by J M Gregson
That had all changed with his acquisition of the passport, with his addition to the official workforce at the farm, and with the recognition of Denis Pimbury as a person.
He wandered unhurriedly round the shops, making himself move deliberately slowly, marvelling at the richness and diversity of the merchandise available in this prosperous world. It added to his pleasure that these were the streets where once he had moved only by night, slinking along with an eye always on what was happening behind him. For the first time in many months, he thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers and strolled deliberately along, an Englishman at ease in his ancient city.
In the pedestrian precinct, he stopped for a moment to watch the buskers, standing with a woman police officer at his elbow, making that a test of his nerve in his new-found security. Then he stood looking at the plants outside a gardening shop, pretending that he had borders to fill and a house to maintain. One day, perhaps …
It was all an illusion, of course. A pleasant illusion, but an illusion nonetheless. He was glad that he had proved himself with the policewoman, that he was able to move at leisure among the shops like this. But he was not here simply for pleasure: he had something to do, a mission to complete. It was a routine transaction, he told himself, a thing which would excite no attention among the huge and unheeding public around him. Yet all his assurances to himself did not succeed in stopping the thumping of Denis Pimbury’s heart.
The shop was hidden away from the main thoroughfares, down one of the narrow old streets on the cathedral side of the town. It looked from the end of the alley like an ordinary house, sandwiched as it was between other narrow stone cottages which had ceased to trade as shops. Only the three brass balls, so tight against the lintel above its door as to seem almost an apology, denoted the nature of the business transacted here.
There were such places all over the world, Denis told himself firmly. They provided a necessary service, nothing more and nothing less. There had even been such places in his native country. But he had never before set foot inside one of them. The man serving him must not get to know that.
It was not a man but a woman. He almost turned round and left the shop when she came out through the beaded curtain from the rear and stood expectantly at the counter. But retreat would invite suspicion, and that was the thing Denis had learned to fear most of all. And why shouldn’t he deal with a woman, after all? This was just a straightforward commercial transaction, the way in which this place made its living. He couldn’t explain that he had expected not a woman scarcely older than himself but a hunched and bespectacled old Jew, probably wheezing and certainly grasping: that would merely show his prejudice in all its raw ugliness.
The woman watched the man with the sallow face and the black, hunted eyes as he stood just inside the door. Such diffidence was familiar to her; it came into this tiny shop in a variety of guises. Sometimes it brought with it surprising things. She said as brightly as she could, ‘How may we be of help, sir?’
He sprang forward, reaching the narrow counter too quickly, almost losing his balance and falling with the abruptness of his movement. ‘I want to sell these.’
The ring and the brooch tumbled from the tissue paper onto the glass tray in front of him, tinkling unnaturally loud in that quiet place. Away from the old Georgian window at the front of the shop, there was little natural light; the stones gleamed softly in the semi-darkness, blinking like an accusation at him.
She said coolly, ‘How did you come by these, sir?’ Then, when he did not immediately reply, she added more softly, ‘We have to ask, sir. It is required of us by the authorities. There is a lot of stolen jewellery around, you see.’
‘They were my mother’s.’ Denis found it hard to deliver the phrases he had planned. He had meant to give a fuller explanation, but he found that the simple terse statement was all he could make himself deliver.
It was a familiar enough explanation. The woman at the counter did not give much heed to it. She had asked the question; the answer was not particularly important to her. She flicked on a small, fierce white light and shone it down onto the two pieces whilst she looked at them through her eye-glass. A single diamond in the ring, emeralds in the brooch. Good quality, both of them.
She said, ‘I’ll need to consult with my colleague. He’s more of an expert than I am on jewellery.’
Denis gave her the briefest of nods, not trusting himself to speak. He was wishing now that he had not come here: it smelt dangerous, and he still had a sharp nose for danger. But he needed the money, after what had happened last night. Money allowed you options.
She picked up the tray and took it back with her through the beaded curtain. She shouldn’t really have done that: the proper procedure was to bring any expertise forward to the counter, not remove the goods from the sight of the owner. Once the goods were out of sight, you could do switches, swindle the customer by substituting worthless trinkets and swearing that they were what he had offered to you for valuation. But this man was a foreigner: she knew that from the few words he had uttered. More importantly, he was much too desperate to insist upon the niceties of the trade.
Denis listened to a whispered exchange; he had no chance of distinguishing any of the words. It seemed to him to go on for a long time, though in fact it took no more than a minute and a half. He resisted the urge to turn and flee, to leave his treasures and to indulge the simple, overwhelming instinct to escape.
The woman came back to the counter. ‘It’s a nice brooch: antique. There’s not as much demand for emeralds as there was a few years ago, but it’s attractive enough. And the diamond in the ring is—’
‘How much?’
She could smell the staleness of the man’s breath, smell the desperation upon him. She was no more than thirty, but because of her trade she had smelt that desperation hundreds of times before. ‘Five hundred, for the two of them.’
They were worth much more, but she had divined correctly that he wasn’t in the frame of mind to bargain. He looked at her with those wild dark eyes beneath the lank black hair, and she moved her foot nearer to the alarm bell on the floor, fearing for a moment that he might physically attack her. She realized in that instant that he knew that she had undervalued the pieces, that he was more intelligent than she had taken him for.
But all he said was, ‘All right. I need cash, please.’ The accent he had struggled to lose returned now when he least wanted it, harsh and guttural with his tension.
She smiled at his naivety. ‘We don’t do cash, I’m afraid. I’ll give you a cheque. It’s the normal terms of the trade. You’ll find that—’
‘I need cash. I do not sell if it is not cash.’ His teeth flashed white in the half-light. In his desperation, he looked like a hungry jackal.
She wondered whether to put all the arguments to him, to point out that it wasn’t safe these days to carry large amounts of cash, especially in a pawnshop. But he looked very determined. And at five hundred, the items were a steal. She said, ‘Wait a moment, please,’ and went back through the curtain, taking the brooch and the ring with her again. He surely wouldn’t take flight without his booty.
She came back within thirty seconds this time, and said, ‘The owner is prepared to make an exception for you. You are very lucky. We’ll need your name, of course.’ Then she counted out five hundred pounds for him in twenty-pound notes and explained carefully that he was depositing the items with them for a set period, that he could redeem them for the standard charge by producing the ticket she was giving him at any time during that period, that the shop would be entitled to sell the goods for whatever they would realize if he did not redeem them in the time allowed.
He scarcely heard the terms of the transaction. His eyes never left the notes as they passed beneath her practised, manicured fingers. It was only a supreme effort of self-control which prevented him from snatching the money from beneath her professionally smiling face.
That did not surprise the woman. She was used to peop
le not heeding the terms of business. But she felt legally bound to deliver them, even though they were outlined in small print on the back of the pawn ticket. Not many people listened, and even fewer came back to redeem things, these days.
When he had gone, she made the phone call she had always planned. You had to keep on the right side of the law, in this business.
‘It’s good of you to come in here so promptly, Mr Mills. I’m very sorry it has to be in these circumstances,’ said Lambert. His real thought was that it was a relief to have someone in this baffling case who actually seemed anxious to help them, but he could hardly say that.
‘I landed at Heathrow this morning and drove straight down here in a hire car. It seemed the least I could do for Clare.’
‘Since you’ve taken the trouble to come from the other side of the world to offer us your thoughts, I feel I owe it to you to be completely honest. I have to tell you that we’ll be grateful for any help you can give us.’
The big tanned figure in the chair opposite him nodded. ‘You’re not getting much help from the immediate family.’ It was more a statement of fact than a question.
Lambert raised his eyebrows. ‘You expected that?’
Ken Mills frowned. ‘I suppose I did, for a variety of reasons. That’s why I’m here. The New Zealand police said they’d relay whatever I had to say to you, but I felt I wanted to be personally involved in this. I owe it to Clare to see that whoever did this to her is brought to justice.’
Beneath his surface health, he was taut with anxiety. No doubt it owed something to the long flight and the time change, but both John Lambert and Bert Hook thought that there was something more than that, that he wanted to deliver himself of something which was troubling him. Lambert said quietly, ‘You had better tell us why you think that those who were closest to your daughter are not likely to be very helpful to us.’
He sighed. ‘I’ve had hours to think about it on the plane. The words came to me easily, when I was just sitting and thinking on my own. Now that I’m here, I feel much more confused.’
‘Your daughter is dead, Mr Mills, and I’ve just virtually admitted to you that ten days later, we aren’t even close to an arrest. This is no time for being squeamish about voicing your thoughts. We shall certainly respect any confidences you offer to us.’
‘All right. Let’s begin with the easy one. That wretched husband of Clare’s. Ex-husband, I suppose I should say. The sheep-badger, or whatever he calls himself now. I expect you’ve talked to him and formed your own impressions. He’s no good, Superintendent. He was a disaster as a husband and from what I was able to gather from Clare he’s been a disaster ever since.’
Lambert nodded at Hook, who said quietly, ‘Ian Walker is dead, Mr Mills. He died last night.’
Ken Mills’s brown eyes opened wide in horror. ‘Strewth! Look, I didn’t like the bloke, and I’m not back-tracking on that. But I’d no idea that—’
‘He was murdered, Mr Mills. Killed beside his caravan with his own shotgun.’
Both CID men were watching their man intently. They had no idea of Mills’s background, whether he was the kind of man who would have had the inclination and the knowledge to employ a contract killer, if he thought the man he had just confessed to hating had killed his daughter.
Mills’s surprise at the news of this second death seemed complete and genuine. He seemed quite dazed as he said, ‘And you think this second death is connected with my Clare’s?’
Lambert said, ‘We don’t know that for certain, as yet. I should be very surprised if there wasn’t any sort of connection.’
Mills stared unseeingly at Lambert’s desk. This world of murderous intrigue and secret hates was as far removed from his new life in the wide spaces of New Zealand as it was possible to get. For a moment, he wondered why he was here. He wanted to throw off this tight Gloucester world of his youth and his failed first marriage, to stand up and storm out of this claustrophobic police station and into the open air.
Yet he owed it to his daughter to stay here, to do whatever he could to pin down her killer. He dragged his thoughts back to another of the people he had been directed to talk about and said dully, ‘Roy Hudson. He didn’t feel anything for Clare. Didn’t want her in the house.’
There was a pause before Bert Hook looked up from the note he was making and said, ‘How well do you know Roy Hudson, Mr Mills?’
Mills gave a short, mirthless laugh, which emerged as almost a bark. It was the first audible evidence of the strain he was feeling. ‘You wouldn’t expect me to be objective, would you? Not about the man who crept into my bed and took over my family.’
Hook smiled, trying to take the tension out of the air. ‘I don’t think we would anticipate a balanced view, certainly. Nevertheless, your thoughts would be interesting for us to hear.’
‘I’m not as bitter as you might imagine. My marriage was finished long before Roy Hudson came along. If you want the truth, I think that at the time I was quite glad to have someone to take the responsibility for Judith off my hands. I still felt a duty towards her, you see.’
‘But you weren’t happy about Mr Hudson’s relationship with your daughter.’
‘No. I don’t think he wanted to make a home for her.’ He paused, looking out towards the park, hearing for the first time the shrill voices of the distant children through the open window of the superintendent’s office. ‘No doubt there were faults on both sides. Clare was an adolescent at the time, with everything that goes with that. And she was still very attached to me. She’d always been closer to me than to her mother.’
His voice cracked a little on that thought, and it seemed for a moment as if this tough outdoor man would dissolve into tears. Then he gathered himself together and spoke evenly. ‘I felt Hudson wanted Clare out of the house. I only got Clare’s side of things, of course – I was still in this country in the early years of Judith’s remarriage. But I don’t think Roy Hudson offered her much sympathy or understanding, or even tried to keep going any sort of relationship between Clare and her mother. Rightly or wrongly, I felt he was to blame for Clare’s marriage to Ian Walker. Everyone from the outside could see that it was going to be a disaster, but I think she wanted more than anything to get out of the house and establish a new life for herself.’
‘How well did Roy Hudson know Ian Walker?’ Lambert slipped the question in as unobtrusively as he could. Mills had come round the world to talk about his daughter’s death, but they had a second murder on their hands, a second network of relationships to establish and investigate.
‘I don’t know. I was still here for Clare’s marriage to Walker, but I left for New Zealand a fortnight later. I’ve married again out there, quite unexpectedly. We’re very happy.’
For a moment, they had a glimpse of his very different Antipodean world, of the effort it had taken him to turn back the clock and come here as a last duty to the dead daughter he had loved. Lambert said very quietly, ‘Do you have any reason to think Roy Hudson might have killed Clare?’
‘No. I can’t pretend to like the bloke, and I think he could have been a better stepfather and friend to my daughter than he was. But that’s very different from saying I think he killed her. I can’t see any reason why he would do that.’
‘Or why he should kill Ian Walker?’
‘No.’ He gave a sour smile. ‘I said I didn’t wish that man dead. But I can’t grieve much for him. He made Clare’s life a misery for a couple of years, and even after they were divorced he was trying to sponge off her. I recognize that you have to try to catch his killer, but I shan’t be losing much sleep over his death. It’s Clare’s murderer I want you to arrest.’
‘I can understand that, but as we’ve already indicated, it’s highly probable that the same person killed both of them.’
Ken Mills looked at Lambert for a moment, weighing that notion. Then he nodded and said, ‘You say “person”. Does that mean that you think a woman might have killed Clare?’
/> ‘She was strangled before her body was put into the Severn: probably with a ligature. That means no great strength was necessary and it would have been perfectly possible for a woman to be our killer. And Ian Walker was killed with his own shotgun; again it is quite feasible that it was a woman who pulled the trigger.’
Mills nodded his acceptance of the logic of this, then said suddenly, ‘I wanted to talk to you about Judith.’
‘I wish you would. I don’t mind admitting to you that your ex-wife is one of the enigmas of the case so far. Mrs Hudson is proving the strangest mother of a murder victim I have come across in a quarter of a century of murder investigations.’
Mills nodded, seemingly not at all surprised by this frank declaration. ‘I struggled with that personality for fifteen years before I gave up on her. Clare has struggled with it throughout her life. I suppose it was even more difficult for a daughter than a husband. When Clare was a child, she simply didn’t understand it. She saw other mothers continually demonstrating their affection for their children, when hers didn’t seem to care for her. It must have been very hard.’
‘Are you saying that there was a psychological basis for this situation?’ Like almost all policemen, Lambert distrusted psychologists and psychiatrists, who seemed too often to provide the let-out for criminals whom it had taken many man-hours to outwit and arrest.
Ken Mills sighed. ‘I’m saying I’m not certain how responsible she is for her own actions. I never was and never will be. It’s the reason why our marriage broke up. Perhaps we should never have tried. I’d be interested to know what Roy Hudson thinks about his marriage, after a few years with her. You think this might have a bearing on Clare’s death?’
Lambert smiled ruefully. ‘I’ve no idea what’s relevant and what isn’t at the moment. We shan’t know much more about that until we have a murderer under lock and key. That’s always the case when we have no obvious suspect immediately after a murder. We have to gather every scrap of information we can and pool our knowledge. With luck and a little expertise, significant connections will emerge.’ He wondered if he sounded as tired as he felt as he offered this familiar explanation.