Close Call

by J M Gregson

  ‘And you say he was in Herefordshire on the night when Durkin died?’

  ‘He was staying in Cheltenham. But the Serious Crime Squad have a reliable sighting of him in Ross-on-Wye on that Saturday night. About three hours before Durkin was killed.’

  ‘What’s his usual MO?’

  ‘Rifle, with silencer when appropriate. Or pistol at close quarters. He’s a marksman. Won a prize at Bisley, sixteen years ago. But he’s a killer first and foremost: if he saw a silent and reliable method of dispatching his man, he’d take it in preference to a bullet. Garotting is one of the swiftest and surest methods of killing, if you can take people by surprise. And it doesn’t leave slugs behind for forensic to identify.’

  The three of them were silent, imagining the horror of sudden, silent violence in the small hours, in that quiet spot beside the River Wye. Then Lambert said, ‘What chance is there of pinning this on him, if he did it?’

  The professionals were always the most difficult to arrest. They moved in and out quickly, killed swiftly and unemotionally, and left few traces of themselves behind. Received police wisdom argues that there is always an ‘exchange’ at the scene of a killing, that the criminal always leaves behind something of himself, which forensic science can use to put him behind bars. But professional assassins are as aware of this as their police opponents. They leave minimal evidence of their crime; often, indeed, it is not even possible to be sure of where it took place. Bodies are dumped in rivers, or on building sites, or even entombed beneath the concrete of bridges or motorways. CID may suspect the contract killer, may even be privately certain that he is guilty, but without convincing evidence the Crown Prosecution Service will not even consider bringing a case to court.

  Rushton shrugged. ‘There’s going to be very little chance of making out a case against Watson, I’d say, unless we can come up with more than a sighting in the area. I’m trying to secure copies of his bank accounts, but I’m not hopeful.’

  Lambert sighed. ‘We’ll need to see him, in due course, unless we can be sure that he wasn’t involved in this. I might want you to come with me for that, Chris.’

  Both of them half-expected Hook to express his dismay at being deprived of such a meeting. Instead, he looked at his notes and said, ‘What about the older couple? Ronald and Rosemary Lennox. They always seemed unlikely candidates for this. Have you been able to eliminate them?’

  Lambert shook his head. ‘Not yet. I agree that when you compare them with a contract killer they seem outside possibilities, but they both have motives, of a sort. And opportunity, especially if you envisage them being involved in it together. That, I’m afraid, is a possibility we have to bear in mind for all three of the couples involved.’

  Rushton said, ‘Rosemary Lennox set up the evening where the victim died. A street party, I think she called it.’

  Lambert grinned a little at his puzzlement. ‘Yes. She remembers the street parties at the end of the war, when she was only three. I saw the Lennoxes together on my own, on Tuesday. Ron actually taught Robin Durkin at school, about sixteen years ago. He said he was a high-spirited, rather mischievous boy, but nothing worse than that, at the time.’

  ‘But Lennox rather changed his tune when I saw him with you on Wednesday,’ said Hook. ‘He admitted then that Durkin had been more vicious than that in his final years at school, and also that he knew Durkin was dealing in drugs within a year or two of leaving school.’

  ‘He also pointed the finger at Durkin as a blackmailer. He suggested that he was blackmailing Carol Smart and Jason Ritchie, though he claimed he had no clear evidence on that. Ron Lennox also said that Durkin was certainly not blackmailing him, that the idea of his having anything in his blameless past which could lead to blackmail was ridiculous.’

  ‘Which on the face of it seems likely to be true,’ said Rushton, scanning his file on the recently retired schoolteacher. ‘He looks far too boring to be a murderer.’

  Lambert gave them a wry smile. ‘I seem to recall something similar being said by policemen in Cheshire about a certain Doctor Harold Shipman, until the full extent of his killings became clear. Although I agree that Ronald Lennox looks more of a pedant than a killer, we’d better leave him in the frame for the moment. And I think we should see Rosemary Lennox on her own. She may be an unlikely murder candidate, but she hasn’t been eliminated yet. And she does a lot of voluntary work in the community: she may know important things, even if she’s not directly involved in this herself.’

  ‘Both the Smarts are still candidates for murder, in that they both admit being blackmailed by Durkin,’ said Rushton.

  Lambert shook his head. ‘Not quite, in Carol Smart’s case. She admits to having an affair with Durkin in the past, but not to being blackmailed about it. But the effect is almost the same: Durkin had a hold over her and she was frightened that he was going to reveal things to her husband or her daughters.’

  ‘What about the only one who was there on Saturday night who doesn’t live in Gurney Close? This Jason Ritchie has a history of violence. Stabbed a man three times. Only got off so lightly because of a good brief and police evidence which wasn’t convincingly presented.’

  Chris Rushton worked on the well-established police precept, ‘Once a villain, always a villain’. It is a deplorable assumption, of course, but statistics support police cynicism; most criminals are recidivists, and the number who start badly and end as model citizens is depressingly small.

  Bert Hook said, ‘The GBH was five years and more ago. Ritchie’s kept his nose clean since then.’

  ‘Or he hasn’t been caught.’ Rushton voiced the experienced copper’s normal reservation.

  Lambert said, ‘He’s another man we need to see again, now that we know more about the murder victim. I’m sure he was holding something back from Bert and me when we saw him on Tuesday. He claims he hadn’t had previous dealings with Robin Durkin, but it seems odd that he hardly spoke to him throughout that last Saturday evening. Ron Lennox says that he thought Durkin was blackmailing Ritchie, that he had a hold of some sort over him.’

  ‘Could that be anything to do with his relationship with Lisa Holt? She seems to fancy him as her toy boy.’ Rushton, as a divorced man himself, was always sensitive to such issues.

  Lambert tried not to smile. ‘I doubt it. The pair of them seem to have been quite open about their association, even to the extent of Lisa taking him along to the street party on Saturday night. She’s divorced now from her husband, and it’s difficult to see what anyone could make out of her pairing up with someone else, whether permanently or temporarily. Even a pillar of rectitude like you can’t make much out of it nowadays, Chris.’

  Rushton said stiffly, ‘I wasn’t taking a moral stand. I was simply searching for anything which would make either of the pair vulnerable to a man like Robin Durkin. And thus candidates for his murder.’

  ‘Fair enough. Lisa Holt’s already admitted that Durkin ruined her marriage and almost killed her ex-husband. She makes no bones about the fact that she hated him. And if Jason Ritchie was as drunk as they both say he was after the street party, she could have sneaked out of her house to meet Durkin without lover boy being aware that she was gone.’

  ‘And vice versa,’ said Rushton, stubbornly reluctant to let his chief suspect get away with anything.

  Bert Hook grinned. ‘So it seems that you haven’t managed to eliminate anyone whilst I’ve been preoccupied with Luke. Any one of the six residents of Gurney Close – or seven if we include Jason Ritchie in that number – could have killed Robin Durkin. His wife, the Lennoxes, the Smarts, Ms Holt and her lover, could all have done this.’

  Lambert nodded ruefully. ‘I’d say there are varying degrees of probability among that lot, but I can’t claim that we’ve ruled out any one of them whilst you’ve been preoccupied with more important things at the hospital, Bert.’

  Rushton added gloomily, ‘And there’s still the strong possibility that Durkin was eliminated by an ou
tside agency. By a contract killer, retained by one of his rivals or former partners in the drugs trade.’

  Bert Hook sighed theatrically. ‘It seems that it’s just as well that I’m now back to throw my mighty intellect on to the side of justice.’

  Seventeen

  Alison Durkin seemed perfectly calm. She didn’t ask about the progress of the investigation. When a rather weary-looking John Lambert apologized for arriving at six thirty in the evening, at a time when she might have been planning to eat, she said, ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t eat early. I don’t have young children to consider, like some other people.’

  It was a lead-in to the most important question he needed to ask of her, but it seemed too abrupt to pitch it at her now, almost before they were in her house. Lambert let her take them into the sitting room which looked on to the lawn where the body of her husband had been found, then seat them in the chairs she had planned for them, as if they were more conventional visitors. She said, ‘I’ve made a pot of tea. I thought you might be ready for a cup. I could certainly use one.’

  Then she poured tea into three cups very deliberately, as if demonstrating the steadiness of her hand and the extent of her recovery. Her rather white, almost translucent skin looked less drawn than when they had seen her in this room on Tuesday, and her whole bearing was quite different from when they had seen her in shock on Sunday. Her dark, straight hair seemed more lustrous and healthy than it had been in the aftermath of this sudden death. Her every move proclaimed that, a mere five days after the violent event which might have shattered her life, she was coming to terms with life as a young widow.

  As if she read this thought in them, Mrs Durkin said, ‘It’s a good thing there are no children who have lost a father in this house. That’s the kind of thing people say after a divorce, isn’t it? Well, I feel this is like a divorce, in some respects.’

  Hook nodded, took a sip of his tea, tried to dismiss the thought of his own son fighting for his life. He said quietly, ‘But you still have to come to terms with it, Ally. And you don’t have to put on a show of bravery, as you would have to do if you had children to consider.’

  He had remembered that she had asked him on Tuesday to call her Ally. She found that she was absurdly pleased about that. She took a deep breath and said, ‘You said when we last spoke that you were finding things out about Rob. Things which wouldn’t please me. No doubt you have gone on digging, and continued to unearth unpleasant facts.’

  She had clearly planned this recognition of realities, this acknowledgement that her husband had been a villain and that she was prepared to hear about it. Lambert wondered whether it could possibly be also an assertion that what she had done to him on Saturday night was justified. He said gravely, ‘I’m afraid that we have to go on digging, as you put it. It is our duty to find who killed Robin. To discover that we need to know all about the life he lived. You helped us yourself, when you told us on Tuesday that you thought he had been blackmailing people.’

  ‘Yes. You’ve no doubt unearthed some of his victims.’

  ‘We have, yes. We are continuing to discover things about his activities in that field.’

  ‘He liked to have a hold over people, you know. He didn’t open up very often, even to me, but once or twice I heard him positively gloating about something he knew. Usually it was when he thought it would give him an opportunity to pay off old scores.’ She offered first sugar and then a plate of ginger biscuits, for all the world as if she were discussing the weather and this were a normal social occasion.

  ‘Have you thought of any people who might be victims? As you imply, blackmail victims often become desperate.’

  ‘And turn into murderers, you mean. I see that, but I’m afraid I can’t offer you any names. I kept out of that area of his life. Or he kept me out of it. Either way, you could say I was prepared to enjoy the affluence which came from his behaviour, without wishing to dirty my hands with the knowledge of it.’ For an instant, the hint of a private trauma of self-loathing threatened her control.

  Lambert said, ‘I don’t think he raised substantial sums from blackmail; you’re probably right that he enjoyed having a hold over people and the feeling of power which that gave him. We think the majority of his money came from trafficking in illegal drugs.’

  ‘I suspected as much. I suppose I didn’t want to know for certain.’ She fingered the top of her arm, winced a little, said bitterly, ‘I’m now having to confront the things which I wouldn’t acknowledge to myself when Rob was alive.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry about that. But I’m sure you want us to find out who murdered him.’

  ‘Are you? I’m not certain I want to know who killed Rob. Not certain that I want you to know.’ She voiced the daring, outrageous thought and hid the lower half of her face behind her cup as she drained it, then set the cup back on its saucer and said, ‘More tea, Superintendent Lambert?’

  For the first time, there seemed something brittle about her control. But she had almost invited him to take up the issue of her own life, and Lambert said quietly, ‘In the course of routine enquiries, we have turned up things about you, Mrs Durkin. Things which we have to raise now.’

  ‘Then go ahead.’ She tried to think what these things might be, but her mind was blank when she most wanted it to be active.

  ‘Our records show that you attacked a previous partner. That you have a conviction for occasioning Actual Bodily Harm.’

  ‘It’s irrelevant.’

  ‘You should have told us about it.’

  Alison Durkin felt curiously calm. She had expected this. ‘Of course I should. You only had to check your records to find it. But it’s something I’ve long ago put behind me. The habit of concealment dies hard, I suppose.’

  ‘You took an offensive weapon to a man you were living with.’

  ‘That sounds very dramatic. You make it sound premeditated, which it wasn’t. I picked up the nearest weapon to defend myself, from the table behind me, when I was being attacked myself. My hand fell on a pair of kitchen scissors. I did the man no lasting damage.’

  ‘But you pleaded guilty to a serious charge.’

  ‘The legal advice was that it would be technically difficult to do otherwise. And it could have been more serious, couldn’t it? It could have been GBH. But I was given only a conditional sentence, which I understand is a rarity with an assault charge.’

  ‘It is. Did your husband know about the case?’

  She smiled a bitter smile. ‘Of course he did. He taunted me with it whenever it suited him. But I never took scissors or anything else to him, even though there were times when it would have been very satisfying.’

  Lambert found her confidence about this violence she had concealed unusual and a little disturbing. He said, ‘We have found out something else about you in the course of our enquiries, Mrs Durkin.’

  ‘And what might that be?’ Alison found that her confidence over the way she had handled the assault issue made her truculent now.

  ‘We discovered that you were a patient in Westview Private Hospital just over three years ago.’

  Her confidence drained away as the shock hit her like a physical blow. She had not expected this, had made no plans to deal with it. Her face froze into a mask. ‘In April 2002, yes. In the abortion unit. I had a termination, yes.’

  ‘Forgive me, Mrs Durkin. But in a murder investigation, we have no alternative but to pry. We need to know how this event affected your relationship with your husband.’

  She wanted to tell this quiet, insistent man, who was almost old enough to be her father, to go and hang himself from the nearest tree. Instead, she heard herself saying, ‘Yes. Because it could turn me into a murder suspect, this, couldn’t it? Or enhance my status in that respect: I suppose I was already a suspect.’

  Hook said, ‘This isn’t easy, Ally, for any of us. Did you have the termination on medical advice?’

  ‘No! On Rob Durkin’s bloody advice, that’s all! He said we di
dn’t want children, not at that moment. In a year or two, he said, but not then. He even said that we needed my income! I must have been even more stupid then than I am now!’

  Hook said, ‘It’s probably as well that you haven’t got a toddler who had to be told about a father’s death this week. You said that yourself, a few minutes ago.’

  She looked at him as if he had thrown a new and revolutionary idea at her, rather than merely recalled her own platitude. It was suddenly important to her to make the degree of her suffering clearer to this kindly, avuncular figure. ‘I wanted that child. But I persuaded myself that I had come to terms with the abortion, for the sake of my marriage. Then I found a year later that Rob had a child by another woman. A child that he was supporting.’

  Hook nodded, as quietly as if he was about to record a car registration number. ‘We’ll need the details of this woman, if you have them.’

  ‘She’s dead. I think she was on drugs. One of Rob’s pushers. She became an addict; the child was taken away from her. I suspect she committed suicide. I only found out about the child because I ferreted out a paternity order in Rob’s bureau. He wasn’t pleased about that.’ It might have been the first time he had hit her, but she was no longer sure about things like that. She found herself fingering the cotton which covered the bruising at the top of her arm again, as she recollected that moment when she had discovered that another child had been born, almost on the day of her termination. It seemed now to belong to another and darker life.

  Hook waited a moment, thinking of the child he had left in the hospital, before he said, ‘Were you planning to have children at some future time?’

  She left it so long before she answered that they thought she was going to ignore the question. Then she said very quietly, ‘I think that it was that abortion which marked the real end of our marriage. I didn’t see it at the time, but when I look at things now, I’m sure that I should have known then that it was time to get out.’