by Gregson, J M
‘Until when?’
‘Until about nine, I suppose. The steward will confirm it for you.’
‘I’ve no doubt he will, sir, in due course. Where did you go when you left the golf club?’
‘I came back here.’
‘And you were here for the rest of the night?’
‘Yes. And there are no witnesses to that. But you wouldn’t expect there to be.’
Rushton noted the replies diligently and went away to feed them into his computer record. He wondered how many of the suspects would have a better alibi for last night than Jim Pritchard, who stood at the window of his study until the police car moved out of his sight. The Warners were alibi-ing each other, which to a suspicious policeman meant they had no alibis at all. He wondered what the enigmatic Sue Hendry and that strange man Peter Brooke would have to offer. For what it was worth, his money for this one would be on the man he had just left, but he had been wrong too often in the past to risk voicing that to his colleagues.
There was an instruction for him from John Lambert when he got back to the Murder Room. He picked up the phone and got in touch with the Firearm Licences Department to implement it immediately. Then he wondered why Lambert was suddenly checking on the possession of firearms among their five remaining suspects.
*
Gloucester has nothing like the social disturbance or the violence of London. But it has its fair share of these things, like any British city of any size in the ’nineties.
Amongst the other flotsam of the enterprise society, it has its homeless and its buskers. The latter operate mostly in the pedestrian precinct around the major shops of the city centre — there are few subways to offer shelter and funnel the crowds past them in this ancient town. The police do not as yet consider the buskers a major problem: there are not very many of them, and they do not appear to have close connections with that sub-culture of drugs and petty crime which is making the centres of some major British cities places of fear and squalor.
Once the CID thought of extending their search to Gloucester, it did not take the uniformed men long to bring in Peter Brooke. He was too good a violinist to remain anonymous among the motley collection of folk-singers and guitar players who predominated in this bohemian company. He had even managed to attract a small audience who paused to listen, rather than dropping their charity into the hat as they hurried on in embarrassment. Not many buskers chose Sarasate, and none of them played it with that mixture of fine tone and spirited attack.
He was uneasy at the police station, unable to keep his limbs still, spilling the mug of tea he was eventually given on the front of his already stained and torn sweater, then cupping his hands round it like an old man to retain control of it. It seemed amazing that he should have such immediate control of the violin whenever his hands fell into position upon it, but policemen are used to such contradictions.
When they put him into the interview room, his dark, deep-set eyes looked around with the quick, desperate glances of a caged animal. He was persuaded to sit down, but when Bert Hook came with a young detective constable to interview him, he was standing again in the corner of the tiny room, stooping like one carrying many more than his twenty-eight years.
He had not shaved for two days at least. By his appearance and his odour, he had not washed either. There was a stale smell about him, a compound of bad breath, stale food, and dirty clothes. In the confines of the green-walled interview room, there was no escaping from it. Bert had smelt worse: at least there was no vomit to contend with here. He began with the routine admonishment. ‘You were asked to keep us informed of your whereabouts. You didn’t do that.’
Brooke looked as if he didn’t even understand. He scratched his cheek for a couple of seconds before he said, ‘I’m “of no fixed abode”. That’s what the pig wrote in the book in London.’
‘But we know where your squat is, and you weren’t there.’
‘I was there until…’ — he paused and looked thoroughly confused — ‘until two or three days ago.’
Hook wondered if he knew what day it was as they spoke. He said, ‘And where have you been for those two or three days?’
The dark eyes peered at him suspiciously from beneath their unkempt brows, searching for the trap which lay behind the words. ‘In Gloucester. I wasn’t trying to hide.’
Hook smiled. ‘If you had been, playing your fiddle in front of the Guildhall wouldn’t have been the best way to do it. Especially as they tell me you play it rather well. But you didn’t sleep in Eastgate Street. Where have you spent the nights, Mr Brooke?’
Again Brooke paused, as though trying to work out what net was being spread for him beneath the unfamiliar ‘Mr’ and the compliment to his musicianship. ‘Near the docks. Behind Baxter’s warehouse. I grew up round here, you know: I know my way round.’
There was a small, bitter pride in his voice. In London, he had needed to be shown the ropes by other, more experienced members of the human detritus who slept rough each night in that metropolis of modern civilization. Coming back to his roots, he had been able to fend for himself without such guidance, even in his present wretched state.
Hook looked at the thin arms, clasped around the violin case as though it was a baby that someone might try to take away at any moment. ‘It’s still cold at nights. Near freezing, wasn’t it, last night?’
‘We have boxes. Big, cardboard boxes; there are plenty of them round there.’ Despite his initial, automatic use of ‘pig’, he was being won round — too easily, some of his streetwise London companions would have said. He had delivered his latest reply in an educated voice, speaking standard English, with only the faintest trace of a local accent. It came oddly from this stinking, scarecrow figure.
‘Do you take drugs, Mr Brooke?’
He was neither surprised nor shocked by the question. For the first time, he did not hesitate over his reply, and for the first time it was clear and precise. ‘No. I have done in the past, but only pot. I’ve never touched coke or heroin.’ He looked suddenly younger, like an earnest adolescent trying to convince them. Bert Hook caught a glimpse of the boy who had gone off happily to the Royal College of Music with the world at his feet. Brooke said, ‘I’m not a pusher, if that’s what you think.’
‘No, I don’t think that, Peter. But I thought you might be a user. You must admit that you’ve been behaving strangely in the last month. I don’t know how things were before that.’
Brooke looked as if he was considering this view of himself for the first time. Then he nodded, as if it had surprised him. ‘I suppose I have.’
Hook looked at the dirt beneath the fingernails that were so prominent on top of the violin case. ‘Can you give us any explanation for your behaviour? It’s time you did.’
Most young men would have thought the grief following inevitably on the murder of a mother, even when she was estranged from her son, was sufficient explanation for some erratic conduct. Brooke did not even proffer it as the cause, except indirectly. ‘I thought you’d have me in the frame for my mother’s murder, once you knew how I’d hated her. And I told you that myself.’
‘I can understand how you thought that. But it wasn’t the best policy to lie to us. Once we find one lie, we wonder how many more you’ve tried to sell to us. In your case, we’re still wondering.’
Brooke nodded; an intelligent young man giving his attention to a serious suggestion, his attitude again at odds with his vagrant’s appearance. Hook reminded himself that these sudden switches of attention and mood could be symptomatic of irresponsible, murderous minds; sometimes they went with that absence of any moral awareness that characterizes the psychopath. Bert said, with the air of an older man giving good advice, ‘You should tell me now when you last saw your mother, and what went on between the two of you in those last meetings.’
The man with the violin nodded seriously, for all the world as if he were accepting a precept from Menuhin in a master class, as he once had in happier days.
He seemed now to have lost all fear of his interviewer. After a moment of intense thought, he said, ‘It was on the Friday before she died.’
It was impossible to be sure whether Hook was encouraging or gently threatening as he said, ‘There are witnesses to that meeting. You had better tell us what happened.’
This time there was no hesitation. It was clear that Brooke had been over this many times in his own mind: it was only naming the exact day which had caused him to pause over his reply. ‘I went to The Beeches to see Laura. My sister Joyce had persuaded me to do that. She said that Mother wanted to be reconciled and that I should give her a chance.’
Not that they should make up their differences, or any such phrase, thought Bert. The young usually saw things not only in black and white but entirely from their own point of view. From what he had heard, Laura Pritchard had in this case been much at fault, but doubtless not exclusively. The dead are never able to put forward their case for consideration. He thought for a moment of the source of their information about this Friday meeting, Sue Hendry, with her very different perception of the dead woman. ‘And did you see in fact see her as you had planned?’
‘Yes. Joyce dropped me off in the village and I walked up to the house. I didn’t want to present myself under big sister’s wing, you see. Some woman drove up to The Beeches and dropped Laura off from a car. She passed me in the lane on her way back, but I didn’t recognize her.’
‘Sue Hendry. She manages your mother’s secretarial agency.’
And she was also her lover, expecting to set up house with her. No need to tell him that.
He nodded, seemingly anxious only to recall the detail and tell his tale. ‘I went into the house and spoke with Laura. Jim Pritchard wasn’t there. Laura said he’d gone into Cheltenham to get some gear for his holiday.’
‘What was it you wanted to see her about?’
‘I’d decided to go back to college. My sister had been trying to persuade me to complete the course for years. I needed money to do it — I’d forfeited any right to a grant by throwing up the course in mid-year when Dad died. I’d sworn I’d never speak to Laura again when Mandy died in India — you know about her?’
Hook nodded. ‘Your sister told us.’
He looked relieved not to have to relive that episode. ‘Well, Laura said she was ready to help. Eager to, in fact. Joyce had said she would be, if only I would take the first step and make contact.’
‘How long were you there?’
Again that serious look came over the filthy face. His forehead creased itself into a little frown of concentration which was oddly reminiscent of his sister. ‘Not long. I suppose about twenty minutes. It was the first amicable exchange we’d had in several years, and I think neither of us wanted to push it too far. There was too much between us for it to be called a reconciliation. It might have been the beginning of one.’ He was picking his words precisely, weighing them like a university don. The contrast between his speech and his appearance would have been comic, had this not been such a serious business for the men on both sides of the small square table with its silently turning cassette recorder.
‘And you left the way you had come?’
‘Yes. Laura couldn’t give me a lift back to the village because her husband had her car — I think she said his was being serviced. And I didn’t want to meet the man who had taken my father’s place.’ His face darkened at the thought. He sounded almost like Hamlet, whom Bert had studied on his Open University foundation course; but there was no sign of an Oedipus complex here.
‘Did anyone see you go?’
‘No. Not that I know of. Why?’
‘Because it would be nice to have some confirmation, first that you left when you say you did and secondly that the meeting was as amicable as you contend it was.’
‘Jim Pritchard must have come home not very long after I left.’
‘But he hasn’t told us that his wife even mentioned that you had been.’
He gave serious thought to the matter in his curious, academic way, with his chin lifted and his eyes cast above their heads; he looked as though he was deliberating some minor point of literary criticism with a college tutor, rather than trying to convince policemen of his innocence of murder. ‘No, it’s quite possible that she wouldn’t have told him. She knew I didn’t want my business discussed with him. And I got the impression that things weren’t too close between them, from the way she spoke of him.’
That showed some perception, if what he was saying was true. He could not have known that she was planning to leave her husband to set up house with Sue Hendry. But that in turn assumed that the doughty Miss Hendry was telling them the truth about the affair, and also that Laura Pritchard had not been deceiving her. There were far too many ifs and buts in this case. Hook dropped his next question in without the hint of a change in tone: even the young DC at his side only realized how important it was when he saw the reaction of the man who sat opposite. ‘And why did you go back to The Beeches to see your mother again on the following Monday, Peter?’
Brooke looked first surprised and then apprehensive, as if the trust which this ruddy-cheeked countryman had won from him had been used to set a trap for him. ‘I — I didn’t go there on the Monday.’
Hook raised his eyebrows, looked in puzzlement at the officer beside him, riffled for the first time through the papers he had brought with him. It took several seconds, and it was a convincing performance. ‘Our information is that you were.’
‘Then your information is wrong. The last time I saw my mother was on that Friday afternoon.’ He hugged his violin case hard, swaying gently backwards and forwards on the unyielding upright chair. His dark eyes never left Hook’s, but there was fear in them now, as well as a desire to convince.
Hook looked regretful, studied his papers again for a moment, said quietly, ‘Do you know a chap called Everton Smith? He did gardening for your mother at The Beeches. She used to work with him in the gardens.’
‘I don’t know the name. Is he a coloured boy? Quite young; cheerful-looking; with a Honda 750?’
‘That’s the chap. I didn’t think you’d be into motorbikes.’
‘Oh, I used to be, when Dad was alive. Had a little Honda myself once, before I went to college. Never got to the big stuff.’ He looked delighted to have surprised them with this. Perhaps no one had taken much interest in what he thought and knew for a long time, so that even this sort of interest pleased him. They were getting a glimpse of the naturally gregarious boy he must have been before life went seriously wrong for him.
‘The gardener’s name was Everton Smith. It was he who said he’d seen you on the Monday.’
‘No, he’s got it wrong. He did see me on the Friday, though; he’s probably just made a mistake about the day. Don’t forget it’s almost three weeks ago now. I should ask him again.’ Perhaps he became aware of how closely they were studying him throughout this. Certainly he now checked himself and said apprehensively, ‘What’s wrong? He hasn’t told you anything else, has he?’
Hook waited, but Brooke said nothing to incriminate himself. For ten seconds, he studied the grubby countenance opposite him as carefully as if it had been a slide under a microscope. Finally he asked, ‘Where were you last night, Peter?’
The deep-set eyes widened in alarm. ‘I told you: behind Baxter’s warehouse. Why?’
‘Before that. Where were you during the evening?’
‘I played some Bach in the pedestrian precinct for a while. There weren’t a lot of people about, but I like playing Bach, anyway. Until about eight, I suppose — I don’t have a watch. After that…’ His forehead puckered again in that frown that was so like his sister’s. Then his face brightened. ‘We had fish and chips. I’d done quite well with the busking, and I treated a lad who plays the flute — he’s quite good, but it’s not a popular instrument for busking, the flute. Not solo, anyway.’ For a moment, he was diverted into the intricacies of the public taste in its entertain
ers.
Hook said, ‘Can you find him for us? You may have to.’
Brooke was brought back to the thought of murder as much by the sober tone of this as the content. ‘I think so. I don’t know Tony’s second name, but he’s probably still working the patch near the Guildhall.’
‘And was he with you throughout the night?’
‘No. He sleeps at home. He just can’t get a job in music. Not for the moment.’ He made it sound as if his new friend’s integrity was more important than the proof of his own whereabouts.
‘Is there anyone, then, who can vouch for your being in Gloucester between nine o’clock and midnight last night?’
He thought, brought back again to his own danger. ‘No, I don’t think so. Not for the whole of that time. I dossed down early — you get the most sheltered places, in the doorways and entrances, if you’re down before the pubs empty. There were others there when I got up this morning, but I don’t know when they arrived.’
‘Do you drive?’
‘I can do, yes. I passed when I was eighteen. And I have a full motorcycle licence. Why is it important? Tell me what happened last night!’ His voice had for the first time a hint of hysteria.
Hood studied him for a moment before he said, ‘Everton Smith, who claimed to have seen you at The Beeches on that Monday, was murdered last night, Peter. Almost certainly by the same hand that killed your mother.’
In the moment in which Brooke looked at them, his features filled with dread as he appreciated the purpose of their previous questions. Then he plunged his face abruptly into his hands.
The policemen, professionally objective, watched the filthy fingers trying to restrain the tearless sobs of the face behind them; beneath them, the arms were still clasped awkwardly around the battered violin case.
Chapter Nineteen
While Lambert chafed through the morning in a regional CID meeting, the case ground inexorably forward.
The preliminary report from forensic confirmed that Everton Smith had died by hanging. There was one interesting and puzzling subsidiary fact: the laboratory tests had revealed no sign of scuffing from the corpse’s heavy boots on the wood taken to the laboratory for examination.