In Vino Veritas lah-23

by J M Gregson

  Lambert said, ‘It’s routine in a murder case. Anyone who was close to the victim is interviewed in case he can provide useful information.’

  ‘Not on Saturday night, they’re not. And not by the man in charge, the celebrated John Lambert.’ The smile was still there, but this time there was an edge to the words. ‘If this was no more than routine, you’d have sent a copper round, maybe a DC. I wouldn’t have been honoured with a chief superintendent and a detective sergeant.’

  Lambert answered the smile, but did not hurry his reply. There was nothing wrong with letting a man who was used to being in control see that you were assessing him. ‘I see you have some knowledge of police procedure, Mr Ogden.’ He waited until he saw the man’s face cloud with anger, then went on briskly, ‘I think you have enough common sense to have expected this visit. Physically, your land is close to Abbey Vineyards. Very nearly surrounded by their vines, in fact. And I don’t think you would expect the fact that you have had what one might call “ongoing discussions” with Mr Beaumont over the years to have escaped us.’

  ‘All right. So we didn’t see eye to eye and never would have. Doesn’t mean I killed the man, does it?’

  ‘Indeed it doesn’t, Mr Ogden. But could you now tell us about the source of your disagreements, please?’

  ‘You already know it. You only have to look at a map. Beaumont wanted my land, but he wasn’t going to have it.’

  ‘I can certainly see that he would want it. It would have consolidated his holding, made a natural completion of the land he held.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve watched him swallow up the land of everyone else who held fields adjacent to his, over the years. He was never going to get mine.’

  ‘You make it sound as if you weren’t friendly neighbours.’

  ‘I hated his guts. I’m sure he felt the same way about me.’

  ‘You hadn’t agreed to differ?’

  Ogden smiled sourly. ‘You didn’t know Beaumont, or you wouldn’t be asking that. He wasn’t used to being refused things. He warned me years ago that he wouldn’t take no for an answer. But that’s what he got and what he’d always have got. He didn’t like it. He was used to getting his own way and he turned nasty when he didn’t.’

  Bert Hook looked up from his notes. ‘How nasty, Mr Ogden?’

  Tom Ogden looked from the notebook into the rugged face above it. For some reason he could not quite fathom, he felt an affinity with this burly man with the countryman’s face and the Herefordshire accent. He made a real attempt to explain how things had been with his more affluent neighbour. ‘Beaumont first came to me over ten years ago. He made me what would have been a fair offer, if I’d wanted to sell. A very fair offer — the fairness has never been a matter of dispute. Over the years, he’s been back half a dozen times, each time waving a better price under my nose. I’ve told him the same thing every time: I’m not interested in selling, and the price makes no difference. He didn’t seem to understand that. At any rate, he never accepted it.’

  Hook nodded, made another note. ‘And when did he make the last of these offers?’

  Tom wanted to distance himself from this crime, to tell them that he hadn’t seen the man for many months. But that wouldn’t be safe; for all he knew, they had already learned how recently he had clashed with the man whose death had been so convenient for him. ‘He’d been round to the farm twice in the last couple of months. He always came during the day. I think he wanted my workers to see him, to be unsettled and think that their jobs might be at stake. He was that sort of man.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him?’

  ‘Last week. He came round with an even bigger offer than he’d made in April.’

  ‘Which you rejected.’

  ‘As I’d rejected all the others. It was more than a fair price, but that wasn’t the issue. Beaumont didn’t seem to understand that. He never learned that there were more important things than money.’

  Hook nodded, seeming to Tom to understand how it had been, even to sympathize with his point of view. ‘And how did he take it when you rejected his latest offer?’

  ‘He didn’t like it. Like I said, he was a man used to getting his own way and to pressurizing you when he didn’t. He turned nasty.’

  ‘How nasty, Mr Ogden?’

  Despite his agitation, Ogden wanted to tell the sergeant to call him Tom, when he’d never have asked the tall bloke to do that. But he sensed he should keep this formal. ‘He threatened me. He said that this was his final offer and it would be all the worse for me if I didn’t take it.’

  ‘And what did you take that to mean?’

  ‘That he’d send people in to ruin my crops — soft fruit is very vulnerable and he knew that as well as I did. And that if that didn’t work he’d send people in to attend to me.’

  ‘You mean that he was threatening you with physical violence.’

  ‘Yes. I’d seen how he compelled another farmer to sell to him, eight years ago. He’d wrecked his machinery during the night, then sprayed his newly planted crops with weedkiller. The man sold out to him the following week.’

  ‘So exactly how did he threaten you, Mr Ogden?’

  ‘I’d told him the farm was doing well and that I was expecting a bumper crop this year. He said it would be a shame if anything happened to ruin that crop.’

  ‘And how did you react to that?’

  Ogden hesitated. He recalled the conversation quite vividly, having been over it in his mind many times since it happened. But he couldn’t recount the full details to these men without compromising his position. ‘I told him that two could play at that game. He said I couldn’t afford to threaten him.’

  ‘And why was that?’

  Tom stared at the Indian carpet which covered the middle of the room; he couldn’t bring himself to look at either of the CID men. ‘I don’t know. I suppose he meant that he could play things far dirtier than I could, if it came to it. He was certainly right about that. God — or in Beaumont’s case, the devil — is always on the side of the big battalions, isn’t he?’

  There was a long pause, but Tom knew now that he’d already said too much. It was Lambert who said, ‘If Beaumont is the kind of man you say he was, I expect he’d done his homework on you. I expect he knew that you had a record of previous violence. A criminal record.’

  Tom Ogden glared at him resentfully. ‘Beaumont wasn’t the only one who’d done his damned homework, was he?’

  Lambert smiled grimly at him. ‘I have people to check these things for me, Mr Ogden. A murder enquiry warrants a big team of officers. It’s automatic that we check on known enemies of the victim to see if they have criminal records.’

  ‘So it’s once a villain always a villain, is it? It’s a hell of a long time since that happened. I’m not the young fool I was then.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘Thirty-seven years, Mr Ogden. But you were then twenty-six, not sixteen. Certainly not an easily led teenager. And Grievous Bodily Harm is a serious charge, to which you pleaded guilty.’

  ‘Because I was guilty. I hadn’t meant to injure the man seriously, but I did. So I admitted it and took my medicine.’

  ‘In the form of a hefty fine and a suspended sentence. You must have had a good brief, to get away without a custodial sentence.’

  ‘I did. My dad got the best man for me, when he’d finished reading me the riot act. I pleaded guilty and it was my first offence. I’ve never been in trouble with the law before or since. It’s years since anyone’s even mentioned this. I didn’t expect it would ever be flung in my face again.’

  ‘Murder awakens all kinds of sleeping dogs, Mr Ogden. You may think that incident is now irrelevant, but it’s got to interest us. It shows a man with a quick temper and an immediate use of violence as retaliation. The kind of man, in fact, who might see murder as a solution when he was pressed too far.’

  ‘I didn’t murder Beaumont. I don’t deny that I’d have liked to, but I didn’t kill him.’ Tom looked from the lo
ng, grave face of Lambert to the rounder, more sympathetic one of Hook and added defiantly, ‘But I’m bloody glad the bastard’s dead and I’m sure whoever killed him had good reason for it.’

  He felt himself trembling with the vehemence of his emotion in the seconds which followed. Then Hook said quietly, ‘Where were you on Wednesday night, Mr Ogden?’

  ‘I was at the cinema with my wife. Enid will confirm that for you. We don’t go very often, but she wanted to see The Duchess. I think she’d read the book. We’d missed it the first time. Personally, I didn’t think much of it.’ He was aware that he was talking too much, sounding nervous and defensive, filling the silence with irrelevant detail when he was normally sparing with words. He stopped abruptly, looking at Lambert for a reaction.

  The chief superintendent studied him for a moment, in which Tom thought he read these thoughts, and said impassively, ‘Then who do you think did kill Martin Beaumont, Mr Ogden?’

  ‘I don’t know. One of his women, or one of their husbands? The gossip is that he put it about a bit. Someone who worked with him? I don’t know anyone at Abbey Vineyards except Beaumont, and I wish I hadn’t known him.’ It sounded rather desperate, but he ended defiantly, ‘I probably wouldn’t tell you if I did know. I’m delighted the bugger’s dead!’

  ‘You would be most unwise to withhold any information which could lead to an arrest, Mr Ogden. It would make you an accessory after the fact and lead to very serious charges.’

  The two big men were on their feet, leaving the farmer to follow them to the door with a surge of relief that this was over. Lambert paused at the entrance to the handsome old building. ‘We may well need to speak to you again, when we know more of the details of this death.’

  The words rang like a threat in Tom Ogden’s mind through the evening which followed.

  SEVENTEEN

  There is a popular misconception that the team never takes time off during a murder investigation. A moment’s consideration exposes this as the myth it is. Investigations often last for weeks or months, and officers would remain fresh in neither body nor mind if they worked incessantly on them. Indeed, there have been some high-profile failures when senior officers became so obsessed with a case that it took over their lives. Judgements are then impaired, and attention to detail becomes worse, not better, when people drive themselves too hard.

  Detectives were too close to the cases and the suspects involved to spot the obvious in two of the most notorious cases of recent years. Peter Sutcliffe, the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, eventually found guilty of thirteen murders and seven attempted murders, was interviewed and released several times by the police in the course of that enquiry. The awful Fred West, who buried several young female victims beneath the concrete of his house and its surrounding area in Gloucester, was a known petty criminal who was deemed to be incapable of such monstrous crimes.

  John Lambert had often come near to obsession in his early CID days, to the extent that his preoccupation with detection had endangered the marriage which most of his juniors now saw as a model alliance in a difficult profession. He was aware of the dangers now, and he watched for the signs of fixation in those around him as well as himself.

  Sunday morning was not a good time for interviews or any other kind of progress in a case like this one. Lambert made a move which he would once never have made. He arranged that Hook and he would present themselves bright and early on Sunday morning at Ross-on-Wye Golf Club and find themselves a game. Golf would blow away the cobwebs, he assured Bert conventionally. His DS was not convinced. Lambert had played the game for thirty years and more; he played to a handicap of eight and kept his temper on the course. Hook, who had taken up the game only three years previously at his chief’s insistence, was not persuaded that Sunday-morning golf would provide him with the healthy release his senior confidently predicted.

  The possibilities of disaster were increased by the opposition John Lambert secured for them. He lined them up against the only scratch player in the club, Tom Bowles. ‘Only a friendly. A chance for us to watch and learn,’ he assured a fearful Bert Hook. Tom had moved to the London area now, but he was down for the weekend with a friend of his who played off four at his new club at Sunningdale. Bert, fearing the slice which made even his modest handicap of sixteen optimistic, was filled with sporting apprehension.

  In the event, things worked out pretty well. Bert Hook disappeared into the woods on two holes, but elsewhere produced some sensible and occasionally outstanding golf to take advantage of his handicap strokes. John Lambert was his usual steady self and the pair fitted their scores together to stay alongside the experts to the very end of the game. On the eighteenth hole, with the match all square, Tom Bowles followed an excellent drive with a seven-iron to eight feet. He then directed a curling putt into the heart of the hole, to secure a splendid win for the young tigers and an honourable defeat for the CID pair.

  Tom Bowles’s partner made his excuses and left, casting a longing eye at the drinks Lambert was carrying from the bar for the others. He explained that he had to go and eat a dutiful Sunday lunch with his aunt and uncle, who lived in Monmouth. He made them sound ancient; Lambert reflected that they were probably in their fifties and about the age of Christine and himself.

  Tom Bowles took an appreciative pull at his pint and said, ‘I expect you’ve cracked the case of the murdered vineyard owner by now.’

  Lambert gave him the quiet, unrevealing smile of long practice and prepared to change the subject. But before he could speak, Bowles added reflectively, ‘I played a match in the first round of the knockout against someone from there — Jason Knight, who runs the restaurant. He put it across me on the eighteenth, rather as I did to you two today.’

  ‘I played Jason last year. He beat me very comfortably,’ said Bert Hook. He didn’t even need to look at John Lambert. Both of them knew the rules here without even thinking about it. If anyone asked you about the case, you gave them nothing, politely putting up the confidential shutters. If, on the other hand, anyone chose to speak to you about people involved in the case, you let him talk. Nine times out of ten it was no more than extraneous gossip; on the tenth you picked up something useful.

  Bowles nodded. ‘He’s done wonders for the place. I’ve eaten there a couple of times, and the food’s very good. Jason was telling me they’ve trebled the number of tables since he started there. I wonder how the death of the owner is going to affect him.’ He took another swallow of his bitter, whilst Lambert and Hook remained reflectively silent. ‘Perhaps he’ll be able to get the say in policy he wants, now that Martin Beaumont’s gone.’

  ‘Too early to say yet what’s going to happen to Abbey Vineyards,’ said Lambert. ‘Not our problem, I’m happy to say.’

  ‘No, I suppose not. Jason will be anxious to know, though. He’s ambitious, as well as being an excellent chef. I wouldn’t mind betting that he’ll be having a big influence on the future of Abbey Vineyards.’

  ‘I expect you’re right there,’ said Bert Hook, studiously non-committal. He sensed that murder was as usual exercising its ghoulish glamour. This pleasant young man, whether he was conscious of it or not, didn’t want to relinquish the subject and his tenuous connection with it.

  Tom said, ‘Jason wouldn’t have got very far whilst Beaumont controlled things, as far as I could see. I told him that.’

  ‘You did?’

  Tom Bowles nodded, moving into the anecdote he realized now that he had always been anxious to offer them. ‘I’m an industrial lawyer. Pretty dull stuff, as far as most people are concerned. But Jason was anxious to pick my brains after our match was over. He said he was asking for advice on behalf of a friend, but I suspect both of us knew perfectly well that it was his own situation he was talking about.’

  ‘We have the same problems as policemen, sometimes,’ said Lambert gnomically. ‘People tend to think we’re experts on all aspects of the law, when we’re often as ignorant as they are. At least you had the bene
fit of having professional knowledge to draw upon.’

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t offer much hope to Jason Knight, though. As a key member of the team at the vineyards, he was anxious to get more power for himself, to have a greater share in policy. I told him that he could perhaps buy his way in, but he hadn’t the capital for that. And from what he said, Martin Beaumont had control of the business neatly tied up — I couldn’t see how Jason was going to get the say in things he wanted, unless his employer was willing to give it to him.’

  ‘Which people tell us he wasn’t,’ said Bert Hook, taking a drink and shaking his head sadly over the obstinacy of autocrats.

  ‘No. I wonder what Jason would have done about that. He was certainly pretty keen to get more of a say in things. Perhaps he’ll get what he wanted without needing to do anything, now. Another drink, gentlemen?’

  ‘Sorry, I think we need to be on our way,’ said John Lambert quickly.

  Even in this ancient part of England, there are not many thatched cottages left. This one had been little altered externally since it was built in the seventeenth century. Inside, its nooks and crannies retained the essence of its quaintness, but accommodated the fittings now considered essential for modern living.

  Vanda North said, ‘I made a pot of tea when I saw you reversing the car into the drive. You need some compensation for having to work on a Sunday afternoon.’ There were biscuits which looked home-made on a china plate beside the teapot. Vanda North did not look to Bert Hook like the sort of lady who made her own biscuits, and Bert was something of an expert on such things. Probably, though, a lady with good taste, who knew where to get the best things in life. Her fair hair was short and expertly cut. Her blue eyes, above a nose which was just a little too prominent, were observant, despite her conventional phrases. He had no doubt that she was measuring them as intensely as they were assessing her.

  He flicked open his notebook and retreated into the conventional first question. ‘How long had you known Mr Beaumont, Ms North?’