Body Politic (16 page)

She
was still standing at the window, watching his movements with a pale smile, as he returned. He said from the hall, ‘Shall I make you a coffee?’

‘
No. I had one not long ago. I’m ready to go, when you are.’

‘
No point in delay, I suppose.’ He put his arm round her shoulders, walked clumsily with her away from the window to the door of the room, and then took her in his arms. They kissed briefly, then held each other for a long, still moment, until he fancied he could hear her heart beating, even through the thick coat. They did not often touch each other during the day; never kissed as they parted in the mornings or met again in the evenings. ‘We’ll get through this, as we’ve got through other things,’ he said to the top of her head.

I
will, you mean, she thought. She wanted to be selfish, to ask how he could possibly know how it felt, to shout down his arrogance in assuming that this could ever be a joint thing. Instead, she said, ‘Of course we shall. We’ve been very lucky with illness, over the years. Something was bound to come up, sooner or later.’ And hit me, of course, not you.

The
small, frightened child that was inside the middle-aged adult wanted again to scream, to indulge in girlish hysterics, to be lifted into huge, enveloping adult arms and comforted. To be told, perhaps, that this was nothing more than a bad dream and that she was now returning to the safe, normal world. Christine murmured into the warm cotton which covered John’s chest, ‘We’d better be going, I suppose.’

The
hospital was not at all like the one where he had gone to interview Zoe Renwick. There were few carpets here, and much more noise. They had to wait behind two other people to register their presence at the desk, and there was much mysterious bustle in the corridors they walked to get to the women’s surgical wards.

But
the sister and the nurses were welcoming when they got there. This was a commonplace, everyday case to them, and the fact that Christine was to be an ordinary patient in an ordinary ward had its own compensations. John Lambert found himself wishing that everyone wouldn’t be so determinedly bright and cheerful, but he knew that was unfair.

The
sister said, ‘We shall want you to take away your wife’s clothes, Mr Lambert, but you can do that this evening, if you’re planning to visit then.’ It was a polite dismissal, and he was cravenly glad of it.

Christine
said as he hesitated in front of her, ‘Get off with you! You know you’re quite indispensable to the Oldford CID: I don’t want a crime wave on my account!’

The
sister followed him a little way beyond her office, to say to him discreetly, ‘Your wife will be operated on by Mr Robertson tomorrow morning, all being well, Mr Lambert.’

That
seemed like a contradiction in terms. He looked up at the windows of her ward when he reached the car park, but there was no sign of Christine’s face. There were so many panes in that huge slab of wall that he was not even confident that he had selected the right ones.

As
she undressed behind the screen, Christine Lambert said, ‘They’re nothing but big babies, these men, aren’t they? We’re better without them in a crisis.’

*

There were two police cars outside the thatched cottage of Raymond Keane. A WPC and a young constable who looked scarcely old enough to be in uniform were on their knees in the lounge. They had tweezers and small metal dishes in their hands as they covered the fitted carpet slowly and methodically, collecting hairs, threads of material, a stray paperclip, anything that might bring a suggestion from the silent room of what had gone on there. Scene-of-Crime work was ninety-five per cent unrewarding, but highly necessary for the sake of that other five per cent. A man had been found guilty of murder when a stray toenail clipping proved he had been where he denied he had ever set his guilty foot. SOC officers constantly reminded their teams of that case.

Sergeant
‘Jack’ Johnson had done this work for years, and he did not allow his subordinates to cut any corners. He was using different officers here from those who had combed the oozing winter ground around the pool in the woods, to ensure that concentration did not lapse through boredom or familiarity. Lambert said, without greeting him, as he came into the house, ‘You’ve finished your work where the body was found?’

‘
Yes, sir. I’ve put a copy of the written report in your tray in the murder room at the station. We—’

‘
Never mind the paper. Tell me what you found. If anything.’

It
was unusually abrupt. Lambert was normally brisk but polite, always appreciative of work meticulously conducted. It was one of the things which made his teams work long hours without much complaint when there was a serious crime. Today he looked white and drawn. Johnson wondered if he was suffering from the virulent flu which had caused so many absences this winter. Well, he could be rude, if he liked, without check. Superintendent’s prerogative. ‘We didn’t turn up much, sir. The clothing has gone to forensic, but I doubt if they’ll find much of interest on it. It’s been in the water for days, after all, and—’

‘
I know that, don’t I? And if anything comes, it will come from the lab, so don’t waste my time with bullshit. Anything from the rest of the area? Or did you just waste a full day’s time?’

‘
There wasn’t much. The ground had been frozen, so no wheel tracks. All footprints were eliminated as being made after the body was found, when the ground was softening up. We found an old ballpen, trodden into the ground and broken in two. There was a glove by the roadside. They’ve been bagged and retained, but in my view they predate the crime by months or even years.’ Johnson spoke quickly, lest he be cut off again for stating the obvious. ‘We found two things, but we’ve no method of knowing whether they had anything to do with the crime.’

‘
Well?’

‘
The first was a fag-end. Tipped. Sodden and flattened. Impossible to say how long it had been there.’

‘
Where?’

‘
By the pond, on the roadside. But it might have been there for months. It’s difficult to tell, with a cork tip. I doubt whether there’d be any possibility of DNA testing; it looked much too far gone for that. I’m sure there’d be no saliva traces or—’

‘
And the second object?’

‘
A wooden toggle. The kind they have on duffle coats. Quite worn. It didn’t come from the clothing of the old chap who found the body, nor from any of my team. But again, it might have been there for months, for all we could tell. It’s bagged and at the station.’

‘
Right. Anything here?’

Johnson
hesitated. It might not be the moment for speculation, with a chief in this mood. But the normal Lambert wanted things without delay. ‘I think he was killed here, sir. I think I know where, but I’ve only just found the place myself.’ He led the superintendent along the low hall with its irregular walls, across a modernized kitchen, into the doorway of what looked as if it had once been a large walk-in pantry, where the main fuse-box for the cottage was high on the wall. There was one of the metal dishes like the ones the officers in the lounge were using on the floor, with a pair of tweezers on its edge, which Johnson had obviously been using when he heard Lambert coming into the house.

He
picked up the tray, exhibiting the few fibres upon it to the superintendent’s experienced gaze. ‘I found these woollen fibres on the floor. Spread over about two square feet. There are probably one or two more of them: I haven’t finished yet. Forensic will test them, but I’m pretty sure they’ll find a match with the sweater Keane was wearing when he was fished out of that pool. There’s a heel-mark on the plaster there, too.’ Johnson pointed to a dark indentation some eight inches from the floor. ‘It may be quite unconnected, but I think we may be able to match it with the shoes Keane was wearing when he died.’

‘
You think Keane died here?’ Lambert looked up at the low ceiling of a room that was little more than a large box. The floor was about six feet square. A tiny place, but big enough for a man to die in. And he saw what Johnson meant about the heel-mark; if a man had been flung down roughly with a ligature about his throat, it was just the sort of mark his foot might have made on the white emulsion paint of the wall.

Johnson
said, ‘Even if he didn’t die in here, then the body must have been left lying flat in here. That’s the only way I can see those fibres getting there.’

Lambert
nodded. ‘I agree. Have you found anything here yet that might have come from anyone else?’

It
seemed ungrateful to Johnson, when he had just been so clever, that the man should merely ask for more. But he knew what Lambert meant. If Keane had been killed here, there would have been what the forensic people called ‘an exchange’ with his killer. If they could find something to link another person with this room, they might have their murderer. Johnson said, ‘There’s nothing yet, sir. Nothing definite. But it’s early days. We’re bound to find things from other people in due course. But whether—’

‘
Whether they’ll be significant in terms of murder may be another thing. All right. Carry on.’

He
went briskly out of the cottage to his car and Johnson lowered himself carefully to his knees in the doorway of the tiny room. He was excited, in spite of his years of experience, by the notion that he might find here the evidence which would solve this case. He had his tweezers inching cautiously over the surface again when he heard Lambert’s feet re-enter the kitchen behind him.

‘
Don’t get up, Jack. Carry on with the good work. And if I was a bit short with you just now, I’m sorry. I’ve got things on my mind at the moment.’

*

In the murder room at Oldford CID, Detective Inspector Rushton was methodically cataloguing the growing collection of items connected with the case. Most would end up as detritus, but a few as vital exhibits in court, and no one could yet distinguish between the two. The price of success in detection was eternal vigilance, in Rushton’s view, and far more often than not he was proved right.

Rushton
was filing reports from the house-to-house men when Lambert went into the station. There were not many residences near to Keane’s thatched cottage, and what few there were strung out along several miles of lanes. But rural folk were an observant, inquisitive lot, more likely to spot strangers and strange happenings than those who lived in Britain’s teeming urban streets. There had already been one quite interesting matter reported.

Lambert
stood behind his DI for a moment, watching the screen on the monitor as Rushton typed in information. Often there were half-humorous exchanges between the men about the value of computers to police work, as Lambert affected a contempt he did not really feel for the new technology to tease this very serious man. Today he said nothing.

It
was left to Rushton to say, ‘There is one interesting report. A woman who lives a couple of miles from Keane’s place goes past the cottage regularly on her way to work at a supermarket in Stroud. She’s seen a vehicle parked in the trees about a quarter of a mile from Keane’s house fairly often over the last couple of months. Half hidden, but she noticed it more often once she’d spotted it. Usually at weekends, she thinks. Which might mean when Keane was in residence at the cottage.’

‘
Any description of the vehicle?’

‘
No registration number. But she’s pretty definite that it was an older Ford van. White, with a big brown patch on one door, where it’s never been resprayed. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find. Oh, and she hasn’t seen it at all in the last ten days or so. Since about the time when we think he was killed, in other words.’

‘
Let me know when you find that van. Is there anything else?’

‘
Yes. Something definitely worth following up, anyway. We’ve been through the files from Keane’s constituency office,’ said Rushton. ‘Not computerized, but quite efficiently kept, in an old-fashioned filing cabinet. Most of them were one-off visits from his constituents, though that doesn’t mean one of them mightn’t be involved, of course. If our MP rubbed someone who was unbalanced up the wrong way, they might react violently after a single meeting. But we have to start somewhere. There are five people who have been to a constituency clinic either three or four times in the last year. I’ve got two men going round to see them this afternoon, or this evening if they should be out. But three of them are housewives and two are unemployed. We should have reports in by tomorrow morning at the latest.’

‘
Good.’ Lambert reacted automatically. Rushton always liked to display his efficiency, but it was so complete in these routine matters that only a defensive man would have felt the need. His superintendent registered what was said, but was too numbed to feel his usual irritation at this demonstration of industry.

Rushton
half turned to look at Lambert, and found him staring at the plastic bags of clothes on the table beyond his desk. He said, ‘There’s one chap who saw Keane seven times in the last year, sir. I thought I might go to see him myself.’