“Put on your flak hat,” said Duncan, from the corner of his mouth.
“I’ll think I’ll slip off for a pee until he calms down,” confided Dacombe, turning on his heel and heading for some bushes at the back of the site.
Despite the shortness of the journey between roadway and building, the man with the mud spattered attaché case arrived, exhausted by his efforts. His Tyrolean-style hat was stained with perspiration which had generated and festered over a lifetime. What could be seen of the man’s head was definitely ovoid, with a Chaplin moustache and a complexion like a pink blotter, as if every blood vessel had flooded to create an enormous delta. The rounded cheeks blew in and out like bellows with the exertion.
The little man, aged perhaps forty-five, imperiously ignored the shout of the police constable and came up to Duncan. “Mr. Dacombe?”
“Sorry, but no. I’m Alistair Duncan, solicitor representing insurers. Mr. Dacombe’s round about somewhere. Or he was.”
“Don’t you know?” The little eyes blinked with indignation. “I must see Mr. Dacombe.”
“He’s about.” Duncan’s reply was languid.
“I’m from the Health and Safety Executive. My name’s Harold Plumb. Don’t you know where he is? I’m a busy man, you know.”
“Aren’t we all!” Duncan deliberately slowed the pace of his voice, prolonging the time before answering. Officialdom baiting, as a sport, was always attractive because officialdom always rose to the bait. “Shall I introduce you to the police constable? He’s just there.”
“I don’t speak to minions. I want to speak to Mr. Dacombe. I haven’t time to deal with anyone else. I’m a busy man. Do you realise I’ve come straight from the Magistrates’ Court as it is?”
“Did you plead guilty, to get it over with quickly?” enquired Duncan, deadpan.
“Guilty? Guilty? What are you on about?” The little man failed to appreciate the joke. Then he saw it. He could see a joke because he’s seen one, once before. “I was prosecuting!” he protested.
“Defendant got a conditional discharge?”
“Absolute discharge, actually.”
“Well that was a good morning’s work for you then, wasn’t it.” Duncan might just as well have saved his sarcasm. The little man’s head was only five feet, five inches from the ground and the barb passed at least a foot higher than that.
“Anyway, Mr . . . whoever you are. I haven’t got time to talk to you. Where’s Mr. Dacombe?” He blinked furiously as he peered around him.
“I think that’s him coming now from over there.” Duncan nodded towards a man of about fifty, with a hooked nose and beady eyes and a face so small that the overall impression was something like a chicken. Wearing his muddy cap and shabby jacket, the man flung his lunch-bag over his shoulder. Harold Plumb acted at once, without considering the rationale of what he was doing. He waddled forward to the man who was standing at his bike.
“Good morning Superintendent Dacombe. My name’s Plumb. I’m from the Health and Safety Executive. You can count on my co-operation.”
Ronnie Arnold, who had just been given permission to go home, turned towards the man in amazement. Then the small mouth opened. “Me? Me, Superintendent Dacombe? This is a fine time for joking, mate. My name’s Arnold. I work here. Do I look like a bleedin’ detective chief superintendent of police?”
Dismissing Plumb from his mind, Ronnie started to push his bicycle across the quagmire, leaving the official puffing more than ever. Silently rocking with laughter, Duncan could imagine Plumb’s mental process turning over with all the speed of a waterwheel in a drought. As the little man realised who had got him into this mess, he looked round. But Duncan had disappeared from view.
Cowle was leaning on a cement mixer in the derelict kitchen. “The man from the Ministry’s here,” said Duncan. “I think it best if we’re out of the way for the time being. I want to talk to you before you give him any statements.”
“OK. I’ve just sent the men home. The police are interviewing them later. Shall we go and have a cup of coffee?”
“Is that possible? Round here?”
“Sure. That’s my house next door. That’s why I was anxious to get hold of these three cottages. Knocking them into one, tarting everything up will add value to my property. Profit all round.
*
Duncan hung his anorak in the front cloakroom of ‘Patrose’. Like the entrance hall, indeed like a hospital, it was all spotless to sight and smell. The deep-pile carpets had been freshly hoovered. A speck of dust would have short shrift here, Duncan decided, as Cowle led him into the good-sized lounge, with its gas-log fire at one end. That, too, was in keeping with the room: expensive yet clinical. The position of every chair seemed to have been plotted with precision, every cushion carefully puffed up, every expensive magazine stepped in relation to the ones beneath.
The ashtrays were empty. Naturally.
Despite the splendour, Duncan felt ill at ease. Like an airport reception, it was an area to be passed through rather than enjoyed and the atmosphere gave Alistair Duncan preconceived notions about Mrs. Cowle. They proved to be wide of the mark, for, when the builder reappeared leading his wife, she was not the jumped-up, nouveau that he had anticipated. He placed her in her early forties, quite tall, willowy and attractive in a painted doll manner. Yet the porcelain features were natural, with no attempt to highlight them. She was wearing a burgundy mohair jumper and black slacks, so that her attractive lines and, particularly, her legs and thighs were emphasised. The slightly overlong face, topped with long, blonde hair was just faintly bored. It was the face of a woman who had seen off her husband too often at 8.30 and who had finished what she had to do by nine, leaving acres of nothingness for the day ahead. The solicitor had seen many such faces. Usually they were seeking a divorce.
“Mr. Duncan. This is my wife, Rosemary. Mr. Duncan is the solicitor who has come down to look after us. What was the name of your firm again?”
“Wyatt, Hebditch & Co., of Bristol.” Duncan stretched out an arm to shake hands.
“My word, you’re cold, Mr. Duncan,” said Mrs. Cowle “But I’ve put the coffee on and I expect you’d like some biscuits.” To Duncan’s surprise there was just a hint of County in her accent. Patrick Cowle lit a cigarette and earned a glance of disapproval from his wife. “I think we’ll have some whisky in the coffee, Mr. Duncan. We’ve got to go out there again, haven’t we?” Cowle had ignored his wife’s disapproval.
“That would be nice. Not too much whisky, though.” As he spoke, Duncan was thinking about the late night which he’d spent with Sarah at his Pensford cottage. They’d spent the evening talking in front of a real log fire. With real ash and real dust surrounding them. There had been out-of-date Sunday papers scattered everywhere and a smell of good food and wine filling the low-ceilinged room. Armagnac by the fire was one of Duncan’s favourites, especially with the promise of Sarah still to come.
He forced himself back into the soulless reality of the lounge. “Can I ask you one or two questions about your business?”
“Fire away.” As Rosemary Cowle left the room, her husband flung himself on to the pseudo chesterfield.
“Well, if you don’t mind me saying so, you must be in a substantial way of business. You’ve got a beautiful house. How long have you been in the trade?”
“All my life. Started at sixteen. Trained right up from scratch.”
“Was your father a builder?”
“No. All this,” he waved his arm around the room, “is my own work. Every brick of it. And today’s the first serious accident. Not bad, after nearly thirty years.”
“Statistically, it’s bound to happen on a building site, sooner or later.” Duncan could have been critical but preferred not to be for the moment. There would be plenty of time for that later. “How old are you, Mr. Cowle?”
“Forty-six.”
“And your experience? I need to know how far you can be criticised for what happened today.”
Duncan’s gaze was steady as he looked across at Cowle. “Nothing personal, mind you.”
“Don’t apologise! You’ve got your job to do. I was apprenticed and had risen to foreman. That was twenty years ago. It was then that an old aunt of mine, whom I had known since childhood, died at Pilton. She left me a small cottage. It wasn’t much: run down, with sixty years’ neglect, but I worked like a black on it. Completely renovated it, keeping all the old character. Couple of inglenooks, old beams, sloping floorboards, leaded windowpanes, you know the scene. Rosemary worked on the garden. Do you know that, in eighteen months, we had turned that place into someone’s dream of retirement?” The satisfaction of the memory could still be seen on Cowle’s face. “When I sold that, the profit was so great that it gave me the boost I needed to set up my own business.”
“That’s where the money’s made.” Duncan smiled. “But what troubles me is that, from what you’ve told me, your own experience should have warned you of the dangers. But I won’t prejudge until I’ve heard you out.”
“OK.” Cowle was unoffended. “I got elected to the Council. There’s nowhere better for a builder. Least, at that time that was right. Long before Poulson. I bought some land without planning permission. It was designated as White Land. I didn’t rush it. All the while I used my Council connections to chat up the planners. Expensive meals out. Working on the other councillors. Suddenly my land got planning permission. Forty-five houses no less.”
“Sounds like a killing.”
“I netted £160,000 from that. Big money at that time. With that type of money I was able to catch the property boom in the early Seventies. By the time of the collapse I’d sold over ninety per cent of those properties.”
“You had no problem weathering that storm?”
“Didn’t know there was one. I wasn’t highly geared like some. They were still buying when I was selling.” Again there was the smile of self-satisfaction. “And when they went bust, I was there to buy up their land cheaply again. Buying at the bottom.”
“And since then?”
“I haven’t worked too hard. I’ve got one major development on the go in Glastonbury but I now prefer one-off jobs. Like the one next door. More profit, less headache.”
“Usually that makes sense,” Duncan agreed. He turned as Rosemary Cowle appeared with a large silver tray, complete with silver service and Flight, Barr and Barr china which Duncan much preferred not to use for fear of breakage. He’d have preferred a mug.
As she poured, with great caution and delicacy, Duncan studied the builder. He was a big man, all of six foot three. Probably weighing about seventeen stone but without being fat. He’d got the hands of a man who’d cranked a cement mixer on a March morning, who’d struggled through wet foundations after a cloudburst. But then he’d become bored. He’d made his money too easily and from that disinterest had come today’s disaster.
Duncan rose from his chair and looked out of the window. In summer, the lawn would have been immaculate but January was scarcely the month for that. There was a summerhouse carefully positioned near the tennis court. The boundary wall gave seclusion so that Duncan could easily imagine Rosemary stretched out by the heated swimming-pool for hours on end. It was not an unpleasant thought, although she was a lady to be admired rather than ravished. “But tell me about the site next door. Surely you saw the danger?”
“Good Lord, no!” Cowley laughed. “I don’t go in for muddy boots. Not these days. Mark Hillyer was in charge. He was the foreman. If the scaffolding was too close to the cable, then he was responsible.”
“That’s some consolation for you, I suppose”, said Rosemary. “Takes some of the blame off your shoulders.”
“Probably helps your conscience more than it does in a law court.” Duncan’s view was definitive. “Now tell me a little more about Mark Hillyer. Do you have a file on him?”
“No. But I know all about him.”
“Did he have a contract of employment?”
“No. I don’t bother with that sort of form-filling. He’s been with me for a few months. Came to me as a foreman. What do you want to know?”
4
Tuesday, 15th January
SHEPTON MALLET
Dwight Riley opened a tin of beans and put them on the dirt-encrusted cooker, in an even dirtier saucepan, until a sea of bubbles warned him that they were ready. Then he flung them on to a slab of yesterday’s bread and sat at the kitchen table. The red plastic tablecloth was still stacked with the remains of the morning’s breakfast, even though it was now lunchtime.
Dwight Riley lived alone, though not through choice. No one wanted to live with him and so it was that, at thirty-five, he occupied a two up and one down, end of terrace cottage, two miles from the town centre. Once, the cottages had been occupied by farmworkers but that had all changed. Now they were tenanted and the low rent was commensurate with the dilapidated roof, unkempt gardens and peeling paintwork of the exterior.
Even in mid-summer the kitchen was never bright, for the windows were small and the glass opaque with endless years of apathy. Some occupants might have killed the feeling of dampness; even created an atmosphere of warmth, but Dwight Riley wasn’t of that calibre and life hadn’t held out many goodies for him along the way. His father had been a US conscript, based in Wiltshire, who had married a land-girl on foolish impulse. In 1949, his father had returned to Baltimore, leaving his wife with a small son as a souvenir of three unhappy years. As if it wasn’t bad enough being named after General Eisenhower, Dwight Riley was born with an inability to pronounce his ‘Rs’. Throughout childhood, people were never sure whether his name was Dwight Wiley and the lads of the village had been quick to mock.
In the jargon of the 1980s he would have been regarded as ‘remedial’ but he was born too early for that classification. As it was, he just dwindled through primary and secondary modern, where he was regarded as someone who would never learn.
He’d worked for Patrick Cowle for nearly two years which, by Riley’s standards, was a long time. And he’d been quite happy until Mark Hillyer had arrived. Ronnie Arnold and Kenny Robertson had been OK, treated him quite well really, but Mark Hillyer, with his sharp brain and malicious tongue, had taken advantage of the brain gulf between them, picking on him wherever possible.
And now Mark Hillyer was dead. After eating a few of the beans, Riley pushed them to one side. He wasn’t hungry so he lit a cigarette instead. Dead. It took some getting used to. Tomorrow he’d be back at work, sweeping up here, banging in nails there, a bit of this a bit of that. But that tongue was now silenced. One minute, the foreman had been strutting round, shouting orders and the next there had been that scream. And Hillyer was dead. Slab dead. Permanently.
He flung a lump of peat on the fire. It smouldered, giving neither warmth nor cheer but, then, it was cheap, particularly if you went over Wedmore way as Riley did of a Sunday. Get in his old blue van and drive out. Never going anywhere in particular but taking things in, not missing much. But saying little.
His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. He rose from the table, a wiry little man with a face so gaunt and a chin so weak that he looked to be in permanent search for his dentures. Premature baldness and overlarge feet added to the fistful of jokers with which he had to face his solitary life.
Detective Sergeant Black and Detective Constable Witherby were immediately struck that the man who answered the door was a funny sort of cove. Only about five foot, seven inches tall, but with feet like a kangaroo.
“Mr Riley?”
“Yes.”
“We’re detectives. You’re expecting us.” Without waiting for an answer the two men passed through the narrow passage and on into the kitchen, where they took seats round the table.
Andrew Black opened the questioning, permitting Witherby to take in the surroundings. He was unfavourably impressed. The walls, which had once been white, were stained with grime and grease but not from any particular abuse — simply from neg
lect. So great were the cobwebs that he felt like the Prince arriving to awake Sleeping Beauty after a hundred years. But a glance at Riley killed that notion stone-dead.
“Where do you say you were this morning?”
“At work.”
“I know that.” The reply was tetchy. “Did you hear anything unusual?”
“Yes.” The word was said slowly, long drawn out and, even then, coming only after the longest of pauses for thought.
“What did you hear then?”
“I were in the middle kitchen, see. Then there were a scream.”
“And?”
“That were it. We went out. Mark Hillyer were on the ground.”
“Did you notice anything else?”
“No.”
“See a flash? Hear a crackle of electricity?”
“No.”
“Who was in the kitchen?”
There was a long pause. Riley twisted in his chair, a habit which had been with him since childhood. “Ron. And Kenny.”
“That’s Ron Arnold and Kenny Robertson?”
“Don’t know. ’Tis Ron and Kenny.”
“How long had you known the dead man?”
“Don’t know. Since he were foreman.”
“You liked him?”
“Didn’t like. Didn’t dislike. He were there. He were the foreman.” He added the latter as if it were an explanation in itself.
“And the others? Did they like him?”
“He were the foreman. You got me, don’t you.” The two officers looked at each other but said nothing by way of comment. Black looked very hard at Riley, who scratched the remains of the dirty hair which nestled around his ears.
The Scaffold: The sensational legal thriller everyone's talking about (Alistar Duncan Series Book 3) Page 2