by J M Gregson
She had gathered confidence as her explanation developed. They had assured her she was speaking in confidence, so she would make sure that they checked out the man and his claims. She had rather liked the little she had seen of Ballack this morning, but he might have all sorts of skeletons in the cupboard which she could not know about and was in no position to investigate. And he had a better motive for murder than anyone else around, hadn't he?
Clare extracted Matthew Ballack’s details from her files and gave them to Detective Chief Inspector Peach, who received them with a poker face and gave her no clue as to how important he considered this contribution.
Then he said without preamble, ‘What time did you leave the Gisbum Hotel on Friday night?’
She thought back to what Jason had told her: she had quizzed him carefully after he had returned from Brunton police station and his interview with this man. ‘Around midnight. I couldn’t be sure of the exact time.’
‘After your husband, then.’
‘I believe he’s already told you that.’
Peach gave her a wry, unembarrassed smile. ‘Husbands and wives don't always agree. Some of our most significant breakthroughs come from marital discrepancies, Mrs Thompson.’ The man had a disconcerting ability to give you the impression that he knew more than he possibly could, that he knew all about the difficult weekend she had endured with Jason. Clare said firmly, ‘Although it was an informal occasion, I was still conscious that I was Mr Hayes’s personal assistant. I thought it was my duty to stay at his side, or at least to remain available, until I was unofficially dismissed.’
‘Which was at around midnight.’
‘Yes. I decided for myself that I was no longer necessary and drove myself home then. As I said, I couldn’t be precise to a few minutes.’
Just when she had grown used to her duel with this aggressive, observant man, the female presence she had almost forgotten spoke up. ‘Is there anyone who can confirm this departure for us?’
She realized that the younger woman had been making notes on her replies. ‘There were one or two other people around, but no one I can instantly recall. It was cold in the car park and there was frost on the windscreens. I think we were all preoccupied with getting visibility from behind the wheel and then getting away as quickly and as safely as we could. There was a little shouting and laughter: I’m sure there were people around who’d drunk a lot more than I had. But they weren’t necessarily driving, of course.’
‘You didn’t see anyone hanging around in the hotel, perhaps waiting for Mr Hayes to leave?’
‘No. I suppose anyone planning murder would be careful to conceal himself from casual observation.’
‘Or herself, Mrs Thompson. You were sitting on Mr Hayes’s table. Did you see or hear anyone behaving suspiciously during the evening? In the light of what we now know happened later, I mean.’
‘No. I’ve thought about it, of course, over the weekend. But I can’t remember anything. I was on the table, but several places away from Mr Hayes. I could not at any time hear his conversations, but I didn’t see any arguments or any sign of anyone losing his temper. Mr Hayes has always been a good speaker on these occasions, but I’ve seen him speak before, so I think I might have detected any sign of his being disturbed. He delivered what he wanted to say very effectively, and he seemed to me quite unruffled.’
Peach took his departure as abruptly as he had done everything else, like a man who could scarcely contain his energy. ‘You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Thompson. You may well have further thoughts on this crime, even in the hectic days which undoubtedly lie ahead of you. Please let us know of them.’
He was almost out of the room before the woman with the striking chestnut hair had gathered her belongings. He left Clare Thompson with the uncomfortable feeling that she hadn’t seen the last of DCI Peach.
Chapter Eighteen
March hadn’t come in like a lion at all. There had been no gales, no wild winds bringing down trees in the Ribble Valley and funnelling down the narrow old streets of Brunton to make the residents scurry for their homes. The month had so far been as unthreatening as the small creatures struggling uncertainly to their feet beside the ewes on the fresh green grass of the valley farms.
Tuesday the sixth dawned as mild as its March predecessors. There was no frost, but also no sun. The cloud was low over the old cotton town and a thin drizzle drifted steadily across the slates of the low terraces and the tiles of the newer suburbs. A grey, depressing morning, thought Percy Peach, as he climbed the stairs to the top floor of the new police station. He paused for a moment to gaze out over town and country and gather his thoughts. An appropriate morning to report to Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Bloody Tucker.
He found Tucker in his brisk directorial mode. ‘I’ve been holding off queries from all sides about the death of Timothy Hayes, Peach.’
‘One of your strengths, that, sir.’
‘I can’t do so indefinitely. This is a high-profile crime, Peach.’
‘Yes, sir. With many high-profile people among the suspects. We’ve been treading carefully, as you advised.’ They had been treading exactly as normal, but there was no reason why this fool should know that.
‘You must proceed very carefully indeed. You must also make an arrest very quickly.’ Tucker apparently saw no contradiction in these two injunctions. He jutted his jaw in Churchillian mode, wishing fleetingly that he could adopt the boiler suit favoured by the great man in his wartime bunker. ‘I shall be keeping an overview of the situation.
‘We’ve cleared a few people of suspicion already, sir.’
‘Peach, I’m not interested in whom you’ve cleared. What I want to hear from you is that—'
‘I’m happy to be able to tell you, sir, in confidence of course, that you and Mrs Tucker have been eliminated from the investigation. As suspects, that is - the team will of course welcome your input as our leader.’
Tucker bristled dangerously, a reaction which Percy always studied with interest. ‘I warned you last time we spoke about this ridiculous charade of pretending that I was a suspect.’
‘You also told me that I must treat everyone present at that dinner as a suspect, sir. The high and the low alike. Anyway, fear not, sir. Your tale tallies with that of Mrs Tucker, sir. It now appears that you drove away from the scene of the crime approximately one hour before murder was committed. We don’t like husband-wife alibis any more than any other police division in the country, but I’m happy to say that on this occasion we are convinced. Perhaps you would convey that to your good lady, sir. I’m sure it will be a relief to her to hear it.’
Tucker glowered at his DCI. He did a good glower, Percy had to admit: credit where credit was due. 'Peach, you need to come up with a result here. Mr Hayes was an important and highly respectable businessman.’
‘He was a crook, sir.’ Percy paused for a moment to savour his chief’s outrage. ‘And he used some pretty devious characters to further his criminal activities. Present company of course excepted, sir.’
‘You had better be able to substantiate these claims.’ Tucker’s voice was heavy with menace, he hoped.
‘Indeed, sir. You are not in any way implicated yourself. That goes without saying.’
‘Except that you managed to say it. What is it that you’re accusing Tim Hayes of?’
‘Pimping. Drug-dealing. Protection rackets. Assault. Intimidation.’
‘I cannot believe that a man like Tim Hayes would have soiled his hands with things like this.’
‘Not personally, sir. He employed other people to do his dirty work. He kept himself at what he thought was a safe distance.’ Percy paused, as if seeking a phrase. Then his round face brightened with inspiration. ‘I suppose you could say he kept an overview of the situation, sir.’
Tucker glowered again. It really was quite impressive. ‘Where does this information come from?’
Peach gave him a knowing look and tapped the side of his nose. �
��Unimpeachable source, sir.’
‘A snout, you mean.’
‘An unimpeachable snout, sir. Or as I suppose you might say in my case, a ‘Teachable snout”! Being as he works exclusively for me, you see.’ Percy cackled delightedly for a moment.
It was a rare sound, one which would have filled the Brunton criminal fraternity with terror and which now serrated the nerves of Thomas Bulstrode Tucker. Catching the thunder in his master’s visage, Percy resumed hastily, ‘To be accurate, a snout who has never given me false information.’
‘You seem to positively enjoy dealing with the scum of this world.’
A comment sprang immediately into Peach’s active mind, but he did not voice it. Instead, he said with apparent concern, ‘I’m sorry that Mr Hayes isn’t all he seemed to you, sir. Especially as he was a member of your Lodge.’
‘The Lodge is quite irrelevant, Peach. And please don’t embark on the subject of your research into connections between crime and Freemasonry.’
‘No intention of doing that, sir. No time for research at the moment. Know a man called Matthew Ballack, sir?’
Tucker peered at him suspiciously, wondering what trap was being set here. ‘No, I don’t think I do. Are you about to arrest him for this murder?’
Percy cackled again, suddenly and unexpectedly, rattling the empty teacup in its saucer upon Tucker’s desk, causing the man behind it to leap with shock. ‘Good to see you still have your impish sense of humour, sir. We’re in no position to arrest Mr Ballack, sir.’ A thought appeared to strike him and he leant his bald head and his small, perfectly formed ear towards his chief. ‘Unless you know something we don’t, sir. Unless you’ve been quietly beavering away at the case whilst we plodders have been finding ourselves dead ends.’
Tucker sighed a heavy, hopeless sigh. ‘Who is Matthew Ballack?’
‘Partner of the deceased, sir. I thought you might have chatted to him at the dinner on Friday night. Formed an impression, perhaps.’
‘I didn’t. I’ve never even met the man. Wouldn’t even recognize him if he walked through that door.’
Peach regarded the door in question as if it might at any moment spring open to admit this mysterious person from Porlock. When it remained firmly shut, he turned back to his chief and said, ‘Pity, that, sir. Partners are always of interest, in situations like this. This one has been almost invisible for some years, and has now surfaced to claim control of the firm. It would have been useful if you’d talked to him a little on Friday night and been able to give us your assessment of the man.’
He shook his head sadly and contrived to make this innocent omission of Tucker’s sound like a major career blemish. The head of Brunton CID found himself searching frantically for a way to assert his pre-eminence. ‘Tim Hayes had a wife, you know.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You should pay close attention to wives. Wives are always leading suspects in a murder case.’
Having delivered this pearl of wisdom, Tucker sat back and nodded sagely. Peach eventually said, ‘That had occurred to us, sir. The lady has already been interviewed.’
‘And how did she seem to you?’
‘A little abstracted, sir. Not quite with it.’
‘There you are, you see. Evasive!’ Tucker was triumphant. ‘You mark my word, wives are always suspect.’
Peach wondered whether to investigate this latest misogyny or to suggest that Tucker in his marital views might be projecting from the particular, in the formidable shape of Brünnhilde Barbara, to the general. With admirable self-control, he said merely, ‘Mrs Hayes did not seem exactly devastated by this death, sir. But grief takes people in different ways. I am planning to see her again when the team has gathered more information from other sources.’
‘Do that, Peach.’ Tucker gestured with a sweep of his right arm towards the world outside his office. ‘And it’s high time you got on with interviewing this partner chap.’
‘Matthew Ballack, sir. In view of the fact that he seems to be emerging as a prominent industrialist, you wouldn’t like to undertake this interview yourself?’
‘No, no! You know it is not my policy to interfere with my staff. And it might seem like overkill to this Mr Ballack if he was interviewed by the head of CID himself.’
‘I’m sure he would find it a most intimidating experience, sir.’ Always leave the lazy bugger wondering quite what you had meant, thought Percy Peach as he went back down the stairs. He noticed that it had stopped raining.
* * *
It was almost a relief to Matthew Ballack when the call came through to him from Brunton CID. He had been expecting it since Saturday morning, and the tension had built in him over three days. But the delay had served a useful purpose. It had given him time to assert his position at Hayes Electronics, to move into the vacuum created by his partner’s death.
It seemed to have gone smoothly so far. Hayes’s personal assistant, whilst not empowered to make policy decisions or to oppose Matthew’s takeover, could have caused him a lot of trouble. Anyone with her knowledge and information about the day-to-day operation of the firm could cause trouble, particularly when he himself knew so little about the detail of the way things had run in the last few years. She could make life very difficult if she chose. But so far she hadn’t done that: he would describe her attitude so far as cautiously cooperative, which was fair enough.
Clare Thompson certainly seemed efficient, and he could not detect in her the kind of loyalty to a departed employer which sometimes made things difficult for the new man. The acid test had come early, when he had moved into Hayes’s office; he had been prepared for a little resentment, but she had shown none. If he could win her allegiance, he had already learned enough about her efficiency to realize that she would be a valuable ally in the months to come. She had so far given no indication that she would not accept the offer to become his PA. In due course, but not so early that it might seem like a weakness, he would give her a rise in salary.
He inspected the office, swinging himself around in the big swivel chair behind the leather-topped desk, looking at the Lakeland scenes and the prints of Modigliani and Magritte upon the walls. Pretentious sod, Tim Hayes! He might introduce some large Beryl Cook prints, bring a bit of humour and relaxation into the place, when he had settled in. But there was no need to hurry about things like that. Change would be gradual, as he divested the firm of its more questionable activities and set about regenerating the traditional ones.
On this, his second day in the director’s room, he was already beginning to feel at home. He told the impersonal voice at Brunton CID that he would receive the senior officer who was conducting the enquiry here at eleven o’clock. It was a much grander setting than his run-down flat. He must think about moving to a different and more appropriate home, when he had the time.
Matthew had half-hoped to be interviewed by that Chief Superintendent Tucker he had observed at the table next to his on Friday night. From what little he had seen and heard there, the man had seemed an affable, unthreatening cove who might give him an easy ride. But he knew enough about police procedures to know that the senior officer in charge of an inquiry rarely moved away from his desk these days.
The man who actually came into his office at precisely eleven o’clock this morning was a different man entirely: a stocky, powerful, bald-headed man with a black fringe of hair and a small black moustache, whose dark eyes seemed to dart everywhere and see everything before they eventually fixed on the visage of Matthew Ballack and stayed there.
He announced himself as Detective Chief Inspector Peach and introduced the young and attractive woman beside him as Detective Sergeant Blake. ‘Just moved in here, have you, Mr Ballack?’ The quick survey the man had given the room seemed to have already established in his mind that this office was all Hayes, no Ballack.
Matthew said briskly, ‘Yes. After Friday night’s tragedy, someone had to take control of the ship. I was as shaken as everyone else, but the only a
ppropriate person to move in here was the surviving partner.’
‘Been a partner for a long time, have you, sir?’
‘Since the very early days. We began all this together twenty- four years ago. It’s all quite legal. I’ve checked it out.’
‘Not our business, that. Unless of course it was a motive for murder.’
The DCI spoke breezily, and Matthew responded with a grin, to emphasize that he didn’t resent the joke. He felt rather foolish when he realized that Peach was perfectly serious. ‘I can assure you it would never have been that. Tim and I had our minor differences over the years, but—’
‘When did you have the partnership checked out, sir?’
‘What? Oh, a few weeks ago, I suppose. I couldn’t be precise.’
‘Interesting timing, that. In view of what happened on Friday night.’
‘I suppose it is. I hadn’t really thought about that. It was just a routine enquiry, in view of the fact that the partnership agreement dated back so far and was so rudimentary. I wanted to assure myself that it still held.’
‘I see. Was Mr Hayes aware of this routine enquiry of yours?’
Matthew thought furiously. He couldn’t see how this one could be checked out. ‘Yes, he was. We didn’t have many secrets from each other, Tim and I.’
‘Really. So this routine enquiry was a mutual one, was it, conducted through the firm’s solicitors?’
Suddenly, Matthew was trying not to panic. He could scarcely believe that one small mistake, his nervous and needless assertion that the partnership was legal, had landed him in so much trouble. ‘No. I made an independent enquiry.’ He wanted to say he’d used his old family lawyers and asked for informal advice, but if they traced this down, that elderly legal gent in Bolton would tell them that he had been referred by the Citizens’ Advice Bureau. ‘It seemed best to have an independent opinion, you see. Tim was aware of what I was doing.’