An Academic Death (Lambert and Hook Mysteries Book 14)

by J M Gregson

  Eleven

  The Drugs Squad has more autonomy than any other section of the police service. It needs it, for it is fighting the biggest criminal empires in the modern world, as challenging to the law and far more widespread than the American gangster networks of the twenties and thirties. When it is fighting such forces, the law needs a flexible and swift-moving army, able to use the appropriate tactics for a particular situation.

  The problem for the police struggling to control an industry which is better financed and more tightly organised than their own multifarious service is to get at the generals of this vile army. The newest copper on the beat can arrest users of drugs, and it is relatively easy to pick up the first tier of suppliers: people like Jamie Lawson, often users who are drawn by their need for coke and heroin into becoming retailers of drugs to other users. But usually the tongues of such operators are tied by fear of reprisals, and even if they are willing to talk, often they do not know the people who are providing their supplies, just as this next tier of men and women do not know — and sometimes take care not to find out — the next rank above them. It is a criminal industry which thrives upon anonymity.

  Even a superintendent in charge of a murder enquiry must sometimes defer to the advice of the Drugs Squad, for he must not imperil the brave men and women who take it upon themselves to infiltrate the networks which import and distribute the range of drugs which are the currency of this evil but lucrative trade. But murder is still murder. It is the worst crime, given the highest priority, and the British police are proud that it should be so.

  It was Sunday morning when John Lambert rang the man in charge of the Drugs Squad in the West Midlands, but the voice with the vestigial Birmingham accent on the other end of the line was instantly alert. He knew he wouldn’t have been bothered at home on a Sunday unless something important was afoot. His first instinct was to protect his own team, but he knew as he listened to Lambert’s calm, succinct account of his problem that he must give whatever assistance he could.

  This man had an overview of an area which stretched south-west from Birmingham to Bristol. It was not a complete picture, or he would have been able to move his army in and win the war. He saw himself as fitting in more and more pieces of a highly complex jigsaw. If and when the picture became complete, or even almost complete, it would be time to move in.

  The problem was that this puzzle didn’t obey the first rule of jigsaws: the picture you were assembling didn’t stay the same as you worked upon it. But two people involved in the supply of drugs had been murdered: he knew as soon as Lambert spoke that he must give him whatever information he had about the drug situation in the area where this killing had taken place.

  ‘It’s part of Sugden’s empire. But only a small part, on the fringe. It’s no use your going to see Keith Sugden. He’ll deny all knowledge, and there’s no way we can even show he’s connected, at the moment.’

  Lambert sighed. He knew the man well, and would have loved to have pinned a murder on him. ‘Who, then?’

  A pause. Releasing information came hard, even in this situation. ‘Kennedy. Do you know him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s a small guy, trying to get big. Sugden’s using him to run his operation in Gloucestershire. He might move him up, if he’s good enough.’

  Just like an ordinary firm, a straightforward commercial enterprise, thought Lambert. A young executive who might go on to greater things if he did his present job diligently and listened to the chairman’s dictates. ‘Where’s he based and what’s his cover?’

  The two questions you always asked about anyone operating successfully in the drugs world. Again the voice on the other end of the line hesitated a fraction before it said, ‘Simon Kennedy’s based on your patch. And he uses three dry-cleaning shops in Cheltenham and Gloucester as his cover.’

  ‘I’ll have to see him. Will I put anyone in danger when I confront him about this death on the university campus?’

  A longer pause. Then, ‘No. He’s well aware that we know about him, but the difficulty is proving his connection with drug distribution. He doesn’t store anything on his shop premises and we haven’t traced his chain of supply yet. We haven’t a scrap of evidence that we could take to court. But the important thing for you is that we haven’t any of our people planted close to him. You’re not likely to blow anyone’s cover by grilling him. In fact, if you could pin this killing on him, it could only help our work — we might be able to scare one or two of his associates into talking.’

  Lambert smiled grimly into the mouthpiece. ‘Thanks. I’ll do my best.’

  But this man Kennedy had so far been more than a match for the considerable resources and intelligence of the Drugs Squad. Even if he had ordered the killing of Jamie Lawson, it wasn’t going to be easy for anyone to prove it and bring him to justice.

  *

  Rushton gave his news of the new addition to the leading suspects in the Upson murder at their conference on Sunday afternoon. Lambert and Hook had come into the station to allow the Inspector to bring them up to date on the latest intelligence from the team and to offer him what they could on what was now established as the murder of Jamie Lawson.

  Rushton’s enthusiasm for his own suspect, the zeal for a possibility which was very much his own finding, was a little dampened by Lawson’s death. ‘Harold Rees was probably driving his own car on that Friday: his daughter was in an exam during the afternoon and his wife doesn’t drive. But the snag with him as a suspect is this second killing. Assuming the two murders are connected, we’d have to prove that this man Harold Rees came down here again to kill Lawson,’ he said glumly.

  Lambert smiled. ‘You did well to turn him up, Chris. He’ll have to account for his presence down here on the day of Upson’s death. And we’ll need to see his pregnant daughter and find out who the father of her child might be. It’s possible the deaths of Upson and Lawson aren’t connected. If they are, it’s the drugs business which seems the strongest link.’

  Rushton nodded. ‘We’ve got the full report from Forensics on the bullet which killed Matthew Upson. They’re the right calibre and the right degree of distortion to have been fired by Upson’s own pistol, which is missing from his house. A Beretta. Without having the weapon itself, of course, no one can be certain, and we all know it’s highly unlikely it will ever be seen again.’

  Hook said slowly, ‘So it looks as if he took it out that day because he thought he might have to defend himself against someone, but in the end had it turned upon him.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘That’s the likeliest scenario, but there are other possibilities. For instance, he might have given the pistol to Clare Booth at some time, for some reason unknown. Only to find her transformed from lover to discarded mistress, with vengeance in mind.’

  Rushton, who had not seen any of the people interviewed, said, ‘We only have Mrs Upson’s word for it that she was surprised to find the pistol missing. She could have used it herself.’

  Lambert nodded. The forceful Liz Upson had made no secret of her dislike for her husband. He had thought at the time that she would hardly have spoken so frankly had she been involved in his death, but her scatological contempt for the man she had insisted was an ‘arsehole’ might have been designed for that very purpose. Her hatred of Upson would have come out anyway — the dead man’s mother would have made sure of that — and the frankness she had insisted upon might have been no more than an acknowledgement of that.

  Rushton was checking his files again. ‘Upson was seen by both Charles Taggart and Jamie Lawson on the afternoon of Friday the eleventh of June. Those are the last recorded sightings. If we accept the view of the forensic entomologist that he died later that same day, his wife is in the clear. She was with her children from when she picked them up from school, and there are witnesses to that.’

  ‘So we would have to assume that she paid someone to kill him. It hardly seems likely. She’s a tough woman, but hardly one you’d expect t
o have access to contract killers.’ Lambert shook his head slowly. ‘How comprehensive is this list of car sightings, Chris?’

  ‘Nothing like comprehensive, I’m afraid. It’s almost entirely random. The patrol cars in the area only recorded people they thought interesting for one reason or another — mainly vehicles which were not local and were seen more than once during the day. Hence Harold Rees’s Vectra. The house-to-house people have asked local residents for the vehicles seen around the area where the corpse was found, but of course this was after the discovery of the body, at least eleven days after the day in question. I’m afraid the list of sightings is very unreliable, with huge gaps inevitable.’

  Lambert nodded sadly. ‘We still have no idea of how Upson got to the Malverns on that fateful evening. He didn’t drive his own car there: that was in the garage for service.’

  ‘And he didn’t take a taxi, as far as we’ve been able to check. None of the local firms reports a fare to the Malverns answering Upson’s description on that day. And they’d be likely to remember, because it’s not a usual destination for them.’

  ‘So the likeliest thing is that he didn’t meet his murderer there, but was taken there by him — or her. Willingly or unwillingly.’

  Hook said, ‘If he was carrying his own gun, he must have been afraid of someone.’

  Lambert pursed his lips. ‘Or threatening someone. Don’t forget he’d a lot to keep secret. He was dealing drugs in a big way. He was a sitting target for a blackmailer, for instance. It’s possible that he was threatening someone else with the pistol when it was turned upon him.’

  Rushton said gloomily, ‘The team seems to have gathered a huge amount of information without it taking us any nearer to our killer.’ He rolled back the cuffs of his immaculate white shirt. He was always smartly dressed, even though he had lived alone since his divorce three years earlier. In a situation where many policemen became unkempt, less careful of their appearance, Rushton was if anything more spruce than ever.

  He hated untidiness, and this was an increasingly untidy case.

  *

  There was a new Porsche in the drive of the big, rather brash mock-Tudor house. The manicured lawns and regimented flowerbeds spoke of a professional gardener. The small maroon blazers on the chair in the wide hall behind the man who opened the door to them were those of the most exclusive private school in the area.

  A man of Kennedy’s age and background couldn’t have made money like this except from crime, thought Hook. From drugs, to be precise.

  Lambert had shown his warrant card and introduced them brusquely on the doorstep, then strode without apology into the deserted room to the right of the front door where Simon Kennedy had indicated reluctantly that they might talk.

  ‘Shouldn’t you say you’re sorry to have to disturb me at home on a Sunday night?’ Kennedy motioned to the two armchairs at one side of the room and made to sit with his back to the window.

  Lambert was too quick for him. He moved into the chair the man had been planning for himself and motioned to Hook to sit beside him. Kennedy hesitated, then sat down opposite them. A shaft of evening sun shone suddenly as a high white cloud moved on, gilding his young face, seeming to emphasise how he had missed out on the opening move in this bizarre game. ‘We can do this at the station, if you think it preferable,’ said Lambert.

  Kennedy leaned a little to one side, so that the sun would be less in his eyes. He would have got up and drawn the curtain, but he was obscurely aware that it would have been a defensive gesture. He was twenty-eight years old, trying to hold himself upright and look taller than he was and more secure than he felt. He had an earring in one of his small, delicate ears. The effect of his well-cut dark hair was rather destroyed by the ridiculous triangle of jet-black beard he affected on the point of his chin; this curious patch of hair was so flat that it looked as though it had been painted there with tar.

  Kennedy said, ‘We’ll do it here, now that you’ve come. Whatever it is, it can’t take long.’

  ‘A student at the University of Gloucestershire, James Lawson, was murdered on Friday night.’

  Kennedy raised his thin eyebrows, too high, like a bad actor. He looked like a man trying to play a villain in Jacobean drama, thought Hook, fresh from his Open University studies: The Duchess of Malfi, perhaps. Except that this man was too young and too inexperienced to play such a villain convincingly. Kennedy now said, ‘Really? The local paper said he was found hanged. I rather assumed the young fool had topped himself. One less parasite to support from our taxes, I think I said to the wife at the time.’

  Lambert’s face tightened a little round the mouth. ‘James Lawson was supplying drugs to the students on campus. He was too high on coke to speak to us reliably, on Friday. But he was going to tell us all about it on Saturday morning, when he had been warned to be in a fit condition to talk to us. But someone prevented that happening.’

  Somewhere at the back of this big modern house, an infant cried, a strange, plaintive, innocent sound to provide the backcloth to their discussion. Simon Kennedy said, ‘Well, I’m sure this insight into how the other half lives is very interesting, but I fail to see —’

  ‘You were supplying him, Kennedy. He was going to tell us all about you, if he’d been allowed to.’

  It was a hit, a palpable hit. They could see in his eyes that the thrust had found its mark. And Lambert knew in that moment that this man would never cut it with the big boys of his evil industry. Keith Sugden would have smiled them away, would have shown how foolish was their accusation by the very absence of any swift reaction. This man tried bluster. ‘Look, you’d better be able to show some reason for an accusation like that. If I chose to —’

  ‘You deny it?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’m a respectable businessman. Three shops of my own and growing. If you think you can —’

  ‘Works well as a cover, does it, the dry-cleaning business? Can you show enough turnover to launder all the thousands you’re making from coke and heroin? I doubt it, if we called for a detailed audit.’

  ‘You’d better be careful just what you’re saying. This is harassment of an honest businessman! You must know that.’

  ‘So bring an action! Complain to the Chief Constable! Take me to court! Put your drugs money where your mouth is.’ Lambert was chancing his arm, knowing he could not prove the connection of this man with the murder of Lawson, perhaps not even his connection with the drugs: if this was part of Sugden’s empire, the traces would be well hidden. But he had had a long and trying day and lost most of his weekend, and his patience with it. His contempt was real enough, and it was stronger than the will behind the young face opposite to him.

  Kennedy spoke a little too loudly, with the conviction dying in his voice. ‘I’m a successful entrepreneur. You plodders wouldn’t understand that! I know the dry-cleaning business, and I’m building up an empire in it.’ He folded his arms across his thin chest; his expensive leisure shirt seemed suddenly too big for him.

  ‘You’re saying all this came from three small shops?’ Lambert’s glance of disbelief took in the house, the Harrods curtaining, the carpet, the furniture.

  ‘I don’t have to account to you for where my money comes from. I’m an entrepreneur.’ He repeated the grand word with a flourish, as if they had not taken enough account of it the first time, but it fell flat for the lack of a reaction.

  ‘You may have to do just that, in due course. Account for where all this comes from. In the meantime, you can tell me about how much coke, heroin and cannabis you supplied to Jamie Lawson and others.’

  Having failed with bluster, Simon Kennedy tried the would-be-reasonable note. ‘Look, Superintendent Lambert, I realise you have a very difficult job — and you too, Sergeant. This drugs culture is a terrible thing, and there must be some awful people involved who are making fortunes out of it. But I assure you you’ve got the wrong end of the stick here. I don’t know who gave it to you and I don’t expect you to re
veal your sources, but if I find who it is, I shall take the appropriate legal action. I can only think it may be some smaller and less successful business rival — you’d be surprised how cut-throat things can be sometimes.’

  It was a long speech, and it carried less conviction as he went on. He had expected to be interrupted, and the fact that these two men heard him out phlegmatically gradually unnerved him, until he ended with a nervous giggle. Lambert regarded him steadily for a few seconds after he had finished. Then he said, ‘Why did you have Jamie Lawson killed?’

  Kennedy was visibly shaken, as the big boys of this trade where killing was common would not have been. Keith Sugden, the man at the summit of this empire, would have been impassive, unflustered, oozing rather than displaying contempt for the police machine which could not touch him. Simon Kennedy was none of these things. He jutted the absurd scrap of beard defiantly at them as his face paled. ‘I didn’t have anything to do with this death. You won’t be able to fix it on me.’

  Hook looked up from his notebook, tightening the screw which Lambert had begun to turn. ‘We won’t need to fix anything on you, Mr Kennedy. It’s obvious this boy was killed because of his drugs connection. Someone wanted to shut his mouth for good before he gave the game away. That someone could only be the man who was providing his supplies, couldn’t it? Look at it from our point of view for a minute, and you’ll see how things stand.’

  There was something near panic now in Kennedy’s wide brown eyes. He had taken Hook for a solid plodder, a timeserver keeping his nose clean and waiting for his pension, not someone who would come in with such relish with the threat of arrest. He felt his own voice waver as he said, ‘I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill that wretched student myself and I didn’t pay anyone to do it for me.’

  Hook smiled at him. ‘Difficult to believe, that is. Be a pity for you if it happened to be the truth. This is murder, you see. Mandatory life sentence. Then there’ll no doubt be supplementary charges, relating to the supply of drugs.’ He shook his large, ruddy face sadly. ‘Going to be locked away for an awful long time, Simon. Of course, if you could say the orders came from above, that you were in complete ignorance of what was going on, you might just get away with it — providing you could give us the evidence to charge one of the big boys, of course.’