Body Politic

by J M Gregson

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  They let him into the ward for a few minutes, even though visiting time was over. The night sister, one of the old school with a will to rule and forearms to match, said disapprovingly, ‘We relaxed the old visiting times some years ago, you know. There were at least ten hours during the day when you could have come.’

  But murder carries its own mystique, even in this violent age, and it gave the superintendent conducting the investigation into the killing of the local MP the status of a VIP. A penitent Lambert was conducted to his wife’s bedside; his daffodils were put in water, waved briefly in front of the patient, and taken away for the night.

  Now he sat awkwardly at the bedside, a big man upon a small chair, conscious of his health among the sick, conscious of his maleness as the preparations began in an all-female ward for the early hospital night. ‘You vomited when I saw you after the operation,’ he said.

  ‘Did I? I don’t remember that.’

  ‘I expect it was the anaesthetic.’ He felt like a distant relative upon a duty visit. That earlier intimacy, the closeness he had felt when she lay helpless and unconscious at his side, was seeping mysteriously away. He had no idea how he might hold on to it. ‘How are you feeling now?’

  ‘Oh, much better. I think I might have some breakfast, in the morning.’

  ‘They say the operation is successful. As far as they can tell at this stage.’

  ‘Yes. So far so good. They have to do a biopsy on the tissues they took away for analysis. We should know the results of that in a day or so.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure it will be all right.’ The naïvety, the effrontery, of the phrase hit him even as he said it, and he went on in confusion, plunging deeper into dangerous areas. ‘Did they—did they take much away?’

  ‘Most of the breast, I’m afraid. I haven’t dared to look myself yet. They give you a false tit, you know, to fit into a special bra compartment. Indistinguishable from the real thing, they say, under clothing. But not to the human hand, I’m sure! Inevitably an expert on these things like John Lambert will know the difference.’

  She smiled bravely through the joke, like a woman in a black-and-white English film of thirty years earlier. He thought she was going to burst into tears, almost willed her to do so, since he knew that would restore the closeness he felt unable to bring himself.

  Instead, she said, ‘You look tired. You’ve had a long day, haven’t you? Are you making progress on the case?’

  ‘Some. But I can’t prove anything. And I can’t see how it all fits together.’

  She didn’t press him further. It was unusual for him to say even as much as this, and she was content that it should be so. She had not wanted the harsh world of serious crime in her home, had demanded that he switch off from work when he came into the house, and for years he had found that very difficult. She was not going to break the pattern she had striven so hard to establish, even in these extreme circumstances.

  And so for another five minutes they talked of trivia and reminisced sporadically about the days when their daughters were small, whilst the staff bustled about the ward with the trolley of evening drinks.

  She was glad he had made the effort to come, and he was glad to see her with more colour in her face. But in the end, they were both relieved when it was time for him to go.

  *

  It was an awful morning, with a north-east wind blowing sleet almost horizontally from a pewter sky. Lambert and Hook were glad of the efficient heating system in the old Vauxhall as they drove through the undulations of Cotswold hills that were now invisible. Dermot and Moira Yates might not see the car visiting that other house in their cul-de-sac in this weather, thought Lambert. But it wouldn’t matter if they did; he often preferred to let suspects see the police screw turning tighter.

  ‘Mrs Doris Hume? Detective Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook.’

  ‘Come in, please.’ The elderly woman with the still bright green eyes and fading red hair was plainly one of those who delighted to be involved in a murder enquiry, to have a place on the fringe of it, whence she might glimpse the workings of the police machine without feeling personally threatened. She led them into a tidy lounge, where there was already a tray with crockery and biscuits on a coffee table, and bustled away into the kitchen.

  When she came back with the coffee pot, she had discarded her apron and looked remarkably trim in her dark-green woollen dress. Plainly this was to be the highlight of her week, an experience to be retailed and perhaps enlarged when she spoke to her friends. Lambert certainly wasn’t going to complain about her attitude: her eagerness was a relief after the caution and the concealments he had met among the principal figures in this drama.

  She probed them a little about the case, but they parried her thrusts with an expert, experienced politeness as they consumed her coffee and biscuits. ‘We’d just like to check a few things about the drinks party you held on Christmas Eve. To help us eliminate people from the enquiry, you see,’ said Lambert, noting Hook attacking the biscuits with gusto.

  ‘Yes. Mr Yates said you might want to ask me about it. I’ve made a list of the people who called in on that night. I can give you their addresses too, if you think it would be useful.’ She handed him a carefully written list on her best notepaper.

  ‘That shouldn’t be necessary. Did Mr Yates give you any indication of the kind of thing we wanted?’ What he was really interested to know was whether the Irishman had asked her to cover up for him in any way: that was the only reason why he had not let a DC conduct what should be no more than a routine fragment of a major enquiry.

  ‘No. He just said you might want to confirm that he was here that night. Which I can do, of course.’

  Yates hadn’t been unwise enough to try to adjust her account of those fateful hours, then. A pity. ‘If you can just give Sergeant Hook here a few details for his records, we needn’t take up much more of your time, Mrs Hume.’

  She looked quite disappointed that her contact with great happenings was to be so brief. ‘Well, we always hold an informal little party for neighbours and a few friends on Christmas Eve. Gets the celebrations off to a bright start after everyone’s finally finished work for the holiday, I always think. We hold open house from about half past three until about ten or eleven, depending on when the last ones go. No formal meal, but I do plenty of sausage rolls and cheesy—’

  ‘But Mr Yates wasn’t here for the whole of that time, was he, Mrs Hume?’

  ‘Oh, no. People pop in when they can, and leave when they feel like it. It’s very informal, and a lot of people have other commitments, on that day. People with families and—’

  ‘Yes, of course. And as hostess, it must be difficult for you to keep track of the comings and goings. So perhaps you won’t be able—’

  ‘Oh, I remember Dermot Yates coming, quite clearly. He was one of the first, you see.’ Lambert had put her on her mettle, by suggesting she might be too vague to be of help. She felt her hold on dramatic events slipping away from her, and was determined to hang on as long as possible.

  Hook said, ‘So he arrived here at what time, Mrs Hume?’

  ‘Soon after half past three. He was one of the first. I think there was only my friend Alice, who’d been helping me with the food, here when he arrived. I remember him explaining about poor Moira not being able to come after all. It cast a bit of a dampener on things for a while, because she’s been in other years, and she’s such a lively girl normally.’

  ‘And he was here until what time?’

  She paused, pursed the lips she had made up so carefully for this occasion, wrinkled her brow, allowed them to see a little grey at the

  roots of her red hair as she bent her face to the carpet in concentration. Lambert had the impression, despite all these trappings of thought, that she had decided on the time she was about to deliver to them before they had ever come into the house. ‘It would be about seven. I know because the Petersons arrived just as h
e was leaving. I’m sure they could confirm the time for you, if it should be necessary.’

  ‘Thank you. And as far as you know, Mr Yates was here for the whole of that time?’

  The pensioner’s face narrowed in conspiratorial mischief, so that the CID men glimpsed the impish schoolgirl she must once have been. She hadn’t thought this was going to be important, but now she suddenly divined that it was. Or at least it might be. She could see herself in court in her best hat and coat, answering the questions of a grateful counsel with precision and dignity. ‘Dermot popped out, didn’t he? Popped out and came back again.’

  They couldn’t conceal the rise in their interest, and she smiled her delight. Then, a little guiltily, she said, ‘I expect he was just checking that Moira was all right, wasn’t he? He worries about her, even though you can’t see anything wrong, you see.’

  ‘Yes. He’s very fond of his sister, we could see that for ourselves. Can you give us any idea of how long he was gone?’

  She hesitated before she reluctantly shook her head.

  ‘Not really, no. Well, it wouldn’t be fair, would it, if I’m not sure? There were lots of people coming into the house at the time when he slipped out, you see. It was quite noisy and confused.’ She smiled a little at the recollection of herself as a busy, capable hostess, on the one day of the year on which she now entertained.

  ‘You probably have some idea when he left, though? It might just be important, you see.’

  ‘Well, I am sure that he hadn’t been here very long when I saw him going up the road towards his own house. Some time around four, I should think.’

  ‘And can you give us any idea how long he was away?’

  ‘No, not really. I was too busy, you see. And my husband wasn’t here until about half past five. Dermot was here then, because I remember him greeting George when he went into the lounge. But he might have been back here well before then. I really couldn’t be sure.’

  So Yates might have been gone for a few minutes or an hour and a half. They could check with other, less busy people who had been here on that night, if it should be necessary. And it might well be: Yates had certainly chosen to give them the impression that he had been in this house through all those vital hours.

  The two big men stood up together. Lambert said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Hume. You’ve been most helpful. I’m sure I hardly need to mention that you should keep the nature of our enquiries confidential.’ He hadn’t much confidence that her discretion would hold for very long, but he thought she would hardly talk to Dermot Yates, at least.

  As they reached the door, he said, ‘Do you know a Mr Gerald Sangster?’

  ‘Oh yes. Been very good to our over-fifties tennis club, Mr Sangster has. Let us use an indoor court at half the usual rate. And he’s been a friend of the Yateses for years, I think. Very keen on Moira, if you ask me! And who can blame—’

  ‘Mr Sangster wasn’t here on Christmas Eve, was he?’

  ‘Oh, no. He has been once before, and I did invite him. I think he might have come, if Moira had. But it’s not his scene really, as they say nowadays. With him not drinking at all, you see. You don’t need to, of course, but you can feel a bit out of place if everyone else is—’

  ‘Mr Sangster doesn’t drink?’

  ‘No. Not at all. Makes quite a thing of it. Jokingly, you know, but he says fit sportsmen can’t afford to drink. Is it important?’

  ‘Oh, probably not. We must have picked up the wrong impression somehow. Our fault, I should think.’

  She waved them off from the top one of the three steps below her front door, an animated, erect figure. She could not possibly know how unexpectedly interesting she had been to them.

  *

  Joe Walsh insisted on watering the bright little polyanthus he had bought before the two uniformed constables took him to the station. ‘It’s for Debbie, you see,’ he said to the two unimaginative young men who had never heard of his daughter, as if that immediately made everything clear.

  At Oldford Police Station, he looked round the bare little interview room, which seemed impossibly crowded, with Lambert, Rushton and Hook all crammed together on the other side of the square table. ‘Top brass out for me this morning,’ he said. His smile was nervous, but not fearful, as they might perhaps have hoped.

  Walsh wore the same clothes that Rushton had seen yesterday, the same soiled jeans and ragged cardigan. The frayed collar of his blue shirt, half inside and half outside the pullover beneath the cardigan, was noticeably grubby. In the tiny, overheated room, they caught the stale odour of his neglected body. His lank grey hair did not look as if it had seen a comb this morning. He looked from one to the other of the impassive, watchful faces which confronted him. ‘Are you going to charge me?’ he said.

  Rushton said, ‘No, Joe. Not yet. You’re just helping the police with their enquiries. What happens after that depends on you.’

  The thin head nodded. ‘That’s all right, then. I told Debs you might want to talk some more with me. She’ll understand if I’m not back for a while.’ None of the three men confronting him knew whether he meant back at the house or the cemetery.

  Lambert said, ‘You’ve been concealing things from us, you see, Joe. We don’t like that. But we’re giving you the chance to put things right now.’

  Walsh digested this for a moment, looking again round the little semicircle of three faces which were so close to him. Then he said, ‘I’m glad that bastard’s dead. I’m not going to help you catch the person who killed him.’ The pinched features set in a determined line: he hugged his skinny body with that folded-arms gesture which was familiar to Rushton from the previous day.

  Rushton said, ‘Oh, but you are, you know. Even if you killed him yourself.’ He glared at the dishevelled figure, willing him to look into his eyes, to realize his danger.

  ‘Did you kill him yourself, Joe?’ Hook, speaking for the first time, was very quiet, speaking in the way he spoke to his sons when he caught them out in their childhood sins, as if he might agree to forget the crime once it was admitted.

  ‘No. I thought I was going to, but I didn’t. I don’t think I could have done it really. Not even for Debs.’ He said it reluctantly, as if it was a failing in him, turning the normal moral canons on their heads.

  Rushton was watching him intensely. He said, ‘That’s what you said yesterday, Joe. It won’t wash, you know.’

  Walsh shook his head, his regret now manifest. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ he said again.

  At a nod from Lambert, Rushton put the polythene bag with the wooden toggle from the duffle coat on the table between them. Walsh stared at it for a moment, then looked up at the expectant faces opposite him. For the first time there was fear in the brown eyes. Rushton said, ‘Don’t touch it, Joe. It is yours, Joe, isn’t it? The one that’s missing from your coat.’

  ‘It could be. How did—?’ Suddenly he was aware of what Rushton had done on the previous evening, of the look the DI had snatched at the coat in the hall whilst he had been getting the disinfectant from the kitchen. His voice was harsh as he said, ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘Wondered where you’d lost it, did you, Joe?’ Rushton could not keep the excitement out of his voice as he scented a triumph. ‘And well you might. This fastener was found by the pool where we recovered the body of Raymond Keane.’

  Walsh looked desperately into Rushton’s hungry, triumphant face; looked from there to the other faces alongside him, searching for a denial that this was so, for some phrase of consolation. ‘It might not be mine. How do you know it’s mine? Mine’s been missing for a long time!’ His voice rose in panic on each phrase, until it came near to hysteria. His breath stank now as it came at them in gusts.

  It was Lambert who said quietly, ‘But it is yours, Joe. Don’t be under any illusions: the men in our forensic laboratories will have it all matched up with the other toggles on your coat by the time the case comes to court.’

  ‘Court? But I didn’t do it.
I keep telling you. Honest, I didn’t do it!’ For the first time, it seemed important to him that he should convince them of that.

  Lambert leaned back, relaxing the pressure a fraction, anxious to keep the pathetic figure talking when it seemed he might degenerate into sobbing at any moment. ‘You know more than you’ve told us, Mr Walsh. If you want us to believe you, it’s time to be more honest.’

  The trembling figure had been almost on his feet, his frame rising with his panic. Now he sank back again on to the hard upright chair, his small chin nodding a little, as if to convince himself, as he stared at the table. ‘I was there on Christmas Eve. You said my van had been seen.’

  ‘Why, Joe?’

  ‘I—I don’t know. I think I felt that as long as I was watching him, as long as I knew what he was doing, and he couldn’t see me, I had him in my power.’

  ‘All right.’ Lambert had heard psychopaths talk like that in prison cells. This man had not their air of excitement at the mention of violence, but there were many gradations of madness. And something within him said that there was madness in this crime somewhere. ‘Did you see Mr Keane arrive, Joe?’

  ‘No. He was there when I drove past, though. I saw his Jaguar.’

  ‘And you parked in your usual place?’

  ‘Yes. Under the trees, a hundred yards on. I could see the cottage from there.’

  ‘And what did you see?’

  ‘Nothing. I was expecting the blonde woman to arrive, but she didn’t. She might have already been there, though. There’s parking round the back. There were no lights in the cottage, not that I could see. I decided eventually that they must have gone out. It was bloody cold that night. I went home as soon as I decided that he wasn’t there.’

  There was silence in the room. Lambert looked at the sweating, exhausted figure who held the key to this case and said, ‘See if you can rustle us up some tea, Bert, will you?’

  It was a relief to have the door open for a moment, for all of them. Rushton announced the suspension of the interview, then leaned over and stopped the tape recorder turning. The slight figure watched the silent machine balefully, as if it were a living thing, as if it and not the human tormentors opposite him were the source of his danger. All that he said while Hook was away was, ‘I didn’t kill him!’ muttering the words in a low voice, as if it were necessary to convince himself of it.