Only a Game (20 page)

‘Can you recall anyone else reacting strongly to the news?'

Pearson thought for a moment before shaking his head. ‘No. There was a hubbub of noise, and more confusion than I've indicated. But I can't recall any more of what was said. Edward Lanchester was pretty vehement, but that's what you'd expect. He's got a lot of respect and standing in the town, having been around for such a long time and been chairman himself in a different era. And unlike most of the rest of us, he also had nothing to lose by speaking up forcefully.'

‘So who do you think it was who went up there and garrotted Capstick?'

The sudden rawness of the challenge made Darren Pearson gasp. He wondered if it was a CID tactic or just a characteristic of Peach to be so forthright. He said as firmly as he could, ‘I've no idea. I've told you all I can.'

‘For which we thank you, Mr Pearson. If anything else, however trivial, occurs to you, please get in touch immediately.' DCI Peach stood up and placed his card on the desk Pearson had chosen not to use. ‘Thank you for providing us with a useful beginning. We shall no doubt need to have further words with you in due course.'

He made the routine conclusion sound like a warning.

FOURTEEN

I
t had been a long, hard winter, the worst for twenty years. But Spring had now definitely arrived. The crocus had finished, the daffodils were in full bloom, the tulips were in bud. It was a perfect early April day in north-east Lancashire. The clouds flew swift and high against blue sky over Pendle Hill and the greater heights of Ingleborough and Pen-y-Ghent away to the north. On the golf courses, the fairways had been mown and there was the first faint whiff of new-mown grass and summer promise in the air.

Percy Peach wondered whether his chief's colourful dress was an attempt to herald the spring or a reaction against the more sober colours he felt were demanded of him at Brunton police station. Either way, it was a mistake.

Thomas Bulstrode Tucker was a parakeet among the dull crows of the Lancashire landscape. Indeed, a large crow was regarding the chief superintendent with some distaste when Percy located him on the twelfth hole of Brunton Golf Course at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning. Tucker wore a sweater which was the colour of bright mustard and plus twos in the brightest scarlet Peach had witnessed. The knee-length stockings which were obligatory with plus twos were in a shade of lemon which was a pale shadow of the sweater above it. They had a spectacular spattering of mud which testified to the wearer's erratic progress on the eleven holes so far completed.

Peach watched his leader's club hit the ground two inches behind his ball and dispatch it a disappointing thirty yards nearer to the green. The effort soiled further the player's muddied calves. ‘Bad luck, sir,' Percy called sympathetically, as Tucker removed the worst deposits of mud from his person and slammed his club violently back into his golf bag. ‘Our fairways will be a bit drier at the North Lancs, I imagine.'

It was a source of continuing frustration to Tucker that his applications to join the more prestigious and demanding North Lancashire Golf Club had been repeatedly rejected on the grounds of his lowly prowess in the game, whilst Peach's application had been immediately successful. He whirled upon this unexpected interruption of his game. ‘What the hell do you want, Peach?'

‘And a good morning to you too, sir,' returned his chief inspector cheerfully. ‘Supporting Watford are we this year, sir?'

‘Watford?' Tucker assumed the air of blank incomprehension which Percy always found appealing.

‘The colours, sir. Very near to Watford football team's distinctive strip, I'd say. They're struggling a little in the Championship this year, I believe.'

‘Say what you've come to say and stop spoiling my day!' ordered Tucker as he glared with parallel malevolence first at Peach and then at his ball, which they were rapidly approaching.

‘We have a murder, sir. A suspicious death, at the moment. But the SOCO officer and I are both satisfied that this is a homicide, though we await the official confirmation.'

‘We are treating the death as suspicious,' Tucker muttered, rehearsing his official reply to all press and media enquiries. Then, with controlled aggression, ‘Why are you interrupting my weekend with this?'

‘Because you demanded that you should be informed immediately of all high-profile crime on our patch, sir,' said Peach, with equally controlled reasonableness.

Tucker aimed a desperate lunge at his golf ball, with predictable results: the ball sliced high and right and disappeared into a hawthorn hedge at the edge of the course. He wheeled on Peach with predictable fury. ‘What the hell do you expect me to do about it?'

‘Well, you could try turning your shoulders rather more and swinging more slowly,' said Peach thoughtfully.

‘Not the bloody golf ball, you fool, the suspicious death!' shouted Tucker, exciting the interest of a four-ball match on the adjoining fairway. ‘Some Saturday night brawl outside a pub, was it?'

‘Very perceptive about the time, sir. Yet to be firmly established, but the SOCO officer and I are already quite certain that the death took place last night, sir. I expect it's your well-known overview of the crime scene which gives you these insights.' Tucker was now risking further damage to his lurid apparel by thrashing a club desperately within the hawthorns in search of his ball. Peach watched with interest before saying sympathetically, ‘You might have to mount a full-scale CID operation to hunt down that one, I'd say, sir.'

‘Look, you've done what you came here for. Informed me of some low-profile death and ruined my game into the bargain! I think it's high time you were on your way, Peach.'

Percy pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. ‘Not low-profile, this one, sir. Not in my opinion. It's the chairman and owner of Brunton Rovers, sir. One James Capstick. Thought you ought to know, sir. By the way, your ball is three yards right of where you're looking and in the ditch, sir.'

It was a very grand modern house, with a service flat attached and what looked like more accommodation over the garage. It had an acre of immaculately tended garden. Daffodils in full bloom flanked the winding drive to the front of the house, and the first double red blooms were opening on the camellias which climbed on each side of the door.

Rather to their surprise, it was a man who opened the door to DCI Peach and DS Blake. He was a powerful figure, with broad shoulders and watchful, deep-set eyes in a square face. He recognized them as police before they could announce themselves and said, ‘I'm Walter Boyd, Mr Capstick's chauffeur. Mrs Capstick is waiting for you in the drawing room.'

It was a long, elegant room, with two large windows which looked across a sweep of lawn to the budding azaleas and laburnums in the border at the end of it. There was a grand piano in the corner of the room and what looked like a very expensive hi-fi system alongside it. The chaise longue at the other end of the room looked highly elegant but extremely uncomfortable; Lucy Blake guessed that people rarely sat upon it. There was ample and more comfortable-looking furniture in the easy chairs and sofas which sat upon a huge Persian carpet and occupied most of the rest of the room. The CID officers took two of the easy chairs at the invitation of the woman who had risen to greet them. She did not ask them if they wished for refreshment, but a moment later, a middle-aged maid brought in a silver tray with tea and cakes upon it.

Percy Peach made his customary apologies for intruding upon a grieving widow so soon after her husband's death, but he felt rather as though he was uttering stage lines in a comedy of manners. The air of artificiality was increased by the fact that the central figure in the scene did not seem to be devastated with grief. She poured the tea into the china cups with a steady hand and set them upon small tables beside each chair, then offered them plates and cakes. In all this time, they could not begin the questioning which was the occasion of their visit. It seemed that Helen Capstick and not Peach was dictating the pace of the action.

Eventually, Peach said grimly, ‘Mr Capstick appears to have been a man with a number of formidable enemies.'

Helen Capstick didn't hurry her reply, even after the delay her hospitality had ensured. Her hair was an unusual colour, a bronze which shone as if it had been burnished; it was so beautifully cut and set that it was difficult to tell whether the colour was natural to her or not. She had bright blue eyes, which studied her visitors as keenly as if they and not she were the subject of investigation. She said, ‘I would expect anyone with Jim's business ventures and successes to have enemies. I have no doubt that he fished in some fairly murky ponds at times, but I took care to know as little as possible about his businesses. He preferred it that way and I was happy to accept it.'

‘You're saying that you can't imagine who could possibly have killed him last night.' Peach let a little of his irritation show even as he took his first sip of the tea provided for him.

‘No. You're saying that Jim was murdered, then?' She did not seem to be outraged or even surprised by the word. She seemed almost as if she was joining in a game with them, for amusement played about her lips.

Peach said stiffly, ‘We are treating this as a suspicious death. That means that the possibility of murder must be investigated.'

‘Or even the probability. Mr Peach, let's not waste any more time. I think that someone killed Jim last night. The place where he died and the people who were there suggest to me that it was almost certainly someone with a connection with Brunton Rovers Football Club who killed him.' The language was formal, but as Helen Capstick became more animated, there was just a trace of a Birmingham accent, which came surprisingly from these sophisticated lips.

‘There are other possibilities. As you have declared yourself, a successful man in the areas where Mr Capstick operated makes enemies. It is entirely possible that one such enemy might have employed a contract killer to kill him at Grafton Park, precisely because that environment would divert suspicion from the real source of this attack.'

‘It is entirely possible, as you say. I had not considered such an explanation before, because of the announcement which preceded Jim's death last night. But I am sure that Wally Boyd, the man my husband chose to employ as a chauffeur, also operated as his bodyguard. He was not with him last night, of course.'

She could not prevent her dislike for the man coming out in the way she spoke, so that Peach was emboldened to add, ‘And no doubt Mr Boyd acted as a general factotum and gatherer of information for Mr Capstick.'

‘Possibly. I haven't bothered to speculate about Wally Boyd's duties: I doubt whether you would find all of them in his job description.' Again her coolness, even contempt, for the man edged through the calm phrases. Peach did not expect that Mr Boyd would remain much longer on the Capstick staff; he moved him a little higher on his mental list of people to be interviewed.

‘Mrs Capstick, you have just indicated that you think your husband's death was probably a direct result of an announcement he made last night. Please now give us your account of that announcement and the reaction of yourself and other people to it.'

She accorded him the measured, patronizing smile he had already seen. ‘I'm sure Mr Pearson has already given you his account of that.'

The manner of speech can be as revealing as the content: Peach divined in that moment that this woman had no great liking for Darren Pearson as well as Wally Boyd. ‘He has indeed, Mrs Capstick. Quite a vivid account, as a matter of fact. But now we should like to hear how you heard and saw the scene.'

She made a real effort to control her irritation and retain her coolness, well aware that this was necessary if she wanted to give as little as possible away. ‘It wasn't the right time to do it, but Jim said that it had to be done then and he was probably right. The newspapers were on to him and were preparing their headlines; it was better that the people concerned got the news from him than from them. Everyone was full of excitement in the hospitality suite, especially after the Liverpool board members had gone and we could let our hair down a bit. It was when the noise was at its height that Jim stopped things and told us that he was planning to sell the club.'

‘Did you know about what he was going to say beforehand?'

‘No. That may seem strange to you, but it wouldn't if you'd known Jim Capstick. My husband always played his cards very close to his chest. He was probably right to do so. The fewer people who know about these things before they have to, the better, he thought, and I'm sure he was right.'

‘I'm surprised that you didn't know, though. I'd have thought that with you there alongside him supporting the team, he'd have given you at least a hint of what he was going to say in the evening.'

‘Well, he didn't. And I think I'm happy that he didn't. I'd have felt a hypocrite sitting through the match with people like Debbie Black and Edward Lanchester if I'd known that Jim was planning to sell the club.'

‘So how did these people and the others there receive the news when Mr Capstick eventually announced it?'

She paused again, measuring her reply. Peach and Blake could not tell from her manner whether she was merely considering the question or planning to conceal something from them. ‘I think the predominant feeling was one of shock. One or two people, like Darren Pearson, must have had some notion that Jim was considering a sale, but I think even they were surprised by the speed at which things had moved on.'

‘What did you say when you heard the news?'

‘I don't remember saying anything. Oh, yes I do. I listened to several other people like Edward Lanchester and Darren Pearson voicing their concerns about the takeover. Then I asked if we could know who it was who was going to be the new owner of our club.'