An Unsuitable Death (11 page)

Twelve

Lambert’s first task on Tuesday morning was to ring the Superintendent in charge of the Drugs Squad. They had met, once, years earlier, but there was no time for polite preliminaries.

“I need to see Keith Sugden.”

“I’d rather you didn’t, John. He’s a villain and a big one, as you probably know. But we aren’t ready to move against him yet. We have to have a case the CPS will take on before we arrest him. At the moment, he’d laugh at us.”

“Nevertheless, I need to see him. A murder victim was pushing drugs for him. We need to establish who was supplying her.”

A pause. Murder, even here, even in the context of a Drugs Squad operation costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, could not be turned away. “It’s difficult, John. We’re getting nearer, amassing some valuable stuff on Sugden, but we’re nowhere near ready to take him yet.”

“Nevertheless, I need to see him. This isn’t the normal gangland killing, where we know we stand very little chance of arresting the killer. This was a girl who was only on the fringe of the drugs trade. I’m going to get the man who killed her.”

His confidence impressed even the hardened man on the other end of the line, whose experience entitled him to be cynical. “I don’t want the safety of any of my officers compromised. They’re in enough danger as it is.”

“I know that. I won’t jeopardise anyone’s safety. You’re not the only ones who’ve been after Sugden for years, though it sounds as if you now have the best chance of putting him away. But he knows me. He knows I’m well aware he has a drugs empire, though he also knows I haven’t the proof to do a damn thing about it. Nevertheless, once it was obvious that our murder victim was an addict, he wouldn’t be surprised by a visit from me.”

A sigh — the sound of reluctant acceptance of the inevitable. “All right. But for God’s sake, tread carefully.”

“I will. Don’t worry about that.”

For God’s sake, mused Lambert. Whatever God you believed in, He or She had nothing to do with the hard drugs industry.

***

Bert “Nosey” Parker’s drawings were even more useful than he had anticipated. He was an artist manqué; perhaps, thought DI Chris Rushton as he collated information at his computer in the Murder Room, they should employ him to draw some life into those identikit pictures which so seldom produced any reliable identifications for the police.

They had already confirmed that the subject of the second drawing was Arthur Rennie, and used it to expose the tissue of lies with which he had attempted to distance himself from his dead stepdaughter. Now Parker’s drawing of the first middle-aged man who had visited the dead girl prompted the memory of others. The dead girl’s landlady, Jane King, so keen when Lambert questioned her to respect the privacy of her tenants, now recalled that she too had seen this man of about forty-five entering and leaving the flat on occasions. She couldn’t remember when, but she thought his comings and goings had been surreptitious.

Once they knew who the man was, it became obvious why. It was a young mother of three at the end of Rosamund Street who provided the identification. It was a cause for raised eyebrows in the world at large as well as for the police. Or as journalist Joe Roper, who filed his copy for local rag and national dailies alike that night, put it, a matter of public interest.

For the man with the incipient pot belly and receding hair was one James Whittaker, local councillor, campaigner for the homeless, and favourite to become the ancient city’s mayor in the forthcoming year.

Or rather, as Joe told his colleagues happily over his third pint, favourite until this juicy revelation.

***

In the wide valley of the Severn, four miles outside Worcester, an ivy-clad mansion lies hidden behind trees in a small estate of four acres. There has been a house here since medieval days, the first one being that of a fourteenth-century merchant who made a fortune from the wool trade and established himself here in well-serviced comfort, with a view of the river in front of him and the dramatic outline of the Malvern Hills to the south.

That house is long gone, apart from an ancient barn and a few stone stumps in the garden. The present walls of mellow Cotswold stone date only from the early nineteenth century, when a Birmingham toolmaker built himself a great business and retired to the grand house his standing demanded. At the end of the century, this man’s grandson was much taken with William Morris and the arts and crafts movement, and much of the original furniture, furnishings and even two wallpapers of that period survive in the high hall and the large, comfortable rooms. They are superior in quality and preservation to similar examples exhibited in houses owned by the National Trust and open to the public.

But no curious eyes are allowed to gaze on these treasures. The high gates at the end of the drive are manned day and night by a security guard, and no one gets past the entrance lodge without an appointment or the owner’s permission via the internal phone system.

As the electronic gates swung back and he drove the old Vauxhall between them with Hook at his side, Lambert wondered how many people even in affluent Britain could afford to live in this high style and employ this many servants. Crime, he thought sourly, was the great growth industry of the new century.

And Keith Albert Sugden was one of the great successes of that industry. He greeted his police visitors with that air of ironic condescension which he judged would be most irritating to them. “We meet again, Mr Lambert, as they say in badly written thrillers,” he said.

Sugden was a grammar-school boy who prided himself on his learning. Brains were not rare in modern crime, but a decent education still was, except among fraudsters. Sugden found that it gave him respectability in the rarefied circles of society where his money now allowed him to move. He continued, like a man using the diction of an earlier age, “I can’t think what strange notion it was which brought you here, and I won’t go so far as to say that it is a pleasure to renew our acquaintance. But let us have afternoon tea and behave like civilised people.”

There was no chance to refuse. The maid entered the room with the silver tea service on a trolley even as he spoke. Sugden poured the tea himself, handing them the finest Royal Worcester china and small homemade cakes with unhurried care, enjoying the ceremony of this very English piece of hospitality, enjoying even more putting the unwilling recipients of his hospitality at a disadvantage.

He took some pains to look as unlike the popular conception of a successful crime boss as possible. The guttural utterances of a Mafia Godfather were not for him. He was tall: though three inches shorter than John Lambert’s six feet four, he matched Hook’s height, and was immensely more poised. He was slim and graceful in his Armani suit. His fifty-five-year-old face had a healthy tan which was set off by his carefully coiffured grey hair and the gold-rimmed half-moon glasses he wore for reading. He took these off, folded them deliberately with his manicured fingers, and set them upon the low table beside him. Looking like a man whose family had lived for generations in this elegant milieu, he said with a smile, “What is it that you mistakenly think I can help you with, Superintendent Lambert?”

“You can help us to determine who killed a young woman called Tamsin Rennie.”

“The girl who was found in Hereford Cathedral? I applaud your murderer’s sense of the dramatic in his choice of place, but I can’t for the life of me see why you think I might be able to help you.”

“You know perfectly well, Sugden. The girl was on heroin. She was drug-dependent and she had to finance the habit. I believe she was a pusher. A pusher for the drugs which were supplied by your network.”

Sugden had scarcely ceased to smile since they had come into the room. Now he lifted his eyebrows. “My network, Mr Lambert? If I were more easily offended, I might make something of that.”

“We both know I can’t prove it, Sugden.” Lambert was mindful of the need to protect the Drugs Squad officers who were so patiently and courageously pursuing this man. He glanced round the sumptuously furnished room. “Equally, we both know that you’re financing all this from the dirtiest trade in the world.”

“We know nothing of the sort. If I were disposed to, I could make out a case for drugs. They bring much pleasure to people who would have barren lives without them. If you wish to condemn their abuse, you should know that in this country one person a month dies from ecstasy, one a day from heroin and cocaine, and one every fifteen minutes from alcoholism.” Sugden beamed triumphantly as he produced the statistics, like one scoring a debating point in the senior common room of a university.

“And if you have anything to do with it, if empires like yours develop unchecked, those figures will alter drastically. You know as well as I do that our job is to enforce the law. We can’t do much about alcohol and its effects, whatever the problems it causes us, but we can about you and your ilk. You’re dealing in death, and making a fortune from it. And what death! You’ve seen how people die from drugs, as I have. There aren’t many worse ways.”

Lambert wondered, as he felt the anger pounding in his head, how he had allowed

himself to be drawn into this. The relaxed comfort of this man’s lifestyle, his easy panache in the face of a police visit, had got to him, as he had not intended that it would. Keith Sugden knew that too, and smiled his satisfaction in the thought. “I wouldn’t agree, of course, any more than I would agree that I have the remotest connection with this trade. I don’t think I can help you with the death of this girl, so there seems no point in prolonging our discussion.”

He stood up, and Bert Hook almost followed him on to his feet, so powerful was the aura of this man in his own carefully contrived environment. Then, just in time, Bert realised that Lambert had not moved at all, and took his cue from his chief. Lambert said evenly, “Tamsin Rennie was a pusher for your drugs, Sugden. I believe she was going to cease doing that, to move out of the area, to enter a clinic in order to be cured of her addiction.”

He had no idea whether this was true — it was a lot to build on the thin evidence of young Tom Clarke’s vague assertion that he was going to take the girl away with him and start a new life elsewhere. But he had to get at Sugden somehow, and both he and the man opposite him knew the implications of what he said.

Sugden sat down again in the high-backed chair with the carved wooden arms. He kept his smile, but there was perhaps the first slight hint of disturbance in the increased frequency of his blinking. “You are no doubt entitled to your view. But what is it to me, who never even saw the wretched girl?”

“You know as well as I do that a rescued addict is a loose cannon. Especially one who has been a pusher. They’re few and far between, but they’re pure gold to us. They are the most valuable sources of information we can have about organisations like yours.”

Sugden smiled, pursed his lips, nodded two or three times, pretending a professor’s academic interest in a practical area from which he was far removed. “I can see that, I suppose. Reformed junkies might be prepared to talk to your Drugs Squad about what they know. Might even feel a missionary zeal to communicate their knowledge.”

“This one was silenced before she ever got to that stage.”

“No doubt she had other possible assailants as well as her drug contacts. They tell me that addicts exist on the fringes of society. They probably have a lot of dubious contacts. But I don’t speak from first-hand knowledge, of course.”

How right he was, thought Lambert. The drug connection was only one possible source for Tamsin Rennie’s killer, but he wasn’t going to concede that to this man. “She could have been killed by someone you financed, of course. Someone like Fletcher.”

This time he was sure he had shaken his man, however temporarily. Fletcher was a contract killer, selling his services to whoever would pay, but working almost exclusively for Sugden over the last two years.

Sugden said, “I should like to see you try to prove that, Lambert. You would end up with a lot of very expensive egg on your face.” With an effort which was palpable, he forced his blandest smile. But he was used to playing this game: he recovered himself quickly, and so completely that within a minute Lambert could not even be sure that his opponent had been seriously ruffled.

He said doggedly, “She was dealing for you, Sugden. You may not even have known of her existence; it is even possible that you may not know who eliminated her, but by your rules she would have had to go. Your area manager would have known that.”

Sugden’s smile became more animated, relaxed itself into a grin. “I like that term: ‘area manager’. You have a baroque imagination, Superintendent. That is unusual in a policeman. It has enabled you to weave a detailed fantasy about my mythical criminal empire. You should set it down on paper some time, with diagrams. It might win a fiction prize.”

Lambert stood up. He wanted to frighten Sugden a little, to let him know that there were cracks in the fissure of his fortress, that they were nearer to him than they had ever been, to see in him a little of the panic that could lead to rashness. From his own point of view, he would have dearly loved to press the man about the echelon of drug suppliers immediately above Tamsin Rennie in the hierarchy. But he had bluffed his way as far as he could go. He could not pursue the game further without compromising the position of the undercover Drugs Squad officers. He could not dismiss from his mind the vision of the haunted brown eyes in the young-old face of the officer who had risked his cover to come to his home on the previous night.