Close Call

by J M Gregson

‘Robin never came to bed.’ She repeated the words carefully, as if clarity would be the key to discovery.

  ‘And what time did you go to bed yourself?’

  Her brow furrowed. In that instant, she was like a child anxious to give precisely the right information to an adult. ‘We’d had this party. It was just the people who’d moved in here during the last few weeks. To Gurney Close, I mean.’ She spoke wonderingly, as if she could not believe that it was only so recently that there had been laughter and noisy enjoyment around her in this place.

  ‘Tell me a little about it, if you feel that you can. Remember that we know nothing as yet about the people who live here, or about what went on last night. It might be quite important to remember in some detail what happened amongst you all, in the hours before this happened.’

  She shook her head hopelessly at the impossibility of that. She said dully, ‘There was a lot of drinking. We were all enjoying ourselves. Or at least I thought we were, at the time.’

  ‘How many people were involved?’

  ‘Just the people from the close. There were only eight of us, though we made a great deal of noise, at times.’ She looked up at them, realized they were waiting for more, and furrowed her brow again in that concentration that was almost that of a dazed child. ‘There were the Lennoxes, from the bungalow at the end. Ron and Rosemary. It was Rosemary’s idea, the party. To celebrate our arrival here. A street party, she called it. Like they had when she was a little girl of three at the end of the war, she said.’

  Hook made a careful note of the name of the woman who had suggested this celebration which had ended in murder. He gave her a smile of encouragement and said, ‘We need the names of everyone who was there. We’ll be talking to all of them, before very long, but you can help by giving us their names and whatever you can recall of the evening.’

  She smiled back into his earnest, village-bobby face. She had thought this would be an ordeal, but it was almost a relief to be talking to these quiet, vigilant, sympathetic men. ‘The other people were our next-door neighbours. Philip and Carol Smart, who live in the house between us and the Lennoxes’ bungalow, and Lisa Holt, who lives on the other side, in the first house as you turn into the close. She’s divorced, is Lisa. Not long ago. The lawyers are still sorting out the details, I think.’ Alison Durkin looked up nervously at them, feeling that such tittle-tattle must surely be out of place here.

  But Hook just gave her his reassuring smile again and said, ‘You said eight people were at your little party, I believe.’

  ‘Yes.’ For a moment she looked embarrassed. Then, realizing how inappropriate embarrassment was in the face of murder, she said, ‘The eighth member was Lisa Holt’s gardener. A young chap called Jason. Jason Ritchie, I think it is. Robin knew him, I think, but I hadn’t met him until he came here – except that I’d seen him working on Lisa’s garden.’

  ‘And this Jason was at the party, even though he wasn’t a resident?’

  A small smile, as if she now felt the relief of triviality, even gossip, in this context. ‘Jason has been here a lot in the last three weeks. Pretty well full-time. Lisa said that he almost qualified as a resident, and no one seemed to have any objection to his attending the street party.’

  Well, some of the men probably had reservations. Alison thought of Jason’s burnished torso, with the barbed wire tattoo disappearing beneath the white sleeve of his tee shirt, and was threatened with an inappropriate smile. But she wouldn’t go into that here. She put her hands together on her lap, watched them shaking a little above the blue of her jeans.

  Hook said gently, as if they were conspirators here, with Lambert at a further remove from them, ‘And do you think that this Jason Ritchie is providing Mrs Holt with a little more than gardening services?’

  ‘He might be. I won’t pretend we haven’t discussed the possibility. The other three women in the close, I mean.’ She gave Hook a nod of confirmation and then, as if feeling such intimacies were out of place here, said firmly, ‘But we shouldn’t be talking about rubbish like that, should we? Not now, I mean.’

  This time it was Lambert who spoke, his long, lined face relaxing its gravity as he said, ‘On the contrary, we need to know everything you can tell us, Mrs Durkin. Most of it will eventually prove to be irrelevant to our investigation, as you imply, but at this stage we have no idea what may have a bearing on this death. So please tell us everything you can.’

  She nodded, then felt a great lassitude stealing suddenly upon her, after the emotional switchback of the day. ‘You’ll need to give me some guidance, then. I’m feeling very confused.’

  ‘You say you enjoyed your little gathering last night. Can you give us some of the details? Times and places, for a start.’

  ‘Well, we met up at about eight o’clock, or perhaps a few minutes after that. Everyone arrived at more or less the same time. And we met here. On our back lawn. If you can call it that. It’s only been laid for two weeks, and we have to keep watering it until it’s taken hold, the man said.’

  ‘And you were outside for most of the evening?’

  ‘Almost all of it. People brought their own garden chairs to supplement our new garden set, and we stayed outside. We got noisier and noisier, I’m afraid, but there was no one to disturb. It was a beautiful warm night, if you remember.’ It seemed to her now quite remote; she couldn’t believe that it was less than twenty-four hours earlier that they had all been enjoying themselves so innocently.

  ‘And all this took place in and around your house?’

  ‘In our back garden, for the most part. We set out two trestle tables there, one with the drink on – Robin had got most of that at discount rates – and the other with the food which the women had brought. Rosemary Lennox organized us on that, so that we didn’t duplicate things. She’s very good at organizing things, is Rosemary.’

  Lambert thought he caught a little resentment in that last phrase. He said, ‘I noticed that you have a gate cut into your back fence.’

  Alison nodded. ‘Robin got the builders to put that in. He said that it was a shame to be so near to the river and not have access to it.’

  And possibly thus engineered the entrance which brought a murderer to him. Lambert said gently, ‘And did you use the gate last night?’

  ‘Yes. We all went out through the gate and walked down to the banks of the Wye.’

  So the SOCO was right. There had been eight pairs of feet over that grass behind the houses. Quite enough to obfuscate any signs of a single, more vicious, entrance or exit. ‘What time was this?’

  Again that furrowing of the brow, as if it were important to her to get this as right as she could. ‘It must have been somewhere around ten o’clock. The sun had gone down some time earlier, but we could still see the deep red sky over the Welsh hills. “Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight,” someone said. But someone always says that, doesn’t he?’ She almost apologized for being so trivial, when they had more important things to consider.

  ‘Was the gate left open when you all went out?’

  ‘I think it was, yes. Robin led the way, and I wasn’t at the end of the line.’ She suddenly saw what she thought was the point of the question. ‘Someone could have come in that way whilst we were out walking by the river, couldn’t he? He could have hidden in the garage or our new garden shed, and just waited until everyone had gone.’

  She was animated by the thought. Like most people near to a murder victim, she found it more acceptable that he should have been felled by some stranger’s hand than by that of someone she had known and trusted. Lambert said, ‘It’s a possibility, no more than that. It’s also possible that someone came in that way much later in the night, when your party was over and people had gone home.’

  ‘But Robin wouldn’t have been out there then.’

  ‘He might. If he had heard someone moving out there. Or if he had arranged to meet someone.’

  He was watching her closely, to see how she reacted to the sugge
stion. She said, ‘I think I’d have known about that. We didn’t have many secrets from each other.’

  Lambert was sceptical about that thought. She hadn’t spoken with any great certainty. In any case, one thing which murder investigations had taught him over the years was that couples who thought they had no secrets from each other were often deceiving themselves. He said, ‘It’s a possibility, that’s all. I’m not saying it’s probable, but we have to keep our minds open to all possibilities at this stage. If someone just came in here at random, we’d have to ask ourselves what he was after, what there was here which could make him commit murder. There’s no evidence of any attempt at burglary.’

  ‘No. Your men who were here this morning asked me to check my jewellery. There’s nothing missing.’

  ‘So tell us what happened during the rest of the evening, when you came back from your stroll by the river.’

  ‘We stayed in the garden. It was still very warm, even when it went completely dark. And I think all of us had drunk quite a lot, by then, so we weren’t feeling any chill. We sat and chatted and drank a little more. It got quieter, but everyone was very happy. Mellow, someone called it – I think it was Phil Smart who used that word.’

  ‘So you sat for maybe an hour or so, like that? Just chatting.’

  ‘Longer than that, I should think. We’d been there for some time when Robin decided to go round with the brandy bottle. We’d all had quite enough to drink already, I think, but I think most of us accepted a nightcap when he pressed us.’

  Except, perhaps, one person, who was keeping himself alert for what followed. ‘Can you remember any disagreements during the evening, anything which seemed to rankle between people?’

  ‘No. I thought about that when I found him. But I can’t remember any fallings-out during the evening. Not even any mild disagreements.’

  ‘And what time did you finally break up?’

  ‘It must have been about one. I think Rosemary Lennox said that it was time for the oldies to get to bed, and within two minutes everyone was on their feet and leaving.’

  ‘So everyone left together? You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Yes. There were only three couples, you know.’ It seemed fair enough to call Lisa Holt and Jason Ritchie a couple, in this context. ‘Everyone was very light-hearted about not having to drive and being close to home, and everyone left together.’

  ‘And this was about one a.m.?’

  ‘Yes, it must have been. I remember looking at the clock as I got into bed and it was twenty past one. And it hadn’t taken me long to get to bed; we’d agreed to leave all the clearing up until the morning.’

  ‘But your husband didn’t get ready for bed when you did?’

  ‘I thought he was following on behind me. He said he’d just put the drink away and put the scraps of food into the rubbish bin. I heard him flushing the toilet in the downstairs cloakroom before I got into bed. But he never came up, did he?’ She was suddenly near to tears again.

  ‘But you didn’t realize that until this morning.’

  ‘No. I’m afraid looking at the time on that bedside clock is the last thing I remember. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was away. As I said, we’d all had quite a lot to drink. I certainly had. It was after half past seven this morning when I woke up and found that Robin wasn’t there. That he’d never been there. ’The tears ran silently down her cheeks. There was no great sobbing; it was as though she had no energy left for that.

  ‘And a few minutes later, you found him in the garden.’

  ‘Yes. He’d been there all night, hadn’t he? Since some bastard put a cord around his neck and strangled him.’

  ‘That seems very likely, yes. Do you know of anyone who had a grievance against Robin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you’re sure you saw no disagreements during the evening?’

  ‘No. The men were cautious, but they eventually all seemed pretty easy with each other. I remember thinking how well they were all getting on. What a good thing that was going to be for Gurney Close.’

  Lambert nodded, then said quietly, ‘It isn’t just the men we have to consider. The method of killing indicates that this crime could just as easily have been committed by a woman.’

  She looked shocked by that. Perhaps it was a reminder to her that she had not yet been ruled out as a candidate for murder. Or perhaps she just found the idea of a woman killer more shocking, as many people did. She said dully, ‘But none of the women had words with Robin, either. We all got on very well last night. It couldn’t possibly have gone better.’

  And of course there might have been one person there who wanted to achieve exactly that impression. On the other hand, their killer might be miles away from this tight little group of residents. Lambert said, ‘Thank you. You’ve been very clear and helpful, in very trying circumstances. I know it won’t bring him back, but we shall get the person who killed Robin. If anything which might be significant occurs to you, however trivial it might seem, please get in touch with me or Detective Inspector Rushton at Oldford CID. DI Rushton is the man who will be co-ordinating the evidence as the enquiry proceeds.’

  She stood on the steps of her new house, clutching the card with the telephone numbers which Bert Hook had left with her, and watched them as they drove away.

  It was ironic that Lambert had mentioned DI Rushton to her. For Chris Rushton was at that moment recording some interesting findings about Alison Durkin.

  Six

  ‘Ronald, come away from the window. You’re like a little old lady watching from behind her lace curtains.’ Rosemary Lennox smiled indulgently and pulled at her husband’s sleeve.

  Ron Lennox started a little; he had not realized that she was watching him. Then he smiled back at her and sat down. ‘I read somewhere that they can be very useful to the police, observant old ladies. They see things that other people miss.’

  ‘Except that in this case, it’s the police you were observing.’ She watched DS Hook’s silver Ford Focus following the superintendent’s big old Vauxhall out of the close.

  ‘They weren’t in there very long, really. Twenty-seven minutes, I make it.’ Ron checked the time on his watch, looking for a moment as if he might record it in his notes.

  ‘Quite long enough for poor Ally, I should think. That wretched girl’s had quite a day.’ When you were sixty-three, every woman under forty seemed a girl, especially if you rather liked her. Rosemary didn’t feel she had a lot in common with Ally Durkin, from what little she had seen of her so far, but she had admired her energy, her cheerfulness and her spirit in their early weeks as neighbours. And now this awful thing had happened to her.

  Ron said, ‘They’ll have given her quite a grilling, I expect, even though she’s in shock. Come to think of it, they were probably glad to get to her whilst she was still in shock. The wife is always a leading suspect when there’s a violent death like this, you know.’

  ‘I do, actually, yes.’ Rosemary was always resentful of her husband when he went into his instructional vein. She looked at him curiously. He was still staring at the blank windows of the Durkin house, forty yards away. ‘If I didn’t think it a shocking idea, I’d say you were actually quite enjoying this.’

  Ron Lennox dragged his gaze away from the front door of the new house and back to his wife, forcing an ironic little smile at himself and his weaknesses. He said impishly, ‘Well, it is a new experience for us, isn’t it? Being involved in a murder enquiry, I mean. You have to treasure new experiences when you get to our age. All the articles about retirement tell you that.’

  ‘A murder enquiry? Are you sure it’s that?’

  ‘Suspicious death, they said on Radio Gloucester. That means they think it wasn’t natural causes and it wasn’t suicide. Murder, it means.’

  She had never known Ron listen to local radio before: she was surprised that he even knew where the wavelength was on the tuning dial. And now he was gazing at the Durkin house again, as if he had on
ly to look hard enough for the areas of raw new brick to reveal their secrets.

  His curiosity was understandable, she supposed. As a teacher for forty years, Ron had no doubt had his highs and lows, and various crises to deal with. He hadn’t usually brought his troubles home with him, and she was grateful for that. When their son Andy had been at the comprehensive, she’d learned more about what happened in the school from him than she’d ever picked up from her husband. But Ron certainly hadn’t had much melodrama in his life, so it was probably natural enough that he should be fascinated when it hit him like this.

  All the same, Rosemary Lennox wasn’t certain that her husband’s interest in this was entirely healthy.

  Detective Inspector Christopher Rushton was a meticulous man. He liked order in his life. In the world of crime, chaos often seems to be the predominating force; Chris Rushton regarded it as a challenge to impose some sort of order on the police reactions to it.

  He delighted in keeping himself up to date with the latest technology. He was an enthusiast for computers and everything which went with the digital age. And somewhat unusually in the modern police service, DI Rushton had found himself a job niche which exactly suited him.

  Most twenty-first century superintendents ran murder and other serious crime investigations from behind their desks, deploying their extensive teams without leaving headquarters very often themselves. Superintendent John Lambert was a determined exception to the rule, a self-confessed dinosaur among senior CID officers. He insisted upon conducting many interviews himself, on maintaining direct contact with the prominent figures in any investigation as it evolved. It was undoubtedly eccentric, but he got results. And in the police service, if your ‘clear-up rates’ are good, you are given latitude.

  The man left in the CID section to co-ordinate the vast amount of information gathered by the team of around thirty officers assigned to most murder cases was DI Rushton. He willingly undertook the filing and cross-referencing of the welter of information gathered from house-to-house enquiries, in-depth follow-up interviews by senior officers, information volunteered by members of the public, data from previous crimes which might or might not be relevant, and the host of miscellaneous contributions which characterize any prolonged serious crime investigation.