Dead on Course

by J M Gregson

  ‘I thought Harrington was doing me a favour when he provided her with part-time work in his office. Perhaps he was, at first. He liked everyone to be under some kind of obligation to him; maybe there was nothing worse than that in the gesture.’

  He stopped for so long that even Lambert, always patient in the course of a confession, had to prompt him with, ‘But it didn’t stop there?’

  ‘No. She didn’t do much more than make tea and coffee and run little errands around the works. Harrington’s secretary was teaching her to file, and she liked that. But I don’t suppose she’d ever have been able to do it on her own.’ There was something horrible about the way he spoke of the girl continually in the past tense. ‘She seemed to know that Guy had given her a chance she had to take. Anyway, she liked him. And one night when she was the only one left in his office…’ He thrust his face into his hands; a moment later, they heard him weeping.

  Lambert said, ‘Where is your daughter now, Mr Goodman?’

  ‘In a mental home. A “hospital for the treatment of psychiatric disorders”.’ Again he put the euphemism between bitter quotation marks. ‘There was an abortion, you see. The bastard couldn’t even take care of that!’ His voice rose to a shout on the thought, and it seemed he might not be able to go any further.

  But his tone became calm, even tender, as he returned to the tortured girl. ‘She comes home occasionally, but she has to go back. She wouldn’t harm a kitten, but they can’t get her stable, you see.’ They felt his wretchedness and distress, and the greater evil they now knew was to come. ‘Did you plan to kill Harrington this week?’ For a moment, Lambert’s tone was that of the nurse.

  Goodman looked at him now, seeming to register the surroundings which had disappeared from him as he relived his trauma. ‘Not consciously. But I’d said I’d get him. He should have taken me seriously.’ The schoolboy boast rang horridly genuine; his habitual benevolent smile was replaced by a vulpine sneer of triumph. ‘It struck me on Monday night that this was the perfect time to do it, the one time when there were other people around with a wish to kill him. Tony’s little tiff at dinner brought that out clearly enough.’

  He did not even look at Harrington’s former sales manager as he went on. ‘I went back after we’d broken up for the night. Alison was having the devil of a row with Guy about him trying to put his hand up her skirt.’ This time he did look at the person he mentioned. ‘If my poor little Felicity had only been able to treat the bugger as you did…’ The tears started anew. Alison Munro went and knelt beside him, taking a murderer’s hand into hers as if it had been that of a harmless infant. Goodman stared down dully at his carefully manicured fingers, scarcely longer than Alison’s own, as if he wondered that they could have wrought such things.

  His voice as he went on came now in a low monotone, as if he were determined to complete this before exhaustion claimed him. ‘He laughed at me when I mentioned Felicity. Said something about all being fair in love and war. Then he turned away and looked out over the valley: I remember thinking how brilliant the stars were behind his head. Perhaps he was a bit drunk. I waited until he was turning back to me and put both hands against his chest. He went over the edge without even a shout… I’m glad he’s dead. I’d do it again, if I had the chance.’ Even on this last assertion, he did not raise his voice above that awful uniformity.

  There was nothing but sympathy for him in the room.

  Each of his four companions was glad that his victim was dead; not one of them would at that moment have raised a finger to bring him back.

  It was Lambert who recalled him resolutely to different moral ground. ‘Why Marie Harrington?’ he said gruffly.

  There were gasps around the room. All of them had heard of the second death; probably most of them had not until this moment connected it with Goodman. For a moment Goodman looked again as if he was not quite sure where the question had come from. Then he said, ‘She knew. She would have given me away.’

  No attempt this time to excuse the crime in moral terms, to offer any excuse for the darkest of all human crimes. Lambert was struck once again by the brutalising effect of violence, so that a man who had wrestled for months with his personal agony before the first killing could offer no explanation of the second beyond the fact that the woman was a danger to his security.

  As if to reinforce this view, Goodman said slowly, ‘How did you know I’d killed her? Did she tell you about Felicity before I got to her?’ There was still no hint of remorse: this time the whole room picked up that chill message.

  Lambert said, ‘No. Sergeant Hook saw her yesterday afternoon, but she tried to protect you. She pretended she didn’t even know about your daughter. That was what pointed us towards you, in the end. When I talked to other people after her death, I found that Mrs Harrington not only knew Felicity but had been kind to her. That suggested that she had been covering up for you. We found out all about your daughter by contacting your wife and others in Surrey.’

  Goodman looked bleakly round the faces of his friends, wondering which one had unwittingly given him away. For the first time she could remember, Meg Peters was grateful to the police for the anonymity Lambert had conferred upon her unconscious revelation.

  At a nod from Lambert, Bert Hook stepped forward and formally arrested George Albert Goodman for the murder of Guy Harrington. The ritual of the words brought a kind of order to a room full of racing emotions. Goodman was taken away under guard. None of them said much, but none of them felt held any longer in that net of silence in which the revelation of Goodman’s crimes had for a while enmeshed them. It was Sandy Munro who asked in his soft Fife tones, ‘What will happen to him now?’

  Lambert said, ‘He will be charged and tried. What happens to him then is fortunately not my concern.’ It was stiff and unsympathetic, but he was thinking of the unforgivable killing of Marie Harrington. Policemen were not automatons, even when the law demanded that they should be. He had liked the honest, spirited widow whose life had been so ruthlessly terminated. He would not readily forgive Goodman for that killing. No doubt the psychiatrists would get busy on a plea of diminished responsibility. At that moment, he was glad that his duties ended with the arrest. Five minutes after Goodman had been driven away between two officers in the back of the white police Rover, his erstwhile companions left the Wye Castle. The Munros and the couple shortly to become the Nashes were of very different temperaments and backgrounds, but they felt united by the touch of tragedy as never before. The Munros had already been cautioned: later they would be charged as accessories after the fact, though the charge might never come to court.

  The two couples took their leave of each other in the car park, as if there was safety in numbers from the emotions which threatened to overwhelm them. Then they drove out behind each other to join the world they had left five days earlier.

  Each of the four took a last look as they went at the rich English scene, with its majestic trees, rolling green slopes, and wide, unhurried bends of river. It was a scene which had changed little in centuries, and would scarcely do so during any of their lifetimes. It was undeniably beautiful. But none of them would ever return.

  If you enjoyed Dead on Course you might be interested in Body Politic by J. M. Gregson, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from Body Politic by J. M. Gregson

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘Of course there are things wrong with the country,’ said Raymond Keane. A winning frankness was one of his strongest cards in friendly company, and he reckoned they didn’t come much friendlier than the lady with the elaborate blue hat and the little smear of cream on her upper lip.

  ‘You mean people sleeping in cardboard boxes and so on?’ she said, anxious not to miss her cue, determined to keep her MP with her for a little longer before he moved on, as she knew he must, to the next smiling listener, to the next vol-au-vent and warm white wine.

  Raymond watched the patch of cream bobbing as she spoke, like a white horse on a
choppy sea. ‘That, of course,’ he said. ‘Though I think we could agree that most of the people who clutter our city streets have chosen their own fate. I was thinking more of the way we have to look under our cars in the Commons park for bombs before we drive away.’ Middle-aged ladies in Gloucestershire liked a little frisson of vicarious fear, he knew that from experience. It was years now since he had checked for bombs, but the danger card was still one to play to build up a little sympathy.

  The gathering was going well. The conservatory of the big house, Victorian in its proportions as well as its design, made the crisp winter day outside seem warmer than it actually was: only the leafless trees and the bright red stems of the dogwoods beyond the wide green lawns revealed that the bright blue sky beyond the double glazing was in fact a winter one.

  Raymond Keane had his professional equipment in good working order. The smile was practised but the brown eyes remained earnest, never setting into the enamelled mask he had seen in less able Westminster men. No one knew better than he the benefits of a safe Conservative seat, especially now that what had once seemed comfortable majorities were under threat in many parts of the country. In this part of Gloucestershire, where the Beaufort rode regularly and royal estates were discreetly hidden behind ancient trees, his support might be diminished but the seat was rock-solid safe.

  He managed a substantial gulp of his Muscadet as he moved on to converse with a local squire. He was well used to these functions after five years in the seat; he thought he managed better than anyone else in the room the manipulation of a plate of food and a glass of wine, a process which clearly needed three hands but had to be managed with two. Thirty feet away, over the head of a lumpy girl and two more of the hats, he caught Zoe Renwick’s eye.

  It held his only fleetingly: he was happy to see again how discreet she was, what a good politician’s wife she would make, in due course. Her look said, ‘How soon can we get away?’ but there was no urgency, no impatience in the question. More important, the man who was reaching for another brown-bread square of smoked salmon was not even aware of her swift glance over his shoulder. He resumed the tidal flow of his views on immigration without even a suspicion that he had lost the attention of his bright young listener for a vital instant.

  Raymond began to move unhurriedly towards the door, chatting to a succession of supporters as he made his circuitous way towards escape. The chairman of the local association, as practised as he was in reading the hidden agendas of gatherings like this, edged equally imperceptibly towards the wide double oak doors from the other side of the room, until this slow-motion pavane culminated in a meeting of the two on the polished parquet near the exit.

  The grey-haired chairman said softly, ‘Time you were on your way, Raymond?’ He was tactful enough to suggest a crowded schedule rather than a simple wish to be finished with a necessary evil of constituency politics. His MP had earned his corn, if that wasn’t too crude a phrase for such a decorous gathering. Keane had done all that was required, with a graceful little speech to set this fundraising exercise in motion, a couple of gentle jokes about the contrast between this get-together and that being attended at this moment by his Labour ‘pair’ in a northern working-men’s club. He had turned a nice compliment to the ladies who had worked so hard to set up today’s function, keeping it light but thoughtful; all these things made it easier to raise enthusiasm and volunteers for the next function at Easter.

  The chairman surveyed the animated heads in the now cheerfully noisy conservatory. A few people had already left. The MP must not be first away, but neither should he stay too long, for that might suggest that he was desperate for support, or not as busy as his publicity always suggested. The chairman said in a low voice, ‘I shouldn’t bother to say any goodbyes, or it’ll take you half an hour to get out. Just melt away discreetly. I shall do the same myself in another ten minutes.’

  Raymond needed no further encouragement to do what he had always intended to do at this point. In twenty minutes, he was back in the cottage with Zoe. In another five, they were in bed together, making relaxed, unhurried love, their clothes dropped by the bed like snakes’ discarded skins, the public personas they had assumed for the lunchtime assembly of the party faithful abandoned just as eagerly.

  Presently Zoe lay back, fixing her brilliant blue eyes on the moulding in the centre of the old ceiling, stretching her arms above her head and clasping her hands beneath the masses of dark blonde hair. ‘Well, do you think they approved of me?’ she said.

  Raymond caught the intoxicating mixture of fresh sweat and expensive perfume from the armpit near his face, then nuzzled recklessly into it, making her giggle as she clasped an arm lightly across his head. ‘You were great,’ he said in a muffled voice. Then, lifting his head and shifting a little to look down into her face, he said, ‘I thought you were quite good at the wine and cheese, too!’

  ‘I wasn’t looking forward to it, you know,’ she said. But she was relaxed now, staring contentedly from her lover’s face to the ceiling, knowing within herself that she had carried it off well, this inspection by the pearls-and-cashmere set and the local landowners.

  ‘You were fine, darling,’ Raymond said contentedly. ‘But I always knew you would be.’ Secretly, he was relieved. A new fiancée was always a risky step for a divorced politician, even though the constituency liked to see you with a wife at election time. He had pretended to her in advance that today was more trivial than he had felt it to be.

  But he needn’t have worried. Zoe had handled it as if she had been bred for it, treating the elderly women with just enough deference, showing just enough spirit to win over susceptible husbands without raising their wives’ hackles. He would take her to all the Party functions from now on. A month from now, they would announce the date of their wedding. By the time of the next election, Zoe would be snugly established as one of the most photogenic of parliamentary wives. Perhaps, in due course, of ministerial wives ... But he was in no hurry about that. At forty-one, time was still on his side in these things.

  ‘It was all a bit too smooth for me.’ Zoe’s voice, suddenly serious, pulled him abruptly back to reality. ‘I thought politics was about getting things done. We seemed a long way from the problems of the country when we were exchanging pleasantries at Darnley Court today.’

  It was true. He had forgotten how divorced from reality these things could seem to an outsider. Which Zoe still was, essentially. ‘We were a long way from any problem-solving today. Those gatherings are a necessary evil, if you like—keeping faith with the people who form the hard core of Party membership, reassuring them that they still matter in a world that’s changing too fast for some of them to understand. And raising useful funds, of course. But I agree: nothing to do with politics, in the sense of getting things done. That happens at Westminster. And even there, more in the committees than in the public debates in the House, most of the time.’

  ‘I just feel that twenty-eight thousand voted for you, and the vast majority of them have lives which have no connection with those of most of the people I spoke to this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s true enough. Perhaps you should come along to the constituency clinics sometimes, once we’re officially a team. That’s where you’ll feel in touch with real life. Where you can even help people, sometimes.’

  ‘I’d like that. Only when we’re officially united, though. I wouldn’t want people to feel I was just there as a voyeur.’

  She was right, as usual. People in distress wanted to see only their MP, and even then they lost faith pretty quickly if you weren’t able to offer real help. He told her about the woman whose husband was in real pain, but had been told he had to wait another three months for a gallstones operation, of the woman whose daughter had disappeared who could get no sympathy from the police, of the couple trying to bring up children in a street where prostitutes patrolled for four hours each night. And of the questions he planned to ask in the right bureaucratic places to get something d
one for these people.

  The recital of these glimpses of an MP’s working life cheered him. Beneath his enjoyment of the trappings of power and his love of the good things in life, Raymond Keane genuinely wanted to use politics to improve the state of his country and the fortunes of the people he represented, and it was good to remind himself of it. But he was still enough in love with Zoe to be afraid of appearing pompous when he spoke of serious things. ‘That’s enough about work,’ he said firmly. ‘The rest of the weekend is ours. And I know how I intend to spend the first part of it!’

  He threw his arm around the slim shoulders beside him and drew her body against his. ‘Does Muscadet always make old men so ambitious?’ she said as he slid beneath her. ‘I must remember to order a couple of cases!’

  It was much later, when the early winter twilight had dropped upon the room and they lay in pleasant exhaustion on their own sides of the big bed, that Raymond said, ‘I trust that chap who threatened to kill me at the constituency clinic won’t come back again.’

  At first, she thought he was joking, and in a way he was. ‘Oh, it’s nothing to get upset about,’ he reassured her when she pressed him. ‘Every MP will tell you that he has his quota of nutters who threaten violence. It’s a way of letting off steam for them to threaten the nearest person they feel has any real power. Nothing ever comes of it.’

  It was a phrase that was to nag at her for many of the strange days which followed that weekend.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Police wives do not mix with each other as much as outsiders might expect. This is not so much because of considerations of rank; the police hierarchy is not as rigid as that which operates in army married quarters, where officers’ wives find it difficult to meet on equal terms with the wives of lower ranks, and even the sergeants’ mess sets up its own social barricades.