by Peter Helton
‘Good moment to come through the front door,’ he murmured.
Austin turned the worn metal knob slowly and opened the door quietly. The place even smelled of a holiday cottage, reminding Austin once more of his two weeks in the lakes. As they sneaked into the narrow hall there were still impatient noises coming from the kitchen, conveniently masking Austin’s rumbling stomach. On the floor of the hall by the steep and bare wooden stairs lay a small rolled-up rug. They stepped gingerly over it on their way to the kitchen.
Lamb jumped and let out a shout when McLusky, standing in the door, knocked loudly.
‘Hello again,’ McLusky said gently.
Lamb recovered swiftly. ‘How dare you come barging in here unannounced?’
McLusky strolled into the kitchen and stopped to look down into the open holdall without touching, hands in his pockets. ‘There was no one to announce us. And I assure you there was very little barging involved. You didn’t barge, did you Sergeant Austin?’
‘Hardly at all.’
‘You can’t come in here without a search warrant,’ Lamb insisted.
McLusky looked surprised. ‘Do you want us to get one?’ Lamb looked uncertain. ‘Because it would be a waste if, having been granted a search warrant, we were not going to then search the place.’ He nodded at the holdall. ‘And everything that’s in it.’ Even from where he was standing he could see that apart from studded leather items, lengths of red ropes and assorted knick-knacks it also contained a camcorder and some DVDs. ‘Of course we don’t need a search warrant at all if we have reason to believe that vital evidence may about to be removed or destroyed.’ He gave Lamb a friendly smile. ‘Or if a suspect belonging to that household has just been arrested. For withholding evidence, for example.’ His smile vanished. ‘Or tampering with it.’
Lamb passed a hand over his face, suddenly looking very tired. Then he crossed to the table and reached inside the holdall. After extracting a bottle of Scotch he zipped the bag shut and fetched glasses from a cupboard. ‘I need a drink,’ he said in an apparent lightening of his mood. ‘Care to join me, Inspector?’
McLusky opened his mouth to refuse until he caught sight of the label on the bottle the councillor was holding. It was a twenty-one year old Glenfiddich. ‘Don’t mind if I do. My sergeant, though Scottish by birth, won’t, since he’s driving.’
Standing in the door, Austin gave his ironic-disappointment impression. He preferred almost any drink to whisky and right now even an instant mug of soup would have suited him far better.
‘Oh, then perhaps I shouldn’t either,’ said Lamb meekly, hesitating with the open bottle near the two glasses.
‘Nonsense, you go ahead. You won’t be driving anywhere either since you haven’t got a car. Because Stephen pinched it, didn’t he?’
‘It’s outside. I brought the spare keys with me.’ He poured the first glass.
‘Ah yes, I’ll take those keys.’ McLusky held out his hand and snapped his fingers. ‘We’ll let you have them back once forensics are finished taking your car apart.’
Lamb corked the bottle without pouring a second glass. ‘Shit.’ He drained his glass in one and set it heavily back on the table.
McLusky shrugged. ‘You said it first.’ He turned to Austin. ‘Get forensics up here, get the car collected and ask for transport to the station for Mr Lamb. I don’t think the councillor and his luggage will fit in the back of your Micra.’
Lamb uncorked the bottle again and this time poured himself a large one.
Twelve minutes on full power. Stir. Let rest for one minute. Another six minutes on full power, let rest for one minute. Stir. Somehow these microwave instructions were more annoying than having to cook it yourself. Fairfield let the packet fall back into her freezer and rummaged some more while her fingers went numb from the cold. Lasagne verdi – boring. Economy cottage pie – what had possessed her? Moussaka – sorry mama. The rest appeared to be just packets of peas, mixed vegetables and fish fingers so old they actually still had real fish in them. She slammed the freezer door shut and warmed her frozen fingers in her mouth. It was just as well Louise hadn’t shown any interest in the content of her freezer or she would never have heard the end of it. Louise with her yards of cookery books, flamboyant cuisine and effortless style. Fairfield took another gulp of wine from her glass then tilted the bottle to read the label and made a doubtful noise. A few days out of her lover’s orbit and already she had slipped back into old habits and bought cheap supermarket wine. She had been perfectly happy with this stuff before Louise, now she noticed how uninspiring it tasted. It just had no depth to it. She drained the glass and put the screw top back on the bottle while her eyes unfocused. Louise would probably be at home now, cooking or eating a meal, at the dining table of course, not on the sofa with a tray on her lap and the telly burbling rubbish at her. For a few more moments she stood by the kitchen counter, drumming her fingers against the side of the bottle, then she pushed herself off, snatched up her jacket and left the house.
She had only had one glass so she was perfectly OK to drive. Well, a largish glass, but she felt more or less sober. Of course she could have done the sensible thing, she thought while driving up the hill towards Clifton, and rung first to see if Louise was in and if she was welcome but she had not yet made up her mind what she was going to Louise’s for. Even as she squeezed the car into a space in Boyces Avenue and walked around the corner to her house Fairfield was undecided: was she here to smoke a peace pipe – or peace cigar in Louise’s case – or was she here to finish with her? The lights were on so she’d find out in a minute.
‘You’re back.’ Louise Rennie stood aside to let her into her first-floor flat. She was wearing her grey-and-cream cardigan and her grey slacks and had not taken off her narrow reading glasses. ‘I’m glad,’ she added.
‘Are you?’ Fairfield’s heart sank the moment she saw Louise. She had very little defence against that woman. It was evening, she was alone, yet she was immaculately dressed, wore her rings, silver necklace and bracelet and her delicate little watch. Her short blonde hair looked just so, her nails were perfect and her toenails manicured. The sight of her bowled her over every time. She marched past her through the hall and then stood irresolute in the large, airy sitting room. The shutters of the tall windows were still open and the darkening sky was a deep indigo that resonated behind the warm glow of the lamps and the open fire.
‘Yes, I am,’ said Louise, shutting the living room door behind her. ‘Or should I leave the door open in case you feel the need to storm out again?’ When Fairfield simply shrugged she said: ‘Come into the kitchen, I was just going to eat. Hungry?’
‘Ravenous.’ Fairfield shrugged off her jacket and dropped it across the back of a two-seater sofa, something she knew annoyed Rennie’s tidy mind. Louise didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘slobbing’. Not only did she not lie on the sofa eating pizza out of the carton in which it was delivered, she didn’t own the kind of clothes to do it in. Even the snow-white chef’s apron she now put on was blindingly spotless.
‘So you got annoyed and ran away,’ Rennie said in the kitchen, tending to a couple of saucepans on the gas range.
‘You were annoying me on purpose. You know I can’t compete with your university chums and all you talked about all night was—’ she helplessly waved her arms in the air, trying to remember – ‘nineteenth-century poets and what have you. Your mate Morva quoted huge chunks of it, in French, no less, and you all just went “Oh yes, isn’t it superb” and I sat there like an idiot.’
‘What did you want me to do, say please don’t mention poetry, Kat doesn’t believe in it?’
‘No. But I think you were enjoying it.’
‘Of course I was enjoying it. I love Rimbaud.’
‘You were enjoying the fact that I felt completely lost. I was supposed to sit at your feet and adore.’
‘Or learn something. You don’t have to go to university to learn things.’
; ‘I thought it was supper, not a seminar.’
Louise gave her a sideways look over her shoulder. ‘We didn’t set out to make you uncomfortable, we were already a bottle of wine ahead when you arrived, remember? And if we had changed the subject because you had arrived you’d have felt equally awkward. And so would we.’ She moved briskly to the polished oak table and set cutlery and glasses for two.
Fairfield remained standing near the gas range, arms folded across her chest. ‘But that’s just it,’ she said, complaining. ‘I’m always made to feel weird around your friends.’
‘You might be feeling it, but you’re not being made to feel it.’
‘Same difference.’
‘Not quite. But OK, perhaps next time we’ll talk murder.’
‘Quite possibly.’ Fairfield let a pause develop, then said hesitantly: ‘Lou …? I’m not sure this is working.’
Rennie had been getting ready to plate up the food and froze. ‘Oh, rubbish. Pour us both a glass of wine. You can’t dump me now, we’ll be eating in a second.’
Fairfield sighed. The food smelled delicious. She went to the table and poured out two measures from the open bottle. No screw-top label this one. ‘Food smells great. What is it, anyway?’
‘Oh, just a réchauffé of boeuf bourguignon.’
‘And what’s a re-sho-ffay when it’s at home?’
‘It’s polite French for re-heated.’
‘Then why can’t you bloody say so? You knew I wouldn’t know what it means!’
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake it’s not my fault you went to a crap school where they didn’t teach you anything! Am I supposed to dumb down for the rest of my life so as not to offend your ignorance?’
Fairfield picked up her glass of wine in her fist, her eyes blazing. Louise licked the wooden spoon she was using and pointed it at Kat. ‘Don’t you dare throw that at me, that wine costs a bloody fortune!’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it!’ She drank it down in one long draught and set it on the table with an exaggerated, appreciative ‘ah’. ‘Have a nice life, Lou. I’m sure you will.’
‘I’d prefer it if you were in it.’
Fairfield was already through the door, snatching up her jacket as she went. ‘We can’t always get what we want! I think I’ll grab some chips and curry sauce on the way home!’ She clattered down the stairs and out into the street. The glass of wine had been a large one and the rush of it was just hitting her pleasantly as she breathed in the mild evening air, walking along on light feet in search of a shop where she could buy some more cheap wine.
And a TV guide.
TEN
‘God, you people are stupid.’ David Lamb had protested all the way to Albany Road, non-stop during processing on arrival at the station, and he sounded no happier now in Interview Room 2, though he had waived his right to have a solicitor present for the time being. To McLusky and Austin, who were sitting opposite him, that meant nothing. Suspects often played the I’m-so-innocent-I-have-no-need-of-a-solicitor card, only to scream for one the moment their threadbare stories unravelled under questioning. McLusky listened unmoved to Lamb’s tirade, which showed little sign of abating. ‘Not only are you wasting your own time with this nonsense, you are also wasting mine. I have work to do. I don’t know how you can complain about cuts to the police numbers and budget if you have leisure to harass innocent citizens while out there murderers run free. I, in case you hadn’t heard, have a county to run, despite incompetent clowns like yourselves.’
‘Then perhaps we should get on with it?’ McLusky said. ‘My last question was: did Mrs Lamb know about your sexual relationship with Stephen Bothwick and that you had rented a love nest for the two of you?’
‘Of course she bloody knew, she’s not stupid.’
‘You know her better than me. And how did she feel about it?’
‘What have my wife’s feelings got to do with it? Could you have found a more irrelevant question to ask?’
Austin chipped in. ‘Mr Lamb, we realize that you must feel great sadness and anger at losing your lover but you are directing your anger at the wrong people.’
‘Hark at him! Is he a sodding psychologist now? I’m angry at the waste of time and your useless line of questioning.’
Austin shifted impatiently in his seat. ‘Mr Lamb, if you are going to dispute the validity of each question then this could take all night.’ He checked his watch. His shift should have finished two hours ago and he had had no chance to call Eve to tell her. But Eve would not be surprised.
Automatically McLusky looked at his own watch, still stopped at ten to seven. It showed the right time twice a day and he had missed it again.
Lamb himself shifted on his chair and threw up his hands in resignation. ‘All right, all right. Yes, my wife was fine about it, OK?’
‘Was she not perhaps upset that you were carrying on a sexual relationship with a male employee?’
‘Good grief, Inspector, we’ve been married twenty-five years.’
‘She didn’t mind you having a bit on the side? And a gay relationship at that?’
‘Please spare me your bourgeois morality. My wife and I have always been sexually curious and … explorative in our relationships. We have an arrangement. It’s called being grown-up and discreet. Perhaps you chaps are just too immature to fully understand such matters. So if you think that my wife killed Stephen out of jealousy then that’s just childish fantasy.’
‘Did you?’ McLusky asked. ‘Kill Stephen out of jealousy?’
‘No.’ Lamb glared at him.
McLusky didn’t mind being glared at or shouted at or called names. That was what you came to expect as a police officer, from day one. It did not affect him. His only interests were the emotions and motives behind it, and how to exploit them. In the interview room, in a murder investigation, the end justified the means. But tonight McLusky felt himself become increasingly irritable and he knew why: he had now developed a sugar craving on top of his smoking habit and he was desperate for both a cigarette and a chocolate bar. ‘Are you quite sure you didn’t kill Stephen? You can’t provide an alibi for the night in question since both your wife and daughter were away, something you knew about in advance. Also, on the night he disappeared up to your love nest, taking your car without your permission, you had an argument. What was it about?’
Lamb pushed forward his bottom lip, then wrinkled his nose. ‘Stephen felt … hard done by. It’s always problematic having a relationship with people you work with.’
‘Is it always?’ McLusky asked. ‘I wouldn’t know. This is not your first such relationship, then?’
Lamb ignored the question. ‘There are inevitably power issues. He thought he didn’t get enough recognition for the work he was doing. He said I was treating him badly, that I was taking him for granted …’ Lamb’s voice trailed off, sounding tired.
‘I expect there to be quite a lot of power issues in relationships that involve sado-masochistic practices, yes. His hair was dyed grey, why was that?’
Lamb crossed his arms in front of his chest and stared sideways at nothing. He looked as though he was ready to cry. ‘Because he was an idiot.’
‘In that case you choose your lovers carelessly. Would you mind elaborating on that?’
Lamb deflated. He sighed loudly. ‘Stephen was going a bit grey here and there. At the temples. I suggested he dye it.’
‘And he dyed it all grey.’
‘Yes.’
‘To wind you up. Because you wanted him to hide his age.’
‘Yes.’
‘And were you wound up?’
‘It annoyed me. He was just making a silly point. And he looked stupid with grey hair.’
McLusky leant back in his chair and looked at the ceiling as though searching for inspiration there.
Austin took over. ‘Did Stephen have other lovers besides you?’
‘No.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I would have known.’
>
‘How? Presumably Stephen had time to himself? And you must have spent some time with your family.’
‘You know, I’m not sure I like your tone.’
‘Then you definitely won’t like the prosecutor’s tone.’
A pause, then he sat forward in his chair as though he had finally come to a decision. ‘Yes, yes. He … I, er, I spied on him. We’d had arguments before, I was afraid he might be … thinking of leaving me. I really was afraid of losing him.’
‘Did you employ a private investigator?’
‘No, nothing like that. I confess, I followed him.’
‘And what did your own spying reveal? Was he about to leave you?’
Lamb paused, looked at the blank wall to his left. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. I’ll probably never know.’
‘Did he meet other men?’
‘I think he was trying to. I followed him to a club a couple of times but each time he left by himself.’
McLusky pretended to look up a piece of information in the papers in front of him. ‘So,’ he said as though he had arrived at an important landmark. ‘The rotary dryer at the cottage.’
Lamb looked baffled. ‘What’s a rotary dryer?’
‘It’s a metal structure often found in gardens, Mr Lamb. It consists of a pole with several spokes connected with rows of clothesline.’
‘I still don’t follow you.’
‘The clothesline from the dryer in the garden is missing.’
‘Is it?’
‘Any idea where it went?’
‘I have no idea what you are talking about. Of course I don’t know! Stephen and I didn’t go there to do laundry together, you know.’
‘You didn’t, for instance, use the clothesline to tie him up?’
‘You’re being absurd now.’
‘So it was Stephen, then?’
‘What was?’ Lamb looked worried.
‘Not Steve?’
He subsided, seemingly relieved at the turn of the questioning. ‘He disliked having his name shortened. I think his mother called him Stevie and he hated that.’
