Close Call (25 page)

‘It's the National Crime Squad who pursue the big boys in drugs, Jason. Along with paedophiles, arms traffickers and major financial criminals. You've been getting yourself into some very bad company, Jason.'

‘I can't think what—'

‘They employ fourteen hundred police officers and four hundred and fifty civilian personnel. Many of them work under cover, throughout England and Wales. They pick up all kinds of useful information.'

‘This has nothing to do with me.' But Jason was aware that he was sounding increasingly desperate.

Ruth David permitted herself a sorrowful smile and a rueful shake of the head at the wrong-headedness of this young man, who was probably no more than six or seven years younger than her. ‘We've been talking to the National Crime Squad about you since you spoke to us on Tuesday, Mr Ritchie. Well, not really about you personally: you're not important enough for that. They're concerned with much bigger fish than you. But occasionally, because they're only interested in catching these bigger fish, a criminal tiddler is allowed to swim into their net and out of it again.' DS David paused, as if to savour her metaphor.

‘You've got the wrong man. This has nothing to do with me.' But the denial was wooden, automatic, and all three of the trio in this strange little exchange beside the garden gates knew it.

Bert Hook was avuncular, almost kindly. ‘Best admit it, Jason. Let's get on and get out of here, before we bring out everyone in the area.'

Jason had to resist the impulse to blurt out everything to this understanding man. He still didn't know how much they knew. ‘What am I being accused of?'

Hook said softly, ‘We now know that you have been dealing drugs, Jason. Dealing for Robin Durkin. You'd have been arrested long ago, if the National Crime Squad hadn't been more interested in the men making millions out of the trade.'

Jason lifted his hands, let them fall back helplessly on to his knees. He felt suddenly cold on this broiling day, felt the sweat cooling upon his exhausted body. ‘I've been trying to get out.'

DS Ruth David nodded, acknowledging that the man's formal, hopeless resistance was broken. ‘You're lucky there haven't already been charges for dealing. The best thing you can do now is to be absolutely frank with us. Then we'll leave it to Chief Superintendent Lambert to consider what to do about your previous lying, about your deliberate obstructing of the police in the course of their duties.'

‘I've been trying to get out. I had a scare two years ago. Nearly got caught outside a pub in Gloucester. It's only a matter of time before you get caught, when you're dealing.'

That tallied with the information they had, which said that Richie had been much more active in the trade two years ago than now. ‘So why didn't you? Why didn't you make the break?'

‘Durkin. He said he could drop me right in it, without implicating himself. That a word in the right ear would land me in deep trouble. I wasn't sure whether he meant with the police or the drug barons. They don't believe in half measures, those people. You end up in the river with a bullet in the back of your head.'

It was true enough, though she doubted if Ritchie was important enough to warrant a killing. ‘So you're saying that Robin Durkin had a hold over you.'

‘He had a hold over lots of people, I think. He enjoyed having that sort of power.'

‘You realize that this gives you an excellent motive for murder,' Ruth David said.

Jason nodded dumbly. He couldn't see any other answer to that. He wanted to deny that he had killed Robin Durkin, but the words wouldn't come.

Bert Hook said almost apologetically. ‘In the light of this new knowledge, I have to ask you again the question John Lambert put to you on Tuesday. We know that you left Saturday night's party at about one a.m. That has been confirmed by others. But did you leave Mrs Holt's house and go out again in the small hours of Sunday morning to meet with Robin Durkin?'

He shook his head miserably. ‘No. Lisa will confirm that.'

‘Mrs Holt admitted to us at Oldford Police Station this morning that she could not be certain of your movements from about one forty onwards. She said that she had had a lot to drink and fell quickly into a heavy sleep.'

It was like a blow in the stomach, a confirmation that his world was falling apart. He felt now that Lisa and he had been moving further away from each other all week, without either of them having the courage to put things into words. No doubt Lisa would have warned him that they were on to him, if he had not had his mobile switched off. He said hopelessly, ‘I didn't go out again. I went to sleep beside Lisa.'

DS David said quietly, ‘Then no doubt you are not able to tell us whether Mrs Holt left her house again that night.'

‘She didn't.'

‘Can you be sure of that?'

Jason's mind raced suddenly, when for minutes it had seemed clamped. They'd talked to Lisa, obviously. If what they had just said was true, she'd gone in voluntarily to the station to give them information. What on earth had she been saying to them? ‘Of course I can't be sure of Lisa's movements, if I was asleep. When you work like this, you don't wake up easily.' He lifted his arms and gestured vaguely towards the shining rectangle of the garage base, as if the fierceness of his physical labour could somehow demonstrate his integrity. ‘All I'm saying is that I'm sure in my own mind that Lisa Holt wouldn't creep out and kill Robin bloody Durkin. Why on earth should she do that?'

Lisa Holt had given them powerful reasons why she might have done it when she told them of how Durkin had wrecked her marriage and ruined her husband, but they weren't going into that with this man. Bert Hook said thoughtfully, ‘You must be relieved that you can get on with your life, Jason. Get on with what you called “keeping your nose clean”. That's another way of saying that you must be very pleased that Robin Durkin is dead.'

‘Yes. I—'

‘Did you kill him, Jason?'

‘No.' He wanted to enlarge on the monosyllable, to give them the words which wouldn't come to him to demonstrate his innocence.

‘Then who did?'

‘I don't know that either. There's no reason why I should, is there? That's your job, not mine.' He was proud of his belated flash of spirit.

DS David smiled at him, her oval face very pretty beneath the dark hair. Somehow that smile dropped Jason's heart towards his cement-streaked boots. ‘It is indeed our job, Mr Ritchie. And sadly, we shall have to report back to CID that we have not been able to eliminate Jason Ritchie from our enquiries into the murder of Robin Durkin. Good afternoon to you. Please accept our apologies if we have disrupted your legitimate work.'

She turned back towards the police Mondeo. Bert Hook looked down at the exhausted man sitting on the low garden wall. ‘Make sure you don't deal again, Jason. Cut yourself off entirely from that trade, and it's possible that there won't be any charges against you.'

Jason was grateful to the burly DS for his concern, when he considered things later. But it was that other and greater charge of murder which preoccupied his thoughts as he drove wearily back to his caravan.

Carol Smart, well-rounded and attractive, did not look like a killer. But she felt very uncomfortable as the head teacher left her in her office with two senior policemen.

Lambert introduced the tall, dark-haired man she had not seen before as Detective Inspector Rushton. He seemed to be in his early thirties. He was a handsome man when he smiled, Carol decided. He did not smile very much. In fact, after the initial, automatic little response when they were introduced, Carol could not remember him smiling at all.

It was Rushton who now said, ‘We need to speak to you rather urgently in connection with new information we now possess.'

‘I'm only too willing to help you, of course.' It was bland and meaningless, but Carol could think of nothing better. She bit back the impulse to embroider it, to tell them that there was nothing of interest that an innocent person like herself could possibly have to tell them.

Lambert gave her a small, encouraging smile, but she was already conscious of his unswerving attention. He said, ‘We now know a lot more about our murder victim, as you'd expect. Not all of it is very flattering to him.'

‘I'd expect that, if you've been talking to lots of people.' Again she had to resist the desire to say much more, to release her tension with a diatribe against Robin Durkin. ‘I told you about my affair with him when I came into the station on Wednesday, Superintendent. I don't think that particular liaison was flattering, either to him or to me.'

‘It hasn't gone any further than the CID files. And it won't, unless it proves to have a bearing on the case.'

‘Then what is it that you want to speak to me about?' An absurd, distracting reservation about ending sentences with prepositions assailed her. Perhaps that was an effect of being interviewed in a school.

‘We now know for certain that Mr Durkin was involved in the supply of illegal drugs.'

‘That doesn't surprise me.' It didn't surprise her, because she had known it for years. Carol could see no point in admitting that she knew as much as she did about the murdered man.

‘He was also a blackmailer, Mrs Smart.'

‘I guessed as much.'

‘Were you one of his victims?'

‘No. I told you when I spoke to you on Wednesday that he was a naturally secretive man, that he liked knowing about people's lapses and having a hold over them. But he never tried to get money from me. Perhaps he knew that I had nothing substantial to give to him.'

‘Blackmail has different faces, all of them ugly. Let's accept that Durkin didn't demand money from you. Did he threaten that he would reveal the details of your affair with him to others?'

Carol had planned to deny this. Now she suddenly knew that that would not be a good plan with these perceptive interrogators watching her so closely. Yet she couldn't bring herself to admit directly that Durkin had been threatening her. ‘I wasn't happy when I found that Robin Durkin was to be a close neighbour.'

‘You felt it was only a matter of time before he told your husband about your affair with him.'

He didn't allow evasions, this Lambert. She suddenly hated his calm and clear-sighted vision, the way he delivered this idea to her as a statement, not a question. ‘Rob enjoyed having secrets, enjoyed having people in his power.'

‘And someone felt that the only way to escape from this was to get rid of him once and for all. Were you that person, Mrs Smart?'

She denied it, and they let her go. But as they drove away from the school, all three of the people who had been in that room knew that the important question was still to be answered.

B
ert Hook was ready to leave the station when the desk sergeant buzzed him to say that there was a man who wanted to speak to someone connected with the Robin Durkin murder case.

‘I told him that the governor and DI Rushton had buggered off early as it's Friday. That you were the nearest thing to top brass we had available.' The desk sergeant was the public face of Oldford Police Station, wearing uniform and engaging in the long-established ritual of denigrating CID. He had known Bert Hook for nearly twenty years, since they had been coppers together on the beat.

‘They've buggered off all right. Beaten it to Birmingham.' Bert enjoyed a bit of alliteration. ‘To interview a contract killer. Still be working long after you're at home enjoying your conjugals, Mike.' He sighed. ‘Who is this bloke and what does he want?'

‘Name of Ronald Lennox. And he won't say what he wants: not to a humble plod like me. Clever-looking sod; also a prat, if you ask me. But I'm biased, of course. I'll bring the bugger through to the purer air of CID and be rid of him.'

Ron Lennox looked round him curiously as he was ushered into the almost deserted CID section, taking in all he could of his surroundings, making sure that this unimaginative detective sergeant knew that being in a police station was a novelty for him. ‘I really wanted to speak to Chief Superintendent Lambert,' he said, not attempting to conceal his disappointment.

‘Superintendent Lambert is pursuing another strand of the investigation this evening. Whatever you have to tell me will be recorded and relayed to him. Always assuming that it is judged to have relevance to the case.'

Not only have I not got the organ-grinder, but the monkey is attempting to be obstreperous, thought Ron. He said loftily, ‘Perhaps I should come back when the man in charge of the case has time to speak to me.'

‘I don't think you should do that, sir. There may be an urgent need for us to hear what you have to say. And I shouldn't like a delay to result in charges of withholding information.'

Uppity sod! Ron had expected them to be grateful for his cooperation, not to find himself threatened like this by a man who looked as if he should be chasing kids trespassing. He said loftily, ‘You said I should come forward if I had any further thoughts about Robin Durkin. I must tell you that I come to bury him, not to praise him, though.' He glanced at the stolid figure opposite him and decided he had better explain his literary reference. ‘Brutus talking about Julius Caesar, Detective Sergeant Hook. Of course, I'm hoping I shan't come to a sticky end, as Brutus did.' Ron's little cackle of laughter rang oddly round the large, low-ceilinged, almost deserted area. His expression said that he doubted whether this pedestrian plod would have any idea what he was talking about.

Hook looked at him steadily for a moment. He did not permit himself a smile as he said, ‘Not Brutus but Mark Antony, sir, if you remember. Not the noblest Roman of them all. Antony came to a different but equally sticky end, I think. But he enjoyed himself a little in the intervening years, I believe. Indulged himself in the pleasures of the flesh in Egypt, if I remember things correctly' Bert ignored the pleasing effect created by the dropping jaw in the thin face opposite him and glanced pointedly at his watch. ‘What is it that you wish to communicate to us, sir?'