by J M Gregson
The switchboard came through at that moment with a call for Superintendent Lambert from the Irish Garda station in Killarney. The PC who had given them the information about Sue Giles’s and Graham Reynolds’ stay at the Lakeside Hotel was back on duty. Lambert outlined the questions he wanted asked to the Inspector: protocol wouldn’t allow him to speak to a junior officer in another country’s force directly. ‘Leave it with me,’ said a rich Irish voice.
In five minutes, Inspector O’Connell was back on the line. ‘You’d better speak to him yourself,’ he said grimly.
Lambert could tell from the subdued tone of the thick Irish brogue that a severe bollocking had been administered. He suspected he knew why, and when he had asked the young officer his questions about the weekend of November 10th, he knew he was right. Another piece in the picture. It was complete enough now for him to make his move.
***
After the noise and bustle of the CID section, the hospital seemed very quiet in the late morning of a still November day.
The small figure in the bed still looked very vulnerable, as though it was kept going only by the mass of medical technology which surrounded it. He sat down gingerly on the straight chair beside the bed; he felt as though his very presence might upset the delicate machinery, if he did not move with extreme care. But he must have made some small sound, for the head he had thought unconscious turned towards him and smiled. The mouth said softly, ‘I’m still here, you see… I told you I was a tough old bugger!… I’m glad it’s over, though. I expect you are, too.’
When the mouth spoke, it became Christine’s mouth again, instead of the atrophied lips of someone very ill and beyond his help. But her voice was deep and hoarse. He said, ‘Yes. Is it very…’ He gestured helplessly towards her chest, an articulate man suddenly bereft of the power of speech.
She turned her face towards him, became his wife again, alive, struggling for breath a little, but miraculously articulate. It’s a bit painful, yes, at the moment. As though someone’s dumped a heavy weight on it. But that’s to be expected, they say. Should ease in a few days.’ Her brow puckered as she tried to ease her position and sent a dagger of pain shooting through the small torso under the blankets.
‘Shall I get a nurse?’ said Lambert, preparing to panic, half-rising from his seat. The line pulsing across the green screen behind his wife didn’t seem to have speeded up its soft bleeping; he wished he knew what on earth it signified.
‘Certainly not. If I can’t even grimace without you sounding the alarm, you’d better go.’
He smiled with her at his own foolishness. ‘I’ll have to go soon, anyway. The Sister said I was only to come in for a few minutes.’ Guilt that he should be so relieved about that surged through him and with infinite care, he gathered the small hand on top of the bedclothes between his two larger ones. It was reassuringly warm. Christine was still in the special care room at the end of the ward; he looked through into the larger world of the ward beyond her open door, saw the vases filled with colour, and said, ‘I didn’t bring you any flowers.’
‘Last thing I want, at present. I’ve only just stopped sicking up the anaesthetic. At least, I hope I’ve stopped. Hurts me a bit when I do that, I can tell you.’
He let go of her hand and stood up, an awkward, shambling figure, wondering how to take his leave of his own wife, when it should have been easy and spontaneous. ‘Better be on my way. Don’t want them coming in to throw me out. The girls send their love — they’ll be in to see you later, as soon as I give them the go-ahead.’
‘You can bring me some fruit in a day or two. Then you can sit and eat it. It will give you something to do when you’re visiting.’ Her speech was slow, but she grinned up at him with a flash of her old spirit. He bent and kissed her swiftly on her forehead: the skin felt very warm and dry when his lips brushed it. He looked back when he got to the door of the room, but her eyes had shut in exhaustion and it seemed that she was already asleep.
The Sister looked up from her papers and said with a quick smile, ‘She’s going to be all right, you know. We have people in here much older than her who make perfectly good recoveries from heart surgery.’ He decided he must look very anxious: everyone seemed bent on reassuring him about Christine today. As if he had ever had any doubts about it.
He became Superintendent Lambert again when he asked her for directions to the ward where Zoe Ross lay. He found her easily enough, guided by the figure of the policewoman who sat patiently reading a magazine just outside the door of the ward. A police presence nowadays is kept low-key and as far as possible invisible to other patients.
He listened to her report, found that she hadn’t yet been allowed in to speak to the recovering Ms Ross, and sought out the Ward Sister. She was a stocky fifty-year-old of the old school of nursing, trained in the days of porcelain bedpans and visiting hours strictly limited to an hour a day. ‘I’m afraid she mustn’t be disturbed yet,’ this formidable figure in blue told him. ‘Perhaps this evening, if she continues without setbacks. Whatever she’s done, Superintendent, she remains a patient while she’s in my care, and I shall treat her accordingly.’
Lambert smiled. ‘She hasn’t done anything, Sister. She’s a victim, not a criminal. I only want five minutes with her. We’re trying to find out who did this to her, and she may be able to help me.’
He saw her resolution weakening. But she did not relinquish the field to him without an assertion of her rights. ‘As you say it’s so important, I’ll go and see for myself whether she is fit to talk to you for a few minutes. But you will have to abide by my decision.’
While she was checking her patient, he made a phone call from her room to Rushton in the CID section. The DI told him with satisfaction that his retired civil servant had picked out a face which he thought belonged to the man he had seen in the Wilton Arms on the previous evening. It’s a man who goes by the name of Walter Smith, among several others. Started as a heavy with a night-club operator now in prison, for supplying drugs in his clubs. Wally Smith is now a freelance, specialising in contract violence. Contract killing, they think in Birmingham, but that’s never been pinned on him. All he’s got is three years for GBH at the end of the eighties. Sounds like our man.’
‘Sounds very like our man,’ said Lambert. He saw the sister nodding at him through the glass. ‘I’m about to speak to Zoe Ross now. I’ll get what I can from her and see you later.’
He could see from her eyes that she recognised him. He was not sure that he would have recognised her. Her nose had obviously been broken and reset; it was grotesquely swollen and discoloured. It looked like an overripe beetroot — as if blood would well out of it if you merely touched it. She had scores of tiny butterfly stitches in the torn skin of the upper part of her face and around the line of her jaw; the pupils of her eyes peered out from blackened circles.
But curiously, her mouth and lips seemed almost unharmed. They smiled at him and said, ‘The nurse says I look like a bad-tempered panda. She won’t let me have a mirror.’
‘Very wise,’ he said. ‘But you’ll look a lot better in a day or two. Facial injuries are among the quickest to mend.’
‘You speak like an expert. I suppose you see a lot of bad injuries.’
‘More than I want to. Used to see a lot more, years ago. When I was a PC and attended road accidents.’ More years ago than I care to remember, he thought. The worst he had seen thirty years ago were still vivid in his imagination, despite his attempts to obliterate them. ‘Miss Ross, we think we may have identified the man who did this to you. If we’re right, we’ll have him arrested before long.’ He spoke more confidently than he felt. He was hoping they would be able to arrest that sadist Wally Smith before he realised they were on to him: if they had any warning, loners like him tended to disappear to another city, under another name. After two thousand years of exhortations to turn the other cheek, there was a greater demand than ever for his sort of brutality.
Zoe Ross’s
brain must have been working as sharply as ever, whatever her injuries and her post-traumatic shock, for she anticipated his first question. ‘I can’t help you with any identification, you know. I never even saw him. He threw some sort of bag over my head as I got out of my car. Then he just started hitting me. I — I thought he was going to kill me.’
For a moment, her lower lip quivered at the recollection, and Lambert said hastily, ‘Then there’s no point in taking you back over it. Hopefully we’ll get a confession out of the man, or find some trace of him at the scene of the crime — we had a team out there as soon as you’d been put in an ambulance to be brought here.’
‘Yes. I was lucky in that way, wasn’t I? They said it was a policeman who found me and called the ambulance on his mobile. How come he was there so quickly? I couldn’t have lost consciousness for more than a few seconds, but he was there before I could even try to get to my feet — and was I glad to see him!’
Her brain was normal, whatever the state of her face. A sharp girl, this one. Even if unlucky in love. But he had too much experience of pretty and intelligent girls choosing awful men to be surprised by her choice of the duplicitous Ted Giles. He took a quick decision that there was no point in deceiving her about this. ‘The policeman was actually under orders to follow you. When you turned into the car park behind the Hare and Hounds, he waited five minutes before he followed you in. It’s standard practice when people are under surveillance, to try to prevent them discovering that they’re being tailed. He saw the man we think was your assailant driving away, but of course he didn’t know you’d been attacked until he found you lying beside your car.’
‘I suppose I ought to be thankful that he was there. But why on earth was he following me?’
Lambert smiled grimly. ‘Because you’re involved in a murder inquiry, I’m afraid. You know a man called Aubrey Bass. His van was used to dispose of the body of Ted Giles. We had him in for questioning about it. Held him for almost twenty-four hours. He claims he knows nothing about it — that his van must have been taken away without his permission. But he’s a dubious ruffian, our Aubrey, and my Inspector thought it was worth keeping an eye on him when he was released. Within an hour, you paid him a visit. Not surprisingly, he put you under surveillance after that.’
‘I only went there because I heard in a pub that you’d taken him into the station for questioning. I knew Aubrey Bass, just about. I knew he lived next door to Ted, because he’d ogled me once or twice when I’d been visiting. I wanted to know if Bass knew who had killed Ted — you didn’t seem to be getting very far at the time. He said he knew nothing about it, but if I needed someone to take care of me, he could be the man.’ The mouth, which was the only recognisable part of her face, smiled wryly at the recollection. Without the accompaniment of the rest of her features, it made a bizarre effect.
‘I can believe that, now. You must see that it looked pretty suspicious at the time.’
‘I suppose so. It looks as though I should be grateful that police help was so close at hand last night, whatever the reason.’
‘You shouldn’t have tried to play the amateur detective. Look where it’s landed you.’
That miraculously untouched mouth grinned at its owner’s naivety. ‘Are you any nearer to arresting the person who killed Ted?’
‘I think we are, yes. It’s a matter of putting the various pieces of the jigsaw together, and we’re nearly there.’ Beyond her bed, he could see the formidable Sister in the doorway, looking fierce disapproval and gesturing at her watch. He said, ‘I’m glad that your injuries are no worse. There’s one final thing. If we’re right about the man who attacked you, he didn’t even know you. He’s a man who sells his services to anyone who will pay handsomely. Can you think of anyone who might have hired him to attack you like that?’
The two dark, glistening pupils which were all he could see of her eyes fixed on his face for a moment, and he thought she was going to give him a name. Then she said softly, ‘No. I can’t think of anyone who would want this done to me. Perhaps you’ll discover that if you find the man.’
He stood up, ‘Yes, I think we will.’
But as he thanked her for her help and took his leave, he thought he already knew who had paid her attacker.
Sixteen
Aubrey Bass looked out of his window at the car park behind the block of flats. He didn’t like what he saw. His van was back in its usual position, which was good. He had looked anxiously over his shoulder into its interior, the first couple of times he had used it, not liking the thought that the body of his late neighbour, Ted Giles, had been carried there on its last journey to Broughton’s Ash churchyard. But he had carried a big load of lead to the scrapyard in it yesterday, and disposed of it for a good price without too many questions being asked. That made him feel that things were back to normal now, as if that more usual load had exorcised the old van of the lingering traces of a murder victim.
What Aubrey saw when he peered blearily towards his vehicle did not please him, however. The pigs were back. He knew Sergeant ‘Jack’ Johnson. The man had done his stint as station sergeant on the front desk of Oldford Police Station for several years, and anyone in that post had inevitably come into contact with Aubrey Bass and his life of indolence and venial crime. He was down in the car park now with another uniformed man and a couple of civilians. Aubrey, opening his window furtively and, craning his neck, could see that they were examining the ground round the rear exit from the block. They seemed to be taking measurements, as well as scanning the tarmac intently. Probably nothing to do with him, but he didn’t like having the filth around the place, all the same.
He shut the window, switched on his kettle, and scratched himself comprehensively. Nosy bastards! Just as well he’d got rid of that lead yesterday.
***
In their different ways, three otherwise hard-headed women had behaved stupidly. And all of them for love of men who weren’t worth it, thought Lambert. If it was love: for him, the difference between love and infatuation remained as difficult to define as ever, even after so many years of studying it at first hand. Passion, then. Whatever the emotion, it hadn’t brought any of these three women what they desired: one of them lay in hospital and the other two were likely to end up in prison.
The dahlias which had flowered so bravely in Connie Elson’s garden when Lambert and Hook had last visited the place had been cut down now by frost. They were sodden brown sticks, rearing into the air like miniature versions of the shattered trees of the Somme battlefield. Nor was the woman of the house immediately at the door to greet them, as she had been on their previous visit. The bell rang loud in the silent bungalow, and it seemed for a minute and more as if the occupant might have fled.
When she eventually opened the door, Connie Elson looked white and tense, despite the wide smile she had put on for them in the hall. This time, Lambert dispensed with the formalities of greeting. ‘We need to talk, Mrs Elson,’ he said curtly, and walked past her without being invited into the lounge where they had sat to enjoy coffee and flapjacks on their previous visit.
She ignored his attitude, making a last attempt at conventional hospitality. ‘Do sit down, Superintendent. And you too — it’s Sergeant Hook, isn’t it?’
Lambert remained standing. ‘I’ve come here from the bedside of Miss Zoe Ross.’
‘That woman! I thought you’d have arrested her by now. She killed poor Ted, you know, whatever she says.’
‘She didn’t kill Ted Giles, Mrs Elson. And now she’s in hospital. I notice you don’t look very surprised at that. I’m here because I think you put her there.’
She abandoned her decision to sit down, drew herself instead to her full height, tried desperately to rise to this challenge she told herself she had half-expected. ‘Now look, Mr Lambert, you should know better than to come here making accusations like that. I haven’t been out of this place in the last twenty-four hours, so—’
‘I didn’t say you’d a
ttacked her yourself! Nothing so straightforward and risky as that!’ Lambert, who had intended to heather out, to let her condemn herself by over-elaboration, found himself shouting. He was suddenly weary of this woman, with her designer clothes, her expensive jewellery and her elaborate coiffure; she was at once pathetic and dangerous. Yet the brain works with amazing speed: even in his anger, he had time to wonder if he would have been so furious with the woman if her victim had been a man and not an attractive younger woman. He went on in more measured tones, ‘You put her in hospital as surely as if you had attacked her yourself. More surely, because the man you employed was a professional. He threw a bag over her head and beat her face without mercy; it will be a miracle if she isn’t permanently scarred.’
‘But I didn’t want—’ Her hand flew to her mouth, the jewelled rings flashing as they caught the afternoon sun through the big window.
‘You didn’t want her hurt as badly as that? Think you can dole out violence in controlled doses, do you, like money? Well, men like Wally Smith aren’t that easy to control, you see, when they have someone helpless to hit.’
‘You’ve got Wally?’
He felt a surge of triumph with that short phrase. She’d as good as admitted she’d used Smith. He might deny it all, but with her evidence they’d put him away for a long stretch. ‘We’ll have him before the day’s out. And you’ll go to prison for employing him, I’m glad to say. Arrest her, Bert, and let’s be out of here. We haven’t any more time to waste on Mrs Elson!’
Hook pronounced the formal words of her arrest in connection with an assault on Zoe Ross. She appeared to take notice of the warning that whatever she said might later be used in evidence, for at first she said nothing. Only when she sat weeping beside Hook in the back of the car on the way to the station did she speak. Three times she said between sobs, as if it didn’t just explain her conduct but excused it as well, ‘But I thought she’d killed Ted, you see. I knew she’d found out about Ted and me, and she must have known he was going to marry me.’