Close Call

by J M Gregson

  ‘Second question: why was he hiding it away so carefully? Was he merely dodging the taxman, or was the money itself illegal?’

  Rushton had no hesitation about that. ‘That money’s dodgy. It’s got to be. No small businessman makes sums of that size without them being dodgy.’

  Lambert grinned. ‘How sad that one so young should yet be so cynical. But I agree. Unless you inherit it, which we know he didn’t, or have large sums of capital to invest, it’s virtually impossible to acquire getting on for a million pounds by legitimate methods. And if that money had been accumulated legally, he wouldn’t have been taking such steps to hide it. So now question three: how did Robin Durkin contrive to get his hands on an extra eight hundred thousand pounds?’

  Rushton grimaced, knowing that he was being asked to voice the obvious. ‘Drugs? Fraud?’ The two great modern sources of illegal gains. The two means by which the fly boys of the criminal industry build up capital and finance even bigger coups. The two crimes which policemen suspect automatically when unexplained sums of this magnitude turn up.

  ‘Not fraud. There’s nothing in Durkin’s background or the world in which he operated to suggest that. I don’t think the opportunities were there. Drugs are certainly a possibility. I’ll get in touch with the Drugs Squad to see what they think.’

  The Drugs Squad enjoys a great degree of autonomy within the police service, as befits a unit operating in the most dangerous and most lucrative of all crime divisions. The personnel of the Squad guard jealously the information they take such risks to acquire, even from fellow police officers. Secrecy is vital, both to the safety of the many officers operating under cover and to the success of their operations. But murder overrides normal practice, and Lambert knew the man he would contact.

  He said thoughtfully, ‘There’s a fourth question to add to the other three, you know. And that is, how many other people knew that Durkin was making money of this sort? Did anyone who was at that party on Saturday night know anything about it? Did even his wife know?’

  ‘You sure you want to do this, Bert?’

  Lambert had never seen the normally rubicund Hook looking so pallid. The detective sergeant nodded more firmly than he felt. ‘I’m better working, John. There’s nothing I can do, is there? You just sit around feeling helpless.’

  ‘All right. I won’t raise it again. You must let me know if you want out. And if there’s anything Christine or I can do, you know that—’

  ‘There isn’t!’ There was an awkward pause, which seemed to stretch whilst Lambert took the car round a long bend under the trees, then Hook said, ‘There’s nothing anyone can do, except the medics. But thanks for asking.’

  The caravan was old, but its exterior was surprisingly spruce. Its paintwork gleamed softly, even though, at this time of day, it was in the shade of the great oak which stood twenty yards from it. It would probably never be towed on the road again, but its tyres were fully inflated and it stood exactly level on its concrete footing. The metal step beneath its door had neither leaf nor dirt upon it; it looked as if some diligent housewife had recently brushed it thoroughly.

  The man looked a formidable figure as he opened the door and stood looking down at them. His frame filled the whole aperture of the doorway, shutting out any light behind him.

  Jason Ritchie didn’t even try to manufacture a smile for them. He saw no need to pretend that they were welcome: the fuzz had never given him anything but grief in his life. He said, ‘You’d better come in, I suppose.’

  They climbed the single step and sat where he indicated, on the bench seat with its thin covering of foam cushioning. Everything in the place was cramped, so that when the occupant sat down opposite them, he was abnormally, unnaturally close. No more than two feet away, thought Bert Hook; this was a closer and even more claustrophobic environment than the inhibiting box of a police interview room at the station.

  The difference here was that the man was on his own ground, showing no signs of the inhibitions which the interview room at the nick often brought to people questioned there. Ritchie said, with a belated, clumsy attempt at welcome, ‘You want a mug of tea? I was making a brew anyway.’ He spoke as if he felt a need to apologize for the gesture, as if he was already regretting something which ran so counter to his principles.

  To Hook’s surprise, Lambert accepted the offer, and they watched Lisa Holt’s gardener moving with brisk efficiency around the tiny area which was so familiar to him. The caravan was even more clean and tidy inside than outside. The stainless steel sink gleamed softly, the blankets on the bed were tucked in as tightly and neatly as those on the hospital beds still fresh in Hook’s memory. The windows were bright and clean, and even the small chintz curtains on them looked as if they had enjoyed a recent wash.

  They didn’t compliment him on this, nor offer any other casual words. These particular policemen felt no need to fill conversational voids with small talk. They chose to let a silence build, heavy with implication, hoping it was increasing tension in the man at the centre of it. In this confined space, Jason Ritchie’s movements sounded unnaturally loud as he took milk from the tiny fridge and put it into the three large china beakers he had set on the side of the sink.

  Perhaps he felt some of the unease they wanted to see in him, for it was he who eventually broke the conversational hiatus, as he said roughly, ‘You’re wasting your time here, you know! There’s nothing I can tell you that you don’t already know.’

  Lambert smiled at him, picking up the first trick in the game. ‘Neither you nor I know whether that is true or not, at this stage, Mr Ritchie.’

  ‘Let’s get it clear then. I know bugger all about this killing. I hardly knew Robin Durkin before Saturday night, and I don’t know anything about the way he died. Full stop.’

  But his aggression was already a weakness: that thought struck Jason himself now, even as it became apparent to his visitors. Lambert said calmly, ‘We have to be interested in anyone who was close to a murder victim in the hours before he died. I expect you know enough of our procedures to appreciate that.’

  Ritchie glanced up at him sharply above his beaker, then nodded a sullen acquiescence. They took him through his account of the now familiar Saturday night party by a series of questions, since he seemed reluctant to give them a continuous statement of his own. Then Lambert said, ‘When was the last time you saw Robin Durkin?’

  ‘You know that.’ The brown eyes stared hard into Lambert’s grey ones. The thick, strong fingers moved over the tattoo of barbed wire on the upper arm, tracing its line upwards and under the cotton. It was a habitual gesture, as if it was a tangible thing he could feel under his fingers, rather than a tracing beneath the skin. ‘I said goodbye and thank you to him at the end of the party on Saturday night, and I left with the others. If you’re implying anything else, I want a brief.’

  ‘You’re entitled to retain your own legal advice at any time. You’re not entitled to free legal representation unless you’ve been arrested and are being questioned in connection with an offence.’ Lambert’s eyes, looking into his from no more than two feet, seemed to Jason to see everything and never to need to blink. ‘Did you see Mr Durkin again after you left his house at just before one a.m. on Sunday morning?’

  ‘What the hell are you implying?’ He watched Hook make a formal note of his reply, resting his notebook on the spotless melamine surface between them. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re on about.’

  But they all knew what was behind the question. Jason felt himself having to work up his anger, when he knew that he should have been more naturally and spontaneously outraged by the suggestion.

  Lambert ignored his reaction and said, ‘You don’t seem to have spoken much directly to Mr Durkin during the evening. Perhaps not at all. Was there a reason for that?’ No one had reported that directly to him: it was something he had deduced from the various accounts, including the one Ritchie himself had just given to them.

  Jason did not refute th
e idea. He said gruffly, ‘I was there on sufferance, the only one who wasn’t a resident of Gurney Close. I was watching myself a bit, making sure I didn’t step out of line. All the men were older than I am. I hadn’t a lot in common with them.’ It sounded a little desperate; he hadn’t expected to be pressed on this.

  ‘Robin Durkin was the nearest in age to you among the men. One might expect that you would have found it easier to talk to him than to the others.’

  ‘I didn’t. I don’t know why.’

  ‘Even when drink had relaxed you and everyone else? I would have thought that might have loosened your tongue.’ Lambert had no idea where this was going, but he had located a weakness, almost by chance, and his instinct was to go for it.

  ‘We were all quite relaxed by the end of the evening. I kept close to Lisa, because I was only there because of her. But the others were friendly enough, once we’d had a few drinks.’

  ‘But not so friendly in Robin Durkin’s case that you felt able to talk to him. Did you see him again after you had left his house with Mrs Holt at the end of the party?’

  ‘No. I’ve already told you that I didn’t.’

  ‘You hadn’t, actually. Never mind, you’ve answered the question for us now. So tell us what happened after the party broke up.’

  ‘I spent the night with Lisa.’ Jason wondered whether to enlarge upon the delights of this, but decided against it.

  Lambert looked at him keenly. ‘Did you know Mr Durkin before you met him in Gurney Close during those last weeks of his life?’

  How abrupt the man was. How quickly he switched from one area to another, just when you felt you were getting to grips with him. ‘No. I’d passed his garage, like other people. I didn’t recognize that this man was the Durkin who owned the garage until I met him when we were doing the gardens.’

  ‘So you hadn’t had a relationship of any kind with him before that.’

  ‘No. I’ve told you I didn’t. Why should it be of any interest to you if I had?’ He wished as soon as he’d said it that he hadn’t asked that question, that he’d left them merely with a blank negative.

  Lambert smiled, as if he too recognized the error. ‘We’ve got to be interested in any previous dealings people had with someone who is now a murder victim. Particularly when one of them has a previous history of violence.’

  So they had come to it, as he told himself now that he had known they would. He forced himself to appear calm, to take a long breath before he responded to them. He tried to speak evenly, but found his voice rising as he said, ‘This is always the way with pigs, isn’t it? Once a villain, always a villain. You don’t look any further than someone with a record, when you want to pin a crime on someone. I told Lisa you’d be after me. I knew it would be like this.’

  Lambert waited for the torrent of protest to dissipate itself. ‘We bear in mind what has happened before. That is no more than common sense.’

  ‘Then bear in mind that I’ve never killed anyone. Take your blinkers off and look at the facts.’

  ‘One of which is that you have a conviction for Grievous Bodily Harm. Another of which is that you could easily have been facing a murder charge on that occasion, if the cards had fallen slightly differently for you. Facts we need to bear in mind, as you indicate, when we are looking for the perpetrator of another violent crime.’

  ‘Not my style, Lambert. This man was garrotted with a piece of cable. I’ve never attacked anyone like that in my life.’

  ‘But you attacked someone with a knife. Stabbed him three times. Nearly killed him.’

  ‘Self-defence.’

  ‘The man attacked you with his fists. You took a knife to him. Very nearly killed him.’

  ‘He was a violent man. Attacking me outside a back street pub, with other violent men. They were wearing boots, and they’d have used them, if they’d got me down. Very likely kicked me to death.’

  ‘Not what the coppers who arrested you thought.’

  Jason allowed himself a small smile. ‘It’s what the court thought though, isn’t it? What my brief told them and what they accepted. British justice triumphant against lying PC Plods. And thank the Lord for it.’

  Lambert permitted himself a mirthless answering smile. He wasn’t going to get involved in mudslinging over a battle which had been lost long ago. ‘I hope you did thank the Lord. Or at least thanked a persuasive brief. A suspended sentence for taking a knife to someone must have sent you away laughing at the law.’

  ‘Learned my lesson, though, didn’t I? That po-faced woman judge told me to go away and keep my nose clean, and I’ve done just that. For five years, now. A triumph for British justice and the liberal ideal, that’s Jason Ritchie.’ He found to his amazement that he was enjoying this, that winning the argument with this senior policeman was giving him a kick. ‘So don’t think you can breeze into my home and arrest me for something I didn’t do. British justice won’t allow it, see? Police harassment, they’d call it, in my view. I’d go for the brief I had last time.’ He nodded a couple of times, trying to control his excitement as the adrenaline pumped in his veins.

  Bert Hook looked up from his notebook, avuncular and concerned. ‘So you’re thinking in terms of briefs already, Jason? Not a good move, that. Might have suspicious coppers believing you had something to hide. Might make them think they were on to something, wouldn’t you say?’

  Jason Ritchie was thrown by this sudden intervention, when all his hostility had been concentrated on the gaunt superintendent. ‘I’m not hiding anything. I know the way cops try to trip you up, that’s all.’

  Hook nodded. ‘Very wise, that. Not hiding anything, I mean. I’ve seen a lot of people get into trouble, over the years, when they’ve tried to hide things. You’re sure that you hadn’t met Mr Durkin before you encountered him in Gurney Close, are you?’

  It was slipped in almost casually, as if Hook were acting in the interests of the excited young man who sat on the other side of the table in the cramped little caravan. Almost as if he were a brief for the defence, thought Jason. ‘No. I’ve already said I didn’t know him.’

  Hook nodded. He looked as if he were about to make another note, but then thought better of it. He said almost casually, ‘So who do you think killed Robin Durkin, Jason?’

  The query which set the pulses racing in Jason’s temple had been uttered so quietly that it seemed paradoxically to be more significant, more menacing. He found himself wishing that it was still Lambert who was putting things like this to him: it seemed easier to fight a man who was more openly aggressive. ‘I don’t know. Someone who came in from outside, I should think, after we’d all gone.’

  ‘And why do you think that, Jason?’

  The quiet repetition of his forename was ringing like a taunt in his ears, an intimacy he didn’t want to hear but could not avoid. ‘I – I can’t think that anyone who was drinking and eating with him on Saturday night would have killed him. We were all getting on so well together!’

  It sounded lame, even to him. Hook nodded quietly a couple of times, as if weighing that idea. Then he said, almost reluctantly, as if it pained him to recall it, ‘Except for you, Jason. Who didn’t speak directly to Mr Durkin at all during the five hours of eating and drinking and laughter, on your own admission.’

  He wondered how they had prised out this, who among those there on Saturday night had been observant enough to watch how he was behaving towards their host. He was not experienced enough to realize that these two were experts in making bricks with very little straw, in picking up some small admission he had made and exploiting it as a weakness. He said rather desperately, ‘You asked me what I thought, and I’m telling you, aren’t I? I think someone came in from the path by the bank of the river, after we’d all gone. Perhaps he’d been waiting there for hours, watching for his opportunity.’

  ‘It’s a possibility. But you’d all been out there, through the gate at the back of the Durkins’s garden, wandering down to the banks of the Wye, w
e’re told. Surely you’d have seen anyone lurking there with malicious intent, wouldn’t you? Still, we’re considering every possibility, however unlikely.’

  They left him then, with the injunction that he must not move out of the district without giving them a new address. This familiar environment of his, what he thought of as his little private castle in the woods, seemed sullied by their visit. Jason sat for twenty minutes, motionless in the neat and spotless interior of the old caravan, recovering his composure, telling himself that, however he had felt, they hadn’t prised anything out of him that he hadn’t been expecting to give them.

  Lambert drove slowly back towards Oldford, through a Forest of Dean which was heavy with fresh new leaf, as if the pace of his driving could be an encouragement to measured thought. It was several miles before he said, ‘It was good having you with me in there. But you don’t have to do this, you know.’

  ‘I told you, I’m better working. It occupies the mind. Some of the time, anyway. And I thought you weren’t going to raise it again.’ Hook stared out of the window at the forest sheep, scampering away beneath the trees, as if they were of surpassing interest to him.

  Two more miles passed before he said, ‘I wonder what exactly it was that Jason Ritchie was concealing from us.’

  Bert Hook felt as if he was watching a scene in someone else’s life, not his, as he paused for a moment at the door of the hospital room.

  The woman sitting by the bed, looking down at the too-tiny conformation beneath the sheets, was surely some other woman, not his wife. That grave and grey-faced female was ten years too old to be his smiling Eleanor, who played like a fellow-child with her boys, who united with them in their teasing of their staid and anxious father.

  And that slight, amorphous shape beneath the sheets could surely not be his ebullient, noisy Luke, the exhausting embodiment of perpetual mobility that he had so often called upon to be still. This must surely be some other, private drama, in someone else’s life. Not his.