Rest Assured (15 page)

‘They don't want to hear that, Michael. They're busy men.' Tiler was apologetic to the police officers, affectionate towards his partner.

‘Yes. Yes, I'm sorry. Well, I remember seeing the new moorhen chicks at the edge of the lake and feeling glad to be alive. And then I met Debbie Keane.' He giggled at the unwitting joke he had made with this juxtaposition, revealing again how nervous he was. ‘She was very upset, as you'd expect, because she couldn't find Wally. Apparently he'd been missing since late last night.'

‘Yes. Did she tell you why she hadn't looked for him earlier?'

‘She said she'd gone to bed without knowing that Wally hadn't come back to their home. Apparently he spends a lot of time using the computer in his own room. She said they sleep apart and she didn't realize he wasn't around until he didn't appear with their morning cups of tea.' Norrington clasped his hands and wrung them together, as if he needed some gesture of apology to mitigate this betrayal of the Keanes' domestic arrangements. ‘I said I'd have a look round to see if I could locate Wally. Fortunately, George Martindale turned up at that moment and more or less took over. He's a much more practical man than I am, is George.'

Hook, who had his notebook open but who had so far made scarcely an entry, said briskly, ‘And the two of you discovered the body hanging from the oak tree, in the wood beyond the larger lake. We have your statement about that.'

‘Yes. I'm glad I wasn't on my own for that.'

‘Mr Norrington, this is very important. Did you see anyone else around the site? Was there anyone near the place where you found the body?'

‘No.' He spoke very promptly, then apparently felt the need to explain himself. ‘It was still very early, you know. The sun was climbing, but it was still only around six o'clock.'

Lambert said curtly, ‘Who do you think killed Walter Keane, Mr Norrington?'

‘Not me, for a start.' His hands flicked in the air in front of him as if they were not within his control. ‘Sorry. Bad taste, that. Frivolous, as well; this is a serious matter. I've been thinking about who might have killed him, ever since your officer indicated to me that it wasn't suicide. But I haven't come up with anything. I didn't know Wally as well as some people around here, but I can't think why anyone would want to kill him. He could be irritating, I think, but no more than that.'

He looked to Tiler for confirmation, and his companion said calmly, ‘We've been discussing the matter for most of the day, as you can imagine. We haven't come up with anyone who might have done this. We thought it might be an outsider, but that's probably wishful thinking. You don't want it to be anyone you know, still less someone you consider to be a friend.'

Hook said firmly, ‘We need to know where both of you were last night, so that we can eliminate you from any suspicion. This is routine. It's part of the process we are applying to everyone on the site.'

He had expected an overwrought reaction from Norrington, but the two had obviously anticipated the question and discussed their reactions to it. Norrington did not look at Tiler as he said, ‘We were together for the whole of the evening and the whole of the night.'

Geoffrey Tiler said quietly, ‘I can confirm that. It may not be what you wanted to hear, but it is the truth.'

‘The truth is all we want, sir, from everyone on the site. One person, possibly two people, will probably be lying. It will be our job over the next day or two to find out who they are.'

‘Possibly two?' said Tiler.

‘It is very possible that more than one person was involved in this death. A partnership would have made murder easier in several respects.'

Tiler saw them through the door, then moved to the flower bed beside their home and removed a couple of weeds from it as his visitors departed. He went back into the unit and said to Michael evenly, ‘Possibly a partnership, they think.'

There was a steady stream of traffic on the A49 between Leominster and Hereford. You would have expected that on a sunny Saturday afternoon in midsummer. Not many lorries or trailers, of course. George Martindale would have welcomed some heavy commercial vehicles around him. Somehow, the great wall of a high van in front of him would have offered him greater cover than a string of cars on pleasure outings.

His new red Ford Focus seemed shiny and far too noticeable on this mission. The boys had wanted that colour when they saw it in the showroom. He would have chosen some more muted colour himself, but he'd been happy enough to defer to them at the time. The sign that told him he was entering the village of Hope Under Dinmore came up all too quickly. Such an innocent-sounding name, to be selected for a sinister transaction.

That was stupid thinking, George told himself firmly. The transfer which would take place here was but a tiny segment of the evil abroad in the world; the merest fraction of the vice that must be occurring even in a rural and thinly peopled county such as Herefordshire. He was helping to supply a demand, that was all. A demand which would be met, whether he was part of the supply chain or not.

Thus the old arguments and the old evasions swam through his mind. They remained as unconvincing as they always were.

The lay-by came into view precisely when he expected it, exactly one mile south of the village of Hope Under Dinmore. They were nothing if not accurate, these people. He indicated in good time, then swung carefully into the parking provided. His was the only car here; he felt very conspicuous in the bright red Focus. He should have brought a newspaper. The map-book was all he had to pore over as he waited. There was no reason why a man in a bright red Focus should not be consulting maps to find his way, but he felt very noticeable and very spurious.

He didn't actually wait in the lay-by for very long, but the minutes felt to the naturally active George Martindale to stretch towards hours. Seven minutes after he had cruised into the lay-by, a Mondeo Graphite drew up not more than four feet behind him. The same make of vehicle, and a single black man of about his own age at the wheel. That might have made Martindale feel easier, but it didn't.

The man behind him was very visible, even magnified, in George's rear-view mirror. He was broad-shouldered. He had short, grizzled hair and he wore sunglasses with wide black lenses. They were appropriate wear for a sunny July day, but they made the man look even more threatening. That impression was not mitigated by the man's movements, or lack of them. He sat there motionless for a full two minutes, gazing at the car in front of him and the driver at its wheel.

When he eventually detached himself unhurriedly from his vehicle, it was almost a relief to the man awaiting his attention. George had fully opened all the windows in his vehicle whilst he waited, but the Focus still felt altogether too warm. The man was bigger and wider when he stood upright than he had appeared to be when sitting in the Mondeo.

He had to bend quite low to put his elbows on the sill of the driver's door of the Focus. Although he was now very close, George could still not see his eyes behind the black spheres of his sunglasses. It made people more sinister when you could not see their eyes, because it made it much more difficult to follow what they were thinking. The eyes were windows to the soul. Mary had told George that. He didn't wish to investigate this man's soul.

‘Payment up front.' The Mondeo driver was a man of few words.

‘This isn't a normal drop. This is an extra I've been forced to accept.'

The merest quiver of those huge shoulders. Nothing as violent as a shrug. ‘I've got my orders, same as you've got yours. Payment up front.'

Barbadian, George reckoned, by his accent. No help there. Those from the small island of Barbados had little sympathy for men from their bullying bigger West Indian neighbour, Jamaica. He glanced behind him, saw that the lay-by still held only their two cars, and slid a polythene package containing a bundle of notes swiftly from beside his seat into the big receiving hands. ‘There's a grand there in tens and twenties.'

The sunglasses dipped briefly towards it. ‘I won't count it. You wouldn't be stupid enough to try to cheat these people. Neither of us would.'

For a moment, they were two men united by a mutual resentment of the anonymous and powerful forces which controlled them. Then the man outside the car stooped and produced the box which had hitherto been out of Martindale's vision. ‘It's good stuff. Mostly coke and horse. Make sure you make the most of it.'

George took the box, nodded sourly and pressed the switches to raise his windows. He needed to isolate himself, to get away from here as quickly as he could. The transaction was over and the Barbadian was as anxious to be away from here as he was. He was back in the Mondeo with the engine running by the time George had stowed the box in the rear footwell of the Focus. Seconds later, he was away, swinging across the road into the stream of the northbound traffic, not troubling to wave to the man whose thousand pounds he had just collected.

Martindale shut his eyes for a moment and took a long breath. Then he eased back into the traffic and took the first opportunity to turn round and head back towards Twin Lakes. He passed the Mondeo, now moving south, a hundred yards after he had turned. The drivers made no acknowledgement of each other.

After he had run through Leominster and turned on to the lane which led to Twin Lakes, he stopped the car and transferred the box from the back of the car to the boot, where he hid it as well as he could under his golf waterproofs. You couldn't be too careful, with the place alive with policemen, both uniformed and plain-clothed. He'd much rather not be taking drugs on to the site at all, but he'd been given no choice in the matter.

Mary Martindale wondered why her normally cheerful spouse looked so worried as he parked the car outside their unit. He mustered his usual smile for her as he climbed the three steps to the elevated entrance, but she wasn't deceived by that.

George summoned his resources of cheerfulness. ‘We can have that picnic now, if you want it.'

‘It's too late to go out. We'll eat it here. But we've got visitors first. The police want to speak to us about last night.' She glanced at the clock beside her cooker. ‘They'll be here in ten minutes.'

George had just enough time to wash his face and change his shirt. These were the first steps towards presenting an innocent front to the forces of the law. Its representatives arrived as they had promised at four thirty, punctual to the minute.

He sized them up as well as he was able. There was the tall man he'd seen questioning others earlier in the day. Chief Detective Superintendent John Lambert, he said his name was. George knew a little about him already, but he didn't acknowledge that. The solid man beside him looked less threatening. But you couldn't trust the police, any of them. Especially if you were black: everyone knew that.

It was the sergeant who gave him all the usual stuff about this just being part of the police routine. Maybe it was, but that wouldn't make him any less careful with these bastards. Then Lambert said to him, ‘It was you who discovered Mr Keane's body. We've read your statement about that.'

‘Then you'll know that I wasn't alone.'

‘We do indeed. We've already spoken to Mr Norrington.'

‘We were the only people around at six o'clock this morning. We were trying to help Debbie Keane. She couldn't find her husband and she was in a state.'

‘Which proved to be well justified by subsequent events. Did you believe her when she said she hadn't missed him earlier?'

‘Earlier?'

‘He hadn't been in her home since last night, but she says that she only realized he was missing this morning. You accepted that?'

‘I'm not sure I even heard it. I arrived to find her talking to Michael Norrington and gathered that Wally had gone missing. I registered that and we said we'd look for him. I'm not sure I was aware at the time of anything except the fact that he was missing and needed to be found.'

‘That is understandable. It is to your credit that your first impulse was to find out where he was and what had happened to him.'

‘If Debbie says that she hadn't found he was missing until the morning, that will be correct. She enjoys a bit of gossip – well, she thrives on it, to be honest. But there's nothing vicious about Debbie. I'm sure you can trust whatever she's told you.'

‘Thank you. You'll appreciate that I know no one here, although DS Hook has met a few of the residents before and knows a little about what goes on here.' He contrived to make that fact sound quite sinister, as if Hook knew all sorts of facts and George and Mary had better be very careful to give him the truth. ‘So you and Mr Norrington, being the only people around at six o'clock this morning, set out to look for Walter Keane.'

‘Yes. Debbie wanted us to do that.'

‘Whose idea was it to take the route you did, Mr Martindale?'

George hadn't expected that question. He thought feverishly about the implications of it. ‘Does it matter?'

‘Probably not. But the information isn't in your statement.'

‘I think it was probably my idea. Michael isn't a very practical man. I think he was glad I turned up when I did. I'm sure he was anxious to help Mrs Keane, but he didn't seem to know what to do next. I suppose I suggested that we should look in the woods, simply because that was the most obvious hiding place for someone who was missing. We were still presuming at that stage that Wally might have chosen to hide himself away for some reason. Or of course that he might have met with some sort of accident.'

He was choosing his words carefully; this wasn't the time to make any kind of mistake. Lambert nodded slowly. ‘How did Mr Norrington react when you discovered the body hanging in the woods?'

‘How do you think he reacted? He was horrified, just as I was.'