Remains to be Seen

by J M Gregson

  ‘But I didn’t do it,’ said Ben dully, sounding almost resigned to his fate.

  Lucy Blake considered his bowed head for a moment before she said softly, ‘Then who did, Ben?’

  ‘I don’t know. One of the resident staff at the Towers, I should think. Or maybe that Mr Simmons, Neil’s stepfather. They didn’t get on at all, you know: Neil told me that.’

  ‘Which one of these, Ben?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, you must have some ideas. That’s if DC Northcott is wrong and you didn’t do it yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t! And I don’t know who did. I don’t know much about them, apart from Neil. I only went in each day to work there, you know. And I was outside all day, working on the gardens or in the grounds. I hardly saw anyone, apart from Neil.’

  He looked exhausted, and Lucy Blake was almost willing to let it go at that. She glanced at the relentless black face beside her and received the slightest of nods. Clyde Northcott said, suddenly gentle, ‘Would you turn out your pockets for us, please, Ben?’

  At the beginning of the exchanges, Ben Freeman might have refused, but all resistance was gone now. He pulled out the pockets of his jeans without a word and put the contents on the table in front of him. The keys for the lock with which he chained his bike and the front door of the house where he lived with his mother. Three strips of chewing gum. Two pounds and fourteen pence in coins. A credit card. A torn Riverside Stand ticket for last Saturday’s Rovers game. Nothing remarkable. He stared at the two officers, trying to muster a little defiance in the face of this innocent collection.

  Northcott gestured towards the garment Ben had put carefully on the back of a chair when he came into this warm room. ‘The anorak as well, please.’

  Ben cast his eyes down to the dark green carpet beneath his feet. But not before they had caught the glint of fear in the dark-blue irises. He fumbled in the side pockets of the garment, produced two empty sweet papers, a used tissue, an even dirtier handkerchief, and added them to the pathetic collection on the table in front of him. They were grubby but innocent, his belongings: Ben wanted to muster some truculent defiance to throw into the faces of these CID torturers, but no words would come to him.

  Instead, Clyde Northcott reached unhurriedly across to the inside pocket of the anorak, the one with the zip across the top of it, which most people forgot. He unzipped the pocket, produced the small white rock from within it, looked steadily at Freeman as he said, ‘Coke, Ben. You’re in possession of a Class C illegal drug. That leaves you with a little explaining to do, doesn’t it?’

  Sixteen

  DCI Peach looked up and down the narrow terraced street before he got out of his car. There were places where it wasn’t wise to leave a car unattended nowadays, in this part of Brunton. But this street looked respectable enough. The houses were well kept, with clean curtains and newly painted doors. No one bothered to rub the doorsteps every week with the yellow or white stone, as his mother had still done when he was a lad in the early seventies, but everywhere was clean and tidy.

  The door opened almost before he had finished knocking. The man looked at him apprehensively, asked him in reluctantly, told him as such people always did that he didn’t see how he could be of any help. But within two minutes they were sitting opposite each other in well-worn, comfortable armchairs.

  Derek Simmons cleared his throat and said, ‘We won’t be disturbed. Brenda’s gone round to her sister’s. She needs a bit of company.’ He wouldn’t tell this sharply dressed observant man that he himself was no company at all for Neil Cartwright’s grieving mother, because he hadn’t got on with the dead man; or that this death had dropped like a wall between a husband and wife who had never had secrets from each other; or that he’d worked very hard indeed to get Brenda out of the house for this meeting.

  Peach looked round for a moment, quite content to let a man who was patently nervous become even more so. Like a lot of these small terraced houses, this one was unexpectedly comfortable inside. The walls had been stripped of the paper they had carried for years and painted in an off-white emulsion, to make a small room look bigger. The three-piece suite was comfortable and of excellent quality, and the oval mirror in its heavy Victorian frame sat comfortably on the wall opposite the fireplace.

  Peach eventually said, ‘Routine, this is. Or at least I hope that’s all it is.’

  ‘I hope so too. Brenda and I said everything we could say to the constable who took our statements on Friday.’

  Peach gave him a bland smile. ‘That’s why we’re here, sir. When there are discrepancies in people’s statements, we follow them up and clarify things. That’s the routine I mentioned.’

  ‘Discrepancies?’

  ‘That’s the thing, sir. Discrepancies. To be precise, we’re interested in what happened on the Sunday night, which is almost certainly the time when your stepson was killed.’

  Derek determined to keep calm. ‘That’s straightforward, as far as I can see. I was at the snooker club for the whole of the evening. Brenda was here. You’re surely not suggesting that the lad’s mother’s been lying to you?’

  Men of forty-three were always lads to the generation in front of them. ‘No, sir. We’ve no reason to doubt that Mrs Simmons was here for the whole of the evening, as she stated. Or that you were out from around six forty-five until a quarter to eleven, as both of you stated.’

  ‘Then where’s the discrepancy?’

  Peach made a show of consulting his notes, though he knew perfectly well what he was about to say. ‘There seems to be a little confusion about where you were during those four hours, Mr Simmons.’

  ‘No confusion. I was at the snooker club.’ He paused a moment, looked into the black, unblinking eyes, and was drawn into saying, ‘Ask Harry Barnard. He was with me through most of the evening.’

  ‘We’ve asked Mr Barnard about it, Mr Simmons. That’s why we’re here. He said you were with him, but no one else in the club that night remembers you being there for so long. The steward was behind the bar all evening: his recall is that you came into the place somewhere around half-past eight. So we went back to your friend Harry Barnard and pressed him a little. He now agrees with the steward that you didn’t come into the snooker club until around half-past eight.’

  Derek wondered whether to deny it, to bluster it out, to challenge them to break his story. But if they’d demolished Harry Barnard, he couldn’t hope to convince them. He tried to keep his voice steady as he said, ‘So I must have got it wrong. I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘So are we, Mr Simmons. You’ve wasted a lot of police time. And tried to deceive us, when we’re looking for a man who has committed murder. We have to ask ourselves why you did something so foolish. That’s why I’m here now.’

  Derek wondered whether to change his story, to say that he’d gone out much later on that fateful night and get Brenda to back him up. She might do it, if he told her how vital it was to him. But he couldn’t ask her to do it, not with her beloved son the victim at the heart of all this. He’d have to claw his way out of it as best he could. ‘All right. I left here at the time I said. But those people you spoke to are right: I didn’t get to the club until about half-past eight.’

  Peach didn’t bother with any of his range of smiles this time. Instead, he said grimly, ‘I should warn you before you say any more that we know a little about your relationship with Neil Cartwright. You two didn’t get on together, did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it had better be the truth this time.’

  ‘I went to see Neil at Marton Towers. Straight from home, I drove up there. Must have arrived there at about seven or just after seven.’

  Peach looked at him keenly from beneath the black eyebrows. If this was correct, it would confirm that the dead man had been alive at this time. The latest sighting they had of him thus far was much earlier in the day. ‘And what happened between you?’

  ‘Nothing happened. He wa
sn’t there. I hammered on his door in the stable block, but neither he nor Sally was in. I waited outside for nearly an hour in my car in the dark, getting colder and colder, thinking he must come home at any minute. But he didn’t.’

  ‘And have you any witnesses who can confirm that this is what happened?’

  ‘No. It’s a quiet place up there behind the main house at the best of times. I saw no one, and as far as I’m aware no one saw me.’

  ‘Was this a pre-arranged meeting with your stepson?’

  Derek paused, weighing the implications of the question, knowing that he was now a murder suspect. ‘We’d sort of arranged it. We hadn’t fixed a time, but Neil had said that he could arrange to see me on my own on most Sunday evenings.’

  ‘And who had initiated this?’

  ‘I had.’

  ‘And what was the purpose of the meeting?’

  Derek made himself take his time and arrange his thoughts into some sort of order. ‘You’re right about me and Neil. We didn’t get on together. He never accepted me as the new man in his mother’s bed. I know he was attached to his father, but he never gave me a chance. I’d have accepted that we’d never get on, if I’d been the only one involved, told him to bugger off and leave me be. But it upset Brenda when we were shouting and swearing at each other. I wanted to meet Neil to see if there was any way we could sort things out, for her sake.’ Derek looked resolutely at the carpet between them, afraid that he would lose concentration if he looked up and saw disbelief in this copper’s aggressive eyes. ‘I’d tried the same kind of approach before, and he’d told me to get lost. But I was determined to have one last go, for Brenda’s sake.’

  ‘A last go indeed.’

  ‘Yes. Except that we never met. I never got the chance to put my case.’

  ‘Or you put it and failed, as you had before. And the falling-out was a violent one. Got out of hand, perhaps.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. I told you, Neil wasn’t there.’

  ‘Then why deceive us about it? Why try to set up an alibi for yourself with your friend Mr Barnard?’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d believe me – not when people told you about how Neil and I could never exchange a civil word with each other. And – well, I’ve had a bit of trouble before. A long time ago.’

  ‘Serious trouble, though. Flew into a rage and nearly throttled a man, didn’t you?’

  ‘It was twenty years ago. Just a fight that got out of hand, really. And it was self-defence.’

  ‘Never established, that, was it? I’d say you were lucky you didn’t kill the man.’

  ‘You can see why I didn’t want you to know that I’d been up to Marton Towers, can’t you? Because of what happened twenty years ago, you’ve now got me down as a murder suspect.’

  Peach shook his head firmly. ‘Not because of what happened twenty years ago, Mr Simmons. That merely demonstrates to us that you have a capacity for violence. What makes you a suspect is that you saw fit to lie to the police about what you had been doing at around the time when a man you seem to have hated was killed. When you are now forced to reveal to us that you were at the probable scene of the crime at around the time it was committed, that makes you an even better candidate.’ He nodded his head in satisfaction, as if he saw pieces of a jigsaw falling neatly into place.

  ‘I didn’t kill Neil.’

  ‘You won’t object to giving us a DNA sample, then.’

  A flash of what looked like fear crossed Derek Simmons’ too-revealing face. ‘Do I have to?’

  ‘No. We haven’t the right to demand one. Not at this stage, anyway.’ He made the last phrase heavy with menace.

  The ageing face set like that of a sullen child. ‘Then I’m not giving you one. I don’t see why I should. I told you, I didn’t kill Neil.’

  Peach looked at him keenly, his head a little on one side. ‘Have you any suggestions about who might have killed him, then?’

  ‘No. I don’t know the people who worked with him up at the Towers. Because we didn’t get on, I’ve not been involved with his life.’

  Peach pursed his lips as he nodded slowly. ‘Question we have to resolve, Mr Simmons, is whether you were involved in his death. Don’t leave the area without telling us about your plans, will you?’

  DCI Peach departed as abruptly as he had arrived. Derek had an hour of bleak contemplation of his situation before his wife came back from her sister’s house. Brenda said, ‘It was good that you made me go out, love. I feel better for seeing Edith and George, as you said I would. I just wish people wouldn’t treat me with kid gloves, try to pretend that nothing has happened, when my son is dead. Anything happen whilst I was out?’

  ‘No. Very quiet, it’s been.’

  Another lie. Another deception of the woman whom he had been determined never to deceive. Derek Simmons was beginning to wonder if the lying would ever end.

  At Marton Towers, Tuesday night was very dark. The clouds were low, threatening rain or sleet before morning. Neither stars nor moon were visible, and there was no street lighting here. Even the lamps which usually illuminated the main drive had not been switched on since the events of the previous Wednesday.

  Sally Cartwright was used to the night. When she had first come here five years ago, she had welcomed the darkness and the solitude, the confirmation that the city and all its tawdry glitter had been left far behind her. But in those days, which now seemed so innocent and so far away, she had never thought that it would come to this.

  It was only just after nine o’clock, but it felt much later than that when you seemed to be the only one abroad in a sleeping world. She stood for a moment outside the door of her new cottage at the end of the stable block, letting her eyes become accustomed to the darkness and the eerie stillness of the night. The silhouette of the rear elevation of the big neo-Gothic mansion was the only thing she could see at first. The back of the big house was much less regular than the front, allowing for the multiple services which the affluent Victorians and their successors had demanded to supply the needs of the owner and his guests in the impressive main rooms of the house.

  But in the darkness of this moonless March night, the shape became two-dimensional; only the basic, dominant outline, with its multiple turrets and towers, stood out against the dark sky and the scarcely moving clouds. The dead man’s widow was reminded of Colditz, that earlier dark citadel, with its complex implications of imprisonment and escape. In that sombre moment, Sally Cartwright wondered if she would ever escape completely from what had happened at Marton Towers.

  Sally told herself again that she wasn’t frightened of the night. Hadn’t she grown accustomed to its silence and its stillness over the years at the Towers? On a summer night, she had often ventured out alone, relishing the soft, warm, intimate obscurity, and the myriad sounds of the small animals who were active during the short hours of darkness. This March night was different. There was not even the sound of a distant screech-owl to remind her that she was not completely alone.

  Her eyes were accustomed to the night now, utilizing the tiny amount of light there was to pick out the route she wanted to take. As she moved away from her door, she saw for the first time the only other visible sign of human existence around her. A hundred yards away, at the other end of the long, low stable block, there was a single soft orange glow behind thick curtains. The Naylors must have moved out of their temporary suite in the mansion and into their newly refurbished cottage. She wondered for a moment exactly what was going on in that other cottage, what kind of words the chef and his small, dark-haired attractive wife were exchanging with each other.

  It was better not to think about that. She moved softly over the gravel she could scarcely see to the narrow path of tarmac which would take her to the main house. She had thought she knew every step of this route, but she moved very carefully now, happy to feel the soles of her trainers on the smooth surface, so that even the tiny scraping sounds she had made on the gravel were eliminated. As she drew
level with the mansion, its black turrets towered impossibly high above her. She had a brief glimpse of the silent lakes on either side of the drive at the front of the mansion, still as black glass, with scarcely enough light even to catch their surfaces for her.

  Then she turned away from the sight and towards the back of the house. There was no illumination to be seen anywhere, and you would have thought from here that the massive place was locked and deserted. But Sally knew better than that. As she moved nearer to the masonry, she felt she could smell the very stones of the familiar place, which had become strange and menacing to her.

  All was darkness now under the mighty shadow of the Towers. She switched on the tiny torch she had brought with her for this last section of the route. With the outbuildings beginning to surround her and the first walls already higher than her head, surely no one would see the tiny, jerky circle of white light in front of her. She moved towards the north-facing portal of what had once been the dairy room of the house.

  She needed her torch to find the lock when she reached the high, solid outer door. She stepped inside, thought about pressing a switch, decided instead to use her torch to find the security-system panel. Her fingers looked to her very white and frail as they tapped in the numbers of the code. She breathed a sigh of relief as the click told her that she had prevented the alarms screaming into action all over the ground floor of the big house.

  She stood for a moment, waiting for her pulses to slow, gathering her resources for the different challenge which was coming. Then she turned the narrow beam of her torch upon the stone-flagged floor of the former dairy and moved through into the kitchen, and thence on to the carpeted floors of the front part of the mansion. She stood in the hall for a moment, her light fainter as she turned it on to the wide staircase twenty yards away from her, running up into the darkness of the first storey.