[Lambert and Hook 22] - Darkness Visible

by J M Gregson

  Leo Jackson gave a self-conscious shrug. ‘We can’t control that. We have to sell to legitimate purchasers.’

  Lambert allowed himself a sigh. ‘No, of course you can’t. Thank you for acting as a good citizen and bringing us this information, Mr Jackson.’

  The three officers stared glumly at each other for a moment after their informant had left the room. ‘You have the answer to your question, Chris,’ said Lambert. ‘The murder weapon was left at the scene because it belonged to the deceased, not his killer. And none of us believes there’ll be any prints on it.’

  Their one useful clue had just been declared useless. ‘Let’s hope the forensic boys come up with something for us from the clothes and the pockets,’ said Bert Hook. He did not sound optimistic.

  Choral evensong in Gloucester Cathedral was one of Robert Beckford’s favourite services. He loved the ethereal sound of the carefully modulated trained voices; it sounded to him like an echo from that heaven which the modern world was deserting. He glanced at his watch, finished setting out the chairs for the meeting of the cathedral chapter on the following day, and hurried back into the ancient church.

  The choir were in their traditional surplices. The congregation was depressingly small, though supplemented by those few late-aftemoon tourists who chose to sit down and listen rather than hurry out of the place with the advent of a religious service. Robert looked upwards at the slender stone vaulting shafts, soaring impossibly high above him in an unbroken sweep. He knew a lot about his workplace now, knew that this choir had been built in the 1330s, that even then it had been a remodelling and masking of the massive pillars of the old Benedictine abbey church.

  For the professional soldier Beckford had been for so long, that seemed an impossibly long time ago. Soldiers were taught to exist in the here and now, to obey the urgent demands of a dangerous and perpetually changing modem world. He knew that the world in which these stones had been raised was as violent and even more brutal than his own - indeed, the tomb of Edward II, the king who had died the most hideous of all royal deaths, was but a few yards away from him. He turned his gaze upon the great east window, the size of a tennis court and the largest stone-traceried window in England, as he told any visitors who showed interest in it. Almost seven centuries ago, that had been constructed. He envied once again the certainty of the people who had built this place, the ‘singing masons building roofs of gold’, in that ringing phrase of Shakespeare’s from a play he had never seen.

  The archdeacon who was conducting the service today spoke a few words, reminding his listeners of an unchanging God and this unchanging House of God in a changing world. Then the choir took over again, and Rob looked up at the vaulted ceiling above him, where the notes and the voices seemed to hang, then seep away into the ancient stone. The men who had hewn those stones then had known their trade, secure in their faith as they moved around Europe, enjoying the patronage of a wealthy church which was certain of its ground and certain of the faith of the men and women who walked upon it.

  Robert Beckford had a pleasant confusion in his mind which he felt no urgency to resolve. In the harsh setting of the Falklands and Iraq and the orderly, intensely disciplined army world which had framed his former life, he had thought himself an atheist. Gloucester Cathedral and his daily presence within it had changed him. He had become first an agnostic and lately the possessor of some sort of faith. He could not define it.

  and he would not have the confidence to defend it against the vigorous arguments of those who found Christian services so much mumbo-jumbo. But he was certain that what he had just savoured was a spiritual experience, something more than mere physical satisfaction. This job was important to him. It carried a significance far greater than the modest salary which was paid into his account each month by the cathedral authorities.

  ‘Mr Robert Beckford?’

  He still hadn’t got used to that form of address. Only officers had been ‘Mr’ in the army which had been his working environment for so many years. Rob blinked a little as he moved out through the massive doors and into the bright sunlight. ‘That’s me. What can I do for you?’

  The young man in uniform tried not to sound too pompous. ‘We’d like a few words with you, sir. Well, not me, Chief Superintendent Lambert, actually. It’s a CID matter, you see.’ For Robert Beckford, the bright day had suddenly darkened.

  Fifteen

  Mark Rogers never listened to local radio. He couldn’t even find Radio Gloucester on the dial of the old set in his bedroom. His son George heard the discordant sounds of his struggle and bounded in to tune to the station with expert, eight-year-old’s fingers. A set of those should be sold with every new piece of electronics, his father thought fondly.

  He felt less doting when George announced a little while later over the evening meal, ‘Dad was listening to Radio Gloucester in your bedroom, Mum.’

  ‘Don’t speak with your mouth full, please, George.’ Samantha turned to her husband. ‘You never listen to Radio Gloucester. You always say local radio is nothing but pop records and mindless chat.’

  ‘I wanted the news and the local weather, that’s all. I’d missed it on the way home.’ He’d heard all of the Radio

  4 PM programme on the car radio as he drove back from his meeting with the BT engineers who worked for him, but she wasn’t to know that.

  ‘And was there anything earth-shattering?’

  ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘There’s been a murder. Dad was listening to that. They’re asking anyone who can help to get in touch with the police.’ George turned his wide-eyed beaming face upon his mother, and awaited a reaction.

  Samantha turned to Mark. ‘You’re not interested in murders.’

  She sounded almost accusing, he thought. ‘Not normally. I’m not. But this is local. It’s the same man who was beaten up a couple of weeks ago. It rather intrigued me.’

  ‘How do you know it’s the same one?’

  ‘I remembered the name.’

  ‘Someone you know, is it?’

  ‘No, of course not. I just happened to remember the name. Darren Chivers, he was called.’

  Samantha Rogers let it go at that. She didn’t like talking about things like this in front of the children, who as usual were watching them wide-eyed when she’d rather they lost interest.

  But Mark was usually very bad on names.

  ‘It’s a nice place to live, this. Very cosy and very handy for the centre of the town.’ Bert Hook tried to break the ice as they entered Robert Beckford’s house.

  ‘It comes with the job. We couldn’t afford it otherwise. Goodness knows what a house in the cathedral close would bring on the open market.’ Rob tried not to sound as nervous as he felt.

  Lambert scarcely removed his eyes from Rob as he said to the man’s wife, ‘We need to see Mr Beckford on his own, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You’d better use the front room, then. You won’t be disturbed in there.’ Gwen Beckford was not as good at concealing her feelings as her husband. She felt a little miffed to be excluded.

  It was a comfortable room, with a tall Victorian fireplace and a picture rail running round the high walls. It was furnished as a dining room, with a highly polished mahogany table as its centrepiece. The CID men sat on the upright chairs beside it and looked at their man across the table without speaking for a second or two. He said, ‘I’m willing to give you all the help I can - that goes without saying. But I can't think what this can be about.’

  ‘Can’t you, Mr Beckford? Haven’t you been following the news over the last twenty-four hours? The local news, in particular.’ Lambert was polite but brusque, even a trifle hostile.

  ‘This murder, you mean?’

  ‘I do indeed.’

  ‘But that’s nothing to do with me. I don’t see how I can be of any help to you.’

  ‘We are interested in talking to anyone who knew the dead man, Mr Beckford.’

  Robert set his features to reveal nothing.
One of the things you learned early in the military life was to keep an impassive face in all kinds of circumstances, such as when you were standing to attention on parade with some manic drill pig yelling in your ear. That training stood him in good stead now. He stared straight ahead of him, focused on the Worcester vase on the mantelpiece, and said, ‘I can understand that. But as I didn’t know the man, I can’t see why you are here.’

  ‘The dead man was Darren Chivers. Do you still maintain that you did not know him?’

  ‘The name means nothing to me.’

  ‘Yet you have been reported to us as speaking to him in the cathedral within the last two or three weeks.’

  Edwina bloody Clarkson! It must be. Sticking her nose in and causing trouble for him as usual. He didn’t think anyone had seen that little interchange with Chivers in the Lady Chapel, but she must have been keeping an eye on him after their little spat. Damn the woman!

  Robert felt an overwhelming desire to tell them the truth, to tell them that the man had been blackmailing him and threatening to reveal events from his past to the cathedral authorities. The identity of blackmail victims was kept secret, wasn’t it, even when such criminals were taken to court? But it would be bound to come out, even if the police didn’t reveal it. Miss Edwina bloody Clarkson would make it her business to ferret out what was going on, once she knew that the police were involved. And if she knew, she would delight in conveying her knowledge to the bishop and the senior clergy as quickly as possible. And then she would make the maximum use of it. She would claim he had obtained his verger’s post under false pretences, and both the job he loved and this house he and Gwen loved would be taken from them in a trice.

  He said doggedly, ‘I didn’t know anyone called Darren Chivers.’

  ‘You’re saying our informant was mistaken?’

  ‘Who was your informant, Mr Lambert?’

  ‘We do not reveal our sources, Mr Beckford. With your military background, you would no doubt expect that.’

  ‘Well, I do not know anyone of that name. Lots of people speak to me in the cathedral. Most of them just want information about the history or the layout of the buildings. If this man did speak to me, he was probably asking a question of that sort. I certainly do not know anyone called Chivers.’

  His rather stiff military manner was serving him well. He didn’t think his face was revealing much and his voice was quite even, sounding in his own ears much calmer than he felt.

  The man who had been introduced as Detective Sergeant Hook now produced a photograph of Chivers and passed it across the table to him. ‘Is this the man who spoke to you in the Lady Chapel?’

  Robert made himself study the picture for a few seconds. ‘It may well have been. I couldn’t be certain. This would have been a casual exchange of the kind I conduct several times a day, as I’ve explained to you. I’m afraid I don’t give close attention to the people I meet in those circumstances.’ Lambert studied him silently for a moment, in that way which often embarrassed members of the public, who were used to polite social exchanges where such scrutiny would have been positively rude. ‘Our information was that this was quite a prolonged exchange, lasting for two or three minutes. I would have expected a meeting of that sort to stick in your mind a little more clearly.’

  ‘I’m sorry that I don’t recall it more clearly. I don’t wish to be vague - I’d like to be more helpful to you, if I could.

  May I suggest that your informant might be mistaken in her description of this chance encounter?’

  Lambert smiled, acknowledging that with his use of gender the man had divined who had placed this information with them. ‘That is always possible, of course. I take it that your recollection is that the exchange between you and our murder victim was much more brief.’

  ‘As 1 do not recall the meeting at all, I cannot be precise.’ He had not been caught out and contradicted himself, as this shrewd, persistent man had hoped; Rob allowed himself the suggestion of a smile. ‘However, if the conversation had been as prolonged as your informant claims, I am pretty sure that I would remember it now.’

  ‘And you had no previous acquaintance with Darren Chivers?’

  ‘No. And I am still not convinced that I spoke with him on that morning.’

  Lambert’s grey, unblinking eyes were intent upon the face of the man on the other side of the mahogany table. ‘I didn’t mention that this exchange took place in the morning, Mr Beckford.’

  ‘Didn’t you? I must have assumed it, then.’

  ‘And your assumption is correct. Interesting, that.’ Beckford didn’t allow his irritation to show. ‘Interesting, but scarcely significant. I’d have thought.’

  Lambert stood up. ‘Mr Chivers is a murder victim. Keep that photograph, please. You never know, it may eventually stir some memories.’ His voice was tinged with irony for a moment. Then he said briskly, ‘You will realize that it is your duty to get in touch with us at Oldford CID if anything occurs to you which might have a bearing on this case. Good night to you, Mr Beckford.’

  Robert stood holding the wide blue front door of the house until his visitors disappeared from view at the end of the close. He was brusque and dismissive when his wife asked him what it had all been about - a case of mistaken identity, he told her.

  Rob had taught himself to sleep in all kinds of uncomfortable and occasionally dangerous places around the world. But Gwen Beckford noticed how restless he was in their bed that night.

  Michelle de Vries found that the conversation with Guy Dawson was very scrappy when she visited his house as usual on Tuesday night. Perhaps he was as anxious to get into bed as she was, she thought, with the self-deception which is always a lover’s weakness.

  In fact, Guy was as preoccupied as Michelle with the death of Darren Chivers, the man who had threatened to bring their world crashing about their ears. Both of them had listened to every news bulletin they could about the sensational murder of their tormentor. Yet for some reason neither of them cared to mention it to the other as they drank the gins and tonics which were a prelude to their retirement to the bedroom.

  ‘Does Gerald suspect anything?’ Guy ran his fingers round the edge of his glass, deliberately casual.

  ‘No. I’m sure he doesn’t.’

  ‘There’s no reason why he should, now.’

  That small three-letter word was the only reference either of them made to the events of the last few days during the first hours in which they were together.

  Much later in the evening, Guy Dawson sighed a sigh of gratified exhaustion and murmured into Michelle’s ear, ‘You’re insatiable!’

  There was no doubt from the awed tone in his voice that he intended it as a compliment. Michelle stretched her toes luxuriously towards the bottom of the bed and murmured, ‘Only with you, my darling! I’ve never felt like this with anyone else!’

  ‘I think you’re a wanton harlot! And what’s more, you’re my wanton harlot!’ They were both lying on their backs and satiated, but he now rolled on to his side and took her again into his arms, stroking the small of her back in that tentative, experimental way he had. Each caress felt as if it was the first time he had ever touched her; she enjoyed the sensation that he was each time feeling his way anew into her body and her affections.

  She felt the familiar stirring of desire, even at this moment when she was so fulfilled, but she said as firmly as she could, ‘We can’t, Guy! It’s time I was getting home.’

  ‘That’s a relief! I’m only human, you know, as King Kong said to Fay Wray. There are limits even to my stamina.’

  But he went on gently stroking her back, so that Michelle still felt a little shaft of disappointment that she could not stay the night. She detached his hands and rolled on to her back. She was gazing at the ceiling of Guy Dawson’s bedroom when she voiced the thought that had been in both their minds earlier in the evening. ‘I won’t be seeing that man with his demands for money again, thank God!’

  ‘And so say all of u
s! Well, both of us, in this case. And God knows how many other poor sods whom we don’t even know and don’t want to know.’

  ‘You think he was extorting money from others? That we weren’t the only ones?’

  ‘Good word that, “extorting”. I like it when you display your technical expertise. You’re a woman of many parts.’

  He let his hand move on to her hip. She took it firmly in hers and squeezed it. ‘I suppose he could have been blackmailing others as well as me. When he came into the shop, I somehow thought it was a one-off.’

  ‘He sounds like the sort of sly sod who would have a lot of dubious irons in the fire. Not that I’ve ever met him, of course.’

  That seemed to Michelle an odd qualification to make. She said without any great emotion, ‘You missed nothing. He was scum.’ She had a sudden, disturbing thought. ‘You don’t think he left anything behind, do you? Anything which might get back to Gerald, even now?’

  ‘No, I’m sure he didn’t. I don’t suppose he ever meant to tell Gerald, so long as you went on paying him. Because he’d have been back for more, you know. He wouldn’t have stopped at that first two thousand.’

  ‘I expect he would have come back again, yes. And I wouldn’t have been able to give him any more, without Gerald discovering that money was mysteriously disappearing.’

  ‘It’s just as well he’s gone then, isn’t it? We shouldn’t spend much time mourning a bastard like that.’

  It was a conventional enough reaction to the death of a blackmailer. But as she showered in Guy Dawson’s bathroom, Michelle de Vries could not rid herself of the feeling that she was cleansing herself of something secret and evil.

  Sixteen

  The post-mortem report on Darren Chivers had revealed very little, beyond the fact that he had almost certainly been killed with his own weapon, by person or persons unknown. Less than twenty-four hours later, the three men at the heart of the investigation met again, hoping that house- to-house inquiries and the forensic laboratories might have come up with something more helpful.