Close Call

by J M Gregson

  Rosemary took over in her efficient, matter-of-fact way and gave him their story of Saturday night’s events. Lambert listened without interruption to her lucid, economical account, watching her husband’s reactions to what she told him. Then he said, ‘And whose idea was this gathering? A street party, I think you called it.’

  Rosemary smiled. ‘It was mine. And it wasn’t really a street party. I called it that when I suggested a gathering because I remembered sitting at a table in the street at the end of the war in 1945, when I was only three. We had sandwiches and home-made cakes and lemonade. It must have made quite an impression on me, because I can still recall it quite vividly.’

  ‘So you suggested a street party for the new residents of Gurney Close.’

  ‘Yes. I think because we were a group of disparate people drawn together by the accident of residence. All we really had in common was that we’d become occupants of these new houses at more or less the same time.’

  ‘Or in our case, a bungalow. The only one in the close,’ said Ronald Lennox pedantically.

  ‘But the party was your idea, Mrs Lennox?’

  ‘Yes. I dare say someone else would have suggested a get-together of some kind, even if I hadn’t.’

  Ronald Lennox bristled, suddenly and unexpectedly. ‘They certainly would have done just that. Are you trying to suggest that Rosemary set this thing up deliberately, just so that someone could have the opportunity of killing Robin Durkin? That’s ridiculous!’

  Lambert smiled, not at all displeased to find the man losing his sense of proportion. ‘I’m suggesting nothing, Mr Lennox. One of the things we have to establish in a case like this is who set up the situation. It is simply a fact to be determined, like any other fact. When we have all the facts, some will emerge as highly significant. Neither I nor anyone else is yet in a position to say which ones those will be.’

  ‘Of course you aren’t! And I can see that there is nothing sinister in your enquiry.’ Rosemary Lennox tried to be as calm and equable in her answers as this polite but determined superintendent was in his questions. But she noticed that he hadn’t refuted her husband’s suggestion about the meeting being set up as a possible prologue to murder.

  ‘There is one other thing I wanted to clarify about the evening and your impressions of it. Both of you can help here. You have confirmed what other people have told us, that a fair amount of drink was consumed. I know it’s difficult to be accurate about these things, but how drunk would you say people were, at the end of the evening?’

  Ronald Lennox responded promptly to the invitation, as Lambert had somehow known that he would. ‘Oh, we’d all had quite a lot over five hours or so. And none of us had to worry about driving home. I remember us congratulating ourselves on that, at the time.’

  ‘Repeatedly,’ said his wife, with a touch of acid.

  ‘I’d say that no one was blind drunk and reeling about, but we were all pleasantly pissed, if you’ll pardon the modernism,’ said Ron.

  ‘Yes. That tallies with what Mrs Durkin and Mrs Holt have told us,’ said Lambert thoughtfully. ‘And how drunk would you say Mr Durkin was? In the same state as everyone else?’

  Ronald Lewis’s thin face cracked into an indulgent smile. ‘Oh, Robin was pretty far gone. We’d been drinking for hours, remember, and you usually drink rather more than you think you’re taking, in circumstances like that, don’t you? I know I realized that the next morning, when I had the biggest hangover I’ve had in years. Wasn’t fit for anything on Sunday, was I, Rosemary?’

  ‘You certainly weren’t. And of course, we had to contend with the news of Robin’s death, before we were far into the day.’

  Lennox grinned ruefully. ‘I must have drunk a lot more than usual on Saturday night, because Rosemary had some difficulty waking me to give me the sad news. But to answer your question, I’m sure Robin was as merry as anyone at the end of the evening. I remember him going round with the brandy bottle, giving everyone a nightcap. And I’m sure he didn’t miss himself out.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Lambert tersely.

  ‘May we ask why?’ said Rosemary Lennox quietly.

  There was no reason why they should not know. ‘The postmortem report shows that Robin Durkin had drunk only a moderate amount last Saturday night.’

  They both looked surprised. Ron Lennox said, ‘He didn’t give either of us that impression. Perhaps habitually he didn’t drink as much as we would have thought he did. Or perhaps he was one of those men who get drunk quite easily, so that you assume they’ve drunk more than they have.’

  ‘That is a possibility, of course.’

  Rosemary looked at him sharply. ‘But you obviously don’t consider that the likely explanation.’

  ‘From what you and other people have told us, it doesn’t seem likely, no. His wife, for instance, thinks he usually let himself go on occasions like Saturday night. She says that he was no drunkard, but she thought like you that he had drunk quite a lot during Saturday evening.’

  ‘But why would it be important?’

  Lambert thought from Mrs Lennox’s shrewdly intelligent features that she had already guessed why. ‘We don’t know for certain that it has anything to do with this crime. But one explanation could be that Robin Durkin knew that he had an assignation coming up when your party was over. A meeting with someone, for which he wanted to keep his brain sharp, and unfuddled by too much alcohol.’

  Ron Lennox frowned. ‘I can see what you mean. But surely this chap who came into his garden and killed him took him completely by surprise? I can’t think that Robin was anticipating a meeting. Not by the way he behaved with us in that last hour.’

  Lambert shrugged. ‘I offered that as a possible explanation. It’s not the only one. I’m confident that we shall know a lot more about this by the end of the week.’ It was always as well to give the public the impression that you were in confident control and that things were moving steadily forward. Especially when there was a possibility, however remote, that the killer of Robin Durkin might be one of the two people confronting him so earnestly in this comfortable room.

  He said, ‘Thank you for your time. We may need to see you separately at a later stage of the enquiry. Am I right to presume that neither of you knew Mr Durkin before you moved into Gurney Close?’

  Rosemary Lennox smiled. ‘That is correct. One of the interesting things is how a disparate group of people can be brought together by the common problems of moving into a new neighbourhood. Hence my suggestion for the street party. I remember thinking on Saturday night how good it was that such different people should be enjoying themselves together. And then this happened.’ She looked past Lambert and out of the big window of her sitting room at the dangerous world outside, and shook her head sadly.

  It was her husband who broke the silence which followed. He said quietly, ‘I knew Robin before we moved in here.’

  They both turned to look at him, more because of his tone than because what he said was particularly startling. He forced a smile to disperse their solemnity. ‘There’s nothing sinister about it. I know him for the same reason that I know hundreds of other people in the local community, Superintendent. I taught him, years ago.’

  ‘How many years ago, Mr Lennox?’

  ‘Sixteen, seventeen years ago. Something like that. We could check the dates in the school records, if it’s important.’

  ‘And is it, Mr Lennox?’

  He smiled, as if he were pleased to have thrown his little surprise into the exchanges. ‘Of no importance at all, in my opinion. A matter of supreme irrelevance, as one of my colleagues used to say.’

  Lambert answered his smile. ‘What kind of a pupil was he?’

  Ron Lennox grinned at the recollection, and his lined face looked suddenly more attractive with mirth. ‘Bit of a nuisance, if you want to know. In fact, I’m aware of the convention that one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but Rob Durkin was a right little bugger when he was at school!’
>
  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Oh, nothing vicious, you know. High-spirited adolescence, you’d call it. But high-spirited adolescence can be a pain in the arse when you have to deal with it. Especially without the sanctions you used to have when I started teaching forty years ago!’

  Rosemary was surprised to hear her normally fastidious husband describe the vanished schoolboy as both ‘a little bugger’ and ‘a pain in the arse’. She sensed that a familiar diatribe about modern discipline was in the offing. She said hastily, ‘You never said you’d taught Robin, Ron. Not even on Saturday night, when everyone was being relaxed and indiscreet.’

  ‘Professional discretion, Rosemary. Robin never acknowledged that I’d taught him, so I thought he might not wish to have those days recalled. Perhaps he wasn’t proud of the way he behaved at school: I think some of the other teachers had more trouble with him than I had. I’d have been perfectly prepared to have a laugh with him about the peccadillos of his youth, but I didn’t think it was up to me to raise the matter.’

  ‘And his school career was the only contact you had with him until the last few weeks of his life?’ asked Lambert.

  ‘Indeed it was. And I wouldn’t like you to go away with the idea that the young Rob Durkin was anything more than a high-spirited boy. There was nothing vicious at all about him. He was the same as hundreds of other boys with a lot of energy and a little mischief in them.’

  ‘Nevertheless, thank you for recalling those days.’

  ‘Not at all. I only mentioned them because I felt I must be strictly accurate in answering your questions. We don’t want to be hauled into the police station and given the third degree because of some small omission at this stage, do we, Rosemary?’ Ron laughed at his little witticism, a high, startling sound in the quiet room.

  Lambert took an amicable leave of them then. And Mrs Lennox was left wondering why her husband had never mentioned this previous acquaintance with Robin Lennox, even to her.

  The man was surly, tight-lipped, cautious. Police officers are used to dealing with such attitudes, but DS Liz Brown had problems of her own to contend with.

  As a newly promoted CID sergeant, she was anxious not to make mistakes. She had been thrilled to be assigned to the team of Chief Superintendent John Lambert, who had acquired almost mythical powers in local police folklore, through a combination of longevity and sustained success as a villain-taker. But now that she was actually working as part of his murder team, excitement had turned to trepidation. The old dinosaur would surely eat her for breakfast if she made mistakes.

  And here was this surly man putting up the barriers against her and making her life difficult. She glanced at the gawky uniformed constable who was standing expectantly beside her in the airless office which had been assigned to them for this interview. No help there. He looked scarcely more than a boy to Liz, and he was watching her expectantly, as if he expected to learn things.

  They were in the rambling buildings of the Ford main dealers in Gloucester, where Mark Gregory was a sales manager. He looked at his watch and said, ‘I hope this won’t take much longer. I’ve a busy schedule to cope with.’

  ‘It will take as long as it needs, Mr Gregory. This is a murder investigation.’ Liz spoke with a firmness she did not feel, and got a tiny crumb of comfort from the sight of her acned colleague nodding his support.

  ‘And I’ve already told you I know nothing about this crime. I’ve even offered to prove to you that I was out of the area at the time.’

  ‘No one has suggested that you killed Mr Durkin.’ At this moment, I’d like to suggest it, you sullen sod, but I can’t. ‘We need to find out all we can about the murder victim. And we expect the public to cooperate with us.’

  ‘Which I’m doing.’ Mark Gregory became suddenly all sweetness and reason. No point in alienating the forces of the law, especially when they came to you in this unthreatening guise. And he didn’t want them prying too closely into the past.

  ‘You were a partner of Mr Durkin.’

  ‘Not for the last three years, I wasn’t.’

  ‘A former partner. We need to know about those years when you worked together.’

  He resisted the impulse to tell her to go to hell. That would only prolong this. ‘There isn’t much to tell. We established a successful small garage. Built up quite a good reputation. He was in charge of the workshops and servicing, I handled the showroom and car sales. I thought the partnership was working well. But that wasn’t enough for Robin bloody Durkin. He had to control the whole thing. He had to get rid of me.’

  There was already enough of CID in Liz Brown to make her pulses quicken. Usually people were polite, even unctuous, in the face of death. Normally any hostility was veiled, and defences had to be stripped away to reveal the enmities beneath. This man was making no secret of his resentment: that had to be interesting. With a bit of luck, she would only need to lead him on. She said rather lamely, ‘You didn’t part on friendly terms?’

  He smiled grimly. ‘As friendly as they could be, when you’d stopped speaking to each other. He bought me out.’

  ‘So it was a straightforward business transaction.’

  Again that bitter twisting of the lips, as if he wanted to say much more than he was going to allow himself. ‘In so far as anything was straightforward with Rob Durkin, yes. He said the business needed capital to expand, that I must provide as much as he was prepared to put in or get out. I got out. Not because I wanted to, but because I had no alternative.’

  ‘But he paid you a proper price.’

  Gregory’s mobile face turned to stone. ‘That’s between us. He had me over a barrel, because he knew I was strapped for cash at the time. He drove the kind of bargain you’d expect from a bastard like him. But I was a good salesman. I got a job here and I’m doing pretty well. I preferred being my own boss, but at least this way I’m away from the tricks of Rob Durkin.’

  Liz wondered whether to press him about the terms of the partnership buyout. But she sensed that Gregory would resist, and she hadn’t any weapons to use against him. He was simply a member of the public helping police with their enquiries, as a good citizen should. And John Lambert would have other methods of getting the information, if he thought it relevant. She said, ‘You make it sound as if Mr Durkin must have had a lot of enemies.’

  ‘I’m sure he did, DS Brown. And in case you still have any doubts, I shan’t be mourning his death. As far as I’m concerned, it’s good riddance to him.’

  ‘Do you want another coffee?’ he said.

  ‘No. I’ve had far more than I want already.’

  The hospital, or rather this particular section of it, was very quiet. Abnormally quiet, surely. And the time passed more slowly here than anywhere else in the world, when you were waiting for news.

  Eleanor Hook looked up at the round white face of the clock on the magnolia wall, watched the red second hand ticking silently round it. She wondered why she and Bert were suddenly so stiff and wordless with each other, why two people who normally communicated so effortlessly and easily could become awkward and tongue-tied, sitting here like strangers on these uncomfortable plastic chairs.

  ‘How long is it since the specialist went in?’ Bert Hook knew perfectly well how long it was. He was talking for the sake of talking, because speech seemed less threatening than silence.

  ‘Twenty minutes. It seems longer, but I don’t think it is.’

  ‘That’s long enough to decide what’s wrong with him, surely. He should be out here talking to us by now.’

  ‘He’ll be putting the right treatment into operation. Getting the nurses organized. Making sure he’s regularly checked, monitoring his progress towards recovery.’ Eleanor was surprised how positive and cheerful she made it sound as she tried to convince Bert. How could you manage to do that, when you were sick with the worry of it?

  ‘He’s always been a strong lad, Luke. Much stronger than he looks.’ It was the first time either of them had me
ntioned his name in hours. Bert felt as though he was tempting fate as he voiced it.

  ‘He didn’t look strong when they brought him in here. His temperature was sky high. And his head was hurting, despite the pills. Poor little scrap!’

  And suddenly she was in tears, and Bert was holding her clumsily against him, muttering over and over again, ‘He’ll be OK, Elly. He’s strong, is young Luke. He’ll be OK!’

  They were still like that when the registrar came out, looking to Bert absurdly young in his white coat, with his wrists sticking out too far at the cuffs. He said, ‘He’s in the best place now, Mrs Hook. The very best! We’ll pull him through for you, I’m sure.’

  ‘What is it?’ Bert’s voice was rough and challenging, dispensing with the normal courtesies.

  The registrar had wanted to take them off the corridor and into the office, to talk quietly and reassuringly to them, infusing them with a confidence he could not feel himself. But he was caught up now in Bert’s urgency, in his brutal and primal helplessness in the face of catastrophe. ‘It’s what we feared, I’m afraid. Meningitis.’

  Eleanor felt the colour draining from her face as she prised herself away from her husband. ‘How bad?’

  ‘Pretty bad. His temperature’s very high and he’s lost consciousness. The crisis will be in the next thirty-six hours.’ The registrar felt absurdly relieved that he’d got all his bad news out at once, like a child blurting out a confession.

  He said again, as firmly as he could, ‘But we’ll pull him through, I’m sure.’

  Ten

  ‘First question: was this extra money coming from the garage business?’ said Lambert.

  Rushton was staring at the page he had put on to his computer, giving the startling details of the dead man’s finances. ‘No. Quite certainly not. The agency for new cars was for the Seat range of models. There’s nothing wrong with them, but it’s not the most lucrative dealership to have. When you look at Durkin’s new and used car sales, he wasn’t doing much more than making a living. Perhaps a comfortable living, depending on how tightly he controlled his overheads, but nothing more than that.’