by J M Gregson
The tie which had killed Jackson was almost invisible in the folds of flesh at his throat. John Watts reached for it automatically and managed to loosen it, trying to ignore the sightless eyes which stared past him at the ceiling. Then he felt automatically for the wrist. There was no pulse, but the flesh was still warm.
FOUR
‘I knew him – well, I met him at least. It was only last week that I spoke with him on television.’ DS Bert Hook, who was well used to death, could not keep the shock out of his voice.
Detective Superintendent Lambert glanced sharply sideways at him from the passenger seat. ‘Nice chap, was he?’
‘I only met him for a short time and it was in front of the television cameras. That’s a very artificial situation.’
Lambert sighed and repeated patiently, ‘Nice chap, was he?’
‘No. He was a bloody monster. But I don’t understand these showbiz types. I should never have been placed in that situation.’ Hook directed the most baleful look he could at his passenger without compromising safe driving.
Lambert grinned. ‘You were the obvious man for the job, Bert. Your degree and your literary credentials meant that there was only one man we could send.’
‘You pulled rank, you mean. They wanted you but you pulled rank and sent forth a lamb to the slaughter.’
‘I’ve never thought of you as a lamb, Bert. Many other animals spring to mind, but never a lamb.’
‘All chief superintendents are bastards. I thought you were the exception.’ Hook spoke without rancour, playing out a humorous resentment he had expressed many times already.
‘So you didn’t take to this man Jackson.’
‘On my very limited acquaintance with him, I thought him a bully and a braggart.’
‘And now he’s dead, in highly suspicious circumstances. Does that make you a suspect, DS Hook?’
‘Not if he died this morning, it doesn’t. I was in court giving evidence in front of a crown court judge, being told to confine myself to the facts and keep my opinions to myself. Watching a young thug get a suspended sentence when he should have been sent down for a year.’
End of banter. The defects of the justice system and the determination of unscrupulous lawyers to frustrate the efforts of the police to protect the public were too serious a subject for the two men who had worked together for over a decade to continue sniping at each other. Even Bert Hook, considered a dangerous liberal by many of his police colleagues, had no time for young ruffians who exploited the helpless aged. The pair thought about the matter in hand and did not exchange another word on the short journey to the film set location outside Oldford.
As neither man had any experience of the numbers of people involved in the compilation of a popular television series, they were surprised by what they found there. It was almost as though a new village had sprung up overnight, subsuming the old one which had existed there for many centuries. The tower of the old stone church was visible above this upstart community as they drove in, but the low-roofed cottages of the village, which was scarcely more than a hamlet, had been obscured by the swift and temporary erections which housed this small army of actors, extras and technical staff.
Both CID men felt that illogical resentment of the new and the temporary when it intrudes upon the old and the familiar. ‘We’re getting old, Bert,’ said Lambert gloomily, apropos of nothing in particular.
They parked at the edge of the site and walked through to the area almost exactly in its centre which had been ribboned off already as a scene of crime. Lambert had dispatched DI Chris Rushton to take charge here whilst he waited for Hook to return from court, knowing that no one would conduct these initial formalities more efficiently than Rushton. The DI met them now, trim, efficient, emphatically on top of the job and anxious to demonstrate that nothing here had been neglected. ‘The pathologist has already been and gone and agreed what was obvious. Death was by strangulation, sir. The meat wagon is available as soon as you choose to give permission for the removal of the body. I thought you’d want to see the corpse in situ before we had it removed.’
Lambert nodded, glanced at the sign above the door which read ‘SAMUEL T. JACKSON. PRODUCER’, and climbed eagerly into the caravan, feeling that little surge of excitement which always brings adrenalin to the CID man when he is confronted by the most serious crime of all.
There was no doubt that this was murder. The blackening face and bulging eyes with fractured blood vessels told them that. His own tie had strangled him, by the looks of it. The ends of it fell loose at the back of the dead man’s neck, where it seemed as though they had been tightened viciously by hand or hands as yet unknown. The rest of the tie was mostly invisible beneath the folds of flesh which fell over the constricted throat of the slumped figure.
Lambert studied the scene with some distaste for a moment. He was well used to death and had seen much worse ones than this. This indeed was one of the less disturbing corpses. There was no blood here. There was the smell of death, but not the awful odours which rose from a body which had lain undiscovered for days or weeks, and no sign yet of the maggots which take over any deceased flesh which is not quickly removed to the morgue. John Lambert was scowling at a problem which was practical and immediate.
‘A woman could have done this,’ he said soberly to Hook. ‘No great strength was required, especially if he was taken by surprise. She simply had to twist the ends of that tie quickly and hard. Perfectly possible for a woman, especially a woman driven by passion.’ His hope that half the human race could be immediately eliminated from suspicion died as he took his first look at the victim.
Hook looked at the thick thighs, at the legs flung out stiffly in front of the armchair in which the man had possibly been sitting before his body slumped down to the floor in the throes of death. The shoes were expensive: probably around two hundred pounds, by the looks of the soft tan leather. Luxury always made death more pathetic and somehow more touching, because death reduced the billionaire in a second to the same status as the pauper, with all the trappings of affluence made as irrelevant as day or night, heat or cold. He bent and looked at the nails at the ends of the plump, sausage-like fingers, but did not touch them. They were undamaged and the nails were clean. ‘It doesn’t look as if the poor bugger was able to put up much of a fight. He was probably taken by surprise, as you suggest.’ He turned round to Rushton, who was standing a little awkwardly in the doorway, wondering whether he should simply have left John Lambert and his bagman to form their own first impressions.
‘Did the pathologist give any indication of a time of death?’
‘No, except that it was recent. But we know that, from people on the site. And the man who discovered the body said that it was still warm. But it’s hot in here, of course, so that doesn’t mean much.’
Lambert smiled grimly. ‘Let’s hope that the flesh wasn’t so warm that it was alive when that man came in here.’ The last person known to have been with the victim was always a suspect, until he or she could be eliminated. It wasn’t unknown for killers to report a death they knew would be swiftly discovered, claiming that their victim had been dead rather than alive and healthy when they had paid them a final visit.
Chris Rushton grinned. ‘I spoke with the man who found him when we arrived. He seemed shocked enough then. But these people are actors, of course.’ He spoke as if they were some strange tribe whose customs were completely unknown to honest Englishmen like him.
At that moment, there was a tentative knock on the side of the caravan, adjacent to but not on the door which Rushton held open. The DI stood back reluctantly and allowed the short, squat man who had knocked to stick his head through the doorway aperture and address Chief Superintendent Lambert. ‘Bad business, this.’
‘Indeed it is, sir.’ Lambert was patient in the face of this unhelpful contribution. Most people hadn’t met violent death at first hand before, unless they’d been military or medics. They had to tune themselves in to murder an
d to the idea that someone close to them, even some friend they cherished, might be involved.
They could only see the head and shoulders of the man who stood outside and Lambert was reluctant to invite him into an area where clues might still be discovered. The face on that head now filled with horror, as it stared between Lambert and Hook at the thing which had brought them here. Then the mouth said, ‘This is a location site for filming.’
‘Yes. It is also now a scene of crime site. I should not need to explain to you which takes precedence.’
‘I understand that. But location filming is much the most expensive part of any television enterprise. And today is a perfect day for it.’
‘I’m sorry about that. But this whole site is a crime scene at the moment, in that the person who killed Mr Jackson may still be here among us. Indeed, the statistical probability is that he or she almost certainly is. Have you any idea who that person might be?’
‘No. None at all. It could be almost anyone working here today, I suppose.’
‘That is the way we have to view things, until we can narrow down the field. That is why the extensive team we have here are busy questioning everyone known to have had access to this caravan between ten a.m. this morning, the last time when Mr Jackson is known to have been alive, and one forty-seven p.m. this afternoon, when his body was discovered. There will be no further filming done here today. May I ask what is your function in this enterprise and what was your relationship to Mr Jackson?’
The man climbed slowly into the caravan, standing as near as he could to the entrance and resolutely refusing to look at the corpse. ‘I’m Ernie Clark, deputy producer. Sam was the front guy, but I set all this up. I’ll be taking over from him. So it’s up to me to get the show back on the road.’
‘Not today it isn’t. Possibly tomorrow, if we make reasonable progress in the next few hours.’ Lambert glanced down at the corpse. ‘This is the scene of a serious crime, as you can see for yourself, Mr Clark. It will remain so for the foreseeable future. If my team can complete the taking of statements from people on site today, we may be able to allow you to continue work here tomorrow, but I cannot promise that at this moment. In the interests of progress and efficiency, we should now vacate this caravan and allow my scene of crime team to complete their detailed examination of it.’ He rose stiffly and trod the path to the door which had been marked for him by his scene of crime officer, a former policeman who was now a civilian, an experienced man who had conducted many SOC investigations.
Clark retreated before him and stood awkwardly on the flagged approach to the caravan. ‘Is there anything I can do to speed up this process? Time is money to us, as I’ve explained, and we’re already behind schedule after yesterday’s rain.’
‘You could begin by telling us everything you can about a murder victim who is no longer able to speak for himself.’
‘No. It seems incredible that we’ll never hear Sam again. He was never backward when it came to voicing his opinions.’
Bert Hook smiled wryly. ‘We’ve met before, Mr Clark. In the studios of Central Television a couple of weeks ago. I got the impression on that occasion that Mr Jackson wouldn’t take kindly to any form of opposition.’
Clark grinned for the first time. ‘That’s a polite way of putting it. Sam didn’t do discussion, he issued orders. That was part of his image and his image was important to him.’
‘He must have been a man who excited opposition.’
Ernie Clark smiled. He liked this weather-beaten copper, who seemed so much more cooperative than the taller, more intense man beside him. ‘That might be the understatement of the year. Someone told me this morning that they had a child who made friends easily. Sam Jackson made enemies easily. But he rather liked that. As long as he kept the power in his own hands, he didn’t care if he made hackles rise all around him in those whose destinies he controlled. He’d point his big cigar at people and say that if they didn’t like it they could lump it – that was one of his favourite expressions. He had a limited but colourful vocabulary. He’d be telling me to shut up and piss off and get on with my work if he was here now.’ He glanced towards the now closed door of the caravan and regret showed upon his squat face for the first time.
Hook nodded ruefully. ‘We don’t like murder victims who make enemies easily, Mr Clark. It leaves us with too many suspects.’
‘Who do you think might have done this to Sam?’
‘At this moment I’ve no idea. Have you?’
The challenge was abrupt and unexpected from this innocent-looking source. ‘No. I’ve no idea. Of course I haven’t.’
‘It’s a reasonable question to ask of you, Mr Clark. You know far more about Mr Jackson and his acquaintances than we do at this point.’
‘I suppose that’s true. It has to be true, hasn’t it? But I’ve no idea who might have done this. I haven’t had time to think about it.’
Lambert came in again on that. ‘Then give it some thought, please, Mr Clark. You’re in a position to know most or all of these enemies you’ve told us the deceased accumulated easily, so of course we’d like your thoughts on the matter. In confidence, of course.’
‘All right, I’ll think about it. But when I said Sam made enemies, I didn’t mean he offended people strongly enough to make them want to kill him. It’s a big step from resenting what someone does or says to you to wanting to kill him.’
Lambert pursed the lips at the bottom of his deeply lined face. ‘The transmission from dislike to hatred and then on to murderous hatred. That’s a process we’ve seen in operation many times, over the years. It’s a subject on which some experienced CID man should write a thesis. That would have to be DS Hook, who’s much more adept at that sort of thing than I am. Of people on the site at the moment, who do you think might well have gone into Mr Jackson’s caravan and strangled him with his own tie, Mr Clark?’
Clark swallowed hard. ‘I don’t know. I can’t think of anyone in our business who would do anything like that. We deal in make-believe – that’s the actor’s raison d’etre – and sometimes in melodrama, but real life is different. I can imagine lots of actors and some of the staff who support them talking about killing someone, but it’s unthinkable that any one of them would actually do it.’
‘Yet it seems one of them did in this case, doesn’t it? Perhaps you’d give the unthinkable some consideration overnight, and let us know what you come up with.’
Lambert and Hook went back into the caravan, where a woman was carefully bagging a tiny fragment of soil found just inside the doorway, which might be completely innocent and irrelevant or might be from the shoe of the person who had climbed into this vehicle as an enemy and left it as a murderer. They watched the SOC photographer taking the final pictures of the corpse from every conceivable angle. Then John Lambert gave permission for the ‘meat wagon’ to ease slowly to the side of the vehicle and prepare to remove the mortal remains of Samuel Terence Jackson, cigar smoker, petty tyrant, and late producer of Herefordshire Horrors.
John Watts saw the chief superintendent, who was obviously to be the SIO for this case, arriving on the site with his bagman. A little while later, he watched Ernie Clark’s tentative approach to the scene of the crime and the men who were here to investigate it.
He was relieved to see Ernie taking the initiative with the police, who were now thronging the site and questioning even people who had only come here for the day to act as extras. It seemed odd to have so many men in uniforms nodding and taking notes from everyone they could corner. As director of the Inspector Loxton series, he was used to having the odd uniform on set, usually to play the lumpen dullwits who made Detective Chief Inspector Loxton look so alert and penetrating. Watts had to keep reminding himself that the men and women in uniform who were dominating this bright April afternoon were real policemen pursuing a real murderer.
The big cheese would want to see him: he knew it. He was almost insulted when they didn’t seek him out immediate
ly. But that was a stupid reaction; there was no room for vanity in this situation. You needed to keep your wits about you, particularly as it was bound to emerge that there had been little love lost between you and Samuel T. Jackson. Eventually that cool, efficient DI Rushton, who looked the part so convincingly that John would like to have drafted him into the series, came and told him that Chief Superintendent Lambert apologized for the inevitable disruption in filming and would like to see him first thing on Wednesday morning. That would be on site here, where they were setting up a murder room.
John Watts knew now what he must do and he had already decided exactly where he would do it. It was some years since he had visited the spot, but he was sure he could find it easily enough, with the help of the large-scale road map he had in his car. But what he had to do needed privacy and he must wait for darkness. Now that the hour had gone forward and they were on British Summer Time, the daylight seemed to stretch unnaturally into the evening as he waited nervously for it to disappear.
Watts dined early at the country house hotel, where he and senior members of the cast were staying, because he did not feel like conversation tonight. There would be only one topic, the sensational death of their producer, and he did not want to be involved in that. He would need to act a part, to seem as shocked as everyone else would be, and he didn’t want the strain of doing that. The others were actors, good professional actors, and he was not. That was why he had decided at the outset of his career that he must become a director if he wanted to stay in this business. The director saw the whole scene, not just the small, selfish portions of it which most actors saw. Whatever they might say and even believe about ensemble playing, most actors were immersed in their own roles, their own problems, and the effects they were making. He had the advantage of them in an actual situation, if he could keep his grasp on the whole picture and the events that would emerge against this real-life backdrop.