More Than Meets the Eye (28 page)

She wondered again just what part Peter Nayland had played in this death he had found so welcome.

Another fine day. Warm, but not too warm. Ideal for visiting gardens. Superb weather, in fact, for moving through the various ‘garden rooms' which made up the horticultural masterpiece which was Westbourne Park. Long lines of people did just that, waiting with cheerful patience whenever the numbers demanded it.

The restaurant was busy throughout the lunch period, with queues waiting at the door for vacant tables and a rising decibel level in the multiple conversations. Curious how the noise level always rose steadily through the three hours or so when the place was full, thought Hugo Wilkinson, as he worked swiftly but methodically in his kitchen.

He would have liked poorer weather, even a thoroughly wet day, because he wanted to get away from his kitchen as soon as possible. He had things to do, vital things. He had to get rid of the evidence. That had been the advice the leader of the group had given him last night. You've enjoyed it, now ditch it; there was no choice. Get rid of anything which could incriminate you and deny all knowledge of the group and why they met. The police probably wouldn't believe you, but without the evidence they couldn't pin anything on you. It was a pity he'd even admitted to being a member of a photographic club.

Work was normally a release for him. A kitchen working flat out is a stressful place, but this was the kind of tension he had been used to all his working life. It occupied you wholly, so that you had no time to think about the disturbing things in the rest of your life. He liked the total absorption and total concentration that he had to bring to the task. Yet today he could not cast aside the nagging fear that he should already have acted, should have cleared his flat of all the things which could land him in trouble. He should have taken it as a warning when that bugger Lambert had challenged him during the murder investigation, should have cleared the evidence ruthlessly then.

As soon as the last main courses had been served, he muttered an excuse about having to do some ordering and slipped away from the kitchen. He hurried quickly along the short path to the residences and arrived at the front door of his cottage at almost the same time as three men. ‘This area is private,' Hugo said desperately. ‘The main entrance to the gardens is over there.'

The leader of the trio did not immediately reply. Instead, he slipped his hand within his jacket and produced a warrant card and a larger document. He did not even trouble himself to look into Wilkinson's eyes. It seemed that it was important to him to be as impersonal as possible about this, to establish as little contact as humanly possible with the man before him. ‘Mr Wilkinson? I'm DI Norman from the West Midlands Child Pornography Unit and these are my colleagues. I have here a search warrant which entitles us to enter your home and remove any materials we find which are obscene or pornographic, possession of which may constitute a breaking of the law. You are welcome to observe our search and witness that nothing is planted here and no unnecessary force is used.'

He pronounced the phrases with a cold formality, like a judge passing sentence. He still had not looked Wilkinson in the eyes. Hugo led them into the cottage, moving with the slow, steady paces of a sleepwalker.

He stood motionless and observed their movements, watching his life disintegrate before him. One of them eventually suggested that he sit down and he did so immediately, as if responding to a command.

They went through his bookcase swiftly but thoroughly, shaking each book to see if it concealed anything between its leaves. A couple of photographs fell from one, pictures of naked children he should have dispensed with long ago. The youngest of the men looked at him with a cold contempt, then slipped the photographs carefully into a polythene sleeve. Hugo wondered if the officer had children of that age himself.

In the bottom drawer of his small sideboard, they found the two videotapes he should have ditched when Dennis Cooper first revealed his suspicions. He wanted to say something jaunty and apologetic, something which might mitigate the squalor clinging about him like a shroud. But the words stuck in his dry throat. He wanted a drink, but he felt that even a move to the tap in the kitchen would somehow be a confession.

Then they moved across to the computer and the one man who had not even looked at him so far settled himself comfortably on the chair in front of it with his back to Hugo. ‘You going to give us the password, Mr Wilkinson?' He didn't trouble to turn round. When there was no reply, he said in a lower voice to his colleagues, ‘Shouldn't take long to get into this one.'

Hugo didn't react. Perhaps if he sat like a statue it would at least delay things. But what was the use of delay? After two minutes, he announced to the ceiling, ‘The password is Henry. That was my father's name.'

‘Thank you, sir. Cooperation is much the best policy,' said the man at the computer. Still he did not look round.

The first images of the children came up within sixty seconds. Hugo thought they brought a slight gasp from the man in front of the monitor, but he could not be sure of that. He had no idea whether he was shocked and revolted or whether exposure to other and worse pictures had dulled his reactions to what he found here. He wanted to offer something which would mitigate his guilt, even some light-hearted phrase to break the tension. But there was no word he could say. The steamroller was advancing steadily and inexorably to crush him.

It was over sooner than Hugo had expected. He realized dully that they would examine the full range of the material later at the station. They would no doubt question him about everything in due course, as they prepared a case for the Crown Prosecution Service. The man logged off and carefully shut the computer down.

He sat looking at the empty screen for a moment. Then at last he turned to the wretched figure who lived in this place. ‘We need to take this computer away, sir. You will be given a receipt for this and everything else we remove.'

Not long afterwards, they were ready to go. DI Norman stood in front of Hugo, then took a step backwards, as if he feared that close proximity would tarnish him. ‘Thank you for your cooperation, Mr Wilkinson.'

‘What now?'

Norman hesitated, then said, ‘We shall review the evidence. I am sure that formal charges will be made in the next few days. Do not leave the area without notifying us at this number.' He set a card down on the table beside him. ‘I understand that you are at present involved in a murder investigation on this site. We do not wish to impede it by taking you into custody at this stage.'

He looked Hugo full in the face on the last sentence, for the first time in their hour's acquaintance.

Lorna Green presented herself at the murder room at precisely four thirty. Punctuality was a habit with her and she feared that any delay might make her seem nervous. How she presented herself was important to her; it might be additionally important when you were a suspect in a murder enquiry. She renewed her make-up, adjusted a few strands of her neat brown hair, and was prepared for her ordeal.

‘Thank you for coming here so promptly.' Lambert studied her unhurriedly for a moment. She was a handsome woman at fifty-three, but she looked more strained than he remembered her on Tuesday. She'd given three talks today, but he fancied that it was the task of caring for her mother which was the real problem. He'd seen before how Alzheimer's carers suffered, and the situation only ever seemed to deteriorate.

This was a woman under stress, but detectives had to be aware that people under stress sometimes took strange actions.

Lorna said, ‘I was here for most of today anyway. Coming in here at the end of it was no problem.' She glanced at her watch. ‘I don't imagine this is going to take long.'

‘You have another appointment?'

She gave him a tired smile. ‘No other appointments, no. But I have a friend sitting with my mother and I'd like to relieve her as soon as I can. I don't like leaving Mother on her own nowadays. Over the last few weeks, she's become . . . rather unpredictable.' Lorna pronounced the phrase carefully; she didn't want to be brutal about her mother, but precision was important to her.

‘This shouldn't take long.'

‘I can't imagine it will. I'm ready to offer any help I can, but I think I told you all I could on Tuesday morning.'

‘We now have material which we didn't possess then. Mr Cooper kept a secret notebook which has been passed to us. It contains his thoughts on many of his staff; there are also certain items of information which have proved valuable to us.'

Lambert and Hook were both watching her face closely to register her reaction to this. Unexpectedly, she smiled. ‘Dennis hadn't changed much, then. He used to write down things like that twenty years and more ago.'

‘I see.'

‘He was a naturally secretive man and he enjoyed it. “Hear all, see all, say nowt!” he used to say – he was brought up in Yorkshire, you know.'

The two men opposite her nodded. Lambert thought Yorkshire origins meant nothing; Hook, who had played against a few dour Yorkshire cricketers in his time, thought it explained a lot about the man. Lambert said, ‘I believe “knowledge is power” is another such saying. Mr Cooper seems to have organized his work as leader around maxims like that.'

‘“
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est
”. Usually translated as “Knowledge itself is power”. Francis Bacon, I believe.'

‘If you believe it, Ms Green, then I have not the slightest doubt that it is so.' Lambert allowed himself the smallest of friendly smiles. ‘I have to tell you, however, that Mr Cooper made notes upon you in this small black book of his.'

‘I feel flattered that he considered me sufficiently important for that.'

‘You are the only one of the voluntary workers here who is accorded this dubious privilege. Perhaps his interest derived from his previous history with you.'

‘And again I should perhaps feel flattered that you think a long-dead affair could still be so influential.'

Lambert paused, steepled his fingers and looked quizzically at this composed woman. ‘How important is your work here to you, Ms Green?'

‘I know a lot about the history of Westbourne Park. It has been a labour of love for me to make myself acquainted with it. I think you were kind enough to say when we last spoke that I probably know as much as anyone alive about this place. But I am quite replaceable. There are other enthusiasts who know enough about these gardens and their history to give the guidance talks which are the main thing I do here.'

‘With respect, that is not what I asked. I wanted to know how important the work here is to you personally. What sort of hole would it leave in your life if it were removed from you?'

She took her time over her reply. ‘I should miss it. There's no denying that. I love this place, love seeing the gardens in the changing seasons, and I've grown even more attached to Westbourne through my work here. It fits in with the present circumstances of my life. It is part-time and I can vary my days to fit in with when I can get people to sit with Mother for me. It's highly convenient as well as highly enjoyable.'

‘Thank you for being so frank. I must now be equally frank and tell you that Dennis Cooper was planning to dispense with your services.'

‘Would he really have been so petty? I told you on Tuesday that I'd been a bit naughty and corrected him once or twice in public. But he needn't have seen me as a threat. He's in charge of the show and I'm an unpaid part-time worker.'

‘Perhaps the very fact that you give your services voluntarily made you a greater threat to him. People who are not in paid posts can afford to be much more independent than those who work here under the curator's direction.'

‘Yes. I see that. And I suppose I was a little more cavalier with him than I would have been if I'd had a full-time job to lose. But I can't believe he was planning to get rid of me.'

Hook said quietly, ‘I can read you the relevant passage from his notebook if you wish me to, Ms Green.'

She waved a hand briefly and dismissively. ‘That won't be necessary.'

Lambert waited until her eyes flicked back from Hook to him. ‘You see now why I asked you how much the work here meant to you. Did you in fact care enough to remove the man who was threatening it? I'm not suggesting that you plotted his death carefully. I'm suggesting that tempers rose and an argument got out of hand. That you seized the nearest implement and used it against him.'

‘The nearest implement?'

Lambert nodded at Hook, who said evenly, ‘We now think Mr Cooper was killed by the tightening of a tree-tie upon his neck. If it was a surprise attack, possibly from behind, it would have required no great strength.'

She was silent for a moment, her head a little on one side. Then she said slowly, ‘Yes. A tree-tie would have done it very well. Particularly one of the larger ones we use on the maturing saplings.'

‘We think one was removed from a cherry tree a few yards from the scene of the death.'

‘Then I agree that it was probably the instrument of poor Dennis's death. What I refute is that I was the person who used it.'

‘You have told us that your work here means a great deal to you. We do not always behave rationally when we are threatened with the unjust removal of something we love. I'm suggesting a quarrel which got out of hand.'

He had half-expected this highly intelligent woman to fly into a rage at his renewed suggestion. Instead she treated it quite calmly.

‘You're saying that I was a woman under stress and a woman with a previous heavy emotional involvement with Dennis. That I already carried a heavy resentment of the way he had treated me years ago, which was reactivated by his intention to banish me from Westbourne Park.' She paused, as if waiting for some sort of denial from him. When he said nothing, she said, ‘It's feasible, I suppose. I'll admit I was much more resentful than I should have been when he took me to task for correcting him in public. I can't deny that our past history came into that. And I certainly wouldn't have welcomed a decision to axe me from the staff here. But I'm a resourceful person. I held down quite a big job for several years and I think I could easily have got other work.'