[Lambert and Hook 20] - Something Is Rotten

by J M Gregson

  He felt the first shiver of cold, and noticed for the first time quite how late it was. Reluctantly, for he was loath to fracture the feeling of well-being which had suffused him by the end of the rehearsal, he shut the folder on his notes and picked up his clipboard. The evening could hardly have gone better, he told himself again, as he took a last look at the deserted stage before switching off the lights and making sure the door locked securely as he pulled it to behind him.

  It was very dark outside after the brilliance of the interior. Most of the sky was clear of cloud, but there was no moon visible tonight. As his eyes gradually adjusted, he perceived the dark outline of his Mercedes at the end of the car park, the only vehicle now left in the area.

  Terry Logan glanced away to the west, where he would normally have glimpsed the local landmark of May Hill, with its copse of firs at the top. It wasn’t high, but you could see it from many miles around and it was a much-loved local landmark. Terry remembered an octogenarian telling him of how when he came home from Hitler’s war half a century earlier, May Hill had been the beacon which told him that he was home and all was well with a battered but defiant Britain and with his Gloucestershire world.

  Tonight, although he knew exactly where the hill lay, he could not see it.

  The car park was unpaved. He picked his way carefully across its uneven surface in the darkness. Ten yards from his car, he pressed his key pad to open the doors, and the sudden flashes of orange illumination seemed unnaturally brilliant in the prevailing darkness, showing him exactly where he should place his feet for the last few steps to the driver’s door.

  He had his hand on the handle before he heard the first soft footstep behind him. He was turning his head when he felt the steel blade of a knife against his throat. The human brain works with amazing speed under pressure. Terry Logan’s brain told him in the same split second in which it registered the arrival of the blade that he was going to die.

  Then, as the knife slashed swiftly across his throat, his brain ceased to function even as it registered the final swift agony of death.

  Nine

  Bert Hook took his time over his morning shave. He was happy to have the bathroom to himself, with the door safely locked for a few minutes. It would give him time to prepare for the inevitable banter of his family at breakfast and his colleagues at the station. This was an aspect of amateur dramatics which he had not anticipated amongst his other trepidations.

  It was scarcely eight o’clock when the phone rang. ‘It’s John Lambert for you,’ said Eleanor from the kitchen. ‘I expect he wants to hear about your triumph at the rehearsal last night.’

  Bert smiled his most elaborately tolerant smile and went to the phone. His expression changed very quickly. Lambert was as usual terse and informative. ‘We have a suspicious death, Bert. I haven’t seen the stiff yet, but from what I hear this sounds like murder.’

  ‘Where and when?’ The two automatic initial questions. How would be the next one, but that could wait until they had the corpse in front of them. Why would come much later.

  ‘In the car park behind the village hall in Mettlesham. I’ve no idea yet exactly when - some time last night.’ Chief Superintendent Lambert stopped, uncharacteristically hesitant about how to communicate the next piece of information to his old friend and colleague.

  ‘I was out there myself last night. It was our first proper rehearsal for Hamlet.’

  ‘I know you were. I’m afraid it seems likely that the deceased is one of your colleagues at that rehearsal.’

  Hook’s mind flew first, for some reason he did not care to analyse, to Mrs Dalrymple. Surely that majestic voice which had first dictated to him that he should involve himself with the Players had not been stilled forever? Then he thought it must probably be their enigmatic star, that handsome, gifted loner who he was sure had the capacity to infuriate many people. These thoughts took him no more than two seconds, at the end of which he was telling himself that such speculation was entirely inappropriate for a man who called himself a detective. But he heard the tremor in his voice as he asked, ‘Do we know yet who the victim is?’ Lambert noticed that his sergeant had already accepted his suggestion that this was murder. ‘It’s a man called Terry Logan. I’m not sure exactly what part he was playing in your Hamlet.’

  Bert tried to control his shock. He had never had a personal involvement as close as this in a serious crime. He said woodenly, ‘Terry Logan wasn’t going to be on stage. He was directing the whole thing.’ And now he was going to be the central figure in a wholly different real-life drama.

  ‘You knew him.’

  ‘Not well.’

  ‘Well enough to have any idea who did this?’

  ‘No. I don’t know much more about his background than you do. He lives - lived - in a beautiful old manor house.’ Bert heard himself make the mistake in tenses which he had so often heard the newly bereaved make in shock. ‘Terry Logan had private money, I believe. He worked in a school, but I don’t think his income from there was very important to him. He’d directed plays in school, as well as amateur dramatics outside it, for many years. He was very experienced in all of that. That’s about all I know.’

  At the other end of the phone, Lambert was smiling. ‘That’s quite a lot, for a man who knew no more about him than I did.’

  ‘We’ll need to check it out. I’m not sure where I got it from - most of it was probably just hearsay.’

  ‘It’s more than we usually know at this stage. I’ll meet you in that car park in half an hour, if you can make that.’

  ‘I’ll be there.’

  Bert Hook put down the phone and went back to an immediately sobered breakfast table. He hadn’t known Logan well, but he’d been to his house and drunk his drink. The man had been full of life and his plans for it.

  Bert Hook was feeling the kind of shock he often had to cope with in the relatives and friends of victims.

  Becky Clegg was eating her cereal in an unwonted, hostile silence. Since she had announced last night that she was leaving this squalid flat, her two companions had scarcely spoken to her. More than that, they had rejected her sporadic attempts at conversation. Her male companion had rebuffed her with monosyllabic grunts, whilst the female one had not deigned to reply at all, but had walked over and turned up the volume on the battered little radio by the sink.

  The radio was tuned to their local station, Gloucester Radio. The music was raucous and the fact that the set was not accurately tuned made the sound excruciating even to their young ears, but none of them went over to adjust the tuning or turn down the volume. In the complex code of their adolescent tensions, that would somehow have meant a loss of face.

  The announcer had that chatty, falsely cheerful voice which local radio seems to think is the appropriate way to thrust you into the trials of a new day. She gave the silent trio at the battered table the benefit of her opinions and reactions on a variety of trivia. Then her voice dropped into the deeper and more portentous tones which Becky remembered national radio using to convey the news of Princess Diana’s death when she had been a schoolgirl.

  The presenter intoned, ‘We have some disturbing late news. Police have just announced the discovery of the body of a middle-aged man in the car park behind the village hall in Mettlesham, near Ross-on-Wye. It is understood that the man, who has not been named, was suffering from knife wounds. The police are treating the death as suspicious and anyone with any information is asked to get in touch with the CID section at Oldford Police Station immediately.’

  She gave them a number to ring, but the trio who had avoided each other’s eyes for twenty minutes were looking at each other long before the last digit was pronounced. The girl broke her self imposed silence. She said with undisguised relish, ‘Mettlesham Village Hall. That’s where you were last night, Becky Clegg.’

  The girl had used her full name, as the teacher had been used to do years ago when you were in trouble at primary school. Becky stared not at her but
at the spoon she had suddenly dropped into her cereal bowl. ‘It’s Terence Logan.’ She hadn’t known she was going to say anything at all: the words sounded in her ears as if they were coming from someone else.

  The boy who had been about to leave the room stared at her bowed head. ‘And how would you know that?’

  ‘I don’t. But that’s who it will be. You’ll see.’

  ‘He’s right. How could you know that?’ This time it was the girl, coming in right on the heel of Becky’s words.

  Becky didn’t reply to that. She said dully, ‘He was going to be our director in this play.’

  ‘So who killed him?’

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘You seem to know who’s been killed before it’s been announced. You might know who did it.’ The girl was enjoying this. ‘You didn’t do it yourself, did you?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t.’ For the first time, she registered the malevolence of the girl on the other side of the table. ‘We had a rehearsal. We had notes on the rehearsal from the director. We came home. All right?’

  ‘If you say so. Not me you’ve got to convince though, is it?’ The girl’s small eyes narrowed in amused hostility at the thought. ‘The police will be wanting words with you.

  And this time you might not get the soft tosser you got last week. And you can’t expect support from us, now that you’ve decided we’re not good enough for you. That right, Wayne?’

  The boy looked from one to the other of the women in the room, then nodded weakly. His will was no match for that of this virago.

  Becky said, ‘I might be wrong. They only said a body in the car park. It might be nothing to do with us.’ Yet the uncertainty in her voice said that she was certain that it was.

  Her rejected flatmate picked up this weak shot and volleyed it back across the net with delight. ‘It will be. And the police will have you in for questioning before long.’ She nodded in happy anticipation.

  Becky thrust her arms resolutely into the sleeves of her coat, took a deep breath, and said briskly, ‘I must be off to work. Can’t be late at this stage of my career, whatever’s going on in the rest of the world!’

  The girl had been planning some caustic remark about the desertion of her friends, but now she had better weapons at her disposal. She gathered herself for her final thrust. ‘I wouldn’t like to be in your position, Becky Clegg. Not if I had your record with knives!’

  Hook turned his Focus carefully into the car park behind Lambert’s old Vauxhall Senator. They filled the last two spaces of a parking area which was now cut down to half its normal size by the blue and white ribbons which formed a rough rectangle around the crime scene.

  The SOCO officer was a civilian, but he knew this duo well enough. ‘A man walking his dog when it was barely daylight found the body this morning. We had the police surgeon out here at seven-thirty, just to confirm death. Bit of a waste of time, as our man was as cold as ice. The pathologist arrived about ten minutes ago. He might be able to tell you a little more.’

  They donned the paper overalls, slid the plastic coverings over their shoes, and picked their way down the three-feet-wide strip which had been designated as the entry for all personnel into the central area of the crime scene. As they passed between the screens which had been erected to give the corpse its final privacy from the vulgar gaze of a curious public, Bert Hook halted involuntarily in shock.

  It was true enough, what people said. However many bodies you had seen, it was different when you knew the deceased. And this death was pretty dramatic, he told himself, as he swallowed hard and followed his chief forward.

  Terry Logan lay sprawled upon his back beside his Mercedes, so close to it that the palm of his outstretched left hand was underneath the body of the car, near to the driver’s door. His throat had a deep cut which ran almost from ear to ear. His expensive light blue leisure shirt was now crimson-brown for most of its length, with the blood from the wound. His eyes were open, staring at a new day they would never see. The features were not rigid with horror; they had relaxed into an inappropriate surprised smile.

  Lambert stood impassively above the body and stared down into these unrevealing features, wishing for the umpteenth time in his career that the old myth about the eyeballs retaining an impression of their killer had any truth in it. But that would have made life far too easy for detectives. He said grimly, ‘I suppose this is Logan, is it, Bert?’

  ‘It’s him all right,’ said Hook, still trying to recover his normal equanimity. He said stupidly to the pathologist, ‘He’s lost an awful lot of blood.’

  ‘Less than it looks, really,’ said the man whose business it was to handle human remains. Like many of his kind, he seemed quite cheerful, as if treating such things as everyday occurrences was part of his professional patina. ‘He’d have lost a lot more blood from a wound like this, if death hadn’t been instantaneous. This man died within a second or two of being attacked.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Several hours ago, at least: he’s quite cold.’ He looked down calmly at the awful, gashed throat. ‘Probably late last night or early this morning - some time around midnight. The stomach contents may give a little more guidance, but only if you can establish when he last ate.’

  ‘Did he put up a fight?’

  The pathologist was about to say that he couldn’t give an opinion about that after a cursory on-site examination. Then he glanced at Lambert’s intense, concentrated face. ‘My guess at this stage would be that he didn’t have the chance to do that. I’ll need to have him on the slab to see if there is suggestive bruising or any traces of skin under the nails. There’s nothing visible here. I’d say it’s probable that he was taken from behind by surprise and killed before he could offer any real resistance.’

  ‘Or that he knew his assailant and wasn’t expecting to be killed.’

  The small man with the neatly trimmed red beard considered this. ‘That’s more your field than mine. It’s a possibility, but I’d have expected the victim at least to get his hands up and take some damage on them if he was facing his attacker, even if someone pulled a knife on him when he wasn’t expecting it. The surprise attack from behind seems more probable to me.’

  ‘Will the assailant have blood on his clothes?’

  Criminals are always “he” initially, a concession to statistical probability.

  The pathologist gave the matter a little thought, lifting his hand to touch his beard in a mannerism Lambert remembered from previous encounters with him in the Home Office Laboratory at Chepstow. ‘Impossible to say for certain. The blood from a wound like this would certainly spurt. If he was killed as I suspect he was, it would probably have wet the killer’s sleeve. But it’s possible it didn’t touch him at all: he might have had just a little on his hands, which could be easily washed away. Sorry.’

  Lambert answered his wry smile, recognizing that they were two professionals applying very different skills in the pursuit of the same goal. ‘I suppose we’re right to assume this was a male.’

  The pathologist shook his head. ‘Can’t even help you there, I’m afraid. You know better than I do that a huge majority of knife crimes are perpetrated by males. But there’s no reason why this killing shouldn’t have been inflicted by a woman, once you accept the element of surprise. He’s not a tall man, and with the sharp blade which was used here, no great physical strength was needed.’

  Hook found himself wanting to contribute something to the discussion to show that he was not still in shock. He said dully, ‘More and more women and girls have begun to carry knives over the last two years. Becky Clegg, the girl who was playing Ophelia, has assault with a knife on her record. Two years ago, I think.’

  There was the sound of another vehicle arriving, then of an engine changing into reverse as it manoeuvred as close as possible to the screens. The pathologist glanced towards the roof of the van and said, ‘The meat wagon’s arrived. I’ll get him on the table as soon as I can and see what else
I can find that’s going to be useful to you. Don’t hold your breaths. I’ve a totally unscientific gut feeling that I’m not going to find a lot more on this one that will be helpful to you.’ As the photographer took a last shot of the body where it lay, he went back to his car, nodding a greeting to the driver of the van and his companion, as they brought in the plastic body shell and prepared to load the remains into the back of the van.

  Lambert went back to the SOCO officer, watching the two men who were combing the site on hands and knees, laboriously gathering anything with tweezers which might have a possible bearing on this crime. There is a well-documented theory that there is always an “exchange” between criminal and victim at the scene of a crime, that however careful the criminal might be, he will leave behind some evidence of his presence at the spot. Apart from assisting detection, the evidence gathered by the SOCO team is often instrumental in preparing a case for the Crown Prosecution Service to take to court.

  ‘Had he been robbed?’ Lambert asked without much hope. A mugging which had gone wrong, a thief panicking and killing in the face of unexpected resistance, would be a much easier crime to solve than one with more complex motives.

  The civilian officer shook his head. ‘His wallet’s still intact. Credit cards untouched, as far as I can see. We can’t be absolutely sure of this, but I doubt if his pockets have even been searched. What is almost certainly his house key is still in his trouser pocket. And his car keys were on the ground beside him: the most valuable thing around here is that Mercedes, but no one attempted to drive it away.’

  In spite of his carapace of professional calm, the SOCO chief was animated and involved. He hadn’t been in charge of things very long. After a series of squalid minor crimes, investigating seedy flats and alleys smelling of urine, this was his first murder. He didn’t want to get anything wrong, to miss even the slightest, most innocent-looking clue.