by J M Gregson
With diminishing hope, DC Tebbit said resolutely, ‘It was a bitter divorce, then, at the time?’
‘Most of them are, aren’t they? Especially when the lawyers get busy on them. I’d given Pat the best years of my life, and all that stuff. Cast out as a lonely woman – Gordon didn’t come upon the scene until a couple of years later. But I didn’t kill the old sod, if that’s what you’ve come to check on. He’s long since ceased to matter to me, and I was at the theatre in Buxton on Tuesday night, with about a thousand witnesses.’ She grinned at the younger woman, enjoying her gentle teasing.
Ros decided against reminding this middle-aged lady about the existence of contract killers. ‘What I have to establish,’ she said portentously, ‘is whether you know of anyone who might have killed him on Wednesday night.’ She saw the older woman beginning to shake her head, detected the beginning of a smile on her lips, and added desperately, ‘Or of any trait of his personality, which you know about and we don’t, which might have had a bearing on his death.’
‘Not really.’ Then, as she saw the disappointment on the unlined young face, she added cheerfully, ‘Pat couldn’t keep his trousers on, of course. Any pretty face turned him on. That didn’t matter, it’s natural enough, but as soon as Pat got any encouragement he was into bed with them.’
Being just the tiny cog she had described in the investigative machine, DC Ros Tebbit didn’t realize it. But this was the first time any member of that team had heard anyone say anything derogatory about Patrick Nayland.
Barry Hooper had somehow expected that the police would interview him at his place of work. That’s where they’d talked to Alan Fitch, after all. The wide-open spaces of Camellia Park, the anonymity of the greenkeeper’s sheds, would have allowed him more confidence than he felt here.
They had simply knocked on the door of the house and been shown the way up the stairs to his tiny bedsit. A very tall Detective Superintendent and a slightly shorter, wider, Detective Sergeant: two large men who looked even larger, even more menacing, in the confines of this high, narrow room.
The three-storeyed house had been a good one in its late Victorian heyday. Now the once elegant rooms had been subdivided to maximize the letting potential, and you could hear the sounds of other residents through the thin hardboard walls. The district’s steady decline had accelerated steeply since the horrifying murders of Fred and Rosemary West; the garden of remembrance which now occupied the site where they had perpetrated their appalling crimes was only two streets away.
The two men sat on the edge of Barry’s bed, allowing him to sit facing them on the one comfortable chair the room allowed. They looked around the mean room, with its threadbare carpet, its wallpaper unchanged in twenty years, its scratched wardrobe and chest of drawers, its tiny scullery behind the inadequate curtain. There was nothing of Hooper himself visible in the place, not a photograph, not a picture, and Barry thought perhaps they were noting that. He said nervously, ‘I’ve only been here for a few weeks. At least it’s a place of my own.’
‘When did you move in, exactly?’ asked DS Hook. He shifted his position a little on the bed, and Barry thought for a horrifying moment that he was going to patrol the room and look into the drawers. But he merely produced a notebook and shifted his weight from his left buttock to his right.
It took Barry a moment to refocus on the question. ‘I moved in here at the beginning of November. Once I’d got established in my job at Camellia Park.’
Hook looked hard into the too-mobile young black face. He said quietly, not unkindly, ‘Pushing it a bit, weren’t you? Your job wasn’t made permanent until nearly the end of that month, was it?’
Barry hadn’t expected them to know that. He couldn’t think how they had discovered such detail. He didn’t think about the employment records in the office at the golf course. He thought Alan Fitch must have told them, and for a moment suffered a searing shaft of disappointment at what seemed like treachery from the man who was his idol. ‘No. But I’d been working steadily there for three months and the wage was coming in, with quite a bit of overtime at the weekends – I helped out in the clubhouse when they were busy. I suppose I just hoped I’d be made permanent.’
‘Like it there, do you?’
‘I love it. Like working out in the open air. Like seeing the results of what we do in the months afterwards. Like going back to grass we’ve sown and trees we’ve planted and seeing them come on.’ His enthusiasm was almost childlike. He stopped suddenly, as if feeling that he had betrayed himself with his eagerness, as if he was waiting for them to mock him for it, as the lads he saw in the evenings had done.
But Hook just nodded and smiled, as if as a countryman he fully appreciated such ardour for the outdoor life. ‘Bit of a change from what you’ve done before, the work at Camellia Park.’
‘Yes.’ They seemed to know everything about him, this pair.
‘Changed your companions as well, have you, Barry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because you were keeping bad company a year or two ago, weren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ He suddenly lifted both of his hands together and ran the slim fingers through his wiry black hair, in a gesture that was pure nerves. It appeared to free his tongue. ‘That’s a long way behind me now, Mr Hook. Two, perhaps three years. I don’t see those boys now.’
‘Two of them are inside, so you wouldn’t see them, would you? Given up thieving now, have you?’
‘It was never proved, Mr Hook. Not against me.’ This was as bad he had thought it could be in his worst imaginings.
‘I think it was, Barry. You were found guilty. You were lucky that the care home manager spoke up for you. And the man who ran the hostel said you’d been led astray by others. That you weren’t a ringleader. But we’re used to reading between the lines when we look at police records, you see. We know that you were lucky to get off with a few hours of community service.’
‘I was, yes.’ Barry Hooper wondered why he was agreeing with the police, why he was allowing himself to be led gently into all kinds of admissions by this burly man with the old-fashioned sweater and the soft Herefordshire burr. He said inconsequentially, ‘I couldn’t hold a job down, in those days.’
‘No. “Unreliable”, they thought, at the supermarket; and then at the foundry; and then at the glass factory. Interesting word, “unreliable”. It has a multitude of meanings, when employers use it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Often means you can’t get in on time in the mornings. Can mean more serious things, sometimes. Like thieving.’
‘I wasn’t a thief. Not after that first time. I’d learnt.’
‘Glad to hear it. Sometimes, if it’s petty thieving, firms sack a bloke because it’s easier than taking him to court.’
‘I wasn’t sacked for thieving. I – I didn’t have much luck, in those days.’ He realized what a desperate whinge that sounded. ‘It’s true what they said, though. I was just not reliable.’
‘Wonder why that was, Barry. Young lad like you were then, making his way in the world. And not unintelligent, according to the care home manager. There doesn’t seem to be any reason why you shouldn’t have been perfectly reliable.’
‘But I wasn’t, was I? Perhaps I just hadn’t—’
‘Given up the drugs now, have you, Barry?’
It was like a blow in the face. He didn’t see how they could know, and yet they did. He didn’t know that an experienced man like Hook could read the symptoms at a glance, then feed in speculation as if it were an established fact.
Barry put his hands together between his thighs, gazed hard down at the knees of his jeans. He dared not look up at his tormentor, in case his eyes strayed to the drawer near the top of the dresser. ‘I’ve given them up, yes. It was only pot, you know, never more than a few spliffs. But that was what made me unreliable.’ He stared at the hole in the carpet beyond his feet, wondering if that had sounded like a lie to them. He had lost all sense of judgement now.
Hook studied the abject figure for a moment, then gave the briefest of nods to Lambert. It was the Superintendent who said, ‘Anyway, you seem to be holding the job down at Camellia Park. Everyone there seems quite pleased with you, in fact.’
Barry forced himself to look up into the long, lined face, into the grey eyes which seemed to look effortlessly into his very soul. Was this the hard-cop/soft-cop routine he had heard his friends talk about? Yet Hook had not seemed harsh; Barry could not work out how he had revealed so much about himself to that soft-voiced, avuncular figure. Relieved now to be able to speak without reservation, he said, ‘I love the work on the golf course. Love working with Mr Fitch.’ Just in time, he stopped himself from going on about the birds and the wild flowers and what he had learned about them from his mentor.
‘How did you get on with Patrick Nayland, Barry?’
‘I hardly knew him, did I? I used to see him sometimes, when I was coming in to work or leaving. But I scarcely said more than “Good morning” to him. It was Mr Pearson who interviewed me, when I was appointed. He had Mr Fitch with him, though.’ He added that as if he did not want to denigrate the status of the Head Greenkeeper.
‘Mr Nayland must have been pleased with your work, though, to make you a full-time employee.’
‘I suppose so. I expect it was Mr Fitch who spoke up for me. We get on very well together. He says I’m a quick learner.’ It was impossible to detect a blush on the black cheeks, but Barry Hooper gave every other sign of a pleasurable embarrassment.
‘And now the man who paid your wages has been brutally murdered, at the end of an evening where he had been the host to all of you.’
‘Yes.’
‘And have you any idea who might have done this dreadful thing, Barry?’
‘No.’ There was more fear than he could have thought possible in the explosive monosyllable.
‘I expect that at some time during the evening you’d been down to the basement where Mr Nayland died, hadn’t you?’
‘Yes. Everyone had.’
‘I see. Watching the others, were you?’
‘No. I just mean that the meal took a long time, so I expect everyone went down to the washroom at some time during the evening.’ Amidst his anxiety, he was stupidly pleased that he’d come up with that word ‘washroom’. It wasn’t a word he’d ever used in his life before, but he’d remembered the delicious Michelle Nayland using it to him on that night.
‘It wasn’t you who found the body. So how long before the discovery was it that you were down there?’
‘I couldn’t say.’ Barry Hooper stared resolutely at the fraying threads of the carpet between his feet.
‘You can do better than that, Barry. Ten minutes? Twenty? Half an hour?’
He shook his head, like a bull tormented by the matador’s darts. ‘I can’t be sure. A long time. Perhaps an hour.’ He knew immediately that he’d overplayed his hand, but he couldn’t take it back now. He wondered what the others had said, whether anyone had observed his comings and goings on the night. He didn’t think so, but you couldn’t be sure, not with so many pairs of eyes to take into account.
A long time seemed to pass, but he wouldn’t lift his eyes from the carpet. You could see a bit of the floorboards at one point; he’d never realized that before. The words seemed to come from a long way away when Lambert said, ‘Who found the body, Barry?’
He looked up then, startled. ‘Mrs Moss. She screamed the place down and we all went down there. But you must know that.’
‘We do indeed. It’s just that you seemed so vague about your own movements that I wondered how much you remembered about the murder.’
‘I remember that. And I know it was a long time before Mrs Moss screamed that I was down there. I just wasn’t sure of exactly how long.’
‘An hour, you said.’
‘That’s what I think it was.’ Barry felt as he had done years ago at school, when he had been detected in a lie and could do nothing but go on obstinately repeating it to the teacher, even when the facts had exposed it.
‘All right. Who else went down there, in the time between your visit and the discovery of the body?’
‘I don’t know. Everyone, I should think. Pretty well everyone, anyway.’
‘What were you doing when you heard Mrs Moss screaming?’
He must be careful here. Everyone should remember what was happening then, shouldn’t they? ‘I was talking to Alan – to Mr Fitch. He’d just come back upstairs from the wash-rooms.’
It was out before he could stop it. The man he would least have wanted to incriminate. He felt like Judas. And he hadn’t even thirty pieces of silver for his pains: he had just been trying to save his own miserable skin. There was a long pause, as if they wanted him to appreciate what he had done, before Lambert said, ‘How long before the screams was this?’
‘Quite a while, really. It must have been, because we were talking for quite a while. He was warning me to keep off the port, that it was lethal stuff for a young man. He was telling me some tale about when they’d docked in Portugal, years ago, and he’d had a skinful of port.’ He tried desperately to extricate Alan from what he’d done to him. It wasn’t true: the tale about the port had been during one of their lunch-time talks in the greenkeeper’s shed, weeks ago. He must remember to tell Alan what he’d said, or things would only get worse, with these two worrying at it like dogs with a bone. He was conscious of Lambert waiting, whilst Hook made a careful note of what he’d said.
Then the Superintendent said quietly, ‘Do you remember anyone else going down to the basement in the period immediately before the body was found?’
‘Yes. Michelle Nayland. And Mrs Nayland.’ He flayed around like a novice on ice, desperately trying to save his friend.
‘And can you remember the order in which they went down there?’
‘No. I’m not even sure how long it was before the screams. Probably they went later than Mr Fitch.’ He felt that he was probably contradicting himself now. ‘I’d drunk quite a lot. And I didn’t think any of this was going to be important at the time.’ Belatedly, he came up with the excuse that everyone had offered.
‘And yet you’re sure that a full hour elapsed between your own trip to the basement and the discovery of Mr Nayland’s body.’
‘A long time, I said. I’m sure it was a long time.’ He looked up into the long, lined face, desperate and wide-eyed, pleading to be believed.
‘Who do you think killed Mr Nayland?’
‘I don’t know. Not Mr Fitch.’
Lambert nodded very slowly. ‘I see. Mr Fitch built a bonfire at Camellia Park on the day after the murder, didn’t he?’
‘I don’t know.’ Then, as he realized how ridiculous this denial sounded, Barry said, ‘Yes, I remember now, he did.’
‘And what did he burn?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You weren’t there?’
‘No.’ Then another belated attempt to retrieve things. ‘Well, not when he started the fire I wasn’t. I helped him later on. We were burning brambles that we’d cut down on the course. That and other rubbish. We have to get rid of things every so often, so we have a bonfire.’ He wondered if he was now saying too much, even though he knew that he wasn’t really saying anything. Nothing that was useful to these inquisitive CID men, that is. When they didn’t react, he added inconsequentially, ‘It was a good day for a bonfire, Thursday.’
‘So why weren’t you there when the fire was lit?’
It sounded like an accusation. ‘We were told we needn’t come in at the usual time on that morning, after what had happened the night before. But Alan was in at the usual time.’ Again he felt he was letting down the man he least wanted to implicate, so he said limply, ‘I expect he couldn’t sleep.’
‘I expect you’re right. If you think about anything you haven’t told us yet, get in touch immediately. You never know, your recall of things might improve.’
It sounded
like a threat, but all he could think of was that they were going at last. He was on his feet too quickly, standing by the door to open it for them. The tall one, the Superintendent, looked at him for a few seconds without speaking before he left. The Sergeant, who had grilled him at the beginning and then kept silent, said as he turned in the doorway, ‘Honesty is much the best policy for you, Barry. This is murder, and you’re out of your depth here.’
Absurdly, he found himself thanking the burly man for that thought. That was almost admitting some sort of guilt, he told himself angrily, as he sat where Hook had sat on the bed and considered what he had said to the CID men.
At least they hadn’t searched the place. Probably they weren’t allowed to do that, probably they needed a search warrant. But he knew that he’d have been powerless to stop them, if they started opening drawers and cupboards.
Barry Hooper walked over to the scratched old dresser, slid open the second drawer down, moved the white vest and blue socks to one side, watching his slim black hand as if it belonged to someone else. The two white cocaine rocks were there, as he had known they would be.
He tried to firm up his resolve to kick the habit.
Twelve
It was after the inquest on Monday morning that Chris Pearson buttonholed Liza Nayland.
He had watched her carefully during the solemnities of the coroner’s court. She had given the brief evidence of identification in a clear, controlled voice, then listened, grave-faced but attentive, to the rest of the proceedings. She had cast her eyes down during the forensic evidence about the knife-wounds and the blood, but had given a little sigh of relief when the inevitable verdict of Murder by Person or Persons Unknown was brought in ten minutes later.