[Lambert and Hook 21] - A Good Walk Spoiled

by J M Gregson

  He fancied the man’s breathing quickened a little in the silence. Then the voice said, ‘You got the message, bastard?’

  ‘I’ve got the message. The problem is that there’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘No, bastard. Your problem is to find a way of doing something about it. Your problem is to ensure that the torture of innocent creatures ceases. And ceases fast. That's your problem. We shall be watching you. We’ve got someone in those labs of yours now, so we know everything that goes on there. Just as we know that as Director of Research you’re the man who can stop it.’

  ‘That’s not true, you know. We’re a big international company now, driven by forces which you—’

  ‘Shut it, bastard!’ His head was roughly pulled back; the blade of the knife caressed his exposed throat, as if the movement was a prelude to something more conclusive. ‘We know all about you, Cullis. We know where you live, who you see, when you come and go. We’ll be watching you. If you want to live, you’ll produce results. Now get on your way! And don’t even think of looking round!’

  The man waited until Richard’s shaking hand restarted the engine, then slid silently from the back seat and out of the car. Richard kept his head facing rigidly ahead as he turned on to the lane. He stole a glance into his rear-view mirror, but there was no trace of the man who had threatened his life. A quick glance sideways told him nothing about the occupants of the car which had been here when they arrived, the car which presumably contained other animal rights fanatics, who would collect his attacker and receive his report.

  Richard Cullis had no real idea of his exact position. He drove until he reached the outskirts of Tewkesbury, then took the main road for Cheltenham and his home. He felt an overwhelming urge to stop and try to recover, to still the trembling he saw in the hands on the steering wheel, but was driven on by an even stronger, irrational fear that his adversaries might still be behind him.

  He had never been so glad to turn into the tree-lined avenue where his house lay, never so relieved to press the button which opened the double door of his garage electronically. He pressed it again as soon as the BMW was safely within it, heard the big door lumbering shut on the springs behind him. Then he switched off the engine and plunged his head into his hands.

  He remained slumped thus for a long time before he went into his house.

  Four

  Saturday morning. A soft Gloucestershire rain falling steadily, coming in from the Welsh mountains, which were obscured by cloud to the west. No more than a steady drizzle, but not the sort of summer morning to have you leaping out of bed and springing eagerly into the weekend tasks.

  Yet some of the weekend pleasures were still available, if you were open-minded and versatile. Paul Young knew that his wife was awake, though she hadn’t yet spoken. He turned on to his left side and slid his arm round her, running his fingers over the perennially exciting curve of her belly.

  Debbie Young said sleepily, ‘Saturday morning. Things to do, you old satyr.’ But she put her hand on his affectionately, moved it up over the waist she thought too ample to the curve of her breasts above it.

  ‘It’s raining, love. I won’t be able to get into the garden this morning. Maybe not all day. Great pity, that, I was so looking forward to it. Leaves me with all this energy needing some sort of outlet.’

  ‘The children will hear.’ She smiled drowsily, feeling very secure as she went through the ritual with eyes still closed and waited for him to make his answers. She moved his hand over her nipple, delighting in the slow, leisured process of marital arousal, in the confidence rather than contempt which was bred by this sort of familiarity.

  Paul knew what was going to happen now; understood also his part in the preamble. ‘Elbe’s away on a stopover. Danny was out with the lads last night: he won’t surface before midday, and you know it.’

  ‘Ooh, you’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’ She mimicked the wide-eyed teenager she had been when they had first known each other, slipping on from that into gross caricature. ‘You’re going have your wicked way with me whatever I do, aren’t you, Sir Jasper?’ She stretched luxuriously in the big bed, feeling his member reassuringly urgent behind her.

  Paul smiled secretly into the familiar tousled blonde hair at the back of her neck and happily banished his anxieties in a happy, innocent lust. It was going to be all right. He had put off telling her his important news last night and now he was putting it off again. But escapism was surely allowed when you were making love to your wife. Escapism had never been so delicious.

  He rolled Debbie over on to her stomach and ran the back of his fingers up and down her spine, as if he needed to search for the familiar cleft at the top of her bottom. Once it was found, he turned over his hand and let his fingers play gently there, a preface to the more vigorous and intimate stroking they both knew would follow in due course. It was good to rejoice in your awareness of each other’s bodies, to do what you both expected and still find it exciting and satisfying.

  Fifteen minutes later they lay on their backs and looked at the ceiling with secret, satisfied smiles. It was several minutes before Paul said, ‘I’ll nip downstairs and make us a cup of tea.’

  Debbie eased her limbs into a delicious post-coital stretch, straining her toes towards the end of the sheets, planting her forearms luxuriously against the headboard. You didn’t need to worry about suspicions of underarm hair and upper-arm flab when your lover was your husband. ‘It must be nearly nine o’clock. We must really get the show on the road, you idle man. There’s shopping for me to do, even if you can’t mow the lawn.’

  ‘Overrated pastimes, shopping and lawnmowing. I’ll get that tea.’

  He pushed the boat out and brought toast and marmalade as well on the big wooden tray. Debbie levered herself up to sit with pillows behind her, pneumatic and relaxed, knowing that she had nothing to prove and nothing to hide here. In a moment, she would discuss the children and the differing problems which adolescence was bringing to a seventeen-year- old girl and a sixteen-year-old son. She had borne the children early, but Paul would still tell her whenever she allowed him to that he found the forty-year-old mother more attractive than younger women. That idea was fanciful and its repetition was tiresome, Debbie Young told him occasionally, but she never instructed him to abandon it.

  She was completing her second slice of toast when Paul said earnestly, ‘I’ve something to tell you. You should really have known last night, but I had to wait for the children to go out and then the moment didn’t seem right.’

  ‘And this morning you had other things on your mind.’

  ‘Yes.’ He ran his hand gently over her stomach, this time in simple affection, with no sexual intent. ‘I’m being made redundant.’

  His news had come out in a rush, bald and direct, almost like a physical blow, when he had finally brought himself to deliver it.

  It took Debbie completely by surprise. She stopped for a moment, then continued to munch her mouthful of toast slowly and methodically, as if she hoped that the physical digestion of food might help her to digest this news. Then she said slowly and evenly, ‘Redundant?’

  ‘Surplus to requirements. Fired, if you like. That’s the word they’d have used in my dad’s day.’

  ‘Never mind your dad. Can this be changed? Have you a right of appeal?’

  ‘No. They can show they’re cutting back. I’ve got a month’s notice. And minimum redundancy pay. It won’t be much.’

  ‘What happened to “last in, first out”?’

  ‘There’s no agreement about that at Gloucester Chemicals. They can choose whom they get rid of. In any case, in this particular sales team, they can argue that I was the last one in.’

  ‘Recruited by Richard bloody Cullis.’

  ‘I suppose so. He was in charge of sales then. It was before he became Director of Research.’

  ‘Before he took the job I should have had.’

  ‘Yes.’ Paul realized now that thi
s was why he had been so reluctant to give her the bad news: he had known that his own disaster would turn into another diatribe against Debbie’s boss. ‘That man affects our whole bloody lives.’

  ‘I don’t think he was personally involved in this. You’d certainly never be able to prove that he was. As we’ve both agreed before, I’m not really cut out for sales. I don’t know why I took the job in the first place. I have to admit that my record isn’t that good, and if they’re looking for—’

  ‘It’s because you’re my husband. Cullis probably took you on with a view to sacking you.’ That’s preposterous, love. You’ll see that when you think about it a bit more. You’re making this personal when it’s just an unfortunate fact of life. I’m sure that Richard is far too busy with his own concerns to—’

  ‘It’s personal, all right. Don’t make any mistake about that. He’d like me to move on as well, you know. He knows I should have had his job and he feels threatened with me working in the labs. He can’t sack me, but he thinks that if he makes life unpleasant enough I might go and work somewhere else. Well, he can get stuffed! I’m going nowhere. If anyone goes, it will be Richard bloody Cullis!’

  ‘Don’t let this upset you! I’ll get something else, love.’ Paul did not sound convincing, because he wasn’t convinced himself. Forty-one wasn’t the age to be looking for a new start in a different field, especially when you carried the stigma of redundancy from your last post into any application. ‘I’ll be realistic, not set my sights too high. It might take a little while, but I’ll get something.’

  ‘Cullis thinks he can do anything he wants. He’s got the job I should have had and now he’s put the word in to make sure my man doesn’t have a job at all. Someone needs to do something about Mr Cullis.’

  His wife’s ringing declaration in that quiet bedroom would come back many times to Paul Young in the weeks that followed.

  The police are sometimes accused of being too sanguine about threats of violence. The public perception is that they shrug their shoulders, go through the motions of trying to protect the innocent by asking a few routine questions, and then go away. It seems to many people that the guardians of the law wait for something to happen and then react, rather than trying to prevent crime. When someone is threatened, they cover their backs by asking routine questions and offering routine warnings and then disappear.

  The truth is that the law often makes it difficult for them to do much more than this, where malice is only suspected and only vague verbal threats have been offered. Especially where domestic threats are involved and evidence is disputed, it is difficult for the police to do much more than offer stem warnings.

  But when a man is seized by an anonymous enemy and told what to do with a knife at his throat, they take the incident very seriously.

  There could be no real criticism of the service’s reaction to the threats offered to Richard Cullis in the darkness of a Gloucestershire lane. The threats, which had all the hallmarks of being from All God’s Creatures, were a matter of heavy police concern. All God’s Creatures was an organization with much more than its quota of fanatics, and fanatics always spell trouble for the police. They bring extreme forms of protest, which spill over too often into violence. Many of their demonstrations end in conflict, and police officers themselves have often been the targets of attacks.

  Cullis’s BMW, particularly the back seat, where his assailant had crouched, was subjected to detailed examination by forensic scientists. There were two hairs on the headrest which did not match the sample volunteered by Cullis himself. There were a couple of clothing fibres on the rear seat which might have belonged to his attacker or to some other, quite innocent passenger. There were soil particles in the footwell which were fresh and probably had come from the man who had in effect kidnapped Cullis and made him drive to the pre-arranged rendezvous with his fellow-thinkers. But the material was loam and clay, which might have come from almost anywhere in the county or its neighbours.

  In other words, forensic efforts produced nothing of great significance. These things were carefully filed away as evidence against an eventual arrest: the hairs in particular might provide a useful match with anyone subsequently arrested and charged with a criminal offence, but there was no match with any DNA samples retained by the police.

  It had been the wettest summer on record, as the still-flooded fields attested. The place where Cullis had been directed to drive his BMW to meet the car presumed to be occupied by other animal rights protesters was unpaved. Useful tyre-track evidence remained and moulds were dutifully taken and retained by the forensic team. The tyres on the car which had waited to meet the BMW in this off-road spot were much less distinctive than those of Cullis’s vehicle. They were typical of the tyres used by many middle-sized mass-produced cars: a Ford Mondeo or a Vauxhall Vectra were the most likely makes, but these were cheap replacement tyres, not the originals, so they could have been fitted to any of ten or a dozen popular models.

  However, tyres have distinctive wear-patterns, which can occasionally be almost as revealing as fingerprints, especially when they are expertly photographed so that enlargements can show individual blemishes. If arrests were made and a vehicle driven by suspects was examined, there was every chance of a match being found. But this would obviously depend on swift developments: tyre patterns change swiftly with wear, as a defence counsel would delight in pointing out caustically in court.

  Detective Inspector Christopher Rushton recorded all these findings dutifully on his computer. Then he collected DS Bert Hook and went off to interview people at Gloucester Chemicals.

  They began with the victim at the centre of all this activity, Richard Cullis. ‘You say this man implied that his animal rights group, All God’s Creatures, had someone actually working here in your labs.’ Rushton looked sceptical; it wasn’t common for this group to infiltrate undercover troops, it required too much patience and discipline compared with their normal direct and often violent methods.

  Richard Cullis said vehemently, ‘The man didn’t just imply it. He stated directly that they had someone working here.’

  ‘Can you recall his actual words, Mr Cullis?’

  ‘Yes, I can. When someone drags your head back and holds a knife against your throat, you remember what he says and how he says it. But I don’t suppose you’ve ever had to contend with that, Detective Inspector!’ Cullis looked for a reaction, but found the lean and dark-haired Rushton quite impassive. ‘This man told me I had to stop all animal testing here. I tried to explain to him that I hadn’t the power to do that, even if I wanted to. That just annoyed him - he wasn’t interested in reasoned argument. He said I’d better make sure that experiments on animals ceased and then he whispered into my ear, “We’ve got someone in those labs of yours now, so we know everything that goes on there”.’

  ‘You didn’t catch a glimpse of this assailant, I believe, even when he finally left your car.’

  ‘No. It was pitch dark. Well, not quite dark, because I could see the floodwaters in the fields as I drove there. I think there was actually a sliver of moon and some stars, but he was away behind the other car as soon as he released me. I was happy enough to get away from that knife.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you heard or smelt anything which could be useful? Was he a smoker, for instance?’

  ‘I didn’t smell tobacco on him. But there was one thing. I listened to his speech and I’d say he was educated Midlands. His local accent came out when he got excited, when he was threatening me.’

  ‘Birmingham?’

  ‘I think so, but I couldn’t be sure. I’ve no great ear for accents - I couldn’t distinguish between Brummie and Black Country.’

  Rushton nodded thoughtfully. ‘He might be bluffing about having one of the animal rights people under cover in your research section, knowing that he can give you a scare and us a lot of useless activity. But we can’t assume that. Is there anyone in your workforce whom you now suspect?’

  ‘N
o. I’ve given a lot of thought to this since last Thursday night, as you might expect, but I haven’t come up with anyone I could point a finger at with any confidence.’

  Rushton sighed. ‘You’d better let us have copies of the job applications of everyone you’ve taken on to work in the labs in the last five years. If you or any other senior person who works in there has any further thoughts, particularly on anyone you’ve taken on during the last year, please contact me immediately with those thoughts.’ He gave Cullis a card with his name and telephone number at Oldford CID section.

  Cullis regarded the younger man resentfully: Rushton looked at least ten years younger than him, and members of the public in their forties tend to assume that their problems are not being treated seriously if a younger man is assigned to the case, whatever the rank involved. ‘Why isn’t Chief Superintendent Lambert handling this? Are threats to the life of local citizens not thought worthy of his attention nowadays?’

  Rushton gave him an acid smile. John Lambert had built a considerable local reputation as a result of securing arrests in some high-profile murder cases over the last fifteen years. Rushton was quite used to hearing his name mentioned by the public. He considered John Lambert something of a dinosaur himself, but you couldn’t argue with his results. Even the Home Office didn’t argue with them: they’d recently given him a three-year extension to his service. Chris Rushton said acidly, ‘Chief Superintendent Lambert is presently fully occupied with a complex fraud case in the north of our area. He is fully informed about this incident and the threats made to you, Mr Cullis.’

  ‘And no doubt if they carry out those threats and slit my throat he’ll take charge of the murder inquiry. A fat lot of good that will be to me!’