Hung in the Balance (Simpson & Lowe Detective series Book 1)

by Ormerod, Roger

  ‘How much have you inherited?’

  ‘Well…of all the nerve! And you a police officer.’

  ‘Off duty. And I happen to know the amount involved.’

  ‘You’re always off duty. I shan’t tell you.’

  ‘All right. Take it easy. Don’t throw that drink, this is my best suit. I’m asking as a friend — of you and your father.’ He cocked his head. ‘How much?’

  ‘I’m not…’ I bit my lip. ‘Mention a figure.’

  ‘A quarter of a million. Thereabouts.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Good,’ he said. He put down the can, slapped his knees, got to his feet and prowled the room a bit, then turned and stared down at me.

  ‘Then don’t you realize, Philipa, what you’re into? They’re after that money, the whole bunch of them. Solicitors, accountants, probably the families — and Anna. And I won’t list the dirty tricks people will get up to for a quarter of a million. I would — myself. Just think…heh, you wouldn’t care to marry me?’

  ‘What? Ha! I see — it’s a joke.’ I had to be tentative.

  He ruffled his hair. ‘Just talking about it makes people hysterical. And I’m not sure it was. A joke, I mean. But that’s the sort of dirty trick I meant.’

  I looked up at him, wide eyed. ‘It’d be a dirty trick, to marry me?’

  ‘Indeed. I’d probably do it on our honeymoon.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Kill you, I mean. Or just after.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Oliver. But do you really think I’d fold up at the first sight of their dirty tricks, and sign an open cheque for them?’

  Then suddenly he was serious. ‘I was trying to warn you, that’s all. The death of Graham Tonkin, water-colourist supreme, is going to have some nasty repercussions.’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down? Please. I’m getting a crick in my neck.’

  He sat, like a grasshopper, I decided. He was trying to make a decision, and didn’t know whether to express it out loud.

  ‘I don’t think your father would’ve approved,’ he said softly.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Let me tell you something. I intend to get to the truth of this, and I’m sure he’d approve of that. And it’s not just because of the money.’

  ‘Not a good idea.’ He pursed his lips. ‘Oh no. Graham’s dead. Why don’t you leave it at that?’

  ‘Well…you see…that’s the trouble, Oliver. I’m beginning to get the feeling he isn’t.’

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Yes. Only natural, I suppose.’ He stared in admiration at the pelmet.

  ‘Natural! What’s damned natural about it?’ I was beginning to get annoyed that he always seemed to be one step ahead of me.

  He gestured at the painting. ‘That. You were handed that, and heaven knows how much woman-talk along with it, which I don’t want to hear. It’s brought him alive to you again. He must’ve had you clearly in his mind. Kept you, I should say. So now you’re dragging up to the front of your own mind all the kindest memories —’

  ‘Stop it!’ I cut in. ‘I’m not lying on any damned psychiatrist’s couch, not for you, not for anybody.’

  ‘I wanted to explain that I can understand you. Sympathize,’ he said gently.

  ‘Then please don’t talk to me as though I’m some empty-headed teenager. This isn’t some maundering and sentimental thing I’ve got. I’ve put one or two things together. I think he’s alive. And that’s that.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Mind your own business.’

  ‘But it is my business.’

  ‘You’re off duty.’

  He sighed. ‘Always the copper, available to sort out all the evils and unpleasantnesses of humanity.’

  ‘It is not unpleasant —’

  He was gently shaking his head, eyeing me with a strange mixture of amusement and sorrow. ‘But it could be. Carry through with your idea, and what do you get? If that body in the car was not Graham’s, then it would be almost a certainty that Graham killed him.’

  ‘Oh Lord!’ I whispered.

  ‘You hadn’t thought of that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then it’s fortunate I’m here when you did.’ He beamed at me, nodding, and I couldn’t help laughing.

  ‘How is it fortunate?’ I asked, realizing in surprise that my glass was empty.

  He took it from me and filled it again. It was a lime and gin this time, the gin being the fraction at the bottom. ‘I think I can satisfy you that he is dead.’

  ‘More than Anna did, then.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She identified him more from what he was wearing — the clothes, I suppose. And the fact that Graham and the car had gone missing together.’

  ‘She didn’t report the car missing. Just Graham.’ He thought about that. ‘Shall we assume the car had little importance to her, in comparison?’

  ‘Yes. We’ll do that. Give her that much. What else is there, anyway, but the clothes?’

  He reached into his pocket and brought out a calico bag, opened its stringed top, and brought out two objects, a wrist watch on an expanding strap and a signet ring. He handed them to me.

  I looked at them in my palm, turned them over, glanced up at him. ‘It’s still going.’ That fact sort of upset me.

  The quietly moving seconds hand fascinated me. He said, ‘Yes, it’s going. It’s been in my pocket.’

  ‘And it’s indicating the right time.’

  ‘I set it to the pips.’

  I looked closely at the back of the watch. On its steel body was the engraving: P. L. to G. T. It was the Omega self-winder I’d given Graham on our engagement. It had cost nearly £1,000, being a chronometer with guaranteed accuracy. He’d treasured it. The signet ring had his entwined initials. This had been a kind of wedding ring. Inscribed inside the band were, I knew though I couldn’t read them with moist eyes, the words: P. L. with love to G. T.

  I made a move to hand them back. He gestured. ‘They’re yours.’

  ‘It’s waterproof, you know,’ I murmured.

  ‘Obviously.’

  I looked up at him. The watch and ring now lay in my lap, and absent-mindedly I was twisting and turning my own engagement ring, trapped behind the wedding ring.

  ‘This watch,’ I said, ‘is a self-winder. If you take it off and place it somewhere, it stops winding itself, but it goes on for eighteen to twenty-four hours.’

  He was looking at me solemnly, allowing me to say it. He didn’t even nod. I went on, ‘He was missing about a week before he went…before the car was found in the quarry. He couldn’t have been in there a week, or the watch would’ve stopped. But it hadn’t…’

  I looked at him, imploring him to continue.

  ‘It was going, and showed the right time,’ he said, willingly compliant. ‘And we’ve got a kind of confirmation. The road below the quarry…you know it? …of course you do. It’s really a private road for the farmer’s access. Or at least, it was until they used it to take out the gravel, and now it’s all hammered down by their wagons. Anyway…a labourer had been using it for several days with a tractor, going along to do some fencing work. It was he who spotted the car. The water in the quarry’s only about six feet deep, and the rear end was sticking out. He says he’d have seen it if it’d been there the day before. So it happened the previous day. More likely the night. The post-mortem examination also confirmed he’d been dead since around midnight the night before. This was therefore five days after he went missing. With the car, you now tell me.’

  ‘Not with the car,’ I murmured, but it was absent-mindedly. I could see no flaw in his argument. ‘Very well. So he was killed five days after he went missing. If that matters. But I tell you again, Inspector, he could not have been driving it.’

  ‘Ah! We’ve gone all formal again, have we? Never mind.’

  He got to his feet, and by the way he stretched I gathered it was to be for the last time.

  ‘We get it during interrogations, you know. They’ll start off by calling me
Mr Simpson, even Oliver if they’re friendly villains, but then up it’ll come: Inspector. It’s when they go on the defensive.’

  ‘I feel,’ I told him, ‘very much more offensive.’

  ‘That’s natural,’ he conceded gravely. ‘You’re defending this precious theory of yours.’ He held up his hand. ‘And offensive because I won’t accept it. All right. Have you finished with the tray?’

  ‘Yes. And what does all right mean? Nothing’s right.’

  ‘It means: all right, I’ll have to show you it couldn’t have been murder. Nine-thirty in the morning suit you?’

  ‘What? I don’t know. You do jump around, damn you.’

  ‘For me to pick you up.’

  ‘Don’t you ever —?’

  ‘I know…do any work. Yes. But I’ve grabbed a week off. Nine-thirty?’

  ‘Very well. If you must.’

  ‘I’ll take the tray.’

  ‘They’ll collect it, Oliver.’

  ‘I like,’ he said, ‘to save people a little trouble. When I can.’

  It was a splendid exit line, so that was what he did, exited.

  I could have killed him — or laughed. I chose the latter, hoping he was well clear and didn’t hear, because it got out of hand, and ended in hysteria and tears again.

  It took a good long shower to restore me to anything like normal, normal enough to go down to dinner. I spent longer than usual dressing for it, making the best of what I’d brought with me, because I could guess what I’d have to face. Once I’d arranged myself, outside and inside, I found I had enough confidence to go down calmly and purposefully.

  They were there. The families. I knew them because they occupied two adjacent tables, eight of them in all, including Anna and Dennis. Their stares would’ve curdled the cream of mushroom soup, so I ordered the shrimp cocktail. And smiled when I could catch their dark and, frankly, venomous eyes.

  To hell with them, I thought, and to Fellowes and Maguire, while we are at it. And Inspector Oliver Simpson. Graham not alive, indeed! Of course he was. I could feel him out there somewhere, feel him as a glow that vibrated through every bone and nerve of my body, warming me until I could stare across and smile, smile, smile.

  And just let them try to prove it wasn’t my money! Just let them. Graham’s, rather. I was his custodian, I decided over the roast beef.

  I was beginning to feel very protective about that money. Like a little lost dog you’ve found shivering on your doorstep, which needs warmth and comfort and affection. All these I was prepared to offer. And this particular dog had no identification tag on its collar. It didn’t even have a collar. So…if anybody came along and had the cheek to claim it…well, one little dog looks very like another, especially when it’s growing bigger every day. As was my affection for it. One’s affections grow for the lost and defenceless, until the pain of possible separation becomes insupportable. After all, there are precedents for it. Finders keepers. And the biblical one: that which was lost and found. And if you can’t be guided by the Bible, where are you? Even if you have to twist the meaning a little. But then…everybody does that, to suit themselves.

  Pleased with this analogy, I had sufficient self-command to incline my head with dignity when I was leaving, and happened to meet Maguire and Fellowes coming in. I remembered them both at once. And they me. But I carried my head proudly.

  Yet…pride goeth before a fall. Is that biblical, too? It turned out to be applicable, anyway.

  This buoyant mood carried me right through to 9.30 the following morning, at which time Inspector Oliver Simpson picked me up and proceeded to destroy it.

  6

  He was wearing slacks and an anorak, the hood lying behind his shoulders. It made him look very big. I was similarly equipped, apart from the hood, as I’d noticed from my window that there was a fine drizzle outside. Low heels this time, as I recalled how awkward higher ones had been in the mud. I had a feeling we would encounter that sort of problem. Oliver always gave out an aura of a murky background to his life.

  ‘Dead on time,’ he said to me in approval, which I found annoying.

  ‘Is it? Where are we going?’

  ‘I’ve got a car outside.’

  ‘You didn’t answer…’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  I stopped abruptly under the portico. He was driving a Volvo 244, almost a replica of the car I’d left behind with Graham, and which I assumed to be the one that’d finished up in the quarry. This one was grey, mine blue. Otherwise the same.

  ‘Is this supposed to be a joke?’ I demanded. ‘If so, it’s not —’

  ‘No, no. I borrowed this from a mate — on purpose. You’ll soon see why. Nip in, it’s damp out here.’

  He could be very aggravating. Rarely did I get a straight answer.

  He took the Mattock road out of Penley, so I didn’t need to make many guesses.

  ‘If you think I want to meet Anna again…’ I left it in the air.

  ‘I hope we don’t. We’re going to Corry’s Head, so I’ll have to drive past.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You could go all the way around, along the Mattock road to the turn-off for the old farm — that way.’

  ‘I know. That was how I did it yesterday. And nearly got stuck, and that was with my own car. I thought that this way — past the cottage — would be easier, and of course more logical.’

  I let that ride, tired of picking up on his leads. He went on placidly, ‘We have to make an assumption that your Volvo went that way…from the cottage.’

  ‘Make your own assumptions,’ I told him. ‘Graham was missing for five days. We don’t know where.’

  ‘We are in a difficult mood, aren’t we!’

  ‘We,’ I assured him, ‘are damned annoyed. And, as it happens, it’s not about you. So you can relax, Oliver.’

  ‘Anything you can tell me?’

  ‘Nothing that’d interest you. I’m a partner in a business in New York. The intake of work doesn’t stop. It demands my attention.’

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Yes.’ But he didn’t pursue it.

  The fact was that there’d been a message for me that morning, taken in by the night receptionist, as Marietta had phoned through at 10 p.m. New York time, about 2 a.m. here. That idiot, Cornel Schmidt, was at that time already heading for the night flight from Kennedy, due in at Heathrow at 9.17 a.m. GMT. I was to pick him up at Birmingham International at 1.20 p.m. Beautifully timed to ruin lunch for me, and the rest of the afternoon. I’d been a fool to mention the money to him. Act first, regret later, that’s me.

  Oliver turned into the lane up to Hawthorne Cottage. This had at one time been the main driveway up to Corry’s Head farm, but since the farm was abandoned its use had been limited to any occupants of Hawthorne Cottage. Which had been ourselves. Infrequent journeys up and down it — my own treks to the office mainly — had kept the surface reasonably free of weeds, but the surrounding hedges and trees were gradually pressing in. The day before, in the smaller Peugeot, I hadn’t been aware of it. In the larger Volvo it made its presence felt. Branches swept the roof and clattered at the side windows.

  Outside the cottage the clearance was a little wider. It allowed us to sweep past grandly, and if Anna was at a window to observe this, I don’t know. I wasn’t going to allow her to see me turn my head and exhibit the slightest interest.

  From that point onwards it all became more difficult. We drove free of woodland, but the farmer’s hedges were still there, and his rudimentary shale surface, as it must’ve been originally, was bordered by no more than three feet of sloped grass verge. At this time of year the verge was tangled with a miserable drooping of the summer’s weed growth. The naked hedges loomed high on both sides.

  There was the best part of a mile of this. I don’t think I’d been up there more than a couple of times before. What was there to see? Nothing but the wreck of the old farm, tucked high beneath the height of the rise at our right. That, really, was Corry’s Head, but the local
s had used the title for the quarry digging, when it came.

  ‘Up here somewhere,’ said Oliver. ‘There’s an old gate.’

  ‘There!’ I said, as we swept round a bend. ‘That gate on the left.’

  ‘You’ve been up here?’

  ‘Not much. Courting days.’

  The lane turned slightly to the right, gradually climbing around the hill, further along and higher up eventually reaching Corry’s Head farm. On the outside of the bend, as we approached it, there was an ancient and rotting five-barred gate, now wide open. Oliver drew to a halt just before we reached it. We both got out and went to stand side-by-side, hands in pockets, staring through the gateway. Beside the opening, and now nearly consumed by the rampant hedgerows, there was a sign that the farmer must have put there. It read: Dangerous Slope. To warn the livestock, no doubt.

  There wasn’t much to see. Just the steeply-sloping and muddy surface of the original field. The quarry was not visible, just the sudden ending of the surface, then space, and far below was the red-brown track along which the tractor must have been running when the car had been sighted.

  I knew that beyond that abrupt ending to the field there was a 150 feet drop to the water below. They must have cut directly into the hillside from the level below, and gone on digging until they ran out of gravel.

  ‘Sheep,’ he said suddenly. ‘He must have put sheep in here. Not cattle, though, I’d have thought.’

  ‘I suppose. Why’ve you brought me here?’

  ‘To prove to you that he couldn’t have been murdered.’

  ‘Changed your mind, haven’t you! Originally you said you thought he’d been killed. Suggested we worked on it together.’

  ‘Yes.’ He tested the mud with his toe. ‘That was until I came here yesterday.’

  ‘So you’ve lost interest?’

  ‘Not entirely.’

  ‘What’s left, then?’ Fishing, I was.

  ‘Possibilities.’

  ‘Hmm!’

  We were silent, until I felt I had to break it. ‘Thrilling, isn’t it?’

  ‘Let’s get on with it then. You reckon he was killed. He was behind the wheel, belted in, but you maintain he couldn’t have been driving.’