[Lambert and Hook 21] - A Good Walk Spoiled

by J M Gregson

  ‘I’m asking for your reasons, Mr Dimmock. A moment ago, you told us that there were details of Cullis’s life you didn’t approve of.’ Lambert, sensing a weakness, was at his most ruthless.

  ‘I’ve told you I didn’t like him. There’s nothing more than that to tell.’

  Jason was thoroughly disconcerted by his own weakness. Normally his mind worked swiftly and the precise words to express his thoughts came easily to him: now both skills seemed to have deserted him. His senses reeled with an overwhelming sense of unfairness. He didn’t know how much they knew, what other people had told them in the last three days: this wasn’t an equal contest.

  It was at this point that the stolid, unthreatening Bert Hook looked up from his notes and smiled at him. ‘And yet others tell us that you were apparently quite friendly with Richard Cullis at one time.’ Hook’s voice was as gentle and persuasive as a therapist’s. Jason felt his head nodding, as if jerked by strings which someone else was controlling. ‘But by the time of his death you plainly disliked him intensely. I think you should tell us the reason for the change.’

  ‘I hated him.’ It seemed to Jason necessary to correct that word ‘dislike’, which was so neutral and so inadequate a word for the way he had felt about Cullis. ‘He’d given me every reason to hate him.’ He looked into the earnest, understanding, unthreatening face. ‘You know about this, don’t you?’

  ‘We need to hear it from you. We need to hear your version of events, you see.’ Hook was as inscrutable as an amiable Buddha.

  Jason nodded, almost eagerly. ‘He should never have done it. “Don’t shit on your own doorstep.” That’s one of the rules of the game for the wandering shagger, isn’t it?’ He gave a curious, mirthless giggle, finding that the obscenities were a sort of release for a man who normally avoided them. ‘Cullis should have kept his fucking away from work, shouldn’t he? That’s one of the rules to avoid trouble; everyone knows that. I know Lucy didn’t work here, but I did. If he’d kept his hands off Lucy, he’d have been all right.’

  Hook nodded: not a line on his face gave away the fact that this was new information. ‘When did this relationship between your wife and Mr Cullis begin, Jason?’

  This use of his first name would normally have made him suspicious: it was evidence of how far he had lost control of himself and the situation that he now leaned forward eagerly and said, ‘A year or so ago, I think. You’d have to ask Lucy, to be certain. They say the husband is always the last to know, don’t they?’ Again he followed his question with that odd mirthless giggle; it made a very odd sound in this quiet room with its dull office furniture.

  ‘Was it still going on at the time of Cullis’s death?’

  ‘No!’ The cry was more dismay than simple negative. It was followed by a look of horror on the normally quiet face. ‘Lucy has assured me time and again that it was over months ago. Are you telling me that she was lying, that she was still seeing the man right up to—’

  ‘I’m telling you nothing, Jason. I’m gathering information during the course of a murder inquiry. Mrs Dimmock gave us no details of this herself. Therefore I am asking you: when did this affair end?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I see. Well, three months ago, I think. ’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes, I’m certain. I’m sorry for the confusion. Lucy wouldn’t lie to me. I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that she might.’

  Lambert had watched Bert Hook’s probing with admiration. He now said, ‘Let’s be clear about this. Your wife began an affair with our murder victim one year ago. This lasted for nine months. You are confident that it ended then.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘And why did you conceal this information from us?’

  ‘It - it’s embarrassing, isn’t it? No man wants to announce to the world that he’s been cuckolded.’ Jason felt better now that the secret was out. He even enjoyed using the old- fashioned word he had never spoken before: perhaps the return of his vocabulary showed that he had a measure of control again.

  ‘Did you kill Richard Cullis?’

  ‘No. No, of course I didn’t.’ He tried desperately to put an edge of ridicule into his tone, feeling his senses beginning to reel again.

  ‘You’ve just outlined a motive for yourself. Cuckolds commit murders. The fact that you attempted to conceal both your wife’s affair and your own reaction to it reinforces the case against you.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have concealed it. My wife asked me to do it. For obvious reasons - Lucy isn’t proud of what she did.’ He wondered if she would be willing to bear him out, if they went back to her. He must get to her before they did.

  ‘Did Mrs Dimmock kill Cullis?’

  ‘No. That’s a preposterous idea.’ Again Jason could not summon the indignation and outrage he wanted.

  ‘You know that isn’t true, Mr Dimmock. Lovers who have been cast aside are usually afflicted by strong emotions. They often behave irrationally. Murder is an irrational crime.’

  Not so irrational when you stood where he did, Jason wanted to say: he bit back the words just in time. ‘She wasn’t “cast aside”, as you call it. It was Lucy who ended their affair.’ Even as he said it, the old, wounding fear struck back at him. She had told him that, again and again, but was it really true? Hadn’t Cullis left a trail of angry women behind him, moving on to the next one as the fancy took him? For almost the first time, he wondered how the termination of this coupling which had caused him so much pain had affected Lucy.

  Lambert’s grey, searching, unblinking eyes seemed to Jason to be all-seeing. They studied his face for seconds now before the superintendent made one of his disconcerting switches. ‘Mr Dimmock, your wife told us that you have a small laboratory in your own house.’

  ‘Yes. I have the facilities to do minor experiments. We have no children, so it seemed a sensible use of one of the rooms. It’s been useful over the years: I do minor research there, which sometimes suggests a line of more complicated experiments to be pursued with the infinitely greater facilities of the research labs at work. It’s prompted a few things like that, and saved a lot of time we might have spent going down blind alleys. It’s an example of using what was originally a hobby to provide useful pointers in working life.’ He was talking too much, trying to explain himself to scientific novices like them. He forced a smile. ‘Sorry, my enthusiasm’s getting the better of me. Would you like to see the place?’

  ‘Not at present, thank you.’ Lambert returned his smile. ‘I’m sure anything significant to our inquiry would long since have been removed, if it had ever existed. Does your wife have access to that room?’

  ‘Of course she does. But she doesn’t use it. I find I use it myself less frequently than in my early years at Gloucester Chemicals.’

  ‘And who do you think killed Mr Cullis?’ Another of those abrupt questions. But a welcome one, this time, switching attention away from him and Lucy at last. He smiled again, flicked a finger down the side of the nose which was a little too long, telling his inquisitor that he knew the game they were playing. ‘Detection is your job, not mine, Mr Lambert.’

  ‘And you know the principal suspects as well as anyone, and far better than DS Hook and I do. You promised to give the matter some thought when we left you on Tuesday evening.’ Jason nodded two or three times, checking his stance like the competent golfer he was before he committed himself. ‘And I have thought about it, without reaching firm conclusions. If I’d been Alison Cullis, I’d have wanted to kill him, I think: he was a rotten husband. If the rumours about what he did to Priscilla Godwin have any truth, she’d also have good reason for revenge. Debbie Young never liked him: she has never been able to accept that he was appointed to his job over her head. And Cullis had just been instrumental in firing Paul Young, which hadn’t left him very happy. Either or both of the Youngs could have planned that death.’

  ‘As could either or both of the Dimmocks. The forsaken woman and the cuckolded husband inflamed wi
th jealousy,’ Lambert reminded him. He allowed himself a grim smile, watching the man’s reactions. ‘The other man at that table was Ben Paddon. I’m rather surprised that you haven’t found a motive for him.’

  Jason didn’t rise to the bait. ‘He’s a quiet young man. A likeable young man, from what little I know of him. He does his work competently enough. He’s a bright boy, or he wouldn’t have got a job in our research labs, but something of an introvert. He doesn’t socialize much: I wouldn’t say I know him much better now than when he came here. He seems to me neither an admirer of Richard Cullis nor an enemy of his. I can think of no reason why he should kill him.’

  He said it with an air of regret, but Lambert did not comment on that. He was impressed by the scientist’s precise use of words. Bert Hook had got through his defences and exposed raw emotions for a moment or two, but otherwise he felt the man had delivered to them no more than he had planned. A coolly competent man this, as he had appeared when he had talked to them on Tuesday night, just after the murder.

  A man clearly seared by the thing he had attempted to conceal from them, his wife’s affair with Cullis. A man who clearly had the capacity to plan and execute a murder like this one.

  Ben Paddon took a long time to make a decision. Even when he had done that, he spent a good ten minutes pacing restlessly about his flat, wondering what words he should use. Eventually, he almost leapt at the phone, then tapped in the number with furious speed, before his nerve could break.

  It rang several times, until he thought she must be out. He was wondering how to phrase his message for the answering machine when a cool voice said, ‘Priscilla Godwin speaking.’

  ‘Pris, it’s me. Ben. Ben Paddon.’

  ‘Hello, Ben. What a relief to find it’s you - I thought it might be those CID men who’ve been prying around at the works over the last three days. What can I do for you?’

  She sounded genuinely pleased. He said, ‘I was wondering if you’d like to go out this evening. Perhaps to the cinema.’

  There was a pause, whilst he waited with heavy resignation for her rejection. Whatever excuse she made, he would help her out with it, saying that it had just been a spur-of-the- moment idea and absurdly short notice anyway. Then her voice said, ‘That’s a lovely idea. I’d be delighted to go with you. You choose the film. I’ll just be relieved to get out of this place.’

  He suggested Atonement and she accepted immediately, before he could explain that he’d read the book and enjoyed it: he’d hoped she might be impressed by that. She suggested that she’d pick him up in her car, and when he demurred, she said quickly, ‘I have my reasons. I prefer it that way. ’

  Ben accepted immediately, then ate his sandwich lunch with a sly, private smile. It had all been much easier than he’d anticipated it would be.

  Twenty

  The weather was good, for late October. But there was still quite a nip in the air after sundown; there might even be a frost, before the night was out, if the sky remained as clear of cloud as it was now.

  Paul Young liked this spot at the bottom of his long garden. You could see May Hill from here; the Gloucestershire rise was of no great height, but it was visible from many points in the county. It obscured the greater and more impressive heights of the Welsh hills beyond it, but it gave intimacy and definition to the ancient landscape around it. It was a natural, permanent feature, a landmark which brought consolation to those residents of the area who thought the world was changing too rapidly.

  It was almost six o’clock now, and there was not much light left in the silent landscape. Paul’s bonfire of autumn rubbish from his garden had been sending a thin column of grey smoke into the windless air. Now it blazed into sudden life, its intense light denying the view not only of May Hill but of anything more than a few yards away. He watched the dead wood he had placed at the centre glowing red, until the heat made him step back a pace. He looked towards the black outline of his house, where the orange lights were now dimmed by curtains. No curious eyes were following his movements.

  He waited another minute, checking that the cheerful blaze was at its most fierce. Then he took out the pages of the diary which he had shredded earlier in the house and placed them swiftly in the very centre of his blaze. He had to leap back quickly from the heat, but he pushed more wood around the fire with his rake, watching the tongues of flame lick around and then quickly swallow the curling worms of paper.

  He was leaning on his rake with satisfaction when he was startled to hear his wife’s voice calling to him from the house, telling him that they were almost ready to eat. ‘I’ll be there in five minutes, Debbie,’ he called back to his invisible informant. ‘I just want to make sure this fire is safe before I leave it!’

  He pushed the remaining garden detritus to the spot where the paper had vanished with the back of his rake, watching his blaze subside to a tiny, smouldering pyre, checking that there was now no remaining sign of the pages he had first shredded and then burnt.

  You could not be too careful, when the stakes were as high as this.

  Priscilla Godwin enjoyed her Saturday-night outing.

  The multi-screen cinema in Gloucester was crowded, giving her a pleasing sense of anonymity within a public place, a feeling she had not enjoyed since first the rape and then the murder of the rapist had dominated her world. The heterogeneous bustle of a weekend crowd, largely of noisy young people full of their own concerns, was just what she needed.

  Her escort became more attractive to her as he grew in confidence. It had been an awkward moment when she collected him from his flat; the reversal of normal roles seemed absurd and neither of them knew quite how to carry it off. The conversation was stilted in the car and in the cinema queue; then they made forced and not at all funny remarks to each other during the seemingly interminable series of adverts which prefaced the screening of Atonement. She accepted an ice cream she did not want just to have something to do with her hands and something to obviate the need for conversation.

  But the film was good, when it at last began, and the themes of childish betrayal and suffering in war were so far from what they had experienced in the last week that both of them were absorbed. An hour into the film, Priscilla let her hand steal gently sideways until it found Ben’s. He grasped it eagerly and she was surprised how much she welcomed the soft, reassuring, unthreatening squeeze of his fingers on hers. For a woman who had a week ago been abjuring any contact with men for the rest of her life, this was quite a turn-up, she admitted to herself wryly. He kept her hand in his for the rest of the film, but did not attempt to take matters any further.

  They chatted more naturally as they walked the two hundred yards to where she had parked the car. Beneath a sky now sprinkled with stars, there was a bite in the night air, and after a moment, she slipped her arm through Ben’s and walked with her side against his; she could feel the warmth of his tall, rather gangling frame as he held her lightly against him. They did not speak a lot, and it was mostly about the film, but the silences were easier between them now.

  ‘I’ll drop you off at your flat,’ she said unnecessarily as they eased themselves into the damp cold of her car. Lay down your own rules and make sure you stick to them, she had told herself before she set out.

  Yet when she got there, she was reluctant to leave him. Ben Paddon sat very still for a moment in the passenger seat, making no move towards her, yet unwilling to get out of the car and leave the evening incomplete. Eventually he said, ‘I heard what happened to you. I understand how you feel. I’ll just say good night and go, if that’s what you want. You decide.’

  Priscilla gazed straight ahead for what seemed to both of them a long time. Then she said slowly, ‘Thank you for being so understanding, Ben. I’d like to come in for a coffee, I think, if that’s all right with you. Just a coffee.’ She laughed at herself for the last phrase, found him joining in, grasped both his hands and pulled him towards her. They kissed each other briefly on the lips.

 
Ben said, ‘I think I’ve only got instant coffee!’ and they both laughed as if it was the wittiest rejoinder he could have made. She turned the car off the road and into the space he directed her to in the car park for the block of flats.

  He was glad he had left the heating on. His flat was warm and welcoming. She walked around the big living room and studied his photographs and paintings of animals, whilst he busied himself with coffee and made sure that the china cups and saucers he rarely used were perfectly clean.

  They sat and talked on his sofa for a long time after the coffee was finished. He had his arm round her, holding her comfortably against him, but he made no move to kiss her again. He was conscious of that other man, now dead, and what he had done to her, desperately afraid of appearing insensitive. Priscilla knew this, but was too unsure of her own reactions to help him.

  She persuaded him to talk to her about his successes at cricket and golf and his interest in animals: he told her how he had come to buy most of the pictures in his flat. He enjoyed telling her these things: for the first time in years, he was finding it easy to talk to a young woman. Ben did not learn very much about her, though he divined that she was actually very fond of the mother she humorously affected to find a burden.

  It was after a comfortable pause that she said suddenly, ‘Do you want me to stay the night?’ He pulled away from her, turned sideways to look into her face. ‘Do you really want to do that?’

  She grinned at him: he looked absurdly young and inexperienced in his earnestness. ‘I would not have asked if I hadn’t wanted to, would I, you goon?’

  ‘I’d love you to stay. It - it wasn’t expected, you know. ’

  ‘If it had been, I wouldn’t be here. And I’ll quite understand it if you want to send a nutcase on her way. ’

  ‘And why would I want to do that?’ Ben was suddenly smiling, confident, immensely pleased with himself and with her.