Making a Killing

by J M Gregson

  ‘We have the number. Where exactly was it parked?’

  ‘Near the end of Orchard Lane, where Denise lives. There’s a five-barred gate leading into a field, where it’s possible to park a car off the road. I usually leave it there.’

  Scarcely invisible. Only lovers, with hormones beating an urgent tattoo, would consider this discreet. Now imprudence might work in their favour: someone might have seen the vehicle in the vital hour. If it had really been there. More tedious leg-work for DCs and the local uniformed man. Meanwhile, he would see Denise Freeman and shatter that air of Gallic superiority. No doubt her new account of her movements would be close to Hapgood’s, but he would probe it hard, turn it over and over to discover some discrepancy with her lover’s version. A disparity that might send her for a long term in Holloway.

  For the second time that day, his thoughts were disturbed by the shrill interruption of the telephone on the big desk. He felt Hapgood’s wide, hypnotized eyes upon him as he picked it up, as if he had some premonition of calamity.

  As he listened, Lambert’s eyes turned directly back to the man opposite him. He put the phone down, gathered his thoughts, and said quietly, ‘Have you ever been to Lydon Hall in your car? Be careful: it’s important.’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Not even to photograph the place for your publicity material about it?’

  Ironically, Hapgood thought it must be important to convince them. He said anxiously, ‘No. Freeman did all that for Lydon Hall. What is this about?’

  Lambert said heavily, ‘I asked one of our detective-sergeants to take samples from the tyre-treads of all the firm’s cars, with particular attention to yours, since a similar blue car was seen leaving the area of Lydon Hall immediately after the murder. These samples have now been tested against samples of gravel from the drive of Lydon Hall at our forensic laboratories.’

  ‘With what results?’ said Hapgood. He looked pale but composed until Lambert answered him.

  ‘I have to tell you that there were traces of gravel in your tyres identical with that of the Lydon Hall drive. Perhaps you had better ring that lawyer, Mr Hapgood.’

  Chapter 25

  The old road along the edge of the common was very little used. It was single track with passing places, and the ford where it left the town varied in depth with the seasons. Anyone in a hurry preferred the newer road along the bottom of the valley. The remains of Wino Willy lay undiscovered for some time.

  When the cyclist dismounted reluctantly to examine the body, the sun was already low enough for the road to be in shadow here, where it ran between grassy banks and high stone walls. He saw the crushed head, retched his sensibilities into the ditch a few yards further on, and rode unsteadily down to the police station in Oldford with his news.

  Half an hour later, the crew of the police control car examined the road, measured, looked for clues to give the detail of the accident. Decently anonymous in plastic and blanket, Willy’s mortal remains were loaded into the ambulance. It moved away almost noislessly down the hill, its blue light flashing eerily while its siren remained silent. There was no hurry now for Willy.

  The police found little in their brief examination of the spot. The victim was a tramp and a ‘wino’, so no doubt it had been his own fault. There would be an end to female reportings of the wild man on the moor: one more minor irritant in their world had been removed. Nevertheless, people should report accidents, even when they were in no way to blame. A hit-and-run death would be an unwelcome statistic in their weekly records.

  For a little while, no one in the uniformed branch at the station connected the death of Arthur James Harrison with the murder inquiry being conducted by CID in the terrapin behind the building. At six o’clock Sergeant Johnson came on to desk duty, noted the death of Wino Willy, and remembered the Superintendent’s interest in the background of the dead man. At 6.14 he informed DI Rushton in the murder room of the death, and Willy was restored to his last, posthumous role in the investigation into the death of Stanley Freeman.

  At that moment, Lambert was interviewing Denise Freeman. She admitted she had lied about her cinema visit, without being anything like as shaken as her lover had been. Yes, she had spent the evening with Hapgood, most of it in bed. He had left her at about 8.50, which tallied with his now admitted arrival at the Stonemasons’ Arms at about nine. The precision of the detail convinced the Superintendent that she had already conferred with Hapgood about the new story. Whether it was the truth, or a new fabrication to conceal their dual guilt, it was impossible to tell from her bearing.

  When Lambert asked why she had given them the false story about her movements on the night of the murder, she gave a Gallic shrug of those slim, attractive shoulders and said, ‘I was not proud to be in bed with a man twelve years my junior on the night my husband was killed. I don’t suppose Simon was proud either; anyway, his instinct is to conceal things.’ There was just enough contempt in her voice for him to be convinced that the affair with Hapgood would not be continued. Then she went on, ‘Perhaps in France there would be less embarrassment about such things, though we can be much more provincial than you in other ways. It was wrong of course to try to hide things: I should have known the efficiency of the English police would find me out.’ The black eyes sparkled like newly split coal, the perfectly formed lips turned neither up nor down at the edges: it was impossible to tell whether even in the discovery of her falsehoods she was not mocking them a little.

  Lambert wanted to shake her, to establish or to dismiss once and for all the notion of a lovers’ pact to kill her husband. But he needed to get up on to the moor before dark, to find Wino Willy Harrison and discover what it was he had to tell. For the tadpole of an idea which had flicked its disturbing tail in his mind had become stronger, was swimming through murky, uncertain waters. Willy’s evidence would kill it, or let it wax strong.

  As he tried to hurry his questioning of the poised and puzzling Denise Freeman, the bleep of his car phone came faint but insistent from the drive outside her front door. Hook went out to answer it; he came back grim-faced, as his chief watched the widow’s face intently during her answers. Superintendent and Sergeant went to the corner of the long lounge, still full of evening sun from its picture windows, and Hook recounted in low, sombre tones the incomplete details of the death of Wino Willy.

  Denise Freeman watched them with Mona Lisa smile, as if she still found it impossible to take seriously the earnestness of these large men. When Lambert returned to her, she was shaken visibly for the first time in their exchanges: his voice was like a whiplash.

  ‘Where were you this afternoon?’

  ‘Here, most of the time. I went into Oldford to do a little shopping at about three-thirty.’ She took her time over the reply, but her calm now required an effort they could observe.

  ‘Witnesses?’

  ‘None, here. My gardener left as usual at about one. In the town, the shopkeepers might remember me.’ She mentioned the names of the greengrocery and bakery in Oldford; for the first time, she seemed anxious to establish her innocence. ‘Oh, and I did see George Robson briefly, in the public car park.’

  ‘Time?’ As Hook noted her replies, Lambert rapped out his questions with an impatience that was nearly brutal.

  ‘I – I couldn’t be certain. It was when I arrived there. I should think about three forty-five. He was going back into the office. He could at least confirm that I was there at that time. Is it important?’ For her, it was a note of weakness: it was the first time she had expressed any anxiety about her situation.

  Lambert scarcely noticed. ‘We’ll need a statement from you, Mrs Freeman,’ he said. Then he was away, leaving her disturbed and frustrated behind him, the engine of the big Vauxhall revving fiercely even as Hook scrambled hastily into the front passenger seat.

  Usually, Lambert used his periods in the car to think, driving slowly, even at times lethargically, as his brain clicked forward. His subordinates even called him �
��Super-gran’ when he was driving, though they took care to keep it well out of his hearing. Tonight, he drove very fast; not dangerously, but with extreme concentration and not a word to his passenger. Hook was glad of his safety-belt, for the first time he could remember in this car.

  Bert Hook, despite his comfortable contours, could move quickly when he had to. In his fast-bowling days, many an unwary batsman had been run out by underestimating his sprightly fielding. Tonight, he had great difficulty in keeping up with his superintendent without breaking into a run. As he strode across the common, Lambert’s legs kept pace with his racing brain, the movement a physical release for his frustration.

  For the tadpole of an idea had become a frog. An ugly frog, which leapt on swiftly from fact to fact in this case, finding a sure foothold each time, until it stared him unwinkingly in the face.

  There were several people walking their dogs at this hour, but they quickly deferred to the urgency of the strange pair in suits and city shoes. It was fine again now, but the slight breeze was having a last fling before the inevitable calm of sundown. Fern and gorse danced in turn around them as they strode onwards and upwards, until they climbed the low stile that led from common to moor. Now they left the path, following steep rises beside the tiny tumbling stream that led like a white ribbon up towards the hidden sheepfold where Willy had made his sometime home.

  ‘Couldn’t Willy’s death have been a straightforward road accident?’ panted Hook, trailing in the wake of his chief and hoping to slow him by conversation.

  ‘It was murder,’ said Lambert bitterly. Murder which might have been prevented, had I only been available when Willy guessed the truth, he thought.

  ‘You know who did it?’

  ‘I know.’ Even Lambert was blowing now, forcing himself on like a Victorian trained in the dogma of cold baths and driving physical work-outs. He offered no more words, and Hook was experienced enough not to press.

  He watched Lambert’s lean figure ahead of him, climbing without pause until he stopped, silhouetted against the evening sky, waiting until Hook arrived heavily alongside him. ‘What are we up here for? Willy’s in the mortuary,’ said the long-suffering Sergeant, deciding that this time the pause was long enough for him to expend so much of his scanty resources of breath.

  ‘Evidence,’ said Lambert, briefly and abstractedly, as if impatient of one who needed to be informed of anything so obvious. He thrust out an arm across the chest of Hook, as if to prevent him plunging on enthusiastically down the small slope which dropped ahead of them before the next steady gradient: a most unlikely eventuality.

  Then the Sergeant saw the object of Lambert’s attention. Two hundred yards away, a golden labrador chased a carrion crow exuberantly across rough ground. When he was within five yards of it, the bird rose and flew heavily back over the dog’s head, cawing contemptuously as it went.

  The dog gave it a ritual, good-natured bark, the farewell of a hunter who had never expected to catch his prey. Then he loped unhurriedly away from them, until he passed out of sight over the next rise.

  The two observers looked at each other. ‘Fred,’ said Hook unnecessarily.

  ‘“The little dog laughed, to see such fun…” Willy quoted that to us when we came up here to see him,’ said Lambert. ‘And he told us, “Every dog has its day.” And his last words then were, “The more I see of men, the better I like dogs.” If I’d made the connection earlier, poor Willy might be alive now.’

  They moved forward more cautiously, each busy with his own thoughts and pondering the confrontation to come. Each was glad he was not alone; with the sun beginning to disappear away below them on their left, this seemed now a lonely place to be alone with a murderer.

  They saw Robson as they passed beyond the knoll where they had seen his dog. He was finishing an examination of the sheepfold where Wino Willy had kept his vigil with the birds and mammals which seemed to threaten him less than his own kind. Too engrossed in his search to notice them, he moved to the drystone wall which was one of the few impacts man had made on this terrain and began an examination of its crevices. While he worked his way methodically along some eighty yards of wall, they crept to within fifty yards of him without being discerned.

  It was Fred who finally gave them away. Spotting his friend Hook, he bounded across the moorland turf with a joyous bark, greeted both men with a tail which threatened to wag his rear end right off, and graciously accepted the fondling of his ears and vigorous patting which was his due.

  His master, who seemed to have found what he wanted at the wall, left his search and came across to them. His joviality was almost effusive; Hook would have sworn he was glad to see them.

  ‘And what brings two pillars of the law up here at this time of night? I at least have an excuse for fresh air and exercise.’ He indicated Fred, who gyrated his tail in acknowledgement. ‘But perhaps you’re merely up here to enjoy the sunset on an evening like this.’ He looked past them, to where a brilliant crimson segment was all that remained of the sun in the evening sky. Neither of them turned to follow his gaze.

  While Fred nuzzled his way insistently into Hook’s hand, Lambert walked past Robson to the wall which had been the object of such systematic scrutiny. At this point, the wall ran through a small hollow and was very broad at the base to support its height of some five feet. Lambert removed the large thin stone which Robson had hastily replaced a foot or so from the bottom. From the dry hollow within, he extracted a green anorak and trilby, almost identical with the ones Robson was wearing. Hook’s gasp of astonishment made Robson turn to him, so that he was not looking at Lambert when the Superintendent said, ‘The wellingtons are no doubt hidden a little further along the wall. Willy wasn’t wearing them when you ran him down.’

  If Robson thought there was no way out, he gave no sign of it yet. ‘You mean the drop-out I used to see up here? Has something happened to him?’

  ‘It was old Fred who let you down,’ said Lambert.

  By chance, he found the one weakness in his adversary’s rock-like calm. Robson whirled instinctively to look at the dog he loved, found no clue to support Lambert’s words, and turned back to him for explanation. ‘For a start, you were at pains to tell us he was a one-man dog, when he so plainly wasn’t. Look at him now.’ Fred was sitting with his chin against Hook’s knee; each time the Sergeant threatened to desist from fondling his ears, his foot pawed vaguely at the air. The labrador’s eyes were almost shut: had he been a cat, he would have been purring.

  The Sergeant’s thigh was already covered with the fine yellow hairs of the dog’s coat. ‘There were dog-hairs on the carpet at Lydon Hall,’ said Lambert. No doubt Fred’s, carried there on your clothing. We shall check.’ Hook produced an envelope from the inside pocket of his suit and transferred some of the hairs from his trousers into it. ‘Fred is almost the opposite of a one-man dog – a most accommodating animal, in fact. If he is happy with me or my sergeant, he would certainly be delighted to take his evening walk with poor, harmless Wino Willy, who had a way with far more timid beasts than Fred.’

  ‘So that makes me a murderer?’ said George Robson. It was the first time he had used the word, and it dropped from his lips almost like an admission.

  ‘It was one flaw in your alibi. It made me think of others. For instance, Jane Davidson left a note in Freeman’s office altering the time of the Harbens’ viewing of Lydon Hall to nine o’clock. He never received it, because he didn’t come back into the office, but it was never found. The only other person who could go into Freeman’s office without suspicion is you as his deputy.’

  Lambert would have had some sympathy with the murderer of Stanley Freeman, though it would have had no effect upon his actions as an instrument of the law. But Robson was now for him the brutal killer of Willy Harrison, and he had to control a surge of hatred. Violence had bred violence, as always. The vandals who slashed trees slashed faces in due course; the louts who began by hitting each other in pub car parks prod
uced the psychopaths who battered old ladies for a few pounds. The murderer who killed because he was cheated by his employer had crushed his innocent accomplice beneath a car a week later, because that very innocence made him dangerous.

  ‘I was up here with Fred when Freeman was killed. You prove otherwise,’ said Robson. Now there was desperation in his defiance.

  ‘Oh, I shall. Because you killed Freeman while Wino Willy was up here with Fred. In the clothes you gave him. I expect he thought it was a privilege to walk Fred for you. When we first came across him, Willy had a new pair of boots, and he’d just emptied three bottles of wine. Was that all you paid him for his role as unwitting accessory?’ Robson’s swift, startled glance showed that he had struck home; Hook wondered if it was the public school training that made a suggestion of meanness strike home when he had brazened out more serious accusations.

  Lambert thrust away the image of the summerhouse behind Lydon Hall, with its pathetic trimmings of a ruined spirit, and pressed swiftly on, anxious only now to have this over. ‘There were other things, of course, as soon as we thought about it. Both your wife and other dog-walkers confirmed that you have established a pattern of dog-walking over the last two months, slavishly adhering to the same clothes in all weathers and the same hour, between eight and nine. You arranged our first meeting at that time, conveniently forgetting our appointment so that you could draw attention to your dog-walking habits. A strange omission in a man with a reputation for never forgetting appointments. Except of course that it was quite deliberate.’

  ‘Very elaborate!’ said George Robson; his short laugh rang loud and brittle in that remote place. ‘You have evidence for these flights of imagination, I presume?’

  For answer, Lambert spoke no word, but turned and looked back at the wall. In that dry niche which Robson had so recently exposed lay the green anorak and trilby identical to his own, carefully stowed there by the dead hands of Wino Willy.