Rest Assured (11 page)

Bert Hook gave her a quiet smile, which was designed to be encouraging but also had an element of resignation. He'd told her clearly all those weeks ago that what he'd said to her had been confidential, yet he'd known even as he'd given her the information that she would swiftly spread it around the site and through the very varied community which constituted Twin Lakes. And in a way that seemed to have served its purpose. There had been no reports of any further threatening notes like the ones which had so disturbed the Ramsbottoms. Perhaps the news from Debbie Keane that a detective sergeant was on the case had silenced the mischievous brain which had devised those melodramatic and distressing messages.

Hook said gently, ‘Probably Walter's death had nothing to do with those notes. But it looks to us at present as though someone killed him. There'll have to be a post-mortem, I'm afraid. But we shall know more after that.'

‘They'll cut him up, won't they?'

‘Post-mortem examinations tell us all sorts of things, Debbie. We shall learn more about exactly how Wally died. Perhaps even things about whoever else was involved in his death.'

She nodded quietly, then repeated her previous reaction with some satisfaction. ‘I knew he didn't kill himself. Wally wouldn't have done that. He enjoyed his life here far too much to do that.'

‘When was he last with you, Debbie?'

‘They always ask that, the police, don't they? They think the wife is a possibility for the killer, don't they?'

She seemed more excited than disturbed by the thought. Perhaps even a little local infamy was better than obscurity. Bert Hook said sturdily, ‘I'm sure no one thinks that in this case, Debbie. But we need to establish whatever we can of Walter's movements last night.'

Her eyes filled suddenly with tears. She was in that febrile state which results from shock; she was experiencing swift changes of mood and emotion that were as much a surprise to her as to the onlookers. ‘We ate at about seven. We don't like to eat too late in the evening nowadays; we need the time to digest the food during the evening. We had quiche and new potatoes and broccoli. Wally always likes new potatoes – he says they're a meal in themselves, when you get salt and butter with them.' She stopped, and for a moment they thought she was going to weep and lose control of her speech. But then she swallowed twice and continued. ‘We had apple crumble for afters; he always liked that. It was much later that he went out for a walk; he often did that in the evenings in the summer. He liked to see what was going on around the site. See who was on the golf course and the bowling green. Find if there was anyone sailing or fishing on the lakes. But I think he would have been too late for that last night, by the time we'd finished watching the telly.'

They waited again to see whether grief would take over and destroy her coherence, but she merely shook her head sadly, as if she were speaking of a distant acquaintance rather than the man who had shared her life for over thirty years. Lambert said gently, ‘Can you recall exactly what the time was when he went out, Mrs Keane?'

She looked at the older man sharply, as if she had forgotten for a moment that he was there. She had been concentrating upon the homely features of Bert Hook, the man she had met months ago in happier times. ‘It must have been quite late, I think. We watched Gardeners' World until nine. We like Monty Don, because he's a real gardener. Then we saw a couple of comedy programmes on BBC One. It must have been somewhere around ten when Wally went out.'

‘Thank you. That is precise and helpful. And as far as you know, he didn't return here after that?'

‘No.' She was suddenly brimming with tears, after the control she had shown in giving her account.

Lambert left it to Hook to ask the most difficult question. Bert gave her an encouraging smile as he said, ‘But you didn't raise the alarm last night. Weren't you anxious then, when Wally didn't come back?'

She was suddenly anxious to speak, her tragedy forgotten for a moment in the necessity to explain herself and her conduct. ‘I didn't know he hadn't come in. He moves quietly, does Wally. And he has his own room. He spends hours in there with his computer. Sometimes he's studying things on it long after I've gone to bed. He has his own bed in there, you see. But he comes in and we have a cup of tea together in the mornings. That's in my bed.' It was plainly important to Debbie Keane to explain that even if they slept apart they were not estranged from each other. It did not seem to have struck her yet that there would be no more companionable cups of morning tea.

Hook nodded. ‘So it wasn't until this morning that you realized he hadn't come back from his evening walk.'

‘That's just it, yes. I woke early with the sunlight. The place felt very empty. There was no noise from Wally's room. No flushing of the toilet or running of taps. And he didn't bring in the tea.'

Now she did weep, but softly and steadily, not in the great sobs they would have expected. Hook, who had never grown hardened to death, was suddenly full of pity for this woman who had been translated overnight from annoying tittle-tattler to tragic widow. She looked small and very helpless, as if she would never cope without the man to whom she had deferred so readily. She would survive, of course, when she had taken the time to grieve and to establish the rails upon which her new life must run. But she looked at this moment as if she needed someone to put arms around her and hold her for a long time, whilst she wept away the first and most wracking bout of her misery. He said softly, ‘Do you have relatives who can help you? Children, perhaps?'

‘We have one daughter. She's in Aberdeen. It's a long way away, and we're not close.' It was almost Chekhovian in its stark negativity.

‘Perhaps you could go to her for a few days.'

‘I wouldn't want to go there. My friends are here. This is where I belong, now.'

‘I see. Debbie, I'm sorry, but I have to ask you this. Do you know of anyone who would have wished to harm Wally?'

‘You mustn't be sorry, DS Hook. We all want to find out who did this, don't we? And I can think of a few people around here who weren't keen on Wally. He could be irritating sometimes, you know. He thought he knew everything and people didn't always like that.' She was suddenly shaken by a sigh which seemed almost too much for her thin frame to contain. ‘But no one would have wanted to kill him, just because he was irritating, would they? You don't go killing people because you're annoyed about an adjustment to your golfing handicap, do you?'

Lambert, who was a member of the Handicap Committee at Ross-on-Wye Golf Club, said hastily, ‘No, you don't do that, Mrs Keane. Perhaps when you've time and you're less upset you could give a little more thought to this. If you come up with any names you think we ought to consider and investigate, would you ring this number immediately, please?'

She took his card and studied it intently for a moment, as if the simple print was confirming to her that this awful thing had really happened and must be attended to. ‘I'll do that. Someone must have done this, mustn't he?'

‘Yes, I'm afraid that's so. And it might be a he or a she. We must keep an open mind on that, until we know more.'

She was suddenly animated by that thought. The gossip in her responded through all her suffering to the thought that this might be man or woman, might be someone to whom she had spoken, someone with whom she might have shared a joke in the days before Wally's death. ‘I'll think about it. Other people on the site might have ideas about it too, mightn't they?' For a moment, she was beguiled by thoughts of the exchanges she would enjoy; she would be the centre of attention for those from whom she normally merely gathered material.

Lambert said, ‘We'll need to take away Wally's computer, I'm afraid. We may be able to get clues about his enemies from what's in there, you see. We'll let you have it back, in due course.'

‘Don't you worry about that, Mr Lambert. I never liked the thing – never understood why he spent all those hours playing with it. I don't know anything about computers.'

‘You won't be able to give us his password, then?'

‘Oh no. I never wanted anything to do with the damned thing. Will that stop you getting what you want from it?'

‘No. We have people who are experts in these things in the police service, Mrs Keane. It will take a little longer, but I'm sure they'll get in there quite quickly. Unless it had anything to do with his death, whatever we find will be kept strictly confidential. And unless it's needed for a court case, everything will be returned to you in due course.'

It was perhaps this glimpse of the nuts and bolts of a murder investigation which brought home to her finally the thought that Walter Keane was gone forever. They left her standing alone in the doorway of her unit, a tiny, weeping figure for whom the world was suddenly far too large.

T
here should have been a golf tournament on that Saturday. It was postponed. The Twin Lakes residents had no stomach for competition, after the sensational death of the man who had watched their golfing efforts and controlled their handicaps. It would not have been fitting; everyone was agreed on that.

But the police spread the notion that people should carry on as normally as possible, apart from avoiding the scene of crime area – that cordoned-off section amongst the trees on the other side of the lakes which had been transformed overnight from picturesque to sinister. So people came out to play golf on the little course, even though the serious competition had been postponed. Surprisingly quickly, the fairways became quite crowded on this perfect July day. Conversation was muted at first, with everyone conscious of what had happened three hundred yards from the first tee, but gradually golf's own petty triumphs and tribulations took over, so that the laughter and anguish rang more loudly from the green acres between the trees.

Vanessa Seagrave was one of the participants. She billed herself under that name now, though Debbie Keane still doubted its authenticity and conveyed her thoughts to anyone who cared to share her speculations. Vanessa, the woman who was now the best female golfer at Twin Lakes, was playing with Freda Potts and two men whose wives did not demean themselves with golf.

Freda was talented but erratic, whilst Vanessa was talented and consistent. Their handicaps reflected this and offered them a close contest against each other. The two men who were partnering them did not care too much about the contest. Their form and their conversation were muted by Wally Keane's death when they began, but they were soon radically cheered by the contours and the movements of their female partners.

It suited Richard Seagrave that Vanessa should be playing golf and helping to ensure that the course was a centre of attention. He had watched the activities of the police from his residential unit, whilst remaining carefully concealed within it. He made a phone call which lasted no more than thirty seconds, agreeing a time and a place. He didn't like phone calls, even from mobiles. You never knew what was being recorded. And from what he read of police activity, it seemed to be possible to track down all kinds of phone conversations which you would once have thought untraceable.

He recognized Chief Superintendent John Lambert and noted grimly that the case was already high profile. The news of a suicide had flown round the site, but this was clearly no suicide. Not if bloody Lambert had been assigned to it. Wally Keane had had this coming to him, from the moment when he'd moved out of his comfort zone. He was a meddling old fool who'd strayed beyond the harmless area where he should have operated. Like Polonius in Hamlet, thought Richard, with a small, satisfied smile. He was an educated man: people sometimes forgot that.

It was when Lambert and Hook were within the screens at the scene of crime site that Seagrave slipped quietly into the driving seat of his dark blue Jaguar. The office staff and the police were stopping anyone coming on to the site, but they couldn't prevent residents from leaving. He watched the long barrier pole rising slowly towards the perpendicular, then eased the big car out into the anonymity of the world outside Twin Lakes.

Britain wasn't yet a police state, whatever the left-wing press said, and you could take advantage of that.

The Ramsbottoms hadn't left their home by the lake during the morning. They had watched what was happening on the site and remained tight-lipped. They hadn't even spoken much to each other, beyond terse statements of fact about what was happening around them.

Jason hadn't felt like playing golf, even after he'd seen others trundling trolleys past them on their way to the course. Three hours crept by as if they were waiting for something. Neither of them was surprised when they saw Bert Hook marching towards their door with a tall man alongside him.

Hook gave them no more than a token smile. Lisa thought Bert looked almost as nervous as she felt. He said, ‘It would be good to see you both again, if it wasn't for the circumstances. You've heard what's happened?'

They nodded in unison, not quite trusting themselves to speak.

‘This is Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert. We need you to answer a few questions for us. We've come to you first, but there's nothing significant in that. We shall be speaking to other people who knew the deceased. Everyone on the site will be interviewed by a member of our team in due course.'

Lisa glanced at her husband, then back at Hook's weather-beaten, reliable features. ‘It wasn't a suicide, was it?'

‘That has yet to be confirmed officially. But no, it wasn't: we're pretty certain about that.'

Jason addressed himself directly to John Lambert. ‘You're now investigating a murder, then. You wouldn't be here unless that was so.'

The tall man with the long, lined face gave him a brisk nod. ‘And we hope you may be able to help us with the first stages of that investigation. Murder and manslaughter are almost unique among crimes, in that the victim cannot speak for himself. Yet almost always we need to gain a knowledge of the type of man he was, the way he lived, his likes and dislikes, the people he liked and the people he hated. These are crucial to solving the problem of who ended his existence. We have to find out all of these things from other people. We've spoken to Walter Keane's widow. You are the next people we decided to contact.'