Skeleton Plot (15 page)

Again the emphasis on himself as a family man, on his feeling for his children. Genuine emotion, or an attempt to divert attention from the man he had been in 1995? Bert said, ‘So they feared that Andrew might be dragged into the world of drugs by Julie Grimshaw?’

‘I doubt whether they really feared that. I think they just felt he was taking on more than he could handle with Julie. They might have been right. No one wants an addict in their family, or even close to them. Addicts can ruin other lives as well as their own.’

‘So what did the older Burrells do about the situation?’

‘They said they didn’t want her in the house again. I think there’d been some sort of incident. I didn’t see it. I was out working the land at the time. But I think Julie was stoned and insulted Emily. Dan wasn’t going to stand for that.’

Hook smiled grimly. ‘Jim, I need you to be very honest now about people I know you admire. Do you think either Dan or his wife did anything more violent than that? Do you think either of them might have had any involvement in Julie’s death? Not necessarily a planned or even a deliberate involvement. We could be looking at manslaughter rather than murder. Do you think one or both of them might have been provoked into violence by her conduct or by her relationship with their son?’

‘No. I’ve thought about it during the last few days, as you might expect. But Emily simply wouldn’t have been capable of that sort of reaction. And Daniel, despite his demand to rule the roost here, could never have been violent towards a woman. He was old-fashioned in that respect. I’m sure when I first came here as a lad he’d cheerfully have thrashed me with a belt, if I’d stepped seriously out of line. That was the impression he gave me and I’m grateful for it now. I don’t deny that I was frightened of him at the time. But the fear was good for me: I might have gone seriously off the rails without it. But Daniel would no more have been capable of physical violence against Julie than his wife would, however much he might have wished her out of his sight for ever.’

Simmons was breathing hard now, vehement in his description of his benefactors, determined to convince the CID men that the dead Emily and the man now in care at eighty-four had had no involvement in this death. His defence was the more convincing in that he must have known that it left him more exposed as a suspect in the case. As a young man not much older than Julie Grimshaw, who admitted to knowing her well at the time, Simmons was too intelligent not to know that he must be one of the CID candidates for murder.

Lambert had never taken his eyes off the man during Hook’s gentler interrogation. He now said tersely, ‘The man most closely involved with Julie, according to your account, was Andrew Burrell. What was your relationship with him?’

Jim was thrown for a moment by the question. It was a diversion from the themes they had been pursuing, the condition and behaviour of Julie Grimshaw when she had visited this farm twenty years ago. He had expected to be asked about Andrew and Julie, not about Andrew and himself. And he had expected the questions to come from Hook, not from this intense older man who he sensed was more hostile to him. ‘We were contemporaries. We got on all right.’

‘You can do better than that. Did you like each other?’

‘We didn’t dislike each other. We were two very different men. We were both young and both still finding out what we wanted to do in the world.’

‘Did you see yourselves as rivals for this farm?’

‘No. I think Daniel wanted to see it that way. I think he wanted to prod his son into thinking his inheritance was being taken away from him. And I was certainly conscious of taking over the role which Daniel and Emily had intended for their son. I felt in a difficult position. I enjoyed farming and I was being trusted with more and more of the day-to-day work and even the farming decisions, but I knew that the intention had been that the farm would pass to Andrew. There was tension between Andrew and his parents, but not really between Andrew and me. He came back from agricultural college without completing his course there; he’d decided that farming wasn’t for him.’

‘So you took over this place quite smoothly?’

‘I wouldn’t say that. I was in quite a difficult position, as I said. Andrew sometimes seemed to despise me, simply because I was interested in this place and in what he regarded as dull and menial work. And I regarded him as a wimp, because he wanted to go off and do an arts degree rather than taking this opportunity in the real world. I can see now that the world he’s working in is the real one for him, but when you’re young you think the path you want to tread is the only valid one.’

‘So you had your differences. Did you fall out with each other?’

‘No. We were very different personalities, so we weren’t likely to be close friends. But what happened here in 1994 and 1995 was opportune for both of us. I remember Andrew eventually saying to me after a row with his dad that it was a good thing that I was around. Daniel and Emily would channel the ambitions they’d had for him into my career here. If I played my cards right I’d get the farm, and he wouldn’t resent it because it would get him off the hook of their expectations.’

‘You must have been glad to hear him saying those words.’

Jim looked round at the small, comfortable room, at the prosperous farm he could glimpse through its single window. He thought of the other rooms beyond this one, of his wife and two children and the satisfaction he got from being in this ancient house and from working hard on this land. ‘It wasn’t as straightforward as you seem to be assuming it was. It took Daniel a long time to accept the idea that his son wasn’t going to take over. It took him several months to accept that I was a possible alternative. Emily liked me and was kind throughout my time here. I’m sure it was she who eventually sold the idea to Dan that I might take over here.’

‘So how do you get on with Andrew Burrell nowadays?’

How persistent the senior man was! It was almost as if he knew that Andrew had phoned him on the previous day, asking him to keep quiet about Liam. But Lambert couldn’t know that Andrew had been in touch, surely? ‘We have very little to do with each other. He lives his life and I live mine. They don’t overlap at any point. His mother tried to keep us in touch, but she’s been gone for quite a while now.’

‘So you haven’t been in contact about this matter?’

Jim felt his pulses quicken at that. Did they know about Andrew’s phone call to him? Had the man told them himself, without letting him know? He spoke as casually as he could. ‘Andrew rang me yesterday, as a matter of fact. Wanted to compare notes about the skeleton, now that we know who it is.’ He glanced at the two very different faces in front of him and forced a smile. ‘Only natural, I suppose; I’m sure you’d agree with that.’

‘What did you decide after you’d conferred with each other?’

‘Nothing. We were both shocked. We each knew as little as the other about how Julie’s body came to be where it was discovered.’ He wouldn’t mention Liam. He owed that much at least to Andrew.

‘Give me the most accurate description you can of Andrew Burrell’s relationship with Julie Grimshaw at the time of her death.’

Lambert hadn’t raised his voice; he seemed the calmest one of the three in that quiet room. But his tone was brusque and this was a command, not a question. Jim tried to speak confidently; this at last was ground he’d expected to cover. ‘I think the affair was coming to an end in the summer of 1995.’

‘Which of them had decided that?’

‘I’m not sure – especially at this distance of time. You’ll need to ask Andrew. But you will, won’t you? Perhaps you already have. You want to know what I think, whether it tallies with his version of things.’

‘At least one person and quite probably more than one will lie to us in the days ahead, Mr Simmons. It’s our job to expose the truth. You would be most unwise to attempt to conceal it from us.’

‘I realize that. When I say I’m not certain about things, I’m being as honest as I can. Julie was a druggie. Not an addict, but a regular user. That meant that she was erratic in her behaviour. She could be quite different from one day to the next. Andrew was still seeing her after his mum and dad had banned her from this house. I know that. But by the summer he’d secured himself a place at Liverpool University and he was determined to go up there at the end of September. Whether he ended the affair because of those plans, I don’t know. It’s equally possible that Julie decided she’d had enough of it.’

‘Or it’s possible that there was no mutual agreement to end the association. It’s possible that they argued over its termination. It’s possible that Julie Grimshaw’s death was a result of that argument.’

‘I suppose so. I can only say that I don’t believe it was. We all thought when Julie disappeared that she’d simply decided to move on. Perhaps to another squat, perhaps to change her life back to something more normal.’

‘How upset was Andrew Burrell when she disappeared?’

‘I can’t tell you that. Not at this distance in time. I remember only that he was excited by the new direction his life was taking with the degree he planned for himself. I can remember arguments between father and son over his deserting the farm. I can remember Emily trying to placate Daniel, because she’d accepted by this time that Andrew was never going to be a farmer. But as far as I can remember, the arguments about Julie were finished by the end of the summer. Perhaps all three of them were relieved that she’d moved on. But I can’t speak for Andrew; you must ask him for his version of 1995.’

Lambert gave him a taut smile. ‘We shall do that, of course. Thank you for your help, Mr Simmons.’

As the two big men stood up, Hook said, seemingly as an afterthought, ‘You were aware that Julie was a regular user of illegal drugs at what we now know was the time of her death. I’m sure you know that regular users are often recruited as dealers by those who operate the drugs trade. Often they receive free supplies for themselves in return for selling a certain quota of Class A drugs. Do you think it possible that Julie had been approached to become a dealer?’

‘I’ve no idea. Is it relevant to her death?’

‘It could be, especially if she refused. People who fall out with the drug hierarchy often die swiftly and obscurely. It’s a possibility we need to bear in mind.’

They were gone a moment later, leaving the sturdy Jim Simmons feeling more limp than he had done for years. He went into the kitchen and picked up the family phone book, checking Lisa’s neat figures beside the names. He rang Andrew Burrell from the privacy of the room where he had spoken with Lambert and Hook. ‘The CID came again, as you said they would. Grilled me about how we felt about each other at that time, about your relationship with Julie. I didn’t give them much. I didn’t tell them about Liam. I avoided all mention of him.’

T
he best way to shut out nightmares is to ignore them. The more you immerse yourself in the innocent concerns of daylight, the less threatening the unreal fantasies of darkness will seem. It is all a matter of setting things firmly in proportion; healthy daytime activity will do this for you. Michael Wallington tried hard to convince himself that this was the simple solution to his problems.

Saturday would be his family day, for this weekend at least. His wife and children must have his whole attention on Saturday. Michael had not always been so solicitous; indeed, he could not remember when he had last been so determined upon a family day. But on this Saturday he was determined to implement this worthy ethic. ‘We’re going for a ride on the Severn Valley Railway tomorrow!’ he told his children on Friday night. Then he showed them the picture of the great GWR steam locomotive which dominated the publicity pamphlet.

Debbie loyally supported his contention that this was to be the outing of the year for them, though she knew that a boy of eight and a girl of five were in truth a little short of the ideal ages to appreciate the railway. Mother and father were bowled over by the poppy meadow near the railway, with its poignant remembrance for the adults of the poppy fields of Flanders a century earlier. But Tom and Jane were anxious to reach the station, the railway and the promised delights of Thomas the Tank Engine at the other end of the ancient line.

They were not as impressed as their father felt they should be when he told them that the tracks had been laid here in 1862 and had now been here for over a hundred and fifty years. They waited impatiently at Bewdley station for something more to childish tastes. Tom was duly impressed when the 4-6-0 steam locomotive
Erlestoke Manor
drew into the station with an impressive screech of braking wheels and a plaintive note in its whistle. Jane retreated in panic as a huge exhalation of white steam hissed noisily ahead of its wheels, but was eventually persuaded by her mother to board the chocolate and cream carriage.

They rattled happily through the sixteen miles of the green and restful Severn Valley to Bridgnorth, with the steam from the engine flying away above their heads towards the hills and the great river running below them. Michael tried to immerse himself in the landscape and in his family. The children, with the vagueness about time appropriate to their years, thought that Dad had surely travelled about the country in trains like this as a young man, with firemen enthusiastically shovelling coal from the tender on to the fire and blackened drivers peering anxiously down the line to check the signals. Mike explained laughingly that trains like this had ceased to function before his time, that even in Granddad’s time there had not been many of them left working. Jane then became anxious: if the engine and the carriages were as old as that, mightn’t they run off the lines and fall off the big bridge she’d seen in the picture? They might all be killed!

The small girl spent most of the trip cradled nervously in her mother’s arms but perked up when the journey was complete and they could inspect Thomas the Tank Engine in the siding at Bridgnorth. She was fully restored after refreshments in the garden of the Railwayman’s Arms. On the return journey Debbie and Michael tried hard to enthuse the children with the exhibits in the Engine House Centre at Highley, but it was quickly apparent that they were too tired as well as too young to reap the full benefits of railway history.

It had nevertheless been a good day out, Debbie assured Mike happily as they drove homewards. The fact that the children, securely fastened into child seats in the rear of the BMW, were asleep within five minutes attested to that. ‘We should do this sort of thing more often,’ said Debbie. ‘You’re a slave to your work, you know. It does you good to get away from the job when you can.’

Michael assented weakly, affirming to himself how lucky he was to have the precious cargo he was now ferrying homewards. But home when it arrived seemed to him a threat rather than a relief. The familiar bricks of the modern detached house seemed to tower like a menacing cliff above him against the western sky as he carried Tom in from the car. He watched the sleeping infant face of Jane bobbing gently on Debbie’s shoulder ahead of him and told himself firmly that the world was surely not too bad a place. If he could just get through this crisis, all would be well …

There were two messages on the landline phone when he checked. The first was from his father, telling him what time they should arrive for lunch tomorrow. The second was from DS Hook, that unthreatening plod who had taken notes when the two CID men had spoken with him on the previous day. They had now assembled a fuller picture of events at Fairfax Street in Gloucester in 1995. In the light of this, they would like to speak to him further on the morrow. He was sure that Michael would now be able to help them to complete the picture of life in that squat.

‘I’m aware that four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon is not the most convenient hour for a meeting. Thank you for making the time to see us.’

‘One has a public duty, Mr Lambert. And I’m sure it won’t be too onerous for me to exchange notes with two intelligent policemen.’ It sounded much too oily, but Kate Clark gave her visitors her full public relations beam and gestured towards the sofa in her sitting room in Tewkesbury.

She had dressed deliberately in an outfit which was as great a contrast to her formal costume of Thursday as she could contrive. This was Saturday, leisure day, her clothes said; she was relaxed and unthreatened, cheerfully making the time to see them during her weekend. But she also wanted to show them what a balanced character she was. They must note how she was taking in her stride their discovery that this woman who was now a senior executive with a great national company had once dwelt in a sordid squat in Gloucester.

That was all securely locked away in the past for her. She might be embarrassed by any revelation that she had once lived in such squalor, but it would cause her just that: embarrassment, not fear. She had tried various garments in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom before settling for a pale blue mohair sweater and a darker blue skirt, with comfortable low-heeled blue shoes beneath her elegant legs. She had considered trousers, or even jeans, but she knew from long business and social experience that men were beguiled by female legs; even experienced CID men, who should surely know much better, might be distracted by the sheer denier of her best tights. It was worth a try, anyway, she thought, as she planted herself opposite them, drew up her knees and turned her cool grey eyes upon the darker grey ones of John Lambert.

She’d had her short dark hair expertly cut and styled since they’d seen her on Thursday, Lambert noticed; sharp observation, one of the tools of the detective trade, had become a habit over the years, instinctive to him now rather than a conscious effort. Appearance must be important to a woman like this, he thought – to women in general, in fact. It was another cross they had to bear. He had long since ceased to care about how he presented himself, save for a very few occasions in his working year. He said, ‘We’ve been asking the older coppers in Gloucester for their recollections of seventeen Fairfax Street in 1995. As well as speaking with other occupants of that house, of course. We’ve come up with a surprising amount of information about the last days of our murder victim.’

‘That’s good. The police machine is very efficient, I know, when there’s a serious crime involved.’

More PR. Lambert ignored it completely and added, ‘And no doubt your own recollection of those days has been sharpened by two days of thinking about them.’

It was a deliberate challenge and both of them knew it. She could have reminded him that she had a strenuous business life, with many important considerations to occupy her, but she didn’t bother with such irrelevancies. ‘I can’t say that I’ve remembered anything which might be helpful to you. But no doubt you will wish to jog my memory with some of the things you and your team have discovered.’ She crossed her legs and gave him the encouraging smile she usually reserved for the more favoured among her juniors.

‘There were drugs in that squat. You admitted as much to us on Thursday.’

‘I don’t like that word “admitted”. I did my best to recall circumstances from twenty years ago, which I had been at pains to shut out of my life.’

‘Sorry for the semantics. You gave the impression of being reluctant to discuss the presence of drugs in that house. Tell us everything which you now remember about the drugs and the people involved with them, both as users and suppliers.’

She was being treated almost as a hostile witness here, she thought. But perhaps that was inevitable, when she’d told them so little on Thursday. How much more did they know now than when they had spoken to her then? Kate said carefully, ‘I’m not proud of my time in that house. I have a career to think of. I’ve genuinely shut out as much as I can of those days. I live in the present, not in 1995.’

‘As we all do, Ms Clark. That’s a truism. But we and you are now involved in the investigation of a murder which took place in 1995, and we have to examine your part in events which took place twenty years ago. Neither you nor we have any choice about that. Tell us about the drugs, please.’

Lambert was even, emotionless, uncompromising. His eyes had not left her since they came into the room. Kate Clark could not remember when she had last felt so disturbed; she could have handled this better if he’d been openly hostile. She tried to speak as evenly as her questioner. ‘I wasn’t a user, beyond the occasional spliff, which all of us took when we could get it. Julie Grimshaw was a user. I’m not an expert, but I don’t think she was an addict. She was quite a heavy user, however, and she seemed sometimes to need drugs, as I never did. It’s difficult to be certain, because I think there were times when most of us in that house were using anything we could to escape from the life we lived there.’

‘Who supplied the drugs?’

She paused, then spoke as if the words were being wrung from her on the rack. ‘Mick. As far as I can remember, he was the only one who brought drugs into the squat. I can remember Julie begging for him to give her horse, one day. I came in suddenly and went out again just as quickly. I didn’t want to get involved.’

‘And did she get the heroin she wanted?’

‘I think so. I don’t know for certain. I didn’t want to know. I was scared of drugs, especially hard drugs. You pretended to be quite blasé in the squat, but you were frightened underneath. I was, anyway.’

‘This Mick was the one who brought in the hard drugs?’

‘Yes. If there was any other source, I didn’t know of it.’

‘Surname?’

‘I don’t know. I never knew. We didn’t deal in surnames.’

‘Describe him, please.’

‘I can’t do that. Not in any detail. He was medium height and I think he had dark eyes. I remember them as deep-set, but there wasn’t much light in most rooms in the squat and I don’t remember seeing him much during the day. He had either a beard or extensive stubble. But a lot of men were like that in the squat. I suppose shaving wasn’t easy.’

‘He sold drugs, you say.’

‘I believe he did, yes. But mostly in other places than the squat. There wasn’t much money there.’

‘We now know from others as well as yourself that Julie Grimshaw was an extensive user. You think the drugs came from this man Mick. How did she pay for them?’

‘I don’t know how she paid for them. She didn’t tell me.’

‘Was she sleeping with him?’

Kate was trying to assess the importance of these questions for her, whilst appearing to answer quickly and helpfully. It wasn’t easy. ‘I don’t think so. She had this thing going with Andrew Burrell. I told you, I went to Lower Valley Farm with her once or twice. I know people do desperate things when they want drugs, but I don’t think she was dropping her pants for Mick. I don’t remember him even trying it on with her. He probably thought he could do better than a potential addict.’

‘Then how was she paying for drugs?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve wondered about that a little since we spoke on Thursday, but I haven’t come up with anything. Unless …’

‘Unless what, Ms Clark?’

‘I wish you’d call me Kate. I don’t know how she paid. She had some money when she came to the squat. And I think she sold her watch and a ring she had whilst we were there. I was trying hard to get her to give up the drugs, but she reckoned she needed them.’

‘So she was using at the time of her death. How do you think she was continuing to pay?’

‘I told you, I don’t know. But as you suggested to me on Thursday, I did suspect that Mick might be planning to recruit her as a seller. Provide her with her own supplies in return for selling a certain quantity of coke and horse and E.’

‘We know all about that. We also know that many of the people recruited to sell drugs on that basis become addicts and end up totally controlled by people higher up the drugs chain. Do you think that happened to Julie?’

‘No. I didn’t believe she was an addict at the time of her disappearance. I thought she was in danger of becoming one and I was trying to prevent that. I don’t believe that she’d sold out to the drug suppliers in that way.’

‘But you think this Mick might have been putting pressure on her to become a dealer?’

Kate shrugged her supple shoulders beneath the mohair and gave him a taut smile. ‘He might have been. I never saw him approach her and Julie didn’t tell me that he had. But it would have been a logical move, if he was looking for new dealers.’

‘You say you’ve thought about this since Thursday. Perhaps you have also considered a possible repercussion. If this Mick fellow approached Julie to sell drugs and she refused to cooperate, might he or his agents have killed her? Drugs are a massive and highly lucrative industry, but those at the bottom of the chain are very vulnerable, if they refuse what is offered. If they felt that Julie was likely to reveal the offer made to her and the identities of the people who had made it, she might well have been quietly and ruthlessly eliminated by them. Do you think that is what happened?’