Just Desserts (19 page)

‘Or they could have been in contact with your husband much earlier in the evening, when he was alive and unthreatened.'

She thought about that. ‘That is certainly possible. Patrick moved among his guests before we sat down for the meal, and even moved around between courses to make sure everyone was enjoying the evening.'

‘People have not been honest with us, Mrs Nayland.'

She nodded slowly. ‘One person is certainly lying to you; we all have to accept that. Have you any idea yet who it is?'

He smiled a little at her naivety, fairly sure this time that it was at least partly assumed. ‘More than one person has lied to us, Mrs Nayland.'

She wondered how a simple statement could sound so menacing. ‘Really? I can't think why that would be.' She wished she hadn't spoken at all, when she heard the words sounding so trite in the small, windowless room.

‘People conceal the truth. It amounts to the same thing as lying.' Lambert was suddenly weary of the multiple deceits of the case. ‘People have their own reasons for withholding information, not always connected directly with the death. But it all helps to protect a murderer, in the end.'

She digested it slowly, being determined not to speak, not to incriminate herself any further. Yet the next second she heard herself saying, ‘I can see that. It can't help you when people want to preserve their own secrets. I've tried to be as honest as I could with you, but others—'

‘Have you, Mrs Nayland? Have you really been as honest as it is possible to be with us?'

She heard the strain in his voice, realized suddenly that this calm, authoritative man had to cope with his own tensions, with the frustrations caused by the people he had to question about a high-profile killing. The newspapers were beginning to dwell upon police bafflement in this case, to question the progress of what should have been a straightforward investigation. She said with dignity, ‘I'm sure that I haven't held anything back from you, that I've been as frank as it's possible to be—'

‘You've been frank about your husband's character, have you, Mrs Nayland? Told us everything that you know about him?'

She felt herself flushing as the anger rose within her. ‘I've answered everything you've asked me. Told you everything it was relevant for you to know.' She stopped suddenly, betrayed by her own phrase.

‘So you decide what it is appropriate for us to know, do you? Not us, who have the duty of finding a violent killer, who have a picture of things which you can never have, because we are talking to all the people involved? At present we are trying to piece together the true version of events last Wednesday evening from the snippets which people like you accord to us!'

Bert Hook had never seen Lambert so near to losing it with a quiet, apparently co-operative witness. He said quietly, ‘Mrs Nayland, you must see this from our point of view. Sometimes it seems as if everyone we speak to is trying to confuse things rather than illuminate them. We know that one person is fighting against the truth, has a clear interest in setting us upon false tracks. But sometimes it seems as if everyone is conniving to help him or her, as if everyone is part of a conspiracy to prevent us discovering who killed Patrick.'

She said dully, ‘I'm sorry if it seems like that. I'm sure there is no conspiracy. I'm sure most of us don't mean to be unhelpful.'

Lambert controlled his irritation, recovering the composure which had temporarily deserted him. He let the silence build between them. Silence standing like heat: he remembered that Larkin comparison. It was certainly hot in this airless room, despite the cold in the world outside. Eventually he said, ‘What sort of a reputation with women would you say your late husband had?' It was clumsy: he had been avoiding DI Rushton's ‘ladies' man' phrase, but he was pretty sure he had produced something more orotund.

Liza Nayland said, ‘Pat had a bit of a reputation, I know. But that was all in the past.'

‘You're sure of that?'

‘Are you trying to be gratuitously insulting?'

‘I'm trying to get at the truth, Mrs Nayland. A moment's reflection will tell you that this line of questioning is relevant.'

She breathed deeply, trying to retain control, to reveal only as much of herself and her emotions as she had to. ‘You mean that if Patrick was playing around, I might have killed him in a fit of jealousy.'

‘I meant that if anyone was jealous of what he was doing, that person might have killed him in a fit of murderous violence. It happens, and this death has the marks of a killing like that.'

She made herself speak evenly, to sound as if she was a woman who would never have lost control of herself like that. ‘Pat had a certain reputation as a Lothario, in the past. When he proposed marriage to me, I was shocked, because I had heard that he played the field, that he wouldn't be serious enough to venture upon a second marriage. I speak in the past tense, because that's where this side of his character was left. We had occasional spats in our marriage, as most successful marriages do. But we did not have any problems with either of us pursuing other sexual partners.'

None that you are aware of, thought Lambert automatically. But he could not offer that reservation to Liza Nayland without being pointlessly discourteous. He went as far as he could, saying stiffly, ‘Other people have spoken of a certain reputation attaching to your husband. You will understand that we needed to ask you about it.'

‘And now you have. And now you have my assurance that this is a line of enquiry which won't lead anywhere.'

He doubted that. But he thought she meant what she said. They said the wife was always the last to know, and sometimes it was true. He said, ‘Forgive me, but I have to ask this. Are you aware that your husband had a conviction for Indecent Assault?'

She could have hit him, for bringing this up now. Instead, she looked into the grey eyes and said, ‘I was aware, yes. But thank you for reminding me of it, six days after Pat's death. I don't wish to discuss the rights and wrongs of the accusations, though I have my own opinions on them. It's a long time in the past, part of an unhappy world Pat had left far behind him.'

Redeemed by a good woman, thought Lambert. The old story. Or, much more often, the old illusion. Many women thought they could reclaim a reprobate by tender loving care, and much more often than not they were wrong. He said, ‘You admitted last time we spoke that your daughter had experienced certain difficulties in adjusting to life with her stepfather.'

‘Yes. I also said I thought they were normal difficulties, which should not be exaggerated.'

‘Would your daughter support your view that her stepfather was no longer interested in women other than you?'

How insolent the man was in his persistence! She reminded herself that this was part of his job, forced herself to be coldly polite. ‘Of course she would! Any difficulties Michelle had with Pat were nothing to do with that, I'm sure. If you want my view, their clashes were more concerned with her deficiencies than with Pat's.' She hoped desperately that Michelle would support her on this, if they spoke to her again. Surely she owed that much loyalty at least to Pat.

‘What will happen now to Camellia Park?'

It was one of those bewildering switches by which he often caught people off guard. Liza took her time, then decided with relief that she could see no tripwires in this line of questioning. ‘Essentially, it will go on as before. We haven't agreed the details, but I have asked Chris Pearson to take up a partnership in the enterprise.'

‘That's generous of you.'

If she took the implication that it might be precipitate, with Pearson still a suspect in a murder investigation, she did not show it. ‘Chris deserves it. He's worked very hard at that golf course, right from the time before it opened. And it's not entirely unselfish you know: if Chris decided his future lay somewhere else, I'd be in a hole. No one knows the ins and outs of all aspects of the development as well as Chris Pearson.'

‘Who controls the pay structure at Camellia Park?'

It was abrupt again, without the greasing of the wheels she was used to in more normal conversations. She was beginning to realize that this man's very brusqueness was a tool, not a social deficiency. ‘Pat did, when he was alive. He always kept finance in his own hands, whatever he delegated to others. But Chris will take it over now, I imagine, though it's one of the things we shall no doubt confer upon. Both of us will want to know how well the place is doing financially: that will determine future plans for development. And salaries are a big issue in that equation.'

‘Would Mr Pearson have known about the wage structure whilst your husband was alive?'

She thought carefully, anxious now to convince him that she was holding nothing back. ‘I think probably not. Pat would share everything else, and I know he rated Chris highly, but it was something of a fetish with him to be secretive about what he paid people. He said he'd had to endure people knowing exactly what he earned when he was on military pay scales, and he hadn't liked it. So people who worked in his enterprises were going to enjoy privacy in that. Pat used to say that knowledge about salaries only led to petty jealousies, so it was better that everyone only knew about his or her own wage.'

‘I think he was probably right about that. Your husband and Mr Pearson were both ex-military men, weren't they?'

‘Yes. They'd both served many years in the Army. I think that was a common bond between them. They seemed to get on well from the start. People forget that everyone thought it was quite a risky enterprise, starting a golf course from scratch. And of course Pat had to lay out quite a lot of money before there was anything coming back from the course. He put most of his officer's gratuity into it. There was an interval of fifteen months between the time when he bought the land and the moment when the first green fees started coming in. I can remember that April morning very well.'

‘Did you know that Mr Pearson used to be in the SAS?'

‘No.' She tried not to resent the fact that he had dragged her rudely away from her reminiscences of happier times. ‘Is it important?'

‘I've no idea. Probably not. It seems rather odd that he doesn't seem to have told anyone about it, but I gather that secrecy is encouraged by the SAS.'

Suddenly, Lambert stood up, looking very tall in this small, claustrophobic setting. ‘If you have any further thoughts, Mrs Nayland, whether in connection with the issues we've raised today or anything else in this case, please get in touch with the CID section here immediately.'

DS Hook ushered her out to her car. Liza Nayland sat silently for a moment before she started the engine, scarcely believing how much the exchange had taken out of her, how searching it had been.

She was surprised to see her hands trembling on the steering wheel as she drove home.

B
arry Hooper was nervous. The CID men had been back to see Alan Fitch again and they must have given him a real grilling. He couldn't get the full story out of his boss, but he could see that they'd upset him. It wasn't easy to disturb Alan, but those buggers had done it.

And if they'd been back to Alan Fitch, they were sure to come back also to him. Yet they didn't. All through the long length of Tuesday morning, he waited for them to come, but there was no sign of the police Mondeo making its cautious way up the unpaved track to confront him in the greenkeeper's shed.

Alan Fitch clearly wanted to be alone with his thoughts after the previous afternoon's confrontation with the CID. He had given Barry a job on his own this morning, repairing the damage caused by subsidence at the back of the ninth tee. The young man went about it methodically, peeling the turf back carefully and adding soil to level the ground beneath, making sure that the grass when he rolled it back into place was just slightly proud of the ground around it, to allow a little for settling. Alan had shown him how to do work like this, and Barry wanted to show his mentor that he could do a perfect job without supervision or guidance.

Yet it took Barry Hooper longer than it should have done, because for once he could not give his mind fully to the work. All the time, as he sliced beneath the turf and peeled it carefully back, he watched the entrance to the club, expecting to see that police car turning carefully between the high brick pillars into Camellia Park.

When he met up with Alan Fitch for lunch in the room they knew so well at the end of the shed, few words were exchanged. Each man was preoccupied with his own concerns, and the part of the day which Barry normally most enjoyed was tense and joyless. After a few minutes, he could stand it no longer. He muttered some excuse to Fitch and roared away on the Ducati, feeling some of the tension stripped away from him as the icy wind howled around his face on the way into Gloucester.

He knew what he wanted when he walked into his familiar room, where the police had talked to him three days earlier. But he made himself a cup of coffee first, pretending to unwind, simulating the actions he would have taken in a more innocent context. He wished yet again that he had not done what he had done last Wednesday night at Soutters, tortured himself anew with the picture of how serene his life might have been now if he had only acted differently then.

The shabby wallpaper, with its almost indiscernible twenty-year-old pattern, and the torn curtain which concealed the tiny scullery were comforting to him by their very familiarity. At this time of day, most people who lived in this rabbit warren of a house were out, and no sounds of his neighbours came to him through the thin dividing walls. He should have enjoyed the privacy, but today he found himself longing for the reassurance of other, human noises around him.

Having delayed the action as long as he could, he walked as he had always planned to do to the scratched dresser and opened the second drawer down. The last bit of cocaine, the rock he had cut in half, lay like an accusation beneath the white vest and the blue socks. He had meant to save it, to make his supply last longer this time. But he needed it now, not at some time in a future he could not predict.