Who Saw Him Die? (Inspector Peach Series Book 1)

by Gregson, J. M.

  “You’re pissed, Courtney,” he said to himself. It was not an unpleasant sensation. The need to concentrate was over with for the day; there would be no one up at this time when he got back to Westhaven. As if to confirm that fact, the street lights went off suddenly above his head as he moved towards the town. He grinned for no particular reason, moving carefully and a little unsteadily through the deserted streets.

  Or almost deserted. He heard footsteps behind him as he moved between the taller buildings near the centre of the old town. The sound seemed to his fuddled senses at one remove, as though it came in a dream. But it was consistent: steadily, sharp upon the cold stone, the sound of the feet rang through the clear night air. There was no attempt to disguise the sound, and it stayed a constant distance behind him.

  With the elaborate cunning of the inebriated, Dick turned suddenly at right angles off the road into the deep shade of a plane tree, almost falling over with the suddenness of his realignment. On either side of a stone pillar which prevented access by vehicles, a path ran from here over cobbled stones, down to the side of the canal. Would he be followed? He knew suddenly that he would run if he was. He knew this route well enough, for he used it always on these late-night returns from his assignations with Frankland.

  But the steps went on, past the black shadow of the tree, on the other side of the road, receding into the darkness. Dick, feeling immensely cunning, crept back a few yards and peered after them. He grinned the wide, foolish grin of one who has been alarmed and finds the fear groundless. The departing form, vague in the enveloping darkness, was, he decided, a woman. A tall woman, but a mere woman, nonetheless.

  Dick Courtney did not often laugh at himself. In his mellow state, he found the novelty of the experience quite pleasant.

  He turned back over the cobbles and moved, relaxed again if a little unsteady, to the path by the canal. It was a pleasant walk during the day, under the bridges of the old town. It was many years since this water had been a thoroughfare; nowadays, green slime accumulated in the danker places. But a municipal authority which had neglected the water for years now recognised it as an amenity, and cleared the surface from time to time. Dick had got to know the walk well over the last few weeks as the quietest route home from his nocturnal activities. He strode out confidently, reeling a little in the darkness since there was now no need to disguise his condition. In ten minutes, he would be in bed.

  He never even saw the figure in the shadow of the bridge. Struck from behind, he was in the water almost before he knew he was falling. And when he surfaced and grasped at the slippery stones above him, the hand was quickly upon his long black hair, pressing down his head, holding it inexorably beneath the thin coating of green weed as his lungs filled with water. He was dead almost before his befuddled senses grasped that he was going.

  Dick Courtney had lived for almost twenty-five years. The whole process of his dying lasted no more than forty seconds.

  HARRY

  Chapter Twenty-One

  From somewhere within the high, thick walls of the mortuary, pop music throbbed, low but abrasive. Trevor Harrison wondered if a determined atheist was allowed to find such things sacrilegious. It was merely unseemly, he decided, as he went through the heavy doors. Nothing, after all, can hurt the dead.

  The assistant flicked the switch of his transistor off as soon as he saw him. It was his lunch hour, as he said; Trevor made his automatic allowances for youth and low pay. The man was no more than twenty; he had the lugubrious air and slow movements which the committee who had appointed him had probably thought appropriate in such a post. He also had an acne problem. Spots erupted in random red volcanoes in different parts of his face; Trevor found himself trying to see a pattern in this mobile relief map.

  He took Trevor into the business part of the premises, unlocked the metal door, slid back the weight inside on its almost silent metal rollers. Then he paused for a moment: Trevor was not sure whether this was to allow the visitor to compose himself or to add to the theatrical effect of the most dramatic moment this work offered. He waited for a nod from Trevor to indicate his readiness before he drew back the sheet. He was careful to expose no more than the features; one never knew what desecrations might be present further down the body.

  When he had worked in a hostel for derelicts, Trevor had performed this task of identification on several occasions: not many of their clients there had had relatives who could be quickly traced. But they had been old men, and death had often come to them as a friend, protecting them from the institutions they feared, providing the natural culmination to the decay which had characterised the last stages of their lives.

  This was a different death, and he found himself unprepared for what he saw. The malicious intelligence which had animated the features of Dick Courtney had dropped away with his life. There was not a line on the handsome, regular features, with their strong, thin nose and luxuriant dark hair above. The mouth which had been so mobile, which had been framed habitually into a sardonic smile, was now stilled. For ever, Trevor thought with a shock. The lips, grey-blue where in life they had been rich red, might now have been framed for prayer, not mockery. He looked no more than nineteen. The menace Dick had carried in life had been wiped away.

  Trevor realised that the assistant was looking at him curiously. It was the first sign of animation he had shown throughout the procedure. Trevor said, “That’s him. That’s Dick Courtney all right.” He was glad to find his voice so steady. Why should his emotions make him so vulnerable, even to a young man who had little interest in them?

  The assistant swept the sheet back over the face, which yesterday had held fellow-beings in thrall and today was no more than a handsome, deteriorating mask. Trevor’s last impression was of the small skein of green weed which had entwined itself in the thick hair. He followed the young man in the white coat that was too large back to his desk and signed the form of identification which was already laid out there. Suddenly he was anxious to be out of the mortuary, with the task behind him and the moment of gazing down at Dick’s dead face securely in the past.

  *

  Beyond the mortuary, adjacent to the entrance, was a small room with two armchairs and a few dog-eared magazines. This was an unofficial waiting room, where distressed relatives could compose themselves while waiting for what lay further within the building to be made as suitable as possible for their inspection.

  Trevor was not even aware of anyone in this area until the man rose and the voice said sharply, “Ah, Mr Harrison. I was hoping to catch you here.”

  Detective Inspector “Percy” Peach seemed to be in danger of overflowing his thin grey suit at various points. He was not so much fat as squat and muscular, an argument for bespoke tailoring rather than the off-the-peg plain clothes issue. He was seven inches shorter than Trevor; he moved in upon him like a pitbull terrier assessing the flank of a rangy setter.

  “You’ve identified the stiff?” It was a good moment to start his interviews, he thought. There was always the chance of catching the senses reeling after an identification. And no need to be over-sensitive: this wasn’t a relative.

  Trevor nodded. From below, Peach had a good view of his Adam’s apple moving as he swallowed. “It’s Dick all right. When was he found?”

  “This morning, before seven. Retired chap, walking his dog. Seems it quite upset him. Shouldn’t walk by the canal if he doesn’t want to see things like that.” Trevor thought of the white, newly innocent face he had just left, imagining it staring up from the dark water with the strands of green waving in the hair. Like Ophelia, he thought, dredging up a memory long submerged. But perhaps it had not been like that.

  As if to confirm that thought, Peach said, “Face down, by Alma Street bridge. Must have drowned there, or very near to there; no current in canals, you see. Handy, sometimes, for us, that is. That’s assuming he did drown, of course.”

  “You think he might have been dead before he went into the water?” For the
first time, Trevor realised that he had assumed from the moment he heard the news that this death was not accidental. Dick Courtney had cruised like a hungry shark among them; sharks were hunted down, not drowned.

  Peach shrugged. On the minimal neck, his head gave the impression that it might be withdrawn altogether, like a turtle’s, if he felt suddenly cautious. “Who knows? The post mortem will tell us, so there’s no need to speculate.” It sounded almost like a rebuke, as though Trevor had been indulging in wild assumptions which needed to be checked at source. “So you think he was killed?”

  Trevor gulped again. He would have liked to sit in one of the discoloured armchairs, but Peach stood foursquare and unmoving in front of him. He said, “Yes, I suppose I do. I’m not quite sure why, but —”

  “And who do you think might have killed the young man?”

  “I — I’ve no idea.”

  “Hm. Interesting you should think someone did for him, when you have no idea who it might be.” Peach let the idea float between them for a moment, watching the brown eyes above him for any shift. “Why should you assume Master Courtney was murdered?” It was the first time the word had been used: he noticed without a flicker the little frisson of horror the word brought to the man in front of him. Harrison had a tiny crumb of toast in the recesses of his beard; the fact that he had no idea of its existence made him seem oddly vulnerable. Peach was encouraged.

  Trevor had been wondering himself why he had so readily assumed that this death was not straightforward, as his father’s had been a few weeks earlier, he said, “Well, Dick was a young man, in the prime of life. I suppose I assumed he could have got out of the canal if he had fallen in by accident.” It was true enough: why then did neither of them think it was the real reason?

  Peach said unemotionally, without aggression, “I think you can do better than that, though, Mr Harrison.”

  Trevor was sifting ideas he had not cared to formulate for himself until now. “He seemed to take a delight in stirring up trouble.”

  “It’s one of the things people learn in prisons, sometimes, stirring the shit.” Peach was almost conciliatory. “He put people’s backs up at Westhaven, then?” He congratulated himself on remembering the name of that high Edwardian house where this do-gooder went about his work: good, that. He was glad he had come here without DS Collins; this stiff old bugger might talk more easily without the presence of a notebook. He ignored the fact that Harrison was probably no older than he was; those unwilling to contemplate the evil abroad in this world were always recalcitrant old buggers to Detective Inspector Peach, whatever their age.

  Trevor said, “He was a disruptive influence in the house, I have to admit.”

  Peach deciphered this. Why couldn’t the man say Courtney was an obnoxious little turd, a bloody nuisance that he would like to have thrown out? They could have got on faster then. “In what way was he disruptive?”

  “He seemed to like to put people’s backs up. He enjoyed baiting Fred Hogan, for instance. He tried to find out things about people, as if he enjoyed having a hold on them.” Trevor, who had only now recognised the trait in Dick, sounded surprised by it.

  Peach thought that only the naturally pious could be surprised by such routine evil. He said, “And how did he set about annoying you?” This Puritan prig was going to be a murder suspect, if he was right about the cause of death. No harm in getting him used to the idea. Peach was pleased to see how the question disconcerted him.

  But Harrison made no attempt to evade it. Having made an uncharitable accusation against a dead man, he felt a need to justify it. He thought for a moment and said, “It was more his attitude than anything else. Not usually what he said. He seemed to want to make everyone in the house uneasy.” He stroked his beard. Had he been lying back in an armchair, it might have seemed a natural gesture; when he was standing only a yard from his interrogator, it was no more than a nervous tic. Peach noted with satisfaction that he had still not found the crumb. Drawn on in spite of himself, Trevor said, “He even tried to make out that my father’s death had not been an accident.”

  Even Peach was taken aback for a moment. “When?”

  “At our house conference on the night before he was killed. When we were all gathered together.” Even now, Trevor appeared more outraged by the disruption of his sacred meeting than by the suggestion that his father had been murdered.

  “Can you remember exactly what he said?”

  “Not word for word. He implied that you had suspected more than you were able to prove.”

  Peach kept his face carefully impassive. Beneath the toothbrush moustache, the lips did not even purse. Might as well keep his options open about the old man, even if the file was officially closed. He looked for a moment at Harrison, watching the idea revolve in that gaunt head. “And do you think your father was murdered?”

  “No. It’s ridiculous. Ros told him so at the time.” Somehow, Trevor felt this had not dismissed the idea as forcefully as he had intended.

  Peach said slowly, as though the idea appealed to him, “If you’re right and Courtney was indeed seen off by someone, we might have to reconsider your father’s death. It would increase the chances that any previous death in the house was connected, you see. Statistically, that is.”

  Trevor dug his long hands deep into the pockets of his corduroy trousers, as if he could not trust them to remain still. “I’m quite sure Dad’s death was accidental.”

  Again, he failed to give the statement the conviction he intended. He had never known his father have a serious fall before that fatal one. Since Dick Courtney had questioned the nature of Old Tom’s death, that thought had gnawed at him in the small hours of the night, until he was surprised that no one had questioned him about it at the time.

  Peach was wondering what he should read in the pale, strained face. “It sounds as though our Mister Courtney wasn’t making many friends: not in your house, anyway.” He blinked his small grey eyes and permitted himself a smile at the notion. “Have you any idea who might have killed him, Mr Harrison?”

  Trevor said, “It needn’t have been anyone within the house.”

  “Of course not. But have you any idea who might have killed him?” Peach enjoyed the repetition of his question, knocking home the monosyllables as though he were using a small, precise hammer.

  “No.” Trevor stared past him, facing an idea he had wanted to avoid. The white lines on the tarmac of the car park swam a little before his eyes, then righted themselves. His blue Sierra seemed to symbolise release from what had become an ordeal. He suddenly wanted very much to be within its well-worn driving seat, with the doors closed securely against this man who seemed to enjoy the unpleasant side of life so much.

  He turned for the door and pronounced the formula of his release. “If you are searching among those who detested Dick Courtney, it could have been any of us.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The canal which had been an instrument of death for Dick Courtney was not the only water in the old town.

  In medieval days, when men built smaller ships with shallow draughts, this had been a port. To the long-departed stone quays by the river, coasters had brought sea-coal from the north-east, and more adventurous vessels tapestries and lace from Europe.

  Now the river ran soft and somnolent on the edge of the town, between the remains of fortified walls where the old town ended abruptly and the fields where the country began. There were paths here: gentle, level walks where one could stroll beside the ancient waterway, with only the occasional eddy above the shallows to remind one that the water moved at all. It was a pleasant place to be on an evening at the end of May, when the days stretch towards their longest but everything has still about it the freshness of an English spring.

  Harry Bradshaw certainly found it so. He had walked here alone before, on the night after he had been released from prison, savouring the sharp air and the vastness of the open sky above him. It had been cold then, with March still stru
ggling to shake off winter and the clocks not put forward. He had been completely alone by the river and had delighted in the space, the isolation, the absolute quiet as dusk moved into night.

  Tonight, he found the path by the river still more alluring. Now the rhododendrons blazed bright in the evening light beside the old churchyard on the other bank of the river, and there were more people on the path to share the scene with him. Most important of all, and least predictable on that March day when he had come here before, Harry had a companion of his own. Sarah Dickenson walked at his side.

  They did not touch each other, and their conversation was sporadic. But the silences were easy, with none of that frenetic need to fill the pauses with meaningless small talk which characterises the British in the early stages of an acquaintance. Harry had told her now that he had been in prison, fearing the question which would follow, yet knowing somehow that it would not be asked.

  “That’s why I can’t take you back to the house,” he said, ending one of their long silences by taking up the discourse as if there had been no gap. “I’m with a lot of other jailbirds, you see.” He grinned a little as he used old Tom Harrison’s word for them. She made no attempt to deprecate its use. Then, wanting to be fair, he said, “I’m very lucky to be there, really. One of the big things when you come out is getting a start. Having a solid domestic base has been a great help.” He smiled again at himself: now he was using Trevor’s phrases. He could see that earnest, concerned face, pleading for understanding of the work at Westhaven.

  She looked at the large man beside her, then dropped her eyes to watch his feet; he put them down with habitual care, even here in the open, as if he feared to damage the well-worn path, which was as durable as concrete. She said, “What are they like — the people who run the house, I mean?”

  “The Harrisons? Quite nice. Very nice, really. They’re not in it to make money. It’s their own house, and they’ve just opened up the rooms and used the space to take in people like that.” This time he did not smile, but laughed openly. “Like this, I should say.” He wondered if it showed a returning self-esteem or merely affectation that he should slip into regarding himself as somehow different from other men who had been inside.