by J M Gregson
‘You had a row with Alison Watts, didn’t you, Jamie, on that last Friday evening? What was it about?’
‘About us. About the future we should have had together.’
For the first time, Lambert glanced at Mrs Allen, and the lady who had been so uncharacteristically restrained took it as her cue to speak. ‘They need something a little more specific than that, Jamie. You’ll have to tell them what you were arguing about.’ She looked at the bent head beside her.
A long, shuddering breath again, as the boy fought for a control that was physically painful for him. He spoke eventually, in a quiet monotone which masked the emotion beneath. ‘She told me she wanted to finish with me. That we hadn’t got a future together. I said we had.’
‘I see. But something must have provoked this discussion of your own relationship. What was it, Jamie?’
Jamie Allen glanced up at Lambert, as if surprised that he could be so perceptive. In fact, Jamie was wondering how much they had been told already. But no one could have known what had passed between him and Allie on that last night. He had spoken of it to no one, until now. ‘I didn’t want her to keep going into Cheltenham, at the weekends. On Friday and Saturday nights.’
‘But she wouldn’t listen to you, would she?’
‘No.’
‘Where did she go to, Jamie, on those weekend trips? Those trips which were so painful to you.’
‘I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. Even then, that last time, she wouldn’t tell me. We had a blazing row, you know.’ He looked up at them, as if it might be a surprise to them, as if even now it was a surprise to him.
Lambert nodded. ‘You’ve no idea what she got up to in Cheltenham? Or Gloucester?’ Those historic and respectable towns suddenly sounded in his ears like Sodom and Gomorrah. In another context, he would have allowed himself to laugh.
Fortunately for the reputation of Oldford CID, Jamie Allen replied quickly. ‘No. She wouldn’t ever tell me. But it was lucrative. She had lots of money to throw about in those last months.’
‘Yes. We’ve found that out for ourselves, Jamie. It would have been helpful if you’d revealed it to us earlier.’
He nodded, then anticipated their next question. ‘I don’t know where the money came from, you know. I didn’t really press her about that.’
Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to hear the truth. Lambert said, ‘Do you think she was involved in any way with the sale of illicit substances, Jamie?’
‘No.’ He seemed almost disappointed, as if he would have preferred that solution to things which were even less agreeable for him to confront.
‘Did you ever see Alison using drugs? Hard or soft?’
‘No.’ He glanced quickly at his mother beside him. ‘One or two people in the school have had cannabis once or twice. I’ve never seen anything worse. But Allie never bothered with it; she said she thought it was stupid.’
‘And yet she was getting money from somewhere. Big money. How do you account for that, Jamie?’
There was one other obvious source of such pickings for an attractive young girl, and it was in the minds of all four people gathered around the dark table in that quiet room. But the young man at the centre of the tableau produced a different suggestion, an ugly slur upon his dead lover, but perhaps more acceptable to him than the more obvious one. ‘I don’t really know why Allie was suddenly so rich. But I think she might have been getting money from people because — well, because of things she knew about them.’
Lambert and Hook heard the sharp, involuntary snatch of breath from the woman at the boy’s side, even as they kept their eyes steadily on Jamie Allen’s face. The Superintendent said calmly, ‘Blackmail, you mean? It’s as well to give things their proper name, you know.’
The young face was wide-eyed, wanting to deny it, knowing well that it couldn’t. ‘I suppose so, yes. I don’t think Allie thought of it as that, but it was. I told her so. That was another thing we rowed about, that last night, as well as her weekend activities. She just said she was taking money wherever she found it, from people who could well afford to subsidise her.’
‘And who were these people, Jamie?’
‘I don’t know.’ He stared miserably at the table.
They all realised that he did know, that he had a name or names to give them. It was his mother, who had been so quiet through all of this, who now said, ‘I think you do know, Jamie. And you had much better tell the officers now than try to conceal it.’
Jamie glanced at her sharply, then transferred his gaze miserably back to Lambert. They all knew he was going to tell them, that the respect for authority so deeply embedded in his upbringing would not let him turn stubborn on them now, when he had gone so far. The CID men wondered if he was going to tell them what they already knew, that Alison Watts had extracted money from her stepfather with the threat to tell her mother the details of how he had abused her. Detection was in their blood after all these years, so that each of them found himself hoping that this would be some new name, some other man or woman with a reason to have killed this troublesome young chancer of a girl.
In a voice they could only just hear even in that quiet room, Jamie said, ‘I don’t like this. Can you promise me that what I have to tell you won’t go any further?’
‘You know we can’t do that, Jamie. The most we can say is that we shall treat your information with discretion. If it has a bearing on a murder trial, it may even have to come out in court. If it doesn’t, it probably won’t go any further than this.’
The boy nodded bleakly. The conventions of school as well as home were strong in him. You did not ‘snitch’ on your mates. Or even on your teachers. But now he must. ‘It was Mr Bullimore,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Allie had gone to bed with him, at one time. And she said she was going to get money out of him, by threatening to tell other people about it. We had a fierce set-to about it, on that Friday night, but she wouldn’t listen to me. I think she went off to see Mr Bullimore when she left me.’
*
Tom Murray could feel the beginnings of sweat on his palms. He knew he must keep his voice even and light, must show no sign of his anger. ‘I think you’re getting this rather out of proportion, Ros,’ he said. ‘It’s no big deal, really. I’m just asking you to —’
‘If it’s no big deal, let’s leave it,’ said Ros. ‘I don’t fancy telling lies. Anyway, I’m no good at it, never have been. I’d only let you down.’ Her lips turned up at the corners into a small, unconscious smile, which looked to Tom to be a deliberate mockery of his concern. It seemed to say to him, ‘I have no need to concern myself with dishonesty; more fool you if you are not as stainless as me.’
He tried again, forcing himself into a broader smile than hers.
‘You’ll just have to trust me, old girl.’ He patted her bottom lightly, affectionately, experimentally.
She rounded upon him, so suddenly that he was thoroughly taken aback. ‘I’m not your ‘old girl’!’ she said furiously. ‘And I won’t have to trust you. Why should I? When you don’t trust me with anything. Not even with the reason why you want me to lie to the police for you.’
‘It probably won’t come to that,’ he said desperately, ‘and all I’m saying is that if it did —’
‘If it did, you want me to tell deliberate lies! And to policemen who are looking for a murderer! For no reason. Or rather, for some very good reason, which you’re not prepared to reveal to me.’ She grabbed his arms as he tried to turn away, forced him to look down into her wide-eyed, furious face. Hazel eyes, widely spaced on either side of the small, strong nose. The eyes that had first attracted him to her as a fellow-student at university, which seemed an age ago now. She was pretty still, despite the years and the children. When he stared into those eyes, and that face that was so alive with the vigour of her anger, he wondered why he had ever needed more than this.
He dropped his head, looked at the small feet in the flat shoes that were so nearly touching his, muttered, ‘I
t’s difficult, Ros. I’m sorry.’
She watched the face that would not look into hers, a boy’s face, puzzled because she was denying him, surly because he could not have his own way as usual. A boy’s face with the lines of middle age beginning to etch themselves upon it; a contradiction of a face. For a moment, she wanted to mother him, to pull the troubled head down onto her breast, to tell him it would all be all right, that she would do what he wanted. Then she thought of the long days alone with the children, of the nights when he should have been with her and was not, and she said, ‘You’ll need to be a lot more than sorry, Tom, if you want me to help you.’
She was more in control of herself than he was, and she felt the power of that. Enjoyed it, indeed. The saint he complained about in her was strangely absent now, and the cruelty she had so often felt in his dismissals was all on her side. She felt almost exultant as she said, ‘You’ll need to tell me where you actually were on that night when you want me to say that we were at the cinema together. Then I’ll decide whether you’re worth lying for.’
*
Eddie Hurst sat back in his leather swivel chair behind the big desk and smiled. The smile did not reach his eyes, of course. Few of Hurst’s smiles did. ‘Hurst the Worst’ they called him. He knew it, was even proud of it. The soubriquet made him a Titan in the dark worlds he patrolled.
But he felt anything but a champion at the moment, despite the smile he was painting over his alarm. Someone had made a monumental cock-up. He didn’t permit those in his association, and heads would roll for this one, in due course. In the meantime, he would have to salvage what he could from the disaster. But he was used to making his own moves in his own time. Now others were calling the shots, and he would have to improvise.
He had to do that so rarely nowadays that he knew it was no longer one of his strengths. He stalled for the time he needed to think. ‘There must surely be some mistake, gentlemen.’ He managed to get an edge of contempt on to that word ‘gentlemen’, but there was no substance to his mockery, and they knew it as well as he did. He eyed the button beneath his desk, within three inches of his left foot. If he pressed that, two of his gorillas would appear within seconds, full of muscular violence, prepared to intimidate, to beat men senseless, to do worse than that, if he commanded them. But they were useless to him in this situation, and he knew it.
Lambert said calmly, ‘There’s no mistake, Hurst. We have a tape of the telephone conversation. Beautifully recorded. It will ring out crystal clear in court. Offering all kinds of sexual services for money. Suggesting that drugs might be available. It’s a little gem, in its own way.’
‘And what makes you think a respectable businessman like me is in any way connected with such enterprises?’
Bert Hook looked up from his notebook. ‘Surely you can do better than that, Eddy? I’m not even bothering to record that. Why don’t you try again?’ This man had evaded the law so often, had brought misery into so many lives, that they were enjoying this. In Bert Hook’s cricketing terms, Hurst was on the back foot and dodging about. And the wicket was getting worse for him. Lambert smiled at the man who was trying to remain calm, to see a way out of this. ‘Your front people at Cotswold Rendezvous soon told us who pulled the strings, Eddy. Natural enough, really: they didn’t fancy going down for years to save your miserable skin. We just leant a little, and they gave. No retribution from you, by the way: that would get you deeper in the shit than ever. Submerge you, perhaps; a service to society, that would be.’
‘Cotswold Rendezvous is a perfectly legitimate singles agency. Providing a service which many people —’
‘Of course it is.’ Lambert was suddenly weary of the preliminaries. ‘As a front, it’s perfect. The first contact our man was offered was a perfectly legitimate one, a lonely lady in search of company. Then your staff got a little too enthusiastic. Began offering things that were anything but legal. And succeeded in dropping their boss right in it.’ He smiled. ‘You can hear the tape, if you want. Your lawyer can have a copy, in due course.’
Hurst found that his brain was working, at last. They knew about the prostitution. About the supply of young girls. About the rent boys. If they didn’t have the evidence now, they’d have it within a few hours: he’d heard already about the enquiries being made in Cheltenham and Gloucester. These people talked, when they were squeezed. So did the landlords whose premises he had used for these services. They weren’t real villains, any more than the young men and women who were paid to offer their bodies. You couldn’t hope to keep the lid on this, now.
But he might still get away with the drugs. They’d said the tape merely ‘suggested’ that drugs were on offer. That empire was much more lucrative, and much easier to defend. They might get a few small-time suppliers, but that wouldn’t implicate him: not legally. Most of them didn’t even know where the crack and ecstasy they pushed came from. Even he didn’t know some of the barons who supplied him from the Continent. It was safer not to know: that was the way this vast, illegal industry operated. These CID men knew about his involvement, had known for years, but had never be able to prove it in court. And they might still not be able to do so, even now, if he played this carefully and then got his well-paid legal bodyguards on to the task. Admit to the prostitution, play it down as supplying a little harmless fun, mistaken maybe, but not too serious. They had a judge and a barrister among their clients, and that might yet prove useful, if the thing came to court with his name still attached to it.
Hurst sighed. ‘All right. We offer a service. Provide randy men with what they want. Hardly a hanging matter, is it? Keeps them off the streets and prevents them from propositioning innocent citizens, if you ask me.’
‘We don’t. And you’ve got yourself involved in a murder investigation this time, Hurst, I’m glad to say.’
Hurst felt his pulse quicken a little at that word, in spite of his surface calmness. The mention of the oldest and darkest of crimes had an effect, even on people like him. He knew that the number of police personnel employed leapt dramatically as soon as a death became a murder, that they would delve into all kinds of unwelcome corners as they sought the evidence for a conviction. He had had men killed in his time, of course. That was almost a badge of office, an assertion of status in the murky world he inhabited. But always they had been men who wouldn’t be missed, small-time villains whose deaths would be shrugged away by a police force who knew they had little chance of establishing the facts of death. And always Eddie Hurst had been able to distance himself so far from these swift eliminations that no one could ever have brought them back to him.
This was different. An implication in a death which was outside his control and influence. He said, ‘I haven’t killed anyone. It’s ludicrous that you should suggest it.’
‘Not directly, perhaps. But if you’re implicated, we shall be able to examine all your activities. In detail.’ Lambert seemed to find that as attractive a prospect as it was a dismal one for the man on the other side of this absurdly large desk.
‘I don’t know why you should even think —’
‘Was a girl called Alison Watts on your books?’
Hurst found himself licking dry lips, a reaction he had always been happy to see in others. Better to sacrifice this, to let the whole of the prostitution and paedophile empire go, if it came to it, than to let them get into the drugs. He was certain of that now. Yet he had to force out the words: it came hard to him to admit anything to the pigs he had laughed at for so long. ‘I believe she was, yes.’
‘She was murdered at the end of July. Perhaps you were involved in that, too.’
‘Of course I wasn’t. The first I knew about the girl’s death was when I read about it in the press last week.’
‘But Alison Watts was earning you a lot of money. You must have known months ago that she’d gone missing.’
Hurst considered whether he should deny that, whether he should try even at this stage to distance himself from the network of v
ice, to let someone else take the rap for pimping. But there wasn’t anyone else, now. And these men weren’t going to take their teeth out until they had tasted blood. He made himself smile. ‘Our staff leave us for all kinds of reasons, without always informing us about them. They get married, sometimes. Or move to the other end of the country. There is a high turnover rate among nubile young girls. Attractive women with a little money have plenty of options. But perhaps you wouldn’t know about that.’ He managed a token sneer.
‘We have search warrants for your offices in Gloucester and Cheltenham. We shall take a list from you of the males and females you employ for improper purposes. In due course, they will all be interviewed. At this moment, I am interested in the murder of Alison Watts. I need a list of the men who were prepared to pay for the services you offer. The kind of men who might have had contact with girls like Alison.’
Hurst delayed them a little, for form’s sake. He could have made it difficult for them to find the list, could even have destroyed certain documents while they went for their search warrants. In other circumstances, he would certainly have done so. But the destruction of evidence when a superintendent was in pursuit of murder suspects gave pause for thought, even to Eddy Hurst. Especially when the list would at least remove him from any immediate implication in this death. Within five minutes, they had a list of thirty-three names in their hands.
Most of them were names which meant nothing to them, though doubtless most of them were affluent citizens who would be highly embarrassed by the questioning which was to come.
But halfway down the list was a name which immediately caught their eyes. It was that of Thomas Murray, pillar of respectable society and Head Teacher of Oldford Comprehensive School.
Chapter Seventeen
CHRISTINE Lambert watched her husband finishing his breakfast as solicitously as she had once watched the daughters who now had children of their own. He hunched a little over the table nowadays, and he no longer complained about the absence of bacon and egg or the presence of semi-skimmed milk. Even as a joke, that ritual had been exhausted. She had got her flowers for his forgetfulness about her cancer clearance. The white and yellow chrysanthemums glistened in the hearth as they caught the pale morning sun. His omission was no more than a joke between them now; she had long since ceased to look for issues of dissent between them.