Dead on Course (12 page)

Lambert was for a moment as disconcerted as they were. At once amused and aghast, he found himself picturing the faces of Bert Hook and Christopher Rushton if he played. Not to mention that of the Chief Constable if he came to hear of it, as he undoubtedly would. It was unthinkable that he should accept the invitation.

‘
I should be delighted,’ he said. ‘If the circumstances of the investigation permit it.’ He noted with satisfaction the dismay of Nash and Munro, even perhaps a fleeting surprise on the urbane features of Goodman that his bluff should be called so promptly. He did not dare to glance at Hook. ‘Not this morning, though. Perhaps I might join you for a game this afternoon, if my schedule will allow it?’

‘
That would be admirable, Superintendent.’ If Goodman’s equilibrium had indeed been shaken, there was no sign of it when he spoke. ‘We’ll play a few holes on our own this morning, then hope to see you on the tee at, shall we say, two-fifteen?’

‘
I shall look forward to that,’ said Lambert, drawn into the conventional courtesies even in these bizarre circumstances. ‘But I’m afraid I must deprive you of Mr Nash for a while: I need to check his recollection of events on the night of the death.’

Nash must have known this would come sooner or later, but he looked thoroughly miserable about it, like a man answering the summons
he has long expected to the dentist’s chair. It was left to Goodman to answer suavely, ‘Of course, of course. We shall look forward to your company this afternoon, Mr Lambert, if duties permit.’

‘
I should be ready for you in about a quarter of an hour, Mr Nash,’ said Lambert. He turned swiftly on his heel and left them; Bert Hook followed him with what he hoped was a deadpan face. This ridiculous game clearly upset the judgement of people who should know much better by now. Ahead of him, Lambert was nursing the thought that it would be interesting to study the interactions of those three in a supposedly relaxed context; he wondered how far that was a rationalisation of his impulsive acceptance of Goodman’s invitation.

He was well on his way to the Murder Room before he noticed Sergeant Johnson, who was in charge of the Scene of Crime team. The officer had that indefinable air of importance which stiffens the back of men charged with news. He was standing by the corner of a long, single-storey brick building which must once have been stables but now accommodated a variety of golf-course machinery and other implements. Lambert went over to examine the object which was the source of his restrained excitement.

It was a heavy wooden wheelbarrow, with a steel rim on its single heavy wheel. Probably fifty years old and dating from the days of the private estate, its sturdy workmanship proclaimed that it was good for many years of service yet. But it had now fulfilled its single dramatic function in this long working life.

For Johnson said,
‘This is the means employed to move the body, sir.’ He was already anticipating the convoluted phrasing of the courtroom. ‘The wheel fits the only tracks found within twenty yards of the body. And forensic have just confirmed that the fibres we found at each end of this came from the back of Harrington’s cardigan and trousers.’

Both of them gazed for a moment at the unremarkable contrivance that had suddenly been invested with a sickly glamour. It was all too easy to picture Harrington
’s heavy torso bouncing over the hard ground at dead of night in its last cradle, his legs dangling grotesquely between the handles smooth with use, his eyes gazing unseeingly at the cold stars above.

But they were policemen both. Their thoughts sprang quickly to speculation about the last hands to have gripped those shining, innocent handles.

12

Tony Nash was not at ease.

When he came into the interview room, it was his attempt to seem relaxed which drew attention to his discomfort. He sat down quickly in the chair indicated to him and folded his arms; his fingers moved nervously over his sweater sleeves. Hook watched them playing their repetitive tune against the light blue lambswool, wondering whether their owner could still control them if he chose.

Nash had the wide shoulders of a powerful, stocky man. Lambert, looking at the longish blond hair with its hint of disarray, was reminded of a cinema Tarzan he thought he had long forgotten. Nash was handsome enough to carry such a part: his features had the regular lines of a romantic novel
’s cover. Except that there was something just slightly wrong about this fresh-faced beauty: the features were infinitesimally too small for the head and the shoulders beneath them. The prettiness of a woman’s face sat where something more rugged and durable might have been expected.

The end of a pink tongue moistened the delicate lips and Nash said,
‘I am only too anxious to help, of course, Superintendent, but I very much doubt if I can add much to what you already know.’

It was a conventional opening, but delivered flatly enough to reveal it as a prepared sentiment. Perhaps he expected Lambert to say,
‘Best let us be the judges of that, Mr Nash.’ If so, he was disappointed, for the Superintendent did no more than nod an acknowledgement, as if he had scarcely registered the thought. Then he said, ‘I take it that you came here this week for no other purpose than to play golf, Mr Nash?’

Nash was immediately disconcerted. Probably it was merely by the directness of Lambert
’s approach, but he might have suspected a reference to his nocturnal activities with the striking Miss Peters. He said, ‘That was the primary purpose for all the men. Meg doesn’t play. Alison Munro does, but she hasn’t been playing this week.’

‘
Quite. I understand that you are sharing a double room with Miss Peters.’

‘
Yes, but that is surely hardly—’

‘
I ask only because we must be sure of the disposition of the party at the time of Mr Harrington’s death, Mr Nash. You must be aware that that is a point of crucial importance.’

Nash relaxed, it seemed by a deliberate effort of will.
‘Yes, I see. You mean that we might be able to clear each other of any involvement in this business.’

‘
Possibly. Unless of course you planned the business together.’ Lambert, though he knew it ignoble, enjoyed the suggestion and the concern it caused his hearer.

‘
I didn’t kill Guy. And neither did Meg.’ Nash’s fingers had at last stopped moving; they were gripping tight on his upper arms, so that he looked like a child made to fold his arms against his will.

‘
Perhaps not. You will appreciate that we shall probably only be certain about that when we arrest the person who did. If you are not involved, your best policy will be to conceal absolutely nothing. I’m already collecting lies like blackberries in this investigation.’ He did not care whether or not it was an exaggeration. He had no intention of indulging in preliminary fencing with this man.

Nash looked agreeably startled. His blue eyes widened a little and he said as aggressively as he could,
‘I see. Well, you certainly haven’t collected any from me.’ Then he grinned weakly as the realisation struck him and said, ‘But then, we’ve hardly spoken yet.’

‘
Scarcely at all. Tell me, Mr Nash, did you see anything in your first two days here that seems significant now, in the light of Mr Harrington’s violent death?’

‘
No. Nothing at all.’ He seemed immediately aware that he had spoken too quickly to have given the matter proper thought, for his faced flushed in the silence the two experienced men opposite him allowed him to hang on his abrupt denial. But he had the sense not to fill the silence with any imprudent disclosure. He was intelligent, with the shrewdness that came from twenty years of successful work at a variety of levels: he was not going to be ruffled as easily as his initial demeanour had indicated.

Lambert reminded himself wearily that the innocent as well as the guilty were made nervous by police inquiries. He said,
‘And yet you must have been with Guy Harrington for most of the time.’

‘
I suppose so. We played golf most of the day, and ate together in the evenings.’

‘
In all probability you conducted one or both of these activities with the person who killed your friend. So you can see the importance of my question.’

‘
It needn’t have been one of us.’

‘
Indeed not. There are other possibilities, and they are being investigated. That is why I said “in all probability”.’

‘
And he wasn’t my friend.’ This was an unexpected assertion; even if they had suspected it, it was unusual for someone close to a murdered man to confess so much so boldly. ‘I worked for him, that was all. He was all right to play golf with, most of the time.’

‘
Was he a good employer?’ This was Bert Hook, coming in when their subject had almost forgotten him, and as usual disconcerting him by the unexpectedness of the intervention. Bert, who had moved straight from his Barnardo’s home into the world of men at the age of sixteen, knew a good deal about the habits of employers, good and bad.

‘
No. The best thing was to keep well out of his way and get on with your job.’ Hook reflected that many men had made themselves rich by encouraging that philosophy among the men they paid. ‘He was a bastard. Took all he could get from you, then let you down.’

‘
How?’ said Lambert sharply.

Nash looked like a man who had gone further than he meant to, but
realised that he could scarcely draw back now. ‘I’m his Sales Manager in the plastics division. I worked it up from nothing. The products were good enough, but they needed selling, like anything else. When I’d done all the hard work, he pegged my salary. That didn’t worry me that much—I thought it was time to move on anyway. But when I tried, I got nowhere. Not even interviews. Eventually I found he was writing references which ensured no one would even look at me.’

‘
Did you tackle him about it?’

Nash gave a mirthless laugh and a brief, hopeless gesture at the ceiling with his hands; it was the first time he had unclasped his arms since he had struck the pose when he sat down.
‘I did. All he was interested in was how I’d got the information. Fortunately, it was from a secretary who had already left, so there was no way he could get at her. He said my job with him was safe for life—just so long as sales targets were achieved and I didn’t step out of line. But I could forget about moving elsewhere: he didn’t train up staff in order to pass them on when they were becoming useful.’

Lambert reflected that
it was scarcely the kind of man management calculated to increase profits in the long term. But such attitudes were not so unusual in small firms, even in the ‘nineties. And of course, he was hearing only one side of the story. The dead were never able to defend their actions. Even taken at face value, this grievance seemed scarcely the kind to drive a man to murder.

As if reading his thoughts, the man opposite him said,
‘I didn’t kill him for that. I didn’t even stop playing golf with him, as you can see.’ He ran a hand impulsively through his mane of hair, a gesture of release from the physical tension that had built steadily in him as he talked of his dead employer. His face was full of bitterness, part of it seemingly against himself for his sycophancy.

‘
Were you the only one who felt like this about him?’

Nash had the confidence for the first time to pause and weigh his reply.
‘No. Sandy Munro doesn’t say much, but I think he felt as resentful as I did about Harrington as an employer. I couldn’t tell you exactly why.’ Lambert, who had been told some of the reasons by Munro himself on the previous evening, merely nodded.

Nash, apparently welcoming the chance to transfer the discussion from himself to others, said,
‘I’m quite sure Alison Munro didn’t like him, perhaps just because of the way he treated Sandy. George Goodman seemed easy enough with Harrington, but I don’t know him all that well. He didn’t seem particularly upset when we found the body yesterday morning, but it’s not easy to tell with George.’

Lambert himself ha
d wondered what lay behind Goodman’s carefully presented serenity. It was interesting to find that men who had known him much longer still found him difficult to estimate. But the most significant point about Nash’s assessment of his party was the omission. ‘You must be aware that you have left out one person,’ Lambert said, playing his fish gently now.

Nash
’s fresh face hardened with caution. ‘Meg Peters had nothing to do with this.’ His mouth set obstinately, like that of a child who hopes that if he repeats something often enough it will become fact.

‘
That is something we shall have to establish to our own satisfaction, I’m afraid,’ said Lambert. He sounded friendly, almost regretful, and indeed he had sympathy enough for one he suspected was experiencing the illogicalities of extreme sexual passion: Nash was watching him with an anxiety he could not conceal. Routine police inquiries were already turning up interesting facts about Miss Peters: he wondered how much Tony Nash knew about her past. As much, he fancied, as she had chosen to tell him, but he had no idea how much that was. ‘Can you tell us something about Miss Peters’s previous relationship with Harrington?’