Malice Aforethought

by J M Gregson

  It was calm, relentless; Reynolds felt he was a specimen under a microscope which had just been pronounced interesting. He found himself licking his lips, gripping the edge of the table in front of him, doing all the things he had promised himself he would not do when he came here. His voice sounded distant in his own ears as he said, ‘I was wrong to pretend that there was nothing between us, that our relationship was good. It wasn’t. But that wasn’t my doing.’

  Lambert permitted himself a sardonic smile, enjoying the sight of this fish wriggling upon his hook. ‘Come now, Mr Reynolds, you can hardly say that. Almost any man would be upset by the man who was sleeping with his wife, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘They weren’t married any more. Well, they were, but in name only. Ted had ceased to have any close relationship with Sue long before I took over.’

  ‘Of course. And perhaps it wouldn’t be logical for him to oppose you. But logic doesn’t have a lot to do with these things, does it?’

  Reynolds stared at him for a moment, as if he wished to deny the thought. Then he said sullenly, ‘I suppose not. It didn’t in Ted’s case, anyway. He wasn’t quite the saint the newspaper reports of his death portray, you know. Popular teacher and man without enemies — all that stuff.’

  ‘So what were you quarrelling about on October the twenty-sixth?’

  ‘I don’t remember the details now.’

  Lambert let the futility of that bounce off the walls of the small, airless room. Then he said, ‘You can do better than that Mr Reynolds. I’m giving you the opportunity to do so.’

  It sounded like a threat in Reynolds’ burning ears. A threat of what? He was not sure of what, but he was no longer thinking rationally under the merciless gaze of those grey eyes. No wonder frightened adolescents signed confessions after hours in places like this. He found his mouth saying, ‘All right! We didn’t get on as well as I said we did, Ted and I. He didn’t like me taking up with Sue. I think he hated her, would have done anything to frustrate what she wanted to do with her life.’

  ‘I see. That wasn’t quite the impression Mrs Giles gave us of their relationship when we spoke to her yesterday. Perhaps we shall need to speak to her again.’

  This time Graham Reynolds was sure it was a threat. But he knew he mustn’t offer them any more information. ‘Sue kept her distance from him, only spoke to him when she needed to. She didn’t believe in giving him opportunities to be awkward.’

  ‘I see. Well, last Saturday night someone denied Mr Giles the right to be anything. And this morning, after pretending otherwise as long as you could, you tell me that you and he were enemies. As the man charged with investigating the murder of Edward Giles, your deceptions interest me, Mr Reynolds. I think you should now tell me what you were quarrelling about, without any further prevarication.’

  It was quietly spoken, but all the more insistent for that. Lambert had not raised his voice throughout the interview; even now, his tone suggested well-meant advice. And yet to Reynolds, used only to speaking to people in social situations where the conversational niceties were used to oil the wheels, he seemed inexorable. Glancing at the face of Bert Hook on Lambert’s right, he found that rubicund countenance as expectant and unblinking as his questioner’s, and capitulated. ‘We had a real row because I told him to lay off Sue. I said I was going to marry her and he said he’d put every obstacle in our way.’

  ‘But you must have known that he couldn’t hold things up indefinitely. The law is on your side, as you must be aware.’

  ‘I knew that, of course. But his attitude annoyed me. I told him as much, and we exchanged words about it, angry words. But there was no more to our quarrel than that.’ His mouth set in a line; the tanned, experienced features were suddenly sullen and determined as those of any child who is determined to stick to his story.

  Lambert wondered if that was really all there was to the argument between the two men, but he sensed that it was all he was going to get at this stage. Reynolds was not under caution, was still officially helping the police of his own free will. Lambert said, ‘When did you last see Mr Giles?’

  The swiftness of the switch threw Reynolds, who had been setting himself to frustrate further probing of his quarrel with Ted Giles a fortnight before his death. ‘I — I haven’t really thought about it.’ That rang as false in his own ears as theirs: they all knew he must have considered the answer to this, whether he was guilty or entirely innocent. ‘I think I saw him in the staffroom before afternoon school last Friday afternoon. Yes, I remember now, I did. But not later than that. I was free for the last period on Friday and I left school early, you see.’

  Lambert ignored that. ‘And where were you last Saturday night, when Mr Giles was being murdered?’

  The question shook most people, especially when it was framed in those blunt words. But for the first time in their exchange, Graham Reynolds smiled. He made himself take a little time, tried even to savour the moment. ‘I was in Ireland on Saturday night, Superintendent. Enjoying a splendid meal in a hotel in Killarney, to be precise.’

  ***

  Christine Lambert felt giddy as the waves of relief surged through her. For a moment she felt she might faint, falling forward from her armless chair in a heap upon the doctor’s carpet. Within a few seconds, this passed, her vision cleared, and she was seized by a disconcerting urge to leap forward and embrace the grey-haired, bespectacled figure on the other side of the desk. Instead, she said simply, ‘You can’t even guess how relieved I am. I was convinced in my own mind it was the cancer recurring, you see!’

  Dr Cooper’s natural caution surfaced immediately; he mustn’t allow this nice middle-aged woman’s relief to mislead her. When she had thought her pain stemmed from cancer, she had been adamant that he was to hold nothing back, that there was to be no room for what she had called ‘medical discretion’ with her. He hastened now to prick her bubble of optimism before it soared out of reach. ‘The news may not be quite as good as you imagined, Mrs Lambert. No cancer. But a serious heart condition. We’re talking about major surgery. Maybe a triple bypass.’

  Christine, who knew she should look grave, tried to do so and failed. ‘Surgery is a relief now. I thought you were going to tell me that it was cancer which had gone beyond the lymph glands, that it was simply a matter of time. I was all keyed up to refuse surgery, to refuse any treatment except painkillers, in fact. I had my speech about going swiftly and not losing dignity all ready for you.’

  Dr Cooper smiled. It was not often that someone greeted the necessity for a heart bypass with such elation. ‘There’s a high chance of a successful outcome; the figures improve with each passing year. But it is a serious prospect, nonetheless, and you and your family must prepare for it properly, Christine.’ It was probably because of her unexpected skittishness that he used her first name. He had seen this woman through three pregnancies and breast cancer, without ever falling into that intimacy; now, with the need to impose realism upon her schoolgirl buoyancy, it had tripped out quite naturally.

  It was not the serious nature of her condition but the mention of her family which brought Christine Lambert back to earth. ‘Yes, you’re quite right, of course. I’ll prepare them. One thing, though: please don’t mention this to John at the moment. I’ll tell him, but in my own good time.’

  ‘I’ll respect your wishes, of course. But we really don’t recommend keeping secrets from spouses. In the long run, it doesn’t—’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell him. But although he’s a detective superintendent and well used to death, he can’t bear any thought of it within his own family. I don’t want him fussing round me like a protective mother, not until I’ve adjusted myself to the new situation.’ She wished suddenly that her own protective mother, who had been dead now these ten years, was around to see her through this. And with that thought, her levity departed and she became responsible again. ‘Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ll let him know as soon as you have a bed arranged for me. But John’s much better
at coping with thieves and murderers than with a sick wife. He rather loses balance when I’m ill. He never had to cope with it until two years ago, and I doubt whether he’s a quick learner in this.’

  Christine prevailed, as she always did when she was determined to do so, and they left it at that. And a seriously ill woman drove home with her heart singing with hope.

  ***

  Superintendent John Lambert, thought by his wife to be so good at coping with murderers, felt himself not much nearer to discovering the identity of this particular one.

  He sat in his office with Chris Rushton and Bert Hook, digesting the fund of information gathered by the team, trying to isolate the five per cent of it which might be important. ‘Anyone at the school we should put in the frame?’ he asked. ‘Apart from the obvious candidate, of course, who so delighted in showing us that he was in Ireland.’

  ‘That tale seems to stand up, I’m afraid,’ said DI Rushton, meticulous as ever, and as ever anxious to demonstrate it. ‘I checked the hotel in Killarney. Mr Reynolds and Mrs Giles checked in there late on Friday night. No ‘Mr and Mrs John Smith’ for them — I suppose hypocrisy isn’t the flavour of the month now in these things, even in the Emerald Isle. They stayed until Sunday and had dinner there on Saturday night, which seems to leave both of them in the clear.’

  ‘Unless of course one of them hired a contract killer. Sue Giles certainly seems to have the money to do so, but I doubt if she has either the contacts or the inclination to dispose of a troublesome ex-husband in that way.’

  ‘There doesn’t seem to be anyone else on the staff of the school who’s a likely prospect at present,’ said Bert Hook. ‘Two of the staff have had words with him in the last few years, and one or two parents have found fault with his treatment of their little darlings, but there’s nothing very serious. Most people say he was a popular and successful teacher.’

  ‘We certainly haven’t turned up a motive in the school for anything as serious as murder,’ said Rushton.

  ‘Any clue yet as to the source of this extra income over the last two years?’ said Lambert.

  ‘Nothing. It doesn’t seem to be anything educational. He didn’t do A-level examining, which was my first thought. In any case, that wouldn’t have raised sums like the ones involved here, and it would have come in one or two big cheques, not the fairly regular dollops of cash Giles was putting into the building society account. And he didn’t do evening class teaching or work for the Open University, which might have meant monthly payments, but again not of the size he was enjoying.’

  ‘So something criminal,’ said Bert Hook, not without satisfaction. Large, unexplained sums often meant some activity on the wrong side of the law. And where lucrative crime was involved, violence and even murder were never very far away. This might be the most promising line of enquiry.

  ‘No suggestion of criminal associates from anyone we’ve interviewed,’ said Rushton dolefully. ‘Even the rare people who didn’t like Giles didn’t suggest anything very shady. But I must say he does seem to have succeeded in keeping his private life exactly that in the last few years.’

  At that moment, the phone on John Lambert’s desk shrilled insistently. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, sir,’ said the girl on the switchboard, ‘but I have a caller who insists on being put through to the office in charge of the Giles murder investigation. She won’t identify herself, and I’ve told her you’re in conference, but—’

  ‘Put her through, please. And put a trace on the call,’ said Lambert.

  A high-pitched, female voice, discordant, near to hysteria. ‘Ted Bloody Giles. Paper says he’s a bloody saint. You find out about his work with Rendezvous, then see if you think he’s such a fucking saint!’

  ‘Please try to be calm. We—’ But at the other end of the line, the phone was crashed down.

  The Rendezvous was an escort agency in Gloucester. The trace on the call revealed only a deserted phone box. But it looked as though they might have the source of the late Mr Giles’s extra income.

  Seven

  Colin Pitman was a successful businessman. Over thirty-five years, he had built up his haulage company from a one-man, one-vehicle business to a limited company which employed thirty drivers and owned sixteen heavy-duty vans and lorries. The Pitman name was familiar to the public on the sides of pantechnicons, and Colin had worked, thought and scrapped his way to a fortune. He was a rich man, proud of what he had achieved. He was also the father of Sue Giles.

  A doting father, John Lambert decided, after three minutes in his company. They sat in his office, with its prints of Malvern at the turn of the century on the walls, a red leather Chesterfield which looked as if it had never been used, and a desk and swivel chair which matched the formidable bulk of the man who ran this business, which centred upon the yard outside these modest office premises. Lambert and Hook had come through that yard to meet their man. It was a busy place, with heavy goods vehicles moving carefully in and out of the service bays in the hangar-like shed where they were checked and maintained. There was a dominant smell of hot oil and diesel, which seemed to permeate even into this room, despite the vase of golden chrysanthemums someone had set in front of the unused gas fire.

  Pitman listened to the sounds outside, even as he sat them down to talk and asked his secretary to bring them coffee, so that they divined immediately that he was hap-piest out there, with his finger on the pulse of that invisible but scarcely soundless body he controlled. A hands-on manager this, in the modern jargon, with firm ideas, tested in the hard commercial world beyond the small town where he was based. A man who was used to his own way and who did not take kindly to argument.

  He made no pretence of wondering why they had come, though he plainly planned to offer them very little. It’s about Ted, isn’t it? Well, I’m sorry he’s dead, and I hope you catch the bugger who did for him, but I don’t see how I can be of any help to you.’

  A Yorkshireman, by his accent, and no doubt proud of it and the bluntness which was supposed to accompany the breed. Bert Hook had bowled to some eminent cricketers but never to Boycott. He decided it must have been rather like questioning this man: he was all dour opposition, but ready to make you look silly if your concentration lapsed. Lambert, responding to this attitude in the man, said without preamble, ‘What did you think of your son-in-law, Mr Pitman?’

  Hook, still thinking of Boycott, saw him coming down quickly on this yorker. ‘Not much. Put him out of my mind as much as I could. That’s why I can’t help you now.’

  Lambert decided to behave as if the straight bat had given him a chance. ‘Ah! You didn’t much like Ted Giles, then.’

  Pitman looked at him suspiciously. ‘Course I didn’t. He made my girl miserable, didn’t he?’ He snorted contemptuously that they should query what was so obvious and looked around him as if he wanted to spit, which he might well have done in the yard outside. He didn’t dislike policemen, who had their place in the orderly world his business needed, but he preferred them in uniform; you knew where you were then, with ranks and functions. He was suspicious of anything he did not know, and he had little experience of CID men in their plain clothes.

  Lambert took his time. ‘We know their marriage broke up. Your daughter told us it finished years ago and—’

  ‘That’s right.’ A little too promptly, even interrupting; perhaps an automatic response, supporting his daughter.

  ‘And you blame Ted Giles rather than your daughter for the failure of that union?’

  ‘Course I do. He had it made with Sue, if he’d had the sense to see it.’

  Lambert let the seconds stretch, but Pitman didn’t enlarge upon the thought. He glared at them, breathing heavily, as if they had offered him a personal slight. Eventually Lambert said, ‘I’d like you to give us an account of the marriage as you saw it.’

  ‘Why should I? It’s bugger all to do with you.’

  ‘In ordinary circumstances, yes. In a murder inquiry, no. You’re not stupid: you
will appreciate we are looking for the enemies of a man who was brutally murdered. From your attitude so far, you would appear to be one. You can’t expect us not to pursue that.’

  Pitman glared at him, then broke into an unexpected smile. ‘You’re a blunt man, Superintendent Lambert. In other circumstances, I might appreciate that. All right, I see your point. I didn’t like Ted Giles. Not much, even from the start, though I had to make the best of it when they were getting wed. My wife were still alive then, and she saw to that.’ For a moment, his face clouded, and they had a glimpse of how this self-sufficient man had relied heavily upon his wife in the areas outside his work. ‘I don’t know too much about the details of how he split with our Sue, but I do know Giles was playing away.’

  ‘He had other women?’

  ‘That’s what I said, isn’t it? Whether it was one or more than one, I don’t know, but she wouldn’t have it. And she were right.’ His jaw jutted aggressively above the barrel chest, as if he was challenging them to deny him.

  ‘Is Sue your only daughter, Mr Pitman?’

  If Pitman was thrown by the sudden switch of line, he did not show it. This was a question he was often asked, and one of the few social topics he was prepared to enlarge upon. ‘Aye, that she is. And a good daughter, too.’

  ‘I’m sure she is. And no doubt the two of you are very close?’

  He looked from one to the other of the two serious faces on the other side of the big desk, his face full of suspicion. He was saved from answering by the arrival and distribution of the coffee, but he was such a direct man that the pause did not help him. His hair was thinning and brushed straight back from his forehead, but he flicked away a non-existent curl from above his left eye in a nervous reaction that took him back forty years to the uncertain adolescent he had thought buried forever. It was a curiously touching gesture in this big, confident bear of a man. However strong we might appear, we are all vulnerable to our children, thought Lambert. He said again, ‘You have a close relationship with your daughter, I think?’