Malice Aforethought

by J M Gregson

  Archie Elson always said that it was easy to make money quite properly, once you had a certain amount of it. He went on saying so until the day he collapsed and died with his second heart attack. But he was never specific about how he had acquired his first half-million. In his more expansive and generous moments, when he had eaten well and enjoyed a few brandies, he would say rather sentimentally that you needed a good woman at your side, to provide the support and stability a successful man required. Then he would clasp the Junoesque figure of his wife tightly to his side and say that without Connie he could never have done it, and she would flush becomingly and tell everyone that Archie had drunk a little too much again.

  Connie was ten years younger than Archie, which helped to reinforce the impression that she was an innocent young girl who knew little of his early dealings and the dubious paths he had taken towards success. But Connie had been born in a Bristol slum with nothing. She was both more astute and more interested in the way wealth was acquired than these observers gave her credit for. When Archie was alone with her and his tongue was loosened by drink, he answered her questions, half flattered that she should be interested in his work, half grateful to have this one person with whom he could be honest. He survived his early, dubious years and then moved on to affluent respectability. Thereafter, Archie sometimes conveniently forgot the methods he had used and the risks he had taken in his early days.

  Connie never forgot. Not even in the years after his death, when she basked in the respectability and comfort of wealth that was based impeccably on blue-chip stockmarket shares. She was aware not just of the methods but of the people her husband had used in those murky early years. Most of them she had long since abandoned as they became unnecessary. She was in regular contact with none of them. But she kept the names, addresses and telephone numbers of a select few, who might be prepared to do things which were quite outside the law, provided they received appropriate remuneration. When you had fought your way up from the gutter, you kept such information as an insurance.

  While Graham Reynolds and Sue Giles were conducting their uneasy reunion on the evening of November 19th, Connie Elson spent the night in agonised recollection of the man who had been buried earlier in the day. The police had not been back to her since they had come to the house on Saturday. She didn’t see how they could possibly have anything more to ask her. They had probably written her off as a silly, infatuated woman, with her judgement made useless by love. Well, she was a much more resourceful woman than they thought. And perhaps they were much less clever than they thought — they didn’t seem to be getting any nearer to an arrest.

  At two in the morning, Connie formed a resolution. On the morning of November 20th, she called one of the men from her past at eight o’clock. He had once been her husband’s chauffeur. But in the early days, he had been much more than that. He had been a bodyguard to Archie, and also what her husband had once called an ‘enforcer’. The term came back to her now from some corner of her subconscious as she tapped out the number.

  ‘Walter Smith. Who’s that?’ said a bad-tempered voice in her ear. It didn’t say, ‘Why the hell are you disturbing me at this hour?’ It was the tone of the voice which said that.

  ‘It’s Mrs Elson, Wally.’

  ‘Mrs Elson? Sorry. I was asleep, you see.’ A hint of apology and explanation now in the suddenly alert Birmingham voice. He knew that she only came to him with dubious propositions, but they were extremely lucrative ones. Wally liked a woman who knew the escalating price of violence and was prepared to pay it.

  She paused, took a deep breath, then plunged decisively into speech. ‘I think I may have some more work for you, Wally. Well-paid work, of course. I’m sure you’d be interested.’

  ***

  Colin Pitman stood in the yard of his works, surrounded by the lorries and pantechnicons which were the basis of his wealth. This was usually where he was most at home, the world where he was comfortably in control and he and everyone around him knew it. No one tried to pull the wool over his eyes about haulage and freight, because no one, not even his longest-serving drivers, knew the business in all its facets as he did. He was a kindly man in his bluff way, aware of the home circumstances of most of the men who drove long distances for him, and willing to help them. He would adjust the schedules when a baby was due or an elderly relative was near the end. He was a comfortable autocrat within his own small empire, dispensing justice as he saw it with a discerning eye. There might be something of the Victorian master about him, but Colin Pitman accepted the best union practices and applied them.

  He took care that he was outwardly his usual self on this busy Tuesday morning in Malvern, genial and gruff by turns as he saw the heavy vehicles on their different ways. But inwardly, Colin was a troubled man. He had seen Matt Walsh off on his way to Leipzig with a consignment of steel tools. It was the longest journey available that week. Normally he would have started a new man with an easier journey, but he wanted this one as far away from him and from Malvern as it was possible to be. In any case, Walsh was not a new man. He was a man who had been taken on again after being sacked. Not laid off, sacked. That had never happened before at Pitman Haulage, and his action had raised a few eyebrows in the office, because everyone had known that Walsh had been fired for fiddling his mileages; Colin had made the reasons for his action very public at the time, pour encourager les autres.

  He thought he had carried off Walsh’s reinstatement all right. Most people seemed to think he was just being particularly charitable; perhaps the boss was getting softer as he got older. But he knew, because he was no good at disguising things from himself, that he had been blackmailed. It made him uneasy, as he had never been before in this place. The smells of warm oil and diesel failed to bring the reassurance to his soul that he had hoped for when he came and stood in the yard. He wasn’t sure where the notion had come from, but the thought that blackmailers always came back for more would not leave the brain of this proud, stubborn man.

  He was so preoccupied with the idea that he did not notice the police car until it drew up alongside him. ‘Few more questions, I’m afraid,’ said Superintendent Lambert as he levered himself stiffly out of the front passenger seat. He smiled affably enough at the preoccupied Pitman. ‘You’ll remember Detective Sergeant Hook. Could we go somewhere private, do you think?’

  They went inside to his office, sat carefully down on the red Chesterfield which looked as if it had never been used, studied the prints of Malvern in Elgar’s time, at the turn of the century, as they waited for the coffee he was determined they should have. Hook wondered if Pitman was playing for time with his insistence on the coffee. Then he decided he was too straightforward a man for that. Perhaps he just wanted to show that a man who lived in the rough world of huge machines and huge loads could offer the trappings of a cosier success.

  Pitman was a man with no small talk, suspicious of their presence, and these experienced CID men did not offer him any conversational olive branches. People who were embarrassed sometimes blurted out quite revealing things.

  Pitman was merely silent, and when the coffee cups were in their hands, Lambert moved straight in to the reason for their visit. It’s about the statement you made to us about what you were doing on the night of Saturday the tenth of November.’

  ‘The night when Giles was killed? Have you got any nearer to discovering who killed the bugger? I didn’t like him, because of the way he treated my daughter, but—’

  ‘Where were you on that night, Mr Pitman?’

  ‘I told you that. I was at home.’

  ‘You don’t wish to change your statement?’

  ‘No. Why should I?’

  ‘Because we have a signed statement from someone who says you were not at home on that night. Someone who is prepared to swear it on oath, if necessary.’

  ‘Then he’s lying. Who is he?’

  Lambert thought quickly, then decided that on this occasion he would reveal his source. Pitman
did not strike him as a natural liar: he might well tell them the truth, if he was faced with the evidence. ‘I can’t give you his name. He’s a man you wouldn’t normally consider reliable. But in this case, I think we can accept what he says, since he’s confessing to a crime. He’s a burglar, Mr Pitman, well known to the police. He tells us he broke into your premises on the night of Saturday the tenth of November. More precisely, and more interestingly from our point of view and yours, he tells us that there was no one in your house at eleven o’clock on that night.’

  ‘But that’s impossible. The house was—’ Pitman stopped abruptly, staring furiously first at his desk and then at the faces of Lambert and Hook.

  They were old hands at this game. When a man was in difficulties, you didn’t help him out. It was a long time before Lambert said, ‘You were going to say, perhaps, that your house was alarmed. That the alarm was switched on at that time. No conflict there: our man confirms that it was.’

  Pitman looked like a caged bear. With thick eyebrows lowered over his furious face, he gripped his desk hard with both hands, as if that were a substitute for the physical action he so desired. He said in a clipped, low voice, ‘You just said this — this criminal, whom you apparently think is a reliable witness, broke into my house. How could he do that if the alarm was on?’

  ‘I said your premises, not your house, Mr Pitman. Your garage is some way from the house — perhaps you should extend your alarm system to it. Our burglar is a professional, even if a not very successful one. That’s probably why you haven’t yet missed anything. He took a toolbox with a set of rather expensive tools and a cordless power drill from your garage. He planned to enter the house as well, but he realised it was alarmed and that the alarm was on. According to him, there wasn’t a single light showing in the house.’

  Colin Pitman felt more uncomfortable than he had at any time since his school days. For now, when the memory was quite useless, he remembered standing dumbly in front of a schoolmaster, caught out in some adolescent misdemeanour, squirming with no sort of reply under the master’s sarcasm. He felt as exposed now as he had done then, exposed in front of a tittering classroom, moving his schoolboy weight from foot to foot. He said, trying in vain to force scorn into his voice, ‘Taking the word of a criminal against mine, then, are you?’

  Lambert allowed himself the weary smile of a man who has listened to thirty years of lies and half-truths. ‘Tommy Brick’s word isn’t usually worth a lot, it’s true. But the uniformed lads caught him red-handed on another job last night, you see. Searched his house and found the stuff from your garage among some other minor items he hadn’t managed to pass on immediately. He’s going to ask for four other offences to be taken into account; one of them is breaking and entering into your garage and removing the items I mentioned. We shall be asking you to identify them, in due course.’

  Pitman realised that he was still gripping the edge of his desk. He forced his fingers to unclench, watched the blood beginning to pulse back into the whiteness of them. He glanced up quickly at the two faces who studied him with such concentration, then folded his arms deliberately and kept his eyes resolutely upon a tiny mark on the desk in front of him. He was surprised how evenly he was able to speak when he said, ‘All right, I wasn’t there that night. I won’t try to argue.’

  But you did argue, thought Bert Hook. Until the evidence drove you to a point where you could argue no longer. He flicked over a new page on his notebook and said, ‘We shall need a full account of exactly where you were and at what times on that Saturday night, Mr Pitman.’

  Pitman nodded with weary acceptance, but did not look up again from the desk. ‘I can’t give you all that. You’ll see why. I was in the red-light district of Birmingham on that night. I drove around for quite some time before I committed myself. It’s not a regular habit of mine, you see. I don’t know the name of the streets. I don’t know the name of the woman I was with. That’s part of the bargain you strike with women like that, in so far as I understand it.’

  Lambert said, ‘I see. Why did you see fit to lie to us when we saw you five days ago?’

  Now at last Pitman looked up at them, his eyes blazing with an astonished anger. ‘Think I’m proud of it, do you? Think a man wants to boast about going out and paying for it? I’d never been near a tart in my life until two years ago. But my wife’s been dead and gone these five years now. And a man still has needs, you know. More’s the bloody pity!’ His self-contempt came pouring out in the last phrases.

  Lambert did not back off. ‘I repeat my question. If this is true, why didn’t you tell it to us last Thursday, instead of pretending you were at home on that evening? We probably wouldn’t have needed to let it go any further.’

  ‘I have a daughter, Superintendent. A daughter I’m very close to. You established that when you came here the first time. She’s going to find out what I’ve said to you today, whether I like it or not. Just as she knows that I told you I was here on Saturday night. I can’t keep things from her, even when I want to.’

  It should have been a confession of weakness, but he said it almost proudly. Lambert said, ‘The tom you picked up in Birmingham. Why so far from home?’

  ‘Because I wanted to be a long way from where anyone might know me. Anyone who might spot Colin Pitman picking up a tart!’ The self-loathing again; there was a fascination with his own weakness as well as a hatred of that part of himself. ‘Anyway, I can be in Birmingham in less than an hour from my house.’

  ‘Was this a regular arrangement?’

  ‘No. Of course it wasn’t. Once in a while, I get lonely. Lonely and randy, if you want it all. I should have thought that much was obvious from what I’ve said.’

  ‘I see. It’s just that if it had been a regular arrangement with the same girl, it would have made it easier for us to check your story out. We shall still have to do that, you know. A man was murdered during the hours we’re speaking of, a man you told us quite openly you hated.’

  Pitman shrugged his huge shoulders, then allowed them to slump forward. It was as though the act of confession had exhausted him.

  Hook wanted to tell him that they came across greater weaknesses and much greater evils than this. Instead, they took the details of the prostitute and the time he had spent with her. It had been drizzling with rain as he cruised the streets of the sprawling industrial city. The woman was probably in her early thirties, with longish dark hair. She had a room with a gas fire and a single bed. And a picture of the Queen on the wall above the bed, surveying the actions of this obscure subject of hers. It was the only original detail Pitman offered them. He gave the impression that once he had made his concession to the persistent demands of his loins, he hadn’t noticed a great deal about his partner or her surroundings while taking his dubious pleasure.

  Perhaps he hadn’t, but it wouldn’t make it easy to find the woman who might give him an alibi for that November night.

  When they had gone, Colin Pitman sat and looked at the wall for a long time. He didn’t trust the police to keep the secret of what he had just told them. Even if they tried, it would have to come out sooner or later, as they tested one person’s story against another. It was a murder investigation, as they kept reminding him. He picked up the phone, made sure that he had an outside line, that no one in the outer office was listening. The phone rang so long that he thought Sue was not in. Then, just when he was wondering why she had not put the answerphone on, his daughter picked up the phone. She must have come from a distance; he could hear her breathlessness as she gave her name.

  He said tersely, ‘It’s Dad, Sue. The police have been here again. They’ve rumbled that I wasn’t here on that Saturday night. You’d better hear what I’ve had to tell them.’

  ***

  The notice over the bed said in red capital letters NIL BY MOUTH. As if she were an animal, not able to speak for herself, thought John Lambert. The letters seemed to grow larger as he sat by the bed, until they vibrated with a l
ife of their own, depriving him of the power of speech and the ability to think rationally.

  ‘There’s plenty of bread in the freezer,’ said Christine, desperately terminating a long pause, ‘but don’t you go living on just toast, the way you tend to do. There’s plenty of ham and cheese in the fridge, and I bought half a dozen of those complete meals for one.’ She looked down at his long hand laid on top of her small one on the blankets. Both of them had wanted some intimacy at this last meeting before her operation, but neither of them was easy with even this small gesture, with other people around. She felt that all the other women in the ward must be watching this new arrival, studying her relationship with the man whom some of them probably knew: Superintendent Lambert was by now something of a local celebrity, and the young nurse had asked her loudly as she took away her suitcase of clothes whether she was the wife of the Mr Lambert.

  He said, ‘I expect I shall have Caroline and Jacky fussing round me, as though I was helpless!’ He remembered vividly that he had mouthed all these clichés last time she had been here for surgery, when she had had the mastectomy. Why was memory so selective, throwing up in stark detail all the trivial things which merely left you embarrassed, but failing to recall all the deep, philosophical things he had thought of to say at this time?

  He wanted to say it had been a good marriage, that he was glad they hadn’t separated in those early years when it had seemed that his job and his fierce preoccupation with it might divide them. But that would seem like an epitaph, would sound as if he didn’t expect that she would come out of this alive. He sought desperately for something to say, could only come up with the thought that nurses, like policemen, looked younger with each passing year.

  Christine studied the lined, anxious face with its troubled grey eyes. She felt a searing sympathy for this normally so articulate man, which she supposed must be love. She said, ‘How’s the case going? Have you found out who killed our schoolteacher yet?’