by J M Gregson
Paul moved back to the sitting room on silent feet. He called softly to Gary. ‘Study must be upstairs. I’m going up there now. We’ve still a good quarter of an hour before the night porter is due.’
Gary did not turn round from the window. ‘For God’s sake be quick about it! I can’t stand much more of this!’
He couldn’t, either, thought Paul, as he went softly up the wide modern staircase. Not a man to take into the jungle with you, Gary Pilkington, for all his physical strength. You learned a lot about people in situations like this.
The first door he tried at the top of the stairs was a bathroom. Good thing he’d insisted on them wearing gloves, with all these brass handles to turn. It wouldn’t take him more than a minute to try all of these doors, if he needed to. And once he found that elusive study, the books themselves would surely be easy to spot in their old leather bindings.
Then he noticed that one of the doors to the rooms at the back of the house was slightly ajar. Might as well try that first.
The moonlight was very strong in this room, falling in shafts through the twin windows across the coverlet of a kingsize bed, picking out the door of an en suite bathroom. The main bedroom, obviously. He was about to go on in search of the study when he saw something sticking out beyond the foot of the bed. The moonlight glistened softly on a leather toecap.
A pair of shoes, pointing up at the ceiling. And in them, feet. And above the feet, legs. As he moved his reluctant limbs across the room, Paul Barnes knew suddenly what he was about to find. A torso, and a head, in the shadow of the big bed. Wide, sightless eyes, staring unseeing as glass into his face.
Paul Barnes forced his unwilling, suddenly trembling hands into life and switched on his torch. There was a red, unmoving pool beside the dead face of Dr Claptrap Carter, now the late Director of the University of East Lancashire. Half the dead face, to be strictly accurate: the rest had been blown away.
Someone had been more serious than him about the Perfect Crime.
Four
‘Detective Inspector Peach will see you now.’ The female detective sergeant with the lustrous red-brown hair called Paul Barnes into the Bursar’s office, which had been temporarily cleared of university clerical staff and handed over to the CID.
Bit of all right she was, thought Paul, as he followed her appreciatively into the office. Not much more than mid-twenties, he judged, and voluptuous with it. Not at all what he had expected of the police. He wouldn’t mind giving her one, that DS Blake, when this was all—
‘Right kettle of fish you’ve dropped yourself in here, lad! Stinking fish, too! Can’t see either of you coming out of it smelling too sweet!’
The man who had so rudely shattered Paul’s bedroom visions was stocky and powerful, with a shining bald head fringed with jet-black hair and a matching black moustache beneath very dark eyes. He had delivered his series of opening observations with mounting vehemence and increasing satisfaction.
Peach sat behind the Bursar’s huge, leather-topped desk as if he had occupied the chair for years, not minutes, and gave Paul the impression that he devoured students for breakfast each day. His black eyebrows lowered themselves over the charcoal eyes, whose pupils seemed to bore like gimlets into Paul’s inner thoughts. Peach managed the difficult feat of frowning with his forehead and smiling with the bottom half of his face.
Paul did not find it a pleasant smile. He said, ‘We found him for you. Without Gary and me, he might have been lying there yet.’
Peach’s smile broadened. ‘True, that is, isn’t it? We should be grateful to you, shouldn’t we, at that rate? And yet when I look at you, my lad, gratitude isn’t the first emotion that leaps into my mind.’
Paul steadied himself, trying hard to feel wronged. He hadn’t expected this aggression, especially when his first contact with the fuzz had been that delectable female presence now sitting quietly on the Inspector’s right. He tried to summon a sense of dignity. It wasn’t a thing you needed often as a student, but it might be useful now. And he was a drama student, after all: these simulations were supposed to come easily to him.
He repeated loftily, ‘If it wasn’t for us, Claptr — Dr Carter might still be lying undiscovered in his house.’
Peach held his smile for a moment longer, like a headlamp on full beam. Then he rapped, ‘What time did you report the discovery of a body, lad?’
Paul licked his lips. ‘I couldn’t be certain of the time. Time was the last thing on our minds when —’
‘I’ll tell you, then. Twenty to three in the morning. 02:41 hours, as we say in the police service, to be precise. Unless you’re now saying that you want to dispute that, of course. That’s the time our station sergeant recorded for the phone call from your campus night porter.’
‘No! I mean no, I don’t wish to dispute that. If that’s when you say our night porter rang you with the news, then that will be correct.’
‘So that’s when you found the corpse of your Director. Or five minutes before that, shall we say, to be strictly accurate?’
Paul Barnes didn’t like the way this was going. He had expected to be interviewed with Gary Pilkington, so that he could act as spokesman for the two. But the first thing this man had done was to separate the two of them, treating them almost as though they had something to hide rather than as citizens doing their duty and being of assistance to the fuzz in exposing a crime for them. God knows what Gary would end up saying, if this man got at him.
Paul said, ‘Well, yes, it must have been some time just before Percy rang you. We might have taken a few minutes to collect ourselves, before we went across to the porter’s office and got him to ring through. It was the first time either of us had seen a dead body, you know. It might have thrown us a little off balance.’
‘Oh, I’m sure it did! Often does, doesn’t it, DS Blake? Makes people go quite weak at the knees, sometimes.’ Peach whirled his attention back from the smiling features of Lucy Blake to the man on the other side of the big desk. ‘But the usual reaction is to scream for help. To run to the nearest phone as quickly as your little feet will carry you and yell for the police!’
And that’s exactly what Panicky Pilkington had wanted to do, thought Paul. Rush off and spill the beans about their plan for the Perfect Crime. Land them in hot water right up to their necks — the scalding kettle of fish this man Peach claimed they were in now, come to think of it. It had taken Paul a good two hours to calm Gary down, to work out the best tale they could tell and rehearse it. It wasn’t a good tale, but it was the best he had been able to do, in those dire circumstances, with old Claptrap Carter lying dead and Gary Pilkington screaming in his ear.
He repeated that story now, carefully and doggedly. ‘We’d been drinking and talking, on into the night, until we’d lost all track of the time. Students do that. It was Gary who suddenly realized that it was two o’clock in the morning. And yet neither of us felt like going to bed. So I suggested that we went out for a stroll around the site, because it was a beautiful moonlit night, cold and clear, and we thought the air would clear our heads.’
Paul, who had concentrated on the leather of the big desk as he strove to deliver the tale as they had agreed it, looked up nervously at Peach, wanting to be interrupted, feeling that the long silence from the other side of the desk made his words all the time less convincing. He received only another kind of smile from Peach, with the mouth slightly open and an inspectorial tongue caressing the startlingly white teeth. DI Peach looked like a Dobermann awaiting permission to attack a bone.
Paul dragged his eyes away from that round, expectant face and resumed his account. ‘We were walking past the Director’s Residence when we thought we saw a light inside — almost as if someone was moving about in there, with a torch. I think now that it must have been a trick of the moonlight reflecting on the double glazing. But at the time we thought we’d better investigate.’
DS Blake said quietly, ‘You didn’t think of going and raising the ala
rm at that stage, Mr Barnes?’
Bloody hell, thought Paul. He’d enough dealing with the Dobermann, without the female joining in with her questions. And raising the alarm is exactly what Panicky Pilkington would have done, of course, if they had really seen a light in the place. He said stubbornly, ‘Maybe we should have done that. But our first thought was that we might catch someone in there.’
Peach beamed delightedly. ‘Brave lads these, aren’t they, DS Blake? The type that made Britain great, hidden away on our doorstep in our local university! Bloody stupid too, of course.’
Paul tried hard to ignore him, to complete the story they had agreed. ‘We couldn’t get in at the front of the house, but when we went round the back, we found that a window had been forced. So I climbed through and let Gary in by the back door. You — well, I think you know the rest. We didn’t find anyone inside there, but we did find the body of Dr Carter.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Yes. I’ve told your officers all of it before.’
Peach shook his head sadly. ‘Yes. Indeed you have. I just wanted to check that that was still it, you see. Because I don’t think it sounds very convincing. What do you think, DS Blake?’
‘About as convincing as a student pantomime, I’d say, sir. Bit better rehearsed, perhaps.’
She was training up nicely, was Lucy Blake, thought Percy Peach. He couldn’t believe he’d resisted the move when that fool of a superintendent, Tommy Bloody Tucker, had allocated her to him as his DS.
Paul Barnes glared his disappointment at this vision of loveliness he had been relying upon for sympathy. He hadn’t reckoned on Beauty siding with the Beast. Obviously, what people said was right: you couldn’t trust the police, however beguiling the guise in which they came to you. He said sullenly, ‘Well, that’s how it was.’
Peach shook his head slowly, seemingly more in sorrow than in anger. He stood up. ‘If you say so, sunshine. Better have a word with your partner in crime now, hadn’t we? Perhaps the history student will recall the recent past more effectively than the drama student.’ As the slight figure with the sharp, handsome features shuffled out, he called after him, ‘We shall need your fingerprints, Mr Barnes. And send in your partner in crime, please.’
*
Gary Pilkington’s nerve had not been improved by his wait outside the Bursar’s office. He had spent the time going over and over the story that he and Paul — well mostly Paul, if he was honest — had put together to conceal the true purpose of their visit to the Director’s Residence on the previous night. Repetition had not made the story more convincing in his fevered brain, but they were stuck with it now, so he’d better get it right.
He was not reassured by the sight of a thoroughly discomfited Paul Barnes coming out of the office. He had no time to speak to him, because that friendly woman detective came out and ushered him straight into the office and the smiling face of Detective Inspector Peach. The DI waved an arm expansively at the chair in front of the big desk and waited for Lucy Blake to resume her place beside him on the business side.
Peach studied the unsuccessful efforts of the big body opposite him to stay still for a moment before he said, ‘History student, I believe, Mr Pilkington?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good memories, history experts had, when I was at school. Good recall of past events. Let’s see how you are about last night.’
Gary struggled to rid himself of an obstinate frog in his throat. ‘What — what exactly is it you want to know? We told one of your constables all about it this morning, and I thought —’
‘I know. Dreary for you, isn’t it, this repetition? But indulge me, please. Just take us through the whole thing again, will you, Mr Pilkington? Give you the chance to put right any mistakes you might have made, and DS Blake and I the chance to ask any intelligent questions we can think of. We’d like that.’
Paul didn’t like it, not one little bit. But his brain refused to work when he bid it to work at its fastest. It would take him all his resources to remember and deliver the story as he had agreed it with Paul. He dared not look at those observant faces across the huge expanse of green leather on top of the desk as he began: ‘Well, we’d been drinking and talking way into the night, the way students do. Then I suddenly realized that it was two o’clock in the morning. And yet neither of us felt like going to bed. So Paul suggested that we should go for a walk round the site. It was a beautiful moonlit night, cold and clear, and we thought the air would clear our heads. We were walking past the Director’s Residence when we thought we saw a light inside.’
Paul stopped and swallowed, trying to get the next bit straight in his mind. For the first time since he had begun, he looked up at the CID officers — and found them both regarding him with considerable amusement. ‘What — what is it that’s wrong?’
Peach stopped smiling for a moment to purse his lips. ‘Your delivery, I’d say, principally. You’ve got the script off pretty well, but your delivery is very wooden. Needs more expression and variation, I’d say, wouldn’t you, DS Blake?’
‘Definitely more light and shade, I’d say. Mr Barnes could probably help you with that, being a drama student.’ The smile sat more winningly on Lucy Blake’s cheerful, light-skinned face, but that didn’t make Gary Pilkington feel any better about it. He tried to speak, but found he couldn’t.
Peach turned the screw. ‘Dried, have we, Mr Pilkington? I’m sure we could help you with a prompt. Tell him how it goes on, DS Blake.’
Lucy Blake flicked back unhurriedly to a page in her shorthand notes. ‘…We saw a light inside. Almost as if someone was moving about in there, with a torch. We thought we’d better investigate. We couldn’t get in at the front of the house, but when we went round the back, we found that a window had been forced…’ She stopped, smiled, and allowed the pause to stretch on for seconds, which seemed like minutes for the agonized young man on the other side of the desk.
Peach eventually took pity upon him. ‘You see our point, Mr Pilkington? It does rather smack of a prepared statement, doesn’t it? Or a prepared fiction, if you’re an old cynic like me.’
Gary forced his brain into action: it felt as if the gears had jammed. ‘We did — did put our heads together, to make sure we told the same story. Every one says you have to be careful, in case the police twist —’
‘You’ve told the same story, all right. The trouble is that it stinks! You should have paid more attention to the tale you were rehearsing so carefully, if you wanted us to believe you. The matter of the tale is even less convincing than the manner in which you parrotted it off.’
‘I suppose it may not sound very convincing, but —’
‘It sounds like a pack of lies, lad. An attempt to deceive the police in what may shortly become a murder inquiry.’ Peach’s voice was suddenly harsh and impatient. ‘I suggest you go and sit on the landing outside for a few minutes and consider your options, whilst I see whether Mr Barnes has begun to see sense.’
Gary did not look at Paul as he shambled past him in the doorway of the Bursar’s office. He slumped onto the chair waiting for him outside, feeling like a wet cloth that had been wrung out between two strong hands and put out to dry.
*
Paul Barnes tried to speak to the distressed Pilkington as they passed each other, to find out just what it was that had so upset him. He needed to know for his own sake where they stood, whether his friend had been able to maintain his ground in there. Instead, he found himself back in the Bursar’s office still uncertain of his ground, feeling the initiative slip from him to that bouncy little bald-headed Inspector who regarded him so balefully as he re-entered the room.
Peach leaned forward, put his elbows on the big desk, and spoke in an unexpectedly low voice. ‘It seems to me, Mr Barnes, that what you have given DS Blake and myself so far is no more than a right load of old boots. I don’t know about her, but my patience is wearing very thin indeed. We are in the early stages of what might well prove to b
e a murder inquiry. I would advise you to start telling us the truth about what happened last night. Immediately.’
Paul gulped. He didn’t trust the police. These were in fact the first dealings he had had with them in his life, but everyone said you shouldn’t trust them. Fascists, and unscrupulous bastards to boot, they were: that was the student view. But he had to admit to himself that what this squat, loathsome man said made sense. You couldn’t go pussyfooting about, not with dead bodies lying around. Paul licked his lips, looked for support to the female face with its nimbus of red hair, and said, ‘You won’t believe it, when I tell you.’
Lucy Blake gave him a small smile of encouragement. He watched her slim fingers tighten around the gold ball-pen as she prepared to record his amended version of events. Then Peach, resuming his most aggressive mode, rapped out, ‘Try us with the truth, sunshine. Then we’ll discuss why you chose to tell us a pack of lies previously.’
Paul wondered if he should tell them half of the truth, concoct some version of events which got round the fact that he and Gary had undoubtedly been guilty of breaking and entering into the house of the Director of their university. But his brain would not work properly under the baleful glare of those dark eyes. And it wasn’t an easy thing to improvise any new version of events which would get them off the hook. And if he did, that wimp in bear’s clothing Gary Pilkington would never back him up and carry it through. Paul Barnes had begun the process of transferring his resentment to his unwilling partner in crime.
He swallowed hard and said abruptly, ‘It was earlier in the night.’
‘What was?’
‘The time when we found the body of Dr Carter. Just after midnight, if you must know.’
