Least of Evils

by J M Gregson

  When Lucy returned with the tea, Percy had been persuaded to accept a second slice of fruit cake and the pair were dissecting England’s Ashes triumph in Australia. She proposed an adjournment to the sitting room with their teacups, in the vague and totally mistaken belief that the pair might be easier to control from there.

  The technicalities of batsmanship in the five-day game and the one-day game occupied them for some time and excluded her from the conversation. Lucy gazed fondly at the silver-framed photographs in pride of place upon the mantelpiece. The left-hand one showed her dead father in black and white, leaving the field after a notable bowling performance in the Northern League. The right-hand one was in colour and more recent. It showed Percy looking dapper, his red cap a little on one side and a smile of pure pleasure upon his face as he mounted the pavilion steps. Her mother’s careful black print below announced that this was ‘D.C.S. Peach, leaving the field after another attractive Lancashire League half-century for East Lancs.’

  Perhaps her mother caught the direction of her glance, for she reiterated a familiar theme. ‘You gave up cricket far too early, Percy. I blame our Lucy for that.’

  ‘He’d retired before I ever met him!’ Lucy protested with renewed indignation.

  ‘Only just! You could have talked him out of it, at that stage.’

  ‘That’s true, I suppose,’ Percy pronounced magisterially. ‘I was just putty in your hands, Lucy. A slave of your every whim.’ He widened his eyes into a schoolboy’s helpless erotic stare and trained them upon the ceiling.

  ‘You’ve never been helpless in your life, Percy Peach. You gave up because you bloody well wanted to!’

  ‘Language, our Lucy! Not in front of the mother who bore you and bred you and baked for you, please! I’m sorry, Mrs B. It must be some of the people she mixes with at work. And the criminals aren’t much better, these days.’

  Agnes giggled and rocked herself to and fro on the sofa in front of the open fire, delighted by the idea that a one-time mill girl and a woman who still did a part-time stint in the supermarket could be shocked by a simple ‘bloody’.

  Lucy tried desperately to shake the pair’s mutual delight in her discomfort. ‘Anyway, golf’s his game now, Mum. He’s doing very well at it, I’m told. I’m thinking of taking it up myself.’

  ‘GOLF!’ Agnes forced many years of derision into that single upper-case syllable. ‘Wash your mouth out, girl. Not a sport at all, that. Don’t you dare compare it with cricket!’

  ‘It’s not like the old days, Mum. The top golfers have to be athletes now, like other sportsmen. Tiger Woods is an athlete.’

  As soon as the words were out, she knew she had chosen the wrong example. But there was no chance to arrest the derision flooding into every well-loved wrinkle of her mother’s face. ‘Don’t give me Tiger Woods, young lady. That’s golf for you. He’s so bored with the game that he has to jump into bed with every young floozie that offers. Goes round paying for it! I ask you.’

  ‘Makes it worse, does it, paying for it?’

  ‘You can’t play cricket for ever,’ Peach said hastily. His traditional values told him that a discussion of the precise moral differences between a sportsman paying for sex and leaping gratefully into the many beds which were freely offered would be interesting, but scarcely seemly between mother and daughter. ‘There’s nothing worse than seeing your scores decline and hearing people mutter when you go that it should have been two years earlier. Golf isn’t the game that cricket is, never will be, because it’s much more selfish.’ He noted with relief a certain softening in the grim visage of Agnes Blake. ‘But it’s a new challenge to take up.’

  ‘Is that what I was? A new challenge?’ said Lucy, who was still tuned for aggression.

  ‘Well, golf leads you to explore some interesting places,’ said Percy thoughtfully. ‘It’s like you in that respect. And it calls for constant physical ingenuity and invention.’

  ‘HUH!’ Another upper-case monosyllable of supreme contempt from Agnes. She plainly had a talent for this verbal compression, and the outburst banished the subject of golf as comprehensively as her greeting had blackened it.

  Lucy looked fiercely at Percy, but found no help there. After a few seconds of heavy silence, she said desperately, ‘How’s the vicar getting along, Mum?’

  The young clergyman who had married them in the old village church was a nice man, she thought. He was underpaid, like most of his calling, and suffering from a religion riven with conflict over women bishops. He had also taken on a picturesque fifteenth-century church which was a perpetual drain on finances. He was in favour of women priests and could see no logical reason why they should not in due course become bishops, but suffered from the fact that most of his parishioners were ageing, conservative and much inclined to the old ways. If they saw their vicar as dangerously advanced in his ideas, they would be less inclined to fund the new roof which was urgently needed.

  ‘He’s doing all right, is Reverend Davies. He’s managed to get one or two of the young families in, to replace us old folks.’

  Agnes looked hopefully at Lucy, who said hastily, ‘That’s good. And I heard in the village that one of your benefactors is a member of Percy’s golf club. So it can’t be all bad, can it?’

  It was a nice bit of golf propaganda, so welcome to her that the words were out before she could suppress the thought. Agnes said, ‘The man who’s paying for the bell to be recast? He’s never a golfer, is he?’

  ‘Oliver Ketley? He is, you know. Percy said he was there when he was in the club last Saturday. So golf can’t be all bad, can it?’

  ‘Four thousand, he’s paying. And him not even a believer! But a church is part of the community, he says, and he wants to pay for the cracked bell to be recast to support our village.’

  ‘You might not be so happy if you knew where that money came from, Mrs B.’ Percy Peach, who had been settling down for a doze in the warm, low-ceilinged room, was suddenly deadly serious.

  ‘Is he a wrong’un then, Percy?’ Agnes, who had been looking forward to hearing the peal of bells restored to the old church, was abruptly cast down.

  ‘He’s a bad ’un, Mrs B. You can take my word for that. As bad as they come, in my view. But don’t you go around saying that, because he’s a clever bad ’un. We can’t pin him down, so that as far as the law’s concerned he’s a blameless man as well as a very rich one. And he who sups with the devil needs a long spoon, as your vicar well knows. But you take his money, same as the captain of the golf club took a couple of thousand quid for his chosen charity last week. Better it’s used for things like that than some of the things Ketley spends it on. Just don’t have anything to do with him personally, that’s all.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ll need to do that. He just sat down and wrote out a cheque, the vicar said. Isn’t he the man who’s done all that new building at Thorley Grange?’

  ‘Yes. He’s installed himself there now. He’s busy playing the lord of the manor and trying to win a reputation as a major local philanthropist.’

  Agnes Blake, who had lost ten years when she was so delighted by Percy’s earlier banter, seemed suddenly a frail old lady. Her face was lined and troubled as she said, ‘Perhaps we shouldn’t be taking his money after all.’

  Lucy glanced at Percy. ‘You take it, Mum. Percy’s right, it’s better spent on a cracked bell in an old village church than on other things he might choose. But don’t say anything about Ketley. In due course, it will probably come out that he’s a villain. They usually get too bold and go too far in the end. In the meantime, don’t venture an opinion.’

  Agnes looked very disappointed. ‘That might be difficult, when some of the daft creatures in the village are singing his praises.’ Then she was suddenly fearful. ‘He won’t come round here, will he?’

  The old lady looked very small and frail in her favourite armchair. Lucy reached across and took her hand. ‘No, he won’t come round here, Mum. He’s not that sort of villai
n.’

  They talked about other things then, and she watched the colour and animation come gradually back into her mother’s face. Percy cheered her, as he always could, with talk of cricket and then anecdotes of the more trivial and comic episodes in the task of policing the nation.

  Percy thought of Agnes when they were driving back to Brunton. Would doubts about her safety surface again when she was left alone in her cottage, with the night closing dark and cold around her? He watched a hungry winter fox scurry across the road in his headlights, then said, ‘I’m sorry I told your mum about Ketley. Much better if she just thought of him as a local benefactor, but I spoke before I thought.’

  She was silent for so long that he thought he was not going to be forgiven. But then she moved a little closer to him in her seat and said softly, ‘It was me who introduced the name, not you. You’re a good man, Percy Peach. It was out before you could stop it because your habit is to speak the truth to your friends. I’m glad Mum is one of those.’

  He squeezed her arm in thanks and they drove the last two miles of the short journey in companionable silence. When they reached the house, he walked automatically to the kettle, filling it for the last hot drink of the day, feeling a pleasant lassitude in his limbs after his indulgence at Agnes’s table. Lucy went to the phone to check if there were any messages, as was her usual habit.

  She listened twice to the terse message, then handed the phone to Percy in the kitchen without a word. There were no details in the official police voice and scarcely a hint of excitement. But the facts were clear and unembroidered. A suspicious death. A man believed to be Oliver Ketley had been found shot dead in his car.

  TEN

  Chief Superintendent Tucker was present in the CID section on Sunday morning. Even in death, Oliver Ketley was powerful.

  Tucker marched from one section to another of CID, ill at ease at this level because he spent so much more time in his penthouse office on the top floor of the new brick building. ‘This is going to be a big one!’ he told DCI Peach unnecessarily.

  ‘Very big!’ echoed Peach. But where there had been apprehension in Tucker’s tone, there was satisfaction in his. Whoever had removed Ketley from the world had done that world a service, in Peach’s view. Delivered it from evil.

  ‘Is there any chance it could be suicide?’ asked Tucker hopefully.

  ‘Every chance, at the moment. Ketley was found with the death weapon in his hand, apparently.’ There was a lot of stress on ‘at the moment’. Peach didn’t believe the man he had confronted a few days ago would have chosen this way out.

  ‘You don’t think he might have been filled with remorse for his crimes and chosen to end it all?’

  ‘Do you, sir? Considering the things he’s done, it would have been a pretty belated remorse. If he didn’t choose to end his life the day after all those cockle-pickers were killed in Morecambe Bay, I doubt whether he’d have done it all these years later.’

  ‘Not even if he felt the police net closing on him and arrest inevitable?’

  Peach looked at him keenly. ‘Unless you know more than I do about the police net, that wasn’t the case. My impression is that now they’ve pinned one man down and put him away for life for that 2004 crime, the others who were involved can breathe a little more freely. I think Ketley felt that. I tried to give him a bit of a scare about it last week – told him the Special Branch had infinite resources and they wouldn’t rest until they had him. He didn’t seem very worried about the threat they represented.’

  ‘We’ll need to be careful, Peach. As far as the media are concerned, Ketley was a blameless citizen and a prominent local benefactor. We can’t go around blackening his reputation without chapter and verse to back us up.’

  ‘No, sir. My feeling is that chapter and verse might be forthcoming, in due course, but only after we’ve sorted out exactly how he died. Death always brings its own halo, in the short term. For the present, we can expect the press to treat Ketley as a dead hero.’

  The two very different men were silent for a moment, contemplating the vices of the fourth estate. In due course, the tabloids would switch shamelessly from glorification to vilification. Hadn’t Robert Maxwell gone from war hero to vicious tyrant overnight, once it was safe to reveal the unethical habits of his press-baron autocracy? The next best thing to a saint cruelly removed from the world was the unmasking of a shameless villain who had posed as a saint. But that usually waited for a while.

  In due course, the shabby ethics and shocking crimes of Oliver Ketley would be exposed in every salacious detail. But for the moment he would be a great man cut down in his prime, with an inefficient police service struggling to provide answers to the tragic mystery of his death.

  ‘You’ll know more when you’ve been to the scene of the crime,’ said Tucker pointedly.

  ‘Indeed I will, sir. DS Northcott and I are off there this minute, sir.’

  Tucker looked doubtfully at the tall black figure who had appeared behind Peach. ‘Well, take it carefully. I’m the man who will have to answer to the media for any insensitivity you show.’

  ‘Yes, sir, we’ll remember that. DS Northcott and I are noted for our sensitivity. Perhaps you could set up the house-to-house enquiries in the area, whilst we are out at the crime-face.’

  Tucker glanced at his watch. ‘I’ll do that. If you have anything significant to report later in the day, please contact me by phone.’

  ‘I shall do that, sir. What time will you be home from golf?’

  Tucker had made the mistake of sitting down. He now followed Peach’s glance down to his feet and hastily stood again. His posture had revealed his ankles and with them the lurid yellow long socks that he wore with plus twos for his Sunday golf. He said with all the dignity he could muster, ‘Report anything you have as soon as you get it. And for God’s sake, tread carefully!’

  A Bentley, no more than a few months old. Oliver Ketley had enjoyed driving a classy motor. It showed others where you stood and where they stood. With his death, it had become no more than a tawdry bauble.

  The Bentley was a very dark blue. The crimson staining its windscreen didn’t clash with its colour, but the irregular shape and the splashes around it would have offended the car’s designer, who had striven to make everything in his design regular and harmonious.

  ‘Bit above our station, lad, this motor,’ said Peach to Clyde Northcott.

  ‘Running costs a bit high for me. I think I’ll stick to the bike.’ Black humour, the defence of Peach and Northcott, as with most police in the face of death. There was nothing irreverent or disrespectful about that. It was simply an attempt to keep the starker facts of their working lives at a decent distance. You needed something, if images like this and much worse ones weren’t to disturb the long, dark hours when you tried to sleep.

  They stood beside the police car, forty yards from the Bentley and the activity in and around it. They had an easy relationship, deriving from the way Northcott had arrived here. He had been a hard and violent teenager, slipping down darker paths as he moved into his twenties. His black skin and his inclination to solve disputes with his fists had made him much feared but little liked in the electronics factory where he had then worked. He had begun to deal in cocaine, successfully enough to buy the powerful Yamaha R1 motorcycle he craved. He had then extended his dealing.

  The event which had changed his life had been his involvement as a suspect in a murder enquiry. He had briefly been the leading suspect before Peach and his team had brought the real culprit to justice. Recognizing potential alongside Northcott’s more sinister qualities, Peach had recruited him first to the police force and three years later to CID. When Lucy Blake had become Lucy Peach and police regulations had dictated she could no longer work closely with her husband, he had needed a new bagman. Clyde Northcott had been promoted to sergeant and to that privileged but precarious role. Peach publicized him everywhere as the ‘hard bastard’ he needed beside him, but both of them knew h
e was much more than that. The muscular black presence was a shrewd man with his own ideas, shaping his role skilfully as he went along.

  It was Northcott who asked the question which nagged at both of them as they moved towards the big car. ‘Could he have done this himself?’

  Peach glanced sideways and upwards into his face. ‘We have to regard it as a possibility, until it’s proved otherwise. Personally, I’d be very surprised.’

  ‘And considerably disappointed.’ Northcott kept his face very straight and did not look at his DCI as they reached the car.

  It was true, Peach supposed. Every CID officer who was any good thrilled to the excitement of the hunt. Even the fair Lucy had done so, in her years beside him. It wasn’t just the thrill that came with a successful arrest in a big case, though that was the culmination of it. It was the urge to pit yourself against the forces of evil, to show that the law could not be flouted in this, the most serious of all crimes. You thrust hard to solve the various puzzles set you and bring the hunt to its logical conclusion, even when the odds were against you.

  In spite of which, Peach had a bad feeling about this one. Either Ketley had foiled them by taking his own life before they could bring him to court for his crimes, or some other equally violent competitor had removed a rival. You couldn’t just assume that it was such a death, and he might well be emphasizing that thought forcefully to his assembled team tomorrow morning. But if a fellow gangster had arranged this, that would mean a contract killer. And everyone in the police service knew that contract killers were the hardest of all murderers to corner.

  He was relieved to see that Jack Chadwick, former police sergeant and colleague but now civilian, was in charge of the scene of crime team. Jack was the best SOCO officer he knew, who not only never missed items left behind at a scene, but was quick to spot the possible significance of anything which presented itself. Jack nodded to Northcott, then spoke to Percy as if they were still the serving colleagues they had once been. ‘The meat wagon’s ready to move in. I thought you’d like to see the corpse in situ before they take it away.’