by J M Gregson
‘Nothing unnatural in that. Not many families care to air their differences in public. She admitted the two didn’t get on at first, but she said they were happy enough together at the time of this death.’
Hook checked his notebook again. ‘She said, “Michelle had realized that my happiness was bound up with Patrick, and had accepted the situation.” It’s hardly a glowing testimonial. And she instanced that they’d had a happy meal together, only a few days before the man’s death. If you have to pick out a particular meal where things went well, it strikes me that it was the exception rather than the rule.’
Lambert sighed. ‘We can put rather more pressure on Liza Nayland, now that we’re a little further away from the murder and we know a little more about her husband. What about her daughter?’
‘An intelligent and attractive young woman. Just the type that young, divorced detective inspectors should be pursuing.’ Hook kept his face impeccably straight as he looked down at his notebook.
Rushton felt that he was blushing, despite the fact that he should have been well used to shafts from this duo by now. ‘She’s much too young for me.’
‘Eight years or so? Probably needs an experienced man like you to keep her out of mischief, Chris.’
‘And she may be a murderess. I think we should stick to the point.’
Lambert controlled the wish to smile and nodded earnestly. ‘Attractive young women have been known to stick knives into people before now. What struck me is that her recall of what went on at Soutters last Wednesday night was very precise – until it came to the moments that might be of use to us. Then she became as vague as the rest of them; that makes me wonder if it was a convenient vagueness.’
Hook said, ‘She was very definite in insisting that she was Nayland’s stepdaughter, not his daughter, despite adopting his name. She said, “I gave Patrick a hard time, at first, and I’m sure he thought I was a right little cow.” But she claimed they were getting on “perfectly well” by the time of his death. But she was back at work within thirty-six hours of the man’s death and she wasn’t grief-stricken: she said, “I’m not going to simulate a misery I don’t feel.” She thought Nayland must have been killed by someone he’d offended in his business dealings.’
Lambert nodded. ‘Which would conveniently strike Michelle and her mother off the list of suspects, of course. There’s a surprise! But we need to see the delightful Miss Nayland again, to press her harder about one or two things. There’s some discrepancy in the times when she was at the scene of the murder, as well as this query about her relationship with the dead man.’
‘We’ll put a good word in for you, when we see her, Chris,’ said Hook. ‘Tell her you’re sound in mind and body – well, body, anyway.’
‘What have you turned up among the employees?’ said Rushton grimly, his eyes firmly fixed on his computer screen.
Lambert smiled. ‘Pearson we’ve already discussed. Joanne Moss, the Catering Manager at Camellia Park, is the woman who discovered the body. The others agree that they went down there and found her in near-hysterics with the corpse. No one has said anything yet to clear her of the murder, but equally no one has even suggested the idea that Joanne Moss killed him.’
Rushton said, ‘When I spoke to her on Wednesday night, Joanne Moss was still too upset to be coherent. How was she when you spoke to her on Friday night? Did you find her account of how she came to be down in the basement with a dead man in her arms convincing?’
‘As far as it went, yes. She says she was in the ladies’ loo for three or four minutes. It’s probable but not certain that the door of the Gents was slightly open when she went down there, without her noticing it. In which case, Nayland might have been lying dead during the time she was in there and even perhaps for some time before that. She noticed that the door was slightly ajar and then saw his foot there as she came out of the Ladies. The configuration of the doors means that you are indeed much more likely to notice a gap in the doorway of the Gents on your way out of the Ladies than on your way in there.’
Rushton nodded slowly, measuring the statement from Joanne Moss, which he had turned up on his computer screen, against his memory of the geography of the basement at Soutters. ‘She could, of course, have arranged to meet him down there, knifed him, and then screamed her head off.’
Lambert agreed. ‘She could have done just that. It’s something we must bear in mind. For what it’s worth, she denies any suggestion that she had arranged to meet Nayland down there, and we haven’t found anyone else yet who supports such a theory.’
Hook had rather liked the competent and personable Mrs Moss; she had given them tea and home-made biscuits after a long hard day. He said, ‘But if she killed him, why not simply walk back upstairs and let someone else find the body? There’s no suggestion that she was caught red-handed: it was her screams which brought people to the scene.’
Rushton was reluctant to let her go as a suspect. ‘She would have had to account for the blood on her clothes, if she’d come back up to the restaurant. The hysterics might have been genuine. They might be the only part of her story that is genuine.’ But he didn’t sound convinced of that.
Lambert sighed, ‘That leaves the two blokes who work on the course. Alan Fitch and his sidekick, Barry Hooper. One of the problems I have with this case is that none of the people involved has struck me as a likely murderer in interview. Often we have the problem that we have several likely candidates; in this case there isn’t one of them that I’d be glad to arrest and lock away. This chap Fitch has seen violence in the past, and in my judgement he would certainly be capable of killing someone, if he felt strongly enough about it. But that’s very different from saying I think he’s the man who killed Nayland in Soutters on Wednesday night.’
Hook said, ‘He’s got a past all right. He says he learned how to look after himself when he was seeing the world with the Merchant Navy, but that’s usually a euphemism for being handy with your fists, and sometimes with worse weaponry than that. He’s got a conviction for causing an affray, which could easily have been for GBH. On the other hand, that’s a long time ago now, back in his Merchant Navy days, and he has a clean record since then. And he enjoys his work on the golf course and enjoys being the one in charge of things. I can’t see what he’s going to gain from this death.’
‘I agree with that,’ said Lambert. ‘And yet his manner didn’t quite reinforce it. He was very reticent about Nayland, so much so that I got the impression that he didn’t like the man, didn’t even regret his death much. He was at the golf course before anyone else on the morning after the murder, and he lit a bonfire. No reason why he shouldn’t have done that: there was rubbish to dispose of. Barry Hooper confirmed that. But Fitch seemed very defensive about it, and very nervous when we had a look at the remains of the bonfire. But if he had been burning anything incriminating, he’d done it very effectively: there was nothing but a circle of black earth left for us to see.’
Rushton said, ‘What about this black boy, Barry Hooper?’ and flashed the appropriate file up on his monitor screen. ‘Chequered background, hasn’t he? Conviction a few years ago for thieving. Probably on drugs.’
‘Nothing to suggest this level of violence though. And it’s three years and more since he was last in trouble. And he loves his job at the golf course. So why get rid of the bloke who employs you?’ Hook, who had pressed Hooper so hard during interview, felt the need to stand up for him now.
Lambert smiled despite himself at Hook’s earnestness. ‘Hooper was jumpy when we interviewed him. Perhaps that’s only to be expected, when he’s been in trouble with the police before. I felt that he was concealing something, but I couldn’t think what it might be – unless we consider the obvious possibility that he’d killed Nayland. But like Bert, I couldn’t for the life of me see why Barry Hooper would want to kill the man who paid his wages, who had only recently decided to make him permanent in the first job in his life that he really enjoys.’
Hook said, ‘I thought he was immediately cagey about that fire which Fitch had lit. He wasn’t there at the time. As you say, Alan Fitch had come in before anyone else was around and immediately lit that bonfire; that makes you wonder if he’d come in whilst it was quiet with that specific purpose in mind. Hooper made it seem more suspicious, because he too seemed to think that there was more in it than met the eye.’
Lambert said, ‘Young Mr Hooper might be useful to us when we know a little more. He isn’t a natural liar. Bert verbally roughed him up a bit at the beginning of our meeting and he was putty in our hands after that.’
Rushton looked at the rubicund Sergeant in surprise; Bert didn’t have a reputation for being hard on lads like Barry Hooper. When accusations of institutional racism were hurled at the police, DI Rushton always cited Bert Hook as an example of how ridiculous the notion was.
At that moment, there was a beep from the desk behind him as an email arrived in his inbox. ‘Probably won’t be anything useful, but better check it out,’ he said.
His face lit up with a modest pleasure as he read the message. Technology coming up with the goods again, when John Lambert thought he could do everything by his old-fashioned methods. In all truth, this wasn’t a lot. It wasn’t going to lead to an immediate arrest, but it was an addition to their knowledge in this baffling case; he was glad it had come in whilst Lambert was in the CID section.
‘Details I’ve been waiting for of Christopher Pearson’s Army record,’ DI Rushton explained. ‘Decorated in the Falklands, as we already knew. Served the bulk of his time as a warrant officer with the Royal Artillery. But there’s one interesting thing we didn’t know. He spent the last three years of his service with the SAS.’
‘Now why on earth would a man wish to conceal something like that from us?’ said Superintendent Lambert thoughtfully.
Thirteen
For a young man of such slight build, Barry Hooper was surprisingly strong. Alan Fitch noticed that fact once again on the raw afternoon of Monday the eighteenth of December, as they lugged railway sleepers off the tractor at the side of the ninth tee at Camellia Park.
He was proud of the strength of his own stocky physique, developed on the ships in his youth and preserved with no sign of diminution into middle age. The speed of movement left you, but the strength stayed, so long as you continued to use it regularly. But he was surprised how Barry kept up with him until they were both breathing heavily with satisfaction as they had the final baulk of timber in place at last.
They had extended and elevated this teeing ground. Now they were putting in five steps at the side of it, to enable golfers to ascend easily and avoid damage to the turf on the side of the tee. Inevitably, there would be some who would ignore their diligently constructed steps, who would slip and leave ugly slide-marks in the carefully laid grass. If such transgressors went arse over tit in their descent from the tee, that would give Alan Fitch a certain kick.
He tapped the end of their final sleeper the last quarter-inch into place with the sledgehammer, checked the spirit level on the top step, and said approvingly, ‘Good job, that, young Barry. Be here when I’ve gone – perhaps when you’ve gone, if you don’t slow down on that motorbike.’
‘We’d like a few words with you, please. On your own.’ Lambert, speaking quietly from behind the pair, felt a reprehensible sense of power as the two of them started like guilty things upon a fearful summons. But it seemed unlikely that either of these men was familiar with Hamlet.
Alan Fitch recovered quickly. He dismissed the image of vultures which had sprung into his mind when he had turned to find the two dark-suited men standing motionless on the higher ground above him. He said, ‘We’d best go back to the sheds, then. Barry, you stay here and carry on with that path. It’ll need a few more barrowfuls of aggregate before we can finish it off. You do that now, whilst I have a word with these gentlemen, and we’ll do the final levelling tomorrow.’
He led the CID men away to his den, as he had come to regard the room at the end of the long concrete shed where they kept their tractor and mowers and other course equipment. He had preferred the old wooden shed in which he had been based when he started here, with its intimate smells of oil and grass and metal, but when safety regulations required a more modern building, he had adapted surprisingly quickly to his own section at the end of it.
Within a month, Alan was pleased with its solid wall which cut him off from the oil and the chemicals, with its modern shower and washing facilities, its new kettle and crockery which Joanne Moss had sent up for him from the clubhouse. With a few ornaments like the ship in a bottle contrived by one of his messmates from the Navy days, the animals carved painstakingly from bone by some anonymous Victorian sailor, the black and white picture of a teenage Alan Fitch with arms folded in his football team, he had put his own stamp upon the place. The fact that these were the things his wife would not allow him to display in their small, neat home only made this place more of his own den, as did the fact that few people other than Barry Hooper ever ventured in here.
He offered the two large, observant men who had followed him into that den a cup of tea, but they refused, politely but briskly, with the air of people who had more important things upon their minds. They invited him to sit down in his own place, and he did so, perching awkwardly on the edge of the battered armchair, then easing himself equally awkwardly back into it, as he tried to simulate relaxation.
Alan Fitch was a man of action, a highly able man in the strictly defined sphere where he operated, a man who derived confidence from that competence. Ten years and more ago, his aptitude had manifested itself in the multifarious operations needed to sail a modern cargo ship; now he had mastered the very different processes involved in maintaining the fairways and greens of a golf course. But when he was denied action, when he was removed from the areas where he thrived, he was more nervous than men who dealt habitually with words. Alan’s closest relationship outside his home was with Barry Hooper, and that had grown naturally out of the work they did together, out of the actions which the older man could demonstrate and teach to his acolyte. He could not keep his strong hands still now as he sat opposite his two visitors. Even to have made them tea, to have sought out tea bags, beakers, milk and sugar, would have been a release for him, a release which was now denied by these men who studied him so closely.
There was no real preamble. Lambert said abruptly, ‘You didn’t like Patrick Nayland, did you, Mr Fitch?’
They knew, then. He accepted it immediately, never thought they might be bluffing. They had known about his conviction for causing an affray, known that it might have been a much more serious charge. Yet he couldn’t just admit it, not with the man lying dead and these people hungry for an arrest. ‘He paid my wages. Gave me the job here. Made me Head Greenkeeper, with an Assistant.’ He pronounced the titles carefully, as if the formality could give weight to his argument.
‘But you didn’t like him. He knew things about you, didn’t he?’
They knew everything, then. He must concentrate, in this world of words where he was least at home. Channel all his energies into convincing them he hadn’t twisted that knife in Nayland’s guts. ‘He knew things, yes. I couldn’t help that. But he threw them at me, reminded me about them. I didn’t see him much, avoided him when I saw him about the clubhouse and the course. But he owns the place. I couldn’t avoid him if he came looking for me.’
‘What did he know, Mr Fitch?’ Lambert’s voice was gentle, understanding, even sympathetic.
Alan was dimly aware that perhaps they had not known everything, that perhaps he had already given away more than he needed to. But he knew he must concentrate on the killing, must summon all his resources to cover up what had happened in the basement of that restaurant. ‘He knew I’d killed a man, didn’t he? In a fight. I was attacked, was only defending myself. But he said it should have been manslaughter at least. That if it hadn’t been in Aden, I’d never have got away with
out a charge.’ He had looked down at the old rug on the dusty floor through all this, concentrating on the words, the treacherous words which could give him away. Now he looked up and said, ‘But you know about all this, don’t you?’
‘Patrick Nayland was in Aden at that time. In the Army.’ Lambert was thinking aloud, but he uttered the phrases as if they were statements, clothing speculation as fact.
‘He was in Aden all right. I’m not sure whether the Army was still operating there or not. But Nayland was there. He knew some of the people who were involved. Knew the man who was killed, he said.’ Fitch shook his head confusedly, like a cow dismissing troublesome flies.
Lambert fancied that Patrick Nayland might have done a little bluffing too, might have pretended he knew more than he did about the incident: Fitch was an easy man to deceive. None of that mattered now. What mattered was its effect on this powerful man who sat so nervously before them. Had Nayland’s knowledge been a powerful enough factor to trigger his murder? The Superintendent said quietly, ‘Did he threaten you? Threaten to reveal what he knew to others?’
‘No. No, he taunted me. Whenever he felt like it. Talked about it as a great joke.’
That confirmed the view that Nayland had picked up gossip rather than concrete evidence. It was easy to convince Fitch that you knew more than you did. ‘You could have got another job, Mr Fitch.’
‘Not one like this. I like the work I do here. I’m good at it. I’ve developed this place from scratch, and it’s going to get better and better.’ Alan Fitch had spoken spontaneously for the first time, and his pride and his stubbornness rang in the words.
