by J M Gregson
Superintendent Tucker had listened and nodded his head dutifully and thoughtfully in all the right places, whilst his brain had told him what a load of pretentious codswallop this was. He’d show these lesser ranks what was what, when he was back in the station on Monday morning with this wasted weekend behind him. Brunton CID section had better be very careful indeed in the coming week, if it wished to avoid the wrath of its principal officer.
The train ran at last between the deserted platforms at Brunton. Only three people alighted from the thinly peopled carriages. Tucker stumped down the platform and out of the station. Not a taxi in sight. He had thought of ringing Barbara from Manchester to ask her to pick him up in the centre of Brunton, but had decided that he did not want to face her resentful countenance any earlier than was strictly necessary. Now that seemed the lesser of two evils.
Tucker stood with his suitcase and looked dolefully round the normally busy square in front of the station; apart from public transport, it was deserted at this hour on a baking Sunday evening. Wait for that elusive taxi: there was nothing else for it.
Then he had the first happening in several hours to relieve his pervading gloom. He glimpsed a maroon car he thought he recognized on the other side of the square. It disappeared behind two of the town’s green corporation buses for a moment, but when it emerged, he was sure. Percy Peach! For once he was delighted to see his old adversary.
Then delight turned first to dismay and then to fury. Peach, his eyes determinedly and dutifully upon the deserted road ahead of him, ignored his chief’s frantic gestures and accelerated straight past him.
It was fortunate that none of the church-going citizens of Brunton was within earshot of the head of its CID section that Sunday evening, for they would have heard a series of verbal obscenities which breached all decorum. Then, when it seemed the insufferable chief inspector was at the furthest point of the square and about to disappear, the maroon car swung in a wide arc and came slowly back towards the lone figure with the suitcase.
The window slid down and a beaming Peach said, ‘Welcome home, sir! Can I offer you a lift?’
‘I thought you’d missed me,’ Tucker complained whiningly. He struggled into the back seat: he might have to accept a lift, but at least he would treat this minion as a taxi-driver.
‘Didn’t see you until the last minute, sir. Thought it must be safer to go round again, as the advanced driving manual advises us.’
Tucker, who had never read any such publication, brooded darkly for a moment, then said with what good grace he could manage, ‘Anyway, I’m glad to see you, Peach. There was no sign of a taxi.’
‘Thought Mrs Tucker might have been detailed to collect you,’ said Peach, studying the road ahead and relishing the thought of Tucker attempting to ‘detail’ the formidable Barbara to do any such thing.
‘I didn’t want to worry her on a Sunday evening,’ said Tucker. Then, because that didn’t sound convincing even to him, he said, ‘I’m on my way home from a most useful and instructive weekend.’
‘Really, sir. You found slopping out a rewarding exercise, then?’
‘I found the whole experience refreshing.’ Tucker cudgelled his brain for some of the phrases that infuriating psychologist had used in his final address. ‘It gave me an insight into the minds of people who lead very different lives from ours. It showed me how to understand the reactions to corrective regimes which the criminals we labour to incarcerate have to endure.’
‘Really, sir. It sounds quite riveting.’ Peach savoured the sight of two young women in summer dresses skipping across the zebra crossing in front of him. ‘Got on well with the other poor sods there, did you?’
‘It was good to be able to exchange notes with like-minded people from all over the country.’
‘It must have been, sir. Did you get in any really useful creep ... sorry, I mean did you enjoy the contact with minds as fine as your own, sir?’
‘The object of the exercise was not personal aggrandisement. Peach. Do you realize that most of our criminal fraternity comes from the social groups D and E.’
‘I think I was aware of that, yes. From my practical studies, you see, sir. I come face to face with rather a lot of the bastards. Survived all right on the iron rations, did you, sir?’
‘I can handle Spartan regimes rather well, thank you. Peach.’
‘Yes, sir. You were at public school, weren’t you?’
‘The aim of this weekend was to broaden our horizons, to increase our awareness of the philosophy behind corrective regimes.’ Tucker sought desperately for the other phrases he had been striving for hours to reject. ‘I don’t mind admitting that I now feel a fuller and more rounded person. To be a senior officer in the modem police service, you need imagination and versatility, you know.’
Percy reflected that imagination and versatility were not qualities he would immediately associate with his chief. ‘I’ll tell the lads and lasses down below to expect an improvement in your philosophy, sir.’
The chief superintendent glared fiercely, but it had little effect on the back of a bald head. ‘You need both to broaden your horizons and to increase your interests. Peach.’
Percy was tempted to dwell in detail upon the contours and physiology of DS Blake as embodying his interests. Instead, he said by way of a modest rejoinder, ‘I do play a little golf, sir.’
Tucker was not so stupid that he did not recognize the need to veer away from a dangerous subject when it was broached. He said aggressively, ‘Have you made an arrest in the Aspin murder case yet?’
‘Getting near to one, I think, sir. Not many suspects in the D and E social classes, though. Perhaps I should have a rethink and find a more working-class suspect.’
Tucker looked through the window and saw that they were now within a mile of his home. There was no need for much more conversation with this odious underling who was doing him a good turn. He sighed and said with the air of a man who was a martyr to duty, ‘Is there anything you wish to report to me?’
There wasn’t really. But there might just be the opportunity to leave Tommy Bloody Tucker thoroughly confused and securely up a gum tree at the same time: Percy thought deeply for a moment and decided that this was not a mixed metaphor but two different concepts, each of them delightful. ‘You won’t have heard, sir, during your weekend on retreat. Jemal Bilic did a runner.’
‘You’ve let him get away?’
You could always rely on a positive and encouraging response from Tommy Bloody Tucker. ‘He was arrested this morning, sir, at an airport just south of Glasgow.’
‘I always told you it would be him, you know.’ Tucker was already conjecturing how he could incorporate this claim into his press conference.
‘Mrs Williams still hasn’t provided us with an alibi for the time of the murder.’ Percy glanced into his rear-view mirror, saw his chief’s bewilderment at the name and added helpfully, ‘The woman Geoffrey Aspin was planning to marry, sir. The one who had the big row with him after the bunfight at Marton Towers.’
‘Ah! Cherchez les femmes. Peach. An old-fashioned principle, but still a sound one in my view.’
‘Yes, sir. It’s interesting to see how much more broadminded your attitude has become, as a result of your weekend in the can. And Mr Aspin’s business partner, Denis Oakley, is now using the firm’s money to relieve his private financial worries. A thing he wouldn’t have been able to do before Mr Aspin’s demise.’
Tucker’s brow furrowed at this plethora of discoveries. ‘This is the man you said wasn’t a Freemason, isn’t it?’
‘I’m not sure I did, sir. But as far as I am aware, Mr Oakley is not a member of the Fraternity.’
‘He may very well be your man at the end of the day. Financial desperation is often a motive for murder.’
‘Is it really, sir? I must remember that. But here we are at your beautiful home. It’s a pleasure to return you to the bosom of your family.’
Peach was pleased to s
ee the bosom in question presented in the open doorway of the Edwardian house. Brünnhilde Barbara’s bust was as impressive as ever, and a little way above it there loured a frown of pleasingly Wagnerian dimensions. He waved happily to this vision as he drove away.
It was always a pleasure to fire a few red herrings across Tommy Bloody Tucker’s bow. This time that really was a mixed but totally satisfying metaphor.
Twenty-One
At half past eight that evening on the same Sunday, with the sun deepening towards crimson in the western sky behind her, Carol Bilic parked her car in the drive of her sister’s house. She sat pensively behind the wheel for a full minute before climbing reluctantly out of the car and ringing the bell beside the front door.
Louise opened the door immediately and smiled a little nervously at her sister. ‘Come in. The children are safely in bed.’
Carol was relieved to hear it. She always said she wasn’t much good with children, except for her own. In truth, she was happy enough to chat to Louise’s Daisy, who was a bright little girl, full of childish prattle. She found poor Michael - and she was well aware that Louise would have been outraged to hear her thinking of him as ‘poor Michael’ - quite difficult.
The boy smiled a lot, in a vacant, innocent, toddler’s sort of way, but he hadn’t any worthwhile language development yet, as far as Carol could see. She couldn’t think of things to say to him, and when he interrupted his happy burbling to try to communicate with her, she couldn’t tell what he was trying to say. She’d attempted to play with him, but it didn’t help that he was so slow to pick things up; he seemed obstinately determined to ignore what you were trying to get him to do. It didn’t help that Louise doted on the boy so and watched you when you were with him: it made you perpetually afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.
She was pleased to see that Steve Hawksworth had cleared the children’s toys and had a stiff gin and tonic ready for her when she went into the sitting room. The three of them sat quietly for a few minutes, sipping their drinks and appreciating this period immediately after the children were safe in bed. When Louise asked Carol about her own children, she said with sudden pugnacity, ‘I want them to have the best education. I’m going to send them to boarding school.’
She had sensed that Louise wouldn’t approve of her decision but she wasn’t going to encourage any argument about her plans. Her sister said nothing for a moment, then asked, ‘What does Jemal think of the idea?’
‘Jemal is an irrelevance.’ Once, in what now seemed another life, Carol had played Goneril in a production of King Lear. She remembered that formidable woman’s dismissal of her marriage and her husband as ‘an interlude’. That was how she would think of Jemal Bilic from now on. ‘He will have no further part in my life or that of my children.’
‘He’ll at least have visiting rights, you know,’ said Steve mildly.
Louise smiled a brittle smile. ‘He’ll find that difficult from inside a high-security prison, don’t you think?’ She saw the shock on their faces, exulted in the effects she was making, and added as casually as she could, ‘They’ve caught him, by the way. He was arrested this morning. Some minor airfield in Scotland, apparently. He was trying to get out of the country.’
There was a little pause before Steve said, ‘Do you know what they’ve charged him with?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care, frankly. I hope he’s made to pay for whatever he’s done. If that means a long stretch, so much the better. It will remove him from the children’s life for good. I don’t need his money any more, now that Dad’s wealth is available to us.’
It was a shock to hear her speaking so brutally about her life. Louise sensed that there had been more suffering over the last few years than Carol’s pride had allowed her to admit. She heard herself saying before she was aware that she had formed the thought, ‘Carol, do you think Jemal killed Dad?’ Carol took so long to respond that they thought she was not going to speak. Then she said with apparent calm, ‘I don’t know, do I? We’ve been growing further apart for a year at least - probably longer than that when I look back from here. To be honest, I think now that I didn’t want to know what he was doing, because I felt it would be something pretty awful and probably illegal. I suppose that makes me some kind of coward. What I can’t deny is that I took his money and plenty of it for myself and the kids and the house. That certainly makes me a hypocrite.’
Steve Hawksworth gave her a sympathetic smile and replenished her gin and tonic. All three of them found the clink of the glasses and the sound of the liquid and his slow movements about the room soothing, as if the very ordinariness of his actions was a reassurance in this unnerving situation. As he resumed his seat, he said quietly, ‘You may have to face up to the idea that Jemal killed your father, Carol. If they put out an alert on ports and airfields, he must have been involved in very serious crime. Statistically, it is the people already involved in crime who are most likely to go on and do even worse things. If you look round the people who were closest to Geoff, Jemal is overwhelmingly the most likely person to have killed him.’
Carol wanted to scream at him for his dullness and his logic and his talk of statistics. Typical bloody accountant! All head and no heart, all brain and no emotion! She watched her fingers whitening with her anger as they clenched her glass, told herself that the man meant well, that he was only trying to soften what he saw as the inevitable blow for her. She took a sip at her drink, swallowed, controlled her exasperation, and said calmly, ‘You may well be right, Steve. What you say makes sense. It’s what I was telling myself on my way here.’
Louise said, ‘That’s good, sis.’ She had not used the diminutive for at least ten years, but it came back naturally to her at this time of stress. ‘It’s better to face up to it from the start rather than when it becomes public, I think.’
Carol could not take consolation from her younger sister: it was the first time in years that she had been offered it and she found that she could not stomach it.
She said with a sudden, startling vehemence, ‘It might not have been Jemal! You’re both talking as if it’s established, when it isn’t. It might have been that bloody Williams woman! It might have been Denis Oakley, who has his hand up every skirt which offers and some that don't!’ She looked at the unbelieving faces and thrashed more wildly about her. ‘It might even have been one of us!’
There was a pause, whilst all three of them listened to her breathing as it gradually slowed. Then Louise Hawksworth said quietly, as if trying to lower the temperature in the room, ‘I went to see Pam Williams yesterday.’
‘Why did you do that?’ It was Steve, not her sister, who was in so quickly, wondering why she had done this unexpected thing without even mentioning her intentions to him.
‘I thought it was time to bury the hatchet.’ She wondered if that was the appropriate cliche, in these circumstances, but pressed on. ‘We didn’t behave very well to her, when you look back on it. We treated her with nothing but suspicion from the outset, because we all thought she was after Dad’s money. Well, she can’t have that now, can she? I thought it was time someone from the family made peace with her, so I did. She’ll be coming to the funeral, when we’re finally allowed to have it.’
Steve said accusingly, ‘Louise, she might have murdered your dad. It was premature, to say the least.’
‘She didn’t kill Dad. She’s as upset as any of us. She was very good with Michael. He liked her.’
No one cared to suggest that this was a non sequitur. Steve had been about to say that Pam Williams was probably upset because her meal ticket had been removed, but something in the set of his wife’s face made him think better of it.
Steve threw in his own surprise instead. ‘I went into your dad’s factory on Friday. To see Denis Oakley.’
It wasn’t the bombshell he had been half-hoping for. Eventually, Carol Bilic looked at him coldly. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘I wanted to see the books. I wanted
to see just what had been going on.’
‘And did you do that?’
‘No. He wouldn’t let me see them. But he admitted that he was writing cheques on the firm to solve his personal financial difficulties. The police had just been to see him and he was pretty shaken.’
For a moment, Carol saw a wild, unlikely humour in the situation, with the glib womaniser being confronted by this dull, uxorious man who was professionally qualified to pick out every financial irregularity in his conduct. She found herself having to control a sudden impulse towards outright, high-pitched, prolonged laughter, and realized in that moment how near she was to hysteria. She made herself finish her drink, stared for a moment at the melting ice and the slice of lemon in the bottom of her glass, and said, ‘So do you think Oakley killed Dad?’
Steve resisted the impulse to rush in too strongly.
He said reflectively, ‘He seems to me more like a serial womaniser than a murderer. He may not be morally stainless, but there’s a big step from philanderer to murderer.’ Louise was still seized by the notion that she must defend Pam Williams from that charge, which meant finding someone else to answer it. ‘People get desperate, though, when they’re driven into comers. They do things which may not be characteristic of their normal personalities. The police said something on those lines to us, I think. We’ve all known Denis Oakley for years, and yet we hardly know him at all. Dad was always around here. Denis was always out on the road.’
Steve gestured towards Carol’s glass, but she shook her head and reminded him she had to drive home. He moved across the sofa a little and put a reassuring hand on his wife’s arm. ‘You’re right, love. None of us really knows Denis. And there’s no doubt that Dad’s death has been a boon to him.’ Louise resisted the inclination to shrug off his touch and move away from him. Their natural, unthinking unity had disintegrated since her dad’s death; she was beginning to wonder if they would ever regain it. Ten days ago, she would never have gone to see Pam Williams without discussing it with Steve first, and he would never have waltzed off to the Aspin and Oakley factory without announcing his intentions to her. She felt now that she was being disloyal to Steve as she said dully, ‘Denis Oakley’s a womaniser, not a murderer.’