by J M Gregson
It was disconcertingly unprofessional.
*
“Need a word, Percy.”
Charlie Bancroft looked smug. He must, then, have some information, thought Peach. The plodder had his uses, complementing the man who got out and about. And Bancroft was the best sort of plodder, dedicated and thorough. The sort who saved a lot of time for more mercurial characters like Percy. “Is it about the Verna Hume case?”
Bancroft nodded, quietly confident. That bouncy little bugger wouldn’t be able to patronize him about this. It was information gained by patience and by traditional methods, not by leaping about town and country after any lead that flashed upon the scene. And he’d caught Peach at the right moment, without that Lucy Blake around to flash her legs and twitch her comely arse about the place. DI Bancroft was a man who kept his urges under an iron control, and protested his fidelity to his plain wife a little too often to be convincing.
“I’ve got five minutes, Charlie, that’s all. Come in here.” Peach led his fellow officer away from five pairs of disappointed constabular ears in the murder room and into the privacy of the small office afforded him by his status. “You’ve found out something new. About one of our suspects.”
“Derek Osborne.”
Peach permitted his expressive black eyebrows to rise a little. The dead woman’s father did not seem to have the driving energy that was usually, but not always, a characteristic of a murderer. But Percy knew better than to make assumptions about a crime that was the most individual as well as the darkest of all. “So what’s the old bugger been up to?”
Bancroft had intended to string this out a little. As usual, Percy was too direct for him. “It may be nothing.”
“Don’t piss me about with that line, Charlie. We get it too often from the public.” As you’d remember, he thought, if you went out and met them more often instead of sitting on your inspectorial backside all day. “What about him?”
“I’ve been to see Verna Hume’s bank manager. As you asked me to. Twisted his arm a little. Called in a few favors. He went through her last year’s statements with me.”
Murder overrode even the sacred English secrecies about money. If you pressed hard enough. “And?”
“There are regular payments from her father into Verna’s account. Every month. Three thousand pounds a year in all.”
Not a great sum, for some people. But a huge one for a man with the income Derek Osborne probably had. “Are there any indications of the reason for these payments? A debt being repayed, perhaps?” That seemed very unlikely.
“None. I pressed old Muirhead pretty hard about it. He huffed and puffed about confidentiality and the bank managers’ code, but I don’t think he knew any reason himself.”
Peach frowned. “I wonder what Derek Osborne’s income is. Not a large one, I should think.”
Bancroft allowed himself a small, superior smile, For once, Peach had followed the script he had planned. “His account is at the same branch. I made a few discreet inquiries about that. Leant on Muirhead pretty hard. Osborne has a regular income from pension and insurances of just over eleven thousand pounds per annum.”
Peach whistled his surprise, a sound which made sweet music in the ears of Charlie Bancroft. Eleven thousand pounds was enough to live on in retirement, if you went carefully. But not if you were paying over twenty-seven per cent of it to a domineering daughter. (Percy’s dad had insisted on ten minutes of mental arithmetic every night, when it was long since out of fashion in schools). Violence often leapt out of desperation, and desperation could burn under gray hairs and wrinkles as fiercely as anywhere else. And it was often the old, who could see no way out of a desperate situation.
Percy thought suddenly of Alice Osborne and the way he had failed to cut through her deceptions a few yards away from this room. Had she been trying to protect her husband? “No indication from Osborne’s account of why he was making these payments?”
“No. But there was one other interesting thing.” In his excitement, Bancroft forgot his plan to delay this final fact a little longer. “The last payment, a week before Verna Hume’s death, was bigger than the previous monthly transfers. Three hundred, instead of two fifty.”
*
Lucy Blake had been informed that she was good with old women. Of both sexes. But the police hierarchy told you that sort of thing, when they were dishing out jobs no one else wanted to do, she reflected.
Her practised eye caught the face looking down from the window as she went up the stone steps to the wide front door. By the time she was climbing the stairs to the first-floor flat in the high-roomed Victorian house, she thought grimly that she might need to be careful as well as competent, with this one.
The man was a probably thirty years older than her mother, she thought. He had very little hair, rheumy eyes, and a head which nodded continually. The first problem would be to determine how much reliance to put on what a man like this had to tell her.
“You said on the phone that you had some information for us, Mr Tattersall.”
He looked her up and down as if she were trying to trick him. “Not for the likes of you I’aven’t, young woman. No more than for that constable who came knocking at the door on Monday. Still wet behind the ears, he was. I told ’em to send a senior officer round.”
“And that’s just what I am, sir. One officer in seven in the force is a woman nowadays, you see.”
The damp eyes opened wide. The nodding head suddenly changed direction and shook disapprovingly. But the loose lips tightened: he was not beaten yet. “I said someone senior, not a slip of a girl.” He grinned at her nastily, triumphant in this conclusive rejoinder.
Lucy sighed, then forced a small, automatic smile. “It may surprise you to know that I am a detective sergeant, Mr Tattersall. That’s as high a rank as you’re going to get, I assure you.”
She sat down beside the frail body on the sofa, which seemed too large for it. A skeletal hand moved like a spider across the two feet of tapestry towards her thigh, warning her that her move might have been a mistake.
But at least her proximity made him abandon any reservations about her sex and rank. “I saw people, didn’t I? Going into that house on Saturday night.” The nodding head gave a greater lunge to indicate Wycherly Croft, the yellow teeth flashed wide to indicate the value of his knowledge.
Lucy noted that he had picked up the important hours from the uniformed constable he had talked to originally. If he was sharp enough to have deduced the time of the murder, he was certainly not gaga. So he might have information that was of real value. She felt that little surge of excitement, which Percy Peach said was one of the rewards of the real detective.
She took out her notebook and the gold ballpoint pen, sensing that Tattersall might respond to the importance accorded to him by an official recording of his tale. The skinny hand with the brown marks on the back of it stole three inches nearer to her skirt.
“Tell me about what you saw, please,” said DS Blake, in her most official voice.
“We keep ourselves to ourselves round here,” said the old man unexpectedly. Then, realizing perhaps that his visitor would not be sitting beside him if that were really the case, he went on hastily, “But I’m making an exception now, because there’s crime involved. Because it’s MURDER.” He delivered the word in breathless capitals, his eyes widening and fixing upon her, his voice becoming that of the small boy now more than seven decades behind him.
Lucy leant her head confidentially six inches closer to his, keeping her eye warily on the bony hand on the tapestry. “There was murder in that house on Saturday night, yes, Mr Tattersall. And you may be in a position to help us to see that justice is done.” She spoke earnestly, as if the aged observer were receiving some special confidence.
It had the desired effect. Horace Tattersall took a long, slow breath of satisfaction, then transformed his ague into a vigorous nod. “I saw things, didn’t I? You should have spoken to me sooner.” He smi
led with a supreme smugness.
And he might have a point there, thought Lucy Blake, but she wasn’t going to admit it. The fingers on the slender hand straightened like legs beneath it and carried it to within three inches of her leg.
“There was young woman. A pretty one, with blonde hair.”
“How tall was she, Mr Tattersall?”
“About your height. Maybe a little shorter.” He let his eyes travel slowly from her neck to her ankles, dwelling with pleasure upon what they passed on the journey. “Good figure, too, like you. Healthy girl.” He breathed a wealth of eager lubricity into the adjective.
“And what age, would you say?” Lucy, writing phrases dutifully into her notebook, tried to sound dull and official, so as to douse the fire in these ancient loins.
“Difficult to be certain, from up here. But she was a bit older than you, dear, I’m sure of that.” And the hand leapt rapid as a lizard towards her groin, fastening with surprising strength upon the highest point of her thigh.
Lucy removed it firmly. She was not scared by the old man; she had learned to cope with lager louts and worse on Brunton’s Saturday nights, could throw young toughs around with surprising dexterity. The hand was not moist, as she had expected, but dry and warm, like the skin of a snake a boy had made her touch years ago at school.
She said, “Show me where you watched this from, would you, please?” and the two of them stood and moved over to the window, without any reference to the activities of that mobile, optimistic hand.
“I was here, dear. I can see the whole avenue from here, if I move around a bit. And no one notices me.”
Broadly speaking, it was true. The first-floor sash window had wide panes and commanded an excellent view from its elevated position, while the surprisingly clean white net curtain probably concealed the aged observer from all but the wariest of his subjects. There was an excellent view of Wycherly Croft at the end of the cul-de-sac.
Lucy took details of what the woman he had seen was wearing. The old man was a little vague, but it seemed to be jeans, with a light green anorak above. This could well have been Sue Thompson. Tattersall didn’t think he’d ever seen her before but, by her own account, Sue had been an infrequent visitor to her sister’s house.
Lucy had reserved the most vital question until the last. She put it as quietly as she could. “And have you any idea what time this woman came here, Mr Tattersall?”
He cackled delightedly beside her. “Yes, I have. Not such a dozy old bugger as you thought, am I? It was while that blasted lottery thing was on the telly. I got up to have a walk round – well, to go for a pee, if you must know.” He sniggered at his daring. “Thought I’d just ’ave a look out, and there she was, just going through the Humes’ gate.”
Around eight o’clock, then. Lucy was getting the hang of this. She fed him the line he wanted. “But you won’t know how long she was in there, of course?”
The thin shoulders beside her at the window shook with triumph. “Wouldn’t I, though? She was in there for exactly a quarter of an hour I saw her come out again. Watched her walk right down to the end of the road.”
I’ll bet you did, you old lecher, thought Lucy. Especially if the jeans were tight; you’d watch her until she was out of sight. Then, for the first time, she was beset by a vision of the hopelessness of old age, of the loneliness of the life that was lived in this room.
She said quietly, “You’ve been very helpful, Mr Tattersall. Thank you for your cooperation.”
The two of them turned away from the window. She kept carefully behind him. Sympathy need not extend to rashness: it was better not to afford groping opportunities. Tattersall sat down heavily on the sofa, as if exhausted by his evidence. He patted the area beside him seductively with the gaunt hand, but Lucy ignored the invitation. “Thank you for your help, sir. I’d better be on my way now, so that we can use this information.”
He looked up at her. His sly old face wrinkled mischievously, until he looked so like Mr Punch that she took an involuntary step backwards. He glanced appreciatively at her calves, then returned the moist eyes to her face. “Don’t you want to hear about the other one, then?”
Lucy looked down at him sharply. His head and limbs shook involuntarily, but his lips turned slowly upwards in a devilish grin. He was serious.
She sat down carefully on the upright chair opposite the sofa. “Of course I want to hear,” she said. “Tell me all about it, Mr Tattersall. Did you stay at the window for the whole of the evening?”
“No. What do you think I am, a peeping Tom?” He giggled uncontrollably for a moment at such a ridiculous idea. Then he leant forward earnestly, beckoning her close, affording her a gust of stale breath. “I watched my telly, didn’t I? Not that there’s much on on a Saturday night. But I always watch Match of the Day, don’t I? Last Saturday it was on early, for once. Started at ten. Should do that every Saturday, if you ask me.”
Fearing a diatribe against the BBC programers, Lucy said, “And did you see something while the football was on, Mr Tattersall?”
He gave her a look of mixed contempt and pity for this feminine ignorance. “‘Course not. Wouldn’t be missing the football, would I? It was before it started. I got up to shut the curtains, while the news was on. Put the light out first, didn’t I? See more that way, you know.”
She did. And remain concealed yourself, of course. And they said it was women who watched over their neighbors like this. “What did you see, Mr Tattersall?”
“I saw a car. Went right into the drive at the Humes’ house. Brought on the security lighting, or I wouldn’t have seen much – it was practically dark, you know.” His beaming face indicated that security floodlights were one technological introduction, of which, he thoroughly approved. “Clear as day, it was, when that came on. It was a Volkswagen Golf. Smart black job, with a soft top.”
He was obviously proud both of his recall and of his knowledge of modern cars. Lucy had seen a car like this somewhere in the last few days, but she couldn’t remember where. “You didn’t get the number?”
His face fell. He’d been delighted to place the name and the model, and yet this insistent young woman wanted more. “Of course I didn’t. Didn’t know then that it would be important, did I? Didn’t know that I’d be asked all about it by a pretty red-head who says she’s a detective sergeant, did I?” He leered horribly at her nylon-sheened knees.
“No, of course you didn’t,” said Lucy hastily. “You’ve really done very well. Did you see the driver of this car at all?”
He nodded, pacified by her words. “Another woman, wasn’t it? Up to no good, if you ask me, at that time of night. Tallish woman, with dark hair. Could see that when the light came on. Older than the other one, I think, but I couldn’t really see much of her face. Couldn’t see what she was wearing, either, except that she had a dark coat on. She rang the bell by the door.”
“And someone let her in?”
“Couldn’t see that, could I? I expect so. She waited on the step for a bit, then went into the house.”
“And was she in there long?”
“No. She came out again very quickly. Within two minutes, I’d say. The news was still on the telly. And she drove off at a hell of a rate.”
Lucy suppressed her excitement, trying hard to keep it out of her voice as she shut her notebook. “Thank you, Mr Tattersall. You’ve been most helpful. It’s good to find an elderly person so observant.”
“I’ve kept my other faculties as well, young lady!” he said eagerly, pawing the air with his skeletal hands as he levered himself off the sofa. But she was too quick for him, making her farewells from beyond the doorway of the overheated room.
His description of this second woman, who had come to Verna Hume’s house with the beginnings of darkness and left it so hastily, had not been detailed. But it had been enough to suggest to her where she had seen that Golf soft-top in the last few days.
It had been at Osborne Employment Agency. Ou
tside the office of the dead woman’s business partner, Barbara Harris.
Twenty-Four
DI Peach didn’t know it, but he agreed with Richard Johnson on one thing at least. Carmen was not an appropriate name for the surgeon’s wife.
She had an unlined, full, black face and a figure, which Percy’s old mother would have said was built for comfort, not for speed. Too ample for you to imagine her dancing a habanera or clicking her castanets, or flashing her eyes at susceptible soldiers. But Carmen seemed a nice enough woman: she greeted Peach with fresh coffee. He was glad after all that he had changed his mind and come here himself instead of sending Lucy Blake.
Serenity was the word which sprang to mind, he decided, as he watched Mrs Johnson’s confident, unhurried movements about her kitchen. Well, Percy Peach might disturb serenity. He was good at that.
“I need to talk to you, Mrs Johnson. About your husband. It shouldn’t take long.” Not unless you’re going to be as evasive as everyone else involved in this case seems determined to be, he thought.
Carmen Johnson nodded, not at all disturbed. “Your sergeant said that on the phone when she arranged the appointment. You just need to confirm some facts you’ve been given, she said.” Percy approved that. Lucy was picking up the tricks of the trade. Offer just enough information to disturb, without revealing the detail which would allow the subject time to prepare answers.
“I need to ask you a few questions, Mrs Johnson. Get you to confirm something your husband has told us, if you are able to do that. It’s just a routine part of our work.”
She looked at him steadily, not frowning, not smiling; it was almost as though she had set up a contest with him, in which her part was not to show emotion “I understand that. You are investigating the murder of this woman Verna Hume. My husband knew her, and you wish to check out his story. I would expect that.”
