by J M Gregson
‘It’s a cut-throat business nowadays. The best will thrive, the worst will go to the wall. That’s how I like it.’ Lambert wondered how much substance there was behind this bravado: he was aware that he was always prone to underestimate those who spoke in clichés. Unintelligence did not always accompany insensitivity.
‘So you think the procedures of the firm are not up to date?’ he said innocently. He knew where he was steering.
Hapgood was looking like a man who wished he had not ventured into these waters. ‘Sometimes one has to cut a few corners,’ he said sourly. He had his right hand placed over his left upon his crossed thigh. The middle finger began to tap a silent, irregular rhythm.
‘But not everyone is willing to do that?’
‘Stanley Freeman did.’ It was the reaction of a small man driven into a corner; Lambert did no more than raise his eyebrows. ‘Stanley was swift enough on his feet when he saw the chance of a quick buck. There are ways and means in this business, Superintendent.’ It was pathetic really, thought Hook, the way modern youth thought knowledge of the seamier side of life was closed to others, even policemen.
‘Like cultivating old ladies with their own properties?’ said Lambert.
It was as if Simon Hapgood had been hit in the face. His cheeks flushed red and his eyes filled with alarm for a moment at the knowledge that he had underestimated them.
‘You know about Emily’s Aunt Alice?’ He could not keep his voice even.
‘Among other things,’ said Lambert shamelessly.
‘It’s Emily’s own fault,’ said Hapgood defensively. ‘She should have known Freeman well enough. She’s been there twenty years. Stuffy old biddy.’ Lambert wondered what schemes of Simon’s the sturdy Emily had refused to condone.
‘What do you think of Miss Godson?’ said Lambert.
‘We haven’t a lot in common,’ said Hapgood, desperately simulating a neutrality which was too late.
‘This is a murder inquiry,’ Lambert reminded him impatiently, preparing to turn the screw a little tighter. ‘At the moment there appear to be five people who could have committed this crime, including yourself. The innocent, as they say, have nothing to fear. Naturally, I am interested in your views on the other four, which will of course be treated as confidential. I shall in due course be asking them about you. Indeed, I have already heard some interesting assessments of everyone concerned.’
Hapgood, as he had anticipated, did not relish that thought. His mind must be reeling; Lambert had watched him mentally enumerating the other four suspects. Surely he must have divined by now that Denise Freeman was the fifth possibility. Lambert said quietly, ‘I gather that you don’t get on with Emily Godson.’ He was prepared to prompt now that his quarry had been driven into the desired area of questioning.
‘She doesn’t like me. Self-righteous cow.’ He muttered the last words, then glanced up guiltily as he considered the impression he was creating. The public school veneer had been precious thin, thought Hook, with his own self-righteousness. ‘You must understand that I’m younger than Emily, and enthusiastic to succeed. She’s done nothing but put obstacles in my way. It took her a long time to become a Senior Negotiator and she doesn’t want to see anyone else moving up rapidly.’
Probably there was something in it, Lambert thought. If Emily had met old-fashioned male prejudice, she would he scarcely human if she was not jealous of early preferment for someone like Simon. Especially if his progress was built on unscrupulous short cuts, as he had already half-admitted it was.
‘Do you think Miss Godson killed Stanley Freeman?’ he asked simply. He felt Hook shift beside him on the sofa: it was a highly irregular question. He was more interested in Hapgood’s reaction than his opinion.
He tossed his head again, the sun behind him gilding his hair into an incongruous halo. He pursed his soft, small lips and folded his arms, as if giving the proposition serious thought. ‘I suppose she could have. She’d certainly no reason to love the boss.’ Then he brightened, as if a notion had suddenly struck him. It was impossible to be certain whether it really was a new idea, or something he had thought of earlier and was now eager to plant. ‘She knows all about EXIT. I remember her going on to us about people’s right to die with dignity and the good work EXIT was doing.’
‘When was this?’ said Lambert, carefully unexcited. He wished he could see Hapgood’s face more clearly.
‘Oh, a while ago. Six months, maybe more. She had their literature; I think she was going to join.’
In other words, Emily Godson had become interested in the harrowing question of how best to die after the long trauma of her mother’s illness, when her aunt’s senile dementia was becoming more marked. It was natural enough, but an area of questioning to be explored when he saw her again: the society’s material had clearly stimulated the idea of an ingenious murder in someone. Denise Freeman was the only one he had questioned about EXIT. He tried not to find Hapgood’s eagerness to incriminate a colleague distasteful.
‘George Robson?’ he said abruptly.
Hapgood was surprised but not thrown of balance by the sudden shift. His quick eyes switched back and forth between Superintendent and Sergeant, looking for any indication of where their suspicions lay. ‘I wouldn’t think so,’ he said eventually.
‘Mr Hapgood, I’m not asking you now to speculate about the culprit. I am looking for extra facts which may be significant. Things you may know but which we may not have discovered yet. You will hardly need telling that it is your duty to help us in this way.’
Hapgood looked sullen. ‘I don’t know anything about George Robson which would make him a killer. He didn’t like Stanley Freeman, but none of us did.’ He stopped, aware that the wrong pronoun had slipped out.
‘You didn’t like Mr Freeman yourself?’ said Lambert, wondering if he sounded smug. Hapgood looked carefully at the coffee table between them and said nothing.
Then Bert Hook, making one of his rare interventions, struck below the belt with ruthless precision. ‘You used to call him Joe Stalin, I believe?’ he said, without even looking up from his notes.
Hapgood reddened: his face was as revealing in this respect as a young girl’s. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. It was just a joke. I – I was letting of steam when he wasn’t there.’ They could see him conjecturing about who had revealed this. Lambert would be interested to know himself in due course; it was something Hook had picked up from the preliminary interviews by others.
‘Quite,’ said Lambert drily. He succeeded in making a perfectly natural reaction, the kind of safety-valve many employees indulge in in the boss’s absence, sound sinister. He was quite enjoying the embarrassment of this young popinjay. But that was an indulgence, unless he could use it in the rest of the interrogation.
‘He piled work on to me. Arranged appointments in the evening that he should have taken himself. He was exploiting me…’ Lambert let him run on with the petty catalogue. It was probably largely true, from what he had pieced together of the dead man, but hardly a motive for murder. Hapgood went on rather desperately with his self-justification, until the Superintendent wondered if he had some other, more real motive that he wanted to conceal. He let the petty list of grievances run out, feeling like an actor trying to time a good line perfectly.
Then he said, ‘Where were you on that Wednesday night?’ He was pleased with the effect he achieved. The blood drained from Simon Hapgood’s face as quickly as it had risen earlier. His eyes widened as he tried to divine what was going on behind Lambert’s impassive features. He must surely have expected to have to account for his movements on the night of the murder, but the abrupt appearance of the question in the midst of his evasions had thrown him off balance.
‘I – I was expecting to go to Lydon Hall. Then Stanley said he would show the Harbens round himself. They were important clients. He was good with Americans, he said.’
‘And you weren’t?’
This time Hapgood refused to rise t
o the bait. ‘Perhaps not as good as Stanley. He could be very persuasive with important people, when he chose.’ It was the second time they had heard this grudging acknowledgement of the dead man’s expertise: George Robson had said more or less the same thing. It marked a measure of recovery in Simon Hapgood. He was pleased with himself for his compliment to Stanley Freeman, as if he had compensated for his vituperative Joe Stalin nickname by this evidence of balance. He plucked the creases of his trousers precisely into position and worked hard at looking thoroughly composed.
‘You haven’t told me where you were on Wednesday evening yet,’ Lambert reminded him.
Hapgood produced a packet of tipped cigarettes. He offered them to his interlocutors, was refused, took one himself. He lit it with a butane lighter, pressed his shoulders against the back of his chair, blew a contemplative funnel of smoke at the ceiling. It was a caricature of relaxation and clear conscience. But as he arranged packet and lighter on the coffee table between them, the lighter slipped from his hands and clattered unnaturally loud upon the table’s smooth brown surface, destroying completely the effect he had striven so hard to create. Hook felt like jeering as he had when a small boy at a villain’s mistake in the cinema, but his solemn mask never slipped as he waited with ballpoint over his notebook.
Hapgood said, ‘I had a viewing of Milton Farm at six-thirty. I was rather at a loose end after I had left the clients. I had something to eat here and then went out to a pub, the Stonemasons’ Arms in Cornbrook.’ It was a well-known pub in a village three miles from Oldford, fashionable with the affluent younger drinkers; the car park was a perpetual temptation to thieves, with its sprinkling of Porsches and BMWs. It was within a mile and a half of Lydon Hall through the lanes: three minutes’ drive for a man in a hurry.
‘Timing?’ This was Hook, flicking over a new page in his notebook and making it clear that every word would be recorded and checked out.
Hapgood paused, took his time: Lambert suddenly had the feeling that he had rehearsed all this. ‘I can’t be sure. I must have come back here about seven. I used the microwave to heat a frozen dinner for one, so I didn’t take very long over it. I expect I was in the pub by about eight o’clock, but I couldn’t be certain. I was relaxing. I didn’t know at the time it would be important.’ The sentence they had heard so often before. That was because it was true, of course. But the story had come out just too glibly.
‘You stayed there until closing time?’
‘More or less. About half past ten, I think.’
‘No doubt you saw people you knew who could vouch for your presence there.’
If it was a challenge, it did not ruffle him. ‘One or two. I’m quite well known there.’ He reeled off three names, again just too quickly for the recollection to be spontaneous. But it would be a foolish man who had not reviewed his movements on that fateful evening.
Bert Hook wrote down the names laboriously, spreading the seconds to build the tension. Then he said, ‘What car do you drive, Mr Hapgood?’
Was there a snatch of breath before he replied? It might have been no more than the surprise of an innocent man at an unexpected question.
‘A Ford Sierra.’
‘Colour?’
‘Dark blue. Not metallic.’
Hook wrote down the words while Lambert studied the fresh young face intently. They stood up. Hapgood’s relief was evident. He even attempted a grotesque return to his manner at the outset of the interview. ‘Well, gentlemen, if I can be of any further help – ’
‘What do you know about Denise Freeman?’ Lambert spat the question like a poisoned dart. He was surprised at the hostility in his own voice.
Hapgood, rising to shepherd them off the premises, had turned towards the door, so that the light at last fell full upon his face. They watched the pale, epicene features fighting for control. The eyelids blinked three, four times in rapid succession, the small lips twitched twice before he managed to speak. His first words emerged as little more than a croak.
‘Why do you ask me about her?’
Both men watched him struggling for control, excited by a reaction far greater than either had anticipated.
There was a pause of no more than two seconds, which seemed much longer to all of them. Then Lambert said coldly, ‘Because she is a suspect, just as George Robson and Emily Godson are. As you are yourself. As Jane Davidson is.’ He watched Hapgood closely as he produced the last name. There was nothing like the reaction which Denise Freeman’s name had produced. For a moment then there had been real fear. For himself, or for the enigmatic widow? Lambert’s question had been provoked by his remembrance of a single, unreturned look Hapgood had directed to Denise Freeman across the coffin of the murdered man.
Hapgood might have blustered if he could have managed more control of himself. As it was, he was wise or fortunate enough to say nothing. Lambert, anxious to keep him reeling, to prevent the retreat into his legal right to say nothing, volunteered, ‘Mrs Freeman has provided us with an account of her whereabouts on the evening of the murder, as you have. As Sergeant Hook has just indicated to you, we look for witnesses to corroborate all such statements. So far, we have found none to substantiate Mrs Freeman’s story.’
Hapgood’s eyes flicked to Lambert’s face, then to Hook’s; he found no clue in either to help him. They saw fear in the bright blue eyes; the bright room seemed unnaturally silent.
‘Do you know of any reason why Mrs Freeman should kill her husband?’
Hapgood shook his head, dumb and miserable. Neither of them thought him altruistic enough for it to be a detached concern about an innocent woman.
‘Have you any idea where she was last Wednesday night?’
‘No!’ This time the response was loud, instinctive, an emotional reaction rather than a refusal of information. He must have realized how odd it sounded in the pause which followed. He swallowed hard, then said unsteadily, ‘I went to the pub as I said. I didn’t see Denise.’
‘I hadn’t suggested you did,’ said the Superintendent quietly. He wondered if Hapgood was too nervous now to realize how much he had given away in that single unguarded use of the Christian name. For the first time, Lambert was toying with the idea that these two had indeed been with each other at the time of the murder. Perhaps, indeed, at the scene of the murder. ‘Now, I must ask you this, Mr Hapgood. Have you anything further to tell us which might bear on the death of Stanley Freeman?’ He made it as simple and as unbending as he could, as though he were enunciating a formal charge.
‘No. Nothing. You must believe me.’ Hapgood tossed the golden hair back in his habitual gesture and attempted the look of appealing sincerity his nerves could not sustain. Lambert’s eyes never left his face.
‘We shall need to talk further,’ he said. ‘Probably after I’ve seen Mrs Freeman again. You won’t be leaving the area, will you, Mr Hapgood?’ It was more a directive than a question.
Hapgood shook his head miserably, then stood in the Georgian doorway until Lambert had reversed the Vauxhall and driven out of sight. Then he went hopelessly back inside and shut the front door carefully. He picked up the nearly spent cigarette, drew a last nervous comfort from it as he tapped out the digits on the phone.
It rang three, four times. As it was answered, he stubbed out the butt of the cigarette.
Chapter 20
The police station at Oldford was in a chronically over-crowded Victorian building. Plans were in hand to remedy the situation. Within two years, a disused primary school would be converted to allow the burgeoning force the space it needed. Crime has overtaken fecundity as a feature of rural England.
But serious crime was still mercifully rare here. This meant that the CID section was even more cramped than the rest. The murder room had been established in a terrapin building in the yard behind the station, the only place where the required resources could be concentrated efficiently. Eight days into the inquiry, Superintendent Lambert reviewed progress with DI Rushton and DS Hook.
The routine business of the investigation had continued steadily, the machinery of police routine forming a background to Lambert’s less predictable procedures. Here were stored the signed statements of the discoverers of the corpse and the people who had subsequently emerged as major suspects. Fingerprints from the drawing-room at Lydon Hall were filed alongside those of the suspects. In plastic bags were the minutiae of hairs, pins and clothing fibres, all meticulously labelled. Out of sight but even more carefully packaged were the shoes and clothes of the dead man, waiting for the recovery elsewhere of the tiniest fibres which might indicate a connection between murderer and victim on that fateful night. They were folded carefully, filed in plastic sheeting in the drawers of an old cabinet, out of sight lest they should distress close relatives. In another drawer were the plastic bag which had enclosed the corpse’s head and the suicide note found in the pocket, waiting to become in due course Exhibits A and B in court.
It would never do for a spouse to set eyes on such grisly reminders of the crime. Unless of course she was simply being confronted with her own evil deed. Lambert was dissatisfied with his picture of the widow of the late Stanley Freeman. He had checked the pages of the preliminary interviews, Hook’s notes on their own exchanges, and the findings from the subsequent checks he had ordered. His amour propre was disturbed: Denise Freeman had so far revealed to them little more than she had chosen to. He saw her in his mind’s eye, cool, dark and Gallic, her Mona Lisa smile seeming to suggest her superiority to the simple techniques of the English police. She had seemed both calm and ruthless in her assessments of others during their interview. She would make a good murderer, if she thought such desperate measures necessary. Or – and the thought which had been buried in the recesses of his mind suddenly sprang clear – she was the kind of woman who could persuade men to kill for her.
‘Denise Freeman said that on the night of the murder she was at the cinema in Tewkesbury. Any corroboration yet?’ He thought of the widow’s cool, detailed account of The Last Emperor and its stars, so matter-of-fact and convincing as they had sat on her manicured lawns.
