by J M Gregson
“This one was silenced before she ever got to that stage.”
“No doubt she had other possible assailants as well as her drug contacts. They tell me that addicts exist on the fringes of society. They probably have a lot of dubious contacts. But I don’t speak from first-hand knowledge, of course.”
How right he was, thought Lambert. The drug connection was only one possible source for Tamsin Rennie’s killer, but he wasn’t going to concede that to this man. “She could have been killed by someone you financed, of course. Someone like Fletcher.”
This time he was sure he had shaken his man, however temporarily. Fletcher was a contract killer, selling his services to whoever would pay, but working almost exclusively for Sugden over the last two years.
Sugden said, “I should like to see you try to prove that, Lambert. You would end up with a lot of very expensive egg on your face.” With an effort which was palpable, he forced his blandest smile. But he was used to playing this game: he recovered himself quickly, and so completely that within a minute Lambert could not even be sure that his opponent had been seriously ruffled.
He said doggedly, “She was dealing for you, Sugden. You may not even have known of her existence; it is even possible that you may not know who eliminated her, but by your rules she would have had to go. Your area manager would have known that.”
Sugden’s smile became more animated, relaxed itself into a grin. “I like that term: ‘area manager’. You have a baroque imagination, Superintendent. That is unusual in a policeman. It has enabled you to weave a detailed fantasy about my mythical criminal empire. You should set it down on paper some time, with diagrams. It might win a fiction prize.”
Lambert stood up. He wanted to frighten Sugden a little, to let him know that there were cracks in the fissure of his fortress, that they were nearer to him than they had ever been, to see in him a little of the panic that could lead to rashness. From his own point of view, he would have dearly loved to press the man about the echelon of drug suppliers immediately above Tamsin Rennie in the hierarchy. But he had bluffed his way as far as he could go. He could not pursue the game further without compromising the position of the undercover Drugs Squad officers. He could not dismiss from his mind the vision of the haunted brown eyes in the young-old face of the officer who had risked his cover to come to his home on the previous night.
This time it was he who stood first. “We shall be back, Sugden,” he said. “I don’t know when, as yet. You think we’re plodders, and in some respects we are, but we do have some old-fashioned virtues. Patience and industry, for a start. They help us to catch up with people like you, eventually.”
“I’d say that was whistling in the dark, Mr Lambert.” Sugden allowed himself to turn the title and the name into a parting sneer as he ushered them out. “If, of course, I had anything to hide.”
Lambert did not acknowledge the salute of the thug at the gate as they drove back into the sunny world outside. It had been a generally depressing expedition, as he acknowledged to Hook beside him. But he had seen enough to convince him that Sugden knew all about Tamsin Rennie’s death, knew in all probability who had killed her. Whether the killer was from within Sugden’s organisation, eliminating a possible source of danger, or whether this death was merely a convenient piece of luck for him, was still to be established.
Behind the ivy-clad walls of the mansion the Superintendent had just left, Keith Sugden had picked up the phone. He didn’t think the CID were anywhere near him yet. But he was a careful man. It would be as well to warn certain people about the way Lambert’s mind was working.
Thirteen
It was time, Lambert decided, to pay another visit to the house where Tamsin Rennie had spent the final months of her short life.
It was only four days since they had been here, but it was clear that the house was now undergoing something of a facelift. The handsome but scratched Georgian front door had been given a coat of deep blue paint; its brass fittings had been removed for the purpose, and cleaned and polished before they were refitted, because they now gleamed handsomely against their new blue background. The wheelchair and the battered, old-fashioned hatstand had disappeared from the hall, which was trim and neat, pleasantly scented with a bowl of pot-pourri which was set beside a vase of dahlias on the single low table.
Jane King was not pleased to see them. “I’ve said all I have to say,” she told them as she stood four-square on the doorstep. It was only when Lambert suggested they could talk at the station if she thought that more suitable that she turned and led them through this immaculate hall to the comfortable ground-floor drawing room where they had talked on the previous Friday. “This is highly inconvenient,” she grumbled as they sat down. “I’ve got the decorators in, as you may have noticed.”
“I saw that you’d had the front door sanded and painted, that you’d got rid of the wheelchair and hatstand from the hall,” said Lambert conversationally.
She thawed a little. “The wheelchair went at the weekend. It was only here because one of my tenants had a crippled aunt to stay for a couple of days. The hatstand is in my own flat upstairs. It’s hardly necessary nowadays, but it belonged to my mother and I can’t bring myself to part with it. The decorators are now working in the basement flat where Tamsin lived. You can probably hear them underneath us — there’s an entrance from the house, of course, though the door is normally kept locked when anyone is in residence in the flat. I know Tamsin didn’t die there, but I thought I’d have the whole place redone before I let it. You said you’d no objection, once your team had finished their work there, and your office gave us clearance to start the work.” She shuffled some estate agents’ brochures together on the table beside her, pushing them together into a plain cardboard file.
It seemed harsh, somehow, that while the girl’s corpse lay still unreleased for burial in the controlled chill of the mortuary, all traces of her existence should be wiped from the place where she had lived. But that was a sentimental view: after all, the scene of crime team had bagged and removed anything remotely personal to the dead girl before the redecoration began. Anyone who was considering renting that basement flat would no doubt prefer that every trace of a murder victim’s stay there was removed before they reoccupied the place. Lambert said, “You seem to have remembered rather more about the visitors to that basement flat since our visit on Friday, according to enquiries made by our uniformed men. That’s why we’re here now.”
The chin of her square face lifted beneath the glitter of the bright blue eyes. For a moment, he was sure she was going to argue. Then she folded her arms across her dark green silk blouse in a movement of self-control. She said calmly, “Ask away. If I can help you, I will.”
“Very well. First of all, we have now confirmed that Tamsin Rennie was by the time of her death a heroin addict, drug-dependent, needing a shot of heroin approximately every twelve hours. She was not a registered addict obtaining supplies on prescription, so she must have needed considerable sums to pay for them. Our present belief is that she was a dealer, probably obtaining her own supplies free in return for the dangerous business of supplying drugs to other users. Have you any idea where she got those supplies?”
“No. I know nothing about drugs, and I’m shocked to know that one of my tenants was an addict. I’m pretty sure no one came here to supply her. Surely she’d be more likely to collect them away from here, nearer to the places where she dealt in them?”
She was deadly serious now, seemingly disturbed by the notion that her house could have been used even on the periphery of this trade. And what she suggested was true enough: the dead girl’s contacts were more likely to have been in or around the sleazy pubs and clubs where she dealt than in this quiet Georgian street. At least the suggestion that drugs might have changed hands here seemed to have shaken Jane King a little, so that she might now be more forthcoming about other things. Lambert said, “We need to know much more about the men who were in contact with Ta
msin in the months before her death. Did you know that Tamsin’s stepfather visited her regularly, at least in the early days of her stay here?”
“No.” She stared him steadily in the face, refusing to enlarge on her answer.
Lambert produced a photocopy of Parker’s drawing. “This is Arthur Rennie. Are you sure you haven’t seen him before?”
She looked, then held the picture before her for a moment. Whether she was studying it and cudgelling her memory or calculating how to phrase her answer, he could not be sure. When her reply came, it had a forced formality, as if caution was dictating she gave the bare facts, lest she implicate Rennie. “I have seen him, yes. I remember him visiting Tamsin, when she first came to stay here. But I did not know his identity, not until now. It was not my business to know it. I told you on Friday: my residents are entitled to their privacy. That is one of the reasons why they pay me rent.”
“Of course. But you didn’t know about this man’s relationship with the dead girl?”
“No. Now that you’ve prodded my memory, I seem to remember seeing him here more than once. He might even have come after she’d transferred to the basement flat, but I wouldn’t be sure of that.”
“Now that you’ve remembered him, let me push you a little further. Can you recall what sort of relationship Tamsin might have had with him?”
The blue eyes narrowed a little, studying him coolly, wondering quite what he was about, where this might be leading. She crossed her legs, while the CID men noted automatically the quality of her light brown linen trousers. She was older than they had thought on their first visit, Bert Hook decided as she glanced at him, probably in her mid-forties, well preserved, expensively clad and discreetly made up. She was an attractive woman, but there was a quality of hardness about her which made one pause. Hook, with his upbringing in Barnardo’s homes, was an expert on middle-class ladies of smart appearance and iron will.
Now she said, “I didn’t see enough of the man to form any estimation of his relationship with Tamsin. But I can tell you a little, because she talked to me once or twice when she was paying her rent. I know she didn’t get on with her mother. And I gather there had been well, an incident with her stepfather. She said he had assaulted her. I gathered that was one reason why she had left home and taken a room here in the first place. I only have Tamsin’s word for that, of course. It may not even be true. I wouldn’t like to cause trouble for anyone. I’m only telling you now because she’s been murdered.”
“As she had been at the time of our last visit, Mrs King,” said Lambert drily. “It would have been helpful to have this information then.” He found the landlady’s cool composure irritating. But at least she seemed to be more cooperative now; for a woman who had begun this meeting by stating that she had said all she had to say, she was now providing a lot of information. Perhaps she was frightened, as many were, by the mention of drugs, by the need to reject the notion that her house had been the place where they changed hands.
Whatever the reason, they must capitalise upon this willingness to deliver information. “Perhaps we can now stir your memory about other things: I also asked you on Friday if you had any idea how she was raising the extra money to pay for that basement flat, but you were unable to help us. You said, if I remember right, that she mostly paid in cash, but you didn’t know where it came from.”
She nodded slowly, ignoring the slur on her honesty at their first meeting, too shrewd to be drawn into a defence of her behaviour four days earlier. Lambert was forced to make his own running. “We now have reason to believe that Tamsin Rennie was entertaining men for money, was selling her body to sustain the lifestyle she had taken on. Are you saying that you were completely unaware of these activities?”
She took her time, refusing to descend into the anger that might have been revealing. “That had not struck me as a possibility at the time. Now that you mention it, I can see that it is a possibility. The acts would support it: she had a number of male visitors, more than you might expect a girl of her background to entertain, I suppose. I expect I’m rather naive in these matters.”
She looked so far from naive that Lambert found an involuntary smile on his lips. “You’re saying you had no idea of this activity at the time?”
“If I’d thought she was using my flat for the purposes of prostitution, which I presume is what you are saying, she’d have been on her way very quickly.”
“I see.” For a moment, Lambert wondered whether this smartly dressed, worldly wise woman had been acting as pimp, furnishing clients for Tamsin Rennie. It hardly seemed likely. If she was the madam of a disorderly house behind the staid exterior of 17 Rosamund Street, she would certainly have been acting for several girls, and enquiries among her tenants had revealed no other women making their living in that way. He said, “Well, now that you are belatedly aware of these activities, can you recall in a little more detail any others among her clients? I need hardly tell you that in a murder investigation we must follow up any such contacts until they are eliminated from the inquiry.”
She refused still to be insulted by his tone, which told her more plainly than words that he believed she had withheld information on his last visit here. She looked past the two large men for a moment to the clump of salvias which blazed so brightly in the enclosed quiet of the garden beyond the window; she seemed to be reviewing the last months and trying to picture the men who had come to see her basement tenant.
Eventually she said, “I was aware that there were men, but as I didn’t know what you are now telling me was going on, I didn’t pay a lot of attention. My tenants, as I have repeatedly explained to you, are entitled to their privacy.”
“But you must have been aware, for instance, of Tom Clarke, the young man who wanted to marry Tamsin Rennie.”
She shrugged. “Is that his name? The lad who wants to be an actor? I didn’t pay much attention to him. You expect girls of Tamsin’s age to have a regular boyfriend.”
“Yet you know how this one earns his living, it seems.”
She smiled at him, refusing to take offence. “I expect Tamsin told me. We chatted a little, when we happened to meet. But that wasn’t often, once she had taken the flat in the basement with its own entrance. It was mostly when she came up to pay her rent.”
“Did she ever mention any violence from him? Or suggest he was becoming a nuisance?”
“No. Not to me. For what it’s worth, I got the impression that she was rather fond of him, and becoming more so. I should emphasise that it’s just that: an impression. I can’t recall Tamsin actually saying that, and I’ve never spoken to the boy himself. Is he now a suspect?”
Lambert smiled. It was the first naive question she had asked, and they both recognised it immediately as that. “The boyfriend always has to be eliminated in cases like this. Just as the husband has to be. And at a further remove, in the next circle moving outwards from the centre, anyone who lived in close proximity to the victim and thus had the opportunity. That is why members of my team have questioned all your tenants in the last few days.”
“And why the man in charge of the case has come here twice to speak to the victim’s landlady?”
They smiled at each other, each appreciating the swiftness of the mind behind the face. Then Lambert said, “There is a discrepancy in our records. Your friends the Frasers say you arrived for dinner with them last Wednesday at some time after eight. You told us it was at twenty past seven.”
She smiled. “If Don Fraser says it was later, I’m sure he’s right. He’s a very precise man, Don. I think I said at the time that I wasn’t sure about the time, that I didn’t expect to be quizzed about it by the CID.”
Lambert nodded. “You did indeed. There was another reason for this second visit. Sergeant Hook and I also suspected that you would be able to help us with information about the victim and her associates. As you are now most usefully doing.”
“Well, I didn’t see much of the boyfriend, though I was aware he
was visiting regularly, was sometimes staying overnight.”
“What about Tamsin’s other visitors?”
She breathed in, revealing nothing of what she was about to say in the quiet, square face within the neat framing of short dark hair. She looked out through the window at her garden and said, “There was one man I did recognise. Councillor Whittaker.”
She looked back from the flower border to Lambert’s face on her last words, as if curious to see whether the name would emerge as the bombshell it might have been.
It was his turn to be deadpan. “How often did you see him here?”
“Several times. I cannot be precise. But I did see him going into Tamsin’s flat about ten days ago.” As she watched Hook recording her words, she had a slight, rueful smile. Perhaps she was considering the local impact of this when it reached the press, as it surely must.
“And you think he had visited her upon a regular basis?”
“I did not say regular. I said he had been several times: that is rather different.”
Lambert smiled, admiring her precision in spite of himself. “Yet you remember Councillor Whittaker’s last visit — if indeed it was his last one — pretty clearly. Ten days ago, you said.”
“I remember it because there is something to pinpoint it in my mind, Superintendent Lambert, that is all. The flat is below this room: you have heard the men at work down there yourselves this afternoon. It was a warm evening; the windows were open downstairs then as they are now. So was the window in this room.” She walked over and lifted the bottom of the sash window; they heard the noise of the workmen’s radio from the flat below quite clearly. “I heard the sound of an argument. A heated argument, in fact. He was arguing that Tamsin should leave the flat. What you have told me this afternoon gives a little more sense to it. I only caught the odd phrase, but I now think James Whittaker was trying to get Tamsin to go away and set up home with him.”
