Body Politic (25 page)

‘
Did I? I don’t remember that.’

‘
I expect it was the anaesthetic.’ He felt like a distant relative upon a duty visit. That earlier intimacy, the closeness he had felt when she lay helpless and unconscious at his side, was seeping mysteriously away. He had no idea how he might hold on to it. ‘How are you feeling now?’

‘
Oh, much better. I think I might have some breakfast, in the morning.’

‘
They say the operation is successful. As far as they can tell at this stage.’

‘
Yes. So far so good. They have to do a biopsy on the tissues they took away for analysis. We should know the results of that in a day or so.’

‘
Yes. I’m sure it will be all right.’ The naïvety, the effrontery, of the phrase hit him even as he said it, and he went on in confusion, plunging deeper into dangerous areas. ‘Did they—did they take much away?’

‘
Most of the breast, I’m afraid. I haven’t dared to look myself yet. They give you a false tit, you know, to fit into a special bra compartment. Indistinguishable from the real thing, they say, under clothing. But not to the human hand, I’m sure! Inevitably an expert on these things like John Lambert will know the difference.’

She
smiled bravely through the joke, like a woman in a black-and-white English film of thirty years earlier. He thought she was going to burst into tears, almost willed her to do so, since he knew that would restore the closeness he felt unable to bring himself.

Instead,
she said, ‘You look tired. You’ve had a long day, haven’t you? Are you making progress on the case?’

‘
Some. But I can’t prove anything. And I can’t see how it all fits together.’

She
didn’t press him further. It was unusual for him to say even as much as this, and she was content that it should be so. She had not wanted the harsh world of serious crime in her home, had demanded that he switch off from work when he came into the house, and for years he had found that very difficult. She was not going to break the pattern she had striven so hard to establish, even in these extreme circumstances.

And
so for another five minutes they talked of trivia and reminisced sporadically about the days when their daughters were small, whilst the staff bustled about the ward with the trolley of evening drinks.

She
was glad he had made the effort to come, and he was glad to see her with more colour in her face. But in the end, they were both relieved when it was time for him to go.

*

It was an awful morning, with a north-east wind blowing sleet almost horizontally from a pewter sky. Lambert and Hook were glad of the efficient heating system in the old Vauxhall as they drove through the undulations of Cotswold hills that were now invisible. Dermot and Moira Yates might not see the car visiting that other house in their cul-de-sac in this weather, thought Lambert. But it wouldn’t matter if they did; he often preferred to let suspects see the police screw turning tighter.

‘
Mrs Doris Hume? Detective Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook.’

‘
Come in, please.’ The elderly woman with the still bright green eyes and fading red hair was plainly one of those who delighted to be involved in a murder enquiry, to have a place on the fringe of it, whence she might glimpse the workings of the police machine without feeling personally threatened. She led them into a tidy lounge, where there was already a tray with crockery and biscuits on a coffee table, and bustled away into the kitchen.

When
she came back with the coffee pot, she had discarded her apron and looked remarkably trim in her dark-green woollen dress. Plainly this was to be the highlight of her week, an experience to be retailed and perhaps enlarged when she spoke to her friends. Lambert certainly wasn’t going to complain about her attitude: her eagerness was a relief after the caution and the concealments he had met among the principal figures in this drama.

She
probed them a little about the case, but they parried her thrusts with an expert, experienced politeness as they consumed her coffee and biscuits. ‘We’d just like to check a few things about the drinks party you held on Christmas Eve. To help us eliminate people from the enquiry, you see,’ said Lambert, noting Hook attacking the biscuits with gusto.

‘
Yes. Mr Yates said you might want to ask me about it. I’ve made a list of the people who called in on that night. I can give you their addresses too, if you think it would be useful.’ She handed him a carefully written list on her best notepaper.

‘
That shouldn’t be necessary. Did Mr Yates give you any indication of the kind of thing we wanted?’ What he was really interested to know was whether the Irishman had asked her to cover up for him in any way: that was the only reason why he had not let a DC conduct what should be no more than a routine fragment of a major enquiry.

‘
No. He just said you might want to confirm that he was here that night. Which I can do, of course.’

Yates
hadn’t been unwise enough to try to adjust her account of those fateful hours, then. A pity. ‘If you can just give Sergeant Hook here a few details for his records, we needn’t take up much more of your time, Mrs Hume.’

She
looked quite disappointed that her contact with great happenings was to be so brief. ‘Well, we always hold an informal little party for neighbours and a few friends on Christmas Eve. Gets the celebrations off to a bright start after everyone’s finally finished work for the holiday, I always think. We hold open house from about half past three until about ten or eleven, depending on when the last ones go. No formal meal, but I do plenty of sausage rolls and cheesy—’

‘
But Mr Yates wasn’t here for the whole of that time, was he, Mrs Hume?’

‘
Oh, no. People pop in when they can, and leave when they feel like it. It’s very informal, and a lot of people have other commitments, on that day. People with families and—’

‘
Yes, of course. And as hostess, it must be difficult for you to keep track of the comings and goings. So perhaps you won’t be able—’

‘
Oh, I remember Dermot Yates coming, quite clearly. He was one of the first, you see.’ Lambert had put her on her mettle, by suggesting she might be too vague to be of help. She felt her hold on dramatic events slipping away from her, and was determined to hang on as long as possible.

Hook
said, ‘So he arrived here at what time, Mrs Hume?’

‘
Soon after half past three. He was one of the first. I think there was only my friend Alice, who’d been helping me with the food, here when he arrived. I remember him explaining about poor Moira not being able to come after all. It cast a bit of a dampener on things for a while, because she’s been in other years, and she’s such a lively girl normally.’

‘
And he was here until what time?’

She
paused, pursed the lips she had made up so carefully for this occasion, wrinkled her brow, allowed them to see a little grey at the

roots of her red hair as she bent her face to the carpet in concentration. Lambert had the impression, despite all these trappings of thought, that she had decided on the time she was about to deliver to them before they had ever come into the house. ‘It would be about seven. I know because the Petersons arrived just as he was leaving. I’m sure they could confirm the time for you, if it should be necessary.’

‘
Thank you. And as far as you know, Mr Yates was here for the whole of that time?’

The
pensioner’s face narrowed in conspiratorial mischief, so that the CID men glimpsed the impish schoolgirl she must once have been. She hadn’t thought this was going to be important, but now she suddenly divined that it was. Or at least it might be. She could see herself in court in her best hat and coat, answering the questions of a grateful counsel with precision and dignity. ‘Dermot popped out, didn’t he? Popped out and came back again.’

They
couldn’t conceal the rise in their interest, and she smiled her delight. Then, a little guiltily, she said, ‘I expect he was just checking that Moira was all right, wasn’t he? He worries about her, even though you can’t see anything wrong, you see.’

‘
Yes. He’s very fond of his sister, we could see that for ourselves. Can you give us any idea of how long he was gone?’

She hesitated before she reluctantly shook her head.

‘
Not really, no. Well, it wouldn’t be fair, would it, if I’m not sure? There were lots of people coming into the house at the time when he slipped out, you see. It was quite noisy and confused.’ She smiled a little at the recollection of herself as a busy, capable hostess, on the one day of the year on which she now entertained.

‘
You probably have some idea when he left, though? It might just be important, you see.’

‘
Well, I am sure that he hadn’t been here very long when I saw him going up the road towards his own house. Some time around four, I should think.’

‘
And can you give us any idea how long he was away?’

‘
No, not really. I was too busy, you see. And my husband wasn’t here until about half past five. Dermot was here then, because I remember him greeting George when he went into the lounge. But he might have been back here well before then. I really couldn’t be sure.’

So
Yates might have been gone for a few minutes or an hour and a half. They could check with other, less busy people who had been here on that night, if it should be necessary. And it might well be: Yates had certainly chosen to give them the impression that he had been in this house through all those vital hours.

The
two big men stood up together. Lambert said, ‘Thank you, Mrs Hume. You’ve been most helpful. I’m sure I hardly need to mention that you should keep the nature of our enquiries confidential.’ He hadn’t much confidence that her discretion would hold for very long, but he thought she would hardly talk to Dermot Yates, at least.

As
they reached the door, he said, ‘Do you know a Mr Gerald Sangster?’

‘
Oh yes. Been very good to our over-fifties tennis club, Mr Sangster has. Let us use an indoor court at half the usual rate. And he’s been a friend of the Yateses for years, I think. Very keen on Moira, if you ask me! And who can blame—’

‘
Mr Sangster wasn’t here on Christmas Eve, was he?’

‘
Oh, no. He has been once before, and I did invite him. I think he might have come, if Moira had. But it’s not his scene really, as they say nowadays. With him not drinking at all, you see. You don’t need to, of course, but you can feel a bit out of place if everyone else is—’

‘
Mr Sangster doesn’t drink?’

‘
No. Not at all. Makes quite a thing of it. Jokingly, you know, but he says fit sportsmen can’t afford to drink. Is it important?’

‘
Oh, probably not. We must have picked up the wrong impression somehow. Our fault, I should think.’

She
waved them off from the top one of the three steps below her front door, an animated, erect figure. She could not possibly know how unexpectedly interesting she had been to them.

*

Joe Walsh insisted on watering the bright little polyanthus he had bought before the two uniformed constables took him to the station. ‘It’s for Debbie, you see,’ he said to the two unimaginative young men who had never heard of his daughter, as if that immediately made everything clear.

At
Oldford Police Station, he looked round the bare little interview room, which seemed impossibly crowded, with Lambert, Rushton and Hook all crammed together on the other side of the square table. ‘Top brass out for me this morning,’ he said. His smile was nervous, but not fearful, as they might perhaps have hoped.

Walsh
wore the same clothes that Rushton had seen yesterday, the same soiled jeans and ragged cardigan. The frayed collar of his blue shirt, half inside and half outside the pullover beneath the cardigan, was noticeably grubby. In the tiny, overheated room, they caught the stale odour of his neglected body. His lank grey hair did not look as if it had seen a comb this morning. He looked from one to the other of the impassive, watchful faces which confronted him. ‘Are you going to charge me?’ he said.

Rushton
said, ‘No, Joe. Not yet. You’re just helping the police with their enquiries. What happens after that depends on you.’

The
thin head nodded. ‘That’s all right, then. I told Debs you might want to talk some more with me. She’ll understand if I’m not back for a while.’ None of the three men confronting him knew whether he meant back at the house or the cemetery.

Lambert
said, ‘You’ve been concealing things from us, you see, Joe. We don’t like that. But we’re giving you the chance to put things right now.’

Walsh
digested this for a moment, looking again round the little semicircle of three faces which were so close to him. Then he said, ‘I’m glad that bastard’s dead. I’m not going to help you catch the person who killed him.’ The pinched features set in a determined line: he hugged his skinny body with that folded-arms gesture which was familiar to Rushton from the previous day.