Rest Assured (19 page)

It was quite a long way. It seemed to get a little further each time. Something over a mile, he thought. He didn't mind that, though he hated the sense of exposure. He felt more and more defenceless now when he moved out into the open. He'd had a car, once, before he'd undertaken this assignment. That seemed a long time ago, and the man who had driven the car and been interested in other cars was a man he scarcely knew or remembered. He'd thought once that he'd get back to that Mark, but it now seemed an unrealistic goal, one in which he had little interest.

He didn't like it when the narrow streets finished and he had to move along wider and more modern roads. The houses here were set back from the pavements and there were lots of cars parked in front of them. But there were spaces too. It was Monday morning and most people would be back at work after the weekend. Mark remembered that world.

There weren't many people about and he liked that. A woman with a toddler's hand in hers crossed the road to avoid him. He must look pretty sinister, with his shaven head and his unshaven face. He grinned his secret grin and did not look at her again. He was nearly there now. He couldn't see the football posts; they should have been visible now, over the low wall to his left. They must have taken them down for the summer, to stop the kids using them. The pitch had been mown recently; the straight lines of the cutting made the grass look quite neat. He stopped near the entrance and looked around, but there was no sign of a groundsman. Probably he was employed by the council and directed to somewhere else today; that was good.

Mark Patmore knew exactly where he had to go. He shuffled across towards the long wooden building which was a cricket pavilion in summer and changing rooms for the football teams during the winter. There was no sign of life within it today. He moved to the rear of the ramshackle edifice, where the shed which housed the maintenance equipment for the playing fields was attached.

There was no padlock on the door today. That was as it should be. He opened it and slipped quietly inside. The only light was from the single small window in the side of the wooden hut. He felt at home in the dimness.

The man sitting in the chair beside the tractor did not move. He wore neatly creased fawn chino trousers and a bright yellow shirt with the Pringle logo prominent. Casual wear, but as clean and smart as Patmore was grubby and dishevelled. The man's hair was precisely parted and as neat as if he had come here straight from a barber's shop. Patmore sat on the wooden chair opposite him and ran both of his hands briefly over the stubble of the scalp he had shaved three days earlier. He had never seen this man before and he resented him already.

Yellow-shirt flashed a warrant card that signified he was a Detective Inspector. Mark didn't bother to register the name. The DI studied him wordlessly for a few seconds; you needed to assess men like Mark Patmore before you decided how much to rely upon what they told you. If they moved beyond a certain point, they could sell out and disappear into the murky underworld they were supposed to be illuminating for you. When he said, ‘What news, Sergeant?' the rank was meant as a reminder that they were on the same side: he had caught a whiff of the under-cover man's disillusion.

‘I saw them last night. Well, saw Mercer. They're promoting me. Me and one of the others.' Patmore curled his lip on the thought, as if promotion merely emphasized what a dangerous farce these bastards had devised for him. ‘They want to move us up – they're putting each of us in control of a group of dealers.'

‘Congratulations.' Yellow-shirt kept any hint of irony out of his tone, but it was a strange thing to be acknowledging the promotion of your own man amongst the enemy. ‘Have you any names for us beyond those of the dealers around you? It's the men further up we need to nail, if we're ever going to break this.'

Mark was suddenly enraged that the smug bastard should remind him of something so obvious. He wanted to crash his fist into the small straight nose and the prim, successful mouth beneath it. ‘That's why I'm here! That's why I've been risking my life for the last eight months. And no, I haven't any names for you. Not yet. Perhaps by the time I have them, I'll be doing so well out of drugs that I won't want to reveal them. Sir!' He delivered the last word like an expletive, after a lengthy pause.

‘Take it easy, Sergeant Patmore.' But the DI knew that the reminder of rank meant nothing here, that he was dealing with a man near to the end of his tether. He was on ground where he had not ventured before, and he felt it crumbling beneath his feet. ‘When you have names, we'll take them and get you out. Meanwhile, you're doing a good job.'

The phrase fell limply amidst the wisps of dead grass on the wooden floor of the room. Who the hell knew what a good job was, in this extraordinary context? Even Mark Patmore, who was at the centre of it, had no idea whether he was doing a good job or drowning in vice. He had no comparisons, no measures by which he could judge himself and his performance. He knew now that he wanted it to end, but how it would end and what he would do if he survived he could not even contemplate. He stood up, wanting to be out of the presence of this smooth bastard, back in the squat with the losers he suddenly loved. ‘I'm seeing them on Wednesday.'

‘Good. And you'll let us know if you get any names of the men issuing orders to you at this new level.' He didn't wait for assent, since it might not be voiced. ‘What about the other dealer who's being moved up with you? Do you have a name for him?'

‘It's the black man.' But there were a lot of them among the dealers as well as the users. Mark liked this one, what little he'd seen of him, and the other half of him didn't want to deliver the name. But he sighed and said, ‘He's not a user. That's why they think he'll be reliable, I suppose. His name's Martindale.'

DI Rushton had completed his initial trawl of criminal records by early afternoon. He was not optimistic when he reported to his chief superintendent.

‘We've turned up two previous instances of violence which have led to court proceedings and convictions. One was fourteen years ago and was a domestic. The man assaulted his former wife. He broke a cheekbone and two ribs but claimed she was threatening him with a knife at the time. The court must have believed him, because he got away with a suspended sentence. He is now forty-nine, apparently happily settled with his second wife, with whom he has two children. The family were here on Friday night and are still on site. He was with other people throughout the evening and has no connection with this crime, unless we think he brought a killer in from outside, which seems highly unlikely because of his background and present income. I doubt if he'd have the contacts or the money to bring in a contract killer.'

‘And your other man with form?'

‘He was involved in a pub brawl eight years ago. Put a man in hospital. Seems to be a man handy with his fists and with his boots who lives on the edge of the law. But he's small-time. He doesn't like us and the two officers who took his statement didn't like him. I had a look at him myself and agreed with them, but I don't think he had any involvement in this crime. He has an impeccable alibi for Friday night and no apparent motive: he's only just bought one of the homes here and scarcely knew Keane. Other people have confirmed that. Again, I think a contract killer would be beyond both his experience and his resources.'

‘So how does this crime look to you, Chris, now that you've assessed all the statements and the previous form?'

DI Rushton was now used to being treated as an equal and being asked his opinion as such by the great man. Lambert had overawed him, when he had first been assigned to him as a young and newly promoted detective inspector. ‘I suppose it's still possible that someone totally unconnected with what goes on here came in from outside to commit murder, but that seems highly unlikely, especially if we posit a prearranged meeting at a specific place in those woods. More important to me is that Walter Keane's life revolved totally around Twin Lakes and what happens here. The Keanes have been virtually full-time residents here for the last eight years. Walter's death must surely be directly connected with previous events here.'

‘Agreed. So what next?'

‘I'd be pretty confident that the killer is among the five couples whom you and Bert have already spoken to. Everyone else with even the flimsiest of motives seems to have several people to attest his or her alibi.'

‘And you've come up with nothing in the way of form on any of these ten people?'

Rushton smiled grimly. ‘Enquiries are ongoing, as we tell the public when we've nothing to report. In this case, they really are. There's nothing useful on record, but I'm still exploring the police grapevine in the case of two of the ten.'

Lambert's answering smile was rueful, but even more grim than Rushton's. ‘We can't afford to wait for you to gather information, Chris. Tell me what you have, and where you have nothing, give me your thoughts.'

‘Let's take the easy ones first. Lisa and Jason Ramsbottom. He got in with a bad set when he was younger. He was a member of a gang with whom he had a series of Saturday-night rumbles up in Lancashire, where he grew up. I suspect that there were a couple of occasions when his youth protected him from charges, because we all know it's hardly worth the bother of charging kids under eighteen. But all that's a long time ago. Marriage and a daughter, who's now fourteen, seem to have settled him down. Most important of all, it was the Ramsbottoms who brought Bert Hook on to the site more than two months ago to investigate threatening notes. They'd hardly have done that, if they'd been contemplating murder.'

‘Only one person needs to be involved in murder, but I take your point. Go on.'

‘George and Mary Martindale. George was a jobbing builder for several years, taking work wherever he could get it, but almost never unemployed. He seems to have been involved in a few fights and scuffles, but nothing serious; I expect as a black man in that environment, he had to learn to use his fists. He's been working for the council in the road works department at Kidderminster and I've spoken to his bosses there. They're very well satisfied with him and have recently promoted him, making him foreman of a road works gang. They say George is popular with the other men, looks after youngsters well, and is generally a good example. He and his family – he has two boys aged eight and six – seem to be well liked on the site. Several of the other people we've interviewed have told us that, without any prompting.'

‘All round good egg, then. If a Jamaican can be such a Bertie Wooster thing as a good egg. Life being what it is, we'll probably find he strung up our victim on Friday night.'

Chris Rushton grinned. ‘I doubt it. He has the physique to do it, but hardly the motivation. He seems to treat Debbie Keane's nosiness with an affectionate tolerance. From what they've said to us so far, we could probably say the same of Matthew and Freda Potts – well, of her, anyway. Matthew hasn't been here often enough to have many dealings with the Keanes. He works on oil rigs in the North Sea and is away for lengthy periods. But Freda has been here two or three times with her nephew. Neither of the Potts seems to have any criminal record. Matthew Potts was in the SAS for several years and I'm still trying to check his army record: the military authorities are notoriously stingy with information, as you know. I suppose with his background he'd be able to kill someone like Wally Keane with great competence, but I can't see why he would want to do that, and no one else has suggested a reason. He seems to have hardly known the victim. His wife, on the other hand, was quizzed and irritated by the Keanes when she was here without Matthew.'

Lambert came back to the people who had been in his mind for almost twenty-four hours now. He said hopefully, ‘Have you turned up anything useful on Richard Seagrave or Vanessa Norton?'

‘No criminal record for either of them. Seagrave went to Rugby public school as a day boy and Norton was at Roedean for a time. Her father was an army major and her parents were abroad for most of the years of her schooling. Seagrave and Norton aren't married and we've no evidence about how long they've been together or how serious the relationship is.'

‘Pretty serious, I'd say, from what we saw. Bert and I interviewed them yesterday afternoon. She did most of the talking and I felt that was something they'd agreed on before we saw them. We got very little out of them.'

‘Neither of them has any criminal record, as I said. They seem pretty high-powered people to take a place here, but perhaps it's a bolt-hole from taxing lives elsewhere. She writes a fashion column for the Mail on Sunday and he has his own successful business, Seagrave Enterprises. Office supplies. Highly successful, apparently, for a small business which is run almost entirely by the owner.'

‘Could it be a front for something larger and darker?'

‘It's possible, I suppose. I'll make unofficial enquiries. There's a DI in Birmingham who trained with me and owes me a few favours.'

Lambert grinned. ‘I'm the one who always tells my team members they mustn't assess people's characters without assembling the proper factual basis, so I don't want this to go any further at present. But I didn't like Mr Seagrave and I didn't trust his partner, if that's what the blonde goddess is. How have they been received here at Twin Lakes?'

‘They're more popular here than they are with you, by the sound of it. No one seems to know much about him; he doesn't mix a lot, though people find him pleasant enough to speak with. He provided a fine silver cup for a junior golf competition, and presented it to the first winner himself, as well as providing other generous prizes. That hasn't done him any harm in this holiday environment, where families are so important. Vanessa has taken up golf herself and made rapid progress, apparently. There was some amusement because Wally Keane kept having to adjust her handicap and was reputed to resent her progress.'