[Inspector Peach 13] - Wild Justice

by J M Gregson

  So that’s why you’re here on a Saturday afternoon. Confession made. Mystery solved. ‘That’s most fortunate for us, isn’t it, sir? A lucky break, you might say, having a senior detective on the spot. Did you see anything suspicious?’

  ‘What? No, of course I didn’t!’

  Peach slid open the top drawer of his desk and produced the notebook he never used. ‘What time did you leave, sir?’

  ‘What? About eleven fifteen, I should think.’

  Peach recorded the time carefully and slowly, the tip of his tongue protruding from the comer of his mouth as he wrote. ‘Is there anyone who can confirm this for us, sir?’

  ‘I was with my wife. There are lots of people who could confirm that I left at - Peach, what on earth are you on about?’

  ‘You just said I should treat everyone who was in that room as a suspect, sir. I’m merely following your direction.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Peach! The idea that I could be a suspect is quite preposterous!’

  ‘You mustn’t be thin-skinned in a murder investigation, sir.’

  ‘Peach, if you pursue this line of questioning, I shall lose my temper! ’

  Percy had a nightmare vision of a huge, hysterical parrot and desisted. ‘Just trying to eliminate you from the inquiry, sir. You may recall that I told you a few days ago that we were finding out that Mr Hayes was indulging in some unsavoury activities with some dubious companions. It looks as if his chickens may have come home to roost.’

  ‘I find that very difficult to believe. Peach. Last night was a highly respectable assembly. There were many of the town’s great and good present.’

  ‘Including yourself and your good lady, sir. I appreciate that they don’t come any greater or gooder than that. But you will be aware that the bigger and cleverer villains often surround themselves with the trappings of respectability to mask their darker activities.’

  ‘I still believe you’ll find that Tim Hayes was a gentleman and a great loss to the Brunton community.’

  ‘Member of your Lodge, wasn’t he, sir?’

  ‘I’ve told you before that Freemasonry has no influence on my views. I simply think that you’ll find me a better judge of the man’s character than your dubious informants, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, we shall see, sir, won’t we? This could be more valuable material for my research thesis on the connection between Freemasonry and crime in north-west England.’

  Tucker regarded his DCI with undisguised distaste. ‘Just make sure you handle this carefully. Peach. Some important people in the town are likely to be involved in this investigation.’

  ‘Will do, sir. Oh, and don’t worry on your own account: I’m sure the admirable Mrs Tucker will vouch for you. We all know how suspect wives’ alibis for husbands are, but they’re difficult to break, aren’t they?’

  Chapter Fourteen

  By Sunday morning, the tension between them was almost unbearable.

  Both Clare and Jason Thompson knew that the normal thing for them to do was to talk to each other about the melodrama which had exploded so suddenly into their lives. The way they had been behaving since they had heard about the shooting was quite unnatural. They should be discussing this startling, brutal disruption of their routine.

  Yet it was as if each of them feared to do so. They were two intelligent people. Through a long Saturday, the fact that they were deliberately avoiding any discussion of this death had become more and more apparent to them.

  Now they sat at the breakfast table, each with toast and marmalade, each staring at the table and the kitchen appliances around them in turn, seeking for innocent, general subjects of conversation. Each topic they settled on proved futile, since it invariably petered out after a sentence or two.

  In the heavy silence which dominated the house, the sound of the bulky Sunday newspaper crashing through the letter box and into the hall made both of them jump. There was a comic moment when both of them started up from their chairs to fetch the journal with a bright announcement of its arrival. With a wan smile at herself, Clare sank back onto her chair and let Jason collect it.

  It was the Sunday Times, with its multiple sections. He spread it out on the table between them and they made a show of discarding the parts they were not going to read. They had the discussion they had conducted before about the uselessness of some sections, about the fact that everyone who bought the journal must discard approximately half of it, about the number of trees which must be wasted nowadays in surplus newsprint.

  Then the phone rang and both of them sprang towards it. This time it was Clare who got there first. She gave their number, listened for a moment, then mouthed at him, ‘It’s the police.’ Jason could not take his eyes off his wife as she spoke. Because it was so quiet, he heard most of what the woman on the other end of the line was saying.

  ‘My name is Detective Sergeant Blake. No doubt by now you will have heard about the death of Mr Tim Hayes.’

  ‘Yes.’ Clare did not trust herself with more than the monosyllable.

  ‘I’m afraid we are having to treat this as a suspicious death, as you probably heard on the radio. We now have the seating plan from Friday night. You were both sitting quite near to Mr Hayes during the evening.’

  ‘Yes. Quite near but not immediately adjacent. I did the seating plan myself.’

  ‘I see. Well, DCI Peach, who is in charge of the investigation, would like to speak to both of you.’

  Clare glanced at Jason, saw the alarm in his eyes which she had no doubt was in her own. She forced a smile, looked back at the breakfast she had still not touched on the table. ‘Well, if you could come round here in an hour or so, you’d be able to see both of us together.’

  A short pause. ‘We’d prefer to see you separately, Mrs Thompson. There’s nothing sinister in that, it’s standard procedure. We need to build up a detailed picture both of the evening and of the victim, you see, and people sometimes remember different things.’

  ‘That really seems rather a waste of your time in this case. I was Mr Hayes’s personal assistant and I kept his business diary, so I can see that I could be useful to you. My husband, on the other hand, hardly knew him. I don’t see that he’s going to be able to contribute much that you—’

  ‘Nevertheless, we shall need to see him on his own. It’s standard procedure, as I said. It probably won’t take very long.’

  Clare felt the phone being removed from her hand. Jason said tersely into the mouthpiece, ‘I understand. I’ll come into the station to see you.’ Then he added belatedly, ‘It’s Jason Thompson speaking.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Thompson. When can you come here?’

  ‘Right away. I can be with you in quarter of an hour or so.

  Might as well get it out of the way.’ A high, nervous giggle reminded him how on edge he was.

  * * *

  Matthew Ballack struggled to open the sash window in what had once been an elegant Edwardian room but was now the only decent space in his frowsty flat. He hadn’t had this window open since the previous summer, but on this Sunday morning he felt a need for fresh air.

  Eventually he managed to wrench the swollen, reluctant frame six inches upwards, allowing cool, clear air and a brave March sun into the stale room. He had drunk more than he should have and stayed up longer than he should have on the previous night, listening to successive news bulletins on Radio Lancashire and revelling in his release from the tyranny of Timothy Hayes.

  Now he had to cease rejoicing and decide upon his strategy. Should he keep a low profile or assert himself immediately? It would have to be the latter, he soon decided. There were not many people around now at the original Hayes Electronics factory who would remember him from the early days. Tim Hayes had ensured that he was more and more marginalized and moved him further and further away from the respectable front of the firm.

  But Clare Thompson might still remember him, even though he hadn’t seen her for years. He would go into the main office tomorrow
and let them know the position. More than that, he would fill the vacuum left by Hayes’s death before any other person tried to push himself into it. Even when you had the law and natural rights on your side, it was better to declare your position from the first than to come in later and thus have to unseat and discomfort other claimants.

  He was thinking like a leader again, asserting sound business principles. Matthew Ballack felt long-dormant ability stirring within him and exulted. He might even clean up this firm and restore its original integrity, once he had retaken the reins of power.

  * * *

  The CID section was not busy on a Sunday morning, even with a murder hunt now initiated. Most of the team were out checking on the less important of the many people who had been present at Timothy Hayes’ last meal on Friday night.

  Percy Peach could easily have taken the visitor into his own office, where they would not have been disturbed. Nevertheless, he led him into interview room two, marginally the smallest of these facilities. The DCI liked an environment where he was thoroughly at home and strangers were wholly uncomfortable, and this windowless, cell-like box, with its sage-green walls and harsh artificial lighting, filled the bill admirably.

  He watched Jason Thompson come in and sit down nervously on the other side of the small, square table, noted with satisfaction how often his hand rose unnecessarily to brush away the carrot-coloured hair which was his most individual feature. Peach gave him the smile a cat might give to a cornered mouse and said pleasantly, ‘Good of you to come in here to help us with our enquiries, sir. Nasty business, this.’

  ‘Yes. But I expect you have to deal with them all the time.’

  ‘Not all the time, sir, no. Murder is still quite an event in our lives, isn’t it, DS Blake? Still quite an exciting crime for us, if we’re honest.’ He leaned forward and switched on the cassette recorder. ‘I think we’ll just keep a record of our chat, if you don’t mind, Mr Thompson. Not strictly necessary, of course - you’ve not been charged or anything like that. But it’s useful to us to have a tape: you would be surprised how often people remember things quite differently from us.’ He smiled sadly at the omissions of humanity and contrived to give Thompson the impression that he was already a suspect.

  ‘I’m sure I shan’t be able to give you anything useful.’

  ‘Probably not, sir. But you never know. In due course, we shall be able to fit your story into the picture given to us by everyone else. Or not fit it in, of course, which would be much more interesting!’ He beamed his delight at that prospect. ‘How long had you known the victim?’

  ‘Well, I suppose we’d been acquainted for seven or eight years.’

  ‘Acquainted?’ Peach’s eyebrows rose high towards the white dome of his head. Lucy Blake, silent and studiously expressionless over her notebook, was impressed yet again by the way Percy could pick up the most innocent of words and make it sound like an accusation.

  ‘Our paths didn’t cross. He was an industrialist. I am a schoolteacher.’ Jason Thompson’s brown eyes blinked twice behind his thick-lensed glasses, as if to emphasize how out of touch with Hayes’s world he had been.

  ‘But your wife obviously knew Mr Hayes very well indeed.’ He looked startled, and his hand flew up again to the straight red hair and brushed it away, though it was not in fact over his eye. ‘In a professional character, yes. She has been on the staff of Hayes Electronics for many years, and has been acting as Mr Hayes’s personal assistant for something like four years.’

  ‘And no doubt has given complete satisfaction.’ Peach noted the man folding his arms and looking hostile. He said reasonably, ‘The business has gone from strength to strength, we’re told, and no director of such an enterprise can be successful without a highly efficient personal assistant.’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure that is so.’

  ‘We shall get a fuller picture when we question her about that in due course. In the meantime, do you know of any enemies Mr Hayes might have made?’

  ‘No.’ The denial came a little too loud and a little too promptly. As if he realized that and needed to fill the silence, Thompson added, ‘I hardly knew him, as I said.’

  ‘Did he seem at all disturbed during the dinner?’

  ‘No. Not as far as I could see. I wasn’t near enough to speak to him or to hear what he was saying during the meal. He made a speech at the end of it. He seemed all right then.'

  ‘And what about after that?’

  Thompson blinked rapidly again behind the thick glasses. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t see him after that.’

  ‘You weren’t in his group at the bar?’

  ‘I left the hotel. Quite a few others did the same.’

  ‘So Mrs Hayes told us.’ He watched him stiffen at the mention of the widow’s name. ‘What time would this be?’

  ‘Around eleven, I think.’

  Lucy Blake made a note of the time and looked up at him. ‘So you and Mrs Thompson drove straight home from the hotel.’

  ‘My wife wasn’t with me. I told you, she’s - she was - Hayes’s PA. She had to stay around. I’d had enough by eleven. I’d had a long day at school before we went out that evening.’

  ‘So you drove there in separate cars?’

  ‘No. We went together. I’d anticipated that we’d be going home together.’ For a moment, his thin face twisted with pain. ‘But it didn’t matter that we weren’t. The Johnsons were there - he’s a supervisor in the factory. They live within two hundred yards of us. They gave me a lift home. I must have been in the house by quarter past eleven.’ His explanation came in staccato bursts.

  ‘And you didn’t go out again?’

  He looked into her calm young face and said aggressively, ‘No, of course I didn’t. What would I want to go out again for?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. We have to record these things, Mr Thompson. What time did your wife get home?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I’d gone to bed.’

  ‘So you don’t recall her coming home at all?’

  ‘Of course I do! I wasn’t asleep. I’m just not sure what time it was. Around midnight, I expect, but I couldn’t be sure.’

  ‘And we don’t want you to guess at times if you can’t be sure.’ Peach came back in smoothly, making it sound to Thompson as if the whole case might depend on what time Clare had come into the house. ‘I expect your wife was quite a long time after you. I think things went on for at least an hour or so after you’d left.’

  For some reason, that thought seemed to give him pain. He eventually said, ‘I didn’t know that. Perhaps Clare didn’t stay until the end.’

  ‘Perhaps not. We’d obviously be very interested in anyone who stayed there as long as Mr Hayes did. But we shall be able to speak to your wife in due course, and get a more accurate time, won’t we?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so. If she can remember these things any better than me. No one knew Hayes was going to be killed, did they?’

  ‘Someone did, Mr Thompson. Someone who waited for him in or near his car and shot him in cold blood.’

  ‘That wasn’t me. And it certainly wasn’t Clare!’ Thompson seemed by his vehemence to be trying to convince himself of that.

  Peach let the man’s intensity hang for a few seconds in the cramped, airless little room. ‘You’d known Mr Hayes for several years. A man in that position makes enemies, and you must be aware of some of them. Of the people at that meal on Friday, who do you think wanted Hayes off the scene?’

  Thompson looked for a moment as if he was going to volunteer something. Then he said, ‘I told you earlier that Hayes and I inhabited totally different worlds. He wouldn’t know mine and I certainly wouldn’t know his. I’d hardly met the man.’

  Peach nodded thoughtfully. ‘Whereas your wife would obviously know quite a lot about him. I expect we shall get more useful suggestions from her.’

  ‘I don’t think she’ll know much more than I do.’

  ‘Really? When she’s been his personal assistant for the last few
years? By your own criteria, she’s going to know an awful lot about Timothy Hayes.’ Peach, eyebrows raised in innocent surprise, was a model of reasonableness.

  ‘Professionally. She’ll know about his professional movements and the people he met in the course of business. Nothing more than that.’

  ‘Did I suggest anything more than that, Mr Thompson? Business colleagues and rivals are bound to come within the scope of our investigation, and the more we can learn about them the better. Or are you suggesting that this may be what our beloved press love to categorize as a crime of passion?’

  ‘No!’ Again the word rang out a little too loud and too quickly. As if he too understood that, Thompson said, ‘I’m not suggesting anything, am I? I told you, I hardly knew the man.’

  ‘Good position to be in, that, Mr Thompson, when we’re talking about a murder victim. But then, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if we find the person who did this adopting exactly the same pose.’ He shut the file in front of him, looked interrogatively at DS Blake, then said with apparent reluctance, ‘Well, that’s it, for the moment, then. Thank you for coming in here to help us, Mr Thompson. Your assistance is much appreciated.’ Jason was halfway home in the car before he could put his finger on what was worrying him about an exchange in which he thought he had held his own. It was that simple phrase of Peach’s: ‘for the moment’.

  * * *

  It was several hours later, in the comfortable warmth of the living room in her small modem flat, that Lucy Blake said, ‘He was holding something back, I’m sure, that Jason Thompson.’

  ‘They all hold something back,’ said Percy Peach with the cynical assurance of the long-time CID officer. Twenty-four hours later than he had planned, he stretched his legs and lounged a little further back on the sofa, contemplating the gleaming brown toes of his leather shoes and wondering if this was the moment to slip them off.