Body Politic

by J M Gregson

  ‘If it could do that, we wouldn’t need superintendents,’ said Rushton daringly. ‘And you still haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Zoe Renwick? She could have done it. I’m keeping an open mind. She’s well organized, and in the right circumstances, she could be ruthless. She changed from being prepared to marry Keane to hating him within a week. Women who have their eyes opened like that tend to be bitter, even unbalanced.’

  ‘Only women?’ said Bert Hook with a smile.

  ‘These liberal attitudes will get you into trouble, Bert. Unbecoming in the police force in any rank below Assistant Chief Constable, they are. Sexist and homophobic, we’re supposed to be, certainly up to the rank of detective sergeant. All right, let’s say, as a generalization, no more, that women, being finer creatures, tend to feel these things more deeply than men. Therefore their reactions may be more extreme. Will that do?’

  ‘Could Zoe Renwick have moved the body?’

  ‘Yes. With difficulty. Nurses are trained in lifting techniques, for the sake of patients. Keane wasn’t a big man: a hundred and fifty-six pounds, the PM says. She’s strong enough, even though we all know that dead weight is a bugger to move. It seems that there was no heating on in the cottage in that bitterly cold weather, so rigor mortis would be delayed. Keane’s corpse probably hadn’t stiffened up by the time he was collected for disposal.’

  Experience of death and its consequences made them as dispassionate as surgeons about human remains. Rushton said, ‘The computer hasn’t thrown up any new leads. Nor has it ruled out any of our leading suspects yet. Have you?’

  Lambert grinned, glad to be absorbed in the intellectual puzzle, despite its grim theme. ‘I should be surprised if it was Chris Hampson. Because this death will probably save the business which is at the centre of his life, he has gained more than anyone from it, but nothing anyone else has said has suggested him. Unless of course someone is deliberately protecting him—but none of the others seems close enough to him to take the risk of shielding him like that.’

  Hook said, almost reluctantly, ‘Zoe Renwick had plenty to gain. She inherits almost everything from Keane except that business and some family heirlooms. Once he’d found out everything was over between them, he’d have been down to old Alfred Arkwright to change that will pretty smartly.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘But don’t rule out the three musketeers over at the Yates household. I include Gerald Sangster with the other two, because in the matter of Raymond Keane at least they become a trio. Moira Yates is seen as a woman scorned and the other two are close enough to her to want revenge on her behalf. They’ve scarcely troubled to disguise it.’

  Rushton said, ‘Well, we know Moira Yates couldn’t have done it, because she’s been confined to the house with agoraphobia for months. She could have alibied one of the other two, I suppose.’

  Hook said, ‘You haven’t seen her, Chris. There’s something very odd about her. She seems to be in control of herself and what’s happening, and yet at the same time in a world of her own.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘That could be an effect of the medication she’s on, don’t forget. One of the effects of the diazepam she’s been prescribed can be an excess of short-term confidence—especially if she takes a double dose before facing what she sees as stress situations, like interviews with us. Or the one Zoe Renwick attended with Keane a week before he died, for that matter. Moira Yates seems to have surprised everyone by taking control on that occasion.’

  Hook said, ‘Have we ruled out a conspiracy? It seems to me the kind of killing and disposal that is easier to accomplish if two, or even three people were involved. Actively involved, perhaps, as well as covering each other’s traces. The disposal of the body, for instance, would be easier if more than one person was involved in it.’

  ‘That’s why I called Sangster and the Yateses the three musketeers,’ said Lambert. ‘The two men are both devoted to Moira in their different ways, both resentful of her illness and the man they see as causing it. We’ve caught them out in at least one lie, the one about Sangster’s drinking. Maybe that’s only the tip of the iceberg, but we need proof. They’ve already shown they’ll stick together if one of them is threatened. Neither Yates nor his sister mentioned that he’d left that party on Christmas Eve.’

  ‘You seem to be discounting Joe Walsh,’ said Rushton. ‘He strikes me as the most unbalanced of all of them, and we’ve thought from the outset that we should be looking for a nutter. Or a nutter at least in respect of Raymond Keane, MP. Walsh certainly has tunnel vision about him. I found I was very sorry for him. But he wouldn’t be the first murderer I’ve felt sorry for. He’s channelled all his grief and resentment about his daughter on to one man. He certainly seems more contented now that Keane has gone. He has the air of a man with a job well done.’

  Lambert was pleased to see his DI confessing a sympathy for a man who might be a murderer. A year ago, he would have thought it unprofessional for a detective to declare such feelings; he was more confident and flexible now. Lambert said gently, ‘He seems to have put himself increasingly out of touch with other people since his daughter died. People who do that lose touch with reality, until their obsessions seem quite natural to them. In this case, a man channelled all his grief for his daughter into an obsession against the man who would not help him to get justice for her. But did Joe Walsh do the job himself, Chris?’

  ‘He’s changed his story. I think he might still not have told us everything he knows.’

  ‘You could be right. When he told us about Zoe Renwick’s visit to Keane’s place on Christmas Day, we went haring off to see her, because hers was the first major lie we’d unearthed, and she seemed likely to be our killer. She still may be. But Joe Walsh was visiting that cottage every day: I don’t believe he ceased to go there at that point.’

  Lambert looked at the two faces waiting for a lead from him. ‘Pull Walsh in again, Chris.’

  *

  There were flowers on the table in the middle of the ward, sunlight streaming through the high windows. The place was more cheerful and animated this afternoon than he had previously known it, with patients moving about and talking to each other. Christine’s bed was empty when he got there.

  ‘She’s in the day room, love,’ said the young nurse, spotting the forlorn visitor with an expert eye as she hurried past with hypodermic and drugs.

  Lambert found his wife sitting at one end of the high, glass-roofed room with a book, not watching the afternoon television soap with the others. ‘I’m bored,’ she said, stretching her slippered feet cautiously, setting the paperback crime novel face down upon her lap. ‘That’s supposed to be a good sign, you know. Shows you’re getting better.’

  Lambert said, ‘You look better, too. Much better.’ She did. There was colour back in her cheeks, and the dark-brown hair was neatly combed and brushed. He fancied he saw more life in her eyes, but that was probably just his imagination. He sat down awkwardly beside her, setting aside the thick woollen shawl which someone had left on the chair. He was uncomfortably hot in his suit. Hospitals had to be heated for the sick, he knew, but they were always much too hot for him. He said awkwardly, ‘Did they tell you anything today? Anything about ...?’

  It was absurd that someone who spent so much of his time framing questions for people should be unable to complete this one, but he could not.

  Christine grinned at his discomfiture, the same mischievous grin he remembered in her thirty years and more ago, when he had first known her as a twenty-year-old. ‘The tests? Yes, they did, John. There’s nothing further showing up. The biopsy was all clear.’

  He felt an immense relief, a relief he could not show. He wanted to take her in his arms and hug her, as if he and not the doctors had brought her this cheer; he wanted to show her how important her health was to him. He was not sure he could have done it in private; in public, he had no chance.

  Whilst he resented the innocent backs of those women who watched the televi
sion, he knew that he would have struggled for the words, even if the two of them had been alone together. And now Christine reached out cool fingers and set them warningly on the back of his hand. ‘No demonstrations,’ she whispered. Then with an explanatory gesture of her head towards the line of unconscious backs he had found so inhibiting, ‘Not everyone has been as lucky as me with the results of the tests, you see.’

  They chatted quietly for a few minutes. He tried not to look at Christine’s breast where it curved softly beneath her dusky-pink dressing gown, to wonder which of the laughing women on the row of chairs a few yards from them had had the evil, perhaps fatal news. Death was very different in places like this, more inevitable and straightforward. The puzzle here was not who or how but why.

  He was getting awkwardly to his feet, dismissed after his audience, when he remembered to ask, ‘Have they said anything about when you can come home?’

  ‘Just saved your bacon there, didn’t you, John?’ Again there was that old, familiar grin, and he realized for the first time quite how relieved she was. ‘As a matter of fact, the consultant said that if I have a good night I might be able to come home tomorrow.’

  *

  Joe Walsh used his trowel carefully, resting on one knee on the turf, disturbing as little of the soil as was necessary to bury the small pot almost to its rim.

  He talked all the time in a low, confidential voice. ‘I can get the trowel in now, Debs. Much better than when we were in all that frost.’ He levered himself upright, stood back for a pace to admire the effect of the bright-blue petals and yellow stamens of the polyanthus, then put the wide glass dome carefully back in place over it to protect its fragile winter beauty. The colours were more brilliant now, in the early January twilight. ‘Should last you a few days in flower, that should.’

  He clasped his hands under his armpits, trying to ease warmth back into his fingers after their contact with the cold soil. The wind was raw, but he was reluctant as always to leave this place. ‘That Keane’s to be buried on Tuesday. I still think I might go to the funeral. But as you said, that isn’t really important. I told the police about that blonde woman, the way you told me to, Debs. And I’m sleeping better, now. Perhaps I might do a bit of decorating, in a week or two. Just the lounge, you know, not your room. I shan’t touch that, don’t you worry. Your posters look quite good, now I’ve got used to them.’

  He backed away from the grave for a few yards, like a courtier leaving the presence of a Tudor monarch. It meant he did not see the man behind him until he almost trod on his toes. Joe started violently as he felt the presence at his shoulder.

  Like a guilty thing, thought DI Rushton. ‘No need to worry, Joe,’ he said. ‘Time to come in and have another little talk with us, that’s all.’ He led the shabby figure away very gently.

  *

  Joe was given a cup of tea and a sandwich. He sat alone in the small square interview room for a few minutes, looking at its blank walls without resentment. He thought this was the room where they had talked to him last time, but he could not be quite sure of it. He was neither bored nor fearful; he had lived with much worse than this in the last twelve months.

  And now it was almost over.

  The same three men who had talked to him before came presently into the room, scraping the plastic chairs into the limited space available to confront him. He nodded to them, a little nervously but quite affably. They were the only people with whom he had exchanged more than a few words in months now: the nearest thing he had to friends.

  It was the tallest one, the one who seemed to be in charge, who said to him, ‘We need to know more about what happened on Christmas Day, Joe. And we think you’re the man to help us. Very important to us, you are.’

  Joe nodded, a little smile playing about his emaciated lips. Very important, eh? It was a long time since anyone had considered him important. It gave him a little feeling of power; he was surprised how pleasant that felt. People said you had to be careful with the police, but these blokes seemed all right to him. He finished the last of his tea, careful not to slurp as he sometimes did when he was alone.

  Lambert said, ‘You told us last time that you saw Miss Renwick drive away from Keane’s cottage in a hurry. “Like a bat out of hell,” you said.’

  ‘Yes. If that’s the name of the blonde woman he’d been knocking off.’ He felt quite daring, throwing in the slang like that. He was getting back into the real world. Debs would like that. But he wouldn’t have used that coarse expression in front of her; he mustn’t let his standards slip.

  ‘And what happened after Miss Renwick had gone, Joe?’

  He was immediately guarded, though he was unaware of how his face shut as suddenly as a book in front of them. ‘I went back to my van, didn’t I? Drove away, but not as quickly as she did.’

  ‘I don’t think you did, Joe. I think you were curious, when you saw her come out in such a panic. You thought you’d go and see what she’d been doing, what had upset her, didn’t you, Joe?’

  It was touch and go. For a moment he was sullen, and, had he chosen to deny them, they would have got no further, even though they would have known he was lying. Then he looked at the scarred square table, as he had done when he made his previous revelations, and said, ‘I’d never been inside Keane’s place before. Wouldn’t have got in that time, if she hadn’t left the back door open.’ For a moment, he was resentful of the woman’s omission, blaming her as a child might have for his own actions.

  ‘Tell us what you found inside the cottage, Joe.’ Lambert’s voice was a monotone in his ears, low and hypnotic.

  ‘I found Keane, didn’t I? Lying cold and dead.’ A smile spread slowly across his face at the recollection. Then he looked up into the three attentive faces and said fearfully, ‘I didn’t kill him, though.’

  Rushton realized suddenly that this was progress in the man’s rehabilitation. The Joe Walsh he had seen when he first went to that shabby council house might well have been proud to claim the murder. The DI found himself hoping, quite unprofessionally, that the man he had spotted for their murderer had not in fact committed it. Lambert said, ‘So tell us what you did, Joe. You know that you can’t hold back anything now, if you want us to believe you.’

  And Rushton knew somehow in that moment that Lambert had decided that the ragged figure in front of them had not killed Keane.

  Walsh said, ‘I didn’t know what to do. I remember feeling glad that he was gone. I thought at first that the blonde woman had killed him. She might have done, mightn’t she, even though he was cold? She might have done it the night before. Anyway, I think I was a bit confused. I stood there for a moment, with my head reeling. I nearly got myself a drink of water, but I didn’t want anything from that house. You’d have had my fingerprints, if I’d had a drink, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Joe, we would. But you’ve told us now that you were there. That’s good. What happened next?’

  ‘I drove away. Not as fast as the blonde woman, though. I wasn’t scared. I drove to the cemetery. Told my Debbie about it. Told her we needn’t chase him any longer over the accident. I don’t know how long I was at the grave. There wasn’t anyone else around on Christmas morning. I remember I passed one old woman coming in, as I left. Crying, she was. I went home then. Had something to eat. Beans on toast, I think.’ He looked as if the most elaborate Christmas dinner could not have been more of a celebration.

  Lambert’s voice, gentle, insistent, irresistible, said, ‘But that wasn’t the end of it, was it, Joe?’

  Joe, staring at the table, wondered vaguely how they knew about these things. The tall man seemed almost clearer than he was himself, as though he was merely helping him to remember. He was surprised what a relief it was to talk, after keeping it between Debs and himself for all these long days. ‘I watched some television in the afternoon and the evening. Can’t tell you what was on, though. Can’t remember it myself, you see. I was thinking about Keane lying there. Wondering when he’d
be found. Wanting to help whoever had done it.’

  They were the words Lambert had wanted to hear, but his tone never wavered with his excitement as he said, ‘You went back there, didn’t you, Joe? Back to the cottage.’

  ‘Yes.’ Walsh’s voice was scarcely audible now, even in that small room where the three men listened so tensely. ‘I thought, “If I move his body, nobody need ever know what happened. He might not be found for years.”’

  And if you’d thought to weight him down, you’d have been right, thought Lambert. The body might have been at the bottom of that pond for years. He said gently, ‘What time did you go back there, Joe?’

  ‘Late. Very late. The television had finished. I knew it would be quiet then, you see. It must have been about two in the morning, I think.’

  ‘So you put your duffle coat on and went out to your van.’

  ‘Yes. I had to scrape the frost off the windscreen and the wing mirrors. It was cold. Bloody cold!’ Debbie wouldn’t mind him saying that, he was sure; bloody wasn’t very strong, not nowadays.

  ‘But you got the van started and drove over to Keane’s cottage. Did anyone see you?’

  ‘No. There was no one about. It was a clear night, but very frosty. But it was two o’clock on Boxing Day morning. There was scarcely a light on in the houses I passed. Those who were still up weren’t going to be driving, I reckoned.’

  ‘So no one saw what you did at the cottage?’

  ‘No. There wasn’t a soul about. If there had been, I’d just have driven past without stopping.’ He grinned slyly; for just an instant, he was proud of his cleverness.

  ‘All right, Joe. What did you do?’

  He looked up at Lambert, for the first time in minutes. For a moment, it looked as if at this key point he was going to deny that he had entered that sinister, silent house. Then he said, ‘I parked round the back. Keane’s Jaguar was still there, with frost all over it, like a dusting of snow. I tried the back door of the cottage. It was still open.’