The Best Man To Die Page 6

  ‘If I tell you how it was,’ Cullam said, ‘you won’t believe me.’

  ‘Maybe not, try me.'

  Cullam put his elbows on his knees and leant forward.

  ‘It was in a café,’ he said. ‘One of them places where they have rooms for drivers to kip down for the night. Up on the A. 1 between Stamford and Grantham. I was coming up to my eleven hours – we’re not supposed to drive for more than eleven hours – and I went in and there was Charlie Hatton. I’d seen his lorry in the lay-by. We had a bite to eat and got talking.’

  ‘What load do you carry?’

  ‘Tires, rubber tires. While we was having our meal I looked out of the window and there was a fellow there – in the lay-by – sitting in a black car. I don’t know why, but I didn’t much like the look of him. I said so to Charlie, but all he said was I was like an old woman. He was always saying that to folks. Then he got me and two more drivers to go into his room for a hand of pontoon. He said it was quieter in there, but I couldn’t see the lay-by from his room and after a bit I went outside. The fellow in the car was still there.’

  ‘Did you take the number? Could you describe him?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Cullam gave him a shifty look. ‘I never took the number. I sat in the cab for half an hour and then this fellow went off. Charlie’d said he wanted to phone Lilian and when I come back over the road he was in a phone box. I wanted a light for my fag – I’d run out of matches – so I opened the door of the box and just asked Charlie for a light. Well, I don’t reckon he’d heard me coming. “Tell Mr McCloy it’s no dice”, I heard him say and it was then I said had he got a match? He jumped out of his skin like he’d been stung. “What the hell are you up to”, he shouts at me, “interfering with my private phone calls?” He was as white as a sheet.’

  ‘You connected this call with the man in the car?’

  ‘I reckon I did,’ Cullam said, ‘I did afterwards when I thought about it. My mind went back a couple of months to when Charlie’d asked me if I’d like to make a bit on the side. I wasn’t interested and that was all there was. But I never forgot the name McCloy and when Charlie got so cocky in the pub I thought I’d needle him a bit. That’s all.’

  'When was the café incident, Cullam?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘When did you overhear Hatton’s phone conversation?’

  ‘Way back in the winter. January, I reckon. Not long after Charlie had his lorry pinched and got hit on the head.’

  ‘All right. That’ll do for now, but I may want to talk to you again.’

  Wexford went back through the Cullams’ living room. The children had disappeared. Mrs Cullam still sat in front of the television, the baby asleep now in her lap, the dog lying across her slippered feet. She moved her head as he crossed the room and for a moment he thought she was going to speak to him. Then he saw that the movement was a mere craning of the neck because for an instant he had obstructed her view of the screen.

  Dominic, Barnabas, Samantha and Georgina were sitting on the kerb poking sticks through the drain cover. Wexford wasn’t inclined to be sentimental over the Cullams but he couldn’t help being touched that they who were poor in everything had been affluent, extravagant and imaginative in one respect. If they never gave their children another thing, they had at least endowed them with names usually reserved to the upper classes.

  Dominic, whose face was still coated with food, looked up truculently as he passed and Wexford said, because he couldn’t resist it:

  ‘What’s the baby called?’

  ‘Jane,’ said Dominic simply and without surprise.

  When Wexford got home for his tea Clytemnestra wagged her darning-wool tail at him but she didn’t get out of his chair. Wexford scowled at her.

  'Where’s Sheila?’ he asked his wife.

  ‘Dentist’s.’

  ‘She never said anything about toothache.’

  ‘You don’t go to the dentist’s because you’ve got toothache any more. You go for a check-up. She’s having that molar of hers crowned.’

  ‘So I suppose she won’t feel up to taking that creature out in the morning. Well, she needn’t put it on to me. I’ve got enough on my plate.’

  But Sheila danced in gaily at six o’clock and smiled at her father to show off the triumph of orthodontics.

  ‘There, isn’t that great?’ To satisfy her Wexford peered into the perfect mouth. ‘That filling was getting a bit of a drag,’ she said. ‘Very shy-making for close-ups. An actress has to think about these things.’

  ‘I bet Bernhardt never bothered about her teeth,’ said Wexford to annoy her.

  Sheila opened her eyes wide and fixed her father with a precisely constructed look of wistful adoration. ‘Did you often see Bernhardt when you were a young man, Pop?’ she asked.

  Wexford’s reply was an ill-tempered snort. He pushed a cup of tea to his daughter who rejected it in favour of cold milk. This she sipped slowly, very conscious of the picture she made in her cream linen dress, her pale hair slightly but attractively disordered, Roman sandal thongs binding her long legs to the knee. Wexford wondered what life held for her. Would she succeed and the future be a succession of triumphs, starring parts, world tours, fame, the increasing terror of growing old? Or would she marry some young idiot like this Sebastian and forget all her aspirations in the possession of two children and a semi? Because he was a father and no longer young he confessed to himself that he would prefer the latter. He wanted her to be safe. Nothing on earth would have made him tell her so.

  No such thoughts troubled her, he fancied. Living in the moment, she drank her milk and began to prattle on about her visit to the dentist.

  ‘If I ever settle down…’ Sheila said this in much the same tone of incredulity as she might have said, ‘If I ever die’. ‘If I ever settle down, I wouldn’t mind a house like his. Not in Kingsmarkham of course. Stratford might be nice or the Cotswolds near Stratford.’

  ‘Within commuting distance,’ Wexford put in slyly.

  His daughter ignored him. ‘One of those black and white houses it is. Terribly ancient and full of atmosphere. Of course, the surgery part’s all modern. New copies of Nova and Elle. I thought that progressive.’

  ‘Thoughtful too,’ said Wexford, ‘what with everyone in Kingsmarkham being bi-lingual.’

  ‘Your generation just wasn’t educated, Pop, but I can tell you I hardly know anyone who doesn’t read French. Anyway, the old fuddy-duddies can look at the antiques.’ Sheila put her glass down and tossed her head. ‘Georgeous painting on the walls, and some marvellous glass sculpture.’

  Sounds like the police station, Wexford thought. ‘And where is this shrine of culture?’ he said aloud.

  ‘Ploughman’s Lane.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be called Vigo would he?’

  ‘Mm-hm, he would.’ Sheila sat on the sofa and began painting shiny black lines on her eyelids. ‘It’s about time you and Mummy stopped going to that dreary old Richardson in the High Street and switched to Mr Vigo.’ The most difficult feat of her artistry completed, she started to stroke her lashes with a mascara wand. ‘Mr Vigo is an absolute dream. One of those fair-haired characters with a craggy face. Madly sexy.’ Wexford winced and hoped she hadn’t seen. His daughters were still little girls to him. Who the hell did this craggy fair fellow think he was, projecting his dreamy sexiness at his little girl? ‘Of course he’s not young,’ said Sheila serenely.

  ‘All of thirty-five, I daresay. One foot in the grave and the other on a bar of soap.’

  ‘About thirty-five,’ said Sheila seriously. She held her eye lashes up with two fingers to curl them. ‘He’s got a baby of six months and – something rather tragic. His older child’s a mongol. Ghastly, isn’t it? It’s eight now and Mr Vigo hasn’t seen it for years. He and his wife tried and tried to have another one and they did, but it took them all those years. Of course he worships the baby.’

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Wexford asked. She was a
detective’s daughter all right. ‘I thought you went to get your tooth done, not do a survey.’

  ‘Oh, we had a long talk,’ Sheila said airily. ‘I don’t suppose you can understand, but I’m interested in human nature. If I’m going to be a real actress I’ll have to know what makes people tick. I’m getting quite good at summing people up.’

  ‘Bully for you,’ said her father sourly. ‘I’ve been trying for forty years and the margin of error’s still about eighty percent.’

  Sheila looked at herself in her handbag mirror. ‘Mr Vigo’s got a very smooth sophisticated manner. Cool, if you know what I mean. I sometimes think dentists have a very interesting relationship with their patients. They’ve got to be nice, have the right psychological approach, otherwise, you’d never go back to them again, would you? It’s such an intimate thing. I mean, can you think of any other situation, Pop, when a man gets so close to a woman except when he’s actually making love to her?’

  ‘I sincerely hope nothing like that happened.’

  ‘Oh, Pop… I was just saying what it was like. I was making a sort of comparison.’ Sheila giggled and twisted a strand of hair around one finger. ‘Although, when I was going he did give me a sort of squeeze and said I’d got the loveliest mouth he’d ever seen.’

  ‘My God!’ said Wexford, getting up. ‘If you don’t mind what you say to your father, you might remember he’s also a detective chief inspector.’ He paused and then said, not realizing the effect his words would have, ‘I may go along and see this Vigo.’

  ‘Oh, Pop!’ Sheila wailed.

  ‘Not because of your lovely mouth, my dear. In pursuance of an enquiry of my own.’

  ‘Well, don’t you dare…’

  All this time Mrs Wexford had been placidly eating ginger biscuits, but now she looked up and said calmly:

  'What a silly girl you are. I often think it’s a blessing intelligence isn’t necessary in the interpretive arts. If you’ve finished with your face you’d better take that dog out.’

  At the word dog, Clytemnestra uncurled herself.

  ‘All right,’ said Sheila meekly.

  Chapter 7

  They stood under the willow trees, looking at the river. Anyone who didn’t know them might have taken them for a couple of businessmen out for a Sunday afternoon stroll.

  But almost everyone in Kingsmarkham knew them and knew also by now that this was the spot where Charlie Hatton had been murdered.

  ‘I said we’d have to talk to everyone in the darts club,’ said Burden, stopping down at the water’s edge, ‘and I reckon we have. Funny, isn’t it? Pertwee’s the only one who could put up with Hatton for a moment, but no one’s willing to come out with it. It’s always the others who were daggers drawn with him. The one you’re talking to is all tolerance and forbearance. The farthest he’ll go is to admit a sort of resentment. Does a man do murder because a mate of his riles him in a pub or because he’s got more money than he has?’

  'He might if he was going to get some of the money,’ said Wexford. ‘A hundred pounds is a lot to a man like Cullam. We’re going to have to watch Cullam, see if he does some big spending in the next few days. I’m not at all happy about the way he washed the clothes he was wearing on Friday night.’

  Burden was advancing gingerly across the river, trying not to get his feet wet. He trod on the projecting stones which the water lapped without covering. Then he bent down and said, ‘There’s your weapon.’

  From the bank Wexford followed the direction of his pointing finger. All but one of the stones were furred at their perimeters and partly on their surfaces with green weed.

  Burden was pointing to the only one that looked bare, as if until very recently it had lain with its exposed area embedded in the river’s gravelly floor. He squatted precariously and lifted the stone in both hands. Then he eased himself to his feet and scrambled back to Wexford.

  It was a big stone, not round, but elongated and shaped rather like a mandolin. The side which had lain on the river bed was green and moss-grown and there was nothing about it except for its shape and its anomalous position in the water to show that it might have been used as a lethal weapon. Wexford grasped it in both his hands, raised it high and brought it down hard to meet the empty air. Hatton had been walking along in the dark and someone had waited for him among the willows and the brambles, the stone ready for use. Full of whisky, his thoughts fuddled and far away, Hatton had given warning of his approach. He had been whistling and probably not bothering to tread softly. The stone had been raised high just as Wexford was raising it now but brought down that time on the back of Hatton’s skull. Once, twice, more than that? As many times as it took to kill. Then Hatton had rolled into the water. His killer had rifled his wallet before casting the stone into the stream.

  Wexford thought all these things and he knew Burden was following his thoughts, matching them, so he didn’t bother to say anything. He dropped the stone and it rolled a little before falling into the water with a soft plop.

  Across the meadows he could see the flats of the council estate, the sun striking their plate-glass windows and making them blaze as if the whole place was on fire.

  ‘Since we’ve come so far,’ he said, ‘we may as well have another chat with Mrs Hatton.’

  Her mother was with her and three other people. Jack Pertwee sat on the smart-checked tweed sofa holding the hand of a girl with a monumental pile of black hair and eyelashes like shoe brushes. Mrs Hatton and her mother were both in black, smart unseasonable black relieved with a great deal of showy costume jewellery. The window’s suit looked brand-new and Wexford couldn’t help wondering if she had actually been out the previous afternoon to buy it. She wore a white blouse with an ostentatious frilly jabot and a big paste spray on one lapel. Her stockings were dark and her shoes, though also apparently new, the outdated, stiletto- heeled, pointed kind of gleaming black patent. She looked as if she were about to set off for a provincial cocktail party, an office party of female executives.

  At first Wexford felt a curious distaste and then he thought about the dead man and what he knew of him. This was the way Charlie Hatton would have liked his widow to look, brave, defiant, bedizened. The last thing a cocky little man like Hatton would want was a kind of spiritual suttee.

  He surveyed the rest of the company. Plainly they had interrupted a mourning tea party. The girl on the sofa must be the bride whose nuptials Hatton’s death had deferred. And the other man?

  ‘My brother, Mr Bardsley,’ said Mrs Hatton. ‘Him and Mum came to keep me company. This gentleman is Mr Pertwee.’

  ‘We’ve met,’ said Wexford graciously.

  ‘And Miss Thompson,’ said Mrs Hatton. She spoke in a low dutiful voice. Her eyes were swollen under the thick green and black make-up. ‘They were all very fond of Charlie. Would you like a cup of tea? You can if you want. You’re welcome.’

  ‘We won’t, thanks, Mrs Hatton.’

  ‘Well, sit down then, there’s plenty of room.’ She said it proudly, indicating the several empty chairs. They were good chairs, upholstered and cared for, not the uncomfortable dining seats with hard backs a less affluent hostess would be obliged to offer latecomers. Looking at the branched hanging lamp of teak and smoky glass, the velvet curtains and the big colour television set, Wexford decided that Hatton had done his wife proud. Cullam and he were both lorry drivers, both lived in council accommodation, but that was all they had in common. He glanced at Bardsley, the brother, a fair rabbity man, like his sister but less well-favoured, and he observed his suit. It was very likely his best suit – today of all days he would surely wear his best suit – but it was a cheap off-the-peg affair.

  ‘Please forgive me, Mrs Hatton, if I ask a few routine questions,’ he said. She gave him a pleased earnest nod. ‘You and Mr Hatton were in business together, I understand, Mr Bardsley?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Was it a full partnership?’

  Bardsley put his teacup down and sai
d in a melancholy voice, ‘I was thinking of taking him into partnership, but business hasn’t been that good lately. As it was, he just worked for me.’

  ‘Would you mind telling me what wages you paid him?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know… I don’t rightly like to.’

  ‘Of course he don’t,’ Jack Pertwee suddenly interrupted belligerently. ‘What’s it got to do with what happened on Friday?’

  ‘That’s right, Jack,’ murmured the girl and she squeezed his hand.

  ‘You can see Charlie did all right for himself. You’ve only got to look around you.’

  ‘Don’t make trouble, Jack,’ Mrs Hatton said with that peculiar intense control of hers. ‘The officers are only doing what they have to.’ She fingered her brooch uneasily. ‘Charlie usually brought home a bit over twenty pounds a week. That’s right, isn’t it, Jim?’

  Jim Bardsley looked unhappy about it and his voice became aggressive. ‘I’ve been lucky to make that much myself lately,’ he said. ‘Charlie was one of the sort that make a little go a long way. I reckon he was careful.’

  Marilyn Thompson tossed her head and a lock of hair drifted from the elaborate structure. ‘He wasn’t mean, anyway,’ she flared, ‘if that’s what you mean by careful. There’s not many men who aren’t even relations that’d give someone a record player for a wedding present.’

  ‘I never said he was mean, Marilyn.’

  ‘It makes me sick. What you want to do is find who killed him.’ The girl’s hands trembled and she clenched them. ‘Give us a cig, Jack.’ Her hands enclosed Pertwee’s wrist as he held the lighter and they were no more steady than his. ‘You lot,’ she muttered, ‘you lot don’t reckon nothing to a working man. If he hasn’t got a nice home you call him a layabout.’ She glared at Wexford, pushing back her hair. ‘And if he’s got things like your class take for granted you jump right on him, say he must have nicked them. Class, class, class,’ she said, tears trembling on the brush-bristle lashes. ‘That’s all you think about.’