Only a Game (24 page)

Unexpectedly, Peach smiled at her. ‘Perhaps you should have become a detective when you gave up tennis, Mrs Black. One of the things we have to remind ourselves of constantly is that there might be other explanations as well as the obvious ones. Do you know of anyone with a personal grudge against the deceased of the kind you suggest?'

‘No. But I'm sure the extensive research you are no doubt conducting will throw up some possibilities.'

‘Are you, indeed? What time did you leave the hospitality suite, Mrs Black?'

She was studiously unruffled and unhurried. ‘I can't be precise. I didn't know it mattered at the time. We discussed the news among ourselves after Capstick had left us to it. Everyone was pretty excited. I should think it was about twenty minutes after Capstick went up to his office – if that is indeed what he did.'

‘Did you leave alone?'

‘Yes. My au pair had arranged to take the children home and get them to bed, so I wasn't tied to any particular time, because I knew beforehand that I would be required in the hospitality suite after the game to help entertain our visitors. I went out to the reserved car park to get my car at around half past seven, I should think. But it may have been earlier or later, I couldn't be sure.'

‘Did anyone see you leave?'

Again she gave thought to a question which could have provided her with a valuable witness before she said, ‘Not that I'm aware of, no. But I know that I was home by eight, because I went to see the children in bed. I didn't leave the house again.'

‘I now have to ask you again whether you have any idea who killed James Capstick.'

She smiled her acknowledgement that the interview was coming to an end, that she thought she had handled it well enough. ‘Beyond the fact that it wasn't me, I've no idea, Detective Chief Inspector Peach.'

SEVENTEEN

T
he day had clouded over. The first spots of rain pimpled the big window on the turn of the stairs as Peach climbed the staircase to Thomas Bulstrode Tucker's penthouse office at Brunton police station. The low cloud had already shut out the line of the hills and left only an ever-diminishing view of the grimy roofs of the old cotton town. A suitable obfuscation for a Tucker exchange, in Percy's not altogether unbiased view.

‘It's taken you a long time to come and report to me,' said Tommy Bloody Tucker tetchily.

‘On the contrary, I took the first opportunity to apprise you of the case yesterday,' his DCI pointed out firmly.

‘In an attempt to ruin my weekend relaxation!' said Tucker unreasonably.

‘Your golf seemed to be doing that quite effectively without my contribution,' said Peach thoughtfully. ‘Golf seems to be that sort of game, don't you think, sir? You set out to unwind and find yourself knotted up with frustration in no time. Still, I'm quite new to it. I haven't yet acquired your philosophical acceptance of misfortune and formidable powers of self-control.'

‘What is it you're here to say, Peach? I'm far too busy to waste my time with your fripperies.'

Peach reviewed the square metres of empty desk in front of his chief. ‘I thought you said you were impatient for my report, sir. Well, the good news is that we've already interviewed the victim's wife, his chief executive at Brunton Rovers FC, his football manager, and his football manager's wife. None of them appear very enthusiastic about the late James Capstick – not even his wife, in my view.'

‘Very interesting, I'm sure,' said Tucker with all the sarcasm he could muster. ‘Are you now going to tell me who killed him?'

Peach smiled benignly, not at all put out: chief superintendents, his expression said, must be allowed these harmless sallies. ‘Afraid not, sir. You wouldn't wish me to leap to conclusions, I'm sure. Your overview would tell you that haste is the last thing the CID can afford in a high-profile case like this one.' He brightened as if struck by an original thought. ‘I think you might tell the press officer that enquiries are proceeding satisfactorily and that the public are co-operating with us, but that no arrest is imminent.'

Tucker, who had already directed that a statement including just these anodyne phrases should be issued, glared fiercely at his acolyte. ‘We're under pressure here, Peach. The nationals and the radio and the television are pressing us, in view of the high-profile victim. We need a result, and a quick result.'

Peach considered whether he should invite the man to take direct responsibility for the case he was nominally directing, the most reliable method of deflating him. Instead, he said tersely, ‘As soon as I've anything tangible to report, I shall do that, sir. In the meantime, I advise against one of your media-briefing conferences; it could be a trifle embarrassing with so little to reveal to the jackals. I wish to broach another and more personal subject with you, sir.'

‘Personal?' Tucker did his goldfish impression, as if this was some exotic foreign word which he could not be expected to understand.

Percy took a deep breath. ‘I'm getting married, sir.'

‘Married?' More bemusement.

‘Yes, sir. I always thought it was to be a case of “once bitten, twice shy” in my case – you are no doubt aware that I had a brief and not altogether happy experience of matrimony many years ago, sir. When I was in my green and salad days, as the Egyptian queen memorably expressed it.'

‘Salad?'

Percy thought that Tucker had now mastered perplexity and should move on to some other reaction. ‘I suppose that beholding the deep and unbroken contentment which characterizes your own marriage might have had a subconscious effect upon me, sir.'

The vision of Brunhilde Barbara finally broke through Tucker's bemusement. Alarm burst suddenly into his florid features. ‘Now look here, Peach, I don't know what you're implying, but—'

‘So I thought I would take the plunge again into the uncertain seas of commitment, sir. I am to be married at the beginning of May. In view of the fact that it is my second voyage on these perilous seas, we thought a quiet ceremony would be advisable, sir. I hope you will understand that in such circumstances I thought it advisable not to issue an invitation to you and your wonderful wife, sir.'

‘No. I mean, you're quite right there, Peach.' The thought of his spouse's Wagnerian rejection of a wedding invitation from Peach induced an uncharacteristic decisiveness in her husband. Barbara Tucker, who had no conception of how completely her husband's reputation depended upon Percy Peach, could not understand why he tolerated the insufferable man. ‘Keep the gathering small, as you say. Much the best policy.' Tucker waved a wide arm vaguely at nothing in particular to signify his approval. ‘I expect I shall have the opportunity to meet the lady at some future date.'

‘Actually, sir, you already know her.'

‘Already know her?' Welcome return of goldfish.

‘She's a police officer, sir. To be precise, she is Detective Sergeant Blake.'

‘Detective Sergeant Blake?'

‘A member of your CID team, sir.'

‘I am aware who Detective Sergeant Blake is, Peach! Kindly credit me with a little knowledge, will you?' A fact surfaced unexpectedly from the primeval swamp which was Tucker's memory. ‘DS Blake is the woman you thought it would be impossible to work with when I assigned her to you.'

Percy smiled in fond recognition of that moment four years earlier. ‘Indeed, sir. It shows how far your enlightened attitudes have pervaded your staff, doesn't it? There was I thinking that I'd be unable to work with a woman and you with your wider perceptions saw that you were offering me happiness beyond the realms of detection.' He beamed what he hoped was the appropriate romantic-novel bliss at the corner of Tucker's ceiling. ‘Well, I am now able to tell you that your projection of your bedroom happiness with Barbara into other lives has borne fruit, sir.'

The linking of bedroom with Barbara rang loud alarm bells in Tucker's racing brain. He said sternly, ‘You shouldn't be working with the woman, Peach, if there's a relationship. Against all the codes of the service, that is.'

After all this time, the bloody idiot is still so out of touch that he didn't know we had a thing going, thought Percy. Tommy Bloody Tucker, top Brunton CID brain. God help us. He said sternly, ‘A whirlwind romance has overtaken us, sir. But you are right, as always. At the conclusion of the present Capstick case, DS Blake and I will reluctantly sever our working relationship. And shortly afterwards, we shall be united in holy matrimony.'

‘That will be in order.'

‘Thank you, sir.'

‘Is there anything else. I'm really very busy at the moment.'

Peach surveyed the shiningly vacant desk again. ‘No, sir. I shall get back to solving this business at Grafton Park now.'

‘Do that, please.' His relief at seeing the back of his DCI was shaken by a belated thought of team management. ‘And Peach.'

Percy turned wearily with his hand on the door handle. ‘Sir?'

‘Do convey my congratulations to the lady in question. To DS Blake. To  . . .'

Percy took pity on him. ‘It's Lucy, sir.'

‘Of course it is, yes. Well, tell her that I hope she will be very happy. Oh, and you, too, of course.'

Tucker shook his head in bewilderment as the door finally closed and he was left alone. Someone wanted to marry Percy Peach – an attractive girl, too, if he'd got the right one. The world got stranger every day.

‘Do come in. I've been expecting to speak to you ever since this happened.'

Edward Lanchester took the pair through the high Edwardian hall and into a comfortably furnished sitting room, where the flames of an open fire danced unexpectedly and cheerfully. ‘The central heating is perfectly adequate, but I'm of the generation which still likes to see a real fire in the evenings. I can remember us digging ourselves out of many feet of snow in 1947, though I was still a boy at the grammar school then. And everything seemed to freeze up in 1963 – that was the last year in which I remember there being burst pipes all over the town. I think we'll draw the curtains and shut out the rain and the miserable evening, shall we?'

Lucy Blake wondered if he talked so much because he was nervous, like so many of the people they spoke to in murder enquiries. Within a few minutes, she had settled for another explanation: like many people who lived alone, the old man was lonely, whether he realized it or not, and his reaction to visitors was to talk rather more than was necessary. She said, because some response seemed to be called for and Peach was still studying their host, ‘I like your curtains. This is a very pleasant room, isn't it?'

‘I think it is, though it's probably a little old-fashioned for your taste. I can't claim any credit for the curtains, or for anything else in here, for that matter. My wife chose everything. Practically everything in the house was her taste. I suppose that's the way it was when we were young, the man was the breadwinner and the woman made the home. Eleanor died two years ago.'

‘You must miss her very much.'

‘I do, I'm afraid.' He thought suddenly of the daughters he saw so rarely, of the sympathy and support they might have offered him if they'd been closer. It was pathetic that he should be so grateful for such a small moment of warmth from this pretty young woman with the dark red hair, who had never known Eleanor. ‘But I'm forgetting my manners. Can I offer you some sort of refreshment?'

‘No need for that, sir. But thank you for the thought.' Peach had been studying Lanchester, as his junior had expected. But Lucy Blake had missed noticing the thing which had really kept him silent: Percy had for a totally uncharacteristic moment been in awe of someone. Edward Lanchester had only just ceased to be the chairman of Brunton Rovers when the diminutive Denis Charles Scott Peach had begun supporting them as a small boy. Such a figure surely merited a moment of respect, even from the grown man who was now the senior policeman Percy Peach.

Only a moment, though: Percy hastily reasserted his professional persona. ‘We need to speak to you about the murder of James Capstick.'

Lanchester nodded his smiling acceptance of that. ‘As I say, I've been expecting you ever since the news broke yesterday.'

‘We've already spoken to a number of other people, sir. We haven't been idle.'

‘Oh, I wasn't implying anything like that. But I expect I shall now be a disappointment to you. I don't suppose I shall be able to add anything useful to what you already know about the events of Saturday night.'

‘We speak to everyone who was close to the incident. It's part of the routine of a murder enquiry.' Peach found himself unusually ill at ease in the presence of this alert and well-groomed elderly man. It could only be because of Lanchester's eminence at the football club during his formative years, he decided. He determined to assert himself. ‘You didn't like James Capstick, did you?'

The white-haired man was not at all put out by the abruptness of this. He'd always liked men who came straight to the point, who didn't defer to his real or imagined eminence. ‘I don't think many people liked James Capstick, Chief Inspector. I expect you've already discovered that. But to answer your question, no, I didn't like him at all. He was a necessary evil, in the modern football world, but that did not mean I had to like him.'

‘A necessary evil?'

Lanchester sighed. ‘You can't run a Premiership football club, especially in a small town like Brunton, without having a lot of money behind you. Not nowadays. I chaired the club for many years, and I hope ran it prudently and efficiently. That was what was expected of a chairman in the sixties and seventies. Nowadays, unless the club is a public company, the chairman usually owns it and is expected to finance it. Jim Capstick had a lot of business interests and a lot of money.'