Rest Assured (24 page)

Mary told George about Debbie after the boys had been allowed to leave the table at the end of a noisy lunch. He nodded distractedly: he was plainly preoccupied with some problem of his own. After a few more desultory exchanges he said abruptly, ‘I have to go out tonight.'

‘But we're on holiday. I thought this week was for us and the children.'

‘I know. I'm sorry. I don't have a choice.'

Mary Martindale accepted it, as their relationship said that she must do. But she knew that the council didn't call people out like that. And certainly not at night. Who was it who had this power over George?

‘We'd like to see you on your own, Mr Seagrave.'

Richard glanced sideways at Vanessa Norton. ‘It's not convenient. We were thinking of going out.'

It was the first Vanessa had heard of it, but she said loyally, ‘We were. And in any case, I can't see why you should object to my presence. We are merely good citizens helping you voluntarily with your enquiries.'

Lambert noted her knowledge of the intricacies of the law. ‘If you are satisfied that Mr Seagrave has nothing he might wish to remain private, I have no objection to your presence at—'

‘It's all right. I'll come with you to your place near the entrance. What you call the murder room, I believe.' Richard Seagrave contrived to invest the simple words with a touch of contempt.

They did not speak on their brisk walk to the unit temporarily allotted to the police for their investigation. Lambert had set up the furthest and smallest bedroom as an interview room. It did not have the constricted feel of an interview room at the station, with its graffitied walls and square scratched table and single high light in the ceiling, but it was small, crowded with equipment and confined, which gave a feeling of claustrophobia to the nervous and the inexperienced.

Richard Seagrave was neither of these. He looked with interest at the photographs and bagged items as he was led through the unit to the room at the rear and his seat opposite the two set out for Lambert and Hook. He watched the DS shut the door carefully behind them before he sat down. He looked hard at Lambert and said, ‘This shouldn't take long. I've already told you what I know about Wally Keane and the way he died: about the man, little; about his death, nothing.'

Lambert felt a heavy distaste for this man which he didn't trouble to disguise. He stared into Seagrave's confident, unrevealing face for a moment without speaking. ‘That's an interesting observation. It's surprising you should claim to know so little about Keane. He seems to have known quite a lot about you.'

‘That doesn't entirely surprise me. His wife was a nosey cow. Still is, I'm sure. I expect she passed things on to her pathetic husband.'

‘She did indeed. And then Walter Keane made all sorts of enquiries of his own into the backgrounds of the individuals concerned. Patient and imaginative enquiries. The amount of detail he collected is astonishing.'

Seagrave's broad face showed not a flicker of fear. His brown eyes narrowed a little, but continued to stare steadily back at Lambert. ‘That merely confirms my view of the man. I was right not to like him. I didn't trust the little sod as far as I could throw him.'

‘I see. You are now declaring hatred for a murder victim. Commendably frank, even if ill-advised. I'm sure your well-paid legal adviser would tell you that.'

‘If you're trying to needle me, Detective Chief Superintendent, it won't work.'

‘What exactly did Wally Keane discover that he could use against you so effectively?'

The first flicker of alarm. No more than the uncontrolled movement of an eyelid, but it was picked up by two men whose work involved much studying of the human countenance. But Seagrave prided himself on his facility with words. He was, after all, an educated man, he told himself. More than a match for these jumped-up plods. ‘You appear to be telling me in your quaint and indirect way that Keane was a blackmailer. The lowest form of life, in my opinion.'

‘That is one of the very few things on which you and I might agree, Mr Seagrave. At the moment, our interest in Keane is as a murder victim. As that, he has the same rights as any other citizen.'

‘In which case, I should declare that I have no connection with him.'

‘Then why did you pay him a large sum of money a month before he died?'

The right eyelid flicked again. The voice remained steady. ‘I have no idea what you're talking about.'

‘I think you have, Mr Seagrave. I've no doubt you made the payment as indirectly as possible, so as to make it difficult to trace back to you personally. Equally, I've no doubt that we shall be able to provide all the details, by the time the case comes to court. Perhaps this really is the time to start seeking advice from your very expensive lawyers.'

Richard Seagrave folded his arms with extreme deliberation. He wished to confirm for himself as well as these offensive policemen that he remained perfectly calm. ‘Defamation of character, Chief Superintendent. Lawyers are good at proving that. The quite gratuitous accusation you are making could cost the police service a lot of money. I think I shall quite enjoy pursuing this. It may well be settled out of court: chief constables don't like bad publicity. But it will be expensive. You will not be a popular man with your superiors.'

Lambert ignored him. ‘We shall be interested in due course in what it was you thought it so important to conceal. Something which might well interest us, since it warranted a large payment to a blackmailer. In the meantime, it is my job to arrest the man who killed Walter Keane last Friday night.'

‘A time for which I have a watertight alibi. You would be well advised not to offer me further material for a defamation suit.'

Bert Hook said quietly, ‘An alibi provided by your present partner. We don't like alibis provided by wives and partners which are otherwise unsubstantiated.'

It was the first time he had spoken. Seagrave looked at him as if he were something scraped off his expensive shoe. ‘I'm sure you don't, Detective Sergeant. Alibis make it difficult for you to frame innocent citizens.'

Lambert had a severe problem with this man. Seagrave and his firm were being investigated by the Serious Crime Squad and very dark things were suspected of him. But that investigation was ongoing and secret and he must not damage it by providing any prior warnings to the man at the centre of it. But he had a murder on his hands here, the most serious crime of all. Seagrave was certainly capable of killing a frail man of sixty and they now knew that he had ample motive. Lambert said tersely, ‘Where were you between nine o'clock and eleven o'clock on Friday night?'

‘With Vanessa Norton. We told you that on Sunday and it isn't going to change, for the simple reason that it's the truth.'

Richard Seagrave managed to look very complacent. A man could smile and smile and be a villain, as Hamlet said. He liked that comparison. He was, after all, an educated man.

G
eoffrey Tiler and Michael Norrington were engaged in a serious dispute. That did not happen very often.

It had been inevitable that it would happen, sooner or later, Geoff told himself. It was adolescent romanticism to think that any couple wouldn't have little spats. And he and Mike were well beyond adolescence, he thought ruefully. Sometimes he wondered what might have happened, if they'd met at that age. But this wasn't the moment for that sort of self-indulgence. The death of Wally Keane had changed all sorts of things, far more than he had thought it would. Ironically, it was that death which was now accelerating life, moving it on much more quickly than he would have wished, threatening to take it out of his control. He didn't like that.

Geoffrey Tiler was a man used to exercising control.

He said, ‘I think you should tell the police what happened. I think you should give them your real name. They'll find everything out for themselves, if you leave them to it. They have a big team on a murder enquiry. They pry into all kinds of things, just in case they might prove to be relevant.'

‘My past isn't relevant.'

‘You know that. I know that. But at present those CID men don't seem to know very much, so they're investigating everything. They'll turn up the details you don't want them to have, eventually. And then they'll ask why you needed to conceal them. And what else you might be hiding from them. It will concentrate their attention upon you, in exactly the way you are trying to avoid.'

‘You're ashamed of me. You don't want to be associated with—'

‘That's rubbish and you know it is! I've known all about it for months, and it hasn't made a blind bit of difference between us. Now has it?'

Michael Norrington looked gloomily out of the window. ‘I wouldn't blame you for being ashamed of me. I was ashamed myself. I wish it had never happened. I wish I could turn the clock back and handle things differently.'

The perennial and impossible desire of the weak, thought Geoff. But he didn't mind this weakness. This weakness was dependent upon him for reassurance and rescue, and he wanted to be the man who offered those things to Mike. ‘You can't change a single thing, Mike, and you know it. That's life and we can't make it other than it is. But you were a different person then. We both accept that. I'm sure everyone did things thirty years ago which they wish they could undo now. I think you'd be much better to be honest with the police.'

‘Make a clean breast of it, you mean? As we were told to do when we were schoolboys? But I can't go to confession and be absolved of my sins. The police don't work like that.'

‘No, they don't,' agreed Geoff grimly. ‘They're not in the business of forgiveness. They accept confessions, but they also detect things. They'll find out about your past, whether you like it or not. And when they do, they'll throw it at you. You'd be much better taking the initiative.'

Mike wasn't used to taking the initiative. He hadn't done it many times in his life, and when he had, it had often been disastrous. As it had been in this thing which he wished to consign to oblivion and which Geoff kept bringing up. Sometimes he wished he had never told him. He said sullenly, ‘You may be right, I suppose. But I can't bring myself to go parading my sins in front of policemen. It would be inviting the homophobic bastards to laugh at me and persecute me.'

Geoff Tiler came and stood beside him, looking out of the window at the wide, still waters of the lake and the swans and the waterfowl which moved so innocently upon it. His forearm was almost touching the longer and more slender one of the man he intended to marry. He could feel the warmth and it made him wish for physical contact. But something told him that this was not the moment. If Mike shied away from him, that would drive them further apart, accentuate the rift which this stupid dispute had created.

Geoffrey Tiler was a man used to controlling and directing the things and the people within his world. But now he forced himself to say sadly, ‘I'll go along with whatever you decide, Mike. Of course I will.'

Jason Ramsbottom came looking for the police. Not many people did that.

He said to DI Rushton in the murder room, ‘I understand Mr Lambert wished to speak to me. I can't think why that would be, but I'm here.'

The police had now occupied a second holiday unit, adjacent to the first one which had been designated as the murder room. Lambert had improvised an office in there, with the help of furniture lent to him by Jim Rawlinson. The site manager at Twin Lakes was understandably anxious to keep police activity as invisible as possible.

The chief superintendent sat behind his desk with Bert Hook beside him and regarded Ramsbottom for a few seconds before he spoke. ‘Good of you to come here, sir. I expect your wife told you that we'd been looking for you. You didn't fancy doing this alongside her in your own home.'

It was a statement rather than a question. Jason did not know how he should react to it. Perhaps that was what this gaunt, experienced interrogator had intended, he thought. He'd no idea how much the man knew, so he'd need to play this by ear. That wasn't easy, when the CID men seemed to be following his train of thought without apparent effort. Jason said stiffly, ‘I thought it best to come to see you as soon as possible, when I heard that you'd been looking for me. Is there something wrong with that thought?'

‘Nothing wrong at all, sir. A commendable promptitude, indeed. And I can quite see why you wouldn't want Mrs Ramsbottom to hear this.'

‘I don't know what you mean by that, I'm sure. I was hoping that you might have at last discovered who sent us those awful notes, but I suppose that's too much to hope for.'

He was trying to take the initiative, to put them rather than him on the back foot, and he tried to deliver this with a sneer. He stared hard at the impassive Hook, who had been the man invoked by his wife to solve the problem of the notes those many weeks ago. Lambert said, ‘We, or rather DS Hook, seem to have solved the problem of the notes, in that they ceased to appear after his visit here two months ago. I understood that because they had ceased you did not wish us to allocate resources to the matter. Am I mistaken in that?'

‘No, of course I don't see any point in trying to discover who sent us those notes, since we are no longer being persecuted by them. Naturally I'm still curious about who was cruel enough to threaten us in that way, but I'm sure that your investigation should be abandoned in the face of the much more important matter of a murder investigation.'

‘Good. It's always helpful when the public accept that we have finite resources and must allocate them as we see fit. Murder, as you say, has a high priority.' Lambert stared at him evenly. There was the suggestion of a smile on his lips. Jason sensed that the preliminary word-fencing was now concluded. It had not gone his way.