Death of a Nobody

by J M Gregson

  ‘I don’t believe you. It’s all balls!’ But there was doubt now in his voice, where he had intended contempt.

  ‘It isn’t balls, Sturley. Your mate Jones was a little careless, you see. He let Pegg claw at him as he went down, I expect. There was a little blood on Charlie’s body that wasn’t his own, you see. Not much, compared with what Charlie shed. Just a smear. But enough. The DNA boys were delighted with their tests. Not too bright, your mate Jonesey, after all.’

  It’s bollocks! It’s all part of your—’

  ‘And fibres, Sturley. Your mate left fibres. Not many, but enough. On poor old Charlie’s left shoulder and neck.’ Rushton produced a sheet from the inside pocket of his lightweight grey jacket, opened it with deliberation, consulted it, registered satisfaction as he found the detail he wanted. ‘Matched with the fibres of socks found in the flat of Walter Jones.’

  Rushton put the sheet away and looked back at Sturley. Then he changed his delivery, so that the words spat like bullets across the table. ‘Couldn’t resist the odd kick when your man was down, could he, your mate? Pity he didn’t get rid of the socks where you threw the knife you stabbed with, wasn’t it? But then you buggers are never as bright as you like to think you are.’

  He let his disgust pour across the table, up and over the huge, waxy face with its eyes filling with fear. He had won. He was savouring the moment, anticipating the final collapse.

  Sturley wondered wildly whether to deny that he had been there, to put it all on Jones. But he knew he could never make that stick. Jones would tell them, insist upon it, even if he hadn’t done so already. As if to toll the knell of his hopes, Hook said, ‘John Murray, the manager at the Curvy Cats, has already blown your alibi. He’s admitted you were away from the club at the time of Pegg’s death. Once Berridge is removed, everyone is suddenly prepared to talk, you see. It’s a rotten old world.’ Hook’s expression said that at this moment he found this world entirely satisfying.

  Sturley looked from one to the other. He said, Jonesey’s a stupid bastard. He should never have opened his mouth to pigs.’ It produced no reaction from the men opposite him; they all knew that it was irrelevant now. ‘All right. We were acting on Berridge’s orders. We had no option. We only did what he asked us to do. We didn’t even know what Pegg had done.’

  It was the old, useless defence of obeying orders. It wouldn’t do him any good, but there was no point in telling him that. They had what they wanted. They told him about the statement he would sign. He nodded, defeated, eyes cast down, massive shoulders bowed. They released him then, had him escorted back to his cell.

  The success was a bond between two officers who were temperamentally opposed. For a moment they were close. And in the future years, the gap between them would be reduced a tiny but tangible fraction by their memory of this success.

  They looked at each other for a moment, smiled a tight little agreement. Rushton said to the desk sergeant, ‘You can have Jones brought up now. We’ll see what he has to say for himself.’

  ***

  Ian Faraday’s house had the depressing untidiness of a man who lives alone. It was neither dirty nor chaotic. There were no dishes in the sink, though the stacking drainer beside it was two-thirds full of the crockery which had been there for two days. There were two packets of cereals on the breakfast bar in the kitchen, which were probably never put away into one of the oak-fronted units.

  The lounge into which the sales director led Lambert and Hook was clinically clean compared with some of the squalid rooms they had to enter in the course of their work. But there was a thin film of dust visible upon the china ornaments on the windowsill, and one of the drawers in the sideboard against the wall was slightly open. Yesterday’s newspaper still lay where it had fallen, beside what was obviously the only armchair in regular use. The chair was out of alignment with the rest of the three-piece suite; it had been turned to face the television in the corner of the room. The companion of the man who lives alone, thought Lambert. He wondered suddenly if Chris Rushton’s house was like this now, if, indeed, he was coping as well as this. Lambert had only been there once, and in those days the place had had the imprint of a competent young woman and the happy chaos of a toddler.

  Faraday said nervously, ‘I hope you didn’t mind coming here. Policemen appearing at the office cause a lot of gossip, and we can do without that at the moment. There was enough talk when you came to see me on your own the other day.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘And that was before your employer was murdered. A visit in connection with a murder investigation would only excite the natives even more. We are aware of the disturbances we cause, but they will be inevitable, I’m afraid, as long as there are serious crimes. Did our officer come in to get your fingerprints?’

  Faraday nodded. He did not seem to think it strange that he should be included among the group who might have been around the scene of the murder. ‘He explained that it was just for elimination purposes.’

  They had not yet been asked to sit down. Hook was looking through the patio doors at the back garden, which showed the same signs of partial neglect as the house set upon it as spring advanced. The lawn had been mown, but the edges were not cut. The roses were springing into growth, but they had not been pruned, and the tallest of them had been bent low by a gale, towards the ground where the weeds were beginning to burgeon. Faraday must have caught his glance, for he said, ‘I used to be quite keen on the garden. But I don’t seem to get the time now, and I must admit that for a lot of the time it scarcely seems worth the effort.’

  With no one to show it off to, it wouldn’t, thought Lambert. He was suddenly grateful for the cosy domesticity which sometimes seemed so dull. He would make an effort to enjoy his extended family to the full this weekend, when Caroline and the grandchildren arrived. He sat down on the sofa which had seen so little recent use; Hook joined him and Faraday turned the armchair from the television to face them.

  Lambert said, ‘We are checking the movements of people who were close to Jim Berridge in relation to the time of his death. We already know something of your actions at that time, Mr Faraday, but we need confirmation from you. And a little more information.’

  He had not meant it to sound threatening, but it emerged so. Faraday took a deep breath and uttered the words he had determined on whilst he waited for them to arrive. ‘I should make one thing clear. I was not close to Jim Berridge, except when he came into our offices, which wasn’t very often. The more I saw of him, the less I liked him.’

  ‘In view of what we know about him, that can only be to your credit. We shall be checking how far, if at all, you were involved in his criminal activities in due course.’ All their information so far indicated that Faraday’s only involvement was with the legitimate woollens and men’s shop businesses which Berridge had used as a front for his seamier dealings. But there was no need to concede that at this point; it was better to keep their man hopping about on his back foot, as former fast bowler Bert Hook usually put it.

  It was Hook, who had so far confined himself to making great play with his notebook preparations, who now said, ‘And Berridge had no reason to like you, had he, Mr Faraday? You were conducting an affair with his wife.’

  Faraday had always thought privately of the liaison as reflecting credit upon him: it took a brave man to risk an affair with the boss’s wife, particularly when that boss was Jim Berridge. He had been surprised over the months by his own audacity. Now his actions had landed him in the position of a murder suspect. For the first time, he realized how serious a suspect he must be, from the point of view of these men. He said, ‘Fortunately, Jim didn’t know about Gabrielle and me. I shudder to think what he might have done to us if he had discovered it.’ Almost comically on cue, he was shaken by a small, involuntary shiver at the thought.

  Lambert said, ‘But now he never will know, so you need no longer contend with that possibility.’

  Ian had been congratulating himself on that for a
day and more. Now, emerging from the mouth of someone else, what had been a relief seemed like a threat to his security. He said, ‘You’re saying that gives me a motive for his murder?’

  ‘Oh, we’re more concerned with facts than motivation, at this stage. No use pinning down a perfect motive and then discovering the chap couldn’t possibly have done it because he was somewhere else at the time.’ He smiled a little, studying Faraday’s broad-set eyes beneath the abundant crop of brown hair, speculating about the workings of the brain behind them.

  ‘Quite. And I was somewhere else on the night when Berridge died. Fifty miles away.’ Ian smiled, even managed to look confident: he was, after all, a successful salesman.

  This time, Lambert did not return the smile. Instead, he said quickly, ‘Who told you when Berridge died, Mr Faraday? The death has been placed between six on Tuesday evening and eleven-fifty-two on Wednesday morning. We have not yet released any more definite time than that.’

  Faraday’s mouth opened; his smile dived away into the cavity as swiftly as a startled lizard. ‘I — I thought… I suppose I just assumed he had been killed at night. Dead of night, and that sort of image, I suppose.’ The throwaway laugh he attempted did not sound convincing, even to himself.

  ‘Hmm. Mrs Berridge seemed to be making the same assumption. Interesting, that.’

  Ian waited for them to enlarge on this, even to press him on the mistake he had made. Anything suddenly seemed an improvement on this stretching silence, in which his temple thumped and his brain obstinately refused to work. Eventually, he said rather desperately, ‘Anyway, I was away overnight, in Stratford. With Gabrielle. We went to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. I expect she told you that.’

  ‘She did indeed. The Winter’s Tale, I believe. Mrs Berridge showed us the programme.’

  Ian wished they would not keep calling her that. It was an unwelcome insistence on a connection he wished to obliterate as swiftly as possible. He said irrelevantly, ‘We shall be getting married, in due course.’ Then he wished immediately that he had kept quiet. It seemed to bind him even more closely to the murder of the man who had stood in the way of this alliance.

  As if in response to that thought, Lambert said, ‘Sergeant Hook will take the details of your movements last night.’

  ‘I think Gabrielle has told you the essentials already.’

  Hook said, ‘We need them from you, Mr Faraday.’

  ‘To see if our accounts agree?’

  ‘Any discrepancies between them would certainly be of great interest to us.’ When Bert Hook was scrupulously polite, it was always a danger signal, thought Lambert.

  Faraday licked his lips. ‘Well, I was here for a couple of hours after I saw you on Tuesday afternoon, Mr Lambert. I suppose I left here at about six. I met Gabrielle in Stratford just before the performance. I couldn’t be sure of the time, but it must have been about twenty past seven. We just had time to buy a programme and get to our seats.’

  ‘And where did you meet?’

  For a moment, he looked lost; perhaps it was just a genuine difficulty in recalling the exact point of their rendezvous. ‘Outside the theatre. We knew we wouldn’t have a lot of time to spare before the play, you see.’

  The explanation was an unnecessary gloss, an attempt to justify where none was needed. Gabrielle Berridge had told them that they had met at seven, and by the Shakespeare memorial. There were discrepancies of twenty minutes and two hundred yards in Faraday’s account of their rendezvous; interesting, but perhaps not wide enough to be significant.

  ‘Do you think anyone on the theatre staff will remember you?’

  Faraday shook his head. ‘I’ve thought about that. I should think it’s unlikely. The place was full, and the bars were crowded at the interval.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘We had a drink at the Swan. It was crowded, as you would expect at that time. I got the drinks at the bar, but I doubt if the girl who served me would remember it — she was run off her feet at the time.’

  He gave every appearance of a man genuinely trying to be helpful. Lambert studied him for a moment, wondering whether the man would realize the crucial nature of his next question.

  Faraday sat with legs crossed in his armchair. His lightly patterned shirt and tie were both expensive and fashionable, no doubt products of the business he represented. His suit was a well-cut dark-brown worsted, his shoes in supple burgundy leather. There was certainly anxiety in the brown eyes beneath the plentiful crop of well-groomed hair, but that was natural enough: they had made it abundantly clear that he was at the centre of a murder investigation.

  Lambert said, ‘Have you anything which would prove conclusively that you attended the theatre on Tuesday evening?’

  ‘I thought you said that Gabrielle had found the programme for you?’

  ‘She did indeed. Without much difficulty. But perhaps you are not aware that programmes do not relate to a particular performance. At the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, you can even buy them in the theatre during the day, when no performance is taking place.’

  ‘I see. I hadn’t considered that.’ Faraday pondered the matter, then reached into his pocket. When he failed to locate what he wanted there, he said, ‘Other jacket, I think. Bear with me for a moment.’ He rose and strode swiftly from the room, as if action was a relief to him. They heard his feet hurrying up the stairs, then boards creaked briefly over their heads. In less than a minute, he was back with them, trying not to look too pleased with his find. ‘Will these be of any use? They’re the ticket stubs from Tuesday night. I see they’ve got the date and time of the performance on them.’

  ‘That should certainly be most useful.’ Bert Hook spoke stiffly, feeling that this was a play in which he deserved better lines. He took the rather grubby stubs, checked the information, made a note of their details on his pad, then returned them to their owner.

  They took the name of the small hotel where Faraday had spent the night with Gabrielle Berridge, then listened to his account of their movements on the next day. It conformed exactly with what she had told them. As she had done, he seemed to relax as he retailed the places and the times, as though he knew as clearly as they did that the crisis period was on the previous night and now accounted for.

  In fifteen minutes, they were back in the murder room at Oldford CID. Rushton had news for them. ‘Report’s come in from Forensic on the murder weapon. Prints from Berridge’s right hand on it.’

  ‘None from the left hand?’ Lambert was thinking of how he would put this in his report for the Coroner.

  ‘No.’ Rushton looked at the Ceefax. ‘Rather indicates that the victim’s hand was put on the handle after he was shot, they say. Looks as if the pistol had been wiped clear of all other prints and the killer wore gloves. That’s no more than we expected. But there is one interesting thing. There is a single print from someone else on the butt of the pistol.’

  ‘Who?’ Trust Rushton to hold back the interesting item, thought Lambert.

  ‘We don’t know yet. I’ve got two DCs going through records, but we haven’t turned up anyone yet. They’ve only been on it for about twenty minutes, but it shouldn’t take long to do a scan, with modern technology.’ He put the little plug for progress in automatically.

  ‘But the print could be from one of the people we’re interviewing.’

  ‘It could indeed. They’ve all allowed their dabs to be taken, but we haven’t had them processed and compared yet. But we should know in a few hours if it was one of them. Of course, it could be a contract killer. There are several of them that we do not have prints for, because they have never been identified.’

  But a professional would never be so naïve as to leave a print behind, thought Lambert. With any luck at all, this was going to be one of their suspects.

  16

  Lambert, driving alone into Old Mead Park, decided that all new blocks of flats should have resident porters.

  They were a great addition to security
in themselves. And when a crime did take place, they were as useful as two extra members of a CID team. At least, they were if George Lewis was typical. His knowledge of the habits of the residents made it possible to eliminate most of them from suspicion, for he was able to confirm much of what they said individually to the door-to-door team. And his intimate knowledge of the building and of the interiors of many of the apartments was at the disposal of the police.

  Lewis had assumed an interest in CID work from the moment when he heard of the violent death of his old friend Charlie Pegg. There was no humbug about Lewis. Once he knew of Berridge’s involvement in that death, he made no secret of his satisfaction at the violent death of this most affluent of his residents. Whatever the motivation behind this killing, George Lewis took it as just retribution for the dispatch of his friend.

  Lambert now took steps to secure his continuing cooperation by giving him welcome news. ‘Sturley and Jones have been charged with the murder of Charlie this morning, George. And it will stick. They’ve virtually confessed now. Pleading that they were under orders from Berridge.’

  ‘They were, weren’t they?’ Lewis was anxious to have all the details of what had happened to Pegg clear in his mind.

  ‘Yes, Berridge was certainly the ultimate murderer. But those gorillas were his instruments. They’ll go down for a long time, don’t you worry about that.’

  Lewis nodded, a small, rotund figure who yet acquired a surprising dignity in his concern for his dead friend. ‘If Berridge killed him, then I’m glad he died the way he did. He didn’t deserve anything better.’