Close Call

by J M Gregson

  Luke had insisted on new football boots for his present, despite his father’s preference for cricket and his insistence that football was out of season. But the boots were still in their box on the living room floor. It would normally have been difficult to prize their soccer-mad son out of them, even in the house. But they gleamed softly in their lidless box as Bert went into the room, their pristine state a sinister symbol that something was wrong.

  ‘The doctor’s coming back this afternoon,’ said Eleanor, her normally cheerful face grey with anxiety. ‘He left some more pills this morning and told me to ring back if Luke’s temperature didn’t come down. It hasn’t and I did. He’ll be here in half an hour or so.’

  Bert Hook went into the boy’s bedroom. Luke lay very still on the bed, his eyes closed. For a moment of horror, Bert had the illusion that he was not breathing. Then the thin, almost bloodless lips moved, almost imperceptibly, and Luke gave a tiny groan. He looked very small and frail beneath the single sheet. Bert’s mind flashed back to a time he thought he had forgotten, when the boy had been only five or six and laid low with a childish chill.

  Bert knew without any diagnosis that this was something much more serious. He put his hand softly on the boy’s forehead, withdrawing it in horror as he felt how hot and dry the skin was. The eyelids fluttered open, the head turned just a little, and the blue eyes looked at him as if they were trying to recognize a stranger.

  ‘Happy birthday, son,’ said Bert softly.

  He fancied he caught the beginnings of a smile on the ashen lips. Then the eyes clouded and shut again.

  ‘You must know everything that happened on Saturday night by now. At the party, I mean.’ Lisa Holt added that hasty qualification. They surely couldn’t know who had killed Robin Durkin.

  ‘We have a good idea. We need your account of it. It may differ from what other people remember, you see,’said Lambert. He contrived to make the information seem like a threat.

  They had come to see her in the office where she operated as a solicitors’ clerk. One of the partners and the girl who usually worked alongside her were both away on summer holidays, so that the place was quiet. The boss had given her the room of his absent partner for this meeting with the police. She was glad to be away from her house in the close, which was so near to the spot where Robin had died, but also glad to be on familiar ground. And she was confident that she wouldn’t be overheard; she knew from experience that this room was soundproof, that nothing she said to this observant superintendent and his stolid-looking sergeant would pass beyond its thick oak door.

  She gave them a measured account of the street party which had preceded this death, trying to prevent it from sounding like the prepared statement that in fact it was. She had been over this many times to herself in the last day and a half, knowing she would be asked for her story, rehearsing it many times, because she knew she must be careful about how much of herself she revealed to these observant men.

  She delivered her words evenly, answering Lambert’s occasional questions calmly enough, watching the sergeant making notes on what she said in his round, rather childish hand, with the tip of his tongue protruding occasionally at the corner of his mouth. It was a surprise when Hook looked up at the end of her story and said, ‘And you left at the same time as everyone else?’

  ‘Yes. I think it was the Lennoxes who made the first move, but once they had done so, we all stood up and left together. I collected most of the crockery I had brought and walked the few yards back to my own house.’

  ‘With Mr Ritchie.’

  It was the first time she had ever heard Jason called that: the title sounded strange. She felt that Jason should be older and more responsible to justify it. She resented the question, even though she understood the reason for it. ‘Yes. And to save you the next question, he stayed the night at my place.’

  ‘You were together for the whole of the night?’ If Hook was embarrassed to put the question, he disguised it very well.

  Lisa took a deep breath, telling herself that there was no point in getting annoyed about this, that to do so would merely play into their hands. ‘Yes. We made violent love to each other, and then fell asleep. In the same bed. Does that tell you everything you need to know?’ She felt the annoyance in her voice, even though she had been determined not to show it.

  Lambert smiled at her, trying to defuse the situation. ‘Everything and a little more, I think. You are telling us that neither of you could have left the house without the other one knowing it. That neither of you could have gone out to the back garden of the house next door and garrotted Mr Durkin.’

  She swallowed hard at the word, making herself take her time before she said, ‘Is that how he died?’

  ‘Yes. There will be a brief press release this afternoon, which will indicate that. It will use the term strangulation rather than garrotting. As a person closely involved, I thought you deserved the extra detail.’ In fact, he had wanted to see how she would react to the harshness of the word, to the brutal frankness of this description of the death.

  Lisa Holt had flinched just a little, and just for a moment. He said suddenly, ‘How soundly did you sleep, Mrs Holt?’

  She made herself smile. She was not going to give this man the satisfaction of embarrassment. ‘We’d eaten plenty, and drunk more. Both of us. To be honest, we were pleasantly pissed, Superintendent. And then, as I told you, we made violent and very satisfying love. I’d say we slept very soundly indeed.’

  ‘So if Mr Ritchie had got up and moved around, even left the house, you would probably not have been aware of his movements.’ Lambert made it a statement, and she was irritated to see Hook flicking to a new page in his notebook and recording the fact.

  ‘Both of us were sleeping the sleep of the just. Or rather the pissed, as I said. So yes, probably neither of us would have been aware of the other going out. But for the record, I’m quite sure that neither of us did that. The first thing I was conscious of was screaming from Ally Durkin at whatever time it was the next morning. I wondered what on earth all the noise was about. And I had to waken Jason, even then. He was out to the world.’

  ‘How long had you known Mr Durkin?’

  He had a habit of putting his questions very abruptly, as if by surprising her he might catch her out in some deception. Lisa wondered if it was part of his normal technique, or something which denoted a special animosity to her. Probably the former. She was pleased that she sounded so calm and matter-of-fact as she said, ‘Four or five weeks, I suppose. We all moved into the close at about the same time.’

  ‘You didn’t know him before you became his neighbour?’

  ‘No. I knew his garage. I drive past it quite often. I’ve seen it grow and become more prosperous over the last few years. But I didn’t know Robin until we found ourselves neighbours in the new houses.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who had reason to dislike him?’

  ‘No. He’s been helpful to most of us since we moved in. He had contacts and he seemed to enjoy using them. He saved us quite a bit by getting the booze for the party at a good discount. I suppose he has business enemies – I’m sure most people who’ve become successful quickly make enemies – but I don’t know anything about that.’

  Lambert noticed again the inclination to push this crime outside the close, to suggest that their killer was some anonymous figure from the larger and more violent world outside. But that was natural enough: even people who are totally innocent do not like to take on the idea of an immediate neighbour as a murderer.

  They left her with the usual injunction to get in touch if any useful thoughts occurred to her. Lisa Holt decided that it had been straightforward enough, and less fraught than she had feared. Nevertheless, she was glad that it was over. She spent the rest of the afternoon working on the conveyancing of a three-hundred-year-old rectory in a Gloucestershire village. It was detailed, straightforward, even slightly boring, work, which demanded the whole of her attention. She was glad
of that.

  At the end of the day, she went home and chatted to her son about his day at school whilst she made a meal. At the first opportunity, she went up to the bedroom where she had slept with Jason Ritchie on Saturday night. That was less than two days ago, but it seemed much longer.

  She stood for a long minute looking out of the bedroom window into the back garden of her neighbours, gazing at the innocent-looking patch of grass on which a man had died.

  Nine

  ‘The bank manager will see us this morning. I spoke to him as he was leaving last night.’ DI Rushton greeted his chief with the news as he came into the CID section at Oldford nick on Tuesday morning. It was still only ten to nine; he wanted Lambert to realize he had been at work at his computer for almost an hour already.

  ‘You go, Chris. Bert Hook’s delayed at home, but he’ll be in shortly. I want to talk to the Chief Constable about the crime figures, and clear the overtime budget for this Durkin murder enquiry. Go and get the details of Robin Durkin’s finances for us. I’ll hold the fort here for the time being. You need to get out more.’

  Rushton looked at him suspiciously for a moment. He decided this was probably a light-hearted remark rather than a real criticism, but he wasn’t sure. He was never quite sure whether the long-established partnership of Lambert and Hook was pulling his leg. He was surprised how reluctant he felt to get up from his familiar chair and leave the winking screen of his computer: perhaps the chief was right when he said he should get out more.

  The bank manager put up the token show of resistance to revealing the details of the dead man’s finances. It was very British, Chris thought: you could fairly easily discover all sorts of intimate details about a man’s sex life; from an examination of the records, you could discover in a few minutes any crimes he had committed and where he had done time. But money was sacred, and unless there was a very serious crime involved, the details of a man’s financial situation were jealously guarded by all concerned.

  Today there was a serious crime, the most serious one of all. Murder sounded a note of grisly glamour, even for a bank manager who was twenty years older than DI Chris Rushton. Charles Ferguson, manager at Barclays, made both the Durkins’ private accounts and the account for the business the dead man had run from the garage available within minutes to the young inspector, once he had played the murder card.

  The joint private account told the story Rushton would have expected for a prosperous businessman. Never in the red, with plenty of small and medium cheques passed by Alison Durkin over the last few months as she planned the furnishing of the comfortable nest of her new house. It was an expensive business, moving house, but there was no sign of any financial straitjacket for the Durkins.

  It was when he turned to the business account that Chris Rushton found the entries more interesting. He studied them for a moment, then pushed them across the desk to the silver-haired manager. ‘Is this the sort of financial profile you’d expect for a prosperous small garage?’

  Ferguson was immediately defensive. ‘I’m really no expert on these things. We don’t interfere with our customers’ transactions: we’re here to provide them with a service, which includes confidentiality. We don’t pry into what they are doing, that’s not our function. We provide advice when clients want it, but don’t interfere.’

  ‘Unless they get into financial difficulties. When you can be most unhelpful.’Chris Rushton had been through a divorce, and had certain residual resentments about banks.

  Charles Ferguson said stiffly, ‘There are certain financial constraints. We have to protect people from themselves, sometimes. Prevent them from getting themselves into deeper financial trouble. And people don’t realize that individual managers have less room for manoeuvre than they once had. Policy decisions are taken at a much higher level than was once the case. We are not allowed to go against the guidelines.’ He had dropped into his defensive mode automatically, trundling out the tired phrases which had become a large part of his life over the last ten years. For the third time in a week which had only reached Tuesday morning, Ferguson thought that he wouldn’t be sorry to retire in a few years.

  Rushton was wondering how to arrest the flow of clichés. Because there was something interesting here. He said bluntly, ‘Look at the deposits into that account, please. Tell me if they seem to you typical for a business like that of Robin Durkin. If you don’t feel able to comment, no doubt you can refer me to someone with the appropriate expertise.’

  He had hit upon the right approach, almost by accident. The manager was stung by the suggestion that he might not be up to this. He studied the figures carefully for the first time. It was a full minute before he spoke, and when he did his voice was animated, even startled. ‘You’re right! This isn’t typical at all. The sums are much too large, even for a prosperous small business like Durkin Autos.’

  ‘There seem to be very large sums moving in and out.’

  ‘Yes. And it’s not just that.’ Ferguson could not keep the excitement out of his voice; detection was a totally new and unexpected pleasure for him. He came round the desk and pulled up a chair to sit down beside his unexpected visitor. He pointed at certain entries with a well-groomed finger. ‘The dates are wrong. There should be a lot of money passing through at the time of the new car registration numbers. There’s always a flurry of new sales then, for any dealer with an agency. There should be a lot of financial activity in the account at those times, as they pay out money on cars taken in part exchange and bank the larger sums taken from the sales of new cars. Those trends are there all right: you can see them in April, for instance, after the spring change in registration letters. But there are very large sums coming in at other times, when I would expect a garage account to be very quiet.’

  ‘Coming in and going out.’

  ‘Yes. These large sums don’t seem to stay there very long.’

  Their roles were almost reversed now. It was the manager who was animated, Chris Rushton who was attempting to sound calm as he said, ‘It’s a pattern which would be typical of someone engaged in money laundering, wouldn’t you say?’

  It was a suggestion which this sober man would normally have automatically resisted. But it was the first time he had been asked to confirm anything like this, and he could not resist it. ‘Yes. I must say it has all the hallmarks of money laundering. Which is embarrassing for us: we’re supposed to be vigilant about these things nowadays. It might take a lot of proving. But we have fiscal experts who would take on any further investigation. They would work with you, of course: serious crime is much more your field than mine, Detective Inspector.’

  ‘It’s something we’ll need to follow up. It will be interesting to see where this money has been transferred to. And in due course, to find where it came from.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it will. I hardly knew Robin Durkin myself, unfortunately.’ He said it with genuine regret. And then, in a belated fit of caution, he said, ‘There may be a perfectly innocent explanation, of course.’

  There was not. The money had been transferred to an account in the Halifax Building Society in Cardiff, opened three years previously in the name of someone calling himself Mark Durkin. There had been no withdrawals from it. The balance now stood at eight hundred thousand pounds.

  ‘Do come in and sit down! You’ll have to take us as you find us, I’m afraid. We’re still settling in. Everything takes longer to do than you expect, as you get older!’

  Ronald Lennox gestured vaguely towards the sofa in their bright new room, which already looked like a well-established living area, despite his introduction to it. There was a vase of roses in the hearth, a smaller bowl of roses on the north-facing window sill, pictures of English landscapes on the walls, a photograph of a handsome youth who was obviously their son in pride of place on the sideboard.

  Lennox was patently nervous. John Lambert watched him with interest. He did not speak, did not oil the wheels of social exchange as the man expected him to do. It was an
unfortunate effect of CID experience that you enjoyed nervousness in people you were interviewing. Anxiety made your opponents more vulnerable in the bizarre games you had to play. Bizarre because ninety per cent of the time people were innocent, but had to be treated with suspicion until this innocence was proved.

  Rosemary Lennox saw what was happening. She said coolly, ‘We want to offer you all the help we can, Superintendent. That goes without saying. But I can’t think we can add anything to what you already know.’ She was wearing a dark-blue cotton dress with a pattern of small white flowers. The flowers in her dress and her white sandals picked up the silvery threads in her grey hair, which was surprisingly becoming above her neat, intelligent face. It was cut short and tidy, but with a wave over her forehead which took away any severity. She looked very comfortable on this very warm day, in contrast to her husband. Ronald Lennox sat sweltering in the suit and tie he had donned when he heard that the superintendent in charge of the case was coming to see him.

  Lambert said, ‘I’m sure you want this business cleared up as quickly as we do. Normally, I would have Detective Sergeant Hook with me to take notes, but he can’t be here today. This morning’s meeting may prove to be no more than a formality, but I must ask you to give it full concentration. Small things sometimes emerge which turn out to be highly significant at a later stage.’

  ‘What sort of things?’ Ronald Lennox was in almost before his visitor had completed his sentence.

  ‘Little discrepancies in the way people remember things. You’d be amazed how much people’s recollections differ, even when they’re recounting events which occurred very recently. Even the recall of totally innocent people is sometimes quite varied.’ Lambert gave Lennox a smile which did nothing to allay his nervousness.