by J M Gregson
Twenty minutes later, the four were back in the clubhouse. Percy left immediately to get back to the Hume murder case. His evening game at the North Lancs and this half day at Southport and Ainsdale were his only time off in a week of twelve-hour days. Leisure well earned and well spent, he thought.
Four hours after Percy’s team had completed its round, when all competitors were back in the clubhouse, T.B. Tucker, Chief Superintendent in charge of the Brunton CID section, allowed himself to be pushed forward to claim the trophy his team had won. His public skills were as polished as his golfing ones had been coarse. He thanked the S and A for their excellent course, and made a speech calling attention to the skills of his three companions in victory. His audience thought how appealingly modest he was.
In other parts of Lancashire, his staff were busily at work. He might by the end of the week be able to announce and claim credit for another sort of victory. Chief Superintendent Tucker would no doubt be appealingly modest about his own part in it.
*
In returning to the real world, Peach drove only as far as Preston. There he picked up DS Blake as arranged, and drove along the other side of the Ribble’s wide estuary to Lytham St Annes.
The Osbornes were expecting them – Lucy had phoned to arrange this meeting in the morning. The pair looked their age as they stood together at the big window at the front of their bungalow and watched Percy’s blue Mondeo turn into their drive. Both had very white, anxious faces. They did not touch each other, but stood very close, as if each craved comfort from the other. Lucy had a sudden premonition that what came out of this meeting might divide rather than unite a couple who seemed so devoted to each other.
The four sat down in the neat lounge with its worn but comfortable furniture. “Time for some straight talking,” said Percy Peach with relish.
The Osbornes glanced at each other, wondering how long they would be proof against such directness. Peach sat on the edge of his armchair, as impassive as a squat, perfectly modeled Buddha, his fringe of black hair neat beneath his small, delicate ears, his dark eyes giving the impression of seeing and recording more than was merely present in front of them. It was Alice Osborne who said tentatively, “What exactly was it you wanted to know, Inspector?”
Her voice went up at the end of the sentence with her Geordie inflection. Peach gave her what he thought of as his encouraging smile. To the nervous elderly woman opposite him, it seemed to be how a shark might grin before a meal.
“You could start by telling us why you went to the murder victim’s house at dead of night, Mrs Osborne.”
“I told you. I was looking for something.”
“I might buy that. But it wasn’t photographs, as you admitted eventually when we questioned you about it at the station and it wasn’t jewelery either, was it? Though you tried to sell us that idea as well. So just what were you looking for?”
She looked up into her husband’s troubled face. He said quietly, “It’s all right, lass. You tell them. It can’t hurt me.” He was as gentle, as persuasive, as if she had been a sick child.
And he succeeded in reassuring her. She looked back at Peach and found that he had lost some of his terrors. She said slowly, “I wasn’t looking for anything in particular. I was searching for something that might connect Derek with this awful business, that’s all. It wasn’t until I got there that I realized how hopeless it was. Poking round in those big rooms with a torch, not knowing what I was looking for.”
There was a kind of heroism in the visit though, however mistaken it might have been. To go to a large empty house where a murder had taken place at dead of night and begin a systematic search would have required nerve in a young lawbreaker, let alone a frail old woman who had never broken the law in her life, thought Lucy. Unless, of course, she had ruthlessly smothered her stepdaughter in the same place three days earlier; DS Blake made the automatic CID reservation not to judge things by appearances.
Lucy said, “Tell us now exactly why you went there, Alice. As Derek says, it will be much the best thing to do.”
“I was looking for something – anything – which might have connected Derek with Verna’s death. She had some kind of hold over him, you see. I knew that. She may have been a bonny lass, but there was something wicked about her. Whenever she came here, she upset him, even though she was his daughter. At first, I thought it was just that she resented me taking the place of her mother by being married to him. I knew she hadn’t liked that.”
“It wasn’t that,” said Derek quietly, almost as if he was talking to himself.
“No. I don’t suppose I really thought it was, by the time she died. But I didn’t know what it was, this hold she had over him. Derek still hasn’t told me.” She looked up at him, more in hope than resentment. He shook his troubled face from side to side, as slowly as if the movement gave him physical pain.
Peach said enigmatically, “Anything there which linked your husband or anyone else with the crime was removed long before you went to the house, Mrs Osborne. That’s what we put scene-of-crime teams into places for.” She looked up at him expectantly, but he wasn’t going to tell her whether they had found anything in that house which linked Derek Osborne with the killing.
“No. I was a silly old bat, wasn’t I? Thinking I could get my man off the hook, simply by going into the place and finding something, like that.”
Her old, lined face gave a small, sad smile. It was left to Lucy to voice the chilling thought which had driven her into her bizarre course of action. “You thought Derek had killed his daughter, didn’t you, Alice? That’s why you wanted to find out what hold Verna had over him. You thought it would link him with her death.”
The old gray head nodded. Confession was proving a huge relief, when all she had anticipated was an ordeal. “It seems awful that I could even consider Derek killing his own bairn. But you didn’t know Verna.”
“No. We’ve got to know quite a lot about her, though, since her death. There are other people with reasons to hate her, you know, as well as your Derek.”
Lucy wondered how much older than her own mother this frail, defeated yet courageous woman might be. Perhaps to children their parents were always old; to others, Agnes Blake must seem a vigorous and resourceful woman.
Alice Osborne’s head now jerked up in alarm. “I don’t believe Derek killed her any more, you know. That was just a day or two of madness after her death, when we were all in shock. You mustn’t take any notice of an old fool like me.”
“Not such an old fool, Mrs Osborne,” said Peach, not unkindly. “You were right to think that the daughter had been exploiting some hold she had over the father. Wasn’t she, Mr Osborne?”
The sudden switch of his focus caught Derek Osborne off guard. He recoiled six inches on his chair, almost as if he had been physically struck. For a moment, he looked as if he would deny the allegation. Then he said, in a voice so low that even in that quiet room it barely carried, “I don’t want to talk about that. I can’t.”
He put his hand on top of his wife’s smaller one as they sat together on the sofa, but it was he, not she, who needed support now. A seagull, swooping so low over the garden that it barely cleared the line of well-worn washing, screamed harshly, its call unnaturally loud in the silence.
“You’ll have to talk, Mr Osborne. We can do this here or at the station. It’s your choice.” It was a line he had delivered truculently a thousand times before, but never had he been so quiet in his insistence. He sounded almost regretful.
Derek Osborne said, “Not here, anyway. I can’t do it here.” He stood up and went into the hall. For an absurd moment, Lucy feared that he might run away, that they and he might have the indignity of a chase across these neat suburban gardens which the old man could never win. Then he reappeared wearing an overcoat which was of good quality but at least twenty years old.
“I’m ready,” he said. Then he went over to where Alice still sat on the worn sofa and said, “I’m sorry, l
ass. I can’t explain this. I love you.”
Without waiting for any reaction, he turned and led the way to the front door. Lucy wondered for a moment if he thought this would be his last exchange with his wife in this place, if he expected to be arrested and detained.
But when he was sitting in Peach’s Mondeo, he said, “There’s no need to go to any police station. Just take me somewhere away from Alice and I’ll talk.” He waved at his white-faced wife as the car drew away from the bungalow; neither of them even attempted a farewell smile.
Peach glanced sideways at the taut figure. “Alright, Derek. We’ll go wherever you say.”
Five minutes later, they were sitting on a bench on Lytham Green, within a hundred yards of the defunct and sail-less white windmill, which appears on all the postcards and has given that mile of smooth green seaside turf its definition, for locals and visitors alike. There was a brisk but not unpleasant breeze, sweeping in the scent of seaweed from the edge of the estuary fifty feet below them. Percy gazed across the water towards the course at Southport, where Tommy Bloody Tucker was at that moment receiving the trophy they had won; it was scarcely eight miles away across the water, though nearer to forty by road. Already his enjoyments of the morning seemed to belong to a different world.
There were not many people about late on this midweek afternoon, so that the three could sit on a bench and speak with total privacy. The two younger figures without coats and the frail older man huddled in his overcoat looked for all the world like day trippers enjoying the sun and the sea air. For thirty seconds or so, they watched a boat on the horizon, making its slow, almost imperceptible way towards the docks at Liverpool.
Then Peach said, “We can shorten this, perhaps. You should know that we are aware that you were making regular payments into your daughter’s bank account, Derek. Payments of two hundred and fifty pounds a month. Except for the last one: that had just been increased to three hundred pounds. My guess is that this was to be the new regular sum.”
He spoke softly, almost regretfully, not at all in his usual ebullient manner. Perhaps it was just another tactic, thought Lucy. Perhaps he had decided that he was going to get more out of the troubled man beside him by persuasion than confrontation.
If it was no more than that, it at least showed insight, for Derek Osborne responded in the way most helpful to them. He said, as though they already knew everything he had to tell them, “Verna didn’t need the money, you know. It meant very little to her, but it was crippling me. I think that was what pleased her. She enjoyed hurting people. Perhaps me most of all.”
Peach said gently, “We know that your daughter wasn’t much liked by anyone. I’m sorry. Perhaps she was most dangerous to those who thought they loved her.”
Osborne looked sharply sideways at him, but Peach continued to gaze out at the swirling waters of the Ribble estuary. After a few seconds, the dead woman’s father said, “You’re right. She had a hold over me. Maybe you already know – you seem to know everything else. When she was seventeen, some years after her mother had died, I went to bed with her one night.”
Lucy Blake stared resolutely out over the waters, denying herself the gasp of astonishment the old man’s last words had almost provoked in her, feeling that the slightest movement from her might break the spell and stop Derek Osborne from talking. Nevertheless, the elderly man suddenly leant forward and sideways, looking right into her face, forcing her to look at his tortured, deeply lined features. “You don’t want to be hearing this, young lady.”
Lucy managed a small smile. “I’ve heard much worse in this job, Mr Osborne, believe me. Many times.”
“Really? I suppose you see the worst of the world, all the time.”
Then, as if he had only so much consideration to expend on others, he was back with his own agony, turning directly away from her, directing his statements to Peach, as if by shutting Lucy out of his vision he could close her ears to this. “It was a moment of madness, and she led me on. I suppose all men say that.”
Percy, careless now of what Lucy might feel, anxious only to have the information out of Osborne, said “Men do say that, in all sorts of situations. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t be true, in a few of them at least.”
Osborne nodded abstractedly, so that they were not even sure if he had heard and registered this encouragement. “I suppose it wasn’t all that much, really, not in your terms. We kissed and cuddled, with no clothes on. There was no penetration. Not that that made any difference. Verna spoke as if I’d fucked her stupid for months on end.”
The bitterness and frustration came bursting forth in the sudden obscenity from this quiet man.
“And your daughter used this incident to blackmail you. Right up to the time of her death?”
Osborne nodded wearily. “From the time I married Alice onwards. I’d have told her to get lost if it had been anyone else she was threatening to tell. Even Sue – her sister knew well enough what Verna was like, how she liked to slash at anyone else’s happiness. But I couldn’t let her hurt Alice and me, could I?”
“No, Derek, perhaps you couldn’t.” Peach was silent for a moment. Blackmail was the worst crime of all in his book, apart from murder, he supposed. “But your daughter won’t be worrying you any more. Or extracting any more money from you. Did you kill her?”
Osborne, exhausted now, but full of the relief that the shame he had hugged to himself for so many years was out at last, allowed himself a mirthless smile. “No. Alice thought I had done, I think. For a day or two.”
“Yes. But even then, she was anxious to protect you. It couldn’t have been easy to go to that house at night as she did, even though it didn’t help.”
“Will she need to know this?” Suddenly, the exhausted face filled with a new alarm.
Peach said, “Not from us, provided that what you have both told us is true. But these things tend to come out. If they do, it would be much better if she found the facts out from you. She’s going to want to know what you’ve told us, you know, when you get back. Do you really want to feed her more lies?”
He gave a long sigh, which seemed to be dragged from the roots of his being. “No. I don’t suppose I do.”
“It won’t be easy. But explain the circumstances. A lonely man and a pretty daughter up to mischief. I think she’ll understand, knowing both you and Verna. And you and Alice are a bit too old to have secrets from each other, don’t you think?
He watched the old man weighing his arguments, seeing the logic, trying hard to accept that he must do what he had paid to avoid doing for years, what he had thought he had escaped with Verna Hume’s death.
Percy said gently, “My colleague was right, you know. We see much worse, almost every day. It wasn’t anything so very terrible. If you explain it properly, Alice will accept it, I’m sure.”
They dropped him off at the bungalow, a few minutes later. Lucy looked back through the rear window of the car and watched him walk slowly, very slowly, up the short drive of the neat little bungalow, between the bright red rows of salvias he had planted out only that morning to complete his garden display. As Peach’s Mondeo turned the bend at the end of the avenue, the door opened and Osborne turned towards the dark rectangle and the peace he had to make.
*
They were through Preston and two thirds of the way back to Brunton when Peach turned the car off the road and into the almost empty car park of a Little Chef cafe. He did not get out. Having made this first move and stopped the car, he was lost for words.
Eventually he said, ridiculously but with considerable relish, “Tommy Bloody Tucker was bloody awful at golf this morning!”
Lucy felt as if she had been brought to a playreading and given the wrong script. “And how were you?”
“Quite good, actually… it seems a long time ago now.”
“Yes. You were very good with those two this afternoon.”
“Felt like a social worker with old Derek there at the end, though. I’m
not much good at the caring policeman act, am I?”
“On the contrary, you were very good indeed, I thought. And it wasn’t just an act was it?”
Suddenly, clumsily, they were embracing. Neither knew afterwards who had made the first move. She held him hard, feeling his broad shoulders gradually relax, caressing his lips gently with her tongue, feeling a moustache for the first time in her life tickling her upper lip. She had never fancied men with moustaches.
He let her go eventually, nuzzling her ear with his nose for a few seconds to postpone the moment when he would have to look into her face. “You smell nice,” he muttered into the forest of clean, soft hair.
She giggled a little, breaking the spell, looking into his face, finding it full of a comical surprise she had never seen in it before. “I think I might like a coffee now,” she said.
*
Later that night, Lucy rang her mother as she had promised to do. The job was going all right, she said. She thought they might be near to an arrest in the Hume murder case, if what her DI said was right.
“I hope he treats you properly, that man,” said her mother: it was one of her ritual statements of worry.
“He treats me very well, Mum. He’s a gentleman, is Percy Peach.”
Parents couldn’t expect to know every development in their children’s lives, she thought later. And in Derek Osborne’s phrase, at least there had been no penetration.
Twenty-Six
Margaret Ashton was a nice woman. Thirty-five years of age, happily married and with a picture of her husband and two lively children on the sideboard. Tall, dark-haired, intelligent, and loyal to her friends.
But she was no match for Percy Peach.
She had been determined to stand by her friend Sue Thompson. If that meant supporting Sue’s story that she had been at the cinema on that Saturday night, then so be it. She knew perfectly well that a decent lass like Sue, the very best kind of single parent, could never have murdered her sister; it was surely quite impossible for anyone who loved Toby as much as Sue did to have killed anyone. Because she was such a nice woman, Margaret didn’t see the non sequitur in that argument.