by J M Gregson
‘What kind of car, Wayne?’
‘I don’t know. It was dark and I only saw it side-on as it passed.’ It was suddenly important to him to convince them of the detail of this. ‘Dark colour, I think. Not silver or white, anyway.’
‘You must have listened hard when you were about to break and enter. Did the car drive on, until it was out of earshot?’
‘No.’ Wayne, frowning with concentration, felt a swift wave of excitement sweep over him as he realized what he was going to say. ‘No, it stopped quite quickly. Turned into one of the houses further down the road and switched off.’
‘How far down the road?’
He shook his head in frustration that he couldn’t be precise. Despite his low-key questioning, the PC Plod detective was excited, and Wayne had caught some of that excitement himself. ‘I couldn’t say. They’re big houses, with quite a distance between them.’
‘So it could have been two houses away from you?’ Hook was leading the witness, but this wasn’t a court of law.
Wayne shivered suddenly; it surprised him more than them. ‘It could have been, yes. I was just happy that it was well away from me. I listened for a minute, to make sure of that. I suppose I thought it was just someone coming home.’
‘Think hard, Wayne. Did you hear that vehicle again? Did you hear it drive away?’
‘No. I was doing the house over after that. Perhaps twenty minutes. Maybe even a bit longer. I didn’t hear any other vehicle sounds. I didn’t hear your blokes drive into the road, but they were waiting for me at the gates.’
Hook glanced at Rushton to convey that he didn’t think there was anything more to be had from this wretched, frightened figure. The DI said, ‘I hope for your sake that everything you’ve said is genuine, Mr Johnson. As regards your burglary, you may expect be charged and released within an hour, once your brief arrives. Let us hope that we have made an arrest for the homicide committed close to where you were last night by the time your case is heard. That would enable us to assure the court that you gave us every assistance with a more serious crime.’
In the end, it was Sue Charles who offered comfort to Edwina Preston.
She saw her first in the car park behind the supermarket, when she was preparing to do her weekly shop. Edwina was sitting quietly behind the wheel of her car. She did not appear shocked or even surprised. She simply looked as if her thoughts were elsewhere. Like someone listening to music on the radio or CD, perhaps, thought Sue. She did that herself sometimes, when there was an aria or the movement of a symphony she wanted to hear to its end. Buying for one did not take very long. Sue emerged with her purchases within ten minutes, which included the two when she had been queuing at the till. She would buy vegetables and her first strawberries of the year from Percy at the little greengrocer’s on the high street. She liked to support his stubborn resistance to the march of the supermarkets. She’d seen his little notice with its flying apostrophes as she drove past.
Edwina was still sitting in the driving seat of her car, with exactly the same abstracted, unseeing expression. Sue hesitated for a moment, then went over to the little dark green Fiat. She put on a cheerful smile and waved at Edwina from the front of the car. The face behind the wheel started violently, apparently did not recognize her for a moment, then smiled weakly. Sue opened the door of the car. ‘Are you all right, Edwina? I saw you before I went into the supermarket.’ As if that explained everything, she thought stupidly.
Edwina nodded slowly. Then she shook her head vigorously. ‘Peter’s dead.’
‘Good heavens! Are you sure?’ Sue realized how stupid that sounded and took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, of course you are. I think you should come home with me for coffee. You shouldn’t be on your own at a time like this.’
Edwina said dully, ‘I told them I was going to my daughter’s. But I suppose I knew I wasn’t, really.’
Sue was still stooping awkwardly beside the open window of the car. ‘You need someone to talk to. You can come with me in my car, if you like, and I’ll drive you back later.’
‘No, I can drive. You lead the way and I’ll follow you.’
Sue felt relieved about that. She’d be able to send Edwina on her way without the awkward business of driving a distraught woman back to this car park at some unspecified time later in the day.
But Edwina Preston did not seem to be distraught. She drove perfectly competently behind Sue’s Fiesta, indicating each turn in good time and keeping just the right distance behind her Samaritan. She even chose to reverse into the entrance to Sue’s bungalow, as if seeking to prove how competent and unshaken she was. Sue waited patiently for her to complete the manoeuvre, then put a motherly arm around the younger woman’s shoulders and led her gently into her home.
Edwina stood behind her in the kitchen whilst she boiled the water and made the instant coffee. To Sue’s surprise, she picked up the tray with the two china beakers and the biscuits and carried it into the cosy sitting room, careful as a child not to spill the liquid, the tip of her tongue wedged at the corner of her mouth and her eyes firmly upon the task in hand.
She must be around forty-five now, Sue calculated, though she looked understandably older at this moment. She was certainly quite a few years younger than Peter. Edwina had been in the sixth form and at university with her own daughter. That must be a quarter of a century ago now, though it seemed much less to Sue. She hadn’t seen much of her over the last few years; she fancied that was because Peter Preston hadn’t wanted it, after Sue’s successes as a crime novelist and emergence as a minor local celebrity. Peter wasn’t the sort of man who rejoiced in other people’s successes.
Edwina sipped her coffee and munched a biscuit very slowly. After a few minutes, Sue said awkwardly, ‘It must have come very suddenly. Was it a heart attack?’
‘What? Oh no, nothing like that. I’d been away overnight, you see.’ She spoke as if that explained the whole business, then said nothing more for almost half a minute. Sue was wondering how she could prompt her to reveal more when she said suddenly, ‘I believe someone killed him.’ She sat with her head on one side for a moment, then added with apparent satisfaction, ‘That’s what the police think, anyway. They said I couldn’t go into the house yet. Said it was a crime scene.’
Sue Charles felt a little thrill of excitement. This would be her first real murder, when she’d created so many fictional ones. And the victim was someone who had derided her skills as a writer; there was something very satisfying about that, however much she might be occupied with ministrations to the sad figure in front of her. ‘Did they give you any clear idea of what had happened?’
‘No. They spoke as if there might have been an accident, at first. But when I asked questions about it, the young policewoman talked abut a suspicious death. That means they think someone killed him, doesn’t it?’
‘It does usually, yes.’ It would be three o’clock soon. Sue wanted to put the radio station on to see what, if anything, the police had released about this, but she couldn’t do that with Preston’s widow sitting very upright upon her sofa. ‘Sometimes after investigation the police realize there is a more innocent explanation, of course.’
Edwina Preston nodded. ‘They won’t do that this time, though. Someone killed Peter, I’m sure. I wonder who it could be. He had a lot of enemies, you know.’
Sue Charles would recall those words many times, in the days to come. They should have been chilling, but she found in them a kind of comfort.
TWELVE
It took no more than an hour to set the machinery of a serious crime investigation in place. The house to house trawl of people in this area might throw up nothing, or it might provide the most vital clue of all in establishing who had been in the area at the time of the killing. It was dull, necessary and expensive in terms of manpower. Uniformed officers had to be recruited and put fully in the picture; that was a fact accepted with weary resignation and a few routine groans about the demands of CID by the sections
losing staff.
To make sure this expensive team operated with maximum efficiency, the officers, some of them junior and inexperienced, had to be properly briefed. The procedure of house to house and other routine checks was simple enough, but the important thing was to provide officers with the correct questions. The place of the death was obvious and the method was clear, so where and how the victim had died were already evident. When the crime had taken place was now the most pressing question, if the team was to channel its questioning towards the key element in a killing.
Whilst Rushton and Hook were exploiting the windfall that was Wayne Johnson, Lambert received the call he was waiting for, telling him the pathologist was at the scene of the crime. He drove swiftly out again to The Avenue and the big mock-Tudor house. There were already a couple of journalists and a photographer outside the gates of The Willows. He wondered who had told them about this. Possibly one of the neighbouring householders, but in this case far more likely one of the police personnel at Oldford. It was almost impossible to prevent police officers from making easy money by unofficial leaks nowadays. As in other areas of life, professional pride was not what it had been when he joined the service.
He told himself he must behave like a modern chief superintendent and not an old fogey as he went into the house and watched the team at work. They were entirely civilian now, though he recognized a couple of ex-coppers amongst them and knew that the photographer was almost exclusively employed by the police. The ‘meat wagon’ van was parked discreetly at the side of the house, awaiting the go-ahead to remove its grisly cargo for the post-mortem examination.
Lambert didn’t speak to the pathologist until the man had completed his work and finished speaking into the mouthpiece that would record his immediate impressions at the scene as a prelude to the more detailed and scientific dissection to come. Rectal temperatures and the examination of intimate areas always felt like an invasion of privacy to John Lambert, even though a corpse could no longer register such violations. Humanity lost all dignity in death; it was inevitable, but depressing nonetheless. He was pleased that he still found it so after thirty years. A man had to cling to his humanity when he spent his life among such things.
The pathologist was a slight man with red hair and a tightly clipped red beard. He had neat, quick hands and an intensity that reflected his concentration on whatever task was before him at the time. Lambert had once asked him whether with such skills he wouldn’t prefer to be a surgeon, and been told that pathology was the most satisfying surgery of all. You could carry your search for answers and the truth to the ultimate, in a way not possible when you had the tiresome issue of preserving human life as your priority.
The pathologist glanced up at the detective’s patient, expectant face. ‘He was killed at close quarters by a firearm. Shot twice, almost in the same place, so presumably in quick succession. No suicide note?’
‘No. And no sign of whatever weapon killed him.’
‘Then you must presume that this was murder or manslaughter. Anyone in mind yet?’
‘No. His wife was away overnight.’
The medic smiled at the CID presumption that the next of kin must always be considered the first candidate for murder. ‘We should find the bullet when we cut him up. Give you a chance to match it with the weapon.’
‘Which is probably at the bottom of a river or under tons of concrete by now.’ Lambert grinned sourly. ‘You know what I’m going to ask you next.’
The bearded one’s grin was as acrid as the policeman’s. ‘Time of death. And I’m going to tell you that I’ll have a better idea after I’ve cut him up and done my work in the lab.’
Both of them glanced automatically towards what had so lately been a living, breathing man and was now just meat and bone, waiting to be butchered and analysed. ‘Give me some idea. You’re not going to be held to it in a court of law.’
‘I’d say he’s been dead fifteen hours at least.’
‘Last night, then. Some time during the evening rather than in the small hours of today.’
The thin face winced at such speculation. ‘Try to find when he ate his last meal. If you can give me that, I’ll give you a more accurate time of death when I analyse the stomach contents. We’ll give the autopsy priority. No problem with a suspicious death.’
Lambert thanked him and walked into the hall of the house. The scene of crime team had collected various items, principally from the room where the body had fallen and the study upstairs where Preston had spent most of his time. ‘We’ve got prints from the back door handle,’ said the man in charge. ‘Probably they’re just from the occupants of the house, but we’ll need to match up in due course.’
Lambert drove thoughtfully back into Oldford. He was already fairly certain that Preston had been killed at some time on the previous evening or in the early hours of the night. When he entered the CID section, he had his first piece of positive encouragement from DI Rushton. It had come from a man who was about to be charged with breaking and entering. It was the first useful by-product of petty crime that Rushton could recall. A black or dark-coloured car had driven into The Avenue and possibly to the house of the murder at a crucial late evening time.
It should have been exciting, but Ros Barker found herself unable to concentrate upon the work in hand.
She and Kate were deciding which pictures to select for the exhibition in Cheltenham. Ros had already settled on the major ones, which would be in the most eye-catching positions as people entered the gallery. Harry Barnard had been an invaluable guide to commercial considerations in that. But there were still another twenty smaller paintings to be selected for display. The choosing of them should have been a pleasurable task.
But Kate Merrick had done their shopping in Oldford and come back with the news that the high street there was buzzing with rumours. A major crime, apparently, with extra police being mustered to make up the team of investigators. A local sensation in prospect; such dramatic outrages were to be expected in Gloucester and Hereford and Cheltenham, and all kinds of things went on in the major city of Bristol to the south, but they were almost unheard of in sleepy Oldford. It was merely a historical convenience that a major police centre had been established in Oldford, a happy accident that the now nationally famous Detective Chief Superintendent John Lambert should be a local.
To have a gory crime on even the outskirts of the town would be a splendid bonus for most residents of this normally peaceful, even sleepy, rural area. And if the victim at the centre of all this excitement should turn out to be a local celebrity, that would be bliss indeed. There was a good chance of that, for the centre of the investigation was rumoured to be The Avenue.
Kate Merrick was a local, and a very human one. She brought a little of the excitement that was building in Oldford back to the studio with her. Ros Barker, as the older and senior of the partners, tried to pour the appropriate cold water upon such gossip. But she was thirty, not seventy, and the sight of an animated Kate, with her fair skin flushed and her kittenish features so animated beneath her dishevelled fair hair, brought feelings of pleasure rather than irritation to her.
And both of them knew very well who lived in The Avenue, though for some curious reason neither of them chose at this moment to mention it.
Ros listened to the news of the gossip as it poured from her excited partner, made her ritual protest, then settled for running her fingers down the back of the tremulous Kate, feeling the vertebrae and the active muscles around them as Kate said, ‘A strangling, that boy in the butcher’s said. Someone else came in and said they’d heard it was a whole family. I do hope there aren’t any children mixed up in it.’
‘Mmmm!’
‘And you can stop that maternal stuff immediately.’ But she didn’t move.
‘Mmmm! It isn’t maternal.’
‘But you can stop it nonetheless. Work first, play later.’
‘Mmmm! Promise?’
Kate scrambled hastily away fro
m her partner and on to her feet. ‘Why does the young one always have to provide the work ethic round here?’
‘I suppose because I’ve always responded to discipline. When it comes in your shape, it’s positively irresistible. The more you accuse me of being an idle old trollop, the more I like it. I suppose I’m just a helpless decadent in my private life, the way all good artists are.’
‘Good artists who are idle never became successful ones. And I want you to be successful, Ros. Don’t ever have the illusion that I’m with you for your art. You need big money to keep me around and don’t you forget it.’
She dodged a half-hearted attempt by Ros to recapture her kitten and they set about selecting which pictures should be among the privileged twenty to be displayed in the Barnard gallery at Cheltenham. Half an hour later it was Kate who said, ‘I think this one should go in, Ros. It’s different from the others.’
It was a nude of Kate lying on the sofa on which they sat every day, but with a light blue drape beneath her. There was a window frame beside her, with a cat, which was not at all kittenish, looking in with bared fangs. A representative of the dangerous world outside, which always threatens the innocence that blooms in privacy, the blurb for the exhibition would explain.
‘You sure?’ It was one of Ros’s own favourites, but too personal for her to be able to say objectively whether or not it was one of her best. ‘People will recognize you, you know.’
‘You always said that wasn’t a consideration, that art comes first and overrides such petit bourgeois considerations.’
‘Did I?’ But of course she knew she had; she could almost hear her own voice saying it, in her most sententious vein. ‘Well, it seems different when it’s personal. It’s an invasion of intimacy. At least you should be consulted before being displayed in all your naked glory.’
‘How very petit bourgeois! When I was looking forward to all my teachers and the poor sods who used to try to be my boyfriends seeing me tits and all!’