by J M Gregson
Jason Knight’s smile was bleak and humourless. ‘All of us are wondering about that. Including the man who shot him, I presume.’
‘They know it was a man, then?’
‘No, I don’t think they do. I was making an assumption.’
‘But it needn’t be a man, need it? A woman could have shot him just as easily.’ Ogden was anxious for anything which would broaden the field of suspects; it sounded as though he was computing the odds against his own arrest. It was probably no more than a natural nervousness when you were a murder suspect, Jason decided. He said, ‘We just wanted to discuss the future with you, Mr Ogden.’
‘It’s Tom. And if you’ve come to persuade me to sell you this place, you’ve wasted your journey.’ His jaw set in a firm line and he stared his visitor straight in the face for the first time, emboldened by the familiar instinct to protect his ground.
Alistair Morton said quietly, ‘We’re not here to offer you money, Tom. We couldn’t do that, even if we wanted to. We don’t know what the future of our firm is yet, nor even whether we’ll have a part in it.’
Tom looked at him for a moment, then nodded brusquely. He liked the look of this older of the two men. Probably the first, subconscious reason was that he could have dealt with him easily in a fight. He was not conscious of any such reaction in himself, but when you worked with your hands in an environment where bodily strength and stamina were important qualities, you felt easier when you started with a physical advantage. Morton was older and slighter than Knight, and a direct contrast in appearance and manner to the blond, ebullient Martin Beaumont who had been his ogre over the years. Ogden said gruffly, ‘What is it you want, then?’
‘We have different ideas about the way our firm should go than Beaumont had. As our nearest neighbour, we’d like to know what you think of them.’
‘How different?’
Alistair took a deep breath. Privately, though he had agreed they should come here, he had not expected that they would even get a hearing from Tom Ogden. He decided the best introduction he could offer was to declare a dislike of his late employer. ‘I’m the financial director at Abbey Vineyards. I’m also the oldest employee, now that the founder is dead. I was in the business from the start, and I don’t mind telling you that Beaumont made some dodgy deals and did some hairy things, particularly in those early days. He also made certain promises to me about the future of the firm, on which he failed to deliver. To put it bluntly, he lied to me. He gave me his word on some important things and later denied it absolutely, because it suited him. I didn’t like him any more than you did, Tom.’
‘Fair enough. What difference does that make to either of us now?’
‘Maybe none at all. Maybe quite a big one. That’s what we’re here to discuss.’
‘I’m not going to sell out. You’ve wasted your time if you think I am.’
‘That might well be so, Tom. We’re not fools. We’re not here to offer you the moon. We wouldn’t propose anything that wasn’t in our interests as well as yours. And as Jason says, we can’t yet offer anything definite. It’s just that if there was a measure of agreement amongst the three of us, that would strengthen our hands in whatever negotiations we may choose to undertake with other interested parties.’
Ogden was interested despite himself. Over twenty years and more, the situation with Beaumont had been black and white; he had never needed to think twice about his rejection of that odious man’s proposals. But if he was going to have to deal with a group of people, perhaps making more subtle suggestions than Beaumont ever had, he would be at a disadvantage. He was an independent farmer, proud of his yeoman stock. He knew every yard of his land and he made his own decisions. But that meant he had little experience of negotiation.
Secretly, Tom Ogden feared being outsmarted. The kind of situation where you conceded one thing to gain another was foreign to him, and he felt he was too impulsive and excitable to handle it well. If he could indeed reach some agreement with these qualified, experienced men, he would feel much more confident in dealing with others. He said cautiously, ‘I can see that we are all in a new situation. What is it you want to discuss with me?’
Alistair nodded appreciatively. They had already achieved more than he had expected. ‘We hope that in future the system in our firm will be more democratic than it ever was under Beaumont. We hope that the five of us who have done most to run the place will have power, rather than just wages. We hope that we shall control policy in a way we have never been able to do in the past.’
‘I keep hearing that word “hope”. You’re not in a position to make decisions or to come here making offers to me, are you?’
‘Indeed we’re not, Tom. Jason here told you that at the outset. We’re not here to offer you lies or to make propositions we can’t fulfil. All this is tentative, to see if we can establish some common ground between us.’
‘That’s all right then. Just so long as you don’t expect any commitment from me today, I’m prepared to listen and to decide whether your plans are in my interests too.’
‘That’s good. Well, it’s obvious to all of us that your land is in a particularly interesting position for us. The acquisitions made by Abbey Vineyards over the years mean that your strawberry farm is almost surrounded by our fields.’
‘It’s a prosperous concern. We’re about to have our best year yet.’
‘I don’t doubt it. And Jason and I are not here to make you any cash offer for your land. We are not in a position to do anything of the sort. But let me tell you how we see the future of our firm, because that will obviously affect you as well, whatever happens. We see Abbey Vineyards as having a board of either five or six, depending on whether the widow of the late owner wishes to be involved. We know that you are not interested in a cash offer for your land and we understand why. But we thought that you might be interested in becoming the sixth or seventh director of the firm, in exchange for the absorption of your land into the vineyard.’
Tom Ogden, who had expected to reject these men as firmly as he had always rejected Beaumont, felt suddenly and unexpectedly exhilarated. His wife had been telling him for years that he needed to contemplate retirement; that he should be considering Beaumont’s gold because he had no one to take over from him at the farm; that it was an inevitable fact of life that it would eventually become an anonymous chunk of Abbey Vineyards. This way he would not only get out with head held high, but would have a say in the future of his land, an interest in a thriving business which he could retain as long as he lived. He said guardedly, ‘That would need a lot of discussion. A hell of a lot of discussion!’
‘Of course it would, Tom. On both sides. And we can’t even start on that yet, until all of us are clearer about the future. But you’re not opposed to the idea in principle?’
‘No. Not in principle. It’s different from selling out. It would leave me with an interest in this land and how it was developed.’
‘Of course it would. And from our point of view, it would make obvious sense. We’d like to be able to tell whoever else may be involved in the future of Abbey Vineyards that we’ve made contact with you and had a favourable response.’ He saw the stirrings of dissent in the weather-beaten features opposite him and hastily modified his phrase. ‘Or at any rate that you haven’t turned us down flat, as you always did Beaumont. That we’ve talked about a very different sort of agreement, and that these discussions are ongoing. That would strengthen our hand too. There’d be three of us thinking along the same lines about the future policy for the firm.’
Tom Ogden didn’t like some of the glib modern phrases, but he’d already decided the general idea was acceptable. He stood up and offered his hand. ‘I agree that what you have suggested might be possible, that I’m open to further discussion in due course. Let’s hope none of us ends up behind bars because we saw off that bloody man Beaumont.’
He had tried to end on a light note, and all three men smiled. But none of them found the
notion very amusing.
The flat which Gerry Davies had admired on the previous night seemed smaller, with these two large, threatening men within it. Sarah Vaughan asked them to sit down on the small black and white sofa, crushing them together a little, making their presence less dominating in her home. She sat opposite them on a chair which was a little higher, and gave Lambert a smile which he did not return.
She was used to people congratulating her on her taste and on the neat, minimalist interior of her dwelling, or at least on her securing of a picturesque site beside this quiet reach of the river Wye. This time there were none of those initial niceties. Instead, Lambert issued a direct challenge. ‘Miss Vaughan, you lied to us when we spoke on Monday. You impeded the progress of a murder investigation.’
She felt a flash of anger at Gerry Davies and his clumsiness in revealing what she had sought to conceal, then guilt that she should cavil at this honesty in an honourable man. ‘I didn’t tell you about Martin Beaumont’s assault on me. Surely you can understand that. It was an embarrassment to me.’
‘And a motive for murder. That is how we have to see it as detectives. Especially when someone takes elaborate steps to conceal it.’
‘I just didn’t tell you about it. I didn’t lie to you.’
Lambert lifted an eyebrow at Hook, who turned back the pages of his notebook with what seemed to Sarah deliberate slowness. ‘You said about Mr Beaumont, “I didn’t see any evidence of the womanizing I heard people gossip about. For all I know, that’s all it was – gossip.” That seems a pretty definite denial.’
‘All right. I didn’t realize I’d been as emphatic as that. Martin made a pass at me. Well, a lot more than a pass, actually. It was an attempted rape, if you must know. He didn’t accept my refusal. It was in his Jaguar and in broad daylight. He’d offered me a lift into Ross to collect my car. He pulled off the road and threw himself across me. Eventually, I managed to grab a handful of his hair and pull his head back, then get my knee into his balls.’ She was breathing hard at the recollection of that afternoon, glaring at them accusingly. They were men, weren’t they, and thus in some distant way to blame for this degradation?
Hook said quietly, ‘When did this assault take place?’
‘At the end of April. I can give you the date if you want it.’
‘About a fortnight before Mr Beaumont was killed.’
‘I suppose it was, yes.’
Lambert let the seconds stretch, encouraging her to make her own inferences about her hatred of Beaumont and what he had attempted. Then he said coolly, ‘Did you take any action about this attack?’
She was suddenly furious with the man and his calmness. ‘Get real, Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert! If I go to the police, he denies it, says I’m a silly young woman who’s fantasizing about her boss. If I go to a solicitor, he wants evidence, which I can’t provide. If Beaumont hears I’ve taken any action at all, I lose a job which I enjoy and earnings which I won’t be able to match elsewhere. So I make sure that I don’t give the man any opportunity to be with me alone and I get on with my life! That’s the action I took.’
Lambert nodded several times, as if this time he accepted her account of things. ‘Have you thought of anyone who can confirm that you were here at the time when Beaumont died?’
‘No. There isn’t anyone. I had telephone calls between eight and nine on that evening, but nothing after that.’
‘Who do you think killed Martin Beaumont? We now think it was someone in his immediate circle, not an outsider.’
‘I don’t know. It’s your business, not mine. It wasn’t me. But you’re not going to believe that just because I say it, are you?’
‘Not just because you say it, no. The nature of our work does not allow that. You can see that you did not help yourself by concealing what you have now told us.’
‘It’s a motive; no more than that. I admit that I was quite pleased when I heard Beaumont was dead. But you must have other motives, as well as mine.’
They didn’t respond to that. Sarah Vaughan was left staring bleakly through her window at the view which everyone found so attractive. She’d have to go in to work at the vineyard soon. She’d have to spend the rest of her day among the other suspects.
TWENTY-FOUR
In Oldford police station, it was early afternoon. The sun was high, the CID section was almost empty, and the postprandial atmosphere was soporific.
Detective Inspector Rushton did not like that. He knew that the end of this day would mark a full week since Martin Beaumont had been shot through the head. His enthusiasm for data meant that he was well aware of one of the hoariest of police statistics: there was a sharp decline in successful conclusions to those murder hunts which had no arrest within seven days.
He wandered through to the front of the station, where his mood was not greatly improved by a conversation with the uniformed station sergeant. This corpulent veteran was due for retirement in three months and he wanted nothing more than an uneventful countdown to that date. Rushton wanted a sense of urgency, and he was not going to find one here. He enjoyed being at the centre of the investigation, correlating and cross-referencing the multitude of data as it accrued, but today he envied Lambert and Hook their more direct involvement with the people in this case.
Then, when he was telling himself that he would have to wait for any serious input until the pair arrived back at Oldford, he received an encouraging phone call. More than encouraging, in fact. Crucial, perhaps. A young probationary constable had unearthed a witness who had seen a car in Howler’s Heath at eleven o’clock on the Wednesday night of the murder. A parked car, in fact. No number: you couldn’t expect miracles of the ever-fallible public. But a colour and a make.
A colour and a make which tallied with the vehicle of one of the key suspects in the Beaumont case.
Two hours after Tom Ogden had finished his discussions with Jason Knight and Alistair Morton, he ushered Chief Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook into the same stone building.
He had set out the shabby furniture a little more formally, but he took the same chair behind the table, with the two CID men facing him across it. He met them as they climbed out of the police Mondeo, but they exchanged scarcely a word with him as he led them into the old byre. Once they had the privacy of the old stone walls around them, Ogden discovered why that was.
Even now, they did not speak, but looked at him expectantly. He said nervously, ‘I trust you’ve made some progress. As I told you, I had no time for Beaumont, but I shall be interested to hear how—’
‘You lied to us on Saturday night.’ Lambert said bluntly.
The farmer’s healthy outdoor complexion reddened visibly. In this place, he gave the orders and was obeyed without discussion. He was not used to being challenged. In addition, he was fighting the acute discomfort which affects the normally honest man when he has lied. ‘I might have made some sort of mistake.’
‘There was no mistake, Mr Ogden. DS Hook asked where you were last Wednesday night and you said you were at the cinema with your wife. That was a deliberate lie. You also asked your wife to lie on your account.’
Ogden was speechless. The justified allegation that he had forced Enid, the most honest and straightforward woman he knew, to lie on his behalf hit him hardest of all. As if he feared that the man might wander even further out of his depth, Bert Hook explained quietly, ‘You and your wife were seen at the cinema on Thursday night. Not Wednesday, as you claimed to us on Saturday.’
‘All right. I lied and I admit it. And I was stupid – as Enid said, with the size of the team you’ve got on the case, I was always likely to be rumbled.’
Bert hoped that Ogden was right in that assumption. He had an uncomfortable feeling that if Chris Rushton’s fiancée hadn’t recognized the Ogdens at the cinema on Thursday night, his story might have been accepted. Hook said heavily, ‘You’d better tell us now where you really were on Wednesday night.’
&n
bsp; ‘I was at home. Enid had had two sleepless nights with toothache and a visit to the dentist last Wednesday. She went to bed with painkillers at about half past nine. I’d no one to account for where I was after that.’ Ogden spoke as if he was delivering words he had prepared for this moment, as he probably was. It made him sound as if he did not expect to be believed.
Lambert said curtly, ‘In fact you went to Howler’s Heath, where you met Martin Beaumont and shot him through the head with his own weapon.’
‘No. I was at home. If you must know, I sat in a chair and worried myself about Beaumont’s latest offer for my land, because Enid had said I should accept it.’
‘Then why lie about the matter?’
Tom looked down at the deeply scratched table, at the chip in the edge which had been there since his grandfather’s time, when cattle had been milked in here. ‘Because I hated Beaumont and everyone knew it. Because I had a police record of violence. I knew you’d bring that up. Because I’d have liked to kill the bastard, if I’d felt I could get away with it!’
They listened to the heavy, uneven sound of his breathing. It seemed to fill the room like the breathing of a heavy animal in pain. When it subsided a little and he glanced at them again, Hook spoke like a therapist. ‘Did you kill him, Tom? It would be far better to tell us now, if you did.’
‘No. I didn’t stir from the house. But I can’t expect you to believe that now, can I?’
‘If you didn’t kill the man, who did?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what goes on at the vineyard. I’ve never wanted to know. That bugger must have had a lot of enemies, from what I saw of him.’