Death on the Eleventh Hole (12 page)

‘So let’s say she put her normal two hundred in for the week we’re talking about. What about the other thousand?’

Tracey Boyd shook her head. ‘Drugs?’

‘Perhaps. But there is no sum as big as that at any other time. She put smaller sums in regularly — usually around two hundred quid, as you say. Could she have let money accumulate and then put it in?’

‘Not Kate. She didn’t like having cash around the place. She put it in the Cheltenham and Gloucester as soon as she could.’

‘So she didn’t tell you where this thousand had come from.’

Tracey Boyd’s face was full of conjecture about the sum. But all she said was a sullen, ‘No. I’ve no idea. She didn’t tell me everything.’ She sounded resentful, but whether of her friend’s secrecy or the relentless prying of the CID was not clear. Then she added, as if it were a consolation to her, ‘If it was anything to do with drugs, I’m glad she didn’t tell me.’

Lambert tried another sudden switch. ‘Kate Wharton had a boyfriend, didn’t she, Tracey?’

She looked for a moment as if she would deny it; she had made obstructing the police into a habit over the years. Then she admitted, ‘A smackhead. I warned her off him, but she kept seeing him. Thought she could pull him out of it, I suppose.’

She affected a world-weary contempt for her friend’s naivety. The CID men shared it to a large extent: they had seen too many women confident they could reform worthless men, and mistaken in that confidence. ‘Give us his name, please, Tracey.’

‘Joe something. I don’t know his other name. I only met him once. And I told you, he was connected with drugs, so that was enough for me.’

‘Do you think he killed Kate?’

This time she was really startled by the bluntness of the question. She recoiled from it physically, inching back a little on the sofa. ‘He might have, I suppose, if she tried to get rid of him. According to what she said, he was very keen. And there’s no knowing what they’ll do, is there, smackheads?’

‘Indeed there isn’t. For what it’s worth, we’ve seen the boy, and so far there’s nothing to connect him with Kate’s death.’ Whether he was guilty or innocent, the last thing he wanted to set in motion was a witch-hunt for someone in Joe Ashton’s condition. ‘Do you know the names of any of Kate Wharton’s regular clients?’

‘No. It’s part of the deal. We never ask for names. Most of them are married men. Or professional men. Or policemen.’ She gave him a bitter smile.

It was the response he had expected. Most people who paid for sex did indeed want to remain anonymous, and where the prostitutes did know a name, they knew they risked danger if they did not keep it to themselves. Indiscretions would mean that at best they would lose trade; at worst they would have their faces cut so badly that they would no longer be able to attract customers.

Lambert said gently, ‘This is a murder inquiry, Tracey. We’re looking for a man who might have killed your friend Kate, not just cheated on his wife.’

‘I know. But I don’t know the names of any of her regulars. It was understood we didn’t exchange things like that.’ Her face was expressionless, her mouth set into a thin slit, and he knew he would get no more from her, in this meeting at least.

Hook shut his notebook and the two big men stood up. ‘If you think of anything, including names, which might be useful in our enquiries, it is your duty to contact us immediately. We shall probably be in touch with you again, when we have gathered more information. Kate’s money will have to be returned to her estate, I’m afraid. Sergeant Hook will give you a receipt for it.’

She went and produced the two hundred pounds with a rubber band round it from her handbag, and handed it over with relief rather than resentment. She went down the single flight of stairs to the wide front door with them, as if anxious to make sure they were really leaving the premises.

Tracey Boyd decided she needed to indulge herself after that ordeal. She would make an exception and drink in the afternoon. She poured herself a stiff gin, filled up the glass with tonic. Then she sat for a long time on the sofa, leaning back into its cushions, trying unsuccessfully to relax, thinking about what she had given and what she had learned from the CID men.

She decided eventually that she had a good idea where that mysterious thousand pounds of Kate’s had come from.

Twelve

When Lambert walked into the murder room on Saturday morning, he knew immediately that DI Rushton had some interesting information for him. Chris was only in his early thirties, a young man still to John Lambert, and his face could not conceal his satisfaction in having turned up a piece of information which his chief did not possess.

‘It’s Roy Cook,’ said Rushton crisply. ‘He’s got a record.’

‘So why didn’t we know this earlier?’

‘Because he changed his name. Ten years ago, when he was thirty-two.’

Before he knew Julie Wharton then, if the pair’s accounts of their association were to be trusted. ‘So what had he done?’

‘Beaten up a woman. Because she refused him sex.’

‘He did time, then.’

‘Two years. He said he’d been led on, that the woman had wanted it, and then got scared. The usual mitigation plea. He was out in fourteen months, with remission. He was working on a building site in London at the time of the conviction. He changed his name to Royston Cook when he came out and came back to his native heath — he was born in the Forest of Dean.’

‘Any other form?’

Rushton shrugged. ‘Drunk and disorderly. Causing an affray. Both around twenty years ago. He was bound over to keep the peace — treated leniently as a young man, I suspect.’

‘Anything else?’

‘He was almost brought to court on a rape charge, a year before the assault that got him sent down. The police in Battersea had the case fully prepared, but the case collapsed when the woman refused to give evidence at the last minute.’

The usual story. Understandable that women could not face the public exposure and the public humiliation of hostile cross-examination by a defence counsel, but highly frustrating for the police and the Crown Prosecution who had put in the time to prepare a solid case.

It gave Roy Cook an interesting background. He was now involved in a murder case where the victim had fought desperately before her death, had retained traces of that conflict under her nails.

Bert Hook had been standing at Rushton’s shoulder, reading the information as it came up in the file Rushton had allotted to Roy Cook on his computer. He looked up into his chief’s intense face. ‘Do we go and see him now?’

Lambert frowned. ‘I’d rather arrive without giving him notice of our visit so he can prepare himself. It’s Saturday, and my guess is that he’s more likely to be at Julie Wharton’s than at his own house. Let’s try there.’

He was sitting in the driving seat of his old Vauxhall Senator before a panting Hook had even reached the passenger door.

***

Father Gillespie watched Joe Ashton with a troubled face. The boy was eating at last, but away from the others, at a small table on his own. He had refused the support of numbers, still looked abstracted and intense, as if his mind was elsewhere and he scarcely knew what his body was doing. But he was eating. He had already had a plate of cereals, and now the scrambled egg and toast was disappearing rapidly. He had looked like a lost soul when he had wandered into St Anne’s House on the previous evening. Even after a night’s rest, his cheeks were hollow and his eyes were sunk deep into their sockets.

Father Jason Gillespie made it a habit not to wonder what people had done, to offer shelter and support without asking questions. It was why people came to St Anne’s, why he had been able to rescue people who had one stage further to fall to prison or to a painful and ignominious death. But Joe Ashton’s appearance set him thinking about the visit here by that stiff, well-meaning policeman, DI Chris Rushton, and the questions he had asked about a dead girl. This boy had seemed to be one of his successes, well on the path to a normal life. Was he now guilty of the worst crime of all?

Joe Ashton had not taken heroin on the previous night. He wasn’t an addict, not anymore, and, for the first time since Kate had died, it was important to him to prove that to himself. That is why he had come to St Anne’s House: he was aware that he needed support if he was to do without smack, to pick himself up from the trough. He had tossed restlessly far into the night, had fallen into a troubled but restorative sleep at around half past four, when the first notes of the dawn chorus were shrilling round the eaves of the old house.

There were eight others in St Anne’s House that night. All of them were down at breakfast while Joe still lay face down and asleep on the thin mattress upstairs. It had taken Father Gillespie, shaking his shoulder and virtually ordering him to rise and eat, to get Joe down to the dining room. One or two of the others looked at him curiously when he went and sat on his own, but they were too full of their own problems, too apprehensive of a harsh, perhaps even violent, rebuff, to approach the old-young, drawn face in the corner of the room.

Because the others had almost finished when he arrived, he was alone in the big room by the time he had eaten his food and clutched his mug of hot tea in both hands, wondering what to do about the bleak world around him. Father Gillespie, who seemed over the years to have built up a feeling for such things, arrived at this crucial moment. He slid into the chair opposite Joe and said, ‘So what happens today, Joe?’

‘I don’t bloody know!’ Joe spat. ‘Come here to give me a fucking bollocking, have you?’ He didn’t swear much nowadays, was surprised to hear the words issuing from his lips. Father Gillespie wore no cassock, but his calling was a provocation to a man steeped in despair.

Jason Gillespie was unshockable. He had been through far worse than this, had swallowed blasphemy and obscenity for weeks on end with some of his guests, had sometimes endured months of such treatment with only the bitter taste of failure at the end of it. He said with a gentle smile, ‘Better out than in, stuff like that, Joe. But it doesn’t take the day away, and doesn’t answer the question about what you’re going to do with it. And I’ll give you a bollocking if I think it’s necessary. I’ve told you before: I’ll help all I can, but bear in mind that the kick in the pants might be part of the therapy.’

Joe Ashton looked up into the lined, experienced face, with its kind but challenging grey eyes. Jason Gillespie was actually forty-four, but to twenty-two-year-old Joe he seemed immensely old and immensely knowledgeable. Joe felt an sudden, enormous consolation in that thought; it was as if his desperate life and its decisions could be taken out of his hands by this sage from a different world. He said, ‘There’s bugger-all I can do, is there, Father?’

‘There’s always something you can do, Joe. You can pray, for a start, throw yourself on God’s mercy and ask for His guidance.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, God can go fuck Himself. He doesn’t exist.’

‘Be a bit difficult that, if He doesn’t exist. You’ll find He’s still there, when you’re ready for Him. In the meantime, you could get yourself off to Sainsbury’s and ask for your job back.’

‘Fat chance of that! I haven’t been near the bloody place for a week!’ It seemed so much longer than that, to him.

‘Tell them about Kate dying. About how upset you’ve been since then. I’ll ring them for you, if you like, prepare the way for you.’

Joe thought for a moment, looking at the scratched Formica of the table top. Those coppers who had come to see him in the squat had said that old sourpuss Harding at Sainsbury’s had thought he was a good worker. He might just get his job back, if he went now. He was aware, without admitting it even to himself, that he needed the routine of work. ‘I don’t need bloody priests to speak for me,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ll go down there myself, when I’ve had a wash.’

‘That’s good, Joe. And give yourself a good shave, with the electric razor up there, won’t you? They like a good appearance, in food stores.’ He was wondering whether he might make that preparatory phone call anyway, whether he could rely on the manager at Sainsbury’s not to tell the returning black sheep that someone had spoken up for him. Joe didn’t reject the advice about his appearance, so Father Gillespie said, ‘It was rotten about Kate, Joe. Still is, I know. It won’t bring her back, but the police will get whoever killed her, you know.’

Joe looked up sharply, and the priest saw panic flooding into his face. ‘They will, won’t they? I was sure they would, when they came to the squat.’

Jason Gillespie wasn’t sure whether the note in the boy’s voice was of satisfaction or of dull despair. ‘Do you want to talk about Kate, Joe?’ he asked. ‘It might be a help, you know.’

‘I can’t, Father. You don’t understand.’

‘Maybe I might, though, if you talked about it.’ This was not the confessional, where the boy would be asking for absolution for his sins, and the priest would be bound to secrecy. This boy had no religious belief, not at present. But the priest saw a troubled soul, and knew the benefits of release which sometimes came with talking. He said, ‘You and Kate were good mates, weren’t you?’

‘She was on the game. Dropping her knickers to anyone, for a few silly quid.’

‘I know that, Joe. There are worse things than that. You must have thought so, too, or you wouldn’t have bothered with her.’

‘Drugs, too.’

‘I didn’t know that. But you can kick the habit, as you know from your own experience.’

Joe shook his head. ‘She’d given up that. She was never a smackhead, like me. She’d given up dealing, too.’

‘That was good.’

‘I wanted her to move away. Start afresh with me.’ His voice had suddenly acquired a dreamy tone as he voiced the escapist vision Father Gillespie had heard so often before. He looked at the priest and said in a sudden burst of candour, ‘We were going to get married. We’d have been all right, you know.’

‘I’m sure you would, Joe. And if—’

‘But we had a row. A terrible row.’

Jason Gillespie was suddenly not sure he wanted to hear the end of this. He said, ‘I think you should get round to Sainsbury’s as quickly as you can, really. And if they want someone to guarantee that you’ll—’

‘The most awful row you could imagine, Father. I wanted her to give up the game and come away with me right now. She said we needed just a bit more money. That if I gave her three months she’d have it. I couldn’t face that. Kate being with other men, doing the sorts of things that—’

Suddenly his face was in his hands. Father Gillespie watched the slim shoulders heaving for a moment, then said, ‘I can understand that. I don’t think I could have lived with that, either.’

Joe Ashton’s voice was muffled by his fingers: ‘We had this awful row. She scratched me. I hit her.’

Jason Gillespie had a sudden, throat-constricting fear of what was coming next. He pulled the skinny young hands away from the anguished face. He heard himself saying, ‘It’s all over now, Joe. Best get yourself tidied up and over to Sainsbury’s. I’m sure they’ll want you back.’

Joe Ashton turned at the door. ‘I’m sorry I swore, Father,’ he mumbled as his last words before he disappeared.

Father Gillespie had forgotten all about the swearing.

***

They arrived at Julie Wharton’s house without announcement, as Lambert had planned. But if she was surprised to see them at ten o’clock on a Saturday morning, she gave no sign of it.

The only difference in the sitting room from their last visit was a photograph of Roy Cook on the sideboard, which confirmed Lambert and Hook’s view that it had been deliberately removed on their first visit to conceal the fact that she was so close to the man. And thus to keep Roy Cook out of the case: in view of what DI Rushton had just told them about the man’s previous record with women, that was an interesting thought.

She asked them to sit down, then showed a hint of underlying nervousness by asking the first question. ‘Have there been any developments?’ she said. It was a cool enquiry about a case which might have been quite distant from her, rather than an anguished request for news about the hunt for the killer of her dead daughter.

Lambert was irritated as he had been at their previous meeting by this seeming absence of emotion. He ignored her words and answered with a question of his own. ‘Is Mr Cook here?’

‘No.’ She looked at the TV remote control, which was on the low table beside Bert Hook’s armchair, where Roy had sat last night. Men always had to have the remote control, even when they put on the programmes you wanted. ‘He was here overnight, but he’s gone into work this morning. He said the overtime would be useful, and you have to take it whenever you get the chance with the Forestry Commission.’

Lambert nodded. ‘I suppose you know he changed his name.’

If she was shaken, she did not show it. She paused for a couple of seconds, weighing her words before she said, ‘I do know that, of course. And if you’ve discovered that, I suppose you also know about his record.’

‘Yes. We know he went to prison. For assault upon a woman.’

‘Yes. You don’t know what the woman had done to him.’

‘But the judge and the jury did, when he was given two years in prison.’

‘You may say that. Perhaps you have a greater faith in British justice than I have.’

‘Hardly. Any experienced policeman has seen dozens of people get away with crimes he knows they have committed. It’s the price we pay for a fair system, they tell me. So you know about Roy Cook’s time in gaol. Do you also know that on another occasion he was suspected of rape? That the charge was only dropped because the woman concerned refused to give evidence at the last minute?’