Body Politic

by J M Gregson

  The vehicle carrying the corpse of Raymond Keane moved cautiously through the deep woods around his cottage, its lights the only movement in that silent, frozen landscape. The body was covered with a blanket and an old coat. It was unlikely that there would be police on the route of this final journey, but there was no need for unnecessary risks. Besides, the driver preferred to have those wide, unblinking brown eyes covered on this final journey.

  It seemed to take a long time to reach the place, though the distance could not have been more than four miles. The car hesitated for a moment at the side of the road, then turned carefully through the ragged gap in the hedge, where years ago there had been a gate. On the uneven track between the young birch trees, it was more than forty yards to the chosen place.

  Once there, the driver switched off the car’s lights. There was enough light from the low crescent moon and the stars for the task that was left.

  No great strength was needed now. The pool was below the back of the vehicle, not more than four yards away. The driver dragged the corpse out, hearing but scarcely registering the thud as it landed heavily on the iron-hard ground. The material at the bottom of the trousers gave the easiest hold: the mortal remains of Keane were dragged unceremoniously feet first down the steep slope of frozen mud and flung vigorously on to the surface of the pond.

  For the person conducting this awful dispatch, there was then a moment of black farce that might have come straight from Hitchcock. The surface of the pond was already frozen hard. The body slid spread-eagled on to it, the white face staring unseeingly at the night sky. And lay there, its eyes glinting white in the light of the moon. For a long fifteen seconds, it seemed to the watcher as though the ice was already too thick for the evidence to disappear from sight. Then, with a noise which sounded in the living ears beside the pond like that of an alpine glacier cracking into movement, the ice broke, and the body of Raymond Keane disappeared into the black depths of the hidden pool.

  The pieces of broken ice disappeared for a moment with their sinister burden, then returned to the surface and settled again into stillness. The watcher wasted no more time. Within thirty minutes, the driver was back in bed like other, more innocent survivors of the Christmas festivities.

  Nature was the unwitting ally of evil. By morning, the ice on the surface of the hidden pool was already over an inch thick. When the body rose towards the surface two days later, the ice was a three-inch ceiling above the water, imprisoning the murdered body against discovery for as long as the arctic conditions should persist.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘The news is out. Such as it is. I knew we couldn’t keep it quiet indefinitely.’

  The Chief Constable stared dolefully at the newspapers on his desk. Like most of his colleagues, he found journalists more annoying at times than criminals. At least criminals kept you in a job, whereas it often seemed that if you made the wrong move journalists would be delighted to put you out of one. And you knew where you were with felons, whereas the fourth estate could switch sides overnight, without notice, and often with no good reason. ‘It’s only because he disappeared over Christmas that we were able to keep it quiet as long as we did.’

  George Harding was quite new in his post still. Despite voicing the ritual police suspicions of the press, he was much more at home with the media than his grizzled predecessor had been. They could be helpful at times; and even when they became a nuisance, he accepted that they were a necessary evil. He pushed the papers at Lambert.

  The story had made the front page of The Times, but only in the bottom-left corner: there were no glaring headlines as yet. ‘Mystery of missing Tory MP’ was the heading, and the text beneath began soberly, ‘There is still no news of missing Tory MP Raymond Keane. The promising backbencher was expected to spend Christmas and New Year in his Gloucestershire constituency, but last night had still failed to appear. His sister said yesterday that the family was “a little upset” by his failure to contact them, but saw no real cause for alarm. “MPs are busy people, despite what some of the public think,” she said. It appears that Mr Keane has not been seen since he visited his mother’s house on Christmas Eve.’

  For most of the tabloids, the Keane story wasn’t yet worthy of the front page. The Sun headlined its piece ‘Rottweiler Ray goes missing’, pinning a scarcely earned reputation for parliamentary dogfighting on Keane in the interests of alliteration. The article began, ‘Eligible bachelor and aggressive parliamentary debater Ray Keane has gone missing from his Gloucestershire constituency. The MP, known as Rottweiler Ray since he savaged Labour ministers in Commons exchanges, has not been seen since Christmas Eve. His mother and his business partner both refused to comment on his absence last night.

  ‘Keane’s parliamentary research assistant, vivacious twenty-three-year-old Despina Mottershead, agreed that her employer was an attractive man, and thought that he might well have disappeared to the Continent, though she was not sure what country he might have chosen. She said she had no doubt that he would be back for the beginning of the new parliamentary session. “Mr Keane is one of the most responsible and dedicated of our younger politicians. I certainly expect to see him or hear from him within the next week,” she said last night ...’

  Superintendent Lambert knew why he was in the Chief Constable’s office. The hunt, which had so far scarcely been worthy of such a dramatic name, was to be stepped up. When the press chose to stir things up, they got attention, however much the police and other public services might deny the connection. That was real life.

  ‘They haven’t raked up the unsavoury history of other disappearing politicians yet,’ he said. It was the only consolation he could think of to offer the smartly uniformed man on the other side of the big desk.

  George Harding smiled, ruefully rather than grimly, Lambert hoped. ‘It’s just the beginning, John. You know the pattern. Tomorrow, if there’s still no news, we’ll get some of the tales of gay MPs and scandals which have led to resignations. Anyway, we shan’t be responsible for that. Keane will have brought it upon himself. If he chooses to disappear without telling anyone where he’s off to, he knows what the press will do with the story. I take it we haven’t any further news?’

  ‘No, sir. But I wouldn’t expect any, unless the man turned up of his own accord. We’ve put him on the missing persons register, but otherwise kept it low key, as we agreed. The family didn’t want us to stir up a hornet’s nest. His sister was more annoyed with Keane for not contacting his aged mum than worried about him. She seems to think he’ll turn up when he’s ready.’

  ‘Has he done this sort of thing before, then?’

  ‘No. Not as far as we can tell, without more detailed enquiries into his past activities.’

  Harding pursed his lips. He was a handsome man, his hair now a becoming silver but still plentiful, his body comfortably covered with flesh rather than plump beneath the well-tailored uniform. The chances were that nothing was seriously amiss, that he would only irritate Keane when he turned up if they were too persistent now with their enquiries into his absence. But once the press was on to these things, you had to be seen to be doing something. If anything proved to be seriously amiss with the police reaction to the disappearance, they would use the blissful benefits of hindsight to hold an inquest on it. An unfortunate word. Harding said, ‘Give it another day: if there’s still nothing then, step up the activity. Let them see we’re taking the matter seriously.’

  Even Chief Constables cannot expect to know the moment when events will take such decisions out of their hands.

  *

  It was good to be out in the fresh air. Detective Sergeant Bert Hook sniffed it appreciatively. The British climate was as perverse as ever; on this second day of January, when winter should have been at its hardest, there was a hazy blue sky and a most unseasonable mildness. Over the edge of the Forest of Dean, May Hill was clearly visible; you would have a good view of the seven counties from there today.

  Hook rejoiced t
o be out on a day like this, especially after a morning in court where a key witness had failed to appear and the Crown Prosecution Service had decided not to pursue the case. It must be therapeutic to be out in the fresh air, even for this futile activity. ‘Blow the cobwebs away nicely, this will,’ Lambert had promised as they stepped out of the car, ‘and we can always count it as your belated lunch hour.’

  Hook smiled sourly, turning the bright steel five-iron speculatively in his large, strong hands. ‘I suppose golf at least gets you out into the countryside. Didn’t someone call it a good walk spoiled?’

  ‘Mark Twain. Who seemed otherwise a nicely rounded human being. Mind you, on the driving range, you don’t get the good walk that homespun humorist offered you as consolation. But it’s a start.’

  ‘And a finish, as far as I’m concerned!’ said Hook firmly. ‘Remember, I’m here under severe protest, and only because you made it one of your daft conditions.’

  ‘Give us your money, lad. I’m not paying as well as instructing.’ Lambert took the coins from Hook and slipped them into the machine, watched the forty golf balls tumble into the basket below, and then put coins of his own in for another basketful. Might as well have a little practice himself, if he had to be here to oversee the novice golfer beside him.

  Hook, maintaining his gruff exterior, followed the superintendent along the row of covered stalls to the furthest and most private of them. He was pleased to see that there were only three other people striking balls, two of them women, and that the five feet high wooden divisions between the booths would give a decent degree of privacy to his initial efforts in this ridiculous game.

  Though he had no intention of admitting as much to Lambert, he was secretly looking forward to this. He got too little exercise these days. Since he had given up serious cricket at thirty-eight, he had done nothing beyond the widely spaced long walks and sporadic visits to the gym in preparation for occasional police medical tests. Golf might be a silly game, but it was played in attractive places, and you could go on with it for as long as you could walk.

  Moreover, it surely couldn’t be very difficult for a good cricketer. You approached a dead ball in your own time: no one came and hurled an unplayable delivery at you, or edged your perfect outswinger through first slip’s fingers for four. It was partly the lack of challenge which had kept him away from golf over the years. But you had to lower your sights a little as you got older.

  Bert teed the ball on the rubber stub provided and swung Lambert’s five-iron speculatively a couple of times, as he had seen the men who earned such ridiculous sums from this game do on television. It felt quite easy: it was difficult to see why people made such a fuss about the technique involved in such a simple thing as hitting a golf ball.

  He stood with feet on either side of the ball and looked at it steadily, then swung the club in a wide, graceful arc, preparing a modest response for his chief’s surprise at the excellence of his first shot. There was no sound, where he had expected the echoing impact that was coming from the stalls behind him where other people practised. He looked to see the ball soaring in a graceful parabola over the green expanse in front of him, towards the hundreds of other balls which waited to be collected from the end of the practice area.

  Lambert’s attempts to control his mirth were pitifully unsuccessful. He spluttered for a moment, then burst into a long, relieving peal of laughter. Hook looked down, saw the reason, refused for a moment to believe it, then joined reluctantly in his mentor’s hilarity. The ball still lay where he had placed it in the tee. ‘We call that an air shot,’ said the recovering Lambert. ‘You should expect a few of those in the early stages.’

  ‘Stupid game!’ muttered Hook. He glanced malevolently at the offending ball, then set the club behind it and froze his powerful frame into intense concentration. If it had been cricket and he had been hit for four, he would have bowled a lifter, pitching just short of a length and rearing at the offending batsman’s ribs. But there was no one to attack in this silly game.

  He eventually produced a savage slash at the ball. This time he made contact, but only minimally, with the top of the increasingly tiny target. The ball dribbled forward and fell from the elevated platform to the muddy grass beneath it, coming to rest some ten yards in front of him. ‘Bastard!’ said Bert.

  Lambert felt cheered by this evidence of a golfing gene in his sergeant. He had feared that the taciturn, nonswearing Hook might not have the vocabulary necessary for the serious amateur golfer. He need not have feared. Hook’s next three efforts got the ball into the air, but with drastic slices, which took the ball at an angle of almost forty-five degrees to the line he had intended. Bert’s language passed through the sanguinary to the scatological.

  Lambert called from his instructor’s position in the next stall, ‘Just swing the club, don’t snatch at the ball,’ and managed to send a couple of high, straight shots of his own down the inviting green expanse in front of them, demonstrating his own relative competence at this activity. A muffled outburst from the neighbouring stall indicated that Hook had now added blasphemy to his vocabulary of golfing reactions. Perhaps there was real hope for him in this game.

  Hook’s initiation to the game took less than half an hour, though in terms of suffering it seemed to him much longer. Lambert was quite gratified by his own efforts. He should practise more often, he realized. He felt quite invigorated, and the accuracy of his last few seven-iron shots in the still January air had been highly satisfactory.

  Bert Hook, on the other hand, stumbled away from the practice booth dishevelled and disorientated. His hair was tousled; his features were crimson with effort and frustration; he had lost a button from his unsuitable shirt and broken a lace in his unsuitable shoes with his final, titanic effort to dismiss an infuriating white ball far into the distance.

  ‘You’ll get better, with practice, Bert,’ said Lambert patronizingly.

  ‘I won’t, you know. I bloody won’t. This was a one-off. A debt of honour. All it’s done is confirmed to me what a damned stupid game this is.’ Bert flung the five-iron roughly into the boot of Lambert’s car. ‘Good sodding riddance to bad sodding rubbish!’ he said with feeling.

  Yet as they drove away and he seethed in the front passenger seat, Hook knew that he would be back. He wouldn’t dream of admitting it to John Lambert, of course. But this daft game couldn’t possibly be as difficult as he had made it appear today. He would meet the challenge, show he could cope with it, and then give up the game.

  Lambert drove silently, with a slight smile lifting the corners of his mouth. He had noted his pupil’s reactions with an experienced golfing eye, and he knew the temperament of Bert Hook. The fish was hooked.

  *

  It is a mistake to take on a boxer puppy when you are sixty-nine. The man flapping the lead decided that this warning should be inscribed in capital letters in every canine handbook, in every RSPCA publication, in the directives of the hallowed kennel club itself. He had covered seven miles and more of winter Cotswolds, with the dog covering a good four times as much. Now, when she should have been exhausted, she had disappeared.

  ‘Daisy!’ he called hopelessly. ‘DAISY!’ The woods might have been empty of all life, for all the reaction his shouting extracted. He hadn’t even felt like a pensioner, until he got this wretched animal; now he felt older than his years, as he toiled unavailingly in the wake of this muscular bundle of energy. He got out the dog whistle his wife had presented to him hopefully on the previous day, panted for a moment, then summoned all his breath to blow a single long, high-pitched blast.

  He waited for a full thirty seconds with diminishing hope. There was no sound in the high, leafless trees around him. Then, somewhere in the invisible distance, a rook cawed faintly. He wondered bleakly if it had been disturbed by Daisy. If so, she was a long way off.

  He went back to the road and moved slowly along it, bellowing the dog’s name every two minutes, whistling in between times, cursing the
day he ever let himself be talked into this purgatory. They had walked many miles before she went missing; surely he had a right to expect even a ten-month-old boxer bitch to be decently tired and obedient after such labour on her behalf?

  They were into the early dusk by now, and he began to wonder what he would do if Daisy didn’t reappear soon. At that moment, he heard a slight noise away to his left, near where a road ran away over the hills to Cirencester. A snuffling. Probably some wild creature, but it could be Daisy. He called her name, felt his heart lift in relief with her short answering bark. ‘Come on then, girl!’ he trilled encouragingly.

  She didn’t come. He turned off the lane, between ivy-clad stumps which might once have been gateposts. He could hear the dog now, growling excitedly at something; she could not be more than thirty yards away, but he could see neither her nor the source of her interest.

  Then suddenly he came upon both, fixed in a scene which would haunt him for months. A low, dark pond beneath the trees, and the dog up to her haunches in water, growling at something within a foot of her nose. The ice had gone from the pool with the thaw, save for a few half-melted grey slabs floating at the far end.

  And between him and that ice, the grotesquely bloated body of what had but recently been a man, the arms and legs swollen within the clothing like those of a Michelin man, the eyes staring unblinkingly at the sky they would never see again.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Chief Constable’s face was grave. Lambert looked a question as he took the proffered chair, and Harding nodded. ‘It looks as though it’s Keane,’ he said. ‘We shall know within a couple of hours; the formal identification can wait a little longer, if necessary.’

  Already he was shaping the way the investigation would go, deploying his resources, considering the national spotlight this would bring to his force. ‘Damned politicians! If he had to do away with himself, why couldn’t he do it in London, and leave his own patch clear?’