Too Much of Water

by J M Gregson

  Hook did not reply until he had the contents displayed on Hudson’s desk. Then he said, ‘I wonder if you recognize these items, sir.’

  Roy Hudson looked down at the innocent trinkets. A diamond ring and an emerald brooch. He recognized them all right, but the sight of them set his brain racing. Why were they here? Where had they come from, and what would be the implications of identifying them?

  He picked up each of them in turn, then revolved them carefully between his fingers, playing for time. The key thing was where they had been found, how they had come into the possession of these senior policemen. But they weren’t going to tell him that, unless it suited them to do so. He forced a smile and said, ‘Of course I recognize them. They belonged to Clare Mills, didn’t they? I should know: it was me who gave them to her.’

  The full name dropped oddly from his lips. They would have expected ‘Clare’, or at least ‘my stepdaughter’ from him. Bert Hook, ball-pen poised now over his notes, said, ‘When did you give them to her, Mr Hudson?’

  He took his time, checking in his mind that each statement could do him no harm. ‘I gave her the brooch when Judith and I told her that we were going to get married. I knew how attached she still was to her father. I hoped the gift would act as a goodwill gesture, smooth the way for her mother’s remarriage.’

  ‘And did it do that?’

  He wanted to say that it was none of their business. But he knew that he and Judith had kept these men at arm’s length until now, that they couldn’t go on doing that for ever. And they’d already caught him out in one lie. Besides, he needed to give them the best possible version of his relationship with Clare, to get himself off the hook. ‘It did, yes, to a certain extent. Clare wore the brooch at our wedding, so that had to be a good thing.’ He was pretty sure that she hadn’t, but no one was going to be able to disprove it, at this distance in time.

  ‘And the ring?’

  He took his time again, wondering how he could make the best capital of this. ‘That was later. I couldn’t be precise.’

  ‘It looks like an engagement ring.’

  ‘It does, rather, doesn’t it?’ He laughed, pleased with himself for being able to relax like this. ‘That isn’t an accident. When Ian Walker proposed to Clare, he produced an awful glass thing which might have come out of a Christmas cracker. We tried to persuade her not to marry him. When it became clear that she was determined to do just that, I wanted her to have a proper ring.’

  It didn’t seem particularly likely, but they’d never be able to expose it as a lie. Hook wrote it down dutifully, taking what seemed to the man opposite him an age over it. Roy Hudson said, ‘Was Clare wearing these things when she was pulled out of the river?’

  Hook looked at Lambert, wondering how much he wanted to reveal of the manner in which these things had come into police hands. The superintendent said quietly, ‘Both these items were taken to a pawnshop on Tuesday by a man who had known your stepdaughter, Mr Hudson.’

  Roy tried not to shout out his triumph. This took him off the hook all right. He had always known that it would be so. He could not keep the elation out of his voice as he said, ‘That’s it, then, isn’t it? This man killed Clare and removed her jewellery. I can assure you that those were the only two items she possessed which were of any value. And now he’s no more sense than to go pawning them, only ten days after her death. He’s delivered himself into your hands, surely?’

  Lambert said, ‘He’s certainly delivered himself into our hands, yes. We haven’t yet established that he killed Clare Mills.’

  Bert Hook, who had thought privately that he was probably the only man who didn’t believe that the man who called himself Denis Pimbury was their killer, was delighted to hear his chief speak with such conviction. Lambert picked his words as carefully as the man in front of them was doing as he said, ‘We have not so far been able to disprove the man’s account of where he was on the Saturday night when Clare died. We need evidence before we can charge a man.’

  ‘Evidence which will be forthcoming, I am sure.’ Roy tried not to sound too smug or sycophantic, tried not to show the immensity of his relief, which at that moment was surprising even him. ‘With the efficiency of the police machine, it’s only a matter of time, I’m sure.’

  Lambert answered his smile. ‘I’m sure it is, Mr Hudson. Whether the man who pawned these items is the man eventually arrested for the murders of Clare and of Ian Walker, only time will tell. In the meantime, it is possible, even probable, that we shall need to speak to you again.’

  ‘Always at your service. Always anxious to be of help to the forces of law and order!’

  Roy Hudson tried not to sound too dismissive as he showed them to his door.

  Twenty-Six

  Thirty-six hours in custody had not improved Martin Carter’s appearance.

  His hair was still a bright young man’s red, but the face beneath it was unnaturally white; the once bright blue eyes had lost their lustre and there were dark hollows beneath them; and the wide mouth drooped in what seemed permanent despair.

  A night in a cell usually has a pronounced effect on anyone who has not been there before. It had softened Carter up nicely for the Drugs Squad officers, who were now convinced that he had given them everything he had to give about the organization he was working for. As they had feared, he did not know very much: little more than the name of the man immediately above him in the chain and the person who had recruited him and supplied him. The barons who made the millions out of illegal drugs kept themselves well insulated from the dealers who took the risks on the streets. The man at the top of the pyramid above Carter was not even in the country for most of the time, though his Swiss bank account was kept regularly supplied.

  Martin Carter had been charged with dealing in Class A drugs and then led back to collapse limply into his cell. The Drugs Squad superintendent intended to ask for him to be remanded in custody, but that would be more to protect him from the wolves above him in the hierarchy of the evil industry than because he represented any further danger to the public.

  The Drugs Squad enjoy a high degree of autonomy within the police service, and their superintendent was a powerful man. It was not until he had a phone conversation with Superintendent John Lambert that he knew that Carter was a suspect in a murder enquiry.

  Lambert had let him stew for another night in the cells before he came with DS Hook to interview him. They studied the pathetic figure unhurriedly before they began to question him; there is rarely need for haste when a man is in the cells. Eventually Martin could stand their scrutiny no longer. He said wearily, ‘I’ve told those Drugs Squad officers all I know. I’ve nothing left to say.’

  ‘I doubt that. We’re here about something even more serious than drugs. Murder, Mr Carter.’ The pitiful figure in front of him excited feelings of compassion in John Lambert, but this was no time for mercy. This was the time to have the truth out of a man: people with no resources left lost the capacity to deceive.

  Carter did not look up, even at the mention of that oldest and worst of crimes. He was a man at the end of his resources, who had not even examined the drab surroundings of the interview room to which they had brought him for this exchange. ‘I don’t know anything about Clare’s killing. I can’t be of any help to you on that.’ He delivered his monosyllables slowly and evenly, like a man speaking in a dream.

  ‘You won’t expect us to take that at face value, Mr Carter. You’re a criminal now, charged and awaiting trial.’

  His face winced on that, but still he did not look up. He lifted his hands from his sides and put them on the square table in front of him, as if to demonstrate that they contained nothing. They were small, delicate hands, as pale as the rest of him. The fingers began to twine and untwine, very gently, as if someone had pushed the slow-motion button on a video. ‘I’m a criminal and my career’s gone. Clare Mills wouldn’t think much of me now, would she?’

  ‘You told us when we spoke to you last w
eek that you fancied Clare. That you were hoping at one time to develop a relationship with her.’

  A nod, scarcely perceptible. No words.

  ‘That wasn’t true, was it? Or perhaps I should say it wasn’t the whole story.’

  A pause, when it seemed as if he might deny it. Then another, more definite nod.

  ‘I think we know why you contacted her so persistently in the months before her death. But I’d like you to tell us about it, Martin. I hope you can see that your best policy now is to be completely frank with us.’

  He had looked up for the first time on the mention of his forename. ‘Yes. I’ve nothing left to hide, have I? I was trying to recruit her to sell drugs for me. Trying to build up my sales network.’ He delivered the last phrase with a bitter irony, so that they knew that it was not his own.

  ‘That wasn’t your idea, though, was it? Someone else was pressing you to recruit Clare into the organization.’

  He should deny it. He knew that well enough. It had been drilled into him from the start. You didn’t give anything away about the people above you, if you wanted to stay alive. But it was too late for that: he’d told everything he knew to those persistent drugs detectives, who had seemed to know so much already. ‘Yes. They wanted Clare in. I’m not quite sure why.’

  ‘And that is why you kept arranging meetings with her.’

  He nodded his acceptance of that and then, as if snatching at the last shreds of his integrity, added, ‘I did fancy Clare Mills, though. I’d like to have been her boyfriend, if she’d have had me.’

  He stared at the slowly turning cassette in the tape recorder, not looking up at them, fearing the mockery he would see in their eyes. It was Bert Hook who pointed out gently, ‘But she was in a lesbian relationship, Martin.’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t know that at first. But she told me. To stop me making a fool of myself, she said. She told me that was in strict confidence and I hadn’t to talk about it to others. And I didn’t; I kept her secret.’ A tiny morsel of pride stirred in him at that thought.

  ‘And kept your feelings alive for her, I expect. In spite of the sexual preferences she told you about.’

  ‘Yes. I even thought we might get together, after she’d walked out on Sara Green.’

  They were disciplined by long years of CID questioning. Neither of them showed the slightest reaction to this; neither of them suggested that they were hearing this news for the first time. Hook said in the same even, sympathetic tone, ‘And when was this, Martin?’

  ‘Two days before she died, wasn’t it? I saw her on the day she died. Tried to say I’d support her, be a shoulder to cry on. I should have left it at that, let her recover a bit before I tried to get together with her, but I was silly enough to let Clare know that I wanted to be her lover.’ His lips curled in a bitter contempt for his own naivety, but still he did not look up at them.

  ‘And what did she tell you about her break-up with Sara Green?’

  ‘Just that it was final. That they’d had a tremendous bust-up, on that Thursday night before she died. That she’d made a great mistake in planning to live with Sara. That she wasn’t a lesbian at all.’

  Hook glanced across the bowed head of Carter at Lambert. They had only the word of this exhausted, defeated man that this was an accurate report. He might be putting his own slant on what had happened between the two women. Even if he was being honest, he might be remembering the situation in the way he had wanted to see it rather than recounting what the dead woman had actually said.

  But if even the bare facts of what he said were true, this gave Sara Green a motive for murder. Sexual jealousy is perhaps the commonest of all causes of domestic killings, and that is essentially what this would have been. This fracturing of the relationship had occurred just two days before the woman leaving it had been murdered. And the most significant fact of all was that Sara Green had deliberately concealed this break-up from them.

  ‘She wouldn’t have me.’ Oblivious of the thoughts of the two men who were interrogating him, the man with his head bowed over the small square table continued his account of his own agony.

  ‘What did she say to you, Martin?’ Hook prompted gently.

  ‘She was polite enough. She said she didn’t want to get into another relationship immediately. Of any kind.’

  ‘And did she give you any hope for the future?’

  This time the pause was so long that they thought he was not going to reply at all. But at length he said, ‘No. She said that she couldn’t see herself having a one-to-one relationship with me. That she hoped we could always be friends!’ He looked up sharply on that last phrase, as if he expected to catch them laughing at his misery. ‘They always say that, don’t they? That they want to be bloody friends with you!’

  ‘Only when they want to be kind, Martin. I doubt if Clare would have said it unless she really wanted you as a friend.’ Hook watched the abject figure in front of them, well aware that he too was a murder suspect, that this latest development increased rather than decreased the chances that he might have killed Clare Mills. He said quietly, ‘Did you try to get her to sell drugs again?’

  ‘No. I didn’t get the chance. She brought the matter up herself. She warned me that I should get out of the trade, should stop dealing before it was too late.’

  ‘And why do you think she raised that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ A huge, racking sigh shuddered through the slim body. ‘I wish to hell I’d listened to her.’

  As if in answer to this movement, Lambert’s harder voice rang again in his ears. ‘How did you react when she turned you down, Mr Carter? Because that is in effect what happened, isn’t it?’

  He nodded, his wan face cast down again towards the scratched surface of the table. He said abjectly, ‘I accepted it, didn’t I? That’s what I do, accept things.’

  This was more than self-pity. This man was looking at himself and what he had come to, and loathing what he saw. Lambert said, ‘Are you sure that there wasn’t a more violent reaction?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Here was a girl who had repeatedly refused to work for you, who was now refusing point-blank to have any emotional dealings with you. Did your temper snap at this point? Did you in fact strangle Clare Mills?’

  ‘No. I didn’t kill her. I don’t know who did.’ But he had no energy left to add vehemence to his denials. He sounded as if he did not expect them to believe him.

  Lambert let the seconds stretch out agonizingly in the quiet little box of a room, but Carter said no more. Eventually the chief superintendent said, ‘You knew Ian Walker, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t like him. He was nothing but trouble for Clare.’

  ‘And he’d been in her bed, hadn’t he? The place you wanted to be, but were being refused access to.’

  ‘Yes. Walker kept coming back and bothering her. He wouldn’t get out of her life.’

  ‘And he’d have come back again, once he knew she’d finished with Sara Green, wouldn’t he?’

  Another pause. And then, ‘I expect he would. He wasn’t one to miss an opportunity.’

  ‘He might even have got some sort of relationship going with Clare Mills again, don’t you think? She still had some feelings for him, from what we hear from other people.’

  ‘He’d have tried.’ His voice was so low that they could only just hear it above the quiet whirring of the tape machine.

  ‘Did you shoot Ian Walker last Monday night, after you’d got rid of Clare?’

  He glanced up at them again, looking from one to the other. ‘No. I don’t do that sort of thing, do I? I’m not man enough for that.’

  There was a curious combination of self-contempt and challenge in the statement. He was in a state of near-collapse as he was taken back to his cell. Lambert and Hook said nothing to each other. But each of them knew enough about weak personalities to realize that they could be dangerous.

  A man like Martin Carter could kill, if he was drive
n to the point of desperation.

  The man wore a dark suit, of good quality but well worn, fraying a little at the cuffs. He looked round him nervously in the police station, as if he felt that this was not where he should be. The station sergeant had seen this sort of unease too often before to take any particular account of it. But when the man came to the desk and said he wanted to see the officer in charge of the Clare Mills murder investigation, he was fast-tracked through to Lambert’s office.

  ‘It may be nothing,’ he said nervously. ‘Probably is nothing, in fact.’ He grinned apologetically for his presence here.

  Lambert had seen such diffidence too often to be surprised or irritated by it. ‘You’ve done the right thing coming here. We’re grateful for any information. Don’t you worry about the relevance: it’s our job to see where it fits into the general picture. First of all, you’d better give Detective Sergeant Hook your name, please.’

  ‘Tillcock. Chris Tillcock. I used to work for Roy Hudson.’ He looked at the long, lined face of the chief superintendent for any sign of excitement at that news, but Lambert was too old a hand to offer him more than a nod of recognition. ‘I was in the accounts department. I am a certified accountant.’ He offered the information nervously, as if he expected the fact that he was not chartered to be queried.

  Instead, Lambert said, ‘You say you used to work for Mr Hudson. How long ago was this?’

  ‘My employment was terminated three years ago.’

  ‘By Mr Hudson?’

  A hesitation. ‘Yes. You could almost say by mutual consent, I suppose. But he got rid of me all right. Paid me my redundancy money and sent me on my way.’

  They watched him without speaking for a moment. This might be just a man with a grudge against an employer who had fired him. Tillcock might be a man who was legitimately sent on his way for inefficiency, who now wanted to get a little of his own back on a former employer.