Merely Players

by J M Gregson

  A powerful motorbike, roaring throatily in the distance, then changing gear as it turned into the parking bay and stopped behind Jack Chadwick’s Citroen. The two tall men who climbed off the bike were in black leathers and gauntlets. They did not remove the helmets for a moment, which they spent studying the frost-coated BMW sports car which was cordoned off in the car park. Then they turned and marched carefully to where Chadwick and his team had stopped work to witness their impressive entrance.

  The leading figure removed his helmet only when he was two yards short of Jack Chadwick. There were involuntary starts of shock in the three people behind Chadwick, for the features now revealed were almost as black and shiny as the helmet which had concealed them. Everyone who worked at Brunton police station would have already recognized the Yamaha 350. The black face gazed for a moment around the civilian faces, then smiled and said, ‘Detective Sergeant Clyde Northcott. And this is DC Brendan Murphy. Anything of interest yet?’

  ‘We have, yes. Percy Peach not coming today?’ Chadwick had been looking forward to a few words with his old comrade.

  Northcott’s smile broadened to a grin. ‘Percy sent the poor bloody infantry, didn’t he? Too cold for him, I expect. He won’t be in church, if I know Percy. He’ll be still in bed, with Lucy Blake as was. Lucky sod!’

  It was said without bitterness but with genuine envy. Lucy Blake, with her dark red hair, blue-green eyes and ample curves, had been the object of many advances and many more erotic fantasies among the male officers of the Brunton service. It had been an immense surprise and a source of lasting regret among them when she had announced her commitment to the bald, bustling figure with the out of date black toothbrush moustache. Percy Peach was a local detective legend, a figure who excited respect and fear in equal measure among his juniors, but they had not thought of him as a rival for the delectable Detective Sergeant Blake. But all argument and all speculation were over now; she was Mrs Lucy Peach. Not all envy, though; virile young men and the odd woman still clung to their sexual fantasies.

  Brendan Murphy, a native Lancastrian despite his Irish name and heritage, rubbed his hands vigorously together and beat his arms rapidly across his chest. ‘Last time you’ll get me on that damned bike! I had my eyes shut most of the time. And now I’m bloody frozen!’

  The four people who had already begun work on the site smiled at him in friendly fashion. When you were dragged out on a morning like this to work in a place like this, it was always good to see someone even colder and more distressed than you were. ‘You’ll live!’ Northcott growled unsympathetically towards the fresh, unlined face which was almost as white as his was black. ‘Put another woolly on next time.’

  Murphy informed them that he was wearing a thermal vest and long johns, but no one was interested any more. Jack Chadwick had lifted their one indisputable trophy and was holding it out reverently in gloved hands towards Clyde Northcott, as if he were an acolyte in some solemn religious service.

  Northcott did not touch it, but studied it for a moment through the transparent plastic which already protected it against contamination. ‘You’re holding a lot of money there, Jack. That’s a Purdey. Is it the murder weapon?’

  ‘Almost certainly, I should think, unless it was left here to divert us. Forensic and the pathology boys will confirm it. But all of us here know enough to be certain that this man died from a shotgun fired at close quarters.’

  The two policemen turned towards the white mound they had been conscious of since they came here. They stared down wordlessly for a moment at the shattered torso and the crimson-black spattering on the white ground. Above them, the face was curiously unmarked, frozen into a rictus of surprise, with only two spots of now blackened blood upon it. The sun was rising now, slowly melting the thin layer of whiteness which covered the grisly contents of this cordoned area. On the face of the corpse, only the eyebrows still held their covering of frost.

  It was the woman in the team who identified the victim. She gave a quick gasp and said, ‘That’s Alec Dawson. Or rather the man who plays him, Adam Cassidy.’

  Jack Chadwick and the others abandoned their work for a moment and came over to confirm this. It was Chadwick who said, ‘You’re right, Annette. Never watch that rubbish myself, because it’s so far away from real policing.’ He was anxious to assert his ex-copper status with the derision he knew would be the police reaction. ‘But my wife loves the series.’ He glanced round his team. ‘This is a local celebrity, the most famous man to come out of Brunton for a long time. The shit’s going to hit the fan when this gets out. For God’s sake, let’s make sure we don’t miss anything.’

  The two CID men looked round at what they recognized already as an unpromising scene of crime. The photographer had already finished his work here; he was helping a younger woman to conduct a minute examination of the frozen ground. They each had tweezers and sample bags. They had already collected several cigarette ends and a few hairs from a stunted hawthorn. These looked animal rather than human; dogs too felt calls of nature, and their owners usually took them further away from parking areas, in unconscious acknowledgement of man’s pre-eminence over the rest of the animal world.

  The pair were treating this ground with due care, carefully skirting the dark yellow circle of Wayne Carter’s urination before he discovered the corpse. So far, they had found none of the used contraceptives which were too often discarded in places like this. Perhaps this spot was too wintry and exposed for even the hardy fornicators of Lancashire. But they would bag everything they found here, however unsavoury. Ninety per cent, perhaps a hundred per cent, of what they took away would have no relevance to this crime, but there was no means of distinguishing that on site.

  ‘Have you done the car yet?’ asked Northcott.

  ‘No. The keys were in his pocket, though. I’ve opened the door and had a quick look, but we’ll move on to it when we’ve finished here. I don’t think we’ll find much in the BMW. It’s very new: only eight hundred miles on the clock. The passenger seat looks as if it’s never been used. Maybe it hasn’t.’

  Brendan Murphy came back to the one jewel the place had so far offered to its investigators. He looked down at the shotgun, then at the corpse, then back at the most experienced man there. ‘Any chance of suicide?’

  Jack Chadwick came and stood beside him. When you find the instrument of death near a body, it holds about it a strange wonder. The pair stared at the inanimate object as if it could tell them more, if they only looked at it long enough. Jack eventually said, ‘This isn’t suicide. At least not in my view, but forensics will confirm it. For a start, suicides normally shoot themselves in the head, especially if they’re using a shotgun. And though recoils can do strange things to weapons, the Purdey was lying too far away from the body for this to be self-inflicted.’

  ‘Then why should a killer leave it here for us to find?’

  Chadwick glanced at the fresh young face beside him. DC Murphy was eager for knowledge, not afraid to appear naïve if that’s what the search for knowledge demanded. ‘We don’t even know for certain yet that this is the murder weapon. If it is, then it’s possible that someone who was shocked by what he had done simply flung away the shotgun in a panic. The more likely reason for it’s being here is that your killer didn’t care if it was found, because he knew it wouldn’t tell you anything about him.’ Killers were always male until you knew otherwise, simply because in violent deaths men were overwhelmingly more numerous. ‘We’ve already fingerprinted it and found nothing useful.’

  Murphy beat his arms across his chest again. He wasn’t looking forward to getting back astride the Yamaha. He glanced at Clyde Northcott, who seemed to be preparing to do just that, then down again at the shotgun in its wrapper. ‘Even someone who wasn’t contemplating murder when he came here would have been wearing gloves in December, in a place like this.’

  ‘Welcome to the murder team,’ said DS Northcott grimly.

  Chief Superintendent Thomas B
ulstrode Tucker was an enthusiastic but dreadful golfer. This combination exists in all sports, but it is commonest in golf. There are many reasons for that. The commonest is probably the much-lauded handicap system, which allows the abject to play against the proficient, on what should be level terms. The system is more complex for the outsider than the Bible and Koran combined, but basically it means that the duffer is given extra shots to compensate for his dufferdom.

  Thomas Bulstrode Tucker disappeared resolutely to the course on Sunday mornings, worshipping at his chosen golfing shrine come sun, rain, hail or frost. Brunnhilde Barbara, who controlled the rest of his social life with a Valkyrean fierceness, indulged him in this. She approved of three things in her husband: his high rank in the police service; his embracement of Freemasonry, where he was in line to become Master of his local lodge; and his participation in the mystic rites of golf. She was under the impression that the latter two had helped him to a series of promotions, that he would not be a chief superintendent without his enthusiastic membership of his local lodge and of Brunton Golf Club.

  The only one of the three with which Barbara could claim any personal contact was Freemasonry. Thomas looked good in an evening suit, or even a well-tailored lounge suit; she had judged him against others on ladies’ nights at his own and other lodges, and found in his favour. He was quite handsome, with his full, well-groomed head of hair, now attractively silvered at the temples. He could make an adequate speech at the Masons, where the standard of competition was not high. There was ample scope for the conventional, and Thomas could be neither heckled nor questioned.

  Because of her husband’s perceived success at the lodge, Brunnhilde Barbara had no idea how abject was his failure both as the Head of Brunton CID and as a humble playing member of Brunton Golf Club. Indeed, she was wont to announce with a Wagnerian certainty at coffee mornings that Thomas played golf and that she understood he was quite good at it.

  Percy Peach knew that he was not.

  He ranked Tommy Bloody Tucker as one of the world’s worst golfers. In Percy’s not entirely unbiased view, his chief’s golf was a reflection of his capacity as a senior police officer. Another question which posed itself to Percy Peach’s perennially enquiring mind was why the worst golfers so often seemed intent upon drawing attention to their ineptitude by wearing the most garish golfing attire.

  On this bright but bitterly cold morning, Tucker favoured a tight-fitting pale-blue cap with the legend ‘Welsh Ryder Cup, 2010’ as its badge. His sturdy physique sported a canary yellow roll-neck sweater. His lower limbs carried plus twos in a scarlet and green tartan which even the most colour-blind of Highland chieftains had surely never sanctioned. His knee-length socks were a deeper yellow than his canary sweater; their neatness was marred by the loose threads which bore witness to his frequent sorties into bushes in search of his errant golf ball. The deep scuffing in the leather of his two-tone fawn and white golf shoes also demonstrated heroic endurance rather than expertise.

  The chief superintendent was having one of his better golfing mornings. The ball was running long on frozen fairways, so that when he topped his drives, as he habitually did, they were running like startled rabbits over the iron-hard ground. To avoid damage to the regular greens, the few enthusiasts on the course today were forced to use the temporary greens, which on frozen turf made putting a game of chance. The holes on these rough surfaces were six inches in diameter rather than the normal four and a quarter. This lottery was today favouring the duffer Tucker, the man who had long suffered at the unremitting hands of the gods of golf.

  The larger holes were gathering in the putts of this peacock practitioner of the sport. Tucker and his three companions had agreed on the first tee that serious golf was impossible. These conditions could offer no more than healthy fresh air and exercise. But as the morning wore on and Tucker’s ball disappeared erratically into a succession of the large holes, these same conditions became in his view ones which tested the skills and adaptability of the dedicated golfer.

  The three men with him were by now ready to welcome any diversion from his voluble celebrations. They were thus quite happy to see a motionless figure waiting as impassive as the grim reaper beside the tee on the thirteenth hole.

  T.B. Tucker was not. He ignored the muffled man in black ostentatiously, insisting that they putt out on the frozen temporary green of the twelfth. It was a move which was in his view immediately justified. His own putt from some six yards was at least a foot wide of the hole when it hit a frozen heel-mark on its second bounce, broke sharply left, and dived into the edge of the large hole. ‘Read that one just right!’ said Tucker with satisfaction. His companions looked at each other and cast their eyes towards heaven as they followed him glumly. He evidently meant that seriously.

  ‘What the hell do you want?’ Tucker enquired aggressively of his chief inspector.

  ‘And a good morning to you, sir!’ returned Percy Peach equably. ‘Most effective use of the googly, if I may say so. I’ve never seen a googly turn like that on the second bounce before.’

  ‘This is the one chance in the week I get to relax. And you have to pursue me, even here!’

  Percy, conscious of the three men listening expectantly behind his chief, bowed his head reverently for a moment. ‘I’m very sorry, sir. I’m merely acting on orders. Your orders.’ His smile when he looked up again was splendidly complacent.

  ‘I never ordered you to disturb me and my friends at the golf club.’

  Percy had removed his bobble hat as Tucker approached. He now allowed his eyebrows to rise a little towards the whiteness of his bald pate. For an impressive moment, he looked hurt but mute in the face of this injustice. ‘You told me you were to be apprised immediately of any serious crime on our patch, sir. With particular attention to high-profile cases.’

  Tucker had walked on to the tee. He now teed the ball for his drive, determined to impress his companions with his insouciance in the face of this impertinent interference. ‘Well, what is it, then?’

  ‘A suspicious death, sir. A death which in my opinion is almost certainly murder.’

  Tucker paused in addressing his ball. ‘What sort of murder? Don’t tell me you’ve come here to report some routine domestic incident.’

  ‘Murder is never merely an incident, sir. You said that to me in 2008, sir. I remember thinking what a worthwhile reminder it was for all of us. I treasure your aphorisms, sir.’

  Tucker, who was not quite sure what an aphorism was, decided to dispatch his ball whilst he pondered this. It was a mistake. His familiar crouch over the ball translated itself suddenly into the galvanic heave of his backswing. It was a little too much for his worn shoe-studs to handle on this frozen turf. His feet slid swiftly from beneath him and his garish posterior hit the unyielding ground with a thump which seemed to the appreciative onlookers to measure at least four on the Richter scale.

  After a few seconds of a silence which throbbed with suppressed hilarity, Tucker’s partner in the four-ball managed to enquire whether he had seriously damaged himself. An opponent suggested hopefully that they would quite understand if he wished to abandon golf for the day in view of the farcical conditions. Tucker shrugged their solicitude nobly aside, rolled on to all fours, and rose gingerly to assert his shattered authority. He said with all the sarcasm he could muster, ‘And what exactly do you expect me to do about this, Peach?’

  Percy studied him for a moment with his head on one side. ‘You could shorten your backswing a little, sir. Turn the shoulders by all means, but resist with the hips. Your energy and determination were impressive, but you lost balance, you see. You could try—’

  ‘Not about my golf swing, you fool! What do you expect me to do about this so-called high-profile murder?’

  ‘Ah!’ Percy studied the ground for a few seconds; it seemed that the evidence in the frost of his chief’s recent fall held a professional interest. Then he said thoughtfully, ‘Well, sir, I expect you to do nothing of any
consequence. I expect you to maintain your professional overview of the situation, as it is your professed policy to do. I have fulfilled my orders in coming here to apprise you of events.’

  The three men behind the chief superintendent in charge of Brunton CID were listening intently, but one of them had his hand over his mouth, whilst the other two were finding the top of a frost-covered fir tree to the left of them of absorbing interest. Apparently their pompous companion’s mastery of the local crime scene was not as absolute as he always professed it to be in the clubhouse.

  T.B. Tucker strove to assert himself. ‘I shall take overall charge of the case, of course. You will direct the day-to-day investigation, Peach. You will start by questioning anyone who had any sort of a grudge against the dead man. Is that clear?’

  Percy marvelled at how this man never lost his talent for the blindin’ bleedin’ obvious. ‘Of course, sir.’ He produced a notebook and ball-pen from some recess in his heavy clothing and adopted an even more formal tone. ‘Could you give me a full account of your movements on Friday night and Saturday morning, please, sir?’

  ‘I was— what the hell do you mean, Peach?’

  ‘I’m obeying orders again, sir. I have reason to think from statements you made to me last week that you had a great dislike of the dead man, as a result of an appearance with him on a television programme called The Gerry Clancy Show. If you could just tell me where you were at these times, preferably with the name of a witness who could confirm your statement, I shall probably be able to eliminate you from the initial list of suspects.’

  Tucker’s jaw dropped to reflect his total bafflement. Peach was glad to note the familiar distressed-goldfish look on these noble features. He had only seen it indoors before, usually in the sanctity of Tommy Bloody Tucker’s office. In this more public setting, the look was even more impressive. The chief super managed just two syllables before the vacancy overtook him again. ‘You mean—’