‘Matthew Street.’
He could picture the houses now. Three-storeyed, with cellars beneath, in terraces which had been going slowly downmarket throughout the century after Victoria’s death. With their front gardens concreted over to allow the parking of as many vehicles as possible. Most of them now split into segments for cheap letting to tenants who could afford nothing better. No more than three streets from the place where the appalling Fred and Rosemary West had conducted their ghastly, unthinkable series of murders of young people. The police had not come well out of that grisly carnage, and no policeman could be happy with the thought of it. Lambert looked steadily into the tired, crafty face. ‘You let rooms?’
‘I let apartments.’ There was a pathetic hauteur about her correction. ‘I live at the back of the ground floor myself, and I have a little garden at the rear of the house.’ This small assertion of gentility was clearly important to her.
‘And the rest of the house is sectioned off for lettings?’
She nodded, mollified by his acknowledgement that they were more than just rooms. ‘There are four of them altogether, of different sizes. Three of them are single units, and the fourth one is a double.’ She spoke the words almost without a breath: it was plainly a spiel she was used to delivering to prospective tenants. There would be a high turnover in a house like hers. Not many people would stay for long — unless the area happened to suit their special requirements.
‘And which of these did Katherine Wharton occupy?’
‘Kate. We all called her Kate.’ It seemed suddenly important to assert the last threads of individuality that clung to the girl she was now sure lay dead, the girl whose body was perhaps at this moment being cut up like the carcass of a farm beast. ‘Kate had the double. On the first floor. They have a big living room and a bedroom each.’
‘Who do, Mrs Eastham?’ He kept the surprise out of his voice, delivered the question as if it were more dull routine. But this flatmate, not the landlady, should surely have come forward with the news of her missing companion. She would have been the first one to know that Kate had not come home, the first one to feel the pangs of anxiety about that.
‘Kate and Tracey. Tracey Boyd. They pay their rents separately, but they occupy the place together.’
‘So when did Miss Boyd last pay her rent?’
‘Last Friday. Regular as clockwork, they are, with their rents. Tracey every Friday, Kate every Sunday. They know I don’t stand for any nonsense.’ She folded her arms suddenly, as if asserting herself as the stern landlady.
‘And Tracey didn’t mention on Friday that Kate Wharton was missing?’
‘No. She may not have been missing, of course, on Friday. I told you, I last saw her on Thursday, but Tracey may have seen her after that.’ Liz Eastham’s instinct was to place the burden of answering on to this as yet anonymous contemporary of Kate’s, to extricate herself as quickly as possible from police questioning.
Lambert nodded. ‘We shall have to see her in due course, if the girl who’s been killed is indeed Kate Wharton.’ He opened a drawer in his desk and picked out the facial photograph of the corpse that he had selected for identification purposes. ‘Do you think that this is her?’
Liz Eastham’s thin fingers trembled a little as she took the photograph, handling it as carefully as if it had been a sacred relic. She looked at the serene, lineless face, with its eyes closed in the peace of death, for two long seconds. Then she said, ‘Yes. That’s Kate all right.’
She would have liked to weep a little as she handed the picture back to the superintendent who would search for her killer: it seemed the only proper thing to do.
But the tears would not come.
Four
Detective Sergeant Bert Hook had broken the news of death to many distraught parents in his time. He tended to be selected for this task for two reasons. The first was that he had a natural empathy with people caught in such dreadful circumstances: beneath his weather-beaten village bobby exterior, there was a ready response to the distress he saw. The second and more important reason for CID purposes was that he was a deceptively acute observer: his stolid bearing concealed an instant feeling for any reaction which was false, any facial expression which betrayed the mind behind it.
It was a valuable quality whenever there were suspicious circumstances surrounding a death. With three-quarters of all murders in the area committed by members of the family, even a mother was suspect at this stage of an inquiry. Hence the reason for a CID officer as well as the uniformed policewoman on this grim mission.
The woman who opened the door to them seemed to have no premonition that they brought bad news. She said to Hook as he offered his warrant card, ‘You didn’t say you’d have company when you phoned, Sergeant,’ and stood looking down with a slight smile at the trainee woman constable who stood behind him.
Julie Wharton proved to be a woman in her early forties, with a rather square, carefully made-up face framed by a helmet of skilfully cut dark hair. She wore a bright green sweater and dark green, almost black trousers. She looked for a moment longer at the heavy figure of Hook in his light grey suit, then at the uniformed girl who seemed scarcely old enough to be out of school. Then she led them through a narrow hall and into a neat living room. There she turned to face them, so abruptly that they were arrested suddenly in the doorway of the room. Householder and visitors stood awkwardly facing each other, scarcely three feet apart.
Hook said, ‘I think it would be better if you sat down, Mrs Wharton,’ and promptly sat down on the sofa himself, with the uniformed girl beside him. Julie Wharton hesitated, and he thought for an instant she was going to question his presumption. Then she sat down and said with a little sigh, ‘You’d better tell me what this is all about, Sergeant Hook.’
He had expected her to show alarm when he asked her to sit down, to catch some intimation of the awful news he brought. But still she behaved as if she had no apprehension of bad news. Hook cleared his throat and said formally, ‘I believe you have a daughter, Katherine Mary Wharton,’
For the first time, her face clouded, with his use of the girl’s full name. ‘My daughter is Kate Wharton, yes. Is there something wrong?’
Hook reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, thought for an awful moment that he had forgotten the picture, then felt the corner and drew the photograph of the dead girl carefully forth. ‘Yes, I’m afraid something may be very wrong. Do you think this might be Kate?’
She took the picture from him, looked for four, five, six seconds silently at the black and white photograph of the unlined, serene face with the closed eyes, whilst her audience watched anxiously for any sign of distress. Then she said in a perfectly even voice, ‘That’s my daughter, yes. That’s Kate.’
Still she looked at the picture, and still she gave no sign of hysteria. Hook was well aware that grief had many ways of manifesting itself, that an outwardly dull response could well be one of these. He said gently, watching the square, still face carefully, ‘That is the picture of a girl found dead on Ross-on-Wye golf course on Monday evening. I’m very sorry, Mrs Wharton.’
Still she did not look up from the face of the dead girl. ‘She looks very peaceful. As though she was just asleep.’
Hook tried hard not to think of what might be happening to that face at the autopsy, thrust from his mind the image of the skin being peeled back to allow the removal of the brain from the skull. He said, ‘Do you know where Kate has been during the last few days?’
She looked up at him at last. ‘No. We’re not in touch much nowadays. She has — had — her own life to live.’
Hook nodded imperceptibly to the young woman at his side, and she came in on cue with, ‘Perhaps I could make us all a nice cup of tea, Mrs Wharton. We know this must be an awful shock and—’
‘I don’t need tea. I’ll get you one, though, if you want one. I don’t like other people working in my kitchen.’ Mrs Wharton rose abruptly and left the room without waiting
for any confirmation.
Hook said quietly to the WPC, whose first suspicious death this was, ‘Go in there and provide whatever support you can. Don’t talk to her unless she invites it. And let her make the tea herself if she wants to. Performing simple actions can be better therapy for some than drinking sweet tea.’
He listened for the sound of conversation from the kitchen, for the sudden shriek of pain and outrage which might crack that carefully made-up mask of a face and allow the agony of a bereaved mother to burst out. He heard the sounds of crockery being assembled, but no noise of muted conversation.
Julie Wharton allowed the young WPC in her crisp new uniform to precede her with the tray as she re-entered the room, but that was the limit of assistance she allowed to the girl. She handed them plates, offered biscuits, poured the tea with a steady hand. Hook, who had accepted the offer of tea to prolong his study of this strange mother, found himself wishing that they could be out of the house and free of this strange, unreal atmosphere.
He made small talk, but this disturbing host replied in monosyllables. The girl beside him, who had been prepared for a harrowing experience, for holding a tearful and distraught older woman in her young arms, could offer nothing in the face of this polite denial of the conventions of grief.
Bert Hook eventually said, ‘We’ll need to talk to you about your daughter in due course, Mrs Wharton. But not now. Superintendent Lambert will probably wish to speak to you, later in the week.’
She nodded. ‘You’ll need someone to identify the body, won’t you? I’ll come with you now, if you like.’
Hook, who had been wondering how to broach the subject, thought rapidly. The body would need to be tidied up after the pathologist’s cuttings before it could be presented to a relative. He said, ‘That’s very good of you. But not now. Perhaps later today, or tomorrow morning. I’ll give you a ring about it.’
Julie Wharton stood on the steps and watched them go with her hands at her sides, smooth and immutable as an Inca goddess. Hook would have given a great deal to know what happened to that face once the door was shut upon the world outside.
***
Lambert was getting ready to leave the police station at Oldford when the call came.
‘Chief Constable here, John. Could you come up to my office for a moment, please?’ There was an odd diffidence in the usually confident voice, but what may be framed in the form of a polite request is a command when it comes from the CC, even to a superintendent.
Douglas Gibson had known John Lambert for over twenty years, had indeed been instrumental in allowing him the freedom to operate like a superintendent from a previous age, one who attended the scenes of crimes and questioned suspects himself as investigations developed. Gibson was a silver-haired, handsome man, who preferred to keep his finger on the pulse of a small efficient country police force rather than move on to the larger city post he could undoubtedly have commanded.
He was unusually constrained on this Tuesday afternoon, as the sun poured into his office on the top floor of the building. There was a tray with china cups and saucers and a tray of ginger nuts. ‘I’m elevated to VIP status today,’ said Lambert, as he sat down in front of the huge desk.
Gibson smiled wanly as he came round the desk and sat in one of the armchairs beside the senior officer in his CID section. He was a man who was good with words, who could use the guarded phrases of diplomacy with the public as easily as he could fire bullets at officers who fell below the standards of efficiency or integrity which he demanded. Yet now, with a man he had known and respected for years, he did not know how to begin.
‘How are things at home, John?’ Gibson’s words sounded feeble in his own ears.
‘Not bad. Christine’s had no recurrence of the breast cancer, and the heart bypass seems to have given her a new lease of life. She’s teaching again, and enjoying it. A part-time post: five half-days a week.’
‘I’m glad to hear it!’ Gibson was relieved to be able to say something genuine. His own daughter had been taught by Christine Lambert, a quarter of a century ago, and still spoke of her with great affection. ‘She has a lot to give, your missus. How old is she now, John?’
With that question, Lambert knew suddenly what this was all about, as clearly as if it had been written on the Chief Constable’s forehead. ‘You want to talk to me about retirement, don’t you?’
Relief suffused Gibson’s features before he could stop it. ‘I should have known you’d be on to me before I could come out with it. Yes, I’m afraid that’s why I asked you up here.’
Lambert didn’t know what he thought, could not even estimate his own reaction to the news, beyond a ridiculous pleasure that he had taken the initiative himself in raising the word. His tongue seemed to run on without any permission from his brain as it said, ‘Well, I’m fifty-eight already, as you no doubt know from the staff files: three years beyond the normal age of retirement.’
‘Yes, I do know that. It was I who made out the case for your service to be extended. Not that the authorities needed much persuasion, in your case, I’m happy to say.’
‘But now it’s time to go.’
‘Not as far as I’m concerned. You know I’d keep you on as long as you were prepared to stay, if I was allowed to. But our masters think they know better. They’re wrong in this case, as they so often are.’
Lambert swallowed a bite of biscuit, forced himself to take a mouthful of his cooling tea. ‘I can’t grumble. I’ve had a good innings.’ He grinned sourly at the feeble metaphor.
‘If they extended service on the basis of results, you’d be here for another twenty years, John.’
‘Thank you for that. But sometimes the outsider’s view is the more objective. It’s probably time I went.’ He felt anaesthetized, as if he were listening to someone else making the appropriate modest responses.
‘Not from the standpoint of crime detection it isn’t, John. But maybe from your own perspective, it is. You must have thought about retirement.’
‘I have. Often.’
‘You’ve earned it.’
‘Thank you. I’m not sure I’m quite ready for it, but I’m sure I’ll adjust.’
‘You and me both, John. I’ve been wondering how I’ll cope with it, these last few years. They say you adjust to it more rapidly than you expect. That you wonder within a few months how you ever found time to go to work.’
Lambert was suddenly resentful of the ubiquitous ‘they’, with their easy consolations and their vapid platitudes. He said with a doleful smile, ‘Well, at least I’ve got my rose beds going strong. The copper’s traditional retirement occupation.’ He loved his garden, yet its pleasures seemed to him now an evasion, a retreat from the harsh reality of the human scrapheap.
Gibson said, ‘It’s the usual thing: a central directive that has to be implemented by everyone, whatever the individual circumstances. They won’t even look at special cases, with people who’ve already had extensions to their service.’
‘And I thought they were expanding the police service, taking on more people to combat the increase in crime.’ Lambert found himself quoting the government’s recent announcement, and hated himself for this first hint of bitterness.
‘They’re expanding the service all right. But they also want to improve the career prospects of those already in. Senior ranks over a certain age are being pushed out to make way for promotions.’
Lambert managed a genuine grin at last. ‘It’s a reasonable enough policy. We’d both have been pushing for it thirty years ago.’
‘And the old farts would have been keeping us firmly in our places! Oh, you’re right, John, it’s a reasonable enough policy. But there should be room for exceptions, for a special case to be made out in particular circumstances.’
‘You know as well as I do that the policy would disappear under hundreds of applications, hundreds of “special cases”, if they allowed room for appeals.’ Lambert smiled, suddenly conscious of the irony in his arguing
for the very axe which was cutting off his working head.
Gibson stood up. He was genuinely sorry to lose this most successful of his policemen, but he was enough of a tactician to know when to call a halt. ‘I’m very sorry, John. You know it wasn’t my doing. If I can find any loophole in the directive, you know I will.’
Lambert nodded, scarcely hearing him now, conscious only that he was being dismissed, that he wanted to get out of the room with whatever dignity he could summon. He turned at the door, not wanting to ask the question, but knowing that he must be certain of the details of this bombshell. ‘How long?’
Douglas Gibson, who had been relaxing in the thought of an unpleasant task completed, looked apologetic again. ‘Your next birthday, I’m afraid. They won’t go beyond that. Everyone here will want to say goodbye to you, but we’ll talk about all that later.’
Lambert nodded. ‘Three and a half months, then. Better go and get on with the job. Tidy things up for the new man!’
He was immediately sorry for that cheap parting shot, felt himself diminished by it as he went carefully back down the familiar stairs. He stopped for a moment on a deserted corridor of the floor below, looking out over the lush green spring countryside of Gloucestershire beyond the stone buildings of the old market town. He felt like screaming at this cheerful, uncaring world, for its beauty and its strong new growth, as he had done when he heard of Christine’s cancer five years earlier; as he had done nearly thirty years ago, when they had lost one of their children in infancy.
He had forgotten he had ever known that feeling until it renewed itself now. He told himself that he should be ashamed, that retirement was not to be compared with any sort of death. Yet it was for him, he was sure, a kind of bereavement.
Death on the Eleventh Hole Page 3