by J M Gregson
He realized with surprise that it was a precept he had always observed. ‘Then what on earth do you want with an innocent citizen?’ he said. He was sitting in the driver’s seat again now; it was difficult to draw himself up to his full height and give the question dignity when the law was towering above him.
‘There was a serious crime committed in this area last night, sir. Not half a mile from here. Your car is one of a number known to have been in the district at the time of the crime. The registration number is recorded at the station.’
PC Rogers was slow and methodical in his speech, like a patient uncle instructing a child in the complexities of adult life. Yet he could not have been more than twenty-two, and Knowles felt insulted by his ponderous delivery. ‘I had nothing to do with your damned crime.’
‘No one has accused you, sir. If what you say is true, we shall still need to eliminate you from our inquiries.’
He was reciting a formula, and they both knew it, but that did not lessen Knowles’s irritation as they proceeded with the exchange. ‘Are you arresting me?’
‘Certainly not, sir. You would merely be helping us with our inquiries into a serious crime.’
Knowles, hearing the last of the necessary clichés, began to wonder how much they really knew about his movements on the previous evening. He said as firmly as he could, ‘And of course I’m only too anxious to give you all the assistance I can.’
Rogers noticed that this man had not once asked them about the nature of the serious crime they had mentioned. Odd, that.
By the time he had waited ten minutes in the CID section at Oldford, Vic Knowles had recovered enough of his composure to be rather more aggressive.
DI Rushton was younger than him by a few years. He had not a grey hair in sight. And he had kept himself in better condition: that was always an irritating thing for an athlete to contemplate. Knowles said, hoping to establish immediately the goalposts for this exchange, ‘Are you in charge of this case, then?’
Rushton’s brown eyes regarded him coolly for an instant before he said, ‘No. I keep an overview of the material we’re collecting, and organize the documentation. Superintendent Lambert is in overall charge of the investigation.’
Knowles riffled through his knowledge of television crime to decide how exalted these ranks were. He let a little edge of sarcasm creep into his voice as he said, ‘A Super in charge: this is big stuff, then.’
‘It’s murder, sir.’ If Rushton enjoyed the little frisson of apprehension the revelation brought, he gave no sign of it. ‘The autopsy has now established that officially.’
Knowles felt himself already fretting in the face of the Inspector’s calmness. How could these men be so matter-of-fact about the ultimate crime? ‘And what connection do you think I have with the crime of murder?’ He tried to be as calm as the man opposite him, but he felt the slight tremble which came into his voice on his mention of the word.
‘I very much hope no connection at all, sir. Perhaps you will be able to demonstrate that to our satisfaction in the next few minutes.’ Rushton’s steady brown eyes had never left Knowles’s mobile face since he had come into the interview room.
Knowles thought: He’s enjoying this, the bastard; enjoying having me on the spot; enjoying the fact that he knows more than I do about the present state of the case; enjoying watching me trying to pick my way through this marsh without falling off the path.
Rushton said, ‘The DVLC computer gives your name as the owner of the red Sierra you were driving today. It also gives your address as Sutton Coldfield. Is that correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you were in this area both last night and today. Did you stay in Oldford last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what was the purpose of your visit to the town?’
Knowles glimpsed at last the possibility of a little prestige in a situation which had seemed hitherto to have been designed to humiliate him. He leaned forward a little towards the impassive young face on the other side of the table. ‘This must be in confidence for the moment, Inspector, but I’m expecting to be confirmed as the new manager of Oldford Football Club in the next couple of weeks.’
The brown eyes widened a little; the rest of the long face remained impassive. A cold fish, this Rushton. ‘I see. I thought Trevor Jameson was the Manager.’
Damn! Just his luck to get a soccer fan. ‘He is, but not for much longer, I’m afraid.’
‘I see. I didn’t know that. Mr Jameson is a neighbour of mine.’ Rushton allowed his distaste to overlay the simple statement of fact.
Things were going from bad to worse. ‘Look. Perhaps I’ve said more than I should have done. But you asked me why I was here, you see, and I was trying to be helpful. Between you and me, I don’t think Trevor knows much about it yet, but that’s the way it is in football. I saw Mr Kemp this afternoon –’
‘Charlie Kemp?’
‘Yes. The Chairman of the club. I had an appointment, you see.’ Knowles’s fingers stretched up to the thin gold chain beneath his open-necked shirt, twisted it for a moment, then dropped away as he saw the inspector’s eyes upon them.
‘Yes, I see, Mr Knowles. What I don’t see is why you were in the region of the ground at midnight last night, when your appointment was for this afternoon.’
Rushton, beneath his careful politeness, was enjoying Knowles’s discomfort, and both of them realized it. ‘I – well, I thought I’d come and look at the set-up here. I had a look round the club, saw how prosperous it was, and –’
‘Did you go into the Roosters Club?’
‘No.’
‘Why not, Mr Knowles? That would have given you an even better view of the “set-up”, wouldn’t it?’
‘Yes, but I didn’t want Mr Kemp or some official of the club to see me. Didn’t want them to think I was spying, you see.’
‘Even though that was exactly the purpose of your visit.’ Rushton permitted himself a small smile; the observant brown eyes creased a little at their corners.
Vic reached up and tugged at the tie which hung crookedly from his neck. ‘Look, you asked me why I was here, and I’ve told you. It’s normal practice, isn’t it, to want to know what you’re letting yourself in for when you’re considering a new job? I was just doing it discreetly, that’s all.’
‘A wise precaution. Especially when Mr Jameson apparently doesn’t even know that his job is at risk.’ DI Rushton liked Trevor Jameson; and like the rest of the CID, he disliked Charlie Kemp, a crook who had so far been too elusive for them to pin down.
And he did not care for the man in front of him: Vic Knowles was ‘flash’, with his smooth suits and his glib phrases about the game. Rushton, who enjoyed his football, did not like the flash operators he saw more and more often within the professional game.
Knowles said, ‘Look, I’m just trying to be as helpful as I can.’
‘As is your duty as a good citizen, Mr Knowles. So give us an account of your movements last night.’
The tape turned silently beside them, but Knowles’s eye had caught the young DC to the rear of the Inspector, with his pencil poised over his pad. He could not shake away the image of a chronicler of his sins, that recording angel that had been planted in his imagination by an earnest Sunday School teacher almost forty years ago.
‘Well, I parked near the Roosters and watched the people going in.’
‘Time?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t know I was going to be cross-examined about it today, did I?’ Rushton gave him no more than the slightest of smiles. ‘I suppose it was about half past nine. Look, if you could just give me the details of this crime, I’m sure I could –’
‘In due course, perhaps, Mr Knowles. How long were you parked near the Roosters?’
‘I told you: I can’t be precise. I suppose it was about three-quarters of an hour. Maybe an hour, at the most. I had the radio on. I listened to the ten o’clock sports bulletin, and I was there for some time af
ter that.’ Knowles ran both hands abruptly through his lank hair, as if he could no longer keep control over them.
‘And you watched people going in and out of the Roosters. Not a very exciting evening, for an active man like you.’
‘That’s my business. Are you saying you don’t believe me?’
Rushton enjoyed ignoring this man’s questions. ‘And what did you do when you had completed your vigil of observation on Oldford Football Club, Mr Knowles?’
‘I went back to my digs.’
‘Where were you staying?’
‘At the White Lion.’
It was a run-down pub on the edge of the town, which still kept a couple of cheap bed and breakfast rooms, used largely by reps who wanted to make a bit on their expenses.
It was not the location recorded for the red Sierra by the observant beat copper.
‘So you were back there from about half past ten onwards?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you went quietly to bed? Not a very exciting evening for you.’
‘I was tired. I had a couple of drinks before I went to bed.’
‘Ah! That’s useful; it means the landlord will be able to confirm your presence at the time you suggest.’
Knowles looked at him with a hatred that was suddenly manifest. He had never troubled to dissemble his feelings when he talked to the footballers who had called him ‘Boss’ over the years, and he could not conceal his emotions now. ‘No, he won’t. I had a bottle in my room. I didn’t know whether I’d be staying in licensed premises or not, you see, so I brought a bottle of whisky in my case. I nearly always do. I’ve learned over the years to be independent.’
He was talking too much now. Rushton let him run to a stop before he spoke. ‘So there is no one who can confirm your story about the time when you returned to the White Lion. Unfortunate, that.’
‘Look, I don’t have to take this. I’ve a good mind to make a complaint – I came here of my own free will ...’
He spoke like a man who expected to be interrupted, and Rushton deflated him by refusing to do so. He did not think this man would lodge any complaint, in view of what was still to come.
When Knowles ran out of bluster, he said, ‘You have been told that your car was noted as one of the vehicles in the area where a murder was committed last night. It was noted by a constable on his beat at 11.15 p.m. And it was not in the car park of the White Lion hotel. It was quite near the spot where the body of a woman was found later in the night. A woman who had been strangled.’
For an instant, Knowles’s eyes widened, and showed the bright red veining at the corners. Then he cast them down; a small pulse beat for a moment at the top of his right cheek, and he flicked at it with his fingers as if it had been a fly.
Rushton said, ‘Are you telling us that someone else took your car while you were in your room at the White Lion and drove it to where it was seen?’
For a moment, it seemed that the lie would be attractive to Knowles. Then he shook his head sullenly. Rushton said, ‘Do you wish to have a lawyer present for the rest of our exchange?’
He judged correctly that the suggestion would strike Vic Knowles only as a further threat. When the man had refused the offer, he said, ‘I think it’s time you gave us a full and proper account of what you did last night, Mr Knowles.’
There was a silence which seemed to Knowles to stretch interminably in the small room, though in fact it was no more than thirty seconds long. His irregular breathing seemed almost that of an asthmatic as his mind raced and he sought to control it. Eventually he said, ‘I went to the Roosters as I told you. It might have been a bit later than I said; it was going dark.’
‘What you are telling us now will form the basis of a statement which we shall ask you to sign, Mr Knowles. In your own interest, you should take care to be accurate. What happened next?’
‘I – I wasn’t there as long as I said. Perhaps quarter of an hour – I did hear the ten o’clock sports bulletin on the radio, as I said.’ He produced this irrelevance as if he had a desperate idea that it might confirm his integrity. Then, as if he realized how futile it sounded, he said, ‘But just after that, I picked a girl up.’
‘Is that why you waited outside the club?’
Knowles nodded sullenly, twisting the cheap digital watch on his wrist. ‘There’s no law against it.’
‘There are laws against both soliciting and kerb-crawling. Those laws are not my concern at the moment, but –’
‘I knew the girl already, I’d seen her before.’
‘What was her name?’
Knowles’s broad shoulders dropped hopelessly. ‘I don’t know. I’d only seen her once before.’
‘But you had arranged to meet her outside the Roosters.’
‘No. Well, I had – Oh, I don’t know.’ Knowles dropped his eyes; they were unable to contend any longer against those relentless brown ones.
Rushton tried to keep his growing excitement out of his voice as he said, ‘You went there to wait for her, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘But you didn’t know her name. Was she a prostitute?’
There was another silence: it pained Knowles to admit, as he knew he must, that he had been reduced to this. ‘Yes, I suppose she was.’
‘And you had intercourse with her last night? That was presumably your purpose in contacting her.’
‘Yes.’
‘At her place?’
‘No. In the back of my car. It was cheaper that way.’ For an instant his searing self-contempt came through the words.
‘And where did this occur?’ Rushton, who was having trouble with his own wife, was taking a ruthless satisfaction in the exposure of this shabby liaison.
Vic Knowles looked up at Rushton and the officer behind him for the first time in several minutes, and there was fear in those bloodshot eyes. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know this town. I drove to where she told me. Somewhere quiet on the edge of the town, but it was dark, you see.’
‘I see. Your car was recorded at just before eleven o’clock, just off the Gloucester road. Would this lady whose name you do not know have been with you at that time?’
He nodded hopelessly. ‘The time sounds right. I’ve told you, I don’t know where we were. I just drove to a quiet place, as she directed me.’
‘How much did you give her?’
‘Twenty pounds. I told you, it was cheaper in the car. So long as all you wanted was straightforward sex, and you didn’t take too long over it.’ Again his disgust with himself seemed too genuine for a man like him to simulate.
‘We shall need a description of this woman.’
He gave them what he could. Young, seeming to him not much more than a girl. Dark hair, cut fairly short; red blouse; skirt navy or black; fishnet tights; a handbag – black, he thought. He was not even sure of the colour of her eyes. It sounded like the murdered girl: it could also be one of a dozen others. And that assumed, of course, that this man who had begun with a string of lies was now telling them the truth.
Rushton said, ‘And where did you drop your passenger off when this transaction was completed?’
‘I didn’t. She got out where – where we’d parked. She said she hadn’t far to go and she needed some fresh air.’ He could not find the phrases for the self-disgust he had known was in her as well as himself that they should be reduced to this breathless coupling on the back seat; nor the abrupt way she had flung open the door and set off down the road while he had still been struggling with his trousers round his ankles.
He remembered his sudden fury that she should need to be rid of him like that. But he could not tell them that. Not now.
Rushton and his DC were watching him intently, as he eventually realized when he was forced to look up at them. Rushton said, ‘Did you follow her in the car?’
‘No, of course I didn’t. Why the hell do you think –’
‘Did you kill the girl you were with last night, Mr Knowles?’
&
nbsp; ‘No. No. Why in hell’s name should you think –’
‘A girl was found murdered within three hundred yards of where you say this girl left you last night. From your description, it could well have been the woman you say you were with.’ Rushton eased his tall frame back in his chair for the first time, as if the better to study his man. ‘You say she left you alone in your car. What did you do after that?’
Knowles’s voice was very low as he said, ‘I stayed where I was for a little while. Perhaps ten minutes, I don’t know. Then I drove back towards the football club, until I found my bearings, and drove from there to the White Lion. The rest of what I told you earlier was true.’
Rushton waited, but Knowles volunteered nothing else. ‘We shall need to examine your Sierra. It will take us a couple of hours, maybe more. I’ll get a police car to run you back to your hotel, if you wish.’
Knowles was about to say that he had planned to drive straight back to the Midlands, that one night in the White Lion was quite enough. But he thought better of it, and merely nodded. All he wanted to do at the moment was to get out of this place, and gather his thoughts.
Rushton said, ‘Do you live alone in Sutton Coldfield, Mr Knowles?’
‘Yes. I’ve been divorced for three years now.’
‘So there is no one at your address who could bear witness to your movements over the last few weeks?’
‘No. Look, I’ve told you –’
‘You told us a few minutes ago that you had already seen the girl you were with last night – the girl whose name you cannot remember – on a previous occasion. When was that?’
Knowles licked at lips which stayed obstinately dry. ‘I came down to the ground when the team played a testimonial match at the end of May. The last match before they went off for the close season. I’d been sounded about taking on the manager’s job and it was my only chance to see the ground and the players in action. Oldford was just a name to me, you see.’ At this moment, he wished with all his heart that it still was.