Least of Evils (25 page)

‘No. I am sorry for that. It had become a habit for me to claim this Lee as a brother. I have never been to Norwich.'

‘I see. Do you have your passport here?'

He did not reply, but walked across to the small dressing table and opened the top drawer. ‘Here it is. You will find it is quite in order.'

Peach took it and studied it for a moment. It seemed to be absolutely in order. It might of course be a forgery, but he did not know what to look for to establish that. He handed it back to the anxious-looking man and motioned him to sit down. He thought the olive face was a little paler, but that was probably imagination or wishful thinking. ‘You have been in this country for five years.'

Chung wasn't sure whether it was a statement or a question. ‘Yes.'

‘Why did you come here?'

‘It seemed that there would be more opportunities for me here.'

‘There is no work in Vietnam?'

‘There is work, yes, but more chance here. More chance to develop yourself. Perhaps I shall eventually return. If I do, what I have learned here and the experiences I have had will help me to get a better position in my home country.'

‘I see. What did you do there, before you decided to try your luck over here?' Peach had no idea what the racial relations mafia would make of this line of questioning, but he would pursue it as long as the man did not object to his questions.

‘I was a teacher. I had not taught very much. I had not long been qualified.'

‘I see. Forgive me, but it does not seem a very logical progression, this. You are a teacher, in your own country, at the outset of a career. You are an intelligent man, with a facility for languages – I say that because of your excellent English. Yet you come here and apparently take whatever work is available. Even this desire to embark on a career in catering seems to have come upon you only in the last couple of years.'

‘Yes. I agree it is unexpected.' He hesitated a little over the clumsy, four-syllabled word, as if asserting that his English was not after all so perfect. ‘But I wanted to broaden my horizons by travelling, the way the books and the brochures tell you to do. I wanted to sample western civilization.'

He stopped as if he expected to be interrupted, so that Peach was reminded of Gandhi's remark that western civilisation would be a very good idea; the villainies you saw from people like Oliver Ketley tempted you towards thoughts like that. He switched his ground now, in the manner which had outwitted more experienced deceivers than Chung Lee. ‘Why did you lie to us about where you were last Saturday night, Mr Lee?'

‘What? You're talking about when Mr Ketley was murdered, aren't you? I told you on Monday, I was with my friend Fam Chinh at the restaurant in Market Street. We had a green curry. I had ice cream to follow.' He rattled the list off quickly, as if he could convince them with the detail.

‘No, Mr Lee, you were not.'

‘There is some mistake I think.' But he did not think that. He knew now that it had been a foolish plan.

‘Our detective constables interviewed Mr Chinh. He tried to support you, but they could see that he wasn't happy. When they challenged him, he admitted that this was just a story you had asked him to tell for you. He did not see you at all on Saturday night. Instead, he admitted that he had eaten with you on Sunday evening and that you had asked him to tell this tale for you then.'

Chung's brown eyes stared steadily, unblinkingly, at the carpet between his feet and Peach's. His voice was a monotone as he said, ‘I should not have asked Fam Chinh to lie for me. I do not know him as well as I said I did. We worked together for a few months, that is all. We looked out for each other, as you English say. He is a good man, who fears for his family in a foreign country.'

‘He has nothing to fear from us. Unless he makes a habit of lying for possible murderers.'

‘I am not a murderer. I did not kill Ketley. I was scared, that was all.'

It was the first time he had not accorded Ketley his title. From beside him, out of his vision, Clyde Northcott said, ‘Then where were you on Saturday night, Mr Lee?'

‘I was here. But because no one can say that to support me, I was afraid that you would suspect me. In my land the police are not as honest as here. They want convictions. They fasten on the weakest story.'

Clyde had no knowledge of the police in Vietnam. The situation Lee had described wasn't unknown in Britain, but this wasn't the moment to acknowledge that. He said calmly, ‘You have made the situation much worse by lying to us. We now cannot trust anything else you have told us without checking it out.'

Chung didn't turn to look at him. He ran a hand briefly through his dark straight hair and said. ‘I am sorry. What you say is true. But I was very afraid, being questioned by the police in a strange land. I made a mistake.'

Peach said quietly, ‘When did you come to England, Chung?'

It was the first use of his forename. They were strange, the English and their little rituals. It might denote some sudden switch in the senior policeman's attitude, but he had no idea what that might be. ‘I came here in 2005.'

‘And what kind of work did you do?'

A long pause. ‘I took whatever I could get, at first.'

‘You worked on a building site, did you not?'

‘Yes. It was the only work I could get.' He wondered just how much these people knew. This quiet, persistent, apparently sympathetic man was releasing his knowledge in scraps, as it suited him.

‘It was the only work you could get in a particular area. In Lancashire.'

‘In Liverpool, yes.' Chung looked down at his soft hands, as if wondering how they could ever have done that work with bricks and the cement.

‘Between Liverpool and Southport, to be precise.'

‘Yes.' They did know, then. But he must be careful, nonetheless. They would have to prove things, in this country, before they could lock him away. There was no reason why he should confess everything.

‘Strange work for a teacher to undertake.'

‘I told you, I wanted travel and experience. You can't pick and choose what you do. The type of work didn't matter much, so long as I could support myself.'

A pause again; Chung wondered whether they were weighing the merits of what he'd said. Then Peach said quietly, ‘I suggest the type of work didn't matter, Chung, so long as it was in the right part of the country. I suggest you wanted to work as near to Southport as possible.'

‘No. I took work where I could get it.'

‘We have your employment records, Chung. Why did you begin work in that particular part of Lancashire?'

‘Anywhere in the country would have been all right. I had a contact near Liverpool who helped me to get work.'

‘Name?'

‘I do not remember his name. He is no longer in this country.'

‘Let me make a suggestion, Chung. In my opinion, you wished to work as near Southport as possible and you took whatever work you could get to be there. You wished to get as near to Oliver Ketley as you could.'

Lee was an undemonstrative man, adept in concealing his feelings behind an inscrutable exterior. There was no sound from him now, but the mention of the dead man's name brought a sharp twitch of the shoulders and a stiffening of the neck above them. He said nothing, continuing to stare at the carpet, so Peach was forced to venture a little further with his conjecture. ‘I believe you lost someone very close to you and blamed Oliver Ketley for his death.'

‘Ketley was a very bad man.'

It should have been banal, but his sincerity in the quiet room carried them with him. Peach said softly, persuasively, ‘He was indeed a very bad man, Chung. We can agree on that. I can see why you would want to kill him.'

‘I did not shoot Ketley.' He repeated it doggedly, as if that was necessary to convince them.

Peach, watching him keenly, decided that this was the moment when he had to move from the certainties he had used so far to speculation. ‘Fifth of February, 2004. The night of the cockle-pickers, when at least twenty-three illegally employed workers died on Southport sands. You lost someone that night, didn't you, Chung? Someone very close to you.'

‘My brother. Ketley took him on, put him in charge of the Chinese labour. I know that now. He was the only man from Vietnam who died that night.' It was an immense relief to have it out at last, when he had concealed it for so long, from others as well as the police. ‘His body was never found. He shouted for help on his mobile phone, but those were his last words. No one could find him. He must have been washed out to sea.' His voice broke on the last, hopeless statement.

‘But you found you couldn't get near Oliver Ketley.'

This quiet man with the round white face and the bald head seemed to Chung to know everything, even to understand everything. ‘No. I couldn't even get to see him. And I realized that he must never know that I was here or that I even existed. He would wipe me from the earth as he might swat a fly. But I had time; I did not need to hurry.'

‘So you moved into catering, and eventually into Thorley Grange.'

‘Yes.' There was suddenly a small smile on the small, perfectly formed lips. ‘I found I was quite good in the kitchen. I might even make a career of it.'

They smiled with him, grateful for any small relaxation of the tension which had dominated the last few minutes. Then Peach said with deadly seriousness, ‘And on Saturday night your chance came. You shot Oliver Ketley through the head and avenged your brother.'

Chung summoned his resolution for a last denial. Against all the odds, they seemed reasonable people, these British policemen. They seemed to see the justice of his case. They would surely not wish to put him away for this, if he could convince them he hadn't done it. ‘I should have liked to kill that man, yes. That would have given me great satisfaction. But in the end I did not need to. Someone else got there before me. I hope you never find out who it was.'

There was no moon visible as Greta Ketley drove into the visitors' car park. The Georgian house which had been converted to luxury flats rose like a dark cliff above her as she climbed out of the Audi.

There was no reason why she should not see Martin quite openly now. Oliver couldn't harm them. The police had discovered Martin and their relationship. There was really no need for concealment. But old habits die hard; a week ago, discovery would have meant death for Martin and something worse than death for her. When the stakes had been as high as that, you didn't readily abandon the habit of caution.

As usual, the flat door opened without her ringing the bell. She liked the fact that he had been waiting for her, but she knew she would have liked anything about him tonight. He put a hand on each of her shoulders, held her at arm's length to look into her face, as if seeing her and loving her for the first time all over again. Both of them understood that: they had never needed many words.

Martin Price said, ‘I'd almost forgotten how beautiful you are. It isn't long – under a week. But it feels as if it's been months.'

‘It does to me too, my darling. But now we have the rest of our lives.'

Lovers speak like that and mean it. To outsiders it sounds fatuous, but what matters is that they mean it. Even if many love affairs do not last the years they should, the lovers need to believe these wide, sometimes absurd, claims they make about the rest of their lives.

As if they recognized that words were unreliable, this pair did not use many of them. They smiled at each other for a moment, almost shyly. Then he hugged her hard, kissed her tenderly, and led her not into the sitting room but the bedroom, as she wished him to do. She eased off his jacket and he slid her sweater tenderly over her shoulders and her head. They kissed again, his right hand holding her breast and squeezing it softly. Then they undressed without a word and slid between the silk sheets, hands searching for each other as carefully as if this was the first time.

Greta was surprised by how long they took over the preliminaries, using their hands to explore each other's bodies, gently at first and then with deliciously increasing urgency. When she spoke at last, it was only to reinforce what their limbs were saying to each other. ‘This is our honeymoon!' she whispered. ‘This is Martin and Greta beginning a new life together.'

And then at last their bodies stiffened and he stroked the soft symmetry of her shoulder blades, then the small of her back and the pleasures below it. They had complete confidence in each other, as lovers should. The whole exchange became more hectic and urgent as urge answered urge and they climaxed exquisitely together.

They lay for a long time without words afterwards, staring up at the ceiling they could scarcely see. Each revelled in the nearness of the other, in the fact that they were so happy without the need of words. Eventually his hand found hers and squeezed gently. ‘Do you want a drink?'

‘Tea would be nice. Nothing alcoholic – we don't need stimulants.'

He brought them tea in bone china beakers. She liked the quality he seemed to seek out, even in beakers. But then she would have considered it tasteful tonight if he had served it in chipped earthenware, she thought, with that secret smile he found so attractive.

Martin drained his beaker and said, ‘How are the police getting on?'

It should have been an intrusion upon their magic, private world, but tonight nothing could spoil things. She said, ‘They seemed very pleased to have found out about us. Made quite a big thing of how I'd played the grieving widow and tried to deceive them. But they don't seem to have much idea about who killed Oliver. They don't like him any more than we did. He's a bigger villain than I ever knew he was when he was alive. Perhaps they're not going to bother too much about who removed him.'

‘We mustn't rely on that. Murder is murder to the police, whoever the victim is. And we've got the most obvious of all the motives.'