Authors: J.M. Gregson
‘
Yes. But she hasn’t needed much attention.’
Moira
looked up and smiled her secret smile again. ‘He means you’ve been able to keep an eye on me, Dermot. Make sure I wasn’t doing anything silly, as they say. But sure didn’t y’always do that when we were kids?’ She allowed the Irish brogue they had scarcely heard before to come through loud and strong in the last question, then laughed affectionately at him, as if there were no one else in the room.
Lambert
said, ‘Where were you on Christmas Eve, Mr Yates?’
Again
there was no evidence that the man was shaken, though his questioner was sure that he appreciated the importance of this thrust. The Irishman ran a hand through his plentiful, unruly brown hair, considered the matter, then fixed his wide brown eyes upon the new page in Hook’s notebook that had been made ready for this. ‘Basically, I was here. I did a little shopping in the morning, then was here for the rest of the day.’
‘
You were out for a little while in the afternoon, though,’ Moira reminded him, with a nervous little nudge of her arm.
If
he was annoyed by the revelation, he gave no sign of it. ‘That’s correct, yes. I went to the Humes’ down the road, for a Christmas drink. They keep open house for a few hours on Christmas Eve, and people pop in as it suits them. Moira should have gone with me, but she didn’t feel up to leaving the house, so I went on my own.’
‘
It wasn’t just the house. I couldn’t face all those people at once, when it came to it. But Dermot was very good, as usual. I don’t suppose he was more than a couple of hours across there. And I could see the lights in the house and people going in and out for the whole time.’
‘
Well, I may have been a little longer. I was quite tipsy when I got back.’ Dermot Yates grinned a little at his own expense.
Or
you say you were tipsy, thought Hook as he wrote. Detection made a cynic of everyone. ‘What time were you out of the house, sir?’ he said, making it clear that the answer would be recorded.
‘
I couldn’t be quite sure. I should think I went across there at about three thirty.’
‘
And you came back here when?’
‘
About six thirty. Maybe a little later.’
Lambert
said, ‘Well, we can always check your memory against other people’s recollections, if that should be necessary. You say there were lots of other people there?’
‘
Yes. Though not all the time; they came and went. But I expect the Humes would have some idea of the time I was there.’
‘
Yes. No doubt they could help us, if it should be necessary.’ Lambert was suddenly brisk, giving the impression that this was almost at an end, that only a few formalities needed to be completed. ‘And on Christmas Day?’
‘
We were here all day, weren’t we, Moira?’ She nodded vigorously. ‘And an old friend of ours, Gerald Sangster, was with us for most of the day. From about eleven in the morning until quite late at night. About eleven, I suppose. We had quite a lot to eat and drink. Gerry only lives a couple of miles away. Someone dropped him off in the morning, and he walked home at night, so that he wouldn’t be worried about the breathalyzer.’
‘
Is Mr Sangster a relation?’
‘
No. I told you, an old friend.’
Moira
said, ‘It’s all right, Dermot.’ She patted his hand and turned her attention back to Lambert. ‘I suppose he’d be better described as an old flame, Superintendent. He’s provided a lot of moral support for me while I’ve been such a nuisance to Dermot.’
Yates
opened his mouth to deny that she had been a nuisance, but Lambert switched the questioning again. ‘You have a car, Mr Yates?’
‘
Yes.’
‘
Have you any objection to its being examined by a forensic team?’
‘
No. But I’d like to know—’
‘
We both have cars, Superintendent Lambert.’ Moira Yates was on her feet. ‘You may look at them now, if you like.’ Lambert wanted to say that there was no point, that it needed the specialist resources and expertise of a forensic team, but it was too late; she was moving with the smooth grace of an athlete ahead of them, across the room, through the kitchen, to the door in the utility room which linked the house directly with the garage. She hesitated for the merest fraction in the threshold she had not crossed for months, then flung open the door and showed them a green Vauxhall Astra which was covered with a thick layer of dust. ‘There she is, kind sirs! First time I’ve seen her since September.’
Lambert
was at last able to deliver his thoughts about the necessity for scientific examination by a forensic team, but he was privately sure that this car as she said had not been on the road for months. Dermot Yates said, ‘My car’s on the drive. I use it almost every day. It’s been on the road quite a lot in the days since Keane disappeared.’
‘
Nevertheless, I should like our forensic experts to have a look at it,’ said Lambert. ‘For purposes of elimination, you understand.’
‘
Whenever you like,’ said Dermot. He followed them on to the drive as they left. ‘I can’t be sorry that Keane’s gone,’ he said in a low voice. He rubbed his broad nose, pulled for a moment at the square chin below it. ‘Frankly, I’d like to shake the hand of whoever killed him. But you have to try to find the man who did it, of course, I understand that.’
He
took his pale face back into the house. Lambert wondered what that close pair would say to each other when they were alone again. He looked at Yates’s car as they passed it. It was a Vauxhall Cavalier hatchback, with the rear seats presently laid flat to provide extra storage space.
It
would have accommodated a body quite easily when the wide rear door was raised.
‘She’s come through the operation,’ the sister said. She tried to make it sound fresh and bright, but it was difficult when you had said those words so many times.
In
the bed, Christine Lambert looked small but very peaceful. She lay on her back with the sheet neatly drawn beneath her chin. Someone had arranged her hair in a dark-brown aureole around her face, so that it shut out the edges of the white oval and made the smooth, well-featured face seem tiny and vulnerable. Lambert saw too many dead bodies, he decided: this silent figure evoked for him the carefully prepared dead flesh of the funeral parlour.
He
did not dare disturb the sheets to take a hold on his wife’s hand, so he smoothed the marble brow gently with the backs of his fingers, and found it reassuringly warm. They had made her look like a nun, not a corpse, he decided; he preferred that image.
Words
came to him now, when they were useless because she could not hear. He wanted to tell her that this thing would bring them closer, whatever happened. That they would be as close to each other as they had been twenty years ago, when they lost a child that was four days old, and for weeks it had bonded them as no pleasant experience could ever have done. Finding the words he thought his agnosticism had banished for ever, he prayed beside the silent bed that all might be well for its occupant.
The
first part of what followed might almost have been scripted by Hollywood, except that there were no violins and there was a full two-minute gap before Christine’s eyes opened slowly. They looked towards the ceiling and the high fluorescent light, registered puzzlement, then focused on her husband as he bent forward. A tiny smile came to her pale pink lips. John Lambert said, ‘You’re through it and doing fine. Don’t try to talk.’
Suddenly,
her throat and face were convulsed, and he thought in spite of his advice that she was trying to reply. Just in time, he snatched up the stainless-steel bowl from the top of the bedside locker and thrust it beneath the wobbling chin. Christine was sick, retchingly, erratically, surprisingly copiously. She sank back exhaustedly into a renewed unconsciousness. He drew away the bowl reluctantly and with great care, anxious not to spill even a drop of the foul-smelling contents upon the immaculate sheets.
Mercifully,
a nurse appeared at his elbow, picked up the bowl, wiped the patient’s mouth and chin expertly with a tissue. ‘I expect it was just the aftermath of the anaesthetic,’ said Lambert apologetically.
The
nurse smiled briefly at his anxious face. ‘Are you sure it wasn’t something you said?’ she teased.
*
Bert Hook had told Lambert he should take as long as he needed inside the hospital. Lambert had said he would not be more than half an hour.
The
municipal golf course with its driving range abutted the hospital grounds. Hook could see club-heads rising and falling over the hedge at the edge of the car park. He had no doubt that if he lowered the window he would even be able to hear the oaths which seemed to accompany eighty per cent of amateur golf shots. He resisted temptation for almost a full minute. But he couldn’t spend half an hour sitting in the car worrying about John and Christine in the hospital, could he? Morbid, that would be.
He
slipped off his jacket and tie, stole to the boot, extracted Lambert’s five-iron from his bag like a thief in the night, and made briskly for the professional’s shop.
Just
time for a basket of forty balls. And no one would know: he could have the club safely stowed away by the time the chief returned. Help him to think, the exercise would. Help him to apply himself to the analysis of that strange interview with Moira and Dermot Yates which they had just concluded. He put his coins into the machine and watched the balls tumble into the wire basket, then took them swiftly to the most private of the bays alongside him, looking over his shoulder guiltily like an unpractised shoplifter.
The
first few attempts were as bad as he had feared. ‘Sodding bloody game!’ he said as he topped the first one miserably forward. Then, by way of emphasis after a further attempt which hit the mat well behind the ball, ‘Sodding, bloody stupid, bastard game!’ This, be it noted, from a bowler who had taken the blindness of umpires to plumb lbw’s in his stride, who had even remained equable when edged through suddenly paralysed slips for four.
The
trouble with this stupid game was that there was no batsman to glare at with your hands on your hips. You could only be angry at yourself. Bert decided he was going to be good at that. Even on this crisp day in early January, his temperature was rising, despite his shirt sleeves. By the time he had dispatched forty balls, there might well be steam rising above his straining torso.
Then,
on about his sixth attempt, something very strange happened. He scarcely felt the ball on the face of his club. There was merely a tiny tremor through his body, similar to that which had occurred on those very rare occasions when he had hit a six off the very meat of a cricket bat. He looked automatically at face level in front of him, expecting to see the ball careering away savagely to the right from the low, topped shot which seemed to be his normal product.
Then
he spotted it. It soared gloriously against the pale blue heaven, became a speck, seemed to hang lazily for a moment, then descended lazily, until it hit the earth and bounced high and straight, coming to rest many yards beyond anything he had previously perpetrated. ‘Bloody hell!’ said Bert in astonishment. And then, more enthusiastically and appreciatively, ‘BLOODY HELL!’
No
subsequent shot matched that sublime effect. But there were several more which got into the air and travelled a reasonable distance. And Bert had quickly acquired one of the habits of the regular golfer. He now took that one perfect shot among forty as being his normal game.
He
went back into the pro’s shop trying not to look too pleased with himself. It was quiet in there. No one in the shop seemed to have observed that perfect stroke, which was a pity. But that also meant that there was no one to witness the move he planned now. He spoke quietly to the professional, who said he was sure he could accommodate him, looked in the large diary he kept beneath the counter, and made the entry which Bert requested there.
By
the time Lambert returned, Bert Hook was sitting erect in the passenger’s seat, with his jacket and tie resumed. The preoccupied superintendent seemed not to notice his detective sergeant’s heightened colour and glow of rude health. Bert was pleased to be informed that Christine’s progress was all that could be expected. He assured the chief that he had not been bored.
But
superintendents are devious men. Bert, feeling his secret was secure as they drove away, knew nothing of the arrangement John Lambert had made a week previously with the professional.
*
Gerald Sangster was a surprise, even to men who had schooled themselves over the years to be surprised by nothing.
The
passing references to him which had been made by others, by Moira and Dermot Yates, by Zoe Renwick, had led them to expect a worthy but rather pathetic figure. Old flames who flicker around the candle after they have been rejected compel sympathy, but they are often passive, inadequate figures, without wills of their own. Wimps, in the modern vernacular.