Close Call

by J M Gregson

  Ron was aware that he was talking inconsequentially, unnecessarily, as he took them through a sitting room which had lost its flowers and its photographs on the mantelpiece, and now seemed like any other new lounge in the close. He led them into the light, pleasant conservatory and invited them to sit in the wickerwork chairs. ‘We won’t be disturbed. Rosemary is at the Red Cross centre. She does voluntary work there on a Wednesday.’ He knew he was sounding nervous, knew that these experienced men would have picked that up, wondered what they were making of it.

  ‘We wanted a few more words with you about Robin Durkin,’ said Lambert, his economy with words underlining Lennox’s unnecessary loquacity.

  ‘At your service,’ said Ron expansively as he sat down. ‘Though I’m sure I can’t tell you any more about him than you already know.’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’Lambert’s manner was not unpleasant, but his words sounded to Ron like a threat. ‘We now know quite a bit more about the murder victim than when we last spoke with you, so whatever we learn from you today will be fitted into a fuller context.’

  Was that a warning to him not to lie? Ron said apprehensively, ‘One doesn’t like to speak ill of the dead, but …’ He had lifted his hands as he began the statement, but they dropped limply back on to the arms of his chair as the words ran out for him. They were bony hands, sticking out a little too far from the cuffs of the cardigan he had selected to emphasize how relaxed and unthreatened he would feel.

  Hook flicked open a new page on his notebook and looked at his man earnestly. ‘Tell it how it was. That’s much the best policy, Mr Lennox. Especially when it’s a murder that we’re investigating. Any attempt at concealment only leads to complications.’

  Ron looked gratefully at the weather-beaten, honest face. ‘All right. Robin Durkin wasn’t a very nice man. Rosemary and I like what we’ve seen of his wife, Alison, and when we spoke to you yesterday we didn’t want to say too much about him because of her. And of course we didn’t want any trouble with our new neighbours. But I happen to know that Rob Durkin was a nasty piece of work. Rosemary and I didn’t plan to have any more to do with him than was strictly necessary.’

  ‘But you were quite willing to go to a party at his house last Saturday night.’

  Ron smiled. He was ready for this. ‘As was everyone else in the close. It was my wife who had suggested the street party; when it turned out that the venue was to be at the Durkins’s house, we could hardly make a sudden withdrawal. I think you’ll find if you question them closely that others as well as me had reservations about the man. But perhaps you already have.’

  Lennox was speaking in a curious, rather pedantic manner, as if he were outlining the obvious for someone rather dense. Perhaps it was a habit acquired in his schoolteaching days. Or perhaps he had prepared these words carefully before their arrival. Lambert said with a twinge of irritation, ‘You’d better tell us exactly what you knew about Robin Durkin.’

  ‘It’s nothing tangible. Nothing I’d care to swear to on oath in a court of law. But then I won’t have to do that, will I?’ A little nervous laugh escaped him before he could suppress it.

  ‘Anything is possible, in a murder case. That’s why we need the full story from you now.’ Lambert was getting impatient. ‘If it will help to loosen your tongue and remove your inhibitions, Mr Lennox, I can tell you that we have already discovered quite a lot of things about Mr Durkin.’

  ‘Hah!’ Ron heard the breathy monosyllable exploding into the bright room an instant before he realized that it had come from himself. ‘That I can well believe! If your investigative techniques are as efficient as I am sure they are, Superintendent, you will have discovered by now what an unsavoury character Rob Durkin was.’

  ‘We are in the process of getting a fuller picture. And you are in the process of helping us,’ said Lambert tersely.

  ‘Yes. Right. Well, Durkin was a blackmailer, you know, among other things.’

  ‘What other things?’

  Ron was sure the blood was rushing to his face. It was an unfamiliar and disconcerting feeling. He had expected to talk about blackmail, to deliver the sentences he had prepared on that, not to have the ground switched so abruptly to this. He looked down at his brilliantly polished brown toecaps and decided that city shoes were inappropriate footwear to go with the informal dress he had donned for these exchanges. ‘Well, I’m sure he had some pretty unsavoury business dealings. Cut plenty of corners in his working methods, from what I heard. Have you talked to his partner in the garage?’

  ‘We have, yes. What he said rather confirms what you are telling us now.’

  ‘Well, there you are, then. An unsavoury man, and it’s not just I who think so!’

  That seemed to give Lennox great satisfaction; Lambert noted with interest how important it seemed to him. ‘Mr Durkin had accrued a very large sum of money, seemingly not by legitimate means. Have you any views on how he might have come by such a fortune?’

  Ron pretended for a moment to be struggling with his scruples. Then he said, ‘In my view he was involved in supplying illegal drugs. That’s a lucrative business, they tell me. The kind of thing where you can quickly accumulate money, if you’re the kind of man he was.’

  ‘Indeed it is. And what kind of man was he?’

  ‘I’ve already told you that. The worst kind. A man who did not operate by the moral canons which the rest of us use to regulate our lives.’

  There was a curious combination of passion and fastidiousness in this man, as if he sought to control his emotions by the precision of his words, to disguise a real hatred for the dead man by meticulous vocabulary. Lambert strove for a wavelength which would encourage him to cooperate. ‘It’s true that if we left now we should be in no doubt about how you felt about our murder victim. But as an intelligent man, you will appreciate that we need rather more chapter and verse about this. We can’t simply take your strong feelings as establishing the worthlessness of the man.’

  Lennox pursed his lips, thought for a moment, nodded slowly. ‘I see that. You mean that, in a court of law, some clever defence counsel would say I was just voicing an opinion.’

  Lambert smiled. ‘We’re not talking about courts of law. We’re a long way from that yet. I’m asking you to support what you’re telling me with something more tangible than your own dislike for Robin Durkin.’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t normally go around exchanging gossip.’ The eagerness in his face made Lambert doubt that. ‘But one picks up quite a lot, around a secondary school, you know, if one keeps one’s ears open. People think we educationists exist in ivory towers, but we certainly don’t. Not these days. I used to listen to the sixth formers talking and pick up quite a lot about what young people were up to.’

  Lambert leaned forward conspiratorially and said, ‘And you asked a few pertinent questions, too, I’m sure.’

  ‘On occasions I did, yes.’ Ron rocked back and forward a little on his chair, folding his arms and hugging his thin chest. This was better: they were treating him now as a valuable source of information. This was a chance to put the boot in on that awful man who had died on Saturday night. ‘Within two years of leaving school, Rob Durkin was dealing in drugs in quite a big way. I’m certain of that. We had one or two cases of drug abuse in the school – all schools do, nowadays, they tell me. And of course they had to be followed up. Where possible, we kept the police out of it. But Rob Durkin’s name came up every time. He was an ex-pupil who was exploiting his contacts with the school. Anything but an alumnus, you’d have to say!’

  His little cackle of laughter at his bon mot flew oddly round the glass walls of the conservatory. Lambert said, ‘We have been made aware of these activities over the last two days. But Durkin was a clever man. He seems at that time to have established a network of dealers, without direct involvement in selling drugs himself. He was never charged with offences because the CPs didn’t think there was enough evidence.’

  ‘That’s him exactly
! That’s just what he’d do. Let others take the risks, and keep his own back well covered.’ The vehemence of Lennox’s feelings overcame his air of objectivity. ‘I don’t know any more about it than that, as far as hard evidence is concerned. If I had known, I’d have reported it to you at the time, as a responsible citizen who wanted to see the law upheld. But I’m sure he went on to bigger things, that he wasn’t involved just in dealings at the school gates any more.’

  ‘We think you’re right, Mr Lennox.’ Lambert smiled encouragingly. He didn’t often flatter people, but he would use whatever was necessary to hurry on his investigation. ‘So let’s agree off the record that Mr Durkin was a thoroughly unsavoury character. What else can you tell us about the way he made his money?’

  Ron nodded sagely. He liked this. They were fellow-professionals now, in the pursuit of a villain. A dead villain, but then villains were better dead. ‘I’m pretty sure he was a blackmailer. The worst sort of crime, wouldn’t you say, blackmail?’

  ‘Apart from murder, of course!’ Lambert and Lennox had a little dual smile about that. ‘Most policemen find blackmailers pretty despicable, yes. And when they turn into murder victims, they are often the worst sort of victims, too, for us. They usually prove to have a lot of enemies, you see.’

  ‘Among the people they’ve tormented, you mean? Well yes, I can quite see that. Must make things difficult for you. In that it gives you a wide field of suspects, I mean.’

  ‘That’s one of the reasons why we hate it when a blackmailer is murdered, yes.’

  Ron Lennox nodded several times, enjoying the logic of the discussion, appreciating having his ideas treated seriously by these professionals. ‘You can’t have much sympathy, though, for a man who’s been battening on to people like that. I think I’d feel that he’d driven his killer to such extremes, if it was someone who hadn’t been violent before.’

  ‘The law has to be observed, nevertheless. I’m sure a man like you wouldn’t condone murder.’

  Ron smiled at him, continuing to relish the exchange, experiencing an excitement he had never felt before, that of being close to the heart of a very serious crime. ‘No, of course I wouldn’t. I’m just saying that one must feel a certain sympathy with a killer, in these particular circumstances.’

  Bert Hook nodded encouragingly. ‘So who was Robin Durkin blackmailing, Mr Lennox?’

  The question shook Ron out of his complacent enjoyment of the situation. He hadn’t expected anything so direct, and certainly not from this lumpish sergeant who hadn’t spoken now for several minutes. ‘I wouldn’t know that, would I? He wouldn’t be a very good blackmailer, if an innocent schoolmaster like me knew about his victims, would he?’

  His involuntary cackle of laughter at the silliness of that idea rang round the huge panes of conservatory glass. Hook didn’t respond with a smile. He said, ‘But you keep your ear to the ground Mr Lennox, as you told us a few minutes ago. It was by doing so in the school that you came to suspect that the man was dealing in drugs: a suspicion which our present enquiries have proved to be well-grounded. And no doubt you have continued your habit of acquiring useful knowledge.’

  Of sticking my nose into other people’s business, he means, thought Ron. He’s not as harmless or as blockish as he looks, this man. But nor am I the sucker for flattery that he thinks I am. He said primly, ‘I take an interest in the people who were once my pupils. It’s one of the satisfactions a man gets, in a poorly paid and increasingly demanding profession. It gives one pleasure to see boys and girls becoming adults and going on to do great things in life. One feels one has made some small contribution to their success, and to society as a whole, when one sees such things.’

  ‘And naturally you take an interest in following the after-school lives of the less savoury characters as well. People like Robin Durkin.’

  Ron rocked back and forth a little on his chair, clasping his arms across his thin chest in an involuntary gesture of satisfaction. ‘I can’t deny that there is a certain ghoulish interest in failure as well as success. Though of course one is delighted when boys and girls who have been nuisances at school shake off their adolescent peccadilloes and become responsible citizens.’ His expression rather belied this pious sentiment.

  This time Bert Hook did smile. ‘And no doubt there is also a certain macabre pleasure when those that you have predicted will become villains justify your judgement.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’But Lennox’s wicked grin showed his pleasure in the proposition. ‘One is not pleased to see people turning out badly, but I won’t deny that it gives one a certain confidence in one’s estimation of people when one sees one’s judgements vindicated.’

  ‘And in the case of Robin Durkin, you saw what you had predicted becoming fact.’

  ‘Yes, indeed I did. He was a thorough nuisance at school: a lot of boys are just high-spirited and mischievous, but I found Robin Durkin to be underhand and malevolent. It looked to me then as if he was going to be a bad lot, and so it proved.’

  ‘So who was he blackmailing, Mr Lennox?’

  Hook’s brown eyes looked hard into his face now. Ron felt he had been led round in a circle to where they had begun, and been shown in the process that there was nothing for it but to voice his suspicions in full. He found that he was not averse to doing so. ‘I don’t know. Not for certain. I just felt from his manner, from his smugness, that he was still up to his old tricks. I’d known Durkin a long time, don’t forget. I remember that even when he was at school he liked to have a hold over people, liked to exploit his knowledge of any breakage of the school rules, for instance. And what was more, he took a delight in showing people that he had a hold over them.’

  ‘And you’d seen signs of that in him again, all these years later.’

  ‘I had indeed.’ Lennox could not conceal his own satisfaction in this.

  This was a petty man, perhaps, but maybe also an important one, in the context of a murder investigation. Hook said patiently, ‘You must see that any knowledge, even any conjectures you have about this, are of interest to us. So who do you think Durkin was blackmailing at the time of his death?’

  Lennox nodded contentedly. ‘“Conjectures”, you said. That’s the right word, you know. I haven’t any certain knowledge, and I’m not pretending to any.’

  Lambert said curtly, ‘We understand that. Are you going to give us any names?’

  Ron looked from one to the other of the contrasting faces, and was satisfied to see that he had their complete attention. ‘I think it possible – no more than possible, mind – that he had some sort of hold over Mrs Smart.’

  He looked to see surprise and satisfaction in their faces, but they were disappointingly non-committal as Hook wrote the name in his notebook. Perhaps this was a professional inscrutability, Ron thought. Or perhaps their enquiries had already thrown up something in that area. He said, ‘I think it possible that Durkin had something on Jason Ritchie, as well. There was some sort of tension between them on Saturday night, I think.’

  Lambert gave him a small, acerbic smile of encouragement. ‘You seem to be very observant, Mr Lennox.’

  ‘One picked up the habit, I suppose, over forty years in the classroom. Children always have their secrets, and it’s as well to try to pick up the undercurrents of what is going on amongst them. I suppose one transfers these skills into the adult world, without realizing it.’ He looked immensely pleased with himself.

  Lambert said without any change in his quiet tone, ‘Was he blackmailing you, Mr Lennox?’

  For a moment, Ron could scarcely believe his ears, so unexpectedly had the question come to him. He was striving for control as he said, ‘No, of course he wasn’t! Whatever made you think that he was?’

  ‘It’s just that you seem to be very aware of his methods. Acutely conscious of both his practices and his mannerisms, in fact, for one who claims not to have been in touch with him for many years.’

  ‘But what possible hold could Rob D
urkin have had over me?’

  Lambert smiled, seemingly becoming more at ease as his man’s discomfort grew. ‘I wouldn’t know that, would I, Mr Lennox? That’s the nature of the crime of blackmail, isn’t it? If I knew what it was that you needed to conceal, a blackmailer wouldn’t be able to extract money from you, would he?’

  ‘Well, let me formally assure you then, that Rob Durkin was not and never had been blackmailing me. There is no possible way in which he could have secured a hold over me. My background is blameless, if rather dull. Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘No disappointment, Mr Lennox. Simply another fact that can now be recorded. Who do you think killed Mr Durkin?’

  Again the abruptness of the question caught Ron off his guard. He made himself take long seconds before he replied. ‘I’ve no idea. I don’t envy you your task, Superintendent, because I’m sure there are lots of candidates. People in the lucrative but violent world of illegal drugs, I have no doubt. And also people who were or had been the blackmail victims of this unsavoury man. I’m privately sure that you’ll eventually arrest someone that I’ve never even heard of.’

  After they had gone, Ron Lennox stood looking out of the window, across his back garden towards the spot where Rob Durkin had died, still feeling a residual buzz of excitement.

  He could not for the life of him decide whether the meeting had gone well or badly.

  Fourteen

  Philip Smart thought sometimes that his wife knew. When he said on Wednesday night that he was going out to the club, she accepted it not only without any objection but without any question.

  Sometimes he wondered whether he would have liked a little more wifely opposition, a little more curiosity about his activities. But another part of his complicated psyche told him that he should be grateful that he did not have a jealous harridan of a wife, screaming at him and making his little escapades impossible.