by J M Gregson
She hadn’t known she was going to say that. She heard her pride in her man coming out in her words. Peach gave her what she regarded as an odious smile before he said, ‘No doubt Mr Jacobs was well briefed last week on the actions and movements of our murder victim. No one was better placed to give him that information than Dominic O’Connor’s PA.’
‘You’re barking up the wrong tree.’ She felt the lameness of the cliché even as she delivered it. But more original and effective words wouldn’t come to her. ‘Brian Jacobs didn’t kill Dominic O’Connor.’
She lapsed into ‘Dominic’ for her dead employer whenever she was under stress. Peach wondered if at some time she had been one of the string of women everyone said O’Connor had bedded. ‘You won’t expect us simply to accept a statement like that, Mrs Parker. Especially as you chose to conceal your relationship with a man whose bitter and permanent enemy has now been brutally murdered.’
‘Brian was certainly his enemy. But I didn’t disguise that. I gave you Brian’s name when you asked me for enemies of your murder victim.’
‘Yes. It seemed very frank and helpful of you at the time. As it was no doubt intended to be. But you deliberately withheld the information that you had a close relationship yourself with Brian Jacobs.’
‘I’m not ashamed of that! I’ve been divorced for three years. One of the things everyone tells you is that you have to pick yourself up and live the rest of your life. That’s what I’m doing, and you aren’t going to stop me, DCI Peach!’
Clyde Northcott regarded her steadily as she glared furiously at his boss. ‘Where were you last Friday evening, Mrs Parker?’
For some totally illogical reason, she found she wanted to explain why she’d kept that name, wanted to tell him defiantly that she would be changing it soon to Jacobs, wanted to tell him that Brian would be back in charge of the financial division at Morton’s if everything went according to plan. She swallowed hard and controlled all of these impulses. ‘I was at home in my own house, the one I have lived in since my marriage failed and I received it in the settlement. I live there with my son, but he was out on Friday evening.’ She piled on the irrelevant details, as if hoping she could convince them of more vital facts by accuracy with this useless surrounding data.
‘Is there anyone who could confirm this for us?’
‘No, there isn’t! You’ve got me down as a suspect for Dominic’s murder now, have you? Just because I chose to regard my relationship with Brian Jacobs as a private matter when we spoke on Monday?’
Northcott responded with a calm smile. ‘We’d like to eliminate you from all suspicion, if we could, Mrs Parker. It would make our job easier, as well as helping you.’
‘Well, you can’t!’ She heard herself sounding like a petulant child and knew she wasn’t doing herself or Brian any good here. ‘Look. Brian hated Dominic O’Connor and in my view he had good reason to do that. I’d even be prepared to admit that Brian was a little unbalanced about it. But that doesn’t mean he killed him.’
Peach came back in immediately on that. ‘It gives you both a good motive. Having Dominic O’Connor off the scene is convenient for both of you. Perhaps more than convenient. Is Brian Jacobs hoping to replace this man he hated here?’
She thought furiously. They or their team had talked to lots of people in the firm in the last couple of days, including the MD. Probably someone had told them about this idea she had planted on Brian’s behalf, so she had better not deny it. ‘He may well do that. I’ve spent the last few days stalling callers on my phone, so that I know better than anyone that the firm needs someone urgently. I can’t think that they are going to get anyone better than Brian, who knows this business well and now has experience elsewhere to add to that knowledge.’ She said it defiantly, making a case for her man because it was what she wanted to do, irrespective of whether that was the right strategy here.
‘And where was Mr Jacobs last Friday?’
‘I expect he was at work in the afternoon and on his own in the evening. You’d better ask him.’ Suddenly, she wished she’d said they were together at the time of the murder, but it was too late for that now.
Peach smiled at her, as if she had made some kind of mistake. ‘Someone will ask him that, Mrs Parker.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Someone may be asking him that at this very moment.’
And checking whether our stories tally, she thought. She was a novice at this game, whereas this man had played it many times. She tried to force confidence into her voice. ‘Brian’s got nothing to fear from you. He didn’t kill Dominic O’Connor.’
But for the first time, Jean Parker had a small, secret doubt about that.
The Vice Squad moved in like a small army. It had been a huge operation and it had gone on for several months. But on Friday, May 10, the Asian men who had been luring and sometimes virtually kidnapping under-age girls from care homes into prostitution and worse were taken into custody. On the same day and at the same time, there were arrests not just in Brunton but in two other towns, one in Lancashire and the other in Yorkshire.
The Asian men looked thoroughly sinister in the photographs secured by the press. As the men who had fronted the operation, they received most of the publicity, which was appropriately damning. These were shocking crimes, involving multiple rape for the most unfortunate of these girls and dreadful suffering for all of them. It was the most despicable sort of crime, practised on some of the most vulnerable members of a troubled society. It was right that the criminals should be seen in the harshest spotlight, however untypical they might be of the Muslim community which had harboured them. But these arrests and the accompanying publicity weren’t going to do much for race relations in Brunton, with its thirty per cent Asian population. Percy and Lucy Peach were glumly aware of that.
DS Lucy Peach had been no more than a small part of the vast organisation which had secured this result. But she was determined to be involved in the arrest of Linda Coleman; when you had worked hard to secure a collar, you wanted to witness it personally. She supervised the arrest and charging of two young Asian men, who had treated her with the contempt they accorded all working women when she had questioned them during the earlier stages of the investigation.
One of the most satisfying factors in the arrests which were carried out on that Friday morning was that the shadowy figures who had financed this grim business were also brought to justice. Too often the major criminals who put up the money for vicious enterprises like this got away with it, because of lack of evidence. They had skilful and highly rewarded lawyers and they often sheltered behind the respectable façade of more legitimate businesses. But this time the links had been established early in the investigation. Moreover, the Asian men they had paid to handle the dangerous processes of recruitment soon split on the people who had financed them, once they found that their own arrests were inevitable. Fear of long jail sentences and what might happen behind the high walls of British jails loosened tongues. The attitudes of the men who had treated the care-home girls so abominably turned suddenly from arrogant to desperate.
Linda Coleman, whose husband was already awaiting trial for the murder of James O’Connor, was arrested on the same morning as the men she had paid and directed to recruit the under-age girls to this squalid servitude. Her conceit was her Achilles’ heel. She had believed until the last minute that she was unassailable, that her lawyers insulated her from anything as sordid as arrest. She left it too late to try to get away, in the belief that her wealth and what it bought for her would keep her secure.
Lucy Peach, who had worked for months to secure this outcome, witnessed not only Linda Coleman’s arrest but the preferring of charges which would put her away for a long time.
‘You’ll suffer for this!’ Coleman snarled at Lucy. ‘That face of yours won’t look quite as pretty when it’s had a razor across it a few times!’
‘Record that, please,’ DS Peach said to the custody sergeant, who had just outlined the charges against
Linda Coleman at Brunton police station. Lucy spoke more calmly than she felt. But the Lennon criminal group, in which Linda Coleman had been a major figure, had been crippled by this, with its major figures arrested along with her. Lucy said calmly, ‘Your husband’s going to go down for the murder of James O’Connor. You might be inside for almost as long as him, when this comes to court. You wouldn’t like to indicate who killed his brother Dominic, would you, Mrs Coleman? We’re offering no deals, but it might get you a year or two off your eventual sentence, if you were seen to be cooperating.’
‘Get lost, you cocky young bitch! That’s one killing you can’t pin on us. We had nothing to do with seeing off that randy sod!’
That was probably true, from what Percy had told her, Lucy thought. But even negative information had to be useful, when you were narrowing your field of suspects.
John Alderson’s small front garden looked as neat as it had when they had visited it two days earlier. More so, if anything, since its owner was working diligently in it when they pulled up outside the terraced house.
‘It’s as colourful as anything in the street,’ said Peach as they stood on the flagged path beside him.
Alderson looked up and down the long, respectable road, as if testing the verity of that. ‘The trouble with so-called winter pansies is that they’re really spring-flowering. You have to pull them out when they’re still at their best to put in summer bedding plants.’
It was as if he was trying to assert himself as a bona fide gardener; perhaps he thought that would give him a harmless respectability in police eyes. ‘It’s south-facing here, sheltered by the houses. We shall have flowers open on the roses in a couple of days. That’s very early, for Brunton.’ He looked at the police car outside his house, then at the two men who had ridden here in it. ‘I suppose you’d better come inside.’
He limped a little as he led them into the small, tidy bachelor’s living room where he had spoken to them on Wednesday. There were black-and-white pictures of a couple who might have been his father and mother on the sideboard, a nineteenth-century watercolour of Whalley Abbey on the wall opposite the window. There were eight books between the marble bookends, but four of them were reference books and the other four were from an ancient book club. There was nothing contemporary about this room, nothing they could see which might give them a clue to the personality of its occupant.
They sat down, refused the offer of afternoon tea. Peach studied his man for a moment, then nodded to Northcott, as if he hoped to rattle Alderson by the use of a different questioner. The big detective sergeant opened his notebook carefully, then dropped his bombshell as if it were no more than an introductory conversational gambit. ‘Your car was sighted outside Dominic O’Connor’s house on the morning of the day when he was murdered.’
John Alderson smiled hard into the unsmiling face of DS Northcott. ‘My car is a silver metallic Ford Fiesta. There are a lot of them around.’
‘There is only one which has your registration number. Are you denying that it was there at that time?’
‘No. I wouldn’t wish to do that. I didn’t go into the house, though.’
‘Why did you choose to conceal this visit, when we spoke to you on Wednesday?’
‘I didn’t conceal it. You asked me what car I drove and I told you.’
‘And you chose not to tell us that you had used this car to visit a murder victim on the day he died.’
‘Whoa there! I didn’t visit a murder victim. I didn’t even go into the house. If I had done, Dominic O’Connor wouldn’t have been there at the time. I knew that, or I wouldn’t have gone near the place.’
Northcott glanced at the watchful Peach and then returned his attention to Alderson. ‘Perhaps you’d better tell us what the purpose of this visit was.’
‘Perhaps I had. It’s quite simple. I was returning Ros O’Connor to her home. She’d spent the night here.’
‘And Dominic O’Connor?’
‘Dominic had spent the night in Birmingham. Ostensibly on business – whether there was a woman involved or not, Ros didn’t know. And frankly by this time didn’t really care. It was because we knew Dominic was going to be away that I picked Ros up on Thursday and brought her here. You could say that we were taking advantage of an opportunity.’
‘But you chose to tell us nothing of this on Wednesday.’
‘No. It had no bearing on Dominic’s death. And tell me frankly, would you have chosen to tell two curious policemen that you’d been in bed with the wife of a murder victim on the night before he was killed?’
‘I don’t have to answer hypothetical questions, Mr Alderson. When did you last see Mr O’Connor alive?’
The suddenness of the query shook John Alderson, but he strove not to show that. He retreated behind a smile, trying to look as though he had expected this, wondering exactly how he would answer it. He decided that he couldn’t risk trying to deceive them about this. If they’d spotted his car at the other end of Brunton, then they’d probably seen Dominic O’Connor’s much more noticeable red sports Jaguar outside this house. Perhaps the CID men were hoping he’d deny this, so that they could immediately expose him as a liar. He certainly couldn’t afford that.
‘I saw Dominic on that same Friday morning. But much later – about three hours after I’d dropped Ros off. It must have been at about half past eleven. He came here to see me.’
Peach had so far done nothing save study him closely. Now he said, ‘You’d better tell us about this meeting.’
John nodded, trying to look perfectly at his ease. ‘I think that would be best, now that you know that he was in this house. He came here to tell me that he knew about Ros and me.’
Peach nodded, wondering how he was to shake this very cool opponent. ‘You’re taking care to sound very calm about this. I imagine you had a fierce exchange over the matter.’
‘Then your imagination misleads you. It certainly wasn’t a friendly exchange. I didn’t like Dominic because of the way he’d treated Ros. And I don’t imagine he was feeling friendly towards a man who was bedding his wife. But within those limits, what we said to each other was civilised. There was never any prospect of blows being exchanged.’
‘And within a few hours the man who came to see you was killed. It must be obvious to you that we need to know exactly what was said during that late-morning meeting on Friday.’
‘I can see that.’ John was now extremely uncomfortable, though he was trying hard not to show it. He didn’t want to tell them what had passed between him and O’Connor, because it wouldn’t show him in a good light. But he was shrewd enough to know that these men had a large team who were experts at digging out information which people wished to conceal. If he didn’t tell them the truth and they discovered it from someone else, it might land him deep in trouble. He tried to stall them a little whilst he decided exactly what he was going to say. ‘What took place was a private exchange between two men. Dominic wouldn’t have wanted me to talk about it now, any more than I do.’
Peach said with the air of a man whose patience is wearing thin, ‘And Dominic is now dead, murdered by person or persons as yet unknown. That alters things quite drastically, as you are surely aware.’
‘Very well. Dominic O’Connor came here to warn me off – to tell me that I wasn’t going to benefit financially from any association with his wife.’
‘And how did he propose to do that?’
‘He said what I already knew: that he was a Catholic who didn’t approve of divorce and wouldn’t consent to it. When I said that that would represent no more than a delaying tactic, he told me he was planning to change his will. Ros would inherit nothing. And she would get nothing if she left him whilst he was alive.’
‘And your reaction to this was?’
‘I told him that I didn’t think the law would allow him to behave like that. Women have rights to property, even in a divorce which they have initiated. He conceded she might get the house, or a share of it. B
ut he was a rich man, a partner in a prosperous firm, and he’d get an expert lawyer onto the task. He would deny Ros and me every possible penny. He said he thought I should know this, since it would undoubtedly change my intentions towards his wife.’
‘It must have shaken you.’
‘It didn’t. Well, not as much as you might think. I wasn’t really surprised that he knew about Ros and me. Discretion isn’t Ros’s strong point – if he challenged her, she’d be likely to scorn deceit and come out strongly about her feelings for me and her feelings for him. I think he was eventually more rattled than I was. I said I was sure he couldn’t leave Ros as destitute as he planned to do, and that even if he succeeded it wouldn’t alter my feelings in the slightest.’
John Alderson stopped on that. He was almost challenging them to dispute what he said, because it was important to him that he asserted the depth of his love for Ros. Peach said reasonably, ‘But this meeting must have shaken you to some degree. The discovery that the man was hell-bent on denying you the financial benefits you could have expected from a long-term relationship with Ros must have altered your expectations about the rest of your life.’
‘No. Dominic O’Connor thought he could make me back off. He thought that if I was told I wasn’t going to make big money on the deal I’d drop his wife like a used coat. He looked round this place and assessed it, the way you did when you came here on Wednesday. He said that I was unemployed and anything but prosperous. Then he said he was sure I wouldn’t want to take on an enemy like him, that I’d see sense and back off.’
‘And did you agree with him?’
John was shrewd enough to know that Peach was trying to nettle him, to make him reveal more of himself than he wished to do. He took his time, trying to estimate what reactions his words would excite in these men who wanted an arrest. ‘I surprised myself a little, I think. I told him that I didn’t want him as an enemy. I said that I could understand that he must feel humiliated that someone like me now had the affection of his wife. But I also pointed out that he’d brought this upon himself by taking a string of lovers and treating Ros with contempt. I told him that I wasn’t in this for financial gain and that it was insulting of him to presume that I was. I said that the lady would decide on this and that I was confident that Ros would come to me, whatever the financial set-up might be. I then asked him to leave my house.’
