by J M Gregson
‘It’s very quiet round here today,’ said Hook as they went up in the near-silent lift. He wasn’t sure himself whether he was merely making conversation or gathering information against all eventualities, as was the normal CID officer’s instinct.
Lewis seemed to have caught the same need for precision. ‘There are usually only four of the eleven residences occupied in the middle part of the day,’ he said with authority, as they moved over a carpeted landing to the door of the penthouse. ‘And sometimes it is fewer than that, if the occupants are out shopping.’
They heard the electric bell ringing clearly inside the apartment; as they had expected, there was no sign of movement in response. At a nod from Lambert, the porter inserted the skeleton key and the lock turned smoothly. ‘It’s the first time I’ve been in here since I came to let in Charlie Pegg and set him to work for Mrs Berridge,’ he said, as he turned the brass handle and pushed on the rosewood panel. Probably he spoke just for the sake of words, trying to disperse the tension they all felt suddenly rising as the door opened and the oblong of light fell upon the landing. But the mention of his murdered friend seemed only to add to it.
Lambert moved swiftly through the huge drawing room, with its panoramic views over the Gloucestershire countryside, into the dining room, with its oval mahogany table and reproduction Chippendale chairs. The kitchen was neat, almost clinical in its cleanliness; there was no crockery in the washing-up machine. The arrays of units were surely far too elaborate for the culinary requirements of the two residents. After a moment’s hesitation, he pushed open the door of the main bedroom, noting in passing the two pillows at the middle of the top of the king-sized bed, indicating perhaps that one person slept alone on that generous surface. The en suite bathroom was empty. So were the main bathroom and the second bedroom.
Hook, feeling like a character on stage, went and opened the door of a cloaks cupboard near the entrance. He saw only three coats and a vacuum cleaner; no body tumbled hideously forward into the room. He rejoined the others in what was plainly James Berridge’s study. It was as deserted as the rest of the penthouse. Lambert walked over to the desk and tried the top right-hand drawer; rather to his surprise, it was not locked. But it was empty apart from some blank envelopes and writing paper. The other drawers of the desk were locked. He resisted the impulse to investigate further, to open cabinets and look for evidence which might help to put Berridge away. There would be time for that in due course. Better to let the fingerprint boys loose before they began to open desks and filing cabinets.
He said to Lewis, ‘When was Berridge last here, George?’
The porter shook his head reluctantly, as though to confess ignorance was a blot on his professional expertise. ‘I couldn’t say. I haven’t seen him for a couple of days. But I finish officially at six in the evenings and I can’t see as much from my flat as from the office. In any case, I have very little idea of who is coming and going in the hours of darkness. The Berridges have two garages, but they are on the other side of the block from my place, so I don’t hear any sounds of activity from there.’
‘We’d better check those garages before we go.’
Lewis nodded and began the business of closing doors and locking up the apartment. It took a little time to descend to the garages beneath the block; during this interval, Hook and Lambert elicited the information that the Berridges rarely moved about together, that they seemed more and more to lead independent lives. Lambert thought merely that it was a mercy that Mrs Berridge was not likely to be too devastated when her husband was put away for a long stretch. In view of what they found in the next few minutes, the information suddenly became of much greater interest.
Lewis said, ‘Most of the owners have electronic controls for these garage doors, but I can override them. I have to be able to open them by hand, for safety reasons, you see.’ It was another small assertion of his importance in his official function; Hook and Lambert exchanged smiles behind his back as he bent to the lock. He fiddled for a moment with the small, flat key, then slid up the door of Gabrielle Berridge’s garage. It was empty; the tiny patch of fresh oil from the engine sump was all that the daylight revealed in that bare concrete box.
When the panting Lewis eased up the, door of the adjoining garage, there was more material for them. James Berridge’s light-blue BMW gleamed smooth and bright, as if welcoming the light as an opportunity to show off its contours. They were looking at the passenger side of the vehicle, and at first they thought it was empty. Then, as they moved round behind the boot and saw that the driver’s door was open, they realized that it was not.
James Berridge’s body lay half in and half out of the vehicle, with the head twisted at an odd angle against the concrete floor. The single eye which remained was open, frozen in a permanent expression of surprise. Most of the back of the head was shot away; the pistol must have been pressed against the temple. A long smear of grey and crimson matter was mercifully shadowed by the body of the car.
The pistol lay where it had apparently fallen, beneath James Berridge’s twisted right wrist.
12
The Scene-of-Crime team was as diligent in its attention to the area around the body of James Berridge as it would have been in investigating the death of any more admirable citizen. George Lewis was impressed as he watched the comings and goings of the officers and glimpsed what little he could of their work in the garage.
Once they had their tapes erected to seal off the area of the search, they brought in extra lighting, directing their arc lamps under the vehicle they could not move until they had examined the ground beneath it in minute detail. Lewis was delighted to discover a role for himself. By acting as an unofficial barrier between the busy policemen and the curious residents who paid his salary, he could find out most of what was going on.
He made tea and biscuits for the Scene-of-Crime team, then fed snippets of what he had learned to the curious residents of Old Mead Park about the sensational event in the basement. Passing to and fro outside the garage as the day progressed, George saw what he presumed was human hair, strands of various fibres, even what looked like minute samples of grime and oil, being carefully labelled in their polythene envelopes for dispatch to the forensic laboratories. Retailing some of this to the residents as they passed his room, the porter watched with satisfaction as those respectable eyes widened.
The fingerprint officer, his feet covered like those of his colleagues in plastic bags to protect whatever evidence lay beneath his tread, dusted every surface that seemed remotely hopeful with his mysterious powder, systematically treating both the exterior and the interior of the BMW before he moved on to the garage doors and the plastic light and power switches. Then he steeled himself to give the same treatment to the corpse itself and the pistol that had almost certainly been the instrument of his death. His last task before he left was to press the fingers of the dead man on to a prepared surface, so that he would have clear prints for elimination purposes.
It was three hours before Lambert and Hook returned. They watched impassively as the mortal remains of James Albert Berridge were put into the death wagon. Lewis, appearing silently at their heels, said, ‘Away to the funeral parlour at last, is he, Mr Lambert?’ The residents would want all the gory details; for a day or two at least, and perhaps for longer if he used this affair skilfully, the porter would be a little more than the reassuring but anonymous presence which he normally was for most of them. Information increased a man’s standing and interest. Lewis, erect if a trifle portly in his official uniform, presented himself to the man in charge of the case as the intelligence officer for the residents of Old Mead Park.
The superintendent understood that Lewis’s standing might be increased by information, and was prepared to offer a little, knowing that he needed to question the porter in due course. ‘I’m afraid it may be some time before he reaches the funeral parlour, George. There’ll be a postmortem first, and then an inquest.’
‘Lewis
nodded, putting his hands for a moment in the jacket pockets of his uniform, trying to appear insouciant in the face of death, as the van reversed carefully away from the garages with its grisly burden. ‘Will they try to find out why he killed himself at the inquest?’
Not exactly that. The main purpose of an inquest will be to establish exactly what kind of death this was. Whether it really was suicide, for instance, George.’
The porter’s eyes widened. Noticing one of the residents regarding him curiously from a distance, he took his hands out of his pockets and fastened the top button of his green jacket, though the afternoon sun was now at its warmest. ‘You think someone waited in there and shot him?’ He gestured with his head towards the dark cavern of the garage, where Sergeant Johnson and his SOC team were concluding their work.
‘I’m trying not to think anything until I have more facts, George. We don’t even know when he died yet, but we should have an idea about that by the end of the day. Do you recall seeing any strangers about the place, last night or this morning?’
George frowned, making sure he gave the question the attention it deserved. He would have liked to be able to put forward a sinister, armed figure, but that was clearly not on. ‘No, I didn’t. I told you, I’m off duty between six p.m. and nine a.m., and my flat is on the other side of the building from these garages.’ He brightened a little. ‘The milkman is usually here by seven-thirty, and the postman comes about eight. You could ask them.’
‘That’s already in hand. Is there a paperboy?’
‘No. The milkman brings in the papers, Monday to Saturday.’
Lambert nodded. ‘We shall be asking your residents if they saw anyone, in due course. This may turn out to be a murder enquiry, George.’
‘Surely not.’ It was impossible to say whether this was a conventional expression of horror at the darkest crime of all or a genuine view. As if seeking to explain himself, Lewis stumbled on. ‘I mean, I know he had plenty of enemies—’
‘How do you know that, George?’ It was Bert Hook, whose presence the porter had almost forgotten, who had interrupted. Lewis was startled for a moment by the challenge. ‘Well, I’ve heard the odd story. And Charlie Pegg told me to watch out for him, when I got the job here. And I’ve seen him once or twice at nights, with men who looked like minders to me.’
Lambert said quietly, ‘I told George that Berridge was a villain, Bert, before all this happened. When we were still looking into Charlie Pegg’s death.’
‘I guessed it for myself anyway. I’ve kept my eye on him for two years, after what Charlie told me when I got the job here.’ Having asserted this, the porter was silent for a moment. Perhaps the time when they had searched the rooms of the penthouse before discovering the grim scene in the garage seemed already much more than four hours earlier, as it did to them. ‘He killed Charlie Pegg, didn’t he? For grassing on him.’
Lambert glanced at him sharply, wondering for a moment if he knew more than he had admitted to about Pegg’s activities within this block. It did not seem very likely: Pegg had been a loner, careful with his knowledge, like most snouts who lasted any length of time. He remembered Lewis’s account of how Pegg had saved his life in their National Service days, and thought that such closeness should allow a man a little knowledge about the death of his friend.
He said quietly, ‘Yes, George. He didn’t strike Charlie down, but he killed him just as much as if he’d handled the knife himself. The men who did it were his men, acting on his orders. You’ll be glad to know that we have them in custody. And thanks to our Forensic people, we can prove they killed Charlie. We came here this morning to arrest Berridge on the grounds of that and other very serious charges.’
George Lewis looked with silent satisfaction at the now locked and empty garage. ‘If he killed Charlie Pegg, I’m glad someone got here before you did.’ On this ruthless statement, he turned away, as if he acknowledged now that the drama was ended and he must get on with the other, more mundane, tasks that he had postponed to attend upon it. He moved without grace, a short, tubby figure in his rather ridiculous uniform. But his sturdy loyalty to the dead friend who had moved from jailbird to craftsman and police informer gave him an undeniable dignity.
The CID men followed him into his office, where he was able to give them a surprising amount of detail about the daily activities of the residents of Old Mead Park. Hook noted the details in his rapid, round hand: his notes would be a useful check against the more detailed door-to-door interviews which were already being launched above and around them by the junior officers of the team.
George Lewis’s most interesting piece of information was a negative one. It seemed that Mrs Berridge had been at Old Mead Park in the earlier part of the previous day. But he had not seen or heard anything of her since then.
***
Sarah Farrell rang in to the travel shop at four o’clock. ‘I shall be back in tomorrow. Have there been any problems?’
‘Nothing we couldn’t cope with. We’re perfectly OK, you know. There’s no need for you to rush back until you’re feeling completely well.’ There was no necessity to let the manager think she was indispensable. In the travel agent’s office, the older woman who answered her call tried to fill her tones with concern, but she was more worried about asserting her own competence.
Sarah understood that. She did not resent it; she was preoccupied in any case with more important personal considerations. ‘That’s all right. I know you can cope, but I’ll be better at work.’ For a moment, she had forgotten what excuse she had given for her absence. She remembered now, just in time: it was an imagined illness her mother had suffered. ‘Mum’s getting better now, anyway. They thought it might be pneumonia, but it was only a chill. Thank heavens for antibiotics! I should be in tomorrow at the usual time. Thanks for holding the fort. Did the new winter brochures come in from Thomson’s?’
One thing about all that was true, Sarah thought as she put the phone down. She would be better at work than on her own with her memories in the little mews cottage.
She went automatically to switch on the radio, as she normally did when she was working alone in the cottage. Then she thought better of it. The news of the death of James Berridge had been relayed in the bulletin at one o’clock, and there would probably be no addition to what had been announced then. She knew all that she needed to know about the death of the man who had been her lover.
She looked again at the great stain on the lounge wallpaper. She would have a go at cleaning it up, once she felt up to it. They said red wine was the worst of all to shift: she might have to redecorate. Then she wandered through into the cloakroom and studied the livid bruising around her closed right eye in the antique oval mirror over the small washbasin. She would need a story for that when she went in tomorrow: even the most skilful make-up would not cover that from the sharp eyes of her staff. Fair skin was always the worst for showing up such damage.
Her head still ached, but she was too restless to sit still. When she tried to read a book, the print danced before her eyes and her mind strayed obstinately elsewhere. She had a feeling that there was something she had omitted, some obvious step that she had overlooked in her distress. When she went upstairs and looked in the black leather handbag she used most often, she realized what it was.
There followed an absurd half hour of black comedy when she tried to dispose of the things. She looked automatically at the empty fireplace, but she knew immediately that the solution was not there. She rarely lit a fire, for the central heating kept the small house as warm as anyone could wish it; in any case, the things would never be properly destroyed by the heat she could muster from her living-flame gas fire.
She dropped them into the wastebin beneath the kitchen sink, then hastily retrieved them. She had heard of them examining people’s rubbish. If the sociologists found out all kinds of interesting things about people that way, the police would surely not neglect it. She thought about the recesses of the rubbish bag in the
dustbin outside, but it would be four days yet before it was collected, so that was no good. She almost dropped the things into the waste disposal unit. Then, at the last moment, she wondered if they might break the machine; she had never fed anything into it but kitchen waste. If the things broke it, that would draw attention to the very secret she was trying to conceal.
Eventually she went out to the garden behind the cottage, looking right and left like a thief to check that she was not observed. There was no one in sight. She had better be quick: there was no knowing when the long arm of the law would appear. She smiled bleakly when that phrase came so automatically to mind: it was the way her father had always described the police, in those far-off days when to his small daughter they had seemed a remote but friendly force.
She was no gardener. Her status as professional woman had demanded that she paid the pensioner in the cottage opposite hers to tend her small, neat plot. But she managed to find a trowel in the corner of the garage. Then she almost made an elementary mistake. The first hole she dug was amongst the wallflowers which had opened their brilliant palette in the bed beneath her kitchen window in the last week. Just in time, she realized that these plants would be removed before long, and the ground forked over for the summer bedding. What she was burying might be turned up before the curious old eyes of her gardener.