The Best Man To Die Page 12

  ‘He’s bought that refrigerator,’ said Sergeant Martin. ‘And a room heater and a load of other electrical bits and pieces. Paid cash for them, a couple of quid short of a hundred and twenty pounds.’

  Wexford put the lights on and behind the streaming glass the sky looked black as on a winter’s night. ‘All right, Cullam, where did you get it?’

  ‘I saved it up.’

  ‘I see. When did you buy that washing machine of yours, the one you washed your gear in after Hatton died?’

  ‘April.’ As the storm receded and the thunder became a distant grumbling, Cullam’s shoulders dropped and he lifted sullen eyes. ‘April, it was.’

  ‘So, you’ve saved another hundred and twenty pounds in just two months. What do you get a week? Twenty? Twenty- two? You with five kids and council house rent to pay? You’ve saved it in two months? Come off it, Cullam. I couldn’t save it in six and my kids are grown up.’

  ‘You can’t prove I didn’t save it.’ Cullam gave a slight shiver as the overhead light flickered off, then on again. A rolling like the banging of many drums, distant at first, then breaking into a staccato crackling, announced the return of the storm to Kingsmarkham. He shifted in his chair, biting his lip.

  Wexford smiled as a zig-zag flash changed the gentle illumination of the office into a sudden white blaze. ‘A hundred pounds,’ he said. ‘That’s pathetic payment for a man’s life. What’s yours worth, Sergeant?’

  ‘I’m insured for five thousand, sir.’

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant, but we’ll let it pass. You see, an assassin is paid according to his own self-valuation. Never mind what the victim’s life’s worth. If a road sweeper kills the king he can’t expect to get the same gratuity as a general. He wouldn’t expect it. His standards are low. So if you’re going to employ an assassin and you’re a mean skinflint you pick on the lowest of the low to do your dirty work. Mind you, it won’t be so well done.’

  Wexford’s last words were drowned in thunder. ‘What d’you mean, lowest of the low?’ Cullam lifted abject yet truculent eyes.

  ‘The cap fits, does it? They don’t come much lower than you, Cullam. What, drink with a man – drink the whisky he paid for – and then lie in wait to kill him?’

  ‘I never killed Charlie Hatton!’ Cullam leapt trembling to his feet. The lightning flared into his face and, covering his eyes with one hand, he said desperately, ‘For God’s sake can’t we go downstairs?’

  ‘I reckon Hatton was right when he called you an old woman, Cullam,’ Wexford said in disgust. ‘We’ll go down stairs when I’m good and ready. You talk and when you’ve told me where McCloy is and what he paid you, then you can go downstairs and hide your head.’

  Still on his feet, Cullam leant on the desk, his head hanging. ‘It’s a lie,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know McCloy and I never touched Hatton.’

  ‘Where did the money come from then? Oh, sit down, Cullam. What sort of man are you, anyway, scared of a bit of thunder? It’s laughable, afraid of a storm but brave enough to wait in the dark down by the river and bash your friend over the head. Come on now, you may as well tell us. You’ll have to sooner or later and I reckon this storm’s set in for hours. Hatton had fallen foul of McCloy, hadn’t he? So McCloy greased your palm a bit to walk home with Hatton and catch him unawares. The weapon and the method were left to you. Curious, you were so mean, you even grudged him a proper cosh.’

  Cullam said again, ‘It’s all a lie.’ He twisted down into the chair, holding his head and keeping it averted from the window. ‘Me bash Charlie on the head with one of them stones? I wouldn’t have thought of it… I wouldn’t…’

  ‘Then how did you know it was a river stone that killed him?’ Wexford pounced triumphantly. Slowly Cullam raised his head and the sweat glistened on his skin. ‘I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Nor me, sir,’ said the sergeant.

  ‘Jesus,’ Cullam said, his voice uneven and low.

  The black clouds had parted to show between them shreds of summer sky turned sickly green. Against the glass the unremitting rain pounded.

  Stamford police knew nothing of Alexander James McCloy. His name was on the voters’ list as occupying Moat Hall, the small mansion Burden had found deserted, but plainly he had left it months before. Burden plodded through the rain from estate agent to estate agent and he at last found Moat Hall, listed in the books of a small firm on the outskirts of the town. It had been sold in December by McCloy to an American widow who, having changed her mind without ever living in the place, had returned it to the agent’s hands and departed to spend the summer in Sweden.

  Mr McCloy had left them no address. Why should he? His business with them had been satisfactorily completed; he had taken his money from the American lady and disappeared.

  No, there had never really been anything in Mr McCloy’s behaviour to make them believe he wasn’t a man of integrity.

  ‘What do you mean, “really”?’ Burden asked.

  ‘Only that the place was never kept decently as far as I could see, not the way a gentleman’s house should be. It was a crying shame to see those grounds neglected. Still, he was a bachelor and he’d no staff as far as I know.’

  Moat Hall lay in a fold of the hills perhaps a mile from the A.1. ‘Was he always alone when you saw him at the house?’ Burden asked.

  ‘Once he had a couple of chaps with him. Not quite up to his class I thought.’

  ‘Tell me, were you taken all over the house and grounds to make your survey or whatever you do?’

  ‘Certainly. It was all quite above board – none too clean, but that’s by the way. Mr McCloy gave me a free hand to go where I chose, bar the two big outhouses. They were used for stores he said, so there was no point in me looking. The doors were padlocked anyway and I got what I wanted for my purpose from looking at the outside.’

  ‘No stray lorries knocking about, I daresay?’

  ‘None that I saw.’

  ‘But there might have been in the outhouses?’

  ‘There might at that,’ said the agent doubtfully. ‘One of them’s near as big as a hangar.’

  ‘So I noticed.’ And Burden thanked him grimly. He was almost certain that he had found him, that he could say, ‘Our McCloy was here,’ and yet what had he achieved but dredge up a tiny segment of McCloy’s life? The man had been here and had gone. All they could do now was to turn Moat Hall upside down in the forlorn hope something remained in the near-derelict place to hint at its erstwhile owner’s present refuge.

  ‘Are you going to charge me with murdering him?’ Cullam said hollowly.

  ‘You and McCloy and maybe a couple of others when you’ve told us who they are. Conspiracy to murder, the charge’ll be. Not that it makes much difference.’

  ‘But I’ve got five kids!’

  ‘Paternity never kept anyone out of jail yet, Cullam. Come now, you wouldn’t want to go inside alone, would you? You wouldn’t want to think of McCloy laughing, going scotfree, while you’re doing fifteen years? It’ll be the same sentence for him, you know. He doesn’t get off any lighter just because he only told you to kill Hatton.’

  ‘He never did,’ Cullam said wildly. ‘How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know this McCloy?’

  ‘A good many times before I’d believe you. Why would you kill Hatton on your own? You don’t have to kill a man because he’s got more money and a nicer home than you have.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him!’ Cullam’s voice came dangerously near a sob.

  Wexford switched off the light and for a moment the room seemed very dark. Then, as his eyes grew accustomed, he saw that it was no darker than on any summer evening after heavy rain. The light had a cold bluish tinge and the air was cooler too. He opened the window and a light fresh breeze clutched at the curtains. Down below on the forecourt the tub flowers had been flattened into a sodden pink mush.

  ‘Listen, Cullam,’ he said, ‘you were there. You left the bridge ten minutes before Hatton
started. It was twenty to eleven when you said goodbye to Hatton and Pertwee and even walking none too fast you should have been indoors at home by eleven. But you didn’t get in till a quarter past. The following morning you washed the shirt you’d been wearing, the pullover and the trousers. You knew a river stone had been used to kill Hatton and today you, who get twenty pounds a week and never have a penny to bless yourself with, spent a hundred and twenty quid on luxury equipment. Explain it away, Cullam, explain it away. The storm’s blowing over and you’ve nothing to worry about except fifteen years inside.’

  Cullam opened his big ill-made hands, clenched them and leant forward. The sweat had dried on his face. He seemed to be having difficulty in controlling the muscles which worked in his forehead and at the corners of his mouth. Wexford waited patiently, for he guessed that for a moment the man was totally unable to speak. Terror had dried and paralysed his vocal chords. He waited patiently, but without a vestige of sympathy.

  ‘The hundred quid and his pay packet,’ Cullam said at last. His tone was hoarse and terrified. ‘I… I took it off his body.’

  Chapter 12

  ‘What did he want it for, Charlie-bloody-Hatton? I’ve been in his place, I’ve seen what he’d got. You ever seen his wife, have you? Got up like a tart with her new frocks and her jewellery and all that muck on her face, and not a bleeding thing to do all day long but watch that colour telly and ring up her pals. They hadn’t got no kids, yelling and nagging at you the minute you get in, crawling all over you in the night because they’re cutting their bloody teeth. You want to know when my missus last had a new frock? You want to know when we last had a night out? The answer’s never, not since the first baby come. My missus has to buy the kids’ clothes down at the jumble sale and if she wants a pair of nylons they come off the Green Shield stamps. Bloody marvellous, isn’t it? Lilian Hatton’s got more coats than a perishing film star but she has to go and spend thirty quid on a new outfit for Pertwee’s wedding. A hundred pounds? She wouldn’t even miss it. She could use it for spills to light her fags.’

  The flood-gates had opened and now Cullam, the reticent, the truculent, was speaking without restraint and from a full heart. Wexford was listening with concentration, but he did not appear to be listening at all. If Cullam had been in a fit state to observe behaviour he might have thought the chief inspector bored or preoccupied. But Cullam only wanted to talk. He was indifferent to listeners. All he required was the luxury of silence and a nearly empty room.

  ‘I could have stuck it all,’ he said, ‘but for the bragging. “Put it away, Maurice,” he’d say. “Your need’s greater than mine,” and then he’d tell me about the new necklace he’d bought for his missus. “Plenty more where that came from,” he’d say. Christ, and I can’t find the money to buy my kids new shoes! Two kids I’d got when I’d been married as long as Hatton. Is it fair? Is it right? You tell me.’

  ‘I’ve listened to the party political broadcast,’ said Wexford. ‘I don’t give a damn for your envy. Envy like yours is a hell of a good motive for murder.’

  ‘Yeah? ‘What would I get for killing him? I wasn’t in his will. I’ve told you what I did. I took the money off his body. Five kids I’ve got and the milkman don’t come till eleven in the morning. You ever tried keeping milk for five kids with out a fridge in a heatwave?’ He paused and with a shifty, fidgety look, said, ‘D’you know what Hatton’d have done that Saturday if he hadn’t been killed? Wedding first, Pertwee’s wedding, and Hatton all got up in a topper with his tarty wife. Round the shops afterwards, not to buy anything, just to fritter. Charlie told me it wasn’t nothing for them to get through twenty nicker poking about in the shops. Bottle of wine here, some muck for her face there. Then they’d have some more booze at the Olive, have dinner. Off to the pictures in the evening and in the best seats. Bit of a contrast from me, isn’t it? If I want to relax I go out in the garden, anywhere to get away from the kids’ bawling.’

  ‘Are you a Catholic, Cullam?’

  That surprised him. He had perhaps been expecting a tougher comment and he hunched his shoulders, muttering suspiciously, ‘I haven’t got no religion.’

  ‘Don’t give me that stuff about children then. Nobody makes you have children. Ever heard of the pill? My God, they knew how to plan families twenty years, thirty years before you were born.’ Wexford’s voice grew hard as he warmed to a favourite theme. ‘Having kids is a privilege, a joy, or it should be, and, by God, I’ll get the County down on you if I see you strike that boy of yours on the head again! You’re a bloody animal, Cullam, without an animal’s… Oh! what’s the use? What the hell are you doing anyway, cluttering up my office, wasting my time? Cut the sob stuff and tell me what happened that night. What happened when you left Hatton and Pertwee at the bridge?’

  Stamford had promised to give Burden all the help they could and they were as good as their word. A sergeant and a constable went back with him to Moat Hall and the locks on the two outhouses were forced.

  Inside they found oil on the concrete floor and, imprinted by that oil, a tracery of tire marks. Apart from that there was nothing to show a suspect occupancy but two crushed cardboard cases in one corner. Both had contained canned peaches.

  ‘No joy here,’ said Burden to the sergeant. He threw the flattened cardboard down in disgust. ‘I’ve got things like this in my own garage at home. The supermarket gives them to me to bring my wife’s shopping home in on Fridays.’

  He came to the doorway and started across the deserted yard. As surely as if he could see them actually arriving, see them now, he pictured the stolen lorries driven in. The big doors would open for them and close on them and McCloy and the men who were ‘not quite up to his class’ would unload them and store the cargoes here. Back-slapping, laughing immoderately, Charlie Hatton would go into the house for a drink and a ‘bite to eat’ before driving the lorry away and abandoning it.

  ‘I’d like to go over the house,’ he said, ‘only breaking and entering’s not in my line. We’ll have to wait for permission from the expatriate lady in Sweden.’

  Cullam got up and wandered to the window. He looked as if he expected Wexford to hinder him, but Wexford said nothing.

  ‘He was flashing all this money about in the Dragon. On and on about it he was when we walked up to the bridge.’ Cullam stood by the window, staring fixedly now at the road he had trodden with Hatton and Pertwee. The wet pavements cast back mirror reflections. Wexford guessed the Kingsbrook must have swollen now, its stones submerged under a mill-race. ‘Pertwee told me to wait for Charlie Hatton,’ Cullam said. ‘I wouldn’t do that. God, I was sick of him and his money.’ Slowly he pushed a hand through his thin tow coloured hair. ‘Anyway, I told you, I wasn’t feeling too good. I just walked along the path in the dark.’

  Thinking of what you were going home to, Wexford thought, and what Hatton was. There would have been no sound down there but the sibilant trickle of water. Above Cullam, above the web of black branches, a tranquil galaxy, a net of stars. Greed and envy took from a man’s heart everything but – well, greed and envy. If Cullam had noticed anything as he walked it would have been the rubbish, the flotsam that the river sucked in and gathered on its journey through the meadows.

  ‘Did you wait for him?’

  ‘Wait, nothing!’ Cullam said hotly. ‘Why would I? I hated his guts.’ Wexford wondered how long since anyone had made so many damaging admissions in this office in so short a space of time. Cullam burst out violently. ‘I was sick then. I threw up under the trees. And I felt bloody, I can tell you.’ He shuddered a little, but whether at the memory of this vomiting by the water’s edge or of something even uglier Wexford could not tell. He watched the man narrowly, not caring for the wariness of his eyes and the way his hands had begun to twitch. ‘I’m not used to whisky. A half of bitter’s more my line.’

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ Wexford said sharply. ‘What happened then? Did you hear Hatton approach?’

  ‘I�
��d heard him for a bit by then. I could hear him whistling a long way behind. He was whistling that stupid little old song of his about the man who was scared to go home in the dark.’ Wexford looked up and met the shifty eyes. They slid away furtively, the pink lids blinking. Was Cullam a complete clod or did he realize how macabre his words had been? A man would have to be totally deficient in imagination to fail to be struck with a kind of horror and awe.

  ‘Mabel, dear,

  Listen here,

  There’s robbery in the park…’

  Burden, who had heard them, had memorized the words and repeated them to his chief. ‘Robbery in the park…’ How did it go on? Something about there being no place like home but he couldn’t go home in the dark. It was Wexford’s turn to shiver now. In spite of his age, his experience, he felt a cold thrill run through him.

  ‘Then it happened,’ Cullam said suddenly. His voice trembled. ‘You’re not going to believe this, are you?’

  Wexford only shrugged.

  ‘It’s the truth. I swear it’s the truth.’

  ‘Save your swearing for the dock, Cullam.’

  ‘Christ…’ The man made a sudden effort and the words tumbled out fast. ‘The whistling stopped. I heard a sort of sound…’ He had no descriptive power, few adjectives but hackneyed obscenities. ‘A kind of choking, a sort of – well, God, it was horrible! I felt so bloody bad, anyway. After a bit I got up and – and I went back. I was scared stiff. It was sort of creepy down there. I couldn’t see nothing and I – I stumbled over him. He was lying on the path. Could I have a drink of water?’

  ‘Don’t be a damned fool,’ Wexford snapped.

  ‘You needn’t be so rough with me,’ Cullam whined, ‘I’m telling you, aren’t I? I don’t have to tell you.’

  ‘You have to, Cullam.’