Furniture, as one would expect in such a place, was cut to the irreducible minimum: a single chair on each side of the small square table which stood beneath the light. Here questioner and questioned could confront each other with their eyes no more than three feet apart and every change of feature mercilessly illumined by the shadowless light. Lambert called for an extra chair and positioned it so that neither he nor Hook should dominate their side of the table; the effect for the man who was now brought to sit opposite them was no doubt of an increase in the forces ranged against him rather than a diminution of the intensity. It was a situation designed to discourage truculence.
Andrew Lewis had no truculence. Still in his torn jeans and oil-stained shirt, with one lace broken in his trainers, he almost cringed as he was brought in and ordered to sit down. He had his mother’s ash-blonde hair and blue eyes; the first was dishevelled, the second full of the unfocused fear of a child in a world of hostile adults. He had not asked for a wash, so that he had not been offered one: the uniformed branch did not see putting young tearaways at their ease as part of their brief.
Lewis was no tearaway. His thin, hunched shoulders trembled as he waited to be questioned. The grubby stains which ran in irregular smears beneath the eyes only emphasised the youth in the fresh, unlined face. At this moment, it was easy to see why Margaret Lewis might feel the need to defend this vulnerable creature with all the resources at her command. Biology was a powerful force. And Lambert had a sense of fair play that was increasingly old-fashioned: he felt an illogical annoyance against the men who had tried to help him by sending a suspect in like this. He called for the only alleviation the system had to offer. In three minutes, a constable brought in three steaming mugs of tea, setting the smallest one before Lewis with the fraction of a second’s unconscious hesitation which was all his sense of discipline allowed to his resentment.
Lambert, who had lately given up all sweetening, tried not to watch Bert Hook’s large hands struggling incongruously to drop sweeteners from his plastic dispenser into his tea. He said to the apprehensive man opposite to them, ‘How old are you?’ They knew the answer from the growing pile of material which was being assembled for them in the murder room at Oldford, but it was a neutral way of beginning with a subject who was full of distrust.
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Have you been in trouble with the police before?’ He regretted that ‘before’ immediately, with its implication that Lewis was up against the system and all its resources.
‘You people know all about that.’ The young face stared at the table between them, face blank as a sheet of grubby notepaper. Like a child who has done wrong and knows it, he was lapsing into a trance-like sullenness, defying a reaction to an adult world seeking a sign of remorse.
Lambert, aware of his colleague beside him studying those tight-shut features, took a quick decision. Without a word, he motioned Hook to take on the questioning.
The Sergeant allowed himself a swift flash of surprise, no more. He took over the central role with the slightest nod of acceptance. Then he said nothing for what seemed a very long time. The seconds stretched out slowly, painfully, until the silence in that tiny, stifling room seemed like a tangible thing.
Eventually, as Hook knew must happen, the youth’s eyes were drawn upwards, slowly, painfully, as if by some agency outside himself. The Sergeant gave him a small, slow smile; Lewis looked down again, but both of them knew now that there was a kind of contact, neither friendly nor hostile. Bert said, ‘We’d rather hear it from you, lad.’
The youth lifted a hand to his hair, moving it slowly back from where it hung over his left eye, stroking it over his scalp into a semblance of order. It was the first movement he had made since he had been ordered to sit on the chair. He said dully, as if speaking against his inclination, ‘Where do you want me to begin?’
This time the silence was not a tactic. Hook was thinking furiously. ‘Have the people here told you why you were brought in?’
‘No. I ran away.’ He sounded as though he were explaining why the people who had locked him in a cell were not at fault. Perhaps he thought that if there was any misunderstanding, he would be the ultimate sufferer.
‘So I heard. Led them quite a dance. Naughty lad.’ Perhaps Lewis caught a friendly rather than a threatening note in the words, for he glanced quickly up at Hook, then across at the impassive Lambert. Hook said formally, ‘Your mother was housekeeper to a certain Mr Edmund Craven, who died just over a year ago. We now know that what was originally registered as a death from natural causes was in fact a murder. Did you know that?’
Lewis licked his lips. ‘Yes.’ Plainly he wondered what was coming next. Hook, indulging his natural inclination, took his time. And all the while he watched the young man opposite him.
‘Do you know how?’
Lewis shook his head, as though he did not trust himself to speak. His interlocutors studied him, wondering whether his ignorance was genuine. This time his eyes did not twitch upwards to theirs. He did not see the affirmation Lambert gave to Hook before the Sergeant gave the detail. ‘He was poisoned. In fact he was given several dosages of arsenic over a period of months. Someone planned this murder very carefully and carried it through very ruthlessly.’
Now Lewis did look at them. And the blue, revealing eyes were full of fear. Whether it was the horror which descends upon the innocent in face of the evidence of evil, or the alarm of the killer who sees that his methods are revealed, it was impossible to say. Presently he looked between them, towards the door of the room, not as if he expected any release from there, but rather as if he expected it to open new and even grimmer revelations. Perhaps he decided eventually that Hook was the nearest thing to a friend for him in this place. He said directly to the Sergeant, securing for the moment a brittle calm, ‘That is horrible. But I didn’t do it, and I don’t know who did.’
‘Perhaps not, lad. But perhaps you know more than you realise. In any case, we need to clear you of suspicion. We think that from what we know of the murder, it was probably committed by someone who had regular access to the victim in the three months or so before he died.’
Andrew Lewis glanced sharply from one to the other. ‘I was there then,’ he said, through lips that were so nearly shut that even in that small room they could barely hear him.
‘Exactly,’ said Hook calmly. ‘And that’s why we’re here now. We need to clear you if we can, and also find what you know about any of the other people involved.’
By putting the emphasis on clearing the young man rather than the seriousness of his position as a suspect, Hook kept him talking instead of lapsing back into the sullen panic where he had begun. Lewis said, ‘I was there. I didn’t see much. I kept out of Craven’s way as much as I could.’
‘Why was that?’
‘He didn’t like me. I didn’t like him much. But I didn’t know he was—dying.’ The recollection of opportunities missed and things which would have been better left unsaid passed across his face. It was probably the first time this youth had felt the irrevocability of death; for the men opposite him, it was a look they had seen too often before.
‘Had you given him reason to dislike you?’
Lewis sighed. He was relaxed enough now to permit himself a tiny rueful smile, recognising that he was going to volunteer the information he had been denying them at the beginning of the interview. ‘Yes, I suppose so. He didn’t like younger people much anyway—you should ask his daughter and her husband about that. Once I got in trouble with the police, he didn’t even want me in the house.’
‘That is not an unusual attitude. How did you get into trouble?’
A sour little smile again. ‘My mother would tell you that I got into the wrong company. It’s true, but it’s too easy an excuse.’ Andrew Lewis was more intelligent than the frightened weakling he had appeared to be at the beginning of the interview. Lambert’s first, irritated reaction was that this did not necessarily make things less compli
cated: it might bring him back into focus as a possible murderer or accomplice. His thin lips were framing words carefully now, as he begun the story he had thought to deny them. ‘When I left school, I had six O-levels, but the area was in the grip of the ‘eighties recession. Things are a lot better now for school-leavers. I got various small jobs in supermarkets, most of them temporary. Then I went to an engineering firm on a YTS scheme. I did quite well, but at the end of six months the employer got rid of me, at the point where he would have had to pay proper wages.’
‘You found you were just cheap labour, and when you ceased to be cheap he dispensed with you and looked for another government trainee.’ Hook sounded quite resentful himself, and it was not a response he simulated to encourage confidence in the man opposite him: he had seen too much abuse of the scheme to distrust what Andrew Lewis was telling him now.
‘I’d always been quite good with engines, which had won me friends among older boys after I left school. After the YTS fiasco, I was feeling pretty bitter and I didn’t even look for proper employment. I spent my time repairing motor-bikes and old cars for the lads I knew. I didn’t always get paid what I had been promised.’
Hook nodded. It was the start of a pilgrim’s progress of life’s disillusionments. Perhaps the boy would have gone less far along this road if he had had a father to advise him: Bert liked him better for not offering the absence as a mitigation of his conduct. He said, ‘And it was at this time that you first came before the courts?’
‘It was stupid, really. After a Christmas party I gave someone a lift on the back of someone else’s moped—I don’t drink, you see, or scarcely, anyway. It was a week before I was due to take my test. Of course, the police caught me. Eventually, I was done not just for carrying an unauthorised pillion passenger but for taking a vehicle away without the owner’s consent. I hadn’t done that, but I think the bloke thought he’d get away with things more easily himself if he said I had.’
‘You got a fine?’
‘Two hundred quid. And a ban. And six penalty points on my licence.’
If Hook thought it harsh, he gave no sign. ‘That was the beginning of your troubles.’ He could understand young, keen constables wanting a conviction. No youngster ever beat the system, unless he had more money and influence than young Andrew Lewis. He did not at this moment agree with Angela Harrison’s description of him, as ‘a lout’.
Lewis was in more of a dilemma than he cared to show. ‘Never trust a policeman’ was a dictum that had been quoted to him often in his short life, and all his previous experience had confirmed it. Now, in what he had thought his greatest crisis, he had to decide how far to trust this equable, understanding man in plain clothes. He wanted to, and perhaps in truth he had not very much choice in the matter. He said, ‘I suppose it was the real beginning of disaster for me, yes. I thought the magistrates had thrown the book at me, and all my friends encouraged me to be bitter. The case made the local papers: there had been cannabis at the party, though I wasn’t involved in that. I couldn’t get any permanent work, and I was too bitter to listen to the right people.’
‘Like your mother,’ said Hook quietly.
Lewis looked up at him quickly, suspecting some attempt to trap him. But his confidence held. He gave a small shrug of his thin shoulders and said, ‘Yes, Mum was about the only one giving sensible advice, but most boys of seventeen think they know more than their mothers. I was still repairing cars for the wrong people. And when I was asked, I drove one of those cars on the wrong occasion.’
He paused, and Hook said, ‘Did you know where you were going?’
Lewis looked at him for several seconds before he replied, ‘No. But perhaps I should have done. It was a Jaguar and I think I was so anxious to drive it that I didn’t ask too many questions.’ He said apologetically, ‘I’m keen on cars, and I think I can drive a bit.’ It was the first thing that he said that even approached a boast.
‘So I hear,’ said Hook rather grimly. ‘I believe you can handle a Lotus when you’re given the chance.’
It reminded Lewis of the trouble he was in. He looked cast down again. He was looking down at the table when he went on in a monotone, ‘It turned out that my companions were holding up a little general shop run by a Pakistani. They’d got me because I could handle the car for a quick getaway: I’d just tuned it up. I got out of the car to see what was going on and walked straight into a major incident. My passenger was threatening the shopkeeper with a knife. He’d never have used it, but—’
‘No one intends to use a weapon when they take it with them, lad. Then things happen.’
‘I suppose so. Anyway, the shopkeeper’s wife had rung the police and we were caught in the shop.’
‘And the jury didn’t believe that you hadn’t known what the whole thing was about until you got there.’
Lewis nodded miserably. Recollecting an incident he had been over a thousand times in his own mind was unpleasant therapy.
‘Would you have believed your story, if you’d been in their position?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t. There are times when if you behave badly, you just have to live with the consequences; you’ve learned that the hard way. At least I hope you have.’
Lewis did not respond to that: perhaps he was thinking of his drive in the Lotus. Eventually he said, ‘I don’t suppose you believe me either.’
Hook sighed. ‘For what it’s worth, I think I do. If it wasn’t true, I’d have expected a bright lad like you to come up with a more convincing story by now. But it doesn’t matter a damn now whether I believe you or not.’
Andrew Lewis said nothing to that. He was not going to explain what he hardly recognised himself, that it had suddenly become important to him that this bluff man who was questioning him should accept that what he said was reliable. He reverted to matters of indisputable fact. ‘The chap with the knife went to prison. I was sent to a Borstal for four months: it was still a week to my eighteenth birthday at the time of the crime.’
‘You went back to Tall Timbers when you were released?’
‘Yes. I managed after a while to get quite a lot of work servicing and repairing people’s vehicles, but Mr Craven stopped me getting a permanent mechanic’s job in the area. Every time I was being considered, he rang up and asked them if they really wanted to employ a jailbird. He knew all the local garage-owners—he’d lived in the area all his life.’
Hook was silent for a moment, considering the picture of the household at Tall Timbers indicated by this. He decided that he did not much like the late Edmund Craven: such positive malevolence went beyond what he would allow to the natural prejudice of old age against youth. Beside him, Lambert was thinking of Walter Miller’s view that young Lewis had ‘shown he could be violent’ and ‘hated Ed’. The second at least seemed to be justified, whatever the provocation. It made this man a more convincing murder suspect; he was capable of acting impulsively, as he had shown even today in his flight. Whether he was capable of the planning and nerve to conduct a murder over several weeks remained to be investigated; in alliance with some other person, it was certainly a possibility.
Hook said, ‘You obviously had no love for the late Mr Craven.’
Lewis had the air now of a man determined to clear the air. It was a reaction they met often enough among people who were not confirmed criminals; sometimes there was a kind of therapy involved. It was also a syndrome which some offenders were expert in simulating, a fact which could make life difficult for persevering detectives. ‘No. For the most part I kept out of his way, because I didn’t want to make things difficult for Mum. He’d been quite good to her, and I knew he planned to leave her the house in Burnham. I was frightened to death she might lose that through me.’
Lambert spoke now, for the first time since the beginning of the interview. ‘Did you think he was the kind of man who might have punished an innocent parent for what he didn’t like in her offspring?’
Hook said, ‘We’d better know that occasion, Andrew. Other people will probably recall it as well as you.’
‘I’d been repairing a window that was jammed in Mr Craven’s bedroom. He accused me of taking some money that had been on the dressing-table and ordered me out of the house. I knew I hadn’t taken anything, and I’m afraid I shouted back at him. My mother eventually arrived to calm him down and get me off the scene. It was she who eventually found the money intact, in the top drawer of the dressing-table.’
It was a little scene which opened up possibilities, where the CID men wanted only certainties. Hook said a little wearily, ‘Did anyone else know of this?’
Lewis nodded. ‘Angela Harrison was in the house at the time. She heard the row between us and arrived with Mum to find out what it was all about. I think she believed her father—only natural, I suppose. It was only later that Mum found the money.’
‘When was this? Can you remember?’
‘About two months before Mr Craven died. I’d been saving up to move out, and the row made me even more determined.’
‘So you left more or less immediately?’
‘No. But I began looking for a place in earnest. I moved out just after he died.’ Perhaps he caught the sinister overtones of this timing, for he shrugged helplessly. ‘I looked for a place in Burnham because I knew Mum would be moving to the house there. Eventually.’
The last word sounded like a belated attempt to extricate himself from a damning statement. Hook said, ‘In those last months of Edmund Craven’s life, you were probably in the house more often than anyone except your mother. Did you see anything which strikes you as suspicious conduct, now that you know that a murder was being executed at the time?’
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