Skeleton Plot (10 page)

‘And what makes you think so?’ She felt like an actress in a bad play, without any key lines herself, merely speaking a series of cues to prompt action from others.

‘Can you tell me where you were twenty years ago, Ms Clark?’

She wasn’t calling upon him to address her as Kate any more. She was floundering, wondering if there was a way to escape from this, to handle it without compromising her present exalted position in the firm. ‘Twenty years ago isn’t easy to recall at the drop of a hat, DI Rushton.’

‘Allow me to help you, then. Were you at or around that time living in a squat in Gloucester?’

A significant pause, whilst Kate thought furiously of her options and decided that there was no easy way out of this. ‘I might have been, I suppose.’

‘Our information is that you were in a derelict house in Fairfax Street in the city at that time.’

She wondered furiously where their information had come from. But there was no future in that. She said quietly, ‘You agreed earlier that this would be confidential. Can I rely on that assurance?’

Rushton allowed himself his only tiny smile of their meeting. ‘I think it was your assurance, rather than mine. But yes, all our enquiries are conducted in confidence. Unless of course you should eventually be called as a witness in a court of law, when things would obviously be outside our control.’

He rather enjoyed that addendum, feeling himself reversing dominance with this powerful, confident woman. For her part, Kate was trying not to show the very real fear she now felt. ‘I admit that I was in the place you mentioned for a short period at around that time. So where do we go from here?’

‘The man in charge of what is now a murder inquiry is Chief Superintendent John Lambert. He will wish to interview you with a colleague of his within the next two days. You may wish to suggest where that interview might take place.’

She took the card with Lambert’s number, promised to ring him during the next few hours. Whenever she could fit the call in with her busy schedule, she said.

DI Rushton let that little piece of vanity go. Kate Clark might need all the trappings of authority she could muster, in the weeks to come.

You didn’t let the police into your house without showing resentment. Steve Williams had spent his life fighting the filth. That wasn’t going to end now, merely because he was sixty-six and finished with most of the things which had divided them. He made his ritual protest as he led them into his large and well-fitted sitting room. ‘This feels like persecution. I had nothing to do with that skeleton. I’ve already told your wooden-tops that.’

They were old foes, he and John Lambert, though they hadn’t crossed swords for many years now. ‘If you’d no connection with this death, then you’ve nothing to fear. You’ll be treated like other, more innocent, members of the public. The law says we have to do that, whatever our private feelings might be. Unlike you and the people you employ, we have to abide by the law.’

‘Used to employ, John. Those times have gone. I’m retired. As you should be by now. I know you must be around ten years younger than me, but coppers retire early on fat pensions. Bastards like you should be piling shit on your roses.’

It was the first time in his life he had used his opponent’s forename. Both of them noted it; both of them determined to show no reaction. Lambert said sourly, ‘Until the Brenton Park estate was built, you were the nearest householder to the spot where this body was found. Of course you’re going to be investigated. Even someone without your record would be asked the questions we are going to ask you.’

Williams waved a hand at the largest of the sofas and adjusted the alignment of an armchair carefully so that it directly faced them. He had so far given no more than a single glance at Hook. He knew him too from way back; they had tangled when he had been dishing out beatings and Bert had been a raw young constable. But he was not going to acknowledge that. Bert studied him objectively and with no embarrassment. CID officers have no need for the conventions and niceties which people are accustomed to in their normal social exchanges.

Hook saw a man who was ageing but still vigorous. Williams was almost completely bald now. He had lost the use of one eye after a brawl conducted in his twenties, but you would scarcely have known that without studying his face very closely, which not many people were bold enough to do. He was broad-shouldered and powerful, but now carried a paunch which had not troubled him in his younger days.

At this point, there was the noise of a slight movement in the room above their heads, which all of them heard but chose to ignore, save for swift glances at the ceiling from the policemen. Steve said roughly, ‘You’d better ask your damned questions and get out of here. Leave innocent folk to get on with their quiet lives.’

Bert Hook flicked open his notebook without taking his eyes off the big man’s face. ‘Did you know a young woman called Julie Grimshaw?’

‘Yes. Shapely young tart, she was, twenty years ago. Wouldn’t have minded an hour or two between the sheets with her, if I’d had the chance.’

He was being deliberately offensive and they all knew it. This was an answer he had prepared and considered long before they came here. ‘And did you get that chance?’

A smile which degenerated quickly into a leer. ‘No. These young girls don’t want to know the things an experienced man could teach them, do they? And you know me: I was far too much of a gentleman to force my attentions upon her, wasn’t I?’

‘We have reason to think Miss Grimshaw was on drugs at the time of her death. What can you tell us about that?’

‘Bugger all. I was never into drugs and never wanted to be. You know that.’

It was true. Prostitution and loan-sharking had been Williams’s main sources of income, in the days when he had operated chains of pimps and lenders in three counties. Hook said, ‘You’d have had access to drugs, if you’d wanted them. You could have provided her with whatever she wanted, if you’d chosen to do that.’

‘That is a wicked accusation. You are fortunate that I choose not to take it up. I shall be tolerant with you, for old times’ sake.’

He was playing games with them. Safe games. He was on firm ground here, because he hadn’t ever been accused of dealing in drugs. He’d never been convicted of anything in court, in fact, though every CID officer in Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Somerset knew that Steve Williams was a villain. Hook watched him carefully as he said, ‘So you knew her. Did she come to this house?’

Williams looked round the room he had used for thirty-three years as if he was seeing it for the first time. ‘Yes, she did. A few times, I think. She ceased coming here rather abruptly, as far as I can remember. I’ve no idea why. Well, I hadn’t, until you walked in here today and told me that someone had killed the poor bitch.’

‘And why did she come here?’

‘Think I had designs on her, do you? Would I have brought her into my own house if I had? Don’t shit on your own doorstep, DS Hook. That’s as true now as it was then. You should remember it, if you’re planning a crafty shag on the side.’

Hook was annoyingly unresponsive. He made a note of Williams’s reply. His face betrayed not a flicker of emotion.

It was Lambert who now said tersely, ‘The girl was on drugs. She was vulnerable. She was the kind of female you used to recruit to work in your brothels. You liked vulnerable girls.’

‘Piss off, Lambert! I had nothing to do with Julie Grimshaw. And I’ve no idea what you’re trying to pin on me when you mention brothels.’

The barefaced lies were usually the best, he’d always found. They took people aback and most of them didn’t know how to react. But these weren’t fellow villains. These were CID, used to dealing with lies, barefaced or otherwise. Lambert regarded him steadily. ‘It’s difficult to accept the word of a man with your record. I’m sure you realize that. We may need to speak to your wife about this.’

‘You’re not speaking to Hazel! She’s not well. She’s not fit to be badgered by coppers.’

Lambert continued as if the big man in the armchair had never spoken. ‘We may need to check what Mrs Williams remembers about Julie Grimshaw. People’s recollections are sometimes very different, twenty years on. Even those of people with nothing to hide. And you’re giving me the distinct impression that you have something to hide.’

That wasn’t true. It was just that you automatically exploited any sign of weakness in an enemy, and he certainly listed Williams as an enemy. He doubted at this moment whether the man had anything to do with this death, but he would check that out thoroughly before he accepted his innocence. And he wasn’t going to make any concessions to Steve Williams. They looked challengingly at each other across the ten feet or so which separated them and he saw with some satisfaction fear and hatred in the one good eye of his opponent.

John Lambert knew he couldn’t force an interview with Hazel Williams. As far as the law of the land went, these were good citizens who were helping the police voluntarily with their investigation. He didn’t want to accuse a disturbed woman of obstructing the police in the course of their enquiries, but he would certainly do so at a later stage in this strange case if it became necessary. He said quietly, ‘You had a son living in this house twenty years ago. A son who must have been about the same age as Julie Grimshaw.’

‘Yes.’ For the first time since he had brought them in here, Williams was edgy rather than truculent. ‘Liam had nothing to do with this.’

‘But we can’t speak to him. He’s no longer around.’ Lambert’s tone had softened a little, for the first time.

‘Liam was killed in a traffic accident eight years ago. RTIs, you call them, don’t you? There’s no such thing as an accident, as far as the filth are concerned.’

‘I’m sorry you lost your son, Williams. But I need to know about his relationship with Julie Grimshaw.’

‘He knew her. Same as he knew lots of other girls.’

‘But he brought her here.’

‘Same as he did lots of other girls. There was nothing special about Julie Grimshaw.’ He was tight-lipped, determined to be unemotional.

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘Quite sure. Liam had lots of girls. Too many, to my mind. But I was probably the same, at his age.’

‘If Liam was here now, do you think he’d be able to help us to find out exactly how this girl died?’

Williams looked with open hostility at Lambert, hating the question but knowing he must answer it. He would have lied unthinkingly and automatically on Liam’s behalf if he had been alive and in the next room. For some reason he would never to be able to explain, Steve found it more difficult with the boy no longer here. Liam would have been forty-one now, but his father could never picture him as more than the thirty-three he’d been when he’d killed himself on the road a mile from here. For most of the time, he remembered him as a young, irresponsible, attractive lad, the age he’d been when Julie Grimshaw was around. That wasn’t helping Steve now. He said carefully, ‘Liam knocked around in a crowd, a group of lads and a group of girls. Julie Grimshaw was one of the girls.’

‘Was he getting drugs from her?’

‘No. Liam wasn’t a user.’ He was furious and he wanted to say more, but he didn’t trust himself with words. Not on this.

And Lambert, who wanted to press him, knew that he wasn’t going to get any further today. They told him ominously and unsmilingly that they would be back. They treated him as they left as a known criminal who had frustrated them over many years, rather than as the grieving father he had been for the last few minutes.

They didn’t know it, but Liam Williams’s room had been the one immediately above the door of the solid red-brick house. As Hook reversed the police Mondeo, Lambert glanced up at the window of that room. He saw the white face of a permanently grieving woman, watching them depart.

J
im Simmons told himself that he was luckier than most people involved in the case. He worked on the land. He could use the eternal rhythms of weather, seasons and soil to sooth the fears he felt over what was happening around him.

The cornfield was doing well this year. Green was dominant still, but he fancied he could see the first tinges of gold as the low early-morning sun shone almost horizontally on the slope of the land. The small herd of cows was proving a success, despite the pessimists who had said you needed huge herds or nothing. The Herefords were looking healthy and there was enough growth in the pasture now to keep them amply supplied without the need for expensive feeding supplements. The milk yield had increased over the last two weeks. Hopefully the negotiators would screw a decent milk price from the supermarkets in their present meetings, and make dairy cattle less of a suicide venture for the small farmer. The cows mooed at him as they saw him standing there; their udders were full as they assembled outside the milk parlour for the evening milking.

It was in the twilight that he walked out alone to look at the place where the skeleton of Julie Grimshaw had been found. That was over the fence at the end of his pasture field, the poorest land on the farm. Old Joe Jackson, the man who had bought the land from him to add to his small garden, had put up a fence, but not a high one, to mark the new boundary of his garden plot. The scene-of-crime tapes and the screens which had masked that sinister square of ground were gone now. The spot looked once again quite innocent – like the newly dug vegetable plot it had been intended for, in fact. He wondered if old Joe would feel like growing stuff there now, after what had happened. Jim decided that he wouldn’t feel like planting cabbages there himself, in view of what had been dug up from that ground when Joe had begun to work it.

Jim Simmons couldn’t see Joe Jackson using that land if he wouldn’t himself. Jim had been brought up to work the land, to get used to it containing all sorts of things, both useful and unpleasant. It was only soil, after all. In fact the man who had taught him most of what he knew, Daniel Burrell, would have said with a grin that rotted human remains would have made the soil all the richer, all the more likely to produce excellent vegetables. Jim smiled at the memory of old Dan and his sturdy common sense. He could hear Burrell’s voice now, telling him that he’d received a good price for a small, almost useless patch of land, and that this finding merely proved that he was well rid of it.

Simmons frowned as he gazed at the place where the skeleton had been found, wondering for just a moment whether Daniel Burrell could possibly have known anything about how those bones had got there. But old Dan surely wasn’t that sort of fellow. Jim wondered how much they would talk about the skeleton when he next visited Dan in the care home. Then he shook his head and turned away, walking slowly and with a sudden weariness back to the farm and Lisa, and to Jamie and Ellie and that other, more innocent world in which children lived.

Kate Clark, MBE, was more shaken than she cared to admit by her short meeting with Detective Inspector Rushton. She had a good relationship with her PA and she often swapped irreverent thoughts with her about the people who had come to see her, but on this occasion she said nothing.

She had a full day before the meeting she had arranged by phone with Chief Superintendent Lambert. Usually time fled from her all too quickly, but these hours seemed to drag by in a long series of anxieties as she wondered what they would ask her, how she should respond and how much she could afford to conceal. She was used to exchanging ideas. She enjoyed challenging herself, whether it was with senior colleagues, more junior employees or members of the public. She was pretty good with people, she thought, and exchanges normally stimulated her and made her work and her life interesting. But she could talk to no one about this. She was alone with her thoughts, with her guilt, and with her speculations about how much the police knew and how much they would have to know.

Harry Purcell was coming to her place tonight. They usually managed one night each week with each other and they tried whenever possible to alternate their venues. They were both divorced, both wary of the commitment of a second marriage. They were moving closer together, but they were quite a way yet from even living together. Kate felt that; she wasn’t quite sure how Harry felt.

Harry had tried to push things on when they’d met at his place last week. She’d said, ‘It’s working well as it is. Let’s just leave it to take its course. Give it another few months – until the autumn, say – and then we’ll review it. Meanwhile, we’ve both got busy lives and we’re both ambitious. This friendship should help us along, not get in our way.’

He’d accepted her logic, or appeared to accept it. Kate had been flattered by his desire to get closer to her. She wished she’d told him that, once she was back here with time to reflect upon the matter. Men needed reassurance, didn’t they? Especially men who’d been hurt once, as Harry had. She didn’t know how much the failure of his marriage had wounded him, how deep were the scars it had left behind. That was the kind of thing you discovered when you lived with someone, she supposed. She was finding that she didn’t know quite as much about life and its workings as she knew about business.

Now, when her thoughts were full of the police and what they might or might not already know, she almost cancelled Harry’s visit. It would be easy enough: she could say that she had to be away for some business meeting that had been arranged at short notice. But she didn’t like lying to Harry. That was surely a good thing, wasn’t it? A sign that there was mileage in their relationship? When he rang her on her mobile at four o’clock to check that tonight was still on, as he usually did, she told him that it was and that she was looking forward to it. She spoke quite formally; even though they were both on their private phones, she was never convinced that only he could hear her. She never breathed sweet nothings or sexual encouragements on the phone, even in response to the outrageous things Harry Purcell sometimes said.

It was a strange evening. She didn’t want to tell him about the police and that erected a barrier between them. Couples all had their secrets; all people kept some things strictly to themselves. But her fear of the coming police visit was so great and so immediate that she felt guilty concealing it. Their conversation during the evening seemed to her stilted, though Harry didn’t seem to notice anything unusual. There were rumours of an American takeover of his company, and he spent quite a long time talking about that. Asking her advice, in fact, which Kate supposed was flattering. He was very much dominated by his work and his worries about it. They were two of a kind really, she thought wryly.

The sex was good, as it always was. She forgot about the police and gave everything to it, in her usual way. She was quite abandoned in bed, screaming out her pleasure, ordering him to do things violently (which she knew he was going to do anyway), flinging out the four-letter words of command which she never used elsewhere. She wondered sometimes whether she used sex as a counterbalance to the rest of her life, to the rational decisions and the rational accounts of them which occupied most of her days. It was the only time in her life when she enjoyed being subject to anyone else, when she enjoyed pleasuring a man and indulging his every physical whim.

Harry Purcell loved it. Perhaps even loved her, Kate thought, as he lay panting with his head upon her breasts. She stroked his head gently as her spirit crept unwillingly back into the real world. She’d been lost in her own wild, scatological demands, but she was pretty sure that he’d said somewhere in the early stages that he loved her. That was surely a good thing. Yet she didn’t welcome it. Not now, when the problems she had cast aside were reasserting themselves.

Harry had to leave early in the morning. She was glad of that. She knew she wouldn’t have been good at conversation over the breakfast table, with the day she had to face. He left after hurried toast and coffee, taking with him her assurance that they would meet at his place as usual next week. She wondered as he left what her position with the police would be by then, what the next seven days might have in store for her.

She had a meeting in Oxford at ten thirty. She was as usual well prepared for it, but she went over her papers again before getting into the car. It was a good thing that she had this meeting to occupy her, she told herself unconvincingly, as she fought her way through the Oxford traffic to the venue. It would keep her thoughts off the interview with the police in the afternoon, prevent her from going over and over the same ground that she had covered so thoroughly yesterday.

The meeting followed its agenda and was from her point of view quite straightforward. She made a few contributions, rather more muted than usual. Then, more quickly than she wanted to be, she was driving the Mercedes coupé back along the A40 and into Gloucestershire. She stopped first for lunch at a small place she’d used before in Burford. The food was good and the owner was friendly but didn’t insist on making conversation whilst you were trying to eat and rest.

Today the woman was more attentive than usual. ‘You’re sure that all you want is soup and a roll? We have some tasty sandwiches. Baguettes, if you prefer them; most people seem to, nowadays.’ And then when Kate replied in monosyllables and forced a smile, she said, ‘You look very pale today. Not sickening for something, are you?’

Kate was back in her flat in Tewkesbury long before the police were due. Give yourself plenty of time to get ready for any important meeting: that was her policy. Except that for this one there was no agenda, so how did you set about preparing yourself? Two thirty, they were due to arrive. She wasted three quarters of an hour in useless speculation about the attitude they would take and the direction in which the conversation would go.

Two big men, one very tall and the other burly and powerful. The older and taller one introduced himself as Chief Superintendent John Lambert and his companion as Detective Sergeant Bert Hook. She’d heard of both of them, John Lambert as the man the papers called a ‘super-sleuth’ and Sergeant Hook as that rare police phenomenon, a man who’d taken an arts degree with the Open University. She told them that: it gave people a lift and got you off on the right foot when they realized that you’d heard of their exploits and their claims to fame.

On this occasion, it didn’t seem to help her.

Lambert said bluntly, ‘We’re here in connection with the discovery of human remains in the grounds of a bungalow on the Brenton Park housing estate in Herefordshire. I don’t suppose that surprises you, Ms Clark.’

His last words were a challenge which she chose to ignore. ‘I read about the skeleton which was dug up there. I can’t imagine why you would wish to speak with me about it.’

‘It is because we think you may be able to give us information about those remains. I should tell you that we are now speaking of a murder victim.’

She was already finding his unflinching scrutiny disconcerting. She was used to dominating face-to-face exchanges. More often than not it was not she but the people she spoke with who dropped their eyes or looked away from her. Kate said, ‘I’m sorry about that. The murder, I mean. But I don’t see why you should think that I have anything to offer to you in the way of information. Do you know who this woman was?’

‘She was a young woman who was twenty-one when she died. Her name was Julie Grimshaw.’

Kate was studiously untroubled. ‘Can you be sure of that?’

‘We can be quite positive. We have a DNA sample from a parent which confirms the identity. Modern DNA analysis tells us quite certainly that a body which was buried under a car park in Leicester was that of Richard III. In the light of that, you will appreciate that we are absolutely positive about the identity of this woman. Now we have to discover who killed her and buried her body in that spot in the Brenton Park development.’

‘I want you to discover who killed this woman. That goes without saying. Until now all I knew was that the skeleton was that of a youngish woman.’

‘And now you have an identity. This is a woman whom we have reason to think you knew quite intimately at the time of her death.’

There was no escaping the challenge this time. She said as firmly as she could, ‘I think it is high time you enlightened me about exactly what you’re thinking, Mr Lambert.’

She had deliberately omitted his police title, but he gave no sign of irritation. He did not respond directly to her request. Instead, he threw another question at her. ‘Where were you living twenty years ago, Ms Clark?’

‘I cannot recall that precisely. I don’t suppose many people can.’

‘But I think that in your case you know exactly where you were. Our information is that you were at that time living in a squat at seventeen Fairfax Street in Gloucester. Do you deny that?’

Kate tried hard to remain calm. She had been over this a dozen times as she anticipated their visit, but it seemed more stark and infinitely more damning as it emerged like an accusation from the mouth of this calm, experienced man. ‘Who is the source of your information?’

‘We don’t reveal our sources. I’m sure you wouldn’t expect us to. Just as whatever you are going to tell us this afternoon will not have your name attached to it if we need to use it elsewhere. Unless you are about to provide us with a confession, of course.’

This should have been said lightly, Kate thought, with a small laugh to follow it to indicate that it was not intended seriously. But this grave-faced man delivered it as if he thought it was a serious possibility. Kate Clark gathered herself to give of her best, to give the performance of her life which she felt was now needed. ‘I have come a long way since those days, Mr Lambert. I think you will understand why I do not care to recall my time in that squat. It would provide salacious material for the popular press if they found out that one of the women who has broken the glass ceiling and entered senior management with a great national company lived in a squat as a twenty-one-year-old.’