Making a Killing

by J M Gregson

  ‘Sergeant Hook, you sound quite smug about it. Nothing more definite from the Harbens about the blue car they saw, is there?’

  ‘No. They’ve been shown a brochure picture of a blue Sierra, but they couldn’t be sure. They saw the car against the low evening sun, and they were busy taking evading action. “A medium-sized dark blue car” is as far as they can go. Hapgood is the only one of our suspects with a blue car.’

  Lambert spent thirty seconds in deep, frowning thought. Then he said, ‘For what it’s worth, which at this moment is precisely nothing, I don’t believe Mr Hapgood’s story. Let’s have him in again. He should be back here shortly. Meantime, what do you think of the grieving widow, beyond the fact that black suits her and she knows it?’

  Bert Hook started a little guiltily from his picture of’ Denise Freeman at the graveside. She had worn her mourning like an elegant uniform, and uniforms on women always turned him on; even stolid sergeants were allowed their not-so-innocent fantasies.

  ‘What did she stand to gain?’ he said, daring to answer a superintendent with a question of his own.

  Lambert shrugged. ‘Freedom, Bert. She’d had enough of the contemptible Stanley. She doesn’t get the business, but she gets a salary from it, and everything else. Plus her freedom to live how she wants. And with whom she wants, perhaps.’

  Silence. They indulged their own thoughts about the chic Mrs Freeman. Eventually, Lambert speculated on whether these pauses were longer in the case of attractive females than corpulent men. Then he told himself he must beware of this philosophic vein.

  ‘She drives a green Volvo,’ said Bert Hook.

  ‘Which might be mistaken for blue against the evening sun. I saw it. And no one seems to have seen it in the car park at Tewkesbury. Nor did anyone notice the scarcely anonymous Denise in or around the cinema.’

  ‘I think she’s lying,’ said Hook. It sounded like sycophancy, a mere attempt to follow his superior’s thinking and anticipate its conclusion. In fact, he had just made up his own mind, and was surprised to hear himself voicing his thoughts almost as they formed.

  Lambert looked at him with a quick little smile: sometimes there was still something very boyish in his sergeant. ‘So do I. What puzzles me is that I think if she’d planned to murder her husband, she’d have organized something much better than a visit to the cinema as an alibi. Compared with the thought that went into the murder itself, it all seems rather improvised.’

  Suddenly, the middle of the three phones in front of him bleeped, loud as a trapped bird in the quiet room. Lambert picked it up automatically: he had left the number with the murder room. Rushton’s voice was urgent. Lambert made him wait while Hook went to the door and opened it a fraction to check that Emily Godson was not listening at the reception desk, where she still sat. She was not: so there was a direct outside line from Freeman’s office. A fact which held its own interest.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Lambert to his Inspector.

  ‘Denise Freeman, sir. We’ve come up with a sighting of her in Tewkesbury.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In the cinema. At the interval. She was sitting where she said, in the circle.’

  ‘Reliable?’

  ‘Oh, I think so, sir. It’s a distant friend of Mrs Freeman’s. She was sitting on the other side of the cinema, so she didn’t speak to her, but she saw her when the lights were up, both before the main film and immediately after it.’

  Lambert flirted with the idea of a distant friend being brought in by Denise Freeman to support her story, but found it unlikely.

  Rushton had saved his real news for last, treasuring his titbit as long as possible. He said, trying ineffectively to conceal his satisfaction, ‘There’s just one thing wrong with it, sir. This wasn’t on the Wednesday night when the murder was committed. It was on the previous Monday.’

  Chapter 24

  Simon Hapgood was in earnest, low-toned conversation with Jane Davidson at the reception desk. Bert Hook’s size elevens approached noiselessly to within eight feet before the Sergeant’s voice, investing the innocent words with quiet menace, said, ‘The Superintendent would like a few words with you now, Mr Hapgood.’

  Backs, Hook decided, could be more revealing than he had ever allowed. He watched Hapgood’s shoulders rise in tension beneath the immaculately cut gold hair. When the man turned with broad, toothpaste smile, the Sergeant knew how much effort had gone into forming the lips into this caricature of relaxation. And when Hapgood twirled his car keys on his fingers and said, ‘By all means, Officer,’ Hook thought that from close range he could detect fear in the cold blue eyes.

  It was still there a moment later, when Hapgood looked at the Superintendent across the mahogany desk of his dead employer. Lambert was buoyant. The case had begun to move; his mind grew sharper with the thought. With confidence came an irritation with the pretensions and the deceptions of Simon Hapgood. It was time this dubious young man learned not to take on the big battalions.

  He said without preamble, ‘I won’t waste time. Further information has come to light.’ About Jane Davidson and Denise Freeman, not you, but you don’t know that. So start squirming. ‘I advise you to think carefully. Have you anything to add to your statement about your movements on the night of Stanley Freeman’s murder?’

  Hapgood licked dry lips and tried to think. Thoughts came, but they were the thoughts of a mind in panic; incoherent, disorganized, leading to no useful conclusion. He forced a smile, swallowed, said, ‘I don’t think so. I came home, had a light meal – ’

  ‘We are familiar with your account, there is no need to repeat it,’ said Lambert, eyes relentlessly on the callow face. The renewed catalogue of Hapgood’s movements might bring a calm he was not going to allow. ‘I ask you again, do you wish to make any variation in that story?’

  ‘No.’ The blue eyes looked not at his tormentor but past him, over his shoulder, to the framed certificates on the wall beyond the drinks cabinet. Lambert was suddenly reminded of a Luftwaffe pilot, with blond hair and empty blue eyes above blue uniform. As a very small boy, he had seen such a man led from his crashed plane, dazed and fearful; he did not know whether this image was a memory of that moment or of the myriad layers of film and television which now overlaid it. Nor could he have said how far it affected his attitude to Hapgood at this point. His next move determined the course of the interview.

  ‘Mr Hapgood, you were not in the Stonemasons’ Arms at eight o’clock, as you claim. You were seen there all right, by numerous witnesses: all after nine p.m.’

  ‘I was there earlier than that. On my own. The pub doesn’t fill up until quite late on Wednesdays.’

  Lambert let him go on until his words petered out. Each phrase came with less conviction, until the voice died almost to a whine. Hapgood rearranged the red tie on the brilliant white shirt, tried to find the end of it of absorbing interest, found his eyes drawn back inexorably to the Superintendent’s sphinxlike face. Lambert, more certain now than if he had concrete evidence in his hands, closed his trap. He could see himself from without, like an actor speaking someone else’s lines, utterly confident of the outcome because Hapgood’s responses too were now fixed.

  ‘You arrived at the Stonemasons’ Arms and parked your blue Sierra at just about nine p.m. You entered through the outside toilets, arriving in the pub as if you were in fact returning from there.’ It was an old trick of petty crooks in city pubs, in his days as a detective-constable twenty years and more ago.

  Hapgood was only a petty crook in executive’s clothing. He swallowed twice before he could speak, the blood draining from his fresh, unlined face until it looked like parchment. In a strange, old man’s voice, he said, ‘I – I didn’t kill Freeman.’

  There was a long pause, the detectives, in no hurry now, waited for him to elaborate. Perhaps, if he could have trusted his voice, he would have done so. Perhaps the habits of deceit he had lived by prevented a willing disclosure of the truth, even when, like them, h
e realized it was now inevitable.

  Hook glanced at his chief, received an assent that would have been invisible to those outside their circle, and said harshly, ‘You’re going to have to convince us of that. Having lied to the police for over a week, you’ll have to work hard.’

  The pale blue eyes looked from one unyielding face to the other in front of him. Then, as the handsome head nodded a hopeless acknowledgement, the gaze fell to the carpet between the Italian leather shoes. Hapgood’s mouth had become a thin white slit; still he did not speak.

  Lambert switched instinctively from stick to carrot in an effort to keep his man’s tongue moving while his mind reeled. ‘You may smoke if you like. While you do, I should consider your position.’ In the ambience they had created, this perfectly sound advice became a threat.

  Hapgood produced packet and lighter, selected a cigarette, lit it at the second attempt. He watched his hands with a fascination that was almost comic, as if they belonged to someone else. Belatedly, he remembered his audience, offered the packet, and received two solemn refusals. His movements were almost in slow motion, as he strove for the relaxation which would not come. Eventually he succeeded in lighting his cigarette, then watched the flame of the lighter for a moment. In the heavy silence, they caught the note of Jane Davidson’s voice from the switchboard, the tone cheerful, emollient, efficient as she dealt with a caller. It seemed to come from another and more innocent world.

  ‘You aren’t the only one to lie about your movements,’ said Lambert eventually, probing for a reaction, suggesting as he had done throughout that he knew more than he did.

  Hapgood shot him a quick, wary glance. It was the look of a cornered animal, but there was no defiance left in him. He said, ‘She didn’t kill Freeman either.’ He presumed his tormentors knew who the ‘she’ was; he took a long, nervous draw on his cigarette.

  And suddenly Lambert did know. Once he had accepted the idea, it seemed so obvious he felt a fool for not considering it much earlier. Hook’s quick glance of surprise was small consolation as he said, ‘You might care to know that Mrs Freeman’s account of her movements on that Wednesday night has already been discredited. We now know that she was at the cinema in Tewkesbury not on that night, as she claimed, but on the previous Monday.’

  Hapgood nodded: it was only what he had expected to hear. ‘We were together on that Wednesday night.’ Then, as if to avoid further questions, he said, ‘Between seven o’clock and ten to nine.’ This precision could only mean that he had thought about the times and their significance on many occasions in the preceding days. Probably he realized this, for his face relaxed into a grisly smile as he studied the grey smoke rising slowly from the end of his cigarette.

  ‘During which time you executed the murder of Stanley Freeman,’ said Lambert. He made it sound as matter-of-fact as an item of shopping. Perhaps his tone misled Simon Hapgood, for it took him two long seconds to react.

  Then he shouted, ‘No! No, we didn’t!’ at a level which must have carried throughout the building. Lambert, watching his victim intently, still had time to wonder what the reactions of Emily Godson and Jane Davidson must be beyond the heavy door; George Robson was still out. ‘You can’t think that,’ said Hapgood; his voice was lower this time, but the edge of panic belied his words. Hook, a man not given to fanciful conceits, thought he could smell fear on the man.

  Lambert turned the screw. ‘This is a murder inquiry, Mr Hapgood. Both you and Mrs Freeman have impeded it by premeditated deceit over several days. It is not unreasonable for us to assume that you are guilty of conspiring to murder Mrs Freeman’s husband. The onus at this moment is on you to convince us otherwise.’

  It was not true, of course. Morally he might be right, but the law would not support him. As if to rebuke him, Hapgood now said dully, ‘I want to speak to my solicitor before this goes any further.’ It was the dull note of despair: he had taken the Superintendent’s words at their face value. But his face showed that he might yet be led where they wanted.

  Lambert said, ‘That is your right of course at any time. But we have made no charges yet. You are merely helping the police with their inquiries.’ It attempted to get the best of both worlds, raising a brief hope in Hapgood, then reminding him with the familiar official jargon of the seriousness of his position.

  And it worked. Hapgood looked from one to the other and said wearily, ‘What do you want to know?’

  At a nod from his chief, Hook moved in to play the hard man. He opened his notebook portentously and said, ‘You should give us a detailed account of what you now say you did between seven and nine on the night of the murder.’ The phrasing was not lost on the discomforted Senior Negotiator. For a revealing moment, he looked at the sergeant with hatred, but Hook, with pen poised, stared down at his blank page with impassive distaste.

  ‘I was with Denise, that’s all,’ said Hapgood sullenly.

  ‘Where?’ said Hook.

  ‘At her place. In bed, for God’s sake!’ Hapgood glanced at Lambert, found no relief in the Superintendent’s steady examination of his face, and looked down at his feet. He plucked an imaginary hair from where no hair lay on the knee of his trousers. His face looked thinner for his ordeal; the immaculate blue suit seemed now a fraction too large for the body which carried it.

  ‘Were you there throughout this period on that Wednesday evening?’ Hook somehow managed to incorporate scepticism into his delivery of the cumbrous phrasing.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have you witnesses?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Hapgood could not bring of the attempt at indignation. He declined into a resentful monotone. ‘We were in bed together for most of the time. Do you expect witnesses to that?’

  Hook, who chose to treat the question as rhetorical, wrote carefully and controlled his imagination.

  It was Lambert who said, ‘Sergeant Hook is inviting you to help yourself. You have until this evening lied steadily to us about your actions on the night of the murder. You are now asking us to believe that you were in bed throughout the vital hour with the wife of the victim.’

  ‘It’s true! Ask Denise.’

  ‘Oh, we shall, Mr Hapgood. But you’re now saying that the only witness to your new story is the wife of the deceased. A woman who has lied comprehensively about her actions on that evening. Who on her own admission was at odds with her husband, who was killed at the time when the two of you claim to have been alone together.’

  ‘Why do you think we killed him?’ There was horror in the young eyes, but whether the horror of a murderer discovered or an innocent accused it was impossible to say. Hapgood was thirty, but he looked as if he was completing the business of growing up only with the present crisis.

  Lambert did not trouble himself with any cautious disclaimer. ‘Look at it from our point of view, Mr Hapgood. A man is carrying on an affair with a woman who is ready to be rid of her husband. That husband is murdered, by a preconceived and meticulously executed method. Both the wife and her lover lie about their actions on the evening of the death. When those lies are exposed, they admit they were together for that evening. Unobserved by anyone. It’s a classic scenario for murder, with a classic motive. Young man persuaded to the deed by infatuation with an older woman. You might even be able to persuade a jury you were an inexperienced lad who was led out of his depth, but I wouldn’t count on it.’

  ‘It wasn’t like that.’ Hapgood had a hopeless air about him now, as if he were already in a cell.

  Lambert let him dwell upon his situation for a moment, without ever ceasing to study him. Then he said, ‘If it wasn’t you, you will need someone other than Denise Freeman to support your story. You went to her bungalow in your own car, presumably?’

  ‘Yes.’ Hapgood nodded to support the scarcely audible word.

  ‘And you parked it in the drive there?’

  ‘No. I left it at the end of the lane. I always did. It seemed more discreet.’ In the face of murder, the small
deceits of adultery seemed insignificant now, and he smiled bleakly, apologetically.

  ‘How long had your affair with Mrs Freeman been going on?’

  ‘Six months.’ He had no need to hesitate here: it was a computation he had made for his own purposes on the morning after the death of Freeman.

  ‘How many people know about it?’

  ‘None, that I know of. I told you. We were discreet; neither of us wanted it broadcast.’

  It was the usual way. Lovers were always sanguine about their security. The husband might be the last to know, but other people usually discovered relationships fairly quickly: lovers always underestimate the curiosity of the uninvolved. On the other hand, Denise Freeman was a cool and competent planner, who had no doubt undertaken this sort of thing before. She would organize secrecy better than most.

  ‘What about the people who worked with you?’

  ‘They didn’t know.’

  ‘You can’t assume that because they didn’t mention it to you. They’re in a position to know more than anyone else about your movements, because of the appointments you have with clients.’

  He shrugged. ‘If they’d known about it, they’d have let me know they knew. They didn’t.’ It was a shrewd enough assessment: no doubt he had considered it long before the murder. If either Emily Godson or Jane Davidson had known about it, wouldn’t they have used it to taunt or threaten him? Neither of them was fond of Hapgood, to say the least. Unless, of course, they planned to use the information to incriminate him in a murder inquiry. Lambert remembered Jane Davidson saying dismissively of Hapgood, ‘He’s not concerned with me,’ then denying too quickly any knowledge of his commitments elsewhere.

  ‘Someone may have seen your car on that Wednesday night.’

  Hapgood said dully, ‘It’s a blue Ford Sierra. Registration number – ’