Making a Killing

by J M Gregson

  She emerged half-dressed from the bathroom, brusquely dismissing her uncertainties. ‘Time you were moving, lover-boy,’ she said. Perhaps she knew the strange attractiveness her slight French accent gave to the glib phrases of Hollywood. She took a dress that was scarcely worn from the wardrobe. Trousers suited her long legs and slim hips, emphasized the measurements she had retained since she was twenty-one, but policemen should be received conventionally. She would make no gesture towards mourning: curiously, her unexpectedly tender recall of her husband made her more sensitive to the effects she might create. Black might be construed as hypocritical by anyone who knew of the recent state of her marriage. She had not enjoyed her visit in black to the offices of Freeman Estates, and Simon had scarcely helped things by going over the top when he should have kept quiet. She chose a dark pink summer dress, demure, but light enough to sketch in her trim bust and waist with every movement she made.

  ‘What time are they coming?’ Simon made no attempt to move as he watched her pull the dress over her tanned shoulders. She must be ten years, maybe even a little more, older than his thirty, he thought. But she had worn well, there was no disputing that. And certainly in bed –

  ‘In half an hour. Come on, darling. Out!’ She slapped his thigh and pulled away the clothes. He rolled reluctantly out and reached for his shirt: he was still not secure enough to parade himself naked before her experienced eyes. He washed and dressed quickly; he had no wish to meet senior policemen, in however routine a context. When he emerged from the bathroom, Denise had left the bedroom.

  When he was a vigorous forty-eight, she would be almost sixty, he mused. When he was fifty-eight, she would be an old lady. They said older women were grateful, the raffish, inadequate young men with whom he exchanged notes. Most of them aspired to a rakishness they would never achieve. Simon was obscurely aware of this, so he did not rate their opinions very highly. But he was not good at leaps of imagination, so that picturing this long-term future, weighing the pros and cons of marriage to a rich and sexually voracious widow, was beyond him. He did not yet know it was a pointless exercise.

  ‘I have an appointment at two myself anyway,’ he said. He vaguely resented the way she seemed always to manage the length and termination of their meetings, and was trying to assert his own measure of control. ‘What does this policeman want?’

  ‘Superintendent Lambert,’ she said, unconsciously adopting the precision she found necessary. ‘Is Superintendent a high rank in the British police?’

  ‘Very,’ said Hapgood. ‘Too high to be wasting his time on this!’

  As she turned away from him, Denise’s face twitched as if she had been slapped: the notion that Stanley’s death should be unworthy of the attention of anyone significant seemed insensitive from one who had invaded his bed. She told herself she was being unfair: this very directness in Simon had once been an attraction to her.

  ‘Do they know about us?’ Simon was defensive; he had seen quite enough of policemen in the past.

  ‘There’s no way they can do.’

  ‘It’s better to keep it that way.’ There was something very near alarm in his voice. He slipped on his shoes and made for the door with his car keys in his hand. He seemed suddenly very young to her: she tried to cherish his vulnerability, but could see him only as callow, rather tiresome in his sudden anxiety to be gone. He looked different in his dark grey professional suit and maroon tie, like an actor playing a role for which he was ill equipped. She could not believe the public would take him seriously in the part, yet she knew he was quite successful. Perhaps this was the reality, and her image of him as lover the deception.

  He turned reluctantly, then kissed her on the forehead. The physical contact brought them closer emotionally, but only for the moment it lasted. ‘Why is he coming, anyway?’ he said. A small worry gnawed in the recesses of his mind.

  She shrugged. ‘How should I know? It was his sergeant who arranged the time. He’s coming too; he sounded like one of your English yeomen. Very sturdy. Very reassuring. Except to a Frenchwoman: Agincourt hasn’t the same context for us.’

  ‘Didn’t he say what this Lambert fellow wanted to talk about?’

  ‘No. He said it was usual to talk to the next of kin after a death.’

  ‘Not for a Superintendent.’

  ‘We didn’t discuss the rank.’ She gave him a sharp little smile and he was gone, his blue Sierra roaring swiftly out of earshot, as if he wanted to be well away from the place before the police came. She smiled a little indulgently after him, no longer irritated, merely amused by his childish unease at the approach of the law.

  The death had now been officially noted as murder. Neither of them knew that yet.

  Chapter 8

  For senior CID men, there are few better sources of preliminary information than the Desk-Sergeant at the local nick. Lambert was making use of this facility.

  ‘So he lives rough the whole time?’

  ‘Winter and summer. I think occasionally he gets help from someone at the vicarage or the RC presbytery, but clergymen can be quite reticent about those they help. The best clergymen.’ Sergeant Johnson made the qualification in sturdy defence of his agnosticism.

  ‘His real name can’t be Wino Willy.’

  ‘He’s universally known as that now.’ Johnson was the opposite of Sergeant Hook: thin-faced, eager, so mobile he seemed to find it difficult to keep still. He shot from his chair as though forcibly ejected, extracted a file from the furthest of three cabinets in ten seconds. He knew the information already, but one needed to be sure and official for a Superintendent.

  ‘Arthur James Harrison,’ he said.

  ‘So he’s not even Willy really,’ said Lambert inconsequentially. The removal of a man’s name in the interests of alliteration seemed one more small cruelty visited by an uncaring world upon its flotsam.

  ‘He had a short period in hospital two years ago. Appendix. They cleaned him up. Cut his hair and shaved him. All over, presumably.’

  ‘How long was he in hospital?’

  Johnson turned over a page of the file and raised his too-mobile eyebrows. ‘Five days.’

  ‘Five days! And discharged back to that! What time of year?’ He knew he was being outraged where he should have been non-committal. The swift turnround of patients was one way in which the National Health Service could show itself as efficient in these days of cuts and threatened cuts. He had enough political problems with the Law and Order lobby without looking for more.

  ‘End of August. He discharged himself.’ Sergeant Johnson hoped the issue of this information did not sound like a rebuke. Well, it was not after all so irrelevant. Lambert was building up a picture of the man who might just have seen a murder. Or might just have committed it: but he did not believe that. This killing was too carefully arranged to look like suicide by one who must have more motive than poor Arthur James Harrison seemed to have.

  ‘Never mind the file, Jack. Tell me what you know about him beyond that.’ So the Superintendent had remembered even his nickname, though he had not spoken to him for two years. Sergeant Johnson was gratified despite himself. Setting aside his twin disadvantages of high rank and CID designation, Lambert did not seem a bad bloke.

  ‘He was divorced eleven years ago. His wife kept the house. He lived in a flat with his son for a while. The son was killed in a car accident six years ago. Front seat passenger. I was there when the firemen cut him out.’ Johnson stared at the row of pigeonholes on the wall, his face stilled for a moment with the recollected horror.

  ‘Has he been living rough since then?’

  ‘More or less. That was when he gave up his job. He saw the boy buried, then disappeared for two or three months.’

  ‘What was his job?’

  ‘Teacher at the local grammar school; comprehensive, now. Good in his day. Very good, I believe. Inspector Steele reckons he got his son into Cambridge.’

  ‘Subject?’

  ‘History.’ Johnson t
urned back to the beginning of the file. Lambert saw a sharp black and white photograph of an eager, intelligent face. A vanished man. ‘An MA. I seem to remember he was writing a book. Never got finished, I suppose. He used to lecture for the WEA at one time. My wife went. Said he was fascinating on Oliver Cromwell.’ Like most policemen in the humbler ranks, he was half proud of his wife’s erudition and initiative, half threatened by her venture into the exotic world of adult education.

  Lambert was grateful for the picture he was building up. He would have to question this half-crazed man whom life had so reduced. He might even have to bring him forward as an important witness: he shuddered at the thought. ‘How bad is he? Mentally, I mean.’

  Sergeant Johnson pursed his lips. ‘The trick-cyclists would no doubt be able to pin some sort of label on him. If they could get at him. I suppose in the old days he might have been committed at some stage. Nowadays, he’s left alone, as long as he keeps quiet.’

  ‘Has he had any treatment?’

  ‘Nothing worth the name. Three days’ observation a year or so after his wife died. “Severe depression” is all the file says – covers a multitude of sins. Discharged himself after one session of electric shock therapy. Can’t say I blame him.’

  Any history of violence?’ Lambert asked the question very quietly, but both knew the implications.

  ‘None whatsoever. I haven’t seen Willy for three or four years now, but PC Robertson, whose patch it is, says he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Rather the reverse, in fact: he has a great reputation for being able to charm the local wildlife. Small animals and birds seem to find him no threat at all and come to sit at his feet. If he holds on another year or two now that even the Tories have gone “green”, he’ll be transformed from vagrant to conservationist.’

  ‘Human relationships?’

  ‘None to speak of. Kids seem to find him as gentle and attractive as animals do, but these days their mothers snatch them away from strange men. Understandable. Once or twice he’s been seen picking bilberries or blackberries with kids on the hills, perfectly innocently I’m sure. Usually he’s alone; he seems to avoid human contact whenever he can.’

  ‘Alcoholic?’

  ‘Difficult to say. Unless they cause trouble, we don’t see much of them.’

  ‘Meths?’

  ‘It’s possible. There’s no mention of him buying meths in the file, but he’s never given us much trouble, so we’ve never investigated him much.’

  Lambert wondered why he was glad that this did not sound like the profile of a man who would commit premeditated violence. It could hardly be sympathy for that wild figure he had glimpsed so briefly in flight. Such a murderer would have provided a quick, tidy solution, the sort of efficient statistic beloved of Chief Constables. Was he genuinely sympathetic towards this rather tragic underdog? Or was he pleased to have a more complex crime to investigate, relishing the interlocking puzzle he might have to disconnect among those who had been closest to Stanley Freeman?

  ‘Will he be easy to interrogate, Jack?’

  Johnson smiled: a daring reaction to a Superintendent, but his nickname had just been used again. ‘Sooner you than me, sir. Robertson says he’s got worse over the years. Just runs away when he can. How far his son’s death sent him over the edge into real madness is anyone’s guess. But he’s gone wilder since, probably lost all human contact. There’s one thing, sir.’ For the first time in their exchange, chirpy ‘Jack’ Johnson looked uncertain about how to proceed with his senior.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think I’d bring him in here to question him, sir. We had him in about a burglary two years ago – nothing to do with him, and I don’t think he’d seen anything. But he was like a frightened animal in a cage. He wouldn’t say a word.’

  Lambert had already had the same thought, but he said, ‘Thanks. Where does he hang out?’

  ‘One place you know of. He seems to have been using that old summerhouse on the edge of the Lydon Hall grounds since the house was empty. I think in summer he sometimes just sleeps under the stars. But Robertson says there’s an old sheepcote, disused now, on the edge of the moor; he uses that sometimes. He comes into the town occasionally for supplies, but you might get more out of him on his own ground.’

  Lambert walked thoughtfully to his own car, revolving how he might best approach a damaged mind about the most horrifying of human crimes. The man was connected with this death in some way, he was sure. He began to wonder about contacts between Wino Willy and his suspects.

  Chapter 9

  At precisely two o’clock, Denise Freeman watched the big Vauxhall ease through the gates and park discreetly beside her own car.

  The two big men who came unhurriedly towards the house automatically took in their surroundings. Observation was by this time instinctive, but long experience had taught them not to deduce too much too early. They saw a long, low, modern bungalow; as they were not familiar with estate agency language, ‘ranch-style’ was not the adjective either of them would have used. Lambert saw with interest how the carefully trained wistaria was just beginning to frame the rectangular inset of the front door and its adjoining windows, how clematis clambered in abundance over climbing roses, how the circular bed in the front lawn combined geraniums, tagetes and lobelia in parkland precision. ‘Paid gardener,’ he muttered to Hook as a speculation.

  His sergeant was peering into the large segment of rear garden visible past the side of the house. The swimming pool looked blue and inviting against the surrounding green, the garish red-hot pokers and more muted phlox looked like a backdrop from Ideal Home. ‘Not a vegetable in sight,’ he said with disgust.

  Denise Freeman could not know she had made a bad beginning with Sergeant Hook. She opened the front door with a bright smile, moderated it a little in deference to her widowed status, and held out her hand to his chief. ‘Superintendent Lambert? Denise Freeman. Delighted to meet you.’

  In the complex relationships of interviewer and interviewed, the shaking of hands did not normally figure, but Lambert took the proffered hand with only a momentary hesitation. It was small and warm, the grip firm enough to imply confidence, the contact brief enough to maintain a degree of formality. Perhaps the information he brought would shake this composure; or perhaps she already knew; the majority of homicides were still domestic.

  ‘Will this take long?’ she said. Her smile implied that she would be patient, but they must not impinge too harshly upon the privacy of grief.

  ‘It might. It all depends how much you can tell us. I think we should sit down somewhere.’ They were still standing in the hall; if he was going to give her an unpleasant shock, he didn’t want her fainting upon them. But at this moment she looked a very controlled lady.

  ‘I thought we might sit in the garden. It’s warm enough. Would you like some tea?’ Lambert assented, trying not to see Bert Hook’s ill-concealed gratification behind their hostess. Hook had never been known to refuse a cup of tea, and his axiom of ‘the bourgeois the better’ would add to the delight of this context. Coffee from the Crown’s silver jug this morning, and now tea here: criminal investigation was looking up.

  Denise Freeman led them through the bungalow to where a crazy-paved patio overlooked lawn, pool, manicured garden and oak trees beyond. Lambert was puzzled by the vaguely familiar air of a spot he had never seen before. Then he realized it was a small-scale, modernized version of the more grandiose view from the terrace at the rear of Lydon Hall, where he had stood on the previous day, speculating about murder and its possible witness in the arboretum.

  Here there were cups, saucers and plates upon a solid wooden table. So she had planned this, half-expecting a prolonged exchange and seeking to keep its social context as low-key as possible. They seated themselves on garden furniture more opulent than many lounge suites and prepared for the ceremony of tea. Bert Hook had already decided that the china was more ‘refined’ than even the Crown’s. It was a favourite adjective of his, pro
nounced with a curl of the lip: ‘refinement’ had been held out to a ’fifties Barnardo’s boy as the ultimate in morality.

  He was not disappointed by Denise Freeman’s arrival with silver tea service. The dark pink sleeveless dress set off the slim brown arms and calves to perfection, as she had known it would. It was modestly buttoned to the neck. The neat lace trimmings and simple low-heeled sandals were elegant yet unpretentious. With tray in hand, she looked to Bert Hook very ladylike. It was an adjective that did not prevent him from reserving his judgements: his upbringing had brought him into contact with many ladies who had given him hard times.

  ‘Is this usual? I already spoke to a policewoman on the night Stanley died.’ With only the slight hesitation over tenses to suggest that English was not her first language, Denise broached the question which had worried her in the hours since she had taken Hook’s phone call and accepted this meeting.

  ‘Yes. The Coroner’s Officer collects the body and arranges for the next of kin to be informed.’ Lambert was in no hurry to dispense information. Once foul play is established, spouses are always prime suspects, whether as direct agents of death or accessories; he was content to study this one carefully. Was she anticipating his disclosure? She seemed to be prepared for something, but that might be no more than the reaction of an intelligent woman to a visit from the CID. Even to an eye trained to spot disclosures, her body language gave nothing away. Her hand as she poured the tea was firm enough, her voice steady as the poise of her head as she handed the delicate crockery into the large, careful hands of her visitors. For a woman suddenly widowed, she seemed unnaturally calm, but this kind of control was not an unusual reaction in those confronting official functionaries in the days after bereavement; sometimes people did not feel the full impact of death until after the funeral.