Too Much of Water (25 page)

He said, ‘I know nothing. Nothing which can be of any use to you. What is it that you want me to tell you?' He folded his thin arms resolutely across his chest, as if stilling his too mobile body by a fierce effort of will.

‘You could start by telling us your real name.' Lambert's tone was friendly, not hostile. He knew that he held all the cards in the strange game he had to play against this nervous opponent.

‘My name is Denis Pimbury.' He pronounced it carefully, throwing all the conviction he could muster behind each syllable.

Lambert remained amiable as he said firmly, ‘Whatever your name is, it isn't Pimbury. You made an unwise choice there.'

‘I do not understand what you mean. I have passport. My name is Denis Pimbury.' He reiterated the words slowly, like a mantra, as if with sufficient repetition he could make them into the truth.

‘No, Denis. We shall call you Denis, if you wish it: it suits us to call you something. But we shall not call you Pimbury. The only living holder of that name was seventy-three last month. That is such a curious fact that it was reported in the newspapers – on the front page of
The Times
, to be precise. I don't know how you picked up the name, but it was a most unfortunate choice. I hope you did not pay too much for that bogus passport.'

Denis saw his world disintegrating before his eyes, glimpsed his ruin in the calm, compassionate face of this senior policeman, who spoke so quietly and sympathetically to him. He said woodenly, ‘I am British. My mother lived abroad since I was infant. I come back here to work. To make a living. To make my life here.' He could feel hysteria rising in his voice on the successive phrases. Perhaps that did not matter now. Perhaps it was all over. As suddenly as this. When he had thought that things were coming right at last, were falling into place for him.

Lambert glanced at Bert Hook, who said, ‘Maybe that is still possible. Maybe you can still make a life here.'

‘But you do not believe me. You say passport no good.' He did not trust these strange policemen who came in ordinary clothes and offered false hopes. Policemen were not like this. At worst they were instruments of darkness, who snuffed out your life and went on their way. At best, they were harsh figures, instruments of government, who cast you into prison and left you there to rot without trial whilst the world forgot you. These men must have their own agenda, must be playing him like a fish on the end of a line for their own ends.

Hook saw the desperation in the narrow features and understood most of the fear behind them. He said, ‘I'm afraid that passport won't be much use to you, as you say. But Superintendent Lambert and I aren't concerned with illegal immigration into the country. Someone else will be following that up, in due course. But Mr Harrison says that you have been a model worker here, Denis. He is willing to offer you permanent employment, if your entry into this country can be regularized.'

Denis had a facility for languages, and he had picked up English very quickly. But now, with his world crashing about his ears and his mind reeling, he understood little of Hook's formal, guarded language, and trusted even less. He repeated blankly, ‘I good worker. I give no trouble here. Mr Harrison will speak for me.'

Lambert said quietly, ‘We need to ask you some questions about another matter altogether. We are CID officers, investigating murder.'

So that was it. They had been softening him up with all the illegal-immigrant stuff, telling him that he had no hope, that he might as well confess and get it over with. Denis looked into the long, lined face and mustered all the conviction he could summon into this strange new language as he said, ‘I not kill anyone.'

‘Perhaps not. But you'll need to convince us of that. There are certain factors which are not in your favour.' What a stupid, roundabout phrase that was, Lambert thought, what a pitiful substitute for direct accusation. He realized that his desire to study this man and his reactions had taken over, when bluntness would be more effective on both sides. He said, ‘You took certain items to a pawnshop in Gloucester. A brooch and a ring, both of considerable value.'

He had accepted too little for them. He knew even at the time that he should have demanded more, but he had been able to think only of getting out of that claustrophobic shop and away from that calm, assessing woman, who had seemed to read his every thought. Denis spoke softly, trying to pick his words and avoid other things they could use against him. ‘They were mine, those things. I thought I should have the money from them. I had no one to give them to.'

There was a whole world of heartbreak in that last pathetic confession. Lambert nodded his acceptance of the logic of this disposal, studied the tortured young face for a second or two before he said, ‘A valuable diamond ring and an emerald brooch. Where did you get these things, Denis?'

He wondered whether to say they had come from his mother, that mythical mother who had taken him abroad as an infant. But they had already told him that they did not believe the myth; probably they knew exactly where these things had come from and were just trying to trap him into lies. He said in a voice they could scarcely hear, ‘I got them from Clare.'

‘From Clare Mills?'

‘Yes.'

‘After she had been killed.'

‘No. Clare gave them to me.'

‘That doesn't ring true, Denis. You removed the ring and the brooch from Clare Mills's body after she had been killed, didn't you?'

‘No. She gave them to me.' He wanted to say that she had given them to him when she had been a living, affectionate, smiling girl, that she had wanted him to have them. But all he could produce was this stubborn denial, these few poor monosyllables which sat like ashes on his tongue, and told these men whose task was to be suspicious that he had killed Clare.

Bert Hook said gently, almost cajolingly, ‘You'll need to convince us of that, Denis. You must see how it looks, to anyone viewing the situation from outside.'

Denis stared at him, trying to work out why he was offering him such understanding, thinking that this man with the earnest, weather-beaten face was so unlike any other policeman he had met. ‘I didn't want to take them. You not believe that, but it is true. Clare said that she did not want them, that there were reasons why she did not want them.'

‘And can you tell us what these reasons were?'

Denis wanted to thank Hook for not dismissing his protestations out of hand, wanted to come up with a convincing reason why Clare had given him such an unlikely gift. But his English wasn't up to delivering the invention, even if his racing mind could have produced one. ‘No. I not ask her. I think Clare did not want to talk about it.'

Lambert thought that Bert Hook had offered too much sympathy to this man who was in the frame for murder, that he should have gone hard for him, been cynical, forced him into whatever justification of his conduct he could offer. But he had worked with Hook for a long time now, and he had seen him successful so often in drawing out unlikely facts that he trusted his intuition, trusted him to build bridges when he knew that he himself would have been altogether more harsh. Lambert now said sceptically, ‘You're asking us to believe that Clare Mills gave these valuable items to you whilst she was still alive, and without any pressure from you?'

‘Yes. Is the truth.' His Eastern European accent came out strongly, more guttural than he had heard it for months, telling him that the strain of his sudden downfall was getting to him.

‘And why would she do that?'

‘I not know. She just did.' He had held himself rigid with tension, but on this simple, hopeless statement he forced a shrug, and he was so little in control of his body that the sudden violent movement of his shoulders threw him off balance and almost deposited him in a heap on the floor. He had to clutch the wood beneath his knees to preserve his position upon the edge of the wooden chair.

Lambert thrust in the steel which Hook had eschewed. ‘You must see that the logical conclusion for us as CID men is that you killed the girl, then removed the jewellery from her body before consigning the corpse to the river. You deny that this is what actually happened, but you provide us with no reasons to believe you.'

Denis stared at him, his deep-set eyes widening in their sockets. Were they really prepared to listen to him? Or was it all an elaborate charade, inviting him to condemn himself from his own mouth? He said, ‘Clare did not tell me why she wanted to be rid of those two things. I do not think she wanted me to ask her about that.' He paused, searching for words which would not come to him. ‘She said I would need money, if I was to stay here.'

‘Because of the way you had come here, you mean? Clare knew that you were an illegal immigrant?'

He sought desperately for a way out, but could see none. They had told him they knew all about this, that the elaborate precautions he had taken to establish himself here had all been torn away like so much highly expensive tissue paper. ‘Yes, Clare knew that. But she was sympathetic. She wanted to help me. She said she had no use for these two pieces of jewellery, that I should have them to help me to make a proper life for myself here.'

It was just possible, Lambert supposed, but desperately thin. ‘When did she give you the ring and the brooch?'

‘On the tenth of June.'

Surprisingly precise. He wouldn't speculate about the reasons for the precision, at the moment. ‘So why didn't you take them and sell them immediately? You say that she invited you to do that.'

‘I didn't want to take them. I kept trying to give them back to her.' He scratched at his brain for anything which would add substance to this unlikely thought, could come up only with a pathetic, ‘Clare was my friend.'

‘But you took them to the pawnshop on Tuesday, ten days after Clare Mills was killed.'

‘Yes. Clare wasn't here any more to take them back. Those things reminded me of my dead friend, the first person in England who really tried to help me. I didn't want to see them in my room for any longer.'

‘What did you want the money for? What were you planning to buy with it? Because you weren't planning to redeem the goods from that pawnshop, were you?'

‘No.' The reasons he had to give were so vague, so unlikely, that he wondered if he should even begin the struggle to put them into words. ‘In my own country, before the war in Kosovo, I was medical student. I was going to be doctor. I talked to Clare about her mother, about what I knew about autism and Asperger's syndrome. I thought when I was established here, I would see if I could try again to be doctor.'

He stared at the floor, unwilling to look into his questioner's eyes after this bizarre suggestion. Lambert let long seconds drag by before he said, ‘Did you know Ian Walker?'

‘Yes. Clare's husband. Ex-husband. He not nice man.'

‘Why do you say that?'

‘He threaten Clare. He try to get money from her, when she did not have money to give him. Walker bad man.'

‘He's dead now, Denis.'

‘I know. I'm not sorry.'

‘Did you kill him?'

‘No.' But he did not seem at all surprised at the suggestion.

‘He died on Monday night.'

‘Yes. I read about it. He was shot.'

‘Did you shoot him, Denis?'

‘No.'

‘Where were you on Monday evening?'

‘At home. At my room in Gloucester.'

‘On your own?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you didn't go out during the evening?'

‘No.'

Lambert nodded, watching Hook make notes in his round, clear hand. ‘You come to work here on a bicycle each day, I believe.'

‘Yes. That is correct.'

‘So you could easily have ridden out into the Forest of Dean on that evening and killed Ian Walker. It's only half the distance you ride to come to this farm each day.'

‘Yes, I could have done that. But I did not do it.' Denis was beyond caring whether they believed him any more. His situation in this strange, desirable country, which he had so quickly come to love, seemed hopeless. He couldn't understand why they did not arrest him.

Instead, they noted his address in Gloucester, told him to carry on with his work on the farm for the moment. Other policemen would be coming to see him about his situation, which couldn't be allowed to continue. They told him that almost as though they regretted it.

John Lambert did not reply when Bert Hook offered his opinion on the road back to Oldford that the man known as Denis hadn't done either of their murders. It was perhaps his silence as they drove through the Herefordshire lanes that drew from Hook the proposition that Denis might make rather a good doctor.

Lambert thought that was perhaps the most unlikely thought so far in this whole unlikely case.

D
I Rushton had heard all about Judith Hudson. He switched to the Internet, put up Asperger's syndrome on his computer and read a little about it before venturing out into the Forest of Dean to see this woman who was such a puzzle to the CID team.

It was a strange meeting, this one between the handsome policeman with few of the social graces and the woman who seemed to become more and more locked into her own world as the stress of events increased around her.

Chris said with stiff apology, ‘I'm sorry to come here with questions at this time. I know you will feel that you have had quite enough of questions.'

‘It is a busy time in the garden. You would not think it, perhaps, but as we approach the end of spring and move into high summer, everything grows apace. You have difficulty keeping up with things. The grass needs mowing twice a week.'

She spoke like a gardening page in the local paper. He looked at her closely for the first time. She did not seem as though she was being wilfully oblique. Chris sought desperately to establish some sort of link with her. ‘The death of your daughter must have been a great shock for you.'