Close Call (16 page)

‘Among the people they've tormented, you mean? Well yes, I can quite see that. Must make things difficult for you. In that it gives you a wide field of suspects, I mean.'

‘That's one of the reasons why we hate it when a blackmailer is murdered, yes.'

Ron Lennox nodded several times, enjoying the logic of the discussion, appreciating having his ideas treated seriously by these professionals. ‘You can't have much sympathy, though, for a man who's been battening on to people like that. I think I'd feel that he'd driven his killer to such extremes, if it was someone who hadn't been violent before.'

‘The law has to be observed, nevertheless. I'm sure a man like you wouldn't condone murder.'

Ron smiled at him, continuing to relish the exchange, experiencing an excitement he had never felt before, that of being close to the heart of a very serious crime. ‘No, of course I wouldn't. I'm just saying that one must feel a certain sympathy with a killer, in these particular circumstances.'

Bert Hook nodded encouragingly. ‘So who was Robin Durkin blackmailing, Mr Lennox?'

The question shook Ron out of his complacent enjoyment of the situation. He hadn't expected anything so direct, and certainly not from this lumpish sergeant who hadn't spoken now for several minutes. ‘I wouldn't know that, would I? He wouldn't be a very good blackmailer, if an innocent schoolmaster like me knew about his victims, would he?'

His involuntary cackle of laughter at the silliness of that idea rang round the huge panes of conservatory glass. Hook didn't respond with a smile. He said, ‘But you keep your ear to the ground Mr Lennox, as you told us a few minutes ago. It was by doing so in the school that you came to suspect that the man was dealing in drugs: a suspicion which our present enquiries have proved to be well-grounded. And no doubt you have continued your habit of acquiring useful knowledge.'

Of sticking my nose into other people's business, he means, thought Ron. He's not as harmless or as blockish as he looks, this man. But nor am I the sucker for flattery that he thinks I am. He said primly, ‘I take an interest in the people who were once my pupils. It's one of the satisfactions a man gets, in a poorly paid and increasingly demanding profession. It gives one pleasure to see boys and girls becoming adults and going on to do great things in life. One feels one has made some small contribution to their success, and to society as a whole, when one sees such things.'

‘And naturally you take an interest in following the after-school lives of the less savoury characters as well. People like Robin Durkin.'

Ron rocked back and forth a little on his chair, clasping his arms across his thin chest in an involuntary gesture of satisfaction. ‘I can't deny that there is a certain ghoulish interest in failure as well as success. Though of course one is delighted when boys and girls who have been nuisances at school shake off their adolescent peccadilloes and become responsible citizens.' His expression rather belied this pious sentiment.

This time Bert Hook did smile. ‘And no doubt there is also a certain macabre pleasure when those that you have predicted will become villains justify your judgement.'

‘Oh, I wouldn't say that.'But Lennox's wicked grin showed his pleasure in the proposition. ‘One is not pleased to see people turning out badly, but I won't deny that it gives one a certain confidence in one's estimation of people when one sees one's judgements vindicated.'

‘And in the case of Robin Durkin, you saw what you had predicted becoming fact.'

‘Yes, indeed I did. He was a thorough nuisance at school: a lot of boys are just high-spirited and mischievous, but I found Robin Durkin to be underhand and malevolent. It looked to me then as if he was going to be a bad lot, and so it proved.'

‘So who was he blackmailing, Mr Lennox?'

Hook's brown eyes looked hard into his face now. Ron felt he had been led round in a circle to where they had begun, and been shown in the process that there was nothing for it but to voice his suspicions in full. He found that he was not averse to doing so. ‘I don't know. Not for certain. I just felt from his manner, from his smugness, that he was still up to his old tricks. I'd known Durkin a long time, don't forget. I remember that even when he was at school he liked to have a hold over people, liked to exploit his knowledge of any breakage of the school rules, for instance. And what was more, he took a delight in showing people that he had a hold over them.'

‘And you'd seen signs of that in him again, all these years later.'

‘I had indeed.' Lennox could not conceal his own satisfaction in this.

This was a petty man, perhaps, but maybe also an important one, in the context of a murder investigation. Hook said patiently, ‘You must see that any knowledge, even any conjectures you have about this, are of interest to us. So who do you think Durkin was blackmailing at the time of his death?'

Lennox nodded contentedly. ‘“Conjectures”, you said. That's the right word, you know. I haven't any certain knowledge, and I'm not pretending to any.'

Lambert said curtly, ‘We understand that. Are you going to give us any names?'

Ron looked from one to the other of the contrasting faces, and was satisfied to see that he had their complete attention. ‘I think it possible – no more than possible, mind – that he had some sort of hold over Mrs Smart.'

He looked to see surprise and satisfaction in their faces, but they were disappointingly non-committal as Hook wrote the name in his notebook. Perhaps this was a professional inscrutability, Ron thought. Or perhaps their enquiries had already thrown up something in that area. He said, ‘I think it possible that Durkin had something on Jason Ritchie, as well. There was some sort of tension between them on Saturday night, I think.'

Lambert gave him a small, acerbic smile of encouragement. ‘You seem to be very observant, Mr Lennox.'

‘One picked up the habit, I suppose, over forty years in the classroom. Children always have their secrets, and it's as well to try to pick up the undercurrents of what is going on amongst them. I suppose one transfers these skills into the adult world, without realizing it.' He looked immensely pleased with himself.

Lambert said without any change in his quiet tone, ‘Was he blackmailing you, Mr Lennox?'

For a moment, Ron could scarcely believe his ears, so unexpectedly had the question come to him. He was striving for control as he said, ‘No, of course he wasn't! Whatever made you think that he was?'

‘It's just that you seem to be very aware of his methods. Acutely conscious of both his practices and his mannerisms, in fact, for one who claims not to have been in touch with him for many years.'

‘But what possible hold could Rob Durkin have had over me?'

Lambert smiled, seemingly becoming more at ease as his man's discomfort grew. ‘I wouldn't know that, would I, Mr Lennox? That's the nature of the crime of blackmail, isn't it? If I knew what it was that you needed to conceal, a blackmailer wouldn't be able to extract money from you, would he?'

‘Well, let me formally assure you then, that Rob Durkin was not and never had been blackmailing me. There is no possible way in which he could have secured a hold over me. My background is blameless, if rather dull. Sorry to disappoint you.'

‘No disappointment, Mr Lennox. Simply another fact that can now be recorded. Who do you think killed Mr Durkin?'

Again the abruptness of the question caught Ron off his guard. He made himself take long seconds before he replied. ‘I've no idea. I don't envy you your task, Superintendent, because I'm sure there are lots of candidates. People in the lucrative but violent world of illegal drugs, I have no doubt. And also people who were or had been the blackmail victims of this unsavoury man. I'm privately sure that you'll eventually arrest someone that I've never even heard of.'

After they had gone, Ron Lennox stood looking out of the window, across his back garden towards the spot where Rob Durkin had died, still feeling a residual buzz of excitement.

He could not for the life of him decide whether the meeting had gone well or badly.

P
hilip Smart thought sometimes that his wife knew. When he said on Wednesday night that he was going out to the club, she accepted it not only without any objection but without any question.

Sometimes he wondered whether he would have liked a little more wifely opposition, a little more curiosity about his activities. But another part of his complicated psyche told him that he should be grateful that he did not have a jealous harridan of a wife, screaming at him and making his little escapades impossible.

Little escapades. They weren't anything more glamorous or exciting than that, if he was honest with himself. He had assured himself for years that monogamy wasn't a natural state, that free spirits like his would always need to break the monotony of it. But he couldn't deceive himself any more that there was anything glamorous in his pursuit of women, or in the beds he nowadays dwelt in so briefly.

He had left it late to go out, and he thought that that in itself might have excited Carol's interest. But she did no more than nod at him and go back to her book, nettling him illogically by her indifference to his activities. He needed to leave it late at this time of the year, because he had a prejudice about going to these liaisons in broad daylight. They should be secret, even furtive. It was that clandestine element which contributed to the excitement which he found it increasingly difficult to conjure up.

The woman gave him a drink, then draped herself languorously over the sofa, which was new since his last visit. He knew that he would be expected to comment on this addition to the room's furnishings and he duly did so. But it was but another feature of a conversation that felt to him increasingly stilted and artificial, even though the woman seemed to find the exchanges natural enough, as she sipped her gin and watched the level in his own glass going steadily down. Her neckline was a little low for her declining bust, but he knew that it was adopted for him, so such thoughts were churlish.

She seemed to be listening to the meaningless things he said, putting in her own conventional and rather vapid responses at the appropriate moments. At least he wasn't being hurried, he told himself; at least she was maintaining the semblance of affection, of a relationship which went beyond the sheets. He wondered as they spoke how often she had said these or similar words before, how many other men had sat upon this new couch and said similarly meaningless things as their preludes to sex.

She topped up his glass, measuring the gin carefully before she poured in the tonic. She shouldn't be wearing that sleeveless dress: her upper arms were running a little to flab. Phil noticed that she gave herself only tonic, caught her glancing at the clock on the mantelpiece. His observation seemed to be at its most acute when he required it to be least so.

And the coupling when it came was curiously unsatisfying, though Phil could not have said why. Her expensive perfume was heavy upon the pillows, but he found himself wondering whether it was there to disguise the scent of other males who had been there before him. When she opened her legs and received him, he thrust away like a younger man, trying to put out of his mind the comparisons with those other men she must have rolled with here, the men who might have had more urgent and thus more satisfactory comings than his. She seemed willing, even grateful, in her responses to him, but perhaps that was merely an aspect of her professionalism.

She shouted the rough words that she knew excited men, arched her back and groaned and moaned as his own cries became more urgent, told him when it was over and they lay together on their backs that he had the energy of a much younger man. But how much was genuine; how much was part of the flattery which was one of the tools of her calling?

Because that was what this was, for sure. She wasn't a common prostitute, trawling the streets of a city in search of trade. This was a pleasant, discreet suburb of Cheltenham, where the innocent would never suspect that such things went on, that such transactions took place. But Philip Smart could not delude himself that this was anything other than that: a sexual transaction. A discreetly managed and scarcely acknowledged transaction, but a piece of well-paid business, nonetheless, as far as the female partner was concerned.

He put the bank notes on the mantelpiece beside the clock as usual, saying nothing, checking from her quick smile that the price was correct, that nothing had changed since his last visit six weeks ago. He stood for a second looking at the money, feeling the surge of revulsion pulsing through him like a physical thing. It was coming to something, when you had to pay for it! All the things he had said in his youth about the sad old men who bought their women, all the cruel jibes about the pathetic randiness of men who had to pay for sex, came surging back into his head when he least wanted to hear them.

He left as quickly as he could, conscious that the woman too wanted him out of her house quickly, now that she had endured his clumsy tumbling and had secured his money. She came with him to the door, and he noticed lines in her face that he had not seen before, a tiredness, perhaps even a desperation about her eyes, as she told him to come again whenever he fancied a visit.

He felt a sudden, belated pity for her as well as himself, for her desperate attempt to retain her fading looks, for the uncertainty which she must feel about the future. His feet dragged a little as he walked back towards the car, which he had left a discreet two hundred yards away in a pub car park. It was difficult to walk brisk and erect when you had lost all pride in yourself. His mind fled back to childhood, to his long-dead father's warning that his soul would be damaged if he did things with women which would make him ashamed. That old-fashioned man had always refused to answer his questions about the detail of these things, but he knew for certain now that this was one of them.