[Inspector Peach 12] - Pastures New

by J M Gregson

  ‘I don’t expect it will tell us anything we don’t already know.’ Lucy Blake spoke with professional pessimism: never expect too much from the forensic people, then you won’t be disappointed. She summoned Peach on the internal phone and he came swiftly into the section of the CID area which they had set aside for this juicy local crime.

  Lucy Blake was almost right: most of the information in the twelve-hundred-word report was what they already knew or would have expected. The deceased had been in excellent health for a man of sixty years, with no sign of major illness anywhere in the organs of his body. Death had come swiftly and almost certainly unexpectedly, because there were only minimal traces of a struggle.

  There was a little skin tissue under the corpse’s nails, but it was his own skin. In the guarded words of scientists who knew that their words might eventually be quoted and dissected by clever lawyers in court, this was commensurate with the victim having lifted his hands to his own throat in an attempt to dislodge the ligature which was ending his life.

  Even hardened police officers paused for a moment on that, picturing the scene disguised by the formal wording of the report: a man surprised from behind, perhaps by a killer he knew but never even saw, struggling desperately but hopelessly as a crowded and previously happy day ended in brief agony and then the oblivion of death.

  The instrument of that death was almost certainly some sort of steel-cored cable, probably plastic rather than fabric coated, since there were no fibres evident around the striations on the neck. The nature of the fatal wound, with the cord biting deeply into the front of the neck and crushing the carotid artery, suggested that the victim had been taken from behind, or possibly from the side, with the assailant twisting and tightening the cord at the back of the neck to garrotte the victim. His or her victim, the report indicated: due to the manner of this death and the element of surprise, no great strength had been needed. This killing could have been committed by a woman, or even a child of ten years and upwards, the report stated impersonally and unhelpfully.

  The one helpful and revealing piece of information came towards the end of the report, in the section about stomach contents. It provided the answer to one of the mysteries within a mystery which had been puzzling Peach and his team: how had someone contrived to kill Aspin in the blazing sunlight of early evening, at the time of the year when the days were at their longest, without being seen by anyone?

  Because they are always conscious of the possibility of cross-examination in a crown court, pathologists are notoriously cautious about times of death. In this case the report went against the trend. Because they knew exactly what Geoffrey Aspin had eaten for his last meal and at precisely what time, it was possible to deduce more than usual from the digestive stages the food had reached in this corpse.

  That enabled them to place the time of this death with some confidence at between ten p.m. and midnight on the night of Saturday, the thirtieth of June. It seemed that the victim had been lured back to Marton Towers and dispatched in a deserted car park under cover of darkness.

  Fifteen

  Pam Williams looked and felt much more composed than when she had been required to confront the CID on the day after Geoffrey Aspin’s death.

  As she ushered them into the same room in the semidetached house where she had seen them three days earlier, DS Lucy Blake tried a little of the social interchange which DCI Peach rarely chose to use. ‘I hope we didn’t cut short your stay with your son in Leeds.’

  Pam gave the woman a small smile from beneath her now neatly coiffured blonde hair. ‘I came home on Monday night. A day with Justin and his wife was long enough. They meant well and treated me with careful kindness.’ She stopped for a minute, weighing that phrase and finding it apposite. ‘I came away whilst they could still resist telling me that they’d always known my association with Geoff Aspin would end in tears.’

  ‘They didn’t approve of your relationship with Mr Aspin?’

  She sighed, trying not to resent the youth and looks of this woman who had the kind of career she would have loved for herself. ‘No one seems to have approved of it. Not those closest to us, anyway. The response from friends of our own age was generally, “Good on yer, go for it. You’ve both got a long time to live yet, so make the most of it.” Our families, on the other hand, seemed to think we should retire into quasi-monastic seclusion. But they’re of a different generation. You can’t expect the young to see things the way you do.’ She looked directly and accusingly at this girl with the dark red hair and the aquamarine eyes, as if she was accusing her of joining the conspiracy of youth against her.

  They stared at each other for a second or two. Then Blake said quietly, ‘I expect your children had their own agendas and saw your plan to marry Mr Aspin as a threat to them. I’m not saying they’re right, of course, just that—’

  ‘I had no plan to marry Geoff.’

  ‘Everyone we’ve spoken to seems to think that—’

  ‘They can think what they like. I’m telling you the facts. I had made no plan to marry Geoff. I was as surprised as anyone else when he blithely stood up and announced that we were to be wed.’

  Still she looked directly at Blake, as if the younger woman’s very presence here was a challenge to her. But it was Percy Peach who said harshly, ‘So what exactly was the nature of your association with our murder victim, Mrs Williams? If you didn’t intend to marry him, what was going to happen?’ She looked at the stern round face with its moustache and eyebrows which seemed even blacker beneath the shining bald head. She wondered why she felt less threatened and less angered by this forbidding figure than by the woman with the looks and the notebook. ‘I’m sorry. I’m giving you the wrong impression. I said that I had no plan to marry Geoff. That doesn’t mean that I was against the idea altogether. It’s just that Geoff was making all the running, pushing things along. Pushing them along too fast for me. I wanted time for our families - well, in particular, his family, if I’m honest about it - to come to terms with the new situation. Perhaps I wanted a little longer for me to get used to it, too.’

  ‘So you weren’t against marrying Mr Aspin. Indeed, you saw it as a logical development for the two of you.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure I did. But I didn’t see the timetable as he did. Or apparently did. I hadn’t even an inkling that he was going to stand up on Saturday and announce that we were getting married. It’s my view that he didn’t even know that he was going to say it himself when he stood up to speak. I think he was carried away by the excitement of the occasion and lost his normal balance.’

  Peach mused for a moment on this version of Saturday’s events, not troubling to disguise his train of thought from her. This was a very different version from what others had given them, but those others had been proceeding from supposition, not knowledge. The only man who could give them the definitive version of these events was a corpse in cold storage at the morgue. ‘You had a serious disagreement with Mr Aspin in the cloakroom after most people had left Marton Towers.’

  She gave him a wry smile. ‘We had a blazing row, if that’s what you mean by “a serious disagreement”.’

  ‘And what was that about?’

  ‘About what he’d just said. I was furious with him. I told him that he’d just treated me as if I was some nineteenth-century woman who wasn’t entitled to have opinions and a will of her own. That he seemed to assume that I was a pathetic, desperate female who was supposed to be grateful for his announcement and fall upon her knees in gratitude.’

  ‘Had he not even discussed marriage with you?’

  ‘I suppose you could say there was an assumption on both our parts that it would happen in due course. We both knew that it was going to be a serious partnership, so marriage was the logical outcome for us. We’re not from the generation that just shacks up together and sees what will happen.’ She shot an involuntary, hostile glance at Lucy Blake.

  Peach regarded her steadily. ‘What you’re saying is that you
objected to the timing of the announcement?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought the timing wise anyway. Geoff knew his daughters and their husbands were against it. He should have given himself time to win them round, or at least to allow them to reconcile themselves to the idea that it was going to happen. I objected mostly to a public announcement when he had not even discussed the idea with me.’

  ‘Have you met the family?’

  ‘I’ve only seen Geoff’s elder daughter Carol very briefly, and her husband not at all. We spent an hour or two with the younger daughter, Louise, and her husband, Steve. They were guarded and cautious with me, but I can understand that. They seemed reasonable people. I think Geoff could have won them round, if he’d taken his time and used a bit of tact.’

  ‘How much do you think they know about your past, Mrs Williams?’

  Pam felt her mind reeling as Peach put the question without even showing embarrassment. This man had been watching her whilst she’d allowed herself to be irritated by his junior colleague: now he was preparing to dissect her life in the years before Geoff. She said as calmly as she could, ‘So you’ve been prying into my private affairs.’

  Peach gave her a smile which was not apologetic. ‘In a murder inquiry, we gather all the information we can about those closest to the deceased. You could say that it is our duty to do just that. Unless it provides evidence for a subsequent court case, the information remains confidential.’

  Who had told them this? And how much did they know? Surely it couldn’t have been Justin or his wife? Probably neighbours, she decided: she could think of several who enjoyed a gossip, especially if they had a titbit of scandal to retail. She said cautiously, ‘I presume that you’re alluding to a legacy I received five years ago.’

  Peach would have made an excellent poker player, she thought. His face did not flicker. After a second he said, ‘We cannot force you to make disclosures: you are merely voluntarily helping us with our inquiries. Nevertheless, my advice would be to give us the details of this.’

  ‘I have no objection to that. It is obviously already common knowledge. I would rather you got the true facts from me than relied on some third or fourth hand version of it.’ Pam forced herself to shut out her conjectures on who had revealed this and concentrate on what she was saying to this calm interrogator. For the first time, she felt fear: she must pick her way carefully through this and not make any mistakes. ‘About seven years ago, a female friend of mine died of cancer. She and her husband weren’t really close friends of ours - they were twenty-five years older than us - but we’d visited them and they’d visited us whilst I was still with my husband. After my marriage broke up and I was divorced, they kept in touch with me. I was grateful for that: you may not realize it, but most couples just drop you when you become a singleton.’ For some reason she could not fathom, she darted another baleful glance at the woman with the unlined face and the remarkable blue-green eyes who was making notes on this.

  But it was Peach who responded. ‘And after your female friend died, you continued to visit her husband. Mr Arthur Smailes.’

  Somehow it seemed more damning when he quoted the full name at her. ‘Yes. Arthur was in his seventies and his own health wasn’t good. He’d been very close to his wife and he wasn’t good at managing on his own. A lot of men of that age aren’t.’ It will come to you, you cocky young sod, she wanted to say to this bouncy chief inspector. It will come to you much sooner than you think. ‘I used to go round to Arthur’s house to make sure he was feeding himself properly. When I found he was struggling, I began to take food round for him fairly regularly. That was all there was to it, friendship. I dare say we were both pretty lonely, but Arthur Smailes was old and failing, though a nice enough man. Perhaps I should state to you formally that there was never any question of marriage between us.’ Pam allowed herself a small, sad smile at such a preposterous idea.

  ‘But you got to know him very well, nevertheless.’

  ‘I’d have said quite well. I don’t suppose that matters to you. I kept an eye on him, because his children lived over a hundred miles away. I got home helps and whatever else I could secure from the social services for him. When he eventually had to go into the council home, I used to visit him when I could. That meant about once a fortnight. I’d say.’

  ‘Did you discuss his will arrangements with him?’

  Pam Williams fought to control her anger. They had to ask such things, she supposed, whatever their questions imputed. ‘I did not. The legacy was a complete surprise to me.’

  Peach wondered whether that was so. But it wasn’t their job to go into the detail of this. Whether or not Pam Williams had brought undue influence to bear on the old man, as his children had claimed at the time, had been decided years ago and was irrelevant now. There was no point in raking over ashes which had long been cold. Indeed, as far as Percy was concerned, the whole business was little more than a softening-up process to make the woman more responsive to questioning in this case. ‘A legacy of fifteen thousand. Enough to set one of his daughters on the warpath,’ he mused.

  ‘The daughter who had visited him once in twenty-four months. I’d done more for Arthur than any of his children in those last years when he was lonely and ill. If he wanted me to have that money, he was entitled to leave it to me. His body was failing, but he was of perfectly sound mind.’

  A hard woman, perhaps. Yet there was sense in what she said, if the facts were as she reported them. She was a woman on her own at the time and entitled to look after herself. What this matter did suggest was that she would have been alive to the fact that Aspin was a rich man, and perhaps out to further her interests as the family suspected.

  ‘So you kept the legacy from Mr Smailes. Did Geoffrey Aspin know about that?’ Peach asked.

  Pam Williams flicked the fingers of her right hand quickly over her temple, as if at a stray tress of hair. But her blonde hair had remained perfectly in place: the gesture was merely a release of the tension she felt. She wanted to tell this pair to go hang themselves, to get out of her life and stay out of it. But she could not do that. She controlled her voice, and spoke neutrally, even dully.

  ‘I’m not a rich woman, Mr Peach. I was anxious to get out of an unhappy marriage and that made me foolish: I accepted a settlement which was derisory just to see the last of a man I wanted out of my life. I was glad of my unexpected legacy, grateful for Arthur Smailes’s thoughtfulness. And yes, Geoff did know about it. I told him only about a month ago, when I reckoned that we had a future together.’

  ‘Mr Aspin was a rich man. He could have removed all financial worries for you.’

  ‘He was planning to do just that. Surely the fact that I objected to a public proclamation of his plans to marry me shows that I was not a mercenary woman, driven on by financial greed.’ She glared at Blake and said, ‘You were there on Saturday. If you call yourself a detective, you should have seen that I was upset by what Geoff said in his speech.’

  For once, Peach was conciliatory. This woman had been closest to the victim in the days before his death; it was important to keep her talking. ‘Forgive me, but we have so far only your word that you were put out by his announcement that he planned to marry you. Other people believe that you knew what he was going to say. Other people also heard an argument between the two of you afterwards; no one has admitted to hearing what the argument was about. Money is the motive for a lot of serious crime, so you must forgive this line of questioning.’

  She looked fiercely at the younger woman, who had said nothing to corroborate her story, and then back at Peach. ‘I’m not a teenager. There was love between me and Geoff, but not a teenage, closed-eyes love. Of course I knew he was a rich man. Of course I knew that I’d be rid of the lonely life of genteel poverty in old age which I admit I’d sometimes feared. As a matter of fact, Geoff had already agreed to clear the mortgage on this house for me.’

  ‘That was done before last Saturday’s celebration?’ Peach was th
inking about what the family would have made of this; plainly they would have seen it as the writing on the wall, with any designs they had on Aspin’s fortune needing rapid revision.

  ‘Geoff insisted on signing the papers last week. I have them here in my bureau. There didn’t seem any need for hurry in presenting them at the time.’ Her voice faltered on that last phrase and she thought for a moment she was losing control. Then she said quietly, ‘I have no idea whether what he signed last week now has any legal standing.’

  Peach nodded slowly. ‘My guess is that if it clearly predates his death, it would stand, but I’m no lawyer, so you must check it out yourself. Thank you for being so cooperative with us, Mrs Williams. Have you had any further thoughts on who might have killed Mr Aspin?’

  She shook her head mutely, suddenly unable to speak and at the end of her resources. Then, as they were going, she gasped out a question about Geoff’s funeral, and the woman she resented explained gently that the body wouldn’t be released for some time yet, that when they had made an arrest, the defence lawyers would be entitled to demand a second, independent post-mortem.

  They were out of her house and on the path when she called after them, ‘It won’t be up to me to make the arrangements, will it? I won’t be down as his next of kin, you see.’ It was Peach who came back and said gruffly that he was sure that whoever made the funeral arrangements would want her to be there, that they would no doubt accept by that time that she had been close to Geoffrey Aspin in life and should therefore be near to him as the last rites of that life were concluded.

  As the CID pair drove away, Lucy Blake looked back at the front door of the house, which was already closed. ‘That woman doesn’t like me and I’m not sure how much I like her. But I certainly felt sorry for her. For what it’s worth, she was right about what I saw at Marton Towers on Saturday. She did seem upset by Aspin's declaration that he was going to marry her.’