Malice Aforethought (6 page)

Dr Cooper’s natural caution surfaced immediately; he mustn’t allow this nice middle-aged woman’s relief to mislead her. When she had thought her pain stemmed from cancer, she had been adamant that he was to hold nothing back, that there was to be no room for what she had called ‘medical discretion’ with her. He hastened now to prick her bubble of optimism before it soared out of reach. ‘The news may not be quite as good as you imagined, Mrs Lambert. No cancer. But a serious heart condition. We’re talking about major surgery. Maybe a triple bypass.’

Christine, who knew she should look grave, tried to do so and failed. ‘Surgery is a relief now. I thought you were going to tell me that it was cancer which had gone beyond the lymph glands, that it was simply a matter of time. I was all keyed up to refuse surgery, to refuse any treatment except painkillers, in fact. I had my speech about going swiftly and not losing dignity all ready for you.’

Dr Cooper smiled. It was not often that someone greeted the necessity for a heart bypass with such elation. ‘There’s a high chance of a successful outcome; the figures improve with each passing year. But it is a serious prospect, nonetheless, and you and your family must prepare for it properly, Christine.’ It was probably because of her unexpected skittishness that he used her first name. He had seen this woman through three pregnancies and breast cancer, without ever falling into that intimacy; now, with the need to impose realism upon her schoolgirl buoyancy, it had tripped out quite naturally.

It was not the serious nature of her condition but the mention of her family which brought Christine Lambert back to earth. ‘Yes, you’re quite right, of course. I’ll prepare them. One thing, though: please don’t mention this to John at the moment. I’ll tell him, but in my own good time.’

‘I’ll respect your wishes, of course. But we really don’t recommend keeping secrets from spouses. In the long run, it doesn’t—’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell him. But although he’s a detective superintendent and well used to death, he can’t bear any thought of it within his own family. I don’t want him fussing round me like a protective mother, not until I’ve adjusted myself to the new situation.’ She wished suddenly that her own protective mother, who had been dead now these ten years, was around to see her through this. And with that thought, her levity departed and she became responsible again. ‘Don’t worry, Doctor, I’ll let him know as soon as you have a bed arranged for me. But John’s much better at coping with thieves and murderers than with a sick wife. He rather loses balance when I’m ill. He never had to cope with it until two years ago, and I doubt whether he’s a quick learner in this.’

Christine prevailed, as she always did when she was determined to do so, and they left it at that. And a seriously ill woman drove home with her heart singing with hope.

***

Superintendent John Lambert, thought by his wife to be so good at coping with murderers, felt himself not much nearer to discovering the identity of this particular one.

He sat in his office with Chris Rushton and Bert Hook, digesting the fund of information gathered by the team, trying to isolate the five per cent of it which might be important. ‘Anyone at the school we should put in the frame?’ he asked. ‘Apart from the obvious candidate, of course, who so delighted in showing us that he was in Ireland.’

‘That tale seems to stand up, I’m afraid,’ said DI Rushton, meticulous as ever, and as ever anxious to demonstrate it. ‘I checked the hotel in Killarney. Mr Reynolds and Mrs Giles checked in there late on Friday night. No ‘Mr and Mrs John Smith’ for them — I suppose hypocrisy isn’t the flavour of the month now in these things, even in the Emerald Isle. They stayed until Sunday and had dinner there on Saturday night, which seems to leave both of them in the clear.’

‘Unless of course one of them hired a contract killer. Sue Giles certainly seems to have the money to do so, but I doubt if she has either the contacts or the inclination to dispose of a troublesome ex-husband in that way.’

‘There doesn’t seem to be anyone else on the staff of the school who’s a likely prospect at present,’ said Bert Hook. ‘Two of the staff have had words with him in the last few years, and one or two parents have found fault with his treatment of their little darlings, but there’s nothing very serious. Most people say he was a popular and successful teacher.’

‘We certainly haven’t turned up a motive in the school for anything as serious as murder,’ said Rushton.

‘Any clue yet as to the source of this extra income over the last two years?’ said Lambert.

‘Nothing. It doesn’t seem to be anything educational. He didn’t do A-level examining, which was my first thought. In any case, that wouldn’t have raised sums like the ones involved here, and it would have come in one or two big cheques, not the fairly regular dollops of cash Giles was putting into the building society account. And he didn’t do evening class teaching or work for the Open University, which might have meant monthly payments, but again not of the size he was enjoying.’

‘So something criminal,’ said Bert Hook, not without satisfaction. Large, unexplained sums often meant some activity on the wrong side of the law. And where lucrative crime was involved, violence and even murder were never very far away. This might be the most promising line of enquiry.

‘No suggestion of criminal associates from anyone we’ve interviewed,’ said Rushton dolefully. ‘Even the rare people who didn’t like Giles didn’t suggest anything very shady. But I must say he does seem to have succeeded in keeping his private life exactly that in the last few years.’

At that moment, the phone on John Lambert’s desk shrilled insistently. ‘Sorry to interrupt you, sir,’ said the girl on the switchboard, ‘but I have a caller who insists on being put through to the office in charge of the Giles murder investigation. She won’t identify herself, and I’ve told her you’re in conference, but—’

‘Put her through, please. And put a trace on the call,’ said Lambert.

A high-pitched, female voice, discordant, near to hysteria. ‘Ted Bloody Giles. Paper says he’s a bloody saint. You find out about his work with Rendezvous, then see if you think he’s such a fucking saint!’

‘Please try to be calm. We—’ But at the other end of the line, the phone was crashed down.

The Rendezvous was an escort agency in Gloucester. The trace on the call revealed only a deserted phone box. But it looked as though they might have the source of the late Mr Giles’s extra income.

Seven

Colin Pitman was a successful businessman. Over thirty-five years, he had built up his haulage company from a one-man, one-vehicle business to a limited company which employed thirty drivers and owned sixteen heavy-duty vans and lorries. The Pitman name was familiar to the public on the sides of pantechnicons, and Colin had worked, thought and scrapped his way to a fortune. He was a rich man, proud of what he had achieved. He was also the father of Sue Giles.

A doting father, John Lambert decided, after three minutes in his company. They sat in his office, with its prints of Malvern at the turn of the century on the walls, a red leather Chesterfield which looked as if it had never been used, and a desk and swivel chair which matched the formidable bulk of the man who ran this business, which centred upon the yard outside these modest office premises. Lambert and Hook had come through that yard to meet their man. It was a busy place, with heavy goods vehicles moving carefully in and out of the service bays in the hangar-like shed where they were checked and maintained. There was a dominant smell of hot oil and diesel, which seemed to permeate even into this room, despite the vase of golden chrysanthemums someone had set in front of the unused gas fire.

Pitman listened to the sounds outside, even as he sat them down to talk and asked his secretary to bring them coffee, so that they divined immediately that he was hap-piest out there, with his finger on the pulse of that invisible but scarcely soundless body he controlled. A hands-on manager this, in the modern jargon, with firm ideas, tested in the hard commercial world beyond the small town where he was based. A man who was used to his own way and who did not take kindly to argument.

He made no pretence of wondering why they had come, though he plainly planned to offer them very little. It’s about Ted, isn’t it? Well, I’m sorry he’s dead, and I hope you catch the bugger who did for him, but I don’t see how I can be of any help to you.’

A Yorkshireman, by his accent, and no doubt proud of it and the bluntness which was supposed to accompany the breed. Bert Hook had bowled to some eminent cricketers but never to Boycott. He decided it must have been rather like questioning this man: he was all dour opposition, but ready to make you look silly if your concentration lapsed. Lambert, responding to this attitude in the man, said without preamble, ‘What did you think of your son-in-law, Mr Pitman?’

Hook, still thinking of Boycott, saw him coming down quickly on this yorker. ‘Not much. Put him out of my mind as much as I could. That’s why I can’t help you now.’

Lambert decided to behave as if the straight bat had given him a chance. ‘Ah! You didn’t much like Ted Giles, then.’

Pitman looked at him suspiciously. ‘Course I didn’t. He made my girl miserable, didn’t he?’ He snorted contemptuously that they should query what was so obvious and looked around him as if he wanted to spit, which he might well have done in the yard outside. He didn’t dislike policemen, who had their place in the orderly world his business needed, but he preferred them in uniform; you knew where you were then, with ranks and functions. He was suspicious of anything he did not know, and he had little experience of CID men in their plain clothes.

Lambert took his time. ‘We know their marriage broke up. Your daughter told us it finished years ago and—’

‘That’s right.’ A little too promptly, even interrupting; perhaps an automatic response, supporting his daughter.

‘And you blame Ted Giles rather than your daughter for the failure of that union?’

‘Course I do. He had it made with Sue, if he’d had the sense to see it.’

Lambert let the seconds stretch, but Pitman didn’t enlarge upon the thought. He glared at them, breathing heavily, as if they had offered him a personal slight. Eventually Lambert said, ‘I’d like you to give us an account of the marriage as you saw it.’

‘Why should I? It’s bugger all to do with you.’

‘In ordinary circumstances, yes. In a murder inquiry, no. You’re not stupid: you will appreciate we are looking for the enemies of a man who was brutally murdered. From your attitude so far, you would appear to be one. You can’t expect us not to pursue that.’

Pitman glared at him, then broke into an unexpected smile. ‘You’re a blunt man, Superintendent Lambert. In other circumstances, I might appreciate that. All right, I see your point. I didn’t like Ted Giles. Not much, even from the start, though I had to make the best of it when they were getting wed. My wife were still alive then, and she saw to that.’ For a moment, his face clouded, and they had a glimpse of how this self-sufficient man had relied heavily upon his wife in the areas outside his work. ‘I don’t know too much about the details of how he split with our Sue, but I do know Giles was playing away.’

‘He had other women?’

‘That’s what I said, isn’t it? Whether it was one or more than one, I don’t know, but she wouldn’t have it. And she were right.’ His jaw jutted aggressively above the barrel chest, as if he was challenging them to deny him.

‘Is Sue your only daughter, Mr Pitman?’

If Pitman was thrown by the sudden switch of line, he did not show it. This was a question he was often asked, and one of the few social topics he was prepared to enlarge upon. ‘Aye, that she is. And a good daughter, too.’

‘I’m sure she is. And no doubt the two of you are very close?’

He looked from one to the other of the two serious faces on the other side of the big desk, his face full of suspicion. He was saved from answering by the arrival and distribution of the coffee, but he was such a direct man that the pause did not help him. His hair was thinning and brushed straight back from his forehead, but he flicked away a non-existent curl from above his left eye in a nervous reaction that took him back forty years to the uncertain adolescent he had thought buried forever. It was a curiously touching gesture in this big, confident bear of a man. However strong we might appear, we are all vulnerable to our children, thought Lambert. He said again, ‘You have a close relationship with your daughter, I think?’

‘Yes. I try to look after her interests and she looks out for me. She’s all I have, since my wife went. More important to me than all this.’ His arms rose briefly, no more than six inches in the air, but the gesture took in the whole of the industrial enterprise around him and the ultimate futility of his success.

Lambert thought of the huge house and spacious grounds where Sue Giles lived in solitary splendour. No doubt her father lived in a house that was as big or bigger than that one, not just isolated but increasingly lonely, as the prospect of retirement and old age stretched out before him. ‘You don’t live together, though.’

‘No. She has her own life to lead. I see her twice a week.’ His terse declarations had all the determination he had shown earlier, as though two meetings a week was an arrangement he had resolved on and to which he was determined to restrict himself.

Lambert said gently, ‘She’s told you about Graham Reynolds?’

‘Of course she has. We don’t have secrets.’

How often the two men before him had heard parents, husbands and wives use that phrase! Sometimes people sounded as if they were trying to convince themselves, but there was no suggestion of that with Colin Pitman. Lambert said evenly, ‘Then you will know that she plans to marry Mr Reynolds.’

‘Yes. And to save you asking, I’m glad about that. He’ll be all right for her, help her to make a fresh start. If he doesn’t, he’ll have me to answer to!’

‘Just as Ted Giles did?’

Lambert spoke quietly, which only exacerbated the feeling of the furious Pitman that he had been led into a trap. He was a physical man, but there was no physical outlet for him here. He gripped the edge of his desk with both of his huge hands and said, ‘Clever buggers, aren’t you? All right, I told Giles years ago what I thought of him, warned him that it would be the worse for him if he didn’t treat Susie better.’

‘And how did he react?’

Pitman looked puzzled by the question, as if he had scarcely considered the detail of his enemy’s response. No doubt his own anger and his own compulsion to express it had been more important than Giles’s reactions. Then, as if loth to allow any credit at all to the dead man, he said reluctantly, ‘Giles said the faults weren’t all on his side. That he hoped they’d still get back together. That I’d better talk to Sue.’

‘And how long ago was this?’

‘About three years. I never spoke to him again.’ This time the answer was surprisingly prompt and precise.

‘And where were you on Saturday night?’

‘When Giles died, you mean? You can’t come here accusing me of—’

‘I can ask you where you were, Mr Pitman. You are one of the few people we have seen so far who admits to being an enemy of a man who was brutally killed. It’s part of our job to know where you were when he died.’

Colin Pitman looked from one face to the other, at the grey eyes of Lambert, at the pen of Hook poised expectantly over his notebook. Leaning forward, with his hands still clasping the edge of the big desk, he looked like a caged bear. ‘I was at home last Saturday night. The whole of it.’

‘I see. And no doubt you live alone.’

‘Yes. The woman who cleans for me doesn’t operate on Saturday night.’ It was a rare attempt at sarcasm from this direct man; it fell awkwardly into the quiet room.

Lambert ignored it. ‘You stayed in the house for the whole of the evening?’

‘Yes. And I’ve no witnesses.’

Lambert smiled grimly. ‘We tend to suspect alibis that come neatly parcelled for us. Nevertheless, if you think of anyone who can verify your whereabouts on that evening, I’d be grateful if you’d pass on the information. To eliminate you from our enquiries, you understand.’

Hook watched Pitman as Lambert reversed his old Vauxhall and drove carefully out of the busy yard. He was back among his men, directing them with his broad arms and his harsh, no-nonsense voice, back in a world he understood and dominated. They could see the relief in every movement of those strong arms.

What they did not see was that he was conscious of their every movement, even whilst apparently immersed in the operation of his business. Three minutes after they had gone, Colin Pitman was back in the privacy of his inner office, reviewing the visit, reliving the CID questions and his own responses. The outcome seemed to him satisfactory, as far as it went. These were shrewd men, more at home with murder than he could ever be.

But he didn’t see how they could possibly find out where he had really been on that fateful Saturday night.

***

DI Rushton found himself squirming, as he had feared he might when they got round to this subject.

‘Bit tricky, this Rendezvous business,’ said Lambert, po-faced as a Dickensian clergyman.

‘Very tricky,’ agreed Hook, as usual catching his chief’s drift immediately. ‘What would really be most useful would be to put an undercover man in there.’

‘Yes. Test the waters. Find out just how bona fide an organisation it is.’

‘Test whether it’s just an escort agency or something more sinister.’

Their faces turned in unison, innocent but speculative, to gaze at Chris Rushton.

‘Take a single bloke to convince them,’ mused Lambert.

‘Preferably a good-looking younger officer, who would excite plenty of interest among their female clientele,’ said Hook.

‘But a responsible senior man, who wouldn’t land himself in any embarrassing situations. There must be someone around here who could do it. Someone who might even enjoy doing it.’ He pursed his lips, without removing his eyes from Rushton.

‘Wonderful chance for the right man. Free crumpet at public expense. Free
desperate
crumpet, I shouldn’t wonder.’ Hook whistled quietly at the thought.

Rushton found his voice at last. The awful vision of the night when he had gone undercover in a situation like this, ending up drunk and with his trousers over his arm on a Cheltenham street at midnight, swam before him, removing all power of speech by its nightmare vividness. Eventually he blurted, ‘Not me! Definitely not me, if that’s what you’re thinking, sir. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t!’ Like many humourless men, he was often unsure whether those around him were serious or not.

Lambert looked incredulous. ‘You thought you might be the man for the job, Chris? Well, I’d never even entertained the thought, but now that you suggest it…’ He looked speculatively at his co-conspirator.

Hook was on cue with his enthusiasm. ‘My word, yes! Right under our noses, and we didn’t see it! Ideal man for the job. Young, good-looking, without serious ties. He’d be a natural!’ The two faces turned back to Chris Rushton, managing the difficult feat of looking at the same time both bland and expectant.

‘No way!’ said Rushton. ‘I’m quite ready to admit I don’t have the skills for undercover work. Not this kind, anyway.’

Lambert allowed his face to fall, not all at once, but in a staircase of disappointments, until all was gloom on the long, lined visage. ‘Pity, that. We could have gleaned all kinds of useful information. Feather in the cap of the man who secured it, obviously.’

‘Accelerated promotion, I shouldn’t wonder,’ mused Hook. Even his cheerful features descended into despondency at the thought of this opportunity forsaken.