No Man's Nightingale (15 page)

All these details were relayed to Wexford or Dora and/or the Crockers by Maxine; they pooled their knowledge over a drink and at first the whole story was a source of amusement, pronounced ‘hilarious’ or ‘absurd’. Exasperated or bored by Maxine, Wexford had always found her anecdotes or longer stories funny, especially in retrospect, but the humour vanished from this one as events took a different turn. First he heard that Jeremy had been charged with causing death by dangerous driving and driving with over the prescribed limit of alcohol in his blood. It wasn’t an item of news to be imparted to Maxine. In fact he never imparted anything to her, founding their relationship on her talking and him more or less listening. Whether Maxine’s son knew about this he had no idea. After all, the fatality was the driver of the Mini and no connection to Jason Sams.

When the news came that made the comedy into something like a tragedy, Wexford was in Burden’s office drinking coffee and being told that Duncan Crisp the gardener had finally been arrested and charged with the murder of Sarah Hussain.

‘You’re sure about this?’

‘Well, yes, Reg, I am. His alibi doesn’t stand up and in each account that he’s given us times differ. He has a history of violence against women, if no convictions, but when he was kicking his wife around – twenty years ago, she’s dead now, poor woman – we weren’t treating domestic violemce very seriously. He’s known around here as being what I could reasonably call a militant racist and is a member of the BNP. He doesn’t attempt to deny it.’

‘But he does deny any hand in Sarah Hussain’s death?’

‘Yes, but that may well change. He was in court yesterday morning, pleaded not guilty, of course, and was committed for trial.’

A woman PC brought them tea and Burden talked about the evidence he had against Duncan Crisp. As soon as a news item about his arrest had appeared in the
Evening Standard
, the people’s warden, a woman called Jennifer Lomax, had come to the police station asking to see Burden. Now she had read about the arrest she thought it was time she told the police about a quarrel she had overheard between Crisp and Sarah Hussain, carried out over the garden fence. Crisp called Ms Hussain a ‘coolie playing at being a memsahib’ and ‘a blackie’ and she had told him he should be more careful about the racist things he said, saying that the names he called her many people would have passed on to the police as they were against the law. Ms Lomax, who had had a prearranged meeting at the Vicarage, had felt embarrassed about what she overheard but the vicar had smiled and said she felt sorry for Mr Crisp who was an unhappy man. But she had never told the police, Burden said. Could they have prevented a murder if she had?

‘Are you saying he killed her to stop her telling us – I mean the police – what he had called her? Bit thin, isn’t it?’

‘You know I’m not interested in motive. It’s enough that he hated her. A “coolie”, as he called her, living in that big house, being an important figure in the public eye. He admits calling her that, it’s not just Ms Lomax’s word. There is other evidence. A pair of cloth gloves, gardening gloves they are, apparently, found in his home and worn it seems just once. A gardener – he calls himself a professional gardener – never wears gloves but he had these, says they were a gift from a friend, and he put them on only in the presence of the giver when the gift was made.’

‘But you think they were worn when he went into the vicarage to kill Sarah Hussain.’

‘I do.’

‘So he went into the house carrying a pair of cloth gloves with the intention of wearing them once he’d found a weapon? Or did he carry them on him all the time just in case?’

‘When he was inside he was wearing them. He left no prints, never did find a weapon, of course – his hands were his weapon,’ said Burden crossly. ‘The way I see it, he went into the house for some reason we don’t yet know and Sarah Hussain was there alone dressed in those trousers and tunic – salwar kameez, is it called? It was more than he could stand. Perhaps he shouted at her. Perhaps he told her to go upstairs and change into something an Englishwoman – or a white woman – would wear. Did she laugh? Did she tell him not to be absurd?’

‘She would never have been rude or unkind,’ Wexford said. ‘We know enough about her to understand that.’

‘Whatever it was, it maddened him. He threw himself at her and strangled her with his bare hands. No weapon, no need for gloves.’

‘He put them on to avoid leaving prints.’ Wexford said nothing about Burden having no evidence that Crisp had ever been in the house, but it was likely his doubts showed in his face.

‘All these details will be cleared up before Crisp comes to trial,’ said Burden firmly.

Wexford’s walk homeward took him past Sylvia’s house and at the gate he paused. Dropping in uninvited on a daughter was something he had nearly always avoided doing. With Sheila it had been impossible. She had always lived in London and occasionally abroad. Sylvia too, ever since she left her parents’ home to marry Neil Fairfax (that marriage long dissolved), had invariably lived too far away, at the other end of Kingsmarkham or in one of the villages, to make a casual call possible. But now . . . She would be home from work by now and unlikely to be busy. He opened the gate and went up the path to the front door.

Hers had always been a difficult temperament, warm and generous enough except when she had a grievance, sometimes imaginary. She bore grudges too. Her ‘Oh, hello, Dad’ carried an aggrieved note, discernible perhaps only to a parent. But after a small hesitation she asked him if he’d like a cup of tea.

‘Yes, please.’

She appeared to be alone in the house, even her small daughter Mary out somewhere.

‘I’ve taken her to a birthday party which I could have stayed at along with a bunch of other mums. But there are limits.’

A large mug of tea was rather heavily plonked down in front of him. He made what turned out to be an intelligent guess. ‘How are you getting on with Clarissa?’

‘I thought you’d never ask but maybe you know already.’

‘I know nothing,’ said Wexford.

‘Clarissa is out. With Robin. For the third time this week. And no doubt they’ll be off somewhere for the weekend. I heard him introduce her to someone as his girlfriend.’

‘So what’s wrong with that?’

‘Can you ask? Yes, well, maybe you can. You brought her here, after all. A mother who was murdered, very dubious antecedents, mixed race – not that that matters –’

‘I should bloody hope not,’ said her father. He had had enough racism for one day.

‘I said it doesn’t matter. She says she doesn’t know who her father is and that shows the kind of background she comes from. Do you realise she could
marry
him?’

Little as he felt like laughing, he suddenly did. ‘Are you serious? Their combined ages don’t add up to forty. That’s the age people get married at these days – if they get married at all.’

She was glaring at him. He didn’t drink the tea she had brought him either but got up, shook his head and, managing a small wave, walked out of the house.

Only Jason was at home when Diane Stow and Johann Heinemann called at 123 Ladysmith Road for the key. Nicky and Isabella were still at the hospital and likely to stay there overnight, Isabella for observation and Nicky to be there because her daughter was. Jason intended to join them, was indeed about to leave the house for that purpose when Diane arrived, she and Johann in a rented car.

If Jason had been inclined to be rude or even abusive to any connection of Jeremy Legg, he changed his tune when Diane, usually a fairly placid woman, expressed her opinion of her ex-husband even before Jason admitted them to the house. Suddenly hospitable, he made tea. Diane, backed up by Johann who had never met her ex-husband, began taking Jeremy’s character apart. Not only was he idle, had never had a job, was unfaithful to her with anyone who would have him, but was a secret drinker, too much of a hypocrite to have a drink in a pub or bar like any honest person but a user of a hip flask he covertly filled with spirits.

‘You know like most people don’t have a drink or maybe just one before they drive,’ she said. ‘Well, he drinks before he drives. You want to know why? Because he’s frightened. He’s scared stiff of everything, like anything new. You can bet your life if you see him at the wheel of a car he’ll have been drinking.’

At this last Johann Heinemann let out a loud peal of laughter.

‘They’ll have got him this time,’ said Diane. ‘Breathalysed him at the site, you want to bet?’

All this was known to the police but not until that moment to Jason. He thanked her, gave her the key to her own house, and once they had left, set off for the Princess Diana Memorial Hospital.

Next day Isabella was pronounced perfectly well and Jason and Nicky were told she could go home. It was Maxine who, coming round to Ladysmith Road later, remarked that of course they sent her home. It was Saturday, wasn’t it? Hospitals always got rid of patients at the weekend, as everyone knew. Nicky remembered later in the day how Isabella had screamed when Jeremy’s car crashed but been very briefly silent, for certainly no more than a few seconds, then started screaming again. She said nothing about it. What would have been the point? The hospital had said she was OK and that should have been good enough. Besides, she wasn’t going to say anything with Jason’s mum there. She’d have been bound to make a big production of it.

ALL THIS FORMED
the principal part of Maxine’s narrative to Wexford on the Monday. Without apology, she interrupted Gibbon to tell him about 123 Ladysmith Road, Jason’s anxiety over Isabella and the dramas of Diane Stow’s arrival. He had been reading about ‘two fierce and enormous bears’, pets of the Emperor Valentinian, and named Innocence and Mica Aurea.
The cages of those trusty guards were always placed near the bedchamber of Valentinian, who frequently amused his eyes with the grateful spectacle of seeing them tear and devour the bleeding limbs of the malefactors who were abandoned to their rage. Their diet and exercises were carefully inspected by the Roman emperor: and when Innocence had earned her discharge, by a long course of meritorious service, the faithful animal was again restored to the freedom of her native woods.

He laid Volume 2 down and listened to Maxine. A kind of foreboding had taken hold of him – highly unusual with him – that all might not be well with Isabella Sams, that beautiful blonde child with her one-word vocabulary. As he had thought before, this might not be a laughing matter. Perhaps Maxine’s son might not be an over-anxious parent. Perhaps there was real need to be alarmed about Isabella’s condition.

He seldom spoke seriously to Maxine on the subject of the Sams family, he seldom spoke at all, but now he did. ‘What is Jason worried about?’

‘He reckons the Princess Diana didn’t do enough tests, scans, whatever you call them. They sent her home too soon. It’s like I said, hospitals never want to keep you in over the weekend.’

‘He should take her back there if he’s worried.’

And then Maxine reacted not as he would have expected her to, aggressively, militantly, but as her own parents might have done or her farm labourer grandfather, with the one-time working-class awe of doctors and hospitals.

‘Well, you don’t like to, do you? It’s like they know better than what you do. Jason said the same.’

Wasn’t it most likely that the Princess Diana Hospital did know better than Jason Sams and his mother? Of course it was. What did Maxine and her son know about scans and tests? Less than nothing, he thought, and went back to Gibbon and wondering what it was that made a man enjoy seeing wild animals tear a prisoner to pieces, a man otherwise merciful enough to give that wild animal its freedom rather than kill it. People were very strange, then and now.

He saw nothing of Burden all week. There was nothing to say. December came in with a snowstorm and phenomenally large flakes clogged the train lines, making the London to Eastbourne train seven hours late. The lead story in Wexford’s newspaper on Friday morning was the release of Duncan Crisp with a photograph of the gardener outside his own front door in Greenwood Court.

‘Why did you let him off the hook?’ Wexford asked in Burden’s office where he, Burden and DI Vine sat having coffee.

‘It was your buddy Jason Sams who unhooked him,’ Burden said.

‘No buddy of mine. What had he to do with it?’

‘He’s the manager of Questo and in that job, wandering round the store at all hours, he gets to know his customers, at any rate by sight.’

Vine took up the story. ‘He particularly knew Duncan Crisp because Crisp had complained about one of his staff, a woman on the checkout. He said she’d called him “elderly” and he wanted to see the manager. This was at two fifty on 11 October. All complaints have to be noted and logged, apparently. Crisp was told at first that he couldn’t see the manager, Mr Sams was busy. Crisp, who was sort of in his rights, I’d say, refused to move and just stood there, refusing to pay for his shopping until he got what he called justice. Well, after about ten minutes a supervisor appeared and said she’d take him to Mr Sams. He said the checkout woman had to come too, so she did, causing a great deal of disruption in the store.’

‘More complaints ensued,’ said Burden, ‘from the people in that particular checkout’s queue. Anyway, Crisp and the checkout woman, Mrs Louise Wilson, and the supervisor, Mrs Amina Khan, all went to see Jason Sams and Louise Wilson said that what she’d said to Crisp was that they usually packed the goods into bags for elderly people and would he like the service. That was the cause of it all. By this time it was twenty past three and Crisp was pacified by having his stuff packed and a free lift home in the car belonging to the supervisor whose shift had just ended.

‘We’ve talked to all these people, sir,’ said Vine. This time Wexford didn’t bother to correct him. ‘Louise Wilson and Amina Khan all corroborate Jason Sams’s story. There’s no doubt Crisp was in the store from some twenty to three until three thirty and then in the car with Amina Khan until she dropped him off at his flat in Greenwood Court.’