Only a Game

by J M Gregson

  ‘Let’s accept your good intentions, Mr Pearson. At the moment they are no more than that. There is precious little evidence of your reform.’

  Darren wanted to say that Meg was evidence, that she’d left him because of his problem, but had now come back to him because she believed in him. Couldn’t they see that that was the best evidence of all? He shook his head hopelessly. ‘All that I can say is that if you come back in a year you’ll find I’ve beaten this.’

  ‘I see. But in the meantime, do you agree that you wouldn’t find it easy to get another job with the same salary if you lost your post at Grafton Park?’

  ‘That is probably so. I haven’t given the matter much thought.’ That sounded so unlikely that he tried to qualify it. ‘The gambling monster has loomed so large for me lately that I’ve thought only of vanquishing that. I haven’t really thought much about losing the post at Grafton Park.’

  Lucy Blake, receiving the now familiar little nod from Peach, said quietly, ‘Is that because you removed the man who might have ensured your dismissal on Saturday night?’

  ‘No.’ He looked aghast at the open, enquiring face beneath the striking chestnut hair. He had almost forgotten her presence in the intensity of his confrontation with Peach. Now the openness and innocence of that face seemed like an invitation to confess and be finished with this. ‘I agree that from your point of view it looks bad. I agree that I never particularly took to James Capstick as an employer. I worked for him and he paid me handsomely enough, but I never quite trusted him – I always felt that he was prepared to sell out to the highest bidder, irrespective of what it meant to the club and the town. But I didn’t kill him. And I don’t really know who did.’

  Blake let that last phrase hang in the air between them for a moment. Then she delivered it back to him. ‘You say you don’t really know, Mr Pearson. That implies that you know a little more than you’ve told us, doesn’t it?’

  ‘What I’m telling you is that I didn’t kill him. Nothing more.’

  The chief inquisitor was back in quickly on this. Peach said with a world-weary air. ‘Let’s have it, Mr Pearson. It’s been a long day for all of us.’

  ‘I saw someone, that’s all. It may mean nothing.’

  ‘Indeed? Well, you’d better let us be the judges of that, hadn’t you?’

  Darren Pearson could not meet the DCI’s dark, intense eyes. He stared at the table as he said in a monotone, ‘As I went out to my car in the reserved car park, I saw a movement in the street and realized that someone was going back into the building. I was naturally curious to see who it was.’

  ‘So you watched and identified this person. Who was it, Mr Pearson?’

  ‘Debbie Black.’

  ‘You’re certain of that?’

  ‘Yes. She was still wearing the boots and the coat she had worn earlier.’

  ‘And did you wait until she came out again?’

  ‘No. I drove away immediately. I’d no reason to do anything else. I didn’t know until the next morning that Capstick had been killed, did I?’

  ‘Didn’t you, Mr Pearson? Hadn’t you already despatched him at this point? And aren’t you now desperately trying to offer us other candidates for your murder?’

  ‘No. I’m telling you what I saw.’

  ‘So why didn’t you offer us this titbit earlier?’

  ‘I don’t know. It didn’t seem as important at first as it does now. And I like Debbie Black. She feels the same way that I do about this town and its people. I suppose I didn’t want to implicate her. I still don’t, but I’m telling you now, aren’t I?’

  ‘You are indeed, however belatedly. And for whatever reasons. Please don’t leave the area without informing us about your intended movements, Mr Pearson. Good night to you.’

  Peach swept out as briskly as he had arrived, leaving DS Blake to take their leave of the man he had questioned. Darren Pearson was immensely relieved that Meg was back, so that he was not left alone with his thoughts.

  ‘Rubenesque,’ said Percy Peach dreamily from beneath the bedclothes.

  Lucy Blake jumped as if a dart had been shot into her. ‘A girl can’t even get undressed in peace.’

  ‘Prancing about in your underwear. Trying to get a man over-excited at the end of a long and trying day.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were there. I didn’t know a man could get undressed and into bed so quickly.’

  ‘It’s a talent you develop. Practice makes perfect, as with so many things.’

  ‘And I’m not sure “Rubenesque” is flattering. Didn’t his women have big thighs and round bellies?’ Lucy inspected the parts in question in the full-length mirror of her wardrobe, prompting a groan of agonized pleasure from her paramour.

  ‘Ample,’ Percy offered, when he was again capable of speech. ‘Curvaceous. And as for his bottoms, Aaaaaaah!’

  His loss of control was occasioned by his bride-to-be’s discarding her last garment. As she stepped demurely from her pale blue pants, he forsook all attempts at speech and applauded vigorously, prompting a blush which made Lucy in his view even more pinkly Rubenesque.

  Actions spoke louder than words in the ensuing twenty minutes, but Lucy did manage to interject, ‘I don’t know how you can find so much energy after a twelve-hour day!’ which her lover took as a compliment.

  When she lay back and gradually resumed her normal rate of breathing, she said reflectively, ‘I’ll be Mrs Peach in a fortnight, and then you’ll lose interest.’

  Percy had his eyes closed and his head flat on the pillow. He wore the most blissful and relaxed of his vast range of smiles. ‘Rubenesque!’ he murmured softly.

  Lucy stared at the invisible ceiling. ‘I sometimes think it was better in the old days, when people waited until they were married to sleep together for the first time. A wedding must have been more of an occasion then.’

  ‘Pink and rounded and Rubenesque,’ muttered Percy in his dream-like haze.

  She poked him in the side with the elbow which he claimed was her only sharp contour. ‘I’m talking to you, Percy Peach! Giving you my philosophical ramblings on marriage.’

  ‘I always enjoy rambling with you, my love,’ he said dreamily. He suited the action to the words and began unhurried exploration of her stomach with his right hand. Then, to show he had been listening, he said, ‘There must have been a lot of fumbling bridegrooms who didn’t know quite what to do in those days.’

  ‘And fumbling brides who weren’t able to help them out,’ said Lucy, arresting his hand at the point of no return with practised ease. ‘I don’t think we’ll have those sorts of problems.’

  Percy Peach stirred himself dutifully into action. ‘Practice makes perfect, Lucy. Better be on the safe side.’

  TWENTY

  Edward Lanchester was alert, well-dressed, beautifully shaved. Every hair of the still plentiful white hair on his venerable head was in place. At seventy-five, he was no longer accustomed to conducting meetings at nine o’clock in the morning, but that was no reason to let anyone think that his standards had slipped. He checked his appearance in the hall mirror and decided that Eleanor would have been proud of him. As was now his habit, he addressed a few silent words to his dead wife. Then he opened the door to the CID officers.

  Peach was dapper as usual in well-cut grey suit and tie. He was glad of that when he saw Lanchester’s elegant blue suit and tie and spotless white shirt. He wouldn’t have wanted to let himself down in the presence of a former chairman of Brunton Rovers; the deferences we acquire in childhood are the hardest of all to relinquish. He said, ‘Good morning, sir. Thank you for your time. There are just a few things we need to clear up.’

  Lanchester led them into the same comfortable sitting room where he had spoken to them on Monday night. There was no fire burning in the grate this morning, but wood and coal were set ready for when one was next required. The curtains which Lucy Blake had admired were open now, revealing a mature, well-tended garden, which dropped away from t
he window across a lawn to where an early rhododendron was beginning to glow rich red with bloom. A comfortable, slightly old-fashioned house, this, with an occupant who she sensed was desperately lonely beneath his spruce exterior.

  She opened her notebook and began the exchanges, as she had agreed with Peach before they entered the house. ‘The steward you mentioned, Harry Barnard, has confirmed that you left the football ground at around seven thirty on Saturday, as you told us he would.’

  ‘Thank you. He’s a reliable man, Harry. He seems to like being employed for a few hours at Grafton Park, though he’s at least as old as me. He doesn’t need to be supervised – if he says he’ll do a job, you know it will be done. He’s – well, I won’t say any more.’

  ‘You were going to say he has the standards of an older generation.’

  Edward looked at this bright young woman with a new respect for her prescience. ‘I was going to say something like that, I suppose. But that would be less than fair to you and others like you. I’m sure there are people around today who are just as capable and just as reliable as they were in my day.’

  She smiled at him, half-mocking, half affectionate, and he thought again of the daughters he saw so rarely and how he would have loved one of them to tease him gently like this. Or much more robustly, for that matter. He didn’t need to be treated with kid gloves, but there were times when he felt it would be nice to receive any sort of attention at all. ‘Perhaps the modern worker just needs a little more direction and supervision than people like Harry.’

  She smiled at him again. ‘Let’s agree on that, shall we? We’ve now put together a list of people who had the opportunity to commit this murder. We wondered if you’d had any further thoughts on the people who might have also had the motive and the nerve to kill James Capstick. We think you know them better as a group of people than anyone else who was around at the time.’

  ‘I don’t know Helen Capstick well.’ Edward was playing for time, telling himself not to be too easily swayed by this attractive young face which seemed so friendly and accommodating.

  Lucy smiled. ‘But you’ve formed an impression, as we have. It would be interesting to have your view, in confidence.’

  He’d given a lot of thought to Helen Capstick since the events of Saturday night. It surely couldn’t do him any harm to say what he thought about her. ‘Helen is a woman of the modern world. She knows how to look after herself. She’d been married before, as Capstick had. I would imagine she’s had other relationships as well. Women like her don’t reach their late forties without learning how to look after themselves. That doesn’t mean that I think she killed her husband – it’s a long step from keeping a beady eye on your interests to murder.’

  Except that if Helen Capstick thought her husband was about to discover her affair and disinherit her, she might think drastic action was needed, thought Lucy Blake. She gave Lanchester a winsome smile and said, ‘You said you didn’t know Mrs Capstick well. That implies that you knew some of the other people involved considerably better than you knew her.’

  Edward gave her an answering smile, meant to convey that he understood what she was about and would help her as much as he thought appropriate. ‘I know Darren Pearson quite well. I helped to appoint him. I’m happy to say that because he’s been an excellent secretary to the club – or chief executive, as we now have to call him.’

  ‘Despite personal problems.’ She nodded understandingly, making it a statement rather than a query.

  Lanchester glanced at her sharply, then said rather stiffly, ‘I know that his wife has left him. I’m sorry about that. I liked Meg.’

  ‘Then you’ll be happy to hear that they’re back together at present. Perhaps I should tell you that we know about Mr Pearson’s problems with gambling.’

  ‘The gambling thing has never affected his work. He’s always been efficient at the club and always been there when he was needed.’

  ‘But he must have felt threatened when he heard about the sale of the club. He wouldn’t easily get another job, with the problems in his private life.’

  ‘You would need to discuss that with him. I reiterate that as far as I’m concerned – and I’m sure as far as someone much more demanding like Capstick was concerned – Darren Pearson was a model employee.’

  The barriers were going up. Sensing that his DS had got as far as she was going to get, Peach said sharply, ‘And what about Robbie Black and Debbie Black?’

  Edward turned unhurriedly to face the dark eyes and challenging face of the man directing this investigation. ‘As a football manager, Robbie is highly successful. For a club the size of Brunton Rovers, success consists of keeping us in the Premiership. That’s a fact of life we have to accept in the modern football world.’

  ‘And as a man?’

  ‘He’s a disciplinarian. There aren’t too many of those among modern managers, now that they have to deal with millionaire prima donnas.’ For a moment, his nostalgia for an older and simpler era which he knew was gone forever misted his eyes. Then he recalled himself sternly to the matter in hand. ‘Robbie Black learned to look after himself in one of the toughest areas of Glasgow and he hasn’t forgotten it.’

  The three of them were silent for a moment, thinking of the implications of this for the crime committed five days earlier. Then Peach said, ‘What about Mrs Black?’

  ‘Debbie’s devoted to her husband and her family.’

  ‘You like her.’

  ‘It would be difficult not to like Debbie. She was a tennis star and a successful model, but she seems to have relinquished the celebrity spotlight without a qualm to become a loyal wife and a devoted mother. She loves Brunton and she’s building a life for herself and her family here. I believe she’d do anything for Robbie.’

  ‘Even murder?’

  He smiled at Peach’s intensity. ‘No, not murder. Anything within reason. Murder isn’t within reason, is it?’

  Peach relaxed a little, answering Lanchester’s smile while still studying him relentlessly. ‘The trouble is that, at the time of the death, murderers sometimes see killing as exactly that, Mr Lanchester. As the only reasonable way out of a particular situation. Have you any further thoughts to offer us?’

  Edward Lanchester looked at him curiously for a moment, wondering exactly how much Peach knew about these people, before he said firmly, ‘No. Nothing at present.’

  ‘Then we shall be on our way. Thank you for your help.’ Peach stood looking out of the window for a moment, as if taking in the full glory of the scarlet rhododendron, and then left without looking at Lanchester again.

  The Blacks’ au pair was Swedish. She was tall, blonde, and competent, and like most young Swedes she spoke excellent English. She had completed her degree and was spending a year acquiring work experience before she committed herself to a career. She was sure now what she wanted to do, partly as a result of her experiences in Brunton. Sixteen months from now, after another year of training, she would become a primary school teacher.

  Hilde Svendson was also a soccer enthusiast who had followed the results in the English Premiership diligently in her home country. One of the attractions of this post for her had been involvement with the children of a football manager in the Premiership and the connection, however tenuous, with the glamour of big-time soccer. She supported Liverpool: she felt that she was the only person living in the Brunton area who had been dismayed by last Saturday’s result.

  At ten o’clock on Wednesday morning, the children were at school and the spacious modern house felt curiously quiet and empty. Hilde was sorting through the children’s discarded toys with Mrs Black, gathering together a considerable array of highly coloured wood and plastic which would be taken first to the local play group and then, after being been sifted there, to the charity shop.

  ‘We should have got rid of most of these a year or more ago,’ said Debbie Black, handling a wheeled wooden horse with a touch of nostalgia. ‘It’s having plenty of storage space t
hat does it. In our last house I’d have had to be much more ruthless because we needed the room. Look how much clutter we’ve gathered! And it’s all stuff they’ll never touch again.’ She looked at the formidable array with a moment of regret for the years of infancy which would not come again. ‘We’ve almost finished now. We’ll have a cup of coffee and then you can have the gym to yourself for an hour if you like.’

  Hilde was enthusiastic about fitness, and delighted with the array of exercise machines in the private gym at the back of the house. Debbie had noted her Junoesque figure and the fact that she was an enthusiastic trainer, and thus wore very little in that room. She trusted Robbie implicitly, of course, but there was no use thrusting temptation under a man’s nose. Vigorous men of forty-four should be protected from the sensations generated by a panting and scantily clad Hilde Svendson, for their own and everyone else’s sake. You tended to be a little more cautious about these things when you had yourself reached forty-three.

  The bedroom was at the back of the house, so that neither of them heard the car coming up the drive. It was not until the doorbell rang that Debbie went and looked through the window of the front bedroom and realized who the visitors were. ‘It’s the police,’ she told Hilde, as she watched DCI Peach climb out of the passenger seat of the Mondeo and look up at the house. ‘Do you think you could stow these things into my car and take them to the play centre?’

  Hilde hesitated. ‘What is “stow”?’

  ‘Sorry. I just meant pack them into the back of the car and dispose of them for us. The police will probably want to speak to me on my own, you see.’

  If Hilde was disappointed to be cut off from the drama of detection, she hid it well. She hadn’t been a qualified driver for very long and she appreciated being trusted with her employer’s car. By the time Debbie Black had prepared coffee and biscuits for Peach and Blake, she had packed the toys into the car and was easing it carefully past the police vehicle.