[Inspector Peach 12] - Pastures New

by J M Gregson

  ‘I enjoyed it too. Give me a ring if you want another outing.’

  ‘I will. And I do.’ She leant quickly across the car, pressed warm lips against his cheek, and then slipped from the car. Just as she was about to close the door, she stooped and leant briefly back into the warm male cave of the vehicle.

  ‘By the way, Geoff, the full name’s Pam Williams!’ she said. And then, with the briefest of goodnight smiles, she was gone.

  * * *

  On the same March evening when Geoffrey Aspin and Pam Williams were enjoying themselves in the Manchester theatre, Detective Sergeant Lucy Blake was concluding a day off spent at home with her widowed mother.

  In the familiar cottage at the foot of Longridge Fell, she had enjoyed her mother’s cooking after wandering round the small, immaculately tended garden which held so many childhood memories for her. These were the two things she missed most when she was in her cosy modem flat in Brunton, which otherwise met her requirements admirably.

  Sitting comfortably beside the open fire in the low-ceilinged sitting room, allowing her mother to bring her up to date on the village gossip, she thought of the days when she had wandered around the garden with her father. She remembered learning the names of plants, feeling the cool smoothness of daffodil leaves and the velvety softness of pussy willow catkins, sniffing the heady perfume of crimson rose petals and hearing her father’s laughter at her delight in these new sensations. Dear, dead but not forgotten days.

  ‘The crocuses are finished now, but the daffodils are beginning to bloom. I never think spring is really here until the daffodils are trumpeting it for us,’ said Lucy. She wondered how the words for such a simple thought could sound so pretentious. She stretched her toes luxuriously towards the flames in the hearth and settled a little lower in her armchair, feeling pleasantly drowsy.

  Her mother’s response had her alert and sitting bolt upright in an instant. ‘Spring’s here now. It’s high time we were fixing a date for this wedding,’ said Agnes Blake determinedly.

  ‘There’s no hurry.’ Lucy’s automatic, defensive response.

  ‘I’m sure Percy wouldn’t say that.’ Agnes looked towards the two photographs on the mantlepiece, sharing pride of place in the house. The black and white one of her husband, sweater over his shoulder, looking shyly at the camera as he walked off the field after taking six wickets at Blackpool in a Northern League cricket match forty years ago. The more recent one of Peach was in colour, with a dark blue cap concealing the shining bald head above his immaculate white cricket gear, so that he looked younger and more innocent, almost boyish. The inscription beneath was in Agnes Blake’s small, immaculate script: ‘Denis Charles Scott Peach, after another dashing half-century for East Lancs in the Lancashire League’.

  Agnes was the only woman who insisted on remembering the full forenames of the man universally known in the Brunton police service as ‘Percy’. She knew as only a few others did that he had been christened by a cricket-mad father after Denis Charles Scott Compton, the ‘dashing cavalier of Lords’ who played in the era after the Second World War, and in Agnes Blake’s formidable opinion, the finest English batsman who had ever lived. Those magical forenames had been an immediate bond between her and the man who was now her prospective son-in-law.

  Lucy had taken Percy Peach home to meet her mother with great trepidation. She knew that his shining bald head and black moustache were an acquired taste; more importantly, he was a man who was not only divorced but almost ten years older than her. The fiercely direct chief inspector and her doting mother had struck up an immediate bond and were very quickly mysteriously at one with each other, so that Lucy now found herself outflanked and defeated whenever she opposed this formidable alliance.

  She was sure now that she loved Percy, but marriage had not been on her agenda until her mother had got busy on the theme and Percy had proved unexpectedly and treacherously responsive. They were now officially engaged and she had a ring on her finger to prove it. But Lucy enjoyed her CID career and was doing well in it: she saw no need to interrupt it with marriage and a family until some as yet undetermined time in the future.

  That wasn’t how her mother saw things. Engagement meant marriage, as far as Agnes Blake was concerned, and the sooner the better. She would be seventy this year: it was high time she had grandchildren. That she should still be without them seemed to her almost to set a question mark over the respectability which was still so important in a country area. She was fond of reminding her daughter that other, younger women in the small local supermarket where she worked part-time had teenage grandchildren.

  ‘Percy Peach is a taker of villains,’ said Lucy firmly. ‘He’s more interested in my performance as a detective sergeant than in fixing a date for a wedding.’

  ‘Detective sergeant,’ Agnes Blake contrived to ooze a massive contempt into her pronunciation of the rank she was usually so proud to proclaim to her friends in the village. ‘It’s time you got yourself a proper sense of priorities, my girl!’ Lucy remembered how there had been no arguing with that ‘my girl’ when she was an eight-year-old. Twenty years later, she still found it difficult. She sought desperately for some diversion from her mother’s drive towards the wedding. ‘Percy and I couldn’t work together if we were married, Mum. It’s only because our chief superintendent is too stupid to realize that we’re “an item” that we’re able to operate together at the moment.’

  ‘An item!’ Mrs Blake’s fierce curl of the lip on the heel of the innocent little word comprehended all the decadence of twenty-first-century life. ‘In my day, we called it “living over t’ brush” when you hopped into bed together without the benefit of wedlock.’

  Lucy had cursed her fresh complexion and her freckles for as long as she could remember. She cursed them anew now, as she found herself blushing at this maternal intrusion into the intimacies of sex. ‘Things have moved on since your day, Mum. And anyway, we aren’t living together.’

  ‘As good as, I’m sure. I’m not as daft as you think I am, our Lucy, and don’t you forget it.’

  Lucy Blake shot suddenly from the familiar armchair, glanced at the clock on the sideboard, and said, ‘Time I was off to bed, Mum. I have to make an early start tomorrow. I’ve to be at the police station in Brunton by eight o’clock.’

  She stooped and planted her lips affectionately on her mother’s forehead.

  Agnes Blake did not move. ‘You’re running away again, our Lucy. I shall need to have a word with Percy, since I can’t get any sense out of you on the matter.’

  ‘He’s very busy at the moment.’ It wasn’t really true. The really serious crime in which Peach revelled, and in which she was delighted to be involved, seemed to be in the midst of a spring lull. But a small white lie was surely justified against this insistent and masterful parent.

  ‘He can usually make time for me,’ said Agnes with a small, confident, threatening smile. ‘He has a proper sense of priorities, your Percy, even if you haven’t.’

  Twenty minutes later, in the familiar low-ceilinged bedroom where she had slept as a girl, Lucy Blake tried and failed to read the paperback she had been looking forward to starting. Instead, she fell to wondering why she should so fear a pincer movement by the two people whom she loved most in the world.

  You couldn’t really wish for a homicide. But a murder was what she needed at the moment to defer any fixing of this marriage date.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, Geoffrey Aspin drove Pam Williams out into the Ribble Valley.

  He had booked an early dinner at an inn at Whitewell, in the hope that the place would still be quiet at that time in the evening, which would reduce the chances of their being seen together. Now this secrecy irritated him: why should he be ashamed of being seen with this attractive woman at a table for two, or even out in the town with her hand through his arm? He was a free man, and she was a free woman. He would be proud to be seen publicly with Pam. Perhaps he would tell her that tonight.r />
  It was still only the beginning of April and there had been showers earlier in the day. But now they had a perfect spring evening, with a quickly darkening blue sky and a crimson sun dropping low over the invisible coast, twenty miles away to the west. The long line of Pendle Hill, lit by the setting sun, revealed the detail of its slopes and the fissures of its streams as they drove alongside it. On the other side of the car, there were glimpses of the bright surfaces of the Ribble and the Hodder rivers as the Jaguar moved comfortably along the quiet roads.

  It was a majesty which made Geoffrey uncharacteristically reflective. ‘I did a lot of hiking round here when I was a boy. You got the bus out to where you wanted to start, and then spent the whole day on the hills or the fells. That was before we got motor bikes and went to the Lake District. I think you’re always most at ease in the countryside you knew in your youth. I am, anyway.’

  At his side, Pam Williams smiled a small, private smile, happy to hear him reminisce, preparing to break down the barriers she found so difficult to abandon and reveal a little of herself. ‘I grew up in the Black Country. We didn’t see much real country, except on holidays or coach trips.’

  It was an unremarkable sentence, but each of them realized that she had made a small but significant move towards him.

  The food at the pub was good and for quite some time they had the dining room to themselves, with the window beside them. They looked out over trees and a small stream, which slowly disappeared as the twilight became darkness and the stars began to glitter over the fell.

  As they waited for the dessert, Pam Williams told him her full address. Looking for some answering piece of information in this strange bartering, Geoffrey confessed that the ‘late fifties’ phrase he had used in DATING POINT actually signified that he was fifty-nine. She gave him a tight little answering smile and told him after a minute’s silence that she was fifty-seven.

  Then, as they savoured the coffee and petit fours whilst a noisy family party began their meal beside them, she slid a small card she had prepared earlier across the table to him. Beneath the address which she had already confided, the card listed her telephone number and her mobile number in small, clear, black lettering.

  Things were moving faster than Pam Williams had planned, but she found she was gratified rather than alarmed to find it so. An hour later, she invited Geoffrey Aspin into her home for the first time.

  The shaven-headed thug was new to him, but the lawyer at his side was an old foe of Percy Peach’s.

  The young man had dark hair and small, neat hands. He handled all the National Front legal business. He would defend this muscular bully as stoutly and as proudly as if he had been the most innocent victim of circumstances. Peach hated the lawyer more than the moron he was here to protect, who at least had the excuse of limited intelligence for his actions. But Peach wouldn’t let his anger overrule his intellect; there were certain rules you had to obey in the interview room, even in the face of the vilest conduct.

  He regarded the young hoodlum on the other side of the small, square table with steady malevolence, taking in his coarse features, the dried blood on the tee shirt which stretched tight across his torso, the tattoos of Union Jack and rather somnolent lion upon his bare forearms. He watched the brown eyes try to hold his own unflinching stare of assessment and fail, watched the truculence oozing away from the formidable physical figure in front of him, as the man slid glances at the lawyer beside him and waited for proceedings to commence. Silence was always a good weapon: few people enjoyed delaying an exchange about which they were apprehensive. They became more nervous, and nervousness was something which he could usually play to his advantage.

  Peach eventually said quietly, ‘You’re not under caution yet, but I think we’d better have a record of this conversation. People like you have a habit of remembering things differently when it comes to the crunch. And the crunch is certainly coming.’ He grinned his satisfaction at that thought and reached across to set the cassette recorder in silent, menacing motion. The young lawyer looked for a moment as if he was going to object, then thought better of the idea. ‘I never done nothing,’ said the young man sullenly.

  ‘Need to watch your language, son. Your lawyer could tell you that that means that you did do something.’

  The hoodlum looked uncomprehendingly at his lawyer, then back at Peach. ‘I never hit no one.’

  ‘If that’s going to be your defence to a charge of Grievous Bodily Harm, I look forward with interest to the sentence you will get.’

  ‘You got no evidence. I never ’it no one.’

  Peach beamed. It was a sight which would have sent a collective shudder through the experienced criminal fraternity of the area. ‘We have the baseball bat, son. With blood and hair on the business end. And your dabs neatly and firmly on the handle end of it. I call that evidence. Exhibit A, that will be in court. I doubt whether we shall need Exhibits B and C.’

  ‘He ’it me first.’

  ‘Not what your victim says, Mr Utting. Not what the two independent eye witnesses say either.’

  ‘Paki bastard ’ad it coming to ’im.’

  The lawyer at his side nudged him sharply and pointed at the silently turning cassette in the recorder. ‘My client will maintain that he was provoked,’ he said. ‘If you are unwise enough to take this to court, Mr Utting will provide witnesses to that effect.’

  ‘Who will no doubt be his friends who were also involved in this affray. Whereas we shall be able to produce independent witnesses who were merely appalled bystanders. I defer to your knowledge of the law in forecasting which way the verdict will go.’ Percy Peach turned an even wider and more pugnacious smile upon the sallow features of the young lawyer.

  ‘Your fucking witnesses will never come to the bloody court,’ said the young thug, irritated because he suddenly seemed to be no longer the centre of these exchanges.

  ‘Very serious charge, intimidating witnesses,’ said Percy with satisfaction. ‘Another Crown Court charge. Judges don’t like any interference with witnesses. Send you down for several years for that, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Peach leant across the table so that his face was no more than a foot from the coarse features of his hapless adversary. He could smell the stale breath, see the dirt on the scalp under the stubble of short hair. ‘Don’t even think about it, sunshine. If I hear you’ve even been near one of those witnesses, your feet won’t touch the ground.’

  Like most of these bullies, Utting was a coward under pressure. He flinched back in his chair. ‘All right, I thumped the bastard. ’E ’ad it coming to ’im. Now ’e can bandage ’is bloody ’ead and fuck off back to ’is own country.’

  The lawyer said hastily, ‘Detective Chief Inspector Peach, I need to talk to my client in private.’

  ‘Indeed you do,’ said Percy contentedly.

  He switched off the recorder and left them, taking with him the young constable who had sat silently through this. In three minutes, they were called back. ‘Mr Utting will plead guilty to the lesser charge of assault,’ said the lawyer.

  Peach nodded without expression. Assault was all they would ever have gone for: the Crown Prosecution Service would never have taken on Grievous Bodily Harm with the evidence available. And the young girls he had as terrified witnesses wouldn’t need to come to court if this bruiser pleaded guilty. ‘All right.’ He nodded to the young constable. ‘Get him charged. If he changes his mind about that guilty plea, come back to me immediately.’ He addressed his last words to the man at the table. ‘If you go anywhere near either of your victims, or the witnesses, you’ll be back in here and we’ll throw the book at you. And there won’t be any question of bail. Understand?’

  Utting gave him a sullen nod of acquiescence. Peach didn’t trouble to disguise his contempt for either the man or his lawyer as he turned on his heel and left.

  Three

  Things can move on very quickly in a month.’ Geoffrey Aspin stated the obvious with great
contentment.

  ‘I never expected things to move as fast as this.’ For some reason she could not fathom, it seemed important to Pam Williams that she should assert that. ‘It’s only nine weeks since we made the first contact with each other. Until a month ago, I was still giving you as little information as I could about myself. Now you know everything there is to know.’

  ‘I doubt that. But I intend to go on exploring your mysteries.’ Geoffrey grinned down happily at her, enjoying sending himself up with the cliché, feeling totally at ease with the woman who strolled by his side. It was early May and they were in the middle of a four-day break in Cornwall, staying in the Tregenna Castle at St Ives. The clouds were flying high above them, driven across the intense blue of the Cornish sky by an exhilarating spring breeze.

  ‘This is the kind of light which made St Ives into an artists’ colony,’ said Pam Williams. She breathed hard on the clean air, looking over the fresh new green of the cliff-top’s short grass and down upon the intense blue and the glistening white horses of the sea, hundreds of feet below them, enjoying the rush of the wind in her hair, feeling years younger than she had two months ago.

  Geoffrey lengthened his stride and said suddenly, ‘I feel years younger than I did before we started all this!’ He was amazed when the mature woman at his side dissolved into girlish giggles. When she explained how he had voiced her own thoughts, the two of them were rent by a mirth which was wholly out of keeping with their mature years. A moment later, as the laughter died, she tumbled clumsily into his arms and he kissed her, unhurriedly and without embarrassment.

  For a full minute they held each other, revelling in the fresh wonders of the world around them and their own new place within it.

  That evening, full of good food and mellowed by an excellent Shiraz, she said suddenly, ‘I’m glad we came here.’