Late of This Parish (25 page)

The case building against Illingworth was collapsing. It was nothing, after all, to do with what had happened to him at Cambridge. This new information put a different complexion on many things which Mayo needed to talk over with Kite. He turned his car towards Wyvering and then remembered that by now Kite should be back in Lavenstock, and with luck, interviewing Danny Lampeter.

Kite was having a successful morning.

Making what was beginning to feel like a habit he ought to kick, he had driven over to Wyvering to interview Macey Smith, and struck pay dirt. After the first token skirmishes, she had admitted to buying some Victorian jewellery during the previous week from a young man answering to the description of Danny Lampeter. Produced them, what was more, in an attempt to show how cooperative she was. Too cooperative, said the nasty suspicious copper in Kite, making an opportunity to have a word with Farrar, whom he could trust to beaver around and find out whatever was to be found that was behind Macey and her son Tigger setting up shop in sleepy Wyvering.

Back to Lavenstock and the run-down part of the town where Sam Biggs's granddaughter had taken up residence. Over a greengrocer's shop, with a flight of stairs leading from a side entrance where the overflow from the shop was piled up, and crates of tomatoes and oranges, onions in nets, sacks of potatoes stood about waiting to be carried in. Kite leaned on the bell and held his nose at the smell of rotting vegetation issuing from two plastic dustbins overflowing with several days' rejects.

It was mid-morning when they got there and he was prepared for trouble. He had brought Deeley with him, good-natured but solid beef and no messing around when it came to ratbags like Lampeter. Mindful of Deeley's biggest fault, that he was likely to hit out first and think later, Kite said, ‘Go easy on him, Pete. We want to take him
virgo intacta,
if you'll excuse the phrase.'

Deeley's round, ingenuous face, red as a farmer's boy's, took on an injured expression. ‘As if I would.'

A thick miasma of hamburger and cigarette smoke hit them in the face when at last the door was opened by a big, well-developed girl of about eighteen, adorned with a shaven haircut and a mini skirt so short and tight it had difficulty in covering her bottom. She had a doughy face which she'd been in the middle of making up. The one heavily-shaded eyelid gave her the appearance of having been the loser in a punch-up but Kite thought even Deeley might run if confronted by this Amazon in an alley on a dark night.

He showed his warrant card and told her they wanted to speak to Danny Lampeter. She looked at it without much interest but before she could deny he was there, a voice came from inside the room. ‘Who is it, Trace?'

‘Police,' Kite said, and the girl shrugged and stood aside to let them in. A stocky, broad-chested, long-haired individual in his early twenties, naked to the waist, looked up from a newspaper propped against a milk bottle on the table.

‘What you been up to then, Danny?' Tracey said from behind them.

The room was disgusting. A rumpled bed in the corner, a sink under the window piled with unwashed dishes, on the table a meal of sorts which he'd been in the process of eating – breakfast or maybe lunch, whatever cornflakes followed by hamburgers and tinned spaghetti hoops might be designated.

Some remnants of pride prompted Tracey to straighten the duvet on the bed and begin clearing the dishes from the table. ‘Never mind that,' Kite told her. ‘Sit down while we ask your boyfriend here some questions.'

‘He's not my boyfriend –'  she began scornfully.

‘Shut up, Trace.'

‘Danny Lampeter, isn't it?' Kite asked. ‘We're here to make inquiries about some goods stolen from the home of the Reverend Mr Willard of Castle Wyvering.'

‘Well, you can bloody well go away again. Why should you think I know anything about that?' Lampeter demanded, scraping his chair back and standing up in a threatening manner, muscular brown arms akimbo, the blue tattoos livid, his square jaw thrust forward.

‘Watch it, Danny!' Tracey warned.

‘Shut up, I said, Trace.' Tracey shrugged, picked up her eyeliner and hand mirror and opted out of the proceedings. Lampeter, however, looking at Deeley, fourteen stones of him leaning on the door, arms folded, sat down again, raking his hands through his unconfined and flowing locks.

‘I think you know quite a bit about it. That and one or two more things,' said Kite.

‘Dunno what you're on about.'

‘Come off it, Lampeter. You're coming with us, whatever, so please yourself whether you spill now and finish your dinner while you talk, or talk later.'

‘Oh, ta very much. Somehow I've lost my appetite.'

‘Please yourself. Talk here, or at the station.'

‘What about?'

Kite told him, succinctly. One, that he was in dead bother for nicking the things from the Willard house. Two, that he'd better have some alibi for the badger shooting. Three, he'd better have an even tighter one for the time of Willard's murder.

To the first, Lampeter made more pretence of not knowing what Kite was talking about. To the second he protested, ‘That's a load of old cobblers!' and would have gone on, had he not been silenced by Kite. When the third charge was made, his jaw dropped. ‘God Almighty!'

‘The Almighty's not going to help you much, Lampeter. And don't tell me you haven't heard about the murder?'

‘ 'Course I have. I can read, can't I? But what's it to me? I'd nothing to do with it.'

‘You high-tailed it from Wyvering as though your backside was afire last Saturday. Just for the fun of it, huh?'

‘No law against it, that I've heard. If you must know, I'd had a row with my sis. I'd had it up to here with her, interfering old bitch.'

‘That's no way to talk about your sister.' Kite thought of Ruth Lampeter, unlovely, unattractive, lonely, stoutly defending this cretin. ‘After all she's done for you. What was the row about?'

‘Nothing. Nothing to do with you lot, anyway.'

‘Something to do with Willard's murder, was it?'

‘No!' Lampeter shouted. Sweat stood on his forehead. ‘I swear I don't know a thing about the Rev being murdered, straight up.'

‘All right, I may as well tell you that the person you sold the brooch and the other things to last week has identified you, and I'm arresting you on suspicion of theft,' Kite said, and proceeded with the caution. ‘Get your hair ribbon on, ducky, and come down to the station.'

Danny suddenly caved in. ‘Oh, all right, it's a fair cop. I nicked the brooch and the jet bracelet and things. But I didn't do for the old man.'

‘Tape-recorded interview between Daniel William Lampeter and Detective-Sergeant Martin Kite, May 23rd, 1991 at 11.50 hrs. Also present, Detective Chief Inspector Gil Mayo and
Detective-Constable
Peter Deeley.'

Kite settled himself at the table in the interview room opposite Lampeter. After half an hour, they had a signed confession of guilt about the thefts but nothing more. He was, however, weakening. ‘If I tell you something else I know, will you put it down to be taken into consideration?'

‘What d'you think we are? The flaming
Exchange and Mart
? You're in no position to make bargains, Lampeter.'

‘Then get knotted.'

There was silence.

‘This row you had with your sister. It was about the badgers, wasn't it?' Mayo asked, speaking for the first time.

Lampeter swung his gaze to face the Chief Inspector. ‘Might've been.' He shrugged indifferently but his eyes were wary. ‘How come you know about that?'

An educated guess, but he wasn't about to tell Lampeter that. ‘Never you mind. Now come on, lad, it's in your own interests to tell us what you know. There's been a murder committed and if you don't clear yourself you're in for the chop.'

‘It was that Mike Tully,' Lampeter said suddenly, after thinking for some minutes and evidently deciding he'd no option but to come clean. ‘Met him and his mate in the Butcher's Arms one night when I'd sunk a few whiskies. He had this Lakeland terrier and he was going on about what a good rabbiter it was ... We got talking and I just happened to mention I knew where there was some badgers. I didn't know they'd go out and kill the bloody things!'

‘What did you imagine they were going to do?' Kite asked. ‘Take wildlife photos?'

‘I don't see what all the fuss is about, anyway. Two or three badgers. Only a bit of sport, after all.'

Mayo had never seen a badger, except on TV, and he doubted whether either of his colleagues had, either, but this mindless slaughter of dumb creatures for amusement made him want to throw up. Deeley looked as sick as he himself felt. Kite said, ‘You're a shit, Lampeter.'

‘Here, you lot, I wasn't there, don't start blaming me!'

‘Beats me,' Kite said, ‘why they stopped at that. Why they didn't stand and watch the dog tear the badgers to pieces. That's the usual form, isn't it?'

‘You ever seen what claws they've got, them badgers?' Lampeter demanded. ‘You should – Tully says one of 'em nearly gouged his dog's eye out. Valuable dog like that, he didn't want it blinded, did he? So they just shot 'em and left 'em.'

‘I don't want to
hear
any more,' Kite said. ‘You disgust me.'

‘How did your sister come to know of this?' Mayo asked.

‘Because everybody in bloody Wyvering thought it was me, didn't they? As per usual. And I was getting sick of it. That sister of mine's not right in the head when it comes to animals. Reckon she likes 'em a damn sight better than people,' he added with a perception Mayo wouldn't have given him credit for. ‘You'd think she'd be satisfied with all them demos, and letters she writes to the papers but no, she has to be one of the boss women of this society, this what they call SARA. She'd been looking at me sideways all week and in the end she asked me straight out, had I done it. I told her of course I bloody hadn't but when I told her who had she went off her trolley, just the same. Seemed to think it was my fault and went on something rotten about me betraying everything she'd tried to teach me and all that crap. In the end I couldn't stand it no more and I pushed off.'

‘Selling the things you'd nicked from Willard on the way?'

‘I was a bit short,' Lampeter complained. ‘I haven't been able to get a job since I came out the army.'

‘Not strained yourself overmuch trying, I'll bet,' Kite said.

‘SARA,' he repeated later, disposing of a couple of jam doughnuts with his coffee when Mayo called him in to tell him what he'd learned from Uttley. ‘Obvious, isn't it, when you know?'

‘SARA with a question-mark after it, remember. And in close conjunction with Sebastian Oliver's visit. Could be that Willard had learned of Oliver's involvement and was threatening to tell what he knew?'

‘Would he do that? Seeing he thought such a lot of him?'

‘If his high moral principles prevented him agreeing to his daughter marrying a divorced man, he'd hardly be likely to stick at shopping Sebastian Oliver, however much he thought of him. It must've been causing him a bit of heart-searching, though.'

‘And would it put the wind up Oliver enough to kill Willard for it?'

‘It might. Oh yes, it might, if he were involved in that bomb plot.'

‘He had an alibi for the time of Willard's death. Which depends of course on Phyllida Thorne. And since she's up to her neck in SARA she'd be only too pleased to give it.'

‘It looks,' Mayo said, ‘like another ride out to Wyvering. Sebastian Oliver – plus his girlfriend. Not to mention another talk with Danny boy's sister while we're out there.'

Events, however, were to overtake them. It was to be some time before either of them were able to speak to Ruth Lampeter.

Catherine Oliver was in the Rectory kitchen, making pastry. She was well aware of her limitations as a cook and had been pleased if alarmed when Lionel, the previous Christmas, had bought her a food processor – thinking, no doubt, of delicious cakes and even homemade bread. You couldn't go wrong, making pastry in one of those things, everyone said, but Catherine had found she could. Reaching for the off switch now after the required second or two, as the instruction book advised, she decided it couldn't possibly have taken such a short time to bind the mixture together. Perhaps she'd better give it another few minutes, just to be sure. But when she took the dough out and began to roll it, it felt as solid and looked as grey as her pastry always did.

It was no good, she wasn't in the mood for cooking. She couldn't concentrate on anything. What on earth was Sebastian thinking about, taking himself off like that, without a word to anyone since supper last night? And it was now half past three! It wasn't like him. Why?

A few minutes later, she knew, unbelievably, why.

When Kite drew up the car once more in Parson's Place, they found Wainwright there before them, parked outside the Rectory. The constable, looking as though life would have taken a simpler turn had he suddenly been put in charge of the Vice Squad or maybe the whole of the Metropolitan Police Force rather than the lawless parish of Castle Wyvering, took all of three minutes to relate what had happened.

‘A goner?' asked Mayo.

‘No, sir, not quite, but very bad, according to the doctor. He'd been hit on the temple, see, and must've been laying there all night. They've taken him into the Lavenstock General but they don't give much for his chances.'

‘Who found him?'

‘Mrs Wentworth that lives up on Main Street, just before she went to pick the kiddies up from school. Apparently the little 'un, young Damian, had been up there yesterday with his dad and lost one of the bits off his remote-controlled car. He was that upset she promised to go and look for it while he was at school. She wouldn't have seen the body if she hadn't been searching around. He'd been thrown into what used to be the moat, where the long grass grows. Rector and Mrs Oliver are both at the hospital.'