An Accidental Shroud (12 page)

'Irritating? In what way, irritating?'

'That's neither here nor there,' Wilding answered shortly, possibly with a belated realization that the remark might have been better left unsaid.

'So you parted on good terms?'

'I've already said as much, yes.'

'How long did you stay with him?'

'Just under an hour, I should think. Anyway, it was some time after eleven when I got back home. I'm not sure of the exact time.'

'Quarter past, actually,' said Christine.

Jake waited until the sound of the car engine had died away. His eyes stayed fixed on Christine, with an expression she found baffling. She sat waiting for him to bring the subject up and eventually he did.

'Why did you lie to them?' he asked. 'About the time I got home?'

Christine drew in her breath. Why did he
think,
for God's sake? To protect him, of course! And – well, yes, maybe herself, too. She had a lot to lose. She answered stiffly, obliquely, 'Why did you bring me those flowers today?'
And wine, and delicious pâté. Almost as if in celebration, rather than mourning a death. As a bribe
?

'To cheer you up. I knew how upset you'd be about Nigel. You always did have a soft spot for him, didn't you?'

Upset
? What a word to use! What a singularly inept choice of word to describe her feelings. She felt her temper rising. 'Yes, I'm
upset,
but not because of what you think. I'm upset because he's dead, because the way he died is horrible.'
And because I can't – I simply cannot – bear the thought that you might have been responsible. Any more than I can bear the thought of the suspicions going through your mind.
But her anger evaporated as suddenly as it had threatened. She said, on a dying fall, 'There was never anything between us, Jake – except a promise, which he broke.'

'What sort of promise?'

Her answer was a while in coming, she was wondering how to phrase what she had to say in a way that would be acceptable to him. 'You know he was thinking of selling out?' she said, at last.

'Selling out?' Jake's eyes snapped. No, he hadn't known that, and was put out that he hadn't been told. He always felt he had a right to know everything that was going on, to have his finger on every pulse, although Nigel's affairs could really have had very little importance for him, personally.

'Well, he was. To Jermyn's – the big London jewellers. He's been negotiating with them for over a year. And all the time, he was promising that he'd make me a partner ...' Jake looked thunderstruck and the injustice of Nigel's behaviour struck her anew. She said bitterly, 'He wasn't ever much of a businessman, I've no need to tell you that. I could always manage things so much better and he knew it – and was glad of it. Until he had a better offer. But he still went on promising, when he knew, all the time.'

Jake was rendered silent by all this. At last he said, 'So you married me, instead?'

'I married you, yes, but not instead of anything! Jake, why are we quarrelling? Aren't things bad enough?'

Jake had wanted Christine from the first moment he saw her, admiring not only her beautifully shaped body, her vibrant hair, those amazing eyes, but her smartness and the competence with which she managed Nigel's business, the way she tried to make life more comfortable for everyone. He'd laid siege to her and wasn't surprised when she accepted the glamorous invitations he was able to offer. Most women did. But then he'd gradually become aware of a continuing need for her, a desire for a longer-term relationship other than mere physical satisfaction. The fact that he'd come to love her hit him like a thunderbolt and had made him, hitherto so certain of himself, unsure. He'd scarcely been able to believe it when she agreed to be his wife.

'Christine, Christine!' He took a step forwards and put his arms round her.

She leaned against his strength, knowing without question now that she loved him and would be prepared to do more than merely lie for him. But she still didn't know where he'd been until nearly one o'clock that morning.

Back in the incident room, surrounded by members of the team, the air thick with cigarette smoke, incessantly ringing telephones and the clack of printers, Abigail said, 'For what it's worth, his wife swears he was back by quarter past eleven. But I wouldn't like to bet on how much it
is
worth. I think she's covering for him, although if he arrived at the shop at ten, as he said, there'd be time to do all he had to do, dump the body and get back home by that time. It's not all that far from Nailers' Yard to Ham Lane, especially by car.'

'And who's to say he didn't arrive for his appointment before ten?' a DC asked.

'Unlikely, if he intended killing Nigel. It would've been too risky. He couldn't be sure that the old man would've been in bed by then. And there'd still be people about – he couldn't have planned on the storm keeping everyone indoors.'

'True,' Carmody put in. 'And would he have made an appointment at all if he'd intended murder? Run the risk of having Nigel write it down in his diary, knowing how finicky he was about that sort of thing? I'll bet it was only by chance he hadn't noted it down, anyway, maybe because he was busy in the shop when Wilding called.'

'I want to play that tape again before we send it over to the experts to see what they can do with it. See if we can make out a bit more.'

'Let's have a bit of hush, then,' Carmody said to the room at large, slotting the tape into the machine.

'You can buy a fun gizmo now that deliberately distorts your voice,' Farrar offered while the tape was being fast-forwarded through the Mickey Mouse squawks of the other calls on the machine, business calls which had by now been followed up, vetted, then eliminated.

'You can also put a handkerchief over the mouthpiece, or hold your nose,' added Jenny Platt drily.

'Listen, can't you?' Carmody released the button.

OK. See you. Same place, same time.

Not nearly enough to go on.

'But there
is
something maddeningly familiar about it,' Abigail said, nibbling her finger.

They grouped around it, listening to the recording several times but nobody could make any constructive suggestion as to the owner of the voice. Just as the next replay began, in walked DC Deeley.

'It's Tom Callaghan,' he said.

Deeley was looked upon as the station beefcake, the good-humoured butt of CID ragging. Put down as a bit thick, but known for stumbling on things. Dead lucky, they said, uncharitably, not giving him the credit for the sharpness that was (admittedly well-hidden) beneath the surface, not liking it that he had an uncanny knack of being right.

He was in this case. 'That's it – it does sound like Callaghan!' Abigail agreed, after a moment. 'Well done, Pete!'

'Tom Callaghan?
The
Tom Callaghan?' asked Carmody.

'It
is
him!' said Jenny, a regular viewer of his programme, though not by any means because she was a fan of his. It was always as well to know the opposition, in her opinion.

'There's hope for you yet, Pete,' said Farrar, annoyed that he hadn't identified the voice himself.

Hands in pockets, Ted Carmody stood gazing at concrete mixers, squared-off piles of bricks and breeze-blocks covered in polythene, plus all the other untidy paraphernalia on the Wilding building site, the as yet unmade up road cutting a red, sandy swathe through the middle. Dusk was falling and work had stopped for the day.

Building had started at the top of the site and was working downhill. Only about half a dozen houses were as yet occupied, their curtains already drawn against the dark, houses and families drawn in tight to themselves. It wasn't a comfortable place to live, not yet.

'Like I said, you'll have to come across yonder to see what I mean,' said the man Carmody was talking to, a small, wiry type with a bald head and a luxuriant moustache that tried hard to compensate. He was wearing jeans and a quilted anorak and his face was tight with suppressed anger.

The site was otherwise deserted. Carmody had timed himself to arrive after the workmen had knocked off but before it was too dark to see properly, wanting to do some poking around. He'd often found it paid dividends. Like now, though in this case it was ma'am who'd suggested it.

Fontenoy's car, after being thoroughly examined by Forensics, had been passed as clean. Likewise Jake Wilding's, which had also, under protest, been impounded for forensic examination.

'But he's still the best we've got – and if he did it, he must've had access to some form of transport. Get somebody to take a look at what's on his building site, Ted,' Abigail had said. Carmody had chosen to come himself.

He didn't think much of the site security. A locked compound with a high wire fence enclosed raw materials, but any competent burglar could have made mincemeat out of the lock in five minutes. As well as a big JCB there were sundry trucks, bulldozers and a lot of other machinery hanging around. Nice class of house, though. Upmarket prices and more spacious than you'd think, albeit the gardens were on the cramped side. Carmody reckoned himself a good judge of a house, he'd moved around enough in his time. They preferred older houses, he and Maureen, with a sizeable garden, a solid, between-the-wars job, built when labour costs were lower and land not at such a premium.

He'd done his poking around and not come up with anything until, as he emerged from one of the almost completed houses, this man, who gave his name as Dave Hodgson, had appeared out of the growing dusk.

'You're the police,' he stated.

'Sergeant Carmody,' Carmody said, seeing no reason not to admit it, no longer surprised that people recognized his calling at a glance, though he couldn't see how they did it. His feet were no bigger and no flatter than the next man's, he practically never went around saying 'Ullo, ullo, what 'ave we 'ere, then?' But people knew, invariably.

'It's the look, love,' Maureen said comfortably. 'You've got that way of looking at folks.'

He knew what she meant: he recognized it in his mates, that searching, non-committal look they all developed through the need to know, and the effort not to judge. Cynical, some thought it.

He looked now at Hodgson, who said he was a garage mechanic himself, but that was by the way, he was here as a member of the local conservation society. 'And we're not just a load of old Nimbys, neither. Some of us have real principles,' he stated belligerently, and repeated that there was something the sergeant ought to know about, that would interest him very much.

Carmody decided to humour him and followed him across the site and through a smashed stretch of fencing to a large piece of land whereon, enclosed within a flattened barbed wire fence and surrounded by fields of meadowgrass, stood the remains of what had once been Forde Manor, now nothing more than rubble. A fourteenth-century listed building, according to the
Advertiser,
reporting its spectacular collapse, an unlucky casualty of the storm which had arisen on the night Nigel Fontenoy had died. Pictures of the house in its prime had appeared in a central spread devoted to 'Lavenstock's Night of Mayhem'. Many-gabled, timber-framed, with twisted chimneys and roofs sweeping to the ground, lattice windows peering from under the eaves, the house was said to have had a solar and a priest's hole, a spere-truss – whatever that might be – in the hall, and God knows what else. It had been a unique and irreplaceable example of medieval cruck construction. But derelict and dangerous for years, its floors and ceilings collapsed, its walls cracked, its foundations shaky. Like the Cedar House tree, it might have been struck by lightning, or the wind might have simply shaken it to bits. Whatever had caused it, it had gone down, collapsed into a mighty heap of rubble – hammer-beam roof, linenfold panelling, dog-leg staircases and all.

'It could've been restored, made into a showplace. Now it's just a bit more of our national heritage gone,' Hodgson mourned bitterly.

A pity, Carmody agreed. You didn't like to see part of the past disappear. On the other hand, maybe it had outlived its usefulness. Everything comes to an end. 'Act of God?' he suggested, though having guessed by now what was coming.

'God acted bloody conveniently for somebody, then! For the person who wanted it down to build a hypermarket. D'you know who owns this site? Jake Wilding, that's who! As well as that across the road. Must be laughing like a bloody drain.' Hodgson balled his fists into his pockets as if otherwise he might punch the first thing handy. 'Look at that!' he said, withdrawing his hand and pointing.

Carmody studied what the press photograph, taken from the front, hadn't shown: two sets of wide tyre-tracks, deeply bitten into the mud, leading to the rear of the house, and back to the building site.

'Are you making a complaint, sir?'

'Not yet, but we shall be. Our society's meeting tonight to decide tactics. But I'll tell you something: this house has weathered storms as bad as that for nigh on six hundred years. It was shored up, there was no reason why it should've collapsed – not unless the props were knocked away, deliberate. That way, it'd have gone down like a house of cards. There was a preservation order on it but that's no protection against a man with a JCB.'

'It'd be a daft thing to try. Dangerous, on a night like that.'

'Depends how much you want to build a multi-million pound hypermarket, doesn't it?'

Funny how often the very word 'hypermarket' was enough to send some people's blood pressure up to danger level. 'Would one be a bad thing, out here? What about service to the community – to the folks that live over there?' Carmody ventured, indicating the extensive spread of small, new houses which lay behind them, forming the Ashmount Estate, built right on the edge of the green belt. 'It's a long way out of town. Not many shops, I should think.'

Hodgson said, 'That's where I live. And I can tell you, this community needs another hypermarket like we need a hole in the head. What's another mile or so to pick up the shopping? We've all got cars. What we soon won't have is peace and quietness, a bit of real country, somewhere safe for the kids to play, if places like this are gradually being eaten into.'