Close Call (24 page)

The man had never taken his eyes from Watson's face. He said calmly, ‘I am Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert. This is Detective Inspector Rushton. We'd like a few words with you, Mr Watson.'

T
he Governors'Meeting of the junior school was conducted with brisk efficiency. That was normal, with Rosemary Lennox in the chair.

The news was generally good, she reported. The intake for the coming September was now finalized, and numbers would be up, for the third year in succession. The number of pupils was important, because there had been a threat to the future of the school a few years ago, when many of the villages of Gloucestershire and Herefordshire had lost the schools at the hearts of their communities as falling rolls in the classrooms took their toll.

This one had acquired a new, enthusiastic head teacher and Rosemary Lennox as chairman of its governing body at the same time, and had never looked back. The reputation of the school was now such that parents from the whole of the surrounding area wanted to send their children here, and the problems were bulging classrooms and crowded play areas rather than threatened closure. But the problems of expansion were always easier than those of decline, as Rosemary and the head constantly reminded staff and parents. The numbers next year would probably justify another extra teacher, with all the advantages that would bring.

The teacher-governors on the committee were glad that the meeting was swift and optimistic, for they had just concluded a busy working week. They appreciated the competence of the woman chairing the meeting and the way she constantly supported their popular head. Once the business of the day was concluded with the agreement of a date for the next meeting in October, the teachers departed swiftly to their weekend concerns, as did most of the other governors.

Rosemary Lennox was left chatting with her new neighbour, Carol Smart, who was also a governor of the school, and who seemed to share most of her own views. ‘Thanks for supporting me on the employment of a music teacher,' said Rosemary.

‘No problem. I'm glad the success of the school means that we have the resources available. We need things like music to develop the souls of the little hooligans! My own daughters missed out on things like that. I can see the need for minimum standards all over the country, but I sometimes think the National Curriculum seems to squeeze out things like music and drama.'

Carol hoped she didn't sound sycophantic. She was still a little in awe of Rosemary Lennox's grasp of educational issues and clear-sighted pursuit of excellence. But she was getting to know her new neighbour better day by day. She liked what she saw and heard. Rosemary was not stuffy, as she had feared she might be when they moved into Gurney Close; indeed, she had a quite impish sense of humour, on occasions. Carol Smart said, ‘I suppose it helps you with this, your husband being a teacher.'

Rosemary grinned. ‘Ex-teacher, now. And I'm not sure working in the upper echelons of a comprehensive school, with fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds, has much relevance to the problems of a junior school.' Her punctilious and slightly pompous husband was good with committed six-formers; less so, she fancied, with boisterous eight-year-olds. He had even seemed a little diffident and awkward with their own son when Andy had been that age, though there had never been any doubt that Ron loved the boy dearly.

Neither woman voiced the thought which had occurred to both of them during the afternoon. It was surely ridiculous that two such competent but unremarkable women, one a slim, healthy, grey-haired lady in her early sixties and the other a comely and intelligent forty-three year-old, should be involved in the investigation of a violent killing. That two of the governors of this lively and successful primary school should be murder suspects.

Rosemary was gathering her papers from the meeting together and preparing to leave when the head teacher returned to the room, looking surprisingly embarrassed within her own school. ‘There's a Chief Superintendent Lambert just arrived. He says he'd like to speak to you, when you've finished here.'

‘That's all right,' said Mrs Lennox. ‘We've had a murder among our neighbours, you know, Mrs Smart and I. I expect he wants to clear up a few details with us.' She spoke as if murder was just one more thing to be dealt with in a busy working week, no more disturbing than rotas for hospital visiting or rebates on council tax for charity shops.

‘There are two of them, actually,' said the head. ‘And it's Mrs Smart they say they want to speak to.'

‘I'll be on my way, then,' said Rosemary Lennox, sliding her papers into her bulging brief-case. She tried not to show the relief she felt that it should be Carol Smart rather than her that the law wanted to speak with.

Jason Ritchie had never been afraid of hard physical work. Whenever he was confused about other things in his life, he positively exulted in toil that would have put lesser men on their backs for a week. Whilst Anthony Watson was despatching his target into eternity in Birmingham, Ritchie was engaged in more honest and innocent work.

Even a little later, at five o'clock on a roasting Friday afternoon, when most people would have been happy to stop work and declare the weekend had commenced, Jason worked steadily on, feeling the sweat pouring in rivulets down his back and occasionally into his eyes, lifting the mixture of sand and cement and swinging the shovel with steady, rhythmic movements. This shifting of heavy loads with the wheelbarrow was how he had begun the day; this is how he had occupied himself for almost eight hours of it; this is how he would finish his working week. If it took him another hour, even two hours, to complete the job, then so be it.

He was completing the base for a double garage: undemanding work as far as the mental side of it went, but enough to test the strength and the stamina of anyone labouring alone. He was proud of the fact that he was working at the same pace as he had used at nine in the morning, after all these hours when the sun seemed to blaze ever more fiercely. Many men would have been content to stop after the initial preparation, to make two days' work or more out of this. But Jason had worked out his timetable and was sticking to it. It was a hard day, but not an unrealistic one, for a strong man in the prime of life. Jason was delighted to be demonstrating just that, to himself and to anyone else who cared to observe.

He had barrowed and spread the hardcore steadily through the morning, had it laid and roughly levelled within the wooden shuttering by one o'clock, allowing himself the full hour he needed for his sandwiches and his rest, so as to be strong enough to complete the day he had planned. When the ready-mixed cement had been delivered as he had ordered at two o'clock, he had been ready and eager to go.

The woman had looked through the window of the house and marvelled at his strength and his industry as the sweltering afternoon passed without any alteration in his steady, unrelenting application to the task. Her husband had come home half an hour ago, reluctantly offered his assistance, and departed indoors with relief when it had been politely rejected. The task was almost complete now. The last of the mixture had been put into the big rectangle formed by the shuttering and the surface of the concrete had been sprayed and smoothed. The place where the big lorry with the mixer behind it had dumped the two cubic metres of ready-mixed cement hours ago was being hosed down and the surface restored to normal.

A good job done. A week's labour completed. A satisfying as well as a lucrative day. When you worked for yourself, there were financial advantages as well as job satisfaction in working yourself towards exhaustion.

He was so intent on leaving the black tarmac of the driveway as immaculate as it had been when he had begun his operations that he did not hear the police vehicle ease itself softly to a halt in the road beyond the gates. The two occupants of the car stood and watched him silently for several seconds without him sensing their presence. Then a soft Herefordshire voice said, ‘Good job, that. Might even employ you myself, when I can afford an extension to the house.'

Jason started in spite of himself. His concentration on the last stages of his task had been so complete that he had no idea that anyone was there until Bert Hook spoke. Now the detective sergeant smiled at him over the gate, ruddy-faced, unthreatening, approving of the thoroughness and quality of the work he was assessing. He said, ‘You know me, Mr Ritchie. And this is Detective Sergeant Ruth David.'

A young, dark-haired woman, tall and willowy, observing him steadily through dark-green eyes, taking in the curves of his torso and his biceps, the tattoo of barbed wire winding itself round his upper arm. She nodded at him with a small, quick smile when Hook mentioned her name; she seemed to Jason to be taking in far more about him than he wanted her to know. He tried desperately to re-focus, to divert his attention away from his physical tiredness to the mental challenge presented to him by this unexpected arrival.

He said rather stupidly, ‘I don't know how you knew I was here. I thought no one knew where I was working.'

‘Mrs Holt told us we might find you here,' said Hook, not unpleasantly. ‘We tried your mobile number, but it didn't appear to be in operation.'

‘I switch it off when I'm working. Don't want calls disturbing me when I'm on a job like this. You have to work the ready-mixed stuff quickly, or it goes hard on you.' He gestured towards the immaculate rectangle of shining wet concrete, wondering why he was telling them this, aware that the phrases were nothing more than an innocent preamble to something much more demanding.

As if he shared that thought, Hook, speaking as affably as if this were a social call, said ‘Things to discuss, Mr Ritchie.'

Jason looked automatically towards the house, towards the people who had paid him to work so hard through this long, hot day. There was no sign there that anyone had realized that he had visitors. He said, ‘I've almost finished here. I'll be with you in a minute.' He resumed his hosing of the driveway, trying unsuccessfully to thrash his brain into furious action.

You didn't know just what they knew and what they didn't know. That was always one of the problems with the fuzz; you wanted to be quick on your feet, but you didn't know at this stage exactly what you were having to defend yourself against. He turned off the hose, dragged the big shovel for one last noisy scrape across the path, and rattled it against the pick and the rake, asserting the virtues of honest labour against whatever accusations they had brought here with them.

He was conscious of the woman sergeant's eyes watching his every move, totally unembarrassed in her assessment of his movements. When he had got his tools together and put on his tee shirt, she spoke for the first time. ‘Seems you've been economical with the truth, Mr Ritchie.'

‘I don't know what you—'

‘Telling us porkies. Never a good policy, that, with the police. I'm surprised you haven't learned that by now.'

A reference to his previous brushes with the law. He didn't like that. ‘I don't know why you should think I've—'

‘I can understand that you wouldn't want us to know about some of the things you've been up to. I wouldn't want CID anywhere near them, if I were in your shoes. But you should understand that when you lie in a murder enquiry, you're asking for trouble. Lying invites us to examine your other activities.'

‘Which is what some of our officers have been doing, since we spoke to you on Tuesday,' said Bert Hook, as amiably as ever.

‘If I gave you a wrong impression, I can only apologize,' said Jason. He was conscious of how foreign this speech pattern was for him, how ponderous and artificial his evasions sounded in these phrases.

‘More than a wrong impression, Mr Ritchie. You told Chief Superintendent Lambert a string of lies. Very stupid thing to do, with an eminent man like that.' DS Ruth David seemed to be getting deep satisfaction from telling him about his mistakes.

‘Lies. I can't think what you mean.' Jason could envisage exactly what she meant, but he could think of nothing sensible to say. His automatic reaction was to deny the charge of lying, even when he knew that his denial could not possibly be successful.

DS David shook her head impatiently. ‘You said you had not known Robin Durkin before the last few weeks, that you had had no dealings with him before the Saturday night on which he died. We now know that you were lying about that, quite deliberately and blatantly. Very interesting to us, that knowledge is, seeing that Mr Durkin is a murder victim.' She allowed herself a smile of satisfaction, whilst Jason strove to dismiss the idea that these assertions were just the preliminaries to putting him behind bars.

This time Jason said nothing, feeling belatedly that silence might be preferable to the useless denial which would constitute a further lie.

Bert Hook smiled at him, as if he was dealing with no more than a village boy who had been caught scrumping apples. ‘You also gave us statements about your own conduct and way of life which were completely untrue. Misleading the police in the course of their enquiries, I'd call it.'

‘I'm sure I didn't. You can see that I'm running a perfectly legitimate one-man business here. It's hard enough making an honest living these days, without being accused of things you haven't done.'

From the recesses of a pocket in his comfortable trousers, Hook produced the notebook he had used when he and Lambert had spoken to Ritchie on Tuesday. ‘Let me quote your own words to you, Jason, about your previous appearance in court on a GBH charge. “That po-faced woman judge told me to go away and keep my nose clean, and I've done just that. For five years, now.” Not true, is it, lad?'

‘You buggers never give up, do you? Once a villain always a villain, as far as you're concerned.' But Jason couldn't get any conviction into his voice. He suddenly felt the need to sit down on the low garden wall. He stared dumbly at the brightly coloured marigolds and geraniums and wished he was anywhere but here.