Dead on Course (28 page)

There was nothing but sympathy for him in the roo
m.

Each of his four companions was glad that his victim was dead; not one of them would at that moment have raised a finger to bring him back.

It was Lambert who recalled him resolutely to different moral ground. ‘Why Marie Harrington?’ he said gruffly.

There were gasps around the room. All of them had heard of the second death; probably most of them had not until this moment connected it with Goodman. For a moment Goodman looked again as if he was not quite sure where the question had come from. Then he said,
‘She knew. She would have given me away.’

No attempt this time to excuse the crime in moral terms, to offer any excuse for the darkest of all human crimes. Lambert was struck once again by the
brutalising effect of violence, so that a man who had wrestled for months with his personal agony before the first killing could offer no explanation of the second beyond the fact that the woman was a danger to his security.

As if to reinforce this view, Goodman said slowly,
‘How did you know I’d killed her? Did she tell you about Felicity before I got to her?’ There was still no hint of remorse: this time the whole room picked up that chill message.

Lambert said,
‘No. Sergeant Hook saw her yesterday afternoon, but she tried to protect you. She pretended she didn’t even know about your daughter. That was what pointed us towards you, in the end. When I talked to other people after her death, I found that Mrs Harrington not only knew Felicity but had been kind to her. That suggested that she had been covering up for you. We found out all about your daughter by contacting your wife and others in Surrey.’

Goodman looked bleakly round the faces of his friends, wondering which one had unwittingly given him away. For the first time she could remember, Meg Peters was grateful to the police for the anonymity Lambert had conferred upon her unconscious revelation.

At a nod from Lambert, Bert Hook stepped forward and formally arrested George Albert Goodman for the murder of Guy Harrington. The ritual of the words brought a kind of order to a room full of racing emotions. Goodman was taken away under guard. None of them said much, but none of them felt held any longer in that net of silence in which the revelation of Goodman’s crimes had for a while enmeshed them. It was Sandy Munro who asked in his soft Fife tones, ‘What will happen to him now?’

Lambert said,
‘He will be charged and tried. What happens to him then is fortunately not my concern.’ It was stiff and unsympathetic, but he was thinking of the unforgivable killing of Marie Harrington. Policemen were not automatons, even when the law demanded that they should be. He had liked the honest, spirited widow whose life had been so ruthlessly terminated. He would not readily forgive Goodman for that killing. No doubt the psychiatrists would get busy on a plea of diminished responsibility. At that moment, he was glad that his duties ended with the arrest. Five minutes after Goodman had been driven away between two officers in the back of the white police Rover, his erstwhile companions left the Wye Castle. The Munros and the couple shortly to become the Nashes were of very different temperaments and backgrounds, but they felt united by the touch of tragedy as never before. The Munros had already been cautioned: later they would be charged as accessories after the fact, though the charge might never come to court.

The two couples took their leave of each other in the car park, as if there was safety in numbers from the emotions
which threatened to overwhelm them. Then they drove out behind each other to join the world they had left five days earlier.

Each of the four took a last look as they went at the rich English scene, with its majest
ic trees, rolling green slopes, and wide, unhurried bends of river. It was a scene which had changed little in centuries, and would scarcely do so during any of their lifetimes. It was undeniably beautiful. But none of them would ever return.

If you enjoyed
Dead on Course
you might be interested in
Body Politic
by J. M. Gregson, also published by Endeavour Press.

Extract from
Body Politic
by J. M. Gregson

CHAPTER
ONE

‘Of course there are things wrong with the country,’ said Raymond Keane. A winning frankness was one of his strongest cards in friendly company, and he reckoned they didn’t come much friendlier than the lady with the elaborate blue hat and the little smear of cream on her upper lip.

‘
You mean people sleeping in cardboard boxes and so on?’ she said, anxious not to miss her cue, determined to keep her MP with her for a little longer before he moved on, as she knew he must, to the next smiling listener, to the next vol-au-vent and warm white wine.

Raymond
watched the patch of cream bobbing as she spoke, like a white horse on a choppy sea. ‘That, of course,’ he said. ‘Though I think we could agree that most of the people who clutter our city streets have chosen their own fate. I was thinking more of the way we have to look under our cars in the Commons park for bombs before we drive away.’ Middle-aged ladies in Gloucestershire liked a little frisson of vicarious fear, he knew that from experience. It was years now since he had checked for bombs, but the danger card was still one to play to build up a little sympathy.

The
gathering was going well. The conservatory of the big house, Victorian in its proportions as well as its design, made the crisp winter day outside seem warmer than it actually was: only the leafless trees and the bright red stems of the dogwoods beyond the wide green lawns revealed that the bright blue sky beyond the double glazing was in fact a winter one.

Raymond
Keane had his professional equipment in good working order. The smile was practised but the brown eyes remained earnest, never setting into the enamelled mask he had seen in less able Westminster men. No one knew better than he the benefits of a safe Conservative seat, especially now that what had once seemed comfortable majorities were under threat in many parts of the country. In this part of Gloucestershire, where the Beaufort rode regularly and royal estates were discreetly hidden behind ancient trees, his support might be diminished but the seat was rock-solid safe.

He
managed a substantial gulp of his Muscadet as he moved on to converse with a local squire. He was well used to these functions after five years in the seat; he thought he managed better than anyone else in the room the manipulation of a plate of food and a glass of wine, a process which clearly needed three hands but had to be managed with two. Thirty feet away, over the head of a lumpy girl and two more of the hats, he caught Zoe Renwick’s eye.

It
held his only fleetingly: he was happy to see again how discreet she was, what a good politician’s wife she would make, in due course. Her look said, ‘How soon can we get away?’ but there was no urgency, no impatience in the question. More important, the man who was reaching for another brown-bread square of smoked salmon was not even aware of her swift glance over his shoulder. He resumed the tidal flow of his views on immigration without even a suspicion that he had lost the attention of his bright young listener for a vital instant.

Raymond
began to move unhurriedly towards the door, chatting to a succession of supporters as he made his circuitous way towards escape. The chairman of the local association, as practised as he was in reading the hidden agendas of gatherings like this, edged equally imperceptibly towards the wide double oak doors from the other side of the room, until this slow-motion pavane culminated in a meeting of the two on the polished parquet near the exit.

The
grey-haired chairman said softly, ‘Time you were on your way, Raymond?’ He was tactful enough to suggest a crowded schedule rather than a simple wish to be finished with a necessary evil of constituency politics. His MP had earned his corn, if that wasn’t too crude a phrase for such a decorous gathering. Keane had done all that was required, with a graceful little speech to set this fundraising exercise in motion, a couple of gentle jokes about the contrast between this get-together and that being attended at this moment by his Labour ‘pair’ in a northern working-men’s club. He had turned a nice compliment to the ladies who had worked so hard to set up today’s function, keeping it light but thoughtful; all these things made it easier to raise enthusiasm and volunteers for the next function at Easter.

The
chairman surveyed the animated heads in the now cheerfully noisy conservatory. A few people had already left. The MP must not be first away, but neither should he stay too long, for that might suggest that he was desperate for support, or not as busy as his publicity always suggested. The chairman said in a low voice, ‘I shouldn’t bother to say any goodbyes, or it’ll take you half an hour to get out. Just melt away discreetly. I shall do the same myself in another ten minutes.’

Raymond
needed no further encouragement to do what he had always intended to do at this point. In twenty minutes, he was back in the cottage with Zoe. In another five, they were in bed together, making relaxed, unhurried love, their clothes dropped by the bed like snakes’ discarded skins, the public personas they had assumed for the lunchtime assembly of the party faithful abandoned just as eagerly.

Presently
Zoe lay back, fixing her brilliant blue eyes on the moulding in the centre of the old ceiling, stretching her arms above her head and clasping her hands beneath the masses of dark blonde hair. ‘Well, do you think they approved of me?’ she said.

Raymond
caught the intoxicating mixture of fresh sweat and expensive perfume from the armpit near his face, then nuzzled recklessly into it, making her giggle as she clasped an arm lightly across his head. ‘You were great,’ he said in a muffled voice. Then, lifting his head and shifting a little to look down into her face, he said, ‘I thought you were quite good at the wine and cheese, too!’

‘
I wasn’t looking forward to it, you know,’ she said. But she was relaxed now, staring contentedly from her lover’s face to the ceiling, knowing within herself that she had carried it off well, this inspection by the pearls-and-cashmere set and the local landowners.

‘
You were fine, darling,’ Raymond said contentedly. ‘But I always knew you would be.’ Secretly, he was relieved. A new fiancée was always a risky step for a divorced politician, even though the constituency liked to see you with a wife at election time. He had pretended to her in advance that today was more trivial than he had felt it to be.

But
he needn’t have worried. Zoe had handled it as if she had been bred for it, treating the elderly women with just enough deference, showing just enough spirit to win over susceptible husbands without raising their wives’ hackles. He would take her to all the Party functions from now on. A month from now, they would announce the date of their wedding. By the time of the next election, Zoe would be snugly established as one of the most photogenic of parliamentary wives. Perhaps, in due course, of ministerial wives ... But he was in no hurry about that. At forty-one, time was still on his side in these things.

‘
It was all a bit too smooth for me.’ Zoe’s voice, suddenly serious, pulled him abruptly back to reality. ‘I thought politics was about getting things done. We seemed a long way from the problems of the country when we were exchanging pleasantries at Darnley Court today.’

It
was true. He had forgotten how divorced from reality these things could seem to an outsider. Which Zoe still was, essentially. ‘We
were
a long way from any problem-solving today. Those gatherings are a necessary evil, if you like—keeping faith with the people who form the hard core of Party membership, reassuring them that they still matter in a world that’s changing too fast for some of them to understand. And raising useful funds, of course. But I agree: nothing to do with politics, in the sense of getting things done. That happens at Westminster. And even there, more in the committees than in the public debates in the House, most of the time.’

‘
I just feel that twenty-eight thousand voted for you, and the vast majority of them have lives which have no connection with those of most of the people I spoke to this afternoon.’