Just Desserts

by J M Gregson

  Bert Hook couldn’t help thinking that sounded like an excellent personality for a murderer. It made you cynical, this job.

  Michelle taught in a Herefordshire comprehensive school, at Newent, no more than five miles from where Patrick Nayland had died thirty-six hours earlier. The head teacher had volunteered his office for the meeting, to ensure that it would not be interrupted. She told the two plain-clothes men that she was surprised to see Ms Nayland back in the classroom so early; it showed just how conscientious she was, how she put the welfare of her pupils above her personal grief and suffering.

  Lambert began with that. ‘No one expected to see you back at work so quickly after a tragedy like this.’

  She was cool, slim, dark-haired, with large, clear grey eyes and a mouth which seemed about to relax into a smile even when she was at her most serious. She looked very unlike her mother; her looks must have come from Liza Nayland’s first husband. She would quite certainly be the subject of adolescent fantasies among some of her older pupils, Hook decided. She said, ‘My mother is very upset, but perfectly in control of her grief. I spent yesterday at home, but found I wasn’t any use to her.’

  ‘But what about your own grief? It must have been a terrific shock to you, what happened on Wednesday night.’

  ‘It was. But I’m better at work. I’m talking to you in a free period, but I shall see nearly two hundred children of various ages today. It doesn’t give you time to mope, a schedule like that. In your first year in the job, you’re too concerned with survival!’ She gave them the wide, brilliant smile which had threatened since she came into the room, and Lambert found himself responding to it.

  ‘I gather from people who know that you are doing far better than that. In which case, we’d better be brisk, so that you are ready to carry on the good work when the time comes.’ His own grey eyes were more cautious than hers, had narrowed a little with thirty years of police experience. But they sparkled a little above his answering smile.

  ‘I’d appreciate that.’ Michelle thought that this might after all be less taxing than she had feared. She felt on her own ground here, even though they had been accorded that holy of holies, the head’s room, for their exchanges.

  Lambert said briskly, ‘Tell us what you can recall of Wednesday evening, please.’

  She took them calmly through the excellent fare and ambience provided by Soutters and how the company had gelled there. She had not seen most of the people who were there before, but they had soon got on famously together. She was not naïve enough to ignore the part that good food and wine had played in that, but an occasion she had rather feared in prospect turned out to be much less of an ordeal than she had expected. To be positively pleasurable, in many respects.

  So far, so good. She managed to deliver what she had prepared with a fair impression of spontaneity, though she had expected them to interrupt more, to help her along with the narrative by some friendly questions. Instead, they both watched her closely and listened intently, as if registering the manner as well as the matter of what she said, and she found that more disturbing than direct interrogation. As any attractive woman is, Michelle was used to being a point of attention in a room, to being conscious of people watching her even when they were outside the immediate circle of her conversation. But this unembarrassed assessment at close quarters was something quite new to her. She became more self-conscious, and eventually found herself faltering unexpectedly in the account of events she had prepared for this moment.

  She was approaching the startling climax to the evening when Lambert said suddenly, ‘You visited the basement yourself, no doubt. How long was that before your father’s body was discovered?’

  ‘Stepfather.’ Even here, in this context, she had to make the correction. ‘It was probably about twenty minutes before that woman who works at the golf course – Joanne Moss, isn’t it? – found Patrick.’

  ‘Did you see anyone else down there?’

  ‘No.’ She allowed herself the ghost of a smile as she said, ‘Of course, I can only speak for the ladies’ cloakroom.’

  ‘And the door of the Gents was shut at that time?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Yes, I’m sure it was. If it had been open, I’m sure I’d have remembered, because I’d have had a quick peep into the forbidden area: I’m as curious as the next person.’

  ‘Your stepfather might have been behind that closed door. Or do you recall that he was in the restaurant when you returned?’

  ‘I can’t be sure. I don’t remember seeing him, but he was probably there. I wasn’t talking to him but to other people.’ She wondered if she was being too cool, too detached. But she wasn’t going to simulate a grief she didn’t feel. That wouldn’t fool these calm, observant men.

  Lambert nodded. ‘No one seems to recall Mr Nayland leaving the table and going downstairs.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’m not surprised at that. There was a lot going on by that stage of the evening. Lots of shouting and laughter. But presumably one person saw him go, followed him downstairs and killed him. But he won’t be volunteering that information, of course.’ She was surprised how calm she felt as she made the suggestion. Tight situations had always brought out the best in her.

  Lambert said nothing for a few seconds, studying her with an expression which seemed almost one of admiration. ‘The killer might have simply waited for his victim in the basement, of course. He – or perhaps she – could have been down there for quite some time without arousing suspicion. Perhaps as long as twenty minutes.’ He lifted his eyebrows a fraction, letting the implications of the idea impact on Michelle Nayland.

  She kept her cool. ‘I suppose that’s quite possible. But it wasn’t me who stabbed Patrick on Wednesday night.’

  ‘Describe your relationship with your stepfather for us, please.’

  It was that heavy, blockish-looking Sergeant who had issued that command. He was sitting with his pen over his notebook, studying her as impassively as the Superintendent had done from the start. Perhaps they thought the change of interrogator would ruffle her, especially when combined with this abrupt introduction of the one area she feared.

  Michelle made herself control her indignation before she said, ‘I suppose you have to ask about these things. I think you raised it with Mum, when you spoke to her yesterday, didn’t you?’ It wouldn’t do any harm to show them that she’d compared notes with her mother about what had been said on their visit to her on the previous day; they must surely be used to people doing that.

  Hook said stiffly, ‘Your mother indicated that you and Mr Nayland had certain disagreements.’

  ‘Did she, indeed? Well, I don’t mind admitting I had a few problems accepting Patrick when he first came into our lives. I love my dad, still see him as often as I can. It doesn’t help when you’re a teenager and you find your dad suddenly gone and another man in bed with your mother. I gave Patrick a hard time, at first, and I’m sure he thought I was a right little cow. But those days were a long way behind us. By the time of his death, we were getting on perfectly well. I’ve taken his name, after all, haven’t I? He was very good to me, was Patrick, very sympathetic to my problems when I was training to be a teacher.’

  She had delivered it well, she thought. It didn’t seem to have the ring of a prepared statement. And for almost the first time, she was glad that she’d allowed her mother to persuade her to take on the Nayland name. That had been a good touch to offer to these suspicious men.

  They seemed now to be weighing what she’d said, to be wondering where to go from here. It seemed suddenly very quiet in the room. She heard the phone shrill in the adjoining office, and the school secretary answering some query. But she couldn’t catch the words: it was just a distant buzz, reminding her of that other and more innocent world outside.

  It was Lambert who eventually said to her, ‘I’m sorry if you consider this line of questioning an intrusion. But I hope you see that we need to know about your relationship with your stepfather. Y
ou will understand that we have to explore any enmities a murder victim may have had.’

  ‘I understand that perfectly. There is no need for any apology.’

  ‘I am glad that you see no need for evasions. Let me say therefore that you do not appear to be either shocked or grief-stricken by this death.’

  He flustered her for the first time with this prompt frankness. She wanted to spit some defiance at him, in response to what seemed like a calculated insult. But she made herself pause, telling herself that she had brought this upon herself, that it was perhaps even a sign of how successful she had been so far that he should wish to break her composure.

  ‘Appearances can be deceptive, as you must know, Superintendent. I was certainly shocked by both the death itself and the manner of it. But I have had thirty-six hours to come to terms with that shock. And as for grief, you are probably right. Patrick had been good to me and we’d worked out a way of getting on well with each other. But it wasn’t like the death of my real father would have been. I found yesterday that I was sorry for my mother, not myself. And I’m not going to simulate a misery I don’t feel.’ Pride flashed into her face with that declaration, and it took her a moment to recognize the emotion as ill-timed and banish it.

  Lambert studied her with that steady, impassive assessment she had grown used to by now. Then he gave a small nod and said, ‘Who do you think killed your stepfather, Miss Nayland?’

  ‘I don’t know. Someone he’d offended in his business dealings, I should think.’ Then, recognizing how waspish this had sounded, she added, ‘That seems the only possible explanation to me, you see, because I know no one in the family would have killed him. But I told you, I don’t know most of the people who work at Camellia Park. I hadn’t seen most of them until Wednesday evening.’

  They let her go then, with the usual injunctions to get in touch if anything occurred to her which might have a bearing on the death of Nayland.

  They must have stayed to talk to the head for a few minutes, for she saw them sitting together in the police car a quarter of an hour later, when she looked through the window of the classroom whilst taking the third years for English. The class were doing some written work, so she was able to watch the car, whilst trying to give her pupils the impression that this was no more than a casual gazing through the glass above the radiator. The two detectives conferred with each other for a couple of minutes, before they drove slowly out of the car park and through the big gates: she would have loved to know exactly what they were saying to each other.

  She was very excited. It was like the buzz you got after examinations, when you had given everything you had, but couldn’t wind down without nervous chatter with other people who had suffered.

  Michelle Nayland knew she couldn’t talk to anyone about this. Not even her mother: least of all her mother. But she felt she had done well. She was sure she had given the impression of frankness, without really being frank.

  The police hadn’t come up with anything to tie her in with the murder, to put her in that basement at the moment when Patrick Nayland had died. And she was sure they didn’t even suspect the fierce motive she had for murder.

  The full written post-mortem report had been delivered by the time Lambert and Hook arrived back at the police station in Oldford.

  This would normally have been received with at least a very lively interest by the team allotted to a murder inquiry. In this case, no one expected to find much that was surprising or helpful in the PM report. It told them that Patrick Nayland had been in excellent health for a man of forty-nine. He had died when his left ventricle had been pierced by a heavy knife. Death had been almost instantaneous.

  There was some interesting but probably useless infor­­­­mation about the instrument of his death. It was a double-edged knife blade, probably some seven inches long from its point to the beginning of its handle. It was quite a heavy knife, but not necessarily a tool designed for use as a weapon. Similar blades would be found in many kitchens, especially those establishments where food was professionally prepared.

  The first thought was obviously the kitchen of the restaurant where the victim had died. But Fred Soutter had already confirmed to Lambert that none of his kitchen implements was missing. An extensive search of the area, widening out from the buildings immediately around Soutters Restaurant to take in the whole of the small market town of Newent, had so far failed to turn up anything which answered to this description of the murder weapon.

  Lambert and his colleagues knew the score: if the weapon had not been found by now, the probability was that it never would be.

  There was one interesting feature in the report about the manner of this death. There had been so much blood surrounding the corpse by the time the police arrived that Rushton and his men had assumed this was a multiple stabbing, which suggested a picture of someone thrusting a knife repeatedly into Patrick Nayland’s torso, in a frenzy of hatred, or a desperate panic, or a combination of both.

  There were in fact only three stab wounds, of which the first one might well have been fatal. That was impossible to determine for certain, since the blows had been administered in rapid succession. These facts were certainly of interest to the CID team. Contrary to popular opinion, it is rare for someone to die from a simple stab wound; the human body has been known to survive as many as forty abdominal and chest stabbings, with the benefits of modern surgical techniques.

  Patrick Nayland had been stabbed not many times but only three. It helped to explain why no desperate cry for help from him had pierced the cheerful cacophony in the room above, why no one had been conscious of what had happened until Joanne Moss’s repeated screams had announced it. No one could be sure exactly how many minutes Nayland had been dead at that moment.

  The accuracy of the mortal wound also raised an interesting possibility. Did it mean that the person who had murdered Nayland had some specialist knowledge, either of martial arts or of medical matters, which had enabled him or her to apply the blade to the precise point where it would ensure instant death? Lambert spoke to the pathologist on the phone, but he confirmed that he could not be sure if the first wound was the fatal one, which would have supported the thought of a killer with special training.

  Nor could he be drawn into even an opinion as to whether the fatal wound represented a specialist attack or was merely the result of luck accompanying a more random blow. ‘All I can say is that this was a serious weapon. With a heavy, double-edged knife like that, it wouldn’t need much luck to kill someone.’

  DI Rushton set about cross-referencing the pathologist’s report with the findings of Sergeant Jack Johnson and his scenes of crime team. But the peculiar nature of this crime meant that the SOCO findings on this occasion tended to confuse as much as illuminate the picture.

  The team had diligently gathered material from the corpse which had originated with other people at the gathering. There were fibres from other people’s clothing, several human hairs which did not belong to Nayland. But his wife had cradled the dead man in her arms, Pearson had touched the throat of the victim to make sure that he was dead, and other people had no doubt left fibres of their own clothing behind in detaching the hysterical widow from her hold upon the dead man.

  Moreover, Patrick Nayland had passed freely and eagerly among his guests earlier in the evening, shaking hands with wives, patting people like Barry Hooper on the back. It was difficult to see how anything found upon the body could be used to incriminate anyone at the gathering, and even more difficult to see how the connection could stand up to examination in court by an experienced defence counsel.

  All this is what the team would have expected. It was not until later that day that the surprising fact emerged. Rushton had made sure that a sample of Patrick Nayland’s blood had been submitted for comparison with samples on the National DNA Database, which retained the DNA of people convicted of previous crimes. No one expected a match, but the routine had to be observed.

  In this
case, it was destined to provide the murder team with an astonishing fact about the dead man.

  Eight

  Alan Fitch found the presence of the young man at his side irritating today. Normally he was glad of the company: the maintenance of the small golf course could be a lonely job, and the presence of a protégé who listened eagerly to his every word was usually much to his taste.

  Barry Hooper had been a welcome addition to his world, and he was surprised how pleased he had been when the young man was confirmed as a permanent appointment. But today he found the young black man’s company a burden, his eager questions an imposition. It was like having a devoted but demanding spaniel puppy at your heels all day, when you wanted a bit of privacy for your own concerns.

  It was too cold to do much work outside. Even the pile of soil they had been riddling to make a spring dressing had frozen overnight and had to be left to thaw out. They spent the morning servicing the gang mowers, which would not be used on the fairways for the next three months. To be accurate, Brian Fitch serviced the machinery, whilst his willing acolyte passed him tools and asked him a series of increasingly irksome questions.

  They lunched together in the familiar shed, glad of the old electric fire between the two shabby but comfortable armchairs. It was not their usual companionable meal. Barry chattered on about life in general and the delights afforded by his new motorbike in particular, seeming not to notice how his senior’s replies became increasingly surly and monosyllabic. He didn’t mention the murder investigation, and as Hooper’s manner became increasingly febrile, Fitch wondered for the first time whether his incessant chatter was an attempt to distract himself.

  Alan Fitch was relieved when, early in the afternoon, he found a genuine chance to be rid of Hooper. He sent him into Gloucester to get replacements for two worn bolts on the mowers, making him wrap the worn parts carefully in old sacking and take them with him, to make sure that he got identical replacements. He listened to the sound of Barry’s powerful motorcycle engine diminishing as his assistant rode away, then sat down for a moment in an agreeable silence. He needed to gather his thoughts.