Authors: J.M. Gregson
An
hour later, after a meal with John that was punctuated by sporadic small talk, as if they had been polite strangers, she said, ‘I’ve to go in tomorrow afternoon.’
‘
I’ll take you.’
‘
Jacky will come over tomorrow night, I expect. I rang her. She said she’ll bring something for a meal.’
‘
I can look after myself. But she’ll want to see you.’ It would be the first occasion when their daughter would be the strong one, looking to minister to her parents’ needs instead of depending on them for support. He felt both old and weary; helpless, when he wanted to be a cheerful rock for Christine to rest on.
Later,
he held her in the darkness, feeling her still wakefulness, moving his hands carefully over the cotton nightdress, too shy to let his touch stray to the breast which was the cause of all this trouble.
Long
after his steady breathing had told her he was asleep, Christine Lambert lay quietly afraid in his arms.
*
Bert Hook was sometimes a source of amusement to his colleagues because they supposed him soft-hearted. So it was he who got the job of going to see old Mrs Keane about the death of her son. He could have been accompanied by a WPC, but preferred to go alone, knowing he operated these things best when he did not feel his own behaviour was being studied.
The
big, ivy-clad Georgian house was very quiet as he drove between the high gateposts and up the curving drive between the banks of rhododendrons. There were a surprising number of houses like this still standing in Gloucestershire, many of them now occupied by successful post-war industrialists. Some of the larger ones which had kept their estates were occupied by the aristocracy; one or two of the grandest had even attracted royal residents.
This
more modest but still gracious house might have been empty, for there was no vehicle, no sign of activity on the wide expanses of gravel in front of the impressive oak door. But Bert was admitted within a few seconds of his arrival by the middle-aged maid who seemed to be the only servant working in the big house.
Mrs
Keane rose to meet him as he was shown into the spacious drawing room with its marble fireplace and three rectangular windows. She was clad from head to foot in black, as a mourner might have been in her grandmother’s day. It was a custom which like many others had not long survived the 1914-18 war, but it seemed to a lonely old woman a fitting final gesture to the son she had never expected she would survive.
‘
I’m afraid there’s no doubt now that it’s your son,’ said Hook. He had felt like an intruder as he stepped into the imposing hall. Now he spoke like a health visitor, watching the bereaved old woman for signs of collapse. Yet she had to be interviewed: she was the last person known to have seen Raymond Keane alive.
‘
I accept it’s Raymond. Katherine rang me when she’d been to identify him. Was it you who was there with her when she did that?’ Hook nodded. ‘She said you were very kind.’
‘
I’m sorry to intrude at a time like this, Mrs Keane. We need to know whatever you can tell us about your son and the people he knew, you see.’
‘
Yes. But I’m afraid I knew very little about the life he led in recent years, Sergeant Hook.’
She
looked infinitely sad at the thought, and he knew she was confronting a fact she found very unwelcome.
‘
We’re pretty certain now that someone killed your son, you see, so we need to know what enemies were near to him in the last weeks of his life.’
‘
Yes. And obviously I want to help you. But I know very few of his new political acquaintances. Or any of the people he has met since he moved into politics, in fact. Parliament rather took him away from the family, but I suppose that was inevitable. He was doing rather well at Westminster, I believe.’ Her pride surged suddenly through her reserve with the last sentence.
Hook
said, ‘Did he seem at all disturbed or nervous when he left here on Christmas Eve?’
‘
No. Rather the reverse. After a day and more with his aged mother, he was probably only too anxious to get away. But he was going to see that nice young woman Zoe Renwick, whom he was going to marry.’
‘
Yes. We shall be seeing Miss Renwick. I’ve already arranged an appointment with her.’
‘
I expect she’ll be able to tell you more than me about his life in these last few months. He was expecting to meet her at the cottage. He’d tried to ring her from here, but he hadn’t got hold of her.’
‘
And he was looking forward to seeing her?’
‘
Oh, yes. They were going to have Christmas together, just the two of them. But he was bringing her here on New Year’s Day.’ She was suddenly anxious to defend her dead son against any charge of neglect. Bert had seen the reaction often enough in old women of humbler station; it was curiously touching in this straight-backed, patrician figure.
‘
We shall be seeing Miss Renwick very shortly. Is there anyone else who you think may be able to help us fill in our picture of your son? That’s the way we work, you see. The fuller the picture we have of the way a person lived his life and the people he came into contact with, the better our chances of finding out how he died.’
She
nodded, intelligence shining through her grief. ‘There was another young woman, you know. A nice lady. Raymond decided that she wasn’t for him a few months ago. Young people have to work these things out for themselves; it’s more complicated than it was in my day. But I was sorry that they split up. I liked her very much.’
‘
And her name was?’
‘
Moira. Moira Yates. Lovely, lively girl. Excellent tennis player: I saw her win a tournament once. And a very good horsewoman too, I believe. She used to come here quite often, when she and Raymond were close. She and I got on very well together. I thought she’d have been good for him. Not that I’ve anything against the new girl, of course.’
She
added the last sentence as a hasty qualification, still the anxious parent at seventy-six, anxious about her relationship with someone who might become a daughter-in-law, forgetting for a moment that there was no longer any need for such diplomacy.
Hook
said, ‘Thank you. We shall be seeing Miss Yates in due course, I’m sure. I believe your son had a business, in addition to his work as an MP?’
‘
Yes. Though he seemed to me to be neglecting it, leaving everything to his partner, since he became so interested in politics. But he said it was making good money, that they could get along perfectly well without him. It didn’t seem very fair to Chris, but I couldn’t interfere.’
‘
Chris?’
‘
Chris Hampson. Raymond’s partner at Gloucester Electronics. Nice chap; I used to see a lot of him in the old days.’ There was sadness again in the old, lined face, at the realization that she was now excluded from the developing projects in which she had once been so interested.
‘
Had he seen Mr Hampson in the days before his death?’
The
old eyes glistened at him from their grey-black sockets; perhaps she was appreciating for the first time that the people she was mentioning would be involved in the investigation of her son’s murder. ‘Yes. Raymond went to see him on his way down here, as a matter of fact.’
‘
Was there any sort of dispute between them?’
‘
I don’t know. Raymond wouldn’t say any more about their meeting.’ She looked down at the thick Persian carpet; plainly she thought as he did that there were implications in the dead man’s reticence.
She
did not call the maid, but saw him to the door herself. She stood still at the top of the wide stone steps as he drove away, dressed in black from head to foot, as static as a figure from Greek tragedy. The parent’s loss of a child is the worst loss of all, thought Hook, who had never known a parent of his own.
The huge room took up half of the ground floor of the building. It was thickly carpeted and very quiet. Only about a quarter of the heavy armchairs and settees were occupied, and save for the occasional rustle of the turning pages of a newspaper, there was silence. It seemed another world from the busy streets of Cheltenham outside. You would never have known it was a hospital, thought Hook. Obviously you got the benefits from going private, even before you had paid.
Policemen
are well used to hospitals. Long before they reach the exalted ranks of the CID, they get used to guarding injured witnesses; to watching people die; to sitting at the bedsides of injured criminals to protect them from their fellows; to wringing their stories from them as soon as the medicos allow it. The hushed and luxurious South Cotswolds Hospital had little in common with the spartan corridors where Hook had spent many long nights in his early police career.
There
must be patients somewhere, he thought, but there was no sign of them in this plush reception area, which might have belonged to a prosperous industrial company anxious to impress its clients. Lambert was at the long desk, announcing who they were and the purpose of their visit. Hook could hear nothing of what he said from twelve metres behind him; even the superintendent seemed to have been overwhelmed by the prevailing atmosphere of quiet discretion.
They
were directed to the second floor and another, smaller reception desk. There a smiling nurse in green told them that Sister Renwick was with a patient, but would be with them in a few minutes if they would take a seat. A man with a trolley served them real coffee, asked them if they wished to choose from the leather-fringed menu for the evening meal, and departed on silent feet, moving like the rest of this place on well-oiled ball bearings. There was still no sign of sick people, thought Hook: presumably there were some behind the soundproof double doors which had swished shut behind the porter and his trolley.
Sister
Renwick arrived almost as quietly as everything else in this thick-carpeted place, smoothing down her blue uniform, holding out a slim, strong hand to Lambert as he struggled awkwardly to his feet. ‘Zoe Renwick,’ she said brightly, in the voice that must have calmed a thousand relatives. She swept off the curious white cap from her bright blonde hair with a single, practised movement of her hand. ‘The management likes us to be conventionally uniformed—in the fashion of a previous generation of nurses,’ she said, with a smile which showed them perfect teeth. ‘It’s supposed to reassure the customers that they’re getting proper attention. Curiously, I think it actually succeeds in doing that, for many of the elderly patients.’
She
was talking too much too quickly, about anything that came into her head. It was not an unusual reaction among people drawn into a murder enquiry. She shook hands with Hook when Lambert introduced him, then sat down to face them in this quiet little anteroom where she had talked gravely with so many anxious and grieving relatives. She directed her bright-blue eyes expectantly upon Lambert, turning her black-nyloned knees a little to one side, sitting on the edge of her armchair with legs uncrossed.
Bert
Hook doubted whether she was as calm as this pose suggested. She looked very attractive to him: it was easy to see why so many men found uniforms a turn-on in women. But Bert, reared in a Barnardo’s home, had seen too many uniforms in his formative years. Nurses in uniform meant for him the nit-woman who came at regular intervals to examine the boys’ close-cropped heads, moving along the rows of scalps, stamping them as safe for another few months, impassive as the woman who checked the dates on their library books. He wondered if those immaculately manicured fingers which now intertwined in that royal-blue lap had ever searched for nits in childish hair; it seemed unlikely.
Lambert
said, ‘I expect Sergeant Hook told you why we wanted to see you when he phoned.’
‘
Yes. About Raymond. I expected this. But I’m afraid I shan’t be able to help you very much.’ She was immediately tense and defensive, when she had determined not to be; she tried to breathe evenly, resolved to make herself take time to answer.
‘
Oh, you may be surprised how helpful you can be. We gather evidence from all sorts of people, you see. It’s often only when we put it all together, when we get the complete picture, that the full significance of what people have told us emerges.’
‘
When you find discrepancies in people’s statements, you mean?’
Lambert
smiled at her, pleased that she had made the vague threat in his reassurance explicit. ‘Sometimes the contradictions are interesting, yes. But people often make mistakes in good faith, and those are easy enough to sort out. If you simply do your best to answer honestly and fully, there should be no difficulty.’
Why,
she wondered, did everything he said seem to be issued as a challenge to her? Perhaps she was merely hearing menace in his words, because she had things she was anxious to conceal. She felt a dryness in her throat, a scratching in her voice, as she said, ‘What is it you want to know?’