Mortal Taste (26 page)

‘No! I told you, it seemed a silly thing to keep it around, in the circumstances. That was all there was to it.'

‘And where did you see fit to dispose of this dangerous and unlicensed weapon?'

‘Out beyond Bishop's Norton. On Sunday night. At somewhere around half past eleven.' She piled up the detail; for some reason, it seemed suddenly important to convince them of what she had done.

Lambert studied her for a moment. ‘No doubt you could take us to the spot. It may well be necessary to recover that weapon, in due course. Good morning, Mrs Logan.'

They were gone as abruptly as they had arrived. They left Jane Logan wondering for the first time whether Steve Fenton was responsible for the death of her husband.

D
I Rushton was wishing he'd let the young woman beside him drive the police Mondeo. He could have done with the time to concentrate on exactly how he was going to question a contract killer.

‘You won't need to say anything, Pat,' he said, forcing himself to use the first name of the tall girl with the large brown eyes whom he had brought with him from Oldford. ‘You're here to learn, as a young DC. This will be useful experience for you.'

DC Pat Ross wondered why Chris Rushton always had to sound so stiff. The other young ones at the station laughed at him for it behind his back, but he always treated people fairly, and he could be an attractive man, if he would just learn to unbend a little. He wasn't that old: early thirties, she'd have said. Just a mature, experienced man, to a twenty-three-year-old like her. She said dutifully, ‘Yes, sir. I've never even seen a professional killer before, never mind spoken to one.'

‘He won't admit that he kills for a living, you know. He'll probably strike you at first as perfectly normal: it pays them to be as ordinary as possible.'

‘Yes, sir, for obvious reasons. I can see that.'

Chris Rushton wondered if this attractive girl was secretly amused by him; he found himself wondering that quite often with girls nowadays. You couldn't explain to them that it shook your confidence when your wife suddenly announced a divorce you'd never foreseen and took herself off with the toddler you'd adored. You weren't allowed to tell girls you hadn't much confidence, away from your work. Well, not until a later, more intimate stage, anyway; and he never seemed to reach that stage.

Chris spent the rest of the journey thinking about his tactics for the interview at the end of it.

Derek Minton carried an air of good-natured derision about him from the first moment of their meeting. He stood in the doorway of the big modern detached house for a few seconds, eyeing first Rushton and then the observant young woman beside him up and down before he invited them into the comfortable interior of his house. He had them sitting on the edge of a sofa before he said, ‘CID getting younger, is it? It was old Lambert and his plod of a sergeant who came to see me last time: I must say this is a considerable improvement.'

He took in the curves of DC Ross beneath her sweater, ran his eyes up and down her nyloned legs with a smiling insolence which stayed just short of open lechery. He enjoyed taunting the police, especially when he felt the ground firm beneath his feet.

Chris Rushton said stiffly, ‘You must have heard about the death of Peter Logan. He was the head teacher of a big school in Cheltenham.'

‘I believe I did hear, yes. Take a professional interest in all violent deaths, you see. As a criminologist, you understand. Pity about this one, I thought. By all accounts, he was a good headmaster. But I expect Mr Logan was prying into things which didn't concern him. Teachers tend to do that, you know. I didn't like it when my teachers did it.'

‘Did you kill him, Minton?'

Derek Minton laughed, unhurriedly and quite heartily. ‘Of course I didn't! I don't know where you get these ideas from, really I don't.'

‘Perhaps your name comes up because we know of at least four people you've killed in the last two years.'

Minton gave them both a broad smile, then addressed his remarks to Pat Ross. ‘I suppose I should really take offence when he comes out with these things – probably threaten to sue for libel. I'm sure a lawyer would call this harassment. Must be embarrassing for a nice young girl like you, finding yourself involved in something as squalid as this.'

DI Rushton told himself that he had expected this. Minton was a professional; he would have covered his tracks and was bound to behave as if he didn't care about their accusations. But Chris still felt his assurance draining away in the face of the man's brazen contempt. He said as truculently as he could, ‘So where were you on the night of Monday the twenty-eighth of September?'

Minton pursed the lips of his small mouth. ‘Eight days ago, that. I'm not sure I can remember, off hand. Is it important?' He flooded his sharp-featured face with innocence.

Rushton was conscious of the pretty young girl beside him. Watch and learn, he'd said. And now she was watching him being made to look ridiculous. Minton could surely not be this confident, this affable, if he'd shot away Logan's head. Chris felt he was playing out his part in a hopeless charade. He mustered all the boldness he could command to say, ‘You'd better be able to prove where you were on that night, Minton. Otherwise we might begin to think you were in Cheltenham, with a Smith and Wesson in your hand!'

‘Oh dear, dear, Inspector! DC Ross, I want you as my witness that this man has accused me of something I wouldn't dream of doing. But just for the record, and to show how cooperative I am, how anxious to help hard-pressed police personnel with their enquiries, I think I can supply you with some proof of where I was that evening.'

He walked across the big room to a mahogany cabinet in the far corner and took from the top drawer a single sheet of yellow paper. Rushton looked at it dumbly when it was handed to him. It was the programme for a school play,
Unman, Wittering and Zigo
, by Giles Cooper. It was the date of the production, 28th September, which leapt out at the Inspector. He said, ‘So this performance was on the night when Peter Logan was murdered. Hardly your scene, I'd have said, a school play.'

Derek Minton shook his head indulgently, then smiled at Pat Ross. ‘Shows how little you know about me, that. My nephew was performing in that play, you see. Very good he was, as a matter of fact. I was surprised how much I enjoyed the play. It's about a class of pupils who take a young teacher apart: very amusing.' He tittered a little in fond remembrance.

Rushton said as sternly as he could, ‘And you expect us just to take your word for it that you were there? Or is there anyone around who can vouch for your presence at that play on that night?'

Minton pursed his lips again, enjoying the moment, putting off as long as he could the denouement of the scene. ‘My sister and brother-in-law and their other two children. And about three hundred other proud parents and relatives, if you should feel the need for them.'

Pat Ross didn't know what to say to DI Rushton as he gripped the wheel and stared grimly at the road ahead on the way back down the M5. They'd gone a full twenty miles before she managed to say, ‘Well, you did say from the start that it was a long shot, sir.'

The Chief Constable was not at his most affable. He had a press conference arranged for midday on Wednesday, only twenty hours ahead, and as far as he could see he was going to have little that was new about the murder of Peter Logan to give the media vultures.

An excellent headmaster had now become a saint in the eyes of the tabloids, and his violent death a commentary on the decline of Britain into lawlessness. Nine days after Logan had died, the television and radio people would be hostile in their questioning about the Cheltenham killing, looking for sound-bites which would make Douglas Gibson and his colleagues seem inefficient, uncaring or both. The CC had been hoping he might have been able to shut them up with an arrest, but that was looking increasingly unlikely.

John Lambert was wondering why he had been summoned to the CC's presence. Gibson was not a man given to wasting time, whether his own or other people's, and it was scarcely twenty-four hours since Lambert had given him a full verbal report on the progress of the investigation. He said reluctantly, ‘Do you want me there tomorrow for the media briefing?'

‘Yes, I think you'd better be there for this one.' Gibson grinned at his Chief Superintendent's discomfiture: he knew how little Lambert appreciated these occasions. ‘I know you think you could be better employed elsewhere, John, but this might be an occasion for showing the flag. If I sit beside the man who's been successful in so many murder hunts, those journalists might give us a stay of execution.'

Lambert nodded gloomily. ‘I'll be there. You never know, we may have something to report to them by then.'

‘You still think this death might be drugs-related?' Gibson was hoping it wasn't, simply because such a killing would reduce the chances of a successful arrest and prosecution.

‘DI Rushton has gone up to confront Derek Minton in Solihull this afternoon. I don't reckon he'll get very much out of a contract killer, but Chris thought it was worth a try.' Lambert kept his face resolutely straight: the prospect of the inflexible Rushton confronting Derek Minton was really no laughing matter.

‘Nothing else new since yesterday, I suppose?'

‘More than you'd think, but nothing conclusive. Logan's widow has confessed to disposing of a pistol which may or not have been the murder weapon. Our surveillance man has just reported in that Martin Sheene's had a visitor, but I don't know any details yet. I'm about to go off and see Logan's former mistress, Tamsin Phillips, again. She says she's thought of something relevant, but I have my doubts about how reliable she is. She's a highly strung woman with a history of violence: we've still got her in the frame as a possibility for the Logan killing.'

‘Then I won't delay you. There is one piece of good news, however. It's the reason that I asked you to come up here, as a matter of fact.' Gibson smiled at the man who had joined a very different police service not long after he had. ‘The bureaucrats aren't as inflexible as we feared. They've listened to my pleas and agreed that Chief Superintendent Lambert is a special case. You're to stay on, John, if you're agreeable. For at least another couple of years.'

Gibson allowed himself a big grin. He wasn't used to delivering good news, had found himself in the end anxious to get it over with quickly. He shrugged aside the man's thanks, was touched to see how delighted a grizzled warrior in the fight against crime could be by the extension of his war. ‘Don't bother to thank me, John. They've done
me
a favour, as well as you.'

It was only when John Lambert had gone on his way that Douglas Gibson wondered how pleased the man's wife and family would be when they heard the news.

Bert Hook drove carefully through an irregular trail of pupils leaving Greenwood Comprehensive School, whilst Lambert stared through the window and marvelled again at the vast range of emotions on display in the minutes after the end of a school day, from small boys racing along in ecstasy at their release from the classroom to older children trudging with their eyes fixed upon the ground, as if despair could grow no deeper.

Tamsin Phillips was waiting nervously for them in the reception area of the school. She gave them the briefest of greetings before turning briskly upon her heel and leading them down a long corridor and into the History Resources Room, the small room at the back of a classroom where they had conducted their first interview with her.

She was plainly ill at ease, but if anything it improved her dark good looks. Her agitation flushed her face a little beneath the curls of shining black hair, the retroussé nose making her look younger than her thirty-three years and in need of protection. This woman could play the damsel in distress card to great effect, if she should need to, thought Lambert. It was easy to see why that strange, vulnerable, former partner of hers, Darcy Simpson, still felt drawn to her all these years after she had taken a knife to him.

She waited until they were sitting on the hard upright chairs before she said, ‘I asked you to come here. I suppose I should take the initiative and tell you why.'

She gave them a winning smile, switching it from one to the other as she sought for a response. She got nothing from Hook and only the curtest of nods from Lambert. They weren't about to make a nervous woman less nervous.

She had anticipated questions, wondered now quite where she should start. She said uncertainly, ‘Well, after our last meeting, I took some legal advice from a friend of mine.'

‘And he no doubt told you that you should be telling the whole truth. Unless you killed Peter Logan, of course.' Lambert stared evenly into her pretty face.

It was so nearly exactly what her friend had told her that she was thoroughly disconcerted. ‘I didn't kill Peter. It's because I want you to get whoever did kill him that I've asked you to come and see me now. However, the legal advice was much as you suggest.'

‘I'm sure you were told that you should tell us the truth and hold nothing back. I hope you are planning to do that now. I would remind you that this is our third meeting with you. It is high time that we had the complete story.'

She flushed even more deeply, in a mixture of embarrassment and anger. She had thought the days of being rebuked like a naughty child were long over. But this infuriating man would no doubt tell her that she had behaved like a child. Tamsin Phillips looked fiercely at the dusty table in the middle of the room, as if it were necessary to her concentration. ‘You've already had it. Everything I told you yesterday was true.'

‘But incomplete. You said you had more information to give when you asked us to come here today.'