Shades of Murder

by Ann Granger

  SHADES OF MURDER

  Dudley Newman eyed Pearce and smiled. 'Perhaps you think I'm a bit of a sharp operator. Perhaps I am. But there's a big difference between that and being a twister. Oakley was a twister. I'm an honest man. I don't lie. I don't cheat. I look out for my own interest, first and foremost, but that's not illegal.'

  Pearce, listening to this with growing distaste though he knew the man was right, responded, 'All right. What did you agree with him in the end?'

  'Nothing. He said, if that was the way I felt about it, we'd nothing further to discuss. He would withdraw his objections to the sale and let it go ahead, anyway. He was sure his cousins would act fairly by him. What he meant was, he could bamboozle them into parting with a share of the resulting windfall.'

  'And you were prepared to let him do that? Badger those two old women into parting with money they could ill afford? Even though this claim of his was probably entirely imaginary? Even though you'd judged him a con man?' Pearce's voice was sharp. He didn't need to pretend he approved of Newman's attitude. Newman knew he didn't. Knew and didn't care. As he'd said, it wasn't illegal.

  'Not my responsibility, Inspector,' said Newman, almost gently. 'None of my business.' He eased himself back into his chair which creaked protestingly. 'As it happens, any misgivings I might have had were taken care of when I found out that Juliet Painter was advising the Oakley sisters. Juliet has a shrewd business brain. She'd look after their interests, I was sure of that.'

  'Convenient for you, that,' said Pearce. 'Salve your conscience.'

  Newman might have taken this as an insult. Instead he took it seriously. 'If I'd listened to what you'd call my conscience, I wouldn't be sitting here today, head of my own successful business, having done as well as I have. If a man's got a tender conscience, he should enter the church, become a social worker.' Newman's look became malicious. 'Join the police?'

  Pearce got to his feet. 'Thanks for your time,' he said abruptly.

  'My pleasure, Inspector. I'm always ready to support the police.'

  When Pearce got back to HQ he made his way, with some reluctance, to the temporary office assigned to Minchin. He found the Superintendent there, alone, shuffling papers and wrestling with a drawer in the elderly desk with which he'd been provided. Pearce wondered uneasily where Hayes was.

  ANN GRANGER

  The drawer shot out and cracked Minchin's knee. He swore and. rubbing the afflicted area, abandoned what he was doing to turn his attention to Pearce. 'Hello. Dave. Come to report?' Despite the pain he was in and his obvious dissatisfaction with his accommodation, his tone was relaxed and cheery.

  Pearce wasn't impressed by fake camaraderie. In fact, he resented it. He wasn't one of Minchin's men. He was someone who'd been assigned to Minchin, much against his will, and Minchin knew it. The use of a first name cut no ice. Stiffly, he said. 'Yes, sir.'

  Minchin's broad face showed no reaction to the implied rebuke. "Let's have it then.' He nodded at the empty chair.

  Pearce sat down. 'I've been talking to a couple of people. One of them was Kenny Joss, who runs a taxi service and drove the Oakley-women to and from town on a shopping expedition on the Saturday afternoon. He'll be in the file. The other was a local builder called Newman.'

  'What?' Minchin asked sharply, his bonhomie vanishing. 'Dudley Newman?'

  'Yes.' Pearce had no idea how Minchin knew about the builder. 'Joss saw him talking to Jan Oakley in a pub in town, The George.'

  'Bloody hell!' Minchin said vehemently. 'Why didn't you check with me before you went haring off to see this Newman?'

  'You weren't here,' said Pearce, reddening. 'And I wasn't aware you wanted the investigation held up.'

  Minchin glowered at him. 'No one's holding up investigations. As it happens, Mickey Hayes has just gone off to see this Newman cove. So that's two visits from us Newman will have in one day and a right fool Mickey will look when he turns up only to be told you've just left.'

  Pearce did his best to disguise his pleasure at the thought of Hayes being made to look foolish. 'How did you get on to Newman, Mr Minchin?' he asked curiously.

  'Woman at the pub near the house, Mrs Forbes, saw Newman talking to Oakley one evening in the car park,' Minchin told him briefly, still simmering with resentment.

  'Oh, right, that ties in with what Newman told me, then.' Pearce said complacently. 'I'll get it all written up for you. Basically, Newman wants the land the house stands on and he was worried Oakley would throw a spanner in the works. He wanted to suss him out. He reckoned Oakley was a bit of a con man but on the whole, he didn't have to worry about him. after all. He put him down as a small-time chiseler.'

  SHADES OF MURDER

  'Oh, did he?' growled Minchin. 'So, what about the other bloke you saw - Joss?'

  'Oh, Kenny. We'd interviewed him before, it's on file. He told me the same yarn only . . .' Pearce paused and scratched the top of his head.

  'Well?' Minchin asked impatiently. 'Were you satisfied with Joss's replies or not?'

  'Not,' Pearce said without hesitation. 'But I couldn't put a finger on what was wrong. Perhaps nothing was. It could have been he just didn't like talking to the police. Several members of his family have got form.'

  Minchin showed interest. 'Like?'

  'Oh, like drunk and disorderly, assault, handling stolen goods, poaching, street-trading without a licence. All small-time stuff. Kenny hasn't any record though. Kenny's clean.'

  'Possibly. Then he's got nothing to worry about. But he was worried, you reckon. What made you so sure?'

  'The dog,' said Pearce. He explained.

  Minchin listened, rubbing his chin thoughtfully, his sharp gaze fixed on Pearce's face as he spoke. When Pearce came to the end, he fancied Minchin's expression had changed slightly and his manner mellowed.

  Minchin said quietly, 'That's good.' The praise was unexpected and Pearce felt absurdly pleased.

  T think,' Minchin said, 'Mickey Hayes will pay a visit to Kenny Joss. He knows you. He knows how to deal with you - no criticism implied. But he knows what to expect from you, right?'

  'Yes, I suppose he does,' admitted Pearce.

  'But he doesn't,' Minchin smiled slowly and unpleasantly, 'know what to expect from Mickey.' After a moment's silence, he added, 'But then, none of you knows what to expect from either of us, do you?'

  'No, sir,' Pearce said.

  Minchin stared at him for a moment. Then he said briskly, 'Well, you'll want to go along to Mr Markby's office and fill him in on latest developments, I expect.'

  To his dismay Pearce felt himself reddening again.

  'Don't worry about it,' Minchin said bluntly. 'If I were Markby, I'd be doing the same, making sure I got to hear what was going on. I've no objection to you telling him. Just so long as you don't tell him things you haven't told me, get it?'

  'Yes, sir.' Pearce was on his way to the door when Minchin spoke again.

  'You know why we're here?'

  ANN GRANGER

  'Yes,' Pearce said unwillingly, turning. 'Because Mr Markby has a personal involvement with Fourways.'

  'Not only Mr Markby. You're all too close, all of you. Even your poison expert and his family are involved, Mr Markby's ladyfriend . . . the whole thing's bordering on the incestuous. Don't look so ruddy shocked, Dave. You know what I mean. And you should know that's dangerous because you all see what you expect to see. You look at two respectable women in their eighties, bit on the posh side for all they're skint. Old local family. Ladies, eh? Not women. Ladies. You respect them. You feel sorry for them. You treat them with kid gloves. Before you say anything, neither Mickey Hayes nor I are going to upset them needlessly. But we've got no preconceptions, right? To us, they're just two material witnesses. It would even be fair to say, they're a couple of suspects.'

  'I don't - ' Pearce began and broke off. More carefully, he said, T think it's unlikely.'

  'Unlikely things happen all the time, Dave. How long have you been a bloody copper?'
/>
  Stung, Pearce said, 'We're not rustics. We're not a bunch of village idiots.'

  'Perish the thought, Dave. I can see you're a bright boy. If you're ever interested in transferring to the Met, you let me know.'

  'You're not thinking of it?' Tessa, Pearce's still fairly new wife, asked, appalled.

  'Transferring to the Met? Not likely. Still, you should have seen his face when he heard I'd beaten them to Newman!' Pearce said with satisfaction.

  'You be careful, Dave. I mean, watch out for Newman. He'll still be here when Minchin has gone. Dudley Newman's got a lot of influence hereabouts.' She began carefully slicing a purple object which Pearce was unable to identify but suspected he was later to eat.

  T am investigating a murder!' he told her. 'They may have taken Mr Markby off this case but I'm still on it and I'm not going to be pushed around. What are we having to eat, anyway? What's that?' He pointed at the purple vegetable.

  'Honestly, Dave, you must be the only person left in the country who can't tell an aubergine when he sees one.'

  'I'm not a cook, am I?' Pearce defended himself. 'And my dad never grew anything like that in his garden.'

  SHADES OF MURDER

  'Your dad didn't - doesn't - live in a nice hot climate. Anyway, the only things he grows are carrots. It's a wonder your whole family hasn't turned orange. You can, you know, if you eat too many carrots. I read it in a magazine. I'm making moussaka. We had it the last time we went to the Greek restaurant and you said you liked it.'

  'I did like it. I didn't know that was in it.'

  'Well, now you do.' Tessa tipped the aubergine slices into a colander and shook salt over them. She placed a plate on top of them and weighted that with a can of soup. Pearce watched all this, opened his mouth, thought better of it and closed it again.

  'What are they like?' asked Tessa. 'These two London men?'

  'Sharp. Minchin is a bully and Hayes is a weasel.' He told her the nicknames the canteen had bestowed on the pair.

  Tessa giggled. 'You tell Mr Markby that?'

  'No. I might if things get really bad. I'm sort of saving it up.'

  'It's still my show and I'm still in charge at Regional HQ, even if I have been relegated to the sidelines in this case,' said Alan Markby grumpily.

  'Don't let it get you down,' advised Meredith. She suppressed a sigh. There were no words of comfort she could offer that she hadn't already spoken. Alan had taken up his position. He wasn't going to let it go. But hadn't he said that to her recently in another context? He didn't let things go. Though she knew it was useless, she repeated, 'You mustn't take it to heart so much. It's no reflection on you. It's entirely due to circumstances.'

  A fine set of platitudes, she thought, as she heard herself roll them out. It wasn't surprising they weren't having the desired effect. She was beginning to suspect nothing would. He was entrenched now in the role of a man hard done by. She was genuinely sympathetic but on the other hand, she didn't see why she should bear the brunt of what was developing into an out-and-out sulk. This, she told herself, is all part and parcel of sharing your life with someone, sharing a roof. Once I could have slipped away now, gone back to my own home and returned here when he was feeling more cheerful.

  'Look here,' she said more forcefully, 'it's no use letting it blight your life!' (And mine!) 'You can't do anything about it and you're just going to have to put up with it. It isn't the end of the world, for goodness sake.'

  He leaned towards her, chin jutting, eyes a-gleam with outrage. 'It's an insult to my officers. The last thing we need is advice from the Met.

  ANN GRANGER

  You've seen Minchin and Hayes. Talk about fish out of water. But I've got Dave Pearce in there keeping an eye on things and reporting back to me. If Minchin thinks he's going to conduct a Met-style operation in Bamford. he's got another think coming. We don't conduct investigations here by hanging round seedy pubs talking to dubious grasses.' Markby ignored the fact that Minchin's visit to The Feathers had yielded more than Pearce's earlier one had done. He concluded his highly unfair description of Metropolitan Police methods with, 'And tomorrow morning he wants to call round and talk to you.'

  'What, here?" Meredith was taken aback.

  T warned you he'd want to talk to you.' Was she imagining it or did he sound distinctly smug? 'It's either here or you can come in and have a heart-to-heart with him in the interview room.'

  'So you suggested he came here?'

  'No, as a matter of fact, he suggested he came here. You'd prefer it, wouldn't you?'

  T don't know,' said Meredith. T talked to Jan here and look what happened.'

  'Just don't serve Minchin any of your chocolate cakes. All right!' Markby held up placatory hands. 'It was a joke.'

  'Glad to see you've still got your sense of humour!' she retorted.

  The doorbell rang the following morning at ten-thirty sharp. Meredith opened it. On the doorstep stood a hulking figure in a pale-grey suit teamed today with a lime-green shirt and yellow tie with squiggles on it. 'Doug Minchin, you remember me?' His tone was affable but his small sharp eyes as cold as ever.

  'Of course I remember you,' said Meredith. 'How could I forget? Come in.' She peered past him. 'No Inspector Hayes?'

  Minchin manoeuvred his bulk into the hall. 'He's checking out a few things for me." As he spoke, he was looking around him in frank appraisal.

  Jan had done the same thing but somehow, Meredith minded more this time. Alan was not much concerned about the appearance of his home. For him it had always been a place where he kept his belongings and slept. Since she'd moved in she'd made minor improvements but the whole place still looked as if it had been furnished by the Salvation Army. Jan's opinion hadn't mattered, but Minchin's did. It was bad enough that Alan felt displaced by Minchin, without Minchin going awa and telling everyone in London that she and Alan lived in a rundown house with rundown furnishings and an I-don't-care look to it.

  SHADES OF MURDER

  'Are you comfortable in my cottage?' she asked with some asperity.

  'Very nice,' said Minchin. He sat down uninvited in the stronger-looking of the two mismatched easy chairs.

  'We're planning to sell both houses, mine and this one, and buy a bigger place.' Meredith found herself speaking defensively.

  'How are property prices?' asked Minchin unexpectedly.

  'Around here? Quite high. That is, for anywhere decent.'

  'A place like Fourways, then, where the murder took place, that would fetch a good price?'

  Meredith eyed Minchin with greater respect. This wasn't a man who wasted time on idle conversation. 'Fourways is in a dreadful state and it probably wouldn't attract anyone.' She hesitated. 'A local builder, Dudley Newman, is interested in the land. He wants to build several houses on it.'

  Minchin leaned back, pursed his thin lips and said, 'Yeah, I've heard about him.' He glanced round the room. 'This where you and Jan Oakley had your tea-party?'

  'Yes,' said Meredith, 'though I'd hardly call it that. It wasn't my idea. I invited him just to help out.'

  'Whose idea was it?' Minchin turned his hard gaze on her.

  Uncomfortably, she said, 'Juliet Painter's. She thought I might be able to influence him. She only thought that,' Meredith added hastily, 'because I'm a Foreign Office official.'

  'Are you, indeed?' said Minchin deflatingly. 'And was he influenced by you?'

  'Not a bit,' she said, trying to ignore the sarcasm in his voice. T suggested to him that his cousins were poor and that to try and get money from them was unfair. He said he'd no intention of doing any such thing. I'm not quoting exactly but that was the gist of it.'

  'I've read the file,' said Minchin. 'I sat up till one this morning studying it, in fact. It seems he was very keen to get his hands on a share of any money from the sale of the house. He was talking legal action. Some story about a will.'

  'None of us has seen this will,' Meredith said. 'Or at least, not the copy of the original made at the
time it was drawn up and which Jan reckons he found among the family papers. Some people have seen what he claimed was a certified translation. I didn't even see that.'

  'Probably the so-called original doesn't exist.' Minchin's voice was off-hand. 'The thing is, he came here and he told you he'd changed his mind. Did you believe him?'

  ANN GRANGER

  'No,' she said frankly. 'But once he'd said it, it left me nothing more to say to him. I told you, he wasn't influenced by me. He outmanoeuvred me.'

  Minchin rubbed his chin with his thumbnail. 'Did you like him?'

  'No,' said Meredith forcefully. 'No one did. He was a creep.'

  Minchin stared at her. *Let his hand wander to your knee, by any chance?'

  Aware that her face gave her away, Meredith was forced to admit, 'He got the wrong idea and I told him to go. He went."

  If Minchin dared to make one even faintly facetious remark... but he didn't.

  'This Jan didn't make himself any friends. Bet you a pound to a penny he was as much a loner at home in Poland as he was here. You never know with loners.' Minchin's tone had become reminiscent. 'They tend to have hobbies and I don't just mean stamp-collecting. They often see themselves as rejected by the world, so the world is wrong. Sometimes they get the idea to put it right in a big way, all by themselves. All of them, or nearly all, believe they're entitled to something better. Sometimes they get the notion that this "something better" is out there, almost within reach, but they're stopped from getting their hands on it by a conspiracy of other people. See what I'm getting at?'

  'Yes, I do,' said Meredith.

  'We had a fax from the Polish Embassy this morning. He's got no police record. Seems he spent a blameless life grooming horses down on some stud farm.'

  'Grooming? He told me he was a vet.'

  'Well, he would, wouldn't he?' returned Minchin.