by Gregson, J M
‘Is this relevant?’ She tried and failed to keep the anger out of her voice.
‘I don’t know. You’ll need to tell us.’
She looked at him with a distaste which had no visible effect upon him. ‘Very well. I found he’d been to bed with someone else. That he was two-timing me. I suppose there were a dozen women around who could have told me it would end like that. I knew all about his previous affairs, but I thought he was serious about me, that this time it would be different. He told me it would, almost in those words. Now I believe he’d probably told others that, before me.’ She stared past them and out of the window at the grey leaves of a rhododendron beneath the louring sky, as if her spleen could make the dismal picture darker still.
Lucy Blake said quietly, ‘Obviously it upset you, finishing it like that.’
She whirled on the young, earnest face, wanting suddenly to take out her frustration and fury, to damage this young, unlined flesh which knew so little and put queries of such banality. ‘Of course it did! I don’t make a habit of sleeping around, and I didn’t go into the affair like a teenager. I thought we were serious and I was assured by Eric that he thought so too.’ She looked past them and through the window again. ‘It seemed serious at the time.’
Peach said, ‘Serious enough to disrupt your life? Serious enough to consider a divorce?’
For a moment, it seemed again that her wrath would take over and she would refuse an answer. Her struggle for control was quite visible in the heave of her shoulders. Then she said in a monotone, ‘Yes, I suppose so. We hadn’t got round to discussing details, but that was the assumption. I suppose I should say that was my assumption.’
‘How long did your association last?’
‘From when I first slept with him? Five months. All but two days.’
Her reply combined the precision of a teenager in love for the first time with the bitter tone of mature disillusion: Juliet with Cleopatra, Peach thought. He reminded himself that a Cleopatra driven by passion could easily have committed murder. ‘How did it end?’
‘I told you, I found out he was sleeping with another woman. A younger woman, of course.’ Pain as well as resentment flashed across the pale face.
‘Forgive me, but you must see that this is relevant to a murder enquiry. Who was the woman involved?’
‘I don’t even know her name. Eric assured me that it wasn’t serious.’
‘Was she from the Masonic circle?’
She allowed herself a wan smile at the thought. ‘No. She was one of Eric’s musical conquests. She was a member of the Brunton Light Operatic Society, I believe. According to him, it was “just a fling”. That meant he took whatever he could get, wherever he found it.’
The acerbity hung in the room for a moment, like a cloud of living matter. Then Peach said, ‘Did you kill Eric Walsh?’
She threw him a look of pure hatred, which disconcerted him not a jot. When emotion took over, whatever the passion behind it, people became less guarded, more vulnerable. Peach said, ‘It’s a fair question, when you’ve made no secret of how angry and humiliated you were — and still are — about the break-up of this relationship. You must see that.’
She breathed heavily for a moment, wanting to fling these persistent questioners out of her home and banish them forever, but realizing that she could not do that. When she had a measure of control, she said, ‘Yes, it’s a fair question. I didn’t kill Eric. Given the opportunity, I think I might have done, immediately after I’d found out just how little I meant to him.’
Peach nodded. ‘You had that opportunity, on Friday night. Anyone could have slipped out of that gathering and waited for Mr Walsh in his car. He was taken by surprise by someone sitting in the back seat; the manner of his killing means it could have been a woman just as easily as a man.’
She winced a fraction at the thought of the ruthless garrotting, of a man fighting for his life, of the neck she had caressed so intimately being ruptured. Then she said, ‘It wasn’t me. And I’ve no idea who it was. There were a lot of people there. It could have been any of them.’
‘Indeed. Or even someone who had come into the car park from outside. But you are one of the people who had motive as well as opportunity.’
She looked at him evenly. ‘Yes. But I didn’t kill Eric. I told you on Sunday, I was with other people during the period you asked about, the time when Eric was murdered.’
‘You also gave us to understand that you had no connection with the murder victim. You must accept that we now have to treat everything else you said then with a degree of scepticism.’
Ros Whiteman’s sallow skin flushed beneath the glossy dark hair. She had not had her integrity questioned since she was a schoolgirl. ‘I didn’t kill him. And I’ve no idea who did.’
‘You said your husband knew nothing of this affair with the dead man. Are you absolutely sure of that?’
She gave them a wan smile. ‘Oh, yes. I’d know about it, if John had found out about me and Eric.’
Peach was looking at her as keenly as he had done throughout their exchanges, totally unembarrassed. It was part of being a detective, to observe people in the most trying of circumstances. Sometimes the most important part. He now said quietly, ‘If Mr Whiteman had known, it would have given him a motive, wouldn’t it?’
‘I suppose it would. He wouldn’t like to see me made a fool of. He would enjoy being seen as a cuckold and a fool himself even less. But he didn’t know about Eric and me, so it doesn’t arise.’
Percy Peach and Lucy Blake wondered as they left how much was left of the marriage which looked from the outside so secure. Would she take up the reins again and live out her life as though nothing had happened? Would John Whiteman remain forever unaware of the liaison which had threatened the fabric of his life?
Lucy Blake swung the police Mondeo carefully into the quiet road where some of the richest of middle-class Brunton lived out their lives. ‘You see people’s lives, in this job,’ she said presently.
‘More than you want to, sometimes,’ said Peach unexpectedly. She glanced sideways, saw the strain on his face for the first time, and realized that he did not always relish the pressure he applied as much as he appeared to at the time. She had too much sense to make any comment.
*
Jack Chadwick was waiting for Peach when he arrived back at the CID section of the Brunton police station. The scene-of-crime sergeant looked thoroughly discomfited. ‘I’ve got the SOC findings from the car park of the White Bull,’ he said. ‘You should have had them earlier, but I took the team off to the victim’s house when we found there’d been a break-in. We’d found nothing much in a quick survey of the car, and the break-in seemed more urgent.’
‘You did the right thing,’ said Percy. ‘Used your initiative. The thing Tommy Bloody Tucker tells us we should have done whenever something unexpected turns up. Except that he doesn’t hesitate to bollock us if we don’t do everything by the book.’
‘That’s right. Well, he’ll bollock me in due course over this.’
‘Not unless it’s pushed under his nose on a large plate, he won’t. What the hell’s bothering you, Jack?’
‘Something I think you should have had earlier, that’s all,’ said Chadwick gloomily as he followed Peach and Blake into the inspector’s office. ‘Look, let me give you the findings in order. First, we’ve lifted various prints from the car, but I think we’ll be lucky if there’s anything useful.’
‘So chummy wore gloves?’
‘Almost certainly. There aren’t many prints on the rear door of the car, but it had been opened recently by someone with gloves on. Pretty certainly your killer. It might argue that he or she came prepared for the killing.’
‘It might. But it was a cold night in early November. Anyone could reasonably have been wearing gloves. This could just as easily have been an opportunist crime as a planned one.’
‘Except for the murder weapon. Someone came there with a thin cord whic
h was ideal for the job. We haven’t found it, of course, but the PM report says that that is what was used.’
‘It’s still possible that anyone who saw the opportunity would have had a piece of cord or rope to hand. Lots of people have something like that amongst the rubbish in the boot of their cars. I have myself.’
Lucy Blake said, ‘My mum has a piece of rope in the back of her little car. She carries it as an emergency lead for the dog, in case she forgets the proper one. I have one in the back of my Corsa, for the same dog.’
‘How did chummy get into the car?’ said Peach.
‘We’re unlucky there. It’s a vintage car: a Triumph Stag with the original locks. Very good for pulling the women, but not at all secure. In the days when Stags were manufactured, if you had a bunch of keys, you could get into most cars. Even if you hadn’t got a key, it was easy to get in with a bit of wire and a minimum of know-how. I showed the Stag to our pet AA man. He thought he could get in within fifteen seconds, especially with such a worn lock on the driver’s door.’
‘Is that how the murderer got in?’
Chadwick shrugged. ‘Impossible to say. There are minute scratches round the lock, and it’s pretty certain someone has got in that way in the last year or two. But it could be Walsh himself, if he’d locked his keys inside, or an AA man, if one was called to help. It could even have been some previous break-in which had nothing to do with this crime.’
‘Or it could have been someone with a key.’
Peach was thinking about Ros Whiteman, the elegant, embittered woman they had just left.
‘Easily. As I said, security wasn’t such a concern when they built Triumph Stags. Anyone with a selection of keys could probably have turned that lock. It’s simple and it’s well worn, which makes it even easier.’
It was also possible, thought Lucy Blake, that someone who had been close to Eric Walsh had had a duplicate key to his car, made with or without the dead owner’s knowledge. Someone like Ros Whiteman. Or one of the other women he had disappointed in the past. Or some cuckolded husband or lover looking for revenge. Or … This didn’t help a lot.
‘So any vicious sod with a grain of nous could have got into that car.’ Percy Peach summarized her thoughts with his usual vigour. ‘So what else have you found to indicate who that vicious sod might be, Jack?’
‘Not much. Forensics have been over that car like wasps round a jam jar — they’re still working on it now. They’ve sent stuff off to the labs, but it’s my guess and theirs that they’re not going to come up with much.’
‘No prints that are useful, you said. Any fibres?’
‘Quite a few from the driver’s seat. Most of them have already been matched with clothing belonging to Walsh, as you might expect. More interesting ones from the front passenger seat. You may get a match with something worn by one of your suspects, in due course. I wouldn’t count on it.’
‘And from the seat behind the driver?’
All of them knew this was the key spot, the one where the murderer had crouched and waited for his prey. Or hers. Chadwick shook his head sadly. ‘Very little. It looks as though your killer wore gloves throughout, as I said. Probably also an anorak or something similarly smooth, that wouldn’t excite any notice on a cold November night. We’ve got a single navy nylon fibre, the kind that might come from an anorak. But there’s nothing uncommon about it, and it didn’t necessarily come from the killer’s clothing.’
Peach nodded glumly. The forensic scientists look for an ‘exchange’ at the scene of a serious crime, where the criminal leaves behind something of himself or herself. It looked as though this time the residue was minimal. ‘Anything from around the car?’
Jack Chadwick looked mortified, as he had when he had first come into the office. Embarrassment did not sit easily on his square, stolid face. ‘We found various bits of paper, as you’d expect at the end of a pub car park. The lads bagged them up together. ‘However …’ He delved into his briefcase and produced a scrap of paper, no more than five centimetres by ten, which had been put in a protective polythene cover. ‘This was quite near the Triumph Stag. Within two metres of the back seat where the murderer waited for Eric Walsh.’
Peach picked up the polythene envelope by its corner, studied the unremarkable-looking paper slip inside it, then passed it to Lucy Blake. ‘It’s a receipt for petrol.’
‘Yes. Paid for by credit card. With the number of the credit card printed out beneath the price.’
‘And you’ve traced it.’
‘Yes. We couldn’t do much over the English weekend, as usual. Then the banks put up the normal blank wall about confidentiality, but the suggestion that they might be obstructing a murder inquiry worked wonders.’ Chadwick was relieved to draw attention to his persistence, which he saw as belated, because he hadn’t seen the significance of this scrap of paper at first. In reality, as he said, he couldn’t have achieved a result before Monday.
‘So whose account was it?’
‘The Master of the North Brunton Masonic Lodge. John Whiteman.’
Fifteen
The man was almost six feet tall, solidly built, running to a little fat in his fifties. He wore a dark grey suit and a maroon tie and looked just a little too large for his clothes. Most policemen would have placed him immediately as an ex-copper. Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker did not.
He said, ‘You shouldn’t really have been shown up here. I’m in charge of the CID section, you know. You should have seen someone on the ground floor.’
‘I asked to see the officer in charge of the Eric Walsh murder case. I suppose the desk sergeant thought it might be important.’
Tucker looked at him suspiciously, searching for irony. But that heavy face beneath the thinning, sharply parted black hair didn’t seem the frame for irony. The superintendent forced a smile and said, ‘Well, it’s not your fault, I suppose. And I am in charge of the case, of course I am. But it’s my job to maintain an overview, you see. I have to keep a perspective on this and other important cases. To fit everything into the overall framework.’
The man recognized bullshit when he heard it. He hadn’t spent twenty-seven years in the service without developing a nose for bullshit. He said, ‘I understand that. Perhaps I should speak to someone in touch with the day-to-day development of the investigation.’
‘The day-to-day development. That’s just it!’ Tucker seized on the phrase like manna in the desert. ‘You’ll need to see Inspector Peach. He’s the man in charge of the day-to-day conduct of the case.’ He picked up the internal phone. ‘He’s just gone out,’ he said resentfully a moment later, as if Peach’s exit represented a personal desertion. ‘Should be back in about an hour.’
‘I’ll wait,’ said his visitor.
‘Downstairs, then,’ said Superintendent Tucker decisively. He tried to look apologetic. ‘I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes, you see.’
The dark-haired man went heavily down two flights of stairs, was directed to the canteen by a constable who recognized him as an ex-copper, and got himself a coffee. He read his newspaper and waited for his man with a patience developed over twenty-seven years. He reflected without rancour that the wanker upstairs hadn’t even asked why he was here.
*
At the moment when Tucker’s visitor was taking his first sip of coffee, Peach and Blake were being shown into John Whiteman’s office at the back of the Victorian building which housed the family firm of solicitors.
‘I’ve been trying to think of things which might help you to find your murderer,’ Whiteman said as they sat down. ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been able to come up with much. I can give you the names of two or three women with whom I know Eric had … well, shall we say associations, but I’m afraid it’s not a comprehensive list!’ He sniggered self-consciously at his little joke. His normal day didn’t allow a lot of opportunity for jokes.
Lucy Blake noted the names of three women, assuring him that their lives and the lives of th
ose around them would not be disturbed more than was strictly necessary. Peach was silent throughout, observing the bearing of Whiteman rather than what he had to say. He waited until the solicitor was back behind his desk, looking expectantly from one to the other of his police visitors.
Then Peach said, ‘We’ve been busy building up a picture of our murder victim. Eric Walsh was an Orangeman, dedicated to the preservation of the status quo in Northern Ireland. That seems to have been very important to him when he lived in Belfast, but less so since he came to Lancashire. He had a small import-export business, which doesn’t seem to account for everything in his bank account. But perhaps he didn’t declare everything: import-export is notoriously difficult to pin down.’
He looked interrogatively at John Whiteman, who shook his head, ‘It was always a bit of a mystery to members of the Lodge, how Eric earned his living. We thought he might have private means.’
Peach looked at him closely, then apparently accepted this. He went on, ‘Walsh was a highly competent amateur baritone, active in various light operatic groups and in the Brunton Choral Society. Those are things which distinguish him from other members of your Masonic Lodge: we’re always interested in the distinctive things about victims. The other thing obvious thing about Walsh is the stream of women he has left behind him, most of them disappointed when he moved on. You’ve just given us the names of three to add to those we have collected elsewhere.’
He paused, and Whiteman leapt in as he had hoped, to fill the silence. He smiled and said, ‘I would never claim to have a comprehensive knowledge of Eric’s dealings with the fair sex.’
‘You know more about the way he behaved than us, nevertheless — certainly more than we did two days ago. We now have quite a list of his conquests. Would you say the women were easy for him?’
‘Easy? I don’t quite know —’
‘Habitual drawer-droppers, were they? Women out for a bit of nooky? Women who had a history of rumpety and —’