[Lambert and Hook 21] - A Good Walk Spoiled

by J M Gregson

  Lambert smiled, digesting the idea. ‘Enough, you say. What exactly would you mean by that?’

  ‘I know about ricin.’

  ‘I see. Very frank of you, that. I think you’ll find that frankness is much the best policy. Do you also know who used ricin?’

  ‘I meant I know all about its deadliness as a poison. About how difficult it is to counteract, or even detect. Most chemists with any sense of curiosity are aware of ricin, because of the case of Georgi Markov. I was only a child at the time, but I still remember the excitement that case caused.’

  ‘So I expect you knew it was available in the laboratories where your wife worked.’

  ‘Debbie had nothing to do with this, Superintendent Lambert.’

  He had suddenly become tight-lipped and tense. This was a welcome development to Lambert, who had long since learned that all successful CID men must be predators. ‘I didn’t suggest that she had, Mr Young. All that I know is that it is almost certainly one of the people sitting with you at that table on Tuesday night who committed a premeditated murder. If you are now telling me that you can prove that person wasn’t your wife, I shall be very grateful for the information.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I just know that Debbie wouldn’t do such a thing. Couldn’t do such a thing.’ He sought desperately for words which would convince them, would convince himself.

  ‘Your conviction about that is admirable. But you will understand that we must be sceptical, until we have some definite proof.’

  ‘I can’t give you that. But I know she didn’t do it.’

  Hook smiled at him, relaxing the tension. ‘They say that poisoning is a woman’s crime, Mr Young. There is a certain amount of statistical evidence to support the view.’

  ‘Debbie didn’t do it,’ Paul said desperately. ‘I could have got hold of ricin as easily as she could. I go into the laboratories sometimes. Fairly often, really.’

  ‘And did you do that?’

  ‘No. But I’m just saying, I could have done. Or Debbie could have given me the ricin to administer.’

  ‘Which would have made her an accessory to murder. Is that what happened, Paul?’

  ‘No, of course it isn’t. Debbie had nothing to do with this death.’ He glared at Hook, trying to convince him. It was only as an afterthought that he added, ‘And neither did I!’

  Lambert had been studying the vehemence with which he defended his wife. It might mean merely that he loved her and found it inconceivable that she could commit murder, or it might mean something very different. ‘So who did murder Richard Cullis, Mr Young?’

  Paul realized for the first time that he was breathing deeply and irregularly. ‘I don’t know. Priscilla Godwin, perhaps, if you think it’s a woman. From what I’ve heard, she had good reason. But I’m not accusing her: I’m just telling you that it wasn’t Debbie.’

  Lambert studied him for a moment. Then he stood up abruptly. ‘I hope you secure suitable new employment quickly, Mr Young. Please don’t leave the area without notifying us about your movements.’

  Lambert felt a deep weariness at the end of a long day. He was getting old: the days when he could work for sixteen hours without noticing the passage of time were gone now. He drove the old Vauxhall Senator which he stubbornly refused to relinquish into the garage and paused to smell the roses which were still flowering freely on his way to the door of the house. The scent was best at this time, on the edge of darkness.

  Christine opened the door before he could insert his key. ‘Jacky’s here,’ she said softly.

  John Lambert’s first feeling was of pleasure that his elder daughter should be here. The bond went back to those distant days which still felt to him very near, when he had dandled her on his knee and coaxed her into her first words. Then a more selfish feeling took over, as his weariness reminded him that he had been looking forward to a quiet meal and drowsy hours in front of the television, not breezy attempts to cheer up a woman who had recently endured a bruising divorce. There were only so many times that you could remind yourself and your daughter that it could have been worse, that at least there were no children involved.

  Christine knew her husband well - too well, John often thought ruefully. She waited for his mental sigh, then spoke in short, rapid sentences, needing to get all her information out without interruption. ‘She rang at lunchtime. She was quite excited. She told me there’s a new man. He’s here with her tonight. I suggested they came for dinner.’

  Lambert made quite a business of putting his short coat upon a hanger in the cloaks cupboard, giving himself time to think. ‘What does he do?’

  Christine grinned indulgently. ‘Shouldn’t you be asking whether I like him first?’

  He grinned back, enjoying the moment of mutual self-knowledge they could not have savoured in their younger days. ‘You’ll tell me he seems quite nice, which will mean absolutely nothing. You’ll be determined to see the best in him, for your daughter’s sake.’

  She didn’t trouble to deny it. ‘If that’s your attitude, you grumpy sod, you’d better come and meet him! For your information, I think he’s a solicitor.’

  ‘Not a bloody lawyer!’ Lambert displayed the policeman’s ritual horror of the species.

  His outrage lacked impact, since the whole of this brief exchange had been conducted in hushed tones. Now Lambert braced himself mentally and physically and went into the sitting room with his shoulders thrown back and a determined smile. Jacky was already standing; the slim man beside her wore collar and tie and a well-fitting suit. She gave her father the bright, brittle smile of a daughter bringing a man forward for her father’s scrutiny. ‘This is Tim Cohen, Dad.’

  They shook hands. Lambert caught a whiff of aftershave. The man was clean-shaven and his expensive shirt and tie were impeccably clean. You had to be thankful for such things nowadays, John told himself, though he had known hundreds of clean villains and a few dirty saints in his time. Cohen had a short, well-trimmed beard, which was unusual among lawyers. Not a conformist then, which was no doubt an excellent thing as far as Jacky was concerned. He was a few years younger than her, Lambert’s expert eye told him.

  ‘We’re having fish pie,’ said Christine as they moved towards the dining room a few moments later. She fixed her husband with a basilisk eye for an instant, warning him not to query the change of menu.

  ‘Tim’s a vegetarian,’ said Jacky rather too quickly.

  ‘Not a vegan or anything too severe,’ said Cohen nervously. ‘I’m always willing to enjoy fish.’

  ‘I like fish pie,’ said John Lambert determinedly.

  They disposed of the weather quickly, congratulating themselves on the calm, mild October days and the absence as yet of much autumn colour. Then Tim spoke as if making a confession. ‘I was in the station at Oldford today. We do quite a bit of legal-aid work. I saw Detective Inspector Rushton and a detective sergeant, whose name I forget.’

  ‘Probably Bert Hook. I expect they made you very welcome.’

  For the first time, the two women felt the air crackling above the dining table. Christine said, ‘No shop at meal times. It’s one of the rules of the house.’

  Lambert grinned apologetically at Cohen, making them for a moment two helpless males conforming to the domestic rules of the distaff. Rushton had actually given him a brief report on the meeting with Scott Kennedy. Cohen’s vegetarianism fell into place now: he must be an All God’s Creatures supporter. He tried not to feel a prejudice against this connection, telling himself that it was nice to meet a lawyer with moral convictions.

  He was aware of Jacky watching him, measuring his reactions to this new presence in her life. He watched her too, wondering just how serious the relationship was, whether Jacky had taken the initiative in bringing Tim Cohen here or whether it was Christine’s anxiety to see the new man which had brought this tension to his evening meal. Was Jacky, even at what seemed to him her tender age, flattered by the attentions of a younger man? How much was she just w
elcoming male attention after the shattered confidence which always follows a rejection by a long-term partner? How well did she actually know Cohen? How much of this new liaison depended on the strength of pure sexual attraction?

  He wondered about these things, but came up with few answers. After thirty years of analysing people and their motives, he was normally adept at such insights, but tonight he discovered little. He was much too close to the woman he was studying to be objective.

  Cohen excused himself at the end of the meal and went to the bathroom. Lambert insisted on going to his bedroom to change into the more comfortable clothes he would have donned as soon as he came into the house had it not been for this unheralded visitor. Thinking that the bathroom would now be empty, he tried the door on his way back to join the company.

  The door opened, but the room was not empty. Lambert said, ‘I’m sorry. That lock doesn’t always catch. I really must get round to...’

  Cohen looked up from the washbasin with a face full of guilt. ‘I was nervous. I don’t usually—’

  ‘Not here you don’t.’ Lambert’s voice was harsh with shock. He stared at the banknote in Cohen’s hand, at the few grains of white powder which were still on the porcelain at the edge of the washbasin.

  ‘It’s only a snort of coke. You must understand that the evening has been something of an ordeal for me, Mr Lambert, that—’

  ‘I should arrest you, here and now.’ They stared at each other for a moment, with Lambert’s shock and anger matched by the fear and defiance in the younger man’s face. ‘Have you offered drugs to my daughter? I advise you not to lie to me about this.’

  ‘No. It’s a social habit, that’s all. Everyone in my circle—’

  ‘You’re a fool, Mr Cohen. I shall say nothing downstairs, for the moment. Get out of my house as quickly as politeness allows. Kick this bloody “social habit”. If you ever introduce my daughter to it, you can forget a career in the law. Now get out!’

  Lambert did not move until he heard the sound of Cohen’s voice with the two women downstairs, telling them that he had to go, that he hadn’t realized how the time had passed. He was doing it too well, almost glibly. What other deceptions had he practised upon Jacky?

  When Lambert finally moved, he washed the tiny vestiges of cocaine away three times, wondering what he should do about Jacky, wondering whether there could even be room for diplomacy in a situation like this.

  Seventeen

  Ben Paddon, who was normally a sound sleeper, spent a very disturbed night. He woke after only an hour from a rest beset by confusing dreams. For a long time, he could not sleep again. At five o’clock, his fevered mind was rehearsing for the tenth time what he would say to the CID officers he was to see in the morning. At half-past seven, the alarm he normally switched off before it sounded startled him back into the consciousness he had lost less than an hour earlier.

  The staff files in the hands of the CID revealed that Paddon had been working at Gloucester Chemicals for two years and was twenty-seven. To Lambert he looked younger than that, an impression which was reinforced by his obvious apprehension and his rather gauche manner. He was tall and gangling, already developing the slight stoop which was the bane of tall men; he strode cautiously across the small, low-ceilinged room, as if he feared to damage things by more rapid movement. His dark hair would have benefited from a skilled trim; he had a nose which seemed longer because of its thinness and restless blue eyes behind large-lensed glasses.

  He had said that he would rather see them in his flat than at work. Lambert and Hook looked round the combined living room and kitchen with their normal swift, unembarrassed observation. There were the standard television and DVD player and a hi-fi tower which was flanked by a large collection of CDs and DVDs, classical and popular. There were family photographs on top of a bookcase which threatened to overflow with paperbacks, but the walls were crowded with pictures of modem landscapes, African and Asian as well as British. Photographs were mixed with paintings, with mountain scenes prominent. There were pictures of Kilimanjaro and of the great Himalayan panoramas alongside Snowdonia and the Western Highlands. Some of the more intimate pictures had animals within the scenes; there were tigers and cougars as well as native birds and red squirrels. There was scarcely a foot of wall without a picture. A print of Landseer’s Monarch of the Glen stmck an inappropriate Victorian note among the more modem pictures.

  They took him through his unremarkable statement about the sudden collapse and death of Richard Cullis, confirming his determined assertion that both had been a complete surprise to him. Then Lambert said unexpectedly, ‘Good golfer, are you, Mr Paddon?’

  ‘Not bad. I’m better than people expect me to be, I think. I’m twelve handicap and I usually manage to get somewhere near it.’ He smiled deprecatingly as his scientist’s objectivity led him into this un-English lack of modesty. ‘People tell me I could be quite good, if I played more.’

  ‘Yes. One or two of the other statements indicate that people were surprised to find you playing on Tuesday.’

  ‘I was a little surprised myself, as a matter of fact. But Richard was anxious to have everyone out who played at all. It was the first company golf day and he wanted it to be a bonding exercise.’ There was a hint of derision in the way he pronounced the phrase.

  ‘So you didn’t play just to have the opportunity of getting close to Mr Cullis?’

  Ben felt a sudden stab of alarm at the way the older man had led him into this. ‘So that I could poison his food, you mean? No. The impetus came from Richard, as I said, not from me. In any case, I had plenty of opportunities at work, if I had intended him any serious harm.’

  ‘But few of them with a group of other suspects conveniently gathered around him, I should think.’ Lambert found unexpectedly that he rather liked this loose-jointed young man who looked so vulnerable but so far seemed quite able to hold his own in their exchanges. ‘Which of those people do you think killed your boss, Mr Paddon?’

  ‘I can’t help you there, I’m afraid. But I can tell you one thing I did notice: no one seemed to be riven with grief. The death was a shock, of course, but after the initial consternation, no one seemed to be desolated. Richard Cullis had a lot of enemies around that table, you know - sorry, I’m sure you do know that, by this time. It’s your business to find out these things, isn’t it?’ He smiled deprecatingly at Hook, who was taking notes.

  Lambert’s smile was much grimmer. ‘We’re building up a picture of the dead man and his friends and enemies, yes, Mr Paddon. We have to do that from scratch, because a murder victim can never speak for himself. We need to know about your own relationship with him.’

  ‘Almost purely professional, Superintendent. I’ve been at Gloucester Chemicals for four years and Richard was my boss for the last two of them. He encouraged me in my work and congratulated me upon my small successes. I knew him through our almost daily exchanges in the labs. I hardly ever saw him after work, except on company occasions. The golf day at Belmont was really one of those.’ This was what he had planned to say and it came out quite well, he thought. That was probably because it was true. Ben was sure that he’d read somewhere that the best liars always told the truth whenever it couldn’t hurt them.

  ‘Tell us about your work in the laboratories, Mr Paddon. ’

  ‘I do the work I’m given. It’s mostly experimental, but that isn’t as exciting as it sounds. You go down a lot of blind alleys, reaching the conclusions you expect to find, but that’s because all new drugs have to be thoroughly tested before they can be released for use on the public.’

  ‘This includes tests on animals?’

  ‘It does, yes. We are careful to use animals as infrequently as possible and to ensure that the minimum of discomfort is occasioned, but the public has to be safeguarded: occasionally the use of the animals is the only way to ensure that.’ It was the company line; he had mouthed it at interview to secure his job in the first place, and often enough since to keep
up his front with Cullis and his colleagues.

  Perhaps he had delivered it a little too glibly, for instead of accepting it and moving on, Hook said, ‘You don’t find the use of helpless animals difficult, Mr Paddon? I think I should.’

  Ben smiled the practised, superior smile of the specialist. ‘I think all of us who work with small mammals find it difficult, DS Hook. The difference between scientists and the often very sentimental public we serve is that we accept the inevitability of a certain amount of animal testing. I think that there are certain small sections of our laboratory work which none of us enjoys, but we get on with it because there is as yet no reasonable alternative.’

  It sounded very stiff and mechanical, but Lambert decided that Paddon had probably delivered the same thoughts very often before. Animal experiments had had a lot of publicity and no doubt anyone involved in them was often called upon to state his case. ‘We don’t indulge in idle gossip, Mr Paddon. But when someone questioned in connection with a murder case tells us that the victim had lots of enemies, we have to follow that up. You said that no one round that table on Tuesday night was very upset at the sudden death of the man presiding over the occasion.’

  ‘I said that that was my impression, Superintendent.’

  ‘Indeed. And you showed commendable honesty in doing so. I should think the impressions of a scientist are more valid in such circumstances than those of less precise people.’ Lambert allowed himself his sliver of irony at the expense of this earnest young man, then spoke more sternly. ‘One of those people killed Richard Cullis. Which of them do you think it was?’

  Ben, in his relief at moving away from the subject of animals, found himself beset by an overwhelming urge to direct suspicion away from himself. ‘I don’t know: I should make that quite clear to you. But what I do know is that the women there all had good reason to dislike him.’

  His pale, unlined face suddenly had the eagerness of the gossip-monger. Lambert, who had picked up much useful information in his early CID days from elderly ladies observing from behind lace curtains, prompted him eagerly enough. ‘We had better have your thoughts on this, Mr Paddon, in the interests of furthering our inquiry. ’