Remains to be Seen (10 page)

‘And your CID section made the arrests?'

Tucker saw rescue at last: this bitter, beaten-up journo had surely overplayed his hand. ‘That was indeed our function. The key phase of the whole operation, if I may say so.' He gave his audience a beam, hoping for answering and congratulatory smiles. It was the wrong audience.

‘At which you chose to be absent.' Houldsworth nodded seriously and made a note.

Tucker threw a patronizing smile at the bent grey head. ‘Mr Houldsworth obviously does not understand police procedures. My duties as Head of CID were to provide the strategy for success, to select the best team, to maintain an overview of the situation.'

‘So the tactics for this very successful series of arrests were yours, not DCI Peach's?' Houldsworth's watery but experienced blue eyes were now lifted, wide and innocent, towards the man on the dais.

Tucker wondered if his involuntary wince at the mention of Peach's name had been apparent in the crowded room. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Peach is an able and experienced officer. I always give such men room for manoeuvre. They need to be able to react to swiftly changing events.' The familiar phrases which should have slipped smoothly from his tongue felt dry in his mouth. ‘I really cannot reveal any more of the detail, you know. It might prejudice the success of future operations of this kind.'

Houldsworth nodded an unexpected acceptance. Then the forty-year-old woman at his side, a former protégée of Alf's at the
Daily Express
, looked up for the first time from her notes and said, ‘There was a serious fire at Marton Towers last night.'

It was a statement, not a question, leaving Tucker no room for evasion. ‘I believe there was. It had nothing to do with our very successful capture of the drugs barons.'

‘You're convinced of that, are you? Our latest information is that the origin of the fire may not be accidental.'

Tucker regretted once again that he had not taken the latest briefing before going into the TV make-up room. Perhaps his visit to his hairdresser hadn't been such a good idea, after all. It was no use asking this unsmiling, hatchet-faced woman where she had heard this; he'd get the usual stuff about protecting her sources. The most direct of which was no doubt in this case the deplorable Alf Houldsworth. Tucker said stiffly, ‘That is the first suggestion I have heard that arson might be involved. However, I repeat that, as far as I am aware, the fire was totally unconnected with our very successful raid.'

‘As far as you are aware.' Her brief nod over her notebook conveyed that this man did not seem to be aware of very much. She kept her voice studiously low-key as she put her final question. ‘And can you give us any further news on the body found at the scene of the fire?'

Tucker was disconcerted that she should know of this, dismayed to see the looks he was getting from the television and radio teams, to whom he had said nothing of either the fire or the death. He said testily, ‘We do not yet know whether this is a suspicious death or not. I shall authorize a press release tomorrow, when we are fully acquainted with the facts.'

But the buzz as the correspondents hurried from the room to file their stories was all about these last two questions and his non-answers, not about his calm and urbane television performance.

Not for the first time, Thomas Bulstrode Tucker wondered quite how things could have gone so wrong.

The radio and television broadcasts on that Thursday evening carried Tucker's interview about the arrests of the major drugs criminals in the splendid but isolated setting at Marton Towers. It was news, good news, and stressed as such by the newsreader who introduced it.

But the successful attack on a drugs empire might not have been the lead item on the national news without the two simple facts which gave it an electrifying postscript. There had been a major fire at the big house in Lancashire during the hours following these important arrests, with a speculation that arson might be involved. And the charred remnants of a human corpse had been found among the debris. A stark statement, with no further details. But a sensational statement: the newsreader's satisfaction in that thought seeped into his professionally neutral tones.

Tucker had gone home to lick his wounds after the chastening conclusion to his media conference, but at eight o'clock that night, DCI Peach and DS Blake and most of the CID section were still at the station, setting up the elaborate machinery of a murder enquiry.

This one was more than usually complex. They would need to interview the people who had been arrested on serious but very different charges on the previous night, to find out whether they knew anything about either the fire or the body. They would need to interview the resident staff of the Towers, who had nothing to do with the drugs trafficking but who had been evacuated because of the fire danger on the previous night. They would need to identify and interview whatever other dubious characters had been in and out of the large estate in the period before the fire.

At present, they had no idea how far back into the past their researches would have to extend. Because at present they had no accurate idea of when this as yet unidentified man had died.

The man in charge of all the permanent employees at Marton Towers had been overseeing the meal and its aftermath when the police intervened so dramatically on Wednesday night. As a result of this involvement, he had been arrested, along with everyone else close to the men at that meeting.

Now, almost twenty-four hours later, after some intensive questioning of him and others, the officers of the National Crime Squad had satisfied themselves that this man of fifty-seven was not involved in any but the most peripheral way in the drugs traffic. It was almost nine o'clock when a weary inspector came into the Brunton CID section and signified that they were prepared to release him.

Peach nodded. ‘We'll have to let him go soon, if we're not prepared to charge him with anything. But I'd like a word with him first. We have what may well prove to be a murder investigation to conduct. If he's in charge of the staff up there, he'll be able to tell us things about the other people who live there. Until we can eliminate him, he's a murder suspect himself. I'd like to see him whilst he's still officially under arrest, still feeling under threat from the law and brutal policemen like me.'

After last night's operation and the very full day which had followed it, the Detective Chief Inspector was feeling unusually tired. But he took a deep breath outside the interview-room door, then bounced into the room as if he had just come on duty, fresh and full of energy. ‘I'm DCI Peach and this radiant creature is DS Blake. And you are Mr Neville Holloway. I'm sure you won't have any objections to our recording what we have to say to each other in here, Mr Holloway. These machines save a lot of complications, when people remember things differently later on.'

The silver-haired man in front of him looked balefully at the cassette recorder Peach had set turning, then up into the cheerful, almost boyish, round face beneath the fringe of black hair and the bald head. ‘I've said all I have to say. I know nothing about any of this drugs stuff.'

‘I heard you'd been saying that. Repeatedly, apparently.' Peach nodded casually, as if to indicate that he himself was still unconvinced. ‘Still under arrest, though, at the moment.' He smiled cheerfully, as if that was a most happy state of affairs. ‘And no doubt still, as a responsible and innocent citizen, anxious to help the police with their enquiries in any way you can.'

‘I've already been interviewed for hours. You should either charge me with something or let me out of here.'

‘Know a little about the law, do you, Mr Holloway? I suppose I should have expected that.'

‘What do you mean. I'm not a lawyer, and I've no knowledge of—'

‘Been in trouble with the law in the past, though, haven't you? So I'd expect you to know a little bit about your rights.'

Neville Holloway glared at him, then shrugged wearily. ‘All right, I've got a record. It's a long time ago, and I did my time, but it's once a villain always a villain, isn't it, with you lot?'

Peach nodded his head happily. ‘A lot of us are what you might call unenlightened in our attitudes, yes. Perhaps it's because statistics so often support the view you've just expressed. Recidivism, I believe they call it, the people who claim to know about such things. Serious crime, fraud. On the increase, nowadays, unfortunately.'

‘I did my two years.'

‘Paid your debt to society, as they say. Seventeen years ago. No further record of offences, the computer says.'

‘That's because there haven't been any. And I didn't have any connection with these drugs offences that people have been pressing me about all day.'

‘Do you know, I'm almost inclined to believe that, Mr Holloway? But then, I always see the best in people. Bit of a soft touch – I expect that's my reputation among the local criminal fraternity. You've developed a different career for yourself now. You're the butler at Marton Towers.'

Neville Holloway smiled for the first time since Peach had mounted his challenge. ‘Not the butler, Chief Inspector. Mr Crouch doesn't go in for such old-fashioned terms. And you could say my remit is a little wider than that. I'm in charge of the day-to-day running of Marton Towers – responsible for all the staff, not just those in the house, but those employed throughout the estate.'

‘Pity you're not a butler: I've always fancied arresting one of them. But then no corpse was found skewered to the floor in the library. I'm charged with investigating an even more serious crime than trafficking in illegal drugs, you see, Mr Holloway. That's why we're still closeted together in this rather unpleasant little room at quarter past nine on a cold March night.'

‘More serious?' Neville Holloway had told himself a moment ago that he was not going to give this annoying little turkey-cock of an inspector any more reactions, but this one was prised from him by his surprise.

‘Murder, Mr Holloway.' Despite the calculated levity of his approach, which was designed to irritate a man fatigued by hours of questioning, Peach was watching his man closely. Holloway seemed to be genuinely surprised. But if he had any involvement in this death, it would have been good policy to feign ignorance. ‘You are no doubt aware of the serious fire which damaged the former stable block at Marton Towers last night. One of the things found amongst the debris this morning was a body.'

Holloway looked suitably impressed. He thought for a moment and said, ‘I was arrested along with the visitors to the house last night, and I have been in custody since that moment. Plainly I had no connection with that fire, which began after we had been taken away from Marton Towers.'

Peach smiled at such naivety. ‘If only things were so simple, Mr Holloway! You could have set a device to ignite when you were off the premises. Or you could have paid someone else to start the blaze when you were safely elsewhere. But I'm a bit of a soft touch, as I told you, so let's assume for the moment that you had nothing to do with the fire. It doesn't let you off the murder hook, I'm afraid. This person didn't die in the fire. This person died some time before it started.'

‘Who is it? And when did she die?'

Peach, having carefully left the gender of the corpse out of his information, was delighted with this. ‘Now why should you assume that the body was female? Did you have some reason to expect a female victim? That's what I have to ask myself. It's a natural question, wouldn't you say, DS Blake?'

‘Indeed it is, sir. Can you explain your reaction to us, sir?'

Holloway found himself more shaken by this studiously polite question from a pretty young woman than by Peach's truculent ironies. You expected policemen to be nasty and aggressive: he felt he could cope with that. He said, ‘I can't explain it, no. I suppose that numerically, we have twice as many women as men employed at the Towers, so it was perhaps logical for me to assume this was a woman.'

More logical than it was for the SOCO officer to assume the same thing, Lucy thought wryly. She glanced at Peach, then said, ‘The victim was a man, sir. The body was so badly damaged that it has not been possible to identify it yet. Have you any idea who this man might be?'

His first impulse was to protest complete ignorance immediately. Instead, he paused for a moment, as if to give the matter serious thought, before he said, ‘Probably someone who worked on the estate, you'd think, wouldn't you? I'm not aware that any of our current employees has gone missing, but if we include the people who come in daily, quite large numbers are involved.'

‘And you can no doubt give us those numbers.' She poised a small gold ball-pen over the pad in front of her.

‘There are currently seven staff who live on the premises and eight more who come in each day. That does not include cleaners who come in for a few hours a week as required.' Despite his exhaustion, a little pride crept into his tone with the precision which came so effortlessly.

Peach's heart sank at the thought of the number of people who would need to be eliminated. He said with a grim little smile, ‘You're obviously in touch with most things which happen at the Towers. We shall no doubt need to speak to you again, when we know more of the details of this death. You'll be released in the next half an hour, Mr Holloway.'

He switched the cassette recorder off and sat looking thoughtfully at the machine after the tall, erect man had left the room. ‘It would be nice, wouldn't it? But it's too much to hope for, I'm sure.'

Nice wasn't a word DS Blake associated with Percy Peach. She said cautiously, ‘What would be too much to hope for?'

‘To be able to go upstairs to Tommy Bloody Tucker and tell him that it was the butler what did it!'