Rest Assured (10 page)

‘Mrs Keane – sorry, Debbie – has lost her husband.' Norrington watched the previously cheerful black face cloud with sudden concern. ‘Temporarily, I mean. I was just volunteering to go and find him. I think Debbie should stay here, in case he returns whilst we're searching for him.'

‘Yes. You should certainly do that, Debbie. Michael and I will find Wally for you. And tear a strip off him for worrying you, if you like.' George Martindale was back in smiling mode.

Debbie was grateful. She flicked her errant grey hair back from her forehead, and managed a bleak smile. ‘This isn't like him at all.'

The very thin white man and the burly Jamaican turned naturally towards the woods on the far side of the lake from the residences. Unless he was in one of the many homes and buildings, it was the obvious place for a man to conceal himself. Or simply to get away for a while from a garrulous wife, thought Michael hopefully. They walked in silence for a few minutes. They had never held a conversation or been alone with each other before, and you could hardly have had two more different men. Eventually, Martindale said, ‘Do you know much about Wally Keane?'

‘No. He seems to be a bit of a loner. But perhaps you get that impression because his wife's so talkative.'

‘Nosey, you mean.'

Norrington grinned and felt the tension between them slackening. ‘I suppose I do, yes. She's quite a busybody, Debbie, isn't she? But harmless, I think. Perhaps her life with Wally is a little sterile, without a bit of gossip to liven it up.'

George didn't comment on that. He didn't tolerate people who pried into his affairs, but you had to make an exception for a small, grey-haired woman of sixty-one who seemed to have no motive beyond curiosity. ‘He's a bit of a loner, Wally. He knows everything that goes on here, but he doesn't broadcast it.' George glanced sideways at Norrington to see if he would comment, but there was no reaction.

They were in the woods now, on the far side of the lake from the residences. It was still only quarter past six; although the sun was rising rapidly, there was no visible sign of life in the homes. The boys would be dressed by now, George thought, creeping about the place and communicating in those stage whispers and giggles which would certainly waken Mary.

They were almost at the end of the woods when they saw it. The path wound in and out between the major forest trees here, so that the thing had its back to the light and presented itself initially only as a black silhouette against the low rays of the sun in the east.

The corpse was so still as it hung from the bough of the tree that it might have been something else entirely. Until you looked up and saw the features. The face was a livid crimson-grey, turning rapidly towards black around the tongue, which stuck out oddly on one side of the distorted lips. The eyes were so bulbous that they looked as if they might at any moment spring forth from the head.

There was but the slightest movement on the rope which suspended Walter Keane from the branch of the oak.

T
he owner of Twin Lakes was tight-lipped and strained. There had been reports of the death, first on local radio and then on the national bulletins. Foul play had not been ruled out, the official police release said. The familiar phrase was repeated with relish by the newsreader on Radio Gloucester. That got the journos interested. Jim Rawlinson's phone had scarcely stopped ringing during the last two hours. He had tried to ban reporters and journalists from the site, keeping the barrier beside his office firmly lowered.

But journalists are insensitive beasts, as he already knew. They were finding other ways on to the site, which was almost impossible to defend against unscrupulous human parasites in search of news and quotes. He had been relieved when the police had banished reporters and sealed off a wide area on the far side of the big lake with their plastic scene-of-crime tapes. But Jim Rawlinson had searched the site and found two reporters still snooping around, trying to get quotes from his residents about the site and the man who had been found hanged.

And now he had Detective Chief Superintendent John Lambert in his office. This was perhaps the most famous detective in the country and certainly the one whom almost everyone had heard of in this area. If the papers got hold of the fact that he was at Twin Lakes, they'd descend like locusts upon the site. And they'd be looking for the sensational and the bizarre, not the pleasant rural solitude and relaxation which Jim sold as the keynotes of this place.

Rawlinson said gruffly, ‘I can't see why the top brass should be here at all. Not for a routine suicide.'

‘If that is what this proves to be, we'll happily leave you in peace. DS Hook alerted me to the fact that threats have been issued to people on this site by a person or persons unknown. In view of that, any death needs to be thoroughly investigated.'

Rawlinson accepted that, reluctantly. The fact that he didn't query the threatening notes probably meant that he knew all about them: Bert had always known that Debbie Keane wasn't going to keep her mouth shut after he'd questioned her about the threats to the Ramsbottoms.

Jim Rawlinson said, ‘This isn't the kind of publicity I need. I'm running a business here.'

The tall man nodded gravely, though he did not seem much impressed. ‘We'll keep this as low-key as we can, but we can't control the media.' He smiled sourly. ‘This might even be good publicity for you, Mr Rawlinson, if you take the long view. Murder – if this is murder – has a horrid attraction for many of the public. It would certainly put you on the map. Whether it would help you to sell your units might be another matter. But that's not my business. We need to determine whether there has been a serious crime here, and to find the culprit if there has been. We shall need your records of everyone on site. I'm sure you don't allow people to come here without recording a good deal about their backgrounds.'

‘Our records are confidential.'

‘And we shall treat them as such and return them to you. I assume your documentation of the home-owners is computerized. Detective Inspector Rushton at Oldford CID will require a full copy of them. Providing he has that, we needn't take anything away from here.'

Jim Rawlinson was reluctantly agreeing to this when DS Hook's mobile rang, sounding shrill and ominous in the high, quiet office. ‘They're ready for us at the scene of crime, sir.'

Lambert glanced at Rawlinson. ‘Don't worry, sir. We always describe the area as that, until we are sure that no crime is involved. Guilty until proved innocent, I suppose you could say, in this case. Do you think this was a suicide?'

The sudden baldness of the query took Rawlinson by surprise. ‘I haven't even thought about it – I haven't had much chance to think, with these damn media people swarming around. I can't think anyone would want to kill Wally Keane. He was helpful and friendly. He even helped us out in the office here, when we were pushed for staff, with holidays and sickness. He was always ready to lend a hand, and he was almost a permanent resident at Twin Lakes. As far as that's allowed, of course.' He remembered hurriedly that he was speaking to what his father always called the long arm of the law.

‘We'll let you know as soon as possible about the findings of our team. I'm afraid the woods are going to be inaccessible for your residents for at least the rest of today. And for considerably longer, if foul play has been involved.'

Lambert kept his face as blank as possible, implying that he would be pleased if this proved to be no more than the personal and individual tragedy of a suicide. But even as a veteran, he felt that quickening of the pulse which all CID men feel at the prospect of something more sinister.

The scene of crime area was not only taped off but protected by high screens. The sinister burden which hung from the tree had grown even darker as the sun had risen higher and the corpse had turned slowly backwards and forwards on its rope. It had now been photographed from every angle and carefully lifted down.

The two CID men, with plastic coverings over their feet to avoid contamination, moved slowly along the designated path, skirting the man and two women who were painstakingly gathering whatever they could glean from the area that might signify a recent human presence there. Lambert stared dispassionately at the small form upon the ground. Hook looked at it with more emotion, for he had known this thing as a living, speaking man, who had spoken to him and smiled at him on his last visit here three months earlier. Both men had seen hanging suicides before. Of the common means of suicide, this was the one which most affected you, because the evidence of the desperation which drove the decision to end life was somehow more apparent and stark with a hanging than with any other of the usual forms of suicide.

This was not a suicide.

The pathologist who had been examining the mortal remains of Walter Keane was quite definite about that. The body lay face downwards, looking pathetically small amidst the grass between the trees. ‘This man was either dead or unconscious when he was strung up on that oak.' He glanced up at the tree which had been here already for a couple of centuries and looked good for a couple more; somehow that extended presence seemed to make human death and human activity beneath its branches less significant. ‘I suspect the man was insensible rather than dead when he was strung up, but I'll tell you definitely when I've had him on the slab.'

Every profession has its own jargon. It is a long time since post-mortems were conducted upon slabs, but the men who conduct them still use the term, in a world of stainless steel. This one pointed at a wound at the back right of the dead man's head. It seemed at first insignificant, as there was little blood and the damage was concealed by Keane's lengthy grey hair. ‘Someone hit this man very hard with the traditional blunt instrument. We haven't so far found anything round here which fits the wound.'

‘And the rest of this was then arranged to suggest suicide.'

The pathologist nodded. ‘Unless the victim was already wearing a rope around his neck, which seems highly unlikely, the person who hit him then fastened this rope around his neck and hauled him up into the tree.'

Lambert looked automatically from the body on the ground to the limb of the tree above them. ‘So we can probably assume it was a man, because of the strength involved.'

‘No.' The pathologist's prompt and definite rebuttal suggested he was enjoying increasing their problems. ‘The victim is small and lightly built. We'll have an accurate weight by the end of the day, but I suspect it will be less than ten stones. Slinging the rope over that branch and using her own weight intelligently, any reasonably healthy woman could have got him up there.'

The scene of crime officer in charge of the team, a retired sergeant who knew a little of Lambert from his days in the service, said quietly, ‘We don't know for certain that only one person was involved in this. We've found various bits and pieces within twenty yards of here, but it may be that none of them is significant. I understand that many of the residents walk through these woods. It will be difficult to pin anything down to last night.'

Lambert glanced automatically at the pathologist with the mention of a time. The man nodded. ‘Almost certainly late last night, from rectal temperature and the progress of rigor. I might be able to give you something more accurate when I get to analyse the stomach contents.'

He sounded almost eager. Lambert, who had attended many a post-mortem in his younger days, could almost catch in his brain the sickening smells and sounds which would shortly proceed from what lay on the ground beneath them. He'd never developed the stomach needed for post-mortems.

He said without great enthusiasm to Bert Hook, ‘We'd better speak to the wife of the deceased.'

For obvious reasons, the spouse of any murder victim and the last person known to have seen him alive always excite police interest. Debbie Keane was both of these. But neither man held any great hope that they were speaking to Walter Keane's murderer.

Lambert made his stock opening to bereaved wives. ‘We're very sorry to have to intrude at a time like this. You're naturally very upset, but you might be able to offer us scraps of information which will help us to establish how your husband died.'

‘It wasn't suicide?' Debbie Keane had been looking much older than her sixty-one years, with her face drawn and very pale, but obviously her brain was working well enough. She had picked up the implications in phrases he had hoped might pass her by.

He glanced at Hook, who said, ‘It seems possible that he didn't die by his own hand, Mrs Keane.'

She was silent for such a long time that they thought she wasn't going to speak. But experienced CID men often let silences stretch; they realize that people who are accustomed to the normal social conventions will usually feel the need to fill a silence. And sometimes what they say under emotional pressure will be revealing. What Debbie Keane said was simple and quiet. ‘I knew that. I knew that Wally wouldn't have gone up there and killed himself.'

She seemed relieved by the thought, even though it raised the possibility of the worst crime of all. It meant that Wally hadn't felt so desperate that he wanted to get away from her, that he hadn't felt that his life with her had nothing left save a suffering so crushing that even oblivion was preferable to it. There was another long moment during which she said nothing but allowed her mind to race. Then she said, ‘You told me when you were here before that someone had been sending notes around, threatening people with death.'

‘I did indeed. I asked for your help, Debbie, didn't I? But you had no more idea than anyone else who'd been sending those notes. Have you had any thoughts on it since?'

Again a pause, when this time they would have expected an immediate answer. She looked for a moment as if she might volunteer something. Then she brushed the strand of grey hair which strayed persistently over her forehead impatiently away and said, ‘No, I haven't come up with anything. And neither has anyone else I've spoken to about it.'