by J M Gregson
‘You’re obviously a busy man, so I shall come straight to the point, Mr Rogers,’ said Lambert dryly. ‘Can you account for your name on a list found in the pocket of a murder victim?’
Mark made himself smile. ‘The short answer is no. Are you sure that you have the right Mark Rogers?’
‘Yes, we are. This has been thoroughly checked.’
‘It’s odd, this, because I don’t recall any meetings with a .. . Derek Chivers, was it?’
‘Darren Chivers, sir. We have a possible sighting of you with Mr Chivers a little while ago.’
He was shaken out of the urbanity he had planned. ‘Are you positive about that? I’m sure I don’t recall any such—’
‘On the evening of Monday June the twenty-third, it was,’ said Bert Hook, his notebook open in front of him in anticipation of this denial. ‘The informant was one of our plain clothes drug squad officers. If you are now telling us that it was another man entirely, we can soon sort the matter out.’ Detection is a serious business, so that you have to accept simple pleasures where you can find them. The sight of a thoroughly discomforted BT executive gave an unworthy satisfaction to his visitors. Rogers said eventually, ‘I expect you’re right. The name didn’t ring any immediate bells, but—’
‘Even when you realized it belonged to a murder victim, Mr Rogers? I find that difficult to believe,’ said Lambert sternly. ‘I think you had much better be honest with us from now on, don’t you? This is a murder inquiry, and any attempt to mislead us constitutes a serious offence.’
‘I’ve a lot at stake here. I’ve a wife and two children who mean the world to me.’
‘All the more reason to be honest with us and safeguard them, I’d say.’
‘All right.’ As he spoke the words, coffee arrived. Rogers gave his PA a weak, abstracted grin and said that he would see to the pouring of it himself. His hands were quite steady as he filled the cups and added milk as directed, but he did not trust himself to speak until they each held a cup and saucer. ‘I was a little wild in my youth, before I settled down. But which of us is not?’
He waited for an assenting phrase or nod from the two men opposite him, but none came. The two looked to Mark Rogers as grave and serious as if they had never been through youth at all. ‘Darren Chivers was a dealer. He supplied me with drugs. Pot, of course. A little cocaine, but nothing—’
‘How long ago was this, Mr Rogers?’
‘I told you, in my wild youth.’
‘Which must have lasted until you were around thirty. Darren Chivers was twenty-seven when he died. He had been dealing for no more than eight years at the outside.’
Mark cursed himself for improvising such an unlikely story. He had thought Chivers much older. He shrugged, trying hard to loosen his shoulders and make it convincing. ‘I suppose I wanted it to be longer ago. I used drugs a lot in my youth and I still turned to them when I felt the need of a high, even in the early years of my marriage. I’m not proud of it and I didn’t want either my employers or my wife and children to know about it. Chivers knew that. He was threatening to tell both Samantha and BT about the trades I had done with him.’
‘And trying to extract money from you by doing so.’
‘Yes. That is why I had to meet him on that Monday you mentioned. He’d been ringing the house, saying he wanted to speak to me. Samantha was getting curious about who this man was.’
‘What happened at that meeting, Mr Rogers?’
‘I gave Chivers a small sum of money.’
Bert Hook flicked to a new page in his notebook. ‘How much was that, Mr Rogers?’
‘Two hundred pounds. I made him promise that that would be the end of it.’
‘And did you believe that it would be?’
‘Yes, I think I did. He was a small-time operator with drugs, and I didn’t think he’d have the nerve to come back to me again. I may have been naive, but—’
‘Blackmailers almost always come back for more. Are you not aware of that?’
‘I don’t think I even thought of it as blackmail. He seemed too pathetic a creature to be really threatening.’
‘Pathetic, and yet you handed money to him. You must have felt threatened.’
‘I have a stable job and a happy family. It seemed at the time a small price to pay to keep the situation stable.’
‘When did you last see Darren Chivers?’
‘On the night you mentioned. Monday the twenty-third of June, I think you said it was.’
‘Two days after that, Mr Chivers was beaten up so badly that he ended up in hospital. What do you know about that?’
‘Nothing at all. This is the first I’ve heard of it.’ He looked at the sceptical faces, aware that all three of them in the room were thinking of his earlier denials. ‘I’m sure I can account for my whereabouts at the time of that attack, if you give me the time and the place.’
‘I’m sure that you could do that, Mr Rogers. What happened to Mr Chivers on that night had the hallmarks of a beating by professionals - thugs who hire out their services to whoever is prepared to pay for them.’
‘Then they weren’t hired by me. I don’t have contacts like that.’
‘Do you know where Mr Chivers lived?’
Mark wanted to deny all knowledge of the man, but he had been caught out once and he did not know what else they knew about him. ‘I do, as a matter of fact. That’s if he still lived where he used to do years ago. He had a flat in Collingwood Street. Why do you ask?’
‘Because someone entered that flat illegally last Saturday night and removed certain materials which could well have become significant items in a murder trial.’
‘It wasn’t me.’ It felt very banal. He wanted words which were much stronger, but they would not come to him. ‘Where were you last Friday night, Mr Rogers?’
‘We had a company policy meeting in Birmingham on Friday afternoon. It finished much later than I’d hoped it would.
I stayed and chatted with a colleague until about seven, I think. We both wanted to let the traffic get away.’
‘So what time did you get home on that night?’
He licked his lips, well aware of what they were about, anxious to present this as well as he could. ‘I knew the children would be in bed well before I got there, so I’d missed them. I went for a drink in Gloucester before I went home, because I wanted to unwind a little. My section of the company is going through a difficult time, and I don’t like taking my worries home with me. The pub was pretty crowded, at that time on a Friday night - I don’t suppose anyone would remember me being there.’ He knew even as he formed the phrases that he should not have uttered that last sentence. It sounded far too defensive.
Hook, pen poised over his notebook, let that thought hang in the air for a moment before he asked Rogers for the name of the pub and the time he had arrived home, which was some time after eleven. Then they left him, with an injunction to get in touch immediately when - not if, he noticed - any further thoughts on this death occurred to him.
Mark Rogers put his coffee cup back on the tray and rejoined the bustling world of BT, which was oddly reassuring to him after the last twenty minutes. He was noisily cheerful to his PA, making the routine jokes about not being behind bars after all, hoping he was not overplaying his nonchalance in the face of interrogation by senior CID officers. Back in the privacy of his office, he decided it had gone as well as could be expected, after his initial gaffe in denying all knowledge of Darren Chivers.
He would have been less sanguine if he could have heard the conversation of his visitors in Lambert’s car. They had driven a couple of miles in thoughtful silence before Hook said, ‘I didn’t buy his story about the drugs. He might well have bought from Chivers in the past, more or less as he told it, but I don’t see him allowing himself to be blackmailed over that. Half the younger executives in the country would be at risk, if things like that were going to ruin their careers.’
Lambert eased his foot down on the th
rottle as the old Vauxhall cruised west down the A40. ‘I agree. I found myself trusting hardly anything the man said to us. It’s interesting that he knew where Chivers lived and can’t really account for where he was at the key time on Friday night. I think we shall need to have further dealings in due course with the shifty Mr Rogers.’
There was only the lightest of breezes to temper the heat of the sun, and people were sitting out in the gardens of the retirement home. The lobelia and alyssum and the vivid geraniums were at their best now; the first of the spectacular dahlias were beginning to show colour.
John Lambert found the tiny figure of Mrs North sitting alone at the far end of the rose garden, a very small, motionless figure on a sturdy garden bench which seemed much too big for her. ‘I’m sorry this isn’t just a routine friendly visit,’ he said awkwardly, as he sat down beside her.
‘You told me that on the phone. There’s no need to apologize. Jack won’t mind; he won’t know the difference. I’d like to say he’ll be glad to see you, but he might not even recognize you. We have to take it day by day, now. They’re trying a new drug. I think it’s making him a bit better, but I’m trying to teach myself to expect nothing. That way, any little improvement is a nice surprise.’
Lambert marvelled again at the courage and resilience within this tiny, bird-like creature. ‘He was a good boss to me, you know. The best I ever had. He taught me a lot of things.’
‘Including one or two you’ve had to forget, I expect. He was as honest as the day’s long, Jack, but I reckon he took a short cut or two, didn’t he, when he was anxious to see justice done?’ Her voice was full of tenderness, not condemnation; even her man’s frailties were loveable, after the years of uncomplaining support which had bound her to him.
John Lambert smiled, wanting to put his hand consolingly over the tiny one on the bench beside him, afraid that it would be too intimate a gesture, which might bring on the tears which were not too far beneath her sturdy surface. ‘The police service has changed like the rest of the world, Amy, and not always for the better.’
‘He’s having a nap. He usually does after his lunch. Do you want me to come in with you to see him?’
Strictly speaking, anything the man could tell him was confidential and for his ears only, but he’d be floundering, out of his depth, if Jack North couldn’t communicate. ‘I’d like that, Amy, if you wouldn’t mind.’
‘I was a police wife for long enough, John. I know what doesn’t go beyond the walls.’ She rose and led the way towards the big Victorian mansion, her shortness even more marked in front of the tall man who followed her lead.
She had to wake her husband, stroking his hair as gently as if he were a sleeping child, holding his large gnarled hand in hers until she felt his grip tighten upon her. Jack North knew her immediately, but when he eventually realized he had another visitor, standing awkwardly behind her, he peered at him uncertainly and said, ‘You should be at work, Ben.’ Amy made him look up at her as she said, ‘It’s not your son. Jack, not today. This is John Lambert, who used to work with you. He needs you to help him.’
‘John Lambert.’ North repeated the name carefully, as if trying to commit it to his shattered memory. Then a gleam of recognition lit up the rheumy eyes. ‘Did you get him, John? Do we have a collar?’
The old police word North had always used for an arrest, for the successful conclusion to a case. Lambert was encouraged. ‘I need your help, Jack. I need you to tell me things, if we’re going to get a collar. It’s a big one, this, the biggest of the lot.’ He glanced at Amy North, wondering if he should be bringing talk of murder into this quiet world, but felt her willing him on. Perhaps it was important to her that Jack North was able to help, to provide her with the crumb of comfort that his usefulness might bring.
North was looking at him with an open-mouthed trust which he found searing. Lambert said softly, ‘Dan Steele, Jack. Remember him?’ No understanding lit up the tired face. He wracked his brains, remembering that the police always dealt in nicknames, usually not very original ones. ‘Danny Boy, Jack?’
A shaft of recognition in the blue pupils, a smile of delight twisting the mouth. Lambert wished all the faces he interviewed were as revealing as this one. ‘Danny Boy, that’s him. Danny Boy Steele.’ Then the face darkened and the brow furrowed. ‘Don’t trust him, Jack. He’s a bad lad, Danny Boy.’
‘That’s right, Jack! A bad lad. What did he do, Jack?’
‘Bungs, John.’ The old familiar word which he had not used for years came quickly to North on the heels of the name. ‘Don’t have him, John. He takes bungs. Get rid of him. Don’t have him back.’
‘Who gave him the bungs. Jack?’
‘Druggies. Thieves. Seccy ... Seccy ...’ He shook his head hopelessly.
John Lambert, concentrating fiercely, had his own moment of inspiration. ‘Securicor, Jack? Was it a raid on Securicor?’
‘That’s it! Bungs. Securicor.’ He repeated the four syllables carefully, than cackled suddenly at his cleverness. ‘I got rid of the bugger, John. Don’t you have him back now!’
‘I won’t, Jack. And you've been a big help to me. You’re a good copper. Jack. You were the best boss I ever had, you know. And you’re still a good copper.’
Jack North repeated the phrase happily as he sank back into that half-world of confusion in which he lived his life now. Lambert held the old hand in his for a moment, trying to continue some sort of conversation, feeling guilty because now that he had what he had come for he wanted to be away.
The tiny tower of strength which was Amy North edged him aside and told him to be off catching villains. He looked back from the door of the room to see her smoothing her husband’s hair and plumping up his cushions, talking the while as if to a child who had done an unexpectedly clever thing. Not for the first time in his long career, he saw heroism in an unlikely physical casing.
Nineteen
Lambert had an excellent memory for faces, though the names did not always stick as easily as they had done when he was a young copper on the beat. He was fairly sure that he had never met Daniel Steele before, even though the man had once been a police officer working within thirty miles of him.
The man who was now in charge of security at Gloucester Building Supplies was a powerful, stocky man, just under six feet tall. Thirteen stones plus, Bert Hook’s experienced eye told him, with the build of a rugby prop forward and deep- set, watchful eyes, the pupils of which were almost black.
He led them into a small dining room at the front of his house and said, ‘We won’t be disturbed in here. My wife’s gone to work. She works four mornings a week in an office, now that the kids have left home.’
‘And you work nights.’
‘Not always, but quite often. It’s the nature of the job. Petty pilfering during the day, sometimes by our own staff. The danger of major thefts by professional criminals comes at night. I’m confident daytime security is now under control. Night work makes for a happy marriage, I always say - we don’t see enough of each other to get on each other’s nerves!’
‘You were in the job.’
‘I was a copper for twenty years, yes. I don’t miss the paperwork, nor the odd hours, nor being buggered about by twats who never leave their desks. Present company excepted, of course.’
Lambert allowed himself the faintest of smiles whilst keeping his eyes steadily on the swarthy face. ‘I feel no great attachment to my own desk.’
‘Aye. I’ve heard that of you, Chief Superintendent Lambert. Bit of a dinosaur, they say, but one who gets results. I like the sound of that.’
‘How well did you know Darren Chivers, Mr Steele?’
‘The man who was killed at the weekend? I didn’t know him at all.’ Steele stared steadily at Lambert, challenging him to disprove it. He would give them as little as possible, make them demonstrate to him what they knew. He had bluffed criminals often enough in his police days to know that CID men often made a little knowledge go a very
long way.
‘So how do you account for your name being on a list found in his pocket?’
Damn! Daniel had been pretty confident they’d find nothing to connect him with Chivers. He couldn’t possibly have foreseen this. He looked suitably puzzled, then said dourly, ‘Perhaps he was planning to contact me. I can’t think why. It wouldn’t be for a job, and I’ve never done drugs.’
‘And how do you know that Darren Chivers, this man you’d never met, supplied drugs?’
He kept cool. Revealing nothing on his square face was a skill he had learned a long time ago, in his days as a young DC. ‘It was in the reports of his death, surely?’
‘It was not. Our press officer has not released that information.’
Steele shrugged, deliberately keeping the temperature of the exchange down, when he should have been disconcerted. ‘I was a police officer for years. I’m still involved in security work. One picks up all sorts of random information and it sticks. You two should know that better than most. I expect someone at the works mentioned it when we were talking about the man’s death.’
Hook made a note of this reply, his face as serious and unrevealing as the one opposite him. Then he said, ‘We now know that Chivers was also a blackmailer. We think the sheet of paper found in his pocket listed some of his victims.’ Daniel Steele raised his eyebrows; the movement to indicate surprise was a little too elaborate on his hitherto impassive face. ‘A blackmailer, eh? I don’t suppose you’ve any more time for those bastards than I had when I was a copper.’
‘He’s a murder victim, now. And we have to wonder whether he was trying to blackmail you.’
‘Pure conjecture that, isn't it? All you have is my name on a list. And what would he have to blackmail a security man who didn’t even know him?’ He jutted his jaw and gave them a defiant smile.
‘Perhaps something from your time in the police, Mr Steele,’ said Lambert quietly. He made it a statement rather than a question.