Death of a Nobody (14 page)

18

Gabrielle Berridge was unhappy in the midst of luxury. It was a bright spring morning, with the sun climbing and the clouds high. Through the broad picture windows of the penthouse, the views over the bright green Gloucestershire countryside to the top of May Hill were superb. Yet she could not wait to be out of the place.

Ian and she would set up house away from here. In the country, but in a different, harsher northern landscape. In an old stone farmhouse, perhaps. It must be different, to confirm the new life which was beginning for both of them. She tried to picture the setting for her new house, but it obstinately refused to define itself. The pictures which swam before her during the nights were agreeable fantasies, but she was impatient for the reality. She was looking out disconsolately when she saw the old Vauxhall turning carefully from the lane into the car park.

There was no sound from its engine through the double glazing, just as there was no sound from the birds which flew up at this disturbance of their concerns. She watched Superintendent Lambert lever himself a little stiffly from the driving seat. She told herself that he might be merely supervising the door-to-door enquiries which had brought excitement into the generally quiet and ordered life of the residents of Old Mead Park. That he might be here just to ascertain more details of the routine of the place from that cornucopia of local knowledge, George Lewis.

But, against her will, her mind pictured the tall man walking past the door of the porter’s office, turning aside the slightly officious attentions of the rotund little man in his green uniform, making determinedly for the lift. She did not think it odd when she heard a gentle tapping at her door: she found that she had already moved halfway across the flat when the summons came to open it.

The tall figure showed no surprise at finding the door opened so quickly. ‘There are one or two things I need to tie up,’ he said. ‘I won’t take up very much of your time.’ He refused coffee, turned down even her offer of a seat. Nor did he trouble himself with the preliminaries of small talk. ‘I’d like you to show me where your husband kept that pistol. We’ve established now that it was the weapon which killed him.’

She took him through the hall into her husband’s study. She had not set foot in the room since his death. There might be too many ghosts. She made herself go without flinching to the desk and open the top right-hand drawer. ‘This is where he normally kept the pistol. He was very careful, very methodical. Of course, he took it out with him, sometimes. I don’t know when. I took care not to know what he was about in these last few years.’

To a policeman, it was a familiar disclaimer. Once a man was proclaimed a villain, those around him rushed to declare their ignorance about his activities. But it might be genuine, in this case. ‘Did you see him with the pistol at any time in the week before his death?’

‘No.’ She spoke a little too quickly, almost before the question was completed, because she knew what he was going to ask. Her brain was racing ahead, wondering how much he knew. ‘I imagine he was carrying it himself, or had it in the car with him, if that is what he was killed with.’

He looked at her for a moment, then nodded. ‘Either that, or someone else removed it from this drawer. You didn’t take it away yourself, Mrs Berridge, for any reason?’ He could think of only one reason. And so could she.

‘No. No, of course not. I rarely went in there. And he kept the drawer locked.’ But a wife would have access to a key, in all probability, she thought. She braced herself for him to suggest just that.

Instead, he said, ‘But when I tried the drawer just before we discovered the body downstairs, it was unlocked, you see.’

She hoped her face was glassily blank, even as her mind reeled and she cursed her incompetence. She must have forgotten to relock the drawer after she had removed the pistol. ‘I expect he took the gun out and forgot to lock the drawer.’ How she wished that she had not said a moment earlier that Jim was careful and methodical!

Lambert said, ‘Perhaps so.’ He waited, as if she might dig herself into a deeper pit by attempting to extricate herself. But she had the sense to leave it, partly because she did not trust herself to speak calmly. Eventually he said, ‘There is one other rather curious thing.’

She wondered what was coming now, noting that he had now categorized the business of the unlocked drawer as ‘curious’, and thus signalled that he found her explanation unconvincing. This felt like a job interview that was going all wrong: it was a long time since she had endured one of those. And the stake this time was her whole future. She said, ‘I hope I might be of more help with this one,’ and favoured him with a mirthless smile, trying to force humour into her dark eyes.

‘Your husband had a BMW which was almost new, and an electronic gadget to open his garage door on his key ring. They were in the ignition socket of the car. Do you have a duplicate set?’

Gabrielle felt an immense relief, so overwhelming that at first she could scarcely frame an answer to the question. ‘No. No, I don’t recall ever seeing any.’

‘But the car is almost new. There would certainly be a second set of keys. But we didn’t find any duplicates, not in his clothes, nor in the car itself, nor in this apartment.’

She thought carefully, anxious to be of help on a matter that could only be innocent, as far as she was concerned. ‘There must be another set, as you say. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen them. Is it important?’

‘Perhaps not. But anyone who had them would have had access to the garage and the car, you see. The fact that they’re missing rather draws attention to that.’

She felt that he knew about the gun, was pointing up this as a suggestion that she was the one who had had motive, means and access. She longed to scream at him that she knew nothing about these damned keys. But that would only suggest that she did know something about the pistol. They were still standing, though they had moved from the study back to the lounge. She was thankful they had not gone into her bedroom; she felt that those cool grey eyes would surely have divined the place where she had hidden that pistol. She said, a little desperately, ‘Was there anything else?’

‘Nothing you can help me with here. We haven’t managed to find anyone who saw you earlier on Tuesday evening at Stratford yet, but we are continuing our enquiries; we may turn up something, in due course.’

How unconvinced he sounded about that! Gabrielle wondered if they knew of her vain attempts to get Mr Allan at the River Crescent Hotel to tell them she had presented herself there before the theatre performance. Probably not: there seemed no reason why they should have been back to him.

Lambert thought carefully, then decided to give her a snippet from their findings. A sprat which might in due course bring in a juicy mackerel. He was almost at the door when he turned to her and said, ‘By the way, we have now found a single print on your husband’s Smith and Wesson pistol. I can’t tell you whose it is, of course.’

***

Bert Hook enjoyed the drive to Stratford much more than Gabrielle Berridge had on the previous day. He had been up for three hours before he set out, working on his Open University assignment, stimulated by the television programme he had watched at 6.30. He had even found time to breakfast with the boys, a noisy interval of youthful boisterousness and paternal badinage. Bert had married late and happily: he congratulated himself anew on that.

As he set out on his journey, Detective Sergeant Hook felt the satisfaction of a man who already has a couple of hours of useful activity under his belt. The drive would be an interval of relaxation. And now that he was studying literature for his degree, Stratford seemed a place of pilgrimage, rather than just a bustling town on the northern fringe of their area. The hedges were flying green ribbons of hawthorn, but it was too soon yet to tell whether the oaks which grew so tall and stately in this central part of the kingdom would be out before the ash.

He came into Stratford over the same ancient bridge that had brought Gabrielle Berridge into the town on the previous day. But then their paths diverged with their concerns. Hook parked in the large public car park and crossed the lower end of the main street, eschewing the opportunity to be drawn into the preparations for the Shakespeare birthday celebrations to which the flags beckoned him. He moved a hundred yards to the Gower Memorial to the bard, grinning at the bucolic statue of Falstaff and the romantic one of Hamlet.

Bert looked across to the theatre, then strolled by the river for the short distance to its doors. The foyer was quiet at this time of the morning, but there were three people waiting for attention at the box office, and a group of pilgrims to the shrine were examining the still photographs from productions around the walls. He noted that the previous evening’s performance had been of
Macbeth
.

It was ten o’clock. The rubbish bins in the foyer and on the terrace in front of the theatre had been emptied. But in the larger receptacles at the side of the theatre, Bert Hook found what he was looking for.

***

Ian Faraday was working in the rear garden of his house. That same rear garden which had looked so neglected when the CID paid him a visit. But he was not striving to improve that appearance.

It was true that he was getting rid of some of the winter rubbish. He had found the tinder-dry remnants of his autumn clear-up: the tops of perennials which he had cut to the ground after the season was over, prunings from shrubs which were getting too tall near his neighbour’s fence, twigs and small branches from forest trees which had fallen on his lawns during the gales. When he looked round the garden, he was surprised how little he had done of late, how long it was since he had been out here. The new season’s couch grass was coming up strongly among this detritus of the previous year.

But there was enough material for his purposes. He rolled up sheets of newspaper, built the dry sticks around them into the wigwam he remembered from boyhood, resisting the temptation to light his fire until he could see none of the paper, as he had done then. He was as impatient as a child to see a fierce blaze, but not for childish reasons.

The fire went well, as he had known it would. There was no need for the can of paraffin behind him. He piled thicker branches upon it, then produced a fine tall blaze with the dead conifer he had cut in two with his cross-saw. When the heat was great enough to make him stand back, he went swiftly to the garden shed, casting rapid glances at the bedroom windows of the two neighbouring houses which were the only ones to overlook his efforts. There was no sign of any observer.

He kept the clothing tightly bundled until he had it at the fire. Then he poured a little paraffin into the midst of the bundle, holding it tight again for a moment until the liquid soaked into its recesses. Then, after a final check that no curious eye was turned upon him, he unfolded the trousers and the sweater and cast them upon the blaze.

The paraffin made the column of flame leap like a live thing, twelve feet and more into the air. He put the shirt into the middle of the flames immediately, whilst the heat was at its fiercest. He did not want any trace of it to remain for anyone who came to rake over the ashes of this pyre. The clothes were soon gone, in that fierce heat. He piled more debris upon the fire, closing the chapter. It was, in its way, very satisfying.

He did not stay much longer with his fire. As the conflagration died down and he could get near the heart of it again, he raked the charred remnants of branches into the mound of whitening ash, turning the centre of the heap to check that no scorched vestiges of his garments remained for prying hands to recover, watching the subsidiary blazings with the gratification that comes from a task accomplished.

As his fire died, he was pleased to find no evidence that his sweater or shirt had even been part of it; not even a button had survived that Promethean heat. There was a blackened zip from the trousers. He took it and put it at the bottom of his rubbish bag. The refuse men would be round later in the day to remove it. Everything seemed to be working for him, today. With a last look at the gently rising column of smoke from the bottom of his garden, he went indoors to get changed.

He had showered and dressed, was almost ready for the road, when the phone bleeped in the hall. He hesitated for a moment, then answered it. It was the very voice he most wanted to hear: this must really be his day. As soon as Gabrielle had announced herself, he said eagerly, ‘I’ve burnt the clothes I wore that night, as we agreed. No problems: they’ve disappeared without trace.’

She was scarcely listening to him. He caught the alarm in her voice as she said harshly, ‘That man Lambert’s been here. He asked about the gun.’

‘But I told you, no one could know you removed it from Jim’s desk. He didn’t suggest you did?’

‘No. Not quite. But they’ve found a print on that damned pistol.’

He said stupidly, his brain refusing to work, ‘A print?’

‘A single thumbprint. Ian, it can only be yours!’

19

The taxi-driver’s name was Milton. It caused him fewer problems as his clientele became progressively less literate, but he still told them firmly that his first name was Billy, not John. Too many schoolmasters had enquired if he was the original ‘mute inglorious’ Milton; too many of them had said when his attention wandered, ‘Milton thou shouldst be living at this hour’. Billy had inevitably been a little scarred; we are sensitive in our youth.

Billy Milton was twenty-nine. He had been driving his cab for three years now, after a series of other jobs had sailed on to the rocks of recession. He had taken pains to cultivate the air of experience that seemed part of the necessary equipment for anyone driving a cab. He was literally street-wise now, having an excellent working knowledge of the twisting thoroughfares of the ancient towns of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, and even a degree of familiarity with the labyrinth of old and new that helped to make up the street map of the city of Bristol.

Nevertheless, he was feeling his way a little in this particular matter. Was discretion a part of the taxi-man’s job? When he accepted customers, did he take on also an unwritten agreement to keep silent about things which might embarrass them? He had protected a few adulterers when questioned by their spouses, had even occasionally turned a blind eye to fornication four feet behind his head as he drove. Though that was against company policy, the tips had been handsome enough to encourage a little laxity. And Billy, while not vicious, was certainly no angel: that was the image he wished to cultivate. A Jack-the-lad who knew the score and had his own transport was much in demand with the girls.

But did you protect the clients whatever the circumstances? Even when the police might eventually be asking you why you had kept silent? Billy Milton found he was not as street-wise about these matters as he pretended to be in conversation. He decided he had better seek out a little advice. He thought about it for five minutes, whilst he ate his sandwiches in his cab and pretended to read his
Daily
Mail
. Then he brightened: he had thought of someone he could consult without losing face.

***

George Lewis made Billy welcome in his porter’s den at Old Mead Park. He shut the door, put on the kettle and unfastened the buttons of his green jacket, three actions which signified friendship on equal terms and even a degree of intimacy. They were companions in here against the uncertainties and injustices of the world outside.

George looked chubbier now that he had allowed his
embonpoint
free rein beneath his opened jacket, like an elderly woman who had divested herself of corsets. He gazed down with something near fondness at the young man he had seated in the room’s only armchair. George was a man who had never been in a position to enjoy the luxury of giving patronage; now he felt very like a patron to this fresh-faced, vulnerable young man.

He had offered Milton an increasing amount of trade over the last year. It was automatic now that whenever anyone in the apartments asked about taxi services, he recommended young Billy. When visitors had to be picked up or the residents taken to the airport for their foreign holidays, it was Billy who was contacted. And he had been entirely reliable: punctual, cheerful and helpful with luggage when necessary. His efforts had brought profit to him and another small addition to George’s standing as the factotum of Old Mead Park.

Now George smiled down encouragingly at his
protegé
. ‘You said you had something to ask me,’ he said.

‘Oh, it’s nothing really,’ said Billy. It did indeed seem unimportant, now that he had brought himself here. Perhaps it was something he should have sorted out for himself, after all. He did not want to lose face, even with friendly, unthreatening old George.

‘Let’s have it out and done with, then,’ said Lewis, pouring the boiling water carefully into the china coffee mugs. He felt quite paternal: perhaps this is how it would have been, if he had ever had a son.

‘Well, it’s connected with that man who died here on Tuesday night,’ said Milton.

‘Was killed, you mean,’ said George, pushing the bowl of brown sugar at his guest with the china mug of coffee. One had to give these lads standards; probably young Billy had chipped mugs and sugar from the packet in his bachelor flat. George opened the tin and put the ginger biscuits carefully upon a plate. His dead wife would have found a doily, but that would be a bit too much between two busy men of the world. He sat down on his stand chair. ‘I wouldn’t tell everyone this, Billy, but that Berridge who was killed was a right bastard. The police were after him for drug dealings, I think.
And
for murder. Don’t you lose any sleep over Berridge — the world’s better off without him.’ His face hardened as he thought again of Charlie Pegg lying dead in the gutter, of poor Amy Pegg ravaged with tears when she shut the door of her house after his visit.

Billy thought irritably that he had never expressed any regret for the dead man; until this moment, he had not even thought about the matter. Perhaps George was just claiming a little part for himself in the dramatic events of that night: he had noticed from his fares how people tended to do that. ‘I didn’t know anything about this Berridge. He never used my cab. But if you say he was killed by someone on Tuesday night, that affects what I came to talk to you about.’ He bit into a biscuit, munched it systematically. He was trying to come to terms with the notion that he might just have carried a murderer in the back of his cab.

George Lewis said comfortably, ‘Whoever killed James Berridge has my sympathy. But I agree, it makes anything connected with his death more serious. What’s worrying you, Billy?’

‘I picked a fare up near here, on Tuesday night.’

‘What time was that?’

‘About ten o’clock, I think. Perhaps just before ten.’

The porter thought for a moment, going through his residents before he came back to the most obvious candidate. ‘Was it Mrs Berridge?’

‘No. I know her: she’s used me quite a few times, dropping her off to meet someone.’ He didn’t mention a lover, wondering if Lewis knew anything about that. Lewis did. He knew even the name now, having chatted to the lady yesterday. But like his visitor, he didn’t volunteer anything. For a moment, the two men sat sipping their coffee, smug with a mutual discretion. Then Billy said, ‘It was a blonde woman. She rang from the public phone down the road, near the pub. But she could easily have walked from here.’

‘And what’s your problem about it?’

‘I heard the police appeal for witnesses on Wyvern Radio. I haven’t said anything yet. But I wondered if I ought to tell them. It’s just that I wouldn’t like to get one of my customers into any sort of trouble.’

George smiled reassuringly at the anxious face of the younger man, pleased that the advice being sought from him should be so obvious. ‘I don’t think you have any choice, Billy. Superintendent Lambert has been here several times, and he assures me that this is a murder enquiry.’ Name-dropping was another unaccustomed pleasure for George. ‘I think you should tell the police all you can about your fare.’

Milton scrambled to his feet. It seemed clear to him now that he had no choice, but he was grateful to his mentor for making it so. ‘I’m sure you’re right, George. I’ll get on to the CID at Oldford right away.’

‘Ask for Superintendent Lambert. Tell him I told you to use his name,’ said Lewis grandly. As the cab-driver reached the door, George’s thirst for information asserted itself. ‘A blonde woman, you said. The police will want the fullest description you can give them, of course.’

Billy stopped with his hand on the door handle. ‘Yes. It was dark and I couldn’t see very much.’

Lewis smiled, an old hand now in these matters. ‘Nevertheless, you must tell the police about that fare, as soon as possible. You’ll find they’ll ask you questions about her which may help you to remember things.’

Billy Milton brightened a little: like the porter, he was not averse to a peripheral role in these happenings: it might even be good for business in the long run, if it gave him a tale to tell. ‘I do remember one thing, though, now. She’d been knocked about a bit. One of her eyes was almost closed.’

***

DI Christopher Rushton was anxious to demonstrate how helpful his computer had been in the investigation. He was oversensitive about his chief in these matters: Lambert liked to protest his scepticism, but he was well aware of the time that could be saved in areas like record searches.

Rushton said a little desperately, ‘Most of the search data is useful, but negative. For instance, there is nothing to indicate a gangland killing. None of our sources suggest a recent quarrel among themselves. On the contrary, business for Berridge and his partners in crime was going rather well. His drug deals were getting bigger, and the men he was buying from hardly appear in this country at all. There is always competition among the villains involved in London gambling and strip clubs, but Berridge seems to have kept his place in the pecking order and not been too greedy.’

Lambert said, ‘Forensic have just forwarded their report on the package found beside Berridge on the front seat of the car. Drugs, as we thought. LSD tabs, in fact. To a street value of between four and five hundred thousand pounds.’ There were a couple of token whistles from around the table, but no great surprise. Such sums were routine, nowadays. This package had been no bigger than the average briefcase. ‘Presumably, that’s what he went back to the flat to collect, after I’d seen him at Sarah Farrell’s place. He must have known we’d have a search warrant within twenty-four hours.’

‘Are there any hit men known to have been in our area in the days before Berridge died?’ asked ‘Jack’ Johnson, the sergeant who had organized the Scene-of-Crime team at Old Mead Park.

Rushton shook his head. ‘None known to be active. There was a killing in Birmingham by one of them on the same night, so that rules him out. Of course, they’re shadowy figures, paid killers. If they’re not anonymous, they’re not successful for long. There’s always the possibility of one we haven’t yet identified, but all the evidence is against it.’

Lambert said, ‘And I can’t see a professional leaving the LSD behind—not when it was worth as much as that.’ There were nods from the others before he said, ‘We know there are hundreds of people with good reason to wish Berridge dead. But there aren’t too many who had access to him on Tuesday night. Let’s go through those.’

‘Right. The wife first, then.’ The methodical approach, the ticking off of lists, was what Rushton liked best. And with reason: it was the basis of all CID work. Lambert thought he noticed a relish as the DI turned to the widow of James Berridge, and wondered again how deeply Rushton’s desertion by his own wife had bitten. For the copper whose marriage had disintegrated, work could be either a welcome companion or a damaging obsession.

Rushton checked the read-out from his machinery. ‘Gabrielle Berridge says she was in Stratford at the time of the murder. There appears to be a question mark about that.’

‘Yes. She stayed the night there all right. Says she was at the theatre and produced a programme for
The
Winter’s
Tale
, which was the performance that night. She could have picked the programme up at any time. They’re prepared for the run of the play and not dated for particular nights. If this was fiction, there would be some variation in casting or some abnormality in the performance on the night which would trip her up in her account of it. We’ve checked with the theatre: it was a routine performance to a full house, with no hiccups that anyone in the audience could be expected to pick up.’

Rushton said, ‘A full house? Doesn’t that mean that they couldn’t have booked on the night?’

‘Unfortunately not. There are nearly always cancellations available at the box office of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, if you queue for a few minutes before the performance. People have to book so far ahead to be sure of seats that it is inevitable there should be returns.’

Rushton said, ‘There was an interesting snippet came in from the station at Stratford today. Apparently Gabrielle Berridge went back to the hotel where she stayed on Tuesday night yesterday. Tried to persuade the proprietor to say she had been there to book in before the theatre performance. No use, of course: he’d already been interviewed and told our man he hadn’t seen them until eleven-thirty that night. He phoned the station to tell them about La Berridge’s latest visit — I expect he has his licence to think about.’

‘So she could have been at Old Mead Park at the time when her husband was killed. The porter didn’t see her that night, but he couldn’t say at what time she left the flats. Incidentally, I wouldn’t put it past George Lewis to have turned a deaf ear to her departure if it was late in the evening. He was an old friend of Charlie Pegg, and he knows Berridge organized that death. I think he’d be quite happy to see his killer get away with it.’

Rushton said, ‘Does that put him in the frame with the rest?’

‘It must do, as far as opportunity and motive go. He had less to gain from this death than the others, but we all know revenge can drive men to do foolish things. What do you think, Bert?’

‘Unlikely. He had the opportunity, perhaps more obviously than anyone. But you would have to say that about whoever held the job of porter in those flats. Just as domestic staff are always the first suspects in burglaries. They rarely turn out to be the culprits, if only because of that very fact. And George has been very helpful to the investigation: he’s saved the door-to-door enquiry team a lot of time and confirmed many of the habits of the residents of Old Mead Park.’