Remains to be Seen (28 page)

‘So you could easily have dumped his car, after you had deposited the body in that disused room at Marton Towers.'

DS Blake didn't need any reply; the horror on his damaged face was quite enough as she took her leave, thanking the staff nurse for the access to her patient.

The nurse took Ben Freeman's blood pressure and temperature, and remarked that both were higher than she would have hoped. She examined the bruises on his back and his ribs, then ran the back of her fingers lightly over his livid cheek. ‘You're a good healer,' she said approvingly. ‘Things could have been a lot worse, you know! You're really quite lucky.'

Ben lay on his back and watched the high ceiling swimming before the vision of his single eye. ‘They've got me lined up for a murder rap,' he said faintly.

Percy Peach sat back on the sofa in Lucy Blake's neat modern flat and stretched his powerful but rather short legs as far as they would go. ‘Nice place, this. Hardly big enough for two, though, when you make an honest man of me.'

Lucy loved the flat she had bought when this small block had been built three years ago. It was on the second and top floor, with extensive views over the old cotton town and out towards the Ribble Valley beyond it. And with the curtains closed on the winter evenings, it was a cosy place, where you could shut yourself away from the cares of the day and get on with the rest of your life. Percy's talk of marriage and of sharing made her feel very protective about this first residence she had owned. She said acidly, ‘Everything here works, if that's what you mean. Including the central heating, unlike your place.'

‘Tha won't need much heating when tha's wed to me, lass.'

She liked it when he thee'd and thou'd her, but this wasn't the moment to encourage it, when he was coupling it with the marriage which he was anxious to push on and she was anxious to postpone. She said firmly, ‘You wanted me to bring you up to date on my visit to the hospital to question Ben Freeman.'

‘Eeh, tha were always one for the Protestant work ethic. I never thought I'd find that attractive in a woman, but in thee, lass, it's fair champion!' Percy reached out to stroke his partner's rear as she set the two cups of coffee on the table beside them, but she moved out of his reach with a swift grace which came from much practice.

Lucy sat firmly at the other end of the sofa and thumped a cushion into place between them. ‘Young Ben Freeman is a suspect,' she said firmly.

Peach resigned himself to the inevitable, assuring himself that the inevitable could still be quite short. ‘In spite of being beaten up?'

‘Because of it, if you like. He was roughed over because he'd given up dealing drugs. It was a warning to keep his mouth shut about anything he might know. Which appears to be zilch, incidentally.'

‘He was dealing for Neil Cartwright?'

‘Yes. He was one of the ring Cartwright was establishing to increase his earnings from drugs.'

Peach nodded, suddenly fully professional. ‘The Drugs Squad tells me that Cartwright's supplier has now been arrested, as a result of information gathered after last week's seizure of the big boys at Marton Towers. So that chapter is closed, as far as they're concerned. But it leaves us with Freeman as a suspect for our killing.'

‘Yes. Ben Freeman admitted that Cartwright cut up rough when he said he wanted out from his ring of dealers. Threatened him with violence, he says. Whether Ben responded with violence of his own remains to be seen.'

‘Like too many other things in this case. Did Freeman seem like a killer to you?'

Lucy thought of that damaged, confused, rather pathetic figure she had seen a few hours earlier. She was far too experienced a CID officer now to make a murder judgement on appearances. ‘I don't think he'd plan a killing in cold blood. But if he got into an argument with Cartwright, if he panicked, he might have done anything. If someone hid Cartwright's body away in that room without quite knowing how he was going to dispose of it, without any clear plan, that sounds like the kind of thing Ben Freeman would have done. He fled from Marton Towers immediately after the murder, and he approached the crime scene after the fire. He's certainly scared. But he was still in shock when I questioned him.'

‘Aye. I think I'd be a bit scared, when the ministering angel at my bedside turned into a gauleiter.' Peach was a man of very different background and experience from young Freeman, but he had the male knowledge of the effect his partner could have on impressionable men. ‘At twenty, he's our youngest candidate. I'd say he's just as likely as the oldest one, the stepfather, who's sixty-six.'

‘Derek Simmons? He isn't the conventional wicked stepfather, though, is he? For one thing, he only appeared on the scene when Neil Cartwright was an adult, and for another, he seems to have done everything he could to be friendly to Neil. All the hostility seems to have come from the stepson, even according to his mother.'

‘Nevertheless, Simmons went to some trouble to establish a bogus alibi, asking a snooker pal to lie on his behalf. And he was at Marton Towers on the Sunday evening when Cartwright died, on his own admission. Motive and opportunity, if the two of them fell out there. And he admits that he nearly throttled a man, twenty years ago. “A fight that got out of hand”, Derek Simmons called it. This might have been another one.'

‘I'd rather it was one of the women in the case.' Lucy hastened to justify her prejudices. ‘The wronged wife and the lover. Always good candidates. Sally Cartwright seems singularly unaffected by her husband's death. And she too had motive and ample opportunity.'

‘As did Michelle Naylor, if we posit that the lovers had fallen out. If, for instance, Cartwright had pretended the affair was going to be long-term when he had no intention that it should be more than an exciting interlude. That little spitfire wouldn't have taken kindly to that.'

Lucy sought for some method of defending her sex against this clichéd approach, and found none. ‘In their different ways, both those women are very cool characters. I don't think I've ever met anyone quite so cool under questioning as Michelle Naylor. She's certainly got the temperament to plan and carry out a murder.'

‘So has her husband, I would think. James Naylor wasn't quite as calm under fire as his wife. But then he might have more reason to fear our investigation.'

‘He's a chef. They're not supposed to be good with words: it's not part of their job description.' Lucy remembered how she had at one point been sorry for James Naylor, as he faltered under the stress of Percy Peach's interrogation.

‘Doesn't mean they're not good with their fists, does it? Or with a length of rope round a man's neck.' Percy stretched his legs out again, examined the shine on the leather toecaps of his shoes, and said reflectively, ‘Of course, it could still be the butler.'

‘Neville Holloway? He's a smoothie, who obviously knew everything that was going on at the Towers. But he's a fraudster, rather than a killer, to my mind. I think you only fancy him for this because he's the butler. Or because you insist on calling him that to annoy Tommy Bloody Tucker.'

‘Holloway's capable of killing, if he decided it was necessary to him.' Percy brightened visibly. ‘But if he proves to have no connection with this, we could hire him to take charge of our wedding. I fancy taking over the Towers for the day and having a butler in charge of arrangements.'

Lucy hastened to be firm. ‘Well, I don't! And I think Marton Towers will be sold and Holloway will be gone, long before we get wed!'

‘Your mum would like it to be at the Towers. Perhaps I should discuss it with her.' Percy stared dreamily into space, a sure sign that he was at his most mischievous.

Lucy decided it was time for drastic diversion. She shuffled a little nearer to him on the sofa, took his hand, examined his immaculately groomed fingernails, and said, ‘I'm finding it difficult to sleep, with all these people to think about as suspects. I was rather hoping for an early night.' She focused on the spot on the wall Percy seemed to be studying, and looked just as ruminative.

Percy turned and looked into those disturbing, humorous, aquamarine eyes. ‘You're transparent, Lucy Blake. But I like it. Putty in your hands, I am.'

‘Oh dear! I was rather hoping that the bit I planned to handle wouldn't be putty at all.'

‘Eeh, I luv it when tha talks dirty, lass. I might need careful treatment, though, an innocent lad like me. Tha'd better make sure to warm thy 'ands.'

Lucy led him swiftly into the pleasantly warm bedroom. The wedding talk had gone. And she liked being thee'd and thou'd, under the duvet.

It was a considerable time later, after an interval of high pleasure and a splendid spending of energy, that Percy Peach lay on his back and contentedly stared at the invisible ceiling of Lucy Blake's comfortable bedroom. He wasn't conscious that he was thinking of anything, just of being suffused in a warm glow of post-coital fulfilment. Yet the human brain is still more complex and certainly more unpredictable than any computer. For it was in that moment of delicious relaxation that the one significant fact which he had overlooked in the case struck him with stunning force.

N
eville Holloway was glad to be conducting business in his familiar office. He felt in control again, as he hadn't done since his employer and the important visitors had been arrested in that police raid nine days earlier. Things would certainly never be the same again, and the future was uncertain for him and for all of the employees at Marton Towers, but a measure of normality was being restored. Holloway had his remaining full-time members of staff with him in his office and they seemed as anxious as he was to be working again.

Richard Crouch, the owner of Marton Towers, had been charged with serious drug offences and was still in custody, but he had given permission for certain commercial developments at the Towers, which would help to keep the place going. Holloway and his skeleton staff were going to make the place available for wedding receptions and other functions, bringing in part-time help as they needed it. It was an obvious use of the place, to Holloway's mind. Neville had drafted an advert for the local papers and for
Lancashire Life
; he was discussing it and some of the menus they might offer with James and Michelle Naylor and Sally Cartwright.

The chef and the two women were also glad to be back at work. Even if this catering represented merely a stay of execution on their employment, it would increase their reputations and experience. Even if the worst came to the worst and the Towers passed into new hands, this new work would look good on their CVs, and it was even possible that new owners might re-employ them, if they made a success of this.

The quartet passed a happy and productive hour discussing the facilities they could provide for weddings and similar celebratory functions, and the different demands which such work would make on them and the other staff at Marton Towers, such as cleaners and outside workers, who came in on a daily basis.

‘There will be more use of the public areas, such as the main lounge and the reception hall,' said Neville. ‘Can you cope with that, Sally?'

Sally Cartwright smiled. ‘I'm sure that Michelle and I will be able to cope.' It was a coded acknowledgement that she would need to work with her dead husband's lover in the months to come, that the old era was behind them and she was determined to look forward.

Michelle Naylor said coolly, ‘Sally and I have worked efficiently together in the past. There is no reason why we shouldn't do so in a new situation. We shall need part-time workers at different times, but we have a good list of people to call on. Sally and I both know reliable people who will be glad of the work.'

Holloway nodded. ‘The catering demands will also be very different. From serving very high-class food to a few people, we shall have to move to providing acceptable menus for perhaps a hundred people. Can that be done, James?'

James Naylor was ready for the question. ‘I think so. I've given it some thought, over the last few days, since you first came up with the idea. High-quality meals will be needed, especially in the early weeks, when we are creating our reputation. Word-of-mouth recommendations are more effective than all the advertising in the world, where food is concerned, and when you're developing something new like this. I think the kitchen facilities here can cope with it, as long as we offer set menus and we know in advance the number of covers we have to provide.'

It was a long speech for this man of few words, one he had prepared in advance of this meeting. He blushed a little as he concluded it and saw the others nodding their approval.

Neville Holloway, normally so unemotional, found himself caught up in the prevailing enthusiasm. ‘The great advantage we have, the trump card in our hand, is the location. No one competing with us will be able to match the setting of Marton Towers. The photographers will love it, for a start. I can see them posing their wedding groups against our impressive entrance. And they'll certainly want background shots of things like the lakes by the main drive and those two huge copper beeches.'

‘We'll need people to maintain the estate, though, if it's going to be such a feature. Everything's going to start growing like mad in another month or so.' Sally Cartwright spoke almost apologetically about these gaps in the team which had been headed by her dead husband, the absence in this gathering no one in the room wanted to declare.

Neville Holloway said hastily, ‘You're right. Young Ben Freeman left us in the lurch, departing as suddenly as he did last week.'

Michelle Naylor said, ‘I hear he's in hospital. Came off his bike on his way home from his new job at the golf club, apparently.'

If anyone in the room knew anything more accurate about what had happened to the young man who had so recently been their colleague, they didn't reveal it. James Naylor made a comment about Ben Freeman and Derek Simmons, the dead man's stepfather, being interviewed by the police about last week's fire. The others all nodded gravely, as if they were totally unaware that a greater crime than arson was what was interesting the CID.