Close Call

by J M Gregson

  Hook knew that his role now was not to question but merely to prompt, to keep this revelation going. He said, ‘But you didn’t leave him. You bought a new house together.’

  Ally Durkin smiled the disillusioned smile which should have come from a much older woman. ‘I’d loved Rob Durkin since I was fifteen, when he was a high-spirited boy. You don’t give up when you love someone, even when you should. You don’t see things clearly. You turn a blind eye to things you should see as significant. Above all, you hope. Hope that you can change things. Hope that people will change, that they will see things as wrong which you see as wrong.’

  It was a bleak summary of dreams turning to ashes, of scales dropping away too late from innocent eyes, of aspiration turning to despair. She shook herself a little, as though she felt a cool draught on this sweltering evening. ‘I’m sorry. You’re meant to be detectives, not therapists.’

  Hook gave her a smile, acknowledging that she was reestablishing contact with them after the revelation of her private nightmare. ‘It’s not our job to sort out the messes people make of each others’ lives, Ally. But I now need to ask you formally whether you killed your husband.’

  Ally nodded slowly. This hadn’t gone at all the way she had expected it to, but she was prepared for the question. She found herself in fact much calmer than she had expected to be. She would deny murder, of course. But she had a need to convince them that Rob had deserved to die.

  Instead of answering immediately, she slowly rolled up the sleeve of her blouse, revealing the yellow and green of the healing bruise below her shoulder. ‘That’s my last souvenir of the man I loved. I didn’t kill him. But someone did me a favour on Saturday night.’

  It was after eight o’clock when Bert Hook finally contrived his return to the hospital.

  Visiting ended at eight, and he moved against an ebb-tide of departing vehicles as he manoeuvred the silver Focus into the car park. The staff on this ward were familiar with him now. No one tried to prevent him from entering the Intensive Care Unit.

  He was into the single room which had grown so familiar before he realized that something was wrong. The bed was empty. It was neatly, even severely, tidy, with crisp new sheets turned sharply back and the single pillow exactly in place at its head. The chair where Eleanor had sat for days like a watchful statue was gone. The multitude of tubes and machines which had been connected to the tiny, inert shape of his son stood quietly in the corner, yards from the bed where they had functioned.

  Bert’s heart seemed to stop beating for a moment. His head swam, his brain reeled, and he found himself reaching out for the jamb of the door, to keep not so much his physical but his mental balance. They had been told that the worst was over. Surely it couldn’t all have gone wrong at this stage! That would be too cruel to bear.

  Then a familiar voice said, ‘They’ve moved him. He doesn’t need twenty-four hour care any more.’ Eleanor Hook was looking puzzled, not relieved, when her husband turned to her. She felt she should have been able to infuse the simple words with a portentous weight which was quite beyond her.

  She led him into a different room, quiet, peaceful, invested with hope after the feverish agonies of anxiety which had filled the air in that other place, where their son had seemed a tiny, scarcely human focus of too much technology. There were no tubes, no monitors, no quietly winking screens around the bed here. And what lay beneath the neatly arranged white sheets was small, but now demonstrably human.

  Eleanor said, ‘He was conscious earlier. He spoke to me. What he said didn’t make much sense, but he spoke.’ She sounded as if she was announcing miracles and did not expect to be believed. But she did not care about that; she scarcely knew indeed what she was saying.

  Bert didn’t want to say anything. He was overcome by an overwhelming relief, which made him realize in a few seconds how near to exhaustion he felt. He reached out his hand and put it on top of his wife’s hand, which felt warm and dry and very small beneath his. ‘You’ll be able to sleep tonight,’ he said, with heavy, welcome anticlimax.

  Bert Hook could think of nothing else to say, nothing which would reflect what either of them was feeling. After a few long seconds he managed only, ‘Better get to bed soon. I expect you’ll be woken up at six. Things start early, in hospitals.’

  Eleanor looked at him for a moment as if she did not understand him. Then she managed her first smile. ‘I’m coming home with you, tonight, Bert. He’s out of danger, they say.’

  Bert knew that, in the obscure code which had been dictated to them by this crisis, this was a speech of love. He tightened his grip on the hand within his and said nothing. After a moment, he gently freed his fingers and reached them almost fearfully towards the occupant of the bed. He brushed the back of his fingers lightly against the small forehead, touched the fine hair above it, confirmed to himself that his son Luke had come back to replace that small, frail shape which had lain between life and death.

  In the twilight of this corner of the teeming world, the eyelids beneath his thumb fluttered briefly open, and dark pupils looked at him, first in puzzlement, then in recognition.

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ said Luke.

  In his cosy retreat in Birmingham, Anthony David Watson watched the television news and waited for the Central (South) local items. There was a mention of the murder in Gurney Close, but only to say that there had been no arrest as yet. There was a shot of the tiny, quiet close of new houses, then a sequence of that photogenic reach of the River Wye behind them, which must have been taken from a helicopter. The victim was described as a prominent local businessman with no obvious enemies. Watson smiled at those phrases: he knew a lot more than that about the late Robin Durkin. The police also would know much more about him and the things he had been involved in by now, obviously, but they weren’t releasing anything to the media.

  Watson liked what he heard and saw. It probably meant that the CID hadn’t made much progress with their enquiries, as yet. He switched the television off and went back to his book.

  When the phone rang ten minutes later, he did not answer it. He pressed the button and listened to the coded sentence being recorded on his answerphone. He let five minutes elapse before he rang back; do nothing in a hurry was one of his maxims. You made mistakes when you hurried; you were most efficient when you operated at the tempo which suited you.

  The commission was from one of the city’s biggest men. He operated gambling clubs and betting shops alongside his illegal drugs racket: they were convenient tools for the money-laundering which was necessary when you made the sums he did from criminal activities.

  The man didn’t speak himself, of course; it was one of his minions who provided Watson with the facts he needed to know. The hitman thought he recognized the voice, but that did not concern him. So long as you were sure of being paid, it mattered not whether you could put a face to your employer in this trade. For most of the time, it was better for you if you couldn’t identify him. When death was your business, anonymity suited everyone; too much knowledge could be highly dangerous.

  Watson acquired the knowledge he needed by a series of rapid questions. The target suspected nothing, he was told. Well, he’d heard that before, and he would make his own judgements about it and move in with caution. But he was given a detailed account of the target’s movements on the following day, which was much more to his taste. Times as well as the places his man would visit were listed, and his informant seemed confident that the target would stick to the timetable he outlined.

  Watson made rapid notes on the pad in front of him, giving no more than the occasional affirmative grunt as the information came down the line to him. The man at the other end of the line finally let out a little of his nervousness. ‘Is it too early for you? Do you need more notice than this?’

  Watson said, ‘No. If it’s as you say, if he goes to these places alone, I can take him out tomorrow. But you must let me be the judge of the time and the place. If it’s not appropriate, I�
�ll come back to you and get details of his movements on other days.’

  ‘Tomorrow is the ideal day to get him.’

  Watson frowned a little at the phone: you didn’t pressurize contract killers. Deciding on the right time and place was part of his expertise. ‘If he suspects as little as you say, there’ll be other opportunities.’

  ‘We’d like him out of the way quickly.’

  ‘If it’s safe to do it, it will be done tomorrow. You must let me be the judge of the moment to kill.’

  It was the first time that word had entered into the exchanges. Watson put down the phone and went back to his book. He was totally unconscious of the small, mirthless smile which played about the corners of his lips.

  Eighteen

  Lisa Holt did not want to confront the implications of the ideas which had occurred to her during the night. Still less did she want those experienced, persistent detectives discussing those implications with her, when she was not even clear in her own mind about what she thought.

  In the bright light of another blazing day, her fears seemed groundless, even silly. She told herself that three o’clock in the morning was always the worst time for anyone, the time when spectres loomed large and bizarre ideas took hold of the imagination. It reminded her of what St John of the Cross called the dark night of the soul. She’d read a lot of that Spanish mystic, when she was about sixteen and thinking of becoming a nun. When she was a mere girl, in another, more innocent life, which had gone now forever.

  She tried to keep up with her son’s wide-ranging, innocent conversation in the car. His childish treble seemed louder than usual this morning with his excitement. There was an innocence about nine-year-olds which was taxing as well as refreshing: it made you seem tawdry and jaded, and it emphasized the deceptions which seemed to characterize your more complicated adult life. George ranged over the details of his school life, passing in quick succession from the paintings on the classroom wall to his chances of making the football team when the winter came, then on to the girl who sat behind him in class, whose grandfather had died earlier in the week.

  Lisa kept up her end of the conversation as well as she could. Not much was required from her in terms of words, but she had learned long ago that monosyllabic agreements were not enough for George, that her reactions would be measured in terms of the intelligence of the questions she could mount, as her responses to this swiftly-moving panorama of her son’s life.

  Lisa felt quite exhausted when she had dropped him off at the school gates. She watched him trotting eagerly up to his friends and managed a smile at his pleasure in seeing them, at his immediate dismissal of his mother. Then she sat still and reflective for a moment, until the horn of a four-by-four blasted impatiently behind her.

  Instead of going straight to work, Lisa Holt turned the Corsa in the other direction, towards Oldford Police Station.

  Watson decided that he would kill during the afternoon. That was unusual for him. He preferred the hours of darkness, when there was natural cover and fewer people were about. Fewer innocent people, that was the important thing. The innocent were unknowing, and ignorance was hazardous in his world. The ignorant could get themselves involved in things which had nothing to do with them, and that was dangerous.

  It wasn’t that he was worried about spilling innocent blood: he had long since ceased to operate by the moral conventions which informed the lives of ordinary people. Watson’s concern was rather that the ignorant could get in the way, bringing with them unnecessary and dangerous complications. Tidiness was a tool of success, as far as he was concerned. If you killed or injured someone whom it wasn’t your brief to harm, you were inefficient, which would affect your future employment.

  Innocent blood would also bring extra police resources into the equation, a thing he could do without. He didn’t make the mistake he had seen in some of his fellow-killers. They showed an arrogance, a contempt for the forces ranged against them. Watson was determined that he would never do that.

  He studied his street map, pinpointing in his mind the exact spot where the job would be completed, checking that he could make a swift and undetected exit from the scene of the crime. Three twenty-five, it should be, if things went according to plan. Well before the rush hour traffic would complicate the getaway route.

  He put the street map of the city back on the shelf among his other reference books. He would not need it again. He had a photographic memory for the detail of maps, when it was necessary. He needn’t even think about the mission again until lunch. It was a discipline for him not to dwell on things, once he was sure of exactly what he was going to do.

  The only problem now was how to fill in his morning.

  If the CID men were surprised to see Lisa Holt only twenty-four hours after they had last spoken to her, they gave no sign of it.

  An impassive DI Rushton ushered her into Superintendent Lambert’s office and DS Hook placed a chair carefully in front of the great man’s desk for her, as meticulously as if the exact position was somehow important.

  These preliminaries only made her more nervous. She was impatient to get on with what she had to say. Indeed, she felt the certainty with which she had made her determined entry into the station draining away with each passing second. She had put on the maroon trousers and dark-red shirt which she knew flattered her slim figure; she had felt a need to dress as differently as possible from the shorts and the bare feet they had seen yesterday.

  Now Lisa had an absurd wish to look into a mirror, to check that her appearance was right for this exchange, that her carefully applied make-up had not been affected by the exigencies of the school run with George. She said, ‘You’ll probably tell me I’m being stupid. But you said you wanted to hear any ideas we had, to collect any information we could give to you.’

  Lambert said, ‘If I had a pound for everyone who’s apologized to me for wasting my time over the years, I’d be living in an affluent retirement by now. But I’d also have solved a lot fewer crimes. We rely on the public for information, a lot more than we like to admit when we’re claiming how clever we are.’

  ‘It’s just something which occurred to me during the night. It’s probably nothing to do with this crime.’

  ‘In which case it will go no further than this room.’Lambert, anxious for her to get on with this, was yet aware that you could not always rush people without them closing up, that it had probably taken this anxious-looking woman in her late thirties quite an effort of will to come here at all. He was quite content in any case merely to observe, aware as always that this innocent-looking exterior could conceal a murderer, who had come here to dissemble and throw them off the scent.

  Lisa Holt said, ‘It’s Jason.’

  ‘Mr Ritchie,’ Lambert nodded. ‘I thought it might be.’ No harm in letting them think that you were splendidly omniscient.

  ‘He knew Robin Durkin before I moved into Gurney Close. Before we met him on that Saturday night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You knew that?’

  ‘A lot of work has been going on during the last six days. The public does not see much of it, but like the industrious duck, we are paddling hard beneath the surface.’ The simile wasn’t flattering, but it would divert her attention from wondering how much they really knew.

  ‘I just thought I should tell you about Jason.’

  ‘In case it turns out that you’ve been sharing your bed with a murderer, you mean.’

  ‘No!’ It was exactly her fear, the thought which had set her flesh creeping in the small hours of the night, but she hadn’t expected to hear it put into words by this calm, observant, undramatic man. ‘I don’t for a moment think that Jason killed Robin Durkin, but you said that we ought to lay every bit of information we possessed before you. That’s the only reason I’m here.’

  ‘And very commendable it is that you should be here, Mrs Holt. It would have been even more useful if you’d told us this when we first spoke to you, on Monday. Or even
yesterday.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I was coming to terms with this death then. I was too concerned with my own dealings with that awful man to think about Jason’s connections with him.’

  ‘I see. Well, you’d better let us have the full details of Mr Ritchie’s association with the murder victim now.’ Lambert was irritated with this rather attractive woman, who seemed to think they should be grateful to her for coming forward now, when she had impeded the progress of their work by concealing things about her lover.

  ‘I don’t know much, really. It’s just that Jason has let slip one or two things which made me feel that he knew Robin Durkin almost as well as I did. Jason said yesterday that he was as glad to see the man dead as I was, but he wouldn’t tell me why. Just said that Rob Durkin was scum and the world was better off without him.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t tell you exactly why he thought that?’

  She smiled, trying to lighten the tension she felt building between them. ‘He hasn’t had much chance. We didn’t spend the night together. I haven’t seen a lot of Jason since this happened, actually. But there’s nothing very unusual about that. My child and my work take over, during the week. And Jason has quite a workload too.’

  She wondered if it sounded defensive, if they were really going to believe that she and Jason hadn’t talked much about Rob Durkin and the sort of man he had been. She certainly wasn’t going to tell them about the way the dead man had come between them over the last few days, abruptly suspending Jason’s work on her garden, inhibiting their relationship, making each of them question exactly how much they really knew about the other.

  Lambert said, ‘We know now that Durkin was a blackmailer. Did he have a hold over Mr Ritchie?’

  ‘No. Well, I don’t think he did.’ Suddenly, she wanted only to be out of this room and in the open, unoppressive air. ‘You’ll need to ask Jason about that yourself, won’t you?’

  Lambert ignored the question. ‘Durkin was a drug dealer, employing other people to take risks for him. I expect you know about that. Several other people knew, though they didn’t think it necessary initially to inform us about it. Was Jason Ritchie working for him?’