More Than Meets the Eye (15 page)

‘What kind of man was Mr Cooper?'

Jim hadn't expected anything so vague. He felt as though they were studying him rather than Cooper when they asked things like that. Perhaps they wanted to know if he'd been harbouring some grievance against the dead man. He said stubbornly, ‘We got on well, as I've just told you. I liked him.'

‘Fine. But that doesn't tell me a lot about Mr Cooper.'

Jim endured a moment of panic. It seemed that everything he could say about Cooper's character would rebound on him and place him at the centre of this business, when he desired more than anything to present himself as merely a spectator watching events. ‘I'd say he was rather a private man. It wasn't easy to get close to him.'

‘Fair enough. But from what you've told us, you were closer to him than anyone outside his family.' Lambert saw a protest coming and pressed on. ‘You met him more often, both for long-term planning and for day-to-day decisions, than anyone else who works here. You must have some ideas about his strengths and his weaknesses – was he a womanizer, for instance?'

‘No. Well, not that I'm aware of. But I'm usually the last to know about things like that.'

There was a flash of bitterness here, which they noted for future attention. But at the moment they were concerned with what he could tell them about Cooper. ‘By definition, a murder victim has at least one serious enemy. Usually we find a man who excites that sort of rage has more than one. We need all the help that people like you can give us.'

‘Yes. I can see that.' Jim forced himself to stop and think. He'd been quite a bright boy at school and he'd passed all his horticultural exams without much trouble. He'd been pleased to find he could still write quite well when he made his reports about the gardens. But the spoken word was different; gardening wasn't a trade where you had to express complicated thoughts in words. He said carefully, ‘Dennis Cooper didn't give away much about himself. But he liked to know everything he could about others. He certainly seemed to know what was in everyone's file.'

‘Which was probably partly why he was efficient as a leader. You need to know the strengths as well as the weaknesses of your staff.'

‘Yes. Dennis seemed to be more interested in the weaknesses.'

There, he'd said it. Blurted it out in a few words. It showed his resentment against the man, when he'd meant to keep everything bland and unrevealing. He'd no idea at this moment whether this was a good or a bad thing. Lambert seemed to be trying to reassure him as he said, ‘It's much better that we find this out now from you than later from someone else. That way, we might have thought you were trying to conceal something.' He gave Hartley a grim smile. ‘You need to enlarge a little on what you've just told us, I'm afraid.'

‘He wanted to know everything about the private lives of the apprentices we took on. He said I was to inform him of anything irregular which went on. “Irregular” was one of his favourite words, I think.'

‘Perhaps he felt a responsibility towards these young people who are still feeling their way into a dangerous working world. Perhaps with the ones living on site he thought he had a responsibility to supervise their development.'

‘Perhaps. And when only one or two of them can be taken on to the permanent staff at the end of their training, you could say that he had a right to know everything to help his decisions. But more often than not he takes my recommendations anyway. When lads are on drugs or binge drinking, it shows up very quickly in their work, when that work involves hard physical labour. We're lucky here: we can pick and choose our apprentices. We don't get many bad 'uns.'

‘Are you saying the curator had an unhealthy interest in the young men working here?'

‘No, nothing like that! It was all perfectly proper. He just seemed a bit of an old woman when it came to storing away bits of gossip. Am I allowed to say that?'

Lambert grinned wearily. ‘Probably not. But please carry on.'

‘Well, it wasn't just the apprentices. Dennis Cooper wanted all the information he could get on the senior staff here, as well. He wanted to know where the chef went when he went off the site.'

‘And did you tell him?' The grey eyebrows arched above the grey eyes in innocent enquiry.

‘No. I couldn't if I'd wanted to, because I don't know. My family's enough for me to worry about. I keep myself to myself.'

‘But you think the curator liked to pry into people's private lives?'

Hartley nodded slowly. ‘He liked to know everything he could about people. I expect he'd have said that was just part of his job. The more he knew about people, the more accurately he could assess whether they were suitable employees. He's responsible to the Trust for everyone who's employed here. None of us has a job for life. Even the most senior of us are on two- or three-year contracts.'

‘But you need continuity, especially in jobs like yours.'

Jim Hartley smiled. ‘Of course you do. And personally, I don't feel in danger of being made redundant. But any organization which depends on subscriptions for its income can see it decline rapidly in times of recession, so the Trust has to be prudent.'

‘Did Mr Cooper threaten people with dismissal if they didn't toe the line?'

There was a long pause, during which Hartley seemed to find the curator's carpet deeply fascinating. ‘He didn't threaten me. I can't speak for other people.'

‘You mentioned the head chef, Mr Wilkinson. Were he and the curator at loggerheads?'

‘No. I just gave that as an example of how Dennis Cooper wanted to know everything that went on here. I suppose the chef sprang to mind because of something which happened a week or two ago. Hugo shouted words he shouldn't have used in the kitchen. Everyone got to know about that. But Mr Cooper had dealt with it. I don't think there was any residual animosity between the two of them.'

A good phrase. Unusual for a gardener, even a head gardener, Lambert thought. But perhaps he was being patronizing. He nodded to Hook, who said, ‘Where were you last night between six and midnight, Mr Hartley?'

‘That's easy. I was in my cottage. It was a pretty foul evening, with a thunderstorm which took a long time to rumble away and heavy showers as it went. Not the weather to tempt you out.'

‘So you didn't leave the cottage at all between six and twelve?'

‘No. It was the kind of weather where you're glad to have a roof over your head.'

‘Is there anyone who can confirm this for us?'

He hesitated for a moment before he smiled. ‘Well, there's the boys. I read Oliver a story – Sam reads his own nowadays. They were asleep by about nine, but of course Julie could vouch for me after that.'

‘And you for her, I suppose,' said Lambert with a humourless nod. Husband-wife alibis were notoriously suspect, but always difficult to break.

‘Surely Julie can't be one of your suspects? She hardly knew the man.'

‘We shall be questioning everyone who lives on site. At this stage, we cannot think in terms of suspects. We gather information and try to eliminate as many people as we can from the enquiry as we do so. But it is important that we speak to everyone here. They may have seen something or heard something significant. They may know things about the victim, about his likes and dislikes, his friends and enemies, which give us pointers. It is often people on the fringes of an investigation who give us vital information.'

Hartley's tanned outdoor features clouded as he nodded. ‘I can see that. I hadn't thought about it before. I still don't think Julie will be able to help you.'

‘So who do you think did this, Mr Hartley?'

He was shocked by the directness of the challenge. ‘I've no idea. You shouldn't just consider people on the site. There are a lot of people who come in here every week to help us. It could be one of them. Or it could be someone else entirely – someone connected with Mr Cooper's private life.'

‘It could indeed. Do you know of any such person?'

‘No. I'm just making the point that we don't live in a vacuum. Even for those of us working in the gardens all day and living on the site, there has to be life outside Westbourne Park.'

‘I take your point. But can you suggest anyone who doesn't live on the site who should have our attention?'

Jim Hartley studied the carpet in Cooper's office for several long seconds as he forced himself to go further. ‘There's Lorna Green. She's a voluntary worker who probably comes in more frequently than any of the others. She knows more about the history of the gardens than anyone. She gives talks to visitors and answers questions.'

‘And you think she also knows quite a lot about the man who was responsible for Westbourne? You think we should talk to her quickly?'

‘I'm not saying she had anything to do with this. She's not that sort of woman. But something she said one day made me think she's known Dennis Cooper for a long time – longer than any of us who work here. She might be able to tell you the sort of things about his past that you were speaking of.'

‘Members of our team will be speaking to all the voluntary workers here. But we'll make Ms Green a priority. Thank you for the thought. We may need to see you again, when we know more about what happened last night.'

That was merely routine, Jim told himself. It was just his own confusion which made it sound like a threat.

Twenty-four hours after its curator had been murdered, a strange, uneasy quiet lay over Westbourne Park. Monday had been a fresher day after the storm, but cloud had covered the skies in early evening, so that the long summer day darkened earlier than might have been expected.

This was normally a quiet place in the evenings, after the visitors had left. But it seemed unnaturally so tonight. The birds had ceased singing early and it would be an hour or two yet before the first cry of the screech-owl was heard. The few children on the site had departed indoors as the daylight dimmed. Silence and stillness were natural here. But what had happened on the previous evening was known now to everyone who lived on site, so that the quiet seemed extreme and unnatural.

One man who lived here had been waiting impatiently for the twilight. The figure in leathers and helmet looked scarcely human as it moved stiffly through the gloom; the silhouette might have been some biped from another planet. Once the gauntleted hands dropped upon the steel of the handlebars, it took shape as a motorcyclist and became less threatening.

But the silence held, because the rider did not want to be discovered. He wheeled the small machine awkwardly from the shed and turned it towards the gates. For the last fifty yards, he slipped astride it and pushed it along awkwardly with his feet, anxious to be gone from here, but also to escape detection, though there seemed to be no one else abroad in this still and brooding place. Once he was through the staff entrance and on the lane, he kicked the machine into life.

Its small engine roared unnaturally loud through the silence, its lights blazed sudden and dazzling in the summer darkness. Then the rider was away through the lanes, a succession of moths flashing briefly in and out of the long beam of his headlight. All other concerns disappeared beneath the concentration needed to control his bike on this journey through the night.

The presence of the steel frame beneath him, responding to the movements of his body, was as reassuring as the surge of power when he reached a straight stretch of road and opened the throttle. You heard nothing but the sound of your engine, felt nothing but the rush of the cool wind past your ears. You saw nothing through your goggles save what your headlight gave you on these unlit roads. You were in your own world, master of your own fate, on a motorbike. Whilst you rode it and controlled it, it shut out all other concerns which had set you on this journey.

Alex Fraser settled low over the fuel tank for his long retreat through the darkness.

‘T
hank you for coming in here so promptly.'

‘It was no trouble. The rota has me on duty on most Tuesdays in any case.'

Lorna Green looked round Dennis Cooper's office, at the battered filing cabinet in the corner, at the long wood-framed window with the under-eaves of the thatch just visible at the top, at the big picture on the wall of the original owner's other great garden in the south of France. She wondered if she should pretend that she had never been in this room before. That would surely distance her from the crime. She reminded herself that as far as these men were concerned she was only an unpaid part-time worker and thus scarcely worthy of much attention.

She was torn between wanting to know exactly what the CID men were thinking and trying to prove she was quite remote from it. It wasn't in her nature to play down her importance, she thought wryly. You got to know yourself better as you grew older. Even the tragedy which was threatening to overwhelm her at home had taught her things about herself. She looked at the tall, intense man with the grizzled hair and keen grey eyes who had said he was Chief Superintendent Lambert, then at the burly figure with the weather-beaten face who sat quiet and observant beside him. She said, ‘The other part-time workers and guides are being interviewed by members of your team. May I ask why I merit the top brass?'

Lambert pursed his lips, decided not to tell her that she was here to answer questions rather than to ask them. This exchange was voluntary and unpaid, like the rest of her work here. ‘We were told you know as much about this place as anyone. That made you a good starting point.'

‘But you're interested in a man who died here, not the place itself.' Some men thought they could get away with any sort of bland explanation, so long as they were speaking to a woman. And perhaps they succeeded, if they threw in a little flattery; she acknowledged to herself wryly that she'd been pleased when the chief superintendent had said she was the leading authority on Westbourne.