Dead on Course

by J M Gregson

  When the dark shadow had moved back to the road, it removed the plastic bags which had covered its feet, disguising the imprints of sole and heel.

  Then, darkly silhouetted in the moonlight like the instrument of death it was, it moved swiftly and silently back towards the Wye Castle.

  21

  FRIDAY

  Alison Munro moved with uncharacteristic stealth. She was not used to disguising her actions from others, but on this occasion there had been no alternative.

  Her first visit to the place on the previous evening had been under the cover of darkness, and there had been little chance of detection. Now, the early-morning light seemed brilliant, even harsh, and she felt that there was no way that her actions would not be detected. But it was scarcely after six, though the sun was already so bright, and no curious eye peeped around the drawn curtains behind her.

  She checked briefly, but thoroughly, on what she had come here to see. As far as her untrained eye could judge, all was satisfactory. She looked all around her, feeling a furtiveness that was quite foreign. Then, lifted by a relief she had no need to disguise, she turned and went back towards her room.

  The evidence seemed effectively destroyed.

  *

  ‘Check Mrs Harrington’s room, please.’ Lambert’s’ face was grey with foreboding.

  ‘It’s not our policy to disturb guests in the mornings, Superintendent. We could get the chambermaid to look in and—’

  ‘Now!’ It was a shout, a fierce, impersonal order. The starchy receptionist leapt into action as though she had been hit. ‘I want to know whether the bed has been slept in,’ he flung after her rapidly disappearing back.

  The woman was back in two minutes, prickly with resentment, but cowed by the news she brought. ‘Mrs Harrington isn’t there. Her bed hasn’t been slept in. As far as I can see, her clothes are still in the room, and she hasn’t packed.’ She seemed to find a bleak comfort in this last fact; perhaps she thought it indicated that the customer had not departed without payment.

  ‘If she turns up, please ring Oldford police station immediately. It’s very important.’ His tone was neutral, but his face told her that he thought such a reappearance most unlikely. ‘Meantime, will you try to find out when she was last seen here, please?’

  While she went off into the hotel kitchen, Bert Hook bustled in breathlessly from the hotel car park. ‘Her car is still there. Engine cold: it certainly hasn’t been used this morning.’

  ‘Get Rushton to put out a full alert. I don’t think for a moment that she’ll be there, but he’d better set up a check round her home area to see if anyone has seen her. Get a description round the Hereford beat men who were operating last night to see if anyone saw her.’ Hook knew the routine well enough and so did Rushton: a single terse instruction would have been enough. Lambert was talking to relieve his own tension.

  The receptionist came back, her face clouded now with the concern she had caught from them. ‘The night porter says he saw her go out at about half past ten, or maybe a little later. He didn’t see her come back, but he isn’t on duty all night. He goes off between twelve and one. Our guests have keys.’

  Women vanished often enough, usually for reasons which did not warrant police attention. Without any evidence yet to hand, both of them felt already that this disappearance was sinister.

  *

  In the Murder Room at the Wye Castle, detective-sergeants and constables moved on large and careful feet, keeping an eye on the chief who was so uncharacteristically disturbed by the absence of a woman who had seemed to most of them only on the periphery of the case. Lambert was not even conscious that he was treated warily, or that he spoke to any of them harshly. His fury was with himself, for not anticipating this development and frustrating it.

  He pursued his investigation now like a man driven by some outside force. The Munros felt it immediately, but he gave them no explanation for the cold dynamism that cut through the normal politeness of dialogue.

  It was turned first upon Alison. ‘You lied about your movements on the night of Harrington’s death. Why?’

  She was thrown on to the defensive by his abruptness. ‘I am not in the habit of lying,’ she said stiffly. ‘What makes you think—’

  ‘You were heard having a row with Harrington when you said you were wandering round the outside of the hotel buildings.’

  ‘Who told you—’

  ‘It doesn’t matter who told me. Do you deny it?’

  She looked at him furiously. She had such a natural, unconscious superiority in her bearing that it was a long time since anyone had spoken to her like this. Lambert was so intense that he was totally unaware of his manner. Perhaps she realised it, for she said, ‘No. It’s true. We had an argument. I suppose others must have heard.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Do you have to know?’ Her dark eyes flashed across the grim faces opposite her; what she saw there made her fear an outburst from Lambert, so that she answered herself. ‘Yes, I suppose you do. Damn Guy Harrington! He’s still causing trouble after he’s dead.’ She glanced sideways at her husband; suddenly the proud set of her head disappeared and she was vulnerable, wondering what reaction her revelations would elicit from that taciturn presence she relied upon so much.

  ‘It’s the oldest story in the book. Guy was trying to get between the sheets with me. He had been trying for several months.’

  ‘And did the determined Mr Harrington offer anything in the way of persuasion for you to acquiesce?’ Lambert’s phrasing, edged with sarcasm and suggesting his scepticism, made her eyes flash angrily. But he was careless of her feelings in what might have been a delicate area; she had lied once and might do so again.

  ‘He was persuasive and threatening by turns. He couldn’t believe I wouldn’t cooperate eventually. I should have sent him packing to start with.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ Hook watched Munro clenching his fists beside his wife; perhaps it was the question he had himself been asking. He did not look at Alison. His eyes stared at Lambert as unblinkingly as if he was in a trance.

  ‘I wasn’t a free agent. Sandy works—worked—for Guy, as you know. I think you may also know that he wasn’t well treated. Several of what should have been his patents had been appropriated by Harrington. “Standard business practice,” he called it!’ She spat the phrase with a bitterness that was almost tangible. Her husband’s hand stole slowly across to cover hers, though his eyes never left Lambert’s face.

  Alison Munro’s concentration was so fierce that she was startled by the touch; a little, involuntary shudder ran through her before she brought across her other hand to give her husband’s tight fingers a brief answering squeeze. She said, ‘I was foolish enough to think I could appeal to Guy’s better nature. He treated it as an offer to grab what he wanted. He said that if I became his mistress he would see that Sandy was suitably rewarded for his talents.’

  ‘And you refused.’ It was a statement, not a question. She glanced up, prepared to be offended, but found the same strangely neutral intensity in her inquisitor.

  ‘I refused. That only brought out the bully that was never far beneath the surface in Guy. He turned from persuasion to threats. If he hadn’t held all the cards, it would have been laughable. He was like an operatic villain.’

  ‘Scarpia, by the sound of it.’

  She nodded, showing no sign of surprise that a detective should make such a reference, staring down gratefully at the reddish hairs on the back of the neat hand that still covered hers. ‘He threatened that he would sack Sandy. When I laughed in his face and said that a good engineer wouldn’t be out of work for long, he invited me to test that theory. He said that if I didn’t cooperate he’d make damned sure that Sandy never worked again.’

  She suddenly twitched her head to look rather wildly at her husband. ‘It might have been rubbish, I don’t know. But he sounded very convincing. I believed him, for a time at least. I should have—’

&nbs
p; ‘What exactly was the subject of your final argument with Harrington?’ Lambert dragged her attention ruthlessly back from her own emotions to the facts of his investigation.

  ‘I went back to tell him to get lost, once and for all. He tried first to cajole and then to threaten me again, and suddenly I could stand it no longer. I screamed at him, I think. Anyway, I told him to do what the hell he wanted. But if Sandy suffered, he’d better look out for himself.’ It was the kind of airy, unsupported threat that policemen heard often. But coming so inappropriately from this coolly classic beauty, it sounded full of genuine menace.

  ‘Did you threaten to kill him?’

  She looked at him with a sudden fear. ‘I may well have done. I certainly felt like it.’ She hesitated momentarily, then said, as though defending herself was a concession, ‘However, I didn’t murder him.’

  ‘Nevertheless, he was dead within half an hour of your final rejection of him.’

  For the first time in their exchanges, Lambert allowed himself a pause. Even now, it was a brief one, and he made no reference to the notes in front of him. Nor did his eyes leave the woman’s face as he said, ‘Mr Munro, can you show me the sweater you were wearing on the day of the murder? It was a blue one, I think, with strands of white wool woven into the pattern.’

  Sandy Munro looked shaken for a moment: whether by the request itself, the precision of Lambert’s description, or the suddenness of the transition from his wife’s last words with Harrington, it was impossible to say. Then he said, ‘Yes, I know the one. I wore it to play golf in the afternoon, as you say.’ He stood up, moving for once as jerkily as a puppet. ‘It should be in the wardrobe in our room, though I can’t think why—’

  ‘Don’t bother, Sandy. It isn’t there.’ His wife’s voice was like ice in the warm room. She spoke like one in a trance, her eyes staring straight ahead at the innocent sky outside. Then, with an effort that was obvious to them all, she wrenched her attention back to Lambert. ‘Why do you want it?’

  ‘I think you know that, Mrs Munro. Where is it?’

  Her brain seemed to work with extra speed in this crisis, like a driver’s in the course of a road accident. It told her that there was no point in concealment, after all. ‘It doesn’t exist anymore. It went to the gardeners’ bonfire last night. I checked that it had gone completely at six o’clock this morning.’ Her eyes blazed with a desperate defiance.

  ‘And why did you do that?’ Lambert’s voice registered neither surprise nor emotion.

  ‘Because I thought you might come looking for it.’

  ‘You were correct in that. Mrs Munro, destroying evidence can be a very serious matter. Courts have been known to take it as an admission of guilt.’

  Sandy Munro had sat down again, heavily, like a boxer dumped on the canvas by a stunning blow. Alison stretched out her hand and linked her fingers through his unresisting ones. Her face was very white within its neat helmet of black hair, but she said nothing.

  It was Lambert who eventually broke a silence which seemed to have stretched far beyond the few seconds which was the reality. ‘Mrs Munro, I do not have time to probe delicately after the truth. We are investigating a murder; for all we know, two murders.’ He saw both their faces fix in horror upon his, but he did not even check. ‘I will tell you frankly that I do not think that your husband killed Guy Harrington. I do believe, however, that he moved the body, which could certainly make him an accessory after the fact. I think that you also believe that. Perhaps, indeed, you know that.’

  Alison Munro looked wildly from her husband to the two detectives, her senses for once in her life reeling in disarray.

  It was Bert Hook who prompted quietly, ‘The forensic boys will probably be able to get all they want from the remains of that bonfire, Mrs Munro. I’m sure carbon analysis techniques will be able to identify a particular type of wool, even among the ashes. That’s all they need, you see: they already have the sweater fibres found on the corpse.’

  Perhaps his low-key, reassuring tones were what was needed. But it was not Alison but Sandy Munro who looked at him almost gratefully and said, ‘All right, yes. I moved Harrington’s body.’

  He stopped then: perhaps in his naïvety he thought the simple acknowledgement would be enough. Lambert said, ‘You lied to us also, Mr Munro. Quite comprehensively.’ Hook wondered for a moment if he was about to charge one of them with murder. Instead Lambert said only, ‘You had better give us a proper account of your movements on the night of the murder now.’

  Munro took a deep breath, like a child about to embark upon a full confession of some shameful escapade. ‘After the party broke up, I went for a walk, as I told you.’

  ‘Exactly as you told us?’

  ‘Yes. I walked on my own down to the main gates of the complex. It’s about three-quarters of a mile. I remember I went and stood on the green nearest to the gates in the moonlight for a moment or two.’

  ‘You told us that your wife was already in bed and almost asleep when you got back to your room. That wasn’t true, was it?’

  Munro shook his head miserably, looking again like a child who has been found out. For a normally straightforward man, confessions of dishonesty, or worse, did not come easily. ‘No. She wasna there at all.’ Under stress, his Fifeshire accent thickened a little.

  ‘Did that seem significant to you?’

  ‘Not at the time. It did later.’

  ‘You’d heard her rowing with Harrington, hadn’t you?’ Munro suddenly shook his head roughly, as if trying to clear it of confusions. ‘I didna know it was her, not then. But I had heard angry voices, yes. A man’s and a woman’s.’

  ‘Yet you didn’t think Alison was involved?’

  ‘Not at the time I didn’t. I thought it was Harrington and Meg Peters. When Alison wasn’t in the room, I didn’t know what to think. When she came in and went to bed without a word to me, I got to thinking it could have been her.’

  ‘So you got up again,’ prompted Hook gently. He wondered if they were on the way to a full confession, found himself hoping unprofessionally that they were not.

  ‘Yes. I couldn’t sleep. I spoke to Alison, but she seemed to be asleep. I think now that she was only pretending.’ They glanced at each other; she gave him a tiny, acknowledging smile. ‘I got up and put some clothes on to go for a walk round.’

  ‘At what time?’ Hook’s ballpoint was poised like a recording angel’s over his notebook.

  ‘I couldn’t be sure. Perhaps an hour after I’d gone to bed. Half past one, say, or a little after.’ He spoke like one who anticipated that precision here might be important. Perhaps he saw himself giving this evidence in court in due course.

  It was Lambert who said, ‘And you found Harrington’s body?’

  ‘Yes. On the gravel path below the roof where we’d been sitting earlier.’ His voice was low enough for them to have to strain after it in the quiet room.

  ‘And you chose to move it. You had better tell us why.’

  ‘I’d decided by that time that it was Alison I’d heard with Guy. When I found his body, I suppose I assumed for a moment that she’d pushed him off the roof.’

  ‘A theory which has yet to be disproved,’ said Lambert drily. ‘What did you hope to achieve by moving the corpse?’

  Munro looked at his wife; she gave his hand a brief, encouraging squeeze, but neither of them smiled as he went on. ‘My brain wasn’t working very clearly. I think I felt that others beside myself must have heard the row between Alison and Guy. As you say they did. I thought that if I moved the body out on to the course and it wasn’t found until the next day, almost anyone might have done it.’

  ‘So you hauled him into the wheelbarrow and trundled him down the fairway. And left traces of your clothing fibres on both the wheelbarrow and the corpse’s clothes. Not very clever.’

  ‘If I were more used to murder, maybe I’d think of these things!’ In the relief at having his confession out, Munro showed a flash of his normal sp
irit.

  Lambert turned his attention back to Alison. ‘Did you kill Harrington?’

  ‘No.’ She looked as if at that moment she would have liked to kill Lambert.

  ‘Can you give us any proof that you did not?’

  ‘No. I thought the idea of English law was that one was innocent until—’

  ‘Have you any idea who did kill him?’

  ‘No.’

  He looked at them coldly for a moment. ‘Both of you lied quite deliberately to us about your movements at the time of Harrington’s death. I advise you therefore to be very careful as to your answer to this question. Where were you between ten-thirty and midnight last night?’

  They looked at each other; shock and fear were in their faces. Whether it was the consternation of the innocent drawn into evil they could not comprehend or the guilty appalled that their malice had been pinpointed, it was impossible to say. Alison said, ‘May we ask why you wish to know?’

  Lambert shook his head even as she spoke. ‘Not at present. Well?’

  She answered without looking at her husband. ‘We went out into Hereford at about nine. We both felt a need to get away from here. To be among people we did not know and would never see again. We had a drink in a pub. I can’t remember the name; it was near the big bridge over the river.’

  Hook wrote it down carefully. It could be checked, with a little leg-work by the team. Most customers would remember Alison Munro. He said, ‘What time did you leave there?’

  She looked at her husband. Sandy Munro said, ‘Before last orders. About half past ten, I suppose.’

  Lambert said, ‘And where did you go from there?’ Munro looked at him as if he suspected a trick question.

  ‘Straight back here. We must have been in our room within fifteen minutes, at most.’