by J M Gregson
‘Not exactly. We came up with the initials “C.C.”. Several times. We thought it might be you.’
Her brain was working fast, very fast, but she felt refreshingly cool. However much they knew, they couldn’t pin anything serious upon her. ‘I suppose it could be me. But without knowing the context, I can’t be sure, can I?’
Peach smiled. He would reveal that context in his own time, not hers. Keep them on the back foot whenever you could was his motto, whether they were GBH men with tattoos all over their arms or voluptuous academics with skins as smooth as milk chocolate. ‘We found those initials in several places, Miss Campbell. In some instances, they had a time after them, which suggested meetings. Are you indeed the “C.C.” we are seeking?’
She felt as though they were encircling her, quietly cutting off her means of escape. If they trapped her in a lie, things could only get worse. She smiled, lapsing into an American idiom which seemed more informal. ‘I guess I might be. I did have some meetings with Claptrap Carter.’
Peach’s eyes had not left her face for a full two minutes now. He nodded. ‘Details, please.’
‘Well, I saw him at my job interview, when he and others appointed me.’
‘Of course. We’ve already discounted that. The Director’s personal secretary, Miss Burns, helped us eliminate many such dates.’
So they’d had old Tindrawers Burns helping them. The thought shook Carmen a little. She should have expected it, but somehow she hadn’t expected the icy front of Miss Burns to be scaled so easily, even by the police. She fenced for a little longer, trying to buy herself time to think. ‘Yes. Well, it’s difficult for me to remember what the others might be, when I don’t have the dates.’
Peach nodded at Lucy Blake, who already had her notebook open. ‘How about the eighth of July? Or the sixteenth of September? If it helps to jog your memory, both of those are Saturdays, Carmen.’
She noticed that the girl had taken up the invitation to use her first name, whereas Peach had ignored it. The old hard cop/soft cop routine. But it seemed to come naturally to this hard-as-nails little bundle of muscle and this well-formed, well-organized girl with the peaches-and-cream skin. Carmen wondered how much they already knew, how much they were trying to lead her into a string of lies she might regret. Honesty was definitely the best policy, until you were absolutely forced to lie. She sighed, gave them a quick, nervous smile of concession, and said, ‘All right. I was hoping you wouldn’t dig it out, but I suppose I should have expected it, once George was murdered. We had a thing going, the two of us. Oh, I know —’
‘What kind of a thing, Miss Campbell? You will understand that it is necessary for us to be quite clear about this.’ Peach’s voice cut through her embarrassment like a knife.
She was shaken for a moment. Then she shrugged and said ruefully, ‘I shouldn’t have thought I could get away with it. It was a bit cheap, calling him Claptrap, wasn’t it, when I knew him as George?’ She gave them a sheepish smile, which Lucy Blake thought almost as winning as her welcoming one. ‘The students and a lot of the staff called him that, and I suppose I thought I could distance myself from this, by calling him that.’
‘Distance yourself from what, Miss Campbell?’ Peach was unsmiling, insistent, observant. She was beginning to find his scrutiny unnerving.
‘From — from all this.’ She lifted her arms and held them wide apart, then let them drop back to her sides. ‘From the murder investigation. From the murder itself, perhaps. It was pretty unnerving to find that a man I’d been to bed with had been killed like that.’
‘I see. So you were planning to conceal your relationship with Dr Carter from us, to save yourself from being implicated.’
‘No! To save myself from embarrassment. To save myself from having my private life paraded before staff and students! You can imagine how some of my colleagues would have enjoyed gossip like that!’
‘So you decided that you would lie to the police investigating a violent death. Not the best way of avoiding embarrassment, as you may eventually discover. More important than that, it makes us wonder what else people might have been concealing when we find that they have lied to us.’
Those remarkable brown eyes seemed bigger and wider than ever as she glared indignantly at him. ‘There was nothing else. Look, when you come from the kind of background I’ve had, your natural instinct is to distrust the police, to withhold whatever you can about yourself from them!’
Indignation sat well upon her, making her more striking, more than ever like some Inca goddess. Peach studied her silently for a moment, wondering exactly what was happening in the brain behind that smooth forehead. It was Lucy Blake who said, ‘You’d better tell us a little about that background, hadn’t you, Carmen?’
Carmen hadn’t meant it to come to this. She had taken the deliberate decision to tell them things about herself and George Carter, to outline the nature of that relationship on her own terms, to reveal as much as she thought necessary. But the combination of Peach’s unashamed confrontation and this Titian-haired girl’s quiet insistence was prising more from her than she had intended. She paused for a moment, gathering her resources, trying to organize what she was going to say into some coherent account that would give no more away than was necessary. ‘There isn’t a lot to tell. I had what I suppose in this country you would call a wild youth. In Barbados, it wasn’t a lot more than par for the course. I got in with the wrong set.’
‘Surprising how many offenders seem to have done that,’ said Peach drily. ‘Must be the same in Barbados as it is here. Makes you wonder who the ringleaders are. Modest people, criminals.’ He dropped the word like a stone into a smooth pool, and watched for its effect upon Carmen Campbell. ‘Drugs, I suppose? And what else?’
Carmen was again left wondering how much this man knew, how keenly he wanted to lure her into further deceptions which he could expose. ‘Only soft drugs. Everyone used those a little. It was part of the beach culture, on the warm nights. And we were charged once with causing an affray. It was only a street fight that got out of hand. Too much rum, I suppose. We were very young then.’
Peach nodded. ‘Nineteen, I believe. Not so very young. And I wish I had a pound for every young ruffian who has offered me the excuse that he was drunk when he committed a crime. And causing an affray is a serious charge, especially when people are gravely injured: the magistrate didn’t take as light a view of it as you, did he? I gathered that it was only your youth that protected you from a custodial sentence.’
Carmen tried not to show how angry she felt. He had done his homework before he came here, this odious man. At least she had been right in electing not to lie about her past. She looked at the rather more reassuring face of DS Blake, who had encouraged her to come clean about her earlier troubles, and said with a touch of truculence, ‘That’s all a long time ago. It didn’t prevent me getting to Harvard.’
Perhaps the waspish tone of this provoked Peach. He smiled grimly. ‘No, it didn’t. You were obviously a very bright young lady. But it wasn’t the end of your difficulties, was it? The law-abiding citizens of Massachusetts had a little trouble with you while you were attending their ancient university.’
So he knew about that as well. There was nothing for it but to brazen things out. She said defiantly. ‘They’re a bit staid, around the American Cambridge. We livened things up a bit. Youthful high spirits.’
‘I see. But at the time you were twenty-two, and in the final year of your degree course.’
Carmen’s heart seemed to stop for an instant, then start beating again furiously, as if it needed to make up for this omission. It was something she could never remember happening to her before. She found she was breathing unevenly as she tried to make light of the episode. ‘We were all bikers together. Only two of us were girls. It seems to do something to you when you put on the leathers: makes it feel as if you can do almost anything. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, Detective Inspector Peach.’
/> She managed to edge the last sentence with contempt, but Peach only gave her a small, confident smile. ‘As a matter of fact, I might. I used to ride a Yamaha 350 myself, when I was about that age. One or two of the gang had Harley-Davidsons, but we considered them a bit middle-aged.’
She wanted to fling herself at him, to wipe the smile off that smug face with her fists. Instead, she held herself steady for a full two seconds before she said, ‘Then you’ll understand the feeling of power you get in a group. That was when I became really interested in social psychology, I think.’
‘After you’d smashed up a drug store and seriously injured the owner? Group pressure again, was it?’
‘I took no part in that! I didn’t even know one of the boys was carrying a gun, until it was too late.’
‘But you were charged, along with the others. And found guilty. Miscarriage of justice, was it?’
She knew he was trying to rile her. Worse than that, she knew that he was succeeding. She said roughly, ‘They pin whatever they can on you, don’t they, the police? You should know that.’
Peach smiled. She was softening up nicely: would be ready for the real questions any time now. ‘Not always. Not everywhere. Otherwise we might be talking about a murder charge now, Miss Campbell.’
She glared at him. ‘Anyway, the judge must have felt I wasn’t guilty. I only got a suspended sentence.’ She could see again that hushed courtroom in Massachusetts in 1991, with the electric silence as the white boys were sent down and the single, strikingly beautiful coloured girl was released. Surely this man who seemed to know so much wouldn’t have seen the front pages of the local press screaming about political correctness after the verdicts?
Peach watched her for a moment, sensing the turmoil behind the face which gave him so little. Then he said quietly, ‘Well, that’s ten years and more ago. You’ve come a long way since then, Miss Campbell. Without any further charges. And landed in the UK, as a respected tutor in the UEL. Tell us about your affair with Dr George Andrew Carter.’
He had come back to it so suddenly that she was caught unawares. The carefully prepared statement she had rehearsed to cover this had fled her mind. She said. ‘I’m not sure that “affair” is the right word. It was nothing quite as grand or as ongoing as an affair.’
DS Blake leaned forward and said softly, ‘So tell us just what it was, Carmen. How many meetings, and how deep the relationship went.’
It gave her a framework, even it if was not her own framework. She said, ‘Four, perhaps five, meetings.’
‘Overnight meetings, were they?’ Lucy Blake was quiet, even diplomatic, after Peach.
Carmen smiled. ‘You don’t need to pussyfoot around, DS Blake. I’m a big girl now. The first two weren’t what you call “overnight meetings”. The other three were. Yes, we went to bed together. In a motel the first two times. In a hotel in Harrogate, on the other three.’
Peach said, ‘Thank you for being so precise.’ He looked for the first time since he had arrived so abruptly in the room a little uncertain. ‘Forgive me, Miss Campbell, but we have to get some clear idea of this relationship, in which one of the partners is no longer alive to give his version. Were you in love with Dr Carter?’
Carmen felt a little easier, a little more in control. But she knew she must go carefully here. ‘No. I’m quite clear that I wasn’t.’
‘Then what was the attraction? You are, if you will allow the description, a vital and attractive young woman of — thirty-three, is it? Without any permanent attachments.’
Carmen nodded slowly. ‘And Dr Carter was a man of forty-eight, with a wife and two children, no obvious good looks, and a nickname of Claptrap, which implied a certain derision. I’m a stupid and unimaginative policeman, but I can’t see any obvious chemistry between the two of you.’
Carmen knew by now that he was neither stupid nor unimaginative: he had played her like a fish on the end of a line when he had raised her past rumbles with the law. She had not expected that the nature of her relationship with George would be raised so directly. She looked at the woman beside Peach and said, with a not unbecoming embarrassment, ‘We’re not always proud of the things we do. It was power, I suppose — the position George held. We women don’t always care to acknowledge it, but for a lot of us power is still the great aphrodisiac.’
Lucy Blake studied her without speaking; it was one of the CID techniques she had learned from Peach, and it often worked. People who were unnerved spoke to fill the silence, often revealing things about themselves they would otherwise have concealed. But this alert girl was a psychologist, an expert in such things.
Lucy wondered about power as an aphrodisiac. Was that what had attracted her in the first place to Peach? She had been aware of being pulled towards him because he was so good at his job, so single-minded in his pursuit of villains. Perhaps that was almost the same thing. But she was sure that the capacity to make her laugh had also been highly important. She said rather woodenly, ‘You’re saying that it was because Dr Carter was in control of this place that you found him attractive?’
Carmen smiled ruefully. ‘I’m trying to be perfectly honest, as you asked me to be. We all know that there is a complex of things involved in any relationship. When George Carter appointed me, it was just before the college got its university status. He was still involved in all the academic appointments, as he no longer was by the time of his death. He seemed to me a very powerful man. And frankly, that power carried a certain glamour. I don’t think I’d have considered George as a lover without it.’
Lucy nodded, trying to keep this woman’s tongue running whilst she was in confessional mode. ‘And how deep did the relationship go?’
Carmen shrugged, allowed herself a regretful smile, and said, ‘Not very. We went to bed together a few times, as I’ve told you. It promised more than it delivered — probably for both of us. There wasn’t much more than sex. It wouldn’t have lasted much longer.’
There was another silence, but Carmen Campbell was too experienced, too much at home with the picture she had given, to try to fill it. It was Peach who asked her quietly, ‘And who would have ended it?’
‘I would. But for all I know, George might have found that something of a relief, as well as me.’
‘Thank you for being so frank. Where were you last Saturday night, Miss Campbell?’
She had known it would come, but had not been prepared for it to be dropped in as abruptly as this, with no preamble about routine enquiries. She tried not to let the shock show as she smiled at them. ‘I was in Cheshire. In Altrincham, to be precise. I was at a Who revival concert in Manchester on Saturday night, with a group of people. I stayed the night at my boyfriend’s house afterwards. I had no car with me, on this occasion: I travelled from Brunton by train and came back the same way on Monday evening. I had someone with me, from four o’clock on Saturday evening until the next morning.’
Game, set and match, as far as her own guilt was concerned. Her smiling, untroubled face proclaimed as much to Peach. She gave the details as asked to Lucy Blake, even volunteered her boyfriend’s phone number so that her story might be checked out.
‘What does Keith Padmore know about your relationship with Dr Carter?’ asked DS Blake without looking up, as she recorded the information in her own version of shorthand.
‘Very little. As far as Keith’s concerned, George Carter was merely the Director of the university I worked in, and I knew him only on those terms, as a rather remote academic figure. And I’d like it left that way.’
Peach regarded her curiously, wondering about the mores that could accommodate a brief fling with the Director alongside an apparently serious, perhaps long-term relationship. They came across the full gamut of sexual liaisons in CID work, but this seemed one of the more curious combinations. Perhaps this lively and attractive woman was one of those sexually voracious modern females who took a variety of sexual partners almost casually. Carmen Campbell would certainly not be short
of offers.
He offered her the routine final enquiry, not expecting any very useful response on this occasion. ‘You must have gained an impression of the state of George Carter’s private life, even from your relatively few meetings with him. Can you think of anyone who might have hated him enough to kill him?’
Carmen felt an immense relief as the questioning turned away from her own part in this. She tried not to show it, to give every impression of treating Peach’s enquiry with serious reflection. After a moment, speaking as if the words were drawn unwillingly from her, she said, ‘You must be investigating the people who live on the site. Members of staff, I mean, not students.’
‘We are in the process of doing that, yes. Why do you think them particularly worthy of our attention, Miss Campbell?’
Carmen was as wary as Peach was watchful. He was an intelligent man this, a worthy opponent. She mustn’t overplay her hand. She smiled. ‘The same reasons as you, I suppose. They had the easiest access to the victim, didn’t they? And people living on the campus get to know each other, over eighteen months or so.’
They followed that up, tried to get more out of her about what lay behind her statements, but she wouldn’t — or couldn’t — go any further. Perhaps she shouldn’t have said as much, she said. It wasn’t fair of her to speculate, in something as serious as murder. Perhaps it was just feminine intuition, and should be treated no more seriously than that.
Carmen Campbell sat motionless for ten minutes after they had gone, reviewing what she had said and how it had been received. They were a pretty good combination, that unlikely pair, she decided: they had caught her off guard, once or twice. But the important sections seemed to have been all right.
As DS Blake drove the Mondeo, DI Peach was speculating also. It was some time before he said quietly, ‘A busy girl that. And a dangerous one, I’d say. I wonder if her affair with Carter was as passionless as she claims it was.’