Mud, Muck and Dead Things: (Campbell & Carter 1)

by Granger, Ann

  She fixed Jess with a bright angry gaze. ‘Life’s a bugger!’ she said fiercely.

  Jess picked up her coffee cup and held it high. ‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said.

  In the interview room, Ferris sat with his solicitor, Reginald Foscott. Phil Morton sat by the door looking on mistrustfully as Carter took a seat at the table. The usual preliminary of time and names of those present were established for the benefit of the recording. Ferris listened impassively. He might have been there purely as audience. Foscott flicked an invisible speck from his sleeve, folded his hands and tilted his head slightly to one side like an attentive hound.

  ‘We have a witness,’ Carter began, ‘who saw the victim, Eva Zelená, getting into a car described as silver grey, probably a Citroën Saxo, at the end of the lane leading to the Foot to the Ground pub and restaurant where she worked. We have retrieved a car of that description from your garage and subjected it to forensic examination. We took it apart, Mr Ferris. The forensic team found clear traces of body fluids in the boot and DNA analysis has identified them as coming from Eva Zelená. We also found human hair inside the car, which has been established as from the head of Eva Zelená, and a smear of blood, which is yours. An attempt had been made to clean the vehicle, both the interior and in the boot, but it’s not easy, believe me, to clean away that sort of evidence.’ Carter permitted himself a bleak smile. ‘It takes more than a vacuum cleaner and a bottle of fabric shampoo. We have also recovered traces of mud from the underside of the chassis corresponding to the mud in the yard at Cricket Farm.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said Ferris dismissively.

  Reggie Foscott put his fist to his mouth and coughed.

  Carter went on, ‘This evidence shows that Eva was in the car when she was alive and that she travelled in the boot of the car when she was dead. We believe you moved the body to Cricket Farm where it was found, in the first instance, by Lucas Burton.’

  Ferris had listened to all of this in the same detached way. He must have been expecting it. Foscott, however, stirred on his tubular chair so that the legs scraped on the floor.

  ‘My client is prepared to make a statement regarding the young woman, Eva Zelená.’

  ‘A confession?’ Carter raised his eyebrows and looked at Ferris, who returned a sardonic half-smile in his first reaction of any kind.

  ‘A statement,’ repeated Foscott. ‘It was not his intention to do the young woman any serious harm. He acted in self-defence.’

  ‘Indeed? Well, then, Mr Ferris. Perhaps you’d tell us just what you did intend and how it came about that she died?’ Carter asked. ‘Did you dump her body at Cricket Farm? If so, why?’

  ‘Her death was an accident,’ Ferris told him, spacing the words out as if he expected Carter to write them down. He then paused as if he expected some comment but as the superintendent said nothing, was obliged to go on. ‘You know that my wife and I are in the process of divorcing?’

  ‘We understand that to be the case,’ agreed Carter. ‘Your wife, Karen Ferris, has explained this, and backs your claim.’

  ‘Big of her,’ said Ferris dismissively. ‘We have been separated for some time, not officially, but for all practical purposes. I have also been friendly with Penny Gower for some time. Frankly, I had hoped our friendship might grow into something more. But that didn’t seem to be happening and, well, I was frustrated, I suppose. I went off for a drink on my own one evening, at a pub called the Foot to the Ground. I picked it because it wasn’t one Penny and I used, and there I met Eva.’

  ‘Eva Zelená?’ Carter said tonelessly, again for the benefit of the tape recorder.

  ‘That’s right. She seemed like a nice, friendly girl. I got talking to her. It was the classic situation of a slightly drunk and depressed man, pouring out his heart to a barmaid. I don’t mean I told her all my troubles. I wasn’t that drunk or that stupid. But I found it helpful, talking to her. I found myself asking her for a date. She said all right. I took her to the cinema and that was the beginning of it, such as it was. It was only ever a casual affair. It started as a lonely man flirting with a pretty girl. A thousand other men up and down the country were probably doing the same thing at the same moment. But for me, like every other relationship with women I’ve ever had, it went wrong.’ Ferris voice gained animation. Until then he had been speaking in a flat tone, reciting his rehearsed story.

  Hearing the change in his client’s voice, Foscott glanced at him and pursed his lips.

  ‘Look.’ Ferris threw out a hand and leaned towards Carter. By the door, Phil Morton tensed into alertness. ‘You can’t blame me for getting into a situation like that. I was being dumped by my wife and getting nowhere with Penny. How do you think I felt? How would you feel? I just wanted to be with a woman who was good company, didn’t stink of horses like Penny, didn’t communicate with me via a solicitor like Karen, and enjoyed sex. Surely you can understand that?’

  ‘Just carry on telling us how you felt and what you did about it,’ Carter replied, unmoved by this man-to-man appeal.

  ‘What I did? I started dating Eva regularly. But it wasn’t serious. In my mind, it remained a flirtation, a bit of relaxation. I looked on it as a sort of therapy, if you like. Eva did all right out of it. She liked having fun, dancing, going around with me. I was generous. I took her to decent restaurants. I took her to the theatre in Cheltenham and to clubs. Not that clubbing is my kind of thing. I’m getting a bit old for that teens and twenties scene, all flashing flights and deafening noise, but she liked it. We went to the cinema. It was all the usual stuff.’

  ‘You weren’t concerned,’ Carter asked, ‘that Ms Gower might find out about your liaison?’

  ‘No! She hardly ever left the stables before evening and then she always wanted an early night because she had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day and go back down there, mucking out, feeding and grooming and all the rest of it. We’d grab a quick bite and a pint at the Hart and that was our social life. Penny had what she wanted, I tell you! I wasn’t cheating on her in the usual way because what the hell was there to cheat on?’ There was real pain in his voice.

  ‘As for Eva.’ Ferris shrugged. ‘I thought I was giving her what she wanted. She didn’t appear to want anything more. I thought that she saw our relationship the way I saw it. I never collected her from the pub on our days out because I didn’t want anyone there getting the wrong idea about us. Eva never suggested I did pick her up where she lived or took her back to the door. That confirmed for me that she didn’t want our names associated in other people’s minds, any more than I did. It was not what you like to call a liaison, for crying out loud! I thought – I believed we had an understanding.’

  Behind him, on his seat by the door, Morton’s expression said, Oh, yes? You did, mate, she didn’t. Aloud he said nothing.

  Ferris hesitated. ‘I was feeling very stressed at the time and perhaps not thinking very clearly. The divorce wasn’t the only thing on my mind.’ He paused.

  ‘Yes?’ Carter prompted. ‘What was that, then?’

  ‘I was worried about a client of mine, Lucas Burton.’

  At this point Reggie Foscott said crisply, ‘My client denies any responsibility for the death of Lucas Burton.’

  ‘Why was Burton a worry to you?’ Carter asking, ignoring Foscott and his interruption.

  Ferris hesitated. ‘It doesn’t matter. It has no bearing on this.’

  ‘We think it does,’ said Carter. ‘We have the records of mobile phone calls you made on the day before her body was found. You phoned Lucas Burton on the afternoon of Eva’s death, that is to say, on Thursday, the afternoon of the day we believe she died. The next day her body was discovered at Cricket Farm. We’d like to know what that call was about.’

  ‘Business,’ said Ferris. ‘I had a query about his accounts.’

  ‘We had a long and interesting conversation with Mrs Karen Ferris,’ Carter went on. ‘She told us your acquaintance with Burton goes back many years,
although you had only fairly recently become his accountant here. She said you knew him in London when you worked there some years ago. At that time he’d gone under a different name. There was some history between you because when you spoke of him you had looked and sounded very angry. She thought perhaps Burton had cheated you, so she was very surprised when you took him on as a client here, some years later. She asked you about it and you became angry and more or less told her to shut up. At the time she put that down to the deteriorating situation between the two of you. But now she isn’t sure.’

  ‘Mrs Karen Ferris must be regarded as hostile to my client,’ said Foscott loudly. ‘Anything she says must be weighed carefully against the impending divorce proceedings.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Foscott. Mr Ferris?’

  ‘All right,’ Andrew admitted. ‘We do go back years. My first “proper job” was working in a small accountancy firm in south London. Its clients were all kinds of small traders, market stall-holders. But it also had one or two bigger fish: permatanned guys in vicuna overcoats who ran clubs you wouldn’t want your sister to set foot inside. All the business we took on was legit, mind you. But, well, the clients were a rum bunch. The firm doesn’t exist any more, by the way.

  ‘I wasn’t earning much and London is expensive. I’d just got engaged to Karen, my wife. She – she always had ambitious tastes.’ He scowled in memory. ‘I had to save every penny. Lunchtimes I used to nip down to a pub on the corner of the road where the office was. It didn’t offer cooked food but it did sandwiches, crisps, that sort of thing. It was the cheapest place to eat around there.

  ‘I met a chap there. He was something of a regular.’ Ferris gave a mirthless smile. ‘He was a real wheeler-dealer, had the patter, always planning some moneymaking scheme. There were any number of guys like him around in those days, especially in that part of town. I quite liked listening to him, because he was amusing. He went out of his way to cultivate my acquaintance, but I wasn’t so stupid that I didn’t realise he had some purpose. I thought he was going to suggest I do some cut-price accounting for him, on the black. His name was Marvin Crapper.’

  He paused and waited to see if this name got any reaction from Carter, who just nodded.

  ‘Well, it turned out he had something quite different in mind. He was planning a “big deal”. He wanted information, personal private information on the financial situation of a client of the firm. It was one of the bigger clients, the ones I told you about, who turned up at the office in a flash car with a muscleman minder in tow. I told Marvin, forget it! I’m like a priest, I said, I don’t pass on anything. To tell you the truth, it wasn’t just moral scruples. I didn’t want my legs broken. But Marvin kept on. He offered me serious money. Nobody would know, he insisted. He’d never tell anyone, how could he? He had as much to lose as I did, probably more.’

  Ferris shrugged. ‘Well, Karen wanted us to buy a house or at the very least a flat. I needed my share of the deposit. I listened to Marvin. I should have avoided the pub and him, made it clear I wasn’t going to play ball. But I didn’t. I passed him the information he wanted. He paid me. I thought, stupidly, that would be the end of it. I changed my job, I moved to another part of London, Karen and I married. We came down here. I started up on my own. Everything was fine. Well, it wasn’t, because Karen and I were drifting apart. But aside from that, from a business point of view, things were turning out nicely.’

  Ferris looked up at Carter. ‘You know what they say about bad pennies. They always turn up? Marvin Crapper was a real bad penny. I should have known that wherever I was and whatever I was doing, and however much time passed, sooner or later he’d come rolling along my way. It took some time, but two years ago, he did just that.’

  He gave a sad smile. ‘He rang my doorbell. I opened the door and there he stood. It was as simple as that. I was surprised; of course I was, but not particularly by the fact he was there. That had always seemed inevitable, as I was saying. No, what really surprised me was that at first I didn’t recognise him. Gone were the black leather jacket and the gold bling. Gone was the south London accent, too. This was a bloke in a sports jacket and handmade shoes, expensive wristwatch but otherwise no jewellery, speaking like a county gent. Goodbye, Marvin Crapper and hello, Lucas Burton! He changed his ruddy name! He’d changed everything.’

  At this point Ferris laughed unexpectedly, the sound echoing around the small room and disconcerting the rest of them. Carter sat back in his chair. Phil Morton stood up and then sat down again. Reggie Foscott looked distinctly alarmed and leaned toward his client as if he would give him some advice.

  Ferris waved his legal adviser away. ‘All those schemes of his must have worked out because he’d made it big. Only, in some ways, he hadn’t changed. He was still the same old Marvin Crapper underneath all that new gloss. He came in and sat down, quite at home. He spent some time telling me how well he’d done, showed me the wristwatch, wanted to tell me it was by Cartier. He told me about his big house in Cheltenham and his Docklands pad in London. He was scouting round for a holiday place in Florida with a pool. He’d had a place in Spain, Marbella, but it hadn’t been big enough and he’d sold it at some vast profit. I sat and listened to him like a rabbit mesmerised by a stoat. He’d heard I was living and working in the area, he said. He’d been meaning to look me up. Oh, yes, I thought. I bet you were. He wanted someone to do his tax returns, he went on. Who better than his old mate, Andy Ferris?’

  Ferris shook his head. ‘I should have told him to shove off. I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was tied to him. It wasn’t just that he knew there was one time when I’d behaved as badly as he did all the time. That one slip doesn’t make me a crook! I didn’t want to be associated with him. But he – he was like blasted Svengali. In the end I told him, “I’ll do the returns but no dodgy schemes, Lucas!”

  ‘He gave me a big cheesy smile and patted my shoulder. “Oh, that sort of thing is all in the past, Andy! We’re different men now, you and I. You’ve done well. I’ve done well.” He’d done a hell of a lot better than me, I can tell you that.’

  Ferris paused for a split second and then said thoughtfully, ‘All the time he was talking, I couldn’t take my eyes off his teeth. They flashed at me like something in a toothpaste commercial. He’d had those fixed, too.

  ‘Well, he listened to my feeble protests. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. Some hopes! He must have thought I was stupid. All that patter was as fake as the capped smile. He’d got respectable over the years, all right, for outward show: but the leopard doesn’t change its spots. Sooner or later, he’d have another dodge up his sleeve and try to pull me in. I didn’t know how I’d cope if he came up with a new plan. I knew by the way he looked at me, grinned at me like a conspirator, that he didn’t expect me to believe him. In his mind, we were going through the motions. He thought I was a soul mate. He thought I was just like him!’

  At this point Ferris broke off and asked politely if there was any chance of a cup of tea?

  The tea arrived, brought by Bennison, and they resumed.

  ‘The day Eva died,’ Ferris began carefully.

  Foscott sat up straight. They were back on script, thought Carter sourly. He didn’t like all that about Burton because they hadn’t rehearsed it. But they have worked out what Ferris is going to say about Eva. However, I call the shots here.

  ‘I was very depressed and worried,’ Ferris repeated. ‘I wanted Burton out of my life and I’d decided I wanted Eva out of it too. I was afraid Penny would find out about us, even though I’d been so careful. So I took Eva out to lunch and told her I wanted to break up. I didn’t tell her actually at lunch, in case there was any kind of argument and other people seated around us would notice. The trouble is, when you’re in business like me, there mustn’t be any scandal. I was still married even if my wife was off cruising with millionaires. Also, if you have a lot of clients your face gets known. You don’t know who may recognise you. I always took Eva out of the area but I s
till didn’t want to attract any unnecessary attention. So I told her in the car as we drove away from our lunch and I reckoned she was in a good mood and would be reasonable. She was a bit sleepy, too. We’d had a glass of wine.’

  Ferris began to look and sound genuinely puzzled. ‘I just didn’t get her reaction. I couldn’t understand it at all. She wasn’t sleepy any more and the good mood went out of the window. She went mental! I had to pull over and we had a flaming row. Her English wasn’t perfect but she knew enough to swear at me like a trooper. She told me she was going to contact my wife. I told her, go ahead. My wife doesn’t give a damn if I’ve got girlfriends. She’s got a sugar daddy of her own. But then Eva threatened to tell Penny about us. “I know about your other girlfriend!” she yelled at me. “The one who stinks of horses!” I’d never told her Penny’s name or about the stables. But, well, perhaps I got careless one night . . .’ Ferris shrugged.

  ‘I tried to calm her down. The stupid little scrubber wouldn’t shut up. She attacked me. She really did! She clenched her fists and pummelled me and she was surprisingly powerful. The blood smears of mine you found in that car came from a punch on the nose she gave me. I had to wrestle with her to protect myself. I grabbed her wrists and then I grabbed her shoulders and tried to shake some sense into her. And then . . .’ Ferris made a gesture of resignation. ‘Somehow my hands got round her neck and then, I don’t know quite how, but she went very limp. I thought it was temporary. She’d fainted. But I couldn’t revive her. I realised she was dead. It was – it was horrible.’ He gazed at Carter desperately. ‘I hadn’t meant to kill her! I hadn’t meant her any harm. Good lord, I’m a respectable businessman. I have a reputation to preserve! Why would I set out to murder her?’