Death on the Eleventh Hole

by Gregson, J. M.

  She spread her toast with the thick layer of lime marmalade that denoted relaxed luxury for her, and took it into the sitting room to savour it, while Radio One boomed in her ears from the hi-fi tower Kate Wharton had brought with her to the flat. She was curled up on the sofa in her dressing gown, still only halfway through her coffee, when the coppers arrived.

  The same pair who had come here on Friday, the same watchful, distrustful air about them. Tracey decided she preferred even the coppers who occasionally arrested her to these two; those uniformed men had a cheery, impersonal banter with them, a sense of being involved in the same elaborate game which was set up by the law of a hypocritical land. Prostitution was a strange crime: it seemed to bring no real hostility from the police who had to enforce the law, and understanding rather than resentment from the women arrested.

  Through the speaker at the door, she told the CID men to come up, then wondered if she had time at least to put on some make-up, and decided she had not. She felt vulnerable in her dressing gown, with pale shining face and her hair parted but still unbrushed after being washed. It seemed to her that it was more difficult to deceive these efficient, experienced men when she was in this state than when she was dressed and fully made up. Clothes and make-up were after all the tools of her trade, and Tracey Boyd felt at a disadvantage without them.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday, Miss Boyd,’ Lambert said briskly. ‘More questions. Inevitable, really.’

  ‘I don’t see why. I told you all I could on Friday.’

  ‘Our Scenes of Crime team found a few names in a diary they took from a drawer in Kate Wharton’s dressing table. We’d like to check out whether they mean anything to you. Do you recognize this diary?’

  She took the small leather-backed book from them. ‘No. I’ve never seen it before. Not that I remember, anyway.’

  It was a pathetic, touching link with the girl who had laughed and cried with her in this room. They had eaten boxes of chocolates together, drunk the odd bottle of cheap wine, watched weepy films on the television set in the corner. Now all that was left was this book with its blank pages and its occasional, puzzling note. She looked automatically for Sunday, 6th May, the day on which Kate had died. It was completely blank, of course, and its whiteness seemed to emphasize the awfulness of her death. The police, and particularly these two big coppers before her, must have looked eagerly for this page, and been even more disappointed than she was to find no assignation noted there, no clue as to whom Kate intended to meet on that last, fateful day.

  Lambert said gently, ‘The names are at the back of the book.’

  There was a question mark at the top of the page, then three names in Kate’s rather uneven hand. Tracey looked hard at the small page with this minimal information, not daring to look up at the men she knew were studying her every reaction. The name she knew was there, the first of the three; she did not know either of the others.

  Tracey Boyd looked at them for a long time, pretending to be cudgelling her memory while in fact she composed herself to speak. She still did not trust herself to look at Lambert when she eventually said, ‘I’m sorry. None of these names means anything to me.’

  Her voice sounded both confident and regretful in her own ears, and she was emboldened to look up into Lambert’s watchful face. She was half delighted and half appalled by her ability to deceive.

  ***

  Lambert got home early for Sunday lunch. His daughter Caroline and son-in-law, a BT manager he had never warmed to, were already there. He was in time to play in the garden with his two grandchildren, a girl of five and a boy of three. He was trying to teach them to catch a tennis ball, and all three of them were delighted with the progress made since their last attempts three months ago.

  Presently, they grew too excited under his vigorous encouragement, as their grandmother had known they would. Christine watched with a smile on her face from the kitchen window, as the ball flew in wilder, less predictable arcs and John crawled stiffly between roses and peonies and fiercer things such as pyracantha to retrieve it for the children. He made a good granddad, when he was around. He seemed even to be able to forget his latest murder case, his almost personal desire for justice for this lonely, dead girl, as he gambolled with the children and kept them protectively away from thorns.

  The cloud of retirement had lifted from him, for a few hours. They had not mentioned it, since he came home with the news last Wednesday night. But Christine Lambert knew how he was struggling to come to terms with what many men would have welcomed.

  The lunch went well. Christine’s roast beef was as tender and as tasty as ever, and her Yorkshire pudding brought the usual compliments from her son-in-law, a Yorkshireman by birth, who claimed it was better than anything his own mother had ever produced. They had a bottle of Australian Shiraz with the meal. Afterwards, the four adults slumped in drowsy contentment in the conservatory with their coffee, whilst the children played on the lawn outside. An idyllic scene of rural contentment, thought Christine. Well, suburban contentment, at any rate.

  It was almost three o’clock before she caught John looking at his watch. That must surely be a record.

  ***

  It was a bleak Sunday for Malcolm Flynn. The tiny square of unchanging blue sky which was all that was visible through the one small, high window of his cell only made the day seem darker for him.

  He heard the people he had been supplying taken up for interview, one by one during the morning. They would be charged with possession and dealing, would probably get a year or two inside, depending on their previous criminal records. He was ready for the police to come down for him and take him up to the interview room, but it did not happen. Perhaps even Drugs Squad officers wanted their Sunday afternoons off. But the thought that they might come for him, together with speculation about what the three dealers arrested with him might have said in their interviews, kept him on edge.

  Malcolm knew already the tactics he must adopt. He would give away nothing of what he knew about the system, about the hierarchy above him in this well-drilled organization. He didn’t know very much anyway, and revelations would bring swift retribution. Inside prison or out, the barons made sure that death came swiftly to those who did not preserve their anonymity.

  He wouldn’t go for bail. He would be safer in custody than outside, now that he had been caught. There was no sentiment with the men who controlled this lucrative trade: they were likely to eliminate someone who had been caught, sometimes for no better reason than to avoid the unwelcome publicity of a court case. He had the name of the company’s brief, who would do his best for him without giving anything away about people higher up the line. This man would tell him just what he could and could not say in court.

  By five o’clock, Malcolm Flynn had decided that no one would see him before Monday morning. They had given him a much better lunch than he had expected in a place like this. He tried to look forward to the next meal as the landmark in a day which was stretching interminably. Might as well get used to being bored. He was going to be locked up for years, whatever the mitigating circumstances his brief could dig up. The square of sky above him, remote and unattainable through the high, small window, was still an unbroken blue.

  He was trying to doze when he heard the bolts being noisily drawn back on the outside of his cell door. The bored station sergeant took him up to the interview room, refusing to answer any of his queries.

  A tall man with grizzled hair, whom he had never seen before, came into the room and studied him for a moment before he sat down, as if the man opposite him was something scraped off his shoe. Par for the course, that, with the fuzz: it didn’t unnerve Malcolm. If this pig was Drugs Squad, he must be part of the hierarchy, who stayed safe at his desk rather than going out into the field. Some bigwig sent in to quiz the latest capture. A man of his rank would only come in on a Sunday for quite a big fish. Malcolm felt a small, perverted pride in his criminal status.

  The copper set t
he tape in motion, announced his name as Superintendent Lambert, and added the name of the uniformed constable who sat watchfully behind him. Then he said, ‘Well, Mr Flynn, you’ve landed yourself with a big one, here. Street value of well over a hundred thousand, I’m told, and caught passing it to three of your dealers. Red-handed, apparently.’

  There was something not quite right here, something about that ‘I’m told’ and that ‘apparently’ that didn’t sound right, as if this man was distancing himself from the charges that had already been laid against Malcolm. He felt that extra tinge of unease which always comes with the unknown. He said, ‘I don’t say anything about those charges without my brief present.’

  ‘Very wise, if I may say so. But I’m not here about all that. I wanted a more informal chat.’ Lambert gave a slight smile to the uncomprehending face and then rapped out, ‘About something much more serious!’

  Malcolm felt a chill in his veins. But he put on the boldest front he could. ‘I’m glad to hear it. Most people seem to think supplying drugs that will be legal in a few years quite serious.’

  Lambert smiled at him, until Malcolm felt like a mouse whose every move will be covered by the cat calling the shots. ‘Class A drugs will never be legal, and you know it. But drugs aren’t my concern, Flynn, I’m glad to say. I’m sure you’ll get what’s coming to you in due course. This is something much juicier. Murder.’ He stared at his man, not disguising his interest in the reaction the word might bring.

  He was not disappointed. Malcolm Flynn, who had prepared himself to stonewall on the drugs issue, was visibly shaken. He knew suddenly what was coming. That damned girl! But he wasn’t going to give anything away. He had been questioned by pigs before. He knew that you had to keep your wits about you, to give them nothing they didn’t have already. He forced a twisted smile, said calmly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t killed anyone.’

  ‘Kate Wharton, Flynn.’

  ‘Don’t even know the girl.’

  ‘Her body was found on the golf course at Ross-on-Wye last Monday, She’d been killed on the previous day.’

  ‘I read about it. But I don’t know why you should bother to come in here to talk to me about the girl. I certainly didn’t know her.’

  Lambert smiled at him: their faces were barely two feet apart, as he leaned forward, with only the small square table between them. ‘A lie, that. And we’ve got it on tape. Won’t look too good for you, on top of other things. You could talk yourself into a murder charge, if we go on like this.’

  ‘I didn’t kill the girl!’ He hadn’t meant to shout like that, as if he was panicking. They liked it if you panicked. Malcolm said more quietly, but with the conviction draining from his voice, ‘I told you, I didn’t even know her.’

  ‘This is disappointing, Flynn. I would have expected more co-operation, from a man in your position. But of course, if you killed the girl, you’ve nowhere to go, have you? Might as well carry on denying it, I suppose, and hope we can’t assemble the evidence to lock you away. But we will, you know, if you did it. Might take us a few days, but you’re not going anywhere, are you? With serious drugs charges against you, we can take our time about the murder charge.’ Lambert nodded quietly to himself, as though confirming his satisfaction with the situation.

  Malcolm felt fear welling behind his eyes, where it must surely show to this unexpected tormentor. The picture of him locked away like a rat in here, whilst the police patiently built a case against him, filled him with horror. He said stubbornly, ‘I didn’t even know the girl.’

  Lambert studied him for a moment, enjoying the trapped look on his face. ‘You knew her all right. She was one of your dealers. We can bring witnesses to that, whenever we need them.’

  Malcolm thought quickly. Perhaps those three they had arrested with him last night had talked. Or perhaps the girl herself had been to the police, between the row when she had walked out of the system and her death. Concede it then, but give them as little as possible. ‘All right, I did know her,’ he admitted. ‘She dealt a bit for me. But it’s a long time since I saw her.’

  Lambert smiled again. ‘That’s better, Flynn. But not a lot better. You’re still being distinctly economical with the truth. It’s less than a fortnight since you saw Kate Wharton, isn’t it?’

  Of course, they must have been on to him long before they arrested him last night: they had known all about last night’s drop with his three dealers, had let him walk into a trap. They must have been watching him for weeks. For months, probably. As the knowledge tumbled suddenly in upon him, he said dully, ‘I don’t remember. I was sure it was longer than that.’

  ‘Let’s stop playing games, shall we? You were seen with Kate Wharton in a pub near the Gloucester docks, on the night of Monday, 30th April. You were seen to have a fierce argument with her, in fact. We believe that she was refusing to deal, refusing to have anything further to do with your operation.’

  Malcolm wondered how much more they knew, how much more this man was going to release to him in dribs and drabs. ‘She did refuse to deal,’ he concurred. ‘That was the last time I saw her.’

  ‘Except for when you killed her, of course.’

  ‘I didn’t!’ His shout was so loud that the constable started forward automatically, as if to defend his superintendent. Lambert held up a hand without taking his eyes from his opponent’s face as Flynn continued urgently, ‘I’ve never killed anyone in my life. Never even been involved in violence.’

  Lambert studied the flat-featured, terrified face for a moment before he said, ‘Not personally, perhaps. But we know the way your organization operates as well as you do. Perhaps better. You pass the information up the hierarchy. People who want to leave don’t have that option: they are simply eliminated. Usually by a contract killer — nothing so crude as you having to do the job yourself. It’s kept impersonal and efficient. But when you passed the information upstairs, you knew you were killing Kate Wharton, as certainly as if you had tightened that cord around her neck yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t kill the girl! All right, I passed on the information that she wanted out, but that was as far as it went. I didn’t know what would happen to her. And I’d no choice in the matter — I had to report that she was trying to opt out!’

  Lambert watched the frightened man with distaste. He had no pity for him; Flynn was intelligent enough to know the effects of the evil goods he purveyed. But what he said was true enough. The drugs system operated rather like Stalin’s secret police: if you withheld any information, if you did not pass it upwards immediately, you were likely to be liquidated yourself, as unreliable. ‘When did you tell your immediate superior about Kate Wharton?’ he asked.

  ‘Wednesday night. It was the first opportunity I had.’

  Lambert didn’t press him for names. Possibly Flynn himself didn’t know even the name of the man above him, in the massive secrecy which cloaked the higher echelons of the organization. That was Drugs Squad business, for tomorrow. ‘What happened then?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. The next thing I heard about Kate Wharton was when I read in the papers that she was dead.’

  ‘I advise you to tell the truth for once, as you’ve conspicuously avoided doing whenever you could. You don’t wish to change your story about Wednesday night? You’re certain that’s when you passed on the information?’

  ‘Yes. And the last time I saw the girl was two nights before that.’ He was desperately anxious now to be believed, desperate to convince them.

  Lambert thought for a moment, without taking his eyes off his quarry’s face. It made sense. If Flynn had passed the information upwards on Wednesday night, the timing was about right. The organization would have brought in a contract killer, who would have sized up his designated victim and the right opportunity to dispatch her. Four days was about right for this, enabling the anonymous killer to isolate his victim and dump her body on the Sunday night.

  He stood up. ‘If you come up with anythi
ng else, pass it on immediately. There’s a murder rap waiting here, for someone. Try to make sure it’s not you, if you really didn’t do it.’

  Malcolm Flynn was not bored that evening. He was too troubled for that. His unexpected visitor left him tossing miserably from side to side throughout the night on the unyielding bunk in the cell.

  Fourteen

  Richard Ellacott enjoyed Monday mornings. He thought it was the best time of the week for the Captain of Oldford Golf Club.

  He played with the seniors on Mondays, all men over sixty, most of them over seventy, and with a good sprinkling of sprightly octogenarians. At sixty-two, he was a youngster, and he enjoyed that. He had his own tee-off time at nine o’clock, and the tradition was that members fell back and allowed the Captain precedence, on the course and off it. If his match caught up with another one, he must never be kept waiting, but waved through, while the players in the match in front of him stood back and smiled. It was a harmless piece of deference, to emphasize that the Captain of the club was in charge of all golfing matters, that he was king for a year before he retreated back to the ranks, like other men before him.

  Richard shrugged away this half-serious veneration of his office, pretended to be a little embarrassed by it. But you couldn’t help liking it, really, he told his mirror, as he brushed his grey but still plentiful hair and combed his moustache. Many of these seniors had fought in the 1939-45 War, whereas Richard was just young enough to have missed even National Service. And here were these heroes deferring to him on the golf course!

  He was playing a challenge match with the pro today against two members, one of a series the Captain traditionally undertook throughout his year. The match would be keenly contested, but the result did not really matter that much. There would be much cheerful banter in the bar afterwards, when the losers would be ribbed by the rest of the seniors. Monday morning at Oldford was largely an all-male preserve, with hearty men’s laughter, broad humour, little malice, and an indulgence of the schoolboy that is still close to the surface in most healthy men.