[Lambert and Hook 22] - Darkness Visible

by J M Gregson

  ‘I knew him.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I knew him. A long time ago, before I knew you.’

  She stopped, staring at the packet of cereals between them.

  He said, ‘You don’t have to talk about it, you know, love. It’s all right. It’s all gone.’

  ‘It isn’t really that long ago.’ She spoke as if she had not heard him. ‘It’s just that it seems like another life altogether.’

  ‘It is another life altogether,’ said Peter quietly. ‘And you really don’t have to talk about it. Not even to me.’

  ‘I can see myself as if I were another woman entirely. A woman living out a horror fdm. Wondering where the next fix was coming from. Prepared to do anything to get it. Prepared to steal to get the money for the next needle, the next lot of horse. Prepared to fornicate.’ Karen tried the biblical word and apparently found it inappropriate. ‘Prepared to fuck for it, to offer my miserable body to whoever could afford to pay for it.’

  He reached across and took her hands, held them hard for long seconds without speaking, made her turn her agonized eyes upon his face. ‘That’s all gone. You were living a nightmare. Once you’d become an addict, you weren’t responsible for your actions, you’d lost the power of free will.’

  She was back with him now, looking into the face which was two years older than hers and yet so much younger, at the deep-set blue eyes and the nose which was a little too long and the wide, firm lips below it. ‘You’re very charitable. That’s part of the job, though, isn’t it? Comes with the territory, I suppose.’

  He hadn’t heard this note of self-disgust in her voice for years now. He couldn’t cope with this distancing in the wife he loved. ‘It’s not charity. It’s the truth. It’s what I feel.’ He wanted to speak on, to salve this lacerated spirit with words of comfort as he might have salved a wounded body with ointment. But the words which came to him so readily in other circumstances would not come to him now when he most needed them. He said desperately, ‘Who was this Chivers man?’

  ‘Darren Chivers. I never knew about the Christopher until I heard it just now on the radio. The bearer of Christ, Christopher, isn’t it?’ She smiled at the irony of that name for the sly, shuffling bearer of evil she had known as Darren Chivers. ‘He was a drug dealer. Small-time, like me. A user turned dealer to get his fix, like me. Cleverer than me, though.’ Cleverer because he was finding other sources of income.

  using blackmail to supplement his revenue from drugs. But in that moment she knew that she could not tell Peter about her meeting with Chivers a week ago. This man who had emerged from her past to torment her with his threats to unmask her unless she acceded to his demands could not be allowed into the vicarage. Even to report this intrusion of her past into a present life which was so idyllic would be to tarnish it, to risk its destruction. ‘It might even have been me who recruited Darren. He was just beginning to deal when - when you rescued me from all that.’

  ‘When you rescued yourself. I saw the hell you had to go through to get out of it, don’t forget.’

  ‘No. I won’t forget.’ She made herself look at him and forced a smile. She had the illusion that her blood was only now beginning to pulse again through her veins. She felt quite light-headed with the sensation. ‘Sometimes this world and you seem like a wonderful dream which can’t last, just as that world seems like a nightmare which comes back to haunt me at times like this.’

  ‘This is the reality, Karen. This is no dream.’ He grinned at her, knowing now that he was winning his strange, bitter battle against her past. ‘We’d have a bit more money to throw about, if it was a dream!’

  She stared at him wanly for a moment, then gladdened his heart by answering his smile. ‘You’re right as usual, of course! One glance at your stipend will bring us out of any dream. I’ll go down to the hostel again this afternoon and see what I can do to help other poor devils out of their own nightmares.’

  Peter Lynch frowned. ‘Do you think you should, love? You’ve not been sleeping well, these last few nights, have you? There’s nothing wrong with keeping the past at bay by ignoring it, you know, when it gets a little too close.’

  His hands still held hers across the table. Impulsively, she picked up the right one and kissed his fingers. ‘I’m all right, as long as I’ve got you. I really need your support - the kind of support you’ve just given me. But I’m all right, so long as I’ve got that. I’ll get myself together this morning. By the time 1 get to the hostel I’ll be ready for anything.’

  She would, too, she thought when she was alone in the bathroom, looking in the mirror at the dark rings beneath her eyes. They had come during the last few disturbed nights, as she agonized about where she could possibly raise the money to buy off Chivers.

  All that was over now. Karen Lynch tried hard to regret the death of Darren Chivers, but all she saw in that face in the mirror was relief.

  Fourteen

  The woman had a face which was prematurely lined and eyes which seemed permanently narrowed in suspicion. Her untidy grey hair needed a wash. Her thin lips turned downwards at the comers; they were set in a line of discontent which seemed to be her natural expression. In the car, she told the female police constable who was driving her to the mortuary that she was forty-eight. That was the first shock for the younger woman, who would have thought her nearer sixty.

  Perhaps it was the stress of what she was going to do which was making the woman look older, PC Emily Johnson thought charitably. Being called upon to identify the shattered body of your son would surely affect the most undemonstrative of mothers. She chatted a little, trying to divert the woman’s mind from the task ahead, but was answered only in curt monosyllables.

  At the mortuary, the woman accepted the offer of tea and biscuits. She munched a digestive and thumbed unseeingly through a magazine, glancing twice at the clock and giving every impression of impatience. Perhaps she just wanted this to be over and to be alone, thought PC Johnson. It must be a terrible thing to have to contemplate. She had given up trying to talk to the woman. Her emollient little cliches seemed to have helped the two women she had accompanied previously on this wretched mission, but they were clearly useless here.

  The corpses were presented behind glass nowadays, like stuffed specimens in a wildlife museum. PC Johnson made sure that she had an upright chair available, in case this previously unemotional woman felt faint when faced with the reality of death, as people often did. The morticians had told her tales of strong men collapsing under the stress of identification.

  When the body slid into view, she was relieved to see that the worst of the damage was concealed. The sheet was drawn neatly under the chin, covering the worst of the multiple cuts of the post-mortem examination. The lank hair had been brushed forward to conceal the incisions in the skull; the side of the face which had been shot away was mercifully hidden on the far side of the damaged head. The thin profile which was presented was waxy and white. It might almost have been a model rather than what remained of a living human presence.

  The woman gave a tiny gasp, but otherwise showed as little emotion as she had done since she was first apprised of this death. After no more than a second, she said in a perfectly even tone, ‘That’s him. That’s my son.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. What’s next?’

  ‘Would you like a little time with him alone. I can—’

  ‘No. What would I want with that?’

  She signed the form of identification in the office, then went back to the police car with the young police officer.

  They drove without speaking through Herefordshire lanes. Mrs Chivers was almost back at the supermarket and the resumption of her job there when she said, ‘I hadn’t seen Darren for three years, you know. It was a bit of a shock when I heard. But we were never close.’

  It seemed a fitting maternal epitaph on the narrow, flawed, violently truncated life of the son she had left behind her.


  When you were an ex-copper, you knew a wide cross-section of humanity. There wasn’t much which could still shock you, after what you had seen in the job. You got used to keeping your emotions in check. Moral stances and moral judgements were usually better avoided. For a lot of the time, you didn’t pass judgements, but just got on with what you had to do.

  Daniel Steele found that this was for the most part a good preparation for the work he had to do at Gloucester Building Supplies. There were people who had worked here for many years, who had made him feel like an interloper when he had first come to the place. They had their own ways of working the system to their advantage, small ruses they had developed over the years, which most of them had ceased to regard as cheating.

  So long as these were not major abuses, Daniel chose to ignore them. He had discussed things with the managing director, who was impressed that he had discovered these small depredations so quickly. They had agreed that he would monitor the situation and take no action, so long as the fiddles which people had come to regard as the perks of the job were not too blatant. Human nature being what it is, the men involved - it always seemed to be men who enjoyed playing the system - would devise equally ingenious and perhaps more damaging ways of peculation. A few bricks or a few lengths of wood in the boot of the car for do-it-yourself improvements at home did no great damage to company profits and made for a contented workforce.

  Within three weeks of taking up his duties as security officer, Steele had exposed a more major offence and taken the appropriate action. A delivery driver had been loading more than the items ordered on to his HGV and selling the residue to small local builders. Like most people who find what they see as an easy way of supplementing their income, the man had grown both greedy and careless. For a man with Dan Steele’s police experience, he had presented an easy catch. He had been duly exposed and sacked, sent on his way without the prosecution which neither the firm nor the offender wanted.

  The incident had established the new security manager’s position with both the owners and the workforce. This was a man who would ensure that the company was not being ripped off, the owners said, congratulating themselves quietly on this latest appointment. This was a man who was not to be trifled with, the workforce said, a man to be treated with respect. His exposure of the HGV driver even ensured him a certain degree of popularity as well as respect, for workers do not like to see people milking their firm to a criminal extent. There was a general feeling that the man had been allowed to get away with too much.

  So Dan the Detection, as a couple of Welshmen in the workforce had dubbed him, had established himself quickly as an efficient and likeable operator, a man who knew his job but who exercised his knowledge with discretion. This reputation was an important factor for a man who worked for much of his time at night. He would otherwise have been a vague identity for most of the men it was his job to study; he was now a real presence for them to take into their considerations.

  This afternoon, he had his monthly meeting with the managing director. It was as brief and efficient as usual. They exchanged views on how the new procedures which Steele had suggested were working and how best to implement a couple of new refinements to the checking of vehicles leaving the premises. Then Dan strolled among the workers in the stores and the busy loading bays; when you were in charge of security, it was always a good idea to present yourself at unexpected times, to convey the view that you knew everything that was going on and were likely to turn up without warning at any moment.

  Then he left the works and drove swiftly for six miles to a small parking bay beside the A40, as it wound its way through the hills towards Ross-on-Wye. The grey Ford Focus was there as he had known it would be. It was the only other car in the parking facility. He eased himself from the driving seat of his Vectra, then stretched theatrically for the benefit of any curious eyes, as if he was pausing after driving a couple of hundred miles. He walked swiftly to the near side of the parked Focus, where he was shielded from passing traffic.

  The window of the car had been wound down as he drew in behind it. The transaction took no more than five seconds, with scarcely a word exchanged on either side. The Focus pulled away swiftly and immediately. Daniel Steele gave it three minutes before he pulled out unhurriedly and turned for home.

  An hour later. Chief Superintendent Lambert was closeted in his office with DI Rushton and DS Hook. They were studying the PM report which had been emailed to them from the pathology laboratory.

  The pathologist was able to tell them little which they did not already know or suspect. Death had been instantaneous, the result of a head wound inflicted from a firearm at close quarters, almost certainly the one found nineteen feet from the body. The body was that of a male in his twenties, without serious malfunctions in any of the major organs. He had been a user of drugs but not an addict. The forearms showed evidence of sizeable but not daily injections of heroin, which had probably been more frequent at some time in the past than in more recent months.

  The most useful information concerned the time of this crime. The stomach contents indicated that a meal of fish and chips and apple pie had been consumed about two hours before death. The crime had almost certainly been committed where the body was found; the hypostasis after death showed that the blood had settled on the front of the thighs, stomach, chest and face, indicating that the body had almost certainly fallen forward after the shooting and not been touched subsequently.

  The state of the digestive organs and the development of rigor mortis indicated that death had probably taken place two to three days before the discovery of the body by a man walking his dog at 7.30 a.m. on the morning of Monday the 7th of July. Two to three days would have to be the parameters for any expert evidence delivered in court. However, if it was assumed that it had been an evening meal which had been consumed, the likeliest time of death would have been in the late evening of Friday the 4th of July.

  ‘That makes sense,’ said Chris Rushton. ‘Someone shot him under cover of darkness, probably at a deliberately chosen isolated rendezvous on the edge of Highnam village.’

  ‘It needn’t have been premeditated,’ said Bert Hook. ‘We all know that druggies are unpredictable. This man was a dealer. His death might have been the result of something as simple and trivial as an argument over the price of drugs. Anyone desperate for a fix could easily lose control when he saw it being taken away from him.’

  Lambert shook his head. ‘We can’t even be sure that there is a direct drugs connection yet. Chivers was a dealer, so that seems the obvious connection, but we can’t rule out other motives. It looks at the moment as if the killer went there armed, which suggests that there is at least the possibility that this was a premeditated killing.’

  Chris Rushton, who had been doing his usual job of coordinating house-to-house inquiries and logging information on his computer, said, ‘Bert and I had warned Chivers off dealing and he seems to have been lying low over the last week or two. We released his picture to the local press last night and I’ve just had the first reported sighting, in the Cathedral, of all places - hardly the usual pitch for a drug dealer.’

  ‘When was this?’

  Chris consulted the note he had brought with him. ‘A Miss Edwina Clarkson, civilian administrator of the Cathedral’s commercial activities, thinks she saw Chivers there two or three weeks ago, talking to one of her vergers. He’ll be contacted this afternoon.’

  Lambert nodded. ‘I’ll interview him myself, with Bert.’ Rushton, who had not visited the scene of crime, was puzzled about what had been found there. ‘Why would the killer leave the murder weapon at the site? If he didn’t want to retain it, why didn’t he sling it into the Severn or some such place, where we’d never have found it?’

  It was at that moment that Lambert’s internal telephone buzzed insistently. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, sir, but there is a man at the desk who insists he has information relevant to the killing at Highnam.’

  Lambert g
lanced at the other two. ‘Send him in here,’ he said grimly.

  The man was in his early twenties, a little in awe of Chief Superintendent Lambert and his formidable local reputation. He felt suddenly less certain of his ground than he had when he had been speaking to the desk sergeant in the reception area of the station. He sat very upright on the chair which had been offered to him and said, ‘The radio said anyone with information should come forward. It may be nothing. I just thought you should know.’

  ‘I’m sure we should,’ said Lambert briskly. ‘We appreciate you taking the trouble to come in here, Mr...?’

  ‘Jackson. Leo Jackson. I work in the gun shop off Westgate.’

  ‘And what is it you have to tell us?’

  ‘This man who was killed. His picture was in the Citizen last night. I recognized him. He came into the shop last week - I’m almost sure it was him.’ He produced the newspaper from his pocket, folded to reveal the photograph of a slightly younger Darren Chivers, as if it was some sort of evidence of his good faith.

  ‘And did he make a purchase, Mr Jackson?’ Lambert’s heart was sinking. Any information, even of a negative sort, had to be useful, but he feared that he wouldn’t much like what he was going to hear next.

  ‘Yes. He bought an air pistol. A Brocock ME 38.’

  ‘Did he say what he wanted it for?’

  ‘He said he shot pellets at paper targets in his cellar. He said it was a little hobby of his.’

  ‘But you didn’t believe him.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose I did, really. But there’s nothing we can do, if someone assures us he’s going to use the pistol for an innocent purpose.’ He squirmed a little on the chair in the silence which followed this, then added irrelevantly, ‘The Brocock ME 38 is a precision instrument. It cannot cause serious injury, if it is handled responsibly.’

  ‘Unless it is converted to something altogether more lethal, as many of these pistols are.’