Close Call

by J M Gregson

  She refilled his cup and tried not to sound too eager. ‘So let’s hear about the other candidates.’

  He smiled. They both knew what was going on here, knew that he was being tested. But they both knew also that their tensions over stuff like this were far behind them, that whether or not he revealed his thinking to her now was not crucial to their relationship any more. He was deliberately low-key as he said, ‘The wife’s always a suspect, of course. Just remember that when you plan to dispatch me. This one had used scissors on a previous partner. Ally Durkin also had ample reason to wish her man in hell. He’d pressurized her into an abortion, at the same time as he was supporting a child he’d fathered by another woman. He’d also had an affair ten years earlier with a woman who had just moved into the house beside them: we’re still not sure whether his wife knew about that or not.’

  ‘He sounds a real charmer.’

  ‘You haven’t heard the half of it. He was involved in illegal drugs in quite a big way. We’ve found getting on for a million pounds in accounts deriving from that. He was probably getting a bit too big for his boots and treading on the toes of the real barons of the drug trade.’ Lambert found himself rattling off the clichés, as he strove against his nature to discuss this with Christine.

  ‘Hence the contract killer.’

  ‘We think so. But, as I said, my own feeling is that it wasn’t the hired man who took him out. In some respects, it would be simpler for us if it had been.’

  ‘So who else is involved, then, apart from the wife?’ Absurdly, Christine found herself avoiding the phrase ‘in the frame’, since that seemed to her a police expression, and thus off limits for her.

  ‘There’s the woman who organized the party at which he was killed.’

  ‘And thus set up the situation where he died.’ Christine said it slowly, unconsciously emphasizing her role as an amateur looking in on this from the outside.

  ‘Yes. Rosemary Lennox is a pillar of the local community. But we questioned her son this morning and found that Durkin had recruited him as a pusher in the drugs trade. The parents must have known about it, but neither of them has mentioned it to us. The boy’s a student, about to enter his final year at Cambridge. The Drugs Squad are satisfied that he only worked for Durkin for a short time. But he had a lot to lose if Durkin had chosen to drop the information that he’d been involved.’

  ‘And was he the sort of man to do that?’

  ‘He certainly was. Durkin was a blackmailer at the same time as he was developing a drugs empire. And like a lot of blackmailers, he enjoyed having a hold over people as much as or even more than the money it brought him. So Rosemary Lennox probably wasn’t paying money to Durkin, but as the boy’s mother she must certainly have been aware of the damage he could do to her only son whenever he chose to. Durkin might even have taunted her with that thought.’

  ‘She somehow doesn’t sound like a likely candidate for murder.’

  ‘No. Rosemary Lennox is a woman in her early sixties, with an unblemished reputation as an unpaid force for good in a lot of local enterprises. But people become desperate and act out of character when blackmailers threaten them. And women do extraordinary things when they’re seeking to protect their children.’

  Christine smiled, preferring not to recall some of the embarrassing things she’d done in her time to defend her daughters against a hostile world. ‘Presumably the lady has a husband?’

  ‘She does indeed. A man who is amusing and irritating by turns. Ronald Lennox has just retired as a teacher. He taught Robin Durkin at the comprehensive and didn’t like him, even then. He initially gave us the impression that Durkin was little more than a high-spirited, mischievous lad who had to be controlled. But I thought at the time that his antipathy went further than that, and he’s now admitted it. Lennox is the man who first told us about both Durkin’s reputation as a blackmailer and his first steps into supplying illegal drugs. He’s rather drip-fed us the information over the last few days. Lennox is both a pedant and a gossip: rather a ridiculous figure in many respects. But I’m certain his dislike of Durkin runs deeper than he cares to admit. And I’m sure he’s the kind of man who will be immensely proud of his son’s being at Cambridge. He might be prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to preserve it.’

  ‘What a can of worms you’ve opened in a quiet close of new houses!’

  ‘Oh, there’s more to come yet. Much more! I mentioned that Durkin’s mistress of ten years ago, Carol Smart, had moved into the close beside him. Her own husband is a man who apparently finds it difficult to keep his wedding tackle in his trousers for very long, but Carol seems genuinely, touchingly, fond of him. The Smarts have daughters of eighteen and twenty, both working in Yorkshire. Carol was quite desperate that neither they nor Phil Smart should find out anything about her affair with Robin Durkin.’

  ‘So she might have shut him up for good.’

  ‘It’s possible. Durkin was enjoying the secret, and it’s difficult to think that a man like him wouldn’t have used it to hurt someone, sooner or later.’

  ‘What about this woman’s husband?’

  ‘Phil Smart? He’s a serial philanderer who yet seems genuinely fond of his wife, as she does of him. He was also one of Durkin’s blackmail victims. He’d done something irregular at work years ago – transferred some sales figures to himself from someone who’d left the firm – and Durkin found out about it. Durkin had screwed a certain amount of money from this knowledge, but by the time of his death he seems to have preferred just to taunt Smart with the knowledge that he could expose and disgrace him at any time.’

  ‘This Phil Smart sounds like a man desperate enough to commit murder.’ To Christine Lambert, he sounded the most likely suspect so far, but she was too intelligent a woman to voice the thought.

  Lambert smiled grimly. ‘So do a couple of other people. There’s a very personable divorcee of thirty-nine in the first house in the close. Lisa Holt, a woman whose then husband was ruined by Robin Durkin, according to her, a process which also finished what she claims had been a happy marriage.’

  ‘Does she have children?’

  ‘A son of nine. She has also recently acquired a toy boy. I don’t know how serious their relationship is, but he was close enough to her to be invited as her partner to the party which was the prelude to Robin Durkin’s death. He’s a gardener and small builder. We also know now that he was involved in dealing drugs for Durkin a few years ago. He concealed it at first – naturally enough, as it could lead to criminal charges.’

  ‘What sort of a man is he?’

  Lambert paused, striving to be objective. ‘Jason Ritchie is tough. And no angel: you can see how he got involved with Durkin in some pretty unsavoury stuff a few years ago. He also has a conviction for Grievous Bodily Harm, which could easily have been manslaughter or even murder, if the cards had fallen differently and he’d done more damage with the knife he was carrying. He claims he’d have been kicked to death in a brawl outside a pub if he hadn’t drawn the knife in self-defence. He seems to have kept out of trouble over the last few years, but he clearly has a capacity for violence. He’s also more intelligent than this background would suggest.’

  Christine Lambert’s innate feeling for the underdog had her wishing fervently that this young man, who sounded to her both an interesting character and the police favourite for this crime, hadn’t committed the murder. The lad didn’t seem to have a lot going for him amongst these largely middle-class people. She couldn’t dismiss the thought that if an older woman hadn’t taken him into her bed, Jason Ritchie wouldn’t have been a leading suspect in this case at all. But she had far too much common sense to voice any such unobjective views.

  Almost as if he was reading her thoughts, John said, ‘Chris Rushton thinks Jason Ritchie is the likeliest killer. The copper’s instinct is always to go for people with a bit of previous. And very often that instinct proves correct.’

  Christine said rather waspishly, ‘You sa
id the wife had a bit of previous, as well as this young man.’

  ‘Indeed. Ally Durkin is very much in our thoughts. Remember that, when you are tempted to garrotte me, will you?’

  John Lambert stood up, anxious to get back to his labours in the garden. He couldn’t remember giving as much detail to his wife about any case he’d been involved in before. But as he picked up his fork and went to the vegetable plot, he decided it must have helped to clarify his own thoughts.

  For the first time, he thought he probably knew who had killed Robin Durkin.

  Twenty-Two

  It was something Jack Hook had never had to tackle before.

  When you were a thirteen-year-old, every week brought some new experience, but Jack hadn’t realized this yet. As the elder of the two, he was used to playing the worldly-wise and experienced mentor to his tiresome younger brother. To have to greet this vexatious creature home from hospital after a near-death experience was something Jack had never envisaged.

  He had not seen his brother for almost a week, and he was astonished how white and frail he looked when he walked into the house from their Dad’s car. His mum seemed to think there was nothing wrong with Luke, even to be pleased to find him walking in like this. Jack couldn’t understand how she could be so unobservant: the boy was patently very sick, to his mind.

  Jack took a deep breath and said, ‘You can have the latest Harry Potter. I’ll finish it later.’ He had never known that being a saint would sit so uneasily on his shoulders. He felt sainthood pressing on his back, like a very heavy rucksack.

  The thin head with its wispy strands of fair hair shook as though it belonged to an old man. ‘I’m not up to reading much just yet, bro. You finish it. Let me have it then. Let me know what you think of it.’ Luke smiled wanly, feeling the determined, unnatural politeness towards Jack dropping stiffly from him. Everything felt strange and new, including this elder brother he had not seen all week. He stood, awkward and gawky as a new-born foal, in the hall of the house which he had inhabited for all but the last week of his twelve years.

  Eleanor Hook had to control an impulse to burst into peals of laughter as she watched this strange little tableau. She wanted to put the boy into his own bed, to bring him whatever he needed, even to lie down beside him and feel the living, vibrant warmth of him. She did nothing of the sort, of course. She said carefully, ‘Perhaps you should go and sit down with the telly for a while, Luke. Watch the cricket and build up your strength.’

  She had no idea whether there was any cricket on. But her luck held. It was the third day of the test match, and Luke allowed himself to be led, docile as an old dog, to the armchair, which was much too big for him. When Eleanor Hook brought him a sandwich with the crusts cut off five minutes later, the small white face was staring intently at the winking screen.

  It was a full hour later before the parents heard the first argument about switching channels, the first sounds of their boys’ voices rising in querulous debate. They looked at each and smiled the congratulations they could neither voice nor understand, while the dispute in the adjoining room grew shriller as its ritual was played out.

  Normal family service had been resumed.

  On Saturday afternoon, the first clouds in almost a fortnight drifted over Gurney Close.

  Jason Ritchie, who had needed a pick to break up the baked and compacted ground he was levelling behind the first house in the little cul-de-sac, looked up at the sky with the practised eye of the outdoor worker. He calculated that he had probably no more than an hour before the rain coming in from the Atlantic would stop work for the day and bring the first, welcome downpour to the rudimentary gardens of the new community.

  He worked hard and methodically, turning the clay swiftly and expertly with a fork, calculating that he could complete the rectangle that he had planned before the rain came, using the steady rhythm of the labour to distract him from other, more disturbing concerns. He caught sight of Lisa Holt’s face at the window, but she turned quickly away, embarrassed as she would never have been a week ago to be caught watching him. For his part, he carried on with his work without a flicker, refusing to acknowledge that he had ever been aware of her attention.

  Twenty minutes later, Lisa brought out two big beakers of tea and stood awkwardly beside him. She did not want to go back into the house without a conversation, yet she was wondering how to summon the will and the words to sustain one. Feeling how ridiculous this estrangement was between them, she eventually sat herself down firmly on one of the garden chairs beside the plot. Jason went on working determinedly, until she said, ‘You should sit down to drink your tea. You’ve earned a rest.’

  He hesitated, then came and sat down beside her, very carefully, as if they were patients who did not know each other in a doctor’s waiting room. After a moment he said, ‘You’ll need compost of some kind. Some farmyard manure would be ideal. Most of the topsoil seems to have disappeared, and the builder’s vehicles have made this clay like concrete.’

  It was the kind of language he would have used with strangers who were employing him to make a garden, not to Lisa. He was sure in any case that he had already given her this advice when he had last worked in her garden, when they had been open and easy and humorous with each other. When Robin Durkin had watched them from that other house in the close.

  Jason sat and looked at his handiwork, trying to think of other and better words as he sipped the hot tea. He did not want to look into Lisa’s face. Instead, he looked down at her thighs and the slim, delicate, vulnerable feet beneath the aluminium frame of the chair. He was conscious without looking at her of the curl of her hair against the nape of her neck, of the soft curve of her breast a foot from his arm. He wanted her, with a simple, uncomplicated lust that had nothing to do with love. A week ago, he would have suggested quite simply that they went inside the house and made love. At this moment, he felt that nothing between them would ever be simple again.

  Jason said the only thing he could think of to say. ‘The police gave me quite a going-over on Thursday. That Detective Sergeant Hook and a woman sergeant I’d never seen before. They knew all about my dealing drugs; about the hold Durkin had over me; about his threats to land me in trouble with the law.’

  Lisa Holt could no more look into his face than he into hers. She stared hard at the big lumps of dry clay he had not yet broken up with the fork, watching a robin hopping nearer and nearer to where they sat. She said dully, ‘We’ve all been having our secrets picked over by the police in the last few days.’

  ‘Yes. Someone shopped me to them, I think.’

  ‘That was me, Jason.’ It was a relief to have it out. She had been wondering how to tell him. But the words of explanation which would normally have come easily to her were elusive now. She said clumsily, ‘They warned me we couldn’t keep any secrets from them. That we’d be suspected of murder if we held anything back.’

  ‘So you sent them after me. Thought you’d get them off your back by sending them after a man who already had a criminal record.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that. And I’m sure they knew all about your criminal record and would have followed it up without any prompting from me.’

  He found himself nodding when he hadn’t intended to. ‘I quite like that Hook bloke. But perhaps that’s what they intend. Perhaps that’s the way the CID operate.’ He looked up at the sky, seeing the last big tract of blue giving way to the approaching cloud. ‘I thought it might be you who’d put them on to me.’

  ‘I have a child, Jason. I couldn’t afford to leave him without a mother.’ It sounded melodramatic, unreal. That was natural enough, Lisa thought ruefully, since that was exactly what it was: she hadn’t really thought she was avoiding arrest by implicating Jason.

  Jason said, ‘He’s a good lad, George. Your divorce doesn’t seem to have affected him much.’ It had seemed a safe thing to say, but he could think of nothing to continue the thought, to bring him back closer to the boy’s mother.

/>   ‘Martin was always a good father. We didn’t fall out on that score. I bet he’s spoiling George somewhere at this very moment. I’m not going to make any difficulties about him having access.’

  Jason was silent for a moment, considering this other part of her life which was closed to him. Then he said quietly, ‘Do you think I killed Durkin?’

  ‘No, of course I don’t.’ But there had been just enough pause before she replied to tell him about the nightmare scenario that started to dance in her imagination earlier in the week. ‘It’s just that we were all under pressure, all trying to protect ourselves.’ He didn’t reply, didn’t say anything conciliatory as she’d hoped. She forced herself to say the words she had never intended. ‘Didn’t just a little bit of you think that I might have killed him?’

  He smiled slowly, still without looking at her, and shrugged those big, familiar shoulders. ‘More than a little bit of me, at times! I knew how bitter you felt about what he’d done to Martin and about the way he wrecked your marriage.’

  It was his smile, not what he said, that broke the invisible barrier between them. She let a few seconds go by before she said. ‘We’ve been a bit silly this week, haven’t we?’

  He nodded happily and drained his beaker. ‘Throws things out of perspective, murder does.’

  She inched a little nearer to him on her chair, then put her small hand on top of his much broader one. ‘We could go inside, if you want to, Tiger.’

  Now Jason Ritchie turned to look at her full in the face, for the first time in days, and they grinned at each other, ruefully and happily. It was the first time she had used that pet name since the murder. He reached out awkwardly and put his hand round her slim shoulders, pulling her briefly and perilously against him as the lightweight chairs threatened to collapse. She thought he was going to kiss her, but he said, ‘I’d better finish this job first, before the rain comes. Don’t want my mistress saying I neglected duty for pleasure, do I?’