“Excellent!” Martin rubbed his hands. “Now I’ve got a batch of material here to run through. You’ll have to share the music until I get all the copies made, but that should be by the next rehearsal. Most of the songs will be familiar to you.”
Adam grew in confidence as the person he was sharing music with flicked through it. A number of songs he already knew pretty well by heart, while a few—like “Bread and Roses”—wouldn’t need much practice to be word perfect.
“Let’s start with ‘One,’” Martin said brightly, and the pianist launched into the familiar introduction from A Chorus Line.
At the end of the song, the sound of the church door opening caught everyone’s attention.
“Sorry I’m late,” the newcomer announced. “Saw the call for volunteers via my brother’s rugby club. Didn’t have a chance to make contact before now. Have I missed out?”
Everyone waited for Martin to answer, but he seemed to have turned speechless. Adam knew he was a stickler for punctuality, parish gossip reckoning that the only time the man lost his temper was when people turned up late for rehearsals. Probably this bloke rocking up forty minutes late and strolling in like he owned the place had put the choirmaster’s nose out of joint. Eventually it was the pianist who suggested that the latecomer slip in at the end of the row and simply join in.
“We can take your details at the end.” He turned to give Martin an encouraging glance and let his hands hover over the keys, awaiting instructions.
“‘Bread and Roses,’ please, Jonny.” Martin raised his hands, closing his eyes briefly as the introduction began.
As they sang, Adam noticed that the choirmaster remained slightly on edge, and that he didn’t bother to slip across to listen to the new arrival’s voice. Perhaps he’d decided to give the bloke the heave-ho quietly at the end of the evening, as a point of principle. If you couldn’t keep to time, by the musical beat or by the clock, Martin wouldn’t want you in his choir. At least one person at the church had fallen foul of that dictum. The bloke concerned didn’t seem that bothered about any fuss he’d caused, joining in the singing with gusto in a pleasant tenor voice.
“Look at that pair,” the singer next to Adam whispered. “Our newcomer’s giving the choirmaster the glad eye.”
“You could be right.” Understandable, though. Martin wasn’t a bad-looking bloke if you liked them scrawny.
The choir sang for over an hour, running through most of the planned programme for the concert, and at the point voices were starting to feel the strain, Martin called it a day.
“Well done. I’d say this session’s been a great success. I’m already confident that the performance will be a credit to us all. On the evening itself, we’re leaving space in the programme for a set from a local band who’ve expressed interest in helping. They’ve got quite a big fan base, which should boost ticket sales. Give us a rest midway through, as well.” He confirmed arrangements for the next session, then started to pack up his stuff.
Adam lingered to help put everything away, as they didn’t want to incur the wrath of the flower ladies who’d expect the church to be left spick-and-span. He also helped encourage people to leave—gossip groups were already forming, and he had to subtly suggest to them that if they wanted to chat, they should do it in the car park as the church needed to be locked up soon. The guy who’d been last in had been noticeably first to leave. By the time Adam had ushered the last of them out, with Campbell acting as his wingman, Martin was coming down the aisle, studying the contact list, which he then folded and placed in his jacket pocket.
“Lights off?” Adam asked.
“Please. I’ll need to get my keys. Hidden down the bottom of my briefcase as usual.”
As they stood in the porch, both of them ensuring the door was secured, Martin said, “I know teachers are ridiculously busy, but would you have an hour or two tomorrow evening where we can go through some planning stuff? Like suggestions about names or a proper set order for the concert?”
Adam thought of refusing, but that would be both oversensitive and un-Christian. He wasn’t the one Martin was supposed to fancy, so surely this wasn’t an attempt at a date, and anyway he would have the dog present to act as chaperone. Campbell’s slobbery chops poking themselves in Martin’s face would act as a real passion killer if needed. As a project, this was for an admirable cause, one Robin would support, and it would keep him from being bored or mopey. He should be grateful to be able to pass the evening so constructively—watching sport on the telly curled up on the sofa with Campbell for company used to be fine in the pre-Robin days, but it had lost its appeal.
“Okay. At mine? Then I don’t have to worry about Campbell being alone and fretting.”
“Is Robin still away?” Martin was clearly trying to hide his disappointment if the answer was “yes”.
“I’m afraid so. Did you know he’s at Hartwood?” Adam wasn’t surprised at Martin’s startled reaction to the name. “Yes, the same place as the bloke we’re fundraising for. There was a murder that night at the club, and the officer investigating it’s been taken ill.”
“So, they called in the cavalry?” Martin patted Campbell’s head. “You’ll be missing your dad. Want me to pick up fish and chips on the way tomorrow?”
“Are you asking him or me? He’d lick you to death for a portion of pea fritter.” Cod and chips would make the evening bearable, though.
Martin laughed. “Sounds like a done deal.” He headed off down the path, Adam and dog in tow, but as they reached the car park, he said, “This murder business. If a member of the public were to come across anything relevant, it would be their duty to take it to the police, wouldn’t it?”
Where was this leading? “As I understand it, yes. A moral duty, anyway. I think it’s only where it concerns child protection that you get into the legal-duty area. Mind you, Robin would say that he’d want to hear about anything, whether members of the public think it’s relevant or not. The police build up the bigger picture and can work out what fits and what doesn’t. Why do you ask?”
“Just something I came across. I’ll sleep on it.” With that enigmatic statement and an uneasy smile, Martin gave Adam a nod and made for his car.
As they drove home, Adam couldn’t get the conversation out of his mind. Had Martin’s awkwardness been to do with the latecomer or concern with the murder, and what inside knowledge did he want to share?
“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow, eh, boy?” he asked Campbell, but the only response he got were gentle canine snores.
Some of the team were out when Robin got back on Tuesday afternoon and others had appointments scheduled first thing the next morning, so he organised a team briefing for later than usual on Wednesday. That would give him the chance to update Superintendent Betteridge with the slight progress they’d made. He didn’t have the chance to talk to Pru about what he’d learned, as she was taking the opportunity to catch up with an old mate who lived in the area. He found a note on his desk from Sally, who said she’d been in touch with Melanie and confirmed that Nick had a low libido. Robin felt some relief at that—he didn’t want life replicating the television cliché of the quiltbag character always being the victim or the killer. He went to add that detail to the incident board, but Sally had already done so. At a loose end, he decided there was nothing for it but to go back to the hotel, get dinner, watch a bit of telly, attack his emails, and generally have a miserable time of it.
The next morning’s skies were bright, the weather lifting Robin’s spirits as much as the prospect of a better day ahead.
The meeting with Betteridge started in a more positive manner than expected. He gave her a full update, then waited to get the hurry up speech.
Instead, she said, “Don’t beat yourselves up. You’ve only been on the case a couple of days and the potential link of Osment to the vandalism is a step further forward than any the team managed with Robertson at the helm. That’s not me knocking him, by the way, because he
’s a good officer, but I wonder if that bloody appendix was niggling and pulling him down for weeks.”
“Could be.” Robin should have been pleased with her confidence in him, but he still felt dissatisfied. How good it would have been to have offered his old boss some really tangible progress on the case. Although maybe that wouldn’t have been politic: turning up and finding a solution almost instantly would have smacked of showing that the local force couldn’t do their job properly. Probably best that it was taking a few days to bring this to a close. Irrespective of how every night away from home—had there only been two of them?—was absolute torture.
“How’s the county lines stuff going?”
Betteridge rolled her eyes. “Glacially slow, although I think we’re making some progress. Shame I can’t clone you to work with me as well as on the murder.”
“Leave off, boss. Adam will give you a rollicking for making my head swell.”
Once it was time for the briefing, Robin started by thanking everyone for the effort they’d put in so far, then he asked Callum to talk hoodies. The constable said he’d been early that morning to Melanie’s flat to pick up all three of Nick Osment’s hooded tops.
“She said she wasn’t sure which top he’d been wearing the evening he’d gone out for a run and supposedly fallen over, but the fact one had a rip up the back narrowed the field. I took them all, anyway, to be on the safe side. It’ll take a while for the forensics team to make a comparison, but the odds seem good on linking the bloke to the vandalism. Or at least to his clambering over the fence at some point.”
“Good work. Anything turn up out of the bin bag?”
Sally shared a glance with Laurence, conveying her disgust at the task they’d had to do. “Nothing that seemed relevant, sir.”
“Thanks for doing it, anyway. If that’s the nastiest job you’re faced with in your career, you can count yourself lucky.” He studied the incident board, where a picture of the groundsman had been added. “I spoke to Weatherell’s mate Archie last night, and he backs up the story. He knew he’d rung on that Wednesday because he’d been to the co-op on the way home and got a lottery ticket for the midweek draw. He didn’t win.”
“Could he pin the time down?” Pru asked.
“Yes. He said it must have been around half past seven, because he had the Channel Four news on the telly. He particularly remembered that because they’d featured an article about an army wives choir who were putting on a concert. Seems like everyone’s doing that to fundraise.” Robin pressed on, aware that Adam had come to the forefront of his mind. “Archie says they broke into a song that used to be one of his wife’s favourites and he’d had to put the call on hold and turn the box off.”
“That fixes the time, but does it fix the place?” Laurence pointed out. “If Weatherell was on his mobile, he could have been at the clubhouse.”
“He could. But Archie rang him on his landline; the call was completed somewhere between twenty and quarter to eight and it takes half an hour to get to the ground from his house. He couldn’t have killed Osment, then gone home because that would have been too early and he couldn’t have had the call and gone to the ground because that would have been too late. Another person with an alibi for the time of death. If I were ultra-suspicious, I’d be having kittens about that. Oh wait,” Robin rolled his eyes, “I am ultra-suspicious.”
“It sounds like one of those Agatha Christie books,” Sally said. “Everyone in it together and covering up for each other.”
Laurence snorted. “That’s not what you said before, about a conspiracy theory too far. Are you changing your tune and suggesting they set up everything and it’ll turn out that Greg’s injury was faked as well?”
“I don’t mean that at all.” Flashes of scarlet flared on Sally’s cheeks. “I only said it sounded like something Hercule Poirot would investigate. Not realistic.”
“We’re all getting rather worked up here,” Robin said, in as soothing a voice as he could muster. “I don’t think a mass conspiracy is likely—not least because the more people involved in covering something up, the greater chance there’ll be a weak link who’ll give it all away. Anyway, I’m not sure you’d get the little inconsistencies in the statements right, unless they’re all bloody clever. But”—he raised his finger—“don’t discount the notion that there’s been collaboration between people, before or after the event.”
Duly chastened, Laurence folded his arms and clearly tried not to scowl. The effect was comical rather than threatening: he’d have to learn how to develop a better “hard man” persona.
Robin pressed on. “Sally, the darts team. Any progress with them?”
“Yes and no. I spoke to a couple of them, and they said they felt sorry for Osment. Reckoned his wife had led him a bit of a dance before they were married, knocking about with another bloke. One of the team said he wouldn’t be surprised if it carried on postnuptials. They didn’t have a name for the bloke concerned, but they thought he might have been a rugby player because he was supposed to be built like an outhouse. I mentioned it to Sergeant Davis, and we reckoned it was worth going to see Andy again rather than the coach. That’s where we were this morning.”
“That’s a brave call. Isn’t he likely to stick up for his mates?” Robin hoped Pru had thought that part through before dashing in. He needn’t have worried.
“We considered that, sir, and decided it was worth the risk. It struck me that he was a decent bloke who wanted to do the right thing. We went in soft, used the old gentle persuasion that if there was dobbing to be done, it was better for him to do it rather than us find out later that people had been keeping back relevant information and us being suspicious about why they’d done it.”
“So long as you didn’t use thumbscrews, I’m happy,” Robin said. Watching Pru at work with a witness would be a useful education for any of these young officers. Gentle persuasion, with the person being interviewed sometimes thinking it was all their idea in the first place to do what she wanted.
“Didn’t need them, sir. As I said, he’s fundamentally a nice bloke who’s found himself caught up in two horrible situations, and while I suspect he’d like time to rewind and everything to be made better, he’s pragmatic about what he needs to do. Even if it means snitching on his best mate.” Pru paused briefly while the penny dropped. “Yep. Big Dave. He and Melanie were going out before she met Nick. It ended when he met Kirsty, who’s now his wife. Andy reckons people have been saying the fling got reignited a year or so back, but he doesn’t know that for a fact, and frankly he doubts it. Says it would be out of character for Dave to carry on with a married woman.”
Is that wishful thinking on Andy’s part or a genuine comment on the man’s character? Big Dave who’d always protected him so couldn’t possibly do wrong. “We’ll have to ask them direct. Today, preferably. Play the old if it isn’t relevant to the case, it won’t come out card. Might be worth talking to Dawn too. She’ll know. Given that both Dave and Melanie seem to have unshakeable alibis, it’s not like coming clean about any affair is going to put them in the frame.”
“Sorry, sir, but is that necessarily so?” Callum’s hunched shoulders expressed his discomfort with challenging his superior officer. “Melanie’s alibi relies on her two mates, and we know how readily people cover for each other.”
Robin, always appreciative of where junior officers showed a touch of spark, said, “Agreed. Although remember that I said seem to have unshakeable alibis. I’ve not forgotten that Dave was last out of the dressing room and then first back in it with his pal Andy, so he had a small window of opportunity to commit the deed and then tidy up afterwards, with or without help. It’s always possible his mates are covering for him too, whether intentionally or subconsciously. Telling us he wasn’t there long enough to have killed Osment before emerging.”
“Also, he seems to have been avoiding going into the changing rooms until he was forced to do so.”
“Shame they don’t ha
ve working CCTV at the ground, sir,” Callum observed.
Robin agreed. “You’re right, there. Proper cameras, as opposed to dummy ones, could have provided the key piece of information we need. Now, remind me. Has anyone of the key players got a criminal record at all?”
Callum shook his head. “Dave got done for using his mobile at the wheel last year, but apart from that, it’s simply a case of a couple of them having points on their licences for speeding. Preese included.”
“What about the Tuckton Rugby Club angle? Any luck with that, Laurence?”
“Still pursuing it, sir. So far it seems like nobody kept in touch with Osment. Nobody admits to it, anyway. Builds up to the picture of him being unpopular and a bit of a troublemaker, though. Over fond of beer after the game.”
“Isn’t that true of all rugby players?” Sally snorted.
“Probably, but they usually have the sense not to drink four pints and then get in their car.” Laurence shuffled his notes. “I spoke to a guy this morning—Livingstone, team captain when Osment was playing there—who said he had a near miss once on the way home, nearly taking out a lamppost. After that Livingstone insisted that he get a lift to home games with a bloke called Howarth, who lived nearby and who was teetotal so happy to help. Do you think it’s worth talking to him, sir?”
“Why not? If they shared a car, they’d have chatted. Maybe Osment let something slip. Might be worth exploring that near miss he had too. Somebody might bear a grudge.” Robin jerked his thumb towards the door. “Pru, can you see if Melanie’s available to talk to us today? I’m going to ring Dave. The sooner we can see them, the less time they’ll have for getting suspicious about what we’re after and putting their stories aligned with each other.”
A Carriage of Misjustice Page 10