by J M Gregson
‘Yes. All very admirable.’ Peach’s tone softened for a moment, after he had glanced at the lean figure beside him. ‘But what we have to consider is facts. And one of the facts now appears to be that you deceived us when we met you on Thursday at your flat.’
‘I didn’t. I don’t lie to the fuzz. I might like to do it, but I’ve got more sense.’ But she knew now exactly where this was going, and she couldn’t see a way out of it.
Peach knew it too, and he gave her a broad smile. ‘You might not have lied, love, but you chose to deceive us. Quite deliberately. About your relationships with a murder victim and a murder suspect.’
She wanted to deny it, but she could summon neither the words nor the energy. It was hopeless. She remained silent, staring at the supervisor’s desk in this office she never entered, biting her lip with bitter resignation.
Peach’s voice resumed, steady and implacable. ‘You told us on Thursday that Annie Clark had acquired a serious boyfriend – that his name was Matt Hogan; that they had only been together for a few days.’
‘All of that was true.’
He smiled again. She wondered if this man always did that when he was going to hurt you, if he was like a matador giving the coup de grâce to a bull. ‘That is true. That is why I said you deceived us rather than that you lied to us. You chose to conceal information, Miss Shields – including the information that for several months previously Matt Hogan had been your boyfriend, not Annie’s.’
‘Yes.’
‘You didn’t part amicably, did you?’
‘No.’ She was in no state now to distinguish between what was established and what might be mere speculation on Peach’s part.
‘So we have to consider that in the light of your previous record. Which indicates to us the possibility that you might have taken some violent revenge.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Miss Shields, did you kill Annie Clark?’
‘No. I didn’t kill her and I don’t know—’
‘Then why were you so certain that she wasn’t coming back?’
She looked at him with widening eyes, trying to take in this switch of tack. She hadn’t even prepared herself for this. ‘I wasn’t.’
‘But you relet the flat from the beginning of October – only nine days after Annie had disappeared. We’ve checked that.’
‘I didn’t know what had happened to her. I suppose I presumed she’d be off somewhere with Matt. I didn’t see how we could go on sharing the flat, with Matt Hogan coming between us like that.’ She wanted him to believe her, but once he had exposed her deceit about the way Matt had ditched her, nothing she said seemed to carry any conviction.
‘You’d had a row, just before she disappeared, hadn’t you, Heather?’
It was the first time Peach had used her forename, though the other man had done it from the start. She wondered if there was any significance in that. But she no longer had the will to resist him now. ‘Yes. I accused her of being a snake in the grass, of plotting all along to take Matt from me.’
‘And what did Annie say about that?’
‘She denied it. She said that she’d just been part of the group, that she’d had no idea that Matt even fancied her until a fortnight or so earlier, that she’d held back because of me at first.’
‘But you didn’t believe her.’
‘No. I screamed at her, called her a scheming cow and lots of other things. Awful things. Now I believe that she was probably telling me the truth.’ With that admission, she was suddenly in tears.
Peach studied her for a moment, as dispassionately as if she had been a specimen under his microscope. Then he repeated softly, ‘Did you kill Annie Clark, Heather?’
‘No. I’d have liked to kill her, that last Saturday, but I didn’t.’
Peach glanced at Clyde Northcott. The uniformed man shook his head almost imperceptibly, then turned back to Heather Shields. He said awkwardly, ‘You don’t want to go back to your mates in the packing room – not like that.’
She looked up, conscious for the first time of her tears. ‘I’ll go to the loo – put some cold water on my face.’
He smiled, showing her a set of very white teeth, slipping back with her for a moment into that twilight world where they had once existed. ‘You did A levels. You were a bright girl, before …’
‘Before the coke and the horse. Yes. And I’m back on track now. I won’t be in the packing section here for much longer. I’m already processing orders.’ She didn’t tell him how earnestly she wanted to be a writer. That was far too exotic an ambition to be paraded before the police.
‘That’s good, then. You could do a really responsible job, you know.’
She thought he was going to give her arm a quick squeeze before he left, but he didn’t touch her. He gave her another of his broad, surprising smiles and turned away. Then, when he got to the door, he turned and said, ‘Always assuming that you didn’t kill Annie Clark, of course.’
Peach reckoned as they went out into the icy afternoon air that PC Northcott should certainly make CID.
Sixteen
During the last hours of a bitter January, the three remaining members of the coven met at Katherine Howard’s house.
It was a dark, clear night, with only the thinnest crescent of moon adding its light to the diamond-white stars in the navy sky. This wasn’t their usual night, and this wasn’t a normal meeting. They met for mutual reassurance, as minorities meet everywhere in the world. Kath had rung Jo Barrett and Dermot Boyd rather diffidently to suggest that they got together, but each of them had responded eagerly to her suggestion that they should meet and exchange notes about what the police had said to them individually.
When the trio had assembled in the familiar high room of Katherine Howard’s house on that Monday evening, they found a comfort both in being together and in their beliefs. They felt it natural to worship together, to offer up their adoration and incantations to the Mother Goddess and to the male Horned God who was her consort. The moon was waxing, so they addressed the eternal Goddess as Diana and invoked her help, her assistance in bringing them into line with the rhythms which the moon and the sun brought to all things natural.
It was the Horned God they associated with the sun, and they uttered to him their prayers for a wholesome year, for the benefits of the spring and the summer which he would soon usher in for them. And they felt a consolation as they worshipped together, a strength that was anchored in their common beliefs. Their tiny community seemed to give them an effectiveness above what they might individually achieve.
In short, they behaved very much like followers of any of the great religions which they found so mistaken and inadequate.
It was left to Dermot Boyd, as it usually was, to invoke the animism that is a pillar of the witches’ world. He prayed that they might become a part of the ‘Life Force’ which is immanent within all creation, which would guide their actions benevolently, if only they could immerse themselves in the stream of its movement. All was sacred; all was to be cared for and revered – the entire earth and the tiny coven in this room as members of it. He invoked the life force which informed and guided all creation, then went through the familiar list of rocks and trees, deserts and streams, mountains and valleys, ponds and oceans, gardens and forests, fish and fowl; from amoebae to human beings, and all things in between. Dermot Boyd prayed that all in the room might be brought to live in harmony and to be psychically in tune with nature.
A tiny voice within him asked as it always did at this point whether this was not similar to what that other mystic William Blake had been crying out two centuries before, and what the bright young Wordsworth had been trying to say about nature at almost the same time. But that did not matter: Dermot knew that Wiccans were rediscovering the truths of the universe, not inventing them; and if Blake and Wordsworth had been alive now, they would surely have been Wiccans.
The three who were all that was left of a coven which had once numbered e
ight relaxed together afterwards, offering each other reminiscences of their exchanges with that awful man Peach, who was conducting this investigation.
Kath Howard said, ‘They asked me about what we did, what we believed in. I told them what I could, without disclosing details. To be fair, I think they were only interested in witchcraft and our coven as they affected poor Annie Clark. They wanted to know about my relationship with Annie: I suppose that’s natural enough. But they seemed more interested when I mentioned in passing that Annie Clark’s boyfriend was a new one than in anything I had to say about what went on here. How did you find them, Jo?’
Jo Barrett crossed her long legs in her slim black trousers, studiously relaxed. ‘I agree that the man Peach is a shrewd operator. I didn’t take to the woman who was his detective sergeant, either. But I didn’t hold things back. I told them all about the crush Annie had on me when she was at school, seven or eight years ago.’ She was studiously avoiding eye contact, looking down at the backs of her slim hands as if they were suddenly of great interest to her.
‘I didn’t know about that.’ The words were out before Dermot Boyd could check them.
‘No reason why you should. It would only have embarrassed Annie. It was no more than the kind of crush on a teacher many girls get in early adolescence – something which was knocked firmly on the head at the time. It was well behind her. She was a young woman when she came to us.’
Kath Howard looked closely at the slim face beneath the dark hair, wondering why Jo was not looking at them in her usual bold way. ‘Annie must have got a shock, when she came here and found you in the coven.’
Jo smiled. ‘She did. We both did, I suppose. But we got over it.’A small, reminiscent smile flickered about the corners of her mouth. ‘They asked me if I thought one of us killed Annie. I told them the idea was ridiculous. But I suppose they had to ask.’
Dermot Boyd said, ‘They asked me that as well. I found the notion as ridiculous as you did.’
But there was something wrong, he thought, that they should even need to offer each other such assurances. He decided to tell them the way in which Peach had embarrassed him; better that they should hear it from him than from that mischievous chief inspector. ‘If Peach suspects anyone, it’s probably me. I discovered the body, remember. And when they’d been given an identification and came to see me again on Wednesday, I didn’t admit to them that I’d known Annie Clark. I think they found that suspicious.’
‘I should think they would,’ said Jo Barrett. ‘Why did you conceal that?’
Dermot forced a rueful grin, trying to dispel the tenseness he felt in his companions. ‘My wife didn’t know about the coven, about Wiccans. She didn’t know I was coming here. She does now. I was foolish ever to conceal it from her.’ He had no idea whether they found it a convincing explanation; he felt them both watching his face, which he was sure was reddening.
Jo said, ‘Not a good idea, lying to the police. I expect that man Peach has got you in the frame for his murderer now. That’s what they call it, isn’t it?’
‘I expect he has. It’s my own fault. But things conspired against me. I didn’t know I was going to find Annie’s remains in that awful place up on the side of Pendle, did I?’
But no one answered him. Normally, once the formal prayers and incantations were concluded, the exchanges among them were lively, even humorous. They were usually a group of people full of the confidence in each other which comes from a shared set of beliefs. But tonight, the spirit of the departed Wiccan Annie Clark seemed to hang heavily upon them, deadening their exchanges, making them more cautious with each other than they had ever been before.
Each of the three was struggling with the awful realization that there might be a murderer amongst them.
‘Looking for a spring holiday, sir? We have some excellent offers in Spain and Portugal at the moment. They’re booking up fast, though!’ Anna Fenton produced a smile which, even in one of her tender years, was remarkable for nine o’clock on the morning of the first of February.
‘No sale, I’m afraid, love.’ Peach flashed his warrant card in front of her disappointed face. ‘We’re here to see the boss.’
Alan Hurst, hearing the exchange, came out and ushered them through into the storeroom behind the main office, shutting the door carefully behind them. He turned and gave them a smile which was much more strained than Anna Fenton’s professional welcome. ‘We won’t be disturbed in here.’
‘Good.’ Peach looked quickly round the small room, taking in its closed doors and its single small window. ‘We’ll need a bit of privacy, for this.’ He managed to make even his introduction sound menacing, thought Lucy Blake, with a mixture of deprecation and admiration.
‘I can’t see why it should take us very long. I’m pretty sure I gave you everything I knew about poor Annie Clark when we spoke at my house on Saturday afternoon.’
‘Are you, sir? Interesting, that – because we’ve been talking to a lot of people, some of whom you don’t even know, during the last week. We have a team of thirty people in all, doing house-to-house enquiries, questioning shopkeepers, talking to bag ladies, drunkards, vicars and tarts. Even the odd witch, believe it or not.’ He smiled at the recollection. ‘Most of it is a total waste of police time, of course. But that’s the trouble with this job: it’s not until after our lads and lasses have made all these enquiries that we can see what’s useful and what isn’t – that we are able to pick out the little nuggets of gold amongst all the gravel we put through our riddles.’ He gave his man a broad smile, as if pleased with his metaphor, and then looked around the room again.
It was a crowded and untidy place. Piles of brochures from various travel companies occupied all four corners of the room. A filing cabinet with one drawer open and a small desk occupied most of the rest of the floor space, so that there was barely room for the three upright chairs occupied by the players in this odd little drama.
Alan Hurst caught his glance, said nervously, ‘It’s never very tidy, this place. We have to store a lot of brochures: you’d be surprised how quickly we get through them.’ He tore his eyes away from the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, which he knew was securely locked. ‘There’s a little kitchen through that door there. I can make you a coffee easily enough if you’d like one.’ He was aware that he was saying more than was necessary, talking for his own sake not theirs, filling the silences, which he was already finding oppressive.
Peach gave him the understanding smile which told him that he comprehended all of this. ‘Coffee won’t be necessary, sir. Too early in the morning for that. We wanted to explore again your relationship with the murder victim, Mr Hurst. To give you the opportunity to revise some of the information you volunteered to us on Saturday afternoon.’
‘I can’t think why I should want to do that.’
‘Can’t you, sir?’ Peach’s eyebrows arched up into the whiteness of his head, which he then shook sadly, as if surprised anew by the foolishness of humanity. ‘Well, not to put too fine a point on it, and speaking strictly off the record, of course, I’d say you’d been telling us porkies.’
‘Porkies?’
‘Porky pies, Mr Hurst. Lies. Ugly word. But lying is an ugly thing to do, when you consider what’s at stake. Which might be your liberty.’ He was perfectly calm and quiet, but he wasn’t smiling any more.
Alan didn’t know what to do. If he admitted it, how much should he say? He couldn’t be sure how much they really knew and how much this Torquemada of a man was bluffing. He said with draining conviction, ‘I told you that I found Annie Clark a good worker. I told you that she was very willing to learn and entirely trustworthy.’ The phrases sounded in his ears like the references he had written for some of his other girls, when he had decided that it was time they left. ‘I felt confident enough of her abilities to leave her in charge of the shop, whenever it was necessary for me to be away.’
‘When you felt it necessary to be at home with your wife, I th
ink you said, sir.’
Alan understood now that phrase about your heart missing a beat. His own heart seemed to do that quite literally, and then to resume with a much faster rhythm. Was Peach hinting that not all of the time had been spent with his wife, that the police were on to that other and more productive sideline, which had proved so lucrative for him over the last year? He made himself speak slowly. ‘Yes. Judith needs a lot of my time. Unfortunately, I can only see the situation getting worse over the next year or two.’
Peach nodded sympathetically, then turned to the watchful woman beside him. ‘And how did Mr Hurst describe his relationship with Annie Clark to us, DS Blake?’
Lucy made a play of consulting her notes. ‘“Professional”, sir. That was the word he used.’
‘And that was what I meant.’ Alan couldn’t stop himself coming in promptly on the end of her sentence.
‘Indeed, sir. You reiterated it, I believe. When I asked you if you were sure that your relationship hadn’t moved beyond the merely professional, you were quite definite that it hadn’t.’
‘Yes.’ Alan knew now that things had gone badly wrong, but he had no idea what to say. He couldn’t see any way out of this. Damage limitation would be all that he could attempt.
‘I have to tell you that the team’s enquiries have thrown up a rather different picture, Mr Hurst.’ Peach enjoyed being pompous, delaying his moment of revelation, watching his man’s discomfort increasing with every second. Some people would have said he was a sadist; he merely believed that this lying bugger deserved everything he got. ‘You were seen, Mr Hurst – seen with Annie Clark. In a variety of situations, by a variety of people. Not professional situations, in my opinion.’
‘If you’re going to take gossip as evidence, there won’t be much hope for any of us.’
‘I’m not speaking of evidence, Mr Hurst. We’re not in a court of law. Not yet, anyway. Are you still denying that your relationship with Annie Clark went beyond the professional?’
