An Academic Death

by J M Gregson

  They could check his story with the pub at Ledbury, and perhaps find someone who had seen him in the early afternoon at the university site. If they found anyone who had actually seen him with Upson on that day, it might be damning. Lambert looked at him for a moment, waiting to see if he would add anything. It was often when people tried to gild a lie, to make it more convincing in some way, that they gave themselves away. Harold Rees, breathing heavily with that rasping sound, added nothing more.

  Lambert said quietly, ‘We shall need to speak to your daughter, Mr Rees.’

  ‘I don’t want Kerry brought into this. She has enough problems already.’

  ‘She is in this already, Mr Rees. She is pregnant by a man who has been brutally murdered. We have to speak to her.’

  For a moment he looked as if he was going to deny them. He would certainly like to have done so. Then he nodded reluctantly. Glowering his unhappiness from beneath those beetling black brows, he said, ‘I’ll get her. I shall want to be present with her, mind.’

  He stood up and stumped away into the hall. At a nod from Lambert, Hook followed him. The girl must have been waiting for the summons, for she was on the stairs almost before her father called her. She glanced into Harold Rees’s troubled face, squeezed his forearm, and said, ‘Best if you go and sit with Mum in the kitchen for a while, Dad.’

  This great bear of a man obeyed his daughter as meekly as any lamb. He hesitated at the end of the dark hall and looked round at them, with his hand on the kitchen door. The girl had already slipped through the doorway of the sitting room, but Bert Hook said firmly but not unkindly, ‘Better if you leave her to say her own piece, Mr Rees. They’re adults at eighteen, you know.’ He followed the girl into the room and shut the door firmly behind him.

  Kerry Rees had her father’s dark hair, above smaller features and a delicate white skin. Her face was rather too square for classic beauty, but was undoubtedly attractive; the most striking feature was her long eyelashes, which were the more noticeable for being apparently moist at this moment. Despite the loose-fitting clothes she wore on this warm day, the curves of her figure were evident. There was nothing to tell them at first glance that she was over three months pregnant. Probably as she grew into middle age she would replicate the stocky, powerful build of her father, but at present she was undoubtedly nubile, the stuff of young men’s erotic dreams. And of one rather older man, Matthew Upson, it seemed.

  Lambert introduced himself and Hook and began slightly diffidently. ‘Can you confirm for us the details of your pregnancy, please?’

  Diffidence proved to be the right tactic. She looked at him curiously for a moment and then became a woman helping a clumsy man out of his predicament. ‘Certainly. I’m fifteen weeks gone now. I can be completely accurate, because there was only the one occasion when I could have conceived. And yes, I’m absolutely certain that Matt Upson was the father. There are no other possibilities, you see.’ She gave them a bleak smile.

  ‘Thank you. That makes things very clear. And presumably Mr Upson knew about this?’

  The smile moved from bleak to arctic. ‘Yes, he knew. He said I was a little fool for not being on the pill.’

  The bitterness with which she spat the phrases came oddly from those young lips: she was obviously quoting the dead man’s words. They could visualise him clearly as she said it: worldly wise, cynical, trampling roughshod over the sensibilities of this girl who was so much less experienced in these things than he was.

  But had it really been as simple, as straightforward, as that? The dead are never allowed to account for themselves, to put their own case against their accusers at the bar of moral rectitude. For all they knew, this girl might have set out to lure him into bed, might then have been using her pregnancy as a tool to attempt to ensnare him in one of life’s many bizarre games.

  Lambert said, ‘So Matthew Upson seduced you and the —’

  ‘Not seduced. That’s an old-fashioned word, isn’t it? I was a willing enough partner, at the time. Perhaps I mistook a few signals. I’ve no doubt that’s the way he would put it, if he were still around.’ She glanced down automatically at her stomach and the unseen child within it, as if she thought it important for the sake of that tiny human presence that she was honest about this.

  ‘What signals, Kerry?’ asked Bert Hook, and, as often happened, his gentle, fatherly attitude succeeded where other approaches would have failed.

  She looked from one to the other of the two men who had come so far to see her, weighing in her mind whether it was necessary for her to go into these details, and then decided that it was. ‘I knew he was in an unhappy marriage, which according to him couldn’t go on much longer. He said he hoped we had a long-term future together. No doubt you know the sort of thing.’ Her bitter smile might have been at the duplicity of all men or merely at her own harshly shattered naivety.

  ‘But his attitude changed when he found you were pregnant?’

  ‘Yes. But no doubt he would say that he was consistent all along, that I had misunderstood his intentions.’ Again that bittersweet smile. ‘He said I was old enough to look after myself, that I should have taken precautions. Then he offered to pay for an abortion.’

  ‘Which you refused.’

  ‘We don’t believe in abortions in this family, Superintendent Lambert. To us, it’s murder.’ She stared him steadily in the face, challenging him to take up an argument he had no intention of becoming involved in.

  ‘You must have resented his attitude.’

  ‘I did. For a few days, it shattered me. But then I picked up the pieces and got on with life.’

  Lambert doubted whether it was as simple as that, whether even now she was quite as calm and organised as she was presenting herself. He said insistently, ‘But for those few days at least, you must have burned with an intense rage against the man who seemed to be turning his back on you when you most needed him.’

  She shrugged: the mirthless smile was now certainly at her own expense. ‘That’s a fair summary, though it seemed much more a confusion of emotions at the time. But I didn’t kill Matt Upson.’

  Lambert answered her smile, trying to relax her: tension could mean an instinctive denial, an automatic refusal even to think about the possibilities he now had to raise. ‘No. I don’t believe you killed Matthew Upson. We’ve checked, you see.’ The shocked, white face, smooth as fine china, seemed about to protest, and he raised his hand a few inches to prevent it. ‘We have to, Kerry. Murder is a serious business. We found that you were elsewhere, and with other people, at the time he died. You were in an exam during the afternoon and with your friends during the evening. However, there is another person who was around on that day, whose movements we have not been able to check on yet.’

  ‘Dad.’ The single, intimate monosyllable dropped quietly into the comfortable room.

  ‘Yes. No one is accusing him. But he was in the area on the day of the murder, looking for a man he had every reason to hate. We need to eliminate him from our enquiries, if we can.’

  She thought for a moment, looking even more apprehensive as the implications of what she had to say dawned upon her. ‘I can’t help you with that. I didn’t even know he’d been down to the university on that day. Not until afterwards.’

  ‘He says he had a meeting arranged with your tutor in Ledbury. One which Mr Upson did not attend.’

  ‘If he said that’s what happened, that’s the way it was. He’s straight, my dad, whatever else.’

  He wondered what that last phrase covered. Mulish obstinacy in the face of an adolescent daughter’s rejection of his curfew times? Or something more sinister in this context, like uncontrollable fury in the defence of that daughter? ‘Tell me, how soon after his visit did you find that he’d been in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire on that Friday?’

  ‘Not until I’d finished my end-of-year exams and come home. Mum let it out. She was worried about what he might have done.’

  Her hand flashed to h
er mouth as she realised the implications of that phrase; her gaffe and reaction would have been comic, if the situation had been less serious. ‘I don’t mean that she was worried about him killing Matt, I mean she was worried about the rumpus he might have caused when he crashed into the university. We didn’t even know that Matt had been murdered, then.’

  ‘But you knew he was missing?’

  ‘Yes. The news had drifted around the History Department by the time I completed my exams and left. But we didn’t hear about the death for another two or three days after I came home.’

  It was Bert Hook who said quietly, ‘And what then, Kerry? Did you begin to think that your father might have killed him?’

  ‘No! I told you, Dad would never do anything like that. I’d have known if he had!’

  The denial was absolute. But the image which remained in their minds as they drove through the terraces of tightly packed stone houses and out of the old town was of Kerry Rees’s uncertain and fearful white face.

  Thirteen

  While Lambert and Hook drove down the M1, things were happening in the criminal world they strove so hard to control.

  The drugs empire has a chain of command almost as complex as that of the police, but this chain has neither bureaucracy nor weak links to hinder its efficiency. Best of all from the point of view of those who control it and make huge profits from it, it is not hindered by any moral scruple. Modern police officers have a perpetual consciousness of public opinion, a constant awareness that they must proceed by the book. It is inevitable that it should be so: the actions of the guardians of the law must be subject to public scrutiny.

  But the drug barons see such things only as weaknesses in the opposing army, as during the course of operations they undoubtedly are. They are unimpeded by ethical considerations; they make sure their own operations are swift and efficient, without any of the lets or hindrance of conscience.

  In his comfortable mansion in the Severn Valley, Keith Sugden, the shadowy figure who ultimately controlled the drugs which Matthew Upson and Jamie Lawson had been purveying at the other end of the chain, was swiftly made aware of the details of these deaths.

  He felt no sorrow for these infantrymen in his army, whereas policemen would have felt anger when other policemen they did not even know were killed. These deaths were to him an inconvenience on a remote and relatively unimportant front in his war. They were at most an irritation, and that only if the focus of a murder investigation might shed an unwelcome light on this distant part of his operation. These deaths were a security risk, a small problem which must be addressed, no more.

  Sugden was consulted, gave his opinion, and did no more. His opinion would be taken into account, would indeed be heavily weighted in this highly autocratic system, but it would be others, further down the chain of command, in more direct touch with the people involved, who would take the decisions. Sugden was coolly professional: he didn’t want other killings, with all the attention and the publicity they would arouse, unless they were really necessary. If the people who knew the situation thought deaths essential, they would be conducted swiftly, efficiently and anonymously.

  Simon Kennedy, visited at his home on Sunday night by Lambert and Hook, but not so far by any members of the Drugs Squad, was aware of none of these deliberations. As the CID men had suspected, he was a long way from the inner circle of the organisation, making big money, but not taking big decisions. And totally dependent on those above him in the chain of command.

  It was one of those men, the one who had read the Gloucester Citizen account of the inquest on Matthew Upson behind the closed doors of his Cheltenham base, who made the decision about Kennedy.

  Simon was in the Gloucester branch of the dry-cleaning business which was his official front when he got the phone call. He did not recognise the voice on the other end of the line. When he asked for a name, he was not given one. The tone was brisk but not hostile. ‘What time do you close?’

  ‘Five thirty. There isn’t usually —’

  ‘Make sure it’s prompt. I shall arrive at six, and you won’t want anyone around then. I shall come in by the back door.’

  Simon tried to ask him what the purpose of this visit was, but he realised even as he spoke that the line was dead. It was another half-hour before he wondered how his mysterious visitor knew about a back entrance that was completely invisible from the street.

  He was even more disturbed when the man arrived. He saw him coming through the narrow yard at the back of the premises. A slightly built man, whose leanness made him look a little taller than he was. A man with black hair, cut very short but not shaved, with dark, observant eyes, sallow skin and a thin mouth. He wore a dark grey polo-necked shirt, black trousers and black trainers, and he moved silently over the old flagstones to the back door of the shop. There was nothing about him that was colourful; everything seemed functional, efficient, clear-sighted.

  He did not knock, nor even hesitate at the door. A lean arm reached out to the handle, a sinewy hand turned it, and the man was within the building, invisible to any curious eyes which might have observed him taking this private route into the place.

  Simon Kennedy recognised him. Minter. A professional killer, who earned serious money. Rumour had it that he was on a permanent retainer with the organisation now, but Simon was not high enough in the hierarchy to be sure one way or the other. All he knew was that the man carried with him an air of menace; whether it came from himself or his sinister calling, Simon was not sure.

  Minter took Simon in at a glance, then looked round the cramped little store room into which he had stepped. He took in the locked cupboards, the old flagged floor, the cobwebs in the high corners of the disused room, then moved without invitation through the door and into the shop itself at the front of the building. Simon had already taken the precaution of lowering the security blinds over the plate-glass window and locking the front door of the shop, so that any exchange could not be detected by any curious member of the public on the narrow Gloucester street outside.

  Minter walked round the perimeter of the room, inspected the narrow staircase which led to the unoccupied upper storey of the shop, pulled out the two upright chairs which stood by the wall and set them one behind the other in front of the counter, in the centre of the floor. He motioned to one of them; only when Kennedy had sat down meekly as he indicated did he station himself on the other chair. He sat astride it, with his arms folded on the back of it, so that his dark, unblinking eyes were no more than three feet from those of the shop’s owner.

  Throughout this procedure, Minter had spoken not a word. Simon had attempted first a greeting and then one of the meaningless pleasantries with which people establish communication. Neither had received any acknowledgement from this dark intruder, who had come into the place and behaved as if he and not the man now sitting looking into his face was the owner. He had acted, thought Simon with a sudden burst of terror, as if he was preparing himself for one of the swift, anonymous killings which were his means of earning a handsome living.

  That was not Minter’s purpose here. Not this time. But he knew that uncertainty made people afraid, and it had become a habit with him to foster it whenever he could. He could see sweat upon Kennedy’s face; his forehead shone with it, and that gave Minter satisfaction. Not pleasure, that would be too strong a word, but a feeling of efficiency, an assurance that the man was now properly prepared for the message he had to deliver. He knew the sweating man would not be able to stand the silence as they sat looking at each other, so he waited for him to speak, merely to have the satisfaction of interrupting him.

  Simon said, ‘Look, I think you’d better begin by —’

  ‘You’ve slipped up, Mr Kennedy. Your masters are not pleased with you.’ The volume was low, but the words were clipped, edged with the menace they were meant to carry.

  Simon licked his lips. He wanted to use the man’s name, to show that he knew who he was and was aware of the work he did. He n
eeded to establish some kind of rapport, but he could not bring himself to do it. ‘I think there must be some mistake. I haven’t —’

  ‘You shouldn’t have killed that student. Jamie Lawson. Your pusher. Acted without authority. Might have embarrassed the whole organisation.’

  The actual death of that wretched boy was an embarrassment, no more, Simon noticed. Even murder was no more than that, in this league. Well, the big league was what he’d wanted, when he’d joined: that and the big money that went with it. The cold eyes were watching him, waiting for a reaction. His throat was dry. The words passed over it like barbed wire as he said, ‘He was going to talk to that police superintendent, the next morning, you know, and —’

  ‘You don’t take decisions like that. Not at your level.’ For the first time, contempt edged into the impassive tone. ‘If a pusher needs to be eliminated he will be. But not without the order coming from the right level. And the job won’t be done by amateurs.’

  He spat the word like the vilest obscenity, so that Simon found he wanted to say something to reassure him, to show that he recognised his status as a professional, unemotional killer. And to emphasise that he wasn’t the stumbling novice in the criminal world for which he was being taken. But he couldn’t get near to the right words. All he could think of to say was, ‘I know that. The boy was dangerous to us, a loose cannon. But I wouldn’t have —’

  ‘It was a mistake. Your masters don’t allow mistakes.’

  ‘It wasn’t my mistake. I didn’t —’

  ‘The police won’t think he topped himself. That was clumsy. A professional could have told you that. A professional wouldn’t have used that method.’