Skeleton Plot (20 page)

Andrew gave himself a stiff whisky when they’d gone, then tried to review their meeting dispassionately. There’d been some sticky moments and they’d had him mentally squirming for most of the time. But he hadn’t done badly, overall, he decided. He certainly hadn’t incriminated himself. He didn’t think they’d anything more definite on him than when they’d arrived.

L
ate on Monday afternoon the clouds dropped in heavy and low over Gloucestershire and it became very humid. The sun would not be seen for the rest of the day and it seemed that the warm spell might end with thunder.

Lambert had the window wide open in his office, but it still felt airless when DI Rushton and DS Hook came in to compare notes on the Julie Grimshaw case. Rushton reported first on the results of routine house-to-house enquiries around the spot where the skeleton had been found, then on the evidence provided by those Gloucester police, both active and retired, who had patrolled seventeen Fairfax Street and the surrounding area in 1995.

‘Most of the people in that squat were passing through rather than occupying it for any length of time. But we’ve managed to identify and subsequently interview a surprising number of people who were there for periods during that summer. We’ve eliminated anyone who wasn’t using the house at the time when Julie disappeared. Kate Clark is almost certain that Julie was around until late August and what other people have told us confirms that. That means that the two people in the squat who have to be suspects are the ones you and Bert have spoken with twice already: Kate Clark and Michael Wallington.’

Lambert nodded. If DI Rushton said there were no other realistic suspects from the squat, he trusted him absolutely. No one was more thorough than Chris in recording every snippet of information and in seizing upon facts which others might have missed or overlooked. Lambert said, ‘To those two we can add three men who had close associations with the murder victim and who lived near the spot where she was hastily interred after she’d been killed: Jim Simmons, Andrew Burrell and Liam Williams. We’ve interrogated the first two of these pretty thoroughly. Liam Williams was killed in an RTI in 2007, but we’ve twice spoken to his father. Steve Williams as you know is an old enemy of ours, and thus well aware of his rights and exactly what we can and can’t do to him.’

Hook smiled grimly at the mention of Williams. He knew that Lambert, whilst being far too professional to be anything other than objective, would love to be able to implicate Steve Williams in a murder inquiry. He said, ‘If this murder was committed by a dead man, there will obviously be a swift closure. But we need to establish the facts, if only in the interests of our other suspects, who have a lot to lose if the media get hold of the information that they’ve been involved in our investigation.’

Rushton said almost proprietorially, ‘The two who were with the victim in the squat at the time of her death are the ones with the easiest opportunities. On his own admission, Michael Wallington was selling drugs and Julie was a user. We think he tried to recruit her as a seller. If she refused to become a dealer in his network or threatened to expose him, he’d want rid of her. And if he didn’t wish to kill her himself there’d be plenty of muscle available to him if he gave the word to the people higher up the drug hierarchy.’

Lambert nodded. ‘He says that he didn’t get to that point with Julie, and that he wasn’t high enough in the drugs empire to implement that kind of killing. But in the immortal words of a young lady in another context, he would, wouldn’t he? Wallington is a bright man who’s made the most of his subsequent opportunities and now has a senior local authority job in education. But I wouldn’t trust anything he says when he’s fighting to preserve his own skin.’

Rushton said almost diffidently, ‘I saw Kate Clark myself briefly, but you two have interviewed her twice since then. What do you make of her?’

Lambert smiled ruefully. ‘Ms Clark’s a tough cookie, as no doubt she’s had to be to reach the board of one of our great national utility companies. She’s very anxious that her position and aspirations at Severn Trent aren’t compromised by her involvement in a murder inquiry. But she can’t alter certain facts. She was by her own admission – and this tallies with other accounts we’ve heard – the female who was closest to Julie Grimshaw, both spiritually and physically, during those crucial months in the summer of 1995. Much of what we know of Julie comes from her; we have to remember constantly that she has her own interests to protect. She’ll fight like a cornered tiger to protect herself, though that doesn’t mean that she’s committed murder or manslaughter.’

Bert Hook had been impressed by the woman who in 1995 had been Kathy Clark. He was striving to be objective as he said, ‘Ms Clark was by her own admission a fairly desperate and disturbed young woman when she was in that squat twenty years ago. Violence is part of the way of life for people living on the edge of society, as the people at seventeen Fairfax Street were. She’s a woman who would no doubt be quite capable of violence if she thought it was necessary. My guess is that she also keeps in check a fierce temper beneath a calm exterior. I don’t see her committing cold-blooded murder, but I could see her committing manslaughter – perhaps by striking a blow to the head with some sort of implement in the course of a violent disagreement with a friend who everyone says was unstable.’

Lambert nodded. ‘That’s speculation, but it’s an example of why we’re meeting here as an experienced trio. I wouldn’t want speculation among twenty people when I conduct a team meeting, but in the privacy of this office we three should be prepared to say exactly how things strike us. So what do you make of Jim Simmons? He was working his way into a senior position at Lower Valley Farm in 1995, favoured by the owner and his wife and anxious to do whatever he could to please them. We know that the older Burrells wanted to be rid of Julie because they fiercely disapproved of her liaison with their son. Did Simmons see an opportunity for himself there? Did he dispose of Julie one night and bury her hurriedly near the edge of the ground he knew so well and worked every day?

‘Andrew Burrell made the point that he was quite happy for Simmons to assume the running of the farm, but was surprised when his parents actually transferred ownership to him at a bargain price. Andrew has his own agenda, of course, but it seems a valid point. Was Daniel Burrell fulfilling some sort of unwritten understanding when he transferred the farm?’

Rushton said unexpectedly, ‘But what is a fair price for a small mixed farm nowadays? I had no idea, but I’ve made certain enquiries among local agricultural agents. It’s difficult to make a small farm pay and you work damned hard to do it. Lower Valley Farm is in a secluded pocket of land near the Wye. Because of its isolation it doesn’t interest the big concerns who operate factory farms in areas like the Salisbury Plain: they want to consolidate farms into much bigger units. Simmons got a good deal, but not an outlandish one. The sort which might be acceptable to both sides when the seller had a soft spot for his purchaser. Favourable to Jim Simmons, but not necessarily suspiciously so.’

Lambert was once again grateful to his DI for his thoroughness. ‘Thank you, Chris. That’s a relevant fact, when facts are thin upon the ground. I suppose we should expect them to be so after an interval of twenty years. I found Simmons rather irritating in the way he seemed to wish to parade his charming wife and his equally charming children in front of us. I wondered if his eagerness to show himself as a sound and reliable family man meant that he had something to hide from that earlier era. But I’m probably just a cynical old copper who’s seen too many villains parading attractive wives as shields against us.’

Hook, who’d spent most of his boyhood and adolescence after the Barnardo’s home working on farms, couldn’t withhold a certain respect from his judgement on Simmons. ‘For what it’s worth – and I’m well aware that it doesn’t mean he’s incapable of murder – Jim Simmons is a good farmer and he works damned hard for whatever success he enjoys. No one has claimed that he had a close relationship with Julie Grimshaw, though they all seem to think she liked him. I suppose it’s possible that he had some sort of secret association with her, but that seems unlikely. His one plausible motive seems to be his ambition to own and run his own farm.’ He paused, then in the interests of balance added reluctantly, ‘But that can be a powerful one, for a countryman.’

Lambert said briskly, ‘Andrew Burrell. I didn’t much like him, but that’s totally irrelevant to our inquiry. He tried to deceive us when we first saw him last Tuesday, and every fact we’ve elicited from him we’ve had to wring out of him. A leading candidate for this crime, because he was heavily involved with Julie. So much so that his parents were very anxious to send the girl away and end the affair. By his own account, he wanted to marry the girl or at least to live with her. He claims that it was all over between them by the time of her death, but the others who were close to the pair seem less certain about that. Fact: Andrew Burrell had secured a place at Liverpool University, which he was determined to take up at the end of September. Did he want to be rid of Julie for that reason? Was she clinging to him and refusing to be simply shrugged off? On the other hand, did the affair end acrimoniously and was it Burrell who was bitter about that? Did jealousy drive him to violence when he saw her taking up with someone else? Those are all questions we could explore much more easily if this death had occurred last week. Answers are much more difficult to find in the case of a crime which was committed twenty years ago. Andrew Burrell has exploited that: he’s given us nothing. We’ve had to work hard for everything we now know about him and Julie.’

Hook, like his chief, was on new ground with a death which had occurred so long ago. ‘The worst thing about this is that there are people we can no longer question. There are still people who were in that squat who haven’t come forward. We don’t even know their names and unless they answer our appeals we’ll never find them. And there are people who are dead who could have given us valuable insights. Emily Burrell died three years ago; she could have given us information and opinions on her son Andrew, on Jim Simmons and even on Kate Clark. And we can’t even question a man who has to be one of our leading suspects, Liam Williams, because he’s been dead for eight years.’

Lambert nodded, noting that Rushton looked a little surprised by this description of the dead Williams. ‘It’s taken us some time to establish Liam Williams as a suspect, because people have been reluctant to acknowledge how close he was to Julie at the time of her death. It’s another difficulty when following up a crime twenty years after it’s happened. Andrew Burrell in particular was very reluctant to acknowledge the part Liam had played in this. It seems that Liam was a rival for Julie’s affections. Andrew says that he’d dropped out of contention in order to pursue his studies in Liverpool and that there was no serious dispute between him and Liam. It’s possible of course that Burrell was much more bitter than he admits and took out Julie as a result. Or even that Liam killed her after some lover’s tiff if she threatened to desert him or go back to Andrew. We need to know exactly what part Liam played in this, but he isn’t around to question. His mother seems to be emotionally crippled by her son’s death. As for Steve Williams, he wouldn’t give us the time of day if he could avoid it.’

John Lambert shook his head at the hopelessness of the case, at the obfuscations introduced by an interim of twenty years and the absence of key witnesses. Yet the phone call which would provide him with the key was but a couple of hours away.

Michael Wallington spent two hours playing the happy family man. He wanted to be entirely conventional. He became almost a walking caricature of normal fatherhood.

He ate with the family and asked Tom and Jane how they had fared in the first day of their school week. He congratulated eight-year-old Tom on his arithmetic and his football; he echoed his wife’s enthusiasm for five-year-old Jane’s gold star for her collage work. He loaded the dishwasher and then read bedtime stories, first for a very tired Jane and then for a more ebullient Tom. The boy wanted another chapter, but his father looked at his watch and was firm. ‘You need your sleep if you’re to race down the wing and leave Darren Wilson behind you tomorrow, son,’ Michael said firmly.

The boy lay back and looked at the ceiling. ‘Who was Doubting Thomas, Dad?’

Michael’s theology was sketchy, but he could cope with this. ‘He was the one of Christ’s apostles who was doubtful about Him having risen from the dead. He said he would actually need to see his Lord before him before he was prepared to believe that He was back with them.’ Michael had no wish to go into the business of Thomas touching the holes in his master’s hands before he would believe: that was far too ghoulish for a lad who needed his sleep.

‘John Pooley said Thomas put his fingers into the holes where they’d nailed Christ to the cross, and wriggled them around. That was a bit creepy, don’t you think? But Pooley’s dad’s a vicar, so it must be right.’ Tom settled down beneath the sheets with a contented smile.

Michael went downstairs and said to his wife, ‘I have a meeting, I’m afraid, dear. I’m hoping it won’t take very long.’

Debbie was tidying away toys and making the sitting room habitable for adults. ‘Do you have to? There’s nothing on the calendar for tonight.’

‘No, there wouldn’t be. It’s not a formal meeting, it’s just a one-off. Two people who want to confer with me off the record about the possibilities of getting specialist help for slow readers.’ It was always easier if you claimed you were helping the disadvantaged; no one questioned your motives if you cited the disabled or the mentally handicapped or slow learners.

His wife sighed resignedly. ‘You’re too conscientious for your own good at times, Mike. Don’t let these people keep you out any longer than they need to.’

‘I won’t, but I have to give them my time when it’s needed. Think how desperate you would be for help, if our two were suffering. You look tired, darling. I’ll be back as quickly as I can, but don’t bother to wait up if I should be delayed.’

These were the longest days of the year. He was impatient for the night to arrive. Michael didn’t know quite why, but darkness seemed appropriate for the confrontation he was planning. Dusk had arrived and cars had their lights on by the time he drove into the suburb of Tewkesbury and sought out the residence he wanted. It was a pleasant place, as he would have expected, with a view of the Severn to the rear. He could see the glint of the last light on a stretch of the great river as he parked the car. The flats were a conversion of a spacious Georgian house about a mile above Tewkesbury Abbey and the centre, safe from the flooding which was one of the perennial hazards in some areas of the ancient town.