Backhand Smash

by J M Gregson

‘I don’t know. I’ve never been questioned by the police before.’

  ‘Neither have I. Well, once, years ago, but that was about what someone else had done, not about my own actions.’ He came round his desk and stood facing her. Then he put a hand on each of her shoulders. ‘This is unnerving, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. I should have realized it would be. I hadn’t even thought about being grilled by the police, when I … when we …’

  Her voice tailed away and she looked for a moment as if she might cry. She was very pale this morning, he thought. Still attractive and well groomed, but quite wan. She was normally so efficient in all her actions that he hadn’t realized the strain all this must have put upon her; that was very stupid of him. He gripped her shoulders more tightly and said, ‘The important thing is that we stick together. If we give them nothing, they won’t be able to do anything, whatever they might think.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ She brightened determinedly. ‘We can present a united front and send them off to look elsewhere, can’t we?’

  ‘Of course we can. And then we can get the show back on the road. This firm has needed to be rid of Fitton for years!’

  ‘Just as this woman has.’

  He leant forward and kissed her chastely on the forehead, feeling the cool smoothness of her skin against his lips. ‘We can do this, Anne, and we will!’

  There wasn’t much else to say. They would merely have slipped into repetition. They arranged the chairs with elaborate care and did not look at each other directly again. It was almost a relief when the two detectives arrived. There were two cars: the Mondeo they had seen before and another, more official-looking car behind it, with police markings and uniformed officers. The uniforms stayed behind when the plain-clothes men moved into the nerve centre of Fitton’s Metals.

  Peach looked at both of them hard before he accepted the seat offered. No change there, then, Bob told himself. He deliberately avoided looking at Anne, feeling that would show some sort of weakness. Clyde Northcott was the last of the four to sit. His height and his size seemed ominous as he towered above them, but he eventually folded his long limbs into the chair provided and offered what might have been the slightest of smiles. Behind that studiously impassive face, he was thinking about what Peach had told him on the way here and of the part he must play in the drama that was about to unfold.

  As usual, it was the most nervous person in the room who spoke first. Bob Walmsley said, ‘This is all very intriguing, Mr Peach. Both Mrs Grice and I have had a very busy week, as you can imagine, but we’re happy to offer you whatever help we can.’

  Peach made no acknowledgement of this. Politeness, even that meaningless politeness that humanity uses to oil the social wheels, relaxes tension, and he had no wish to do that. People make mistakes when they are tense, and he needed mistakes. Evidence was still thin upon the ground, but these two would give him all he needed before the day was out. With any luck, before the hour was out.

  He said, ‘You and Mrs Grice have had a very busy week, as you say. It began early last Sunday morning and has been hectic ever since then.’

  ‘Since you called at my house with the news of Jason Fitton’s death, yes. That set off a whole train of events here. But I flatter myself that I’ve coped pretty well, with the unselfish and highly efficient support of Mrs Grice.’ He reached out a hand towards the chair beside him. After a moment, Anne Grice took it and held it.

  They were curiously diffident for lovers, thought Clyde Northcott. It was almost as if they were feeling their way with each other. They behaved as though they were embarrassed to display their feelings for each other in public, as many people are.

  Peach watched them until their hands fell limply apart. He looked from Walmsley’s face to Grice’s. The PA seemed attentive but quite calm. It was Bob Walmsley who looked more disturbed. He looked expectant, in the manner of someone anticipating bad tidings rather than good ones – rather as parents or spouses had looked years ago, when, as a young copper, he had needed to give news of road accident deaths. Apprehensive rather than merely expectant, in other words.

  Peach focused his attack upon the managing director. ‘Your reception of the news of your owner’s death on Sunday morning was abnormal,’ he said bluntly.

  ‘I wouldn’t know what is normal, Detective Chief Inspector. My mind was reeling with the news. And at the same time as I was trying to work out its implications for the firm I serve and control.’

  ‘You were very anxious to convince us that the news was a surprise to you. You told us four times how shocked you were.’

  ‘It may be news to you to hear that ordinary, innocent people very often are shocked by death, DCI Peach.’

  ‘Indeed they are. I have the advantage of you in this: I have had to bring the news of sudden death to people on many occasions and in many different circumstances. I have seen innocent people suffering all kinds of shock and reacting in many different ways. They very rarely comment on how shocked they are. You told us repeatedly what a surprise this death was to you, as if it was important to you that we should be convinced of that.’

  ‘Fanciful, Mr Peach. Imaginative, but hardly convincing.’

  ‘It was a quarter of an hour before you asked us how Fitton had died, Mr Walmsley. People normally wish to know immediately how someone has died. It is a reflex action to ask that question.’

  Bob tried to muster sarcasm. ‘I’m sorry if I disappointed you. Perhaps I was more concerned with the implications for the firm than with the details of the owner’s death.’

  ‘When we asked you to give us some account of the dead man’s character, you enlarged upon several major defects – you certainly didn’t seem concerned to protect his reputation. Yet you did not tell us that he was a serial womanizer, which is a trait that invariably brings us multiple suspects. Why was that?’

  It was one of the sudden, almost violent questions that had become Peach’s trademark: one of those shafts that plunged him into violent confrontation with the recipient. Bob Walmsley said hopelessly, ‘I don’t know, do I? My mind was reeling. Perhaps I felt some obligation to protect some shreds of my owner’s reputation from public perusal.’

  ‘Or perhaps you wished to keep us away for as long as possible from the knowledge of Mrs Grice’s involvement in a passionate affair with the murder victim. An affair that would inevitably have focused our attention upon her.’

  ‘Anne had nothing to do with that death, and neither did I.’

  Clyde Northcott spoke now, his attention upon the only woman in the room. His voice was deep, persuasive, but at the same time ominous. ‘You never gave us a satisfactory explanation of why you came here, Anne. Everyone we spoke to at your old firm in Preston told us that you seemed very happy there and had excellent relationships with your boss and the other people in your office. That firm was on the up, whereas when you came here Fitton’s Metals seemed to be heading for a bad period, largely because its owner was milking the profits and starving it of research and development funds.’

  ‘I wanted to get near Jason Fitton. I wanted to damage him in any way I could.’

  It was the first time she had made any sort of concession. Bob Walmsley glanced a sharp warning at her. DS Northcott said quietly, ‘You should have told us that when we spoke on Tuesday, Anne. You told us several times in the first five minutes of our chat that you’d never met Jason Fitton. You’d no real chance of concealing your affair with him, once we spoke to the people you’d worked with in your previous post.’

  ‘I didn’t know that. I’ve never been involved in anything like this before. I didn’t know how many police were involved or how thorough the questioning would be.’

  ‘Once we heard about your affair with Fitton and how bitter you were about the break-up with him, you were bound to be at the centre of intensive enquiries. The fact that you tried to conceal what had happened previously only made your conduct more suspicious.’

  Walmsley spoke up sharply before she could
respond to this. ‘So we concealed things. It may have been foolish, but it doesn’t make us killers.’

  Northcott glanced at Peach, who said unsmilingly, ‘Certain fibres have been extracted from the car of the deceased. Human hair was also collected, from the headrest of the passenger seat. We shall have no difficulty in obtaining a warrant to examine your clothes, once the two of you have been arrested.’

  It was the first time there had been mention of an arrest. Anne Grice looked sharply sideways at her boss, who kept his eyes on Peach’s face as if hypnotized. It was Grice who said, ‘That hair could have been from a long time ago. He bought the Bentley three years ago. It wasn’t his only car, but he liked it. He had it when I was with him. I rode in it with him quite often. I even drove it myself, on occasion. I’m sure I left fibres from my clothing and hairs from my head in there.’

  ‘It’s interesting that you know how long the car had been in his possession. No doubt you had a key to it when you were close to him. A key you used to gain access to the car in the early hours of last Sunday morning.’

  ‘That is a ridiculous idea! As is your production of hairs and fibres that have probably been there since I was with Jason.’

  ‘That car was valeted regularly and thoroughly, as you no doubt remember from your time with Fitton. It was last cleaned on Tuesday the fourth of August, less than three days before his death. Forensic scientists are very clever nowadays: I think they will be able to put a recent date on the single hair extracted from that headrest.’

  Walmsley now spoke, without any obvious emotion, like a man delivering the words of a script he has learned to prove that he knows it, rather than with real expression. ‘We were nowhere near the scene of this murder. Anne told you on Thursday where we were and I now confirm that.’

  ‘Yes. Your fallback position. You’d set that up for us, dropped us useful clues to the idea that there might be more than a professional link between the two of you. You told us in that first meeting, Mrs Grice, that you and Mr Walmsley were “almost personal friends”. Unusual for a PA to assert that, even when it’s true. Preparing the ground for your later contention that you were tucked up in bed together and indulging in carnal delights at the time of the murder. You’d dropped hints of a liaison when we spoke to you on Tuesday. You wanted us to pick up on the notion of an affair, to think that we’d prised the information out of the two of you.’

  ‘I’m a happily married man, DCI Peach. I’m not in the habit of conducting affairs.’ He reached his hand sideways towards Anne Grice again. She took it without looking at him.

  Peach shook his head. ‘The fallback position, as I said. From the start, neither of you shut the door on the possibility of a personal liaison. That is the opposite of the normal attitude. But you needed to keep that suspicion in our minds: if it looks as though we are getting close to what happened in that car park, you need a Plan B. So you claim that you were in bed together at the time. Show an appropriate embarrassment about it, but claim an impregnable alibi.’

  Walmsley shifted his chair a little closer to his PA and took both of her hands in his. She acquiesced in that, but when he tried clumsily to slide his arm round her waist, she detached it gently and said with bleak finality, ‘It’s over, Bob.’

  Clyde Northcott said, ‘There never was a sexual affair between you, was there, Anne? You were in that car park together in the early hours of Sunday morning, not in bed together.’

  She gave a sad smile. ‘I don’t suppose it was ever convincing, was it? Bob has a happy marriage and far too much good sense to jeopardize it. I like him very much, but I’ve never wanted to go to bed with him. I prefer younger models.’ She detached Walmsley’s hands from hers and looked at him with affection as she shifted her chair a fraction away from him. ‘We were in that Bentley from one a.m. onwards, waiting for Jason Fitton. I still had my key and it was too good an opportunity for us to ignore.’

  Walmsley glanced at her sharply. It was the phrase she had used repeatedly when she was persuading him to do this. He said quietly, ‘I killed Fitton. It wasn’t Anne.’

  ‘It was both of us, Bob. You for what he’d done to this firm and me for what he’d done to me.’

  Peach said evenly, almost apologetically, ‘You’ve given us what we need. We’ll ask you to put the details into statements at the station and sign them.’

  Anne Grice continued almost as if he had not spoken. ‘I opened the car with my old key and sat in the front passenger seat. It seemed quite a long wait, but it wasn’t cold. Jason didn’t hesitate to get in beside me. Probably he thought he was on for an easy shag for old times’ sake. He was incredibly vain about his sexual attractiveness.’ She allowed herself a bitter smile. ‘I let him think for a moment that I was there for the taking. Bob was crouching in the back behind the driver’s seat and the fool never knew he was there. He had the cord round his neck and the deed accomplished in a few seconds. Jason didn’t make a single sound.’ Her voice was filled with admiration, as if she was complimenting a craftsman on his work.

  Clyde Northcott pronounced the final words of arrest and the pair were handcuffed and stowed without any hint of resistance into the police car brought there for that purpose. He slid the Mondeo quietly into line behind it and followed it through the gates of Fitton’s Metals and back towards the police cells in Brunton.

  ‘Too much love,’ Clyde said after half a mile. ‘A crime of passion, in a way. She killed because of an excessive love for a scoundrel, he because of an excessive love for the firm he had served so well.’

  ‘But a carefully planned and coldly executed crime. We’ll let the lawyers argue about how much passion came into it. Give the buggers something to do for their money.’

  They were almost at the station when Peach added, ‘Dangerous thing, love, when it gets out of hand. Just you remember that with PC Brockman, young Northcott.’