Body Politic

by J M Gregson

  As he turned his key and pushed the door open, the thought that he was going to be able to get on with his life again entered his mind for the first time. Well, soon, anyway. Once Raymond Keane, MP, had been safely committed to the ground.

  *

  Lambert felt very tired when he got into the house. It felt strangely empty without Christine there. He often popped in during the day, when his wife was out at the secondary school where she taught, but the place had never then seemed as deserted as it did now.

  He rang the hospital, got the news that Christine was resting comfortably, sent the message that he would be in that night. Then he checked his answerphone. There were three messages from friends of Christine, showing their concern, hoping things had gone well, promising visits when the time was appropriate. He would have to ring them back in due course. Or perhaps he would give that job to Jacqueline, when she called that evening as she had promised. Nothing more important than effective delegation, they told you at all the police management courses.

  Then came a call which cheered him up, even in his fatigue. It was the pro at the municipal golf course, grassing on Bert Hook, as he had agreed to do. ‘Your sergeant popped in here whilst you were in the hospital. Hit a basket of balls.’

  ‘I thought he might. I’d let him know my clubs were in the back. He didn’t say anything when I came back, though, crafty old bugger.’

  ‘And there’s more. He’s booked a lesson with me.’

  If the professional had had any scruples about informing on a detective sergeant, his reservations were surely removed by the delighted superintendent’s laughter with which this revelation was greeted.

  *

  DI Rushton parked the police car immediately behind the battered van in the drive of Walsh’s council house. Off the road was best, in an area like this. Though the street looked respectable enough at the moment in the twilight, there was plenty of unemployment on the estate, and the devil found work for idle young hands.

  The inspector took in the stuccoed walls with their small cracks, the rotting windows with their grubby curtains, the neglected garden, the blue front door badly in need of a coat of paint. He had visited hundreds of houses like this in his thirteen years in the police force. Too many for the dinginess of this one to depress him now; coming armed with what he knew, he scented a result here. He was surprised the super had let him do this one. But Detective Superintendent Lambert, whatever else he might be, was never predictable, as far as Chris Rushton was concerned.

  He paused for a moment by the van, looking with satisfaction at the big brown patch on the driver’s door, testing the lock on the back doors. He would like to have examined the vehicle more closely, but you never knew what eyes were watching from within houses like this. He might bring Walsh out to open it for him, in due course.

  He rapped hard on the door. It opened within two seconds. ‘Mr Joseph Walsh?’

  The narrowed brown eyes took in the tall figure in the grey suit, the old-young, arrogant face, the police car in the drive, blocking in his van, as though to imprison him. ‘Come inside.’

  Rushton followed him. He had been prepared for more resistance, had been ready to thrust his way in, to begin with a burst of aggression. It was almost a disappointment when these things were unnecessary.

  There was a scratched oak table, upright chairs covered with vinyl, a threadbare Indian carpet from which the design had all but gone, a three-piece suite whose draylon had long succumbed to grease and dirt. The television set had a film of dust over its face. The tiled fireplace within a wooden fender was occupied by a two-bar electric fire which glowed dully; the only object in the room which seemed to be polished and shining was the crucifix on the wall above it. After the cold in the hall, the room was unpleasantly hot.

  ‘Sit down, won’t you?’ said Walsh, and Rushton had again the feeling that his visit was almost welcome. Perhaps the man was at the end of his tether, was waiting to confess. Confession always brought a kind of relief. That was why it was such a pillar of the faith in which Christopher Rushton had been brought

  up; to which it appeared that Joseph Walsh might still be committed.

  Rushton sat in one of the armchairs. He had been in much worse places than this. His experienced eye told him this was neglect, not real squalor. Not yet, anyway. There was no smell, no expensive damage to the property. Nothing malicious. The place had just been let go. Like its occupant. ‘You live here alone, Mr Walsh?’

  ‘Yes. Now I do. For the last year.’

  ‘Since your daughter died.’ Rushton had done his homework, as always.

  ‘Since she was killed by a drunken soldier, yes. Killed by a man who got away with murder.’

  ‘Not murder, Joe. It would have been manslaughter, even if we’d been able to make it stick.’

  ‘He hit her with a car when she was riding home. Debbie never had a chance. Killed her in the gutter. Never even stopped. I call that murder.’

  She had died on the way to hospital, in fact. And it seemed likely that the vehicle had stopped briefly, a hundred yards beyond the point of the impact. But there was no way Rushton was going to get involved in the detail of an old tragedy which had not even been his concern. He said, ‘I might well feel the same, in your place. Nevertheless—’

  ‘Have you a daughter?’ The eyes blazed at him from beneath the lank hair; the listless figure was almost on its feet, transformed by the passion which had driven out all else for a year.

  ‘I have as a matter of fact, yes, Joe.’ Rushton was relieved to be able to deflate the man. No need to tell him that she was only four, that he scarcely saw her now, since the divorce, that her absence gnawed at him as harshly as this man’s tragedy affected him, even if the loss was different.

  ‘You’ll know what it feels like, if you ever lose her.’ Walsh sank sullenly back into his chair, and Rushton knew suddenly that he was right: his own loss was as nothing compared with the devastating, final severance of death.

  He said, ‘You’ve no wife, Joe?’

  ‘Not for twenty years and more. She walked out with her fancy man. Left Debs and me on our own. I brought her up myself, you know.’ His pride was as manifest as if the smiling girl in the photograph above the television was standing beside him.

  As Rushton felt the bond strengthening between hunter and hunted, he reminded himself that he might well be talking to a murderer. ‘It wasn’t CID that investigated the case. It was traffic division that was involved, Joe. And they did all they could. It was CPS who wouldn’t bring a case.’

  ‘CPS?’

  ‘The Crown Prosecution Service. It’s they who make the ultimate decision about whether these things come to court, you know. The lawyers.’

  Often you could get sympathy by reviling the lawyers, building up a momentary alliance between questioner and questioned in a mutual frustration against the stupidity of the law and the pusillanimity of lawyers. But Walsh waved the idea angrily aside. ‘It wasn’t you lot. It wasn’t even the bloody lawyers. The army posted the bastard to Northern Ireland, so that we couldn’t get at him.’

  Rushton shrugged. ‘Perhaps. Insufficient evidence, they said. That’s what the CPS always come up with when they won’t bring a case.’ He picked up the newspaper from the edge of the table, looked at the rectangle of print which was heavily outlined in blue ballpen. It gave the details of the forthcoming funeral service for the Right Honourable Raymond Arthur Keane, MP for Gloucestershire West.

  Walsh was regarding him steadily when he looked back at him. Rushton noticed for the first time the green of a nearly healed bruise on the right of his forehead. He folded his arms across his chest, oblivious or uncaring about the holes he revealed in the sleeves of his grubby sweater. ‘That bastard stopped me getting justice,’ he said, ‘and now he’s got justice himself!’

  ‘How so, Mr Walsh?’ Rushton was deliberately cool, ready to provoke the anger which might be revealing.

  ‘You know that! Or you should do. He coul
d have got that corporal returned from Ireland for more questioning, got him to face charges. I’ve found a lad who was drinking with him that night, who was a passenger in the car behind him. We’d have had him, if only you could have questioned him again. But my MP wouldn’t help. My representative in parliament didn’t give a damn for justice for my Debbie. We were only little people, you see. Raymond bloody Keane had nothing to gain from helping the likes of us!’

  Walsh was almost in tears with the pity and the fury of it. He had lived this many times in the last year, but over the last few months, as people had got bored with his anger, he had not had many chances to voice his fury. Now it was pouring out, whatever the danger it might bring to the speaker.

  Rushton wasn’t going to get involved in the rights and wrongs of these wild claims. The important thing was that Walsh felt like this, that his emotions were strong enough to drive him beyond the counsels of reason. Rushton said quietly, ‘So you killed him, Joe. Brought your own brand of justice to him.’

  For a moment, he thought Walsh was going to claim the murder, to glory in his guilt and his revenge. It flashed through his mind that he might go back to the station with a murderer under arrest, a prize to display to a superintendent who had floundered uselessly among the other people who had surrounded the dead man. Then Joe Walsh said, ‘No. At first I wished I had. But I’d have been locked up then, wouldn’t I? It’s much better this way, for Debs and me.’

  For a moment, Rushton felt again a strange kinship with the tattered, defiant figure who sat so close to him. This man was a loner too, as he had been himself for nearly two years now. This was a warning of what loners might be reduced to, when obsession preyed on solitude. It didn’t need much, to tip a man over the edge, when he lived alone.

  Then the work Rushton did, the work he was good at, reasserted itself. He said, ‘You were seen there, Joe. At his house, I mean. In your van. It’s quite distinctive, you see.’

  “Course I was. I was watching our Mr Keane, wasn’t I? I might well have had a go at him. In time. When I could choose the moment. But some other bloke saved me the trouble, didn’t he? Well, good for him, I say!’

  ‘Come off it, Joe! Your van was seen near the house several times, including probably the day of the murder itself. And you want us to believe you had nothing to do with it?’

  He had chanced his arm, hoping for a slip which would be revealing while Walsh was still excited. He had made no revelation yet of the police thinking on the time when Keane had been killed. If Walsh denied his presence at the scene on Christmas Eve, it would show that he knew that time. For a moment, Rushton thought the ploy was going to be successful, for Walsh almost rushed into a denial.

  Then he shut his mouth firmly, as though trapping within it the spider which had almost spun his downfall. ‘I don’t deny I was watching the house in the weeks before this happened. I don’t deny that I wanted him dead. But you can’t prove I killed him. Lack of evidence, you see! Just like it was with my Debs!’

  He clasped his thin arms across his wiry body, allowing his grimy fingers to creep round his shoulders, and Rushton thought for a moment that he was going to laugh in his face. The DI said stiffly, ‘It’s our job to get evidence, Mr Walsh, and we shall do that. We shall arrest the man or woman who killed your MP in due course. You said a moment ago that it was a man. Had you any reason for that view?’

  Walsh looked puzzled. Then he gave a small, crooked smile and turned his palms marginally upwards. Perhaps he thought he was off the hook, that his assurances were being accepted. Well, he’d find out differently in a few minutes, thought Rushton grimly: you didn’t escape investigation as easily as that. Walsh said, ‘I just thought it had to be a man, that’s all, a crime like that. He was strangled with a cord or a wire, wasn’t he? Don’t see a woman doing that.’

  Privately, Rushton didn’t see it either. But neither he nor Walsh should be generalizing about what they still thought of as the weaker sex: hadn’t they both failed to keep their wives? Hadn’t those wives both shown a ruthlessness in leaving that had been wholly unexpected? He growled, ‘You’d be surprised, Joe, what we see women getting up to, these days. So why were you watching Mr Keane?’

  If he thought the sudden switch would catch his man out, he was disappointed. Walsh looked with narrowed eyes at the dull red element of the electric fire, scratched his stubbled chin, and said, ‘We’re off the record now, aren’t we? I’m not going to put this in a statement. But I was going to kill him, when I got the opportunity. I owed it to Debbie, you see. But I don’t think I’d ever have got round to doing it. I can see that, now that it’s happened.’

  ‘Very convenient, I’m sure. Where were you on Christmas Eve, Joe?’

  Caution dropped like a curtain over Walsh’s face. He had known this would come, had rehearsed it often in the last two days. ‘Here, most of the time. I did have a run out in the van.’

  ‘Which took you to Mr Keane’s cottage, no doubt.’

  ‘I did have a look round there, yes. I was expecting him down for Christmas, you see. With that blonde he’d been brandishing for the last four months. I’d watched him say goodbye to her on the previous Sunday night. I was close enough to hear what they were saying, you know.’

  There was something chilling about his pride in his cleverness, even to a policeman. And something quite sinister about the image of this ragged, unbalanced figure, motionless beneath the firs opposite Keane’s cottage, watching his every move, listening to his cheerful goodbyes and his plans for the following week. Rushton said, ‘What you heard enabled you to be waiting for him on Christmas Eve, didn’t it, Joe? It’ll be easier in the long run for you to tell me everything now, you know.’

  ‘You won’t get me for it, Mr Rushton. Lack of evidence, you know. Can’t proceed any further for lack of evidence.’ He rocked to and fro on his chair, repeating the phrases which had given him such pain over the last four years, finding them now exquisitely comforting.

  ‘We shall need to examine your vehicle. In detail!’ snapped Rushton. He delivered the last phrase waspishly, but was aware of his peevish futility as he did so.

  Walsh seemed aware of that also. ‘Come and look now, then!’ he said, and he was on his feet and through the door, before the DI could stop him, could tell him that this was a job for the forensic team. Rushton followed him through the open front door. Perhaps even now he could pick up something from the van which would clinch the guilt of this manic little figure and give him his capture.

  Rushton looked as he was bidden at the driver’s and passenger’s seats. He didn’t expect to see anything there, and his inspection was cursory; he did not even put his head inside the vehicle. ‘Open the back doors, please,’ he ordered.

  Walsh had a crooked, knowing smile, but he said nothing as he flung open the twin doors at the rear of the battered vehicle, like a stage magician revealing an empty cabinet.

  Rushton was prepared for a slightly musty smell of damp winter van; it would have been too much to expect any vestiges of the sweet-sour smell of death from the day-old body that might have lain here. What he was not prepared for from this man and his vehicle was the overwhelming smell of cleanliness. The odour of bleach and disinfectant was so strong that he recoiled from it physically, as if he had been struck in the face by some invisible adversary.

  When he turned round, he found Walsh grinning at him, so widely that he could see for the first time how uneven and yellow his teeth were. ‘Cleaned it out on Monday, didn’t I? Cleaned it out good and proper.’ He seemed to think this was a tremendous joke.

  ‘Why, Joe?’

  The skinny shoulders shrugged elaborately. ‘Ponged a bit. Carried some boxes of hen manure, hadn’t I? Strong stuff, that is. And blimey, does it pong!’

  Rushton looked at the bleak, windswept garden. No one had worked in it for a long time. ‘Used enough disinfectant, didn’t you?’

  ‘Disinfectant and bleach. Too strong to put your hands into. Show you, if you li
ke.’ He gestured with his head towards the house behind them.

  Rushton bent his head cautiously and looked inside the little van. There was no carpet, no mat, nothing but the steel of the floor and the sides. He could see the brush marks where the energetic scrubbing had taken place. Even the inside of the roof had been brushed. He couldn’t see that there would be much left in the way of evidence, but at least the vigour of this cleaning suggested that the man thought he had something to hide. Making it sound as menacing as he could, he said, ‘The forensic boys will need to look at this van. Surprising what they can come up with, you know.’

  ‘Sure. Send ’em round whenever you like.’

  ‘What did you scrub it with?’

  ‘A stiff brush. Yard brushes, my old mother used to call them. Put the stuff in a bucket.’

  ‘I’ll take the brush away then, for examination.’ Rushton was trying not to lose face, but the man in the torn jeans and ragged sweater seemed to realize it. Walsh grinned at him, then went and pulled open the garage door and handed him a long stiff brush. The DI took it gingerly by the handle, affected to examine its formidable bristles, which smelled still of the disinfectant, then put it carefully in the boot of the police Sierra. ‘I’ll pick up my notes from inside, then be away,’ he said. ‘And I’d better take the container that the disinfectant came in.’

  It was his last throw, but it was successful. Whilst Walsh went uncomplainingly into the kitchen and burrowed beneath the sink, Rushton pulled open the door of the shallow cloaks cupboard in the dingy hall. There was a woman’s red winter coat hung carefully upon a hanger on the left. Debbie’s, presumably. No doubt her bedroom was still neatly preserved as she had left it upstairs.

  But it was the other garment that interested Rushton. This had no hanger, but was flung carelessly upon a hook. It was a thick, well-worn, navy duffle coat. With the bottom toggle fastener missing.