by J M Gregson
PC Jones is not even guarding a crime scene, with the blue and white strands marking its limits. He is one remove further from the action than that. He is stationed not where a murder victim met his end, but at the house of the deceased. Scarcely worth the waste of even this minimal manpower in the station sergeant’s view, but the edict had come down from the mountain where dwelt CID, and whatever his views of that august body, he wasn’t going to risk ignoring it.
So PC Alan Jones, with his torch and his asp and his apprehension about the dark which he could never admit, found himself at the former manor house which had been the residence of Terry Charles Logan. It was an impressive place, very dark and square against the blue-black, moonless sky as PC Jones looked up at it from the wrought-iron gates.
He just wished that the spot was a little less isolated.
It seemed to Jones a long time since he had heard even a passing car on the lane below the house. He had watched the orange light from the car’s headlamps between the hedges, until the last faint glimmer had disappeared into the woods of the valley; then he had listened to the car’s engine note for a good couple of minutes after this, until its last sound had died away into the night. He thought for a second or two that he caught an echo of the engine sound from the other direction entirely, but the sound died in his ears as abruptly as it had entered them.
The night and its stillness no doubt played tricks with sounds as it did with other things.
‘Patrol the site,’ the sergeant had told him. ‘Walk round the perimeter from time to time and flash your torch into every dark corner. It’s straightforward work, lad, even for someone as wet behind the ears as you are. Don’t think you can sit inside with your feet up all night, but feel free to vary the routine of your patrols, so that anyone watching in the darkness cannot anticipate your movements.’ Alan had joined in the station sergeant’s mirth at that melodramatic idea at the time. Now, in the blackness and the silence which surrounded the square stone building, it did not seem funny at all. Jones had grown up in a terrace of houses in Cardiff, where the sound of human voices was never far away. He wondered now why Terry Logan, a man who by all accounts could have chosen exactly the house he wanted, had sought out such isolation for his dwelling.
PC Jones could not dismiss from his mind the knowledge that the man who had lived in this house had had his throat cut from ear to ear two nights ago, in a stillness and an isolation less profound than this one. He tried to control his erratic breathing by whistling, sporadically and tunelessly, as he walked along beside the wall at the front of the garden, feeling less threatened here on more open ground. A screeching owl rent the air with its raucous call half a mile away, down the valley, as if in response to his whistling, and Alan was glad of even that eldritch sound.
He went reluctantly back up the garden path towards the great mass of stone above him, playing his torch on every angle of the building, telling himself like a parent comforting a child that the bright white light showed that there was nothing to fear. He went into the kitchen at the back of the house which was his base for the night, hesitated for a moment, and then locked the door behind him. It was against regulations, but who was going to know?
At least now he could settle down for a while in comfort, knowing that no one could surprise him. It might be a totally ridiculous idea that someone with a knife was going to spring upon him, but if he locked the door it couldn’t happen, could it? And no one would be any the wiser in the morning, when the bright light of the dawn would make all such notions absurd.
Alan Jones looked at his watch. Twenty past one. How slowly the time seemed to pass, when you were on your own in a place like this. He couldn’t open his thermos flask and have a cup of coffee until three. That is what he had decreed at ten o’clock, when his stint here had begun. Well, you had to adapt to circumstances, the police training course had taught him. He would have a cup now. And perhaps one of his biscuits. Save the main snack for three o’clock, as planned, but demonstrate your flexibility.
He sat down at the table and undid his greatcoat. Might as well relax; no need to go back outside for another half an hour or so. He nibbled his digestive biscuit very slowly and deliberately, making it last as he had done when he was a child. He wondered what time the dawn would come. Not much before seven, at this time in November, but out in the country like this you would be able to see the grey streaks in the east well before you were aware of them in the town.
He was halfway through his coffee, savouring the sharp heat at the back of his throat, when he heard the sound which set his heart pounding. It was at the other end of the house. A distant, muffled scratching. He told himself that he was imagining things, but he did not believe himself for even a moment. And sure enough, no more than three seconds later, the sound came again. The front door, it must surely be. Well, probably the front door: from the other end of the house, you couldn’t really be sure.
The scratching was there again, persistently, now, and then abruptly it stopped. There was another sound, a sort of click. And then perhaps a footfall. But he couldn’t be sure of that.
His first thought was that he should be out there, tackling the intruder, if intruder it was. Then he remembered his orders, the orders no one had paid much attention to, because the possibility of anyone coming here was surely so remote. You radioed in for help. You did nothing but maintain a watch, until reinforcements arrived. Until a car full of powerful, confident, experienced officers came and took over.
Thank God for the rule book.
Jones spoke softly into his radio, fearful in case that sinister, unseen presence at the other end of the house should hear his tremulous tones. To his immense relief, he heard a calm, answering voice, redolent with the warmth and safety and camaraderie of the station. He was told to maintain a watching brief, to do nothing unless the suspected intruders tried to leave the premises.
PC Alan Jones prayed fervently that they would not do that.
They? Had he already decided that there was more than one of them? He found himself wondering absurdly whether it would make him less of a wimp if there were several of them rather than a single felon. But he wasn’t a wimp at all, he told himself firmly. Much as he would have liked to make an arrest single-handed, he was simply observing tedious police routine. He had no choice about that.
Unless of course the burglars got what they wanted and left before the cavalry arrived. He heard another sound, almost above his head, and welcomed it. He switched off the light in the kitchen, went to the door into the hall and listened intently. Whoever was out there had gone upstairs. They weren’t going to leave in a hurry, unless they were disturbed. And they certainly weren’t going to be disturbed by PC Alan Jones.
He went on listening. He heard other muffled, indeterminate sounds. Sounds he would never have heard if he had not had young, efficient, hyperactive ears. They were definitely upstairs now, moving from room to room up there. He could not tell whether it was one person or more than one, but they seemed to be going through the house.
Alan Jones, with his head pressed hard against the edge of the closed door, wondered how long it would take them to reach the kitchen.
He heard the sound of the squad car coming rapidly up the valley, held his breath as it came nearer and nearer, until it was certain that this was his colleagues and that they were coming here. He thought that he had never heard a more welcome sound than that engine racing through the gears.
Jones had feared that they would come with sirens blaring, alerting the anonymous presence upstairs to their arrival long before they were here, compelling some reaction from him to prevent their escape. They did not do that. You would have thought they were innocent revellers, returning late to some house further along the valley. They were at the gates of Terry Logan’s house before those who were within it illegally were even aware of the danger.
PC Jones hastily unlocked the back door of the house, peered out at the shadowy figures who were moving up the slope
of the long front garden, flashed his torch briefly and blindingly towards them, congratulated himself that there seemed to be several large and powerful officers.
There were four of them, in fact. Five, when he added himself to the forces of good. Alan Jones felt a reassuring surge of power coursing through his veins. They’d show the bastards who was in charge here, now. How could these impertinent sods think they could come breaking into the house of a dead man and get away with it? He gripped his asp firmly and strode towards the house beside his leader.
The two people who had been searching the upstairs rooms realized too late what was happening. Only when the car stopped at the gates did they realize that it was coming here, and by that time they were trapped. Caution was no use to them now. They tumbled rapidly, clumsily, noisily down the stairs and out of the front door they had opened so cautiously twenty minutes earlier.
Straight into the waiting arms of the police. A man and a woman, realizing swiftly that they were outnumbered and that resistance was useless. A confused, scuffling scene, with obscenities flying through the night. They were turned with arms up their backs and their faces against the cold stone of the house and assured in urgent monosyllables that they were nicked.
PC Alan Jones was allowed to issue the formal words of the arrest, to announce to the two heavily breathing miscreants the absurd formalities, that they had no need to say anything but that it might prejudice their defence if they failed to declare things which they might wish to use in court. It was his collar, the sergeant said, so he was duly belligerent as he shouted the words through the night.
The captives said nothing as they were put in the back of the second car when it arrived, their heads assiduously lowered by the police to prevent injury as they entered it.
As the police vehicle began its careful journey to the station and the cells, Jack Dawes and Becky Clegg stared steadily ahead of them into the darkness.
Eighteen
Saturday morning. A still, mild, November day, with a weak sun rising late over a quiet landscape in Gloucestershire.
Maggie Dalrymple hurried her husband through his breakfast and then stood in the bay window of the big house, watching his car disappear down the lane. He often went into the works for a couple of hours on a Saturday morning. It was quiet then, so that he could get on with a few checks on financial matters without the inevitable interruptions of midweek.
Sometimes his wife protested that he worked too hard, that he should be taking things more easily now and enjoying the benefits and privileges of success. Today she was happy to see him go.
She was determined that she would not play the local grande dame with the visitors from CID, sensing that they would be less impressed by her councillor and JP status than most other people whom she met in the course of her busy life. When they came at nine fifteen, she took them into the spectacular dining kitchen and sat them down on the other side of the big rectangular table. If they were surprised to be accommodated here, they gave no sign of it. She felt Chief Superintendent Lambert’s grey, observant eyes upon her from the moment he entered the room.
She managed to wring a rather wan smile from Bert Hook, and tried not to think of the very different circumstances in which she had recruited him against his will into the cast of the ill-fated Hamlet. That now seemed much more than twelve days earlier. DS Hook said, ‘There are one or two things we now need to clear up, Maggie.’
He was still using the form of address she had asked him for, but he looked as if it had cost him an effort.
‘I’m ready to help in any way I can, of course,’ she said, finding herself anxious for this preliminary fencing to be over. Maggie Dalrymple was used to tackling issues head on.
Lambert accommodated her in this. ‘You concealed the closeness of your relationship with Terry Logan from us. Lied about it, in fact.’
Maggie found herself blushing furiously. She could not remember the last time she had been called a liar. She wished now that she had put on make-up, instead of presenting herself groomed but unadorned to them, in the hope that such defencelessness might imply honesty. She said with all the dignity she could summon, ‘I think you mean the closeness of my former relationship. That is history. It is a mere distraction. In terms of Terry’s death, I thought you would be only concerned with events in the immediate past.’
Lambert ignored that. ‘You had an intense relationship with a murder victim, which ended with great bitterness on your side. You are too intelligent a woman to think that such an affair is irrelevant to our investigation.’
She set her lips in a firm line for a second or two before she spoke. ‘There was nothing between Terry and me at the time of his death.’
‘Your husband was plainly doubtful about that.’
She wondered exactly how much Andrew had revealed to these observant men when he spoke to them yesterday. More than he had been aware of, no doubt: he was very easy to read, was Andrew, she thought with a flash of irritation.
‘Perhaps he was doubtful, as you say. If so, he was wrong.’
‘Was it not natural for him to be suspicious, when you not only joined Logan’s cast for Hamlet but went round recruiting people like Sergeant Hook to take part? You were acting as Mr Logan’s assistant. That implies a close relationship between the two of you.’
Maggie took her time and allowed herself a knowing, slightly patronizing smile. ‘You have obviously not been involved in amateur dramatics, Mr Lambert. Terry was an excellent director: I’m sure other people have already told you that. Much more than that, he was offering me the chance to play the Queen in Hamlet. I’d have killed for that!’ She gave a nervous little giggle as she realized what she had said. ‘Well, not literally, of course - that is just a piece of stage exaggeration. But this was almost surely my last chance to play Shakespeare; certainly my last chance to play a plum part like Queen Gertrude. I’d have given a great deal for that. Certainly the fact that I had a past with Terry Logan wasn’t going to stop me. The only really important fact was that I had confidence in him to produce something good from his cast. Possibly something exceptional.’
For a moment, she was lost in the thought of the possible triumph which this death had denied her. Lambert was irritated by what seemed to him a ridiculous distortion of values, but he believed that this production had been as important to her as she said. Nevertheless, it was still possible, he told himself, that a passionate hatred of the man who had treated her badly had overridden this enthusiasm for what was after all a hobby. Joining the production had been her best opportunity to get close to the man who had ended their affair so brutally. He said, ‘I understand that there was great acrimony when your affair with Mr Logan ended.’
She threw him a fleeting look of pure hatred before she recovered herself. ‘No doubt Andrew has given you his account of that. My husband is very protective of me. Terry and I had enjoyed what I considered a tender relationship for about a year. He dismissed me as if I was little more than a tart.’
‘To set himself up with a man.’
‘A young man, in fact. A man less than half my age at the time, as Terry pointed out to me. The break-up showed me his very worst side. I have been glad of that in the years since then. It has made it easier to see what a fool I was to get involved with him.’
‘And the young man in question was Michael Carey.’
‘It was. A very attractive young man, as Terry Logan was at pains to tell me.’
‘A man who was also to appear in this production. Wasn’t that yet another thing which should have kept you away from it?’
She smiled again at his naivety about the fascination of drama. ‘Michael Carey is the most gifted actor I have seen outside the professional theatre. I have no doubt that he would have made a striking and exciting Hamlet - indeed, he probably still will at some time in the future, in a professional context. It would have been a privilege to appear alongside him in the play.’
‘Even though he had replaced you in Logan’
s bed?’
She was not thrown by the directness of the phrase. ‘Michael Carey was discarded himself in due course. No doubt as abruptly and cruelly as I had been. We might even have exchanged bitchy remarks about our director when we had got closer to each other, after a month or so of rehearsals. Michael Carey’s acting capacity was far more important to me than his history. And I’m sure that in turn he was far more interested in me as his mother in the play than as a former bedmate of the director.’
Lambert nodded slowly, then said quite casually, ‘Your husband wasn’t in the house when you got home from the rehearsal on Wednesday night, was he?’
Maggie felt her head spin. She even lost sight of the calm, relentless face in front of her for a moment, as her senses reeled in the face of this sudden, unexpected challenge. Again she found herself wondering how much Andrew had told them. How much had he revealed of himself and her to them, when he had thought he was being cautious? How much had they already found from other sources as their team went about finding out the truth of Terry Logan’s death? She’d already lied to them once, about her affair with Terry, and they’d come back and humiliated her about that. She couldn’t afford to lie again. She said like one in a dream, ‘No. Andrew wasn’t here when I got in.
Maggie Dalrymple looked round the big, modern kitchen, with its immaculately clean sink, its rows of cupboards, its food mixer and its array of stainless steel pans. This room which had seemed so innocent before their arrival now seemed threatening. She was beset with the absurd idea of being involved in some grotesque animated cartoon. For a moment she had the feeling that these shining kitchen implements were about to leap forward to denounce her, if she did not tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
It seemed to her a long time before Lambert asked, ‘Where was he at that time?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where do you think he was?’