by J M Gregson
‘And you accepted that?’
There was no need for him to admit to how much it had irritated him. They couldn’t have found that out from anyone else, because he had never revealed his annoyance to others; that would have meant a loss of face. ‘I accepted it happily enough. It was a harmless foible, probably not unusual among the owners of small businesses, for all I know. I was happy enough with what I earned myself, and there had always been an understanding between us that there would be a partnership for me, in the medium term.’ He had carried that off rather well, he thought.
‘An understanding between two ex-military men?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it that way. But I think I mentioned when we spoke last week that our military background probably contributed to a happy working relationship.’
‘You did indeed. However, you didn’t tell us that you spent the last three of your Army years in the SAS.’
‘Didn’t I? Well, I suppose I—’
‘Royal Artillery, you said. No mention of the SAS.’
Chris knew that this adversary who kept so still was watching him as intently as ever. It was unnerving, but he could think of no way of stopping it. ‘We weren’t encouraged to talk about the work we did in the Special Air Service. Most of the members are recruited from Parachute Regiment volunteers. I was approached after my service in the Falklands. We are supposed to remain anonymous.’ A little of his pride had seeped into the explanation, but there surely couldn’t be anything wrong with that.
‘Trained in combat procedures, aren’t you, in the SAS?’
He saw the way this was going. ‘Part of the initial training course involves learning the most effective methods of killing people. The premise is that you should be able to defend yourself and your mission if you get into desperate situations.’
‘You would know how to kill a man with a knife.’
‘If necessary, yes. If I were in a one-to-one situation or worse, and I felt my own life was threatened.’ Chris outlined the conditions carefully, for he could see where this was going now.
‘You would know exactly where to stab a man, if you wished to kill him quickly.’
‘Yes.’ He felt the need to make some amelioration of the stark admission. ‘A man may also be killed as Pat Nayland was killed, with a random blow which strikes lucky and hits a ventricle.’
‘You know that this is what happened?’
Chris Pearson smiled. ‘I can guess at it. I have, as you have just said, a certain amount of knowledge about how people may be killed.’
‘Indeed. And you are right about the ventricle, though it remains to be seen whether it was luck or expert knowledge which rendered the wound fatal. Do you know who administered that blow?’ Lambert was quiet, unsmiling, intense.
Chris forced himself to take the time to formulate his response. ‘I don’t know who killed Pat. You seemed to be implying that because I had been trained in certain forms of combat, I must have killed him. I was trying to point out that there were other possibilities, that’s all.’
It was Hook, looking up from his notes, who said, ‘We don’t like luck, Mr Pearson. We like to proceed on probabilities. We find them more reliable as indicators. It is bound to arouse our interest when we find that someone has knowledge which could have helped him in a particular situation.’
‘The fact that I was in the SAS does not mean that I killed Pat. It’s ridiculous to suggest it.’
‘Not so ridiculous, Mr Pearson.’ Lambert was sober but insistent. ‘Of course your service in the SAS does not mean that you murdered a man. But the fact that you chose to conceal that service is bound to arouse our interest.’
‘I told you: SAS personnel are not expected to boast about their work.’
‘Was Mr Nayland wearing a watch on the night of his death?’
The switch of ground was so sudden that it seemed discourteous. Chris tried to assess the question as his mind reeled, to see what hazards it might hold for him. He said, ‘I can’t remember. Is it important?’
‘You said on the day after his death that you checked the carotid artery to make sure that he was dead. That you detached Mrs Nayland, who was holding the corpse, as gently as you could. You don’t recall whether he was wearing a watch?’
They made it sound as if he was hiding something, as if it was absurd to suggest that he could have been so unobservant. But he genuinely could not remember, and nor could he see where this was leading. ‘No. I had too much on my mind with the man lying dead and blood all over the place to notice whether—’
‘Do you recall whether Mr Nayland was wearing a watch earlier in the evening?’
‘No. Is it important?’
‘Did he habitually wear a watch?’
‘Yes. Most people do.’
‘A good watch?’
‘I expect so. Pat normally bought good stuff. Whereas as far as I’m concerned, modern electronics mean that even a cheap watch—’
‘If you have any further thoughts on the matter, please let us know. Have you decided who killed your employer?’
He’d already denied that he knew who had struck that fatal knife-blow. Now the repetition of the question made it sound as if he must know, as if he must be concealing some vital information. That was the penalty, he supposed, for holding back his knowledge of Pat’s womanizing, of his own SAS training. But they still hadn’t unearthed the thing he felt was really important for him to conceal.
That gave him confidence. He managed to keep calm, even to conjure up a smile at the absurdity of the notion that he should be protecting a murderer. ‘If I knew who’d killed Pat, you’d be the first one to hear from me, Superintendent. I don’t think this was a family killing. Beyond that, I’ve no idea.’
‘And why are you so certain that this wasn’t down to Liza Nayland or her daughter?’
They picked him up on everything. He had thought he was just being courteous in eliminating the two women, but he realized now that it was because he couldn’t afford to have Liza as the killer, or his partnership would be in jeopardy. He hardly knew Michelle Nayland and had hardly considered implicating her as a suspect. He said, ‘I’m not sure it wasn’t one of those two. It’s just a gut feeling, if you like.’
Lambert looked so sceptical that Chris thought he was going to say he didn’t like it. Instead, he rose and said, ‘New information is coming in each day, Mr Pearson. I remind you again that it’s your duty to contribute to the sum of that knowledge with anything that occurs to you about this death.’
Chris Pearson watched them drive away. He went into the living room at the back of the house and made for his familiar armchair. Then he changed his mind and went back into the little-used dining room where he had talked to the CID men. It felt as if he would have been soiling the living room, as if his wife might have picked up something of his deceptions, if he had thought through this latest exchange in the room where they lived out so much of their life together.
He didn’t usually drink until the evenings, and that sparingly, nowadays. He’d given up alcohol completely during those SAS years, and never reacquired the taste for it. But at four fifteen in the afternoon, he now poured himself a stiff whisky and sat down to evaluate the meeting. That bit at the end about more facts coming in each day had sounded like a warning. They’d tried to shake him about the SAS and the fact that he had concealed Pat’s philandering, and they’d even succeeded, to an extent.
But the main point was that they still didn’t know the essential thing. Didn’t even suspect it, apparently.
Sixteen
Barry Hooper got more and more nervous as the early winter night dropped down and the effects of the coke wore off. It was only a small fix, and it didn’t seem to be as effective as usual. He could feel his confidence ebbing away and his anxiety returning, as he waited through the long afternoon for the policemen who never came.
He was home early; there wasn’t much he could do at the course once the light went. Alan Fitch spent the odd
hour maintaining the course machinery in the coldness of the big, high shed, but Barry hadn’t the expertise to do that, and on this day the older man was too preoccupied with his own thoughts to offer him any instruction.
Back in the familiar room in Gloucester, Barry made himself beans on toast and watched the local news on the little portable television set, whose picture came and went with the intermittent efficiency of its portable aerial. The announcer said that the police still hadn’t made an arrest in the Newent murder case. The man who’d interviewed him, Superintendent John Lambert, was apparently something of a local celebrity: the newsreader listed some of the killers he’d arrested in the past. Barry waited for him to appear on the television, but he was apparently too busy with the case. The Chief Constable, very smart in his dark blue uniform, appeared and said that several lines of enquiry were being pursued.
Barry wasn’t experienced enough to realize that this was policespeak for they hadn’t a clue and weren’t near an arrest, as a more streetwise contemporary of his told him confidently later in the evening.
He washed the dishes, dried them and put them back in the cupboard in his tidy way. You had to keep things neat in such a small living space, or it would be a pigsty in no time. He found himself putting out the cereals and the bowl ready for morning. But it was scarcely seven o’clock and the evening stretched like a dead whale before him, grey and unpromising. He tried to read the book he had bought at the car boot sale on Sunday, but he couldn’t get into it. He tried to watch television, but he wasn’t one for the soaps, and he certainly wasn’t going to watch The Bill at eight o’clock; coppers, real or fictional, were the last things he wanted to see.
Not long after eight o’clock, Barry Hooper was doing what he now recognized had been inevitable from the moment he got into his room. He was zipping up his leathers and preparing to go out into the winter night.
He couldn’t really spare the money, but he needed the stuff. He couldn’t see how he was going to get through the night, let alone the rest of the week, without a fix. He would give up, as he had promised himself he would. He knew he could do it. But that would be after this murder hunt was over, and he was still at large. He didn’t allow himself to say ‘if’.
He slapped the saddle of the Ducati when he went out to it, as though greeting a faithful horse. He drove through the narrow Gloucester streets with elaborate care; no way the pigs were going to get him for speeding or dangerous riding. They had a thing against bikers, the pigs. Picked you out and went for you, the way they didn’t do with car drivers. You were one down with the pigs to start with, if you rode a bike. Especially if it was a Ducati; the sods were jealous of bikes like that. He could work up quite a thing against the fuzz, once he had his leathers on and the tribalism of the bikers kicked in.
He opened up when he got to the dual carriageway to Cheltenham, accelerating fast up to eighty, enjoying the startled looks from drivers, as he surged past them almost before they realized he was behind them. He clenched his knees tight against the machine, trying to foster the image of rider and machine as a blended unit, moving with effortless power and control amongst the cumbersome vehicles around him. He was king when he was on the Ducati, supreme in skill, speed and power over all those lesser mortals, the anonymous subjects of the world he ruled.
He parked in the alley behind the pub which his pal had shown him when they first went there. It was better than the car park, where you could get hemmed in by thoughtless parkers of Fiestas and Sierras and rubbish like that. When you were a biker, you never knew when you might want to be away quickly.
The man he wanted wasn’t there yet. He bought himself a half of lager and told himself to be patient. Within ten minutes, he had been joined by two of the others. He didn’t know either of them very well, and hadn’t particularly liked what he’d seen. But he was glad of company of any kind. It would have been a nervous wait alone, wondering whether you stuck out like a sore thumb in the place, whether even the barman was noting your presence and wondering about it.
The man he had been waiting for came in at just after nine. He was short, with hands thrust deep into the pockets of his black anorak. His dark eyes looked even blacker, even more deep-set, in a face that had not seen a razor for several days. He bought himself a whisky, poured water into it from the jug the barman slid towards him, and stood at the other end of the bar, where he could take in the whole scene. He let his glance stray slowly round the occupants of the low, smoke-filled room, registering nothing more when he noticed one of his customers than when he looked at complete strangers.
Barry Hooper knew that he must wait, that he mustn’t try to take the initiative. Eventually the man looked at him for a moment, gave him an almost imperceptible nod, then turned to the barman and said, ‘Must take a leak.’ He turned and walked unhurriedly out of the bar.
But when he reached the door of the toilet, he passed it without checking his step and passed out into the yard and the cold night air behind the pub, not worrying about whether Barry was following him. The sudden darkness was extreme after the brightness within. Barry caught a glimpse of white breath from the man as the brief shaft of light from the door briefly fell upon him. Then the automatic spring shut the door abruptly behind him and he was plunged into an icy darkness. He almost walked blindly into the man. He caught an anoraked arm, felt himself shaken off with a low-throated curse.
‘Sorry!’ he said automatically. ‘Couldn’t see you in the dark with your black clothes and—’
‘You’re a fine one to talk, black boy!’ The words came contemptuously at him, close to his ear. ‘Nigger black, they used to call it, you know. Nobody would ever find you in the night, if you weren’t so bloody clumsy.’
It was nigger brown actually, the colour. For an absurd moment, Barry wanted to correct him. Instead, he said hoarsely, ‘You got coke?’
‘I got pot, black boy. Good enough for the likes of you. Do you twenty spliffs at a good price.’
For a moment, he was tempted. It was all he could afford, really. Then he thought of those calm CID men and the grilling he would face from them, sooner or later. ‘I want coke. Only coke will do.’ It was not until he heard his own voice rising that he realized quite how much on edge he was.
‘Easy, black man, easy. I got coke. It costs though, coke. Good rocks like I got don’t come cheap.’
‘How much?’ He knew he was too eager, that he was playing into the pusher’s hands. But how did you simulate apathy in a situation like this?
The man chuckled coarsely, as if he read his client’s mind and saw the futility of his resistance. ‘Eighty quid a gramme. Do you ten good snorts, a gramme of this will. More, if you cut it with glucose.’
‘I haven’t got eighty quid.’
‘Then why are we wasting time on this fucking freezer of a night? I got bigger fishes than you to fry, you black bast—’
‘Look, I’ll have a quarter of a gramme for twenty. And you know I’ll be back for more, at the weekend. I’m a regular customer, it’s worth cutting me a bit of rope and—’
‘Take your hands off me, black man!’ The voice was so close to his ear that he could feel the bristles of the man’s beard on his cheek; in his eagerness to buy, he had not realized that he had taken hold of the dealer’s arm again. ‘You don’t get a quarter of a gramme for twenty, moron. A quarter’s thirty. It’s cheaper if you buy in bulk, but tossers like you don’t understand that!’
Barry Hooper understood it well enough, but he was in no position to go for quantity. He’d cash the cheque he’d got in Oxford for the watch as soon as he could. In the meantime, he must take what he could get; he needed a fix, and quickly. He felt into the pocket of his jeans beneath the leathers and pulled out the notes. ‘Thirty,’ he said gruffly. ‘Give me the quarter!’
‘All in good time, black boy!’
Barry heard the contempt coming at him through the darkness, and hated the man in black, and himself, and this dark place away from normal hu
manity, and the world of drugs, and the whole business of bartering. The man flashed on a tiny torch, checked the two ten pound notes and the two fives unhurriedly, as if he was still unsure whether to go ahead with the transaction. Barry caught a glint of the white of his eyes, but the black pupils remained invisible still.
Then the foil with the coke within it was pressed into his palm, and the voice in his ear muttered, ‘Don’t come back for less than a gramme next time, black boy. If I didn’t have other and better customers, it wouldn’t be worth my while bloody dealing. Now get going, and on your way back through the bar, send out the blonde girl in the blue anorak. We’ll see if she’s got more than a measly thirty fucking quid to offer!’
Barry turned and fumbled in the darkness for the handle of the door. It was at that moment that the dustbin fell with a startling clatter on to the flags, and a new voice rang out, overriding the curses of the man in black as it shouted that he was under arrest on suspicion of dealing in Class A drugs, that he was not obliged to say anything, but anything he did say . . .
The rest was lost in a confusion of shouting and action, as Barry found the handle of the door and wrenched it open. The voice concluded the words of arrest and yelled at him to stop. But he was away through the bar, sighting as he fled the pale-faced blonde girl his dealer had told him to send out, pulling up the zip of his leather jacket as he fled through the illuminated car park of the pub to the alley where he had left the bike.
The Ducati started first time, as he had known it would. He slid the helmet and goggles on with practised ease and zipped the leathers tight up beneath his chin. He revved the engine, hearing its smooth roar echoing along the brick walls around him. Confidence rose in him with that noise. He’d be all right now: a Ducati 620 was more than a match for anything the police could throw at him.