Bring Forth Your Dead (21 page)

24

Rushton caught up with David Craven in the detention room at Heathrow.

He had booked a ticket on a flight to Milan in his own name: he was not the kind of criminal to have the false passport at the ready which would enable him to assume an alias. The computer threw him up immediately as a wanted person. He made no difficulty about his detention, and Rushton was on his way down the M4 to collect him within the hour.

As he led his sergeant through the crowds to collect his man, the airport was full of people travelling to all parts of the globe for Christmas. The duty-free shop was packed; its bright yellow and red plastic bags dotted the huge lounge, brighter almost than the myriad Christmas packages which poked everywhere from the personal luggage bags. Planes for most destinations were taking of on time on the cold, clear day; passengers were unwontedly cheerful, bright with the anticipation of friends and homes re-visited. It seemed a strange place to arrest a man.

It was not, of course. It was the anniversary of Lockerbie, and the airport staff were well aware of it, though under strict instructions not to recall it to their customers. The atmosphere in this large, bare room was very different from the cheerful bustle outside it. More evil men than simple murderers had been arrested here over the years: men who had despatched, or tried to despatch, into oblivion masses of people they had never seen.

The room seemed to retain a miasma of their distorted ethics. It must have been twenty metres long and half as broad. Yet it seemed claustrophobic. There were no windows here, save a single pane of one-way glass, through which the occupants might be observed by those who had set them here. The long, pale-blue walls had no pictures. The furniture was functional and well-maintained, far better than that of the public areas in most city police stations, but anonymous. The dark blue plastic of its coverings stared back impassively from a score and more of identical chairs: in an age of terrorism, the room had to be ready for large groups of detainees. It was a room that might have been designed by Kafka to depress and intimidate. David Craven had been there for almost three hours.

Rushton felt he was putting him out of his misery as he uttered the old formula: ‘David Alexander Craven, you are charged with the murder of Edmund George Craven. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be used in evidence.’

It was difficult to say whether Craven was stunned or resigned: perhaps it was both. he looked like a hunted animal which had so exhausted itself that capture came as a relief. He was haggard with loss of sleep. Though he had shaved, he had cut himself twice on the chin; the dark spots of dried blood looked like the beginning of some ugly and dangerous rash. The collar of his expensive car coat was half up and half down. One of his shoelaces trailed unnoticed on the floor. There was the smell of stale whisky upon his breath, but he had had no drink since he had been led to this room.

Rushton said, ‘Where did you spend last night?’ He was hoping for a confession; it seemed a neutral enough way to begin to build some sort of relationship with the man.

‘At a hotel on the outskirts of Slough,’ said Craven. Rushton would not have been surprised to hear him say he had spent it under a hedge. Perhaps Craven divined as much, for he said, ‘I didn’t sleep much,’ making it sound like an apology.

‘Why did you run?’ said the Inspector after a pause.

Craven glanced up at him; his dark blue eyes looked as black as the shadows beneath them. He said hopelessly, ‘You were going to arrest me.’

‘And now we have.’ Rushton didn’t know what Lambert had planned: even what he had thought in those last hours before he was struck down. ‘Running never does much good.’

‘How is Superintendent Lambert?’

Rushton felt a surge of anger that his assailant should now express concern. ‘He’ll survive, they say now.’ His latest information was that Lambert was conscious, but he was not inclined to discuss his condition here. ‘You might at least avoid the charge of murdering a policeman, if that’s what concerns you.’ Detective-Sergeant Rogers, who had ridden here in chastened mood with the Detective-Inspector to make the arrest, made a careful note of Craven’s question and did not look up. He was more relieved than anyone by Lambert’s progress in the last thirty-six hours.

Craven said harshly, ‘I didn’t attack him. I heard about it on the radio in my hotel room.’ His voice carried no conviction, even to himself.

‘Who did, then?’

‘How should I know?’ Craven’s haunted eyes looked round the bleak walls and found no relief there.

‘You must have heard also on the radio that we wanted you.
’

‘To help with your inquiries, yes.’ Craven attempted sarcasm on the familiar blanket phrase, but he could not quite bring it off. ‘Well, I’m here, aren’t I?’

Rushton wondered whether to take him off to stew in the cells for a few hours at Oldford. It might be the best way to secure a confession: Craven did not look the kind of man who would be at his best in adversity. Rushton decided to try a little longer here first; that at least would give him two bites at the cherry. He said, ‘It is in your own interest to be as helpful as you can to us.’

This time Craven’s bitter laugh came naturally enough. ‘Which means offering you a confession, tying myself up neatly and throwing myself on the mercy of the law. Well,
that at least I’m not going to do; I’ve helped you far too much already.’

Rushton thought of Lambert in hospital, recovering from the blow that could so easily have killed him. He was obscurely aware that the Superintendent would have handled this better. That irritation was heaped on to the anger he had determined to control. ‘You’re in trouble, Craven. Running away was as good as a confession.’ His contempt came out in the phrase, as though they were children discussing a boy’s refusal to stand still and put up his fists in the playground. When confrontations with people in custody led nowhere, they often ended like this, with the police asserting the simple facts of their control. ‘You’re going to be banged up for a long time, sunshine.’

Craven said hopelessly, ‘I didn’t do it.’ His face set sullenly, like a child’s refusing the facts thrust at him by an adult.

‘Then why run?’

The hunched shoulders twitched a little; it was too small a movement to be called a shrug. When he looked up and found the policemen still watching every reaction, he said, ‘Margaret Lewis always tried to put the blame on me; so did her son. Well, I suppose that was predictable enough. But I met Walter Miller last week and it was obvious he wanted me to say that I’d killed my father. And I’d taken a gun with me because I thought I might be meeting a murderer in a lonely place!’ He laughed bitterly at the irony of the thought. ‘Perhaps I was, for all I know: I’m certain one of those three did it. But you won’t believe that. Everyone seemed to know that Dad had been planning to cut me out of his new will.’ Rushton noted with satisfaction this first definite admission of what they had all suspected. ‘When eventually it became obvious that even my sister, who has always stood by me, was beginning to think I’d done it, I realised how little chance there was that anyone else would believe me.’ He spoke in the even monotone of one both exhausted and defeated, as if his words were not of himself but of someone with whom he had no emotional connection.

Rushton was not impressed. There was an edge of co
ntempt on his voice as he called, ‘And why did you try to kill Superintendent Lambert? Because he was getting close to you?’

‘I didn’t!’ It was the first real vehemence Craven had shown: perhaps he felt the police net drawing tight now around him. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted him dead. He was the man I thought might get me out of this. He’s a clever devil; I realised that.’

It was a defiant reversal for the quarry to pin his hopes on the hunter. But perhaps it did not sound convincing even to the speaker. He looked into the faces of the two CID men and found them only watching to see when he would break. There was silence as each side waited for a move from the other.

But the resolution of the taut little scene came unexpectedly from without. There was a brief knock at the distant door of the big room, a prelude to the almost simultaneous entry of a member of the airport police, who hurried across the dark carpet to the Detective-Inspector and said, ‘This message just came through from Oldford for you, Mr Rushton.’

Rushton’s face creased into a mirthless smile as he read the two brief sentences on the fax paper. He looked with a kind of triumphant distaste at his prisoner. ‘The scene of crime team have found the weapon which stuck down Superintendent Lambert. A marble statue from your office. Ring that lawyer now if you like. He’d better be good.’

25

After twenty-four hours, John Lambert had recovered consciousness and the various tubes were removed. After forty-eight hours, he was allowed to sit in a chair in his dressing-gown. After sixty hours, he had finished his grapes and was becoming a nuisance.

Christine refused to have any mention of work, and she
held steadfastly to her decision. Her husband knew better now than to try to break that taboo, as he might have done twenty years earlier. His head might hurt a little still, but it was functioning adequately: he bided his time and waited for the visit of Bert Hook.

The Sergeant came tentatively into the ward where his recovering chief now lay, carrying a spray of freesias which looked absurdly out of place in his large hands. His relief was manifest when a nurse removed them from him with skilled dexterity and the practised bromide words about their beauty. He sat on the edge of the chair by Lambert’s bed with his feet tucked back beneath it, looking for all the world as if he had come to take a statement. Visiting the sick was not one of his many strengths.

He asked the only question that would have concerned him in his chief’s place. ‘How soon are you expecting to get out of here?’

‘Within two days, they say. Possibly even tomorrow if I’m a good boy. They clear out everyone they can before Christmas. Christine has brought my clothes in already, but I think that was just to stop me bothering the staff.’

Hook nodded thoughtfully and subsided. Lambert, finding that he had to make the conversation, felt cheated of his invalid status. Yet with Hook it suited him well enough. They were old companions now, with no real need to hasten into the gaps inevitable in a dialogue in which neither side had any small talk. And it enabled him to arrive at the topic that interested him without any great difficulty.

‘I saw the Reverend Allcock at his retirement bungalow,’ said Hook. He wanted to ask why it had been necessary, but Lambert took him through a detailed account of the interview without commenting on its unremarkable content. ‘He conducted the funeral of Edmund Craven as the family requested?’

‘Yes. He liaised with Angela Harrison over it. I had difficulty in controlling his lascivious imaginings at the recollection: he’s a randy old bugger!’

‘I bow to your judgement as ever in such matters.’

They skirted carefully round DI Rushton’s direction of the case before Lambert said, ‘Have you arrested the killer of Edmund Craven yet, then?’

‘We have indeed. He’ll be in court tomorrow morning, charged with first degree murder. We’ll be asking for a remand, I expect, pending further charges. He hasn’t been charged with the assault on you yet. I suppose we had to wait to see if you’d survive.’

The black joke fell flat. Lambert stared wide-eyed at the Sergeant, so that Hook wondered if his recovery was going quite as smoothly as everyone seemed to think. Eventually he said, ‘You’ve arrested whom?’

‘David Craven, of course.’

‘Was it you who charged him?’

‘No. DI Rushton and DS Roger did the actual arrest. He was stopped at Heathrow when he was trying to leave the country.’ Hook did not care to admit that he had been kept away from Craven because Rushton feared he might not control himself in the face of what the man had done to his chief. The idea seemed both unprofessional and embarrassingly sentimental.

Lambert nodded absently. ‘Has he confessed?’

‘Not yet, as far as I know. I haven’t seen him myself. He’s got the lawyers busy, of course. No doubt in due course he’ll come up with the best brief.’ The resentment against those able to buy themselves the privilege of the best defence burned strong in Bert Hook; most policemen of his age have learned to accept such things with the weary cynicism of those who know they cannot affect the system.

‘No doubt he will, if it comes to it. Have you found the weapon with which this was done?’ Lambert gestured towards the dressing on the side of his head.

‘Yes. It was a marble figure from Craven’s office. You may remember it from our visit. Forensic have confirmed it: there was enough Lambert hair and gore still adhering to make it easy for them.’

The Superintendent winced a little in the face of this robust approach, his hand straying for a second automatically towards his wound. Then he said grimly, ‘And where was this so easily identifiable statue found?’

Hook thought his chief’s tone did not show due respect for the diligence of the scene of crime team. ‘Under the trees at the edge of the site. Near where the clearance work has begun for the flats development.’

Lambert nodded. ‘Where it was certain to be found.’ He looked past Hook, towards where girders were being hoisted into place for the extension to the hospital, watching for a moment the men in balaclavas guiding the steel carefully into position.

Hook said sturdily, ‘It’s evidence, anyway. Valuable evidence.’ He wondered whether that fearful bang on the head was making his chief resentful of his colleagues’ success in his absence. It would be quite untypical of Lambert, but he had heard before of personality changes following upon such injuries.

Lambert transferred his attention slowly back to his sergeant. ‘That remains to be seen, Bert.’

‘But it’s quite certainly the thing you were hit with. And—’

‘I’m sure it was the thing I was hit with. The question is, who hit me.’ He stared at the fields rising in a gentle slope beyond the building works. The frost had disappeared during the day, but the leafless trees were still as sculptures. The sheep on the skyline looked larger than usual against the darkening blue of the afternoon sky. He tried to think of the invisible Severn flowing slowly through the next valley, but no clear picture would come before his mind’s eye. It was surprising how quickly one became
hospitalised; the world out there seemed remote from the warm cocoon of his existence here, where meals came on time and the day’s landmarks were tablets and injections.

A resolution was forming in the Superintendent’s mind, a determination which seemed to wax strong on the misapprehensions of others. He said, ‘When does Craven go into court?’

‘Tomorrow morning in Oldford. He’ll be remanded to the Crown Court, of course.’

‘He mustn’t go. Drop the charges.’ Lambert was looking past Hook, giving his orders without explanation, like a not very benevolent despot.

Hook was not offended. He realised now that recovery in this case was slower than had been thought at first. Lambert would be his equable self again in due course, but it would take more time than they had been anticipating. He said, ‘That’s out of my hands, sir.’ It was the first time he could remember using the title in years, save on certain public occasions. He realised he was trying to make the denial of a sick person’s whim more easy for himself; he wanted this to be the decision of a huge and impersonal machine rather than of the Sergeant who had followed this frail-looking figure so unquestioningly for so long. ‘I don’t think the Chief Constable would sanction us drawing back at this stage. Unless—’

‘Unless we had someone else to charge. Someone who might even plead guilty.’

Lambert’s tone made Hook look hard at him, wondering whether there might after all be more in this than the effects of severe concussion upon an active mind. The very doubt was a tribute to what he had seen this unlikely figure in winceyette pyjamas achieve in the past. Lambert’s head had been shaved around the wound, to allow the medication team free access to it. The flesh there looked curiously pink and naked, the blue veins now exposed more vulnerable without their cover. The elaborate dressing looked as though it should itself be protected, as if only this small assembly of lint and gauze stood between the brain itself and a world full of menace. Even Lambert’s wrist, bandaged as a precaution to assist the sprain, made him look like a cripple in the bed. Hook thought he had never seen the chief look so old. Yet he did not look at all light-headed. And in the circumstances, that was depressing.

The idea that the eyes are mirrors of the soul is a romantic concept which should not be tested on policemen. By training and experience, they have learned to suppress such nebulous propositions; their enemies, indeed, would deny them souls. On the other hand, it is often possible to follow the workings of a policeman’s brain through studying his eyes. Now, when Lambert’s eyes looked carefully around the ward without any movement of his head, the Sergeant
divined his thought processes immediately. And the divination filled him with instant alarm.

Lambert looked thoughtfully at the curtains surrounding the bed at the end of the ward, where the nurses were working unseen on a patient recently returned from theatre. Then he eased his legs thoughtfully over the edge of the bed. ‘Those curtains are an excellent idea, Bert. Just pull ours around us: my clothes are in the locker.’

Hook agreed as though under hypnosis. Lambert dressed gingerly, while his sergeant tried like one in a nightmare to speak words which would not come. He found his hands moving unbidden to fasten the Superintendent’s shoelaces, while Lambert sat above him on the bed, holding his feet obediently forward like a sickly but determined child. By the time Hook stuttered into a half-formed protest, it was too late. Lambert, finger upon his lips to call for silence, poked his invalid head for a moment between the curtains to ascertain whether the coast was clear, then drew them back with a stage magician’s elaborate gesture to reveal himself fully clothed to an uncaring ward.

There was a brief but embarrassing scene in sister’s office at the end of the ward. While Lambert insisted calmly upon his right to discharge himself, the guardian of medical standards turned to vent her frustration upon the innocent Hook, as if he were the instigator rather than the victim of this outrageous breach of protocol.

Lambert affected not to notice the proffered arm as he walked unaided to the lift, wondering if the massive concentration this seemed to necessitate was obvious to observers. By the time he had covered the hundred and fifty yards of tarmac to Hook’s car, he looked exhausted. He allowed the Sergeant to stow him carefully into the passenger seat like an octogenarian, even allowed himself the luxury of a few seconds with eyes closed as Hook went round the car to the driver’s door.

But by the time Hook had started the Orion’s engine and looked questioningly at him, he was able to speak with something near his old authority. He settled himself back into his seat and looked straight ahead through the windscreen at the winter afternoon, as if savouring the familiar professional mantle he had resumed so irregularly. After the warmth of the hospital, he shivered a little.

Then he said, ‘Let’s go to Angela Harrison’s house.’