by J M Gregson
Lambert, feeling like a psychiatrist listening to a patient, looked rather desperately at Hook, who said, ‘And how did Clare get on with her father?’
‘She was always closer to him than she was to me.’ Judith Hudson seized on that idea eagerly. ‘I used to tell myself that girls always liked their fathers best, that I shouldn’t be jealous of Ken. Adolescent girls are always half in love with their dads, aren’t they?’
Hook smiled at her sudden animation. ‘I only have sons, myself, Mrs Hudson. But I’m told that’s true. Perhaps I’m missing out. So how did Clare receive the news that you were getting divorced?’
She looked as if she had been slapped across the face. Bert Hook got people off their guard quite effortlessly, with his genuine, avuncular interest, and then threw the difficult question at them when they were least expecting it. ‘She didn’t take it well. She was very upset, if you must know.’
‘We must, I’m afraid. But it’s not unusual, you know, for adolescent girls to be disturbed and difficult, in circumstances like that.’ It was stating the obvious, but this woman seemed emotionally ignorant, to be lacking any knowledge of those instinctive responses which were the essence of being human. ‘Did Clare keep in touch with her father?’
‘Yes. She wouldn’t hear of taking my new name of Hudson when I remarried. Her father was working in Oxford for a year or so, and she visited him a lot. It was a real blow to her when Ken found himself a new wife and emigrated to New Zealand.’ A small smile crept onto Judith Hudson’s face, as if she were relishing the memory of her daughter’s distress.
Hook said, prompting her towards further revelation of herself, ‘You must have had some trying times, in those years.’
‘It wasn’t easy. She made life as difficult as she could for me and for Roy. And then she made the most unsuitable marriage. I sometimes thought that it was part of her defiance, that she took up with Ian Walker just to annoy me.’
‘So tell us about him, please.’
Judith shrugged. ‘There isn’t much to tell. He’s a rogue, pure and simple. He’s been in and out of trouble since he was a boy. But he’s more intelligent than he pretends to be: don’t let him fool you about that. Clare had known him a little at school. She flounced in one night and told us she was going to marry him. I thought it was just a bad joke at first, something she’d engineered just to annoy me.’
There was another explanation, thought Bert Hook. A girl, desperately unhappy at home, snatching at the first opportunity to get out of it, however unsuitable the means. He felt the familiar frustration that a murder victim, unlike the victim of any other crime, could never balance the scales with her own version of events. He said, ‘We know about Ian Walker’s record. We spoke to him ourselves, yesterday morning.’
‘Then you’ll know what a thoroughly unsavoury character he is.’
‘You must have been glad when the marriage ended without any children.’
‘Yes. But he’d ruined her education, among other things. She’d left school when she should have been going on to university. In effect, she gave up her education to get a job and support that waster.’ There was a sudden hiss of hatred on the last phrase. It was what you would have expected, in the circumstances she described, but coming from this emotionless woman, any display of feeling was almost a relief.
‘Are you still in touch with Ian Walker?’
‘No. I haven’t seen him for years.’
‘He seems to have been in contact with Clare, not long before she died.’
‘He’d be after money, then, I expect. He’s a sponger, as well as everything else. I could cheerfully murder Ian Walker myself.’ But she said it without passion, as if she were studying herself objectively and being surprised by the thought.
‘Were you aware that he was still in touch with Clare?’
‘No. It doesn’t surprise me. But any contact from him would be bad news, I’m sure.’
‘Do you think he killed Clare, Mrs Hudson?’
She examined the notion for a moment, as dispassionately as if she were considering the murder of some girl she had never known. ‘He might have done. He hasn’t the guts or the intelligence to plan a murder, but he might have strangled her in the heat of the moment, if they had a row. He’d certainly have known some quiet spot to dump her body in the Severn.’
It was so exactly what Lambert had thought about the man that it made the hairs rise on the back of his neck, coming from this source. He said hastily, ‘We have as yet no reason to suspect Mr Walker of this crime. And it would be best if you kept your own thoughts on the matter to yourself.’
‘Of course. Detection is your business, not mine.’
Lambert nodded and took up the questioning again. ‘Do you know anything about a man named Martin Carter?’
‘No. I don’t think Clare ever mentioned him. Who is he?’
‘He’s a postgraduate student, doing research for a degree at the university. He helped Clare a little with her studies. He was pretty well the same age as Clare. I thought she might have mentioned him when she was at home.’
‘No. Not that I can recall. Look, Superintendent, there’s something you should know. Clare didn’t come home during these last few months. My contacts were by phone. She made regular calls, to keep in touch.’
But you didn’t report any disquiet to the police or the university when the regular phone call never came last week, he thought. As an ordinary mother might have done. But they’d already had ample proof that this was no ordinary mother. He said, ‘Why did Clare stop coming home?’
She looked as if she was considering the question for the first time. ‘A variety of reasons, I should think. Excitement over her new studies at university: she was a bright girl, who should have been reading for a degree five years earlier. When you start late, you want to make the most of it, people tell me. New friends: she hadn’t had many of those, during her years with Walker. Perhaps a new boyfriend, for all I know. What about this man you mentioned a moment ago.’
‘Martin Carter? He says not. It seems he would have been willing, but Clare wasn’t.’
‘Someone else, then. I know from the phone calls that she was enjoying being at the university.’
‘Yes. It must have been quite a decision for her, embarking on a degree course as a mature student. Did you offer her any financial assistance?’
‘No. She wouldn’t have accepted it.’
The same reply as her husband had given them. Lambert would have given a lot to hear the exchanges in this strange household when Clare Mills had announced that she was going back into full-time study. He said, ‘Do you think one of the reasons why Clare no longer came here was the presence of your husband in the house?’
For a moment, it looked as if she would react angrily. A flash of temper would have been a relief from this disturbingly composed woman. But then she collected the coffee cups and put them back on the tray, like a stage actress using props during a pregnant pause. ‘I shouldn’t think so. Roy and Clare had their problems, during the early years, but they now have – had – an excellent relationship.’
The same phrase her husband had used. Lambert wondered how much collusion there had been over what they would tell him. ‘Did they see much of each other?’
‘Very little, over the last year or two.’ She smiled at him. ‘I won’t deny that that probably contributed to the improvement in the way they got on with each other.’
Lambert wondered just how well she herself got on with the absent Roy Hudson. Each of them had so far seemed determined that they would not meet him together. He said rather desperately, ‘Is there anything you wish to ask us?’
He would have expected her to ask when she could have the body for burial. That was one of the things which always upset parents, when he had to explain that the body had to be retained indefinitely, that when someone was eventually charged with this killing he would have the right to a second, independent post-mortem examination, if his defence requested
it. Instead, Judith Hudson said after a moment, ‘Are you close to an arrest?’
He smiled. ‘You probably realize that I would hardly be likely to tell you if we were. Until we actually have someone under lock and key, most of our findings have to remain confidential. But I will tell you that we are at present still in the early stages of the enquiry. That is why we need all the help we can get, from the relatives and friends of Clare Mills.’
He had used the girl’s full name like a rebuke, and Judith Hudson said immediately, ‘Yes. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to be more helpful to you. But you will appreciate that owing to the circumstances surrounding her, I haven’t seen much of Clare in the last few years. First of all, she was involved in a marriage of which Roy and I both thoroughly disapproved, and then she was studying at the university.’
She made both of these circumstances sound like deliberate attacks upon her by the dead girl. He said, almost accusingly, ‘But you must have been happy to see Clare justifying her educational potential at last. You said you had been upset when she gave up the chance of university in order to get married.’
‘Yes, of course. And it’s good to hear that she was doing well.’
But apparently you didn’t know that until I told you today, thought Lambert. And shouldn’t you now be desperate to get into her flat in Gloucester, to retrieve whatever souvenirs you can of the daughter who has gone?
Lambert stood up and said, ‘Please get in touch immediately if anything occurs to you which might have a bearing on this death.’ He paused in the doorway as she nodded dutifully. ‘I’m afraid we can’t release anything from Clare’s flat at the moment. We’ve had to bag up a lot of her belongings and take them away. We don’t know yet what may prove to be evidence later in the case.’
‘What belongings?’
‘I couldn’t be precise. Our Scenes of Crime team will have taken away whatever they think might eventually be significant.’
‘What sort of things?’ She was showing more interest than at any time since they had arrived in that high, comfortable room.
‘Photographs. Letters, if there are any. A diary, if we’re exceptionally lucky. But I understand there was no diary or list of engagements, in this case.’
He had thrown that fragment he would normally have concealed at her to see what reaction it would bring. It was difficult to be certain of anything with this unnaturally composed woman.
But he thought he caught a fleeting glimpse of relief in her face.
Eleven
Detective Inspector Christopher Rushton enjoyed being in CID on a Saturday morning.
There were people around, of course, but nothing like the same buzz of activity as on weekday mornings. Crime does not shut down for the weekend, but policemen, like other workers, only work on Saturdays and Sundays if the rotas demand it. Chris Rushton appreciated the time to check through his computer files, to make sure that everything had been recorded as it should be, and, most importantly, to do the cross-referencing that sometimes threw up significant connections and led eventually to arrests.
You could only make these complex connections and use the modern technology to its full potential if you had time to yourself, in Chris’s view. That old reactionary Lambert and his faithful dog Hook were out seeing Clare Mills’s mother this morning. That would allow the inspector, who was coordinating the documentation of the case at Oldford police station, the opportunity to concentrate and do his own thinking. He was relishing the time at his computer when the duty sergeant made a call from the reception desk to say that there was a young woman who wanted to see him, who had indeed asked for him by name.
The sergeant plainly thought this a matter for levity, but Chris ordered him brusquely to send the lady through to see him.
She was a pretty, dark-haired girl of around twenty, he thought. She announced herself as Anne Jackson, and it took him a moment to remember that she was the student who had been the flatmate of the dead woman, Clare Mills. That she was in fact the girl they had talked to when he had visited that flat with Superintendent Lambert only two days earlier.
He was annoyed with himself for not recognizing her immediately: it should be part of a CID man’s mental equipment to remember faces and pin names upon them immediately, in his view. But she had jettisoned the ubiquitous student’s dress of jeans and T-shirt and put on a very pleasant green cotton dress and make-up. And Chris, who was no expert in these things, thought that she had acquired a new hair-style in the last forty-eight hours.
These things couldn’t possibly be for his benefit. It was probably that like many people she was nervous about venturing into a police station, and had responded by putting on her best clothes and her best appearance. He tried not to read anything flattering into the fact that she had asked for Inspector Rushton by name. She must simply have remembered it from their meeting on Thursday.
He tried not to sound like the older generation as he said, ‘And what can I do for you, Miss Jackson?’
‘It’s a bit embarrassing, really.’ She blushed. It went very prettily with the green dress. ‘There’s something I should have told you, when you came with your superintendent to see me at the flat the other day.’
Rushton, who was normally both very stern about such omissions and completely devoid of small-talk, heard himself saying, ‘I’m sure it can’t be anything very serious, in your case.’ He followed that unwarranted assumption with an encouraging smile.
Anne smiled back at him. He was really rather attractive to look at, and he seemed quite nice, when you got through his grave manner. ‘Anyway, I’m glad I’ve been able to get you and not Superintendent Lambert. He frightened me to death!’
‘John Lambert?’ He enjoyed using the superintendent’s Christian name. Normally, with his exaggerated consciousness of rank, he found that difficult, but this morning he was happy to show his familiarity with the great man to this pretty girl. ‘Oh, John’s bark’s much worse than his bite. He comes from the old school, you know. His methods may be a little antiquated, but he gets results.’ He wondered what the chief would think if he heard his inspector being so patronizingly magnanimous about him.
‘Yes. Well, I’ve never been involved in anything like this before, and I got a bit confused, I think. I was thrown by the way he kept looking at me all the time. He never seemed to blink, and he seemed to be weighing up everything I said and wondering whether it was really the truth.’
Chris smiled encouragingly. ‘Well, fortunately, I’ve never been on the wrong end of John Lambert’s interrogations. I think I see what you mean, but I can assure you he can be much fiercer than that, when he feels that anyone is really trying to conceal things from him.’
But he was thinking back to Thursday and Lambert’s remark as they drove away from her flat: ‘I wonder what it was that the girl was trying to conceal from us.’ He hadn’t noticed anything himself, had thought at the time that the chief was just being fanciful, trying to give himself mystique. But it seemed the old bugger had been right.
Chris Rushton said, ‘I think you’d better put things right, then. Let’s hear all about this terrible thing you were confused into concealing.’ He couldn’t really believe he was playing this so lightly, when he would normally have been as stern as a Victorian parent. It surely couldn’t be anything to do with Anne Jackson’s large, attentive eyes. They were a very dark, very intriguing blue, he thought.
Anne smiled at him again, to show him how grateful she was for his sympathy. You’d never have thought he was a policeman, really, not in his powder-blue sweater and his neatly creased navy trousers. He didn’t seem to have a single grey hair. He must surely be very bright, to have become an inspector when he was still so young. She fumbled in the big leather shoulder bag she had brought with her, finding it surprisingly difficult to take her eyes from Inspector Rushton’s face and concentrate upon the contents of the bag.
Anne said, ‘It’s this, you see.’ And she held up a mobile phone in her small hand, as
dramatically as if she had produced a knife dripping with blood.
‘Yours?’ said Rushton.
‘No. It belonged to Clare Mills.’ The name of the dead woman dropped between them like a barrier, and she wondered if he was going to rebuke her, to tell her that she had been concealing evidence, or something of that sort. Then she rushed on with an explanation, feeling herself blushing furiously as she changed tack during it. ‘I forgot all about it at the time. Well, no, that’s not strictly true. I knew that Clare had just put some money on it, and I thought I might as well use the calls up and save myself a bit of cash.’ It came out all in a rush; she felt she should be standing like a naughty schoolgirl and pleading for mercy, not sitting comfortably opposite this attractive man.
Chris said as harshly as he could, ‘We really should have had this at the time we saw you, you know. It might give us some leads.’
‘I know. I realize that now. I’m sorry.’ She wanted to say again how glad she was that she’d got him and not that horrid Lambert, but she’d done that one already.
‘You should have given it to the Scenes of Crime team when they examined the flat and took away some of Clare’s belongings.’
‘Yes. But I wasn’t there when they searched the place, you see. I was at the uni. The landlord let them in.’
‘Well, at least you’ve brought it here now. And I suppose it’s less than two days since we saw you.’
‘Yes. And I haven’t used it at all. I’ve scarcely touched it. Everything that was on there when Clare left should still be there now.’
He was suddenly torn by conflicting emotions. The CID man in him was desperate to conclude the formalities and see her gone, to examine the phone and find what it could tell him about the contacts the dead woman had made in the last days, perhaps the last hours, of her life. But another part of him, asserting itself surprisingly and startlingly, wanted to prolong his exchanges with this girl, who grew more attractive with each minute of her embarrassment, who seemed so grateful for the understanding he was according her.
