Mortal Taste (19 page)

A less conscientious officer than DI Rushton might not have been there at all at 9.20 a.m. on a Sunday. But Chris had not found himself another partner since his divorce, and the neat but sterile little flat he was now forced to inhabit was a lonely place, though he did not care to admit that to his fellow officers. Loneliness tended to make a man conscientious.

She was small and very pretty, in a healthy, buxom sort of way. She was a natural blonde, with shoulder-length golden hair and a fresh, unlined complexion. She had never been in a police station before. When the magic word ‘murder' ushered her straight through into CID and set her in front of a hastily rising DI Rushton, she was a little disconcerted by the place.

She was bubbly and cheerful by nature, and she knew enough of life by now to understand that these were attractive qualities to the opposite sex, so she did not normally curb them. But early on Sunday morning in a police station, she found herself a little subdued.

To Chris Rushton her confusion was rather fetching. He explained to her about how murder rooms were set up, about the machinery of a murder investigation, about forensic laboratories, about how anything which might eventually prove to be an exhibit in court had to be carefully labelled and enclosed in polythene.

If there had been other people around, Chris would have been brisk and efficient, even impatient with his visitor. But now he took his time, trying to give the girl confidence as that annoyingly successful Bert Hook might have done. He found it an unexpectedly enjoyable process.

Statistically – and no one knew his statistics better than DI Rushton – there was every chance that this enchanting Sunday morning presence would be nothing more than a time-waster: most people who volunteered information in a murder investigation were no more than that. But this might just be the exception, and it came packaged in a wholly diverting form.

The girl took the initiative herself in the end. ‘You must wonder why I've come here. Well, I've had a sleepless night again. I decided I couldn't keep quiet about this any longer.'

‘That's usually much the best course. If it proves to have nothing to do with the victim's death, we shall be discreet.' Chris smiled encouragement to mitigate the formality of phrases he had used many times before. ‘May I have your name and address, please?'

‘Liza Allen. I work at the school where Peter Logan was the headmaster.'

‘At Greenford Comprehensive? But all the teaching staff have given us statements. I don't recall—'

‘That's just it. I'm not teaching staff. I've been expecting someone to ask me for a statement but no one has been near me so far.'

‘What do you do at the school?'

‘I'm a lab assistant. In the science laboratories.'

Chris typed the information rapidly on to his computer screen. He said in his most avuncular manner, ‘Now, Liza, you must have something you think is going to be useful to us, or you wouldn't—'

‘Peter was coming to see me, on the night he died. I live near the park where he was killed. Three streets away. Not more than three hundred yards from where . . .' She was suddenly in tears, and they came not just without warning but in floods, shaking her whole frame, shuddering the top of the blonde head as it fell forward, making Chris yearn to spring from his chair and put his arm tenderly round the trembling shoulders.

He did no such thing, of course. He said stiffly, ‘What makes you think that, Miss Allen?'

She looked up at him as if he had accused her of murdering the man herself. ‘I don't think it, I know it! He'd arranged it the day before, then he rang me at lunch time from Birmingham to confirm it.'

‘You were lovers?'

‘Yes. Of course we were!'

She spoke as if there could have been nothing more obvious. He resisted the urge to type this latest fact into his machine as she watched him. He kept his voice even as he said, ‘It's taken you a long time to come forward.'

She nodded, was about to speak when she was wracked by another bout of sobbing. ‘It – it was our secret. It was all I had left. And Peter has – had a family. I didn't want to cause pain for his wife and children, did I?'

Chris Rushton had to resist a sudden, surprising urge to take this silly girl by the shoulders and shake some sense into her. She was probably no more than six or seven years younger than he was. Why had she chosen to complicate her life with this ageing philanderer with his family baggage, when she could have had an eager young detective inspector with no ties? He said sternly, like a father-confessor, ‘And how long had this liaison been going on?'

‘Not long. A couple of weeks. We'd only – well, we hadn't been lovers for long at all.' Perhaps she saw the pity in his eyes, because she suddenly shouted, ‘And I realize I wasn't the first. I'm not stupid, you know!'

He looked hastily around. He wasn't used to dealing with emotional young women, but fortunately there seemed to be no curious observers of their exchange. ‘Of course you're not stupid, Liza. And you've done the right thing to make a clean breast of this.' He wished he hadn't used that particular metaphor as he watched her chest heaving impressively in front of him. ‘What we need to ascertain now is whether you can tell us anything which might help us to find out who killed Mr Logan. I'm sure you're as anxious as we are that we should arrest the person responsible as soon as possible.'

She nodded, unable to speak, and he feared the tears would burst out again. Instead she said, the words coming all in a rush, ‘It was that woman. I thought you'd have arrested her by now.'

Rushton was at a loss. He said woodenly, ‘A woman at Greenwood School, you mean?'

‘That damned teacher! Peter was in love with me, you see, and she knew it! She told me she wasn't going to let him get away with it. Those were her very words!'

DI Rushton knew now who she meant. He already had a file on this woman in his computer. But he wanted the accusation to come from those lips which seemed to him so red, so tender and so tremulous. So Chris said quietly, ‘And who would this be, Liza?'

‘Tamsin Phillips, of course.'

Steve Fenton was expecting the visit. He had been waiting for it since eight o'clock. By ten, he was quite nervous.

Lambert didn't make the conventional apology for disturbing him on a Sunday morning. Fenton had forfeited his rights to courtesy by withholding information on the previous day. Perhaps he realized that, for he seemed embarrassed as he led them into the tidy sitting room and offered them coffee.

To Bert Hook's delight, the offer was accepted. Fenton endured another five minutes of tense speculation in his kitchen before he set the tray down and handed round the cups. He was conscious of Hook flicking his notebook open ostentatiously as he munched his first bite of ginger nut. Finally Steve said, ‘I'm sorry I wasn't completely honest with you at our previous meeting.'

Lambert did not smile. ‘It would have been very much better if you had been.'

‘Yes, I can see that now. I've never been involved in a murder investigation before. It rather throws one's judgement.'

‘So it would appear. It also makes investigating officers treat your subsequent statements with an extra degree of suspicion.'

‘I accept that. But you must see how we felt. The dead man's wife and her secret lover, wondering what to do about a husband who will not countenance a divorce. It's a classic B-movie motive for murder.'

‘Which is made all the stronger when the people involved try to conceal their association after the murder. If you had set out to make us suspect the pair of you, you could hardly have gone about things better. Where were you on Monday night, Mr Fenton?'

‘I was here. Exactly as I told you yesterday. From six thirty onwards. The only difference is that Jane Logan was with me for most of the evening.'

Hook looked up from his notebook and said tersely, ‘Times, please.'

Even this stolid, easy-going sergeant was treating him like a criminal now, thought Steve. He made himself take a sip of the coffee he did not want before he said, ‘From seven thirty until ten o'clock.'

Exactly the times Jane Logan had given them herself. But you would have expected that: they must have conferred on this, and they weren't going to contradict each other over anything so straightforward. Lambert as usual had never taken his eyes off his man. He said, ‘So you are now giving each other an alibi for the time of the murder. Is there anyone else who could verify the fact that you were in this house for the whole of that time?'

‘No. Would you expect there to be?'

‘It would be helpful to you as well as to us if there were. All we are trying to do is to establish facts.'

‘I'm sorry. We were together for two and a half hours. I should think we spent over half of that time in bed. You wouldn't really expect there to be any witnesses, however helpful one might be to us and to you.'

‘No one phoned you during the evening? Even a telephone conversation would prove that you at least were here.'

Steve finished the biscuit he had bitten into earlier, finding it like cinders in his dry mouth. ‘I hadn't thought of that. But no. No one phoned me on Monday night.' He managed a smile. ‘I might have let the answerphone record a message if anyone had, since I was otherwise engaged in more pleasurable activities.'

Lambert looked him steadily in the face, wondering if Fenton was covering himself against the fact that they might find someone who had rung an empty house on Monday evening. He said abruptly, ‘Why didn't you tell us yesterday that you had an expertise in firearms?'

Steve was shaken, as the Superintendent had intended that he should be. But he made himself speak deliberately. ‘You didn't ask me about it. And I didn't see that it was relevant to your inquiry.'

‘When a man has half his head blown away with a Smith and Wesson revolver?'

‘Because of that very fact, Superintendent Lambert. No expertise is needed to place a revolver against a man's head and blow it away.'

It was a fair enough point, and Lambert acknowledged it with a thin smile. ‘All the same, when a man is shot through the head, it seems odd not to mention that you have won prizes for shooting.'

‘Modest prizes. At a local shooting club. Not at Bisley, Superintendent.'

‘You own a revolver, I believe.'

Steve Fenton smiled. He was getting used to Lambert's sudden enquiries, had recognized that they were a tactic. ‘I used to own one. Not any more. I gave up shooting and my membership of the rifle and small arms club when the regulations were tightened after that awful multiple shooting at Hungerford. I gave my pistol to the club: I haven't held a licence for years now.'

‘I see. Have you had any further thoughts on who might have killed Peter Logan?'

Lambert had expected nothing, but Fenton furrowed his brow and said hesitantly, ‘The school has a drugs problem, I believe. In that, it is no different from practically any large secondary school in the land. Peter Logan was aware of it, as he was aware of practically everything which went on in the place. I just wonder if he'd found out something which it was dangerous for him to know.'

Lambert studied him for a moment before he spoke, trying to work out if this was a genuine suggestion or an attempted diversion. ‘It's possible, of course. It's a line of enquiry we're pursuing, along with several others. But if Mr Logan had found anything significant, he hadn't contacted the police in Cheltenham about it.'

‘I see. Well, that wouldn't surprise me. He had a habit of hugging things to himself until he knew for certain, did Peter. And he was always very sensitive about anything which might damage the image of his school. He wouldn't have wanted to stir up a hornets' nest about drugs if he could possibly avoid it.'

‘There's a possibility Logan's death could have a drugs connection, but no more than that. My own feeling is that someone less anonymous and nearer to him killed him.'

Lambert's exit was as abrupt as his questioning. He left on what sounded to Steve Fenton something very like a threat.

E
ven detectives on a murder case must relax. The public does not like to accept it, but all sharpness, all sense of proportion, leaves them if they do not keep in touch with the more innocent world outside murder.

Lambert decided that Hook should continue his golfing education. On a bright, serene October afternoon, when there was a pleasant warmth in the sun, Bert, still a tyro in the game despite his nineteen handicap, was taken out to partner his chief at Ross-on-Wye Golf Club. He began by topping his drive horribly down the first.

‘Shame to waste a lovely day like this on such a bloody silly game!' said Hook. He was still missing the cricket he had played for Herefordshire for twenty years, still not reconciled to the relentless advance of the years that was condemning the doughty fast bowler to the effete game of golf.

But he was determined about one thing. He would stem the flow of his chief's tuition at source. When he saw John Lambert advancing into the fringe of his vision to give him advice, he held up a lordly hand and delivered his prepared statement. ‘I shall conduct my game without the benefit of your tutoring today, John,' he said. ‘We are out here to relax and enjoy ourselves, and I find your guidance prevents me from doing either of those things.'

That's telling the old bugger, Bert thought, as he marched away to his ball. He put his second shot on to the green with a majestic six iron. Bert was surprised, but he had already learned enough about golf to behave as if this was no more than his normal game and he had expected it. From the corner of his eye, he saw John Lambert looking stupefied – whether at the rejection of his advice or the splendour of his partner's stroke, it was impossible to say.