Corridors of Death (20 page)

‘But whoever does it is to get a complete statement of how often they met and exactly what Shaw thought of him,’ he warned. Romford went off speculating on what was making Milton state the obvious all the time in giving instructions.

He seemed to have taken that lapse over Nigel Clark too much to heart. It was a good thing that he, Romford, wasn’t the type to get upset. Someone had to keep his head. Though mind you, he couldn’t blame the Super for getting cross about this new development. He reflected primly that these top-shelf types didn’t half go in for irregular sex. One adulterer, one adulteress, one homosexual, one bachelor knocking off a married woman and now a divorced man visiting a call-girl. Romford reflected complacently on his model family life and began to compose the sermon on the sins of the flesh he would give the next time his chapel called on him. By the time he lifted his telephone his mind had strayed on to a fantasy of what the call-girl probably looked like.

Milton was short with Stafford. He told him sharply that he had reason to believe he had given a distorted account of the phone-call he had had with Sir Nicholas. The industrialist looked suitably abashed.

‘I’m sorry, Superintendent. I admit I held back some of it, but I couldn’t see how that would do any harm. Since I knew I didn’t kill him I couldn’t see why I needed to confuse the issue by strengthening my motive.’

‘It does great harm, Mr Stafford, when people implicated in a murder enquiry take it upon themselves to decide what is and is not relevant. Don’t you realize that I need all the evidence I can get about the behaviour of Sir Nicholas before he was murdered?’

Stafford abandoned his misunderstood look. ‘You’re right, of course, Superintendent. I was looking at it from my own point of view, not yours. I’ll tell you everything this time.’

He went on with what was by now a drearily familiar tale of outrageous goading. Sir Nicholas had been so unfriendly and unsympathetic on the telephone that Stafford had eventually accused him of having been instrumental in setting the department and the grants board against him.

‘He said he had indeed and was proud of it. I was past it and should come to terms with it. He said if I liked I could talk to him about it after the Monday morning meeting.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said “Go to hell” and put the phone down.’

‘You didn’t speak to him after the meeting?’

‘No, Superintendent. I didn’t ever want to speak to him again. I was afraid I might lose my temper. He came up to me just before the meeting started, but I turned away and began to talk to someone else.’

Milton believed him. Stafford had been clutching at his last shreds of dignity. He couldn’t imagine him wanting to get involved in a shouting match which might attract witnesses. He let him go.

Romford came in looking pleased with himself. ‘Lady Clark will see you in half an hour, sir, and Mr Wells will be free between twelve thirty and one fifteen. Mr Nixon says he could see you after that, but he’s got to answer questions in the House at two forty-five and would prefer to see you later if you don’t mind. Prime Minister’s Question Time starts at three fifteen and he’ll slip away as soon as he can. He suggests you go to his room in the Commons about half three and he’ll be along as quickly as possible.’

‘Three thirty will be fine, tell him.’

Milton set off for Kensington and Lady Clark. He was preoccupied with this new story about Harvey Nixon. It might be totally irrelevant, but he feared it wasn’t. If Sir Nicholas knew about Nixon’s sexual activities he surely wouldn’t have missed the chance to tell him before or on Monday. He had been planning an Armageddon and Milton couldn’t imagine him wasting good material like the news that a smut-sheet was on Nixon’s trail. Could even the gentlest man have kept his head when he heard that? If it hadn’t been for Gladys, Milton might well have asked to be relieved of the case on personal grounds. Sir Nicholas deserved to be in the dock, not whoever had been driven to murder him. His killer deserved a decoration. But not Gladys’s. He resolved to think regularly about her from now on. There was something about the world he was moving in on this investigation that blunted his zeal. Gladys was more real to him, although he’d only seen her dead.

He got to South Kensington quicker than he had expected and killed a few minutes gaping absently into shop windows. His eye caught a display of pale furniture, pale rich carpets and expensive knick-knacks. Leaning casually against the reproduction Adam fireplace, its face set in a refined smile, was a mannequin dressed with restraint, elegance and classic good taste. It bore a marked resemblance to Lady Clark. Madame Tussaud’s could put it straight into the Chamber of Horrors if she turned out to have murdered Gladys, though he supposed they wouldn’t think it a gory enough killing to warrant her inclusion. Still, you could never tell what would seize the public imagination. Despite all the popular contempt for Whitehall there was a national appetite for shenanigans among its high-ups. Milton thought about Nixon again and groaned inwardly. At least he was having the decency not to interrogate him before he had to perform in the House. He glanced at his watch again and walked briskly towards Lady Clark’s house.

‘You’ve come to rebuke me for not telling you about Nigel, haven’t you, Superintendent?’ she said, as they sat down.

‘Among other things, Lady Clark.’

‘Look,’ she said, and there were tears in her eyes. ‘I told you about my marriage and my adultery. Could you seriously expect me to tell you also that my only child had turned out homosexual? It wasn’t relevant. I knew he had had an argument with Nicholas about Ronald, but he couldn’t have killed him.’

‘You can’t be sure of that.’

‘I can. Not just because I know it to be totally out of character for Nigel to raise a hand against anyone, but because whatever Nicholas said to him about Ronald, he couldn’t really hurt him deeply. Nigel is in love, just as I am. In a similar position, I would have been able to take anything Nicholas said against Martin because he couldn’t hurt me any more. He had lost that power long before his death.’

‘But Nigel was very upset by what his father said.’

‘There’s a difference between being upset and being wounded deeply enough to want to strike, Superintendent. I assure you, I have never seen Nigel so happy. It’s because he’s developed so much emotionally since he met Ronald that I’ve been able to accept their relationship.’

‘You can’t expect me to see it quite so simply, Lady Clark.’

‘No, of course I can’t. But you must accept that he has an alibi for Mrs Bradley’s murder.’

‘I know he has been given an alibi by his mother, as I know his mother has been given an alibi by him.’

‘I suppose I should feel insulted by the implications of that remark, but I can’t. I’ve been expecting it. You think Nigel might have lied to protect me as I might have lied to protect him, and I’m in no position to prove that that didn’t happen. I can only say that while I have a great deal of sympathy with whoever murdered Nicholas, I feel a violent contempt for whoever killed that poor woman to keep himself out of jail. You can believe that or not as you wish.’

‘Did Nigel know about you and Mr Jenkins?’

‘No. I didn’t want to burden him with my troubles. He had enough of his own.’

‘Have they ever met?’

‘Never.’

Milton had already decided to believe one suspect this morning. He didn’t know if he could afford to believe two. Maybe the whole damn lot of them were plausible liars and he was getting gullible. He contemplated going through with bullying Lady Clark in the way he had intended. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t sound convincing. In his heart he believed she was about as capable of having anything to do with Gladys’s death as Ann was.

‘All right, Lady Clark. We’ll let it go at that for the moment. Can I ask you something else? Did Sir Nicholas ever go out alone on Sunday nights?’

The question took her aback.

‘Sunday nights, Superintendent? Not often. There was a period a few months ago when he went out an awful lot at weekends and stayed out very late many evenings during the week. I suppose he went out on a few Sundays. I couldn’t be precise about it unless I looked at my diary and thought about it for a while.’

‘Where did he go?’

‘I don’t know. He used just to say he wanted to walk and think for a while. Sometimes he said he was working at the office. I wondered for a while if he had found somebody too, but when he went back to his normal habits after a few weeks I decided he had probably just been overworking. What do you think he was doing?’

‘I don’t know, Lady Clark,’ lied Milton. ‘I haven’t got enough to go on. I was just following up a possible lead.’

He knew all right, he thought, as he walked back to the tube. He would lay heavy odds that Sir Nicholas had spent his spare time – as Susan Taylor was to do later – following Harvey Nixon.

32

Amiss had started his day in a state of vindictive contentment. He was pleased with the thought that William Wells was going to have hell to pay. He hoped Milton would give him a real going-over. With luck he’d turn out to be the murderer. So what if some of the ripples did spread to the department? From what Milton had told him of the other suspects they all seemed like reasonably decent people. If anyone was guilty it should be the greatest available shit.

He had the joy of being present when Nixon and Sanders told Wells what they thought of him. Sanders necessarily had to be rather circumspect; it was an embarrassment that his predecessor had been the one to set Wells off on his disastrous trail. Nixon didn’t have any such inhibitions, however. Amiss had never seen him in a temper before and was surprised at how loud and offensive he could be. Not that he said a word that either of those witnessing the dressing-down would have disagreed with, unless Sanders, perhaps, found the expression ‘prize cunt’ a bit unparliamentary. Amiss doubted it though. He was pretty sure that his own smile of approval had been mirrored in Sanders’s face.

It was worth staying in the civil service if he was going to have treats like this from time to time. He was certain Sanders had brought him into the meeting as a sort of thank-you for having put up with Sir Nicholas for so long. The only disappointment was that Wells didn’t seem as upset as he might be. Although he had looked a bit shaken initially at the discovery that Nixon could turn nasty, he had lapsed into sullenness by the end. He just kept muttering about putting his constituents first, and he was visibly pleased that the Prime Minister had decided to reconsider the decision immediately. He was talking to colleagues on the phone now. Sanders – and indeed Nixon – had pleaded with the P.M. to stick to his guns, but the issue had never really been in doubt. It would take a brave man indeed to put his small majority to the test over something as potentially explosive as a public clash between two of its ministers.

‘That was a right slaggin’-down ole Nixon gave Wells,’ observed Phil with appreciation as Amiss went back into his office.

‘What do you know about it?’ asked Amiss incredulously. It was far too early for the news to have got round the department.

‘I ’appened to be in the corridor, didn’t I? I ‘eard Nixon shoutin’ at ’im about ’is bein’ a traitorous little shit. Good for Nixon. Never thought ’e ’ad it in ’im.’

Amiss cuffed him moodily and retired to his desk. Something would have to be done about Phil. He seemed to regard the department as a vehicle for his entertainment. Still, maybe that was a healthy viewpoint. It was better to be entertained by your job than crushed by it. God knows he deserved a few chuckles himself after his time with Sir Nicholas, although it was arguable that the very traits in Sir Nicholas that made him hard to bear, had been the direct cause of all the unusual entertainment he had got that week. The new boss, too, had come courtesy of the same chain of events. Not for the first time recently, he caught himself in internal debate in classic civil servicese – ‘on the one hand’ balancing ‘on the other’, and all implications given due weight. And to think there was a time when he’d dreamt of being a rock-and-roll star.

He resisted the temptation to further introspection and began to read through the final brief for Harvey Nixon’s Question Time that afternoon. He hoped Nixon would recover sufficiently by then to offer a good account of himself. There were enough stories flying round about his exhibition on Monday, and none of them was charitable. Amiss bet there would be an unusually good turn-out of M.P.s this afternoon. You could normally count on there being no more than a handful for any uncontroversial session to do with a department generally regarded as boring, but they would be there in force today to see the performance at the Despatch Box of a man whose career seemed as good as finished and who might even possibly be a murderer. The newspapers hadn’t been able to give the list of suspects of course, but those in the know had a pretty fair idea of who had been ruled out and who were still receiving police attention.

The brief suggested that Nixon could expect some problems that afternoon with Question I, which concerned the government’s refusal to provide the money for a new glass-recycling plant in Wales. Amiss didn’t agree. He couldn’t see Nixon being attacked as hard on this one today as he might be at other times. The House of Commons was fundamentally a club – its members might privately enjoy each others’ discomfiture, but they wouldn’t publicly attack a man who was known to be in trouble. That would be bad form and only the most inexperienced or nasty members would try it on. In any case the figures that had won the case against the Welsh plant were incontrovertible and, although Nixon could be a bit shaky on statistics, Parkinson would be there to brief him if he got into any difficulty. The next item, an apparently innocuous question about the chemical-recycling plant, was a different matter. Someone was sure to find an opportunity to raise the issue of Wells’s article. Still, the P.M. had promised a revised or reinforced decision by lunchtime, and Nixon and Sanders could sort out then what was to be said about it.

Phil was clearly bored. He had decided to persecute Julia. He had raised his head from his book and was chanting ‘Julia, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Ju-li-a: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three on the teeth. Ju. Lee. A.’