An Unsuitable Death (6 page)

Seven

It was on Saturday afternoon that the case got its first positive assistance from the public. A man appeared at Oldford Police Station and asked to see Superintendent Lambert, the officer he had heard was now in charge of the investigation into the Tamsin Rennie murder. Murder opens the doors which bureaucracy normally bolts shut; he was ushered straight through to the CID section and to the office where DS Hook was reporting to his chief.

He was no more than twenty-five, exuding a briskness and an assurance in this alien place which he could surely scarcely have felt. A salesman perhaps, projecting the confidence in himself which he hoped would extend to his product. A man whose attitude said, “Your time is valuable and so is mine; I won’t waste more of either than I can avoid.” He might have been an actor making an entry, thought Lambert wryly.

A moment later, he found that he was just that. The young man said with a nervous laugh, “Thomas Clarke. Tom to my friends. Actor and dogsbody. Resting at the moment. Available for repertory, musicals and pantomime.” He pitched the information into the room above their heads, as if he were projecting the words for a small, select audience. Only then did he look into the grey, observant eyes of the man who had risen to greet him, or take in the weather-beaten face of Bert Hook, or the crowded office, with its filing cabinets and papers strewn over the big wooden desk.

It was when Clarke sat down as requested that Lambert realised that this was the young man pictured in the dramatic profile pose against black velvet which Jack Johnson had brought from the dead girl’s flat. It was an accurate likeness, but one so posed that it pictured an idea rather than a person. The photograph reminded Lambert of a seventy-year-old one of a young John Gielgud as Romeo. No doubt it was designed to suggest a similar histrionic potential to the agents and theatrical managers who might be persuaded to take on the young man’s services.

Lambert studied him for a moment before he made any response to the man’s declaration of his calling. Clarke wore jeans and a light blue roll-neck sweater. He had the slim limbs and coltish movements of youth, which made him seem taller than he was. His thin face was at once handsome and a little gauche: with a little make-up to emphasise his prominent nose and flaxen hair, he could have played a young Andrew Aguecheek as well as Romeo.

Tom Clarke had long, delicate fingers, as unlined as those of a marble sculpture, but they clasped and unclasped in his lap as he sat facing Lambert. This was a young man who did not find it easy to keep still. Lambert took note of that, and determined to play things slowly at the outset: nervous subjects were the ones who found it most difficult to hold things back.

Eventually he said calmly, “You asked to see the officer in charge of the investigation into the death of Tamsin Rennie. I am that officer; my name is Superintendent Lambert, and this is Detective Sergeant Hook. You had better begin by telling us about your relationship with Miss Rennie.”

Tom Clarke threw his arms wide, then brought them back together and resolutely folded them. He looked as if he would like to get up and pace about the small room, but the set-up here plainly did not allow for that. “She was my girlfriend.” He said it defiantly, as if he half-expected the claim to be denied. Lambert wondered what Tamsin Rennie’s reaction to the statement would have been, had she been sitting in the room beside him. He sighed, studying the young face six feet away from him intently. It was the old problem with murder, the only crime where the victim was unable to volunteer any information. “I see. You’re telling us that you were her only boyfriend?”

A flash of temper across that interesting young face was quickly controlled. “I mean I was the only man who mattered to her. We should have been married in due course, if…” The man who was so ready and eager to deliver the words of others was suddenly lost for words of his own.

It was Bert Hook who eventually said quietly, “If you had been able to persuade her to give up the others?”

Tom Clarke flashed a look of hatred at this stolid man who had spoken for the first time. But the weather-beaten features were so calm, so understanding, even sympathetic, that the outburst died in his throat. He waved the too-mobile hands for a moment, then said, “They were unimportant, the others. She’d already given them up. She saw the sense of what I was trying to do. If we’d just been given time, she’d—” Suddenly he sobbed, gasping for control, biting his lip and fighting for the breath which would not come evenly. He looked much younger than his years, like a grief-stricken child trying to be brave in public.

Lambert waited for a moment for the tears which did not come. Then he said calmly, “She’d have done what, Tom? Given up the lifestyle which was making her miserable? Married you, perhaps?”

Clarke nodded, grateful that these somber men seemed to know so much. “Yes, just that. I wanted her to marry me, and she would have done, eventually.”

Again Lambert had that fruitless wish to hear the reaction of the girl who would now never speak. “Eventually?”

“Well, yes. Tamsin had her problems, as you obviously know, but we’d have come through it, in the end. She was just beginning to believe I could help her when when—”

“When she was brutally murdered.”

The sensitive face winced on the phrase, as though it had been struck a physical blow. “Yes. I came here to offer you whatever help I could, but it seems you already know more about her than I do.” For a moment he was almost petulant with the thought.

“We actually know very little. Far less than you assume. For instance, we didn’t even know of your existence, until a search of Tamsin’s flat revealed this picture.” Lambert showed him the rather old-fashioned posed portrait of his profile against the black velvet, and the mobile face broke into a surprising, rather embarrassed smile.

“It’s a bit over the top, isn’t it? I was imitating a picture of Ellen Terry I found in the library at RADA. Pure ham, I suppose. It seemed to impress Tamsin far more than any agent I sent it to.”

“You were at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art?”

“Oh, yes. Nothing but the best for Thomas, you know. At one time my accent would have been just right for RADA. Now they spend a good part of the time trying to knock a public school accent out of you. Regional accents are all the rage in the commercial theatre now, you know. I was allowed to be an effete public school Cassio last year, but only alongside a Brummie Othello being deceived by a Geordie Iago.”

Lambert wasn’t quite sure where this was leading, but for the moment he was content to find out all he could about this mercurial young man. After all, he had announced himself as a murder suspect at the moment he came into the room. “You were at public school?”

“At Shrewsbury, yes. As a day boy, though. We live about halfway between Hereford and Shrewsbury. So I escaped the routine adolescent fumblings in the dorm. Until I entered the theatre, of course!” It was obviously a line he had delivered before, and he looked for a reaction he did not get from the two large men who studied him so gravely and so continuously.

Hook merely said, “So you know the Shrewsbury area well, eh? That’s where this Sacristan killer has been operating, of course.”

Clarke looked at him sharply, but the Sergeant was making an entry in his notebook in his round, careful hand, with no trace of a smile on his rubicund features. It was Lambert who said suddenly, “How long had you known Tamsin Rennie, Mr Clarke?”

“A year, I suppose. Well, very nearly a year, anyway.”

“And how long had you been sleeping with her?”

Colour rushed into the too-revealing features. “Now look here, I came here to help, and if all you can do—”

“Then answer my question! We need to know everything we can about this murdered girl and those around her.” Lambert was suddenly impatient with the self-indulgence of this gilded creature, suddenly aware of the myriad pieces of information that were being documented outside this room and awaiting his attention. “We need to know how serious your relationship with Tamsin Rennie was, how long it had been going on, and whether you think you were the only man seeing her. Then you can tell us when you last saw her and exactly what you know about her death.”

For a moment, it looked as if Tom Clarke’s fury would burst out in words. Then he controlled himself. Fastening on to the phrase which had most angered him, he said in a low, even voice, “There were other men. When I first knew Tamsin, there were other men. But that was over. I’d made her see that it must be. We were going to move away, to start afresh.”

That old dream of the young, that you could move to a new area and cast off all the old baggage. That a couple were stronger than one, could give each other the strength to carry it through. It worked, occasionally. But never with an out-of-work actor and a penniless girl with a drug dependency. Lambert said, more gently now, “Where did Tamsin -get money, Tom? She was spending far more than she earned, even when she had regular work.”

“The rent for the flat, you mean?” He didn’t mention the heroin he must have known about, his eyes flashing a question about how much they knew as he looked into his interrogator’s face. “I don’t really know how she afforded that.” He looked at the carpet by his feet, hearing the hollowness of his own words as he spoke them. Eventually, he said, “Well, I do, I suppose. I just don’t like to admit it. She was taking money from men, when I first knew her. But she gave up all—”

“She was taking money for sexual favours, you mean?”

“Yes. She was when I first knew her.” He still couldn’t bring himself to look at them. “It’s against the law, isn’t it?”

Lambert smiled. The man seemed suddenly very young and naive. “That’s hardly going to concern us now, Tom. But you’re saying that Tamsin helped to finance the rent for the flat by taking money from men who came there. It’s important that you’re completely frank with us. It has surely occurred to you that it could be one of these men who killed her.”

“I’ve considered that. I’m sure it wasn’t.” Then, as if struck by the monstrous arrogance of stating this to a detective, he added apologetically, “They were a long time ago, you see, these other men. She’d given all that up, once we became an item.” He produced the last phrase aggressively, as if challenging them to deny it. Lambert again wondered fruitlessly whether Tamsin Rennie would have regarded Clarke and herself as “an item”.

He produced the second photograph which had come from the dead girl’s flat from his desk. It was all they had to offer, but Tom Clarke did not know that; he looked as if he wondered how much else they had gathered from the place, how many more embarrassing surprises lay in wait for him in the top drawer of this grizzled detective’s desk. Lambert said gently, “This was another picture Tamsin had kept. It was found alongside the one of you which you have already seen. What can you tell us about this man?”

“I’ve never met him.”

“That does not answer my question, does it?”

The slender arms were thrown wide for an instant, as if he meant to protest. Then he folded them carefully, like a child practising a new movement. “All right. He was an older man, who was visiting Tamsin regularly when I first knew her. She had stopped seeing him months ago, along with the others. He was kind and gentle with Tamsin, from what she said. I expect that is why she kept his picture.” He sounded as if even here it was important for him to explain that to himself. He said reluctantly, “That’s all, is it? There weren’t any other pictures of men, were there?”

Lambert wondered whether he should deny Clarke all knowledge of the sparse crop the SOCO team had harvested from that basement flat. Then he nodded and said, “Those were the only photographs we found there. Can you give us details of any other men who you know had visited her?”

He leaned forward, clasping his folded arms tight against his chest, giving at least the appearance of careful thought. “No. I told you, she’d given all that up. I didn’t want to know about her past. I only know about that man because she had a bit of a soft spot for him. He was an older man in pursuit of a young girl who didn’t want him. A bit sad, really. I certainly didn’t feel threatened by him. His name is Milburn, by the way. Eric Milburn, I think. I don’t know his address.”

How easily the young dismiss people even one generation ahead of them nowadays, thought Lambert. Perhaps he underestimates us as well, he thought. He said briskly, “Let’s summarise what you are telling us, Mr Clarke. When you met her, Tamsin Rennie was supporting a residence and a lifestyle which she could otherwise not have afforded by an undefined amount of amateur prostitution.” He held up his hand as the young man made to protest. “As a result of a serious involvement with you, you believe she gave up the lucrative sale of her sexual favours. The employment and remuneration of young actors being as they are, presumably you were not able to provide her with replacement funds.”

He paused for a moment, knowing that actors are rarely reluctant to talk about themselves, and Tom Clarke did not let him down. “No. I’ve been resting for about half of the time I knew her. I understudied three speaking parts at Stratford for the RSC last year, but I only got to carry the odd spear on stage.”

Despite his intention to drop the Royal Shakespeare Company casually into the exchange, he spoke the initials with a hint of awe, as if he hoped for some sort of reaction. Lambert merely said, “Which leaves us with this unanswered question: how then did Tamsin Rennie replace the income which was no longer being gathered from her former clients?”