by J M Gregson
‘So you know more about the murder victim than you were prepared to tell us when we saw you on Friday. Well, we know more about him ourselves now. He had an eye for the ladies, we’re told.’
‘Nothing to do with me, that.’
‘No? But you knew about it and didn’t tell us. And that when we’d told you that we needed to learn as much as we could about the dead man.’
Alan hadn’t thought this was going to come up. He was bewildered by this turn in the conversation. He said uncertainly, ‘Mrs Moss has told you all about it, I expect.’
Lambert stored away this gem for future use, his face betraying not a flicker of excitement. ‘Put it about a bit, your former employee, didn’t he?’
‘I wanted to warn her. She should have seen it for herself.’
Joanne Moss was going to have some interesting questions to answer. Lambert divined suddenly that this stocky figure with the tattoos on his powerful arms felt protective about the Catering Manager, a self-possessed lady who had hardly seemed in need of such a defender. He said, ‘Do you think Patrick Nayland exploited his position as owner to get women?’
Alan Fitch shook his head in bewilderment. He wasn’t familiar with the idea. He said doggedly, ‘We’ve all met men like him. Couldn’t keep his hands off women. Couldn’t be trusted.’
Lambert nodded slowly, as if he was wondering whether to follow up this line of questioning. Then he said suddenly, ‘What were you wearing last Wednesday night at Soutters restaurant, Mr Fitch?’
Alan felt as if he had received a blow between the eyes, even fancied he could feel a physical pain in his forehead as he tried to adjust his brain to this new line of attack. It was the one he had feared. He told himself that he had expected this, that he had been prepared for it. Yet he still felt like a fighter struggling to regain his balance after a heavy blow. ‘I was wearing my best suit. The one I wear for weddings and funerals. I don’t have much use for suits.’
‘And?’
‘What else? Well, a white shirt and a blue tie, I think. And black shoes. Does it matter?’
‘It may do, Mr Fitch. You could produce these garments if we went to your house with you, could you?’
Alan tried to keep the rising panic out of his voice as he said, ‘I expect I could do that, yes.’
His widening eyes had been drawn to Lambert’s calm face, like a rabbit watching the weasel which is eyeing its throat. But it was Hook, looking up from his notes, who now said quietly, ‘And your wife would be able to confirm that these were the garments you wore last Wednesday night, would she?’
She wouldn’t. And he hadn’t briefed her what to say. He could picture her staring uncomprehendingly at the hanger which had once supported his best suit and now held only the jacket, giving him away, then telling them that she had not washed the shirt he had worn, had not seen it since that fatal night. It was too powerful an image for him to cope with. He said dully, ‘I don’t want Mary brought into this.’
Hook said gently, ‘I don’t expect you do. Be much better if this information came from you, wouldn’t it? The real information, I mean.’
The soft Herefordshire tones sounded wonderfully persuasive in Alan Fitch’s ears. He knew he must resist, but he could not see how to do it. His broad shoulders rose and fell helplessly, but he said nothing.
Lambert, quiet but inexorable, said, ‘What exactly did you burn last Thursday morning, Mr Fitch?’
Alan wanted to deny them, but he could not find the words to do it. And when the words would not come, the will melted away. He said hopelessly, ‘I burned the shirt and the trousers I had worn the night before.’
‘And why did you think it necessary to do that?’
They knew, of course. This was just a formality, a tying up of loose ends. He heard a long, heart-deep sigh, and for an instant did not realize that it had come from him. He said, ‘They had blood upon them. Nayland’s blood.’ Alan had wondered if he should have burned the black shoes too, instead of just wiping away the blood. They were nearly new, his only black pair. He waited a moment for them to speak. When they did not, he added the ritual of denial, ‘I didn’t kill him.’
‘Then don’t you think you’d better explain yourself? Explain how you came to have a murder victim’s blood upon your clothes. Explain how you came to destroy what seems like vital evidence.’
‘You won’t believe me. That’s why I—’
‘Try me.’
Alan Fitch tried to think, to organize his thoughts, to put what he knew he had to say as convincingly as possible. It was no good; his head seemed to be spinning, his voice coming from far away as he said, ‘I found him down there. He was lying on his side. I went and got hold of him, turned him on to his back.’
There was a pause, agonizing to Alan Fitch, before Lambert took up the questioning again. ‘You were trying to save him?’
He should have said yes, and tried to make it convincing. But he heard himself saying, ‘I wanted to make sure he was dead.’
‘You admit you wanted him dead?’
‘I just said that, didn’t I?’
‘And why were you happy to see him dead, Mr Fitch?’
He hated this careful, polite ‘Mister’. It was as though they were taunting him, getting ready to take him in and lock him away. He faltered out, ‘I told you, he was two-timing Mrs Moss. She’s a good woman.’
‘And worth killing for?’
Perhaps they were trapping him. It seemed as if they were querying his motive. And he knew that it sounded silly: he should never have tried it. He’d feared his other reason would sound even sillier. But he had no other thoughts left in him. He said, ‘He kept threatening to tell Barry about me. About me killing a man, all those years ago.’
The two CID men glanced at each other. It was Hook who said to the downcast head, ‘That would have been bad for you, would it, Alan? Barry Hooper’s important to you, isn’t he?’
‘That lad looks up to me. Looks to me for guidance. He’s – well, he’s like . . .’ He could not bring himself to pronounce the word.
‘Like a son to you,’ Hook completed the sentence quietly.
Alan Fitch looked up, saw that they were not mocking him, and nodded. ‘I’ve never had a son of my own, you see. Always wanted one.’
Hook said, ‘I can understand that. Did you kill Patrick Nayland, Alan?’
‘No. But I’m glad he’s dead. He was no good, that man.’
‘We’ll need you to say all this again, then sign a statement for us. I want you to consider whether you want to change anything before you do that.’
He said he understood that. He couldn’t believe that they weren’t marching him away between them with the handcuffs on him. He went to the door, watched the police car rock its way slowly down the unpaved track, then speed up as it reached the tarmac road by the clubhouse.
Alan Fitch wasn’t much of a drinking man, these days. But he went and got out the half-bottle of brandy he kept in the medicine cupboard and gave himself a stiff measure before he left the sanctuary of his den. He did not take long over it, but threw his head back and downed it quickly, feeling the relief as the power of the liquor flooded his torso.
Somehow, he did not want Barry Hooper to come into his den and quiz him about his encounter with the CID. He went out, felt his head swim for a minute with the impact of the cool, fresh air, and walked determinedly through the early winter twilight towards the spot where he had left his workforce. The man he had spoken of as a substitute son was emptying a barrow of stones and sand between the shuttering of the path they had laid out together.
‘I hope you’ve not been slacking, young Barry!’ he called out sternly to the slim young back.
Fourteen
Alan Fitch was totally unaware of it, but he had opened up a new line of CID enquiries on the Catering Manager at Camellia Park, Joanne Moss. It was whilst conducting a routine check on the morning of Tuesday the nineteenth of December that Rushton came up with another interest
ing fact.
Employment files are not most people’s ideas of riveting reading, but they are always of interest to the police in a murder investigation. The details of the backgrounds of the workers at the course, preserved from their original applications for their posts, had already thrown up areas of questioning for John Lambert for the initial interviews.
Salary sheets are usually less interesting and less revealing. They reflect the hierarchy in an organization, but little beyond that. Perhaps only someone as painstaking over detail as Detective Inspector Rushton would have taken the trouble to peruse the returns from Camellia Park so carefully. But Chris believed that no stone should be left unturned. That was one of his favourite phrases, one of the ways in which he bored those he directed; it was also one of his strengths.
This was such an occasion. The salaries paid at Camellia Park had been handled by Patrick Nayland himself. Nothing very unusual in that: lots of proprietors of small businesses liked to keep the details of what their employees earned to themselves. DI Rushton looked first at the monthly returns, then at the annual figures which were submitted to the accountant. There was no doubt about it, something was wrong here. Chris Pearson, as overall manager of the enterprise, the man responsible for the whole of the development and the staff who operated to his orders, received a salary of thirty-five thousand.
Joanne Moss, who had begun as a part-time employee and then become full-time, as the modest catering in the small clubhouse expanded, was no doubt very efficient, but in a small, self-contained job. Catering Manager was a rather grandiose title for what she provided at the course.
Yet she was paid five thousand pounds more than anyone else at Camellia Park.
Liza Nayland chose to come into the station at Oldford, when Hook rang to say that they needed to speak to her again. He wondered why she did not wish them to go to the big detached house. She said her cleaner was there on Tuesdays and they would have more privacy at the station, but there were many rooms in that comfortable house where they could have isolated themselves easily enough for this exchange.
The widow did not seem to be nervous. She looked round the interview room, with its windowless green walls, its high central light, its table fixed to the floor and its spartan upright chairs. ‘Not designed to make people feel at home, this, is it?’ she said. The smile seemed confident beneath the firm nose and the intelligent blue eyes.
‘You could say that,’ responded Lambert, with a grimmer smile. ‘We wouldn’t want a room designed to put people at their ease. We get some strange folk in here. There are times when you are quite pleased that the table is fastened to the floor.’
‘I promise not to throw anything at you.’
‘And we promise not to lock you in a cell. Unless of course you compel us to do that by what you have to tell us.’ His tone was light, but the smile did not extend to those grey, observant eyes; eyes which seemed to Liza to be already estimating her motives. ‘We’ve now spoken to everyone who was at Soutters Restaurant last Wednesday night. As a result of what we have heard, there are things we need to follow up. With other people, as well as with you.’
Liza nodded. ‘DS Hook told me as much when he rang me at home.’
Lambert said, ‘You have not been cautioned, of course, so this is not strictly necessary. But I’d like to record what you have to say, in case it conflicts with anyone else’s view of things. Would you have any objection to that?’
She wondered why she heard a threat in the words, found herself wanting to refuse. But she said with a nervous laugh, ‘There’s no way I can refuse without it seeming suspicious, is there? Of course you must record this, if you think it will be useful. Though I can’t imagine what I shall be able to add to what I’ve already told you.’
He didn’t reassure her, as she had expected him to do. This dreary room must mitigate against the social graces, she thought. He merely nodded to Hook, who reached across and pressed a button on the machine to her left. She tried not to watch the cassette turning silently, not to think of her every word being recorded for future dissection by these men whose business it was to see the worst in people.
Lambert said, ‘We now have the findings from forensic. We know from your previous statements that first Mrs Moss and then you were in contact with the body. There is also evidence on the clothing of contact with other people. I apologize if this is distressing, but we need you to think back again to the minutes before your husband’s body was discovered. Can you recall who went down to the basement after your husband had left the table?’
‘You say someone else touched Pat before Mrs Moss found him. Who was that?’
‘I’m not at liberty to reveal that to you, Mrs Nayland.’ Sometimes the stiff, official phrases were the best ones.
‘You think this person killed him, don’t you?’
‘Not necessarily. We shall be interested to know why the person or persons concealed their contacts with him. There may be innocent explanations.’ His tone made that seem unlikely.
‘I’m afraid I can’t remember any more about the time immediately before Pat was killed than I told you last time. I was busy talking to other people – it was Pat’s party, and I was playing the hostess, if you like. I still don’t remember Pat leaving us, so obviously I haven’t any clear memory of the period after he had gone or who might have followed him down to the basement.’ She paused, trying to estimate how far these two believed her. ‘Surely, if you’ve found evidence of other people’s presence from Pat’s clothing, you must know now who killed him?’
It was a nice try at innocence, but it brought her only a grim smile from Lambert. ‘We know that both you and Mrs Moss had held Mr Nayland’s body, and as you would expect, there is evidence of that, upon his clothing as well as yours. We could take that as evidence that one of you held that knife, if we did not accept your stories.’
‘Which of course you do!’ She gave another nervous, involuntary laugh, but it drew no reassurance from Lambert. ‘But I see what you mean. People who were perfectly innocent could have touched the body.’
‘Or they could have been in contact with your husband much earlier in the evening, when he was alive and unthreatened.’
She thought about that. ‘That is certainly possible. Patrick moved among his guests before we sat down for the meal, and even moved around between courses to make sure everyone was enjoying the evening.’
‘People have not been honest with us, Mrs Nayland.’
She nodded slowly. ‘One person is certainly lying to you; we all have to accept that. Have you any idea yet who it is?’
He smiled a little at her naivety, fairly sure this time that it was at least partly assumed. ‘More than one person has lied to us, Mrs Nayland.’
She wondered how a simple statement could sound so menacing. ‘Really? I can’t think why that would be.’ She wished she hadn’t spoken at all, when she heard the words sounding so trite in the small, windowless room.
‘People conceal the truth. It amounts to the same thing as lying.’ Lambert was suddenly weary of the multiple deceits of the case. ‘People have their own reasons for withholding information, not always connected directly with the death. But it all helps to protect a murderer, in the end.’
She digested it slowly, being determined not to speak, not to incriminate herself any further. Yet the next second she heard herself saying, ‘I can see that. It can’t help you when people want to preserve their own secrets. I’ve tried to be as honest as I could with you, but others—’
‘Have you, Mrs Nayland? Have you really been as honest as it is possible to be with us?’
She heard the strain in his voice, realized suddenly that this calm, authoritative man had to cope with his own tensions, with the frustrations caused by the people he had to question about a high-profile killing. The newspapers were beginning to dwell upon police bafflement in this case, to question the progress of what should have been a straightforward investigation. She said with dignity, ‘I’m sur
e that I haven’t held anything back from you, that I’ve been as frank as it’s possible to be—’
‘You’ve been frank about your husband’s character, have you, Mrs Nayland? Told us everything that you know about him?’
She felt herself flushing as the anger rose within her. ‘I’ve answered everything you’ve asked me. Told you everything it was relevant for you to know.’ She stopped suddenly, betrayed by her own phrase.
‘So you decide what it is appropriate for us to know, do you? Not us, who have the duty of finding a violent killer, who have a picture of things which you can never have, because we are talking to all the people involved? At present we are trying to piece together the true version of events last Wednesday evening from the snippets which people like you accord to us!’
Bert Hook had never seen Lambert so near to losing it with a quiet, apparently co-operative witness. He said quietly, ‘Mrs Nayland, you must see this from our point of view. Sometimes it seems as if everyone we speak to is trying to confuse things rather than illuminate them. We know that one person is fighting against the truth, has a clear interest in setting us upon false tracks. But sometimes it seems as if everyone is conniving to help him or her, as if everyone is part of a conspiracy to prevent us discovering who killed Patrick.’
She said dully, ‘I’m sorry if it seems like that. I’m sure there is no conspiracy. I’m sure most of us don’t mean to be unhelpful.’
Lambert controlled his irritation, recovering the composure which had temporarily deserted him. He let the silence build between them. Silence standing like heat: he remembered that Larkin comparison. It was certainly hot in this airless room, despite the cold in the world outside. Eventually he said, ‘What sort of a reputation with women would you say your late husband had?’ It was clumsy: he had been avoiding DI Rushton’s ‘ladies’ man’ phrase, but he was pretty sure he had produced something more orotund.
Liza Nayland said, ‘Pat had a bit of a reputation, I know. But that was all in the past.’