by J M Gregson
‘He’s committed to nothing. He says don’t make any contact with him whilst you’re involved in this murder case. He’ll get in touch with you if and when he sees fit.’
So they knew about Fitton. Of course they did. He should have anticipated that. He suddenly wanted to be rid of this heavy-breathing, overweight man, who was no more than a negative mouthpiece for his boss. Younis wanted to refuse to accept what he said, to tell him that he’d get in touch with Afridi when it suited him, not wait for a contact from him. But he didn’t know what sort of pressure the man in Oxford was under. He mustn’t make an enemy of Afridi. If the Vice Squad were on to him, he might give them other names, as he strove to preserve his own skin.
Younis Hafeez ignored the refreshments he had set out ready on the low table in his living room. ‘Don’t take your coat off; you need to get moving. Tell your boss his decision is going to cost me a lot of money. Don’t hang about around here, unless you want to be dragged into a murder investigation.’
Hafeez normally slept soundly and woke refreshed. He often boasted that he slept well whatever concerns he had and wherever he had to lay his head. That night he slept fitfully, waking several times with a sense of impending doom.
He awoke in the morning to the news that Afridi had been arrested in Oxford.
For a retired man, Arthur Swarbrick was up early on Friday morning. He had finished his breakfast before nine and told his wife, ‘I need to get down to the tennis club. We’ve a first-team match at the weekend. I want to make sure everything is ready.’
Shirley was usually happy to see him involved at Birch Fields. It was his hobby and his pleasure, and it had taken him out into the world and filled his days since he had left his real work behind two years ago. It got him out of the house and ensured he was not under her feet all day. She had been married for a long time now, but she had no illusions about their union. They needed to get away from each other if they were to remain contented. But this morning Arthur could not go to the tennis club. Not yet, anyway.
She said, ‘You still look tired, Arthur. You should let other people do more at the tennis club; you can’t take responsibility for everything. I think it took it out of you going to see Clare on Wednesday, whatever took place between the two of you. You haven’t told me much about it, you know.’
It was true. He wondered why they found it so difficult to communicate about important things. Shirley loved Clare as much as he did, but in a different way. They should be able to talk easily and naturally about such things, but they did not. Giving each other space, people called it, but that was just an evasion here, he felt. As if he were speaking to a stranger, he said, ‘She was very tight when I got there. But she loosened up during the day. We had cheese on toast for lunch, made the way you taught her when she was a girl. We walked in the park during the afternoon.’
‘You told me that – well, except for the cheese on toast bit. But you didn’t explain why you thought she was neurotic when you arrived but relaxed when you left.’
He wouldn’t have used those words and Clare wouldn’t have accepted them. They seemed clinical, not personal. Not the kind of words to be used between parent and child. But then Shirley had never been as close to Clare as he had. Or was that notion just part of his selfishness, the means he chose to deny her access to that precious bond between father and daughter? ‘We talked about Jason Fitton, the way we hadn’t been able to do for a long time. It was as if his death had brought a kind of release for her. “Closure” was the word Clare used herself.’ He felt he had to apologize for such a conventional word. In a more intimate marital relationship he would not have done that.
‘But you think she’s going to be all right now?’
‘I do. I’m not saying that she was happy when I left her. But happiness wouldn’t be quite natural, would it? She was quiet and resolute and she had a sort of calm about her.’ He felt an irritation he should not have felt about struggling to put this into words for his wife. It was quite illogical, but he felt that articulating this might fracture the rather brittle calm that he had brought to Clare.
Shirley wanted to push him further, but sensed now that she must not do that. She said, ‘That trip was more tiring than you realized, you know. Perhaps you shouldn’t go to Birch Fields today. Not this morning, anyway.’ Now it was she who was fumbling for the right words. She was evading the issue, when that was not her way of doing things. She said abruptly, ‘You can’t go to the tennis club – not this morning, anyway. The police are coming to see you again at ten o’clock.’
Murder overrides most things. Even young love suffers in the course of a murder investigation. PC Elaine Brockman had hardly seen DS Clyde Northcott since Sunday, when the news of Jason Fitton’s death had demanded his attention.
She could have rung him on his mobile, of course, but she was not sure whether their relationship had gone far enough for that. He’d been a very welcome mentor to her at the station, where graduate entrants had to tread very carefully, and she’d helped him along a little with his tennis and with the early trials of his membership at Birch Fields. They had been useful to each other in these different fields, but did what they had between them go further than usefulness? That Friday morning, she had the chance to answer that question and she was determined to take it.
They were together for a few minutes after Peach’s briefing to the team had dispatched their fellow officers in various directions. She said nervously, ‘I don’t think the house-to-house is going to bring us much more, now.’
‘No. I think Percy will shut it down after today. You can never tell what house-to-house will bring. It throws up unexpected nuggets sometimes, so it has to be done.’
Clyde seemed to be apologizing for the boring and repetitious work in which she’d been involved in the earlier part of the week. Promising, she felt. ‘I didn’t mind it. Everything is good experience when you’re as raw as I am in the job.’
He grinned at her, his rather solemn face lighting up suddenly in that way that had first drawn her to him. ‘Percy says you’ll be ordering all of us around in a few years.’
‘Is that his way of saying that he doesn’t approve of graduate entry?’
‘No. He’s in favour of it really, though he’d never dream of admitting it publicly. Just as he allows me to have a mind of my own and to question suspects, though he describes me to anyone who will listen as just the hard bastard in his team.’
She took the plunge. ‘Mum wondered if you’d like to come round for tea.’
He looked hard at her. The smile had disappeared as quickly as it had arrived. ‘Are you sure she’d want the hard bastard in her house?’
‘I’m not at all sure that she would. I think she’d like to meet the big daft bugger, though. I think she might quite like him.’
He frowned. ‘I’d like to come, But—’
‘That’s good, then. Around six be all right?’ She was in before he had finished his acceptance, eager to clinch the deal.
‘I was going to say that it’s difficult to make firm arrangements when there’s a murder investigation going on. I don’t want to let you down and get off on the wrong foot with your parents.’
He thought that this was the beginning of something, then, not just a one-off. That was good. And he must be anxious to come, because he hadn’t used the excuse that the case could give him to fob her off. Elaine said, ‘I’m sure Mum and Dad would understand that. I’ll tell them what an important person you are.’
‘I’m not and you mustn’t. Just ask them to make it something that won’t spoil if I’m not there on time.’
‘That might mean salad. Mum’s big on salads when the days are long and the weather’s warm.’
Clyde grinned weakly. ‘Whatever. I’ll be there as near to six as I can. And thank you for the invitation.’
It was a long time since he had received a formal invitation to a meal in a middle-class house. In fact, he wasn’t certain that it had ever happened to him
before; he had certainly never accepted before. He hoped he wouldn’t get the cutlery wrong.
Elaine Brockman wondered quite what it was that she had set in motion. Inviting a man round to meet your parents was another step along the way and Dad at least would make sure she was aware of that.
Arthur Swarbrick took the CID visitors into his study when they came: he didn’t want Shirley to hear this. The room was larger than most studies. The estate agent had called it a ‘playroom’ when they had bought the house, one of ‘three spacious downstairs reception rooms’. He didn’t use it a lot now. He kept some confidential papers and files from the tennis club there, but most of his chairman’s stuff was stored in his office at Birch Fields.
He sat them in armchairs and pulled his own one close to them. ‘I hope you’re getting closer to an arrest. This business has been the talk of the club, as you can imagine.’
‘I can imagine, sir, yes. And we are getting closer to an arrest. Have you picked up anything that might be useful to us?’ Peach was watching with the attention a young cat affords to a newly captured mouse.
‘No. I’ve heard lots of gossip and speculation around the tennis club, but it’s been no more than that. Most of it centres on your activities and how assiduous your team has been in questioning everyone.’
‘We try to be thorough, sir. That makes it difficult for people to conceal things, you see. When they try to do that, we usually pick up from others what they are trying to hide. Concealment always excites our interest. We ask ourselves why people are trying to deceive us. And we come up with some interesting answers.’
‘I see.’ Arthur Swarbrick was filled with a foreboding that he did not succeed in masking. ‘I suppose you’re now going to tell me that some of my members at Birch Fields have been trying to hide things from you.’
Peach nodded gravely. ‘Including the chairman himself. A man who really should know better.’
Arthur tried to look surprised, but he was trumped in this by Peach’s eyebrows, which rocketed upwards more dramatic-ally than should have been possible beneath the bald dome that topped them. Those dark arcs seemed to dominate Arthur’s vision, like moving black slugs that prevented his mind from operating rationally. ‘You mustn’t think that I’ve deliberately tried to deceive you. If I’ve held anything back which you think you should have been told, it was quite unwitting on my part. Does this concern one of my members?’
‘No, sir. It concerns you yourself and no other person, as far as I am aware. Of course, I am not as aware as I should be, because you and others have chosen to try to keep me unaware. Deception is counter-productive, Mr Swarbrick, as you are about to discover. It draws our attention and makes would-be deceivers highly suspect. Especially when we had them in the frame for this crime already and they are without convincing alibis.’
Peach clasped his hands together and set them in his lap, as if to emphasize the satisfaction this thought brought to him. Arthur felt very pale and was sure that he looked very pale. ‘It is not my fault that I do not have an alibi. Neither is it my wife’s fault, but her departure left me without anyone to substantiate my account of my actions and whereabouts at the time Jason Fitton died. Shirley left the summer ball before its end because she wished to get home and go to bed.’
‘Or she was dispatched home to leave you free to do what you had planned for some time to do. Her absence left you free to wait for Fitton in his car and kill him quickly and efficiently with the cord you had prepared for the purpose.’
‘That is ridiculous. It was nothing so sinister.’
‘We have to consider the ridiculous, Mr Swarbrick, when the obvious offers us no solution. It’s what we’re paid to do – amongst many other things. You were not at Birch Fields on Wednesday. Where did you go on that day?’
The question was rapped at him so bluntly that it destroyed what little coolness he had retained. Perhaps they knew all about where he had been and were trying to trap him. Or perhaps they didn’t know and were prepared to put some much more sinister interpretation upon his absence. ‘I went to see my daughter in London.’
‘The one who had had the affair with Jason Fitton.’
It was a statement, not a question. Nothing was sacred to these men. ‘Clare was involved with Jason at one time, yes.’
‘Seriously involved.’
‘Yes. As far as she was concerned, it was very serious.’
‘But it wasn’t for Fitton. And when he broke it off, it affected her badly.’
‘Yes. Deep clinical depression, the doctors called it. As far as my wife and I were concerned, it was a serious mental breakdown. Clare had spells in two different hospitals and we were warned that her mental health was still brittle when she was discharged from the second of them.’
Without any visible sign from Peach, Clyde Northcott took over the questioning. ‘Is Clare your only daughter?’
‘Yes. Our only child, in fact.’
‘You must have been very upset. You must have felt very hostile towards Fitton, in view of the way he had treated her.’ Northcott’s voice was deep, soft and reassuring, inviting confidences that his demeanour implied would be treated with understanding. Arthur was glad for the first time that they had accepted this imposing black man as a member at the club.
Swarbrick’s voice was almost inaudible as he said, ‘We thought for many months that Clare might die. She attempted suicide once and we feared that she might do so again.’
He hadn’t resorted to any of the normal conventions like ‘do something silly’. In this most conventional of men, that made his concern more touching. He looked older than his sixty-two years now, but his distress for his daughter had brought to his lined face a dignity that it had not had earlier. Clyde said softly, ‘You were concerned for her welfare after Fitton’s death at the weekend.’
‘Yes. That’s where I was on Wednesday. I went to see Clare in London. That’s where she lives and works now. It seemed better for her to make a complete break when she came out of hospital. I knew Clare would have heard about Fitton. I wanted to make sure that she was all right.’
‘That she wasn’t feeling suicidal.’
Arthur glanced up quickly into the large black face, but saw only sympathy for him and his plight there. ‘That’s true, I suppose. I just wanted to be with her, to make sure that she was safe. She’d heard, all right, once it was in the papers and on the radio. I don’t think she watches television much, since she came out of hospital.’ He stared bleakly at Northcott, refusing to contemplate Peach.
‘Did you find her well?’
‘Yes – well, better than I’d expected, I suppose. She seemed to get better whilst I was with her. I was glad I’d gone down there.’
‘You should have told us about Clare when we spoke with you on Monday, Arthur.’
‘I suppose I should, yes. Well, I can see that I should certainly have done that, now that you’ve found out. But it seemed to me a private thing. I didn’t want to broadcast the trouble she’d had with Fitton, or to tell you that we’d even feared for her life.’
Clyde nodded, but pointed out gently, ‘You don’t broadcast things when you tell us about them, Arthur. Everything we hear is treated as strictly confidential.’
Peach came back in now, strident and insistent where his bagman had been quiet and understanding. ‘And everything you don’t tell us is treated as suspicious, Mr Swarbrick. If you can view things for just a moment from our point of view, you’ll see why.’
Swarbrick turned his attention reluctantly back to his nemesis. He nodded reluctantly. ‘The fact that Fitton did this to my daughter gave me a greater incentive to kill him.’
‘The fact that you tried to keep the knowledge from us certainly makes you a more probable candidate, as far as we’re concerned. You must have wished him dead many times over the last few years.’
‘I have. Many times.’
‘And those years gave you ample time to plan his death. The annual summer ball at the tennis
club, where you were in control and you knew he would be in attendance, was an ideal opportunity. You know every inch of the Birch Fields complex and you know the preferences and probable movements of most of your members, including Jason Fitton. You probably even knew where he would park his car last Saturday night.’
Arthur merely shrugged his shoulders. There was no point in a denial. ‘I know all these things. I’m glad he’s dead. I’ve considered killing him a few times in the last few years, for what he did to Clare, but he was a powerful man and I didn’t have it in me. Do I look like a murderer?’
He raised his arms a few inches and let them drop limply by his sides. He certainly didn’t look like a killer. Not many men in their sixties, with glasses and thinning grey hair and pot bellies and neat, slightly out-of-date suits, look like killers. But Peach told him with a grim smile, ‘If we considered only the people who look like murderers, we’d have precious few suspects. And I’d have missed a lot of arrests over the last ten years.’
Clyde Northcott said thoughtfully in the car, ‘Arthur Swarbrick opposed my application for membership at Birch Fields.’
‘He’s not unintelligent, then. Perhaps a big daft bugger like you wasn’t part of his plan.’
‘I thought he and I would always be enemies, but I had a lot of sympathy for him in there this morning.’
‘A big daft soft bugger, then.’
‘He had a right to be upset. I wouldn’t like to be on the end of a hostile interview from you.’
‘Entirely professional, DS Northcott. Anyway, you’ve been there, in the past.’
‘Yes, but you were on my side, once you’d got further into that case. I think you must be a little daft soft bugger inside.’
‘A long way inside, DS Northcott. And don’t you dare go public with your opinions.’
Clyde’s smile lasted all the way back to the station.
SEVENTEEN
