Body Politic

by J M Gregson

  Lambert said, ‘Where were you from Christmas Eve to December the twenty-seventh, Mr Hampson?’

  ‘I was at home with my family.’

  ‘For all that time?’

  ‘Yes. Well, we went for a walk on Boxing Day, but all together. In the woods near Westonbirt.’

  ‘Was that the only time you left home?’

  ‘I think so. Oh, I came in here on the Saturday, Christmas Eve. I wanted to look at the books on my own, to see if there was any chance of avoiding the redundancies.’ He glanced at the top drawer of his desk, where the original partnership contract with Raymond Keane lay. There was no need to tell them that he had come in to study the detail of that: he had said quite enough already.

  ‘Did anyone see you here?’

  He paused, feigning to give thought to a reply he had already determined. ‘No. There was no one around on that Saturday afternoon. There wouldn’t have been on any Saturday, let alone Christmas Eve.’

  ‘I see. Is that Granada Estate in the car park your car, Mr Hampson?’

  ‘Yes.’ His face was suddenly taut.

  ‘Would you have any objection to our forensic team examining it?’

  ‘Would it make any difference if I did?’

  Lambert returned his mirthless smile. ‘Your refusal to cooperate with the police in a murder investigation would be noted. The next step would not be up to me.’

  ‘You can examine the car whenever you want to.’ He drew on his cigarette again, tapped the ash into the ashtray, then decided that there was nothing further to be had from what remained, and stubbed the end out with elaborate care. Anything, it seemed, to avoid eye contact with his questioners.

  Lambert said, ‘Do you have a duffle coat, Mr Hampson?’

  Hampson looked as though the question had been completely unexpected. But then it probably was. Anyone who had been aware of dropping a wooden fastener near that pool would have picked it up. ‘No. I had one years ago, like many people at that time. I wear an anorak now.’

  ‘And no doubt your wife could confirm that, if we should need her to.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. But I’d prefer my family to be kept out of this.’

  ‘Of course you would. But murder investigations don’t have normal rules or normal boundaries, you see.’ Lambert stood up, using a favourite ploy, asking his final question at the door, when his subject might be expected to be caught relaxing, in the belief that the interview was over. He looked back at the big glass ashtray, where the cork tip of the stub still cast a tiny, residual wisp of smoke into the air. ‘By the way, did the late Mr Keane smoke?’

  ‘No. Not at all.’

  They left Christopher Hampson staring white-faced from the window of his office as they drove away.

  *

  There were only twenty minutes to the end of visiting hours when he arrived at the hospital. Most of the other beds already had visitors sitting quietly beside them. He was glad to see the long dark hair of his daughter Jacqueline beside his wife, who sat almost upright against her piled pillows.

  ‘I’ll be off now, Dad,’ Jacky said, within a minute of his arrival. ‘I’ve a fair way to drive, and they say there’s a possibility of fog later.’ They had said whatever they had to say before he arrived. She kissed Christine and strode away, tall and confident on high heels, turning briefly at the door to wave and smile at her mother.

  Lambert wondered if her prompt departure was intended as a rebuke to his tardiness or was merely a diplomatic ploy to leave husband and wife together. He was still not used to fencing with his daughter as an adult: it did not seem long since she had sat on his knee to watch Sunday teatime serials on television, still less to the problems of her tempestuous adolescence. He said to Christine, ‘I’m sorry I’m late. I’ve been working until now.’

  ‘Your murder, yes. Our late MP. I didn’t expect you early. How’s it going?’

  He wasn’t sure himself. He didn’t yet feel he had what DI Rushton would have called an overview of the case. ‘Early days. But there isn’t an obvious candidate. No confession volunteered. No, “It’s a fair cop, guy,” for this one.’

  It was a weak attempt to be light-hearted, and it fell appropriately flat. There was a pause before she filled in with, ‘They were talking about it in the day room at teatime. Well, more about the by-election and his successor, really. The waters close over even the illustrious dead alarmingly quickly, don’t they?’

  With her surgery on the morrow, with their fears of what might be found, the speed with which the dead were forgotten was not the happiest of topics. Lambert held Christine’s hand for a little while, surprised to find how naturally the contact came to him, even in this semi-public setting. Eventually she said, ‘I’m glad you’re here, John. There was a time when I thought the job took precedence over any of your personal relationships, you know.’

  ‘I know. Perhaps you were right. But it was a long time ago, and I’m glad you stayed with me.’ He squeezed her hand, felt the answering pressure. ‘And people can change, you know, as they get older. I think I have.’

  They did not discuss the operation next day, each preferring to ignore the ‘No solid food, no liquids after midnight’ notice at the top of her bed. Each knew the surgery was in the other’s mind, but there was nothing more to be said, now.

  The bell rang to announce the end of visiting. All around them, people struggled to their feet, most of them trying not to look relieved at the end of their vigil. The Lamberts’ embrace was perfunctory, embarrassed. He felt her breathing unevenly against his ear, almost overbalanced comically on to the hard bed. ‘It’s the first time we’ve had to tackle anything like this,’ she muttered, holding him for a second after he had dropped his arms from her shoulders. ‘I suppose it won’t be the last.’

  She was offering him hope, he knew, telling him that this was not going to be more than routine, everyday surgery, that the canker within her would not have progressed beyond the breast, that he was not to worry. It should have been the other way round, but he was helpless, unable to offer the comfort which should have come from the one outside this crude cutting of the body they both knew so well. She said, ‘Ask for the ward sister when you ring in. You’ll get the very latest news that way.’

  He nodded dumbly, then picked up her bag and walked unsteadily to the door of the ward with it. He looked back from there, catching hope from her broad smile of encouragement as she watched him from her bed. It was all the wrong way round, he thought again.

  He unpacked her clothes and hung them in the wardrobe. He put her underclothes in the washer as she had bidden him, ready to wash in the morning with his own. The scraps of white material looked very small, too small for a wife and grandmother.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Moira Yates was restless. It was only nine o’clock and the winter sun was barely creeping above the shrubs at the back of the garden, but she had washed up, opened the post, and written a longish letter to her old aunt in Ireland. Dermot Yates began to wonder quite how long his sister had been up.

  She turned from the limited vista of the back garden and moved to look again through the window at the front of the house, where she could see the road outside. The children had gone now, hurried into cars by anxious parents who no longer let them walk to school, but the milk van was making its fitful way towards them. Dermot was irritated by his sister’s restlessness, but cheered by what seemed an interest in the world outside his house. There had been too little of that for months now. He would ask the doctor, but he was sure he would be told this was a hopeful sign.

  ‘I thought the CID would have contacted me about Raymond by now,’ she said. ‘They’re sure to want to see me, you know. And perhaps you too. They’ll be speaking to everyone who was close to him.’

  Dermot supposed she was probably right. She had been watching television a lot during her self-imposed confinement; she must have picked up something from the many crime series, though often she seemed to him to be scarcely regist
ering what happened on the flickering box of colour in the corner of the lounge. ‘I expect you’re right. You won’t be able to help them, though. There must be many people they have to see more urgently.’

  ‘Yes. But they’ll have to “eliminate me from their enquiries”. That’s what they call it, you know.’ She had two spots of colour high in the cheeks that had been so pale for so long. The prospect of contact with the enquiry into her former lover’s death seemed to excite her; almost as much as the man’s presence here a fortnight and more ago had excited her.

  Moira was not rid of the wretched man yet, then, even with his death. Still, this would be temporary, he was sure. Dermot Yates was glad Keane was gone, after the way he had treated his sister. This death would surely mark the first stage in her recovery.

  ‘Will you be going to the funeral?’ she said.

  ‘I hadn’t planned to. Not unless you wanted me to, that is.’

  ‘I haven’t thought about that. I shan’t be able to go myself, of course.’

  ‘No.’ He had not even thought of it as a possibility. For four months, he had had difficulty in getting this outdoor woman even into the garden. For a moment, he considered using the occasion of Keane’s death to entice her out of the house. It would be satisfying to see the wheel come full circle, to see the man who had caused her illness with his churlish rejection of her begin her rehabilitation with the committal of his body to the earth.

  But that would be too much too soon, far more than she could handle. In any case, her mental state was too brittle for her conduct to be predictable: he had a nightmare vision of her throwing herself like Laertes into the grave, or dissolving like Ophelia into a more permanent madness.

  ‘Perhaps I should ring the CID at Oldford,’ she said. ‘It’s being handled from there, you know, the investigation into Raymond’s death.’

  So she’d been reading everything in the papers. Well, he would have expected that; it was a natural enough curiosity. But she hadn’t said anything about it to him, until now. There hadn’t been much in the press, apart from routine stuff about pursuing enquiries on a wide front; reading between the lines, he had decided that the police weren’t anywhere near an arrest yet. Dermot found their failure thus far eminently satisfactory.

  He said firmly, ‘I don’t think you should do that, sis.’ He hadn’t used the diminutive to her in years; now it seemed to take them back to the more intimate days of their adolescence, when she was the younger sister he protected. ‘I expect they’ll be in touch soon enough if they want to speak to us.’

  As if answering a cue, the phone in the hall shrilled at that moment. He hurried to answer it. Moira was still in the same spot when he came back, with both her hands gripping the rounded edge of the windowsill as she looked down the road. ‘That was a Sergeant Hook,’ he said. ‘He and his superintendent will be here in an hour.’

  Her generous mouth relaxed into the broad smile which had been so infrequent in these last fraught months. ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ she said contentedly.

  *

  Alfred Arkwright, solicitor and commissioner for oaths, was preparing to enjoy himself. He had the legal arrangements of an eminent client to reveal, and the police here asking him for favours. And all this well before the morning coffee break.

  ‘Do sit down, gentlemen.’ Arkwright gestured towards the only two chairs in his office, as if indicating the correct seats from a choice of dozens. He was silver haired, erect, patrician, with just enough embonpoint beneath his waistcoat for his hands to fall comfortably upon it when he struck the pose of the frustrated barrister he saw in himself. He lifted his chin above them a little: the tightly stretched skin on his lower face positively shone with the closeness of his shave; a faint scent of pomade crept over the desk to their nostrils.

  ‘The late Mr Raymond Keane chose to favour us with his legal requirements, as I indicated to Sergeant Hook when he rang yesterday. No doubt he thought a local firm would be appropriate for our MP, but I like to think he also recognized a modest reputation for competence which we have established over the years.’ He fingered the old-fashioned cardboard file on his desk. ‘Now, if you could begin by indicating to me just what it—’

  ‘Don’t piss me about, Alfred! I haven’t time to go round the houses this morning,’ Lambert interrupted harshly.

  ‘But let me assure you, gentlemen, that—’

  ‘But nothing. This is a murder enquiry. I haven’t the time for your verbal diarrhoea. Or the inclination. We want the details of the will, and you know bloody well that in the circumstances we are entitled to have them.’

  Arkwright caved in, his mind reeling. In the protected, deferential world he inhabited, he could not remember when he had last been spoken to so roughly. He gave them a truncated account of the provisions of the last will and testament of Raymond Keane, MP. It was a revision made only a month earlier, which always excited police interest. He had planned to deliver it with a proper sense of drama, building up the suspense, but that was all gone now.

  There were minor financial bequests to the wife he had divorced five years earlier and to a nanny who must now be very aged. Items of furniture, silver and porcelain were left to his mother and his sister, presumably to keep them in the family which had held them for at least a century. The Gloucestershire cottage and the rest of his possessions were to pass to Miss Zoe Renwick.

  There was no direct mention of Keane’s business interests. Lambert said, ‘What was to happen to Gloucester Electronics?’

  Arkwright smiled, made ready to be ponderous, then caught Lambert’s eye and thought better of it. He had always thought the superintendent rather a gentleman in a coarse calling; now it appeared that like most of his colleagues in the modern force he was bereft of the courtesies of decent conduct. ‘I have a copy of the contract here,’ he said, producing the document like a stage magician from beneath his desk. ‘Mr Keane and his partner were kind enough to ask me to oversee the design of their partnership and I flatter myself that—’

  ‘No buggering about, I said, Alfred. We’ve other people to see this morning. What are the terms of it? In the event of the decease of one partner, I mean.’

  ‘The terms are that the entire business then passes to the other partner. It is unusual, but both men felt when they founded the firm that it was the best way to protect an infant business. Neither of them expected to die, of course: they were young men at the time. It may be that the time was approaching when a revision would have—’

  ‘You’re telling us that Christopher Hampson now takes over the whole of Gloucester Electronics, with no strings attached?’

  ‘Exactly so. It’s unusual, as I say, but by no means—’

  ‘Right.’ Lambert was already on his feet. ‘We’ve got what we require, for the moment. If we need anything else we’ll be in touch.’ He was through the door, passing across the outer office where a secretary typed, before he called back over his shoulder, ‘Thank you for your help!’

  *

  The old Vauxhall Senator moved quickly, more quickly than usual, towards the outskirts of the town. They overtook a bus as it moved away from the kerb, then had to stop with a screech of brakes as an elderly lady stepped late on to a zebra crossing.

  Hook, who had not spoken in the five minutes since they had left Arkwright’s office in the middle of Oldford, glanced sideways at the long, lined face beside him and said, ‘There’s no need for you to be working at all, John. Rushton and I could do this one, if you like. If you take us back to the station, I’ll—’

  ‘No. No, there’s no need for that.’ Lambert’s eyes were fixed unblinkingly on the road ahead. Soon they passed from the small town into countryside. Bare hawthorn hedgerows flew past the windows, rooks rose in a noisy chorus as they passed beneath the leafless boughs of tall sycamores. Lambert relaxed the arms that were stiff upon the steering wheel with a deliberate effort and said, ‘I wouldn’t know what to do at home, Bert. I could only sit about, waiting for news a
nd thinking of what she’s going through.’

  ‘Christine won’t know anything about it. Not once they’ve given her the general anaesthetic.’

  ‘No ... But I’m better working. The day will pass much more quickly for me that way.’ Lambert smiled, looked at the speedometer, and slowed a little. ‘And I promise I won’t let it affect me. I’ll be thoroughly professional when it comes to questioning Miss Yates and her brother.’

  ‘Of course you will; I didn’t doubt it.’ Hook sank a little lower in the passenger seat, enjoying the January sun and the patchwork of ploughed fields and green hills, clear and sharp in the pale morning light. ‘We may need to go a little easy on Miss Yates, if she’s as ill as we’ve been led to believe.’ He was thinking of his chief’s summary dismissal of Alfred Arkwright’s pretensions.

  ‘She may be perfectly all right physically,’ said Lambert. ‘The only other agoraphobic I’ve known got very overweight because she confined herself to the house and ate as much or more than she had done when she was taking much more exercise. The Yates woman may, of course, be unstable mentally. We’ll need to play things by ear. But presumably we can eliminate her from suspicion fairly quickly, by the very nature of her complaint. If she can’t leave the house, she can’t go around garrotting people.’

  ‘There should be more helpful illnesses like that!’ said Hook. Then, wondering if flippant remarks about illness were in bad taste when his chief’s wife was undergoing surgery for cancer, he added clumsily, ‘If we have to have illnesses at all, that is.’

  Lambert smiled. ‘We shall need to check on her brother, though. If Moira was bitter when Keane elbowed her, her brother might easily have been enraged on her behalf. They must be very close, if she’s living in his house because of her illness.’