by J M Gregson
‘Will you be reading your own poetry?’
‘Not at the festival, no. I’ll be chairing one of the sessions. My friend Bob Crompton is coming down from Lancashire. I expect we’ll have a bit of fun stirring up the Oldford middle classes.’
‘I mustn’t miss that.’ Amy put her arms above her head and stretched again, touching the impressionable young man beside her from shoulder to calf, twitching her hip in a movement he was not sure was reflex or invitation.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ He wasn’t quite sure why he had said that. It came from some vague, unformulated compulsion to detach himself, to look at his relationship with Amy Proctor from beyond the limits of her highly desirable flesh.
She shifted her position and looked at him, her very blue eyes no more than six inches from his. ‘Tea was the last thing I had in mind, Sam Hilton. What happened to the view that
“In the spring a young man’s fancy
Lightly turns to thoughts of love”?’
Sam smiled back into the pretty, amused face. How red and moist her lips were, how wonderful her mouth was, when it rose at the corners like that. He said, ‘Old Browning knew a thing or two, didn’t he?’
She giggled outright now, a movement which made her body tremble against his at all the important points and caused him to forget about tea. Then she said, ‘It’s Tennyson, actually. Locksley Hall, I think.’
‘Just testing.’ Then they both dissolved into brief, helpless laughter and moved seamlessly into a renewal of their passion, which was intense enough to drive out all thoughts save gratification.
They had been lying sated and soundless for perhaps ten minutes and he was thinking that she might have fallen into a doze when she said, ‘Did you know this Peter Preston who’s been killed?’
Sam was suddenly wide awake, though he tried to keep his body motionless to disguise it. ‘Yes. He was on the festival committee with me. Annoying man, but I didn’t think anyone would want to bump him off.’ That curious, dated phrase seemed somehow to detach him from this death.
‘Suspicious death, the police say. That means he was murdered, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ He was silent for a long time before he nerved himself to say, ‘You couldn’t say you were here with me on Tuesday night, could you?’
He regretted it as soon as he’d said it. The silence that followed his request seemed to him to stretch for a long time. It was broken unexpectedly by the shrilling of his mobile phone on the bedside cabinet beside him. He picked it up and gave his name. A cool, impersonal voice said that Chief Superintendent Lambert, who was conducting the investigation into the death of Peter Preston, would like to speak to him in the morning at Oldford police station.
‘It’s good of you to see us as late in the day as this.’
Marjorie Dooks looked at the clock. It was just after eight o’clock. ‘As a former public servant myself, I should say that it’s noble of you to be working as late as this.’
Lambert gave her a thin smile, hoping it masked the fatigue he would once never have felt. ‘Murder overrides most of the rules. We try to push our enquiries forward as quickly as possible.’
‘Before the scents get cold? Before the people who were nearest to the victim have time to cover their tracks?’
This time it was DS Hook whose weather-beaten face creased into an understanding smile. ‘We find it best to gather as much of the routine information as quickly as we can. People’s memories are usually at their sharpest and most reliable when they are still close to the crime. Once we have assembled that information, we are in a better position to proceed. It is easier then to spot those areas which warrant further investigation.’
Marjorie nodded thoughtfully. ‘Assuming, of course, that everyone is telling you the truth.’
Lambert quickly forgot his tiredness as he studied the demeanour of this composed woman. They were in her sitting room, which exuded a quiet opulence. Nothing here was assertive, but nothing jarred with its surroundings. The green leather of the three-piece suite was echoed in the paler green of the walls, which were almost white but with the faint hint of colour which the seats and carpet demanded. The original painting of the view from the Worcester Beacon in the Malverns was by a respected local artist. The prints of the Alps and the Grampians were in matching expensive frames on the other walls. The Bang amp; Olufsen hi-fi and the flat-screen television in the corner were as muted as these modern necessities to the civilized life could ever be. They had already refused drinks from the discreet walnut cabinet in the opposite corner of the room.
He said, ‘Assuming that people are telling us the truth, as you say Mrs Dooks. Most people do, and when someone does not, it often becomes clear who that person is when we put everyone’s impressions together. That is another reason for seeing everyone who was close to the deceased as quickly as possible.’
‘I wouldn’t say I was close to Peter Preston, Mr Lambert. But that may well be why I was not one of your immediate priorities.’
So she’d been checking on whom they’d seen so far. Mere curiosity, or the self-interest of someone involved in this crime? Perhaps just the natural inclination of a woman who had got used to being in control during her professional life in the Civil Service and had since then carried that control into a more local setting. He said, ‘We usually see the widow first in cases like this, for the obvious reason that she should be the person who knew the victim best. She is also usually able to help us compile a list of other people we should see.’
‘So it was Edwina Preston who suggested you should quiz me about Peter.’
‘Your position as chair of the literature festival committee ensured that we would want to hear what you had to say about Mr Preston. In connection with which, I’m happy to be able to tell you that the matter of these threatening letters has now been resolved. There is no reason for you to have any fears on that score.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. I hope you didn’t think I was over-reacting when I contacted your wife about the one I received. I had no means of knowing at that time that I wasn’t the only recipient.’
He had the impression that she was enjoying this civilized, controlled verbal fencing. The thought irritated him, coming at the end of a day that had already been too long. ‘You didn’t over-react. It would have been better, indeed, if you had gone directly to the police at Oldford.’
‘Perhaps. My training induced me to try informal contacts before setting hares running. Have you arrested the culprit?’
‘I can’t see any reason why you should not know this: the culprit was Mr Preston himself. It was presumably some sort of tasteless joke on his part.’
‘Or a more malicious attempt to scare people like Sue Charles out of their wits.’
‘Possibly. It seems that now we shall never know. And we have to concern ourselves with the infinitely more serious matter of murder.’
‘Yes. One hears of people who make friends easily — I’ve even met one or two of them. Peter Preston was a man who made enemies easily. He seemed at times to go out of his way to do just that.’
Lambert smiled. ‘That is the impression DS Hook and I formed in our single twenty-minute meeting with him. Perhaps you could now give us some names from your more prolonged contact.’
‘I didn’t see him socially. Peter regarded most people round here as his cultural inferiors.’ For an instant, there was a hint of real resentment. Then she recovered herself and went on, ‘My experience of him was almost entirely confined to our exchanges within the literary committee. He did speak to me on the phone fairly frequently, but exclusively on matters that had been raised there. Frankly, he resented the fact that I was in the chair. He’d like to have been directing matters himself, preferably without a committee at all.’
‘Who do you think killed him?’
If he expected her to be shocked by his directness, he was disappointed. She sat back in her chair and took her time. ‘I’ve thought about that a lot in th
e last twenty-four hours. No one that I know, is my conclusion. I can’t think that anyone on that committee would have done it. He’d been unpardonably rude to most of us, over the last few months, in different ways. I suspect Peter hadn’t read Sam Hilton’s poems, but he despised him on principle because he was twenty-two and “lacked discipline” in his verse, as Peter put it. Strangely enough, he insulted Ros Barker’s art because it wasn’t avant-garde and abstract enough for him — I suspect he simply wouldn’t entertain her as a serious artist because she was only thirty and had her own ideas. Sue Charles is older than he was and could hardly have been more friendly or cooperative; but he derided her because she was a crime writer rather than what he considered a serious novelist. I doubt whether he’d read her books. I suspect he was just jealous of her because she was a success. He seemed to get more annoyed when she refused to take offence at his barbs. But you can hardly consider Sue as a candidate for murderer. Which leaves me, I suppose. I’d probably crossed swords with Peter more often than anyone.’
She stopped, breathless after this summary of her thoughts, rather surprised that they’d listened so carefully and hadn’t interrupted her. Lambert said quietly, ‘But I don’t suppose you killed him, Mrs Dooks?’
She wondered if he was trying to provoke her by the question, but she didn’t hurry her reply. ‘There were times when I would cheerfully have dispensed with Peter’s services and opinions for ever. But I never thought of killing him. I hope you will believe that I have far more sense than to consider such an idea.’
Lambert’s long, lined face had the trace of a smile as he said, ‘Where were you on Tuesday night, Mrs Dooks?’
‘I was here throughout the evening with my husband. Dull, but helpful, I suppose.’ She watched Bert Hook making a note in his swift, round hand and looked slightly smug.
‘What car do you drive?’
‘A blue Honda Civic.’ She waited for Hook to record it, then reeled off the number as if it were further proof of her innocence.
Lambert rose and said, ‘Any further thoughts you have on this crime will be treated in the strictest confidence. Please contact us on this number if you think of anything, however trivial. Sometimes small details can be very significant when we put them together with data being collected from other people.’
She nodded as she led them across the big room. She turned to Lambert in the doorway. ‘Good luck with your enquiries. If I don’t see you before then, I’ll look forward to hearing your views on crime writing at the literary festival.’
A second reminder. Hook kept his face studiously straight until he had turned the police Mondeo and driven out of the Dooks’ drive. Then he said, ‘Perhaps I’d better come along to that session at the festival. It sounds more interesting each time I hear it mentioned.’
FIFTEEN
DI Rushton was eager to see the chief. He checked that Lambert was to interview Sam Hilton at nine thirty on Friday morning. He was waiting for the chief superintendent when he came into the CID section. ‘There’s stuff from forensics.’
‘What sort of stuff?’
‘Stuff from the filing cabinet in Preston’s study. He was an old-fashioned man. He stored things away in files in a cabinet, rather than use his computer.’
Lambert grinned. ‘Such people do exist, Chris. What did Preston record in such an outdated way? Anything more than gossip?’
‘Much more than gossip, from the little I’ve seen so far. Things about people you’ve already seen. I can summarize it and put it on the computer, but that will take time. It’s more than we expected. I think you might want to look at it yourself.’
Lambert tried not to be too optimistic. He failed. This might be the thing that answered the question everyone, including himself, had been asking: how could dislike and irritation transform itself into the sort of hate that led to murder? He said as evenly as he could, ‘I’ll look at it as soon as we’ve finished with young Mr Hilton.’
Sam Hilton looked rather bleary-eyed as he gazed around interview room number one in Oldford police station. The delights of Amy Proctor had been numerous and prolonged, but they hadn’t left a lot of time for sleep. He was also beginning to think he was in love, which was causing confusion in his mind when it most needed to be clear.
The small, square, windowless room did not offer him much relief. The walls were painted in a bilious green, frequently renewed to conceal the coarse graffiti of the army of the unfortunate who had waited here to be grilled. There was a single white light in the ceiling above him; Sam gazed up at its harshness for a few seconds and then wished that he hadn’t. He could feel the blood hammering in his head. And the police hadn’t even put in an appearance yet.
He was left on his own in the room for precisely ten minutes after DI Rushton had shut the door upon him. Ten minutes to muse upon the unfairness of life, and himself at the centre of that unfairness. It seemed much longer. He tried hard to think about the poem about his grandfather he was working on. Die Happy, it was called — a sort of reaction to Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’. He wanted to say that when Alzheimer’s was taking over, there was no real life left, so that you should welcome death whilst you could still remember the real person who had lived. But this was not the place to make a poem.
Bert Hook studied him coolly for a moment when he arrived before he said, ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Hook and this is Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert. You’ll remember us from two days ago.’
The big cheese again. Bloody John Lambert, the man the press had endowed with an almost mythical capacity for solving violent crimes. He and Sam eyed each other cautiously, wonderingly. It didn’t seem to Sam as if this was going to be an equal contest. He felt as if he were about twelve; as if this grave, unsmiling elder could see everything he had done wrong in the whole of his young life.
Before the thought had properly formulated itself in his mind, he was saying desperately to Hook, ‘I’ve given up dealing. I’ve taken notice of what you and that inspector told me about the drugs.’
‘Good for you, lad. We’ll be watching you in the coming months, to make sure you keep to that. That’s unless you’re banged up for murder, of course.’
‘That won’t happen. Unless you lot frame me for it.’ Sam tried a flash of defiance — and found that it didn’t work. His words sounded ridiculous in his own ears, as if he were spouting cliches in a television scene, rather than being up to his neck in the real thing.
Lambert had been studying the young man as dispassionately as if he were a specimen in a laboratory. He now said with quiet menace, ‘You didn’t like Peter Preston, did you, Mr Hilton?’
‘He didn’t like me.’
Lambert nodded slowly, as if that were entirely understandable. ‘Not what I asked you, is it? Would you answer my question, please?’
Sam wondered whether the man was biased against his youth or whether he was like this with everyone. ‘All right, I didn’t like Preston. In fact, I found him insufferable.’ Take that, you bastard! You might have caught me dealing drugs, but I can do the big words. ‘But that isn’t significant. Lots of people found Preston insufferable.’
Lambert nodded even more slowly. ‘Interesting choice of word, that. If you found him insufferable, you had to do something about it. Perhaps you couldn’t go on suffering his insults any longer.’
‘No. Well, yes, in a way, I suppose. But I didn’t kill him.’
‘Where were you on Tuesday night, Mr Hilton?’
He hated that iteration of his name and title. It made all this sound as if it was merely a preliminary to charging him. ‘I was at home in my flat. In the bedsit where you saw me on Wednesday morning.’
‘Yes. You were rather disturbed then. Was that because you’d shot Mr Preston on the previous night?’
‘No! Of course it wasn’t!’ He tried to make the idea sound ridiculous, but all he could hear in his voice was fear. ‘I was at home on Tuesday night. I didn’t go out at all. I rang
Bob Crompton and had a talk with him about his visit to the literary festival at Oldford.’ He and Bob had enjoyed a few laughs, said some pretty insulting things about the old fogies who were likely to attend the Manchester poet’s readings in Oldford. For no reason he could think of, it seemed to Sam Hilton that the game would be up if he revealed any of this to the men in front of him.
It was DS Hook who now looked up from his notebook and said, ‘What time was this phone call made, Sam?’
His first name, at last. Even a measure of sympathy in the tone from this man — or had he imagined that? He wanted to say he had spoken to Bob later in the evening, but they could trace the time on mobiles, couldn’t they? ‘About half past seven, I think.’
Hook shook his head sadly. ‘Too early to help you, I’m afraid. Is there anyone who can confirm to us that you were at home throughout the evening?’
Sam’s mind was racing as fast as the pulse in his temple. ‘My girlfriend was with me.’
Hook studied him for a moment before he said, ‘Name?’
‘Amy Proctor.’ Sam watched Hook record that in his notebook. Time seemed to be suspended in that claustrophobic room; the squat hand clutching the ball-pen seemed to move with impossible deliberation. Next Hook wrote down Amy’s address with equal care. Sam said he couldn’t remember her phone number. He couldn’t think what had made him volunteer the name; panic, he supposed. Amy hadn’t agreed to his request to say she had been with him on Tuesday. Passion had prevented that and he’d not asked her a second time. But she hadn’t refused, had she? He wasn’t even sure that she’d agree to being described as his girlfriend.
As if from a long way away, he heard Hook saying, ‘Was she with you overnight, Sam?’
‘No. She left at about midnight, I suppose. Maybe just before.’ He wondered why he hadn’t claimed she’d been with him all night, as she had last night. Perhaps because it made the lie seem a little less complete. He’d have to get back to Amy, to check that she was prepared to support him. He’d do it for her.