Only a Game (29 page)

She smiled at him, half-mocking, half affectionate, and he thought again of the daughters he saw so rarely and how he would have loved one of them to tease him gently like this. Or much more robustly, for that matter. He didn't need to be treated with kid gloves, but there were times when he felt it would be nice to receive any sort of attention at all. ‘Perhaps the modern worker just needs a little more direction and supervision than people like Harry.'

She smiled at him again. ‘Let's agree on that, shall we? We've now put together a list of people who had the opportunity to commit this murder. We wondered if you'd had any further thoughts on the people who might have also had the motive and the nerve to kill James Capstick. We think you know them better as a group of people than anyone else who was around at the time.'

‘I don't know Helen Capstick well.' Edward was playing for time, telling himself not to be too easily swayed by this attractive young face which seemed so friendly and accommodating.

Lucy smiled. ‘But you've formed an impression, as we have. It would be interesting to have your view, in confidence.'

He'd given a lot of thought to Helen Capstick since the events of Saturday night. It surely couldn't do him any harm to say what he thought about her. ‘Helen is a woman of the modern world. She knows how to look after herself. She'd been married before, as Capstick had. I would imagine she's had other relationships as well. Women like her don't reach their late forties without learning how to look after themselves. That doesn't mean that I think she killed her husband – it's a long step from keeping a beady eye on your interests to murder.'

Except that if Helen Capstick thought her husband was about to discover her affair and disinherit her, she might think drastic action was needed, thought Lucy Blake. She gave Lanchester a winsome smile and said, ‘You said you didn't know Mrs Capstick well. That implies that you knew some of the other people involved considerably better than you knew her.'

Edward gave her an answering smile, meant to convey that he understood what she was about and would help her as much as he thought appropriate. ‘I know Darren Pearson quite well. I helped to appoint him. I'm happy to say that because he's been an excellent secretary to the club – or chief executive, as we now have to call him.'

‘Despite personal problems.' She nodded understandingly, making it a statement rather than a query.

Lanchester glanced at her sharply, then said rather stiffly, ‘I know that his wife has left him. I'm sorry about that. I liked Meg.'

‘Then you'll be happy to hear that they're back together at present. Perhaps I should tell you that we know about Mr Pearson's problems with gambling.'

‘The gambling thing has never affected his work. He's always been efficient at the club and always been there when he was needed.'

‘But he must have felt threatened when he heard about the sale of the club. He wouldn't easily get another job, with the problems in his private life.'

‘You would need to discuss that with him. I reiterate that as far as I'm concerned – and I'm sure as far as someone much more demanding like Capstick was concerned – Darren Pearson was a model employee.'

The barriers were going up. Sensing that his DS had got as far as she was going to get, Peach said sharply, ‘And what about Robbie Black and Debbie Black?'

Edward turned unhurriedly to face the dark eyes and challenging face of the man directing this investigation. ‘As a football manager, Robbie is highly successful. For a club the size of Brunton Rovers, success consists of keeping us in the Premiership. That's a fact of life we have to accept in the modern football world.'

‘And as a man?'

‘He's a disciplinarian. There aren't too many of those among modern managers, now that they have to deal with millionaire prima donnas.' For a moment, his nostalgia for an older and simpler era which he knew was gone forever misted his eyes. Then he recalled himself sternly to the matter in hand. ‘Robbie Black learned to look after himself in one of the toughest areas of Glasgow and he hasn't forgotten it.'

The three of them were silent for a moment, thinking of the implications of this for the crime committed five days earlier. Then Peach said, ‘What about Mrs Black?'

‘Debbie's devoted to her husband and her family.'

‘You like her.'

‘It would be difficult not to like Debbie. She was a tennis star and a successful model, but she seems to have relinquished the celebrity spotlight without a qualm to become a loyal wife and a devoted mother. She loves Brunton and she's building a life for herself and her family here. I believe she'd do anything for Robbie.'

‘Even murder?'

He smiled at Peach's intensity. ‘No, not murder. Anything within reason. Murder isn't within reason, is it?'

Peach relaxed a little, answering Lanchester's smile while still studying him relentlessly. ‘The trouble is that, at the time of the death, murderers sometimes see killing as exactly that, Mr Lanchester. As the only reasonable way out of a particular situation. Have you any further thoughts to offer us?'

Edward Lanchester looked at him curiously for a moment, wondering exactly how much Peach knew about these people, before he said firmly, ‘No. Nothing at present.'

‘Then we shall be on our way. Thank you for your help.' Peach stood looking out of the window for a moment, as if taking in the full glory of the scarlet rhododendron, and then left without looking at Lanchester again.

The Blacks' au pair was Swedish. She was tall, blonde, and competent, and like most young Swedes she spoke excellent English. She had completed her degree and was spending a year acquiring work experience before she committed herself to a career. She was sure now what she wanted to do, partly as a result of her experiences in Brunton. Sixteen months from now, after another year of training, she would become a primary school teacher.

Hilde Svendson was also a soccer enthusiast who had followed the results in the English Premiership diligently in her home country. One of the attractions of this post for her had been involvement with the children of a football manager in the Premiership and the connection, however tenuous, with the glamour of big-time soccer. She supported Liverpool: she felt that she was the only person living in the Brunton area who had been dismayed by last Saturday's result.

At ten o'clock on Wednesday morning, the children were at school and the spacious modern house felt curiously quiet and empty. Hilde was sorting through the children's discarded toys with Mrs Black, gathering together a considerable array of highly coloured wood and plastic which would be taken first to the local play group and then, after being been sifted there, to the charity shop.

‘We should have got rid of most of these a year or more ago,' said Debbie Black, handling a wheeled wooden horse with a touch of nostalgia. ‘It's having plenty of storage space that does it. In our last house I'd have had to be much more ruthless because we needed the room. Look how much clutter we've gathered! And it's all stuff they'll never touch again.' She looked at the formidable array with a moment of regret for the years of infancy which would not come again. ‘We've almost finished now. We'll have a cup of coffee and then you can have the gym to yourself for an hour if you like.'

Hilde was enthusiastic about fitness, and delighted with the array of exercise machines in the private gym at the back of the house. Debbie had noted her Junoesque figure and the fact that she was an enthusiastic trainer, and thus wore very little in that room. She trusted Robbie implicitly, of course, but there was no use thrusting temptation under a man's nose. Vigorous men of forty-four should be protected from the sensations generated by a panting and scantily clad Hilde Svendson, for their own and everyone else's sake. You tended to be a little more cautious about these things when you had yourself reached forty-three.

The bedroom was at the back of the house, so that neither of them heard the car coming up the drive. It was not until the doorbell rang that Debbie went and looked through the window of the front bedroom and realized who the visitors were. ‘It's the police,' she told Hilde, as she watched DCI Peach climb out of the passenger seat of the Mondeo and look up at the house. ‘Do you think you could stow these things into my car and take them to the play centre?'

Hilde hesitated. ‘What is “stow”?'

‘Sorry. I just meant pack them into the back of the car and dispose of them for us. The police will probably want to speak to me on my own, you see.'

If Hilde was disappointed to be cut off from the drama of detection, she hid it well. She hadn't been a qualified driver for very long and she appreciated being trusted with her employer's car. By the time Debbie Black had prepared coffee and biscuits for Peach and Blake, she had packed the toys into the car and was easing it carefully past the police vehicle.

This time it was Peach who began the questioning. ‘We asked you to go on thinking about Saturday's killing and the people who were around at the time, Mrs Black.'

‘I've done that. It's difficult not to, when you've been close to something horrific like that. I haven't managed to come up with anything which seems significant.'

‘Really?' Peach's eyebrows arched impossibly high towards the baldness above them. They seemed to Debbie Black the most expressive black arcs she had ever seen. ‘Have you reviewed your own story? Are you happy that you've told us what the courts used to call the whole truth and nothing but the truth?'

Debbie felt the skin on her face suddenly very warm. She fought for calmness as she pretended to review what she had said to them on Monday. ‘I think I told you everything. James Capstick dropped his bombshell and shocked us all – even his wife, as far as I could see. Several people, including me, spoke up against the sale of the club to people who knew nothing about this area, but Capstick made it clear that none of us had any say in the matter. Then he left us and we indulged in a collective bout of righteous indignation. It was clear to me pretty quickly that we weren't achieving anything more than letting off steam, so I left and drove back here. I couldn't be certain of the time I left, but it was probably around half an hour after Capstick had told us he was going up to his office.

‘You didn't go out again?'

‘No. I was here for the rest of the evening. Robbie rang and told me that he was going to see his old friend and fellow-manager Jack Cox about the implications of the takeover for him. I think he got in at about eleven and we then spent another hour discussing what was going to happen to us.'

‘You didn't go back to the football ground after you'd left?'

‘No. I just told you. I didn't go out at all for the rest of the evening after I'd returned here.'

‘That isn't quite what I asked you, Mrs Black. I asked if you returned to Grafton Park at any time after you'd left.'

‘Then I'm telling you again that I didn't.'

He looked at her steadily for what was probably a few seconds but what seemed to Debbie a very long time. She stared steadily, fixedly, back at him, trying to thrust away the thought that her cheeks must be reddening. Then, almost reluctantly it seemed, Peach said, ‘Our information is that you did in fact return to the football ground on Saturday night, not long after you had left the private car park.'

Her first instinct was to hold stubbornly to her denial, as if she had been a child caught in some minor transgression. But they must have a witness, possibly more than one. She wouldn't drop her eyes, but she couldn't meet Peach's gimlet stare for any longer. She transferred her gaze to the woman who sat with her eyes on her notebook as she said dully. ‘I did go back. But I didn't kill Capstick.'

Peach was quieter, less challenging now after her admission. He said softly. ‘You had better give us a full and exact account of your movements.'

‘Yes.' But there was a long moment before she spoke again, whilst she fought to stop her mind from racing. ‘I left as I told you, perhaps half an hour after Capstick had left us in the hospitality suite, perhaps a little less than that. But I didn't come straight back here. About a mile away from the ground, I turned into a lay-by and stopped to collect my thoughts. Eventually I decided to go back and speak to Capstick. To plead with him, if you like.'

‘From your description of the man and his reactions in the hospitality lounge a little earlier, you couldn't have expected him to be very receptive.'

‘I don't suppose I did. But Robbie's future was at stake. Our whole life in Brunton was at stake. I was prepared to try anything to save those things.'

‘Even murder.'

‘No. Not murder. I wasn't thinking of that.'

‘So what exactly did you do?'

‘I sat in the lay-by for ten minutes, perhaps fifteen. Then I drove slowly back to the ground. I had to make myself do it, because I didn't really think Capstick was going to take much notice of me. But I've persuaded a few men to change their decisions in the past.' A private, unconscious smile relaxed her taut features for a moment. ‘Anyway, I had to try, because there was so much at stake for us.'

‘Did you see anyone else when you went back?'

‘No. It was very quiet around the entrance by then. I parked in a side street, not in the private car park. I didn't think anyone had seen me.'

She looked interrogatively at Peach, but she knew he wasn't going to reveal the identity of his witness. ‘Go on, please. Try not to miss anything out.'

‘I slipped through the single wooden door which was the only one which was open and went quickly up the stairs to the chairman's office. I'd never been up there before, so I wasn't even sure which room was his at first, but the door was clearly labelled. I knocked and there was no reply, so I pushed the door open cautiously and went in. I got a terrible shock. I think I might even have given a little scream, but I'm not sure of that.'