Death of a Nobody

by J M Gregson

  In truth, there was little in the room yet. The clothes which would eventually be carefully bagged to appear as exhibits in court were still with Forensic. The files of interview evidence which would in due course fatten to an alarming volume, even in a case like this, had scarcely been opened. Some enlarged photographs of the corpse and the place where it had been found had been pinned on a sheet of plasterboard, but there was little else to suggest that this was a murder room.

  Rushton gave them a résumé of the largely negative findings he had collated so far. He said, ‘The only interesting thing is that the landlord thought he saw Pegg making a phone call last night. It would be useful to know whom he was trying to contact.’

  Lambert smiled grimly. Not all that interesting, I’m afraid, Chris. It was me. He got through and we arranged a meeting — that should have been in our usual place tonight.’

  ‘Any idea what he wanted to talk about?’

  The superintendent shook his head ruefully. ‘He had information about someone. Some job that was coming up, I expect. He never rang me without it. But we didn’t even exchange our own names on the phone, let alone any facts. He was too well versed in his trade for that.’

  But his knowledge didn’t save him, they all thought.

  Hook said, ‘Haven’t you any idea, sir, from previous contacts?’ There was almost a superstition about the exchange: even now, when the man was dead, neither inspector nor sergeant mentioned the place where the snout would have met Lambert, nor speculated about the men whom he might have been planning to expose. They would wait for Lambert to give the lead. Informing was a curious business, and the danger of it had just been vividly underlined.

  Lambert said, ‘I have ideas, yes. Proof is going to be very difficult, if the man responsible is the one I suspect. Jim Berridge won’t have done this himself.’ He looked at the picture of the corpse, with its long trail of dark blood running away down the gutter, whilst the other two pondered the name he had given them. ‘There is one thing already from the pathologist. This wasn’t a beating-up that went wrong, a warning-off that got out of hand. The man or men who did this came with a knife to kill Pegg. That was their intention from the start.’

  Rushton said, ‘I think you’re right. And I see what you mean. Most grasses get a nasty attack of GBH. To stop their tricks and warn off anyone else who might be thinking of doing the same. Not many of them are actually killed, even today.’

  ‘That’s what I’m thinking. Even now, not many criminals are prepared to contemplate homicide, if they can avoid it. They know that if it goes wrong there is an automatic life sentence. So they don’t kill, unless they are desperate, or stupid. The way this killing was achieved shows that these men were neither. I think that we are looking at men in the big league, confident and ruthless. And satisfied that we won’t be able to pin this on them, even if we suspect — even if we know — who they are.’

  Neither of his listeners offered an opinion on that. If they thought the confidence of these known purveyors of violence was justified, they knew Lambert too well to say so. Instead, Hook said, ‘Amy Pegg gave me Charlie’s little red book.’ He handed over a small, rather battered red notebook, of the kind that could be bought in any stationery shop. It’s pretty cryptic, as you would no doubt expect. It might mean more to you than to me, as you’d been his contact for so many years.’

  Lambert thumbed quickly through a few pages. The only things which were definite were a few dates. People were referred to by no more than an initial. He wondered if even those were genuine, or whether they represented some kind of code. But he saw a note on the last of the pages the little man had used which said, ‘Ring L.’ and realized with a curious cold thrill that the entry referred to himself. He said, ‘I’ll go through this later. It might give some idea of the people we’re after, but I’m pretty sure there won’t be anything that would be very convincing as legal evidence. Charlie Pegg was too cagey to leave much around for his enemies.’

  On the table behind them, the telephone bleeped, as if giving a signal to kick-start the machinery of the investigation into life. Rushton had the receiver in his hand before it had the chance to sound again. He gave little more than two affirmative grunts to punctuate his listening.

  As he put the phone down, he said to the two who waited, ‘They’ve got the man Pegg spoke to in the pub last night. They’re bringing him in now.’

  ***

  Lambert spent an hour poring over the late Charlie Pegg’s little red book. It was an irritating document, full of suggestion but delivering very little concrete information. At the end of the hour, he went off to see the one person who had actually been named in the book.

  George Lewis came out to meet him from the porter’s office when Lambert parked his big old Vauxhall in the section reserved for visitors to Old Mead Park. It was impossible to tell from his bearing whether he had been expecting a police visit; perhaps he felt it was his duty to show a presence to all visitors to the block of luxury flats. As the end of the century approaches, the defence of riches is eternal vigilance; Lewis had been made aware by the trustees when he was appointed that he was to be the major and most visible element in that vigilance.

  He knew who Lambert was, though they had never met previously. And he seemed to have heard about Pegg’s murder, for he nodded curtly when the superintendent told him why he had come, then took him swiftly into the warm little cubicle which was his private domain against the comings and goings of a busy world.

  The room had a radiator, which was heated by the boiler which warmed the public sections of the block, so that there was no need for a fireplace in the room. If the room had a focal point, it was no more than the small cupboard on which stood an electric kettle and a tray with assorted mugs. There was a coloured plan of the flats on the wall above this, an adaptation of the architect’s original drawings, which showed the disposition and ownership of the apartments on the different floors.

  Lewis had long since ceased to need it, but it came in useful occasionally for directing visitors arriving in the place for the first time. Beside it there were the small red lights of a complicated electronic alarm system, which would sound in here as well as elsewhere if any of the rooms around and above him were entered illegally. George considered its presence here was a visual deterrent to any thief who might come in with the idea of establishing his bearings; certainly there had been little trouble in the two years since the flats had been completed.

  Lambert, studying the plan and the alarm system surreptitiously, could have given him another opinion about that, but that was not why he was here. He said, ‘You knew Charlie Pegg? Your name is in his book of notes.’

  ‘Yes, I knew him. Pretty well.’ For a moment, it seemed that Lewis was going to say something more. Then the kettle came to the boil and he poured the scalding water carefully into the teapot. ‘I was able to put him in the way of some work here, when he was getting going on his own.’

  ‘And his work was satisfactory?’

  ‘More than that. Charlie was the best. He knew what he was about, and he was prepared to spend the time, even if it took longer than he had thought it would when he gave his price.’

  Lewis had the air of a man who had sponsored a protégé and is proud of the results. Lambert was reminded for a moment of an ageing impresario he had interviewed years earlier, who had claimed to have given Tony Hancock his first billing. He wondered how best to phrase his next enquiry. ‘You were quite happy to let him work in the flats on his own?’

  Lewis’s eyes narrowed for a moment; then he decided to smile rather than take offence on his friend’s behalf. ‘I knew about Charlie’s record, if that’s what you’re hinting at. Between you and me, I even did the odd bit of thieving with him myself, for about six months after we came out of the army. Before I got married and saw the light.’ He looked at Lambert; rather to his disappointment, the superintendent’s face registered no surprise.

  ‘But Charlie’d been going straight
for a long time. If I hadn’t known he was safe, I’d never have recommended him — more than my job’s worth. I went in with him at first, but I’d have done that with any workmen who came, if the residents were out. And Charlie would never have let me down. We go back a long way, you know.’

  Lambert, thinking of the cryptic entries in that little red book, suspected that there were other, more intangible things than property which might have been at risk from Pegg’s observant presence. ‘How many of the residents did Charlie work for?’

  George Lewis looked at him suspiciously. ‘Six, perhaps seven.’ He glanced up at the plan on the wall. ‘I could give you a list. But I told you, Charlie would never have—’

  ‘Charlie Pegg was murdered, Mr Lewis. All I want to do is to find out who killed him.’

  Lewis looked at him for a moment as if he did not believe that, as if he was seeking for some other, more convincing motive for this questioning. Then he nodded, pushing a mug of tea into the hands of the seated Lambert. ‘All right. I want that too — more than you could possibly realize.’

  There was such feeling on the last phrase that this time Lambert did not let it go. ‘Perhaps you should tell me about that. I go back quite a long way with Charlie myself.’

  Lewis said, ‘I know. Charlie told me how you helped to get him going with a job when he came out of the nick.’ But not, presumably, that he had acted for ten years as a snout: Lewis would surely have mentioned that relationship, had he known of it. Tut I knew him much longer than that. As I said, we were in the army together, for National Service.’

  Lambert smiled. ‘They caught me for that, too. It seems a vanished world, now.’

  ‘It is, more’s the pity.’ Lewis frowned, and Lambert thought he was about to go into the ritual denunciation of the lack of discipline among the present generation of adolescents. Instead, he said unexpectedly, ‘But National Service was a waste of time, for most of the two years. Taught a lot of people how to skive, even if their boots shone.’

  Lewis seemed about to develop a philosophical strain which would have been just as much of a diversion as the calls for square-bashing and blind obedience which the superintendent had been expecting, so he tried a little desperately to bring the conversation back towards the dead man. ‘Did you get abroad, or were you stuck in barracks here?’

  Lewis looked at him as if he were grateful for the correction. He took a reminiscent pull at his mug of tea, for all the world as if he had been relaxing in some far-off NAAFI. ‘We were in Cyprus, Charlie and I. He was a good lad. Younger than me, but he knew what was what.’

  There was plainly more to come. Lambert sought for a phrase to grease the machinery of articulation. ‘That would be during the troubles in Cyprus, I suppose.’

  ‘Not ‘arf. Makarios was making more trouble every week with the politicians, and Colonel bloody Grivas was organizing EOKA to gun down the troops.’ The old names, half-forgotten even by Lambert, sprang to his lips with the freshness of a grievance remembered. He pushed the biscuit tin at Lambert, scarcely noticed his refusal, and said quietly, ‘He saved my life, you know, did Charlie.’

  It was so unexpected, and the dead Pegg was so much the opposite of a heroic figure in his appearance and bearing, that Lambert must have shown his surprise. Lewis banged the tin back on to the top of its cupboard with a clang of irritation and said, ‘I’m not exaggerating. It’s no more and no less than the truth. We were different then, you know, all of us.’

  It was the perennial appeal of ageing men to be remembered in the pride of their youth. This time Lambert responded immediately. ‘We were indeed, George. Tell me about it, then.’

  ‘We ended up on patrols in the hills, looking for the terrorists who were waging the war the politicians weren’t allowing us to fight. I know not very many were killed overall: the brasshats kept telling us that. But those who were killed were shot in the back. Those EOKA buggers knew their way round those hills and we didn’t — we were sitting ducks, looking round the rocks and trying not to shit ourselves.’ Lewis, carried back to the attitudes of over thirty years before, did not even notice phrases he had long since abandoned in his present life.

  ‘And they nearly knocked you off?’

  ‘Knocked me off. Not Charlie. Yes, the buggers nearly got me. I was the lancejack in charge — there were only four of us; we’d started off as just a roadblock. But there was activity in the foothills just above the road, and we were ordered in by radio. As the NCO, I was at the front of the four, waving my rifle and trying to look like John Wayne. We were about to turn back and report that we’d found nothing when the incident occurred.’

  He had fallen back into the military phrase he had thought long forgotten, and Lambert responded in kind. ‘You came under fire?’

  ‘Yes. But there were no casualties.’ This time Lewis gave a tiny, mirthless smile in acknowledgement of the jargon.

  ‘But that was due to little Charlie Pegg: he was only eighteen then. One of the bloody guerrillas jumped out from behind a boulder, not more than fifteen yards away. He was slightly behind me, and I never saw him. But Charlie did.’ Lewis, experiencing again the dust and the fear of that desperate moment half a lifetime behind him, could not keep his voice steady.

  Lambert was for a moment caught up in the distant drama. ‘Did Charlie shoot the man?’

  ‘No.’ Lewis grinned at the recognition. ‘He said he’d have missed, if he’d tried. He shouted and threw himself on top of me, knocking me flat as the man fired his rifle. Our other two men took a pot shot at the guerrilla, but he was away like a monkey over the rocks. Fortunately, he was on his own — we thought at first we’d walked into an ambush.’

  ‘And neither of you was hit?’

  ‘No. But I would have been, for sure. The bullet took a chip out of the rock I’d had my hand on. I kept the bit of stone. If it hadn’t been for Charlie Pegg…’

  George Lewis shrugged expressively, a small, balding man in a safe, warm room and a safe, cosy job, recalling a moment of drama which seemed at that moment to have happened to a wholly different man in a wholly different world. ‘Charlie could easily have been killed himself, of course, in the act of saving me. I’ve thought about it a lot, over the years.’

  Lambert said, ‘Did he get an award?’ It seemed the line which was needed from him to complete the tale satisfactorily.

  ‘Did he buggery! I reported it all, but all they did was query the wisdom of the military action I had taken. Then they said there was no senior rank to witness Charlie’s act of gallantry, so it couldn’t be officially rewarded. If you ask me, the four of us should never have been ordered to go off at random like that, and the CO didn’t want it officially examined.’

  ‘You could be right at that,’ said Lambert. Lewis accepted the words as the assurance of one old sweat to another, and seemed content that it should conclude his account of times past and favours owed. Lambert produced the little red book and succeeded in confirming several of the initials there as belonging to owners of apartments in Old Mead Park. He did not show Lewis the enigmatic entries alongside the initials, lest his faith in his dead friend’s integrity should be tarnished.

  Instead, he said, ‘What do you know about James Berridge, who has the penthouse apartment, George?’

  Lewis looked automatically at the door, checking that they were shut in where none could hear them. ‘I know he’s a villain. Though I wouldn’t say so to anyone but you. Charlie let that slip: he never said much, but I think he wanted me to be on my guard against him.’

  Lambert nodded, taking a swift decision to venture a little information in the hope of greater returns. ‘He might be involved in Charlie’s death, George. But not directly: he certainly didn’t kill him himself. Keep your eyes open for us. But please don’t do any more than just that. Leave the risk-taking to us. We’re paid for it.’

  George Lewis nodded, then buttoned the jacket of his uniform and opened the door, dropping back into his professional persona after t
he confidences of the last half hour. He accompanied the superintendent to his car, assuring him that he would contact him if he saw anything that might be of relevance to the investigation. As Lambert climbed stiffly into the big Vauxhall, Lewis said, ‘Get the man who killed old Charlie, Mr Lambert. And just make sure I don’t get there first.’

  He was a slight figure, almost comic in his bravado. But his vehemence gave him dignity. Lambert retained the image of the short figure standing at attention long after it had disappeared from his rear-view mirror.

  ***

  Back at Oldford CID, the man with whom Charlie Pegg had had his last conversation was in trouble.

  In the small, windowless interview room, Joey Jackson was no match for Rushton and Hook. He said without conviction, ‘You don’t want me — I’ve nothing to tell you.’ It was the view he had been repeating ever since the uniformed men had bundled him into a car as he came out of the betting shop in Gloucester.

  ‘We shall be the judge of that.’ Rushton was almost puritanical in his detachment; even his distaste for this pathetic specimen was under strict control. ‘I ask you again, and this time consider your answer carefully: what were you talking about last night with Charlie Pegg?’

  ‘Nothing. Well, not nothing, but nothing important. I don’t remember much—I got a bit drunk, you see.’ His lips twisted, but even the sickly, apologetic grin he was searching for could not find its way to them.

  Hook could smell the fear upon him. It was, he supposed, an amalgam of bad breath, dirt and sweat, and in that sense had a physical explanation. But it was a smell he had known before, and always from men who were deeply afraid. As if taking up that thought, the man on the other side of the small table said, ‘You could get me killed, if they knew I was in here talking to you.’

  ‘So who are “they”, Joey?’

  ‘I don’t know. The men who killed Charlie.’

  Rushton eased back for a moment, studying his man. ‘And why did these men you don’t know kill Charlie?’