by J M Gregson
Peach spoke to the team at four o’clock on Friday afternoon. They were pleasantly surprised by what he had to say. They had anticipated losing much of their weekend, but he reported that the routine work was more or less complete and congratulated them on the thoroughness of their efforts. He and DS Northcott would conduct at least one interview on Saturday, but most of the team could take the weekend off.
Clyde was released in plenty of time for his assignment for tea at the Brockman household. He wasn’t entirely sure whether he was pleased or disappointed by that. He was able to journey there with PC Brockman herself, which he supposed was a good thing. He hadn’t been looking forward to arriving at the house on his own. He put on the suit he had worn for his interview at Birch Fields Tennis Club, and she changed out of uniform as she always did before leaving the station.
Elaine drove him to her home in the old green Toyota she had taken over from her mother when she came down from university. Clyde was glad that he did not have to arrive on his treasured Yamaha. That would have involved removing helmet and leathers at Elaine’s home, which he felt would not give the best first impression of him to her parents. She was their youngest child and had come quite late, and they were now in their early sixties.
She slid the car expertly out of her parking space and into the stream of rush-hour Brunton traffic. This swift exit would mean that fewer people saw her with what many of her colleagues regarded as the most eligible bachelor in the station. Clyde had not taken on a permanent partner since he came here, though there had been several opportunities for him to do so. The tight-knit community of a police headquarters is as subject as any other workplace to the vagaries of gossip.
They were queuing at the traffic lights when she said to him, ‘What progress, Clyde?’
She’d been involved in this case from the start, since Peach had said it would be a valuable part of her experience as a fast-track graduate entry. She’d done three days of house-to-house and minor witness interviews; she’d spoken with many of those who’d attended that fateful summer ball at Birch Fields, since she had been a member of the tennis club since she was ten and already knew many of them.
Clyde, whose inclination was always to keep things to himself, even with his colleagues (too many coppers were tempted by the prospect of easy money from the media in exchange for information), decided that she was a member of the team for this case and that he could speak frankly to her. That was good, because he found he didn’t want to have secrets from Elaine; he must be a big daft soft bugger, as Percy Peach had said.
‘I can tell you what I think. It won’t necessarily be what Percy thinks, because he tends to keep his thoughts to himself in the early days of a case.’
‘Not wishing to influence you, I expect. Wanting your great mind to operate independently, so that he can have two informed views on the subject.’ She had her attention on the traffic around her and no trace of a smile. She was an expert piss-taker: that was one of her attractions for him. He wondered how much that was natural to her and how much a university education had developed it. He also wondered for the tenth time whether he would be out of his depth in her household, having volunteered himself eagerly to enter this lions’ den.
‘You know most of the people in the frame for this one. I should think it’s almost certainly someone who was at the summer ball with us on Saturday night.’
‘Oo-er!’ She shivered extravagantly behind the wheel. ‘Almost certainly?’
‘Well, we’ve unearthed a couple of others who’ve covered up their feelings about Jason Fitton, but as they were nowhere near Birch Fields on Saturday night and were tucked up in bed together at the time of the murder, I don’t see how they can be involved.’
‘Anne Grice?’
He was struck yet again by the sharpness of this surprising girl. ‘Yes. She’s the PA to the managing director at Fitton’s Metals and she—’
‘She was Fitton’s mistress for quite some time. Until about two years ago, if I remember right.’
‘You do.’ Clyde was tremendously impressed – and also a little irritated. You didn’t want a girlfriend who was cleverer than you – and he was sure now that he wanted Elaine as his girlfriend. He said resignedly, ‘How did you know that?’
‘I was sent to ask questions at her old firm in Preston. It seems to have been quite a torrid affair they had, and long-term by Jason Fitton’s standards. She was very angry when it ended, according to the people who worked with her in Preston.’
‘Yes. She more or less admitted to us that she took the PA job at Fitton’s Metals just to get near to him – not that Fitton was around much there. He was milking the profits to spend elsewhere, according to his MD. That’s Robert Walmsley, the man who had recently become Anne Grice’s new boss.’
‘And new lover, apparently.’
‘Yes. We had to prise that out of them and I don’t know how serious it is. She’s a lot younger than he is and she claims he’s happily married. The only thing they have in common seems to be a hatred of Jason Fitton, she for what he did to her and he for what Jason did to Fitton’s Metals.’
‘But you think they were concerned with altogether other things at the time of the murder. So proceed, please, to your real suspects.’
Clyde decided to begin with the one he thought least likely. Take the bones out of this, you clever little minx. ‘Olive Crawshaw.’
‘She taught me when I was at school.’
‘Perhaps she could offer that as extenuating circumstances, then, if we nail her for murder.’
‘And she introduced you into the tennis club. Insisted that you should be accepted, in fact, no doubt against strenuous opposition. Perhaps she did that so that she could plead insanity if she should be arrested for murder.’
‘She had motive and opportunity.’ Clyde fell back stubbornly on the old copper’s watchwords. ‘And she has no one who can vouch for her whereabouts at the time of the killing.’
‘Can’t Eric do that?’ Elaine had known both of them since her early teenage years and she couldn’t picture either of them as a criminal.
‘No. He wasn’t at the dance and he was fast asleep when she came home from it. He’s got the beginnings of Alzheimer’s, but I shouldn’t think Olive wants that broadcast.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. He’s a nice man, Eric.’
‘Yes. Percy was very good with him. He talked to him about the Rovers.’
She smiled and motioned to an elderly woman to cross the zebra crossing in front of them. ‘You like your boss, don’t you?’
‘Yes. I like the fact that he’s good at his job and that he’s full of surprises.’
‘Like asking you to be best man at his wedding.’
‘Well, yes. I was thinking more of the things he seems to know, when we’re interviewing people.’
He sounded apologetic. She wanted to tell him that he didn’t need to apologize for liking the formidable Percy Peach. Instead, she said thoughtfully, ‘This Alzheimer’s would put Olive under a lot of strain: they’re not at all like each other, she and Eric, but they’ve always been very close, I think. But I can’t see her as a murderer, strain or no strain.’
Clyde nodded, then recalled what Percy had said. ‘Olive Crawshaw has the capacity for murder: she’s well organized and very determined when she thinks she’s right. And she certainly had no liking for Jason Fitton. She thought that he was a spoilt brat who had grown up into a villain and was doing untold damage to the town and the community she and Eric have worked so hard to nurture.’
Elaine surprised herself by what she now recalled. ‘Eric was a very good headmaster in the comprehensive that handled most of the town’s problem kids. Jason caused him a lot of grief by attacking his school. I’d almost forgotten that.’
‘Olive thinks that her husband’s trouble with Alzheimer’s stems from that episode. She may or be not be right, but the important thing for us is that she believes it. It certainly increased her hatred of Jason Fitton
and her desire to be rid of him.’
Elaine wanted to say that she still couldn’t see Olive as a murderer, but her brief experience of the police service had already taught her that that would mark her as a naive amateur. ‘Who else?’
‘Arthur Swarbrick, your chairman.’
‘Not my chairman, you silly sod. The Birch Fields Tennis Club chairman, who you think had the good sense to oppose your entry. Arthur’s a pig-headed bigot, but hardly a murderer. He’s ultra-conservative and opposed to anything even vaguely liberal, and I’m sure he didn’t like Fitton. But would he murder him?’
‘I might, in his shoes.’ Clyde paused to consider that rather alarming possibility. ‘Jason had an affair with Arthur’s daughter, before he became involved with Anne Grice. He might even have been running the two in tandem, for all I know. Maybe it was the charms of Anne that made him dispense with Swarbrick’s daughter, Clare. The important thing for us is that it almost destroyed Swarbrick’s only child. Clare was in and out of mental hospitals and is still on medication for depression. Arthur went down to London on Wednesday, to make sure she was handling the news of Fitton’s death without mishap. He has far more reason to be bitter about Fitton than we thought at first.’
‘Do you think he did it?’
Clyde smiled grimly. ‘He’s no friend of mine, but I rather hope he didn’t. I found myself very sorry for him when we prised all this out of him this morning.’
‘Very unprofessional, DS Northcott, to let personal feelings obtrude on your judgement like this. I’m with you, though. I see Arthur Swarbrick, your chairman as he is now, as a racist and sexist bigot rather than a ruthless killer. Can you offer me anyone more likely?’
‘Younis Hafeez. Even to a resolute non-racist like me, he’s a kettle of stinking fish.’
‘You infest things with a kind of poetry, DS Northcott. But I agree. That man has given me the creeps ever since he tried to slide his hand up my tennis skirt when I was thirteen.’
Clyde thought unworthily that he would very much like to slide his hand up that same thigh nine years later, though he would never do it without invitation. He strove to concentrate. ‘Hafeez has been trafficking young girls from care homes for the pleasure of middle-aged perverts many miles south of here.’
‘And did he kill Fitton?’
‘Admirable question. You are properly focused on the matter in hand. Brunton CID isn’t even directly involved in the procurement case, though we’ve cooperated throughout it with the Serious Crime Squad. The question for us, as you rightly state, is whether Hafeez garrotted Fitton in the early hours of Sunday morning.’
‘And did he?’
‘I’d like to think so. And so would Percy. That’s unusual, because he’s usually determined to be completely objective about these things.’
‘I’d also like it to be him. Younis Hafeez is an oily perv.’
‘If I’d been to university, I might have been able to produce balanced judgements like that.’ Clyde was uncomfortably conscious that they were getting close to the Brockman residence and that he hadn’t been able to concentrate in these last minutes on the impression he wanted to make.
As she swung the Toyota expertly into the drive, Elaine said, ‘Don’t worry. It will be all right.’ Clyde thought that there might after all be something to be said for this notion of female intuition.
Mrs Brockman welcomed him with the studious politeness which all black men are accustomed to meeting from liberally inclined middle-aged, middle-class women. He didn’t mind that: he knew that she meant well, and he was equally careful, polite and slightly artificial in his response. ‘It’s very kind of you to invite me here, Mrs Brockman.’ She hadn’t met anyone quite like him and he had met very few quite like her.
Elaine’s father tried hard to be breezy: it was what he usually did when he was nervous. ‘And how’s our little girl been getting on in the big world outside, Clyde?’ He added the forename after a tiny pause, which made it obvious that he’d had to work hard to produce it.
‘She’s doing very well, Mr Brockman. I think we could almost say exceptionally well.’ It sounded patronizing, but Clyde couldn’t think what else he could have said.
‘Quite well for a girl, at any rate,’ said Elaine. She glanced sharply at her father and the two smiled; Clyde felt excluded from what was obviously a long-standing matter of contention.
It was salad, as she had threatened. Clyde picked up his knife and fork carefully and embarked on his trial. He managed to eat quite delicately, though the effort involved meant that he trusted his fork only with small fragments and fell behind the others as the meal progressed. There was much false bonhomie. Clyde failed in his contributions to this, as he found that he could not respond to questions and down his salad at the same time. He was confined to monosyllables and inane smiles: they must surely consider him very stupid indeed.
They had home-made scones with jam and cream after the salad: he was much happier with these. He remembered to compliment Mrs Brockman on her scones and downed two of them with relish, though Elaine seemed to find it very amusing that he unwittingly acquired a blob of cream on the end of his nose as he did so. Then there was tea in delicate china cups, with his hand ridiculously large upon the handle and his little finger flickering uncertainly as he drank.
He insisted on helping to carry crockery back into the kitchen. There he watched the family’s amiable golden Labrador demolish its meal with gusto in thirty seconds and marvelled that eating could be so brisk and uncomplicated.
Mr Brockman seemed to be striving hard to approve of him. When they were all sitting in comfort in the lounge, he said, ‘Elaine brought a chap from the university here last year. We didn’t take to him.’
‘That’s hardly fair,’ said Mrs Brockman hastily. ‘We never got to know him, really.’
‘He lived locally. He wasn’t really a boyfriend,’ said Elaine, equally hastily.
‘Bloke was on drugs!’ said her father. He shook his head disgustedly.
It must have been nervousness that prompted Clyde’s reaction. He reviewed it many times later, but he could offer no other explanation to himself or an equally bewildered Elaine. ‘I sold drugs once,’ he said.
The silence was profound and extended. Clyde looked even more aghast than the other three in the room. Eventually, he managed to falter, ‘It was a long time ago and in a different life. I find it difficult to believe that it was me, now.’
Elaine said eventually, ‘Everyone respects Clyde at the station. He’s made DS very quickly and he works alongside DCI Peach. I’m sure you’ve heard of him.’ Her father’s face was still set in stone and her mother shook her head slowly. Elaine added desperately, ‘Clyde’s been really helpful to me. There’s a lot of resistance to graduate entry in the police.’
Her father found his tongue and said dully, ‘We didn’t want you to go there.’
‘It’s been wonderful for me to have Clyde’s advice. Everyone respects him, you see, and no one dares to be horrid to me with him on my side.’ She grinned hopefully at her father, then stared more fiercely at Clyde, willing him to say nothing about his role as Peach’s hard bastard.
Mrs Brockman eventually managed to say, ‘I hear you’ve been working on this murder at Birch Fields Tennis Club, Clyde. Is there any progress?’
‘Clyde can’t talk about that, Mum,’ said Elaine hastily. ‘We’re not allowed to talk about our work at home.’
‘No, of course not. I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘We’re making progress, Mrs Brockman,’ said Clyde, wanting to offer something but picking his words very carefully. ‘In fact, I should be off now. Detective Chief Inspector Peach has an interview lined up for the two of us tomorrow morning.’
‘Working on a Saturday, eh?’ Mr Brockman seemed mildly impressed by this diligence in his visitor. ‘Do you think you’re near to an arrest?’
‘We could be,’ said Clyde Northcott mysteriously.
He’d no idea why he�
��d said that, beyond some vague desire to raise his standing in what was to him an alien but important environment. He’d no real conviction that Peach knew any more than he did about this baffling mystery.
Within the next twenty-four hours, however, his standing in the Brockman household would be gloriously elevated.
EIGHTEEN
‘Why did they want to see us here?’ Anne Grice looked nervously round the managing director’s office.
‘I don’t know. They just said that it would be quiet here on a Saturday morning. Peach said that we wouldn’t be disturbed.’ Bob Walmsley helped her as she moved chairs into position. Any action was a release of tension as they waited.
‘Does Peach usually make his own appointments?’
‘I don’t know. How should I know?’ He was sharp with her, when he did not mean to be. It was getting to both of them, this waiting and wondering. ‘Sorry.’
‘You wouldn’t make your own appointments. You’d leave it to your PA.’ She gave him a weak grin, striving to convey to him that this was an attempt at humour. ‘And why did he specify we should be together? They’ve been happy to speak to us separately previously.’
‘I don’t know, do I? I don’t know why they wanted to see us together. I can’t read their minds, can I? Peach just said that he and DS Northcott needed to speak with us. And that we wouldn’t want to be disturbed.’
‘DS Northcott’s that big black officer who takes notes.’
‘I know that. I’m not entirely stupid.’ He forced a smile. ‘Even though I need an excellent PA to support me.’ They needed to be relaxed, or at least to seem so, when the CID men arrived. He tried hard to think of something neutral and unthreatening to offer her. ‘He didn’t say much when they questioned me, the big black guy.’
‘He did with me. He took over for a while and asked quite a lot of questions. He seemed more sympathetic than Peach.’
Bob’s smile this time was genuine, but rueful. ‘That wouldn’t be difficult. Do you think they use the good cop, bad cop technique?’