Malice Aforethought (5 page)

‘He’s accruing money,’ said Rushton. ‘When you look at his year-end balances, he’s a modest few hundred in the black at the year end until about two years ago, with income just about outstripping his outings. In these last two years, he’s accrued ten thousand pounds.’

‘Yes. I suggested to him only a month ago that he should be thinking about investments if he had no plans to spend his balance.’

‘Where did the extra come from? Did he get a big salary increase?’

‘No. The salary increments in the last two years are barely ahead of inflation. You need to look in a little more detail at those last two years.’

Lambert and most other policemen would have demanded brusquely that the manager stopped playing games and told him the secrets he plainly already understood. But Rushton pored obediently over the sheets of the last months of Ted Giles’s financial life, enjoying the puzzle. After little more than a minute, he looked up at his mentor’s amused, indulgent face, a pupil who had found the answer and expected to be praised. ‘He’s stopped withdrawing money for everyday expenses,’ he said. ‘The incomings from his salary and the outgoings on his standard orders have risen a little in tandem, but in the last two years he has almost ceased to withdraw money for his own purposes from the account.’

‘Correct,’ said George Taylor delightedly.

‘Why?’

The bank manager’s face fell. ‘That is not my concern. It is — was — Mr Giles’s own business.’

‘Well, it’s our concern,’ said Rushton. ‘Got to be, now. He had to be getting money from somewhere. Another account, do you think?’

George Taylor looked pained. He was white-haired, immaculate, nearing retirement. It still pained him to think of his customers using other channels for their finance, even though it might be the rule rather than the exception nowadays. ‘That’s always possible, of course. Or he might be receiving cash payments from somewhere and spending them directly, rather than putting them into the bank. But that’s rare among professional men like Mr Giles. Market traders do it — they spend to dodge tax rather than depositing the money in a bank.’ Despite himself, he couldn’t prevent a tinge of old-fashioned class disapproval in his voice as he mentioned the market traders and their dubious financial practice.

Chris Rushton had enjoyed the formalities of his little rallies across the banking net with George Taylor, but he was in the end more detective inspector than financial conformist. He relished the abnormality in the dealings of the late Ted Giles; he had established another missing piece in this jigsaw where they had to discover the pieces for themselves. ‘We shall have to find where this extra income was coming from,’ he said with satisfaction.

***

It was not DI Rushton but a humble WPC who revealed the secret. A routine trawl of the list of depositors at local banks and building societies revealed a savings account in the name of the late Edward Giles at the Ross-on-Wye branch of the Halifax Building Society. It had been opened exactly two years before his death.

The young woman who ran the desk in the small Oldford branch of the society was the same age as the young policewoman; both were in their early twenties. She had none of George Taylor’s old-fashioned reservations about discussing the accounts of a dead customer. Indeed, the discovery that she had a murder victim among her customers brought its own grisly glamour to her generally dull working life. She pored over the figures on the computer sheets with WPC Jane Wiseman and volunteered her own knowledge eagerly.

‘I remember him well now. Good-looking chap, late thirties. Quite dishy, really, but a bit old for us. He came in regularly with cash to deposit, about once every two or three weeks. Look, you can see the dates.’

Jane could indeed. There were sizeable sums put in, with very little taken out. There was over fourteen thousand pounds in the account. She studied the figures. ‘Very few of these deposits are in round figures, even though the sums are large.’

Unlike George Taylor, the woman at her side did not expect her to make her own deductions: she was only too anxious to help, to play her part in a murder hunt. ‘These were all cash deposits — that’s unusual nowadays, for such large sums, except from shopkeepers and publicans. Probably he was deducting cash for himself, for his own living expenses, before he put in the money. Although the sums are irregular, they are all in pounds, with no odd pence.’ She ran her finger down the column, stopping at £620, £530, £745. ‘If you ask me, he was probably paid in round hundreds and took out whatever he needed for himself before he deposited the rest here.’

WPC Wiseman took the information back to the murder room at Oldford CID, hugging it to herself like a lost pet. It might be that stiff bugger DI Rushton who had established that an important piece in the Ted Giles jigsaw was missing, but it was she who had found the piece itself.

Six

Graham Reynolds was certain of one thing. He did not want to be interviewed by the police at Oldford Comprehensive School.

The news that he had been singled out for special attention by the police would fly round classrooms already overheated by the sensational news that a popular teacher had been found murdered at Broughton’s Ash churchyard. The papers had portrayed Giles as a man without enemies, a man dedicated to the advancement of young people, to accentuate the mystery of his brutal death. In response to Hook’s phone call to arrange a meeting, he said briskly, ‘By the time kids have taken the tale back to their parents it will have grown in the telling — I’ll be on the verge of arrest in half the homes round here. I’ve a free period at ten: I’ll come into the station.’

Hook knew from this reaction that Reynolds had plainly been expecting the call. Sue Giles must have rung him on the Wednesday evening to tell him of the police visit to her. Only what you would have expected, DS Hook told himself, you couldn’t always have surprise on your side. Perhaps, indeed, if Reynolds was planning to hide anything, it was a good thing that he had had many hours to anticipate this meeting and develop his apprehensions about it.

When Lambert and Hook came and sat down opposite him in the interview room, Graham Reynolds certainly did not look like a man who had spent a sleepless night of anticipation. He rose automatically to greet them, his hands steady on the small, square table in the middle of the high, windowless room. ‘First time I’ve been in one of these places. I can see how they help you to get confessions out of people!’ Reynolds glanced round at the bare walls with their lemon emulsion paint, up at the shadeless fluorescent light, as if studying a hospital operating theatre.

Lambert smiled, remembering that this man was a sociologist, wondering if he would feel he had to reproduce certain attitudes towards police work. He said, ‘Interview rooms are built at public expense to serve a purpose. They are basic because our masters don’t believe in unnecessary expense, any more than they do in schools.’

Reynolds gave an answering smile in response to the reference to education. He had black hair that curled tightly and plentifully against his head, and his eyes were a very dark brown. They were set in an alert, quizzical face; his skin was dark, tanned almost olive even in the middle of November. He said, ‘I don’t suppose this will take very long, because I haven’t much to tell you.’

‘Really? Well, you could start by telling us why it has taken you until Thursday morning to come forward, when we were in the school as early as Tuesday asking for any information available about your colleague Mr Giles.’

If Reynolds was surprised by the abruptness of this, by the absence of any polite preamble, he gave no outward sign of it. ‘That’s easily answered. I felt I knew nothing that would be useful to you.’

‘Even though you had worked alongside Mr Giles for five years? Even though you are apparently planning to marry the woman who was still his wife at the time of his death?’

Now Reynolds did seem taken aback, perhaps by the baldness of this, and Bert Hook wondered for a moment if he was quite as committed to marriage as Sue Giles had indicated. It was normal nowadays to find different degrees of enthusiasm for marriage in people who acknowledged each other readily as partners. Reynolds said evenly, ‘I knew no more and no less about Ted than most of his other teaching colleagues. Probably less than Mick Yates, whom I knew you had already seen on Tuesday morning at the school. As for my plans with Sue, they are irrelevant, since they had nothing to do with Ted’s death.’

I wonder, thought Lambert. A cool customer this, who had measured exactly what he was going to tell them when he came here and was not easily going to be teased or intimidated into more. There would have to be some verbal fencing, until an opening presented itself. He said, ‘Tell us all about your relationship with the late Ted Giles, then. Don’t be afraid to state the obvious; bear in mind we still know very little about him.’

‘We taught together for five years. But there was no overlap in our subjects; I’m Head of Social Sciences and Ted taught Chemistry and Biochemistry. We met at staff meetings, liaised a little over sixth-form studies and university applications, but our professional lives were almost entirely separate.’

‘And your social lives?’

‘The same.’ Reynolds stared at the Superintendent evenly across the three feet which was all that divided them, as if challenging him to prove otherwise.

‘Even though you were planning to marry his wife.’

‘Even though that was the situation, yes. Perhaps, indeed, because of that. It is possible to be civilised about these things, Superintendent, though I don’t suppose the police come across many examples of it.’ Reynolds took out a packet of slim panatellas from his pocket and said, ‘You don’t mind if I smoke?’

‘On the contrary, I’d prefer that you didn’t.’ Especially while you’re being so determinedly cool and uncooperative, thought Lambert. ‘When was the last time you met Ted Giles outside school, Mr Reynolds?’

For a moment he looked as if he would contest the smoking refusal. Then he put the panatellas slowly back into his pocket, smiled as though he were humouring a petulant child and said, ‘I can’t remember the last time. Probably with the rest of the staff on some end-of-term binge.’

‘I see. And when did you form your relationship with Mrs Giles?’

‘I’ve known Sue for years. But I suppose we began to get serious about a year ago.’

‘That’s when you first became lovers?’

Reynolds looked now as if he would lose his temper. The brown eyes flashed from one to the other of the men who confronted him and the arms he had kept folded flew apart. Then, with an obvious effort, he controlled himself and said, ‘It was, yes. Look, is all this detail really necessary?’

‘Probably not. But you see, we have no real idea yet what will be useful and what won’t, so we have to ask about all sorts of things. We are trying to build up a picture of a dead man, who can’t tell us anything about what was important to him, what pleased him and what annoyed him. Did the fact that you were sharing his wife’s bed annoy Ted Giles, Mr Reynolds?’

This time Graham Reynolds actually snorted with rage before he was able to suppress it. Then he seemed to realise that this long-faced policeman with the grizzled hair would be happy enough to rile him, to catch and store some unguarded reaction. He took a deep breath and said evenly, ‘No, it didn’t. Ted knew his marriage was over long before Sue and I became an item. He was sensible enough to realise that.’

‘I see. And yet, human nature being what it is, it would not have been surprising if Mr Giles had shown resentment at your new relationship, would it? Not many people find it easy to accept another man enjoying the intimacies they once took for granted, in my experience.’

Reynolds wished those unflinching grey eyes would leave his face, even for a moment. This unblinking, unembarrassed scrutiny was something he had never had to endure in his life before. He said determinedly, ‘There was no animosity between Ted Giles and me. I told you, we didn’t meet socially, and in our professional dealings we got on perfectly well.’

‘I see. In that case, can you explain the fierce altercation you had with Mr Giles in his Chemistry lab on Friday the twenty-sixth of October?’

Hook, bending studiously over his notebook for most of the interview, looked up when he heard Reynolds gasp, adding the pressure of his own scrutiny to the chief’s. You had to hand it to Lambert; he’d set this complacent bugger up beautifully before he played the one real card he had in his hand. Reynolds played for time, as Bert had somehow known he would. ‘This is Mick Yates, isn’t it? Listening outside doors where he shouldn’t be! Wait till I speak to that interfering young—’

‘As you would expect, we cannot reveal the source of our information, Mr Reynolds. I would remind you that my team has interviewed many people at the school, including pupils. It would be as unwise of you to pursue the matter beyond this room as to utter threats within it. Meantime, I must repeat my request that you explain the source of this dispute with a man who is now dead.’

It was calm, relentless; Reynolds felt he was a specimen under a microscope which had just been pronounced interesting. He found himself licking his lips, gripping the edge of the table in front of him, doing all the things he had promised himself he would not do when he came here. His voice sounded distant in his own ears as he said, ‘I was wrong to pretend that there was nothing between us, that our relationship was good. It wasn’t. But that wasn’t my doing.’

Lambert permitted himself a sardonic smile, enjoying the sight of this fish wriggling upon his hook. ‘Come now, Mr Reynolds, you can hardly say that. Almost any man would be upset by the man who was sleeping with his wife, wouldn’t he?’

‘They weren’t married any more. Well, they were, but in name only. Ted had ceased to have any close relationship with Sue long before I took over.’

‘Of course. And perhaps it wouldn’t be logical for him to oppose you. But logic doesn’t have a lot to do with these things, does it?’

Reynolds stared at him for a moment, as if he wished to deny the thought. Then he said sullenly, ‘I suppose not. It didn’t in Ted’s case, anyway. He wasn’t quite the saint the newspaper reports of his death portray, you know. Popular teacher and man without enemies — all that stuff.’

‘So what were you quarrelling about on October the twenty-sixth?’

‘I don’t remember the details now.’

Lambert let the futility of that bounce off the walls of the small, airless room. Then he said, ‘You can do better than that Mr Reynolds. I’m giving you the opportunity to do so.’

It sounded like a threat in Reynolds’ burning ears. A threat of what? He was not sure of what, but he was no longer thinking rationally under the merciless gaze of those grey eyes. No wonder frightened adolescents signed confessions after hours in places like this. He found his mouth saying, ‘All right! We didn’t get on as well as I said we did, Ted and I. He didn’t like me taking up with Sue. I think he hated her, would have done anything to frustrate what she wanted to do with her life.’

‘I see. That wasn’t quite the impression Mrs Giles gave us of their relationship when we spoke to her yesterday. Perhaps we shall need to speak to her again.’

This time Graham Reynolds was sure it was a threat. But he knew he mustn’t offer them any more information. ‘Sue kept her distance from him, only spoke to him when she needed to. She didn’t believe in giving him opportunities to be awkward.’

‘I see. Well, last Saturday night someone denied Mr Giles the right to be anything. And this morning, after pretending otherwise as long as you could, you tell me that you and he were enemies. As the man charged with investigating the murder of Edward Giles, your deceptions interest me, Mr Reynolds. I think you should now tell me what you were quarrelling about, without any further prevarication.’

It was quietly spoken, but all the more insistent for that. Lambert had not raised his voice throughout the interview; even now, his tone suggested well-meant advice. And yet to Reynolds, used only to speaking to people in social situations where the conversational niceties were used to oil the wheels, he seemed inexorable. Glancing at the face of Bert Hook on Lambert’s right, he found that rubicund countenance as expectant and unblinking as his questioner’s, and capitulated. ‘We had a real row because I told him to lay off Sue. I said I was going to marry her and he said he’d put every obstacle in our way.’

‘But you must have known that he couldn’t hold things up indefinitely. The law is on your side, as you must be aware.’

‘I knew that, of course. But his attitude annoyed me. I told him as much, and we exchanged words about it, angry words. But there was no more to our quarrel than that.’ His mouth set in a line; the tanned, experienced features were suddenly sullen and determined as those of any child who is determined to stick to his story.

Lambert wondered if that was really all there was to the argument between the two men, but he sensed that it was all he was going to get at this stage. Reynolds was not under caution, was still officially helping the police of his own free will. Lambert said, ‘When did you last see Mr Giles?’

The swiftness of the switch threw Reynolds, who had been setting himself to frustrate further probing of his quarrel with Ted Giles a fortnight before his death. ‘I — I haven’t really thought about it.’ That rang as false in his own ears as theirs: they all knew he must have considered the answer to this, whether he was guilty or entirely innocent. ‘I think I saw him in the staffroom before afternoon school last Friday afternoon. Yes, I remember now, I did. But not later than that. I was free for the last period on Friday and I left school early, you see.’

Lambert ignored that. ‘And where were you last Saturday night, when Mr Giles was being murdered?’

The question shook most people, especially when it was framed in those blunt words. But for the first time in their exchange, Graham Reynolds smiled. He made himself take a little time, tried even to savour the moment. ‘I was in Ireland on Saturday night, Superintendent. Enjoying a splendid meal in a hotel in Killarney, to be precise.’

***

Christine Lambert felt giddy as the waves of relief surged through her. For a moment she felt she might faint, falling forward from her armless chair in a heap upon the doctor’s carpet. Within a few seconds, this passed, her vision cleared, and she was seized by a disconcerting urge to leap forward and embrace the grey-haired, bespectacled figure on the other side of the desk. Instead, she said simply, ‘You can’t even guess how relieved I am. I was convinced in my own mind it was the cancer recurring, you see!’