[Inspector Peach 13] - Wild Justice

by J M Gregson

  ‘Which you duly accomplished last Friday night.’ Peach’s voice was quiet, resigned, that of a therapist encouraging full confession as a prelude to reform.

  ‘No. No, I didn’t kill Hayes.’ Matthew couldn’t get the vehemence he wanted into the denial. He felt the rising apprehension in his voice. ‘I don’t say I didn’t want him dead, I don’t even deny that I thought about killing him after I’d checked out our contract. But it was a delicious dream, nothing more than that. I found when it came to it that I wasn’t cut out for murder.’ He said it with an acid note of self-disgust, as if he was recognizing not a virtue but yet another failing in himself.

  Clyde Northcott’s deep voice said quietly, ‘If you killed him, it would be much better for you to tell us here and now, Mr Ballack.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him. Someone else did me a favour: I don’t know who.’ Ballack spoke with the defeated, exhausted air of a man who did not expect to be believed.

  Peach said, ‘Tell us again about your movements after eleven o’clock last Friday night, please.’

  ‘I told you this on Tuesday. Your DS Blake made a note of it.’

  ‘So tell us again.’

  Matthew knew now that they were trying to trip him up, to make him contradict himself in his account of the events of that fateful night. He said with wooden concentration, ‘The majority of people left after the speeches were over. I ordered a bitter lemon and stayed for a while, thinking about the events of the evening, about the situation within the firm. It was probably half past eleven or a little later when I left, but I can’t be sure of the exact time. I drove straight back here. I didn’t go to bed immediately, because I knew I wouldn't sleep. But I didn’t go out again. There are no witnesses to that: I slept alone, as I normally do.’ There was again that searing flash of self-contempt in his last phrase.

  Peach spoke like a man reluctant to abandon an argument he knew he must win. ‘You are the man who has gained most by this death, Mr Ballack.’

  ‘I know that. I plan to take full advantage of it. I have my firm back and a job to do.’ He smiled wryly at this small, belated touch of defiance.

  ‘I trust you will be allowed to do that. We too have a job to do, Mr Ballack. We shall find the person who killed Timothy Hayes. Murder must be pursued, whoever is the victim and whatever are the consequences. Goodbye for the present.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It’s Friday, Peach.’ Chief Superintendent Tucker tapped his fingers ominously upon his large, empty desk.

  ‘Yes, sir. I had noticed. It was on the news at seven o’clock this morning.’

  ‘This is no time for insolence! I am here to remind you that it will be a week today since the murder of Timothy Hayes - a much maligned man, in my opinion. Are you aware that serious crimes which are not solved within the first seven days are often not solved at all?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I am. I seem to recall you quoting that statistic to me on other occasions.’ Percy reflected that his chief’s talent for the blindin’ bleedin’ obvious seemed to have been honed rather than blunted by the passing years.

  Tucker jutted his chin and went into Churchillian mode. ‘Zero hour is approaching. Peach. If you do not make an arrest today, your chances of making one at all will be minimal.’

  Both the philosophy and the statistics of this were debatable. But Tucker was an expert in neither of these disciplines. Peach contented himself with observing, ‘We are certain now that Hayes was killed after midnight. That would make his death Saturday morning and give us another day on your theory.’

  It was difficult to bollock a man who refused to grovel, who refused to observe the deference normally accorded to rank in the police service. Logic was no more a strength of Tucker’s than philosophy or statistics, so he now said with a breathtaking arrogance, ‘You should abandon this preoccupation with timescales and get on with your job of detection. Peach. You’ve already sent me into a television interview deplorably ill-equipped with information.’

  ‘On the contrary, sir, I warned you that it was not the moment to call in the media. If you wish me to brief the chief constable on the facts of matter, I shall be able to do so as soon as the case is concluded.’

  Tucker decided reluctantly to abandon the bollocking which would have enlivened a cloudy Brunton Friday morning. He was Churchill in his boiler suit as he leaned forward and said sternly, ‘You had better give me a full briefing on the present state of your investigation. No flummery and no evasions, please.’

  ‘Certainly, sir. Well, the first thing to note is that your friend Timothy Hayes has emerged as a thorough-going villain.’ Percy nodded his satisfaction several times. ‘The Brotherhood of Freemasonry seems to have a habit of producing undesirables in this area, wouldn’t you say, sir?’

  Tucker bristled visibly, a phenomenon which was always of interest to Percy. He glowered and warned, ‘You must guard against this phobia of yours. Peach. Would you please now tell me the present state of your investigation?’

  ‘Certainly, sir. And in turn you will no doubt give me your invaluable oversight. There is a wife - as admittedly there often is in these things. But a wife unlike any other in my now quite extensive experience. She makes no secret of her hatred of her husband, which seems to have amounted to an obsession. She’s now admitted to us that she enjoyed dressing up in black from head to toe and playing the grieving widow. She’s even told us that she had been considering how she might kill her husband in the weeks before his death. She maintains that someone else robbed her of that pleasure and that she hopes he or she escapes justice. She seems to be cocooned in a world of her own, where she doesn’t seem at all affected by being a murder suspect.’ Peach felt some of his own frustration coming out in this lengthy account of Tamsin Hayes.

  ‘You should beware of the wife, Peach. Do not lightly dismiss her from your consideration for this crime.’

  ‘A trenchant observation, sir. I shall bear it in mind. There is also a mistress.’

  ‘Aaah! ’ Tucker tried to mitigate the banality of his eager monosyllable by nodding sagely several times. ‘Cherchez les femmes, eh. Peach?’

  ‘I believe that Gallic viewpoint still has its followers, sir, even in these times of sexual equality. The interesting thing in this case is that Clare Thompson had been ruthlessly jettisoned by Hayes shortly before his death.’

  ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Peach! ’ Tucker delivered this triumphantly original view like a conjuror producing a white rabbit.

  ‘Indeed, sir? I believe the correct quotation is “Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned”. I had occasion to check it out with my fiancée, sir. Which incidentally is another subject I need to—’

  ‘Keep to the point. Peach, and don’t try to obscure the matter and fob me off with quotations. Did this harpy kill Tim Hayes?’

  ‘May have done, sir. She also has a husband. Jason Thompson. Rather odd-looking bod with unruly red hair and thick-lensed glasses, sir.’

  ‘Crippen wore glasses. Peach.’

  ‘Did he really, sir? Also had a black moustache and a short fuse, I believe.’ He stroked his own very black moustache reflectively for a moment. 'Jason Thompson is very highly sexed, according to DS Blake, sir.’

  ‘Has the man assaulted her, Peach? If there has been any interference with one of my officers, I shall—’

  ‘Very gallant, I’m sure sir. I shall convey your chivalric sentiments to DS Blake, sir. Like you, I find this difficult to believe, but it is apparently possible to be highly sexed without leaping astride DS Blake at the earliest opportunity.’

  Tucker goggled at his DCI, another regular occurrence which never lost its fascination for Percy. ‘This man sounds very odd to me, Peach. You should give him close attention.’

  ‘Another of your insights, sir. Unfortunately oddness is not currently an arrestable offence, but I shall bear it in mind. DS Blake thinks that Mr Thompson’s very active libido is entirely directed towards one particular woman, sir. He
appears to be very uxorious, sir.’

  Tucker assumed what Percy called his low-IQ goldfish look again and Peach took pity upon him. ‘He is very devoted to his wife sir. Like yourself, in fact.’

  Tucker passed rapidly from incomprehension to suspicion. ‘Has it occurred to you that this man Thompson might have learned of his wife’s infidelity. Peach?’

  ‘Not only occurred but been followed up, sir. Jason Thompson has admitted returning to the Gisburn Hotel on Friday night after originally leaving for home at around eleven. He wanted to see whether Clare was up to any hanky-panky with Hayes, he says. But he denies killing him.’

  ‘He would, you know. Peach! In the absence of any other suspects, I have to tell you that it is my opinion that—’

  ‘No absence of other suspects, sir. Three more, I’m afraid. Not that we’ve closed our minds to others beyond them, of course. In accordance with your instructions.’ He beamed with the irritating happiness which rectitude invariably brings to the righteous.

  Tucker exhaled heavily. ‘You have a habit of bringing unnecessary complexity into these investigations. I suppose I had better assist you to clarify your mind.’

  ‘A consummation devoutly to be wished, sir. There’s another woman, sir.’

  A sigh which was this time positively theatrical. ‘I thought there might be.’

  ‘Did you indeed, sir? Your insights are quite disturbing, at times. This one is scarcely more than a girl, to experienced men like us. She’s a croupier at the new Brunton Casino.’

  ‘A hard-faced little bitch, no doubt, if she works in a place like that.’

  Peach, despite a wealth of previous experience, was astonished anew by his chief’s ability to prejudge an issue. ‘Rather a nice girl, I would say, sir. Very intelligent and very pretty, but still with a touching naivety at nineteen. She’s come up the hard way, with a single-parent background and not much money around.’ He decided not to feed Tucker’s prejudice by telling him about Jane Martin’s brush with the law at sixteen.

  ‘So how does this nauseating little saint become a murder suspect?’

  ‘By being a date-rape victim, sir. Your Mr Hayes appears to have given her what we think was Rohypnol and had his evil way with her. Took her to his flat and dallied with her there. I’m afraid.’

  ‘He’s not my Mr Hayes, Peach! I never liked the man, from what little I saw of him.’

  ‘Indeed, sir? Well, Miss Jane Martin felt quite murderous after this incident. She also has a boyfriend, sir. Boy by the name of Leroy Moore.’

  ‘This is the black man from Moss Side you mentioned to me earlier in the week.’ Tucker nodded happily at his mastery of key facts.

  ‘This is indeed the man, sir. Moore has killed before, sir.’

  ‘There you are, then. What on earth are you waiting for?’

  ‘Evidence to warrant an arrest, sir. Even being black and having a previous record are not grounds for a murder charge, in these restrictive days.’

  ‘Then go out and get that evidence.’

  ‘Nothing tangible, as yet, sir. He has been doing some pretty dodgy work for Timothy Hayes, in the last year or two. Beating and intimidation, for a start. But as yet we’ve found nothing which would hang a murder charge round his neck.’

  ‘You said Hayes raped his girlfriend. Wouldn’t that be enough to make a violent man take his revenge?’

  ‘Motive, sir, not evidence. Moore had means, motive and opportunity.’

  ‘Then get out there and find something to make it stick, Peach! Do I have to do everything for you?’

  Percy bit back his first reply and said through thin lips, ‘Your views are always of interest, sir. I shall relay your inclination to get out there and put yourself on the line to the lads and lasses downstairs. I’m sure they’ll be chastened by the prospect.’

  Tucker took a deep breath and said with immense dignity, ‘I shall not interfere. It is not my policy to interfere, Peach, however incompetent my officers may demonstrate themselves to be. I think you have now wasted quite enough of my time.’

  ‘You don't wish to hear about the person who has gained most of all by this death? Very well, sir. I am impressed as ever by your insouciance.’

  Tucker gave the sigh of a grieving hippopotamus and said heavily, ‘Who is this latest candidate, Peach?’

  ‘Matthew James Ballack, sir. Divorcee of this parish and partner of the deceased. A man who had occasion to check out what happened to the firm in the event of the death of Hayes only two weeks before that event took place.’

  Tucker leaned forward, steepled his fingers and pursed the chief-superintendental lips. ‘Suspicious, that, you know.’

  ‘I do sir, yes. You taught me a long time ago to look out for things like this.’

  Tucker was as usual impervious to irony. ‘I think you should give this man your full attention.’ Then a thought struck him and he said apprehensively, ‘You’re not going to tell me he’s a Mason, are you?’

  ‘Afraid not, sir. That could have been a clincher, couldn’t it? But he’s still a prime suspect, in my view. On his own admission, he hated Hayes, though they’d started the firm together twenty-odd years ago. Ballack had a gambling problem and went downhill rapidly five or six years ago. Lost both his marriage and his standing and influence in the firm. He was in charge of brothels and on his way out at the time of Hayes’s death - he reckoned this latest post was a deliberate humiliation and I’m sure he’s right about that. He’s now emerged from the shadows as the surviving partner and taken sole charge of what is still a private firm.’

  ‘This looks like it, to me, Peach.’ The well-groomed head nodded its satisfaction at its owner’s acuity.

  ‘Really, sir? Ballack says he left the Gisbum Hotel at about half past eleven but he has no witnesses to that. He says he now plans to clean up the firm and divest it of its more unsavoury activities. For what it’s worth, I believe he is serious in that; it doesn’t of course take him out of the frame for murder.’

  ‘It doesn't indeed. I’m glad you realize that, Peach.’

  ‘One can’t serve at the altar of detection with an archbishop without picking up a few things, sir.’

  Tucker did not follow this at all - metaphors always confused him - but he gave his DCI a token hostile glare to be on the safe side. ‘I don’t think you should now be sitting here bandying words with me, Peach. You should be out there bringing in this man Ballack.’ The archbishop of detection nodded his anointed head several times.

  ‘You think the black man didn’t do it after all, sir?’

  ‘What? Oh, look here, you’ve just told me that this man Ballack has almost confessed to the crime, haven’t you?’

  ‘Well, at any rate, you think the wife and the mistress and the mistress’s husband and the girl he raped are all in the clear.’ Peach numbered them off on the four fingers of his left hand. ‘You’ve certainly narrowed down the field for me with your overview, sir. This has been a most valuable—’

  ‘Peach, just get out there and get this thing solved, will you? You’re the man in touch with the case, the man I trust implicitly to see it through.’

  ‘Implicitly, sir? This is really most touching. It fills me with confidence. I feel we shall have an arrest very soon now. Possibly today. To keep it within your mystic seven days, sir.’

  * * *

  Friday night, and the weekend stretching ahead of them. A month ago, when he had known nothing of Clare’s affair with Tim Hayes, Jason Thompson had enjoyed this time, with no teaching on the morrow and two whole days with Clare stretching deliciously ahead of him.

  Now he found himself searching for things to say, as he might have done with a stranger. ‘The hour will go forward in three weeks. It will really feel like spring then.’

  Clare looked at the clock on the mantelpiece above the wood- burning stove and spoke as if she had not heard him. ‘This time last week you were driving to the Gisburn Hotel. This time last week none of it had happened.’

&nb
sp; Jason wanted to say that yes it had, that the important thing, the thing which had burned his soul, had come long before that. He wanted to say that the death of Tim Hayes was an irrelevance, a fitting end for the man who had taken the dearest thing in his life away from him. He wanted to take Clare into his arms, to press his lips hard against hers to stop her talking about the instrument of his suffering. Of their suffering. Instead, he stared at the steady, tiny flame behind the window of the stove and said dully, ‘We need to put this behind us, Clare.’

  ‘Easier said than done, isn’t it? But you’re right, of course.’ She made a huge effort, threw herself beside him on the sofa and took his hand. ‘Of course you’re right, love. You’ve always been my rock. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Not much of a rock.’ Now, when he least wanted them, the images of her limbs entwining with those of Hayes came back to him more vividly than ever before and he could not put his arms around her, as he had so wanted to do an instant earlier.

  She squeezed his hand and held it against her thigh. ‘And I hope you’ll still be my rock in the future.’

  He wanted her, yearned for her, wanted to start all over again with the familiar, loved body. Yet he wondered if this was how it had started with Hayes, if she and not he had taken the sexual initiative. Jason found that he could produce nothing from himself, could only echo her sentiments. ‘I want that as well.’

  ‘Then everything will be all right.’ She tried to infuse enough confidence for both of them into the words.

  It was at that moment that the doorbell rang insistently, sounding like a knell in both their ears, fracturing the intimacy which had been in embryo between them.