Close Call (11 page)

‘You were a partner of Mr Durkin.'

‘Not for the last three years, I wasn't.'

‘A former partner. We need to know about those years when you worked together.'

He resisted the impulse to tell her to go to hell. That would only prolong this. ‘There isn't much to tell. We established a successful small garage. Built up quite a good reputation. He was in charge of the workshops and servicing, I handled the showroom and car sales. I thought the partnership was working well. But that wasn't enough for Robin bloody Durkin. He had to control the whole thing. He had to get rid of me.'

There was already enough of CID in Liz Brown to make her pulses quicken. Usually people were polite, even unctuous, in the face of death. Normally any hostility was veiled, and defences had to be stripped away to reveal the enmities beneath. This man was making no secret of his resentment: that had to be interesting. With a bit of luck, she would only need to lead him on. She said rather lamely, ‘You didn't part on friendly terms?'

He smiled grimly. ‘As friendly as they could be, when you'd stopped speaking to each other. He bought me out.'

‘So it was a straightforward business transaction.'

Again that bitter twisting of the lips, as if he wanted to say much more than he was going to allow himself. ‘In so far as anything was straightforward with Rob Durkin, yes. He said the business needed capital to expand, that I must provide as much as he was prepared to put in or get out. I got out. Not because I wanted to, but because I had no alternative.'

‘But he paid you a proper price.'

Gregory's mobile face turned to stone. ‘That's between us. He had me over a barrel, because he knew I was strapped for cash at the time. He drove the kind of bargain you'd expect from a bastard like him. But I was a good salesman. I got a job here and I'm doing pretty well. I preferred being my own boss, but at least this way I'm away from the tricks of Rob Durkin.'

Liz wondered whether to press him about the terms of the partnership buyout. But she sensed that Gregory would resist, and she hadn't any weapons to use against him. He was simply a member of the public helping police with their enquiries, as a good citizen should. And John Lambert would have other methods of getting the information, if he thought it relevant. She said, ‘You make it sound as if Mr Durkin must have had a lot of enemies.'

‘I'm sure he did, DS Brown. And in case you still have any doubts, I shan't be mourning his death. As far as I'm concerned, it's good riddance to him.'

‘Do you want another coffee?' he said.

‘No. I've had far more than I want already.'

The hospital, or rather this particular section of it, was very quiet. Abnormally quiet, surely. And the time passed more slowly here than anywhere else in the world, when you were waiting for news.

Eleanor Hook looked up at the round white face of the clock on the magnolia wall, watched the red second hand ticking silently round it. She wondered why she and Bert were suddenly so stiff and wordless with each other, why two people who normally communicated so effortlessly and easily could become awkward and tongue-tied, sitting here like strangers on these uncomfortable plastic chairs.

‘How long is it since the specialist went in?' Bert Hook knew perfectly well how long it was. He was talking for the sake of talking, because speech seemed less threatening than silence.

‘Twenty minutes. It seems longer, but I don't think it is.'

‘That's long enough to decide what's wrong with him, surely. He should be out here talking to us by now.'

‘He'll be putting the right treatment into operation. Getting the nurses organized. Making sure he's regularly checked, monitoring his progress towards recovery.' Eleanor was surprised how positive and cheerful she made it sound as she tried to convince Bert. How could you manage to do that, when you were sick with the worry of it?

‘He's always been a strong lad, Luke. Much stronger than he looks.' It was the first time either of them had mentioned his name in hours. Bert felt as though he was tempting fate as he voiced it.

‘He didn't look strong when they brought him in here. His temperature was sky high. And his head was hurting, despite the pills. Poor little scrap!'

And suddenly she was in tears, and Bert was holding her clumsily against him, muttering over and over again, ‘He'll be OK, Elly. He's strong, is young Luke. He'll be OK!'

They were still like that when the registrar came out, looking to Bert absurdly young in his white coat, with his wrists sticking out too far at the cuffs. He said, ‘He's in the best place now, Mrs Hook. The very best! We'll pull him through for you, I'm sure.'

‘What is it?' Bert's voice was rough and challenging, dispensing with the normal courtesies.

The registrar had wanted to take them off the corridor and into the office, to talk quietly and reassuringly to them, infusing them with a confidence he could not feel himself. But he was caught up now in Bert's urgency, in his brutal and primal helplessness in the face of catastrophe. ‘It's what we feared, I'm afraid. Meningitis.'

Eleanor felt the colour draining from her face as she prised herself away from her husband. ‘How bad?'

‘Pretty bad. His temperature's very high and he's lost consciousness. The crisis will be in the next thirty-six hours.' The registrar felt absurdly relieved that he'd got all his bad news out at once, like a child blurting out a confession.

He said again, as firmly as he could, ‘But we'll pull him through, I'm sure.'

‘F
irst question: was this extra money coming from the garage business?' said Lambert.

Rushton was staring at the page he had put on to his computer, giving the startling details of the dead man's finances. ‘No. Quite certainly not. The agency for new cars was for the Seat range of models. There's nothing wrong with them, but it's not the most lucrative dealership to have. When you look at Durkin's new and used car sales, he wasn't doing much more than making a living. Perhaps a comfortable living, depending on how tightly he controlled his overheads, but nothing more than that.'

‘Second question: why was he hiding it away so carefully? Was he merely dodging the taxman, or was the money itself illegal?'

Rushton had no hesitation about that. ‘That money's dodgy. It's got to be. No small businessman makes sums of that size without them being dodgy.'

Lambert grinned. ‘How sad that one so young should yet be so cynical. But I agree. Unless you inherit it, which we know he didn't, or have large sums of capital to invest, it's virtually impossible to acquire getting on for a million pounds by legitimate methods. And if that money had been accumulated legally, he wouldn't have been taking such steps to hide it. So now question three: how did Robin Durkin contrive to get his hands on an extra eight hundred thousand pounds?'

Rushton grimaced, knowing that he was being asked to voice the obvious. ‘Drugs? Fraud?' The two great modern sources of illegal gains. The two means by which the fly boys of the criminal industry build up capital and finance even bigger coups. The two crimes which policemen suspect automatically when unexplained sums of this magnitude turn up.

‘Not fraud. There's nothing in Durkin's background or the world in which he operated to suggest that. I don't think the opportunities were there. Drugs are certainly a possibility. I'll get in touch with the Drugs Squad to see what they think.'

The Drugs Squad enjoys a great degree of autonomy within the police service, as befits a unit operating in the most dangerous and most lucrative of all crime divisions. The personnel of the Squad guard jealously the information they take such risks to acquire, even from fellow police officers. Secrecy is vital, both to the safety of the many officers operating under cover and to the success of their operations. But murder overrides normal practice, and Lambert knew the man he would contact.

He said thoughtfully, ‘There's a fourth question to add to the other three, you know. And that is, how many other people knew that Durkin was making money of this sort? Did anyone who was at that party on Saturday night know anything about it? Did even his wife know?'

‘You sure you want to do this, Bert?'

Lambert had never seen the normally rubicund Hook looking so pallid. The detective sergeant nodded more firmly than he felt. ‘I'm better working, John. There's nothing I can do, is there? You just sit around feeling helpless.'

‘All right. I won't raise it again. You must let me know if you want out. And if there's anything Christine or I can do, you know that—'

‘There isn't!' There was an awkward pause, which seemed to stretch whilst Lambert took the car round a long bend under the trees, then Hook said, ‘There's nothing anyone can do, except the medics. But thanks for asking.'

The caravan was old, but its exterior was surprisingly spruce. Its paintwork gleamed softly, even though, at this time of day, it was in the shade of the great oak which stood twenty yards from it. It would probably never be towed on the road again, but its tyres were fully inflated and it stood exactly level on its concrete footing. The metal step beneath its door had neither leaf nor dirt upon it; it looked as if some diligent housewife had recently brushed it thoroughly.

The man looked a formidable figure as he opened the door and stood looking down at them. His frame filled the whole aperture of the doorway, shutting out any light behind him.

Jason Ritchie didn't even try to manufacture a smile for them. He saw no need to pretend that they were welcome: the fuzz had never given him anything but grief in his life. He said, ‘You'd better come in, I suppose.'

They climbed the single step and sat where he indicated, on the bench seat with its thin covering of foam cushioning. Everything in the place was cramped, so that when the occupant sat down opposite them, he was abnormally, unnaturally close. No more than two feet away, thought Bert Hook; this was a closer and even more claustrophobic environment than the inhibiting box of a police interview room at the station.

The difference here was that the man was on his own ground, showing no signs of the inhibitions which the interview room at the nick often brought to people questioned there. Ritchie said, with a belated, clumsy attempt at welcome, ‘You want a mug of tea? I was making a brew anyway.' He spoke as if he felt a need to apologize for the gesture, as if he was already regretting something which ran so counter to his principles.

To Hook's surprise, Lambert accepted the offer, and they watched Lisa Holt's gardener moving with brisk efficiency around the tiny area which was so familiar to him. The caravan was even more clean and tidy inside than outside. The stainless steel sink gleamed softly, the blankets on the bed were tucked in as tightly and neatly as those on the hospital beds still fresh in Hook's memory. The windows were bright and clean, and even the small chintz curtains on them looked as if they had enjoyed a recent wash.

They didn't compliment him on this, nor offer any other casual words. These particular policemen felt no need to fill conversational voids with small talk. They chose to let a silence build, heavy with implication, hoping it was increasing tension in the man at the centre of it. In this confined space, Jason Ritchie's movements sounded unnaturally loud as he took milk from the tiny fridge and put it into the three large china beakers he had set on the side of the sink.

Perhaps he felt some of the unease they wanted to see in him, for it was he who eventually broke the conversational hiatus, as he said roughly, ‘You're wasting your time here, you know! There's nothing I can tell you that you don't already know.'

Lambert smiled at him, picking up the first trick in the game. ‘Neither you nor I know whether that is true or not, at this stage, Mr Ritchie.'

‘Let's get it clear then. I know bugger all about this killing. I hardly knew Robin Durkin before Saturday night, and I don't know anything about the way he died. Full stop.'

But his aggression was already a weakness: that thought struck Jason himself now, even as it became apparent to his visitors. Lambert said calmly, ‘We have to be interested in anyone who was close to a murder victim in the hours before he died. I expect you know enough of our procedures to appreciate that.'

Ritchie glanced up at him sharply above his beaker, then nodded a sullen acquiescence. They took him through his account of the now familiar Saturday night party by a series of questions, since he seemed reluctant to give them a continuous statement of his own. Then Lambert said, ‘When was the last time you saw Robin Durkin?'

‘You know that.' The brown eyes stared hard into Lambert's grey ones. The thick, strong fingers moved over the tattoo of barbed wire on the upper arm, tracing its line upwards and under the cotton. It was a habitual gesture, as if it was a tangible thing he could feel under his fingers, rather than a tracing beneath the skin. ‘I said goodbye and thank you to him at the end of the party on Saturday night, and I left with the others. If you're implying anything else, I want a brief.'

‘You're entitled to retain your own legal advice at any time. You're not entitled to free legal representation unless you've been arrested and are being questioned in connection with an offence.' Lambert's eyes, looking into his from no more than two feet, seemed to Jason to see everything and never to need to blink. ‘Did you see Mr Durkin again after you left his house at just before one a.m. on Sunday morning?'

‘What the hell are you implying?' He watched Hook make a formal note of his reply, resting his notebook on the spotless melamine surface between them. ‘I've no idea what you're on about.'

But they all knew what was behind the question. Jason felt himself having to work up his anger, when he knew that he should have been more naturally and spontaneously outraged by the suggestion.