Death of a Nobody

by J M Gregson

  ‘He’s a man, Sergeant. Or he was. Now he’s a man who has been brutally murdered. The worst crime of all. The one which will get all our attention; which will have to be solved if we’re to stop the criminals running out of control.’

  He went sourly into his meeting with the division’s top brass, wondering how he had got into this exchange with an officer who was not under his control and whom he might never see again. His humour was not improved by the realization that there was something in what the man said: the chances of pinning down the shadowy men who had killed a snout were not high, because the degree of cooperation among the criminal fraternity, normally low, would no doubt be zero.

  ***

  The tap was running steadily, sluicing the results of the scientific butchery which is a postmortem examination away over the stainless steel.

  Lambert, resolutely avoiding the visual evidence by remaining in the office outside the laboratory, tried to shut his ears to the steady sound of the water. He was unsuccessful, for he found his mind filling with the images of gore and worse, swirling away into the drains. Cyril Burgess, wearing his green rubber boots and soiled cotton overall like the uniform of a soldier fresh from battle, wondered how best to exploit the delicacy of the superintendent’s stomach for his own amusement.

  ‘He bled a lot,’ the pathologist said by way of conversational opening. ‘Four or five pints gone before we ever got at him here. What the meat wagon brought in was an empty container, as far as blood was concerned.’ He turned towards the entrance to his dissecting room with an invitational wave of his arm. ‘He’s still on the table: we can’t sew him up until we’ve done more tests on the innards. I can show you if—’

  ‘That isn’t necessary!’ The haste of Lambert’s refusal brought a delighted smile from his tormentor. The superintendent was disgusted with himself for his weakness; he should have grown used to the abattoir aspects of the job in his uniformed days of twenty years and more ago. Yet somehow the worst of road accidents had never affected him as badly as the damage done to human bodies with full and malicious intent. He seemed to be becoming more squeamish as he got older. He strove for a professional question. ‘How quickly did he lose all this blood? I mean, did it seep away gradually, or was there a sudden…?’ His words tailed away hopefully.

  ‘Poured like a fountain, I should think. Positively gushed out,’ said Burgess with relish. ‘It does from the heart, you know, when they hit the main artery. Positively pumps out. But it would be much easier to show you—’

  ‘I know how the heart works, thank you, Cyril,’ said Lambert. ‘You’ve explained it to me on previous occasions.’

  ‘Really? Well, anyway, this one worked as it should. Case of “Who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?” eh?’ Burgess was an avid reader of detective fiction, who treasured an idea from his youth that no murder was complete without a quotation.

  ‘Not so old,’ said Lambert stolidly.

  ‘No. About fifty, I’d say. Are you telling me that you knew him, John?’ Burgess was suddenly put out, as if a new rule in the game had been invoked: if the dead man was known to Lambert, perhaps even a friend, his teasing would be in bad taste.

  ‘I knew him, yes. I suppose he was about fifty.’ It was a bleak reminder of his own mortality. He realized now that he had always thought of the nervous, shuffling little man as being older than him, when he must have been almost exactly the same age. He did not give any more details of the relationship to Burgess.

  The pathologist became carefully professional. ‘I can’t give you a precise time of death, but he’d been dead for at least six hours before he was found, and probably rather longer. You can say with certainty that he was killed sometime before midnight.’

  ‘Yes. We can probably pinpoint the time of death fairly accurately, now you’ve confirmed that. Apparently he was seen in the Star and Garter pub at around half past nine. We shall eventually find the man he was talking to there.’

  The determination in Lambert’s tone kept Burgess from any further attempt at humour. ‘He’d eaten a meal of steak and kidney pie and two veg, followed by fruit salad and cream, approximately three hours before he died.’

  ‘He’d been in the pub for some time. Was he drunk when he died?’

  ‘No. A long way from it. He’d not had more than a pint of beer; maybe even a bit less than that.’

  A meeting, then. And not just a convivial exchange about old times. Men like Charlie Pegg did not normally journey fifteen miles to spend hours over halves of bitter. Lambert said, ‘How many men involved? Do the injuries suggest more than one?’

  Burgess brightened at the prospect of being drawn into the investigation. He was fascinated by the processes of detection, though like most laymen he thought the business of investigation much more glamorous than it usually was. But at least his interest meant that he was prepared to speculate, in the hope of helping. The worst pathologists from any CID man’s point of view were those who confined themselves stiffly to the statements they would deliver to a court.

  He said now, It’s impossible to say how many people killed him, John, from what’s left in there. He wasn’t beaten up — as you know, the boots and shoes as well as the fists of assailants can tell a story when a man is knocked about. There are a couple of bruises to the head — I think inflicted by gloved hands. But the only real damage is from the knife wounds. The thrusts were repeated at short intervals, probably by the same person. But there were only four stab wounds, which suggests he stopped once he was certain that the wounds were fatal. There may have been two or three, perhaps even more men around him, but there’s no evidence to show that.’

  ‘Premeditated, rather than a row that went wrong.’

  Burgess thought the words sounded like a statement rather than a question, but he responded nonetheless. ‘It looks like it, John. You’ve seen a lot more violence than I have: we only get the worst in here. But if there’s been an argument, I’d have expected to find other, more minor injuries, inflicted in the minutes before a quarrel escalated into a stabbing. Of course, with more and more people on hard drugs, one can never be certain.’

  ‘I think this was a professional job, by hired men.’ It was what he had thought from the first, but Lambert spoke the words reluctantly. It was the kind of killing that was most difficult to pin down, the kind anticipated by the sergeant at divisional headquarters to whom he had given such short shrift four hours earlier. He said to Burgess, volunteering him a little information in return for his attempts to help, ‘Charlie Pegg spoke to me at half past nine. He thought he had something for me.’

  It was the first time he had used a name for those pieces of dead meat that lay in the next room. And he had virtually said that the man was a police snout. Burgess felt absurdly touched by the confidence. He said, ‘Everything about the wounds supports your view. A professional job. By professional cowards, of course. The victim appears to have been entirely defenceless.’

  They were silent for a moment, trying to picture Pegg’s last moments of life. Had he pleaded with his attackers? Had he recognized them? Had they confronted him with his supposed offence before they dispatched him? How quick and how painful had been his death? Then Burgess said, ‘We’ve sent his clothes on to Forensic, of course. I doubt whether they’ll tell you very much. There is one thing, though.’ He paused, reluctant to revert to his earlier Grand Guignol details now that he was aware that Lambert had been acquainted with this victim.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘The blood must have spouted from the man’s chest. When his killer stabbed him on the second and third occasions, he must almost certainly have been splashed with substantial quantities of blood. The sleeves of whatever garment he was wearing will be heavily marked with blood. If you find that garment, it would be easy enough to match the samples.’

  Lambert nodded and took his leave. He wondered as he drove away whether that garment had even now been destroyed.

  ***


  Sergeant Bert Hook had spoken to Amy Pegg on a few previous occasions. She lived only half a mile from him, separated by a few fields and a straggling road of houses built at intervals over the last half century. The village bobby which still lurked beneath the CID man meant that Bert knew most of the people in his area.

  This sporadic acquaintance was scant preparation for the task he now had. He shepherded her out of the mortuary, guided her to the white police car, watched her as she stowed herself, then put the seat belt carefully into place around her, as if she were either helplessly young or fragile with the extremity of age, instead of a vigorous woman of fifty. Shock took people like that; he had coped with it often enough to be an expert.

  The CID section tended to use Bert to cope with the extremes of emotion, as Lambert had done now when he asked Hook to take Mrs Pegg to identify her husband. Policemen and policewomen have the same weaknesses as the rest of humanity. They mocked Bert for what they saw as an inappropriate sensitivity, for his predilection for the underdog in a world where they saw underdogs as more often than not the instruments of the crime they sought to control. Yet they were ready enough to exploit Hook’s reputation for empathy when it meant that they could assign to him delicate tasks such as the first soundings of a bereaved spouse.

  Routine has it that the next of kin are the first suspects in an unlawful killing, and the routine is such simply because statistics prove that it is justified. The first procedure is always to check the reactions to the death and the whereabouts at the time of the crime of those nearest to the deceased by ties of blood or marriage, even when as now the officer may be privately convinced that a spouse has no connection with the death.

  ‘It was Charlie all right.’ The woman in the back of the car spoke as though she were addressing the world at large rather than an individual, her eyes staring unseeingly at the hedges which flew past on each side. ‘He was very — very white. Like paper. I thought for a moment it might be someone else.’ Her words spoke of the split second of wild hope she had had by the corpse, but her voice was not the soft west country sound which Bert remembered; it had a dry rasp and a sporadic delivery. Like sweet bells jangled out of tune, thought Bert. He was doing literature in his Open University degree, and these comparisons sprang up now when he least expected them.

  He did not say anything else until they were back in the neat little terraced house, thinking that she might talk more easily and be more reliable in her facts when she was on familiar ground. He looked at the neat, spotless room with its cottage suite and its flowered curtains and said awkwardly, ‘You’ve got a lovely place here, Amy.’ It was the first time he had ventured upon her first name. It was not entirely politeness; his own house, with two active boys of nine and eleven, never seemed to be tidy nowadays, except precariously, when they had gone to bed.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ She was standing in the middle of the room, still staring ahead as if addressing a group. It was convenient for policemen to behave as if their snouts did not have private lives, but the reality was confronting him now.

  Hook said, ‘Yes, I would. I very rarely say no to a cup of tea. But will you let me get it for us?’

  She nodded, surprised by nothing after the awful shock which had filled her day. He sat her in a chair, made the tea, decided which had been Charlie’s favourite chair, and carefully avoided it. Perched awkwardly on the edge of the sofa, he waited until she had taken two gulps of the hot, sweet tea before he said, ‘I have to ask you a few questions, Amy. So that we can get on with the business of finding out who did this to him, you see.’ And so that I can officially eliminate you from the enquiry and leave you to your grief.

  She nodded, turning her ravaged face directly towards him for the first time. ‘He was giving you information, wasn’t he? We never mentioned it, and he thought I knew nothing about it. But I knew.’

  ‘I think he was, yes. But not to me. It was Superintendent Lambert he used to speak to.’

  ‘Good man, he is. His wife taught my children, you know.’ Bert’s experience of bereavements made him used to such inconsequential statements. They were sometimes the first steps towards an accommodation with the world which had to go on.

  ‘Did Charlie come home yesterday evening?’

  ‘Yes. He had his meal here. We watched Coronation Street before he went out.’ She sounded surprised that he should not know such things.

  ‘So he left here at about eight.’

  ‘Yes. Perhaps just after eight. He said he was just going to the local pub in the village.’ Her face clouded with pain, whether at the deception or the thought that he might have been safe there he could not tell. ‘He took the van. He wouldn’t have done that to go down to the village.’

  ‘We found his van, Amy. Near where he was found in Gloucester. He seems to have gone to a pub there. Have you any idea why he would have gone there rather than to the village?’

  She thought for a minute. Her round face was distorted by grief, her eyes hollowed and sore with crying, but her forehead wrinkled now like a child’s, as if she was showing him the honesty of her mental effort. ‘No. I don’t think it was anything to do with the business. He’s gone independent now, you know, with his joinery building work.’ She produced the familiar phrase with a little flash of pride, then realized that the present tense would never again be appropriate for it. The tears they both hoped had finished gushed anew down the cheeks that were sore with their passage.

  Hook said, ‘And when did you expect him back, Amy?’

  ‘About ten, or half past. But I didn’t worry until after eleven. I thought he’d just got talking to his pals and stayed on.’ She smiled bleakly. Even the weaknesses of a loved one became attractive with his passing.

  Bert put the key question as gently as he could. ‘But you didn’t report him missing until this morning, Amy. Why was that?’

  She did not seem to feel threatened. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I just didn’t think anything horrible could happen to him. I went to bed eventually, sometime after twelve. I just thought he’d come creeping up to bed at some point during the night.’ Again that picture seemed to give her a little painful pleasure.

  ‘You didn’t think he might be in danger?’

  ‘No. Not at first, anyway. I was more worried when I looked out for him about midnight and saw the van was missing.’

  ‘But you didn’t give the station a ring, even then.’ He looked at the telephone on the sideboard in the corner of the room, and she caught his glance and followed it.

  ‘No. I — I didn’t know who he’d gone to see, did I?’

  Hook nodded, understanding the whole world of the Peggs’ existence which lay beneath those simple words. Charlie was a jailbird, branded as such forever in police eyes, even if his reformation had been achieved a long time ago now. And the process was two-way: he would never quite trust the police, and neither would his wife. There was a reluctance in Amy to associate with the forces which had put Charlie away all those years ago, even though it was she who had insisted that he should not transgress again. The instinctive fear of the police was the rule rather than the exception in Charlie Pegg’s world.

  ‘Can you think of anyone who would have wished to harm your husband, Amy?’

  ‘No. Would it be someone he was — was grassing on?’ She brought out the word with an effort, facing for the first time the probable reason for his death.

  ‘It’s too early to say. But we think it might have been, yes.’

  She shook her head sadly. ‘I don’t know anyone from that world. He kept it quite separate from his joinery work. He didn’t even think I knew about it. Perhaps if I’d pressed him, he’d have given it up. But the money was useful, you see, until he got on his feet.’

  ‘Of course it was. And he was bringing bad men to justice, Amy. Never forget that.’ It was suddenly important to him that this decent woman should not blame herself for her husband’s death.

  ‘Men like the ones who have don
e this to him?’

  ‘Yes. Men like that. Violent men, not petty thieves.’

  She nodded, apparently satisfied on that score at least.

  He checked that her daughter was on the way over, then left her washing the cups and saucers. But she came and stood on the doorstep as he climbed into the car. She looked like a woman seeing off a departing visitor conventionally. Wanting to say something by way of farewell, he could think only of, ‘We’ll get the men who did this to Charlie, Amy.’ He immediately regretted it, for he knew their chances could not be high, and he hated false comforts.

  But she called back, ‘Make sure you do. And you’d better lock them away from me, Bert Hook!’

  It was the first time he knew that she was aware of his name.

  8

  The routine of the enquiry produced very little on that first day. Several people had seen Pegg at the Star and Garter. One or two had seen him drinking with a man, perhaps for half an hour. No one could give a description of this companion. Or no one was willing to.

  Lambert took Hook’s report of his meeting with Amy Pegg and put it glumly together with the negative findings from the house-to-house and Scene-of-Crime teams. DI Rushton was running a computer search for similar killings when Lambert called him into the newly established incident room.

  Charlie Pegg was getting the same treatment as any other murder victim. Lambert had set the centre up immediately as a visual reminder to his CID section that all deaths have to be investigated impartially, whatever the background of the victim, whatever the possibilities of success. Charlie Pegg would have been surprised and immensely flattered to know that his death had been accorded this measure of importance.