Remains to be Seen

by J M Gregson

  ‘One of the women seems likely, if adultery’s involved. But keep an open mind, Peach.’ Chief Superintendent Tucker waved a lordly arm towards the door of his office.

  Peach went back downstairs and made a call to an inspector friend of his in the Lancashire County Police. The information about Henry Rawcliffe, Head of the Brunton Police Authority, was most satisfactory.

  After this moment of self-indulgence, he turned his mind to the people he had mentioned to Tommy Bloody Tucker as being in the frame for this one. Each of the five was concealing something, he was sure, but he relished the challenge of that: he’d break them down, in the next day or two. He would have been altogether less pleased with himself had he realized that his five main suspects were about to become six.

  No one who saw the erect figure striding into DCI Peach’s office would have recognized the furtive creature of the underworld who had lived from hand to mouth in the squat a week earlier.

  Only a certain restlessness, an inability to settle in one position for longer than a minute at a time, remained from the being who had lived with incessant danger over those perilous months. Jack Clark’s hair had been cut, his shirt was clean, dark trousers had replaced the torn and filthy jeans which had clung to his slim legs for so long. He even wore a tie; you might have mistaken this brave and reckless man for a banker.

  Peach, of course, knew otherwise. The Detective Chief Inspector would have protested that he was a born coward, with a healthy consciousness of the vulnerability of his own skin. His colleagues, on the other hand, would have told you that Percy Peach was in fact a man who had never flinched from danger, whenever his work led him into it. But Peach knew that he could never have done what Clark had done, never have lived the necessary lie that he had lived over weeks of almost unbearable tension and vigilance.

  Clark in his turn had been made aware as he chatted to the station sergeant of the iconic reputation as an aggressive taker of villains which Peach had built up for himself over the last few years in Brunton. For a few minutes, the two men circled each other respectfully in conversation, two very different creatures who were each slightly in awe of the other’s strengths.

  Rank was soon dispensed with; the pair spoke as two men playing very different parts in the same war against evil. They discussed the success of the raid at Marton Towers on the previous Wednesday night, with Peach paying fulsome and uncharacteristic tribute to the accuracy of the information Clark had provided to set it up, and Jack making more conventional noises about the swiftness and efficiency of the police swoop.

  Then Peach said, ‘But you didn’t come in here to review past triumphs, Jack Clark.’

  Jack was glad that Peach had taken the initiative: he had been wondering how to cut through the conversational pleasantries, without knowing when or how to do it. Polite conversation was not his strength. He said, ‘You’re right. I’ve been a bit restless, since last Wednesday night.’

  Peach smiled wryly at him. ‘Wish I could say the same. But I collected an investigation into arson and murder at the Towers, after the successful conclusion of the raid.’

  ‘I know that. I was hoping I might be able to help you.’

  For a moment, Peach thought the man was asking to join his team. But then he knew that it couldn’t be that: this man lived and worked in a very different world from that of normal detection. ‘You think you may have information?’

  Jack nodded. Now that he was here, what he had to say seemed more vague and ephemeral than it had when he had paced the narrow confines of his flat. ‘It won’t give you an arrest. It will add to the sum of your knowledge.’ He gave a grim little smile at the formality of that phrase.

  Peach’s smile was equally grim, but also encouraging. ‘Any information will be welcome, Jack. We’re nowhere near an arrest at present.’

  ‘It’s a bit vague, because what we were concerned with was trapping the big boys. But some of the people who worked at the Towers were dealing. I thought you’d like to be aware of that.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. But it’s valuable information, because no one up there’s told me a thing about it. I’m sure Holloway, the man in charge, was aware of it, even if he wasn’t involved himself, but he’s said nothing. Do you know who was dealing?’

  ‘No. At least, the only name I can give you won’t be of much use. It’s Neil Cartwright, your murder victim. He’d been dealing for some time. I think he had the type of job they were planning to offer me, where you supply and direct your own small ring of dealers.’

  ‘So he might have been using other domestic employees at the Towers to deal for him?’

  ‘He might, or he might have recruited completely different people from outside. People like Cartwright are small fry, when you consider the big picture, so they were of no real concern to us in the build-up to last Wednesday’s arrests. And of course, Cartwright’s dealing may have no connection at all with either the fire which followed the raid or the murder which preceded it.’

  ‘But until we know that’s the case, we need to give special attention to anyone who worked with or close to Cartwright.’ Peach’s mind was already on the sheet of paper he had been looking at before Clark came into the room.

  ‘What was his job at Marton Towers?’

  ‘He was Head Gardener. But that title wouldn’t cover the full range of his duties. He was also in charge of the estate. And he had staff who worked for him. At least one of them was full time.’

  ‘If it was an older man, it’s unlikely that he’d have been recruited to sell drugs.’

  Peach smiled at the earnest, neatly clad officer opposite him, who looked so unlike a man who would willingly put his life into extreme danger. ‘This was a young man, Jack. A young man who seems to have made himself very scarce since the events of last week.’

  Fifteen

  Ben Freeman kept his eye on the Head Greenkeeper, who was planting a young tree in the rough beside the adjoining fairway. When you were on probation, it paid you to take extreme care over your work, to make sure that you understood exactly what the boss wanted and then deliver it to the best of your ability. He’d been warned about that when they took him on, and he was doing his best to perform.

  It was the first time they had allowed him to drive the gang mowers which cut the fairways at Brunton Golf Club. There wasn’t a great growth of grass so early in the year, but there was enough for him to be able to survey the appealing swathes he had just cut across the second and third fairways. He was pleased with what he saw. The pattern was regular and the lines were straight. With the neatening effect that mowing always has on growing grass, the two fairways looked a hundred per cent better for his efforts.

  He glanced at his watch. Twenty to twelve already. The time went quickly when you were concentrating on the work. Lunch break in twenty minutes, and the rest of the day fine and bright, if the forecast they’d been given that morning was correct. A couple of the members gave him a cheery good morning and complimented him on the look of his work. It was a good life; he’d made the right decision in coming here.

  He drove the tractor across to the Head Greenkeeper to ask if he should now move on to mowing another fairway. His boss was a powerful, grizzled man of fifty, with the dark, healthy skin which came from much work out of doors. ‘You done well there, young Ben,’ he said.

  He’d been watching, then, estimating the skills of the newest member of his staff. Ben said, ‘I’ve done a lot of mowing before. Mostly fine grasses, though. Smaller mowers than this, to give a fine cut. Lawns and the like.’ He didn’t know quite what he meant by ‘the like’, but he wanted to get in the line about lawns, because they might let him on to the greens, if they were satisfied with his other work. The more experienced lads who worked with him had said that that was the elite job at a golf course: when the boss trusted you to work on the greens, you really knew you were in.

  ‘Might let you mow the first fairway, next week,’ said the boss. And Ben realized in a flash that
he hadn’t been trusted on the first fairway for his first outing with the big tractor and the gang mowers. The first hole was visible from the clubhouse windows, and any clumsiness in the lines left from his cutting would have been all too evident to the members in the bar. But telling him that he might now be trusted there was telling him that he had done all right.

  Ben Freeman said, ‘Do you want me to move on to the fourth now?’ Always show willing, however near it is to break time.

  At that moment, the Head Greenkeeper’s mobile phone screeched in his pocket. He pulled it out, pressed the button and put it to his ear, with the wariness of a man who does not trust such things. He listened, nodded, looked cautiously at the man who sat on the tractor above him as he spoke. ‘You’re to go to the clubhouse, lad. Secretary wants to see you. There’s two coppers come in to talk to you, apparently.’

  Ben Freeman’s bright day seemed suddenly a little darker.

  The grass was also beginning to grow on the neat lawns around Marton Towers. Neville Holloway knew that it would need attention in the next week or two, if the mansion was to have the elegant emerald surround which had set it off so admirably over the last few years.

  With Cartwright dead and no regular outdoor staff now available, it was a situation which would demand his attention before long. At present, he had two men coming in on an hourly basis to keep things tidy outside. But the future was uncertain, with the owner of the Towers in custody and by all accounts likely to stay there. Richard Crouch’s instructions from jail were to carry on as usual for the present: there was plenty of money in the bank for staff wages. But no one, and perhaps least of all Crouch, knew what was the long-term future of the estate and its employees.

  Neville Holloway had more immediate concerns. He looked out at the reflection of the trees in the still waters of the lakes beside the deserted driveway, saw no sign of a human presence and locked the door of his office. Then he set the shredder to work on the documents he had selected over the last two hours.

  With the police about and prying into everyone’s business, it was time to cover your tracks.

  The secretary of the golf club looked at his new employee curiously, then said, ‘These two officers would like to have a word with you. You can use the Committee Room: you won’t be disturbed in there.’

  Ben Freeman looked round uneasily at this big room with the huge table in the middle of it, where he had never been before. When invited to sit down, he set his buttocks uneasily on the edge of a chair with arms, which seemed hugely above his status. Feeling a need to break the heavy silence, he blurted out nervously and meaninglessly, ‘I haven’t done anything, you know.’

  ‘Then you won’t have anything to fear from us,’ said the woman with dark-red hair, who had made him self-conscious by watching his every movement. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Blake, of Brunton CID, and this is Detective Constable Northcott.’

  A tall, unsmiling black man who looked as if he was made of ebony; a man you wouldn’t want to tangle with. Ben looked at the contrasting pair and tried unsuccessfully to muster a little aggression as he said, ‘Well, what is this about, then?’

  ‘Murder, Mr Freeman.’ DS Blake looked him calmly in the face, searching for a reaction, using the single word of the worst and most ancient of crimes as a weapon to frighten this young, open-faced man, who had looked so apprehensive from the outset. She was watchful but perfectly calm, delivering the sinister word as coolly as if it had been an item on a shopping list. ‘Arson as well, perhaps, but let’s all concentrate our attention on murder, for the moment.’

  ‘You’re talking about Marton Towers. I’ve left there.’ Ben was stalling, buying himself time. But he found he couldn’t use that precious time: his brain was racing out of control and refusing to perform, at this moment when he most needed it.

  ‘Yes. Very interesting, that. We shall want to know the reason for your sudden departure, in due course. The important thing at the moment is that you were around at the time when Neil Cartwright died.’

  He felt like throwing in the towel at the start. He had never been good with words, and they were going to out-smart him, whatever he said. The teachers at school had always been able to reduce him to a helpless silence, because they were so much better with words than he was. But this was much, much more serious than anything at school. He said helplessly, ‘Neil Cartwright was my boss.’

  ‘Yes. So you knew him well. How did you get on with him, Mr Freeman?’

  Ben wished she wouldn’t keep giving him the title. No one else spoke to him like that, and it unnerved him. ‘Well enough.’ He knew he needed to give them something more than that, if they weren’t to come after him like dogs cornering a cat. ‘I liked Neil. We worked together a lot, around the estate. And he taught me things, things that I didn’t know before. Mainly things about gardening.’ He forced out the phrases. Nothing came naturally or sounded right, even to him, who was producing these words.

  ‘But you probably had disagreements with him. Most people who work closely together have those, from time to time.’

  How pretty and persuasive she was, when she smiled, this woman who was only a few years older than him but who seemed to know so much more about the world. He had to resist again the temptation simply to agree with her, to give them what they wanted and have it over with. ‘We didn’t fall out with each other. Neil was my boss, but we got on well. I learned things from him, and he told me I was doing well.’

  Again that smile, bathing him in warmth, assuring him that much the best policy was cooperation. ‘Then why did you leave, Ben? Why throw up a good job at the Towers, when you felt you were doing well and your employers were quite pleased with your efforts?’

  ‘Fancied the job here more.’ He’d tried to prepare an argument on these lines, but he couldn’t produce anything which sounded right to him now that the moment was at hand.

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘Better prospects.’ He’d had more than that to say, when he’d rehearsed it last night, but now the words wouldn’t come.

  ‘Assistant Greenkeeper, the secretary here told us. On probation, at the lowest wages. Better prospects in that than in being Deputy Estate Manager at Marton Towers?’

  He wanted to tell her that he had never had that title, that the job hadn’t been anything like as grand as that. But he was beguiled by the thought of it, by the importance it seemed to give to what he had been doing up at the Towers. And she was right, of course she was: he’d loved the work up there, the variety of it, the sense that all the time he was learning and improving himself. If it hadn’t been for bloody Neil Cartwright …

  But he couldn’t admit these things, however much this woman made it sound as if they already knew them. Ben Freeman said desperately, ‘I’ve always wanted to work at a golf club. To work outdoors and make the grass as good as you can possibly make it.’ Someone had told him to say that when he went for interview at the golf club, and he’d duly delivered the phrases at interview, though the people who had spoken with him then hadn’t seemed very impressed by them. He tried hard to convince DS Blake by the earnestness he forced into his face now.

  But just when he had focused all his attention and efforts upon her, it was the unsmiling, hard-as-granite black man who spoke. ‘Why’d you leave the Towers, Ben?’

  ‘I told you, I—’

  ‘You did, and we didn’t buy it. So cut the crap and tell us why, boy.’

  ‘All right. I’d had a bust-up with Cartwright. He told me to go. Said to get my arse out of the place and find myself another job.’ Suddenly and surprisingly, Ben found it easier to speak.

  ‘Big bust-up, was it?’

  ‘Quite big, yes. I was glad to get out, in the end. And I’ve found a job here that—’

  ‘Did you kill Neil Cartwright, Ben?’

  ‘No! No, of course I didn’t.’ Ben strove to convince them with the vehemence of his tone, to find words which would make it apparent that this was a ridiculous notion
. He failed in both attempts.

  ‘Because the facts suggest that, don’t they? You’ve just told us you had a big row with Cartwright, as a result of which he kicked you out of a job you liked. It seems very likely that as a consequence of that, you lost your temper and attacked him.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Perhaps you’d no intention of killing him, when it happened. Perhaps things just got out of hand. Perhaps you were even in fear for your own life, when you grabbed that piece of cable or whatever it was that killed Cartwright. You might even get away with manslaughter, if you get a good brief on it and tell him it was like that.’

  ‘But it wasn’t! I didn’t do it!’ Ben Freeman heard the panic rising in his own voice and could do nothing about it.

  ‘So who did, Ben?’

  ‘I don’t know. I was scared, when I heard about it. That was the reason I got out.’

  Clyde Northcott shook his closely shaven head, gave his first small, mirthless grin at the sorry creature in front of him. ‘Not true, that, Ben. You’d been here asking after this job before the news of this murder was ever released to press and radio.’

  ‘I don’t remember. I’m sure—’

  ‘We can remind you, then. The news of the fire and the murder became public on Thursday last. The secretary here tells us that you came here after a job three days earlier than that. On the Monday, in fact. You’re telling us that isn’t correct?’

  ‘No. If he—’

  ‘Because those days are significant, to simple people like us, who have to try to piece together what happened last week. They mean that you were out of Marton Towers before the police raid and the fire on Wednesday night, but you left after the murder of Neil Cartwright, who was probably killed on the Sunday. Doesn’t look good, does it?’

  ‘It may not look good, but—’

  ‘It all supports a view of events which goes something like this. Ben Freeman has a row with his boss, Neil Cartwright. A serious row, which results in a fight, in which Ben kills Cartwright and hides the body in a place where he knows it won’t be found, for a few days at least. He gets out of Marton Towers, as fast as his panic-stricken legs will carry him, and hot-foots it to begin a new life at Brunton Golf Club. Whether he starts Wednesday night’s fire in the stable block himself, as seems overwhelmingly probable, or whether fate or some other person intervenes to help him, remains to be seen. As do a lot of other things in this case. But frankly, if we have an arrest for murder, all of that is secondary.’