by Gregson, J M
‘No, sir. You’ll be the first to know when we do.’ It was always a sign of danger when Tucker used his first name.
‘You must be getting nearer after four days’ work with a full murder team. It’ll be a week since the murder come Friday night, you know. Most murders are solved during the first week. A high proportion of those where an arrest has not been made after a week remain unsolved.’
Tucker quoted the facts that every raw recruit knew as if they were his original thoughts. Master’s degree in the blindin’ bleedin’ obvious, thought Percy. ‘Yes, sir. I’m bearing that in mind. Let’s hope we can produce something significant by Friday.’
‘Yes. I’d expect that from a man who was twisting my arm to become a chief inspector.’
Percy took a deep breath and decided to ignore this. ‘Looks odds-on it being one of your Masonic friends, sir.’ He brightened visibly at the prospect.
Tucker frowned. ‘I don’t want you jumping to any conclusions, Peach.’
Percy hadn’t lasted long as the preferred mode of address, then. ‘They’re proving to be a pretty devious lot, sir, your colleagues in the North Brunton Lodge, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
‘I do mind, Peach, unless you have very clear grounds for your views, which I don’t believe you can have.’
Peach allowed himself the blandest of smiles before he warmed to the task. ‘I’ll start at the top: the Master of the Lodge, John Whiteman.’
‘A man of shining reputation and impeccable judgement. I told you that when you brought up his name before.’ Tucker leaned forward confidentially. ‘I may tell you, in the strictest confidence, that I have reason to believe John will support my own claims for the Mastership in a year or two.’
‘Impeccable judgement, then, as you say, sir. But that judgement seems to have failed him when it came to Eric Walsh.’
‘I can’t think that John Whiteman would be in any way involved in —’
‘Of course, I should think it would affect your judgement if you found that your wife was dropping her drawers to the local Pavarotti. Never happened to me, more’s the pity — I’d have waved a grateful goodbye to my wife. But once a man finds he’s a cuckold, his judgement tends to fly out of the window, in my experience.’
Tucker was aghast. ‘You’re telling me that Ros Whiteman, the Master’s lady, was conducting an affair with Eric Walsh? That is quite incred —’
‘Dropping her drawers on a regular basis, sir, on her own admission. Amazing what goes on in Masonic circles.’ He leaned towards his chief, as if struck by a sudden thought. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve had the benefit of the lady’s favours, yourself, sir, have you? I seem to remember you being very taken with her when we last spoke. By Jove, but you’re a dark horse! I can begin to see some point in all this Masonic stuff, if —’
‘Peach! Your imagination is running riot! Not for the first time, I may say. Kindly confine yourself to information about whatever suspects you have been able to turn up.’
‘Yes, sir. Well, there’s the Whitemans, for a start.’
‘Both of them? Surely it must have occurred even to your limited brain that if Ros Whiteman was conducting a relationship with Eric Walsh she was hardly likely to kill him?’
‘Good point, that, sir. Very good. But the affair was all over. She found that Eric the nightingale had been removing the drawers from other women whilst swearing his allegiance to her. Very nasty. So was her reaction to this discovery. She’s got to be a candidate for throttling the nightingale, sir. A woman could easily have done it, the post-mortem says. Or she could have employed someone else to do the dirty work for her.’
‘A crime of passion, you mean? I suppose it’s possible, if we accept your startling proposition that such a fragrant lady could be two-timing her husband.’
‘Fragrant, sir? Yes, I like that word. Seem to remember you using it before about the lady. Didn’t I recall a judge using it about another lady, in a different context? However, we haven’t found anyone who saw Ros Whiteman with her hands round the victim’s throat. Or anywhere else, for that matter. But we have caught her husband out in a few lies, sir. Your close friend John Whiteman, solicitor and Worshipful Master of the Lodge.’
‘Not the Worshipful Master until he’s finished his year of office, strictly speaking, Peach. And not a close friend of mine. A man of high reputation and judgement was all I said.’
No rat could desert a sinking ship with more speed, thought Peach. ‘Impeccable, sir, I think you said. Well, we’ve found him distinctly peccable. Pretended to us he knew nothing about his wife’s affair, when in fact he knew all about it. Told us he had never left the bar of the White Bull between eleven twenty and twelve on Friday night, when in fact he had sneaked out for ten minutes during that key period.’
‘John Whiteman was chatting with a group of us after the formal part of the evening was over. Who told you he left the bar during that time?’
‘His wife, sir. She could be lying, of course, but I’m sure such a fragrant lady will be accurate. Besides, we’ve checked it with the hotel staff; they remember him going out of the bar.’
‘Why did he leave?’
‘He says to go to the gents’ cloakroom.’
‘The most obvious reason. And probably a genuine one.’
‘Yes, sir. Except that he didn’t just go there. He went out to Eric Walsh’s Triumph Stag in the car park.’
‘Good heavens! Are you sure of this?’
‘Absolutely, sir. He’s admitted it. But not at first. Only when he was forced into confessing it. The scene-of-crime boys found a credit card slip beside the car, which brooked no argument.’
The superintendent stared uncomprehendingly at his inspector. The Master of the Lodge a murderer? Tucker’s world was collapsing about his ears. He said dully, ‘Has he admitted to the murder?’
‘No, sir. He says Eric Walsh was dead behind the wheel when he got there. That he went out there to have a frank exchange about his wife and found a stiff waiting. He would say that, sir, wouldn’t he?’
Tucker stared bleakly at his desk for a moment, then decided reluctantly that he must support his team. ‘Yes, he would. Have you arrested him?’
‘No, sir, not yet. I’m letting him contemplate his situation. Seeing whether he’ll come up with anything else. Same with his wife.’ He shook his head dolefully, then brightened again. ‘There are other suspects, you see, sir. Other dubious characters among your friends at the Lodge.’
‘Others? But surely —’
‘The killer is usually to be found among the victim’s intimates, I remember you saying, sir. Very illuminating, we all thought it at the time.’ Don’t think you have a monopoly on the blindin’ bleedin’ obvious, Tommy Bloody Tucker. ‘Eric Walsh was a single man, a Mason of long standing, who found many of his close friends — male friends anyway — among the Lodge members. So we have investigated those intimates in accordance with your advice, sir. And very revealing it’s proved to be.’
Tucker said faintly, ‘You don’t mean you’ve found more … more …’
‘More suspects, sir? Oh, yes. Some pretty devious characters amongst the members of your Lodge, sir. Surprising, really. But it wouldn’t surprise you, sir, no doubt. Because you’d be well aware of my finding that a Freemason in this area is four times as likely to commit a serious crime as an ordinary citizen!’ Peach inserted his favourite statistic with characteristic relish.
‘I’m well aware of that claim of yours, because you shove it down my throat at every opportunity.’
‘Sorry, sir. I expect I am a little too zealous at times. But I regard you as our mole planted within this dangerous organization. Careless of any danger to his person. Vigilant but unsuspected.’ Peach contemplated this unlikely scenario for a moment, then shook his head at the wonder of it.
Tucker’s jaw had dropped at the mention of danger. He said huskily, ‘You’re telling me you have found other suspects among the Lodge members?’
‘Two more at the moment, sir. Making four in all, with the Whitemans.’ He leaned towards the big desk, looked over his shoulder at the closed door, and said in a low voice, ‘There may be others whom we haven’t turned up yet.’
Tucker closed his eyes and hoped that this wasn’t happening. But when he opened them he found Peach still there, staring at him earnestly. Tucker had the sudden thought as he looked into those dark pupils that Rasputin would have looked just like this, if you took away the beard and the hair on the top of his head. The superintendent said, ‘You’d better let me have your thoughts, however unlikely.’
‘Keep you briefed, sir, as you say!’ Peach’s energy seemed to increase as his chief’s bearing grew more sickly, as if he fed parasitically upon the other man’s life-force. ‘There’s your friend Darren Cartwright, sir, for starters.’
‘Not my friend, Peach.’ Tucker’s faint, automatic protestation came as though it was spoken through a blanket.
‘Glad to hear it, sir. Cartwright Financial Services is straightforward enough. Offers advice with investments, helps people with capital to make even more money, that sort of thing. But we’ve suspected for some time that he was operating a seedy loan-shark business. Lending at high rates to desperate people and sending in the heavies when they default on payments. As always happens eventually, the heavies went too far and put a woman in hospital: young single mother trying to rear two children on her own. She’s prepared to put the finger on your friend — sorry, your acquaintance — Darren Cartwright.’
‘I’d never have thought it. He was always so polite to me at the Lodge nights.’ Tucker contemplated this evidence of stainless character for a moment. ‘But it doesn’t make him a murderer, you know.’
‘No, sir. You see the weakness in a case with your usual swift acumen, if I may say so. But there is more. Last week he was scared stiff about these threats on his life; this week he seems to have forgotten all about them. Curious, that.’
Tucker had been searching his battered brain for something he knew was there. Now he suddenly found it. ‘But a man has to have opportunity as well as motive for murder. Darren Cartwright didn’t have the opportunity. He wasn’t at the Ladies’ Night last Friday.’
‘Ahhh!’ Peach drew out the syllable, then paused for a moment, allowing Tucker the delicious notion that he was disappointed. He was in fact elated, since Tucker seemed to have forgotten what he had told him earlier in the week about Cartwright. ‘Strictly speaking, you are correct, sir. As Darren Cartwright was at pains to insist himself, he was not at the Ladies’ Night. He was, however, at the White Bull on Friday night, as you may remember. He lied about it, but eventually he admitted he was there.’
‘Why was he there?’
‘Dropped in for a quiet drink, he said.’
Tucker digested this. ‘That doesn’t sound very likely, you know.’
‘That’s just what DS Blake and I thought, sir! Glad to have confirmation from the mind at the top, as always. First of all Cartwright tried to conceal his presence, then he said he had just dropped in for a drink. But it’s not his local, sir. Nor is he in the habit of using the White Bull as a watering hole. We’ve now established that. Which makes his presence there last Friday night all the more interesting.’
‘But was he there at the time when Eric Walsh was killed?’
‘You go to the heart of the matter as usual, sir. And the answer to your question is most interesting. He says he wasn’t. Says he left when last orders in the pub were called, that he was away before quarter past eleven. But we don’t think he was. The public part of the hotel doesn’t close until eleven thirty on Friday nights. If he was there when it closed, as he admitted to us he was, then he was around at the time when Walsh died.’
‘You should question him again, you know. Press him hard about these things. And you could throw in all this stuff about the loan-sharking at the same time.’
The most annoying thing of all about practitioners of the blindin’ bleedin’ obvious was that they thought they were offering original insights, thought Percy Peach. He said tersely, ‘Glad you think that, sir. I plan to see him again later today, with DS Blake.’
‘You mustn’t let the fact that he is a Freemason, and an acquaintance of mine, in any way affect your judgement. Press him hard.’ Tucker stuck out his jaw in a belated assertion of leadership.
‘Yes, sir.’ Peach nodded several times, as if accepting an idea he would never have thought of himself. Then his face lit up with a happy inspiration. ‘Should we try to lure him into a confession, sir? Get him off his guard? I could get DS Blake to flash a bit of gusset at him, let him think he was on to an easy thing, and allow her to persuade him into admissions. We could —’
‘Nothing like that, Peach! Extracting information like that is as worthless as getting it from prisoners under duress, when it comes to a court of law. You must realize that.’
‘No gusset, sir? Not even a quick flash to —’
‘Nothing at all of that sort! Those are my express orders.’
Peach sighed histrionically. ‘Very well, sir. There’s another leading suspect among your Lodge friends, though. Adrian O’Connor.’
‘He’s no friend of mine, Peach! I distinctly remember telling you that earlier in the week. He’s a Catholic, you know.’ Peach wondered again about his chief as a pillar of ecumenical Christianity. ‘Yes, sir, we do know. And he and Eric Walsh go back a long way. They were involved in the sectarian violence of Belfast in the 1980s.’
Tucker thought for a moment, then nodded sagely. Sage nodding was one of the gestures he was good at: Peach sometimes wondered if he practised it in front of a mirror. ‘This may very well be your man, you know.’
‘Glad to hear such an objective view, sir. Walsh’s Protestant brother seduced O’Connor’s Catholic sister in 1988: a highly dangerous thing to do in the Shankill area at that or any other time.’
‘Romeo and Juliet, eh?’ Tucker was pleased to dredge up a literary reference to keep his underling in his place.
‘Nothing like that, sir. It seems the Walshes weren’t serious about the girl at all. She was to be a Catholic trophy to be brandished amidst the petrol-bombs and the street violence. The girl committed suicide in 1989.’
‘And you think Adrian O'Connor might have been pursuing revenge?’
Peach nodded. ‘It's a long time later. But Walsh got out hastily after the IRA ambushed his brother and made a career for himself, initially in Europe, then over here. There’s some evidence that O’Connor was pursuing him. He works for the Shell Oil Company, and he seems to have taken a post in this area principally to get near to Eric Walsh.’
‘He hasn’t been a member of the North Brunton Masonic-Lodge for very long, you know.’
‘Just over three years,’ said Peach patiently. ‘Did you see any evidence of animosity between O’Connor and Eric Walsh?’
Tucker frowned. ‘He’s a fairly low-key member, Adrian O’Connor. Doesn’t say a lot. But he could well be your man. I remember him not applauding once, after Eric Walsh had sung.’
Peach didn’t see that as the clinching piece of evidence in a dramatic murder trial, even in the hands of a trenchant QC. ‘We’re following up our earlier enquiries, sir. And you’re right: O’Connor is a practising Catholic, a regular church attender.’
‘Ahh!’ Tucker sat back in his chair, feeling the pieces of the jigsaw falling into place, gratified by his key contributions as leader of the team.
Peach let him enjoy the moment for a few seconds before he said, ‘There is one snag, though. Adrian O’Connor appears to have left the gathering some time before Eric Walsh was actually murdered.’
Tucker looked glum as the vision of an arrest melted from his fevered imagination. ‘You mustn’t just take his word for that, you know. He could be lying. Probe, Peach, probe!’
‘I’m afraid his departure has been confirmed by two members of the hotel staff, sir, as well as his fellow Lodge members. He seems to have d
riven away from the White Bull before eleven twenty.’
‘Ahh!’ This time the long syllable was filled with disappointment, not satisfaction. The superintendent gathered his remaining resources and said sternly, ‘But have you just been ferreting around among members of the Lodge? Your preoccupation with Masonic crime is something of a fetish, Peach. It does you no credit, you know. It does not denote the objectivity I should be entitled to expect in a chief inspector.’ He was pleased he had remembered to dangle the carrot again, after belabouring his man with the stick. Good man-management, that.
Peach was tempted to tell him to stick his promotion where monkeys put their nuts. But he resisted; he was getting better at resisting temptation, he thought. Perhaps his off-duty activities with Lucy Blake were relaxing his tensions: he made a note to redouble his efforts in that field. He said slowly, ‘There is one other person who has been lying, sir. A member of the staff of the White Bull. He actually persuaded a member of the kitchen staff there to give us false information.’
‘Ah! This is much more promising. This is a much more likely source of criminal violence.’
‘Yes, sir. Would you like to interrogate the man yourself, sir?’
‘No, no. I’m not suggesting that. You know I never like to interfere unless it is absolutely necessary. I wouldn’t be putting your name forward for promotion unless I had absolute confidence in you.’
Unless it was absolutely essential if you are to secure the rank of chief superintendent for yourself, you mean, you old fraud. ‘Yes, sir. Well, it’s the young fellow I mentioned at our last meeting, sir. A man who was attending to your needs earlier in the evening, sir. One of the staff in the hotel.’
‘So he was in touch with Eric Walsh at that time. And possibly before that time. And no doubt he had some real or imagined grievance against poor Eric which made him offer violence to the man.’
‘Perhaps, sir. We haven’t established that yet.’
‘Then you must do so with all possible speed. I shan’t interfere, but my feeling, based on years of experience with serious crime, is that this could well be your man. Our man, I should say.’