Only a Game

by J M Gregson

‘I went back to my old betting shop last week. They refused to take the bet.’ When they had lived together, he would never have admitted either the visit or the refusal. Now he was ashamed, but the confession brought also a kind of relief.

  ‘Because of the debt you’re in. Because of what you already owe them.’

  ‘Yes. They rendered me a sort of service didn’t they? It didn’t feel like it at the time – all I felt was humiliation.’ He stared straight ahead of him, not daring to look at her. ‘It’s the only time I’ve lapsed, Meg. And they protected me from myself. I told them all about it at Gamblers Anonymous. We’re a strange, disparate bunch there, but we help each other. Their support is a strength to me. You said it would be.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. I just knew that you needed every ounce of support you could get.’

  ‘Yes. I need you, Meg. I need your support, if I’m to beat this.’

  There was a long pause, with neither of them looking at the other. Then she said bleakly, ‘I’ve heard that too often before, Darren.’

  ‘I know. This time it’s true, but how can I expect you to believe that?’ He turned suddenly to her, his face frighteningly close, so that she could see the deepening lines round his mouth, the desperation in his grey, haunted eyes. ‘I need you to come back home, Meg. I can beat it, with you to help me.’

  ‘I’ve been making a life of my own here, a new life.’ It didn’t sound convincing, even to her.

  ‘There’s no one else though. No other man who really matters.’

  ‘There isn’t, but that doesn’t mean that you can presume—’

  ‘I’m not presuming anything, Meg. I’m asking. Pleading, if I’m honest. I can beat the gambling this time, but only if I have you to help me.’

  ‘That’s blackmail.’ But she knew as she said it that it was but a ritual protest.

  ‘Maybe it is. I didn’t mean it to be that. But I know that it’s true.’

  ‘You’re saying that the rest of your life is in my hands. That’s not fair, Darren.’

  ‘I’ve gone beyond what’s fair, Meg. But I do know what’s true. I know that if I have you to help me I can do it. I’ve learned my lesson at last, but I need you at my side to win this war.’

  He wanted to say more, but he sensed he shouldn’t. He could feel their two wills wrestling with each other, almost as if it were a physical contest. Eventually she said, ‘The rent on this place is paid in advance until the end of May,’ and they both knew in that moment that she was going to give in. ‘I’m reserving the right to come back here at any time in the next few weeks, if you let me down.’

  ‘And so you should. But I won’t let you down.’ He took her into his arms and kissed her, softly but at great length. ‘When will you come, Meg?’

  ‘No point in delay, once we’ve made a decision, is there? Tomorrow. When I’ve stopped the milk and the papers.’

  Both of them smiled at this sudden descent from high emotion into practicality. He could think of nothing to say, so he said, ‘The neighbours will be glad to see you back,’ and both of them smiled at the welcome banality of it. He was at once overjoyed and suddenly exhausted, and he left shortly afterwards.

  Meg Pearson sat for a long time after he had left, staring at the blank and silent screen of the television. She would have expected a turmoil of emotions, but she felt instead quite numb. She had no idea whether she was right to accept Darren’s assurances of reform, when he had let her down so many times in the past.

  At the back of her mind, subdued but insistent, was the thought that she might just have agreed to move back into the house of a murderer.

  EIGHTEEN

  ‘I want to make it clear that I’m here under protest.’ The chauffeur of the late James Capstick sat bolt upright on the hard interview room chair and spoke the words they had heard so often before.

  DCI Peach smiled the wide smile of a shark presented with an easy meal. ‘On the contrary, Mr Boyd, you are here in a voluntary capacity. You came willingly into the station to help the police with their enquiries into a serious crime, as every good citizen would wish to do.’

  ‘I said that I was willing to talk to you. I didn’t say that I expected to be shut in an interview room with you and another policeman and treated as a criminal.’ Wally Boyd glared without effect first at the amused face of Peach and then at the totally unamused and unflinching ebony features of Clyde Northcott.

  Peach shrugged his broad shoulders with elaborate incomprehension. ‘You agreed that it would not be a good idea from your point of view to interview you in your flat in the Capstick mansion. Indeed, I think that notion came from you. Once you had agreed to come into the station, an interview room was the only suitable place for us to talk. It offers a proper privacy for what you have to say to us.’ He looked round the small, windowless cube of a room with as much approval as Wally Boyd had accorded it dislike.

  ‘I don’t like these places.’

  ‘You have previous experience of them, then?’ Peach’s eyebrows lifted elaborately towards the baldness above them.

  ‘You bloody know I have.’

  ‘Ah! Thank you for respecting our attention to detail, Mr Boyd. Not everyone is so complimentary about our efficiency.’

  ‘You know about my past.’

  ‘We know about some of it, don’t we, DC Northcott? The criminal bits, to be precise. The rest of your life isn’t our business, unless you choose to enlighten us with interesting snippets of it.’

  ‘I know the way you people operate.’

  ‘Really? Well, that’s gratifying. It means I don’t need to remind you that you are not under oath and that you are giving us willing assistance with our investigation into a serious crime – the most serious of all, indeed. Your familiarity with our methods also ensures that it won’t surprise you if I suggest that this conversation be recorded. It’s surprising how often people remember things differently, we find.’ Peach gave him another beam as he switched on the cassette recorder and announced to it that Mr Walter Boyd was being interviewed by Detective Chief Inspector Peach and Detective Constable Northcott and that the interview was beginning at nine forty on the morning of Tuesday the seventh of April.

  Wally Boyd felt even more uneasy. This was the procedure which had preceded charges against him in the past. Surely they couldn’t suspect him of murder? He said a little desperately, ‘Mr Capstick was a good employer to me. Why would I want him dead?’

  ‘No one here has suggested that you might, as far as I am aware, Mr Boyd. Have you heard anyone accusing this gentleman of murder, DC Northcott?’

  Clyde hadn’t worked with Percy for two years without learning his role in turning the screw. ‘No, sir. Not yet. I’m keeping an entirely open mind on the matter.’

  ‘As you should, DC Northcott, as you should. I don’t want any of that old police business of “once a villain always a villain” on my patch. Innocent until proved guilty, people should be, in my view. Just because Mr Boyd was proved guilty once, we shouldn’t hold it against him now.’

  Boyd attempted desperately to interrupt this bizarre double act. ‘I was never guilty of anything like murder.’

  ‘And you aren’t now, Mr Boyd, I’m sure. Well, not absolutely sure, perhaps. I have to keep an open mind, as DC Northcott has just reminded me.’

  ‘Bit of violence, that’s all it was!’ grumbled Wally Boyd, as much to himself as to his tormentors.

  ‘Grievous Bodily Harm, I believe,’ said Peach with a cheerful smile. ‘And violence often escalates into greater violence, the psychologists and the sociologists tell us. And you know how we policemen love psychologists and sociologists.’

  ‘I was nowhere near the scene of this killing!’

  Peach decided by the desperation in the tone that his man was now thoroughly unnerved and unlikely to conceal anything. ‘Let’s presume that’s correct, for the moment, shall we? Tell us who you think killed the man who employed you.’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’ Boyd a
bandoned his indignation as if taking off a garment. He stared at the scratched table between them and said sullenly, ‘It could have been his wife.’

  ‘It could, couldn’t it? She certainly had the opportunity. And now you’re about to give us the motive.’

  Wally Boyd glared at the cheerful, expectant face which was within three feet of his and watching him intently. He had a fair experience of policemen over the years, but this one seemed already to know far too much about him, about even the way he thought. ‘I’m not saying she did it. I–I don’t much like the woman, that’s all.’

  ‘Which you think is ample reason for you to accuse her of murder. I expect you’ll be looking for new employment very soon now, won’t you?’ As Boyd flashed him a look of hatred, Peach’s tone hardened. ‘Let’s have it, Mr Boyd. Let’s have the information we all know you want us to have.’

  ‘I’m not accusing her of murder. I’m telling you things you might not know, that’s all. Things she might not have told you. It’s up to you to decide whether they’ve anything to do with this killing.’ His voice rose as he made the protest which even surprised himself. ‘Mr Capstick was a good employer to me. Treated me fair and looked after me well. I want you to get his killer, whoever it might be!’

  Clyde Northcott leaned forward, his spare, uncompromising features even nearer to his man. ‘So tell us all about Helen Capstick, Mr Boyd.’

  ‘She was cheating on him. She’s got another man, I’m sure of that.’

  Peach was deliberately low-key now, almost casual. ‘How sure, Wally?’

  ‘I can’t give you a name and address. I can get you a phone number.’

  ‘In Brunton, is he?’

  ‘No. Greater Manchester, somewhere. I’ve checked the mileage on her car, and it tallies.’

  ‘Proper little detective, aren’t you? Among your other duties.’

  ‘My loyalty was to Mr Capstick. It was my duty to find these things out. If she was playing away when he wasn’t at home, he’d have wanted to know, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘I think he very probably would, yes. So did you tell him?’

  ‘No. I–I didn’t know for certain, did I? I think he suspected something was going on, But I wanted to be sure of my facts before I went upsetting Mr Capstick.’

  ‘You mean you saw the possibility of blackmail, of getting a hold over Mrs Capstick. Well, knowledge is power, isn’t it, Wally? Francis Bacon said that four hundred years ago. A man with whom I’m sure you have much in common.’

  Clyde Northcott was almost as unnerved by the mention of Bacon as Boyd. Not for the first time, he wondered exactly what Percy Peach’s background before the police service might be. Francis Bacon was not a common figure in police canteen discussions. He took refuge in an even more menacing attitude to the burly man on the other side of the table. ‘James Capstick had some very dubious business associates and some very nasty enemies, Mr Boyd. And you were his bodyguard as well as his chauffeur. Do you think any of them might have done this?’

  ‘No. People like that would have used a contract killer. I don’t see how one could have got in there, with all those people around. Anyway, they wouldn’t have done it there, on his own patch. And they’d more than likely have used bullets.’

  Peach gave him the beam he found even more unnerving than the black man’s glower. ‘You’ve plainly given the matter some thought, Mr Boyd. For which we thank you. How much more do you know about Helen Capstick?’

  ‘Nothing. I know what I’ve given you’s a bit vague. I just thought you should know.’

  ‘You mean that you don’t like her and she doesn’t trust you. That you thought you’d get your retaliation in first by dishing the dirt to us. Well, in the circumstances, we have to welcome that. Don’t tell her you’ve spoken to us. Let us follow it up. We don’t reveal our sources, so there’s no reason why she should know this has come from you. In return, if you have any further thoughts or any further interesting discoveries, you should contact me immediately.

  He offered Boyd a card, but the man said, ‘I don’t want to carry that, DCI Peach, in the circles I move in. I shan’t forget the name and I know the number.’

  Tucker was on the phone. He waved a hand towards the chair in front of his desk in an appropriately tycoon gesture and Percy Peach sat down carefully upon it.

  ‘I’m very busy, as you can see and hear,’ said Thomas Bulstrode Tucker grandly as he set down the phone. He opened his diary, stared at it with a frown for a moment, then shut it and put it back in front of the ornamental inkstand. ‘This had better not take too long.’

  ‘It needn’t do that, sir,’ Peach assured him modestly. ‘I just want to plant a thought and let it fester.’ He wondered for a moment whether that was the right process for Tucker’s brain, then shrugged and went on. ‘We shall need a new Detective Sergeant to replace DS Blake when she moves out of my team, sir.’

  ‘DS Blake?’

  ‘Lucy Blake, sir. The woman I am planning to marry.’

  ‘Ah! I wish you would always make yourself so clear, Peach. I have many other concerns, you know.’ His gesture with his hand towards the window of his penthouse office presumably indicated the wide world outside and all the criminal dangers it contained. ‘I don’t suppose there is anyone we could promote from within?’

  Tommy Bloody Tucker always went for the easiest solution. Peach had relied upon that. ‘I believe there is, sir. There are several candidates, in fact.’ He watched panic suffuse his chief’s face as his ignorance of the officers who served him flooded into his brain. ‘I am prepared to make a recommendation, if you wish it.’

  Tucker tried not to sound too eager. ‘Any recommendation you care to make would be subjected to a rigorous examination from me, of course.’

  ‘Goes without saying, that, sir. The candidate, like everything else in our working world, would be subjected to your rigorous overview, your grasp of the wider criminal environment in which we all exist. Anyone becoming a detective sergeant would have the satisfaction of knowing that his or her credentials had undergone the pitiless survey of the informed professional expert.’

  ‘Eh? Oh, quite. Well, who is it you wish to recommend? I haven’t got all day.’

  ‘DC Clyde Northcott, sir.’

  There was such a long pause that Peach felt sure that he could hear Tucker’s brain ticking. Then the chief superintendent said, ‘DC Northcott is black, Peach.’

  ‘Yes, sir. I had noticed that. I work with him quite a lot.’

  Even Tommy Bloody Tucker was aware that there were some prejudices you shouldn’t voice. Institutional racialism, they called it nowadays. He contented himself with a heavy, ‘Are you sure about this, Peach?’

  ‘Quite sure, sir. Clyde Northcott is in my view the best of two or three promising detective constables in my team. I have no doubt DC Brendan Murphy will become a DS in due course, but in my view Northcott has the strongest present claim.’ He waited for Tucker to bridle at Murphy’s Irish name, but mercifully it passed him by. ‘It would do us a bit of good with the ethnic lobby, don’t you think?’

  Tucker brightened for a moment: you had to pay lip service to these modern trends, whenever you could. Then his noble brow clouded visibly. ‘He was a drug-dealer, Peach. You seem to have forgotten that.’

  Peach sighed the patient sigh of the teacher of slow learners. Perhaps it was the lobby for slow learners which had secured Tucker his CID promotions. ‘I haven’t forgotten it, sir. He was also a murder suspect: that is how our paths crossed in the first instance. But he was guiltless, sir. Just as he has long since dispensed with any connection with the illegal drugs industry. DC Northcott still rides a powerful motorbike in his leisure hours, sir, in case you wish to take that into account.’

  Peach thought he could forecast most of Tommy Bloody Tucker’s reactions by now. But even he was surprised when his leader said, ‘I think I may discuss this with my wife, Peach. Get an outside view.’ Then catching his junior’s surprise and hastening to
appease him, he added, ‘Barbara will be glad it isn’t another woman.’

  Even Peach was astonished by this new evidence of Tucker’s unpredictability. He said weakly, ‘Mrs Tucker isn’t a feminist, then? Believes that the woman’s place is in the home, with the man taking all decisions?’

  ‘Well, no.’ Not for the first time, the director of Brunton’s CID section was struck by the contrast between Barbara’s insistence upon total female domination in domestic affairs and her reactionary attitude to everything else in life. ‘I’d just like to run the idea of promotion for a black officer within my team past her, that’s all. Get the outside view.’

  ‘There are issues of confidentiality here, sir.’

  ‘Quite. You don’t need to remind me of such things, Peach,’ said Tucker huffily. ‘I shall take your views into account when making my recommendation.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. I’m sure you will. It wouldn’t do to be seen as being in any way prejudiced against a coloured officer, would it?’

  ‘Indeed it wouldn’t, Peach! I’m glad to see that you are for once aware of modern trends in police work.’

  As usual, this negative argument thrust home with Tommy Bloody Tucker much more easily than the positive ones. Peach went back down the stairs confident that Clyde Northcott’s promotion was almost in the bag.

  The window was open in Wally Boyd’s flat above the big triple garage when Peach and Blake drove up the drive of the complex of modern buildings which the late James Capstick had owned. The dead man’s chauffeur and minder was probably well aware of their arrival, but they saw nothing of him.

  Helen Capstick let them into the big house herself. The polished bronze hair was perfectly in place; the hard blue eyes studied her visitors carefully; the smile was careful, formal, with no real hint of welcome. There was no means of telling whether she knew that Wally Boyd had been to see them, whether she suspected that they had come here with more information than when they visited her two days earlier. She said merely, ‘You come exactly at three thirty, as we arranged. I’ve always found that it is busy people who seem to be most punctual.’