Death of a Nobody (13 page)

‘I would have done what I could, certainly.’ It was safe to offer such assurances, now that they could not be tested. ‘But I’ve already told them Mr Faraday booked in by telephone, during Tuesday evening. I said I couldn’t remember the exact time. I suppose it must have been after the performance at the theatre.’

‘Told whom?’ Gabrielle felt suddenly cold.

‘The police came here yesterday, Mrs Faraday.’ He thought when her face froze that she was going to faint. ‘Do sit down, Mrs Faraday. I’ll get you some coffee.’ He seemed doomed to go on repeating that name which she had acknowledged now was false, as though he was deliberately taunting her.

She let him take her to the chair by the round mahogany table, but she would not let him escape to the kitchen. ‘What time did you tell them that we came here?’

‘It was a uniformed constable.’ He just managed to prevent himself from tacking on that ‘Mrs Faraday’ again. ‘Just a routine check, he said. I told him you didn’t get here until half an hour before midnight.’

17

One long wall of the travel agency shop was completely lined with the racks of brochures. Members of the public immersed themselves in these, with that concentration characteristic of the English when they are afraid that someone may try to sell them something. Behind the continuous surface of desk which ran down the other side of the room, three women of different ages tapped busily at their computers, recording and digesting the information which became instantly available to them from all over the country.

It was a large room, which had once been two. It was long and narrow, with the only natural light coming from the high-street window where some of the more popular foreign package holidays were displayed as bargains. At the rear of the area, strong neon lighting was necessary to ensure that the golden beaches and the azure seas were allowed to make their full effects.

In the small room behind this emporium of activity, the manager was being questioned about very different things. After the brilliance of the room in which the public moved, this small cell was a surprise. It seemed an odd setting for the chicly dressed figure who sat down before the CID men. Sarah Farrell had plans to turn it into a cosy rest room, but business had been too brisk since she had come here in the autumn for them to give it much attention. It was square and austerely furnished; the curtains were due for replacement and the walls for a coat of paint. The single light bulb above the small table had been given a new shade, but it provided only a dim illumination.

But perhaps Sarah Farrell had chosen the place for the paucity of its lighting. She had made herself up as carefully as a courtesan to receive them, but it still did not work. As soon as she had seated the two large men on the stand chairs, Lambert said, ‘That looks a nasty bang on your eye. Have you let a doctor see it?’

She had thought that even if he noticed it he might ignore it. But he was not an ordinary visitor, and this was not an ordinary conversation. His comment was not only a blow to her self-esteem but an indication of aggression. So there were to be no polite preliminaries in this exchange. She thought of that wine stain on the wall of her cottage, and was glad that she had chosen to meet the police here. These men would not have been deceived by a little rearrangement of the furniture.

She said, ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. I should have learned by now not to move about in the dark at nights.’ She tried the lie oblique, but it seemed no more convincing to her than the lie direct. Perhaps she should have offered no explanation at all.

Lambert smiled a little, not unkindly. ‘Did that also bruise your wrist, Miss Farrell?’

She looked down guiltily at the pale skin of her wrist, pulling the cuff of her blouse automatically to cover it, when it was too late. The livid bruising seemed to her to show clearly the imprint of the fingers which had gripped so hard. She thought of the marks they would never see, on her shoulders and back, of the fist in her side which she thought had damaged a rib. Suddenly the deception no longer seemed worthwhile. ‘All right. I was knocked about. By a man, of course.’

He looked at the greening of the blackness around her eye, thinking that the timing was about right for a connection with this case, to judge by the development of the injury. Years ago, when he had begun as a beat copper in the East End, sorting out Saturday-night domestic disputes, he had become an expert on ‘shiners’. With her blonde hair and white, almost transparent skin, Sarah Farrell was ill equipped to conceal the results of violence. He felt a sudden sympathy for her, when he looked at the efforts she had made with her make-up and saw how ineffective they had been. He said abruptly, ‘When was this? And who did it?’

‘It was on Tuesday night, after you’d left me at my home. So you can guess who did it.’

‘James Berridge, then. You know that he was found dead the next day?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you know also why we are here. In a murder enquiry, we have to find out everything we can about the movements of the victim in the last hours before his death.’

She nodded, showing the top of her neatly coiffured blonde head. She had tried at first to pull hair down over her blackened eye, but with the short-cut style that had merely looked ridiculous. Curiously, with the revelation of the truth about her injuries, she felt a welcome composure drop back upon her. In the quiet room, they could just hear the chatter of the computer keyboards from the other side of the wall. She was on her own ground, where people came to her for decisions and she rarely had to hesitate. She was able to give her CID visitors a rueful little smile as she said, ‘I’ve just told you that he knocked me about in the hours before he was murdered. I suppose that’s not a good start for me, is it?’

Bert Hook, opening his notebook to record what was to come, tried not to feel too much sympathy for this small, neat figure. The combination of the marks denoting her physical vulnerability and the air of calm competence as she prepared to answer their questions was curiously moving to him. He said, ‘You will understand that we need an account of your movements at the time when James Berridge was killed. For elimination purposes, you see.’

‘I understand.’

Lambert said, ‘That means that we need to know what you did on Tuesday evening between the time I left you and midnight.’

Her blue eyes flashed up and fixed on his, and he saw surprise in them. ‘He was killed that night?’

‘Sometime before midnight, we think.’ There seemed no point now in stretching the possible time of the killing beyond this.

‘I’m sorry I tried to protect Jim when you came to my place. He didn’t deserve it.’

‘No. He was an evil man. I can’t regret his removal, but the law says I must investigate his death.’ He watched the open, damaged face. James Berridge’s mistress didn’t seem to be grieving any more than the rest of his acquaintances for him. ‘I think you had better tell me what happened after I left your cottage on Tuesday night, Miss Farrell.’

‘We had an argument. I tried to question him about the things you’d been asking him about. About the drug dealing. About the murder of that man you said he’d had killed—’

‘Charlie Pegg.’

‘That’s right. Jim told me to shut up and mind my own business. He’d never spoken to me like that before.’ She clasped her hands on the lap of her smooth woollen skirt, twisting them as she recollected the dawning horror of that exchange. ‘I think I realized at that moment what he really was. It hadn’t occurred to me until then how little I knew about him. I’d only known him for a few months, but he’d always treated me kindly; I even thought I mattered a little to him.’ She looked for a moment as if she was going to weep; the swollen eyelid fluttered like a technicoloured signal. In the end, she did not dissolve as they thought she would. But it was an effort, and for a moment she could not speak.

Lambert, filling the interval for her, knowing that he must persuade her to continue talking, said quietly, It’s not unknown, you know. The American gangster bosses often treated women and children close to them kindly, so long as they represented no threat to their criminal activities. Perhaps they found it agreeable to develop another side of their personalities in private. But conscience didn’t extend to their business activities.’

He was amazed, as he often was, by the naivety of females who were otherwise sophisticated and successful women of the world. But then he had known plenty of men do foolish things when sex reared its beguiling head. He wondered if this brisk professional woman had really been as innocent of knowledge about Berridge as she claimed. If Berridge had really knocked her about, that put her one up in Lambert’s book. But it also gave her a prime motive for the murder of her assailant. He said, ‘Did you ever see Berridge with a pistol?’

Those bright blue eyes were too revealing for the good of their owner. He watched her hesitate about a deception, then decide to tell him the truth. ‘Yes. Only once. He had it in the glove box in the car. I was getting a map out when I saw it. But I don’t think he minded. It frightened me, but he quite liked to see that. He enjoyed the feeling of power it gave him, I think.’

‘Did you ever see him use it?’

‘Oh, no. I don’t think he had it with him very often. I only saw it on that one occasion. He’d just come back from a meeting in London, I think.’

It was suddenly very important to her that these two large, impassive men believed her. She said, ‘The radio bulletin said he was shot in the head. Was it — was it with that gun?’

‘We think so, yes.’

He regarded her steadily, watching the idea sink in that she could have gone with him that Tuesday night, could have killed him with that weapon after they had fallen out with each other. Then he said, ‘What was it that led up to him hitting you, Miss Farrell?’

The bright blue eyes looked hard at him for a moment. At that moment, Sarah Farrell’s distrust extended to all men. She would have liked to tell this persistent superintendent to go and hang himself, but reason told her that she must deal with these people, if she was to be done with the mess in which she had landed herself. Their questions still felt like an invasion of her privacy. She said reluctantly, ‘He lost his temper when I asked him if there was anything in what you had said. Said I was all right for bedding, but I should stick to my trade. Then he told me I must drive him to meet someone.’

‘Who?’

‘He wouldn’t say.’

‘Where?’

‘He never got round to that. I dug my heels in and said I wouldn’t take him. That turned out to be a mistake.’

Her hand strayed unconsciously to the point where her side still throbbed. Lambert’s eyes followed the movement, guessing what lay beneath the small fist and the navy fabric. ‘What happened next?’

‘He picked up my phone and rang somewhere. When they answered, he told them to get someone to the phone. One of the men you’d mentioned a few minutes earlier when you questioned him, I think.’

‘Sturley?’

‘That’s it. He sent me out of the room while he spoke to him, but I could see afterwards that he was worried. I’d changed into my dressing gown. He told me to get dressed. Said that I was going to be a useful bitch for once, instead of just an easy screw.’ The pain of the phrases soaked her face in dismay, making her for a moment more desolate than all her physical hurts.

Lambert said, ‘And you refused again?’

‘Yes. I told him to get out. That’s when he hit me. He was shouting obscenities at me, but I wouldn’t cry out. I — I remember wondering how much the neighbours could hear! That’s the way I was brought up, you see. Anyway, I think I must have passed out for a minute or two. When I came round, he was gone.’

Bert Hook leaned forward over his notebook. ‘I’m sorry, but we shall need to check this out, if we can. Have you spoken to your neighbours since?’

‘No. I wasn’t anxious to show anyone my face.’

‘I understand that. Do you think any of them heard what went on between the two of you in your cottage?’

‘I doubt it. Mr Lambert knows that I live in the end cottage of four. There was certainly no one in the one next door to me at the time when this happened: I checked the lights. I was quite relieved about it at the time. Is it important?’

Hook said, ‘It may be. An independent witness would establish that the argument and the assault took place at the time you say they did. With luck, he or she might even be able to confirm that Berridge left your place when you say he did, and alone.’

This time her face filled with alarm, not revulsion. ‘You mean that I might have gone with him. Might have killed him later that evening, at his place.’ She spoke slowly, working it out for herself, her eyes widening in an accompanying horror at the realization of her position. ‘God, why did I ever let a man like him into my bed?’

Lambert suspected that it was because even successful and self-sufficient women could be as lonely as anyone else. But that was not his concern. He said, ‘No one is claiming that that is what happened. What Sergeant Hook is saying is merely that it would be useful if we could eliminate the possibility from this investigation. And you with it. That is why we shall be questioning your neighbours: it is very much in your interest that we should find someone to confirm the facts you have given us.’

They left her then, going out at her request through the back door of the premises. They were back in the Vauxhall, easing their way along the busy main street of the town, when the car phone bleeped insistently. The reception was not good between the high buildings, but the crackling made Rushton’s message only more dramatic. ‘We’ve processed the prints volunteered for elimination purposes now. And one of them matches with the print on the murder weapon.’ Even through the interference, they caught the rise in his voice with the excitement.

Lambert was driving, so that it was Hook who said, ‘Which one?’

‘Ian Faraday’s. Do we bring him in now?’