Die Happy (23 page)

She stopped, breathless after this summary of her thoughts, rather surprised that they'd listened so carefully and hadn't interrupted her. Lambert said quietly, ‘But I don't suppose you killed him, Mrs Dooks?'

She wondered if he was trying to provoke her by the question, but she didn't hurry her reply. ‘There were times when I would cheerfully have dispensed with Peter's services and opinions for ever. But I never thought of killing him. I hope you will believe that I have far more sense than to consider such an idea.'

Lambert's long, lined face had the trace of a smile as he said, ‘Where were you on Tuesday night, Mrs Dooks?'

‘I was here throughout the evening with my husband. Dull, but helpful, I suppose.' She watched Bert Hook making a note in his swift, round hand and looked slightly smug.

‘What car do you drive?'

‘A blue Honda Civic.' She waited for Hook to record it, then reeled off the number as if it were further proof of her innocence.

Lambert rose and said, ‘Any further thoughts you have on this crime will be treated in the strictest confidence. Please contact us on this number if you think of anything, however trivial. Sometimes small details can be very significant when we put them together with data being collected from other people.'

She nodded as she led them across the big room. She turned to Lambert in the doorway. ‘Good luck with your enquiries. If I don't see you before then, I'll look forward to hearing your views on crime writing at the literary festival.'

A second reminder. Hook kept his face studiously straight until he had turned the police Mondeo and driven out of the Dooks' drive. Then he said, ‘Perhaps I'd better come along to that session at the festival. It sounds more interesting each time I hear it mentioned.'

FIFTEEN

D
I Rushton was eager to see the chief. He checked that Lambert was to interview Sam Hilton at nine thirty on Friday morning. He was waiting for the chief superintendent when he came into the CID section. ‘There's stuff from forensics.'

‘What sort of stuff?'

‘Stuff from the filing cabinet in Preston's study. He was an old-fashioned man. He stored things away in files in a cabinet, rather than use his computer.'

Lambert grinned. ‘Such people do exist, Chris. What did Preston record in such an outdated way? Anything more than gossip?'

‘Much more than gossip, from the little I've seen so far. Things about people you've already seen. I can summarize it and put it on the computer, but that will take time. It's more than we expected. I think you might want to look at it yourself.'

Lambert tried not to be too optimistic. He failed. This might be the thing that answered the question everyone, including himself, had been asking: how could dislike and irritation transform itself into the sort of hate that led to murder? He said as evenly as he could, ‘I'll look at it as soon as we've finished with young Mr Hilton.'

Sam Hilton looked rather bleary-eyed as he gazed around interview room number one in Oldford police station. The delights of Amy Proctor had been numerous and prolonged, but they hadn't left a lot of time for sleep. He was also beginning to think he was in love, which was causing confusion in his mind when it most needed to be clear.

The small, square, windowless room did not offer him much relief. The walls were painted in a bilious green, frequently renewed to conceal the coarse graffiti of the army of the unfortunate who had waited here to be grilled. There was a single white light in the ceiling above him; Sam gazed up at its harshness for a few seconds and then wished that he hadn't. He could feel the blood hammering in his head. And the police hadn't even put in an appearance yet.

He was left on his own in the room for precisely ten minutes after DI Rushton had shut the door upon him. Ten minutes to muse upon the unfairness of life, and himself at the centre of that unfairness. It seemed much longer. He tried hard to think about the poem about his grandfather he was working on.
Die Happy
, it was called – a sort of reaction to Dylan Thomas's ‘Do not go gentle into that good night'. He wanted to say that when Alzheimer's was taking over, there was no real life left, so that you should welcome death whilst you could still remember the real person who had lived. But this was not the place to make a poem.

Bert Hook studied him coolly for a moment when he arrived before he said, ‘I'm Detective Sergeant Hook and this is Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert. You'll remember us from two days ago.'

The big cheese again. Bloody John Lambert, the man the press had endowed with an almost mythical capacity for solving violent crimes. He and Sam eyed each other cautiously, wonderingly. It didn't seem to Sam as if this was going to be an equal contest. He felt as if he were about twelve; as if this grave, unsmiling elder could see everything he had done wrong in the whole of his young life.

Before the thought had properly formulated itself in his mind, he was saying desperately to Hook, ‘I've given up dealing. I've taken notice of what you and that inspector told me about the drugs.'

‘Good for you, lad. We'll be watching you in the coming months, to make sure you keep to that. That's unless you're banged up for murder, of course.'

‘That won't happen. Unless you lot frame me for it.' Sam tried a flash of defiance – and found that it didn't work. His words sounded ridiculous in his own ears, as if he were spouting clichés in a television scene, rather than being up to his neck in the real thing.

Lambert had been studying the young man as dispassionately as if he were a specimen in a laboratory. He now said with quiet menace, ‘You didn't like Peter Preston, did you, Mr Hilton?'

‘He didn't like me.'

Lambert nodded slowly, as if that were entirely understandable. ‘Not what I asked you, is it? Would you answer my question, please?'

Sam wondered whether the man was biased against his youth or whether he was like this with everyone. ‘All right, I didn't like Preston. In fact, I found him insufferable.' Take that, you bastard! You might have caught me dealing drugs, but I can do the big words. ‘But that isn't significant. Lots of people found Preston insufferable.'

Lambert nodded even more slowly. ‘Interesting choice of word, that. If you found him insufferable, you had to do something about it. Perhaps you couldn't go on suffering his insults any longer.'

‘No. Well, yes, in a way, I suppose. But I didn't kill him.'

‘Where were you on Tuesday night, Mr Hilton?'

He hated that iteration of his name and title. It made all this sound as if it was merely a preliminary to charging him. ‘I was at home in my flat. In the bedsit where you saw me on Wednesday morning.'

‘Yes. You were rather disturbed then. Was that because you'd shot Mr Preston on the previous night?'

‘No! Of course it wasn't!' He tried to make the idea sound ridiculous, but all he could hear in his voice was fear. ‘I was at home on Tuesday night. I didn't go out at all. I rang Bob Crompton and had a talk with him about his visit to the literary festival at Oldford.' He and Bob had enjoyed a few laughs, said some pretty insulting things about the old fogies who were likely to attend the Manchester poet's readings in Oldford. For no reason he could think of, it seemed to Sam Hilton that the game would be up if he revealed any of this to the men in front of him.

It was DS Hook who now looked up from his notebook and said, ‘What time was this phone call made, Sam?'

His first name, at last. Even a measure of sympathy in the tone from this man – or had he imagined that? He wanted to say he had spoken to Bob later in the evening, but they could trace the time on mobiles, couldn't they? ‘About half past seven, I think.'

Hook shook his head sadly. ‘Too early to help you, I'm afraid. Is there anyone who can confirm to us that you were at home throughout the evening?'

Sam's mind was racing as fast as the pulse in his temple. ‘My girlfriend was with me.'

Hook studied him for a moment before he said, ‘Name?'

‘Amy Proctor.' Sam watched Hook record that in his notebook. Time seemed to be suspended in that claustrophobic room; the squat hand clutching the ball-pen seemed to move with impossible deliberation. Next Hook wrote down Amy's address with equal care. Sam said he couldn't remember her phone number. He couldn't think what had made him volunteer the name; panic, he supposed. Amy hadn't agreed to his request to say she had been with him on Tuesday. Passion had prevented that and he'd not asked her a second time. But she hadn't refused, had she? He wasn't even sure that she'd agree to being described as his girlfriend.

As if from a long way away, he heard Hook saying, ‘Was she with you overnight, Sam?'

‘No. She left at about midnight, I suppose. Maybe just before.' He wondered why he hadn't claimed she'd been with him all night, as she had last night. Perhaps because it made the lie seem a little less complete. He'd have to get back to Amy, to check that she was prepared to support him. He'd do it for her.

But then he was sure now that he was in love with her.

Just when it seemed that this more sympathetic man was going to handle things, it was Lambert who now took up the questioning again. ‘Do I take it that you're denying any connection with the killing of Peter Preston?'

‘Yes. Denying it emphatically.' But again the adverb emerged as ridiculous, when he had meant it to sound indignant.

‘I see. Then who did kill him, Mr Hilton?'

‘I don't know, do I?'

‘Don't you? You may well know things related to this death that we don't. It is our duty to discover these things. It is your duty to reveal to us anything which might have the smallest connection with this killing. This is murder, Mr Hilton. Not shoplifting, not breaking and entering, not even dealing in drugs. This is the most serious crime of all. Concealing the smallest detail which might have a bearing on this death could make you an accessory to murder. I advise you very strongly to conceal nothing from us.'

Sam licked his lips. ‘Ros Barker didn't like him any more than I did. Perhaps he was more of a threat to her art than he was to mine, but you should ask her about that. Marjorie Dooks didn't like him, because he wanted her job and was very rude about the way she was doing it. Even Sue Charles couldn't have had much time for him, because he liked to pretend that her writing was trivial rubbish. I can't see any of us killing him, though.'

The now familiar dilemma, which they shared themselves, but couldn't admit, especially to this talented, dangerous young man. Lambert said evenly, ‘Then who did kill him?'

‘Someone from outside the festival committee. Perhaps it was someone from his family, or from his past.'

‘Perhaps. What car do you drive, Mr Hilton?'

‘A black Ford Focus. It used to be my uncle's car. It's fourteen years old now, but it runs well enough. It's taxed and insured and MOT'd.'

Hook noted the details and the registration number, with a small smile at these unnecessary additions. He thought the nervousness was a good sign; he didn't really want this raw, gifted young man to receive a life sentence, though he wouldn't voice that unprofessional thought to Lambert. He said, ‘We've charged you with the serious crime of dealing in illegal drugs, Sam. That doesn't mean you will be treated with any more suspicion than anyone else who is involved in this murder investigation. But you should heed the Chief Superintendent Lambert's advice. If you think of anything at all which might be relevant in the next few days, you must demonstrate your innocence by bringing it to us immediately.'

Sam Hilton emerged blinking into the sunlight outside the station and breathed deeply of the warm spring air. He felt as though he had received a physical battering. But with a young man's resilience, he decided within half an hour that it had gone reasonably well. They didn't seem to be aware of the serious motive he'd had to be rid of Preston.

Long let it remain so.

The contents of Peter Preston's filing cabinet were interesting indeed. They were voluminous and detailed. They were the collections of a natural gossip. But this was a gossip with a malevolent streak, material assembled by a man who had sought to turn the weaknesses of humanity to maximum account for himself.

Peter Preston might have been old-fashioned in his storage methods for information, but within his own terms he had been methodical. There was an almost priggish rectitude in his organization of the material he had gathered. Each dark green file carried the name of an individual. The thickest files were the oldest ones, presumably devoted to the people who had been acquaintances of his, or more probably rivals, in his more active and successful days. Most of the names Lambert did not know, though he recognized one or two BBC and ITV luminaries from a previous generation. He flicked open a couple of these files; much of the material was bitchy gossip picked up from others, but occasionally there was the date of some action that Preston had obviously thought might be of use to him. The last entries in all of these were several years old.

Lambert turned with quickening interest to the more recent compilations, which included files on every member of the Oldford Literary festival committee. He couldn't resist turning first to the one on his wife, headed grandiloquently, ‘Christine Evelyn Lambert.' Disappointingly, it was confined to a single sheet in Preston's small, neat hand. It included, ‘Husband is Detective Chief Inspector John Lambert, who has been lionized by the media as a modern Sherlock Holmes. No doubt much less bright than he thinks he is. Difficult to get beyond the police mafia to discover the skeletons in his cupboard. Might contact Alexander Bryden to see what dirt he can offer on this Lambert fellow.'