Merely Players

by J M Gregson

  ‘Get on with yer!’ said Agnes Blake delightedly. ‘But it’s good to see you. Haven’t seen you since that community meeting in the Paki quarter. I thought you were great, that night.’

  ‘Not as great as you, young lady. You got things going, you know, when you weighed in with Fazal Mahmood and cricket.’

  ‘I didn’t know I was going to speak until I was on my feet. But you spoke your piece after that. And people listened to you.’

  Lucy stepped firmly between them. ‘I am interrupting this mutual admiration society to announce that there is food available for you, Percy Peach. We’ve already eaten, but there’s a quiche in the oven and some fresh bread and salad to go with it, if you want them.’

  ‘That would be wonderful, my dear wife,’ said Percy with the beginnings of a bow. As an aside to Agnes as Lucy turned away, he whispered, ‘I’m no longer allowed to use the chip shop, now that I’ve been rescued by marriage.’

  ‘And a good thing too!’ said Agnes emphatically. ‘A man working as hard as you needs a proper diet, not all this junk food. I only hope her cooking’s improving. You tell me she’s a good copper, but she was never much cop at that!’ She giggled delightedly; she had thought up this witticism a week ago and stored it up for this occasion.

  ‘So how’s the village?’ he asked as they subsided into armchairs.

  ‘Getting over your marriage. I still get enquiries about that best man of yours from the girls in the supermarket, you know.’

  ‘Clyde Northcott? He’s my right-hand man now, you know. He’s taken the place of Lucy – in a manner of speaking. And you can tell them he’s still unattached.’

  ‘So how’s working life without my Lucy beside you, D.C.S.?’

  With the possible exception of her daughter, she was the only person in the world who knew and remembered that Percy’s real forenames were Denis Charles Scott, that a sports-mad father who was now long dead had named him after Denis Charles Scott Compton, one of the most popular of all English cricketers and the favourite batsman of Agnes Blake, who had been taken as a girl to see him play against the Australians at Old Trafford.

  ‘Busy but interesting, at the moment.’

  ‘Lucy says you’re working on this Adam Cassidy case that’s hit all the headlines.’ Agnes was far too well-trained by her daughter to ask what progress he was making. ‘You should still be playing cricket at the weekends. You need to get away from work. You left the game much too early.’

  It was a recurrent theme of hers. She had numerous cuttings and photographs of him as a quick-footed batsman for East Lancs, the Brunton team in the Lancashire League.

  ‘I wouldn’t be getting much cricket in December, Mrs B,’ Percy pointed out mildly.

  Further exchanges on the subject were prevented by the arrival of Lucy with a tray of Percy’s food. She had made tea for all three. The three of them made easy, unforced conversation whilst he ate. He hadn’t realized how little he’d eaten during the day or how hungry he was until he began to demolish the food on the tray.

  ‘Right! I’m off now,’ said Agnes, finishing her tea and downing her cup purposefully.

  ‘There’s really no need,’ said Percy gallantly.

  ‘There’s every need. You’ve both had a long working day and you need to relax and compare notes. And I’d already said my piece about grandchildren before you got home, Percy Peach!’

  ‘What a sensible woman you are, Mrs B!’ said Percy. Lucy was only twenty-nine, but her mother was seventy now, and anxious to have bairns about her whilst she could still be an energetic granny. ‘Between the two of us, we’ll talk some sense into the girl.’

  ‘The girl is a woman. A woman with a career to think of,’ said Lucy firmly. But she feared that her resistance was steadily weakening under the combined assault of this formidable duo.

  They watched Agnes drive her Fiesta carefully away into the darkness, then went back into the house. Percy was silent for so long on the sofa beside her that Lucy thought he must indeed be very tired. Then, just when she thought he might have dozed off, he said thoughtfully, ‘You need people like your mum around, when you do the work we do.’

  ‘And why would that be?’

  ‘You get tarnished, if you spend the whole of your life in crime. You lose a proper sense of perspective.’

  ‘And one woman of seventy helps you with that?’

  ‘Yes. You need to be reminded that the real world is full of genuine people, good people. They’re the people we’re working for in the end, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose they are. I think I see what you mean. Now that I’m working with the anti-terrorism security people, I see mainly Muslims. I have to remind myself constantly that the great mass of them are friendly, because the minority we’re concerned with are sinister and dangerous. If you’re not careful, you end up thinking everyone with an Asian face is a potential suspect. Innocence isn’t a thing that we see all that often, because it’s not what concerns us.’

  ‘I’ve been dealing with the cheaters and the beaters and the killers for a long time now. I see the illegal drugs trade sweeping over us like an incoming tide, whatever our small successes. It’s easy to throw up your hands and say it’s not worth bothering, or to be like Tommy Bloody Tucker and think only of PR and your pension. You need passion, if you’re going to succeed when evil seems all around you.’

  Lucy leaned across and kissed him on the forehead, then on the lips. ‘You’re quite a philosopher, Percy Peach, underneath all that aggression.’

  ‘No. I’m just a copper, fighting villains and trying to maintain a sense of proportion.’

  ‘You’re a little more than that.’ There was a pause. When he didn’t respond, she said quietly, ‘Passion, you said.’

  ‘Yes, I did, didn’t I? Speaking of which, I’ve had a busy day and it’s high time I was in bed.’ But he showed no immediate sign of moving from the sofa. His hands actively explored the curves and recesses which were so warm and so willing beside him. After a few minutes of increasing delight, he murmured into the ear beneath his lips, ‘She has a lot of good ideas, your Mum, doesn’t she?’

  Alarm bells she did not wish to heed tinkled at the back of Lucy’s brain. She forced herself to sit upright. ‘And what particular ideas would you be thinking of?’

  ‘High time she was made a granny, she said. Very understandable, that, in a woman of her years.’ Percy nodded enthusiastically.

  ‘Very understandable, but there are other considerations as well.’

  ‘I prefer to defer to the wisdom of age. There isn’t enough heed given to that in our society.’ And he led her firmly up the stairs to pursue this philosophy.

  NINETEEN

  The big living room of the old farmhouse had a ten-foot ceiling, but the top of the Christmas tree reached to within six inches of it. Once it had its lights and all of its decorations, it would certainly impress the three children who would focus on it and the presents at the foot of it on Christmas Day.

  ‘It’s going to look really good,’ said Jane Cassidy.

  ‘I shan’t do anything more with it at the moment. Thomas will want to help me with all the trimmings.’

  ‘I’m glad we’re coming round here on Christmas Day. Damon and Kate will be less likely to miss Adam if they’re not at home.’

  ‘Liz will be here to chaperone us. But don’t worry, my sister’s good with children. She was a big help with Thomas when Jessica left.’ Paul Barnes reached across and took her hands in his. ‘Do you think Christmas will be a big problem for the children?’

  Jane had already given that a lot of thought. ‘No, I don’t think so. Adam had seen so little of them over the last few months that they’re not as distraught as I’d expected. They seem to have taken it almost too well. I expect there’ll be the odd tear when they’re going to bed, but not a lot more than that. A small part of me wants there to be more, wants them to feel the loss of their father.’

  Paul had too much sense to say anythin
g in response to that thought. After a few moments, he said, ‘It will be good to spend Christmas together. It will be another step towards getting the kids used to us being together.’

  ‘Kate asked about you, last night. Asked whether we were good friends. I said yes. She didn’t seem to make any connection with Adam.’

  ‘Thomas asked me about us, too. He likes you; I think he’s quite looking forward to our being together. Of course, it’s different for him; he scarcely remembers Jessica now.’

  ‘The counsellor came to see me yesterday. I imagine the police arrange it. I talked to her mainly about the children. She said children accept things quickly and easily, so long as you make it seem natural to them. They’re remarkably adaptable.’

  ‘It’s good that Thomas gets on so well with your two. I think he enjoys feeling in charge, having the responsibility for the younger ones.’

  ‘They’re great together. Ingrid was quite happy to have the three of them for the morning. She’s planning to take them out for a walk, when the sun gets a bit higher in the sky.’

  ‘It’s a lovely day. But we’d getter get on with wrapping these presents if we’re to justify your nanny’s gallant efforts.’ They proceeded to do just that, working in companionable silence, apart from comments about the presents and how they would be received in five days’ time.

  The rambling old stone building had thick walls, but the irregular windows had not been double-glazed, so that exterior sounds penetrated fairly easily when things within were quiet. Barnes’s sharp ears caught the sound of the vehicle as it turned off the lane and began the half-mile journey up the paved track to his farm. Jane Cassidy caught the note later, as the engine changed gear and climbed the last two hundred yards. The pair were at the window by the time the police car turned into the cobbled farmyard and parked unhurriedly near the door.

  Detective Chief Inspector Peach, dapper in a light-grey suit, and the much taller Detective Sergeant Northcott, black and menacing in a navy-blue roll-neck sweater. They looked up at the window of the living room for a moment, and caused Jane and Paul to recoil like guilty things, staring at each other with a wild surmise.

  Barnes had composed himself by the time he ushered the two men into the room. He said a little awkwardly, ‘It’s the CID, Jane. Here to ask us a few more questions, though I don’t see what we can add to what we’ve already told them.’

  He stood in a light-blue V-neck sweater beside Clyde Northcott, almost as tall as the policeman, looking in that moment almost as white as Northcott was black. Paul seemed almost rooted to the spot after his introduction, so that Jane said hurriedly, ‘We were just about to have coffee, gentlemen. Would you care to join us?’

  Rather to her surprise, Peach accepted the invitation, once she had given her assurance that the kettle was already on the Aga and it wouldn’t take long. She didn’t realize that he was content to assess the situation, to take the pulse of the relationship between these two, to assess the degree of collusion there had been between them and where they planned to go from here. It was also the first time that Northcott had been involved with him in a situation like this, where you needed to play the cards you held with skill, if you were to secure the further evidence you needed.

  Peach looked round the big room, taking in the impressive half-decorated Christmas tree and the gaudy Christmas paper upon the floor. He stared for a moment without comment at the space rocket which was destined for Thomas and the paint-set Paul had just begun to wrap for young Kate. It felt to Barnes like a violation. He wanted to hustle these things away from prying police eyes, to protest against the smearing of childish innocence which this CID study seemed to him to imply.

  Instead, he went and sat down awkwardly on the edge of the old red leather sofa which was normally so comfortable and waited for Jane to return with the coffee. The visitors seemed much happier with the silence than he was. Paul’s first thought was that they had already made a mistake; by offering to make the coffee, Jane had showed them how familiar she was with the geography of his house, how much she already felt at home here. Then he realized that they had already admitted an affair, that the discretion they tried to exercise with the rest of the public had no place here.

  As if he had read these thoughts, Peach took up that idea when Jane had handed round the coffee and biscuits, with the lithe assistance of DS Northcott. Only when Jane was sitting on the leather sofa beside Barnes did Percy break the silence, which seemed to Barnes to have stretched him to breaking point. Peach said with typical pugnacity, ‘How long have you two been lovers?’

  There was a silence in which Northcott, poised with notebook open beside his mentor, felt he could almost feel the electrical charge. Peach watched the pair glance at each other in alarm, then added, ‘It’s just as well that the two of you are together, don’t you think? That way, you won’t be likely to contradict each other.’

  It was Jane who recovered first. She said, ‘Do you set out to be objectionable as a tactic, or does it just come naturally to you, DCI Peach?’

  Peach was not at all put out. He allowed himself a half-smile. ‘Perhaps I just don’t take kindly to people trying to deceive me. Particularly when a man has been brutally murdered.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that!’ The words were out before Paul could prevent them, his tongue frozen too late by the sudden look of horror on Jane’s face.

  Jane tried to rescue him. ‘Paul means our affair wasn’t like that – wasn’t something tawdry. To answer your question, we’ve been lovers for just over three months. That’s if your question is when did we first have sex together, as I presume it is. If you really mean love, it would be a little while before that.’

  Peach noted the precision of her reply. A woman to whom this relationship was important, who might perhaps kill or accept killing to further its progress. ‘Did Adam Cassidy know about this?’

  ‘No. He took plenty of lovers himself, you know.’

  ‘We do know, yes. You did your best to draw our attention to it. But his lovers are not relevant to this case. Whereas your affair with Mr Barnes most certainly is.’

  ‘We would dispute that. And I would ask you not to publicize our relationship at this point. It will leak out soon enough, I’m sure – country folk love the latest gossip. But we both have children to think of. It is no business of yours, but this isn’t a casual bit of sex on the side. We shall get married in due course, when people have had time to get used to the idea. Maybe in the autumn.’

  She was talking too much, probably because she was afraid of Barnes speaking at all. Peach said grimly, ‘You will certainly not be marrying this autumn, Mrs Cassidy. Both of you may well be in prison then.’

  She tossed her fair hair angrily in the warm air. ‘This is ridiculous! You cannot possibly substantiate that statement.’ She could feel Paul’s eyes upon her, but she forced herself not to look at him. Turning desperation into fury, she said to Peach, ‘Why are you doing this to me? Why do you hate me so?’

  She had expected him to deny it, but he did not trouble to do so. He said with distaste rather than admiration, ‘You proved your credentials as an actress on Wednesday, Mrs Cassidy. You sold us the tale about being here last Friday night with considerable skill.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. I was here on Friday with Paul. I’m sorry I deceived you about it in the first place, but I apologized for that when you saw me on Wednesday.’

  ‘You did indeed. You told us on Monday that you’d been in your own home at the time when your husband was being killed, then confessed with some embarrassment on Wednesday that you’d been deceiving us, that instead you’d been here for the evening. You acted out your charade with great skill. I think that at the time both DS Northcott and I believed you.’

  ‘I’m flattered that you think I was acting so well. But my account was convincing because I was telling you the truth.’ Jane was conscious now of the horror on Paul’s face, but still she would not turn to look at him, sensing that the actio
n might bring words from him which they could not afford.

  Peach insisted quietly, ‘You were at your own house throughout the evening. You answered the phone when Luke Cassidy rang to try to speak to Adam.’

  Jane opened her mouth to bluster her way out of it, but suddenly no words would come. Her brain forced her to accept that there was no escape from the steely determination of the two very different-looking men who sat opposite her, that they had the facts to refute anything she had to offer. She remained silent, unconsciously biting her lip and staring at the rich dark red of the Turkish carpet.

  Peach let this moment of her defeat stretch for long seconds. Then he said quietly, ‘Why did you put those hairs beside the passenger seat of the BMW, Jane?’

  It was the first time he had used her forename. She wondered if this marked her acceptance of guilt, whether the move to the informal marked some key stage in the arcane rites of police interrogation. She gathered her resources for a last denial. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. If Adam had had some floozy in his car, it’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘It was a mistake, Jane. The woman whose head those hairs came from had never been in the BMW. You collected them from another car, with a comb, didn’t you?’

  She had no energy any longer for denial, only a vague wish for self-justification. At first she spoke slowly, as if she were observing the actions of some other woman. ‘They were in the Mercedes. I brushed them up intending to confront Adam with them. But when I heard he was going off for the weekend in the sports car, I thought I’d dump them in there. In case it was some other tart he was bedding!’ Only as she spat out the last phrase did she reveal the intensity of her hatred for the man who had been her husband.

  ‘You thought you’d frame someone else for murder.’

  A pause. Then in a weary monotone, ‘No. I thought he might like to explain away those dark hairs to some blonde he’d picked up for the weekend.’