by J M Gregson
Lambert grinned at Hook’s dismay at his own suggestion. “Opportunity and motive, then. But he’s not the only one. We’ve got a handsome young lover who lied to us about his whereabouts on the evening in question.”
Bert Hook, who had decided that this handsome youth from a background so different from his own was the likeliest murderer, came in eagerly. “Tom Clarke had a better opportunity than anyone else, being in Hereford Cathedral that night for the rehearsal, and his car was parked in the slot nearest to the entrance for the Lady Chapel throughout the three most vital hours of the evening, if we accept his own revised account.”
Rushton nodded. “And if we think this is a crime of passion, Tom Clarke is the strongest candidate of all. He’s admitted in his revised statement that he’d had a serious row with the dead girl at their last known meeting. Not just a lovers’ tiff, but a bust-up where she was threatening to end the affair, whereas he still wanted to marry her and carry her off to better things.” The DI spoke the last words with what was almost a sneer. Chris Rushton had become even more contemptuous of young love than most policemen since the time of his own divorce three years earlier.
Lambert looked at his taut face for a couple of seconds before he said, “You told me earlier that forensic had provided us with some news on the pregnancy.”
Rushton nodded. He had wanted to save his one bit of real news for the best moment. “Two months pregnant, the PM report said, you remember. None of the people we’ve interviewed has declared any knowledge of her condition. We can probably presume that she hadn’t told any of them about it: perhaps she hadn’t been sure of it for very long herself. And perhaps it precipitated some decision that affected her situation, which in turn prompted her killer to take the action he did.”
Lambert said impatiently, “Too many ‘perhapses’, Chris. Let’s hear what forensic had to say about the pregnancy.”
“The father is Tom Clarke. You can’t clear everything away, even with as thorough a cleansing of that flat as was conducted after the murder. There were a couple of hairs of Tom Clarke’s on one of Tamsin Rennie’s sweaters which the SOC team bagged and sent to forensic: they matched them with a sample he agreed to give us when he signed his statement. Tests on the foetus have shown that the child was his.”
Perhaps that had always been the likeliest answer. But CID men welcome unlikely answers: they are often significant pointers. There was a pause before Hook returned to the case against Tom Clarke. “Without forensic and the wonders of modern science, we’d probably never have known this. Probably Clarke didn’t know about the pregnancy himself. But if he did and she was threatening to end the relationship, he might have lost his rag. And save for that single photograph, all the obvious traces of him had been removed from Tamsin’s flat. If Clarke did kill her, he could easily have gone into the flat and cleaned it after the choir rehearsal that night; St Ethelbert Street is a quiet backwater to walk down at that time of night, and it’s highly unlikely anyone, even our Nosey Parker on the other side of the street, would have seen him enter a basement flat in the darkness. We know he had a key.”
Lambert said ruefully, “But then so did most of the people we regard as leading suspects. Including, probably, whoever was supplying her with drugs to sell to others. Have we made any progress on who that might be?”
Rushton shook his head. “Not really. The team has checked out all the other residents of 17 Rosamund Street. Three of them were users of soft drugs, that’s par for the course among seven mostly youngish people. But we’re satisfied none of them had any connection with Tamsin Rennie. Most of them hardly knew her.”
“What about the landlady, Jane King? She knows more about her residents than she admits to, I’m sure. She was much more forthcoming when we went there for a second time. She told us things about James Whittaker, for instance, that she’d withheld when we saw her soon after the murder had been discovered. Did none of the team get any more out of her?”
Rushton permitted himself a rare smile. When John Lambert had had two goes at a subject, there wasn’t usually much left for anyone else to prise out. “She’s a pretty tough cookie, Mrs King. But I think we’ve probably got as much as we’re going to get, as much as she knows, perhaps. She was quite willing to talk about the Rennies and Tom Clarke and James Whittaker, whereas she hadn’t been at first, as you say. But I’d be satisfied now that she’s told us all she knows about them. She’s even given us odd scraps that Tamsin let drop to her when she was paying her rent. But they don’t add anything to what we already know.”
Lambert nodded slowly. He noted Rushton’s preference for the Rennies as murderers and Bert Hook’s stress upon young Tom Clarke. He would have liked to make out a case for someone himself: in these informal exchanges, it helped to clarify the situation and prevent things being overlooked if people were allowed to argue for their own candidates. But he had said what he had to say about James Whittaker, reminded them that mild-mannered killers were not rare. His own fancy was for someone connected with the drugs trade; that was probably because he would be pleased if they could connect this killing with Keith Sugden and his dark empire. But the trouble was that they hadn’t so far come up with any genuine contact as the person who had been providing Tamsin Rennie with her supplies of drugs to deal. It was difficult to put forward a vehement case for such a vague and faceless suspect. He said rather wearily, “Are we any nearer to establishing Tamsin Rennie’s drug trade contacts?”
“Not as far as her supply goes. We’ve found one of the pubs where she dealt, and a kid she was supplying was brought in for possession last night. He’s only eighteen. He’s been thoroughly interrogated, but we’re satisfied he’s no idea where Tamsin got her supplies from. He doesn’t even know who’s replaced her. I’ve been on to the Drugs Squad again this morning, but they’re no nearer to giving us a supplier for Tamsin Rennie. Probably someone with a respectable front, who doesn’t go anywhere near the pubs and clubs where heroin and coke get on to the streets. The secret at that level is to pass the supplies swiftly and anonymously.”
“So the girl may have collected them herself rather than have them brought to her. Did she have access to a car?”
“Not as far as we know. All the suspects have transport, but they all seem genuinely innocent of any knowledge of the drugs industry. I can’t see any of them lending Tamsin Rennie a car to meet her supplier. Apart from any other considerations, none of them would have wanted to get involved in the drugs trade, I’m sure. But she could have taken a taxi, if necessary. Or, more likely, collected them on foot from anywhere in Hereford.”
A faceless local supplier, who might also be the person who crushed the life from Tamsin Rennie’s young throat; who might have had equally anonymous assistance in depositing the body on its macabre resting place in the Cathedral. Suddenly they seemed to Lambert to have made very little progress in a week’s intensive investigation.
He was left at the end of their conference with the feeling that there was something he had not exactly missed but overlooked. That somewhere, in the masses of minutiae from different areas which tumbled through his mind, there was a significant detail that he had not weighted properly.
He took Bert Hook back into his office with his notebook. In the days of old, he would have lit a cigarette. Now they had to make do with the station coffee which Bert swore had an adverse effect on his golf swing. Lambert took his first sip, grimaced, and said, “Let’s just go over our exchanges earlier this morning with Tom Clarke.”
Eighteen
Chris Rushton was quietly proud of his initiative in encouraging the only dissident voice at Arthur Rennie’s revivalist meeting to contact him.
Rushton’s strengths were organisation and thoroughness; if you needed to be sure a job would be done conscientiously and by the book, you passed it to Chris. His diligence and his computer literacy made him a valuable member of Lambert’s team, filing and cross-indexing the vast amount of material which accrued from a team of th
irty. This enabled Lambert to pursue his eccentric and outdated methods of leading his investigation from the front, of conducting most of the more significant interviews himself. Most modern superintendents have settled for the easy life of overview and direction from behind a desk, but as long as Lambert got results he was going to be allowed to proceed in his own archaic way.
DI Rushton had acted last night on impulse in the council hall, and apparently done the right thing when he had inserted the page torn from his diary into the young man’s shopping bag as he let him past his seat. As if to emphasise that, his enterprise with that hastily scribbled message was now rewarded on the very next day. He was told that a Paul Dansen was asking for him at the front desk.
The name meant nothing to Chris, but when he went through to the reception area he recognised immediately the young man who had been so distraught on the previous evening. He had put on a suit to come to see the police; he looked uncomfortable but determined. Chris took him through to the relative quiet of his own small office beside the Murder Room.
Dansen sat on the edge of his upright chair and looked thoroughly ill at ease. It had been bad enough nerving himself to approach the front desk of a police station. Being drawn now into its mysterious inner recesses, he was already regretting his decision to follow up the note he had found that morning under the books at the bottom of his shopping bag.
Putting people at their ease was not one of Chris Rushton’s strengths, but he did his best. His impulse was to talk too much himself. “Thank you for coming in so promptly, Paul. Let me start by saying that I share your view of Arthur Rennie, Born Again Christian and self-styled Pastor of the Mission to Hereford. I believe he is deceiving people and accepting money under false pretences. I hope that you may be able to provide me with some evidence to support charges against the man. I can assure you of a more sympathetic hearing than you got from him last night at the meeting.”
Paul nodded, not taking in all of this but getting the essential impression that he had done the right thing in coming here. “I want justice for my Gran, you see. Rennie makes out I’m after the money for myself, that I’m taking it away from what he calls the work of the Lord.”
“You’d better begin at the beginning. Remember that all of this is new to me. Assume that I know nothing, even that I need to be convinced, if you like. Start by telling me exactly who you are. Remember, I only know Paul Dansen so far as the young man who stood up to Arthur Rennie.”
Dansen hesitated, then plunged into a brief account of himself. He was a twenty-two-year-old student at the University of Gloucester. He was only in his second year of studies, because he had spent two years doing various jobs to support him on his way round the world after leaving school with his A-levels. He was an open-faced, earnest man, who looked younger than his years, despite his experiences around five continents. He said he had met with some pretty savage treatment at the hands of the police in places as different as Africa and America, which helped to explain his diffidence in coming to Oldford in response to Rushton’s scribbled invitation. The DI let him talk for a few minutes before he said, “And you say you have a complaint about the way Rennie has treated your grandmother.”
Dansen nodded vigorously. “And how! I don’t even know whether it’s illegal or not, mind. But if it’s not, it bloody well should be!”
Chris nodded encouragingly. “Quite probably it is. Let’s have the details.” He tapped in a heading on the new computer file he had opened. Not for him the old-fashioned notebook of Bert Hook — not when he was in his own den and could use his computer, anyway. He was only dimly aware that Hook used his notebook not just as a record but as an instrument to threaten, encourage or chasten interviewees, as the circumstances demanded. No one could produce a simple notebook with the portentous implications which Bert’s timing and bearing could give to it.
Paul Dansen said, “Gran went to one of his meetings two months ago and was duly impressed. Since then, she’s given him at least three large sums of money from her building society account.”
“How large?”
Paul shook his head. “I can’t be sure. Hundreds, certainly. Maybe more than that. She wouldn’t tell me. It’s well, it’s possible she doesn’t know clearly herself. She used to have a mind like a razor. She taught maths at the girls’ grammar school for thirty years. But she’s eighty now, and this last year, she’s well, her mind’s gone a bit soft. She doesn’t even remember what she did yesterday and who she saw.”
He was almost in tears. Rushton said gruffly, “Well, it’s a good thing she has someone like you to look out for her, then, Paul, isn’t it?”
He nodded, fought back the tears, said, “My mum and dad live in Scotland now, so they’re not around to protect her. I noticed a big difference in Gran when I came back from abroad, and since she’s been ill it’s accelerated rapidly.”
Rushton said sharply, “Your grandmother is ill now, as well as old?”
“Yes. I’m not doing this very well, am I? Sorry, it’s more upsetting than I expected it would be.” He felt through the pockets of his suit, found a handkerchief, and blew his nose with vigorous relief. “She’s got terminal cancer. It won’t be long before it’s much worse. She’s going into a hospice next week. She’s being very brave. When she’s lucid, she says her great fear was Alzheimer’s and the loss of her mind and dignity, so now she’s going to avoid that.”
“And you think that Arthur Rennie has been exploiting the situation?”
“I know he has. She won’t show me her building society book, but I’m sure he’s already been gifted most of her savings. He told her it was the Will of the Lord that the worldly dross of wealth should be used to pave the road to heaven for the righteous.” Despite Dansen’s distress, Rushton could hear the overblown phrases being delivered in Arthur Rennie’s high rhetorical mode. “Then I found out that he’d been round there last Wednesday, exploiting her illness and her distress. I got there just after he’d gone, unfortunately. And he’s refused to meet me face to face since then. That’s why I was driven to interrupting his meeting and setting up last night’s performance.”
“He’d conned more money out of the old lady?”
“Worse than that. He’s got her to sign her house away to him. He’s taken away the document and I’ve never seen it. But I’m pretty sure it’s one of those simple will forms you can buy at any stationer’s, from the neighbour’s description. She and her husband were called in by Gran to act as witnesses, you see.”
Rushton tried to find the comfort the young man opposite him so obviously hoped for, and failed. These documents were perfectly legal, as long as the simple niceties of witnesses and signatures were observed. Rennie would surely have ensured that, for this was certainly not the first time he had pulled a trick like this. The bequest would no doubt be to some bogus religious sect with a high-sounding title, of which he and Sarah Rennie would be the officers and the only people allowed to sign cheques. It would probably even be registered as a charity, to make it more tax-efficient as a gatherer of funds like this. And this old lady might be dead within a month, by the sound of it, leaving behind only the notoriously difficult and expensive expedient of challenging a will.
Chris said, “We’ll need to move pretty quickly if we’re to stop him. Do you have the names of anyone else that you know is being exploited like your Gran?”
“No. I’m sure there are other people, because I gather he waved the details of other gifts and bequests before Gran’s eyes when he was persuading her to sign this will. But I haven’t any of the details. Gran didn’t register any names, even if that bugger showed her any.”
“If we can get enough from your Gran’s case to have a look at the bank statements for whatever name he operates for his scams, we can probably get the names and eventually the addresses of more people, to build up the case.” There might be enough from the police investigation of Arthur Rennie’s activities in Sussex to persuade a building society manager to cooperate
, thought Chris. The executives making financial decisions were always nervous when old people’s savings were in jeopardy: no one liked the kind of publicity that could come with the exposure of a charlatan like Rennie. But Chris played it by the book, as was his wont, and didn’t reveal these thoughts to the man on the other side of his desk.
Paul Dansen seemed cheered that this earnest inspector was taking his problem seriously. He said, “I could go round and try to confront him again. I’ve found out where the Rennies live now, by following them home after a meeting. But so far I haven’t managed to see him. Usually that harridan of a wife comes out and shouts at me on the doorstep. She calls me the Antichrist, and says I am trying to frustrate the will of the Lord. I think she actually believes it — she seems mad as a hatter to me.”
Yes, thought Chris. Mad enough to kill her daughter, perhaps, if the girl got in the way of whatever strange things Sarah Rennie saw as the work of the Lord. But this distraught young man knew nothing about the involvement of the Rennies in a murder case, and it had better be kept that way. He said, “Don’t go and tackle him face to face. It probably won’t work and it might well make matters worse if he’s put more on his guard. I can assure you that we have Arthur Rennie in our sights and that we shall be following up the case of your grandmother. Thank you for coming in to see me so promptly. I’ll be in contact as soon as I have anything to report, probably within the next few days.”
Dansen stood up and began to stammer his thanks. He wondered desperately if there was anything to add, any detail he had overlooked which might save Gran from herself, while he still had the attention of a Detective Inspector.
But it was Rushton, checking through the lines he had typed on his computer, who suddenly arrested his visitor’s departure. “You say that you just missed Arthur Rennie when he was round at your grandmother’s house last Wednesday. You don’t mean yesterday, do you? You mean last week: Wednesday, August 17th.”
