“It’s time for some lateral thinking,” she suggested.
“I can think of better things to do when I’m lateral,” Duncan replied. “But what did you have in mind?”
The slightly raised, manicured eyebrow, the pat of the hand, gave him the reply he wanted. But she said nothing for a moment. “Forget the building site. Forget precisely how the chap died. Concentrate on motive. Her affair with Kenny Robertson for a start. But, if I were you, I’d be asking from where Mark Hillyer got all his money. She was as well dressed underneath as on top. You don’t do that on a foreman’s pay.”
Alistair Duncan pushed the cruet back and forth as part of his process of lateral thinking. “I think you’re right. I must talk to Dwight Riley again. Last time I put his attitude down to obtuseness. Now I just wonder whether he knows something and is scared to talk.”
“Sorry to sound stupid but does all this keep the damages down.”
“Yes. If I could prove that, even before her husband’s death, June Hillyer was having an affair, then the amount of compensation will be considerably less than if the judge decided that June and Mark Hillyer were going to have their Golden Wedding pictures in the paper in fifty years’ time.”
“Look. I don’t know what Dwight Riley’s plans are but Shepton’s only twenty minutes past Pensford. Before we go back there, do you fancy a quick spin?”
“Tonight!”
“Good time to catch him in.”
“You must be mad, but of course I’ll come.”
They climbed into the Stag. “So much for the log fire and sweet music you were talking about earlier.” Sarah’s pout was in jest.
“Work before pleasure. Tell you what, if the pubs are still open, we’ll take Riley for a drink. I’d value your opinion of him. Anything’s better than his cottage. Last time I came out I was scratching all over.”
10
Wednesday, 23rd January
SHEPTON MALLET
Dwight Riley’s kitchen was darkened. Grubby curtains covered the windows, the kitchen light was off and the room was illuminated only by the colour TV. It was nearly nine-twenty-five and the B.B.C. Weatherman was predicting another cold, windswept day, with a touch of frost.
The occupant was slumped in an armchair which might once have been new, though it was hard to believe. The peat fire smouldered without cheer. On a January evening, the room had all the charm of a winter wet-suit. Riley swung a leg over the armchair and in his hand was a can of beer. He was looking forward to the American film, which he hoped would take his mind off everything else, what with giving up his job. But it was better than staying there. Pity that Patrick Cowle had no vacancies on his other site, otherwise he would have gone there. Mark Hillyer’s death would solve nothing. The dead man lying on the muddy ground seemed to haunt him, though at first it had seemed a relief. Keep his trap shut. Those were the instructions. Live a lie. Live under threats from Ronnie Arnold and Kenny Robertson. No way. Sod them. Give in your notice. That was the answer. Become anonymous, become another statistic on the Unemployment Register. “I want out,” he told the boss. And he did. He wanted to forget the place, forget what was true, what was a lie.
The flashing red light and a screech of car tyres on an American police car announced the arrival of the film on the box. He took a swig of beer, content to be lost in the loan-sharking world of New Jersey racketeers.
When there was a knock at Riley’s front door, Patrolman Doyle was dying from gun shot wounds in the gutter. The viewer jumped, removed his finger from his nose, his eyes wide with surprise. Visitors were not a feature of his life. People rarely called and, even if they did, it was not at this time of night.
He stood up, indecisive. Ah! Perhaps the police had further inquiries to make. Or maybe even that solicitor. No, it wouldn’t be him. Not at this time. Perhaps it was the next-door neighbour complaining about the noise from the TV. She’d done that once. Perhaps it was Ron and Kenny. He took a step forward and a step backwards. No, it wouldn’t be them. He’d said nothing out of place.
The knocker was banged again, harder this time. There was nothing else for it. He’d have to find out and he walked down the mustiness of the corridor. On swinging open the door, he peered into the wintry darkness. He saw eyes as cold as the night.
“Yes?” Riley peered at Ron and Kenny.
“Well, aren’t you going to invite us in, Dwight?” It was Arnold who replied but, even as he did so, he and Robertson pushed their way forwards. Riley followed then into the kitchen, where his five feet, seven inches faced the new arrivals. He shifted uncertainly from one big foot to the other, hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, shoulders hunched forward. No one seemed sure whether to stand or sit and so they all stood, Riley, with his features apologetic at any time, now locked with apprehension and fear.
“How you been doing then?” enquired Robertson.
Riley laughed nervously. “OK. No job yet. They’re hard to get. Things is a bit tight.” He scratched the back of his bald head for want of something better to do.
“Should have stayed with us,” continued Robertson. “Then you’d have been all right.”
“You’re in trouble, you miserable little bleeder.” Ronnie Arnold accelerated the tension. “Should have known better than trusting you. Might have guessed you’d go blabbing. Or did that solicitor pay you to open your big mouth?”
Riley’s gaunt face, which dropped like a ski-slope from mouth to neck stared blankly. He said nothing but the noise from the American film provided a dramatic background. In an angry movement, Arnold switched off.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Riley. You may be thick but you know what I’m on about.”
The elastic mouth mumbled a meaningless reply. “Come off it, Ronnie. I done nothing. And that’s true.”
“Get knotted!” Robertson took a step forward, putting a clenched fist where Riley’s chin ought to have been. The contrast in the two men’s physique was graphic. “We heard the solicitor this afternoon. He were questioning us. And we know he talked to you. And me and Ronnie know, from what he was saying to us, that you had told him a thing or two.”
Arnold, too, moved closer. “Should have kept your bloody mouth shut. It’s down to you, me and Ronnie were grilled all afternoon.”
Riley was confused. Had he said something? He hadn’t meant to do so. He’d been careful. But then solicitors were clever. Perhaps the solicitor had twisted what he said. “I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Bollocks!” Robertson seized him by the shoulders. “We was in the witness-box. We was there. We had to answer his bloody questions. And that were your fault.” Without effort, he picked Riley off the ground, shook him and then put him down again. “And don’t say that Uncle Ronnie didn’t warn you.”
Ronnie Arnold started to pull a length of rope from his haversack. “Well, you won’t do any more blabbing now.” Riley cowered against the table.
“What are you going to do?” The voice was whimpering, a child in a man’s world.
“Belt up.” Robertson lashed a stinging blow across Riley’s cheek and the small man fell to the ground, snivelling and helpless.
“Help me tie him up.”
With only a token show of resistance, the job was done, leaving Ronnie Arnold free to disappear, clutching a third piece of rope, while Robertson stuffed a greying handkerchief into Riley’s mouth.
Arnold returned. “Ready.” Together he and Robertson carried the lightweight figure into the corridor. Only then did Riley really resist for the first time. He twitched and then kicked in full horror, as he saw a hangman’s noose, suspended from the post at the top of the stairs. It hung motionless, by the banisters, awaiting its load.
11
Wednesday, 23rd January
SHEPTON MALLET
“And you think the answer to the problem lies here?” Sarah nodded at the short path leading to Riley’s front door. The cottage was in darkness. Indeed, all the old line of farm cottages seemed silent.
“Yes. If only I’d known, when I spoke to him before, that June Hillyer was carrying on with Kenny Robertson. I can see Kenny had a motive but he didn’t look like a murderer, didn’t strike me as the person to push his foreman on to an electric cable. Ronnie Arnold was different.”
“Or perhaps the two of them together?”
“Maybe.”
Alistair Duncan and Sarah were snuggled in the front of the car. The solicitor’s knock at the cottage door had brought no response. “Let’s give him till eleven-thirty. If he’s out at the pub, he’ll be back by then. That’s only another quarter of an hour.”
“Perhaps he’s left the area,” said Sarah.
“I doubt it. There’s smoke still coming from the chimney.”
The Sinatra cassette finished. “I’ll just have a look about. See if I can get round to the back of the cottages before we go. You’d have thought he’d have been about at this time of night.”
“Perhaps he’s in bed. Where we ought to be.”
Duncan grinned. “Shan’t be long.”
Sarah sat in the car and saw the large figure of the solicitor gradually fade into the blackness. Suddenly she felt uneasy. For no reason, she found that she was locking the car doors, checking that the windows were shut, looking around her in the darkness, trying to pick out a movement, ears finely tuned for the slightest noise. She smelt trouble.
Suddenly, from the darkness, came the sound of muffled footsteps. They weren’t coming from the front path. They were coming from the other direction, somewhere from the blackness behind the Stag. She forced herself to look round but could see nothing until suddenly the figure was by the car door. She couldn’t see the face, only the dark coat and the sense of movement. She peered across, trying to see who it was.
“Let me in.”
Surprised at how shaken she was, Sarah leant across and, with shaking hands, opened the door. Alistair Duncan climbed in.
“Come on Alistair, let’s go. I don’t like it here. I’m scared stiff.”
“Nothing to worry about. There’s no sign of life.”
*
As Alistair Duncan had been settling the account at Renato’s, Dwight Riley was bucking, wriggling and rolling on the stone floor of his hall. Ronnie Arnold tested the strength of the loop, widening and narrowing the aperture. When he was satisfied, he stared at Riley. “We thought you might like to hang about for a while.”
Robertson laughed, as together the two men picked the nine-stone man from the floor and, in a trice, placed his head in the noose, which tightened at once around the scraggy neck. Riley’s voice, silenced by the gag, spoke now through the eyes which rolled in horror, beseeching, pleading more fluently than his tongue could ever have done. But there was no mercy, as Ronnie Arnold permitted the body to fall, inch by inch, so that the rope started to force the glottis and tongue into the pharynx.
Riley could feel the rough texture of the rope biting deep into his neck and deep into his skin in a line up behind his ears. He wasn’t sure whether he was spinning or whether the room was spinning. Or both. The pressure on his jugular vein was startling. He felt himself starting to lose consciousness, was aware that the two men were nowhere to be seen, that he was alone, swinging in his own hallway, his big feet tiptoeing on the ground.
There was a voice. Who it was Riley knew not. “Get him down.”
With a single movement, Robertson lifted Riley, so that the pressure was removed from the neck and Arnold tugged at the noose so that, once again, the airways were freed. Eyes wide open with disbelief, he struggled for air through the choked mouth. Suddenly he was freed and dumped in a chair in the kitchen, where the gag was removed and his arms and legs unleashed.
“Just as well we remembered to cut you down,” said Arnold. “If we’d forgotten, then you’d be dead. You’d better thank us for that because you didn’t remember my previous warning.” Arnold knelt on the floor to push his face close to Riley. “Next time you blab, count yourself dead.” He stood up and walked towards the fire. “But there won’t be a next time. I’m giving you five minutes to pack some things. You’re leaving here. You’re getting in that van of yours and disappearing. You’re not wanted round here.”
Riley coughed and then spoke with difficulty. “Why?” all the while his hands were massaging the red weal which ran from his neck to his ears.
“Because there’s nothing to stay here for. Because you want to make a fresh start in life. Because you want your life to last till longer than tomorrow.”
“I’ve nowhere to go.”
Arnold’s vicious mouth curled downwards. “Put up the rope again, Kenny.” With a nod Kenny left the room.
There was no alternative. “OK. I’ll go. But, with no money, I can’t get far.”
“Go where you bleedin’ well like. And don’t come back. And don’t talk.”
Kenny Robertson leant against the door frame, legs crossed, cool and casual. “Next time we won’t unhook you. Next time you’ll swing till your eyeballs bulge out, until your tongue hangs down that stupid face of yours.”
“I’ll get my things packed.”
12
Tuesday, 29th January
SHEPTON MALLET
Rosemary Cowle answered the door, slightly less formal in manner than on the previous occasion. “Come in, Mr. Duncan.” The smile was warm and welcoming.
“Thank you. Your husband’s in?”
“Yes. He’s expecting you.” She led him through the hall, into a small study, which was lined with oak panelling, with oil paintings built in, to give an air of permanence and antiquity. The whole of one wall was a bookcase, the top tiers of which were filled with evenly lined covers, which Duncan was prepared to bet had been bought by the yard. A glance at the lower shelves revealed a hotch-potch of books. Books always interested Duncan. Study a bookcase, read a mind, Duncan had long ago decided.
Cowle was by the window and, as Duncan approached, he nodded down the garden. “Seclusion like that’s worth paying for.”
As Duncan agreed, Mrs Cowle slipped away to get the tea.
“A rare commodity, especially round Bristol. My cottage at Pensford’s well positioned but, even so, the view looks over the sprawl of the village below. On a summer’s evening you can hear the traffic on the A37, and that’s nearly a mile away.” Duncan declined a cigar but started to light his pipe. “I’ll come straight to the point. You told me that Hillyer was taking home ninety-five quid a week net. Right?”
“Yes. You’ve got the documents”
“Check! Well he was spending at the rate of £170 a week.” Duncan referred to his notes. “The books just don’t balance.”
“Betting?”
“Unlikely. Too regular expenditure. More like a private income. Maybe moonlighting.”
“How did you find this out?”
“June Hillyer’s solicitor told me this morning. But she didn’t realise what she was telling him. She gave him a list of expenditure but she didn’t know what his income was. The solicitor assumed that the books balanced but I wasn’t letting on how much the dead man was earning.” Duncan’s face creased in a hundred places as his face broke into a conspiratorial smile. “And I don’t intend to let on. Not until I have to. Not until I understand where the money was coming from.”
“You mean June didn’t know her husband was only earning ninety-five quid?”
“That’s right. Or, if she did know, she wasn’t telling her solicitor.” Duncan shrugged. “I don’t know which.”
“But you’ll investigate of course?”
“Too true! Mark Hillyer was spending £75 a week, after tax, more than he was earning. Had he been inside, do you know?”
“I don’t think so.”
“And of course employees don’t have to disclose old convictions any more, do they? Not when they apply for jobs. I must check. See if he had a criminal record. See if he was involved in crime, at some time, which might have given him this type of money. But it’s odd that June
didn’t know. If she did know . . .” Duncan paused . . . “Then she wanted the source of income covered up.”
“What about Dwight Riley?”
“No sign yet. He hasn’t been seen since the day of the inquest, six days ago. Just disappeared. The house is locked up. His van’s gone.”
“Unbalanced chap.” Cowle flickered some ash off his red waistcoat, only to see it roll down the check trousers and on to the carpet. He quickly ground it into the pile before his wife returned with the tea things. “I’m not surprised he’s gone. If you’re daft enough to give up your job, with two million unemployed, then you’re daft enough to try your luck somewhere else. Let’s face it, Riley was a half-wit. Lucky to have a job at all.”
Rosemary Cowle appeared with the same nerve-racking china as before. But the orange fondant cake made the balancing act worthwhile.
“Is your site OK now?”
“Sure. Harold Plumb called yesterday and he’s approved the new wiring arrangements. Riley’s replacement starts next week. Twenty-three applicants I had for the job. And that was only on the first day. Phone never stopped ringing.”
Having finished the tea, Duncan left. “The insurers are chasing me for my report but I think I’ll leave this one on the gas. Let it simmer for a while.”
“It won’t cost me?”
Duncan laughed. “No. I plan to cut down the widow’s claim. If I can prove this affair between Kenny and young June, then maybe the insurers will be kind with your premium next year.”
*
Back in his office, Duncan tried the new internal telephone system which had just been installed. After a buzz and crackle on the line there was silence. Muttering obscenities about men on the moon and microchips, he chose to walk to Lucy’s office instead.
She was getting ready to go home but was only too happy to stay.
“Have our London agents phoned back yet?”
“No. Giles Rodd promised to ring as soon as his outside clerk returned.”
The Scaffold: The sensational legal thriller everyone's talking about (Alistar Duncan Series Book 3) Page 6