by William Paul
‘Of course. Where are you? I’ll come round.’
Chapter Forty-Two
Friday, 19.02
The reporters had made the family connection and were now camped outside Lambert’s funeral parlour. He could watch them watching him by crouching and lifting the bottom edge of the window-blind to look down from his first floor flat above the shop. They were in the same pair of cars that had been parked in Pat’s street, the same squirrel-cheeked fat man was squashed in behind the steering-wheel of the lead car chain-smoking and drinking coffee from a regular supply of polystyrene cups bought at the corner shop. The street was busy with slanting tables of fruit and vegetables occupying enough pavement space to slow down the steady stream of people in both directions. The street where he had lived for more than ten years looked strange to him. He had never studied it in any great detail before, never looked at the garish shop signs, and the torn awnings, and the bunches of wires than ran up walls like bulging veins, and the dirty windows of empty flats over the shops, and the thin stalks of plants growing from the muck accumulated over years in the roof gutters. He had never previously taken any notice of the huge illuminated advertisement hoarding in the gap site directly opposite. It changed every twenty seconds, slats revolving from an abstract nude for Silk Cut cigarettes, to a giant jar of Nescafé, to a luxury Toyota car throwing up a dust-cloud against a desert background, and full circle again to Silk Cut’s disjointed nakedness.
Lambert wasn’t going to give the bloody reporters what they wanted. He wasn’t going to break down in tears and lament the passing of his only daughter in neat quotable sentences. He wasn’t going to get the photograph album out to find some nice cute shots of Laura as a little girl for them to publish. ‘Come on, Mr Lambert,’ they had shouted to him. ‘Deal with us and we’ll go away and leave you alone.’ On the contrary he would leave them well alone. Let them rot.
He dropped the blind and retreated to his favourite armchair. He was drunk. Half a bottle of brandy had vanished since Pat had left him, her anger driving itself like a wedge between them as she turned events over in her mind and came to the conclusion that maybe her husband Ron wasn’t the pathetic old fool she imagined but instead an intelligent, scheming adulterer with a death wish.
Lambert couldn’t realistically challenge her. His whole crazy idea had been to make her believe exactly that. He couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t tell anyone the truth now. It was sealed into its own coffin and would be buried as soon as possible. A funeral for the truth. Not too many mourners would attend.
The intercom buzzed. Lambert heaved himself out of the chair and went over to the speaker by the door. John Bannister, the deputy manager downstairs, informed him the police had arrived. Lambert told him to send them up. He could put up two fingers to the press but it would be stupid not to get the police on his side. The pre-funeral formalities would not take long. He unlocked the door.
There were two of them, an attractive woman and a seedy-looking man with a badly bruised eye. They introduced themselves and showed identification but the names did not register in Lambert’s head. They said how sorry they were that Laura was dead. He slumped back in his chair and apologized for being drunk, tacitly demanding understanding as a grieving parent, openly promising co-operation, secretly wishing they would go away and leave him in self-pitying peace.
‘Have you any idea who might have killed your daughter,’ the woman detective asked while the man moved about the room, unsettling him.
‘Laura?’ he said, without quite knowing why. As if there was any doubt about her being his daughter.
‘Of course. Do you have any idea who might have killed her?’
Lambert shook his head.
‘Have you any idea who might have killed Ron Gilchrist? I believe he was a friend of yours?’
‘Yes. No idea. I’ve been thinking it was a suicide after he killed Laura.’
‘No. This remains a murder inquiry Mr Lambert.’
‘You mean it wasn’t suicide?’
‘We have evidence that indicates otherwise.’
‘For Ron as well? Is it what Pat’s been telling you?’
‘No. It’s objective evidence which will be confirmed by the postmortem results.’
‘I see. So it’s not just Pat then?’
A horrible, gut-churning feeling of helplessness came over Lambert. The bile rose in his throat and, bursting like the skin of an over-stretched bubble, caused a sudden repellent taste to fill his mouth. He drank some brandy and loosened the leash on a little more of his self-control. It had been a stupid idea from the first. It had never had a chance of succeeding. His eyes watered and the room went out of focus. The woman detective’s shape swam across his blurred vision and patted his knee. He should have known it would never work.
‘It must be a difficult time for you, Mr Lambert, but it would assist us greatly if you would just answer a few questions.’
‘Of course, of course.’ He wiped his eyes, drank more brandy. ‘Is it true you begin to notice your surroundings more acutely just before you die?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘But only if you know you are going to die?’
Moya patted his knee again, trying to gain his attention. ‘There are things we have been told about your daughter, Mr Lambert. We need to know if they are accurate.’
‘I’m a respectable man. You can’t get much more respectable than an undertaker. People trust you with their dead. You seal their loved ones in their boxes and lay them in their last resting places. You’ve got to be trustworthy for people to let you do that. I’m so respectable. Look at me. Strictly orthodox. Respectability personified.’
The male detective sat beside him on the arm of the chair. A warning sounded in Lambert’s mind. He drank more brandy to dull it. He was raving. He shouldn’t talk so much. He might let something slip out.
‘Laura must have been a bit of an embarrassment to a respectable man then? What with her clairvoyance and her fortune-telling and all the New Age philosophy stuff.’
‘That didn’t bother me. It was just a bit of fun.’
‘Ron Gilchrist too as a family friend. Running that weird magazine.’
‘It was always Pat’s magazine. He indulged her and it made money anyway. Ron would have published anything as long as it made money.’
‘Was he having a relationship with your daughter, Mr Lambert?’
‘You mean was he sleeping with her?’
‘Exactly.’
Lambert shook his head and hoped they believed him. He wasn’t being too convincing. He wouldn’t have believed him.
‘She had left Simon her husband, you know,’ he said. ‘No great loss. He was a waster, but I couldn’t protect her.’
‘She left him, didn’t she?’ the woman asked. ‘She came back to live with you.’
Lambert nodded. The awful taste in his mouth made him scowl. It seemed they knew everything. ‘I couldn’t protect her,’ he said. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying. I couldn’t protect her. She wouldn’t listen.’
‘Lately she lived here with you and her lover, didn’t she?’
He kept nodding. No point in denying it. He pictured Laura in her bedroom, laughing with such carefree abandon, her head thrown back, hands on her stomach. His little girl, grown so big, grown so alien. The tears came again. The room dissolved totally.
‘Your daughter lived here with Norma Illingworth, didn’t she?’ the woman was saying. ‘They lived together as a couple.’
‘Not very respectable really,’ the male detective said. ‘Being a lesbian. It isn’t really fashionable in your kind of circles.’
‘Did you know your daughter was a lesbian?’
Of course he had known. How could he not have known? She had taunted him with the fact. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. It wasn’t respectable. But then, she was his daughter. What could he do about it. Suffer in silence and pretend it wasn’t happening. He looked blindly about the room but could see
nothing.
‘But she liked men too, didn’t she Mr Lambert? There were other lovers. Norma didn’t have her all to herself. Did that cause a bit of jealousy?’
Lambert was thinking fast, his face buried in his hands as he acted the grief-stricken parent. The police had got it totally wrong and didn’t realize it. Perhaps he could turn that to his advantage. But he had to be careful. One word out of place and he would ruin the carefully mapped plan.
‘Was one of those lovers called Robert, Mr Lambert?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you know where Norma Illingworth is?’
He didn’t respond. He pretended to weep. It was a pretence, though the tears were real enough. He was a distraught father, in a state of shock after his bereavement. Surely they would have the sense to go away and leave him alone with his misery.
‘Maybe it would be better if we came back tomorrow, Mr Lambert? Get yourself a good night’s sleep.’
They were gone. When Lambert looked out between his fingers the room was empty. He used the heels of his hands to dry his eyes properly and drank what was left of the brandy.
He checked the window. The reporters were gone too. The street was much quieter, the shops had closed. Litter flapped about in a strengthening breeze, catching under the tyres of the parked cars. The Silk Cut ad transformed into a jar of coffee and then into a jet black motor car speeding into a blood-red sunset. A cat sat on the wooden walkway in front of the hoarding licking its paws. Its fur shone with a silver halo from the tungsten floodlights on either side of it. Its eyes blazed back into Lambert’s.
He turned back into the room. He crossed it, walking unsteadily to the door that led back into his private office. It was a small square room with a table, chair, four filing cabinets, and a collection of professional certificates hanging on the wall. It confused him that there was no one in the room. He stood, swaying slightly, trying to concentrate on the riddle set up in front of him. How had he ever allowed all this to happen. The answer stepped out from behind the door.
‘Norma,’ he said, swallowing a mouthful of bitter tasting saliva. ‘They’ve gone. You can come out now.’
Chapter Forty-Three
Friday, 19.59
After Lambert, Fyfe and Moya decided to call it a day and go for a meal. They decided against a restaurant after reading a succession of menus posted outside. Instead Fyfe bought a Chinese carry-out banquet for two people: tomato egg flower soup, lemon chicken, pork with cashew nuts, char siu with beansprouts, fried rice. Moya went to the off licence next door to get a bottle of wine and then into the corner shop further along for a couple of tins of dog food and a packet of Good Boy biscuits.
‘Careful we don’t get these mixed up now,’ she said as the tops were taken off the silver cartons while the chunks of dog meat were being spooned out on to plates for Jill and Number Five.
After Moya had dumped her stuff in the bedroom, they sat on the carpet in the living-room in front of the fire with the three-piece suite pulled in behind them to stop draughts. The curtains were drawn. The standard lamp shone down on their barricaded space, leaving the rest of the room in greyness. The selection of foods on the tray between them steamed copiously but before they had started the soup the two dogs had wolfed their stuff in the kitchen and come through. They jumped over the arm of the sofa and lay down on the higher level to watch the humans eat.
‘Just like children,’ Moya said. ‘Afraid they might be missing something.’
‘Aren’t we all.’
‘What do you make of old Daddy Lambert then? Poor old guy. It must be terrible to see your daughter die like that. The death’s bad enough and then there’s the scandal.’
‘We might get more sense out of him when he’s sober.’
‘Once he’s sober he may not want to talk about it. Remember he’s the very essence of respectability.’
‘He’s a sad, lonely old man.’
‘Standing by while his daughter’s indulging in deviant sex in the room next to his.’
‘His daughter. His own flesh and blood.’
‘Maybe that’s why Simon Wright got so angry when we asked for the names of Laura’s lovers. It must be quite a blow to an ego like his to have his wife leave him for another woman.’
‘It would certainly kick the feet from under me.’
‘But she can’t have been all queer, not if she was having a fling with Ron Gilchrist.’
‘Variety is the spice of life.’
‘Or death in this particular case.’
Moya opened the wine and they clicked tumblers. The food was hot and spicy. It didn’t last long. The wine, too, went quickly. They discussed the case with their mouths full, sifting through the theories, always running up against the non sequitur of the love note from Bobby clutched in Laura’s dead hand. Deliberately designed to mislead, or a crucial piece of evidence? Who the hell was this Bobby/Robert person? The sheer clumsiness of the suicide scenario was strange, with Gilchrist so obviously a murder victim too. Simon Wright, about to benefit from a handy financial windfall, was the hot favourite. He looked as guilty as sin. Pity his name wasn’t Robert. That would just about have clinched it.
Fyfe stretched out on the floor and balanced his head against a cushion on the chair. Moya stacked the empties on the tray and lifted it out of the way. Number Five stirred herself and went to investigate possible left-overs.
Moya copied Fyfe’s resting position with her head against a cushion on the opposite chair so that they were lying alongside each other, facing each other. The dogs watched them from the sofa.
‘No more shop talk,’ Moya said. ‘We’re off duty now until morning.’
‘You’re the boss,’ Fyfe told her.
‘Good.’
‘That’s the beauty of staying away from the office.’
‘We can make our own rules.’
‘I would say we’ve earned some time off over the last few days.’
‘Some time to ourselves.’
‘Besides we’ve lost the chance to beat Isotonic’s crime-solving record.’
‘So tell me something about yourself.’
‘You first.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Did you really beat up Robert Ross after he had fooled you the last time?’
‘Just a little bit. No bruising where it shows, that’s the secret.’
‘Did you really?’
‘Of course not. He’s a pathological liar.’
‘And you’ve never told an untruth in your life?’
‘Never.’
‘I believe you. What other secrets have you got?’
Plenty, Fyfe thought, but he wasn’t going to tell her about them. He didn’t let her know that the floorboards under the carpet where she was lying so comfortably were saturated with the blood of the man he had shot through the window to stop him murdering his wife Sally. He didn’t tell her about Angela and the money they had stolen, which was now hidden under his garden shed. He didn’t tell her how, as a role model for the modern policeman, he was a non-starter. Instead he strung together a few inconsequential facts and didn’t make himself sound very interesting at all.
When he had finished Moya had her turn. She went easy on the hard luck dimension of a loving mother left by a selfish father to bring up a child on her own. She decided she knew him well enough to complain that she believed her career was being held back by time-serving men who didn’t like to see a mere woman rise above them.
Towards the end she suddenly realized that she should have been packing for her Paris weekend but Ian Dalglish hadn’t bothered to try to contact her to say he was sorry after their last row. Well, she wasn’t going to phone him. The portable was on the mantelpiece with Fyfe’s car keys. It wouldn’t require many detective skills to find her, but he hadn’t even made the effort. Let the selfish swine enjoy his own company, she decided. That would teach him.
Maybe she should tell Fyfe more about her erratic love life, s
he thought. She could cry on his sympathetic shoulder. He would be understanding. There was obviously a mutual attraction between them. It seemed that he instinctively understood more than she had told him already. She liked him. She had felt herself growing closer to him throughout the day. It would be nice to kiss him as long as he didn’t expect anything more as a matter of course. Friends could exchange kisses without guilt. Kisses and hugs. Won’t you be my friend, David? she thought.
Moya closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. It gave Fyfe the chance to observe her closely, to look at her face and notice the miniature laughter lines and the tiny kink in her nose. As he had done all day from a distance, he admired the swelling of her chest below the white blouse tucked into the wide belt at her waist, and her bony wrists and long fingers, and the gentle curve of her thighs, and the lovely ankles crossed one on top of the other and sheathed in black.
She was smiling broadly. She must know he was looking at her. Why else would she be lying back and enjoying it so? He wondered what she would do if he called her bluff. If he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. The urge was becoming compellingly strong. Maybe he was psychic? Maybe he really could read her mind and that was precisely what she wanted him to do? Maybe she was silently urging him on, only he was too stupid to realize it. He looked up at Jill for moral support. Jill looked doubtful. But then she was likely to be jealous so she wasn’t the best of judges.
He should have shaved. A definite roughness had returned to his chin despite Sergio’s special the previous morning. Fyfe got onto his knees and crawled over to be nearer Moya. She must be aware of him approaching her. His body had blocked off the heat from the fire. If she wanted him to stop all she had to do was open her eyes and warn him off. Yet she still lay there, eyes shut, still smiling. It was all set up. They wouldn’t be interrupted. He had deliberately switched off the portable. If Moya had noticed he would have said it was an accident. What was he waiting for? A written invitation?
He hesitated. Never mind what Moya wanted. Did he want to do this? Did he want to get involved with another woman just when he and Sally seemed to be getting on so well together after all their troubles. Most of his problems stemmed from an inability to resist women. Why didn’t he nip this particular problem in the bud. Save himself some grief. Besides, she had told him about her boyfriend back home. He looked over at Jill for guidance. She was no help. He was on his own.