Murder at the Lodge (Inspector Peach Series Book 7)

by Gregson, J M

  Tucker sat down heavily behind his desk, restoring the barrier between himself and his DI, resuming normal hostile relations. He attempted to assert himself. ‘You can’t do it, Peach!’

  ‘I’ve done it, sir.’

  ‘You can’t bring charges against the eldest son of one of our most prominent Asian citizens. Not at a time like this.’

  Peach didn’t see any reason to tell his chief at this stage that no charges would be brought. ‘Really, sir? Are you telling me that I have to ignore a cowardly assault on a sixty-year-old man who has run his own shop honestly and peacefully for thirty years, an assault which occasioned considerable damage to both his person and his stock?’

  ‘Well, no, not ignore, exactly. But in the present sensitive climate of race relations in this area, we need —’

  ‘Even when young Afzaal has confessed to me exactly what he did, in an interview room downstairs twenty minutes ago?’

  Tucker looked as if such a confession was the last thing to be desired. ‘We really shouldn’t be bringing a case against the son of one of our most prominent Asian citizens, at a sensitive time like this.’

  ‘I see, sir. Then you’ll be glad to hear that we aren’t.’

  ‘We aren’t?’

  ‘Bringing a case, sir.’ Peach enunciated his words carefully, as if talking to a retarded child.

  ‘But you said —’

  ‘I said he’d confessed, sir. Not that the case was going to court. Old Harry Alston doesn’t want trouble. He won’t support a prosecution.’

  Tucker sighed his relief. ‘Sensible man. Man with a sense of community, I dare say.’

  ‘Man who fears he’ll be beaten up and have his shop set on fire if he goes to court as a witness, sir. A man to whom we cannot offer adequate protection against such things.’ Peach, who tried hard to be amused by the balloon of hot air who commanded him, was suddenly very angry.

  ‘Well, anyway, I’m glad you’ve decided to let young Afzaal off with a caution. It shows a grasp of the wider issues involved here.’

  ‘He’s not exactly getting away scot-free, sir. He’s agreed that he and his friends will pay compensation of two thousand pounds, and that they will make a public apology to Mr Alston with a police presence to witness it.’

  Tucker’s face clouded again. ‘That seems highly irregular. I can’t think that Mr Afzaal senior is going —’

  ‘He won’t know anything about it, sir.’

  ‘But if his son —’

  ‘Young Afzaal is most anxious that his father should remain in ignorance of what happened last night. That is why he has agreed to pay two thousand pounds and apologize.’

  Belatedly, Tucker got the picture, or most of it. ‘Well, it’s highly irregular, but if you think —’

  ‘It’s the best we can do in the circumstances, sir. While people on our patch feel it’s not safe to go to court as witnesses, we aren’t going to be able to mount the cases against young thugs that we should.’

  Peach spoke with real passion, but Tucker chose to ignore it. ‘Well, keep me in the picture. And remember what I said about promotion. We shall need to watch our Ps and Qs in the next few weeks, you and I, Percy.’ He produced his inspector’s first name again, with difficulty, feeling he must close on a note of friendship, or at least mutual interest. ‘We must show everyone around us, above and below, how well we operate together.’

  Peach stood briefly to attention. ‘I understand, sir. I shall maintain and demonstrate my normal degree of respect for you, of course.’

  Then he was gone, seeming to leave a small, invisible column of disrespect where he had lately stood.

  Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker mused for a moment on these exchanges. He’d have to take this odious little bantam-cock of a man up with him if he was to make chief super, he knew that. He decided the briefing of his senior inspector had gone as well as could be expected. Surely even someone as obstreperous as Peach couldn’t ignore the carrot of promotion? Tucker shook his head uncertainly. That little sod would do anything to frustrate him.

  It was only five minutes later that he realized he had forgotten to tell Peach about the man who had been threatened with violent death.

  Two

  CARTWRIGHT’S FINANCIAL SERVICES’, the words said in bold lettering over the door. The building also housed the branch office of a building society, which in public perception gave it the ultimate stamp of respectability.

  Respectability was important to Darren Cartwright. His office was at the back of the building. His patrons passed into its quiet calm through a door to the right of the building society counter where two women in their early forties handled transactions with cheerful efficiency. Darren’s centre of operations had the wide, expensive desk which was obligatory to implant the impression of financial stability and reliability, three deep armchairs which were replaced every three years, and an antique mahogany coffee table which was not. There were watercolours of Great Gable, Scafell Pike and Eskdale on the walls, with a nineteenth century print of Whymper on the Matterhorn to complete a wider climbing context.

  It was many years since the slightly overweight Cartwright had climbed even a small hill, but most of his Brunton clients knew the Lake District, and mountaineering was a hobby which he found brought from them not only interest but respect — a respect of which they were usually scarcely conscious, which was the best kind of all. Nothing in this room, where he spent most of his working days, was introduced without consideration for the impact it might make on those who came into it only once or twice.

  The business of financial advice he conducted here was efficient, lucrative, and highly respectable. His other business, conducted in the main in the afternoons and by telephone, was less respectable but even more lucrative. And Darren Cartwright certainly did not publicize it.

  Whilst Superintendent Tucker was attempting to beguile DI Peach with visions of promotion, Darren was advising a couple in their sixties on the investment of a hundred and twenty thousand pounds which would be available with the man’s retirement. It was all carefully considered routine stuff. He made his suggestions, got his secretary to make a copy of them, sent the couple away with this to consider the different options available to them. They were to come back to him in three days with their decisions made.

  In fact, he knew from experience that they would reappear on Thursday morning thoroughly confused, that they would ask him in effect to make the decisions for them, that he would advise them as he might well have advised them now. But the delay would fulfil both legal and ethical requirements: the couple would not have been rushed into any decision, would have had two days to consider their options, would retain the illusion that they and not he had made key decisions about their financial futures. It was all completely above board, pleasantly lucrative in terms of commission, and extremely dull.

  Darren Cartwright didn’t grumble about that. Financial services were supposed to be dull, because dullness meant reliability to the punters. And they never seemed dull to the clients on the other side of his big desk, as he had constantly to remind himself, because it was their money — very often their life savings — that was being deployed. Darren was proud of the concerned look he had cultivated for these occasions.

  The business that excited him, the activity which gave him a higher return on his outlay than anything he could offer to his clients in pursuit of pensions and investments, was conducted mainly in the afternoons. He wasn’t proud of it. It certainly wasn’t the kind of enterprise which his Masonic friends would have approved of. So he kept very quiet about it.

  It wasn’t against the law, he told himself, in those increasingly rare moments when his conscience pricked him. Well, perhaps some of the methods he had to use to make sure he got his full returns stepped across that vague line between what the English law allowed and what it forbade, but that wasn’t his fault. People who couldn’t honour their obligations brought it upon themselves — asked for all they got, as his minion
s frequently announced to Darren’s receptive ears.

  He enjoyed a lengthy lunch with the Masonic friend who had introduced him to the West Brunton Lodge a few years previously. You could call it a working lunch, really, thought Darren as they finished the wine; the two pushed business each other’s way when the occasion arose. As Jason Brown was a solicitor in a family firm, he was inevitably able to pass people with legacies to be invested in Darren’s direction, whilst Darren invariably suggested Jason’s name to anyone enquiring about a solicitor.

  It was obvious, really, but quite productive for both of them. Of course, it was the kind of thing which people who were prejudiced against Freemasonry tut-tutted about, but that just showed how out of touch with real life such critics were. It was nothing more than jealousy, really.

  As he came back into his office at quarter past two, Darren Cartwright checked the little wire tray in which the building society ladies put any incoming mail or communications for him. It was empty. He was surprised at how much relief surged through him when he saw that.

  One of his staff rang in with a report at three twenty. The man was brief and direct, as fitted both his inclination and the orders he had received. ‘Ridgeon didn’t pay us. I knew last week he wouldn’t.’

  ‘Wouldn’t, or couldn’t?’

  There was a pause. The man on the other end of the line wasn’t used to having to give much thought to such distinctions. ‘Couldn’t, I should think. It’s a slack time for gent’s outfitting. And he owes others, as well as us.’

  Darren Cartwright thought for a moment, staring unseeingly at the gold pen on the inkstand he never used. Ridgeon’s was a sound enough business, even if it needed more dynamic management. A family business, one that owned its own premises, freehold. If the latest Ridgeon eventually couldn’t handle the debt, Darren would be able to dispose of the high street site easily enough, at a handsome profit. Big clothing chains like Next would certainly be interested.

  ‘No hard stuff. Not at the moment. I’ll get one of my credit managers to call round. Give our Mr Ridgeon a bit of financial guidance. Show him the advantages of combining all his debts into one. We’ll clear his other owings off for him, leave him with only us to worry about.’

  ‘So no threats, Mr Cartwright? No final warnings?’ The man on the other end of the line sounded disappointed.

  ‘No. We’ll see how well he co-operates. If he doesn’t, you’ll get your instructions.’

  Darren contacted the man he called his ‘credits manager’ and gave him his instructions about Ridgeon. Usually people like him were quite ready to have their other debts cleared off, to have the simplicity of one large debt rather than a series of small ones. They didn’t realize how completely they were putting themselves in one man’s power, and surprisingly often they didn’t even realize that the rates of interest they were accepting on the single large debt were sky-high. Thank heavens for suckers, Darren thought with a smile.

  The building society counter was shut and the grille was down when he went out of his office at ten past five. He glanced automatically at the tray by his door and felt his heart flutter in his chest.

  There was a single unstamped envelope in the tray. It bore his name, in bold letters, but no address. Though there was no one around now to see him, he took the envelope back into the privacy of his own office to open it.

  He half-expected the message inside to be in letters cut from newspapers. Instead, it was from a computer-printer. It said simply:

  YOUR TIME IS ALMOST UP. YOU WILL DIE QUITE SOON NOW.

  *

  Detective Sergeant Lucy Blake got quite a shock when she came into the living room of her mother’s neat cottage.

  This was the place where she had grown up, and she was not used to changes in it. And the last change she would have expected was for her father’s picture to disappear from its pre-eminent position on the mantelpiece.

  ‘Where’s Dad gone?’ she asked her mother indignantly.

  ‘Never you mind, our Lucy! He’ll be back soon enough, don’t you fret. And he might have a companion with him. There are other good cricketers in the family now, you know. Or almost in the family.’ She sniffed her disapproval of modern reluctance to tie the knot.

  Lucy decided not to rise to the marriage bait. ‘You’re never going to put up a picture of Percy. I haven’t even got one myself — he just refuses to be photographed. Anyway, you wouldn’t be able to balance Dad’s smile. You’d never get Percy smiling at a camera!’

  Agnes grinned happily at such naivety. ‘Nonsense! You just need to catch him when he’s relaxed. Anyone named after Denis Compton is bound to have a sunny disposition. The “laughing cavalier of cricket”, they called Denis, you know. “Denis Charles Scott”, that’s what the DCS stood for. I never thought I’d have a son-in-law named after Denis Compton.’ Agnes gazed happily into a future full of smiling grandchildren.

  Lucy tried desperately to divert her. ‘Where will you get a picture? I told you, I can never get him to have his photograph taken.’

  ‘I shall go to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph. Get them to look back in their files. I can remember a very good one, taken three years ago during his last season in the Lancashire League. Just after he’d made eighty-three not out when they won at Bacup. He looked very pleased with himself in that picture, if I remember rightly, and no wonder. He’s only thirty-seven now — he retired from cricket much too early, you know.’ She gazed into the distance, visualizing Percy’s neat figure with bat and gloves as fondly as if he had been her own son.

  Lucy said accusingly, ‘You’ve moved Dad. His picture used to be here.’

  ‘And it will be again,’ said Agnes quickly. ‘I’m cleaning his frame, that’s all. He’ll be back next time you come, and he might just have a cricketing companion.’

  Lucy could remember every detail of the slightly fading picture of her father as clearly as if it had stood in its usual place. Nevertheless, in a gesture of loyalty to the father she had lost when she was seventeen, she went and found his picture in the kitchen, carefully removed from its silver frame to allow it to be polished. A veteran with a sweater thrown loosely round his neck smiled shyly as he led his team off the field and up the steps to the pavilion. ‘Bill Blake after taking 6 for 44 against Blackpool’, Agnes had printed carefully in Indian ink beneath the picture.

  ‘Your dad can go back on the mantelpiece in due course,’ Lucy’s mother’s voice said defensively behind her. ‘Very likely he and your Percy will end up side by side. Bill would have liked that. Time you were thinking about settling down, our Lucy.’ She thrust aside the thought of Percy’s moustache and bald pate. ‘You’d have lovely babies, I expect.’

  ‘I’ve a career to make, Mum,’ said Lucy firmly. She was twenty-seven, with her biological clock ticking steadily, and her thoughts ran sometimes towards a family. But it would be fatal to admit any such weaknesses to a mother who was now sixty-eight and yearning to be a grandmother.

  Agnes ignored the mention of her daughter’s career, as she always did. But she turned and looked without embarrassment into her daughter’s fresh face, with its light freckling and its striking blue-green eyes beneath the even more remarkable auburn hair. ‘You’re a bonny lass, our Lucy,’ she said quietly, ‘and that Percy Peach thinks the world of you. I’m sure he’d like to see you safely out of that dangerous world where you insist on working.’

  She was wrong there, thought Lucy. Percy had been outraged to be allotted a woman for his DS at first, but they worked happily together now, and he relied on her a lot. They wouldn’t be able to work together if they were married, or even if that doltish Superintendent Tucker realized that they were an item. She said, ‘CID work isn’t dangerous, you know, Mum. Not most of the time.’

  She added the last phrase to cover how near she had come to death at the hands of the man the press had dubbed the ‘Lancashire Leopard’ only a few months earlier. Fortunately, her mother still did not know the full details of how close
her daughter had come to death. Reassuring herself as much as her mother, she said, ‘Anyway, it’s very quiet in Brunton CID at the moment. Not a murder in sight!’

  On that peaceful Monday evening in the old cottage, she had no idea of the lurid copy her mother would be reading in her newspaper by the end of the week.

  *

  Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker had lived long enough to know that nothing enjoyable in life comes without some downside. Or as his detested subordinate Inspector Peach expressed it, no silver lining comes without a bloody great cloud attached to it.

  At this moment, the silver lining was his association with Freemasonry, which had over the years given him much pleasure, and a little professional advancement he did not care to acknowledge. And the bloody great cloud was Mrs Thomas Bulstrode Tucker. Or Barbara Tucker, as the feminists would have insisted, the driving force behind the CID figurehead that was Detective Superintendent Tucker.

  They were in their bedroom, but it was only six thirty on a summer evening, so the place brought none of the feelings of inadequacy or blind panic which it could carry for him during the hours of darkness. His wife had never been one for sex in daylight, even in those earlier years which often seemed to Tucker to belong now to another life.

  Barbara Tucker moved in front of the window, darkening the room for an instance by intruding her considerable physical presence between her husband and the light source. ‘Do you think this colour suits me?’ she asked.

  It didn’t. Not many women in their mid-fifties can get away with orange. When you tip the scales at a little under fourteen stones, and satin stretches over curves which are substantial rather than voluptuous, it becomes impossible. Tucker sought desperately for words which would convey the fact without insult.‘It’s … it’s perhaps a little daring for a Masonic Ladies’ Night. They’re a conservative lot, you know, and it’s probably best you err on the side of —’