[Inspector Peach 12] - Pastures New

by J M Gregson

  ‘Mr Aspin didn’t think so.’

  ‘Geoff was a cautious man.’

  Now it was the bank manager who allowed himself a smile. ‘Prudence is a virtue which we approve of in the fiscal world. It is one of our duties to protect people against themselves, to prevent them from overreaching themselves.’

  ‘Aspin and Oakley’s wouldn’t be where it is today if I hadn’t taken a few entrepreneurial chances, especially in the early days.’

  ‘That is something on which I couldn’t possibly comment, Mr Oakley.’

  Yes, and you look decidedly smug about that, Denis thought. He said imperiously, ‘I may need to write a few large company cheques over the next month or two. I shan’t have Geoff standing beside me any more, and there will be decisions to be taken.’

  The manager gave him a small smile, which combined acquiescence with regret. ‘The company is in a healthy state, as you point out, with considerable assets. There is no question of us failing to honour your cheques. It was, however, my duty to have this discussion with you. To record that your late partner had certain ... certain reservations over your lifestyle.’

  It was difficult to smile over the mention of a friend and partner who had so recently died. Denis Oakley managed it. He said indulgently, ‘Geoff was a bit of an old woman, at times, you know. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why we worked so well together. Mr Baker, this has been a useful meeting and I shall take note of what you have said. Now I feel that I should get back to the works and to the sordid world of industry, and carry on safeguarding the pay-cheques of my workforce.’

  The manager stood up behind his desk. He did not proffer his hand, as he sometimes did at the end of difficult one-to-one meetings. ‘I am glad to have cleared the air and made clear to you the reservations of your late partner. Perhaps I should point out that at the end of the financial year the auditors will be reviewing all of your expenditure and all of the firm’s outlay.’ That was a long way ahead, as they both knew. Things could be put right by then; they always had been in the past. Like most serial philanderers, Denis Oakley was an incurable optimist. He was on his way out of this inner sanctum when he had a disturbing thought and turned back to the man who was following him to the door.

  ‘I take it that what has passed between us this morning will be treated in strictest confidence. It wouldn’t help us in a difficult situation if employees knew you had been discussing matters of company credit with me.’

  The manager was at his most benign. He gave no hint of any personal satisfaction as he said, ‘The business is in a healthy financial state. No one who works for it needs to know any more than that. Banking wouldn’t work if we didn’t maintain our unwritten rules of discretion.’ He smiled benignly over this truism on which they were agreed. ‘The only people who are able to override such rules are police officers investigating serious crimes.’

  Seventeen

  Steve Hawksworth took the tax returns of the two clients through to the head of the firm when the man’s PA said that he was free.

  Alan Robinson was twenty-five years older than Steve and he enjoyed the trappings of success. An antique silver desk set, with solid silver setting and cut glass inkwells that would never again hold ink stood on the tooled leather of his desk. The man sported a waistcoat across his ample stomach, though the watch chain which his father had favoured had now been reluctantly abandoned.

  Steve decided in that moment that he would wear a modern, lightweight, two-piece suit, when he owned his own firm. No one wore waistcoats nowadays. He would work in shirt sleeves whenever it suited him, setting an example of industry to his staff, and only put his jacket on for important clients. It irked him to have to bring everything he did to this man to sign, just so that the amiable buffoon could pretend that he kept his practised hand on everything they did here. It irked him to know that he was sharper and more efficient than this man who kept the cigars ready to offer to high-level visitors in the top drawer of his desk. There would be no smoking anywhere in Steve’s efficient ship, once he was captain of his fate.

  That dubious brother-in-law of his thought accountants were people with no imagination and no business capacity. He’d show Jemal Bilic what he could do once he had his independence and his own firm. He’d make money, honest money. He’d give Louise an easier life: get her more help with the children, get the best schooling for Daisy, who was a bright girl, and the best possible treatment for little Michael. Down’s syndrome didn’t mean the end of the world: at the parents’ circle they’d met people who were far worse off than them and still very cheerful. But what no one said, what no one could afford to say, was that it was easier if you had money.

  There must be money coming to them, now that poor old Geoff had gone. What you had to do was put that money to good use, which meant building something for the future with it. The best investment of all was in yourself, if you had the ability. He’d talked about it often enough, with Louise: now the time was coming to implement those plans, to show his wife that he was not just a dreamer. He was ready to do that.

  Steve went back to his office and looked at his next assignment. It was the annual tax return of a BT executive with a second home in Cornwall and rents coming in from there. Routine stuff; boring stuff. But he’d do it, and do it well. They thought because he wasn’t an extrovert that he was a dull man, but he had more imagination than any of the other five who worked here. He’d show them that, when his chance came.

  Steve Hawksworth found that he was pleased, even exultant, when that friend of his wife, Lucy Blake, rang to say that the CID would like to speak with him again, now that they had talked to a lot of other people about Geoff Aspin’s death. He was even disappointed that it couldn’t be until the next morning. It was the next minor event in the story, the next small but necessary step in his career. The next stage towards independence and success.

  Once all this excitement surrounding Geoff Aspin’s death was out of the way, they could all move forward.

  * * *

  Carol Bilic took Peach and Blake into the big sitting room where the cleaner had just finished her work and indicated where she wanted them to sit. The late afternoon sun didn’t come into this room, but she made sure that she was not facing the light from the window. She gestured towards the chairs she had set out for them and said aggressively, ‘I hope you’re near to making an arrest for Dad’s murder. It has been five days now.’ She sat down unhurriedly in her favourite armchair and ran a hand over her dark hair.

  So she was going to carry the fight to them. Peach smiled encouragingly at her: he liked a challenge. It would mean he didn’t have to handle a grieving daughter with sympathy and tact. This woman hadn’t seemed devastated by her father’s death on Monday and she now seemed completely recovered.

  ‘The post-mortem examination has told us fairly accurately when your father died.’

  ‘That’s a different thing from knowing who killed him.’

  ‘It is indeed. You told us that you came back here with friends after Saturday’s celebration at Marton Towers. What time did you get here?’

  ‘They dropped me off at about seven. Am I to presume that I am still suspected of killing my own father?’

  ‘And what time did your husband get home?’ Peach spoke as if he had not heard her question.

  She mustn’t lose her temper: that was no doubt what this pair wanted. ‘A little while after me. About half past seven, I should think.’ Jemal could damn well look after himself. If he chose to freeze her out of his affairs, she wasn’t going to go out of her way to look out for him. She looked at the bent head of Lucy Blake as she made notes and remembered that chestnut hair from years ago, when the teenage girl had giggled with Louise over books and records. For some reason it annoyed her intensely that the hair should still be so lustrous. ‘We were in for the rest of the evening, so if Dad was killed any time after that, you can rule us out. Or don’t you accept testimony from husband and wife?’

  Peach gave
her his annoyingly superior smile. ‘Not testimony yet, Mrs Bilic - and I hope it never becomes that. Testimony is evidence given in court under oath. What you’re doing now is voluntarily helping the police with their inquiries, as all good citizens do.’

  ‘I stand corrected. Or rather sit.’

  Her attempt to lighten things fell very flat, even though Peach’s smile widened. ‘You’re saying that neither of you went out again that night?’

  ‘I am. So if Dad was killed later in the evening, you can’t pin it on either of us.’

  ‘Interesting on two counts, that is. First, you seem to assume that your father was killed not immediately after the junket at Marton Towers but much later. You’re correct, as a matter of fact. But it’s interesting to suspicious coppers like us that you should seem to know that, when there’s been no press release about it as yet.’

  She decided not to react to this: defending herself might seem like weakness. ‘You said interesting to you on two counts. What was the second?’

  ‘Your account of the evening differs from that of your husband.’ Peach was suddenly businesslike and unsmiling.

  She was shaken now; her dark eyes flashed from one to the other of the contrasting faces opposite her. She found both of them observing her keenly and both of them unrevealing. Blast Jemal! What yarns had he been spinning to them, and what danger had he brought upon her? ‘All I said was that we did not go out for the rest of the evening.’

  ‘Is there anyone who can corroborate that? Other than your husband, that is: I’ve already said that his account differs from yours.’

  She thought furiously. ‘No. The children were away for the night. A stopover with friends of the same ages; sometimes they come here.’ It seemed suddenly necessary to her to enlarge upon innocent facts.

  ‘Mr Bilic told us that he went out again during the evening.’

  ‘I don’t recall that. I must have forgotten about it.’

  ‘Do you now remember his excursion?’

  She was tight-lipped, her dark blue eyes striking in a face which was now very pale. ‘If he says he went out, then he did.’

  ‘Do you know when he went out and when he returned?’

  ‘No. I’m sure he can give you the times.’

  ‘He has already done so. We would like to be able to corroborate them.’

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that.’ She took a long breath, forming a resolution, gathering her resources to implement it. ‘Mr Peach, if you are going to continue to regard us as murder suspects, there are things you need to know. My marriage is not all it might be.’ Her face wrinkled into a little moue of self-contempt at this anodyne phrase. ‘To put it bluntly, it is coming apart. I shall shortly be arranging a separation, and in due course I shall proceed to formal divorce.’

  It felt strange to be making this first announcement of her intentions to these hard-faced policemen, who knew nothing of the battles of the last few years. She hadn’t even told the children yet, though they must long ago have picked up that all was not well between her and the dangerous man who was their father. She found it disturbing to frame this momentous thing for the first time in words. By way of an ironic, self-deprecating postscript, she added, ‘Dad would have been pleased to hear me saying this: he never liked Jemal.’

  Carol expected Peach to say that he was sorry to hear this, to express the conventional sympathy with which people cover their embarrassment over insights into the intimate lives of others.

  Instead, he nodded curtly and then asked, ‘Are you saying that this is a reason why your report of what happened last Saturday evening differs from that of your husband?’

  ‘I am. This is a big house. When the children are around, we maintain the semblance of a partnership, or we did until very recently. When they are not, we pursue our own concerns, usually in different rooms. The children were not here on Saturday.’

  Lucy Blake looked up from her notes. ‘You’re now telling us that your husband might have left the house, after all, without your knowledge?’

  ‘Jemal comes and goes as he pleases, at any hour of the day or night. He may well have gone out for a time on Saturday night. If he did, I was not aware of it.’

  Blake forced herself to press this woman who had so intimidated her in the days when she had gone to the Aspins’ house as a teenager. ‘I’m sorry to hear about your marriage, Carol. You must feel very bitter. That bitterness wouldn’t extend to undermining Jemal’s alibi for the time of a murder, would it?’

  Carol paused, gathering her thoughts for a haughty dismissal of the woman whose position here still seemed to her that of an upstart. ‘That is a contemptible suggestion. Detective Sergeant Blake.’ She managed to deliver both rank and surname with a ring of mockery. ‘I am merely giving you the facts of the matter. It shouldn’t need stating, but I am as anxious as anyone to see the person who killed my father brought to justice.’

  Peach studied the bristling antagonism between the two women with interest, then turned his attention to Carol Bilic alone. ‘Did you go out yourself on Saturday night, Mrs Bilic?’

  ‘What are you implying?’

  He sighed. ‘It is obvious, I should have thought. DS Blake has just suggested that your father was murdered at around the time when it seems you now admit that your husband was out of the house. We therefore need to know where you were yourself at that time.’

  She ground her teeth together silently, fighting for control, knowing that a descent into screaming and anger would suit the purposes of this brazen man. ‘I was here throughout Saturday evening. Your suggestion that I might have gone out and killed my own father is not only insolent but preposterous!’

  He nodded once again, giving her the infuriating impression that she had said exactly what he would have expected. ‘What are the financial implications of your divorce plans, Mrs Bilic?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. That is an impertinent question, which can have no possible bearing on your investigation.’

  ‘On the contrary, it is a highly relevant question. If you had financial expectations of your father, that would interest us. You have told us previously that he never approved of your marriage. He might therefore have offered you every support in ending it.’

  She wanted to tell him that Jemal was a rich man, that there wouldn’t be difficulties. But she knew that he would fight her every inch of the way, that she would have to wring every penny out of him. Perhaps this man Peach, who seemed to have discovered so many things about this dysfunctional family, was already aware of that; she knew that he’d spoken to Jemal this morning. She gave him a tight-lipped, ‘I’m sure Dad would have helped me.’

  ‘And how would your plans have been affected if he had married Mrs Williams?’

  ‘I don’t know, do I?’

  ‘I suspect you have a shrewd suspicion, Mrs Bilic. Shrewd suspicions are what the CID deal in, so they always interest us.’ He gave her his blandest smile.

  ‘You’re saying that I was relying on Dad’s money to finance my break-up with Jemal. That my plans were rudely interrupted by the arrival on the scene of the Williams woman, who would have vetoed it.’

  Peach shrugged; he enjoyed a good shrug, particularly when he could see interviewees becoming more and more incensed with him. ‘Since you plainly dislike Mrs Williams intensely, you could scarcely have expected her to be sympathetic to your plans.’

  It was all going to come out, whether she liked it or not, if they questioned everyone as thoroughly as this. Carol had a sudden desire that they should have a plain, unvarnished account from herself, rather than a highly coloured version from Louise or Steve or Jemal, who would each put a different perspective on this. ‘All right. The bloody Williams woman was a complication, I admit. I’ll get money from Jemal in the end, assuming that he’s still here and in a position to pay it. But I know I’ll have to fight him for every penny of it. I want my children to have the best education available. And, as far as I’m concerned, that means paying for it.’


  She paused automatically, then realized that she was waiting stupidly for them to argue with her. Instead, Peach said, ‘And you were relying on your father to finance this?’

  ‘Yes. Maybe. As I’ve said, I’ll get money from Jemal in due course. But I want a decent house for myself and the best schooling for my children now. Dad would have seen to that. I’d have got the house because he’d have been only too glad to see me finished with Jemal Bilic and he wouldn’t have wanted me under my husband’s roof whilst I was pressing ahead with divorce. I’d have got the education for my children paid for because he cared for them and would have gone along with my wishes.’

  It was Blake who ended the pause which followed this. She looked up from her notes and said tersely, ‘No doubt the money from your father’s estate will now enable you to fulfil these plans.’

  With the perversity which is the most baffling part of human nature, Carol Bilic was less offended by this blunt challenge than she would have been by more conciliatory words. It was as if the confrontation marked for her the translation of this female she remembered as a pretty, vapid teenager into a mature woman, who could fight her on equal terms. ‘I imagine that will be so, yes. Dad has made no will in the last few months; I have already checked that with the family solicitor.’

  Carol found this forthright, even rather shocking, honesty a relief after the evasions she had planned. Directness was her style, the mode she was easiest with. As far as it was possible for her, she would employ it.

  Blake too was happier with open contest rather than the previous unwarranted and largely unspoken hostility she had endured. ‘Let us be quite clear about this: is there anyone who can confirm for us that you were alone in this house for the whole of Saturday evening? Even an incoming phone call would be useful, if you could give us the name of the caller.’ Carol gave her a tiny, unexpected smile, as if acknowledging the new relationship between them. ‘I can’t do that. There were no calls. I tried to ring my sister somewhere around ten, but there was no answer. You’re saying you suspect me of killing my own father. That I wanted to be rid of him before he could change the terms of his will, before his new woman could work on his views about financial support for me. Well, I didn’t kill him, but I can follow your reasoning. You know better than anyone that I was never as close to Dad as his precious Louise!’