Dead on Course

by J M Gregson

  She was startled when the phone rang, for the first time during her stay. The sturdy Sergeant Hook must have attended to the switchboard operator: she did not look the kind of girl who would be proof against police disapproval. She knew the voice immediately. ‘We need to meet,’ it said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Things to be sorted out. We need to be clear about the story.’

  She didn’t like that ‘we’. She was not part of a conspiracy. Except of silence. ‘You needn’t worry. I know nothing. I can make informed guesses, but they will go no further.’

  ‘There are things I have to get straight for myself. I shan’t contact you again. We’ll go our separate ways, once the heat is off.’

  The voice was nervous; not as she was used to hearing it. She felt a sudden sympathy, a rush of gratitude for the deliverance the speaker had brought her. ‘All right. Tomorrow? It will have to be late morning or afternoon: I have to see Lambert first thing after breakfast.’ Leaning to untangle the cord of the phone, she glanced into the mirror, and was surprised to see the tension in her face.

  The voice said, ‘No. I can’t do tomorrow. I’ll be seeing Lambert myself. I don’t know when yet. Make it tonight.’

  Suddenly she too wanted this meeting over quickly. It was part of the business of ridding herself of Guy. ‘All right. Here?’

  ‘No. We shouldn’t be seen together. You mustn’t be implicated. By the river. Just below the Wye Castle: I can’t be away from here for long without it being noticed.’

  It was true, she supposed. She could see that. Absurdly, she wanted to say how grateful she was. Instead, she said, ‘All right. What time?’

  ‘Say ten-thirty. If we should be all together here, I can sneak out at about the time when the bar is shutting. It shouldn’t take long.’

  They arranged the exact spot. It was no more than ten minutes’ walk from her hotel, so that she need not take her car. The less notice she attracted to her movements, the better. No one wanted her accused of complicity.

  She put down the phone and stared at it for a long moment. For the first time, she acknowledged to herself that she was feeling the strain. She would be glad after all to have this business over.

  19

  It was hot under the television lights: too hot. And the platform party had been sitting under them for too long.

  Lambert, glancing sideways at the beads of sweat on his Chief Constable’s face, wondered for a moment if the young producer had roasted them deliberately, setting them up for a confrontation in which their mental discomfort might be expected to follow hard upon the physical. Watching senior policemen squirm seemed very much to the public taste nowadays. A trendy young current affairs producer (did they still call them that?) would no doubt engineer confrontation rather than consensus.

  On the whole, Lambert conceded reluctantly, Douglas Gibson was not a bad Chief Constable to work for. He had known a few, and judged by the Superintendent’s twin criteria of not interfering with an officer who had his teeth into a case and supporting his force against the pressures of the ignorant, Gibson came out pretty well. In Lambert’s view, he had an exaggerated respect for the media and their operatives, and a determined concern to steer a non-controversial course in the last years of his journey towards a pension. But these were characteristics of the modern breed one had to accept, sometimes even welcome.

  Lambert had an intrusive remembrance of his first CC in a northern city, who had expected unswerving industry from his men and snarled like a police Alsatian at any newspaper hack unwise enough to come within his sight. It wouldn’t do now, said the wise men who appointed Chief Constables. Probably they were right, but Lambert wished fleetingly that the man he was thinking of, now long dead, could be here for a moment to growl his derision.

  Gibson defended his main concern, the investigation into the child abductions on the edges of Cheltenham, with deadpan expertise. The massive police presence and frenetic activity which characterised cases of child disappearance had so far drawn an ominous series of blanks, but only the most experienced listeners would have deduced as much from his brisk account of progress. He gave detailed statistics of the numbers of police involved, the painstaking sweeps of difficult woodland ground, the welcome and pleasing cooperation of the public. The younger reporters, many of whom did not specialise in crime, wrote industriously, while their informant studiously refused to catch the eyes of the older hands.

  When some of them questioned him insistently about the nearness of an arrest, Gibson gave them the arch half-smile of a man who knows more than he cares to reveal, and spoke of the need for secrecy ‘at this delicate stage of the investigation’. Only the officers beside him on the press conference platform knew how worried he was about the lack of anything like a lead.

  Nor would he entertain any suggestion that the police were less than dynamic in their pursuit. Twice he resorted to a grim, ‘These men will be brought to justice’ and struck a granite pose against anyone who might challenge such certainties. When asked why the officer in charge of the investigation was not here to answer questions of detail in person, Gibson said with a hint of acerbic outrage that he was sure the public would rather he was out leading the search for brutal perverts than sitting in the comfort of a city hotel talking about it.

  Lambert wondered where that left him. He did not have long to ponder the question, for Gibson brought the questions on the child abductions to an abrupt halt by transferring attention to the murder at the Wye Castle. He introduced Lambert with the flourish of a magician producing a rabbit from a hat, contriving to look a little disappointed when the move brought no applause.

  Lambert had been wondering what would happen if he announced that he had had to suspend his investigation at what was genuinely ‘a delicate stage’ to come and answer questions to which he could give no useful answers, but it was no more than a beguiling vision. Like all visions, it faded abruptly with the intrusion of reality.

  The media had come a little belatedly to the idea of homicide at the Wye Castle, having been distracted by lurid disclosures of homosexual rings among Westminster MPs as well as the disappearance of the children. Lambert had to correct the hopeful delusions that Guy Harrington had been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat, that the corpse had been an unrecognisable mass of blood and gore, that the head had been found some time after the body. He confirmed reluctantly that although Harrington had fallen to his death, foul play was now definitely suspected.

  At this point Douglas Gibson intervened. ‘Without revealing too much,’ he said benignly, ‘I think I can say that in this case we feel hopeful of an early arrest.’ His eyebrows curved a question at Lambert, with what might have been archness in someone other than a Chief Constable.

  Lambert became uncomfortably conscious of the quiet whirr of the television videotape, of the cameraman zooming in on his sweating visage. For a moment he wished he had not waved away the make-up girl and her powder so airily half an hour earlier. When he replied carefully that routine police procedures had narrowed the field of suspects, Gibson smiled like a headmaster endorsing a favourite pupil and said, ‘Superintendent Lambert is naturally cautious, a quality of which I thoroughly approve.’

  One of the tabloid reporters wanted to know if women figured among the suspects, and the sports reporter of the Oldford Advertiser, an aged Welshman called Williams whom Lambert had known for years, began an ironic commentary on the headlines he foresaw. ‘Leading industrialist struck down in love nest,’ he intoned with relish. Williams resented being transferred from his sporting interests to act for the day as crime reporter: now he scented a little fun.

  He was sitting not three yards from Lambert on the front row, and his comments, delivered towards the ceiling with the air of a philosopher, were plainly intended for the Superintendent’s amusement. Lambert’s heart sank as his practised eye detected the traces of a happy and characteristic inebriation.

  ‘Two women, you say, Mr Lambert,’ said another Lo
ndon man, not looking up from his scribblings. ‘Are both of them suspects?’

  ‘Saucy sex romps topple tycoon!’ muttered Williams reminiscently, his smile recalling long-gone Fleet Street days with fond indulgence.

  ‘Do I understand only one of the women in the party was a wife?’ came next from the persistent group at the back of the room, who were now more animated than at any time during the conference.

  They were too far back to hear any of Williams’s unofficial glosses on their questions. ‘Wild orgy goes wrong at plush club,’ the Celtic oracle now interpreted. ‘The Sun doesn’t like more than one syllable at a time,’ he explained apologetically. Lambert was cheered by the sight of the young producer, who had emerged with arms flapping from his control box. He was directing a variety of minions in search of the invisible source of these disturbing asides, which were in danger of ruining his recording.

  One of the tabloid group had plainly done some research. Warming to his task, he shot at Lambert, ‘Has this red-haired actress been cleared of suspicion yet, Superintendent Lambert?’

  Williams took his attention from the ceiling and fixed the platform party with a single wild eye. ‘Titful temptress topples top tycoon,’ he said. Overcome with his artistry and the visions it produced in one of his imaginative temperament, he slid slowly down his leather chair and shut that disturbing eye; a beatific smile suffused the whole of his thoroughly lived-in visage.

  *

  ‘They cut you off before you even got into your stride,’ said Christine Lambert resentfully as the local news faded to a weatherman lugubriously predicting a continuation of the fine spell. She was more enthusiastic about her husband’s occasional television appearances than he was himself, though Lambert had observed the item surreptitiously over the newspaper he had apparently found so absorbing.

  ‘There was more than that in the can,’ he said, using the only piece of film jargon he knew with the confidence of a professional broadcaster, ‘but it had to be edited.’

  ‘I expect you mumbled as usual,’ said his wife.

  Lambert reflected that the man who said that no man is a hero to his valet had obviously not been married. ‘On the contrary, I was a model of elocution,’ he said, with the determined dignity of the liar who knows he cannot be disproved. ‘In fact, it was old Williams who had to be edited out. He was making tabloid headlines out of the questions I got. It’s a hobby of his.’

  ‘The old boy I met from the Oldford Advertiser? He won’t get into trouble, will he?’ Christine, who had once found a boring dinner redeemed by the stories of the old reprobate, was immediately concerned for his welfare.

  ‘The old bugger’s fireproof in that respect. He did everything he wanted to do years ago. Now for most of the time he just reports golf for the local rag, to keep himself out of mischief, he says. Obviously without success. I was quite grateful to him for the diversion. I think the producer had set me up as a fall guy, if that’s the expression.’

  ‘You know quite well it is. Only judges are allowed to pretend they don’t know phrases like that, not policemen.’ His resentment of American linguistic intrusions was tolerated with affectionate resignation by those closest to him. As a teacher, Christine had a sneaking sympathy for it. ‘And you underestimate your own public performances. You’re well capable of creating your own diversions when you require them. Anyway, what was edited out? Are you about to unmask the killer at the Wye Castle?’

  Lambert’s face wrinkled with displeasure at so amateurish a conception of detection. ‘We’re getting nearer. I have an inkling, but I might be quite wrong.’

  ‘Don’t say you’re playing a hunch. Cyril Burgess would be delighted with the idea.’

  John Lambert smiled wanly. The pathologist paraded his reading of crime literature, even American crime literature, at the slightest hint of encouragement. ‘I’d like to be able to make an arrest before the golfing group disperses. That means a lot of work tomorrow. Bert has arranged for me to see Harrington’s widow first thing in the morning. I have a feeling she may hold the key to this.’

  In a way he could not foresee on that quiet evening, he was quite right.

  20

  Marie Harrington was glad to get out of her hotel. It was comfortable, but its small rooms were increasingly claustrophobic. It was a relief to escape to the vast, anonymous darkness of the night outside.

  She glanced at the tiny watch on her left wrist in the last of the light from the hotel’s frontage. It was five minutes after half past ten. She was deliberately a few minutes after the appointed time, for she did not want to wait alone at the rendezvous. Even in these quiet parts, a woman might be unwise to wander alone at night.

  There was more wind than she had expected, but it was not cold. She glanced at the sky and remembered a line she had learned years ago at school: ‘The moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas.’ This night’s almost full moon was not exactly tossed, but it was intermittently obscured by swiftly moving dark patches. She couldn’t remember the next line of a poem she thought she had forgotten for ever: something about the road being a ribbon of moonlight, she thought. Well, that was fair enough: the lane which branched of the hotel road and ran away towards the river looked almost white in the light of the new moon, until it disappeared beneath the high trees near the river. She gathered her short summer coat about her and set of vigorously to her meeting.

  Her footsteps rang loud upon the silent lane. The only natural sound was a screech-owl from the woods ahead of her, but it was quiet enough for her to catch faintly the scream of a car’s brakes away towards Hereford. She was not frightened of the dark, she told herself resolutely. She had been brought up in Wiltshire countryside, where there was no such thing as street lighting, and she had not been allowed the girlish fears of the suburban adolescent. Now she reverted to her youthful reaction to disquiet at night, and walked even more briskly.

  Her eyes grew more accustomed to the limited light from the full moon, as she knew they would. In five minutes, she caught the silver mirror of the river, where it curved in a wide bend beneath the trees. Half a mile away the castellations of the Wye Castle loomed for a moment against the night sky, a black, evocative silhouette that disappeared even as she watched when a patch of cloud obscured the moon.

  It was around here that they had arranged to meet. She hesitated, then passed on reluctantly into the black shadow of the trees. With the moon still clouded, she could scarcely see enough to follow the road here. It was past the agreed time for the meeting; her partner in it was perhaps as nervous about being here alone as she felt herself. She called the name tentatively; it seemed to bounce back from the wall of darkness ahead of her.

  Then, after she had faltered forward another few steps, a low voice from the trees on her right, between her and the now invisible river said urgently, ‘Marie?’

  ‘Who else at this hour?’ she said irritably. ‘Surely there was no need for all this cloak and dagger stuff?’ But she was relieved to feel another human presence in that silent place, despite herself. When the shadow detached itself from the deeper blackness behind it and came softly to her side, she had to resist an impulse to reach out and touch it, to give herself the tactile reassurance of a friendly presence.

  As if to confirm her safety, the moon reappeared after its brief oblivion, dappling the narrow lane with patches of silver where it filtered between the high branches of beech and oak. ‘It was necessary to be cautious,’ said the companion beside her. ‘The police are watching all of us, and I’m afraid we’re even beginning to watch each other. But I don’t think my absence from the Wye Castle will be noticed at this time.’

  The voice sounded as strained as her own; she wondered how much the setting was contributing to their tension. It was a long time since she had made an assignation like this at night, and then it had had other, more romantic, connotations. ‘I might have enjoyed a stroll by the Wye in darkness at one time. I’m getting a little long in the tooth for it no
w!’ she said. Her nervous giggle rang brittle as glass amid the trees.

  Her companion said nothing. After a few seconds, Marie remembered her feeling of gratitude earlier in the day and her resolution to express it. ‘I wanted to thank you,’ she said awkwardly. ‘To thank you for delivering me from Guy.’ It sounded as silly as she felt, and she said no more. She wished the person who had arranged this strange meeting had more to say. They were almost beside the river itself now; she felt herself steered gently through a gateway and on to the bank. ‘The farmer won’t be pleased to find that left open,’ she said edgily.

  ‘I opened it, just now,’ said the voice at her side. It was breathy, unnaturally harsh, and a gust of bad breath engulfed her briefly with the statement.

  She felt without knowing why that this was the first clear evidence of a danger she should have acknowledged much earlier. Desperately she said, ‘I don’t want to know any more, you know. I just wanted to assure you that you’re quite safe as far—’

  Suddenly she was in the water, with hands pressing inexorably upon her shoulders. The water was no more than three or four feet deep, but she was off balance. The sudden coldness ran like a shock through her whole body. It was not until her head was beneath its surface that she realised that she was fighting for her life.

  The struggle was brief and unavailing. The hands pressed steadily upon her shoulders and the back of her neck. Her feet fought unsuccessfully to get a grip on the muddy bed of the Wye. With the relentless pressure downwards which was applied, she could not even rise to her knees. She could not believe the other’s hands had such strength.

  As the water burst into the lungs of Marie Harrington it was not her past life which flashed in vivid retrospect before her. Her last thought was of her own stupidity in coming to such a place at such a time. And to meet such a companion.

  Once her slim body had ceased its brief and violent struggle, her adversary cautiously removed the gloved hands from her back. The corpse was gently eased towards the middle of the river, where the slow current bore it away downstream. A torch flashed briefly over the river’s bank, checking for any obvious traces of the brief struggle.