by J M Gregson
Lucy looked at the lobes of Alice Osborne’s ears. “Clip-ons, were they? The earrings?”
The color drained from Alice’s face, which made the lines on it much more apparent. “Yes. Not Verna’s normal style, really. But she was very taken with them.”
“I see.” They both knew she was lying. Verna Hume’s ears had been pierced, and she would never have worn earrings of the type Alice was describing. Lucy smiled at her, making ready to exploit this moment of her weakness. “What were you really looking for in that house, Alice?”
It was the older woman’s turn to pause for a long time before she spoke. But she looked not at her tormentors but at the table between them, as if she hoped that if she stared at it long enough some plausible explanation would emerge from its blank Formica surface. But no inspiration came.
She said eventually, “She had things of mine. Things I wanted back. Things I didn’t want other people to see. That’s all.”
“What things, Alice? You must see that we need to know, in these circumstances.”
She did. But she couldn’t think of anything to tell them. She was suddenly, overwhelmingly, tired. Exhausted. She wanted to be cradled in her mother’s arms and carried up to bed, as she had been sixty years ago after playing out on long summer nights in the cobbled Tyneside street.
She said stubbornly, “Just – things, pet. Things I didn’t want other people to see.”
She swayed gently on her hard chair, her eyes cast down, her features clear now of all anxiety and suffused with an infinite fatigue. She looked as if she might collapse at any moment, keeling over gently and falling to the uncarpeted floor without even the softest of cries. That would look well, thought Percy Peach: an old biddy collapsing under the pressure of interrogation.
He asked quietly, almost apologetically, “Did you kill Verna Hume, Mrs Osborne?”
The almost bloodless lips gave a little smile. “No. I’d never have done that to her. And I don’t know who did. I don’t think poor Verna had many friends, though.”
It was almost the first thing she had said that they could accept and agree with. They sent her back to her cell with a policewoman and a mug of tea. Half an hour later, she was released, and Peach watched unseen from the window of his office as Derek Osborne helped her carefully into the passenger seat of the old white Fiesta and drove her away.
That old lady had outsmarted him, he thought, as a young tearaway would never have done. They still did not know exactly what she had been looking for in Verna Hume’s house.
Nineteen
“The public wants results. And it’s our job to provide them, Detective Inspector Peach.”
Chief Superintendent Tucker, Head of Brunton CID, brought in the full name and title for his rebukes, like a primary school teacher checking a recalcitrant child.
Percy thought that if this was the best bollocking Tommy Bloody Tucker could muster, it wasn’t going to be a contest worthy of his talents. “Yes, sir. I see, sir.” He stood to attention and looked over the head of his chief at the wall behind him, like a soldier on a charge.
Tucker was irritated. He had been prepared for an argument, had wanted some hooks of resistance on which he could hang his planned pep talk. “Sit down, for God’s sake, Inspector Peach. You’re here to bring me up to date on the Verna Hume murder. I’ve got a press – no, a full media conference this afternoon, you know.” Tucker tried to look modest, but his chest swelled a little despite himself at the importance of it all.
“Yes, sir. Wouldn’t want you to look silly in front of the cameras, sir.” Peach pulled up a chair carefully, as if it was important to place it exactly an inch outside Tucker’s designated space, then positioned himself upon it equally carefully, with his knees together and his back bolt upright.
“What exactly would you like to know, sir?” He threw his most benign smile across the big desk; it flooded his features, expelling every wrinkle from the face beneath the white dome of baldness.
“Well, just fill me in, that’s all.” Tucker couldn’t admit how little he knew about the progress of an investigation he was supposed to be directing. “I’ve got an overview, of course, but I need—”
“Ah, yes, the Tucker overview. One of the most valuable factors in Brunton CID success, that is, if you don’t mind my saying it. We beaver away at things on the ground, but it’s your overall grasp of the issues, your view from the clouds above, which gives balance and direction to the enterprise. But I expect you must know that, sir. It’s part of the strategy which informs the whole of our work, just the top part of the system which is your creation.”
As often with Peach, Tucker found himself knowing quite well that he was being taunted, but not quite sure which phrase he could fasten on as an insult. This damn fellow kept such an earnest exterior over his hostility that you couldn’t pin him down. And when your reputation was dependent on the bastard’s work and both of you knew it, it made things even more tricky.
He tried the friendly and encouraging tack. “I think you should just run me through the details of the suspects,” he said. Then he added daringly, “And perhaps give me your latest thinking on them.”
“Certainly, sir.” Peach’s smile, which had disappeared with the exaggerated concentration he gave to Tucker’s most routine phrases, now returned. “And perhaps I might have the benefit of your thoughts on the problems of the investigation. Your overview, as we might say: most valuable, that would be. If you have the time, of course.” Percy snatched a glance at his watch. He had just twenty minutes before he was due to visit Richard Johnson, whereas this windbag had no doubt nothing useful in mind before the afternoon’s press conference.
Tucker said limply, “You’ve released the husband. I suppose you’re satisfied he had nothing to do with his wife’s murder?”
“Martin Hume? Oh, yes, sir. It would have been difficult for him, as we now know he was at least two hundred miles away at the time of death. Must admit I wondered at first why you’d pulled him in so promptly. Then I realized that it must be to put chummy at his ease. Or her ease, of course. The real killer, I mean.”
Percy was very satisfied with the look of bewilderment and apprehension on Tucker’s face. It reminded him of Lady Macbeth’s warning to her husband that his face was as a book wherein men might read strange things, but he decided this wasn’t the moment for a quotation: his quarry was quite baffled enough.
Tucker said defensively, “But I believe he didn’t get on with his wife.”
Peach shrugged. “That’s matrimony for you, sir. Blissfully happy marriages such as your own are unfortunately very much the exception, I’m afraid.” Rumor had it that Tommy Bloody Tucker was a domestic wimp of seaside postcard dimensions under the domination of his formidable spouse. Percy leant forward. “Verna Hume was playing away, I’m afraid, sir. Frequently.”
Tucker strove for an idiom which would get him on this man’s wavelength. “Prick-teaser, was she?”
Peach nodded vigorously, as if it was the first time he had heard the expression and it fitted perfectly. “Worse than that, sir. A drawer-dropper. Upstairs, downstairs, over most of East Lancashire, from what I can gather.”
“She was an attractive woman,” said Tucker wistfully. He sounded as if he was sorry he had missed his chance with the lascivious Verna.
“Yes, sir. But as you will appreciate, that isn’t making our job easy.”
“Who’ve you got in the frame, so far?”
“Three men and three women, sir.” A neat division: Percy had only just fixed on this number, but he spoke with complete confidence.
Tucker’s face fell. He had been hoping to announce breezily to his media conference that an arrest was imminent. He leant forward, producing the new phrase he had learnt with modest pride. “No prime suspect, then?”
“No, sir. And the list is by no means comprehensive: we may need to add to it in due course. That’s the trouble with drawer-droppers: they get around.” Percy smiled brightly again. It w
as not the least of his annoyances to Tucker that he seemed to find the very things which depressed his chief quite cheering.
“I understand the uniformed boys made an arrest at the house where the woman was killed. Surely that must have provided you with a lead? Surely the villain concerned must be the murderer, or at least an accessory?” Superintendent Tucker drummed his fingers hard upon his desk; it was a move which seemed to intimidate all his staff save DI Peach.
“That’s interesting, sir. The lady in question is a pensioner. A Mrs Alice Osborne. She may have deceived us, sir – she seemed a frail old lady on the point of collapse when we interviewed her, but she was probably conning us. I wish we’d had you in at the time, now. You’d probably have seen through her in a flash. Perhaps we—”
“Don’t be stupid, Peach!” A spurt of genuine temper warned Percy that he could go too far. “What did this woman say she was doing in the house?”
“Alice Osborne, sir? Well, she said she was looking for photographs at first. But we wouldn’t wear that, so then she claimed she had been looking for jewelery. A diamond ring and a pair of diamond earrings, she said.”
“And you believed her?”
“No, sir. Not when she said they were her own things that she’d lent to Verna Hume, we didn’t.”
“So what was she really after?”
“We don’t know, sir. Not yet.”
“And yet you let her go!” Tucker was triumphant in his surprise.
“Yes, sir, we did. She seemed on the point of collapse, you see. And we thought it unlikely she was the murderer.”
Tucker shook his head sadly at such naivety. “She must be a suspect. Anyone could have suffocated Verna Hume with a pillow, you know. It didn’t need much strength.”
“Yes, sir. Shall we pull Mrs Osborne in again? Before this afternoon, so that you could announce it to the press and TV?” Percy was full of eager energy.
“No! No, don’t do that. Just bear in mind what I’ve said, that’s all.”
“Right, sir. We will indeed, sir.” Peach brightened with a sudden brainwave. “Should we put a tail on her, sir? Follow her into the underworld, if necessary?” He wished Tucker had the imagination to see the beautiful picture he could see of Alice Osborne with her shopping bag on her arm, pursued around the highly respectable shopping square of Lytham St Annes by a diligent police shadow.
“Not for the moment, no. But bear in mind what I’ve said. Who else have you turned up? Let’s have the women first.”
“Yes, sir. Logical as always. Well, there’s the dead woman’s younger sister, sir. Susan Thompson.”
“And why do you have reason to suspect her, Inspector?” Tucker switched to heavy patience.
“They don’t seem to have been particularly close as sisters, sir. And—”
“Oh for God’s sake, Peach! Can’t you come up with anything better than that? Two days of intensive activity from you and your team produces the idea that a sister didn’t ‘get on’ with the murder victim. Really, I sometimes wonder—”
“And she seems to have been carrying on an affair with Martin Hume, the dead woman’s husband, sir.” Peach was as inscrutable as a carved Buddha in a temple as he delivered his bombshell.
Tucker knew he had been set up, but couldn’t quite pinpoint where. “Then why for God’s sake didn’t you say so earlier, man? What’s her story about the killing?”
“Don’t know, sir. I shall find out later today, I hope. She’s given a statement to a DC, of course. But she needs to be interviewed by a senior officer. If you should be available yourself, sir…”
“No! No, I’m tied up today with the media conference, as I said. And you know it’s my policy not to interfere with my officers. Just – just get on with it, that’s all.” Tucker waved a hand vaguely at the air over Peach’s head.
“Yes, sir. We’ve already seen the dead woman’s business partner, Barbara Harris.”
Tucker leant forward, switching to eager efficiency. “Motive?”
“She gets the business back. According to her, Verna Hume conned her out of her share of the partnership some years ago. But the deed they agreed when they set up together hasn’t been rewritten: the death of either partner means that the other gets the entire business.”
“Ah!” Tucker sighed with deep satisfaction, as if he had just seen the significance of something his obtuse inspector might have missed. “Opportunity?”
“Mrs Harris has as yet no satisfactory alibi for the time of the death, sir.” Peach spoke as carefully and impersonally as if he had been in court.
Tucker nodded and spoke confidentially, “Off the record Percy – and I won’t throw your opinion back in your face in the future, you know, it’s not my way – did this Mrs Harris strike you as a ruthless sort of woman?”
Peach considered the adjective carefully. “Yes, sir.”
“Ah!”
“But then most women strike me as ruthless, sir. In the right circumstances. I haven’t the same happy experience of wedded bliss as you, of course. I suppose my divorce is bound to affect my views, even now. And I expect businesswomen have to be especially ruthless, don’t they?”
Tucker had the uneasy feeling that he was being taken for a ride again, without being able to say exactly how. “She’ll stand watching, if she has so much to gain, this woman. You mark my words.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for the overview, sir.” Peach made a note on a piece of card he produced from his pocket, held it at arm’s length to inspect it, then returned it to his jacket. “That’s the three women, then.”
“Right. On to the men. I haven’t got all day, you know.”
“No, sir.” You’ve got exactly seven minutes more of my valuable time, you old fraud, thought Percy. “Derek Osborne,” he said abruptly.
Tucker looked puzzled, then said triumphantly, “Alice Osborne’s husband?”
“The very man, sir. And thus the dead woman’s father.”
Tucker leant forward and looked over his glasses again, and Peach inclined his head in eager anticipation of the coming pearl of wisdom. “Don’t rule him out on that account, Peach. Eighty per cent of murders are committed by close members of the family you know.”
“Really, sir? I shall certainly bear that in mind.” Percy shook his head in amazement at this best-known of all crime statistics.
Tucker peered at him suspiciously. “Yes. Well, it’s well worth remembering. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this Derek Osborne and his wife were in this together.”
“You smell collusion, sir? And yet Alice Osborne was most anxious her husband shouldn’t know she’d been arrested at his daughter’s house. I see it all now, of course. Just a bluff to put PC Plods like me off the scent. They were in it together all the time, I expect.”
“I’m not saying it’s like that at all!” said Tucker irritably. “Just keep an open mind, that’s all I’m saying.”
“A welcome reminder, sir, all the same. Sometimes one is too close to the investigation and the people involved in it to see these things.” Percy put his hand to his pocket, as if he planned to make a further note of this latest gem, then thought better of it. He frowned with concentration and nodded vigorously several times, as if he hoped thus to hammer Tucker’s adage into his dull brain.
“Who else?” asked his superintendent hopelessly.
“We seem to have found the only man Verna Hume mentioned by name in her diary, sir. A Hugh Pearson. Member of my golf club, actually.” Peach grinned apologetically; it was another chance to remind his chief of how the exclusive North Lancashire GC had rejected Tucker’s crude hackings but accepted his own developing skills.
“Hugh Pearson? I know that name,” said Tucker suspiciously, as if that meant a deception was being attempted.
“Very probably, sir, with your awareness of local issues and people. Runs his own successful business, our Hugh does. Pearson Electronics. May well be a member of the fraternity, too, but I wouldn’t know about that, of course
.”
Tucker looked as shifty as he always did when there was a reference to his Masonic connections. That was why he knew the name of course: Hugh Pearson was a member of the Lodge. Quite a winning young fellow he had always seemed to Tommy. He said stiffly, “Whether or not Mr Pearson is a Freemason is neither here nor there, of course.”
“No, sir. But he seems to have been knocking off Verna Hume all right. Here, there and everywhere. She seems to have had what I believe'they now call ‘the hots’ for our Mr Pearson. Though he’s trying to make out now that it didn’t mean all that much to him. Not very gallant that. But then Hugh didn’t seem much of a gentleman to me.”
Tucker wasn’t going to rise to the bait of defending a fellow Mason. He said, “Knocking a woman off doesn’t automatically mean you have to kill her, you know, Peach.”
“No, sir. Worth remembering, that.” For an awful moment, Tucker thought his DI was going to make a note of another of his banalities as if it were a pearl of detection. But all he said was, “My impression is that he wanted to shake Verna Hume off but she didn’t want to go. Perhaps she was serious about a man, for once. Wanted a commitment he wasn’t prepared to give. Pearson has not so far given any convincing account of his whereabouts on Saturday night.”
“You must treat him the same as any other suspect, of course. But for what it’s worth, my impression of young Pearson is that he wouldn’t be involved in murder.”
“I see, sir. Thank you for that different perspective, sir.” Percy realized that he had already been hoping that the egregious Hugh Pearson would prove their man. He wished it now with a renewed, wholly unprofessional fervor, which only Tommy Bloody Tucker could have roused.