by J M Gregson
It was a curious phrase, that, ‘out of the way’. She had a feeling Lambert would have been more direct. But Hook was just as searching, in his gentler way. ‘No. Well, Alan Fitch didn’t like him. But that’s different from wanting him dead, isn’t it?’
‘Indeed it is. But we have to be interested, nevertheless.’
‘Well, he doesn’t say much, Alan. Not to anyone, unless it’s to Barry Hooper. But he did tell me to be careful, a couple of weeks ago. He said the leopard didn’t change his spots. He was talking about Pat.’
It was the very phrase about Nayland that had come from a very different source, DI Rushton. It had been repeated by Chris Pearson, who had known Nayland as well as anyone. They wondered as they drove away from Camellia Park whether Joanne Moss had eventually come to a bitter acceptance of that view.
Eighteen
Eleanor Hook and Christine Lambert were agreed. Their husbands were not going to wriggle out of the treat, just because they were a week into a murder case.
The women had booked the seats for the performance of Die Fledermaus at the Malvern Theatre months ago. December the twentieth was Bert Hook’s birthday, and this was just the right sort of entertainment for the period before Christmas: lighthearted, not too demanding, and yet with enough good tunes and splendid singing to keep everyone interested. The men needn’t dress up; they could even wear sweaters if they must. But they must take their wives to the theatre and celebrate Bert’s birthday with an outing.
The evening beguiled but did not distract either of the CID men. The operetta was about a celebration, for a start. This was a more elaborate and extended celebration than the one at Soutters Restaurant which had ended so dramatically exactly a week earlier, but nevertheless for the CID men events on stage held overtones of that memorable night.
Die Fledermaus has a comic jailer to get the evening off to a good start, a non-singing part which might have been calculated to go down well with policemen, who tend to think they know a thing or two about such people. And the core of the plot involves a masked ball, with all sorts of deceptions going on. It is half a joyous romp, half a satirical swipe at a corrupt society: just the sort of mixture to appeal to seasoned, cynical detectives.
John Lambert found himself wondering about the motives for deceit, about the mechanics of duplicity, about the seeming willingness to be gulled of those who swallowed the deceptions. Over their interval drinks, he and Bert compared notes about the morning’s interview with Joanne Moss, about how much they could accept of what she had said to them that day.
Eventually, Eleanor Hook overheard their muttered conference and brought it to an abrupt end. She encouraged her husband to talk about sopranos, which he did with a surprisingly comprehensive knowledge, and about the advantages of the Viennese lilt to Strauss in his operettas. Christine Lambert listened and was filled with admiration. ‘On the timetable at Barnardo’s was it, Bert, opera singing?’
Hook grinned. ‘If you listened to anything but pop groups, you were highly suspect then. It wasn’t much better when I was a young policeman in the section house. They thought you were probably gay if you listened to classical CDs! It wasn’t until Pavarotti and the three tenors and Nessun Dorma at the World Cup that coppers were allowed to like opera singing.’
He proceeded to discuss different versions of the Czardas in Die Fledermaus, totally unconscious of the contrast between his village-bobby exterior and the erudition he was exhibiting. John Lambert knew that this disparity between appearance and reality, between Hook’s stolid exterior and the active, imaginative brain beneath it, had stood them in good stead again today, when he was pretty sure that Joanne Moss had underestimated Hook.
During the second half of the operetta, the extravagant costumes and the luscious music of the ball on stage, not to mention the multiple intrigues and resolutions of the plot, should have taken up his full concentration. Instead, Lambert found his mind constantly straying to what they had to do in the days to come, to the people they still had to confront with new knowledge, to the conflict they had heard about between the dead man and his General Manager, Chris Pearson.
In retrospect, Lambert thought that it was probably at that beguiling moment when the entire company joined in the waltz from Die Fledermaus that the identity of the murderer of Patrick Nayland came to him.
Thirty-six hours after he had been eased out from beneath the pantechnicon, Barry Hooper was fit to be interviewed by detectives. Modern medicine has its disadvantages as well as its blessings.
The delicate black hands looked curiously fragile as they lay without movement on the very white hospital sheets, like the hands of someone who worked all day at a desk rather than on the various tasks of golf-course maintenance. The dark brown eyes in the too-revealing young face filled with fear when he saw who his visitors were. ‘I panicked. I knew I was going too fast, but I couldn’t seem to do anything else.’ He addressed his remarks automatically to Bert Hook, whom he remembered from their first meeting as the more sympathetic of the two, a man who had ridden motorcycles himself in his youth.
‘It’s a good bike, the Ducati 620,’ said Hook. ‘But dangerous, in the wrong hands.’
‘Is it a write-off?’ Even now, when he knew he must watch his every word, Barry couldn’t resist the query about his beloved machine.
‘It’s been taken into a garage and examined with a view to charges by our forensic people. I hear it’s repairable.’ Despite himself, Hook found himself smiling at the pathetic relief on the slim black face. ‘But you won’t be riding anything for quite some time, lad.’
Barry had memorized all the ward sister had told him about his condition. ‘I’ve got a broken leg and a broken collar bone, and a couple of cracked ribs. They thought at first that my pelvis might be smashed, but it’s only severe bruising. I was really very lucky. I might be out in a week or ten days, with luck.’ He listed his injuries carefully, almost proudly, managing that peculiar male feat of sounding as if his survival reflected some sort of credit upon himself. He looked at the drip above his head, at the multiple medical equipment around his bed, as if he could scarcely believe his luck.
‘You’ll need to be able to move about and fend for yourself before you’re fit to leave,’ said Hook automatically. He thought of the tiny shabby room in that rabbit-warren of a house in Gloucester, of the difficulties of being an invalid in an anonymous, uncaring, squalid place like that.
‘Alan Fitch and his wife came in to see me last night. They say I can go there until I’m able to look after myself.’ Hooper announced it with a proud wonderment. Bert, who remembered the first time when someone had invited the young Hook into their home, understood perfectly that delighted response to a kindness which seemed almost miraculous.
He didn’t remind the man in the bed that such a convalescence would be dependent on neither of the men being behind bars by then.
Lambert thought the preliminaries due to an injured man had gone far enough. He said caustically, ‘You’re in trouble, Mr Hooper, apart from your injuries.’
The dark young face clouded. ‘I was speeding, I know that. Taking risks I shouldn’t have done, and—’
‘You were in possession of a Class A drug at the time. A drug which a Drugs Squad officer had witnessed you purchasing in Cheltenham.’
Barry told himself he should have known they’d come up with that. Suffering from the shock following his smash and the pain of his injuries yesterday, he hadn’t even thought about what had happened to his motorcycle leathers. The police must have taken them away and gone through the pockets.
He struggled to adjust to the idea that these men were here to pursue a crime. Everyone had been so kind to him since he had come round in hospital that it was difficult for him to adjust to the idea of the law coming after him. Could they arrest him, whilst he was lying in bed, unable to move? Would they charge him with what he had done? He said feebly, ‘I wasn’t dealing. It was just a small quantity, for my own use.’
‘But crack c
ocaine is a Class A drug. We’re not talking about pot here, are we?’
‘No. I’m going to give it up. I was well on the way to kicking the habit, but then we had all the stress.’
He couldn’t bring himself to define the stress. It was left to Lambert to say, ‘The stress of Mr Nayland’s murder? Now why should you find that stressful, Mr Hooper? Horrible yes, shocking yes, but once you’d got over the initial impact of seeing a man struck down like that, why should you find it so stressful?’ The word seemed to become more menacing each time he repeated it.
‘I don’t know. He’d just given me a full-time job. I’ve never seen a man dead before. Never knew there could be so much blood when someone was stabbed like that.’ He was floundering, and he knew it.
Lambert studied him for a few seconds, which seemed to Barry to stretch towards minutes. ‘You were under stress all right, Mr Hooper. But not for the reasons you state. Did you kill Patrick Nayland?’
The question was there, boldly, nakedly asked. More nakedly than Barry had ever imagined it put, even in his worst nightmares. His face contorted for a moment in pain; he cried out with the sudden agony of it. He must have moved his shoulder, must have squirmed under the gaze of this calm torturer who had never raised a hand to threaten him. He gasped as he tried to ease the pain, but Lambert did not move a muscle, did not alter a line in his long, observant face. It was Hook who poured a glass of water and held it to the young man’s lips.
Barry saw a nurse look in for a moment at the door of the room, hoped that she would intervene, would tell these men in their grey suits that her patient had had enough, that they must come back another time if they wanted to continue this. His heart sank as she turned away, apparently satisfied that he was in good hands. He said, ‘I didn’t kill Mr Nayland. I’d never have done anything like—’
‘Not even in the pursuit of theft, Mr Hooper? Not even when he resisted and panic took over?’
‘I don’t know what you mean. I never—’
‘Perhaps before you tell us any more lies you should know certain things, Mr Hooper. Such as that a Rolex watch was handed over to the Oxford police on Monday as suspected stolen property. A watch which I could produce for your identification, were it not safely bagged away, ready to be produced as an exhibit in a murder trial. A trial in which you should prepare yourself to be a leading witness.’
‘But what has this to do with—’
‘With you, Mr Hooper? Perhaps I should tell you that the pawnbroker who fulfilled his duty by taking this watch to the police gave a detailed description of the person who presented the watch to the lady in his shop. When he understood that we were engaged in a murder inquiry, he also gave us your address. Perhaps you shouldn’t have settled for such a derisory amount in payment. The proprietor had stopped the cheque his assistant wrote out for you by the time he spoke to the police in Oxford.’
Barry knew the Rolex had been worth more, that he should have held out for something nearer to its true value. All he had done by accepting less was to arouse suspicion. ‘I won it. Won it on a bet.’
Lambert smiled at his naivety. ‘From a man in a pub, no doubt, whom you haven’t seen before or since. Let’s stop all this nonsense, Mr Hooper. The watch has been identified by Mrs Nayland as belonging to her husband. He was wearing it on the night of his death. It was taken from his wrist by someone who killed him in the pursuit of theft.’
‘No!’ The word rang like the cry of a trapped animal around the quiet room, with its crowded array of medical equipment. It was a noise full of fear and anguish: its echo seemed to bounce back from the smooth magnolia walls long after the monosyllable had been uttered. Barry Hooper hoped again that it might bring the nurse to his rescue, that he might be released from this torture, even if only temporarily.
But there was no caring female face, no comforting flash of blue uniform in the doorway. He said, ‘All right, I took the watch. But I didn’t kill Mr Nayland.’ Even now, in this crisis, he couldn’t bring himself to leave out the dead man’s title, to deny him in death the respect he had always shown to him in life.
‘You’ll need to convince us of that. Having lied to us about practically everything so far.’ Lambert looked towards the door of the room, checking that they weren’t going to be interrupted yet by the medics. ‘You told us when we first talked to you on Saturday that you’d given up drugs and given up thieving. Wrong on both counts, weren’t you? So we’d better have a new version of your visit to the basement at Soutters Restaurant on the night of the murder, and what you saw then. And this time make it an accurate account, and don’t leave anything out. Our patience is exhausted, Mr Hooper.’
Barry believed that. He tried to force his brain to concentrate on the one essential task of convincing them that he hadn’t killed Nayland. He felt as he had done years ago at school, when he was trapped in a situation where he had lied so much that no one was going to believe him about anything. Other boys had had parents to speak up for them, but it had always felt as if there had been no one for him from the care home.
Fat lot of use it would be telling this unyielding, ancient copper stuff like that. And he couldn’t remember now exactly what he’d told them the first time. No doubt the burly one, who’d seemed sympathetic at first, had it all down in that notebook of his. No doubt he was waiting to pick him up and accuse him again of lying as soon as his new tale didn’t tally. Barry looked down at his fingers, pathetically thin against the stark white sheet, and said, ‘I didn’t tell it right the first time. I got it wrong last Saturday, when you came to the house.’
‘In more ways than one, Mr Hooper. We’d better have it right this time.’
No one ever called Barry ‘Mister’. This Superintendent Lambert was doing it all the time, and it was unnerving. He wondered if it was something coppers had to do when they were going to charge you with murder. He’d better make it good, this time. No use trying to protect Alan Fitch, or anyone else except himself. He closed his eyes and said, ‘I left the meal and went down to the washroom much later than I told you on Friday. Alan Fitch had just come back into the restaurant. Mrs Nayland came back in, just before I went down, as far as I can remember.’
‘How long before?’
‘A couple of minutes, I think. And Alan just before that.’ He was conscious of the two big men, staring hard at him, looking as if they didn’t believe a word he was saying. As if they weren’t going to believe the next few sentences, which were the most important of his life. ‘I met Michelle Nayland in the doorway as I went out.’ He paused, wanting to be interrupted, to be given another question before he had to deliver the next part. But just when he most wanted them to speak, they said nothing. ‘I went into the gents’ washroom. Mr Nayland was lying dead on the floor. His eyes were open, and there was a big pool of blood.’
Lambert neither nodded nor shook his head. He just continued to study the injured man, until Barry felt he must cry out with the tension of it. He swallowed hard and looked longingly at the glass and the jug of water beside him. But to ask for a drink suddenly seemed like a confession of guilt. He said throatily, ‘Mr Nayland was lying on his back, with his right arm flung out. His sleeve was up and the Rolex was very obvious on his wrist, as if it was asking to be taken. I slid it off and put it into my pocket.’
It suddenly seemed banal, such a stupid thing to have done that it could not possibly be the truth. He wanted to embroider his action, to add a series of details which would convince them. But he could think of nothing, and his voice would go no further. Now, when it was too late for him, DS Hook filled up the glass of water with elaborate care and passed it to him. His fingers trembled so much that he had to raise both hands to get it to his mouth. He tilted it slowly, until the liquid ran into his throat, then channelled cold into his chest and out into his body, as if he were a man dying of thirst in a desert.
Lambert’s words seemed to come from a long way away as he said like a prosecuting counsel, ‘I put it to you that you
struck your employer down to get that watch. That this was murder in the pursuit of theft.’
‘No.’ He could only manage the monosyllable, when he wanted more.
‘If it happened like that, you might get away with manslaughter, with a good brief. You could say you never meant to kill him.’
‘No.’ Barry summoned an immense effort. ‘It was as I said. It happened just like I said.’
Now, when it was too late for him, a nurse, plump and motherly, came into the room and studied the exhausted face and the limp submission of the slim, shattered body beneath the sheets. ‘I’m afraid that’s enough for today. Whatever he’s done, the lad’s exhausted. He was in a bad smash, you know.’
Lambert rose immediately. ‘Thank you. I think we have all we need, for the present.’ He smiled at the nurse and left without another glance at the man in the bed.
His last words rang in Barry Hooper’s brain long after he had gone.
Nineteen
The man was waiting to see the Chief Superintendent when he got into the station at Oldford. A man in an impeccable dark-blue suit, a white shirt and a silk tie. Lambert glimpsed him as he went through to CID.
It wasn’t until he reached his office that he learned that the man was any concern of his. ‘Tell him we’re up to our necks in a murder inquiry. Get him to talk to someone else,’ he said wearily.
‘He says it might have a connection with the case. And it’s confidential: he refused to speak to me about it.’ DI Rushton tried not very successfully to conceal the pique he felt at that.
‘I’ll see him right away, then. And I’ll send him away with a flea in his ear if he’s just prying for information. But he doesn’t look like a journo.’
Indeed he didn’t. The man was probably in his late thirties. His dark suit fitted perfectly and there was the scent of an aftershave which had a subtlety not often experienced in police stations. His hair was expensively cut and he looked ready to preside at a board meeting.