on the Costa Brava. We see people beaten to death because some loan shark has lent them far more than they can possibly pay back and they default on the instalments. We see children being groomed for sex because they haven’t a soul in the world who cares about them. And then we even hear about people being unsympathetic to poets. It’s a cruel world.’ Northcott’s face was like ebony as he stared at the ceiling in the narrow room.

  ‘I wasn’t equating people who think that poetry is nonsense with those sorts of things! I was just trying to explain that poetry is difficult anyway and that it’s even more difficult when people think it’s rubbish and make fun of you.’

  Peach smiled happily. ‘You must forgive DS Northcott, Mr Norris. He’s had a hard life. He hasn’t got the kind of sensitive soul which you and I possess, but we must make allowances. He hasn’t had our advantages.’

  ‘I didn’t have many advantages.’

  ‘Really? That’s interesting. Good schooling in Leeds and quite a string of GCSEs, I heard. University material, if you hadn’t got into bad company, my informant said. DS Northcott didn’t learn anything except fighting at his school. But he made himself pretty good at that. With or without knives.’

  Jamie glanced at Northcott, who had remained impassive throughout this strange eulogy. It was the black man he had feared, but he was beginning to learn that it was his bald-headed chief who was the really dangerous one here. He had been determined before they came to keep his previous life well hidden, but this bouncy, cheerful little man had somehow induced him to bring it up himself. He said helplessly, ‘I came to Brunton to get away from Leeds. I wanted to begin a new life here.’

  ‘I don’t wonder at that. Lucky to stay out of stir, my informant said. Attacking someone with a knife is still regarded very seriously by the law courts, even in these violent times.’

  ‘It wasn’t my knife.’

  ‘Makes a difference when you’re stabbed, does it, that?’

  ‘I’m only saying that I didn’t take a knife out with me. I was attacked. I managed to take the knife from the lad who was planning to use it. It was self-defence.’

  It was the defence Norris had offered at the time and it was probably true, Clyde Northcott reckoned. He said, ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if someone claims that he killed Mr Norbury in self-defence. Why did you come to Brunton, Mr Norris?’

  Jamie wished they wouldn’t keep using that title. It made him feel as if he was already in court, or at least about to be charg
ed. ‘I had a pal here. But he didn’t stay around for long. The main reason I came was to get away from Leeds and what was happening there. I just knew I was going to get into trouble if I stayed there.’

  ‘And you wanted to be a writer.’ Clyde made it sound as exotic as an astronaut.

  ‘That would have happened wherever I was. It’s not as outlandish as you make it sound. Lots of people have a go at it. Mostly they don’t succeed, so you don’t hear much about it. None of us wants to broadcast his failures, does he?’

  Peach grinned at him. ‘That’s true, Mr Norris. You don’t hear DS Northcott talking about his skill at darts or snooker. Very understandable, that is.’ He’d beaten his junior in both of these recently and he saw no point in modesty. ‘Would you describe yourself as a protégé of Alfred Norbury?’

  Jamie was suddenly on the spot here, when he had been marshalling all his resources to defend his conduct in Leeds. ‘I suppose some people would see it like that.’

  ‘I’m sure they would. But I asked how you saw it.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d known him long enough to develop that sort of relationship.’

  ‘But it was he who took you along to the first meeting of the book club on Sunday night, wasn’t it? I’m not aware that anyone else had suggested your name to the others.’

  ‘That’s right. I’m pretty sure that none of them even knew I existed until I turned up with Alfred. I didn’t want to go: I felt that I’d be out of my depth amongst highly educated middle-class people. But Alfred said it would be good for the bourgeoisie to be shaken up by a working-class intellectual. It was he who called me that, not me. I have to say they made me feel very welcome.’

  ‘Was that because of Norbury, do you think, or your own obvious charisma?’

  Jamie glanced up furiously at Peach, but the man was studying the ceiling. ‘I don’t think it was because of Alfred. I got the impression that some of them didn’t much like Alfred.’