Least of Evils

by J M Gregson

  ‘I agree. I am sorry again that we had to intrude today, Mrs Ketley.’ He stood and moved a step towards the door, as did Clyde Northcott. Then he turned. ‘One final question, on a simple matter of fact. When did you last see Mr Ketley?’

  Greta held up a hand as Janey moved to protect her. She wanted this fact established as much as they did. ‘At around seven o’clock last night. We ate early because he said he had to go out.’

  The food was good in the Thai restaurant. It was in one of the older streets of central Brunton. Thirty years ago, it had been a restaurant serving British food, with the menu fashionably printed in French, as it tried to go upmarket. Thirty years before that, it had been the town’s finest cake-shop, with a small café upstairs, where middle-class ladies in fashionable hats discussed the ways of the post-war world and this newfangled welfare state.

  Chung Lee knew none of this. He chose the darkest corner he could and ordered just a starter and a coffee. He picked at his food, for he had already eaten all he wanted in the small staff dining room beside the kitchen at Thorley Grange. Chung felt conspicuous sitting on his own at the small square table with its white linen and shiny cutlery. He relaxed visibly when a man no taller than him and with a similar Asian skin came into the restaurant, looked around, and responded to his urgent signalling.

  Fam Chinh was perfectly at home here. He knew the proprietor and had suggested it as a meeting place. He now ordered a full meal and proceeded to enjoy it unhurriedly. Chung Lee made desultory conversation as he watched his companion eat, wanting all the time to snatch a look at his watch. He didn’t know Chinh well. But then he didn’t know anyone in Brunton well. That was the difficulty about being a natural loner in a strange country.

  He’d worked alongside Chinh whilst he was broadening his experience of restaurant work, immediately before he had been appointed at the Grange. He’d found him an affable, easy-going man and a good partner to work with. They’d both started by stacking crockery and working the big old washing-up machine, both graduated to more demanding kitchen tasks as they had proved themselves reliable to the Indian proprietor. They’d looked out for each other, covering up each other’s small mistakes and occasional late arrivals for work.

  That was as far as it went. They’d been friends and they’d liked each other, but they had seen very little of each other outside work. Chung had taken Fam’s telephone number and the friendship might have developed if they’d had longer together. But then Chung Lee had gone for the job at Thorley Grange. They had not seen each other since then. Fam Chinh had been surprised that morning when Chung Lee had rung him at home and asked if they could meet.

  Now Chung watched his friend with mounting impatience as he worked his way towards the end of his meal. Lee’s confidence was ebbing as he realized how little he really knew of this man. He remembered that Fam was married, that he cherished his wife enough to go straight home to her after work, as not all of the English men seemed to do. But he could not remember if he had any children, could not make the connections which would establish that they were real friends and that friendship carried obligations.

  Just when it was no longer needed, as Fam Chinh finished his meal and wiped his lips appreciatively upon his paper napkin, Lee found a topic of conversation which engaged them both. He talked about the old times in Vietnam, about the tensions with Laos and Cambodia in which they had both been involved, as children growing up near the borders. Usually he spoke little about his early days, finding it best to pretend that he had been in Britain longer than he had. Now the conversation became animated, as Chinh lapsed into a series of comic anecdotes about his boyhood and sought to find if they had joint acquaintances.

  Eventually, Chung Lee looked openly at his watch and sounded not Vietnamese but very British as he said, ‘Is that the time? I shall have to go soon.’

  ‘It’s been good to see you. We must arrange to do this again,’ said Fam Chinh. He was still rather puzzled by this meeting, pleasant as it now seemed, because he had never really expected to see Chung again.

  ‘There was something I wanted you to do for me,’ said Chung. He had blurted it out suddenly in the end, not led up to it craftily, as the English would have done. But he wasn’t English, was he?

  Fam, though his English was not as good as Chung’s, was a little more Anglicized in his ways. He smiled and said, ‘I’ll do whatever I can for you. But I don’t see much I can do. You have moved up in the world and I’m still where I was.’

  Chung wondered if that was meant to be cutting, if the man really felt he had moved up in the world. Had he been disloyal, in leaving him behind working for the Indian? Perhaps he should not have pitched the attractions of work at Thorley Grange so strongly when he was struggling for something to talk about whilst the man ate his meal. It was too late to worry about that now. He wanted to introduce what he wanted casually, so as to make it seem less of a favour. But he hadn’t the skills to do that.

  He looked again at his watch and said, ‘I really must go. Things at the Grange are in turmoil today, as you can probably imagine.’

  ‘Turmoil?’ Chinh spoke as if dealing with a strange new word, as perhaps he was. ‘Why is that?’

  Chung realized with a sinking heart that like many foreigners far from home, Fam paid little attention to local news. ‘Did you not hear about the death?’

  Fam Chinh looked blank for a moment. Then, to Chung’s relief, understanding flooded into the olive features. ‘Someone from the Grange was killed, yes? In suspect way?’

  ‘Suspicious circumstances, yes; that is what the police say. And it was the man who owns the place – owned the place, I suppose I should now say. So there is much confusion and we wonder what will happen to all of us. That is why I have to get back.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I understand. I must not delay you.’

  ‘But there is something I have to ask you.’

  ‘What is that?’

  Chung thought he saw shutters closing on his friend’s face. He said desperately. ‘It is not much, really. I need you to say that I was with you last night.’ Then as doubt flooded into the face across the table, he said desperately, ‘We could say we were here, if you like.’

  Chinh spoke English adequately for his needs, though he was not as fluent as Chung Lee. Under pressure, his control of the language always deteriorated. ‘Why you need this? Why you need me to say you with me?’ His eyes widened in horror. ‘You kill this man? You kill your new boss?’

  Chung managed to laugh, to show the man by relaxing his body how ridiculous that notion was. In the crisis, he was much better than he had been in the preceding hour. ‘No, of course not! I scarcely got near enough to Mr Ketley even to speak to him.’ He chuckled again at the absurdity of the notion of himself as killer, then said, ‘But the staff talk to each other up there, and it does sound to me from what I’ve heard around the kitchen and the rest of the house as if someone killed the boss. I’m foreign, like you, and we know what it’s like, don’t we? We always seem to be the first suspects, when anything goes wrong.’

  To his immense relief, Fam Chinh nodded. There’d been an incident last week when money went missing and he’d been sure everyone was looking at him suspiciously. He’d been very relieved when the money was found. He said, ‘You not really involved in this?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not. But I haven’t been up there very long and everyone else there seems to be British. I just want to be able to say I was with someone when this happened, that’s all. A sort of safety blanket for me.’

  ‘A safety blanket.’ Chinh weighed this strange phrase he had never heard before and took a decision. ‘All right. We were here, weren’t we? We had a full meal and were here for the whole evening.’

  ‘That’s right! We were!’ Lee wrung the man’s hand warmly in his relief, almost as though they were both British. ‘I’ll do the same for you some day, Fam! Though it’s only a precaution, you understand? I’m entirely innocent. I had nothing to do with this.’<
br />
  ‘Of course you are! Of course you didn’t!’

  Chung Lee carried his elation out with him into the street. It survived the cold there and lasted until he was back in his room at Thorley Grange. It was only after two hours there that he wondered how resolute Fam Chinh would prove if put under police pressure.

  TWELVE

  As Senior Investigating Officer, DCI Peach gathered his team on Monday morning to bring people up to date before releasing them to their allotted tasks for the day.

  Winter darkness is a great aid to those who wish to conceal their actions, but Bentleys are more often noticed than run-of-the-mill cars. Two people had seen the vehicle driving out of Brunton to the suburb where it had been located on Saturday night. A resident of the area had actually noticed the big car after it had parked, but had assumed that it was empty, whilst the owner was merely visiting one of the nearby houses. It had been a late-night dog-walker who had actually examined the car and discovered the body.

  ‘We shall have the PM report and the first findings from forensics later today, but you can assume this is murder. An efficient murder, as far as the SOCO officer and I could determine at the scene of the crime, so don’t expect anything startling or helpful is going to be handed to you on a plate by forensics. This one will stand or fall by our efforts.’

  Peach paused whilst the tasks of the day were allotted and there were a few muffled groans. ‘Most of you will know the reputation of Oliver Ketley. I probably know more than any of you. I consider it one of the blackest days in the many years I have spent in Brunton when Ketley decided to move on to our patch. He was a villain: a blacker villain than most of you will ever have encountered. I believe the full extent of his vicious career will only be revealed over the next few years.

  ‘But the man’s character must not influence you and the way you go about your work. As far as all of us are concerned, Ketley is now a victim. If we start picking and choosing among our victims, we might as well all give up this job. We need an arrest and a prosecution, to show that no one can murder on our patch and get away with it. Our mission is to uphold the law and murder is the worst affront of all to the law. We want a result here, as fervently as we would want a result in any other murder investigation.’

  It was a long speech for Percy Peach. The team filed away in sober mood, with many fewer words than usual. They accepted what he said, but they understood also what he hadn’t needed to say. If this was a gangland killing, the removal of one big villain by a rival, this was going to be time-consuming, difficult and possibly dangerous. And the nearer they got to an arrest, the more dangerous it would become.

  Peach’s own arrangement of his day was disrupted by the phone call he received two minutes after he had briefed the team. It came from a superintendent in Manchester whom he had never met.

  ‘DCI Peach? I was referred to you by Chief Superintendent Tucker.’

  ‘Yes, you would be.’

  ‘He said that you were the man in touch with the detail of the case.’

  ‘Yes, he would do.’

  There was a tiny pause whilst the man at the other end of the call translated this police-speak and divined that Tucker was a wanker. ‘It’s about Oliver Ketley. A suspicious death?’

  ‘A murder. That will become official by lunch time.’

  ‘Yes. I may have a candidate for you. Nothing I can prove. Information from a snout.’

  ‘A reliable snout?’

  ‘A very reliable snout. Otherwise I wouldn’t be ringing you.’ The first touch of acerbity in the tone. Every CID officer has his snouts – usually small-time crooks or ex-crooks who move about in the underworld and keep their ears open. They are almost always men and they deal with men; it is much more difficult for the growing number of female officers reaching the higher CID ranks to build up a network of informers.

  ‘I’m sorry. Thanks for the information. What next?’

  The Manchester superintendent passed on the one significant piece of information his snout had brought to him, then said, ‘It’s your case. We don’t want crossed wires, do we? I think you should do the interview. I’ll give you what we know. It’s significant, but it isn’t a lot.’

  Not enough for you to clear up a murder and take the credit, then. But fair play to the super: the fact and the name he passed over were significant. Peach said. ‘I’m grateful for the information. Can you give me an address?’

  ‘Twenty-four Egerton Gardens, Oldham. I know it’s thirty miles or so from Brunton, but if I were you, I wouldn’t try to make an appointment in advance. He wouldn’t be there, probably wouldn’t be within a hundred miles. He’s inclined to shirk publicity, George French.’

  Greta Ketley wanted desperately to speak to Martin Price. Speaking to your lover seemed so much the natural thing to do, after the ordeal of the police interview. She wanted to tell her man about the strangeness of the CID pairing – that your initial reaction was to be scared of the powerful black man who looked so formidable and never smiled, whereas it was the bouncy little chief inspector with the bald head and the black moustache who was the real threat. He asked most of the questions, then seemed to weigh every answer as if you might be lying. She wanted to warn Martin about that; but then if all went well Martin might not even need to speak to the police, lucky man!

  He had told her that it made sense not to contact each other for a few days. She could see the logic in that, though at this moment she resented it. She needed to talk to someone, because she felt very isolated. There were staff all around her, but she had no idea what they were saying among themselves, what was the gossip below stairs about Oliver’s death. She saw Mrs Johnson arranging flowers in the hall and called her into the drawing room where she sat, trying ridiculously to read a book.

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t remember your first name.’

  A small, embarrassed smile crept into the pretty, serious face beneath the dark hair. ‘It’s Jane, ma’am. Most people call me Janey.’

  ‘Then I shall do that also. And you should call me Greta.’

  ‘Please do call me Janey if you wish to. But I do not think that I should call you Greta. I don’t think Mrs Frobisher would approve of it. And it would make life difficult for me with the other staff.’

  The English system for employers and employees was a strange one: she doubted if she would ever work out all its subtleties. You paid these people, but you still couldn’t arrange things as you wished. ‘I see. Well, I shall call you Janey. And I shall ask Mrs Frobisher that you shall be my personal maid – my dresser when I need one, and things like that.’ She threw in the last phrase rather desperately. What she really needed was a friend, but a confidante such as she had seen in old-fashioned plays might be the nearest she could have to a friend.

  ‘Thank you.’ Janey was not sure she welcomed this new intimacy, but she could hardly reject it and it might well be a good thing. It wouldn’t make her popular with the other staff, but it might in due course mean more money.

  ‘How did you think it went yesterday?’

  Janey looked a little blank for a moment before she understood the question. ‘When the CID people came here, you mean?’

  ‘Yes. Do you think they were satisfied?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’ She looked at Greta for a moment with her head a little on one side. ‘They said it was just routine, didn’t they? They said they always saw the spouses of dead persons first, because they knew most about the person who had died.’

  ‘Yes, that’s what they said.’ Greta smiled with relief. She was glad she’d asked this sensible woman to be her friend. Janey seemed so innocent, to have things so much in perspective. She herself had lived for so long in the shadow of Oliver Ketley that she had forgotten how ordinary people looked at the world. The police interview was probably as straightforward a matter as Janey thought it was. Greta said almost apologetically, ‘The police always regard the wife or husband of a murder victim as the first suspect, you see.’

  ‘Do
they? Well, I’m sure they don’t in this case. I’m sure they’re satisfied you’re completely innocent, after speaking to you yesterday.’

  ‘Well, that’s good to hear, from someone who was present at that meeting.’ Greta looked more relaxed as she smiled again. ‘I’m glad we’ve become friends, Janey. I was feeling very lonely.’

  ‘That’s natural enough, when you’ve lost your husband. I felt very lonely indeed, when my Sam died.’

  ‘Yes. It helps to talk to someone who’s been through the same experience.’ Greta wanted to ask how Sam had died and how long ago it had been, but she sensed that for the present she had pushed far enough into the life of this slightly reluctant new friend.

  Janey Johnson took her silence as an indication that she could get back to her household duties. As she vigorously polished the silver punchbowl in the dining room, she wondered if Greta Ketley’s anxiety meant that she had rather more to hide than Janey had hitherto assumed.

  Twenty-four Egerton Gardens Oldham was not at all the sort of residence DCI Peach had expected.

  It was a small detached bungalow, no more than five years old, with a neat garden at the front and a small new greenhouse between the garage and the weedless lawn at the rear. It was one of many such properties on a large modern estate; Egerton Gardens was a cul-de-sac off a wider road which was lined with much larger houses. This was obviously the section of the estate designed for retired couples; had it not been a bitter, overcast February day, they would no doubt have seen elderly men working in the gardens and passing the time of day with their neighbours.

  Percy looked hard at the front door with its neat brass numbers. There was no sign of life within. ‘Let’s hope the bugger’s at home. You introduce us, Clyde: it might be an occasion when we want the hard bastard to the fore.’

  His companion glanced at him without emotion. Northcott could do other things as well as frighten people, but Peach knew that bloody well; when life was quiet, Percy liked to rub friend as well as foe up the wrong way. Clyde dutifully rang the bell, then listened to the noise echoing in what sounded like an empty residence. There was no other sound, but within five seconds the door was opened wide before them and a slight figure in jeans, sweater and open-necked shirt stood interrogatively in the aperture.