Close Call

by J M Gregson

  ‘You felt it was only a matter of time before he told your husband about your affair with him.’

  He didn’t allow evasions, this Lambert. She suddenly hated his calm and clear-sighted vision, the way he delivered this idea to her as a statement, not a question. ‘Rob enjoyed having secrets, enjoyed having people in his power.’

  ‘And someone felt that the only way to escape from this was to get rid of him once and for all. Were you that person, Mrs Smart?’

  She denied it, and they let her go. But as they drove away from the school, all three of the people who had been in that room knew that the important question was still to be answered.

  Twenty

  Bert Hook was ready to leave the station when the desk sergeant buzzed him to say that there was a man who wanted to speak to someone connected with the Robin Durkin murder case.

  ‘I told him that the governor and DI Rushton had buggered off early as it’s Friday. That you were the nearest thing to top brass we had available.’ The desk sergeant was the public face of Oldford Police Station, wearing uniform and engaging in the long-established ritual of denigrating CID. He had known Bert Hook for nearly twenty years, since they had been coppers together on the beat.

  ‘They’ve buggered off all right. Beaten it to Birmingham.’ Bert enjoyed a bit of alliteration. ‘To interview a contract killer. Still be working long after you’re at home enjoying your conjugals, Mike.’ He sighed. ‘Who is this bloke and what does he want?’

  ‘Name of Ronald Lennox. And he won’t say what he wants: not to a humble plod like me. Clever-looking sod; also a prat, if you ask me. But I’m biased, of course. I’ll bring the bugger through to the purer air of CID and be rid of him.’

  Ron Lennox looked round him curiously as he was ushered into the almost deserted CID section, taking in all he could of his surroundings, making sure that this unimaginative detective sergeant knew that being in a police station was a novelty for him. ‘I really wanted to speak to Chief Superintendent Lambert,’ he said, not attempting to conceal his disappointment.

  ‘Superintendent Lambert is pursuing another strand of the investigation this evening. Whatever you have to tell me will be recorded and relayed to him. Always assuming that it is judged to have relevance to the case.’

  Not only have I not got the organ-grinder, but the monkey is attempting to be obstreperous, thought Ron. He said loftily, ‘Perhaps I should come back when the man in charge of the case has time to speak to me.’

  ‘I don’t think you should do that, sir. There may be an urgent need for us to hear what you have to say. And I shouldn’t like a delay to result in charges of withholding information.’

  Uppity sod! Ron had expected them to be grateful for his cooperation, not to find himself threatened like this by a man who looked as if he should be chasing kids trespassing. He said loftily, ‘You said I should come forward if I had any further thoughts about Robin Durkin. I must tell you that I come to bury him, not to praise him, though.’ He glanced at the stolid figure opposite him and decided he had better explain his literary reference. ‘Brutus talking about Julius Caesar, Detective Sergeant Hook. Of course, I’m hoping I shan’t come to a sticky end, as Brutus did.’ Ron’s little cackle of laughter rang oddly round the large, low-ceilinged, almost deserted area. His expression said that he doubted whether this pedestrian plod would have any idea what he was talking about.

  Hook looked at him steadily for a moment. He did not permit himself a smile as he said, ‘Not Brutus but Mark Antony, sir, if you remember. Not the noblest Roman of them all. Antony came to a different but equally sticky end, I think. But he enjoyed himself a little in the intervening years, I believe. Indulged himself in the pleasures of the flesh in Egypt, if I remember things correctly’ Bert ignored the pleasing effect created by the dropping jaw in the thin face opposite him and glanced pointedly at his watch. ‘What is it that you wish to communicate to us, sir?’

  This wasn’t going according to plan. Ron said stiffly, ‘It was your chief superintendent who instructed me very clearly that I should communicate with you if I could offer any further information on the activities of Robin Durkin. That is why I am here. It wasn’t an easy decision for me to take. I don’t like implicating other people in the investigation of a serious crime.’

  Hook nodded. ‘Murder, sir. The most serious crime of all. Murder most foul, as the gloomy Dane’s father has it. So you had better abandon your scruples.’

  Ron Lennox was seriously ruffled to be out-quoted by this blockish-looking but unexpectedly knowledgeable man. He said sullenly, ‘Mr Lambert said that we should go on thinking about the case. I’ve done so and come up with some new ideas.’

  ‘Admirable, sir. If only every member of the public had such a conscience.’

  Ron glared at him suspiciously, but could detect no sign of irony in the stolid features. ‘Yes. Well, you may remember that we talked about Durkin’s activities in the drug trade.’

  ‘Vividly, sir.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it. I told you that I was pretty sure that he had recruited some of the people from my school to work for him. Illegally, I mean, not in his garage. People who were younger than he was. This was quite a while after he’d left school himself, when he had established himself and was looking for pushers. I believe that is what you call them.’

  ‘What everyone calls them, sir.’ Including you, you supercilious buffer. ‘No doubt you now feel able to give me names.’

  ‘One name, Detective Sergeant Hook. Not several. And I should emphasize that I have no definite proof of this theory to offer you. You must understand that—’

  ‘Let’s have the name, sir.’ Hook had pen poised over the pad in front of him.

  ‘It’s young Jason Ritchie. Well, young to me. They always seem young, when you’ve taught them as boys. The man who has been cohabiting with young Mrs Holt in Gurney Close.’

  Lennox’s lips had set in a thin line of disapproval. Hook wondered uncharitably how much jealousy there was behind that. He said patiently, ‘For what it’s worth, sir, it seems that you are right. Mr Ritchie has already admitted to being employed by Durkin as a pusher of illegal drugs. It was some years ago, mind.’

  ‘But it gives him a motive doesn’t it? A strong motive.’ For a man who had claimed to be diffident about involving others in the case, Lennox was suddenly very anxious to do so. He leaned forward eagerly. ‘And Durkin was a blackmailer, remember. We discussed this when we spoke on Wednesday.’

  ‘I do remember, yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, he had a permanent hold over young Ritchie, didn’t he? He could have shopped him at any time by revealing the details of his involvement in pushing illegal drugs.’

  Bert forbore to point out that Lennox seemed to be doing a pretty good ‘shopping’ job himself. ‘But could he have done that without implicating himself, Mr Lennox? Wouldn’t his own much more important role in the trade have been exposed, if he had chosen to expose Jason Ritchie?’

  For a moment, Lennox looked cast down. Then the thin, too-mobile features brightened with mischief. ‘But this was years ago, as you said yourself. I’m sure that Durkin could have dropped the details about Ritchie’s involvement at that time easily enough, without involving himself.’

  Bert Hook didn’t tell him that less than an hour ago he’d been thinking exactly that himself. He said, ‘Your thoughts on this are most welcome, of course, sir. Are there other names you have to offer us? Other people you think might have been involved with Durkin, either as drug pushers or blackmail victims?’

  ‘No. I just thought you’d want to know this.’

  ‘Of course we do, sir.’ Hook was at his most blankly polite.

  ‘I’m only doing my duty as a citizen, you know.’

  ‘Of course, sir. Would that everyone took their responsibilities so seriously.’

  Lennox withdrew, awkwardly and gracelessly. Bert was left wondering exactly how useful his visit had been.

  Half an hou
r later, Hook was at home and determined to switch off from the case.

  The atmosphere in the house was different. Eleanor and he felt almost back to being a normal couple. They looked at the weeds springing up in the small, normally impeccable front garden of their semi-detached house; even had time to stand for a minute and consider how the petunias had burst into full flower since they had last had time to look at them.

  They chatted unhurriedly as Bert drove through the rich green countryside of high summer, following the course of the Wye towards the ancient city of Hereford. The conversation flowed easily enough until they reached the outskirts of the town. It was only when they got within a mile of the hospital that Eleanor Hook felt the tension rising again within her, and heard her conversation degenerating into a series of terse, monosyllabic replies to her husband’s well-meaning questions.

  Bert felt the same disquiet stirring within him. He put his hand on his wife’s much smaller one after he had parked the car under the shadow of the high wall of the hospital. ‘It’ll be all right, you know, Ellie-Belly.’ He couldn’t remember when he had last used this childish form of address to her: not since they were newly married, he reckoned. ‘They told us yesterday that the worst was over, that he was on the mend. And they’re pretty cautious, you know, about things like that, in hospitals.’

  ‘I know,’ was all Eleanor said. She thought that her sensible husband was probably right and wanted to tell him that she was grateful for his thoughts, but she didn’t feel that she could trust herself with more words. There was a queue for the lift and Bert eventually strode impatiently to the stairs and began to climb the three floors to the children’s ward. In that moment, she realized that he was as anxious for reassurance as she was.

  There was quite a lot of noise in the ward. That in itself was a shock, after the church-like silence in which she had sat for hours beside her son’s bed during the last few days. And Luke’s bed was empty, with the sheet thrown back untidily. Eleanor looked around apprehensively for a nurse.

  ‘Hi Mum! Hi Dad!’ He appeared from behind other children at the far end of the ward, a white-faced, pitifully thin, but very much alive figure, in a dressing gown which seemed to have crept up his calves since they had last seen him in it. ‘I’ve had a cheese sandwich. And some ice cream. You going to ask them when I can come home? They won’t tell me anything.’

  Eleanor was fighting back tears of happiness, struggling so hard for control that she could say nothing. It was Bert Hook who had to say, ‘Steady on, son! You’ve been pretty ill, you know.’

  ‘I know. Susie told me they were worried I might die at one time.’ He grinned, trying hard to look modest in the face of this celebrity status.

  ‘And who’s Susie?’ Eleanor managed to speak at last.

  ‘She’s the nurse who’s my friend, Mum. We have laughs together, when she’s taking my pulse and my temperature and things like that.’

  Eleanor diagnosed an early case of hospital infatuation. She was so consumed with delight at this animated son that she jumped a little when a voice at her side said, ‘He’s doing well, isn’t he?’ and she turned to meet a smiling, curvaceous nurse, who looked impossibly young in her uniform and proved to be the favoured Susie. ‘He’ll need to get back into bed now and control his excitement. Luke doesn’t realize that he needs to build up his strength again.’

  Luke climbed into bed immediately and lay down with a happy smile. ‘I wish he was as amenable to orders as that at home!’ said Eleanor.

  ‘He’s a good lad, our Luke,’ said Susie in a northern accent the parents could not quite pin down. ‘But he mustn’t try to go too far too fast, or he’ll have me to contend with.’

  Luke snuggled down and smiled blissfully, a willing subject to this princess of the wards. But she was right: there was something febrile about his excitement, something brittle still in his recovery. In two minutes his eyelids fluttered, then shut. Sixty seconds later, he was fast asleep, despite the bustle of noise and movement from parents and children in the busy ward.

  ‘I think I should leave him now. He’s ready to sleep the clock round,’ said Susie, who had reappeared beside them after attending to a patient several beds away. ‘You should probably try to do the same yourselves, you know, after what you’ve been through this week.’

  She’s half my age and mothering me, thought Eleanor Hook, without a crumb of resentment. They agreed with Nurse Susie, thanked her for her efforts, and left the ward, with a final fond look from the doorway at their sleeping child.

  They congratulated each other breathlessly in the car park outside, agreed with each other that the National Health Service was still a wonderful thing whenever there was a real emergency. Not many words then passed between them in the car on the way home. But now it was the easy, companionable silence of content. People who were at ease with each other and the world at large did not need words to express their delight in life.

  They were almost home when Bert said, ‘He’s growing taller, isn’t he? I don’t think that it’s just because he’s thin and weedy after the illness.’ They exchanged a few more meaningless phrases. Then, as the familiar house came into view, Bert smiled shyly and said, ‘I think he’ll need a new cricket bat by the time the season starts next year.’

  It was the first time in five days that either of them had dared to consider a future for their son.

  Watson knew they were watching him, studying his every move. He’d dealt with the police in many different countries, plenty of them less controlled and less predictable than those in Britain. He knew that here it did not really matter how things looked until they had evidence. The important thing was what you said in answer to their probings. Anthony David Watson would be very careful about what he said to these two senior representatives of the law.

  The older and more senior one looked unhurriedly round the neat, rather sterile décor of the luxury flat, taking in the absence of photographs, of paintings, of anything which would give this man an identity and a personality. Watson had switched off the stainless steel standard lamp and put on the strong central light of the room when he led them into it, so that Lambert and Rushton were sitting with their faces powerfully illuminated. They were in comfortable chairs, but it felt almost like the interview room situation with which they were familiar, with them the subjects of interrogation rather than the man they had come to see.

  Lambert hastened to correct that. ‘We are conducting an investigation into the murder of Mr Robin Durkin.’

  Watson showed not a vestige of emotion. He did not register with even a flicker of facial movement whether he knew the name. Nor did he show to them the exultation and relief he felt in the knowledge that this was not going to be about his actions earlier in the day. The local plods were obviously baffled by the man shot dead through the head outside the club he owned in Birmingham; give it another forty-eight hours, and he’d be confident that they wouldn’t even come looking for him. He said calmly to these country coppers from eighty miles away, ‘You’re wasting your time here, then,’ and gave them one of his empty, confident smiles.

  Lambert did not smile back at him. His grey, unblinking eyes continued to study the unrevealing figure opposite him. He showed neither irritation nor the revulsion he always felt pulsing within him when he confronted a contract killer. ‘We know you murder for a living. We know that you were in the area at the time, Mr Watson.’

  His slight, unstressed inflection of distaste turned his use of the title into an insult. Watson gave him a small, calculated shrug. ‘Free country, Mr Lambert.’ He echoed the superintendent’s slight stress on the title, enjoying the little fencing game they had embarked upon. ‘Or so they tell me. I have my doubts, nowadays. Policemen seem to be everywhere except where they’re needed. Even in the homes of innocent citizens at eight o’clock on a Friday night.’

  DI Rushton was more nettled by the man than his chief appeared to be. He said sternly, ‘Mr Durkin was killed in the early hours of last Su
nday morning. You were in the area at the time.’

  There was no need to deny it. Watson said, ‘And so were thousands of other innocent citizens. I hope you’re not planning to harass all of them.’

  ‘Not all of them are contract killers. Not all of them had a commission to eliminate Mr Durkin.’

  Watson’s inscrutability was his friend again. This was an uncompromising accusation, and he wondered exactly how much they did know, what precisely it was that had brought them to his home at this hour on a Friday night. But he showed not even a hint of alarm.

  He said, ‘Your information is false, I’m afraid, Inspector Rushton.’ It threw the pigs sometimes when you remembered their ranks and their names. It showed them how calm you were, when they wanted you to panic. ‘I certainly had no such commission. The idea that anyone would pay me to kill people is quite absurd. I am an innocent accountant. Some would say that I belong to a profession dedicated to the boring and mundane aspects of life. We certainly do not deal with anything as melodramatic as murder.’

  It was a statement he had used before, but he delivered it well, with just that slight hint of contempt to underline the irony. It ruffled Rushton, who was used to dealing with rougher and less confident criminals than this man. Like an over-eager dog, the DI made the mistake of following up the bone of diversion which Watson had thrown for him. ‘What are your qualifications in accountancy?’

  ‘Not your business, as far as I’m aware. But I know enough to get by. I expect it’s a phrase privileged men like you despise, Inspector, but you could say I’ve learned in the university of life.’

  ‘In other words, you haven’t got proper qualifications.’ Rushton, trying to sound triumphant, emerged as merely petty.

  Watson smiled sardonically, enjoying watching this handsome young police high-flier losing his composure. ‘People seem prepared to employ me.’