by J M Gregson
‘Yes. I try to look after her interests and she looks out for me. She’s all I have, since my wife went. More important to me than all this.’ His arms rose briefly, no more than six inches in the air, but the gesture took in the whole of the industrial enterprise around him and the ultimate futility of his success.
Lambert thought of the huge house and spacious grounds where Sue Giles lived in solitary splendour. No doubt her father lived in a house that was as big or bigger than that one, not just isolated but increasingly lonely, as the prospect of retirement and old age stretched out before him. ‘You don’t live together, though.’
‘No. She has her own life to lead. I see her twice a week.’ His terse declarations had all the determination he had shown earlier, as though two meetings a week was an arrangement he had resolved on and to which he was determined to restrict himself.
Lambert said gently, ‘She’s told you about Graham Reynolds?’
‘Of course she has. We don’t have secrets.’
How often the two men before him had heard parents, husbands and wives use that phrase! Sometimes people sounded as if they were trying to convince themselves, but there was no suggestion of that with Colin Pitman. Lambert said evenly, ‘Then you will know that she plans to marry Mr Reynolds.’
‘Yes. And to save you asking, I’m glad about that. He’ll be all right for her, help her to make a fresh start. If he doesn’t, he’ll have me to answer to!’
‘Just as Ted Giles did?’
Lambert spoke quietly, which only exacerbated the feeling of the furious Pitman that he had been led into a trap. He was a physical man, but there was no physical outlet for him here. He gripped the edge of his desk with both of his huge hands and said, ‘Clever buggers, aren’t you? All right, I told Giles years ago what I thought of him, warned him that it would be the worse for him if he didn’t treat Susie better.’
‘And how did he react?’
Pitman looked puzzled by the question, as if he had scarcely considered the detail of his enemy’s response. No doubt his own anger and his own compulsion to express it had been more important than Giles’s reactions. Then, as if loth to allow any credit at all to the dead man, he said reluctantly, ‘Giles said the faults weren’t all on his side. That he hoped they’d still get back together. That I’d better talk to Sue.’
‘And how long ago was this?’
‘About three years. I never spoke to him again.’ This time the answer was surprisingly prompt and precise.
‘And where were you on Saturday night?’
‘When Giles died, you mean? You can’t come here accusing me of—’
‘I can ask you where you were, Mr Pitman. You are one of the few people we have seen so far who admits to being an enemy of a man who was brutally killed. It’s part of our job to know where you were when he died.’
Colin Pitman looked from one face to the other, at the grey eyes of Lambert, at the pen of Hook poised expectantly over his notebook. Leaning forward, with his hands still clasping the edge of the big desk, he looked like a caged bear. ‘I was at home last Saturday night. The whole of it.’
‘I see. And no doubt you live alone.’
‘Yes. The woman who cleans for me doesn’t operate on Saturday night.’ It was a rare attempt at sarcasm from this direct man; it fell awkwardly into the quiet room.
Lambert ignored it. ‘You stayed in the house for the whole of the evening?’
‘Yes. And I’ve no witnesses.’
Lambert smiled grimly. ‘We tend to suspect alibis that come neatly parcelled for us. Nevertheless, if you think of anyone who can verify your whereabouts on that evening, I’d be grateful if you’d pass on the information. To eliminate you from our enquiries, you understand.’
Hook watched Pitman as Lambert reversed his old Vauxhall and drove carefully out of the busy yard. He was back among his men, directing them with his broad arms and his harsh, no-nonsense voice, back in a world he understood and dominated. They could see the relief in every movement of those strong arms.
What they did not see was that he was conscious of their every movement, even whilst apparently immersed in the operation of his business. Three minutes after they had gone, Colin Pitman was back in the privacy of his inner office, reviewing the visit, reliving the CID questions and his own responses. The outcome seemed to him satisfactory, as far as it went. These were shrewd men, more at home with murder than he could ever be.
But he didn’t see how they could possibly find out where he had really been on that fateful Saturday night.
***
DI Rushton found himself squirming, as he had feared he might when they got round to this subject.
‘Bit tricky, this Rendezvous business,’ said Lambert, po-faced as a Dickensian clergyman.
‘Very tricky,’ agreed Hook, as usual catching his chief’s drift immediately. ‘What would really be most useful would be to put an undercover man in there.’
‘Yes. Test the waters. Find out just how bona fide an organisation it is.’
‘Test whether it’s just an escort agency or something more sinister.’
Their faces turned in unison, innocent but speculative, to gaze at Chris Rushton.
‘Take a single bloke to convince them,’ mused Lambert.
‘Preferably a good-looking younger officer, who would excite plenty of interest among their female clientele,’ said Hook.
‘But a responsible senior man, who wouldn’t land himself in any embarrassing situations. There must be someone around here who could do it. Someone who might even enjoy doing it.’ He pursed his lips, without removing his eyes from Rushton.
‘Wonderful chance for the right man. Free crumpet at public expense. Free desperate crumpet, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Hook whistled quietly at the thought.
Rushton found his voice at last. The awful vision of the night when he had gone undercover in a situation like this, ending up drunk and with his trousers over his arm on a Cheltenham street at midnight, swam before him, removing all power of speech by its nightmare vividness. Eventually he blurted, ‘Not me! Definitely not me, if that’s what you’re thinking, sir. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t!’ Like many humourless men, he was often unsure whether those around him were serious or not.
Lambert looked incredulous. ‘You thought you might be the man for the job, Chris? Well, I’d never even entertained the thought, but now that you suggest it…’ He looked speculatively at his co-conspirator.
Hook was on cue with his enthusiasm. ‘My word, yes! Right under our noses, and we didn’t see it! Ideal man for the job. Young, good-looking, without serious ties. He’d be a natural!’ The two faces turned back to Chris Rushton, managing the difficult feat of looking at the same time both bland and expectant.
‘No way!’ said Rushton. ‘I’m quite ready to admit I don’t have the skills for undercover work. Not this kind, anyway.’
Lambert allowed his face to fall, not all at once, but in a staircase of disappointments, until all was gloom on the long, lined visage. ‘Pity, that. We could have gleaned all kinds of useful information. Feather in the cap of the man who secured it, obviously.’
‘Accelerated promotion, I shouldn’t wonder,’ mused Hook. Even his cheerful features descended into despondency at the thought of this opportunity forsaken.
Lambert decided they had allowed themselves enough light relief. ‘Perhaps we’ll just have to go round there ourselves. Confront them directly, if we’ve no one up to the deceptions needed.’
‘Muddle our way through as usual,’ agreed Hook dolefully.
And the two grizzled veterans turned away to the meeting they had always planned, leaving behind them a handsome young inspector who had been stripped of all his usual confidence.
Christine Lambert was preoccupied with much more serious matters. Her daughter Caroline was giving her advice she did not want to hear.
‘You’ll have to tell Dad, you know,’ she said. ‘And quickly. You should have told him already
, before me and Jacky.’
‘He’s busy with his own concerns. He’s got quite enough on his plate — he’s in charge of the investigation of that schoolteacher’s murder.’
‘You used to complain about that in the old days, when we were kids. Said he shut you out of his life for his job. Now you’re trying to shut him out.’
She was right on both counts, thought Christine. How much children knew, when you thought you were concealing things! And how little they said! She had thought in those dark years when she and John had almost split up because of his intense in-volvement in his work that their late-night quarrels had escaped the sleeping girls. Now the humorous, alert blue eyes which stared so steadily into her own seemed more adult, more knowledgeable about life, than she felt herself. She added another lame cliché to those she had offered already to her daughter. ‘I — I’m still coming to terms with it myself, you see.’
Caroline smiled at the worried, ageing face she knew so well. ‘Tell him, Mum. Tell him you thought it was the cancer back again, that you thought it was the end. Tell him that a heart bypass operation is a relief, not a blow. But tell him quickly. Don’t let him think he’s been kept in the dark, while Jacky and I knew all about it.’
‘All right. Let me choose my moment, that’s all.’
‘Of course. Just so long as that isn’t an excuse for more delay.’
‘No. I’ll tell him in the next few days, I promise.’
‘In the next twenty-four hours. It’s not fair to us to expect us to keep the secret.’
‘All right. By tomorrow night, then.’
‘Right. And don’t build up the problem for yourself in anticipation. He’s a good listener, Dad is. And good in a crisis.’
It was true; Christine Lambert knew it was. But it gave her an unexpected comfort to hear her daughter saying it. She grinned at the younger woman, as they sat in their armchairs with their cups of tea almost forgotten at their sides. ‘You didn’t always think that when you were battling with him in your teenage days!’
‘I did really, you know, even though I wouldn’t always acknowledge it. And Jacky and I never doubted he loved us, however much he ranted at us. And he loves you, Mum. He’ll be very hurt if he thinks you’ve kept things from him.’
‘All right, it’s agreed. Don’t go on at a sick woman!’ Christine stood up and ruffled her daughter’s soft brown hair, as she had been used to do when she was a young girl. Where had those twenty years gone so quickly? Another cliché, but nonetheless true for that, Christine Lambert thought, as she prepared to face a future which suddenly seemed quite brief.
On the other side of Oldford, another daughter was reassuring another parent. ‘We’ll be okay, Dad, I told you. Whoever killed Ted, they can’t possibly suspect me. Or Graham. We were in Ireland at the time. And you were at home all that night. If you’d had a convenient witness to that, it would have looked quite suspicious — a departure from your normal routine. The police are going through the motions. It’s routine procedure.’
Colin Pitman knew it was true really, that he could have worked all that out for himself without ringing his daughter. It’s just that they seemed to be looking right through me. To know so much more already than I did.’
‘I know. They gave me the same feeling when they came here. I expect it’s an impression they always try to create.’
‘Yes. They did say they had a lot of other people to see.’
‘And they will have. Ted had all kinds of contacts in these last few years. Trust me, they’ll be much more interested in them than in my old dad.’
‘I expect you’re right. And not so much of the old, young lady!’ He tried to summon his usual warmth, but it rang hollow in his own ears. He wished she was there in front of him, warm and convincing, instead of invisible at the other end of the phone line.
‘See you soon, then, Dad.’ She rang off before he could pin her down to a time. She did not want to confront that caring, anxious face for a few days yet.
Eight
Gloucester is a compact city. The town grew up around the ancient cathedral, and the medieval cross formed by the thoroughfares of Eastgate, Westgate, Northgate and Southgate still dominates the central shopping area. The modern commercial citadels of Sainsbury’s, B & Q and their rivals sprawl far outside the environs of the old town beside the Severn, but most people still think of Gloucester as the area within the line of the old city walls.
People seeking to establish small businesses look for premises in this central area: the worshippers of God and Mammon come together in a way which would have been comfortable enough for those crafty medieval friars who built the cathedral around the bones of the assassinated King Edward II, knowing it would bring interested pilgrims to them.
So the headquarters of the introduction agency Rendezvous stood, incongruously to modern eyes, within the long winter shadow of the massive stone walls of the cathedral which had dominated the area for six centuries. But there was no winter sun on the bleak afternoon of the 16th of November, when Lambert and Hook visited the place. The rain slanted down from cloud which was so low that it seemed already night, though it was no more than three thirty. Though they knew well enough of the place’s existence, neither man had been here before. But there was no difficulty in finding it: the letters of Rendezvous in garish green neon lighting blazed out brazenly from the gloom.
The young woman who came forward assumed they were prospective clients and turned upon them her most encouraging smile. ‘Do come in and sit down!’ she said, as if they were lingering diffidently in the doorway, instead of standing already within a yard of her neat desk. She went straight into her standard opening spiel. ‘There’s no need to be shy. You’d be surprised how many busy people find that their social lives are a little undeveloped. That’s what we’re here for and—’
‘We’re not customers,’ said Lambert, hastily flashing a warrant card before the girl could get any deeper into her routine patter. ‘Detective Sergeant Hook and I are here on police business — rather serious business, as a matter of fact.’
As the girl’s jaw dropped, the door behind her desk opened and an older woman appeared. She had dark blue eyes beneath yellow hair, which might or might not have been naturally blonde, for there was no hint of darkness at the roots. The hair was a little too tightly and regularly curled for contemporary tastes, and the eyes assessed them shrewdly, recognising them immediately as plainclothes policemen, as the girl in front of her had not. ‘I think you’d better come through to my office,’ the woman said.
She wore a dark green suit and leather shoes which exactly matched it. The jacket fell open as she sat down and revealed a lambswool sweater that clung tight over the well-supported breasts beneath it. ‘Pat Roberts,’ she said after Lambert had given her their names. They did not shake hands. Her eyes studied them unhurriedly, trying to assess the seriousness of their visit from her point of view. Just when they thought they would have to make the first move, she said, ‘We run a business that is perfectly above board, Superintendent. There are a lot of lonely people in the world today. We introduce some of them to each other.’
Lambert smiled. ‘Yes. It says so in your brochure. It also indicates your price for doing so. It must be a profitable enterprise.’
Pat Roberts smiled back, but there was no humour in her face. Despite her careful make-up, they saw now that she was older than she had appeared at first: probably around fifty. ‘We provide more than introductions. We try to match like with like. And if at first they don’t succeed, we enable them to try and try again.’ There was just a suggestion of contempt for the clients who brought the profits, but the implication was that she could afford to be candid with policemen, who saw life for what it was.
Lambert saw a hard woman, a woman who would be not just clear-sighted but ruthless whenever she felt it was necessary. No doubt most of the clients of the agency, encouraged along by those bright young faces at the reception desks in the outer office, never me
t this woman. He said, ‘I think you know why we’re here, Ms Roberts. We are interested in one of your customers.’
‘Edward Giles?’
‘You did know.’
‘I guessed correctly. I read my papers. And I know it must be serious, to bring the top brass in here.’
‘So why did you not come to us? There’s been an appeal out, for four days now. No doubt you read that as well.’
‘Our files are confidential. It’s one of the things our customers expect; one of the reasons they pay the fees you just said were so extravagant.’
‘I see. Well, you will be aware that this is a murder inquiry, so that your normal rules of confidentiality will be waived.’
She shrugged. ‘You can look at Edward Giles’s file, if you like. It’s sparse and uninteresting. He joined us just over two years ago. He hasn’t been back since a couple of early meetings. We never take the initiative in contacting our clients: we assume that we have met their requirements and are well satisfied with our service if they do not continue to use the facilities for which they enrolled.’
‘Fair enough. And lucrative enough, no doubt, when people pay a hefty year’s subscription in advance and then don’t bother you. I have no doubt you have a thin, blameless file on Ted Giles, possibly compiled in the last few days with this very meeting in mind. That is of no interest to us.’
She looked for a moment as if she would respond to the insult with interest. Then she said coldly, ‘Then I don’t think we can be of any further service to you.’
‘Oh, but you can. Of course, if you don’t choose to cooperate, we may need to investigate the business behind the business. The services beyond the ones detailed in your attractive brochure.’