Passion in the Peak

by John Buxton Hilton

‘That leaves Cantrell.’

  ‘A very different proposition. He really did want to know. “Do you mind if I take notes?—” and pulled the gag about what men like himself have to learn from professionals. I had to do a spot of hard preaching to make sure he doesn’t hang about too openly and give the game away. Oh, and you’ll be grateful to know that he’s offered to lend you a few of his security mobsters, in case you’re short on manpower.’

  Gleed stood up from his desk, flexed his shoulders.

  ‘You know, Simon—I’d rather like it to be Cantrell.’

  ‘And I’d like it to be Furnival.’

  ‘This dialogue would sound good on Panorama, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘We’re a couple of bad buggers,’ Kenworthy said.

  ‘I don’t know about a couple. If you hadn’t been here, I probably wouldn’t have taken a step outside the manual. And Lindop’s been behaving in a very interesting fashion. I’ve had a shadow on him every yard since he left the site. A very tired man, from all appearances.’

  ‘He can’t have had much sleep.’

  ‘Well, he really did leave Peak Low. He thought he gave my man the slip—which the officer was crafty enough to let him go on thinking. He drove as far as Bakewell, parked in the public car park outside the police station. Then he did a bit of double-shuffling in and out of a pub, slipped into a garage and hired himself a car on an impeccable credit card. Drove back into the hills with his hatbrim down and his coat collar up. The last report was that he was lying doggo in a lane behind Little Longstone. Which means that he intends to come back—and could be here in under half an hour.’

  ‘Let’s hope he’s played the game with those tapes—and I think he will have done. Furnival can manage without him now. Lindop’s work is done: that was producing the master-tapes. So Furnival’s got all he bargained and paid for.’

  ‘He wins again, in fact.’

  Gleed looked at his watch.

  ‘Final briefing session in twenty minutes. I can’t ask you to sit in.’

  ‘I’d lose my credibility if I did. And I’d better go and rally round his lordship. Who are you putting on his heels, by the way?’

  ‘A face no one knows round here—like all but one that I’m using. A detective-sergeant from Clay Cross. If ordinary Derbyshire villains knew what strength I’ve called in from corners of the county, they’d have a bonanza. I’m setting one of my DI’s on Dyer—a wily sod called Hewitt who’s been beefing about being on an inside job for the last six months. I’m putting a multiple team on Cantrell—he’s likely to be mobile, with his squad of watchmen to organize. And on Tandy himself, I’m using local talent: the egregious Sergeant Nall.’

  ‘You don’t think he’ll try to do the job from inside The Devonshire Arms?’

  ‘If he hasn’t learned anything from a few unkind things I said to him yesterday, he’s ineducable. Watching Tandy is going to need someone who knows every rock, wall and spinney—just in case he gets lost. I’d have liked young Kershaw on that job—but he’s strictly not available.’

  ‘I know. Pity. I’d have liked him on my wing.’

  Gleed looked at him like a man who was not going to press one particular question too forcefully.

  ‘Yes—just how do you propose to comport yourself, Simon?’

  ‘Oh, coming and going,’ Kenworthy said. ‘Hither and thither.’

  Freddy Kershaw was kept for a long time in an ante-room while the panel conferred. He had expected them to be solemn men, but he had been surprised by how uninformative their solemnity had been. One of them had looked sour, one bored. Then they asked him to wait. There was nothing in their waiting-room for him to look at, and he had not thought of bringing anything to read.

  According to the partially informed, a good deal would turn on whether Ricarda Mommsen had received fatal injuries before the car had actually pushed her through the wall. The inquest had been adjourned, so the pathologist’s report was not public knowledge, but there was no lack of soothsayers who claimed to know what was in it. Some said that Ricarda’s spine had been broken against the coping while Larner was still braking. Freddy Kershaw had heard a woman scream while the car was still hurtling down. But the panel did not dwell on any of this. They were judging Kershaw on the foreseeable consequences of his actions, not on the luck of the draw.

  But what had disturbed him most was the counter-productivity of his honesty. He had expected face-value credit for his truthfulness. Some of the panel, on the other hand, had looked deviously for motives, even at this stage. And, obviously, some of them thought they had found something.

  He had been frank with them: Joan Culver had pointed out that her bag was still in the glove compartment. He had judged that he could retrieve it without disturbing the car. A steely-haired superintendent looked at him with eyes that understood only one sort of truth.

  ‘You hoped that by removing this bag, you might be able to hide the fact that Miss Culver had been in Mr Larner’s car at all. Wasn’t that what was uppermost in your mind?’

  Freddy Kershaw was stung.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You wanted to obliterate from your own mind the fact that she had been out with him.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Too forceful. Over-emphasis. Self-condemnatory.

  ‘But something like that had occurred to you?’

  ‘Sir—why should that bother me?’ he asked. ‘It was common knowledge that Miss Culver had gone out with Wayne Larner. I myself had seen them arrive at my billet together. How could I hope to maintain such a fiction as you are suggesting?’

  ‘Detective-Constable Kershaw, we are not here to develop hypotheses. I put it to you that you were in a pretty grim frame of mind as you started up that hill.’

  ‘That isn’t true, sir.’

  And yet it was. He’d been jealous, bloody-minded.

  Then came the ante-penultimate moment when he was given his last chance to add to his evidence. Kershaw had rehearsed a good deal that had been of little use to him because of the way the questioning had gone. And there had been one angle that he had not intended to bring up. It would only be construed as vindictive. He even thought them capable of looking on him as a sneak. In any case, he wasn’t out for anyone’s blood. Yet he heard his voice plunging on.

  ‘It seems to me, sir, that I would not be here today if I had shown no respect for the truth. If I had done as certain persons suggested I did.’

  ‘Certain persons—who are these certain persons? Do you propose to tell us? If you are prepared to be explicit, then we shall record and consider your statement. But we cannot listen to anonymous insinuations. Inexperienced though you are, I would have expected you to have known that.’

  ‘I understand that, sir. I mean that my DI and my detective-sergeant wanted me to revise the statement I had made.’

  ‘Your DI did? What did he actually say to you?’

  There was nothing for it but to admit that no words were actually used. Fewter’s words—or alleged words—had been conveyed to him by Nall. That was hearsay, unacceptable. He had to leave them with the impression that he was as ignorant of procedure as that.

  ‘Wait in the outer room, Detective-Constable Kershaw.’

  ‘So the two-faced sod tried to shop me,’ Nall said, trying to enlist Sergeant Wardle’s sympathy in the Peak Low police house. Wardle’s sole contribution to the affair had been his self-exonerating insistence that he had told Kershaw not to touch the car.

  ‘Damn it, all I told him was for his own good, seeing that he hadn’t the bloody sense to see it for himself. The way he seems to have put it to them, it makes it look as if I was giving him orders to tell lies.’

  A sour bubble of breakfast bacon-fat dislodged itself from the upper reaches of Nall’s digestive tract.

  ‘The silly young bugger even tried to involve Fewter—as if bloody Fewter ever carried a can for anyone in his life. So Fewter’s gunning for me too. Christ! Is that the time? I was supposed to be at Gleed’s
briefing five minutes ago.’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kenworthy had inconspicuously taken post behind one of the pillars of the auditorium, though without any cloak and dagger show. He could see that one of Gleed’s henchmen was already at his start-line. The detective-sergeant from Clay Cross, whose target was Furnival, was in one of the aisle seats, eight rows back, watching the rehearsal. Furnival was also watching it: The Road to Emmaus, one of the appearances of Jesus to his friends after the crucifixion. But their eyes were beholden that they should not see him.

  Until today it had seemed a reasonable link-scene, as well as a convenient way of clearing the depth of the stage for the glorious technology of the Ascension. The original schema had been for the silhouette of Larner’s retreating back to accompany the apostles against a projected background of stony road. He was to remain unrecognized until he began to hum a reprise of There was a shout about my ears (melody Szolnok, lyric Chesterton).

  But the scene was playing worse than flatly. There was something amiss that was worse than the physical absence of Larner. Furnival was chafing and the man in the seat next to him, one of his cohort of scriptwriters, was catching his lordship’s full frontal onslaught.

  ‘It won’t do. When they see this, it’s Larner’s death the audience will be dwelling on.’

  ‘Couldn’t we omit the sequence altogether?’ the scriptwriter asked.

  ‘Unthinkable. We would be liable under the Trades Descriptions Act. We have promised an unabridged version.’

  Dyer was not in the theatre. Why should he be? His sole reason for remaining in Peak Low had been to protect his interest in Larner—and to try to snaffle any vacant parts for others of his proteges. But a contract for a new Mary Magdalene had been signed behind his back, dissipating his last hopes.

  Cantrell was not here, either. There was plenty for him to do, checking the deployment of his storm troops. Everything was happening in an altogether desultory fashion. Hajek was in silent mood, watching the acting without comment, though now and then he wrote down a note.

  And Szolnok was equally passive. In theory, Kenworthy was no xenophobe. But he was always having to fend off the temptation to turn into a dyed-in the wool reactionary. It was one of the hazards of the policeman’s way of life. He had seen many an otherwise fair-minded officer succumb to it. Foreigners—and aesthetes—they had codes that were not as other men’s were.

  Kenworthy slipped out of the auditorium. Hither and thither he had told Gleed his sphere of action lay.

  There was a peculiar diversion in the village while The Road to Emmaus was drifting through its lifeless lines. A lorry piled cumbersomely with scrap metal had shed its load at the nodal Peak Low crossroads, blocking egress and ingress by three of the four main routes. Sergeant Wardle had come plodding out to make leisurely notes of all the appropriate infringements, and every man, woman and child with time on their hands had gathered to share the excitement.

  This operation had been mounted with some degree of uncertainty since, unlike the Passion, perfectionist rehearsal had been impossible. It was Gleed who had laid it on, preferring not to have an audience for the reconstruction of crime that he proposed to mount up Brackdale. Since the exercise was going to involve a wild drive up the hill in a Panda car pretending to be a Lotus, spectators could have made the scene untidy.

  It was a small and assorted group of plainclothes officers that Gleed had with him in situ—the star player was undoubtedly Alfie Tandy, who had been brought up to show them exactly where he had concealed himself on the lethal Saturday. A woman officer, not looking as if she was wholly enjoying her part, had been told to stand where Ricarda Mommsen had taken the impact of the car. The party deployed themselves and they heard the Panda start out from the Square, roaring up the lower stretch of the hill.

  It was remarkable how the wildfire news spread about Peak Low.

  In the theatre, it was backstage that the word was passed that this time Gleed really had surpassed himself. He had actually planned to drive full tilt at one of his own women officers up Brackdale, and everybody had been so damned scared that Tandy—who was going to have been charged with murder later this afternoon—had made himself scarce into the backwoods while pursuit was being made doubly difficult by the traffic snarl-up in the village centre.

  The word was brought on-stage by the first actor with an entrance to make. So now the action, already moribund, petered out altogether for seconds. Hajek was at last stirred to wrath.

  ‘Now what goes on?’

  Someone stepped up-stage and shouted the news down to him. Furnival did not do anything straight away. He waited until the dialogue had picked up again, then said something to his captive scriptwriter, got up and walked without apparent haste towards the main exit. The detective-sergeant from Clay Cross also got up and left the theatre, in his case by a side-entrance. He went out like a man of leisure—but as soon as he was outside, he stepped out briskly along a route that he had already mapped out for himself. In less than half a minute he had Furnival in sight again, and fell in behind him at his lordship’s pace.

  It was a mobile team that Gleed had briefed to stand by for whatever moves Cantrell might make. During the run-up period, until the action proper started, one man equipped with a personal radio was keeping track of the Colonel’s whereabouts.

  There had been something strange about his conduct all day. At first it had simply looked as if he were going the rounds checking on his sentries. But it was not long before it became evident that something other than a normal master-and-man relationship was governing his conversations with his old soldiers.

  Sergeant Cook, the first fingertip of the watch-force, was unable to approach near enough to hear what their talk was about. Gleed had impressed upon him that Cantrell must not know that he was being shadowed: what mattered to Gleed was where Cantrell made for when he heard that Tandy was on the run.

  It looked to Cook very much as if it was the rank and file who were calling the tune in these conversations with their so-called boss. There was nothing military—or even respectful—in their bearing when they spoke to him: hands in pockets, cigarettes alight, even at their duty-points. And it was equally clear that Cantrell was not enjoying himself. He was obviously trying to make some emphatic point, and it stood out a mile that he was having little success. Men interrupted him before he had finished what he was trying to say, and there was more than one occasion when they were all talking at once.

  Then they were joined by a newcomer who came striding across a field. Sergeant Cook guessed that this was the crucial messenger. There was no doubt that the news disturbed Cantrell. Whatever the nature of the rift between him and his work-force, there was no doubt that the news of Tandy’s escape had shaken them all.

  Cook made sure that he was masked by the bole of a substantial tree, pulled out the aerial of his pocket transmitter and reported to Gleed that Cantrell was striding in the direction of Peak Low Hall, at intervals almost breaking into the indignity of a run.

  Detective-Inspector Hewitt had been grumbling for weeks about the office-job to which he had been seconded. When Gleed had called him out to keep watch on Dyer, he had sarcastically remarked that he was surprised that he was considered up to it.

  And then he came to the early conclusion that he would be lucky if this assignment gave him anything to do at all. For all the signs were that Dyer was packing up to leave, and that he would have the dust of Peak Low off his shoes before the morning-was over.

  DI Hewitt had gained entrance to the Hall by pretending to be a heating engineer attending to the valves and air-locks of the radiators. He knew that provided he looked authoritative and busy enough, anyone who saw him was likely to assume that his visit was in order. He was even able to enter Dyer’s own room, in Dyer’s presence—and Dyer’s radiator appeared to be giving him prolonged difficulty. Dyer had been packing files into a tea-chest, and had just tied the last cord. Inspector Hewitt bled air from a valve with the
special key with which he had equipped himself. He was still in Dyer’s room when Cantrell came racing up the stairs.

  ‘Those idiots have let Tandy give them the slip. He’s at large in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘No concern of mine,’ Dyer said. ‘I’ve nobody else under contract. I’m through.’

  Cantrell looked anxiously over his shoulder at the man in overalls who had just noisily dropped a spanner.

  ‘You did have last Saturday night. You’d do better to stick around a day or two, Dyer. We may have to consult. We need to be in close touch.’

  At that moment Dyer’s internal telephone rang. Hewitt had no difficulty in gathering that the man at the other end was Furnival.

  ‘Yes, sir. Cantrell’s with me. We’ll be up straight away.’

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  By the time they took Alf Tandy up Brackdale for the re-enactment, he had had enough. They had tried everything they knew on him and some of the sequences, longish ones, had been anything but friendly. Tandy was a man of character—if that is the word to use of his system, which was to adhere, come what may, to whatever plan of action he had settled on. Only once in his life had he been untrue to a plan conceived, and that had been when he had withdrawn from the confessors’ squad. He was still not sure whether that had been a mistake. Since he had talked to Kenworthy at Ramsgate, he had stuck to a simple line: he had seen something, that Saturday night; it had involved someone close to the top. It was one of Tandy’s weaknesses that he liked people to know when he was on to something big. He did not give secrets away, but he liked his immediate associates to know when he knew a secret. No one had been able to shake him out of these grooves. Now and then, when they were varying their routines with an hour or so of the nice guy routine, he had allowed himself to chat to them amiably, then as soon as they got back to Saturday night, he limpeted up. But the fact of the matter was that even Tandy was beginning to feel a bit jaded. Sometimes Gleed deputed the interrogation to a subordinate, and some of the junior officers lacked the Chief Inspector’s patience. Sooner or later, someone was going to lose his temper and hit Alfie. Alfie could feel it coming, and he did not reckon it.