A Death of Distinction (4 page)

‘When did he last use his car?' he asked abruptly of his assistant, Inspector Abigail Moon.

‘About half-four yesterday. Parked it where he always did, parallel with the barn.' Her face was pinched and pale under her cap of bronze hair, but resolute, determinedly professional, she'd already sussed out the necessary. He'd have been disappointed in her if she hadn't.

‘Which is why the barn took the brunt of the damage. Lucky he didn't leave it nearer the house.'

‘You'll want to see Mrs Lilburne later, I suppose. She was out in the garden at the other side when it happened, but –'

‘I'll want to talk to anybody who was around when it happened, yes, but Mrs Lilburne can wait. She's enough worries at the moment, poor woman. Plenty others we can see first.'

‘That's what I thought. I've arranged for us to see Miss Reynolds, the deputy governor, over at the prison, in about twenty minutes.'

The prison, the YOI, the Young Offenders' Unit. It was very near. Apparently not near enough for the house to be included in its security system, being outside the perimeter fence, but close enough for the bomb to have caused some panic over there, no doubt.

‘– and there's a Mr Spurrier who's asked for a word – Anthony Spurrier, one of the governor-team.'

‘Oh? What does he want?'

‘He hasn't said, but he was out with the Lilburnes last night, at some sort of celebration at the Town Hall – for the governor's OBE, I gather. A chauffeur-driven limo arrived at about seven to pick up Lilburne and his wife and daughter, and then brought them home at eleven.'

‘So the bomb could've been planted on the Nissan any time between seven and when it went off – by virtually anybody. Wonderful!' Mayo looked at his watch. ‘If I'm not due to see Miss Reynolds for another twenty minutes, we've time to see Spurrier first.'

‘No point in driving round to the main building, there's a short cut through the garden.' Her tone was resolutely neutral.

‘And you'd like to get a look at it.' Mayo smiled. ‘All right, all right, I suppose one way's as good as another.'

The scene behind was grim, Abigail was still shaken, but she recognized a generous offer when she saw one, a chance to get herself together. It was especially generous, coming from a man who'd never been known to pick up a spade – at least willingly. Career-orientated and single-minded about it, she'd discovered a keen gardening streak in herself since she'd become the owner of a derelict cottage with an even more derelict garden. He could still surprise her. Something was making Mayo more benign these days, and she'd put money on it being the settling down of his relationship with Alex Jones. Good for them, she thought, but unenvious, her own love life, her association with Ben Appleyard, editor of the local
Advertiser,
being quite satisfactory at the moment, thank you.

She could feel the colour coming back into her cheeks. ‘You never know, you might pick up a few tips yourself.' A bit cheeky, that, but she knew him well enough now to know when to risk it. He didn't seem to mind. Might be different from now on, though, with more rank between them. His new status could put their partnership at risk. Pity, really, when they'd just got into stride, as you might say.

‘I'll have you know I appreciate a nice garden as well as the next man ... under the strict proviso that I don't have to look after it,' he replied equably, unlatching the gate which opened on to extensive lawns that sloped down to a beautifully landscaped garden. Its immediate area was still thick with policemen of all sorts, some of them engaged in picking up scattered debris, and worse, for the explosion had been big enough to blast some of it as far as a shallow lake, about a hundred yards from the house. This wasn't deep enough for frogmen, and several unhappy police officers were wading through the mud and the water lily pads with dragnets, further disturbing the affronted ducks.

Leaving the main centre of activity behind, they followed the serpentine curves of a shredded bark path, alongside tranquil beds and borders where the graceful shapes of bare-branched trees, evergreen shrubs and spreading conifers gave form and substance to a landscape bursting forth from its winter sleep. Abigail, still subdued by the succession of events – the funeral, followed by the explosion – felt her spirits lifted by the sight of rare shrubs beginning to burst into flower, underplanted with bright blue scillas and narcissi and what looked like acres of crocuses – purple, white – and gold, too, she noticed jealously. Why were these left alone, and not hers? In her own little garden, hooligan sparrows had descended in marauding gangs to decapitate all the yellow ones – the yellow ones only – that she'd so painstakingly planted in the autumn.

As the path turned, they came across an old man forking over a patch of ground near to where the garden ended and the perimeter fence began. He glanced up, without stopping what he was doing, as they drew level, and the smell of damp, newly turned earth came to them.

Mayo paused beside him and introduced himself. ‘And this is my colleague, Inspector Moon. You must be the Mr Barnett who was working in the kitchen garden behind the house when the bomb went off?'

Pausing to crumble a ball of soil in one horny hand, the old man nodded, apparently unaffected by the shock of what had just happened, though you could never tell, shock took people all ways, and perhaps for him getting on with the job was its own kind of therapy.

‘Tell me what happened.'

‘Dunno, rightly. Just parked me bike in the barn and got me barrer out not five minutes afore I heard this hell of a bang. How is her, then, the missis?'

‘Bearing up,' Abigail said. ‘The chaplain's with her now.'

‘Oh ar.' The two laconic Lavenstock syllables that could express anything: agreement, disbelief, approval, scorn ... His boot on the fork, he drove the tines into the earth again.

‘Spare us a minute of your time, if you will.'

Barnett removed his foot, even went so far as to lean on his fork and look at Mayo, but he was a surly old devil, not inclined to be forthcoming. Mayo nodded to Abigail and then watched in silence while she questioned the gardener. His answers were as short as he could make them and didn't tell them much: he came twice a week, yesterday being one of his days, and he'd worked as usual, leaving at about quarter to five, having checked that all the tools and garden machinery were in place in the barn where they were kept, before locking up. Noticed nothing out of the ordinary, but he'd been anxious to get off. He lived with his daughter and she went on at him summat rotten if he wasn't home on time. ‘Don't want me to think her's hoping I've fallen off of me bike so her can collect on me insurance,' he remarked sardonically. The barn had still been locked when he arrived this morning at nine-thirty, and hadn't been disturbed as far as he could see. He'd noticed nothing at all unusual, and he'd be glad, his attitude implied, if they'd let him get on with his digging.

‘Nothing and nobody at all?'

‘Not unless you count that there chap with the camera last week.'

‘Oh? What chap was this?' Mayo put in, holding on to his patience.

‘Up by the house. Taking pictures for one of them posh magazines, I reckoned. Wouldn't be the first time – though the missis said nowt to me about it, and he nivver come into the garden – it was just the house he was snapping. But he soon took his hook when he saw me watching him.'

‘Didn't you think to mention it to anybody?'

‘Why should I? There's a footpath from the lane into them woods over yonder. He coulda been one of them hikers, couldn't he?'

Just possible. The house was picturesque enough to have provided that excuse, anyway, had the photographer been challenged. It wouldn't have disgraced a calendar, above a month in spring or summer. But this had been early March and the recent weather conditions for photography had been appalling. And to disappear so promptly when he was aware of being watched?

‘Describe this man to me if you can.'

‘Youngish.' Which, in Barnett's book, meant anywhere between eighteen and forty-five, Mayo discovered. Wearing one of the padded jackets they all wore nowadays, green or blue, maybe, he couldn't remember. It had to be Thursday or Friday when he'd seen him because those were the days he worked here. Beyond that, he couldn't go. Whether the man was tall or short, fat or thin, dark or fair, it was too much to hope that he'd remember, and he didn't.

Mayo thanked him, said it might be useful to talk to him again, and prepared to follow the path which skirted the perimeter fence to the front entrance of the prison, leaving the old man to get on with his work. But once stopped, Barnett seemed to have lost the will to continue. Looking vacantly across the garden, his shoulders sagged, as if the stuffing had gone out of him.

He said slowly, scraping his hand across his chin stubble, ‘Reckon that was it, then? He was the one as put the bomb in the car?'

‘I'd say there's a good chance.'

‘Bloody hell.'

Mayo briskly disposed of any feelings of remorse. ‘If he is, you couldn't have known.' Briefly, he laid a hand on the old man's shoulder. ‘Go home, Mr Barnett. You've had a shock. There's plenty of cars up at the house. Somebody'll drive you home.'

‘Mebbe. When I've finished what I'm at,' the old man countered stubbornly. And when Mayo looked back at the gate, he saw that he'd started his digging again.

‘It wasn't the governor's practice to check under his car before getting into it, then?' Mayo asked when they'd been through the rituals of admittance, and Anthony Spurrier was finally ready to talk to them in his office. This after several minutes' delay while he made a distracted and abortive search among his chaotic papers for a file which had apparently gone missing, the sort of activity the mind fastens on when events are too shocking to contemplate.

‘What? Oh, it wouldn't have entered his head,' Spurrier replied, his eyes still wandering in search of the elusive file. ‘Such things happened to other people. Jack always thought he had a charmed life. Maybe he should've checked – but that's a counsel of perfection. One tends to get relaxed about these things. He wouldn't have thought anybody could've had it in for him.'

Abigail said, ‘Somebody did. The bomb couldn't have got there by accident.'

‘But who, for God's sake?'

‘You must have some pretty dangerous guys banged up in here.'

‘Some. And banged up's the word! If they could've got as far as the house, you wouldn't have seen them for dust – wouldn't have been stopping to plant bombs, I can tell you – even if they'd had the means.'

Dangerous, Abigail had meant, in that they had friends outside, who might conceivably have done the job for them – for reasons which hadn't yet offered themselves.

Spurrier had the stunned look of someone in deep shock. His hands were restless. Long, thin fingers fiddled with a treasury tag, folded and refolded a scrap of paper, rearranged a collection of biros, pencils and odds and ends in a mug with a crude, fat-lady seaside joke on it.

‘You wanted to see us, Mr Spurrier?' Mayo prompted, with difficulty refraining from looking at his watch. He was anxious to get going. Kite, his high-energy sergeant, had already set the wheels of the inquiry rolling, and plodding old Atkins would be setting up the incident room, but this wasn't going to be any straight-down-the-line inquiry. There'd been no claim so far from any disaffected or subversive organizations. There was still time for that, but no point in waiting for it: a bomb as a means of settling a personal score was unusual, but not unheard of – and that meant starting here where grudges were more than likely to have originated. ‘We'll need to interview everyone,' he'd told Abigail on the way over, ‘prison officers, inmates, civilian staff – everybody.' He was anxious to brief his team, establish firm lines of inquiry. And there was Miss Reynolds, the deputy governor, still to see.

And here was Spurrier, still skating around the edges of what he had to say. ‘They pushed the boat out for him last night at the Town Hall. Because of his OBE. The Mayor and Mayoress, speeches, champagne, the works. I was there as a friend of Flora ...' He added quietly, in absolute misery, ‘Oh, God.'

Ah yes, Flora, the governor's daughter. Mayo watched the restless fingers unfold the piece of paper once more, begin refolding it even more tightly, as he added, ‘He was well liked, the governor. Respected and well liked. Better than most I can think of.'

Mayo nodded, resigned to accepting that this wasn't going to be quick. ‘Sure. I liked him myself.'

‘I didn't realize you knew him.'

‘Met him occasionally in the course of business. We had a drink together once or twice.'

It was true that Mayo had liked Lilburne – within their limited acquaintance. He'd sent him a congratulatory note on reading the announcement of his OBE award, believing the distinction conferred on him was, in this case, well deserved. A hail-fellow-well-met type, Jack Lilburne, yet patently dedicated to his job. On the face of it, the last person to provoke enough personal animosity in anyone to make them put a
bomb
under him, to want to blow him out of existence. Maybe it
had
been a gesture of another sort ... an anarchical gesture, a declaration of subversion.

Spurrier had pushed his chair back and walked to the window, standing with his back to them, looking out. The room was old fashioned, had seen better days. Cream paint was chipped and darkened to the colour of old yellow teeth. Thumb-tacked posters, visual-aid boards, were screwed on to one wall, contemptuous of what had once been fine panelling. A hole in the plaster indicated where the doorknob had crashed into it too many times. Files and books spilled on to the floor, a jacket was slung over a peg, with a bump poking out just under its collar. What would Spurrier, a psychologist, have made of the room, what construction would he have put on its owner's character, had its occupant been someone else? That he was a bit of a slob, for sure – and he'd have been dead right, Mayo thought. Spurrier's shoes were unpolished. (To Mayo, who had to be reminded to get his hair cut, and wore his own suits until they were only just this side of respectable, this was the ultimate sin.) More, Spurrier's shirt was open necked and looked rough dried, his cords were baggy at the knees, as well as elsewhere, the lenses of his glasses smeary. About thirty, with worry lines on his forehead, and a slightly defeated droop to his shoulders. But his reactions were quicker than his procrastinating manner indicated and his eyes, behind the dim lenses, shrewd. Almost certainly, underneath the haphazard exterior, was a depth of understanding and compassion.