Die Happy (17 page)

Wayne peered at him suspiciously. He'd met pigs before who said you could help yourself. Usually that just meant land yourself deeper in the shit, by telling them everything they wanted to hear. But if what these buggers said was right, he'd been nearer to a killing than he'd ever been before. He didn't like the feeling. ‘I didn't shoot anyone and I don't know who did. I'd tell you if I did.'

Bert Hook shook his head sadly. ‘Pity, that. I thought you might have been able to do yourself a bit of good. Look, let's accept for the moment that you had nothing to do with this killing, that you were there for other purposes entirely. Criminal purposes, as you're going to admit when your brief gets here, but not capital murder. We haven't got an exact time for it yet, but last night some person or persons unknown killed a man two houses down the road from where you were operating. Think hard, son; it's in your interests to do so. You must have had your ears cocked for any sort of noise all the time you were in that house. Did you hear any activity in The Avenue?'

A few seconds of silence, which this time stretched as long for the CID men as for Johnson. Then he said dully, almost like a man under hypnosis. ‘There was a car.'

Hook said quietly, ‘Don't make anything up, Wayne, just because you think it might help you. It will do the opposite, in the long run.'

‘No. There was a car. In the road, just after I'd got there.'

‘Parked there?'

‘No. It drove in. I'd reversed my van into the drive at the end house. That's easier for loading, and you can get away quickly if you need to, see. I'd just switched off when this car turned into the road and drove past.'

‘What kind of car, Wayne?'

‘I don't know. It was dark and I only saw it side-on as it passed.' It was suddenly important to him to convince them of the detail of this. ‘Dark colour, I think. Not silver or white, anyway.'

‘You must have listened hard when you were about to break and enter. Did the car drive on, until it was out of earshot?'

‘No.' Wayne, frowning with concentration, felt a swift wave of excitement sweep over him as he realized what he was going to say. ‘No, it stopped quite quickly. Turned into one of the houses further down the road and switched off.'

‘How far down the road?'

He shook his head in frustration that he couldn't be precise. Despite his low-key questioning, the PC Plod detective was excited, and Wayne had caught some of that excitement himself. ‘I couldn't say. They're big houses, with quite a distance between them.'

‘So it could have been two houses away from you?' Hook was leading the witness, but this wasn't a court of law.

Wayne shivered suddenly; it surprised him more than them. ‘It could have been, yes. I was just happy that it was well away from me. I listened for a minute, to make sure of that. I suppose I thought it was just someone coming home.'

‘Think hard, Wayne. Did you hear that vehicle again? Did you hear it drive away?'

‘No. I was doing the house over after that. Perhaps twenty minutes. Maybe even a bit longer. I didn't hear any other vehicle sounds. I didn't hear your blokes drive into the road, but they were waiting for me at the gates.'

Hook glanced at Rushton to convey that he didn't think there was anything more to be had from this wretched, frightened figure. The DI said, ‘I hope for your sake that everything you've said is genuine, Mr Johnson. As regards your burglary, you may expect be charged and released within an hour, once your brief arrives. Let us hope that we have made an arrest for the homicide committed close to where you were last night by the time your case is heard. That would enable us to assure the court that you gave us every assistance with a more serious crime.'

In the end, it was Sue Charles who offered comfort to Edwina Preston.

She saw her first in the car park behind the supermarket, when she was preparing to do her weekly shop. Edwina was sitting quietly behind the wheel of her car. She did not appear shocked or even surprised. She simply looked as if her thoughts were elsewhere. Like someone listening to music on the radio or CD, perhaps, thought Sue. She did that herself sometimes, when there was an aria or the movement of a symphony she wanted to hear to its end. Buying for one did not take very long. Sue emerged with her purchases within ten minutes, which included the two when she had been queuing at the till. She would buy vegetables and her first strawberries of the year from Percy at the little greengrocer's on the high street. She liked to support his stubborn resistance to the march of the supermarkets. She'd seen his little notice with its flying apostrophes as she drove past.

Edwina was still sitting in the driving seat of her car, with exactly the same abstracted, unseeing expression. Sue hesitated for a moment, then went over to the little dark green Fiat. She put on a cheerful smile and waved at Edwina from the front of the car. The face behind the wheel started violently, apparently did not recognize her for a moment, then smiled weakly. Sue opened the door of the car. ‘Are you all right, Edwina? I saw you before I went into the supermarket.' As if that explained everything, she thought stupidly.

Edwina nodded slowly. Then she shook her head vigorously. ‘Peter's dead.'

‘Good heavens! Are you sure?' Sue realized how stupid that sounded and took a deep breath. ‘Sorry, of course you are. I think you should come home with me for coffee. You shouldn't be on your own at a time like this.'

Edwina said dully, ‘I told them I was going to my daughter's. But I suppose I knew I wasn't, really.'

Sue was still stooping awkwardly beside the open window of the car. ‘You need someone to talk to. You can come with me in my car, if you like, and I'll drive you back later.'

‘No, I can drive. You lead the way and I'll follow you.'

Sue felt relieved about that. She'd be able to send Edwina on her way without the awkward business of driving a distraught woman back to this car park at some unspecified time later in the day.

But Edwina Preston did not seem to be distraught. She drove perfectly competently behind Sue's Fiesta, indicating each turn in good time and keeping just the right distance behind her Samaritan. She even chose to reverse into the entrance to Sue's bungalow, as if seeking to prove how competent and unshaken she was. Sue waited patiently for her to complete the manoeuvre, then put a motherly arm around the younger woman's shoulders and led her gently into her home.

Edwina stood behind her in the kitchen whilst she boiled the water and made the instant coffee. To Sue's surprise, she picked up the tray with the two china beakers and the biscuits and carried it into the cosy sitting room, careful as a child not to spill the liquid, the tip of her tongue wedged at the corner of her mouth and her eyes firmly upon the task in hand.

She must be around forty-five now, Sue calculated, though she looked understandably older at this moment. She was certainly quite a few years younger than Peter. Edwina had been in the sixth form and at university with her own daughter. That must be a quarter of a century ago now, though it seemed much less to Sue. She hadn't seen much of her over the last few years; she fancied that was because Peter Preston hadn't wanted it, after Sue's successes as a crime novelist and emergence as a minor local celebrity. Peter wasn't the sort of man who rejoiced in other people's successes.

Edwina sipped her coffee and munched a biscuit very slowly. After a few minutes, Sue said awkwardly, ‘It must have come very suddenly. Was it a heart attack?'

‘What? Oh no, nothing like that. I'd been away overnight, you see.' She spoke as if that explained the whole business, then said nothing more for almost half a minute. Sue was wondering how she could prompt her to reveal more when she said suddenly, ‘I believe someone killed him.' She sat with her head on one side for a moment, then added with apparent satisfaction, ‘That's what the police think, anyway. They said I couldn't go into the house yet. Said it was a crime scene.'

Sue Charles felt a little thrill of excitement. This would be her first real murder, when she'd created so many fictional ones. And the victim was someone who had derided her skills as a writer; there was something very satisfying about that, however much she might be occupied with ministrations to the sad figure in front of her. ‘Did they give you any clear idea of what had happened?'

‘No. They spoke as if there might have been an accident, at first. But when I asked questions about it, the young policewoman talked abut a suspicious death. That means they think someone killed him, doesn't it?'

‘It does usually, yes.' It would be three o'clock soon. Sue wanted to put the radio station on to see what, if anything, the police had released about this, but she couldn't do that with Preston's widow sitting very upright upon her sofa. ‘Sometimes after investigation the police realize there is a more innocent explanation, of course.'

Edwina Preston nodded. ‘They won't do that this time, though. Someone killed Peter, I'm sure. I wonder who it could be. He had a lot of enemies, you know.'

Sue Charles would recall those words many times, in the days to come. They should have been chilling, but she found in them a kind of comfort.

TWELVE

I
t took no more than an hour to set the machinery of a serious crime investigation in place. The house to house trawl of people in this area might throw up nothing, or it might provide the most vital clue of all in establishing who had been in the area at the time of the killing. It was dull, necessary and expensive in terms of manpower. Uniformed officers had to be recruited and put fully in the picture; that was a fact accepted with weary resignation and a few routine groans about the demands of CID by the sections losing staff.

To make sure this expensive team operated with maximum efficiency, the officers, some of them junior and inexperienced, had to be properly briefed. The procedure of house to house and other routine checks was simple enough, but the important thing was to provide officers with the correct questions. The place of the death was obvious and the method was clear, so where and how the victim had died were already evident. When the crime had taken place was now the most pressing question, if the team was to channel its questioning towards the key element in a killing.

Whilst Rushton and Hook were exploiting the windfall that was Wayne Johnson, Lambert received the call he was waiting for, telling him the pathologist was at the scene of the crime. He drove swiftly out again to The Avenue and the big mock-Tudor house. There were already a couple of journalists and a photographer outside the gates of The Willows. He wondered who had told them about this. Possibly one of the neighbouring householders, but in this case far more likely one of the police personnel at Oldford. It was almost impossible to prevent police officers from making easy money by unofficial leaks nowadays. As in other areas of life, professional pride was not what it had been when he joined the service.

He told himself he must behave like a modern chief superintendent and not an old fogey as he went into the house and watched the team at work. They were entirely civilian now, though he recognized a couple of ex-coppers amongst them and knew that the photographer was almost exclusively employed by the police. The ‘meat wagon' van was parked discreetly at the side of the house, awaiting the go-ahead to remove its grisly cargo for the post-mortem examination.

Lambert didn't speak to the pathologist until the man had completed his work and finished speaking into the mouthpiece that would record his immediate impressions at the scene as a prelude to the more detailed and scientific dissection to come. Rectal temperatures and the examination of intimate areas always felt like an invasion of privacy to John Lambert, even though a corpse could no longer register such violations. Humanity lost all dignity in death; it was inevitable, but depressing nonetheless. He was pleased that he still found it so after thirty years. A man had to cling to his humanity when he spent his life among such things.

The pathologist was a slight man with red hair and a tightly clipped red beard. He had neat, quick hands and an intensity that reflected his concentration on whatever task was before him at the time. Lambert had once asked him whether with such skills he wouldn't prefer to be a surgeon, and been told that pathology was the most satisfying surgery of all. You could carry your search for answers and the truth to the ultimate, in a way not possible when you had the tiresome issue of preserving human life as your priority.

The pathologist glanced up at the detective's patient, expectant face. ‘He was killed at close quarters by a firearm. Shot twice, almost in the same place, so presumably in quick succession. No suicide note?'

‘No. And no sign of whatever weapon killed him.'

‘Then you must presume that this was murder or manslaughter. Anyone in mind yet?'

‘No. His wife was away overnight.'

The medic smiled at the CID presumption that the next of kin must always be considered the first candidate for murder. ‘We should find the bullet when we cut him up. Give you a chance to match it with the weapon.'

‘Which is probably at the bottom of a river or under tons of concrete by now.' Lambert grinned sourly. ‘You know what I'm going to ask you next.'

The bearded one's grin was as acrid as the policeman's. ‘Time of death. And I'm going to tell you that I'll have a better idea after I've cut him up and done my work in the lab.'

Both of them glanced automatically towards what had so lately been a living, breathing man and was now just meat and bone, waiting to be butchered and analysed. ‘Give me some idea. You're not going to be held to it in a court of law.'