Close Call (20 page)

The man was underlining the fact that he'd held things back on Monday, that the whole of his story would now be suspect. Phil knew he was in no position to take offence. ‘Yes. We all left at the same time. Around one, I think. Carol could confirm the time for you.'

‘And you didn't go out again that night?'

‘No.' He tried to take his eyes from the slowly-revolving cassette, which seemed to be atrophying his thought processes.

‘Presumably your wife could confirm that also.'

He almost nodded, almost gave them a weary, automatic yes. But Carol had been in here herself yesterday, had talked to Lambert; she had been mysterious, even evasive, with him at home, and he did not know what she had said. He couldn't afford to chance his arm with these two: not again, after they had exposed what he had said on Monday. So he said wearily, ‘She couldn't, actually. We sleep in separate rooms at present. I expect she told you that.'

She hadn't, of course, though Lambert was quite content that Smart should think that she had. Lambert wondered how much these two confided in each other, how many secrets they held back. He said, ‘This means that neither of you can confirm that the other one did not go out again after apparently retiring for the night.'

‘You're not suggesting that Carol could have killed him, surely?'

‘A woman could have done this, Mr Smart. The method of killing required no great physical strength.'

‘Not Carol. She couldn't have done this.'

‘And how do you know that? Because you did it yourself?'

‘No.' This time he did not shout. This time it was vital only that he made it clear to them that Carol could not have killed Durkin. ‘I simply know that my wife is incapable of murder, that's all. It's important that you should realize that. I don't want you wasting your time on Carol.'

For the first time since they had come into the interview room, Philip Smart had a kind of dignity about him. This florid, dishonest, rather ridiculous figure, who dealt in clichés and conventional reactions, was lit up by the startling intensity of his love for the wife he had wronged so often. It was totally unexpected in this middle-aged Lothario, but more striking as a result.

Lambert and Rushton reminded themselves soberly when he had left the station that he was still a very realistic candidate for the role of murderer of the man who had blackmailed and taunted him.

B
ert Hook looked at the anxious faces of his colleagues and didn't wait for them to voice the question he had no wish to hear. ‘Luke's holding his own,' he said. ‘The hospital people seem to think the worst might be over, but Eleanor's waiting to see the specialist.'

Lambert and Rushton muttered their relief at this terse summary, and Hook said, ‘Now, can you bring me up to date with what's been happening in the Durkin murder case? I'm afraid I can't claim to have been single-minded about my work over the last day or two.'

Neither of them ventured to suggest again that he should take time off because of his son's illness. Indeed, Lambert was secretly delighted that Hook wanted to be here: he had grown so used to Bert's comforting, complementary presence at his side that he now found it difficult to conduct key interviews without him. He said, ‘It's time we reviewed the case anyway. It would help to clarify my mind, as well as yours. I can't recall a murder victim being as universally disliked as Robin Durkin.'

Rushton nodded, flicking up the relevant list of files on his computer. ‘Blackmailers are a pretty odious crew, as we all know well enough. But even among blackmailers, Durkin seems to have been notably nasty.' Chris smiled at an alliteration he had not intended, then gave a professional grimace. ‘That has ensured that the list of suspects is still much longer than any of us would like it to be, five days after the killing.'

Hook thought of his white-faced Eleanor at Luke's bedside as he said heavily, ‘Have we eliminated the wife yet?'

Lambert shook his head. ‘We need to see her again, in the light of what we now know about her husband. And because of Chris's discovery that she had an abortion, three years ago.'

Rushton tried to look modest. ‘I didn't turn it up myself; I merely recorded it. And it may have no connection with this death.'

‘It's certainly not the sort of thing which women go bragging about to strangers,' agreed Lambert. ‘But we need to ask her about it, when there's a murderer to find. We need to know why she had the termination, and how it affected her relationship with her husband.'

Hook remembered the dark-haired, distressed widow very clearly, though because of the momentous events in his own life it seemed much more than two days since he had seen her. ‘She said when we first saw her that they didn't have secrets from each other. I remember thinking at the time that that was probably very unlikely. This job makes us cynical.'

Lambert could think of few people less naturally cynical than DS Hook, who tended to see the best in most people, despite all the evidence provided by his work. ‘And you were right, Bert. She admitted to us when we saw her again on Tuesday that she knew about his blackmailing activities. Now that we know a lot more about Durkin, it seems unlikely that Alison knew much of the detail of what he was up to. Or if we decide that she did, we need to follow up that knowledge. We now know that she was holding things back from us when we spoke to her on Sunday. I felt that we couldn't press her then, only a few hours after she'd found the body of her husband on the back lawn. We got a little more out of her on Tuesday. But the answer to your original query is that Alison Durkin is certainly still in the frame as a suspect for this killing. We know that she has a previous episode of violence towards a partner, albeit a long time ago, and we need to investigate with her what she felt about her abortion. She had the most obvious opportunity of all. And she was very anxious to suggest that some stranger had come into the garden through that back gate to kill Durkin. It's natural enough for those closest to a murder victim to prefer an outsider as the killer, as we all know, but Alison Durkin was very quick to stress the possibility.'

Rushton said, ‘She may be justified, though. Something's come in only an hour ago to support her theory. There was a call from Birmingham whilst we were talking to Philip Smart,' he added apologetically to a frowning Lambert, who was wondering why this had been withheld until now. ‘It now seems that there was a known contract killer in the area at the time of this death.'

‘Which known contact killer?' Lambert was dangerously terse.

‘Watson.' Anthony David Watson, the records said. But you somehow didn't deal in forenames when you spoke of contract killers.

‘Don't know him.'

‘He hasn't any convictions. Ex-army, like a lot of them. He was a mercenary in Africa for a year or two. Finds he has a lucrative career here, now.'

With the spectacular growth in the British illegal drug trade, there is plenty of work for people who deal in swift, anonymous death. If dealers disobey orders, or get too greedy, or stray into rival territory, or even get to know a little too much, they disappear swiftly and quietly. Liquidation is one of the necessary expenses of billion-dollar crime.

‘And you say he was in Herefordshire on the night when Durkin died?'

‘He was staying in Cheltenham. But the Serious Crime Squad have a reliable sighting of him in Ross-on-Wye on that Saturday night. About three hours before Durkin was killed.'

‘What's his usual MO?'

‘Rifle, with silencer when appropriate. Or pistol at close quarters. He's a marksman. Won a prize at Bisley, sixteen years ago. But he's a killer first and foremost: if he saw a silent and reliable method of dispatching his man, he'd take it in preference to a bullet. Garotting is one of the swiftest and surest methods of killing, if you can take people by surprise. And it doesn't leave slugs behind for forensic to identify.'

The three of them were silent, imagining the horror of sudden, silent violence in the small hours, in that quiet spot beside the River Wye. Then Lambert said, ‘What chance is there of pinning this on him, if he did it?'

The professionals were always the most difficult to arrest. They moved in and out quickly, killed swiftly and unemotionally, and left few traces of themselves behind. Received police wisdom argues that there is always an ‘exchange' at the scene of a killing, that the criminal always leaves behind something of himself, which forensic science can use to put him behind bars. But professional assassins are as aware of this as their police opponents. They leave minimal evidence of their crime; often, indeed, it is not even possible to be sure of where it took place. Bodies are dumped in rivers, or on building sites, or even entombed beneath the concrete of bridges or motorways. CID may suspect the contract killer, may even be privately certain that he is guilty, but without convincing evidence the Crown Prosecution Service will not even consider bringing a case to court.

Rushton shrugged. ‘There's going to be very little chance of making out a case against Watson, I'd say, unless we can come up with more than a sighting in the area. I'm trying to secure copies of his bank accounts, but I'm not hopeful.'

Lambert sighed. ‘We'll need to see him, in due course, unless we can be sure that he wasn't involved in this. I might want you to come with me for that, Chris.'

Both of them half-expected Hook to express his dismay at being deprived of such a meeting. Instead, he looked at his notes and said, ‘What about the older couple? Ronald and Rosemary Lennox. They always seemed unlikely candidates for this. Have you been able to eliminate them?'

Lambert shook his head. ‘Not yet. I agree that when you compare them with a contract killer they seem outside possibilities, but they both have motives, of a sort. And opportunity, especially if you envisage them being involved in it together. That, I'm afraid, is a possibility we have to bear in mind for all three of the couples involved.'

Rushton said, ‘Rosemary Lennox set up the evening where the victim died. A street party, I think she called it.'

Lambert grinned a little at his puzzlement. ‘Yes. She remembers the street parties at the end of the war, when she was only three. I saw the Lennoxes together on my own, on Tuesday. Ron actually taught Robin Durkin at school, about sixteen years ago. He said he was a high-spirited, rather mischievous boy, but nothing worse than that, at the time.'

‘But Lennox rather changed his tune when I saw him with you on Wednesday,' said Hook. ‘He admitted then that Durkin had been more vicious than that in his final years at school, and also that he knew Durkin was dealing in drugs within a year or two of leaving school.'

‘He also pointed the finger at Durkin as a blackmailer. He suggested that he was blackmailing Carol Smart and Jason Ritchie, though he claimed he had no clear evidence on that. Ron Lennox also said that Durkin was certainly not blackmailing him, that the idea of his having anything in his blameless past which could lead to blackmail was ridiculous.'

‘Which on the face of it seems likely to be true,' said Rushton, scanning his file on the recently retired schoolteacher. ‘He looks far too boring to be a murderer.'

Lambert gave them a wry smile. ‘I seem to recall something similar being said by policemen in Cheshire about a certain Doctor Harold Shipman, until the full extent of his killings became clear. Although I agree that Ronald Lennox looks more of a pedant than a killer, we'd better leave him in the frame for the moment. And I think we should see Rosemary Lennox on her own. She may be an unlikely murder candidate, but she hasn't been eliminated yet. And she does a lot of voluntary work in the community: she may know important things, even if she's not directly involved in this herself.'

‘Both the Smarts are still candidates for murder, in that they both admit being blackmailed by Durkin,' said Rushton.

Lambert shook his head. ‘Not quite, in Carol Smart's case. She admits to having an affair with Durkin in the past, but not to being blackmailed about it. But the effect is almost the same: Durkin had a hold over her and she was frightened that he was going to reveal things to her husband or her daughters.'

‘What about the only one who was there on Saturday night who doesn't live in Gurney Close? This Jason Ritchie has a history of violence. Stabbed a man three times. Only got off so lightly because of a good brief and police evidence which wasn't convincingly presented.'

Chris Rushton worked on the well-established police precept, ‘Once a villain, always a villain'. It is a deplorable assumption, of course, but statistics support police cynicism; most criminals are recidivists, and the number who start badly and end as model citizens is depressingly small.

Bert Hook said, ‘The GBH was five years and more ago. Ritchie's kept his nose clean since then.'

‘Or he hasn't been caught.' Rushton voiced the experienced copper's normal reservation.

Lambert said, ‘He's another man we need to see again, now that we know more about the murder victim. I'm sure he was holding something back from Bert and me when we saw him on Tuesday. He claims he hadn't had previous dealings with Robin Durkin, but it seems odd that he hardly spoke to him throughout that last Saturday evening. Ron Lennox says that he thought Durkin was blackmailing Ritchie, that he had a hold of some sort over him.'

‘Could that be anything to do with his relationship with Lisa Holt? She seems to fancy him as her toy boy.' Rushton, as a divorced man himself, was always sensitive to such issues.

Lambert tried not to smile. ‘I doubt it. The pair of them seem to have been quite open about their association, even to the extent of Lisa taking him along to the street party on Saturday night. She's divorced now from her husband, and it's difficult to see what anyone could make out of her pairing up with someone else, whether permanently or temporarily. Even a pillar of rectitude like you can't make much out of it nowadays, Chris.'