In Vino Veritas lah-23

by J M Gregson

  ‘I see. So neither you nor presumably anyone at Abbey Vineyards would think it unusual that you have seen nothing of him since Wednesday evening?’

  She picked her way carefully through this; it sounded as if her reply might be important at some future date. ‘The junior staff would, I am sure, have no awareness of the pattern of Mr Beaumont’s working week. He delighted in giving them the impression that he might turn up at any time and in any situation. It kept them on their toes, he said, as well as showing them that he was interested in people working at all levels in the firm.’

  ‘But your senior staff would be aware of his habit of leaving Thursdays free?’

  ‘I think they would, yes. He made no secret of it.’

  ‘And how many of those would there be, Mrs Cooper?’

  ‘Five.’ Fiona was surprised by the speed with which she had delivered a number. But Martin had regularly circularized these five with documents he thought appropriate only for them.

  ‘Could you give me their names, please?’

  Now, belatedly, she asked him a question, the way a good PA, operating for her boss and the firm, should surely be doing. She was glad she had followed her usual practice in jotting down the man’s name and title at the beginning of all this. ‘May I ask why you are requesting this information, Detective Inspector Rushton?’

  This time it was Chris who paused. He could hardly tell her he wanted a list of potential suspects in a murder enquiry, as the people who had been closest to the dead man were likely to become. ‘It is standard practice, Mrs Cooper. As yet we know very little about the way Mr Beaumont died. It is those who were nearest to him at work and at home who can best give us a picture of a dead man.’ He had almost said ‘victim’. That showed how long it was since he’d broken news like this, he thought ruefully. It was usually left to junior officers to make the first contact and convey the news of a death, but he realized now that everyone should do it occasionally, to keep himself aware of the problems.

  Fiona said, conscious for the first time of a quickening of her pulse, ‘This is what you call a “suspicious death”, isn’t it, Inspector Rushton?’

  ‘It is exactly that, Mrs Cooper. I cannot tell you any more at the moment. I know very little more myself. I am following standard police procedures, as I said just now.’

  ‘I can give you the names and job descriptions of the five senior people I mentioned.’

  ‘That will be most useful information.’ He had been considering whether he should throw in Chief Superintendent Lambert’s name. Most local people were aware of his name and reputation, and the glamour of celebrity often persuaded them to volunteer information they would otherwise have been reluctant to offer. But it was too early to use Lambert’s name yet; time enough for that when this became officially a murder investigation. And this woman was being both efficient and cooperative, in DI Rushton’s opinion, the best possible combination of virtues to offer to a police officer. ‘If it causes you any embarrassment, we will not need to reveal whence this information came to us.’ He liked that last phrase; he had heard Lambert use it years ago, and filed it away for his own use.

  ‘There will be no need for secrecy, Inspector,’ came the prim response from the other end of the line. ‘I shall give you these names in no particular order of importance. Our finance director is Alistair Morton, aged forty-four. Our shop manager and retail sales director is Gerald Davies, aged fifty-seven. Our manager and director of residential accommodation is Vanda North, aged forty-six, who is also a junior partner in the firm. Our head chef and restaurant director is Jason Knight, aged thirty-eight. Our research and development director is Sarah Vaughan, aged thirty-three.’

  Fiona wondered why she had reeled off their ages as well as their names. Probably because she was reading from the employment records and the dates of birth followed the names, she thought. Or was it just the bitchy desire to indicate that pretty young Miss Vaughan was the youngest, most recently arrived, and thus most junior of these people who earned more than she did? She added a little guiltily, ‘Mr Beaumont always stresses that we are a small and dynamic organization, so that these roles are not definitive and inevitably overlap from time to time.’

  Rushton finished writing and said rather breathlessly, ‘Thank you. This will be most useful information, I am sure. Should it prove necessary to talk to any of these people, I or someone else here will contact you again, probably later today.’

  Fiona Cooper set down the phone and sat like a statue for several minutes. She was looking through the open door of the office at the round-backed chair which her late employer had so recently occupied. She had spoken of him throughout in the present tense, she now realized, though she had been told at the outset that he was dead. Not very efficient, really, for a PA, though the police must be used to it.

  They would already be contacting the people she had just named.

  Howler’s Heath was indeed no more than the tiniest of hamlets, as Rushton had told Bert Hook. As Lambert drove up the lane beyond it, the scene of the crime was soon apparent by the unwonted activity which surrounded it.

  The scene beneath the huge chestnuts was already cordoned off with the plastic ribbons proclaiming ‘Do not enter’, which always define the environs of a serious crime scene. Not that there was much danger in this remote spot of the curious crowds who often gather round the site of a murder in a town or suburb, at once attracted and repelled by the macabre glamour of the most serious of all crimes, the wanton termination of another being’s life.

  There were already two police cars at the point where the unpaved track left the lane. Lambert parked behind them; to drive on to the track itself might contaminate important evidence left by other vehicles. The civilians who now constitute most SOCO teams were already busily at work. The photographer announced as they arrived that he had finished his business, but would wait around in case the man in charge of the investigation required any further shots. His manner proclaimed that this was most unlikely.

  Two of the others were on all fours, systematically retrieving and bagging in plastic any items which might have a human connection, any detritus which might at a much later date become an important exhibit in a court case. Every calling has its dreams, and it was the aspiration of these worthy seekers to retrieve a piece of jewellery, an accidentally dropped pen or pencil, even at a pinch a soiled tissue, which would secure the conviction of a killer. It very rarely happened, of course. Evidence collected was usually cumulative and supplementary to other findings in building up a case. But very occasionally it did happen, and the hope of it sustained workers in what was essentially a boring task. Because of that, the dream was rarely disparaged by the Scene of Crime Officer or the senior detective in charge of the case.

  One of the men with tweezers in hand, a retired police constable who was now operating as a civilian, gestured towards the cigarette end he had recently bagged, which might have been a precious find in the right circumstances, and shook his head glumly. ‘Almost certainly pre-dates this crime, sir. I’ve bagged it to be on the safe side, but I’d say it’s at least a week old, possibly more.’

  Lambert nodded his sympathy and moved towards the big blue car. Although the site was remote, you could get to it easily enough by car, and for those who were aware of that it would afford an almost certain privacy. A perfect site for lovers who, for whatever reason, wanted to conceal conversations, clumsy gropings or more serious couplings, for instance. As if the thought had provoked the discovery, the woman at the other extremity of the site now produced with a despairing groan a used condom. She lifted it with tweezers, held it at arm’s length, and deposited it within her polythene container with a gargoyle moue of distaste.

  Lambert walked across and bent over the car, opening the driver’s door gingerly with gloved hand. What remained of Martin Beaumont was slumped away from the door, hunched over the gap between the two front seats. It was the left temple which had been targeted, but there was no exit wound.r />
  The voice of the SOCO behind him said quietly, ‘He’s been here for some time, sir. The pathologist said rigor mortis had been and gone, but he wouldn’t commit himself to a time of death.’

  ‘More than twenty-four hours, though?’

  ‘It looks like it. He said he’d treat the post mortem as urgent and give you his report asap.’ He looked past the superintendent at the gory remnants of what had been a man. ‘It looks as though the bullet is lodged within the skull, sir. He seems to have hit the door and bounced back towards the centre of the car.’

  ‘Not a Smith and Wesson then. That would have blown most of the head away.’ The right eye and most of the face were undamaged. Even the left side of the features might clean up after the post mortem, so that the body could be presented as decently as possible to whatever relative had to undergo the formality of identification. ‘Any sign of the murder weapon?’

  But even as he spoke, he knew there wouldn’t be. Any prize trophy of that sort would have been triumphantly volunteered to the man in charge of the case as soon as he arrived on the scene. The SOCO said, ‘No. I should be very surprised if you ever see it again.’

  Lambert nodded sourly. Probably in the muddy depths of the Severn or one of its tributaries by now. Murderers were rarely so cooperative as to leave such key evidence around. And he was already sure that this was murder. The faint possibility of suicide had disappeared with the absence of the weapon. ‘Did you get anything from the car?’

  ‘A few fibres from the front passenger seat; one or two more from the rear seats and carpets. Impossible to tell how long they’ve been there. Forensic and their labs might find something more, when their boys and girls are released on to it.’

  Lambert looked again at that blank, unseeing right eye. How easy it would be for policemen if the old myth about the cornea retaining the image of what it had last seen had any truth in it. He waved a hand in futile dismissal of the flies, which would return within seconds to the blackening wound which had ended what had once been a man. ‘If the pathologist’s taken what he wants from here, you might as well have the meat-wagon in to remove the corpse.’ He said to the photographer, ‘You’d better stay until then, and take a shot of whatever’s underneath him.’

  Hook had been looking hard at the unpaved track whilst Lambert studied the car and its grisly contents. ‘You found any tyre tracks here?’ he asked the man who had been inspecting the ground.

  ‘Nothing which looks significant as yet. We’ll give it a detailed examination before we leave, but it’s been very dry over the last couple of days.’ The officer had the pessimism which was characteristic of such workers. They were reluctant to offer much hope to those conducting the case, fearful of being reviled as the producers of false dawns.

  Hook nodded, thinking of the bright scenes at his graduation yesterday, of the sun beating down on those happy, noisy, celebrating hordes of people from all sorts of backgrounds. The Jaguar and its ghastly contents had been here beneath these green trees through those same hours, silent and unremarked, save for the heedless singing birds and the flies which scented food.

  He was beset in that moment by an illogical guilt, as if his heedless rejoicing had in some way contributed to the fact that this corpse had been undiscovered through the vital first day of its existence. Lambert rejoined him and they removed from their shoes the plastic coverings used to avoid contamination of the crime scene, then picked their way slowly back along the grass verge at the edge of the track to Lambert’s old Vauxhall Senator car.

  When they looked back a hundred yards to the scene beneath the trees, two men were unloading the plastic body shell from the van the police called the ‘meat wagon’ and were preparing to lever their blood-spattered cargo from the big blue Jaguar.

  And still the sun blazed steadily over the quiet scene, as if to remind them how tiny within the cosmos were the petty affairs of men.

  THIRTEEN

  It was a big house, as they would have expected of the man who had owned Abbey Vineyards. The grounds were tidy enough. A gardener in overalls glanced curiously at the police vehicle, then continued planting long lines of bedding plants alongside the drive. An impressive oak front door stood between the pillars which framed it in the mock-Georgian frontage. The exterior woodwork of the house looked as if it had been recently repainted.

  Nevertheless, the house itself looked curiously unloved and uncared for. The curtains of the room to the left of the door had been pulled back untidily and those in the room on the first floor above them were tightly drawn. The end of a newspaper protruded still from the letter box, though it was now two o’clock on this sunny Friday afternoon. They rang the doorbell twice. It was some time after the second effort that their ringing was answered.

  ‘Sorry. Mrs Forshaw comes in to clean on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but she isn’t here today.’

  The woman had straight black hair which fell almost to her shoulders. Her paleness was stark. It was accentuated by the loose-fitting black dress and shoes she wore. Her deep-set eyes must once have been an intriguing feature of the face, but now the rings beneath them made them look haunted, fearful of what might be at hand. Her thin nose seemed pinched, whereas within a healthier setting it would have been attractive. When Lambert announced himself and Hook with their ranks, she smiled and said, ‘Yes. I was told to expect you.’ Her teeth were regular and attractive. As that single smile briefly lit up the face, they had a glimpse of the woman she had been thirty years ago.

  She took them into a large, well-furnished sitting room, which somehow seemed too big a setting for this wan, uneasy figure. Lambert was seeking to ease his way into the interview with the bereaved spouse, which was usually the most difficult of those to follow a suspicious death. He said, ‘You know why we’re here then, Mrs Beaumont?’

  ‘Yes. The two young women in uniform told me this morning that Martin was dead. I’m afraid they had to get me out of bed, even though it wasn’t very early. I often don’t sleep very well.’

  ‘I’m sorry we have to intrude at a time like this, Mrs Beaumont, and we’ll be as brief as we can. But we have to follow certain procedures.’

  ‘Was he killed? Did someone murder Martin?’

  ‘That is yet to be formally confirmed, but we very much fear he was killed, yes. Forgive me, but you sound as though you were expecting that.’

  ‘You’ll need someone to do a formal identification, won’t you?’

  ‘We will need that, in due course, yes. But if you don’t feel up to it, I’m sure that we can-’

  ‘I’ll do it. No problem, Superintendent, I’ll do it. How did he die?’

  Lambert smiled at her, seeking to mask the rebuke in what he had to say. ‘Mrs Beaumont, you are understandably rather on edge at the moment, as we all would be in these circumstances. But the idea of this meeting is that we ask the questions and you answer them, to the best of your ability.’

  ‘Sorry. I’m jumping the gun, aren’t I? I tend to do that, I think.’

  He watched her carefully to see whether she would recognize her unfortunate choice of metaphor, but she looked only like a woman on edge. It was an effect which was to persist throughout the interview.

  Hook flicked open his notebook and said, ‘When did you last see Mr Beaumont?’

  She looked at him as if registering his presence for the first time, though she had nodded to him politely enough when Lambert had introduced him. ‘Wednesday morning. He spoke to me before he went out to work.’

  Bert registered a puzzlement he scarcely felt upon his homely features, persuading his listener as usual towards the notion that he was less intelligent, and thus less threatening, than was the reality. ‘That is a full forty-eight hours before his body was found. Did you not wonder where he might have got to, or feel any anxiety on his behalf during those hours, Mrs Beaumont?’

  ‘No.’ She seemed to think for a moment that it was an odd notion that she should be worried about her husband. Then she said, ‘I wa
s used to him being away at nights, you see. I expect he was at Abbey Vineyards on Wednesday. And on Thursdays he was always away. Drumming up new business, he said. I expect that he was, some of the time.’

  She caught a glance between the sergeant and his grave-faced superior. What did that mean? Vanda had told her to play the grieving wife, when she’d phoned to say they were coming. That way, they won’t get much from you, she’d said. It was curious how close she and Vanda had become, in just a few days. It seemed odd now that she’d been full of such apprehension when she’d gone to meet Martin’s ex-mistress in her own home. It was because of Vanda’s advice that she’d put on this black dress she hadn’t worn for years. It was a little creased, but it was the right colour.

  It was the older man who now asked her, ‘Did he give you any idea of where he was proposing to go on this particular Thursday?’

  She stared down at the carpet and frowned, giving the question the concentration of a dutiful schoolgirl. ‘No, I’m afraid he didn’t. Is that when he was killed? Sorry, I’m asking you questions again, aren’t I?’

  ‘That’s all right. We don’t know yet exactly when Mr Beaumont died. We expect to have a better idea within twenty-four hours.’ He didn’t mention post mortems if he could avoid it. The thought of the body of a loved one being severely cut and mutilated upset many people, though he suspected this rather abstracted woman would have accepted it without much emotion. ‘We need you and everyone else to assist us as much as possible as we try to fill in the story of his last hours. Murder is one of the few crimes where the victim cannot speak for himself. We shall need to find out what sort of man he was, what kind of appointments he might have made. We shall assemble that information not only from such facts as we can gather but from the thoughts of you and of others.’

  ‘Am I allowed to know how he died?’