Just Desserts

by J M Gregson

  There was something brittle about her, thought Lambert, as if once they broke the thin china of her composure she would spill into hysterics. He said, ‘Have you any idea who killed your husband last night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It might help us if you speculate. It needn’t go any further than these four walls, if it proves unfounded.’

  ‘No. I’ve thought about it a lot since it happened. I haven’t come up with a killer for you yet.’

  ‘I see. Please continue to think about it, then. We shall be interested to hear about your thoughts, in confidence.’

  ‘I will, Superintendent. I’m as anxious to see the man who killed Patrick like that put behind bars as you are.’

  ‘Or the woman.’

  ‘Or the woman, as you say. But I shall be surprised if it was a woman who did this to Patrick.’

  She looked for a reaction in the long face, but Lambert seemed totally impassive. He said, ‘I understand last night’s occasion was designed to celebrate ten years of development at Camellia Park. As the owner of the course and the director of policy, your husband must have made tough and unpopular decisions at times. Such decisions tend to make enemies. Do you know of anyone who had a serious grievance against your husband?’

  ‘No. The place has been a success. It’s been expanding ever since Patrick took the chance and put his money into it. He said there aren’t too many staffing problems whilst that is happening. The real problems come when you have to cut back on something.’

  That was true enough. When someone built an empire, other people went up with him, and most people were happy. Lambert had seen it happen, even in the police force. There was one area, however, which often caused resentment. ‘Was anyone passed over for a promotion he felt he should have had?’

  ‘No. Not as far as I know. And the kind of post available in a small organization like that is hardly worthy of multiple stab wounds.’

  ‘I agree. But we have to explore every possibility at present. This killing has all the signs of an unbalanced mind. You might be surprised how much some people brood on small injustices, until in their minds they develop into something much larger.’

  ‘I’ve seen some of that. I worked in an office with five other women.’

  Lambert couldn’t suppress a small smile. He’d never have dared to say anything as politically incorrect as that. Then he said seriously, ‘I agree with you that other passions can be more powerful than ambition. So I now have to ask you if you know of any relationships which might have had a bearing on this death.’

  She found herself wanting to fly at this calm inquisitor, to scratch the flesh on the gaunt face. She must be much more on edge than she thought. Forcing a calmness into her tongue, she tried to be dismissive, but found herself sounding unexpectedly prim as she said, ‘You mean, was Patrick conducting an affair with someone, was there a jealous husband involved? No, of course there wasn’t.’

  Lambert, listening to the manner as well as the substance of the denial, thought that maybe the lady did protest too much. He said, ‘How did you meet your husband, Mrs Nayland?’

  She wondered if she could refuse to answer, reject the question as the irrelevance she knew it to be. But that would only heighten the man’s interest, and he would pursue it elsewhere. He had already indicated that someone would be in touch with the first wife. She said icily, ‘I’ve already told you I worked in an office. Patrick was an executive there. In due course, I became his personal assistant: I believe that he asked to have me assigned to him. Then it was the old story of the boss having an affair with his secretary, if you like. Except that Patrick was already separated. I was the one who was playing away.’

  ‘So there was resentment from the man who was then your husband?’

  She forced a smile when she felt like attacking him. ‘You’d be barking up the wrong tree there. Malcolm – that’s my first husband – certainly wasn’t happy at the time. He’s now happily remarried, with two small children. He wouldn’t want me back if I came wrapped in diamonds.’

  Lambert said quietly, ‘Thank you. I apologize again for the personal nature of some of our questions, but, as I said, we have to build up a picture of the victim; it usually helps to indicate who might have killed him.’

  It was Bert Hook, sitting quiet and watchful, making the occasional note in his notebook, who now looked up and said, ‘How would you describe your daughter’s relationship with the victim at the time of his death, Mrs Nayland?’

  She had thought the question would come if it came at all from the tall man whose grey eyes stayed so disconcertingly upon her face through everything she said. Instead, it was this stolid, slightly overweight Sergeant with the curiously innocent features, like those of a small boy imposed on a middle-aged man, who had asked it.

  Liza Nayland delivered the words she had prepared during the morning. ‘Michelle had a few problems in the early stages of our relationship. It would have been surprising if she hadn’t.’

  ‘Yes, you mentioned that earlier. And in our experience, it would be surprising if those problems didn’t persist in the years which followed. How would you say Michelle felt about your husband at the time of his death?’

  ‘They were perfectly happy with each other. Michelle had realized that my happiness was bound up with Patrick, and had accepted the situation. We had a happy Sunday evening meal together, only a few days ago. I’m sorry to disappoint you, Sergeant.’

  Hook was too experienced to rise to that. He made a note in his notebook, face as inscrutable as a boyish Buddha. It struck him that if you had to note a meal in a household as being happy, there were problems.

  The two veteran CID men drove away from the house in the Herefordshire village in the companionable silence which came from working for many years together. They had travelled a good two miles before Hook said, ‘She was holding something back, wasn’t she? I’m not quite sure what it was yet, but she wasn’t being totally honest.’

  There wasn’t much work for Joanne Moss on the day after the murder. She knew there wouldn’t be much demand for her food on a morning like this, when only the hardiest of golfers tackled the frostbound acres of Camellia Park.

  But these intrepid souls were rewarded eventually by a thin white sun, and by midday the whiteness had melted from the surface of the course. The men – women were far too sensible to venture out in such Arctic conditions – were jovial when they came into the little clubhouse, as if they had earned the thanks of the world for their bravery in the face of the elements. And they were hungry, eager for the toasted sandwiches, bacon butties and other simple but tasty fare which Joanne could supply from her spotless kitchen.

  This little period of brisk activity lasted scarcely more than an hour. Joanne would have wished for it to be longer, for activity meant that she had to concentrate hard on the simple manual tasks of food preparation. That took her mind off the things she did not want to think about, the things which set her mind racing along channels she did not wish it to explore.

  But very soon, this brisk activity died away to nothing. Joanne tried to string out the work, taking longer than usual over small tasks, like a machine which runs briefly after it has been switched off. Yet suddenly, she knew that she must move quickly. The urgency of what she must do burst like a wall of water into her brain, flooding away her lethargy, filling her with a sudden urgency which was the very opposite of what she had felt only moments before.

  It showed how febrile her brain was, how racing were her emotions, she told herself, as she hurried to her car and drove away from Camellia Park without a backward glance, without even hearing the cheerful farewell called to her by the last of the golfers in the car park.

  When she opened the door of her flat, she saw it as she had not seen it for many months, perhaps not since the moment when she had first viewed it and decided to buy it. She saw it not as a home, but as a place which might tell other people things about her, which might reveal more of herself than she want
ed to show to these strangers coming into her life. A place which might – the word had sprung into her mind before she could reject it – incriminate her.

  Joanne even looked round the place to assure herself that no one had been here, that no one had carried knowledge about her away from the place before she could prevent it. She knew that the idea was stupid, that the people she feared needed search warrants and the paraphernalia of the law behind them. Nevertheless, she checked the beaker on the side of the sink, checked the familiar ornaments and photographs on sideboard and mantelpiece, even went through into her bedroom and checked that the nightdress lay across the pillow exactly as she had left it when she had left the room with her mind racing so madly a few hours previously.

  Only a few hours! The time seemed to stretch itself into days; it seemed already weeks since that sudden scream and the shocked faces coming to terms with the unthinkable last night. And yet she could have given no clear and detailed account of what she had done in the time since then. Her movements, her reactions, even her thoughts, seemed today to have a dream-like quality about them, as if she was watching another person doing the things she did.

  She shook herself back to reality. Quite literally shook herself, in front of the mirror in the small hall, wanting to feel the vigour of the movement in her shoulders and hips. There was nothing unreal about what she had to do now. She must be at her coolest and most methodical. The minds she was pitting herself against would be like that; they wouldn’t be battered by emotions, as she was, but clinical, logical, ruthlessly assessing whatever they saw.

  Having shaken herself, Joanne forced a smile at herself in the mirror, rehearsing the part she must play, telling herself that her years in amateur dramatics must give her an advantage. Perhaps the whole untidy collection of parts she had played had been a preparation for this real one which had been so abruptly thrust upon her. On with the motley. Let the clown smile. Let the tears be kept for private release; their public display was an indulgence she could not afford.

  She took a black plastic dustbin bag from the cupboard under the sink and went rapidly through the flat. She was surprised when it came to it how well her brain worked. It was as if action eased her mind into its normal efficiency, and she gathered items as if she carried an unwritten list within her brain.

  She had not been conscious of any such list earlier, but now she knew exactly the items she needed, and she moved through the rooms as methodically as a cleaner following a weekly routine. She moved the photographs and the two other items which were on display first. Then she went to the drawers and cupboards, treating each room methodically, surprising herself with her knowledge of exactly the items she wanted to remove.

  Joanne was pleased with the way her mind worked: she might be moving like an automaton, but it was an automaton directed by a cool brain. It was only when her task was almost complete, when she was retracing her steps through the five rooms of the flat and trying desperately to think of items she might have forgotten, that panic burst suddenly upon her hyperactive mind. She began to listen for the ring of the bell, to run her eyes frantically along shelves and table and kitchen units to search out the one object she must have overlooked.

  This was like being in a Kafka novel, waiting for the faceless forces of the state to intrude upon her small and private world, to discover the small, intimate, forgotten things which would tell the bureaucracy of the state more about her life than she wanted it to know.

  But there was no ring at the bell, no watching eyes as she peered right and left from the door before taking her dustbin bag of evidence out to the car. How small and light it felt. How slight were the remembrances of emotions which had been so fierce, which had changed the pattern of her life.

  Joanne’s plan was simple enough. She knew the area of Gloucester where the bin men operated on Thursdays, for she had lived there herself before she bought her flat. She would simply drive around until she saw the Biffa lorry, with its steel jaws at the rear, which ground whatever was fed into them into merciful oblivion. She would then drop her own small dustbin bag into those jaws and watch a section of her life disappear for ever.

  The finality of that would be satisfying, in its own way: she knew she needed to reassure herself by witnessing the physical destruction of the evidence. If she merely dumped the bag for collection, she would be afraid that someone would investigate it and discover her secrets, even at the eleventh hour.

  There was an interlude of black comedy, in which she drove round street after suburban street without locating the familiar lorry. She began to wonder if the rotas had been changed, or if the men had started early and already finished for the day. But they couldn’t start so early, not at this time of the year when there was not full daylight until eight o’clock. A kind of panic began to gnaw at her, as vista after quiet vista revealed no Biffa lorry.

  Then, just when she was ready to give up, when she was wondering where she could most safely leave the bag she certainly couldn’t take home with her, she saw the shiny black bags piled at the corner of the street ahead, twenty or more of them. She almost laughed aloud like a child at the sight, her elation reminding her again just how much on edge she was. The men had collected the bags from individual residences and piled them there; the lorry could not be far away.

  She saw it when she reached the corner, moving slowly along the road within a foot of the kerb, the powerful motor of the destructive mechanism at its rear drowning the noise of its engine. She drove past it carefully as it came towards her, parked her car on the opposite side of the road, and slid from the driving seat with the black plastic bag in her hand.

  She would wait for her moment, wait until the men feeding the bags into the maw of the monster at the rear of the lorry went off to collect another pile of bags in the next street, and then fling her own small contribution into extinction. She wanted to disguise herself in some way from any observers, was tempted for a moment to adopt a limp. Then she remembered a production of Oh What a Lovely War! she had been in years ago, where the boys had been asked to simulate wounds as they came away from the front in the 1914–18 war. They had all decided to limp with the right foot; their ragged company had even limped in step with each other, and the rehearsal had collapsed into hilarity. She grinned at the remembrance of it, and decided she had much better walk naturally.

  ‘Get rid of that for you, m’dear!’

  She started like a guilty thing, feeling her heart leap into her mouth, unable because of that to frame the words of a reply.

  He was a large, cheerful black man, the Gloucestershire accent falling oddly from his broad lips. He smiled at her, his broad white teeth seeming suddenly to fill the whole of his face. She became aware that he was holding his hand out to take her small burden from her.

  She found her voice at last. ‘It’s all right, thanks. I can chuck it in myself. It’s – it’s an unofficial one really. I’m not from round here.’ She was telling him things, when she wanted to withhold information, not spread it. He was surely harmless, with his broad and innocent black face, his cheery helpfulness. But other, more sinister, people might talk to him, other people might wheedle from him any information she volunteered now.

  ‘Not allowed, that, m’dear. Public not to feed our mechanical dog, in case they injure themselves.’ He laughed at the absurdity of that notion. His chuckles seemed to Joanne to echo up and down the street, calling attention to the strange couple, the powerful black man with the boxer’s build and the slim middle-class Englishwoman with the dustbin bag held incongruously in her hand behind her.

  He reached forward, took the bag gently but insistently from her. For an awful moment, she thought he was going to investigate the contents. But he merely turned and walked to the corner. When he was a good ten yards from the pile of bags, she caught her breath as he flung her own slight contribution onto the top of the pile with practised expertise.

  He looked back at her with a reassuring smile, and Joanne Moss lifted her hand
briefly in acknowledgement of his service. She sat in her car and watched the slow progress of the Biffa lorry, knowing she could not leave without the physical evidence of the destruction of her past.

  Two young men who seemed little more than boys flung the pile of bags into the steadily churning steel jaws at the back of the lorry, moving with such sudden swiftness that she was not sure which was hers in the hail of bags which suddenly peppered the machine. Two minutes later, the Biffa lorry drove past her stationary car, its steel machinery still turning steadily at the rear, though everything fed into it at the corner of the street had now disappeared.

  It was done. A section of her life had been suddenly obliterated. A section which had held much happiness before the final brutal sadness which had shattered it.

  Joanne Moss felt drained and empty rather than relieved.

  Six

  They were going to have another cold night. Bert Hook could see the frost crystals forming on the hedges already as they drove through the lanes towards Cheltenham. It was seven o’clock on Thursday evening, exactly twenty-four hours since the guests had assembled in Soutters Restaurant for their fatal celebration.

  Chris Pearson looked slightly nervous when he opened the solid door of the house in the old village and faced them. There was nothing remarkable about that: murder investigations made even the most innocent of people nervous. It would be the only time in this exchange when he showed any trace of apprehension.

  He looked at them for a moment, their faces lit by the light from the hall behind him, and said, ‘You’d better come in.’ Then, as if he realized that sounded grudging and ungracious, he added as he led them through the hall and into a dining room at the front of the house, ‘You’re working late on the case.’