An Unsuitable Death

by J M Gregson

  Sixteen

  The Sacristan had been caught. The man who had committed the serial murders of four women around Shrewsbury was in custody.

  Lambert heard the official announcement of the news on the radio on Thursday morning, but it was clear that the information had been released to the press on the previous evening. SACRISTAN IS ARRESTED was all his Times had to offer in its headline, but the other papers were less restrained. They recalled the sexual assaults and the bizarre arranging of the bodies in country churchyards, then went on to remind the world that “the whole of the West Country, which has suffered under the Sacristan’s reign of terror, will sleep more easily tonight”.

  They were driven to recall the retrospective horrors, for they had no details yet of the man arrested, though they speculated that he was a local resident. Desperate for copy, deprived now of the suspense and fear they had built for weeks around the hunt for the Sacristan, the fourth estate turned to another dramatic mystery, which had the advantage from their point of view of being still unsolved.

  “Attention is now turning to the Copycat Killer, the man who aped the methods of the Sacristan and deposited his victim so daringly on the altar of the Lady Chapel in Hereford Cathedral last week. Police were last night still baffled about the identity of the man who chose to tease them by imitating the macabre methods of the Sacristan. Top Cop Superintendent John Lambert and his extensive team remain tight-lipped and uncommunicative about his investigation, which we understand has so far come up against a wall as stout and unyielding as that of the Cathedral itself”

  There was more in the same vein, and some of the tabloids repeated their dramatic pictures of the scene of the discovery of Tamsin Rennie’s body to accompany their theme of police bafflement. All good knockabout stuff, but it would no doubt turn nastier if there was no arrest in the next few days, thought Lambert, as he drove to work.

  He looked at his watch as he went into the Murder Room at Oldford CID on the morning of Thursday, August 25th. It was exactly a week to the minute since the body had been discovered on the altar of the Lady Chapel.

  Lambert decided it was time to put a little pressure on Thomas Clarke, apprentice actor and murder suspect. He called him into the Oldford CID headquarters, had him ushered into an interview room, and left him to kick his heels there for twenty minutes.

  Tom had been directed into a spot in the walled car park of the police station when he arrived. Whilst he waited in the windowless room to find out why he had been summoned, a sergeant and two constables examined the seats and the boot of his car for any sign that the body of Tamsin Rennie had rested there. By the standards of the forensic experts, it was a cursory search. But the two men and the woman knew what they were looking for: principally, fibres from the clothing the dead girl had worn when discovered in the Lady Chapel, and secondly, any other chance evidence that had fallen from the dead girl and gone unnoticed. Serendipity can help detection as it aids other facets of life, but you have to help it along by diligent searching.

  If anything to suggest a connection with the body was found in this unofficial search of the vehicle, the car would be passed on to the forensic crime laboratory staff for a more detailed and systematic searching. The sergeant and the constables found nothing significant. The car was splashed with the mud of the country lanes of Herefordshire on the outside. Its interior had been thoroughly cleaned at some time in the last few days.

  Tom Clarke sat in the ten foot square airless room with the single bulb set behind a wire cage in the low ceiling and became more nervous. On the watch he consulted too frequently, the minutes ticked blank and busy. That was a quotation from somewhere, he thought, probably some poem from the First World War. He cudgelled his brains to try to pinpoint the source, but the answer would not come, and the attempt to divert his mind from his present predicament failed.

  They knew the big thing he had concealed. He felt certain of that. But how much more did they know, or fancy they knew, about him and Tamsin and what had happened last week? His palms were sweating. He found that however much he rubbed them on his handkerchief or the sleeves of his jacket, they were moist again within seconds.

  Beyond the walls of this room, which seemed at every moment more like a prison cell, he could hear muffled sounds. The bleeping of telephones; shouts of enquiry down an unseen corridor; the opening of drawers in metal filing cabinets; the sound of voices, calling words he could never distinguish; the sound, twice, of female laughter. He wondered how much of this activity revolved around him, how much of it was preparation for the ordeal he was now sure was in store for him.

  He speculated on who would confront him across the small table which was screwed to the floor. Probably it would be different men from the grave Superintendent and the burly Sergeant who had listened to him so attentively at his first interview. He rather hoped it would be, if he was to be confronted with his lies. It would be less embarrassing if it was different people; he might even be able to make out it was some kind of misunderstanding, that the wires of exchange had been a little crossed.

  It was the same men.

  Tom stood up automatically when the door of the room finally opened and the two big plain-clothes officers came briskly into it. He was ready to shake hands, to smile and be smiled at, to begin the exchange in a civilised manner. They scarcely even looked at him until they were sitting opposite him on the other side of the table. Then he thought their eyes looked like those of lions surveying a tethered goat. The weather-beaten sergeant pushed a cassette into the tape recorder at the right-hand edge of the table and said, without taking his eyes off his prey, “Second interview with Thomas Clarke, Thursday, August 25th at ten eighteen. Present: Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook.”

  Lambert looked at Tom for a long ten seconds before he said, “You were less than honest with us when we talked to you last Saturday, Mr Clarke.”

  Tom, usually so ready with words, found now that he could not produce them. He faltered eventually into, “I don’t know what you mean,” and then immediately regretted it. He had put on the leather jacket his mother had bought him under careful guidance for his last birthday. His friends had joked about the macho image the jacket gave him; he felt anything but macho here, isolated under the relentless scrutiny of two men who were professionals in a world which was alien to him.

  Lambert did not smile. “Help the boy, Sergeant Hook,” was all he said.

  Hook flicked open the pages of his loose-leaved notebook, referred to the information he knew by heart, and looked back into the pale, handsome face. “You said that you were at home on the evening of Wednesday, August 18th.”

  “Did I?”

  Hook studied him for a moment, then dropped his eyes to his notebook. “To be precise, you said: ‘I was at home. I’d spent the day decorating and I was knackered. I tried to ring Tamsin at about eight o’clock, but there was no reply.’ There were no witnesses to this; your mother was at a yoga class, you said.”

  Hell, thought Tom. It seemed worse, with all that detail he had thrown in to make the lie convincing. He could hardly say it was a simple mistake, that he had got his nights mixed up, when he had thrown in that bit about ringing the flat at eight o’clock and getting no reply from Tamsin. He said, “I’d like to change my statement. I — I was mistaken.”

  Lambert said, “We don’t believe that, Mr Clarke. You must take us for fools if you think we might.”

  “Yes. Well, I’d better tell you where I really was on that night, then, hadn’t I?” Tom attempted a dismissive laugh, but none came. “May I ask who informed you that I was not at home that night?”

  “No, Mr Clarke, you may not. And I should remind you that you are now in the position of having told us a deliberate lie in a serious crime inquiry. A crucial lie, because it was an attempt to establish an alibi for the time of a murder. You have wasted quite enough of our time. You had better tell us immediately where you were and what you were doing on that Wednesday evening.
”

  “I was in the Cathedral. In the nave of the Cathedral, to be exact. With two hundred other people. Rehearsing for the Three Choirs Festival. We sang for over two hours There was one chorus we couldn’t get right. We tenors were too strident, the conductor told us.” He wanted to go on and on, with fact after innocent fact. While he was talking they could not press him. And they did not interrupt, but merely studied him, as if his behaviour under stress was a matter of captivating interest to them. But eventually he had to come to a stop.

  Lambert said, “You will understand that once you have lied to us, we shall treat each one of your subsequent statements with caution. How did you get to this rehearsal?”

  “I came by car. In my little old Fiesta. Well, it’s my mother’s actually, but she lets me use it almost whenever I need it. She’s very—”

  “Where did you park this vehicle?”

  “In the car park at the rear of the Cathedral. It’s private really, for Cathedral employees, but they don’t mind members of the choir using it in the evenings.”

  “Behind the Lady Chapel, in fact.”

  Tom felt the colour draining from his face. “Yes. Yes, I suppose it is, right behind the Lady Chapel.”

  “Within a few yards of the spot where Tamsin Rennie’s body was discovered the next morning. We’ve inspected the spot where your Fiesta was parked, Mr Clarke. It is thirty yards from the St John’s door entrance to the Cathedral at the rear. The nearest access to the Lady Chapel. We’ve measured the distance exactly: it might prove to be important, to someone carrying a body.”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose so, but — but that is the entrance that all the choir members use for evening rehearsals. It’s left open when the main door and all the other entrances to the Cathedral are locked at the normal time, you see.”

  “You were parked in the spot nearest to the St John’s door. You must have been there early to get that.”

  “Yes. I was there thirty-five minutes before the rehearsal was scheduled to begin.”

  “Because you had a body to dispose of?”

  “No! That’s ridiculous. I wanted to marry Tamsin. To take her away from all her troubles and—”

  “And she was resisting that idea, Mr Clarke. Becoming more and more a slave to heroin. Supplying heroin to others, becoming a dealer, with all that that implies. Perhaps choosing to make her future with another man rather than with you. And so you killed her, in your frustration that she would not do what you wanted.”

  “No! No, I didn’t! You must see that I would never have killed my Tamsin.” Tom found himself almost weeping in his need to convince them.

  Lambert’s voice went on steadily, inexorably. “No. I don’t see that. I see certain facts, Mr Clarke. I see that you secured for yourself the parking spot from which you could most easily transfer a body weighing one hundred and ten pounds to the Lady Chapel. And with the least danger of being detected in doing so. I see that you lied about all this when we spoke to you five days ago; that you directly misled us; that you fed us information which has delayed the progress of a murder inquiry.”

  “I know. That’s all true. But I didn’t kill Tamsin.”

  “Then you had better set about convincing us of that. Why did you tell us you were at home on that Wednesday evening, when you were in fact in the very place where the body had been found?”

  “I was stupid. I knew when I saw you that the body had been found in the Lady Chapel. And I knew that the boyfriend is always a suspect. I thought if I told you that I’d been around at both the time and the place of the killing, you’d not look any further for a murderer.”

  “You underestimate us, Mr Clarke. In more ways than one. You don’t know much about the thoroughness of a murder hunt if you thought you were going to get away with that.” He spoke witheringly, but he was uncomfortably conscious that they had been made aware of Clarke’s presence in the Cathedral on that fatal evening not by diligent police work but through the chance observation of his car by another suspect in the case. A police officer had been pursuing the tedious task of checking out the hundreds of choristers involved in the rehearsal for the Three Choirs Festival, just in case any of them had connections with the dead girl, but no one so far had come to him with Clarke’s name. Lambert said, “Have you always sung in the Cathedral choir?”

  “No. I sang as a youngster, then went off to RADA. I can’t be a regular member because well, because when I’m working, I’m obviously not available for rehearsals in the evenings. But six weeks ago someone said if I was ‘resting’, they were short of tenors for the Three Choirs Festival. I jumped at the chance. I was lucky to get in like that, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it.” Just for an instant, he had forgotten his perilous situation in the joy of making music.

  Possibly he isn’t on the official lists, thought Lambert. Amateur organisations are notoriously tardy with the paperwork. Cancel the rocket to the DC combing through that list. He said heavily, “You had better tell us exactly what you did that evening; accurately this time, please, and with nothing conveniently omitted. Begin with why you were parked in such an advantageous position behind the Cathedral, thirty-five minutes before the rehearsal began.”

  “I went early because I hoped to have a few words with Tamsin. I parked there because I thought I’d secure my parking spot at the Cathedral before the others turned up. It can be chaos just before the time we begin the rehearsal, as you can imagine. And it’s only five minutes down St Ethelbert Street to Tamsin’s flat in Rosamund Street, as you know.”

  “And did you see Tamsin?”

  “No. The last time I saw her was on Tuesday morning after I’d stayed the night, as I told you on Saturday. I didn’t lie about that. But what I didn’t tell you properly was that we’d had a row. She was saying that she wouldn’t come away with me, that it was all hopeless, that she’d need to finish with me. I couldn’t leave it like that. I wanted to have another go at her, make her see reason.”

  “And so you went to her flat on that Wednesday night?”

  “Yes. But she wasn’t there. There was no light on when I got there.”

  Hook, trying not to sound too excited over his notebook, asked, “What time was this?”

  “Seven o’clock. Perhaps a little after that.”

  “Did you go into the place? We know you have a key.”

  “Yes. Just to make sure she wasn’t there. She sometimes — you know, with the heroin, she sometimes”

  “Passed out, I know. Or lost all sense of time.”

  “Yes. But she wasn’t there when I looked in. I just looked round briefly and went back to the Cathedral. I must have left the flat by seven fifteen.”

  Lambert studied the revealing face of the young man on the other side of the table. It was a strange combination of distress and a desperate anxiety to convince them that what he said was true. He said, “You say you looked round quickly and then went away. What was the state of the flat?”

  “The state of the flat? It was well, just as it usually was.”

  “Tidy?”

  Puzzlement was added to the other emotions which flitted across the unlined young face. “Well, no. I wouldn’t say tidiness was one of Tamsin’s virtues. Not, well, not since the drugs got a hold on her.”

  “We discussed this with you when we saw you on Saturday. So what you’re now saying is that the flat was in some disorder when you looked in before you went to your choir rehearsal?”

  “Yes. I’m not saying it was like a tip, mind. But there were clothes on the floor. An unwashed beaker and plate in the sink, I think. That kind of thing.” He shrugged helplessly, trying to remember what he had said at their first meeting, wondering if they were trying to trap him, still not sure where this line of questioning was leading him.

  Lambert told him. “I’m taking this up with you again because you admit you have lied to us about your whereabouts on the evening when Tamsin died. If what you’re now telling us is true, it is significant. Tamsin was almost certainly
killed in the early evening of that Wednesday. It is probable that she never re-entered the flat in Rosamund Street after the time of seven fifteen which you are giving us for your visit. But the Scene of Crime team didn’t find the flat in the condition you describe.”

  “You said that on Saturday. Do you mean that someone went in there and tidied the place at some time after her death? But why would they do that?”

  Lambert found himself wishing he could see Tom Clarke in one of his stage performances. He would like to have known how convincing he could be as an actor. At the moment, he was doing a good line in wide-eyed surprise; but he was a naive young man, so it might just be innocence. He said impatiently, “We discussed this with you on Saturday. There might be a perfectly innocent reason why the flat was tidied. But being suspicious policemen looking for a murderer, we are inclined to the view that someone was trying to remove evidence which might have implicated him, or someone close to him.”

  “Yes, I see. You mean someone went through the place carefully to make sure there wasn’t anything there which would suggest him as a killer?”

  Lambert wondered how genuine this question was. They had discussed the state of the flat with him five days earlier, but it was possible he hadn’t realised the full import of the questioning until now. “Indeed. The Scene of Crime team found no crockery in the sink, the carpets clean, and Tamsin’s clothes neatly folded or hung. We don’t know what, if anything, was removed from the place.”

  “No. I can see now why you think the tidiness was significant.”

  “You are one of several people who had keys to that flat, Mr Clarke. Did you go back there, later on that Wednesday night, or at any time on Thursday? We didn’t know where Tamsin Rennie had lived until over a day after her body was discovered. I should remind you that one of the reasons for that was that you didn’t come forward to tell us of your association with her until three days after her death.”