by J M Gregson
‘I expect you see it like that. But after ten days of intensive enquiries, we now have a fuller picture of this crime than do any of the individuals we have been questioning. Certain things have acquired added significance.’
‘I don’t doubt it. All I’m saying is that I have nothing further to tell you about the crime.’
‘And yet you may have, Mr Boyd. Sometimes we unearth extra facts that people have been concealing – sometimes wittingly, sometimes unwittingly.’ Peach’s dark, penetrating eyes left Dermot in no doubt which adverb would apply to him. ‘In your case, we keep asking ourselves why it was that you seemed to know that Annie’s body was in that ruin on Pendle Hill; why you tried to steer your wife away from the spot; why you were not surprised when that decomposing corpse presented itself to you in that derelict place.’
‘You’ve no reason to say that.’ Dermot hissed the words like a conspirator, fearful that his denials would be heard outside the room if he raised his voice.
Peach pursed his lips, weighing the matter unhurriedly and dispassionately, enjoying the accountant’s discomfort. ‘I’d say we had quite good reason. Your wife certainly has the impression that you did not want her to go into that place, even to shelter from a blizzard. You have been evasive about it yourself. You are uneasy, even now, about the suggestion. In the light of what our team has picked up from a host of other people, your discomfort seems to us significant. Which is the main reason why we have taken the trouble to come to see you this morning, to allow you to pass on to us any further information or reflections you may have on the matter.’ DCI Peach gave him a bland smile, which nevertheless seemed to Dermot full of menace.
He licked his lips, trying to make himself take his time. ‘I didn’t know Annie’s body was in that place. It’s probably true that I had an uneasy feeling about that ruined farm. It was probably because I associated Annie with Pendle Hill from the time when she disappeared. I knew she was planning to walk up there, on the Sunday when it now seems that she was last seen alive.’
‘There you are, you see. Something’s come back to you. Another fact falls into place. You knew that Annie was going to be in that area on the Sunday when she was killed!’ Peach beamed his satisfaction.
‘I’m sure I told you this before.’
‘And I’m sure you didn’t. I’m sure DC Pickering, who has diligently kept himself informed on the development of the case, will confirm that.’
‘Yes, sir. First we’ve heard of this. No previous record of Mr Boyd knowing the whereabouts of the deceased at the time of her death.’ Gordon Pickering, fresh-faced and eager, spoke as though flicking through the pages of his mental notebook, turning the screw competently on the older man.
Dermot Boyd wrenched his eyes away from the delighted detective faces in front of him. ‘It was after the meeting of the coven. I was chatting to Annie about the weekend. She said she was going into the original witch country – going up on to Pendle Hill. She had a bit of a laugh with me about it.’
‘I see. Shame this bit of a laugh should have escaped your recollection until now. So who was Annie Clark planning to have as her companion on this journey into witch country?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask her.’ It sounded feeble, even to him. ‘I presumed she’d be with her new boyfriend, I suppose. That’s probably why I didn’t ask her about it. It was only a casual conversation, after the coven’s worship and incantations were over.’
DCI Peach looked very satisfied as he stood up. ‘New information, you see, Mr Boyd. Well worth our arranging this meeting, after all. Annie Clark almost certainly died up on Pendle on that Sunday. And so far you’re the only person who has confessed to knowing she would be up there.’
It was five o’clock and the stars were already glittering in the clear navy sky. Alan Hurst left the tiny flagged yard at the back of his premises and went into the brightly lit shop. ‘You might as well get off early, Anna. We’re not going to have any rush I can’t cope with now.’
He gave her the cheerful smile of the good employer, keeping their relationship close but not intimate. He wouldn’t do anything about bedding Anna Fenton until this Annie Clark investigation was over and he could relax again. Curious that their first names should be so similar, but that must be no more than coincidence. He’d done the right thing, being frank with Peach about his philandering, about his situation at home; about the weakness of the flesh, and the little flings he indulged in. The man had seemed to understand, to accept that there was a huge difference between a little harmless lust and murder.
When his assistant had gone, he went and unlocked the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, took out the video tapes and put them into his briefcase. He was glad of the winter and the darkness. The fewer people who were about the town, the better it would be for him.
From the age of about twelve, Lucy Blake had fantasized like most girls about this scene. She had never envisaged it happening across two pint glasses in a back-street pub.
She said automatically, ‘I only ordered a half.’
‘You might need a pint, to cope with what I’ve got to say.’ Percy Peach set the big mugs of bitter and shandy down on the beer mats with elaborate care, as if any deviation from the exact centre would affect what was coming.
‘Is it about the case?’
‘No. Be easier if it were.’ Percy took a long, speculative pull at his beer, then studied the glass intently, as if it could deliver to him the necessary words. ‘You can blame your mum, if you don’t like it.’
‘I’m getting a bit old for that.’
He grinned suddenly at her. ‘Th’art nobbut a lass, yet.’
‘I’m twenty-nine, tha big daft lummox.’ She warmed to him as usual when he thee’d and thou’d her, when they lapsed into the language that she had grown up with and still heard in rural Lancashire. Sometimes he did it in bed, and it became a comedy cloak for their passion, a reminder that even the greatest things in life should be treated with a certain levity. Now she knew that, in the quietly absurd setting of the back room of this dingy old pub, it was a humorous vehicle for something intensely serious.
Percy frowned at his beer. ‘Tha must understand that I only want thee because I like thee mum.’
‘I understand that, Percy me lad. Perhaps it’s her thee should be talking to now.’
He smiled. He’d stopped himself just in time from saying that he’d already spoken to her. ‘Aye. ’Er knows her cricket, does tha mum. ’Appen she only wants me for a son-in-law because I’m Denis Charles Scott Peach.’
‘She tells me there’s more nor that to it, lad. But it helps that tha were a decent cricketer.’
‘Decent, yes. Never a Denis Compton, though.’ Percy downed another two inches of his beer, and she wondered if they would be on the third pint before he got to the important bit, whether she would have to plunge the whole thing into the farce which was threatening by running for the loo.
Perhaps her man felt the same. He said suddenly, ‘Will tha marry me then, Lucy Blake?’
She had always thought the man of her dreams would be looking soulfully into her eyes at this point. Instead of that, the stocky, bald-headed Peach was staring at the initials scratched into the top of the table by his beer-mat. But, amazingly, he was still the man of her dreams. She pushed out her small hand until it sat on top of his broad one and said, ‘Aye, I will that, Percy Peach.’
‘Bloody ’ell, Norah!’
He finished his beer with one swift swallow, bolted to the bar, came back with another pint and set it down beside the shandy she had scarcely touched. He looked at her now, and a smile of pure pleasure flooded into his round face. He put his hand back on hers, left it there for a full thirty seconds before he broke the spell. ‘Best bum in Brunton. I never thought I’d get me ’ands on that.’ He dropped his eyes towards that mercifully invisible part of her anatomy.
‘Very capable hands. Sometimes I can’t believe there’s only two of them.’ She ignored him as he
held the skilful appendages up proudly in front of her. ‘Mum wants grandchildren, you know. Don’t let her pressurize you.’
Percy couldn’t remember when he’d last been pressurized. He took a more relaxed and meditative pull at his second pint, contemplating the vision of a small, sturdy, red-haired boy with a cricket bat in his hand. ‘She has some good ideas, your mum.’
‘I want a long engagement, though.’
‘Perhaps we should discuss that with your mum.’
‘And have the two of you ganging up on me? Not likely. I can hold my own with most, but not with an alliance between Agnes Blake and Percy Peach.’
‘Aye. But tha must remember that the best bum in Brunton is flanked by child-bearing hips.’ He allowed himself a low groan of pleasure, at once reminiscent and anticipatory, which ran round the walls of the shabby room. ‘Shame to waste either the bum or the hips, I’d say.’
Lucy Blake found that she was enjoying her shandy now. ‘All that’s for future discussion, Percy lad – between the two of us, without third parties. It’s time that we were on our way.’
She stood up, reached for her coat, leaning across him and putting the best bum in Brunton within eighteen inches of his widening eyes.
‘Bloody ’ell, Norah!’ said Percy Peach.
Twenty-One
Alan Hurst watched Judith anxiously as she struggled into the sitting room after their evening meal.
He had already put the television programmes and the remote control on the little table next to her chair. Now he brought her the morning paper and her ballpoint pen and put them neatly alongside the remote control. He didn’t want to seem too much like the mother hen, but his wife liked to do the crossword while the television was on in the evenings, and he didn’t want her falling over trying to reach things whilst he was out.
He went and stacked the pots methodically in the dishwasher, with an expertise born of much practice. He put on his coat and gloves before he went back into the sitting room. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can, Jude,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I don’t expect to be much more than an hour, but don’t worry if I’m delayed. Do you have everything you need?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry you have to go out again, on a bitter night like this.’
‘Needs must. You’ll think it was worth our while, when you see our new extension taking shape!’
‘You never needed to work in the evening in the old days – the days when I used to be able to help you in the business.’ She had meant it to be sympathetic, but it sounded in her own ears like a petulant complaint, and she regretted her words as soon as they were out.
‘Business is very competitive these days. You have to be quick on your feet to stay alive. But we’re doing all right, aren’t we, Jude?’ He bent and kissed her lightly on the forehead, then turned towards the door, feeling the weight of his coat already in the oppressive heat of the room.
She wondered what other, younger and healthier, flesh those lips would touch before the evening was over, whether the real reason for his venturing out on a night like this was to meet some female. She never mentioned his girls, and she tried not to resent them. It was just the situation that did it: you couldn’t blame a man for his needs – not when he was as good to you as Alan was. ‘Be as long as you have to,’ she called after him bravely. ‘I’ll be perfectly all right here.’
She didn’t know in that moment quite how long it would be before she saw him again.
Alan Hurst tried hard not to feel relieved as he shut the front door of the house carefully behind him. He unlocked the boot and took out his bulging briefcase, setting it down in front of the passenger seat in the car. It was good to be out in the cold, clear air after the stifling heat of the house. He breathed in slowly and deliberately several times, the way his father had taught him to do as a child, feeling the welcome coolness drawn into his lungs, putting off for a moment the journey of deliveries he had to make.
He didn’t like doing this. Some day, when Judith and he had built the extension they needed, he’d give up this lucrative sideline, which was threatening to become more profitable than his proper business. Some day. But he put away all thoughts of a distant future, because he was conscious at the base of his brain that it would not contain Judith.
He made his first delivery to the house of the circuit judge. He usually went there first, having an obscure feeling that this client from the high ranks of the legal world could somehow give legitimacy to his enterprise.
The judge lived alone with a manservant, the only example of the species whom Alan had encountered in his entire life. If he came here in daylight, as he rarely did, he left his package in the garden shed. But at night, he delivered it into the manservant’s hands. This man always appeared to know when Alan was coming, so that he never had to ring the bell. The wide and heavy oak door eased back on well-oiled hinges as Alan walked between the laurels and up the drive. The old man with the immaculate silver hair took the envelope with the two video tapes from him with a wintry smile and the briefest of nods, and the door shut as silently as it had opened.
It was much the grandest of the houses that Alan visited. The other properties demonstrated what an estate agent would have called a comprehensive price range. Vice, like its great antagonist virtue, knows no social boundaries, and Alan Hurst was in no position to be choosy about his customers.
He knew exactly where he was going, having rehearsed the route in his mind several times during the day. Most of these people had become regular customers, and neither he nor they wished to linger over the transactions. He felt confident. Now that he had got used to the trade and his particular niche in it, one of the tricks was to appear self-assured, not shifty, to behave as though the idea that you were doing anything against the law was preposterous. Alan Hurst walked brisk and erect, and he did not glance back nervously over his shoulder, as he might have done in the early days.
He did not like going into the new block of flats: he always felt more at risk in this luxurious rabbit warren of a place, where the lift and the corridors were brightly lit and there were inevitably people about. But he managed on this occasion to get to the fourth-floor apartment without meeting a single person, and the door opened as he reached for the bell, just as that very different door had done at the judge’s house. The occupant must have been watching the car park from the window as Alan had driven in. He was a youngish man, with unfashionably long hair: he took the videos without a word and did not respond to Hurst’s hesitant smile.
Alan was away from the place without a word spoken, without anyone other than his client having remarked his presence, as far as he was aware. Nevertheless, he did not like the place. Perhaps he would make some arrangement for the customer to meet him in the car park in future, or even in some spot far removed from those eyes, which gave him the feeling of claustrophobia whenever he set foot into that modern, functional block.
He did not take long with any of his deliveries, for this was not a trade where many words were exchanged, where there was even the pretence of social niceties. Most of his clients were even more nervous than he was. Perhaps as he despised himself for his involvement in meeting this demand, they despised themselves for their weakness. People who are full of self-loathing often divert their self-contempt on to the messenger who brings to them the things they crave, so that Alan Hurst was seen by them as both necessary and despicable.
Without conversational exchanges, each transaction was swift. Yet as always the journey, with its frequent stops, took longer than he had expected. He glanced at his watch as he left the house on the edge of the Asian quarter of the town and prepared for his last errand of the night. It was almost two hours since he had left home. He pictured Judith, sitting with her crossword in the overheated room, half-watching the television, waiting patiently and uncomplainingly for his return, and his heart filled with an immense tenderness and sadness.
Not long now before he was home, and at least the streets were mercifully deserted, even in th
is section of the town, which was so often brimming with people. That was not surprising: the cold here was intense, and most of these old terraces had their cheap brick frontages shut tight against it. He was glad to slide himself back into the warmth of the car. The frost on a few scrubby bushes of privet glittered in his headlights as he eased the car away towards his last delivery.
This final sale was one of the easiest and least dangerous. He drove some three miles to the outskirts of the town, where an estate of comfortable semi-detached houses built in the nineteen-fifties sat solid and ordinary, beside a pub called the Hare and Hounds and several football pitches. He could see the playing fields white with the frost as he swung his car into the road he wanted.
He passed across his merchandise as quickly and as silently as with any of the night’s other terse exchanges. The man who came to the side door of the house seemed even more anxious to be rid of him than his predecessors, even less prepared to look into his face as he muttered the meaningless phrases of acceptance. That suited Alan well enough: the more anonymous these things could be kept, the better it was for him.
He had no idea that anything was wrong until the car at the end of the road switched on its lights and pulled out to block his path. It was only when the police sign on its roof was suddenly illuminated that his heart stopped for a moment, and then began to race.
They were big men, seeming even bigger as they stood at the window of his car and asked him politely to switch off his engine. He heard words which were familiar, but which had never in his life been addressed to him, about not needing to say anything, though it might harm his defence if he failed to mention when questioned something which he might later rely on in court. He was informed politely and formally that he was being arrested on suspicion of purveying pornographic videos of children.
