Mortal Taste (6 page)

Lambert was there before his disgusted partner. He inspected the bottom of the ditch. ‘There's hardly any water in there. You can get it out with a wedge, if you're careful. It's our only chance, now.'

Bert didn't like that ‘now'. It was meant to remind him that all the partnership's troubles were down to this most recent disastrous shot. He stared unbelievingly at the top of his ball, just visible above an inch of green mire. He climbed obediently into the ditch, affecting not to notice the smirks of their opponents at this interesting development. To get anywhere near his ball, he had to bend like Quasimodo beneath a hawthorn. A vicious crop of steely thorns savaged his lower back and his buttocks. Nettles reared between his knees to threaten his manhood. He could no longer see his ball.

He reminded himself without conviction that he was doing this for pleasure.

Lambert's voice said from somewhere above him, ‘You'll need to keep your head very still for this one. It's not an easy shot.'

By gingerly placing his left foot halfway up the bank of the ditch and leaning far to his right, Bert found that he could just see the top of his ball again through the undergrowth. He swung at it, hopelessly and without hope. His club caught in the branches of the hawthorn behind him, but with a desperate brute strength he wrested it clear and launched it at the ball. The steel of the club-head hit mud and stagnant water with an awful splatter and Hook's vision disappeared as a black wetness filled his eye-sockets.

He climbed heavily from the ditch, refusing to scream as the hawthorn scored his back and shoulders. There was spontaneous applause from his two opponents, with whom he had developed a rapport in the face of Lambert's assistance to him. He looked down and saw that the new trousers he had donned to represent the club in this, his first match, were spattered with evil-smelling black and green ditch water. There were ragged cheers and shouts of ‘Encore!' from the four men in the match behind them.

Bert Hook limped towards his golf bag like a malodorous Dalmatian. He had slammed his wedge back into it before he realized the club-head was still covered with mud.

He was studiously avoiding any glance towards his partner. He took a deep breath and said, ‘Where did the ball go?'

‘It didn't come out of the ditch,' said Lambert sadly. ‘I thought you were rather ambitious to attempt that shot, you know. When you've played a little longer, you'll realize what's possible and what isn't.'

It took two pints of bitter in the clubhouse to restore the usually equable Hook to anything approaching normal conversation with his chief. In the interim, he reflected sullenly that Lambert seemed worse since the news of his impending retirement had broken. He was bearing up bravely at work, even talking of time for hobbies, but Bert fancied sometimes that he detected a quiet sort of panic in the man he had worked with for so long.

Lambert would not have acknowledged anything so feeble in himself. But he was conscious of a restlessness, a refusal of his normally disciplined mind to settle to the tasks in hand. Perhaps it was because there was no really serious crime to occupy him at the moment. They had unearthed a tasty bit of embezzlement in a bank near the Welsh border, but that had now been passed to the Fraud Squad. He had only a little over two months of working life to go now and, in view of the irregular extensions Lambert had already been granted, even that was borrowed time. He was beginning to face up to the bleak prospect that his final murder investigation might be behind him.

Golf should have been a welcome relaxation. Yet whilst he kept his end up in the post-match conversation with their opponents, Lambert found it difficult to lose himself completely in the banter. When they trooped into the dining room for a very acceptable meal, he scarcely noticed what he was eating. Then he listened with only half an ear to the ritual speeches and rather desperate jokes from host team captain and visiting captain.

As soon as the formal proceedings were over, he wandered outside, away from the noisy hilarity which persisted in the clubhouse. The night was absolutely still, and surprisingly mild, considering that October was just around the corner. John Lambert moved away from the noise, a little way out on to the silent course, ignoring the dew upon his shoes. Here, all he could hear was the occasional hum of a car on the distant road along the base of the Malvern Hills, towering massively black above him.

There was a vivid sliver of crescent moon, quite low in the sky, and the stars sparkled as brightly as he had ever seen them. He felt very insignificant; his problems disappeared for a moment in the face of the futility of his very existence. There was not a movement in the huge oak trees to his left. The autumn colour was late this year, and there was no leaf fall beneath the canopies of branches. The trees were still ‘those green-robed senators of mighty woods' which poor consumptive John Keats had registered almost two centuries ago.

John Lambert had lived twice as long as Keats already, and what had he to show for it? A few murderers put away, a few hundred villains locked up for a few years. It was an achievement of sorts, he supposed, but when the waters closed over him, his ripples would not last for very long.

‘John?' Hook's voice from the doors of the clubhouse was barely audible.

Lambert turned hastily back towards the clubhouse. The interruption of his private reverie was unexpected but not unwelcome. He moved rapidly through the car park. ‘I'm here, Bert. Enjoying a little solitude.'

‘There was a call for you on the steward's phone. I explained that we couldn't use our mobiles in the clubhouse.'

Lambert's pulse quickened. This could only be serious crime, if someone from the CID section had sought them out here. ‘What was it, Bert?' He was conscious of trying not to sound too eager.

‘Some kids have found a body. Hidden under bushes in a park in Cheltenham. They think it's the headmaster of a big comprehensive school. He's been missing all day.'

‘Suspicious?' But he already knew the answer to that.

Hook nodded, his face serious in the dim amber light from the open door of the clubhouse. ‘Shot through the head, apparently. But not a suicide.'

Lambert didn't ask any more. There would be plenty of time for questions and speculation, in due course. In the meantime, he had his murder. Some poor fellow he had never known had been shot through the head. By person or persons as yet unknown.

Superintendent Lambert tried not to feel exultant as he went back to his car.

C
hristine Lambert found that her husband, who had been uncharacteristically lethargic of late, had finished his breakfast and was preparing to leave the bungalow when she came into the kitchen.

She glanced at the clock: it was still twenty minutes short of eight o'clock. She said, ‘I thought you were winding down a little in your last few months. Getting ready for a life of leisure.'

‘There's been a homicide in Cheltenham. At least, I'm assured it's a homicide.' He wondered if he sounded too satisfied with the news.

His wife nodded. ‘The duty sergeant rang here last night. I told him you were playing golf at the Worcestershire.' Her voice was neutral now: years ago, she would have been full of resentment, hating the job whenever it interfered with his home life. Now, with the end of his career in sight, she was pleased to see him so animated again.

Twenty years ago, when they had had two young children and their marriage had been sailing perilously close to the rocks, John had made the situation worse. He had hugged the job to himself, offering few explanations for his lengthy absences from home, anxious to make his mark and build a career in CID work. Nowadays, in a profession notorious for its high divorce rates, the Lamberts' marriage seemed rock-steady and enduring to the youngsters in the service. Only under pressure, when he saw a young colleague with domestic troubles, would John Lambert reveal how near the partnership had been to coming apart.

He said, ‘I didn't waken you when I came in last night. The post-match celebrations went on for rather a long time, I'm afraid.'

‘Did you win, you and Bert?'

It was evidence of the way his mind had switched to his new preoccupation that he had to think hard about it. Yesterday seemed part of a different world. ‘We lost, I'm afraid. I think I may have been a bit hard on poor old Bert. He didn't play very well.'

‘I should think he's best left to his own devices, Bert. He's the kind of man who has to work things out for himself.' For a woman who had never played the game, who had never seen the two men together on a golf course, she was amazingly accurate. But she had been a gifted and perceptive teacher for thirty years. More important, she had known John Lambert for just as long.

‘You may well be right.'

Lambert wondered whether he was concealing his impatience to be away. He was not.

Christine smiled as she turned away and fiddled with the toaster. ‘You'd better get going. Murders not solved in the first week usually remain unsolved. I remember some things you tell me, you see.'

He said, ‘I'll ring you if I'm going to be late,' and went gratefully out to his old Vauxhall Senator in the garage. They had never been a couple who kissed each other goodbye in the mornings.

Christine watched him turn the car in front of the bungalow and then drive briskly away. She made sure he was safely out of sight before she shook her head resignedly over the temperament of her husband.

There wasn't as yet much news on the death when Lambert arrived in the CID section at Oldford police station. The identity of the victim had been confirmed on the previous evening. A female officer had taken the widow to identify the body at the morgue in Cheltenham. Jane Logan had been shown the half of the face that was relatively undamaged, with the rest of what remained of the head carefully shrouded in layers of cotton sheet. She had signed the papers to confirm that this was what remained of Peter Logan, then collapsed in something very near to hysterics.

That was entirely understandable. Mrs Logan was now at home with her daughter. The doctor had given them both a sedative. The pathologist would be conducting the official post-mortem in the presence of a police officer first thing this morning.

The Chief Constable, Douglas Gibson, came in half an hour after John Lambert and called him up to his office. He wanted to talk about the new case but he began on a more personal note. ‘I applied for an extension to your service, as you know, John.'

Lambert knew what was coming with that use of his forename. He had always got on well with the CC, who had indulged his Chief Superintendent's old-fashioned approach, recognizing him as a man who got results and put villains away. But Gibson was a formal man, as far as exchanges with his staff went. He was trying to sugar the pill with that ‘John'. He went on quickly, ‘It seems it's no dice, I'm afraid. I've heard nothing in writing as yet, but the bureaucratic grapevine tells me that my request will be refused.'

‘Thank you for keeping me in touch, sir. I didn't expect anything else. If they made one exception, they'd have pressure to make hundreds.' Lambert noticed that he had retreated into using that convenient and anonymous ‘they'.

‘I expect they would. But I still think they should exercise a little discrimination about particular officers. I made out a very good case on the basis of the last ten years.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘It wasn't difficult. I'll reiterate my feelings, but I'm afraid it looks as though you must prepare yourself for retirement.'

Lambert smiled. ‘I've been doing that, sir.' He didn't go in for rank much; he even forbade his own team to call him ‘sir', except in formal settings. But somehow it seemed right on this occasion, as a means of putting an embarrassed CC at his ease. ‘The roses are looking pretty good.' That traditional symbol of a copper's contented retirement. He sought desperately for something a little more original, and failed. ‘I suppose I'll have no excuse for not playing better golf, when I'm able to play whenever I want to.'

Gibson shot him a wry, understanding smile. ‘I hear you're pretty useful at the game already. Meantime, you've got a violent death to deal with.'

It was a signal that the CC was done with the awkward apologies about retirement. John Lambert as well as Douglas Gibson felt more at ease with an immediate problem. ‘Yes, sir. I'm going out to look at the scene of the crime now. We should have the essentials of the PM findings by the end of the morning and the full written report by the end of the day.'

Gibson nodded. He had stood up and walked over to the window of his room whilst Lambert was speaking. He was looking out at the Gloucestershire landscape as he said, ‘It's high-profile, John. “Sensational Death of a Highly Successful and Much-Loved Headmaster”. You can hear the capitals as I say it. The nationals have already been on to me. I've given them a steady “No comment” so far, partly because I've bugger-all to tell them anyway. But I've had to agree to a media briefing at four o'clock this afternoon.'

‘Do you want me there?'

Gibson was tempted. The self-effacing Lambert had acquired a reputation over the years, and showing him to the newshounds might mitigate the fact that he had little else that was useful to offer them. But he knew that Lambert hated sitting in front of cameras and journalists, and was well aware that he would be more usefully employed at the heart of the investigation than in a public relations exercise. ‘No. I'll tell them our local super-sleuth is on the job! That may keep them at bay until we have something more tangible to offer them.'

Gibson stayed looking out of the window after Lambert had gone. He watched his Chief Superintendent and the more rotund DS Hook come out and drive away in the police Mondeo, eager as young CID novices to rejoin the hunt. He allowed himself an affectionate smile as he went back to his desk.