by J M Gregson
‘I understand.’
Lambert said, ‘That means that we need to know what you did on Tuesday evening between the time I left you and midnight.’
Her blue eyes flashed up and fixed on his, and he saw surprise in them. ‘He was killed that night?’
‘Sometime before midnight, we think.’ There seemed no point now in stretching the possible time of the killing beyond this.
‘I’m sorry I tried to protect Jim when you came to my place. He didn’t deserve it.’
‘No. He was an evil man. I can’t regret his removal, but the law says I must investigate his death.’ He watched the open, damaged face. James Berridge’s mistress didn’t seem to be grieving any more than the rest of his acquaintances for him. ‘I think you had better tell me what happened after I left your cottage on Tuesday night, Miss Farrell.’
‘We had an argument. I tried to question him about the things you’d been asking him about. About the drug dealing. About the murder of that man you said he’d had killed—’
‘Charlie Pegg.’
‘That’s right. Jim told me to shut up and mind my own business. He’d never spoken to me like that before.’ She clasped her hands on the lap of her smooth woollen skirt, twisting them as she recollected the dawning horror of that exchange. ‘I think I realized at that moment what he really was. It hadn’t occurred to me until then how little I knew about him. I’d only known him for a few months, but he’d always treated me kindly; I even thought I mattered a little to him.’ She looked for a moment as if she was going to weep; the swollen eyelid fluttered like a technicoloured signal. In the end, she did not dissolve as they thought she would. But it was an effort, and for a moment she could not speak.
Lambert, filling the interval for her, knowing that he must persuade her to continue talking, said quietly, It’s not unknown, you know. The American gangster bosses often treated women and children close to them kindly, so long as they represented no threat to their criminal activities. Perhaps they found it agreeable to develop another side of their personalities in private. But conscience didn’t extend to their business activities.’
He was amazed, as he often was, by the naivety of females who were otherwise sophisticated and successful women of the world. But then he had known plenty of men do foolish things when sex reared its beguiling head. He wondered if this brisk professional woman had really been as innocent of knowledge about Berridge as she claimed. If Berridge had really knocked her about, that put her one up in Lambert’s book. But it also gave her a prime motive for the murder of her assailant. He said, ‘Did you ever see Berridge with a pistol?’
Those bright blue eyes were too revealing for the good of their owner. He watched her hesitate about a deception, then decide to tell him the truth. ‘Yes. Only once. He had it in the glove box in the car. I was getting a map out when I saw it. But I don’t think he minded. It frightened me, but he quite liked to see that. He enjoyed the feeling of power it gave him, I think.’
‘Did you ever see him use it?’
‘Oh, no. I don’t think he had it with him very often. I only saw it on that one occasion. He’d just come back from a meeting in London, I think.’
It was suddenly very important to her that these two large, impassive men believed her. She said, ‘The radio bulletin said he was shot in the head. Was it — was it with that gun?’
‘We think so, yes.’
He regarded her steadily, watching the idea sink in that she could have gone with him that Tuesday night, could have killed him with that weapon after they had fallen out with each other. Then he said, ‘What was it that led up to him hitting you, Miss Farrell?’
The bright blue eyes looked hard at him for a moment. At that moment, Sarah Farrell’s distrust extended to all men. She would have liked to tell this persistent superintendent to go and hang himself, but reason told her that she must deal with these people, if she was to be done with the mess in which she had landed herself. Their questions still felt like an invasion of her privacy. She said reluctantly, ‘He lost his temper when I asked him if there was anything in what you had said. Said I was all right for bedding, but I should stick to my trade. Then he told me I must drive him to meet someone.’
‘Who?’
‘He wouldn’t say.’
‘Where?’
‘He never got round to that. I dug my heels in and said I wouldn’t take him. That turned out to be a mistake.’
Her hand strayed unconsciously to the point where her side still throbbed. Lambert’s eyes followed the movement, guessing what lay beneath the small fist and the navy fabric. ‘What happened next?’
‘He picked up my phone and rang somewhere. When they answered, he told them to get someone to the phone. One of the men you’d mentioned a few minutes earlier when you questioned him, I think.’
‘Sturley?’
‘That’s it. He sent me out of the room while he spoke to him, but I could see afterwards that he was worried. I’d changed into my dressing gown. He told me to get dressed. Said that I was going to be a useful bitch for once, instead of just an easy screw.’ The pain of the phrases soaked her face in dismay, making her for a moment more desolate than all her physical hurts.
Lambert said, ‘And you refused again?’
‘Yes. I told him to get out. That’s when he hit me. He was shouting obscenities at me, but I wouldn’t cry out. I — I remember wondering how much the neighbours could hear! That’s the way I was brought up, you see. Anyway, I think I must have passed out for a minute or two. When I came round, he was gone.’
Bert Hook leaned forward over his notebook. ‘I’m sorry, but we shall need to check this out, if we can. Have you spoken to your neighbours since?’
‘No. I wasn’t anxious to show anyone my face.’
‘I understand that. Do you think any of them heard what went on between the two of you in your cottage?’
‘I doubt it. Mr Lambert knows that I live in the end cottage of four. There was certainly no one in the one next door to me at the time when this happened: I checked the lights. I was quite relieved about it at the time. Is it important?’
Hook said, ‘It may be. An independent witness would establish that the argument and the assault took place at the time you say they did. With luck, he or she might even be able to confirm that Berridge left your place when you say he did, and alone.’
This time her face filled with alarm, not revulsion. ‘You mean that I might have gone with him. Might have killed him later that evening, at his place.’ She spoke slowly, working it out for herself, her eyes widening in an accompanying horror at the realization of her position. ‘God, why did I ever let a man like him into my bed?’
Lambert suspected that it was because even successful and self-sufficient women could be as lonely as anyone else. But that was not his concern. He said, ‘No one is claiming that that is what happened. What Sergeant Hook is saying is merely that it would be useful if we could eliminate the possibility from this investigation. And you with it. That is why we shall be questioning your neighbours: it is very much in your interest that we should find someone to confirm the facts you have given us.’
They left her then, going out at her request through the back door of the premises. They were back in the Vauxhall, easing their way along the busy main street of the town, when the car phone bleeped insistently. The reception was not good between the high buildings, but the crackling made Rushton’s message only more dramatic. ‘We’ve processed the prints volunteered for elimination purposes now. And one of them matches with the print on the murder weapon.’ Even through the interference, they caught the rise in his voice with the excitement.
Lambert was driving, so that it was Hook who said, ‘Which one?’
‘Ian Faraday’s. Do we bring him in now?’
18
Gabrielle Berridge was unhappy in the midst of luxury. It was a bright spring morning, with the sun climbing and the clouds high. Through the broad picture windows of the pent
house, the views over the bright green Gloucestershire countryside to the top of May Hill were superb. Yet she could not wait to be out of the place.
Ian and she would set up house away from here. In the country, but in a different, harsher northern landscape. In an old stone farmhouse, perhaps. It must be different, to confirm the new life which was beginning for both of them. She tried to picture the setting for her new house, but it obstinately refused to define itself. The pictures which swam before her during the nights were agreeable fantasies, but she was impatient for the reality. She was looking out disconsolately when she saw the old Vauxhall turning carefully from the lane into the car park.
There was no sound from its engine through the double glazing, just as there was no sound from the birds which flew up at this disturbance of their concerns. She watched Superintendent Lambert lever himself a little stiffly from the driving seat. She told herself that he might be merely supervising the door-to-door enquiries which had brought excitement into the generally quiet and ordered life of the residents of Old Mead Park. That he might be here just to ascertain more details of the routine of the place from that cornucopia of local knowledge, George Lewis.
But, against her will, her mind pictured the tall man walking past the door of the porter’s office, turning aside the slightly officious attentions of the rotund little man in his green uniform, making determinedly for the lift. She did not think it odd when she heard a gentle tapping at her door: she found that she had already moved halfway across the flat when the summons came to open it.
The tall figure showed no surprise at finding the door opened so quickly. ‘There are one or two things I need to tie up,’ he said. ‘I won’t take up very much of your time.’ He refused coffee, turned down even her offer of a seat. Nor did he trouble himself with the preliminaries of small talk. ‘I’d like you to show me where your husband kept that pistol. We’ve established now that it was the weapon which killed him.’
She took him through the hall into her husband’s study. She had not set foot in the room since his death. There might be too many ghosts. She made herself go without flinching to the desk and open the top right-hand drawer. ‘This is where he normally kept the pistol. He was very careful, very methodical. Of course, he took it out with him, sometimes. I don’t know when. I took care not to know what he was about in these last few years.’
To a policeman, it was a familiar disclaimer. Once a man was proclaimed a villain, those around him rushed to declare their ignorance about his activities. But it might be genuine, in this case. ‘Did you see him with the pistol at any time in the week before his death?’
‘No.’ She spoke a little too quickly, almost before the question was completed, because she knew what he was going to ask. Her brain was racing ahead, wondering how much he knew. ‘I imagine he was carrying it himself, or had it in the car with him, if that is what he was killed with.’
He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘Either that, or someone else removed it from this drawer. You didn’t take it away yourself, Mrs Berridge, for any reason?’ He could think of only one reason. And so could she.
‘No. No, of course not. I rarely went in there. And he kept the drawer locked.’ But a wife would have access to a key, in all probability, she thought. She braced herself for him to suggest just that.
Instead, he said, ‘But when I tried the drawer just before we discovered the body downstairs, it was unlocked, you see.’
She hoped her face was glassily blank, even as her mind reeled and she cursed her incompetence. She must have forgotten to relock the drawer after she had removed the pistol. ‘I expect he took the gun out and forgot to lock the drawer.’ How she wished that she had not said a moment earlier that Jim was careful and methodical!
Lambert said, ‘Perhaps so.’ He waited, as if she might dig herself into a deeper pit by attempting to extricate herself. But she had the sense to leave it, partly because she did not trust herself to speak calmly. Eventually he said, ‘There is one other rather curious thing.’
She wondered what was coming now, noting that he had now categorized the business of the unlocked drawer as ‘curious’, and thus signalled that he found her explanation unconvincing. This felt like a job interview that was going all wrong: it was a long time since she had endured one of those. And the stake this time was her whole future. She said, ‘I hope I might be of more help with this one,’ and favoured him with a mirthless smile, trying to force humour into her dark eyes.
‘Your husband had a BMW which was almost new, and an electronic gadget to open his garage door on his key ring. They were in the ignition socket of the car. Do you have a duplicate set?’
Gabrielle felt an immense relief, so overwhelming that at first she could scarcely frame an answer to the question. ‘No. No, I don’t recall ever seeing any.’
‘But the car is almost new. There would certainly be a second set of keys. But we didn’t find any duplicates, not in his clothes, nor in the car itself, nor in this apartment.’
She thought carefully, anxious to be of help on a matter that could only be innocent, as far as she was concerned. ‘There must be another set, as you say. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen them. Is it important?’
‘Perhaps not. But anyone who had them would have had access to the garage and the car, you see. The fact that they’re missing rather draws attention to that.’
She felt that he knew about the gun, was pointing up this as a suggestion that she was the one who had had motive, means and access. She longed to scream at him that she knew nothing about these damned keys. But that would only suggest that she did know something about the pistol. They were still standing, though they had moved from the study back to the lounge. She was thankful they had not gone into her bedroom; she felt that those cool grey eyes would surely have divined the place where she had hidden that pistol. She said, a little desperately, ‘Was there anything else?’
‘Nothing you can help me with here. We haven’t managed to find anyone who saw you earlier on Tuesday evening at Stratford yet, but we are continuing our enquiries; we may turn up something, in due course.’
How unconvinced he sounded about that! Gabrielle wondered if they knew of her vain attempts to get Mr Allan at the River Crescent Hotel to tell them she had presented herself there before the theatre performance. Probably not: there seemed no reason why they should have been back to him.
Lambert thought carefully, then decided to give her a snippet from their findings. A sprat which might in due course bring in a juicy mackerel. He was almost at the door when he turned to her and said, ‘By the way, we have now found a single print on your husband’s Smith and Wesson pistol. I can’t tell you whose it is, of course.’
***
Bert Hook enjoyed the drive to Stratford much more than Gabrielle Berridge had on the previous day. He had been up for three hours before he set out, working on his Open University assignment, stimulated by the television programme he had watched at 6.30. He had even found time to breakfast with the boys, a noisy interval of youthful boisterousness and paternal badinage. Bert had married late and happily: he congratulated himself anew on that.
As he set out on his journey, Detective Sergeant Hook felt the satisfaction of a man who already has a couple of hours of useful activity under his belt. The drive would be an interval of relaxation. And now that he was studying literature for his degree, Stratford seemed a place of pilgrimage, rather than just a bustling town on the northern fringe of their area. The hedges were flying green ribbons of hawthorn, but it was too soon yet to tell whether the oaks which grew so tall and stately in this central part of the kingdom would be out before the ash.
He came into Stratford over the same ancient bridge that had brought Gabrielle Berridge into the town on the previous day. But then their paths diverged with their concerns. Hook parked in the large public car park and crossed the lower end of the main street, eschewing the opportunity to be drawn into the preparations for the Shakespeare bir
thday celebrations to which the flags beckoned him. He moved a hundred yards to the Gower Memorial to the bard, grinning at the bucolic statue of Falstaff and the romantic one of Hamlet.
Bert looked across to the theatre, then strolled by the river for the short distance to its doors. The foyer was quiet at this time of the morning, but there were three people waiting for attention at the box office, and a group of pilgrims to the shrine were examining the still photographs from productions around the walls. He noted that the previous evening’s performance had been of Macbeth.
It was ten o’clock. The rubbish bins in the foyer and on the terrace in front of the theatre had been emptied. But in the larger receptacles at the side of the theatre, Bert Hook found what he was looking for.
***
Ian Faraday was working in the rear garden of his house. That same rear garden which had looked so neglected when the CID paid him a visit. But he was not striving to improve that appearance.
It was true that he was getting rid of some of the winter rubbish. He had found the tinder-dry remnants of his autumn clear-up: the tops of perennials which he had cut to the ground after the season was over, prunings from shrubs which were getting too tall near his neighbour’s fence, twigs and small branches from forest trees which had fallen on his lawns during the gales. When he looked round the garden, he was surprised how little he had done of late, how long it was since he had been out here. The new season’s couch grass was coming up strongly among this detritus of the previous year.
But there was enough material for his purposes. He rolled up sheets of newspaper, built the dry sticks around them into the wigwam he remembered from boyhood, resisting the temptation to light his fire until he could see none of the paper, as he had done then. He was as impatient as a child to see a fierce blaze, but not for childish reasons.
The fire went well, as he had known it would. There was no need for the can of paraffin behind him. He piled thicker branches upon it, then produced a fine tall blaze with the dead conifer he had cut in two with his cross-saw. When the heat was great enough to make him stand back, he went swiftly to the garden shed, casting rapid glances at the bedroom windows of the two neighbouring houses which were the only ones to overlook his efforts. There was no sign of any observer.