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  Brothers

  ( Inspector Peach - 17 )

  J. M. Gregson

  J. M. Gregson

  Brothers' Tears

  ONE

  Jim O’Connor was enjoying himself. He hadn’t eaten much tonight, not compared with what he’d shifted back in his rugby days. He’d had a couple of glasses of burgundy with his sirloin, but his head was perfectly clear. He didn’t want to get drunk, because he wanted to enjoy the evening. That meant having all your senses alert and missing nothing of what was going on around you. He had a speech to make, too, but he was trying not to think too much about that.

  He could see everything in the room from his position at the centre of the top table. He wasn’t talking very much, because he was in a reflective mood. Some people probably said he was self-satisfied, but he didn’t have to consider what other people might say nowadays. And you were allowed to savour what you’d achieved. Surely that was permissible on an occasion like this. He’d come a long way from the Irish village where he’d started. It was surely only right to pause once in a while and consider what he’d achieved.

  The rugby had been the start of it. There was no doubting that. Forty-three times he’d played for Ireland, twice he’d toured with the British Lions. It had opened doors to him; those were the years when he’d met important people, when he’d appreciated just what might be possible for himself in the future. He was only forty-six now and he’d played until he was thirty-one. Yet the rugby years seemed to belong to a different life and a different man.

  Sarah was looking good tonight. She’d been right to go for the deep crimson dress, when he’d wanted her to settle for a brighter red. It set off the long, lustrous black hair she still gathered into a ponytail behind her slender neck. Not too many women in their forties could get away with a ponytail, she’d told him. Well, it set off the bare shoulders above her dress perfectly. She might have a few laughter lines around her eyes now, but it was appropriate for her. That was a point of agreement between them: he didn’t like mutton dressed as lamb and Sarah had no use for Botox.

  She glanced up at him, almost as though she knew that he was thinking about her. ‘You all right, Jim?’

  ‘Sure I am. More than all right.’ The brain is an unpredictable and sometimes an inconvenient instrument. For some reason, his words flashed him back now to his first real girlfriend in Dublin, who had called him Seamus and thought the sun shone out of him. For a moment, he wanted the innocence of those days, wanted again to be that young man who knew little of the world but still had it all before him.

  Moira had been the good Catholic girl his dead mother would have wanted for him, and for a little while he had thought she was perfect. She’d said she didn’t want to sleep with him, not until they were certain it was serious. He’d had her though, with her back up against the wall behind the dance hall, thrusting at her urgently, ignoring her pleas to be gentle with her. It had been just narrowly on the right side of rape, he thought. But Moira would never have accused him of that; she would have thought it was her fault for leading him on. The convent had taught girls things like that, in the old days.

  Jim O’Connor wondered where Moira was now. He hoped she was happy and well. He had a sudden wish to find her, to give her money, to let her have some small part of what he’d achieved, for old times’ sake. But you couldn’t turn the clock back. He was indulging himself even to think of those times. He hadn’t thought of Moira for years — well, months, anyway. Better to kill off such thoughts than indulge them. Each man kills the thing he loves. It had been a fellow Irishman who said that. He hadn’t thought of him for years, either.

  He wondered why he had wandered into this melancholic mood, when he’d been happily congratulating himself upon his achievements only a moment earlier. He glanced over his shoulder at the toastmaster, resplendent in his bright red jacket — or ridiculous, according to your taste. Ridiculous, Jim decided. A toastmaster had no function until he announced the speakers, but how could he blend discreetly into the background, wearing clothes like that? The man moved forward, as if he had taken O’Connor’s glance as an invitation to speak. ‘Do you want the speeches before or after the coffee, Mr O’Connor?

  ‘Before. They won’t be very long. I’ll see to that.’

  He stood up, moved round the table until he stood behind his daughter as the waiters prepared to serve the desserts. ‘It’s bombe surprise for sweet, Clare. At least, that’s one of the options. I put it in for you.’

  He wondered why he needed to say that, then realised that it was just an excuse to talk to her, because she had arrived late and they had scarcely spoken at the beginning of the evening. Clare looked up at him, then laid down her knife and fork together on her plate. ‘There was no need for that, Dad. It’s your evening, not mine.’

  ‘Of course there was no need. I wanted to do it, that’s all.’

  He was aware of the young man she’d brought from university beside her, looking down at his plate with a small, supercilious smile. He had spots still on his forehead; his wrists were thin as they poked out from jacket sleeves which were too short for him. He’d have been no use on the rugby field, this scrawny specimen. Jim wondered whether they’d slept together yet. He tried not to think of his daughter’s lithe young limbs wrapped around this fellow. It didn’t seem long since he’d watched her unwrapping her birthday presents as a seven-year-old.

  ‘You want me after we’ve finished here tonight, boss?’

  O’Connor started at the voice in his ear. It was Steve Tracey, of course. Jim glanced past him, saw the chair he had pushed back from the table behind him. He had moved softly, as big men often do, and Jim hadn’t heard him rise. Now he wanted to reject him, as if his presence and his question cast a shadow over the innocent celebration this was supposed to be. But that wasn’t fair on a loyal servant. Tracey had been with him almost from the start, rising from simple heavy to the director of the small group of hard men who enforced ‘security’.

  Jim forced a smile, kept his voice neutral. ‘I shan’t need you or anyone else to look after me tonight, Steve. This is a social occasion, not a business dinner. We’re among friends.’

  ‘If you’re sure, boss.’ Steve Tracey looked round at the noisy, laughing tables as if searching for some hidden menace. He could see none. He looked back at O’Connor uncertainly for a moment, then nodded and moved back to his chair. Within a moment, he was laughing loudly with the rest of the table around him, working hard to be anonymous. The boss didn’t like his security to be obvious.

  Jim O’Connor went back to his seat and fingered the card in his pocket which carried the notes for his speech. He pulled it out and looked at it; surely it couldn’t be a sign of weakness to show you wanted to be well prepared to speak. Public speaking wasn’t something he was good at — he was going to say as much in his first sentence. Then he’d make that reference to James I knighting a loin of beef here and making it sirloin. They’d all know the story, but he’d explain that’s why they’d had sirloin tonight and then slide in the joke he’d prepared.

  He thought of that funny old poofter James I, passing through here to London and his coronation as the first Stuart king of England. And then his daft son had caused a civil war and brought Butcher Cromwell and his fierce Ironside army to Ireland. Three and a half centuries later, ‘The curse o’ Crummell on ye!’ had still been one of the fiercest oaths in his village — he hadn’t known what it meant, when he was a boy. There went that brain again, diverting him from the present, when he was trying to concentrate on his speech.

  They were serving the desserts now. He took a spoonful of his bombe surprise and raised it with a smile towards his daughter a few yards away. She didn’t see him; he was left waving the spoon awkwardly i
n front of his face and feeling ridiculous. He put the ice cream and meringue hastily into his mouth and looked again at his notes. He was going to welcome them all here, explain that it was twenty years since he had come to the Lancashire town of Brunton and founded his business. He’d picture himself to them as the naive young man he had certainly not been, so as to imply how far he’d come since then. He’d emphasize how good Brunton had been to him, then say modestly how he hoped that what he had brought to the town had also been good for Brunton.

  There would be calls of ‘hear hear!’ and applause then. But he’d hold his hands up modestly and sit down a few seconds later, when he’d told them all to enjoy themselves in this wonderful place. He didn’t need to announce his other speaker, because the toastmaster would do that.

  Jim O’Connor finished his dessert, took a final look at his watch, then tapped his glass with the fork he hadn’t used. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, there will be a comfort break of no more than ten minutes. Please be back in your seats by then for coffee and petit fours. Oh, and the odd speech. I promise you they’ll be very short!’ There was a little laughter, then a shifting back of chairs, a swift and grateful exit by the men who had been drinking beer earlier in the evening. The noise level rose as people took the opportunity to move round the room and chat to people on other tables.

  The toastmaster leaned over the man who’d paid for his services, as for everything else in the evening, and said resentfully, ‘I could have made that announcement for you, sir.’

  ‘Spur of the moment!’ said Jim, waving an arm vaguely towards the noisy room, as if the gesture could explain things. ‘You’ll get your fee, never fear.’

  The man bristled at this coarse reference to money. He shuffled back to his position, standing upright against the wall and staring unseeingly ahead, looking like a small, ageing and rather ridiculous version of a soldier on guard outside Buckingham Palace. O’Connor was already regretting his impulse. The comfort break had been a mistake. He had merely postponed his ordeal, when he could have had it over and done with. He was suddenly desperate to relax. He was getting things out of proportion, a thing he never did in his business life. Sarah was in earnest conversation with the man next to her. Jim whispered in her ear, ‘I’m just slipping out for a breath of air,’ and was gone before she could reply.

  The night air was cool and welcoming. He stood for a moment at the top of the steps beneath the house’s high, rounded entrance, looking down the long, very straight drive to the lights of the gatehouse which were all he could discern in the darkness. The family who owned this place had been here since the Norman Conquest, they said. Almost a thousand years. But things had changed — and had changed fastest of all in the last century. They needed to open the place to visitors now. They were glad of people like him to hire the banqueting hall and bring in the money. They were glad to entertain people who would never have been allowed past the gatehouse at one time.

  The world belonged to people like him now. To Irish peasants who might once have come to the estate as casual workers in the haymaking season. Move over, Sir Cuthbert or Sir Jasper or whoever you were. Make way for Jim O’Connor and his raft of ways of making a quick buck. This is the twenty-first century, mate. And that stuff about the past was a romantic notion: he’d never been an Irish peasant. He’d had a good education and he’d used that and his rugby to get himself started.

  Jim turned and wandered back through the house, taking care not to catch the eye of any of his guests he might meet. He didn’t want to talk now. And least of all did he want to hear the sycophantic small talk which the people he’d invited here might think compulsory if they met their host. He tried the handle of another door, a tall, wide affair, probably oak, he thought. To his surprise, it turned easily and he slipped out into some sort of garden. There was fallen cherry blossom at his feet, thick, pink, almost luminous as his eyes grew used to the pale light from the stars in the clear night sky. He moved around the building, glancing up beyond the high stone wall beside him. There was a wrought-iron gate, not quite closed and latched. He pushed it and walked through to the open area beyond it.

  He recognised where he was now. This was the edge of the car park. He could see the rows of neatly parked vehicles, their roofs shining almost white where they caught the light from the crescent moon which was visible in this more open area. Even as he thought how still it was on this early May night, the slightest of breezes swept through the car park, ruffling the dark outlines of the trees away to his right, sighing a little in the tops of their canopies as it passed through them. It was cool and unthreatening out here. Jim O’Connor breathed deeply of the clear, clean air, knowing that soon he would be back in that warm and crowded room and facing the ordeal of his speech. He glanced down to check the time on his wrist before he turned back towards the house and duty.

  It was his last conscious action. But he felt the steel of the pistol against his temple, heard the sudden roar of the weapon as the swift and final violence of the bullet ended his life.

  TWO

  ‘You heard the news this morning?’

  It was a small hotel, allowing a friendly relationship between owner and client, and the proprietor was eager to drop his little bombshell and then talk about it. Murder was better than politics for a conversation — better than most things, better even than sport. You could get into trouble with politics: it was surprising what strong views some people had, whatever the evidence you cited. Sport was pretty safe, but even there you had to be careful; people had their favourite teams and they could be very blinkered. Even worse, the guests could sometimes be totally uninterested in sport. And then you were left at the end of the diving board, without anything to do except tumble into the pool and look silly.

  But a good juicy murder was pretty safe. Everyone enjoyed talking about death; everyone enjoyed wondering what the world was coming to. They thought the crime was terrible, but they usually wanted all the details of it with their breakfasts. The older ones often wanted to bring back hanging; he’d got used to that. And he had his reaction ready: you shook your head gravely and retreated into the illusions of how much safer a now long-departed world had been.

  These two were young. The woman was quite a looker, with that striking red-brown hair and those bright blue eyes which seemed to be taking in everything and smiling at it, not to mention that healthily curving body beneath. When you wore your white chef’s hat and asked whether they’d enjoyed the food, people thought you didn’t notice how they looked, but you did. He wondered for a few seconds how that little bald-headed bloke with the moustache had got himself a girl like that, but he’d long since ceased to give much time to such speculation. You saw all sorts of couples here, some married, some not. These two were married, he was sure of that. They were easy with each other; they had the air of amused tolerance which he saw only in long-term couples.

  They must surely have heard his question, but they gave no sign of it, seeming to be immersed in their choice of cereals from the wide range provided at the side table. The proprietor repeated a little less certainly, ‘I expect you’ve heard the news this morning, Mr Peach?’

  The man’s near-black eyes turned sudden and full upon him. ‘No, we haven’t. And we don’t want to. No offence, Mr Johnson, but it’s part of the holiday for us to get away from what’s happening in the world. No newspapers, no radio, no television. That’s been a rest in itself, these last four days.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ The owner nodded four times, which was at least two too many. ‘Very understandable. Very sensible, I’m sure. I can see the point of that.’ He went back into his kitchen, leaving the pair to breakfast in peace. They were the first ones down this morning. The others would want to talk about this killing when they came, might even broach it with him, if they’d been listening to the radios in their rooms. Took all sorts to make up a world — that was one of the cliches he loved to swap with his clients in the peculiar world of hotel-speak. He could still picture those da
rk eyes in that round, unrevealing face. The man had been perfectly polite, but he’d decided in that instant that he wouldn’t want Mr Peach as an enemy.

  The couple he’d left behind were deliberately friendly towards him when he served the breakfasts they’d ordered, as if they wished to emphasize that there was nothing personal in their rejection of his conversational sallies. The man must be ten years older than the girl, he thought — when you were approaching sixty and had grandchildren, all women under thirty were girls to you. She had bacon and egg and tomato. The man had the full English, which he despatched with amazing speed and obvious relish. He told the chef it was good bacon and sausage and cooked just right. It seemed he wished to compensate for his earlier brisk rejection of the news.

  They disappeared from the dining room as the first of his other guests entered it, as if they wished to preserve themselves from any further discussion of events in the vulgar world around them. Detective Chief Inspector ‘Percy’ Peach and Detective Sergeant Lucy Peach had signed into the hotel as plain Mr and Mrs Peach. In a few minutes, they would pay their bill and sign out again. Peach would put something complimentary in the visitors’ book, but they would remain Mr and Mrs Peach as they departed. There was nothing unusual in that. Police officers prefer to conceal their calling; they consider it politic to do so in our civilized twenty-first century. Most of the men and women who serve in uniform prefer to don the garb of their trade only at work; they leave it behind in the locker room when they finish the working day, shedding their work along with their clothing.

  Percy and Lucy were members of the CID, of that elite police section which operates throughout the day in plain clothes, attempting as far as possible to blend into the world around it. But they still preferred to keep the nature of their work secret, unless they were asked directly about it by innocent strangers, when both of them found it difficult to lie. As Lucy brushed her teeth vigorously in their bathroom, Percy said, ‘Our last day. Best make it a good ’un.’