Death on the Eleventh Hole (19 page)

He stared at it for a moment, almost glad of this tiny patch of death amongst the profusion of growth. That small round of grass was dead. The healthy grass around it would expand and cover the gap, but it would take time. About three months: the time until his retirement.

He had forgotten the television. There was an old black and white film on now, with Robert Mitchum. It had never been very good, even forty years ago, when it had been as new as the growth beyond the wide window of the sitting room. Was this how the retired spent their days, regurgitating experiences which had been second-class when they were young, gilding the mediocre with the nostalgia of recollection?

He switched the television set off with a violence he could never recall before.

There would be better things to watch, he told himself unconvincingly. He would enjoy the cricket and the golf he had never had the time to watch before. Meanwhile, he still had three months of useful life left, and there was a murderer at large somewhere, a murderer it was his duty to trap. He scribbled a message for Christine, informing her that he would very likely be late home, that the investigation was developing, so that he couldn’t say with any certainty when he would return.

There was no need for it. His wife had grown used over thirty years and more to the exigencies of his job. But writing the message seemed a defiant gesture, an assertion that he still had work to do. As he finished it, his phone rang to confirm just that.

Rushton could not keep the excitement out of his voice. ‘They’ve spotted Minton in Edgbaston.’ Contract killing was a lucrative occupation, enabling its practitioner to live in an ivy-walled house in a quiet close of one of the country’s plushest suburbs. ‘They want to know what action they should take.’

John Lambert hesitated for no more than a second. ‘Tell them to pull him in. I’ll be up there within ninety minutes to interview him myself.’

Eighteen

Joe Ashton was relieved when his van was returned to him by the police. The uniformed officers made no comment when he collected it, but the CID men seemed to have accepted his story that he had always kept the interior of the vehicle very clean. At any rate, they hadn’t come back to him with more questions about it.

The store had had deliveries of tinned foods and of Sainsbury’s own labels on that Tuesday morning, and Joe was kept busy replenishing the shelves of the supermarket and making a series of journeys to the storerooms at the rear of the building. The trouble with this job, he decided, was that it left you too much time to think. The physical labour was steady and demanding, but once you had mastered the limited information about what went where and in what quantities, there were few demands on the brain.

And Joe’s brain needed to be fully stretched. When it wasn’t, it kept coming back to Kate. He was coming to terms with her death now, though he grieved for her with a painful, grinding sorrow in the early part of the day, when the low sun stole unbidden through the uncurtained windows of the squat and reawakened him each morning to the realization that she was gone.

But what he didn’t want to think about was that last, fierce argument they had endured. The pain of it did not become less sharp with the passing days. The thought of their last meeting ending like that would be with him forever, even if he was never forced to reveal the full horror of what had happened.

The police seemed to accept his latest version of it, that he and Kate had had a furious row because she refused to come away with him and leave Gloucester and its memories behind. He hadn’t told them about the blows, about the red mist of fury she had brought to him when she had told him she must go on extracting money from men. They mustn’t ever know about the violence of those final minutes.

Joe Ashton went on methodically replacing the tins of baked beans.

***

Derek Minton did not look like a professional killer. It was true that he was wiry and thin-faced, with cold blue eyes and the mean mouth and thin lips one might have expected in a man who dealt in passionless violence. But he was also well dressed, in a grey suit more expensive than the one Lambert wore, with a discreet maroon silk tie laced with silver motifs and elegant slip-on Barker shoes. He had neatly styled brown hair and hands which were clean and strong-fingered enough to have been a pianist’s. His nails were spotless, and the watch upon his wrist was probably a Rolex.

He put away his book unhurriedly as Lambert came into the interview room and sat down opposite him. The two studied each other wordlessly for three or four seconds, which seemed to the young PC who had come into the room with Lambert to stretch much longer.

Then Minton said calmly, ‘I could have you for wrongful arrest, you know, if I chose.’

‘But you won’t. Your sort doesn’t want publicity. You won’t go into a court until we eventually put you into the dock.’

‘Which will be never. Because I’m an innocent citizen.’

Lambert smiled his contempt for that thought. ‘Do you want a lawyer?’

‘Are you charging me with anything?’

‘That remains to be seen. At this point, no.’

‘Then I don’t want a lawyer. I don’t want anything which will enable you to prolong this farce for longer than is necessary.’

‘You’re a killer, Minton. It’s how you make a living.’

‘Prove it.’

Lambert thought of mentioning two killings in Birmingham’s gangland that they were certain Minton had committed. But they hadn’t been able to prove it, hadn’t been able to provide the witnesses to go into court and put this suave and confident man away for life. So he said instead, ‘You were seen in Ross-on-Wye on Sunday the sixth of May.’

‘Nice part of the country. Nice time of the year. Enjoyed the trip.’

‘On that day, a twenty-two-year-old girl named Kate Wharton was strangled.’

‘Pity. The world needs more twenty-two-year-old girls.’

‘This one was a hard-drugs pusher. She worked for an organization which regularly makes use of your services. Six days earlier, she had told her supplier that she intended to give up pushing.’

‘Naughty little tart, wasn’t she? Some people would say she had it coming to her. Not me, of course.’

‘How did you know she was on the game?’

For a moment, he looked disconcerted by this minor mistake. In the trade of killing, you planned carefully and didn’t even allow yourself minor mistakes. Then he smiled. ‘I did not mean the word literally when I spoke, Superintendent. If you’re now telling me that the girl was indeed on the game, that is no more than a happy semantic coincidence. Interesting things, semantics.’

‘Why were you in Ross nine days ago?’

‘I’m not sure I have to tell you that. But as I always like to co-operate with the police, let’s say I was visiting friends.’

‘And it’s just a coincidence that Kate Wharton was killed that night.’

‘Exactly. A most unhappy one. A more vindictive man than me might say she had it coming to her, being a prostitute and dealing in drugs. Such a person might even say that the world was well rid of such an occupant. But I don’t care to strike moral attitudes.’

‘Of course you don’t.’ Lambert leaned forward towards the calm face with the sardonic smile. ‘You were there to kill the girl, Minton. That was no pleasure trip.’

Derek Minton didn’t even trouble to deny it. He merely shrugged his elegant shoulders beneath the expensive worsted. He didn’t need to defend himself. They’d nothing to go on. He’d been pulled in for questioning often enough before, had been much nearer to a murder charge than this. Did they expect him to be frightened like some kid who’d pinched a wallet?

Minton pulled out a slim gold cigarette case, flicked it open, offered it across the desk to his would-be inquisitor. Lambert waved it away and said, ‘No smoking in here.’

Minton raised an eyebrow, then snapped the gold case shut and put it away with a smile. The incident had ruffled the questioner more than the questioned: he was glad he had conducted this little charade from a previous era. ‘How did this girl die?’ he asked casually.

‘You know that. She was garrotted with a cord. Taken from behind and killed within seconds.’

‘Efficient, then. But not a method I would have chosen.’

That was true enough; it had worried Lambert on the journey up the MS. The killings they knew Minton had committed but could not pin on him were all with the bullet, swift and effective, usually through the head from point-blank range. ‘You agree you have a method, then?’

Minton wasn’t ruffled. ‘Not at all. I merely quote the method I was supposed to have used when you concocted your previous fictions.’

‘A professional like you is adaptable. The cord was the right method for this situation. When you pick up a torn on the streets and she slides willingly into your car, you don’t want anything as noisy as a bullet.’

Minton studied the long, lined face and the intense grey eyes for a moment. This was so near to what he had planned that he did not want to give anything away. He said slowly, without dropping his eyes from Lambert’s, ‘I bow to your superior knowledge, Superintendent.’

‘Who called you down there to kill the girl, Minton?’

Derek Minton smiled. For a moment, he said nothing: he was enjoying this, but he knew that it was a dangerous enjoyment. Pleasure could catch you off your guard more easily than any other feeling. He had killed nine people now, with an increasing price for each death as his reputation for anonymous efficiency grew. In his judgement, he had come quite near to being charged on two occasions. The police had probably thought there were the makings of a case each time, but the Crown Prosecution Service had been afraid to take it on: good old CPS, scourge of petty criminals and friend of the big boys!

The fuzz weren’t going to get him on this one, weren’t going to come anywhere near to a charge. He knew that, and they must know it as well, by now. He repeated with a bland smile, ‘I was visiting friends. Nice river, the Wye.’

Lambert forced himself into an answering smile. He wouldn’t let the man see the frustration and revulsion which boiled within him. He pushed back his seat and stood up. ‘If you did it, we’ll be back for you. You’re living on borrowed time, Mr Minton.’

Derek Minton raised an imaginary glass to him as he left.

Lambert gave curt orders for Minton’s release to the custody sergeant. He hadn’t expected anything from the interview. He told himself that as he drove more slowly back down the M5, attempting to calm himself. He had known he had nothing beyond a sighting in Ross on the sixth of May to throw at Minton, had known that someone as experienced as this would not be intimidated, would offer him nothing in the way of emotional weakness. But he had hoped with his experience to be able to size up whether the man had done the killing, irrespective of whether they could bring him to book for it.

He spent the time on the M5 and the M50 wondering whether Minton’s confidence had been derived from the fact that he had not committed this particular crime, or whether it was a professional carapace, a bland contempt for a system which could not prove his guilt.

***

Richard Ellacott drew out the two thousand pounds from the NatWest Bank in Ross. No one behind the counter at the bank seemed to turn a hair, for they were used to his firm dealing in large sums. Even the fact that he drew the money in cash raised no eyebrows: he was an accountant, wasn’t he, and accountants had ways and means of doing business which avoided tax. Probably he was just having some extensive work done in his home and paying for it in cash; Richard tried to create that impression.

It was a load off his mind to get back to the Mercedes and lock the money away in the glove compartment. He had expected to attract more attention when withdrawing that amount in cash.

His relief did not last long. He would have to deliver the money to his blackmailer on Thursday. And then he would be faced again with the fear that the anonymous woman might come back for more, the waiting for that nightmare phone call that would again set his ordered world spinning out of control.

That blank voice had said that this would be the final demand, but there was nothing he could reclaim to guarantee that — no photographic negatives or documents which he could bargain for and take back. This was simply knowledge: the knowledge that he had visited a prostitute, not once but regularly over a long period, whilst he pretended to be a pillar of society and a diligent attendant upon his invalid wife.

But the blackmailer had assured him that this doubly big demand for two thousand pounds would be a final, one-off payment. All might yet be well, if you could trust a blackmailer to keep her word.

Like many a weak man before him, Richard Ellacott took refuge in a sickly, unrealistic hope.

***

Julie Wharton had a busy day in the office at Cheltenham. There were queries from the junior clerical staff, a request from the senior partner to sit in on a meeting in the afternoon and take notes.

It was as well she was kept busy, for each time she had a moment to herself her mind revived the vivid picture of Roy Cook burning his new clothes at the end of his deserted garden. She knew she had let her physical desire for him obscure the issue. That other Julie, the one she scarcely acknowledged when she moved about the office in her trim skirt and demure blouse, had blinded her brain to the issue, whilst she sated her desire for Roy’s powerful body.

In the cold light of day, in the practical environment of work, the question gnawed at her: would Roy have been burning those clothes unless they bound him in some way to Kate’s death? Unless Julie had arrived unexpectedly at his isolated house, the evidence, if that was what it was, would have been destroyed forever, without anyone but Roy knowing about it. As it was, the evidence was gone, but she was a witness to its destruction.

She ought to go to the police, ought to let them take up the questioning, to make Roy give an account of himself, in a way she would never be able to do. But he had a record: they would surely seize upon what he had done to his clothes to pin the responsibility for Kate’s death upon him, wouldn’t they? And she couldn’t betray him like that, couldn’t simply walk into the police station and grass on him, without even telling Roy what she proposed to do.

It would be different if the police came to her, if that insistent Lambert and his deceptively observant sergeant came and wormed it out of her. Roy would accept that —hadn’t they got far more out of him than he had intended to give them? But throughout her busy day, there came no phone call from the quietly insistent Hook to arrange another meeting with the CID men.

She would have to confront Roy herself. And this time she would do it on her own territory. And she wouldn’t allow herself to be diverted by other considerations.

Roy came to her house at half-past six that evening, as they had arranged that he would. She had a meal ready and the table set; they sat primly on opposite sides of it in the bay of her neat dining room, whilst the sun disappeared round the corner of the house as it moved to the west. They exchanged notes about their day, each conscious of what lay between them, each unwilling to raise it. Julie brought coffee to the table at the end of the meal, ignoring Roy’s suggestion that they take it away from the table to sit more comfortably in armchairs, as they usually did.