Merely Players (29 page)

‘Have you made much progress?' he said nervously.

‘Discrepancies,' announced Peach gravely. ‘Bane of our life, discrepancies are. But in answer to your question, they also represent a kind of progress. We investigate discrepancies and find out things we didn't know. And in our job, new information always means progress.'

‘I see.'

‘Do you, Mr Cassidy? Then perhaps you can help us to unravel the discrepancies in your own statements to us.'

‘I wasn't aware of any discrepancies. What I said seemed straightforward enough to me.'

Peach's eyebrows rose with a slowness which was almost stately. Then he smiled sadly. ‘Straightforward does not necessarily mean correct, though, does it? Any more than simplicity means honesty.'

Luke felt an immense lassitude seeping through his body. Wasn't it better just to let this man have his way? It would certainly be much easier than fighting on. He said heavily, ‘Perhaps you had better just tell me what the problem is.'

‘I think that would indeed be much the best thing to do. DS Northcott, would you recall to us the section of Mr Cassidy's statement which was problematical?'

Clyde opened his notebook and launched into the sentences he had been waiting to deliver. ‘“I went out to the pub at about eight o'clock – at my wife's insistence . . .I saw friends I hadn't seen for months and spent more like three hours than one with them. It was after eleven when I got home. About twenty past, I should think.”'

Peach let the silence hang heavy for a moment. Then he said very quietly, ‘Not wholly true, that account, is it, Mr Cassidy?'

‘I don't know what you mean. Hazel has told you when I went out. And I'm sure people can confirm to you that I was in the pub, if you need that.'

‘They already have confirmed it, Mr Cassidy. The interesting thing from our point of view is when you got there.'

Luke knew now what was coming, but he could see no way of deviating from the course he had set for himself. He said with weary inevitability, ‘The people in the White Hart
might have a little difficulty in giving you exact times. The place was crowded and noisy – on a Friday evening, it usually is.'

‘Yes. I think you were relying on that.' Peach sounded almost sympathetic.

‘They know me there, even though I haven't been in much lately. I was greeted by old friends. I even played darts.'

‘In other words, you did everything possible to remind people of your presence.'

‘I don't know what you mean.' But Luke knew exactly what the man meant; he just couldn't see any loophole left for an escape.

‘You played darts to make people very much aware of your presence. You spoke to lots of people. You tried to give the impression that you'd been in the White Hart
for much longer than you actually had. Several people remember seeing you in the pub. None of them remembers seeing you before ten o'clock. Indeed, one of them remembers your coming into the pub at about ten.'

‘He's mistaken, then, isn't he? I told you the place was crowded and—'

‘Where were you between eight and ten o'clock last Friday night, Mr Cassidy?'

For a moment, he considered stubbornly continuing his defiance. But he knew it was pointless. He said dully, ‘I went round to Dad's house. I think I wanted to argue with him about Adam, to tell him that he should try to stop doting on his every promise, because he was never going to be reliable. But when I got there and parked, I knew it would be hopeless and I couldn't bring myself to go into the house.'

He was silent then, wondering how he could have spent so long before he went to the pub, wondering how he was ever going to convince them without contriving a better story than he had prepared. Peach said softly, ‘You don't get much help with your father, do you, Luke?'

He hadn't expected this. He couldn't see where it was going. He said loyally, ‘That isn't true. Hazel cooks a meal for him almost every day. She's been a good daughter-in-law to Dad.'

‘But you bear the brunt of his decline, don't you. You're the one who sees him every day. You're the one who had to listen to him perpetually praising Adam, when Adam rarely chose to come near him.'

Luke felt his love for the woman in the rear part of the house like a physical pain. ‘Hazel does everything she can for Dad. She won't go and see him any more because she can't stand his bigotry, his racism and his narrowness, and most of all how he insists on going on about Adam and denigrating me. She doesn't like our children seeing him, for the same reasons. It's different for me. I know that Dad's not always been like this; I know the way he used to be when we were young.'

Peach's voice was as gentle as a therapist's. ‘But it's not easy for you. Not easy for you to keep things in perspective. Luke, you said on Wednesday that there were times when you could have killed Adam. Did you in fact drive up on to the A666 last Friday night and do just that?'

‘No.'

‘Perhaps without ever intending to harm him, until you found his shotgun in your hands?'

‘No.' He lifted his hands to the level of his chest in an attempt at denial, then let them drop back hopelessly to his sides. ‘I didn't go up there. I'd no idea where Adam was. I rang to try to speak to him but Jane said he was away for the weekend. Then I drove up to Revidge Road and sat looking out over the town, trying to get my head into some sort of order.'

It was the road at the highest point in Brunton. It commanded a view over the park and the old cotton town below it; where once there had been scores of mill and foundry chimneys, now there were four. Peach said, ‘Are you telling us you were up there for two hours?'

‘For the best part of two hours, if you say I didn't get to the White Hart
until en. I sat outside Dad's house for a few minutes, then I drove up there. I remember watching the lights of the town, and for some reason finding it consoling that they didn't change, apart from those of the cars moving along the streets.' He sounded as if he found his conduct as strange as they did. He said feebly, ‘I was very tired, I suppose, after a busy week at school and all the troubles with Dad. I wasn't thinking very straight; I think I just wanted to be on my own. Eventually I pulled myself together and told myself that if Hazel had been good enough to send me out to the pub I ought to go there and make the best of things. That's why I put myself about so much when I got there. And it was good for me, I think. Old friends help you to get a better perspective on life, don't you think?'

‘Have you any idea who killed Adam?'

‘No. I know his wife and children, of course, but I know scarcely any of his friends, and none of the people he'd been working with.'

Clyde Northcott waited until they were safely back in the privacy of the police Mondeo before he said, ‘Luke Cassidy strikes me as a man at the end of his resources.'

‘Yes. People like that commit murder sometimes. Losing all sense of perspective can be highly dangerous.'

‘He's no real alibi for the time of the killing.'

‘No. I think if I'd planned murder, I'd have made sure I had something more solid to offer than he had. But this killing might have been completely unplanned, of course. There might have been an argument which erupted into violence, with a shotgun at hand.'

Clyde Northcott negotiated the Mondeo past a group of office party revellers lurching into the road outside a pub. ‘Do you think Luke Cassidy killed him?'

‘No. But I've now got a very good idea who did.'

It was just after nine when Percy Peach got home at the end of a long and eventful day. He looked forward to getting back to his rather shabby house now as he had never done when he lived alone in it. He had a new wife. And not only a wife, but a woman who was the subject of male fantasies around the Brunton nick. He still couldn't quite believe his luck. And it was all down to Tommy Bloody Tucker, who four years ago had assigned Lucy Blake to him as his sergeant, in the belief that he would be outraged by being teamed with a woman.

‘I'm home, love,' he called down the hall as he hung his coat on the hook in the porch.

Lucy came out and decided that despite his brave show of energy he was allowed to be tired. ‘The gin and tonic's ready for you.' She looked at him nervously. ‘And mother's here.'

A man at the end of a thirteen-hour working day has every right to be disappointed when he arrives home and finds his mother-in-law encamped there. Indeed, for many men, ‘disappointed' would be a mild word. But Percy Peach was no ordinary man. And his mother-in-law was no ordinary woman. Perhaps that is why there had been such a bond between them, from the moment when the then Lucy Blake had taken home her new boyfriend, bald, divorced, and almost ten years older than her.

‘Haven't seen you for weeks!' said Percy as he gave Agnes Blake her customary hug. He held her for a moment at arm's length. ‘Do you think your daughter is trying to come between us? Do you think she's jealous of our relationship?'

‘Get on with yer!' said Agnes Blake delightedly. ‘But it's good to see you. Haven't seen you since that community meeting in the Paki quarter. I thought you were great, that night.'

‘Not as great as you, young lady. You got things going, you know, when you weighed in with Fazal Mahmood and cricket.'

‘I didn't know I was going to speak until I was on my feet. But you spoke your piece after that. And people listened to you.'

Lucy stepped firmly between them. ‘I am interrupting this mutual admiration society to announce that there is food available for you, Percy Peach. We've already eaten, but there's a quiche in the oven and some fresh bread and salad to go with it, if you want them.'

‘That would be wonderful, my dear wife,' said Percy with the beginnings of a bow. As an aside to Agnes as Lucy turned away, he whispered, ‘I'm no longer allowed to use the chip shop, now that I've been rescued by marriage.'

‘And a good thing too!' said Agnes emphatically. ‘A man working as hard as you needs a proper diet, not all this junk food. I only hope her cooking's improving. You tell me she's a good copper, but she was never much cop at that!' She giggled delightedly; she had thought up this witticism a week ago and stored it up for this occasion.

‘So how's the village?' he asked as they subsided into armchairs.

‘Getting over your marriage. I still get enquiries about that best man of yours from the girls in the supermarket, you know.'

‘Clyde Northcott? He's my right-hand man now, you know. He's taken the place of Lucy – in a manner of speaking. And you can tell them he's still unattached.'

‘So how's working life without my Lucy beside you, D.C.S.?'

With the possible exception of her daughter, she was the only person in the world who knew and remembered that Percy's real forenames were Denis Charles Scott, that a sports-mad father who was now long dead had named him after Denis Charles Scott Compton, one of the most popular of all English cricketers and the favourite batsman of Agnes Blake, who had been taken as a girl to see him play against the Australians at Old Trafford.

‘Busy but interesting, at the moment.'

‘Lucy says you're working on this Adam Cassidy case that's hit all the headlines.' Agnes was far too well-trained by her daughter to ask what progress he was making. ‘You should still be playing cricket at the weekends. You need to get away from work. You left the game much too early.'

It was a recurrent theme of hers. She had numerous cuttings and photographs of him as a quick-footed batsman for East Lancs, the Brunton team in the Lancashire League.

‘I wouldn't be getting much cricket in December, Mrs B,' Percy pointed out mildly.

Further exchanges on the subject were prevented by the arrival of Lucy with a tray of Percy's food. She had made tea for all three. The three of them made easy, unforced conversation whilst he ate. He hadn't realized how little he'd eaten during the day or how hungry he was until he began to demolish the food on the tray.

‘Right! I'm off now,' said Agnes, finishing her tea and downing her cup purposefully.

‘There's really no need,' said Percy gallantly.

‘There's every need. You've both had a long working day and you need to relax and compare notes. And I'd already said my piece about grandchildren before you got home, Percy Peach!'

‘What a sensible woman you are, Mrs B!' said Percy. Lucy was only twenty-nine, but her mother was seventy now, and anxious to have bairns about her whilst she could still be an energetic granny. ‘Between the two of us, we'll talk some sense into the girl.'

‘The girl is a woman. A woman with a career to think of,' said Lucy firmly. But she feared that her resistance was steadily weakening under the combined assault of this formidable duo.

They watched Agnes drive her Fiesta carefully away into the darkness, then went back into the house. Percy was silent for so long on the sofa beside her that Lucy thought he must indeed be very tired. Then, just when she thought he might have dozed off, he said thoughtfully, ‘You need people like your mum around, when you do the work we do.'

‘And why would that be?'

‘You get tarnished, if you spend the whole of your life in crime. You lose a proper sense of perspective.'

‘And one woman of seventy helps you with that?'

‘Yes. You need to be reminded that the real world is full of genuine people, good people. They're the people we're working for in the end, aren't they?'

‘Yes, I suppose they are. I think I see what you mean. Now that I'm working with the anti-terrorism security people, I see mainly Muslims. I have to remind myself constantly that the great mass of them are friendly, because the minority we're concerned with are sinister and dangerous. If you're not careful, you end up thinking everyone with an Asian face is a potential suspect. Innocence isn't a thing that we see all that often, because it's not what concerns us.'