by J M Gregson
CHAPTER TWELVE
Even policemen on murder investigations take some time off at weekends. They like to give the impression to the media that it is not so, that the hunt is relentless for twenty-four hours a day and for seven days of the week, but it is not really. There are exceptions, such as those awful cases where children or young women are killed at random and everyone fears another killing is imminent. But Debbie Minton had died two years ago; there was little to be gained by going overboard on the overtime budget, however often Superintendent Tucker assured the public that no stone was being left unturned.
This meant that Detective Inspector Peach could become plain Percy and play in his first official competition at the North Lancashire Golf Club. He rang the young PC who had proposed him for membership and arranged to play with him on the Saturday afternoon. He would not normally have had the temerity to arrange to play with such a good player, but PC Bob Cook had seen the full range of his erratic golf on police society days at other courses. And he was Percy’s proposer. And he was only a humble constable.
As the round proceeded, Percy began to wonder if he had after all made a wise choice of companion. Bob Cook was six feet tall, just under thirteen stones in weight, and twenty-eight. He was not only very fit, but very skilful. And he had played since he was five, so that Percy, despite being a decade and more his senior in years, was by comparison a fledgling in experience.
Percy was quite satisfied with his opening tee shot—until Cook played. The younger man hit a long, low draw and finished some forty yards in front of Percy’s suddenly puny effort. After Peach had hit a wood into the greenside bunker, his companion landed an effortless nine-iron within eight feet of the flag. The pattern for the day seemed to have been set.
Peach scrambled along and got a few putts in on the excellent greens. He managed nothing of great note, but he had no disasters. After seven holes, he found to his surprise that if he kept going like this, he would play very near to his modest handicap of sixteen. As a sport, this would never compare with cricket, but perhaps it wasn’t such a bad way to spend Saturday afternoons in winter.
His companion’s game was a thing of beauty, but Cook wasn’t putting as well as he might, and he had a handicap of only three. When you took the handicaps into account, they were level pegging. That seemed ludicrous to Percy, who was used to games where the better player justly prevailed, but this was golf, so he gritted his perfect white teeth and concentrated.
It was as they played over the ruined quarry from the new tee on the eighth that Bob Cook played his first really bad shot, losing the rhythm of his swing and lurching into an ugly topped drive which barely cleared the new lake in the valley. Both their heads turned automatically as they trudged past the spot where the grisly remains had been discovered a week earlier.
‘Did you know Debbie Minton?’ said Peach.
‘A little. I was working round here then, of course.’ Bob Cook had been transferred some time earlier to a division some fifteen miles away, though he still lived in Brunton and played at the North Lancs.
Percy said, ‘She was brought in for questioning once, I find. That must have been when you were here.’
‘I think it was. She was questioned for being in possession of drugs, but there were no charges.’ Cook strode off to the right, playing his second shot before Peach’s second for the first time in the round. He seemed to Percy to play hurriedly, and thinned the ball again.
Percy, perhaps encouraged by this evidence of fallibility in his companion, managed to get his ball on to the edge of the green. Three minutes later, he managed to hole a four-foot putt to complete a very satisfying four. Cook then had his first three-putt of the day to finish the hole with an ugly six. He was very quiet for the rest of the round, whilst his score slowly deteriorated. Percy, recording the story on his card as they completed each hole, watched his companion pensively and speculated on the reasons for this decline.
When they had finished, Bob Cook looked at his watch as they went to their cars to put their clubs away. ‘Took us longer than I expected,’ he said. ‘These medal rounds get slower and slower. I’m afraid I haven’t time for a drink, Percy. Got the in-laws coming round for tea, so I’d better be away and get myself a few Brownie points. Would you put my card in for me, please?’
Peach looked thoughtfully after the car as the young man drove away. They had taken three hours to get round: Bob Cook could surely not have expected it to take much less. Policemen who could not dissemble better than that would never make the CID.
Percy handed in the two cards, finding almost as an afterthought that he had played one below his handicap. Probably he wouldn’t win the medal, but it would be a respectable start to his golfing career at the North Lancs. He celebrated with a couple of drinks with two of the members he already knew, basking modestly in their congratulations, enjoying the humorous suggestions that his handicap was too high.
On his way home, he called in at the station. He knew which file he wanted, but without the help of the girls who were there during the week, it took him a little while to find it. He spread the sheet carefully on the top of the filing cabinet in the quiet room and studied it carefully.
The fact in itself was not so startling. It might be no more than coincidence. But Percy Peach had a healthy distrust of coincidence. He would certainly check this one out.
PC Bob Cook had applied for a transfer exactly three days after Debbie Minton had disappeared.
***
Percy Peach’s Achilles’ heel was middle-class, middle-aged ladies. He did not understand them. More importantly, he found it difficult to bully them, to give full rein to the belligerence which was a natural part of his interviewing technique.
Because of these things, they even scared him a little. He did not admit the fact, not even to himself, except when he lay awake in those small hours of the night which even the strongest and least sensitive of humankind have to contend with.
Christine Turner was not only an English middle-class lady but the Ladies’ Captain of the North Lancashire Golf Club. Genghis Khan might have permitted himself a moment of uncertainty before that particular combination. In the various prisons of northern Britain, there were incarcerated a range of petty criminals who would have thought Genghis Khan was a pansy compared with Percy Peach. But they did not know about the middle-class ladies who were the Achilles’ heel of their tormentor.
It was because he was secretly apprehensive about a confrontation that Percy broke his normal rules and sent Lucy Blake alone to see Christine Turner. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything there, but it has to be done. If you should turn up anything, we’ll go back and see her together.’ That was meant to keep his new detective sergeant in her place. She accepted the direction meekly enough, but she then went away with that secret smile which Percy was finding more disconcerting by the day.
If DS Blake held any inhibitions about middle-class ladies, she was resolved that they would not show. But she went to see Mrs Turner at her place of work, and when she arrived there she was impressed, despite her determination not to be overawed.
Turner Home Services was a bustling and lively place. But it was predominantly a man’s world. It sold tiles, cement, central heating equipment and most things that both the home handyman and the professional required for minor building works and extensions. Three men served and offered advice from behind a long counter which ran across the entire breadth of one end of the large single-storey building. Trade discounts were being calculated as Lucy slipped beyond this barrier and headed as she had been bidden to do for the door marked simply ‘Mrs Turner’.
No ‘Ms’ in this man’s world, she noticed. And certainly no phrases like ‘Chief Executive’ or ‘Managing Director’. She half-expected to find the woman behind the door in a set of dusty overalls.
Instead, she found her in a green woollen dress that might have come from a fashion plate. Probably it was not really very expensive, but Christine Turner had the
slender but not stick-like figure which might have been designed to model woollen dresses. Lucy decided enviously that even if she could afford the dress, she would never look as trim in it as Mrs Turner. She placed her own more sturdy backside carefully on the armchair indicated to her when she announced herself.
It was the kind of room that made you move with care. After the busy scene outside, it seemed almost unnaturally tidy. There was a fitted carpet, a desk, three armchairs, two filing cabinets. On the single windowsill, a busy lizzie flowered obstinately on into the autumn. Christine Turner disappeared briefly and returned with two china mugs of coffee on a small tray. ‘Only instant,’ she said with a grin, ‘and no saucers. That’s what the lads have, so it has to be good enough for us.’
Lucy grinned back and accepted the china beaker gratefully. ‘It’s what I’m used to at the station. Except that here the crockery’s better and the coffee’s hotter.’
She took one of the ginger nuts from the small, matching plate. Then she said, a little awkwardly, ‘You run this place yourself?’
Christine grinned. This sturdy girl was half her age, but for a moment they were two conspirators in a world of aliens. ‘My husband died four years ago. Everyone expected me to sell out. But I’d always been involved in the business and I knew most of the suppliers. Some of them thought they shouldn’t be dealing with a woman but when they found I was getting prices from elsewhere they got the message.’
Lucy looked at the door to her right. ‘It looks busy enough round your counter.’ Then, fearful that this might be thought presumptuous, she added hastily, ‘Not that I’d know anything about it.’
Christine Turner nodded, unable to keep the pride from her small, regular features. Then she forced herself to relax. Why shouldn’t she show a little pride to this rare female observer? ‘It’s going well. It hasn’t always been as easy as I have to pretend it is out there, but I get a lot of satisfaction out of it. Wherever Alan is now, he must have a laugh at me sometimes.’
Her face clouded for a moment, as the pain of her loss came unexpectedly back when she had thought it tamed. That often happened when she spoke about the business. Well, at least grief might take the edge off the nervousness she was so concerned to conceal.
As if in response to that thought, the eager-faced young woman who sat opposite her ended the preliminaries. ‘I told you on the phone why I needed to speak to you, Mrs Turner.’
‘Yes. Debbie Minton.’
‘You knew her.’
‘Yes. Quite well. I knew her parents, too. I saw her father at the golf club the other night. What the two of them must be going through! But I haven’t seen her mother since the news came through.’
Because she was a woman not given to conversational ramblings, this came out as what it was, an evasion. And one which could not possibly succeed. Lucy Blake said, ‘But you employed Debbie here, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. Not for very long, but we did.’ Why the disclaimer? She must know that they could easily find out for exactly how long. Lucy said, ‘For almost six months, I believe.’
‘Was it really as long as that? Time slips away when you get older, you’ll find.’ Christine Turner’s giggle was brittle and entirely humourless.
‘Why did she leave here, Mrs Turner?’
Christine thought for a moment of dissembling. She could say the girl found a better job, with more prospects. That she wanted female company. But it wouldn’t be true, and these people would no doubt cross-check with others. Much better to keep as close to the truth as possible. So long as she could conceal the one connection that mattered. ‘I had to get rid of her. It seems awful to speak ill of the poor kid now, but she—well, she was unreliable.’ She knew that was a silly word as soon as she produced it. It merely invited further questions.
‘She was a typist, wasn’t she?’ Lucy noted the tight-lipped nod from the woman who had been in such relaxed control when they spoke of the business. ‘In what way did she prove unreliable?’
‘There were a variety of ways. She became unpunctual, even after I’d warned her about it. You can’t have a typist who takes liberties like that. In a small organization, other people soon begin to resent it.’
‘We know that she dabbled with drugs. Perhaps more than dabbled—we still have several of her contemporaries to see about that. Did you see any evidence in her work of a serious drug problem?’
Christine managed a smile. ‘You would be more expert about that than me. But now that you mention it, it could account for some of her more erratic behaviour.’
‘There were more serious things than punctuality, then?’ Lucy Blake’s short, freckled face was studiously impassive, despite her obvious interest in the answers she was getting.
Christine Turner felt a sudden surge of resentment against this young woman who hid a penetrating mind behind the mien of a sixth-form hockey or netball player. But she must not get annoyed; mistakes came when you lost your calmness. ‘There were, yes. Her work became a little sloppy. There were several occasions when I had to insist that she re-typed letters.’ Then, because this sounded too trivial in her own ears, she added, ‘And I’m afraid Debbie was becoming a disruptive influence.’ Lucy waited for her to go on. When she did not, she said, ‘You must be aware that you can’t leave it there, Mrs Turner. This is a murder investigation, and we need to know all we can about Debbie Minton. We already know quite a lot, so I doubt whether you are going to surprise me.’
Christine felt again that surge of hostility against this self-possessed young woman, who was calling the shots in this office where she was normally so much in control. But hostility would be not just illogical but dangerous. She strove to present the calmness she did not feel. She must make what she had to say sound convincing. ‘Well, she was a little too keen on the men. One expects a little flirting in a place like this; even that a girl should enjoy being the centre of attention. But Debbie’s conduct eventually began to affect not only her work but other people’s as well.’
‘She was making herself too freely available?’ Lucy found that a useful phrase: she had picked it up from her first CID inspector.
Christine Turner nodded. She was finding this increasingly difficult, when as the older woman she should have been in easy control. It was in what she wanted to conceal rather than in what she was revealing that her difficulty came. She felt the tenseness in all of her body as she said, ‘I heard one of the lads saying that she was “an easy screw”. I’ve no doubt from what I saw of her at the time that he spoke the truth.’
DS Blake studied the taut, downcast face before her for a moment. ‘We have had some evidence that the girl was consorting with older men as well as with people of her own age.’
Christine Turner looked up at her then, almost eagerly. ‘Yes. I’d say from what little I saw and heard of her that that was almost certainly so.’
‘Obviously we must follow up anyone who was in contact with Debbie Minton in the period before she disappeared and died. Do you know of any particular older man who was involved with her?’
The woman thought hard for a moment. ‘No. I’m afraid I couldn’t point to anyone in particular. I wasn’t in touch with that side of her life, you see. I only saw her at work.’
‘Nor any younger man who might have been close to her?’
‘No. I didn’t listen to gossip. I was only interested in her work and how that was affected.’ Christine was not used to telling lies; her mouth set into an uncharacteristically hard line.
‘Yes. I see.’
Lucy finished the exchange rather abruptly, wondering if more experienced interviewers would have managed things more smoothly. Not Percy Peach, she decided: he liked to leave people uncertain of their ground.
As soon as she was outside, she contacted the detective inspector on her car phone. He listened carefully to her account of the meeting. It was Lucy Blake’s last words that interested him most. ‘I deliberately didn’t press her, because I knew we were going to see him anyway,
and I didn’t want to put him on his guard. She told me about how Debbie Minton fancied anything in trousers. But she never mentioned her son.’
In his office in the CID section, Percy Peach put the phone down and stared at it thoughtfully. That was certainly an interesting omission in Christine Turner’s account of things. There was almost something to be said for DS Blake, after all.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
There was no question of making the phone call from home. Shirley did not go out on her own, even now, though she seemed better since the body had been found. Derek Minton, watching her with a fierce, hopeless love, thought he saw colour coming back into her face, and fancied that her shoulders were a little more erect. But how could he be sure? He was too close to her, too aware of her every thought, to be sure that it was not merely wishful thinking in him to see her moving back towards her old self.
He determined to make the phone call from work, but when the moment came he could not bring himself to do it, not even in the lunch hour, when the place was all but deserted. There was always the chance that someone would overhear him: he could not go through the switchboard, and he was never sure how secure these new-fangled phones were against eavesdroppers. Not at all, he fancied: you certainly felt exposed to the world around you when you stood with only the canopy of plastic above your head and shoulders.
So in the end he phoned on his way home from work.
The hour had gone back now, and it was dark when he slipped into the kiosk by the sub-post office. He pulled his collar up, like a seedy private detective, or a petty thief, or an adulterer. At any rate, someone who did not want to be spotted in this act; he knew that if he had been wearing a hat, he would have pulled it down automatically over his brow.
It was better than face to face, anyway. Perhaps the man he had to speak to would not realize how nervous he was, if he kept his voice steady. And indeed, as soon as he gave his name, he realized that the man who listened was more anxious than he was. The voice mumbled its sympathy over Debbie, but could scarcely get the words out. Conventional words, which a man like that must have mouthed on many occasions before. Yet he could not form them properly, and when he produced them they did not fall neatly into phrases as they should have done. The voice which faltered at the other end of the line might have been recovering from a stroke.