by J M Gregson
And a film would give him a blessed period of silence, a time to re-group, to marshall his resources. Even to organise a disciplined retreat, if that should be necessary. At this moment, cutting this thing short seemed to him a most blissful prospect. A non-consummation devoutly to be wished. He would remember that phrase for Bert Hook — show him he wasn’t the only one who could play with words.
Below him, the carefully made-up blue eyes looked up into his brown ones; the small, determined chin and the yellow curls shook dismissively; the bright red lips pursed — and shattered his new plans. ‘No, I don’t think so, Frank. We need the chance to get to know each other, don’t we?’ The blue eyes widened interrogatively, moist and alluring. Then the right one winked, suddenly and horribly, like that of a playful witch.
He was an emotional non-swimmer, with the current taking him out of his depth. He did not know how to resist it. ‘A drink?’ he said desperately.
She giggled, then nestled expertly into the crook of his arm. ‘Oh, all right, then, cheeky. I know you’re just trying to get a girl tipsy because you want to get her defences down. But we’ll have a drink first, if you like.’
There was a wealth of meaning in that word ‘first’, Chris thought miserably. A wealth he was more than ever certain he did not want to inherit.
They found a pub. Or rather Sherry did: it was obvious she had been there before. Rushton would have stayed in the brightly lit lounge beside the main bar, but while he ordered, she went and sat round the corner, where he discovered that there were a series of smaller and more private alcoves with tiny round tables.
He had half-expected her to order a port and lemon, as ladies of easy virtue had done in the films of his youth, but she had a gin and tonic, and then another and another, while he drank halves of lager. A pity, really, to be so modest when he was using the wedge of tenners the police had provided, but he needed to keep sober. Or fairly sober: he was aware of a need for Dutch courage which he had not felt so powerfully since he was a teenager, pretending to be at ease in situations which were completely new to him. Well, this was certainly one of those, he thought, as he pulled desperately at his third half.
She asked him about himself, and he went carefully but a little too rapidly through the persona they had prepared for Frank Lloyd. A sales manager, down here from the Midlands base of the company, geeing up the sales team in Herefordshire and Avon. Resident here for a few months; divorced; lonely; in search of a little excitement during the long winter nights. He had rehearsed this background so well that he came out with this last bit of it almost in those words, and Sherry laughed and said, ‘Cheeky! We shall have to see what we can do for poor, lonely Frank in due course, won’t we?’ She put her hand upon his knee, moved it up to his thigh, stroked it appreciatively but absently as she considered the plasterwork of the high ceiling. He had to go for more drinks to break the contact.
He remembered to make the token enquiries about her situation. She said she was divorced but ‘comfortable’, living in her own flat in Cheltenham. Looking for a little excitement out of life. It scarcely mattered what background a tom was going to give herself, he thought, but for form’s sake you had to ask. She worked as a secretary in a small supermarket, relaying the orders for supplies, she said. Fat chance, thought Chris. He wondered what her price would be, when it came to it, and whether you were supposed to bargain or just accept it. Well, that was one thing in which he would not need to take the initiative. Any self-respecting tom was going to want to fix the terms of the bargain before she got down to business.
She was not a bad sort, really, this Sherry. He would want to let her down lightly, when the time came. She was just a pawn in the game. Getting at the men who were organising this racket was what they were after, and he would make that clear to her. Nothing personal. No hard feelings. An unfortunate phrase that: he giggled a little to himself at the private joke.
He was able to do so without the fear of discovery because Sherry was away at the bar. She had insisted on buying her own round; she wasn’t a bad sort at all, really. It should have sounded a warning bell in his innocent, drink-stumbling brain, but it didn’t. And she brought him back a pint, not a half: business must be good in her dubious trade.
He reeled a little when they went out into the cool night air. She put her arm round his waist and said, ‘Steady, Frank!’ and he wondered for a moment quite who Frank was.
Then he straightened and said austerely ‘Quite right!’ and concentrated on walking at his full height and very straight. She seemed to find this amusing, and they giggled together. An officer on the beat regarded them suspiciously whilst they walked past the brightly lit shop windows, and Chris had to resist the temptation to tell the young constable exactly who he really was.
The flat was on the ground floor of a quiet block. Chris tried to assess the surroundings, to decide whether the man who had set her up here owned more apartments in the same block, where other prostitutes might at this very moment be entertaining other clients, but it was too dark for him to see much. And his brain seemed to be refusing to work with its normal efficiency. Hurst the Worst, that was the bloke they were hoping was behind this lot, he remembered. He hoped he was: it wouldn’t do DI Rushton’s promotion prospects any harm if they netted a big one like Hurst. It was as well to remind himself of his real purpose here; he had almost got used to being Frank Lloyd now, and it was really quite agreeable to have his arm round this warm, soft female form.
It was a much nicer flat inside than he had been expecting. Spacious, with thick carpeting and a Persian rug, and the light coming not from the ceiling but from lamps on two small tables on either side of the marble fireplace. Sherry switched on the living flame gas fire and he slumped rather too heavily on to the low, soft settee in front of it. She reached down towards him with both hands and he thought the moment had come. But she merely unpinned the carnation he had long since forgotten and smoothed its ruffled petals. ‘I’ll just put this in water,’ she said. ‘Shame to waste it.’
He went to the bathroom and relieved himself of a surprising quantity of lager, resting his forehead on the wall above the lavatory as he did so, directing the copious flow with elaborate care into the bowl, making sure he did not defile this agreeably female retreat. He spent a long time washing his hands, then looked slyly into the medicine cabinet, to see if the condoms which he knew must appear at some point were in there. There was no sign of them. ‘Find the johnny!’ he whispered to himself, then giggled inordinately at what suddenly seemed a highly humorous thought.
By the time he returned to the lounge, Sherry had set a pot of coffee on the low table beside the settee and come to sit beside him. ‘I think you need this, Frank,’ she said, not unkindly.
The golden-hearted tart, he thought — it wasn’t just a myth. ‘Very good of you,’ he said. ‘But I’m not drunk, you know.’ She smiled, he sniggered, and then both of them suddenly found it very funny, so that they laughed out loud together, for what seemed quite a long time.
When they finished, he had his jacket off, and she had drawn her knees up on to the seat of the sofa beside him. The black nylon was stretched now, and there was much of it to see, because there was an awful lot of Sherry’s thigh pressing against his. He put his hand on her calf as she slid her fingers through the gap on his shirt, where a button had mysteriously undone itself. His hand slid up over her darkly glistening knee to the soft area of her thigh as she kissed him, exploring his teeth with the tip of her tongue. Nothing at Central Methodist Sunday School had prepared him for this.
She had a bra which he would never be able to unfasten, but that didn’t worry him. She’d help him when the time came, he was confident of that. He shifted his position, lifted the compliant body a little, stroked a rounded buttock beneath the tights. He was really quite good at this, after all. He smelt an intoxicating mixture of powder, perfume and deodorant, and she breathed ‘Oh, Frank!’ softly into his ear. This bloody Frank had it all going for h
im, he thought. Better than being a bloody policeman, any day.
It was the moment of truth, the moment which recalled him belatedly to his duty. Something was wrong here. She was being very kind to him, helping him along in a situation which was new to him, and he was grateful to her for her sensitivity. But they had never fixed a price, and they should surely have agreed one by now. It was all very high-class, this. An awful fear seized him that the police funds in his pocket might after all be insufficient, that he might not have enough money with him with him. Be just like John Bloody Lambert to leave him short.
He struggled to get his face free of that bewitching mass of blonde hair. ‘Just a minute, Sherry,’ he said firmly into her small ear.
She sighed. ‘The boys’ room is it again, Frank? Well. I’m not surprised. But don’t be too long, now you’ve got me interested.’ She moved away and poured herself another cup of the now lukewarm coffee.
‘No. I don’t need to go.’ Suddenly he did, but that would have to wait. He tried to distance himself, to sound experienced and official. ‘We haven’t fixed a fee, Sherry,’ he said. He fumbled towards his hip pocket for his wallet and the wedge. ‘It’s very good of you to be so trusting and to take so much trouble over me, of course, but I really think we ought to —’
The slap was so hard that his face was still tingling an hour later. ‘What the damned bloody buggering hell do you think you’re about?’ she said furiously.
She did not wait for a reply. It was just as well it was a ground floor flat. She might well have flung him down the stairs if there had been any. In less than thirty seconds, he was out on the street in his shirt sleeves, trying hard to button the belt on his trousers, holding his jacket clumsily under one arm. There was no chance to offer the kind, infuriated lady any sort of explanation.
The taxi driver did not want to take him. The smell of drink, the dribble of blood from the nostril, the jacket only covering one arm on a cold night, were all ominous signs to his experienced eye. Rushton had to show him his warrant card to prevent him driving off. And when he made him stop halfway home so that he could disappear behind a hedge to empty his straining bladder, he found that the flies of his best suit were still wide open.
It was not a dignified way for a detective inspector to spend an evening.
Chapter Fifteen
THE headmaster of Oldford Comprehensive school arrived at work very early on the morning of Tuesday, 19 October. Normally he would have been happy to be noted showing such devotion to duty, but on this particular morning Thomas Murray, MA (Birmingham), FRSA, moved through the familiar corridors of his school furtively.
He met his caretaker, George Phillips, and reflected that this man, so elusive when there was hard work to be undertaken, seemed always to be present where he was least wanted. Phillips rattled his mop and bucket ostentatiously and tugged at an imaginary cap in hollow deference. He plainly wondered why the head had arrived before eight. Tom gave him no satisfaction on that. He afforded him the briefest of greetings and stood in the corridor until the man shuffled away.
He waited until Phillips was safely behind the door of one of the science labs before he hastened down the corridor and turned towards the school library. The door was locked, but he had his key at the ready. He found the files of newspapers readily enough. The Times was now recorded on microfiche, but he was happy to see that the well-thumbed copies of the Gloucester Citizen had not succumbed to modern technology but were kept in an uneven pile on the bottom shelf of the reference section.
The room seemed unnaturally quiet. The pages of newsprint rustled loud as he searched anxiously for the relevant copy. It was there: Friday, 23 July. He sought out the entertainments section and breathed a sigh of relief. One of the films at the multiplex cinema in Gloucester had been The English Patient. He had seen it, with his wife, though not of course on the twenty-third of July. But the police wouldn’t know that, and if they asked questions, both he and Ros would be able to tell them about the film.
He locked up the library and went back to his headmaster’s office with a lighter heart. He only needed Ros to back him up now. She’d not been as compliant as usual lately. But surely, when he convinced her of the importance of it, she would tell this one small lie for him.
*
DI Chris Rushton took care to be at work at the normal time on that morning. His head ached and his mouth was dry; when he inspected himself in the mirror in the locker room at Oldford CID, he looked unusually pale. But he was there, his shirt and tie as immaculate as usual. At least that would ensure that there could be no cheap jibes from Superintendent Lambert and Sergeant Bloody Hook about the effects on punctuality of a dissolute evening.
He reported to them when they came in for the meeting they had arranged. He spoke as coldly, as neutrally, as he could of the blank he had drawn in the guise of Frank Lloyd, watching suspiciously for any signs of amusement in his listeners. ‘There’s no need to spend any more time over Cotswold Rendezvous,’ he concluded. ‘The lady I met was a perfectly genuine member of a singles club.’
‘Disappointing, that. Just looking for companionship, I suppose,’ said Lambert innocently.
‘Well, yes, sir. How much more than that, I couldn’t of course say.’
‘No, of course you couldn’t, Chris. As you were operating only in the line of duty.’
‘There was no hint of anything other than a woman looking innocently for some sort of relationship. Once I had established that, I got out of the situation as quickly as I could, naturally.’ Chris tried not to think of that picture of himself with shirt and flies undone and jacket under his arm on the respectable Cheltenham street.
But Bert Hook had noted his unease. ‘Naturally, yes. Er — at what point exactly did you decide that the lady was genuine and not a hooker, Chris?’
‘That I don’t propose to tell you. It was an embarrassing enough assignment you landed me with, I can tell you. And if —’
‘Get as far as drawers off, did we?’
‘Of course we didn’t! I merely established that the lady was genuine rather than a tom, and then got out with what dignity I could. Without blowing my cover, of course.’ He turned back to Lambert. ‘And I think I should say here and now, sir, that I didn’t find this assignment easy. I think I should point out that I do not feel that undercover work is one of my strengths. You may wish to bear this in mind if any future plans to infiltrate officers into situations like this are envisaged.’
There. He had got it out, the statement he had prepared for himself as he drove in to Oldford nick that morning. He wasn’t going to endure anything like last night again. He said stiffly, ‘Anyway, it looks as though we have to eliminate Eddy Hurst from any connection with this.’
Lambert nodded regretfully. ‘I’d still like to know where Alison Watts went at the weekends, though. She was pulling in plenty of money from somewhere over those last months.’
Hook said, ‘Some of it came from her stepfather. Could she have been blackmailing other people as well?’
‘I certainly wouldn’t put it past her. Once she had found it so easy to get money from Robert Watts in that way, she might have been tempted to look for other victims. Blackmailers often do. It’s when they turn the screw too tight that they become murder victims.’
‘Who else did she have a hold on? Jamie Allen?’
‘Scarcely. They were just boy and girlfriend, quite openly. Nothing illicit that we know of in their relationship which had to be concealed. In any case, Jamie hasn’t any substantial funds of his own, and that formidable mother of his would have given short shrift to Alison Watts if she’d tried to get money out of her.’
‘Likewise Barbara Bullimore to anyone trying to make money out of her brother’s association with Alison. A formidable female, that one.’ Bert Hook shuddered reminiscently. He was an expert on iron women in authority from the Barnardo’s days of his youth. When he spoke of formidable females, people deferred to his expertise. No one who had met
Barbara Bullimore, whether socially or behind her library counter, would have demurred from Bert’s view.
Lambert said, ‘But Jason Bullimore certainly had something to hide, especially with his past record of susceptibility to forbidden young schoolgirl flesh. It’s worth checking out whether Alison tried to get money out of him after she’d ended their relationship. But I can’t see that he would be able to provide the amount of money Alison was spending in those last months — not unless he had more than a schoolteacher’s salary to draw on. In view of the value of the clothes the SOCO team brought in from her room and what her peers have told us about her sudden affluence, we’ve trawled the banks and building societies for information. It turns out that Alison had an account with the Cheltenham and Gloucester.’
‘And is there much in it?’ said Hook.
‘Just over two thousand pounds. With considerable credits and debits over the last few months. Presumably the debits are largely explained by those clothes and shoes. By the way, we haven’t as yet found the pass-book for this account.’
Rushton said, ‘It could still be a crime of passion. Both Jamie Allen and Jason Bullimore were disappointed lovers. In different ways.’ As the two experienced faces looked into his, he felt himself blushing at the memory of his own amorous fiasco ten hours previously. Telling himself sternly that these two grinning faces could not possibly know of that debacle, he went on determinedly, ‘Jamie was certainly still very smitten with her, but being kept at arm’s length in the months before she died. And from what you say, I gather that Jason Bullimore might still have been emotionally involved with her at the time of her death. Whether he loved or hated her, he could still have been driven to kill her.’