A Choice of Victims (7 page)

‘Would you know what time they left here?’ he asked.

‘I can tell you exactly,’ she said, with an air of triumph. ‘I looked at the clock, you see, wondering if I’d missed the news. It was thirteen minutes past one.’

Driving to the gateway, Hasted clocked the distance at roughly half a mile. Eight minutes walking time, say—which would have put the men there at around one-twenty. According to Philipson the dead woman had left his cottage shortly after one o’clock. How long would it have taken her to reach the gateway?

Police in shirt-sleeves were meticulously searching the area around the gate, others were spread out along the track. Hasted drove down to the woods, confident that the dead woman would have done the same. Some fifty yards into the trees he came to the end of the track, where tyre marks indicated that a car had turned. He had not previously visited Claud Philipson, but he had studied the map, and he followed the footpath through the trees to the clearing. Even in the warm August sunshine the garden wilderness looked depressing. A waste, he thought, as he stood in the porch waiting for his knock to be answered. No one came, and presently he opened the door and stepped into the narrow hall.

‘Mr Philipson?’ he called.

There was no answer. A door to his right was ajar, and he pushed it open; the room was a bedroom and unoccupied. He called Philipson’s name again and walked along the hall. The door to the next room was closed, and he knocked and opened it. A man and a woman stood facing him a few feet apart. The man was old, white-haired and bearded: Claud Philipson, he supposed. The woman he recognized as Cheryl Mason, wife of the West Deering postmaster.

‘Good morning,’ he said. Cheryl Mason smiled and nodded, a beringed hand smoothing her hair, and he looked at the man. ‘Mr Philipson?’

‘That’s me,’ the man growled. ‘And who might you be, mister? Bought the place, have you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Hasted said. ‘I knocked and I called, but no one answered. So—’

‘So you walked in, eh? Just like that. You got a nerve, mister.’

‘It’s all right, Philly,’ Cheryl said. She was a good-looking blonde of around forty, with a trim figure and prominent breasts that clearly were not confined by a bra. Hasted noticed with interest that some of the buttons down the front of the low-cut summer frock were undone. ‘It’s Mr Hasted. You know—the police.’

‘Oh! Sergeant, is it?’

‘Inspector.’

‘Come about that woman, have you? The one what was killed?’ Philipson moved slowly to a chair and lowered himself into it. ‘Cheryl here’s been telling me. You got the man that done it?’

‘Not yet,’ Hasted said. ‘But you may be able to help us there, sir. You’re probably the last person to have seen Mrs Doyle alive. Other than the—the killer, that is.’ He had been about to use the plural noun. But Mrs Shawby’s two visitors were only suspect because they had been in the relevant vicinity at the relevant time. There was nothing to connect them with the crime; it would be a mistake to jump to an unwarranted conclusion. ‘When she called here Friday lunchtime was there anything in her manner—anything she said—that might be considered unusual?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘How do you mean, “not really”?’

‘Well, most of them likes a bit of a natter when they come. But not her. It’s dish out the grub, grab the money and off. Friday, though, it was different. Almost chatty, she was.’

‘What did she talk about?’

‘About how I wasn’t to get depressed about my health and how I needed a lady friend to cheer me up.’ The old man grinned, deepening the creases in his craggy face. ‘I asked her if she was offering.’

Hasted smiled. ‘And that’s all?’

‘Ay.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea, Mr Hasted?’ Cheryl asked. She had a rather singsong voice that although pleasing enough in tone could become monotonous. ‘It won’t take a minute.’

Hasted shook his head. He noted with surprise that she wore neither shoes nor stockings. ‘I’ve just had coffee,’ he said. ‘Oh! One more point, Mr Philipson. Can you remember whether Mrs Doyle was carrying a handbag? A red one, probably.’

Philipson considered. ‘No, she wasn’t. Just a purse. She took it out of her mackintosh pocket when I give her the money.’ He exhaled noisily. ‘Sixty-five pence! That’s what it costs now. Bloody robbery, if you ask me.’

‘It’d cost you a lot more in a restaurant,’ Cheryl said.

‘You told Mrs Holden that Mrs Doyle left here shortly after one,’ Hasted said. ‘Could you be more precise?’

‘The news was on,’ Philipson said. ‘Been on a few minutes. Five past, perhaps? Something like that.’

Cheryl accompanied Hasted to the front door. ‘I like to come over Sundays,’ she said. ‘Make sure he’s all right. Summertime I usually come of an evening, while Ed’s visiting his mother in Yellham. He always spends Sunday evenings with his mother. Sunday evenings and Friday lunchtime; never misses if he can help it. But this weekend I’ve got my sister staying, so I thought I’d pop over now while she and Ed are at church.’

‘The service ended nearly an hour ago,’ Hasted said.

‘Did it? Yes, I suppose it did.’ The knowledge did not seem to bother her. ‘I’d best be getting back. They’ll be wanting their lunch.’

‘Can I give you a lift?’

‘I’ve got my car,’ she said. ‘Left it at the Falcon.’

She opened the door. With her body silhouetted against the bright sunlight, Hasted saw that she was wearing nothing underneath the frock, and as he walked back to the car he wondered about her. Was the heat the sole reason for her being so scantily clad? According to Sybil, if local gossip had it right then Cheryl Mason was doing more for the old man than feeding him, but although there was probably enough smoke to give credence to the suspicion of fire, it seemed unlikely that a man as old and as sick as Claud Philipson could kindle much of a flame. And what of the husband? The gossip must surely have reached him. The majority view in the village, Sybil said, was that he countenanced the affair, however reluctantly, in the hope of financial gain on the old man’s death; it was common knowledge that business at the post office stores was on the slide. Others, Sybil said, believed that he had no choice—that despite her apparently easy-going manner Cheryl dominated him completely, that his protests had no effect on her decisions. That, they said, accounted for his general irritability.

The news of Mrs Shawby’s visitors delighted Driver. Forensic had found straw and traces of animal excreta in the Morris, which tied in with the youths’ statements that they had spent the night in a barn. ‘And there are prints galore,’ he added. ‘If those two yobbo’s are our killers, which it’s a hundred to one they are, it looks like being in the bag.’

‘We have to catch them first,’ Hasted said.

‘Ah! There speaks the voice of caution,’ Driver said cheerfully. ‘True, we have to catch them. Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult. They’re not super-criminals, George. They’re just a couple of—’ The telephone rang. ‘Yes. Yes, he’s here.’ He handed the receiver to Hasted. ‘For you.’

It was Frances Holden. They had been trying to contact him for the past hour or more, Frances said, ever since Sybil’s pains had started. But not to worry. Tom had called an ambulance to take her into Limpsted General. ‘I don’t suppose you’re a father yet,’ she said. ‘But it won’t be long. Congratulations!’

He thanked her and put down the receiver. His hands were sweating and he felt light-headed, and as he told Driver the news the words tumbled over themselves. ‘All right with you if I clear off?’ he said. ‘I’d like to be there. Not at the actual birth—that isn’t my scene—not Sybil’s either. We discussed all that before Jason was born. But I’d like—’

‘Stop prattling, George,’ Driver said. ‘Off with you, lad. Run along and be a daddy.’

*

Cheryl Mason was seldom up of a morning in time to get breakfast ready for her husband. Most days he had eaten and was out of the house before she arrived downstairs, which was usually in her dressing gown. That was how it was that Monday morning. She wandered into the kitchen to find her sister hunched over the table, a large mug of black coffee held between her hands. A frying pan and the remains of Ed’s breakfast were in the sink. Cheryl shuddered when she saw them.

‘God, I feel awful!’ she said huskily.

‘You look awful,’ Blanche Seaton said.

Cheryl peered into a mirror. Her eyes looked sunken, there were dark shadows beneath. ‘My head’s splitting.’

‘So’s mine,’ Blanche said. There was a similarity of features between the sisters, but Blanche was older and plumper. She too was wearing a dressing gown. ‘Want some coffee? It’s instant. I couldn’t find the percolator.’

‘Don’t bother. I’ll do it.’ Cheryl switched on the kettle and spooned coffee granules into a mug. ‘Do you want anything to eat?’

‘Ugh! Even the thought of food makes me want to throw up.’ Blanche sipped coffee. ‘What was that stuff we were drinking last night?’

‘Gut-rot. Some of Ed’s cheap plonk.’

‘What time did we get to bed?’

‘God knows! Well after two, anyway.’

‘Was Ed awake?’

‘No. Snoring his head off. What was he like this morning? Or didn’t you see him?’

‘Polite but distant. He obviously disapproved of our booze-up. Does he usually go to bed before you?’

‘Ed’s a creature of habit.’ Cheryl poured boiling water into the mug and sat opposite her sister. ‘What time do you want to leave?’

‘It doesn’t matter. I’m spending the night with Phyllis. Going back to Aberdeen tomorrow.’

‘A pity you live so far away,’ Cheryl said. ‘How long since we last met? Four years? Five?’

‘Something like that.’ Blanche lit a cigarette. ‘How is it between you and Ed these days. Still bad?’

Cheryl shrugged. ‘Well, we don’t bicker any more. Or not often. We’re past that. There’s the occasional flare-up, but mostly we just don’t bother. Or I don’t; he still gets the odd fit of jealousy. Otherwise—well, he goes his way and I go mine.’

‘Not much of a marriage,’ Blanche said.

‘Not much of anything. He’s selfish and boring and bloody mean.’

‘He bought you that car.’

‘He didn’t. I paid for it myself, out of mother’s money.’ Cheryl frowned. ‘Didn’t we go through all of this last night?’

‘Did we? I don’t remember. Yes, I suppose we did. Oh! There’s a letter for you. There— behind you. Ed said it was on the mat when he came down this morning.’

Cheryl reached back to the dresser. The envelope was flimsy, almost transparent. Her name was on it, printed in capitals, but there was no address and no stamp. She put it down and picked up the mug and sipped.

‘Must have been shoved through the letter box,’ she said. ‘I bet Ed thinks it’s from a man.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘Probably.’

‘Your boyfriend?’

Cheryl shook her head, and winced. ‘He wouldn’t risk a note. He’d be scared Ed might open it and spread the news to his father-in-law. That could cost him the garage. His father-in-law owns it. He’s just the manager.’

‘Who, then?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘Why don’t you open it, then?’

Cheryl slit open the envelope. It contained a single sheet of thin lined paper. For a full minute she stared at the few words printed on it. Then she put it down and looked at her sister.

‘What is it?’ Blanche said. ‘Something wrong?’

Cheryl slid the paper across the table. Blanche picked it up and read it.

‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed.

Chapter Four

Driver’s optimism was justified. The men were picked up on the Tuesday. After a midday drinking session they had settled in a shelter on the sea front, where they had been spotted by an off-duty police constable who happened to have chosen the same shelter. Because he too had had a few beers he was not particularly alert, and it was not until one of the men produced a gold propelling pencil to make notes in the margin of his newspaper that his curiosity was aroused and he realized that their appearances tallied with the descriptions of the two wanted men. Half an hour later they were in the local nick. Another two hours and they were at divisional headquarters, waiting to be interrogated.

They gave their names as Joe Bright and Ron Willis. On Driver’s instructions they had not been charged, but had been told they were wanted for questioning in connection with the taking of a motor vehicle without the owner’s consent. Neither youth had protested, orally or physically, at being picked up. Nor had they shown any great concern; their attitude suggested that they found the whole affair something of a lark.

‘That could be bravado, I suppose,’ Hasted said. ‘In which case you’ve got to hand it to them. I mean, they don’t have to be masterminds to realize that they’re not here just for nicking a car.’

Driver made no comment. ‘You take Willis,’ he said. They had already discussed guidelines for the interrogations. ‘I’ll take Bright. And don’t rush it, George. Let it build up, eh?’

Joe Bright was the articulate one. Driver was surprised at the accuracy of Mrs Shawby’s description. He still wore the blue jeans and anorak, and his long curly hair still looked untidy, but he had recently shaved. His smile when Driver confronted him in the interview room was welcoming rather than cheeky. Certainly he showed no sign of nervousness.

Driver sat opposite at the table and pushed across a packet of cigarettes. Bright shook his head. ‘Never use them,’ he said, adding, as Driver lit up, ‘Killed my old man, they did. You know? Give him cancer. You want to knock it off, man.’

Normally Driver would have been amused. But not now. Not with murder on the cards. He said briskly, ‘Last Friday lunchtime someone nicked a grey Morris 1100 from the vicinity of Warwick Farm in West Deering. You and Willis were seen in the area around the relevant time. Which is why you’re here. We think you may know something about it.’

‘Sure I know,’ Bright said cheerfully. ‘We done it. Me and Ron. And you bloody knew that, didn’t you? All that balls about helping with enquiries—that’s just fuzz talk, ain’t it?’

Driver was taken aback. He had been confident of getting a confession—he held too many cards to fail—but he had not expected it to be volunteered so readily or so soon.

‘Well, that’s a start,’ he said.

‘You want I should make a statement? Get it writ down?’

Ah! A statement would put paid to the questions he needed to ask. ‘I’m going to caution you first. Then I suggest we have a little chat. Sort it all out. After that, if you wish, you can make a statement. All right?’

‘Anything you say, man.’

They had come down from Clapton, Bright said, walking and hitchhiking, hoping to get temporary jobs at a seaside café or restaurant during the holiday season. Thursday night they had slept in a barn, and as they were approaching West Deering on the Friday it had started to rain. The rain was heavy and they had tried without success to find shelter. Turning out of a lane on to the Yellham road they had seen the Morris parked outside a field gate and they had hurried to it, hoping for a lift. There was no one in the car, however, and when they had discovered it was unlocked they had got in to protect themselves from the rain and had sat waiting for the driver. But no one had come, and after a while they had decided that, as the key had been left in the ignition switch, they would borrow the car to take them down to the coast. ‘Which we done,’ Bright concluded, leaning back and stretching his legs. ‘Only, like I said, we wasn’t nicking the wheels. Just borrowing it. You know?’

‘Who drove?’ Driver asked.

‘Ron. It was him got in behind the wheel, see. He had me proper scared, too. I mean, he ain’t driven much before—ain’t passed his test, neither—but that don’t worry Ron none. He just puts his foot on the floor and bloody goes. I thought we’d bought it when he hit a parked car.’ Bright grinned. ‘Made a right mess of it, and all. You ought to see it.’

‘I’ve seen it,’ Driver said. ‘It was my car.’

‘Eh?’ Bright stared at him. ‘It never! You’re bloody kidding!’

‘No kidding,’ Driver said. ‘And it was practically new. I’d had it just four months.’

‘Jeez! Jeez, but I’m sorry, man!’ He sounded properly contrite. ‘That’s real cruel, that is. Still, like I said, it weren’t me what was driving. Got it insured proper, have you?’

‘Yes,’ Driver said curtly. The battered Rover remained a sore topic. ‘What happened after the collision?’

Expecting pursuit, Bright said, they had left the main road and, once they decided they were clear, they had stopped to examine the hot-boxes. The food had been welcome, for breakfast that morning had consisted of a packet of potato crisps. They had then gone on to the coast. ‘I done the driving then,’ Bright said. ‘I didn’t want no more bovver.’

He paused. Driver waited for more. But no more seemed to be forthcoming and he said, ‘Apart from the food, what else did you steal?’

A little of Bright’s sang-froid deserted him. He shifted uneasily and sat up. ‘Well, we was skint, wasn’t we?’ he said challengingly. ‘And there was this bag, see? Bloody criminal, it was, leaving it like that.’

‘How much?’ Driver asked.

Bright shrugged. ‘I dunno exactly. A few quid.’

Driver let that pass. The money was not important. ‘And the gold pencil?’

‘That was Ron. Leave it, I said, it’ll get us nicked. Which it bloody did, din’t it? But Ron’s funny, see? There’s times he don’t seem to hear proper. It’s like he’s kind of shut hisself away. Know what I mean?’

Driver nodded. He did know. There was silence for a while. Then he said casually. ‘How about the boot?’

‘Boot? What boot?’

‘The car boot.’

‘Oh, that! We couldn’t open it. The keys didn’t fit.’

‘You didn’t try to force it?’

Bright shrugged. ‘We wasn’t that bovvered.’

‘We opened it,’ Driver said. ‘Guess what we found.’

‘A stiff, eh?’ Bright said, grinning.

It was not quite the answer Driver had expected. Yet it went some way to bolster the uneasy suspicion that was already forming in his mind. He stubbed out his cigarette, grinding it into the ashtray, and leaned back.

‘That’s right, Joe,’ he said. ‘A stiff. The body of a woman. She’d been killed by a blow on the head. But then you know all about that, don’t you?’

Bright’s body seemed to go rigid. He stared at Driver, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

‘It—it was a joke, mister,’ he said, his voice shrill. ‘I didn’t know—I mean we never—oh, bloody Jesus!’ He swallowed and took a deep breath. ‘But we never done it, mister, honest we didn’t. All we done was borrow the wheels and nick a few quid. We never killed no woman.’ He looked beseechingly from Driver to the uniformed constable by the door, and then back to Driver. ‘We never done it, mister. Honest!’

‘No?’ Driver shook his head. ‘You say there was no one in sight when you reached the car. So if it wasn’t you who killed her and put her in the boot, who was it?’

‘I don’t know, do I? All I know is, it weren’t us.’ Bright licked his lips. ‘Straight up, mister. I swear it.’ Hope came to him. ‘You sure you ain’t having me on? I mean—well, it don’t seem possible somehow.’

‘I don’t joke about murder.’ Driver stood up. ‘I’ll leave you to think it over, Joe. If you decide you’d like to talk to me some more—if you want to make a statement, get it all down on paper—let the officer know. But take your time. There’s no hurry.’

He had to wait for Hasted to finish with Willis. It had been a frustrating experience, Hasted said. Willis had volunteered nothing. ‘Most of the time he sat staring past me with a sort of smirk on his ugly mug. As if the whole affair was nothing to do with him and why was I wasting his time.’

‘He didn’t say anything?’

‘Eventually, yes. But I had to drag it out of him.’

‘So what did you get?’

He had got much the same as Driver had got from Bright: a reluctant admission to taking the car and stealing money and the propelling pencil, and a flat denial of murder. ‘But he didn’t seem horrified or outraged or upset or anything, like you’d expect him to be,’ Hasted said. ‘No, he said, they didn’t kill her—and that was that. No protestations, no questions. He’s a new one on me, is friend Willis. A real odd bod.’

‘Is he willing to make a statement?’

‘Says he wants to think about it. I get the impression he might be illiterate. The doodles he was making on the newspaper when he was arrested—they lack any sort of form, if you know what I mean. Remember Sid Burnett, the fellow who set fire to the Williamson factory? His doodling was similar. And he was illiterate.’

Driver nodded. ‘Illiteracy might partly explain his attitude. Put him on the defensive. But the murder, George. Are those two lads telling the truth? How do you reckon?’

‘I’m not sure. How do you?’

‘I think they are.’

It wasn’t only a gut feeling, Driver said, there were sound reasons for his belief. Such evidence as they had suggested that neither man had opened the boot. Hungry and broke, they had raided the hot-boxes and robbed the woman’s handbag, but the valuable items on her person—the jewellery, the gold wristwatch, the money in her purse—had not been touched, and although their fingerprints were all over the inside and outside of the car, none had been found inside the boot. ‘And why would they bother to detach the key from the ring and, presumably, dispose of it?’ Driver continued. ‘Wouldn’t it be more natural to wait until they had finished with the car and then throw the whole bunch away?’

Hasted agreed that it would, ‘You know, that business of the key really puzzles me,’ he said. ‘No matter who the killer might be, what did he expect to gain by getting rid of it? He must have known that if no duplicate were available the boot would be forced.’

Driver shrugged. ‘Buying time, perhaps. But to get back to our two lads. Why would they kill the woman? I don’t know about Willis, but Bright strikes me as definitely the nonviolent type. And another thing. I’d say it’s more likely she was killed in the woods and not in the gateway. The gateway’s too damned conspicuous. I know it’s fairly isolated and the heavy rain would have deterred pedestrians, but it’s on a public highway. To kill her there, probably only after a struggle, and then stow her away in the boot, would take more than a few seconds. It would also take a hell of a nerve, knowing a car could appear at any moment.’

‘Risky, certainly,’ Hasted agreed.

‘Too risky, George. That’s why I think she was killed in the woods. Probably where she’d parked the car while she visited Philipson. And that’s another point in the lads’ favour. The car would have been out of sight from the road. And what else could have taken them into the woods?’

‘We’ve searched that area too,’ Hasted said. ‘All the way to Philipson’s cottage. There’s plenty of timber chummy could have used—rocks too, come to that—but no bloodstains.’

‘No. But that’s not conclusive, is it? And she was wearing that plastic hood, remember. Incidentally, the pathologist’s initial examination suggests she had an unusually thin skull.’

‘So we’re back to square one,’ Hasted said, looking at his watch. ‘Bloody hell! I mean, if those two tearaways didn’t kill her then robbery wasn’t the motive. Which makes it personal. She was killed because of who or what she was. Which means friend—family—acquaintances. It means digging into relationships. And that I don’t like.’

‘Who does?’

‘And what do we do with Bright and Willis?’

‘Charge them with nicking the car. We can hold them on that. If they ask for bail—which I doubt—we object on the grounds that a more serious charge may be pending.’ Driver smiled as Hasted again consulted his watch. ‘Got a date, have you, George?’

‘You might say that.’

‘Off you go, then. Settled on a name yet?’

‘More or less. Martin James.’

‘James, eh? I’m honoured.’

‘Half honoured,’ Hasted said. ‘Sybil’s father is also James.’

The hospital was only a few hundred yards from headquarters. Martin James had been born early on the Monday morning, but Hasted’s first sight of him had been at midday; within reason, fathers of newly born infants were allowed unrestricted admittance to the maternity ward. He was a large, healthy, vociferous baby, and according to Sybil, who was breastfeeding him, he took after his father in being extremely greedy.

He was asleep in his cot when Hasted visited the hospital that Tuesday evening. ‘Don’t wake him,’ Sybil said. ‘I need the peace. We all do.’

Hasted glanced round the small ward, smiled at the mothers with whom he had already reached a nodding acquaintance, and bent over his son. ‘He’s big, isn’t he?’ he said. ‘Bigger than I thought. Who do you think he’s like?’

‘The late Mr Breshnev,’ Sybil said. ‘He’s got the same supercilious look and heavy jowls.’