[Lambert and Hook 21] - A Good Walk Spoiled Page 17

  Lucy paused, nodded, appeared to come to a decision. ‘All right. I’ve heard certain rumours over the last few days, about an accusation by Priscilla of some sort of sexual harassment. I don’t know how much substance there is in them. But I did see that the two of them were strained with each other: that they weren’t even speaking, in fact. I merely reported that fact to you.’

  ‘As a good citizen helping the police in a murder inquiry should. If you have any further thoughts on the people who dined with you, please ring this number immediately. Anything you tell us will be treated in confidence. Unless it proves to be evidence in a murder trial, it will never be revealed by us. Good morning to you, Mrs Dimmock.’

  He placed the card on her coffee table and swept out with no more than a nod to her, leaving Bert Hook to thank her for her help.

  Alison Cullis hadn’t asked the priest to come to her house. But her Catholic upbringing had taught her what to do when she opened the door and found him on the step, and she did it automatically.

  You took the priest into the best room in the house, the one reserved for important visitors. You sent any noisy children out of the building or, if the hour or the weather made this impossible, made sure that their anarchy was at the furthest possible point of the house from the man in the cassock. You told them to sit still and read, with the severest punishments threatened for any transgression, any fracturing of the rule of silence. Then you offered your honoured visitor refreshment: tea and cake if it was during the day; whisky, preferably Irish, if the priest came during the evening.

  Life in that cramped terraced cottage was a distant memory for Alison Cullis. In the big detached house at Cheltenham, she had no children to banish. She also had much disillusionment about her own beliefs and the efficacy of a celibate clergy. But childhood habits are bred deep and die hard. She led her visitor into the little-used dining room at the front of her big detached house, took her best china from the cupboard, brewed a pot of tea, and slid ginger biscuits on to a plate. She did not welcome this visit, did not know what she was going to say to the priest, but she did all of these things without even thinking about them.

  The man settling himself comfortably into the armchair immediately irritated her. ‘This is a time of great sorrow, my child,’ he said comfortably. It was the delivery rather than the sentiment which annoyed Alison: it was so obviously a standard opening, without emotion or any genuine feeling. Father Driscoll was into his sixties: he should do better than this, with the experience he must have had. She nodded, not trusting herself with words, noting against her will the food stains on the chest of the black cassock.

  ‘Holy Mother Church will be a consolation to you in this time of grief.’ The priest dunked his second ginger biscuit into his tea and nodded his certainty about that.

  ‘There can’t be a funeral yet. The police won’t release the body.’ Alison looked into the complacent face and wondered how to shock it into some genuine emotion. ‘They say the defence counsel for the murderer has the right to a second, independent post-mortem if they request one. That’s if they ever manage to decide who killed him.’

  ‘You husband wasn’t of our faith, but I’ll be happy to arrange a service for him, when you require it. Ecumenism has led to a great relaxation in such things.’ Father Driscoll spoke as if he regretted that.

  ‘I shan’t be having a service for Richard, Father. Your ministrations will not be required.’

  ‘Ah, you shouldn’t make such decisions in a time of grief, my child. Maybe when you’ve had time to get used to the idea of—’

  ‘I’m not grieving, Father. I’m glad Richard’s out of my life.’

  For the first time, the priest showed real distress. ‘That is a hard thing to hear you say, my child. It might indeed be sinful. Even in a time of stress like this, you should consider the welfare of your immortal soul.’

  Alison found herself wondering why people in clerical garb allowed themselves the sort of cliches which would have been risible in politicians. ‘I’m more concerned at the moment with my life on earth, Father Driscoll. What’s left of it will be a lot happier without my late husband.’

  ‘I’m sad to hear you speaking like this, Mrs Cullis. I haven’t seen you at Mass in the last few weeks. And I have to say that—’

  ‘Richard was a consistent and random adulterer. He did not even trouble to disguise the fact. He was a cruel, shallow, man. I am well rid of him.’

  ‘Sure you mustn’t be unchristian, Mrs Cullis.’ The priest’s Irish brogue came out when he was confused.

  ‘I suppose that is how I am behaving. But you didn’t have to live with him, Father Driscoll.’

  ‘That I didn’t, I know, Mrs Cullis. But you’d bound yourselves in the holy sacrament of matrimony, and I’m thinking that—’

  ‘If Richard had lived, I’d have divorced him.’ She was suddenly sick of the charade he was compelling upon her.

  ‘Ah, ye say that now, Mrs Cullis, because you’re upset. Sure it’s understandable that you wouldn’t be thinking straight in your grief. I’m hoping that when your mind’s a little more at rest you won’t be after telling people—’

  ‘I’d have got rid of him through the law. He was a bastard, Father, if you’ll excuse the language - I’m sure you’ve heard worse, in your time. I’d had enough. I was determined to be rid of him. This has saved me the trouble. So you see, I don’t need your pity or the consolation of your religion.’

  Alison wondered why she was telling him this, when she had denied such an intention to the police. It was the desire to shock him, she supposed, to have some revenge on the people like this who had cheated her out of so much of her life. She reached over and poured him more tea, noticing how brown and strong it was now, how steady her hand was as she held the pot.

  She thrust the biscuits at Father Driscoll, was surprised when he took two more of them. She had thought he would have been embarrassed now, glad to make his escape from her house as quickly as he could. Instead, he dunked the biscuits in his tea and ate them silently. His ill-fitting false teeth slipped a little as he raised the elegant china cup, causing him to slurp a little as he drank. The sound made her for the first time sorry for the isolation of this forlorn figure, whose offers of comfort she had rejected. It wasn’t entirely his fault that he was out of his depth. The religion with which he grew up in Ireland had been overtaken by the ways and thoughts of the twenty-first century.

  Father Driscoll finished his tea before he spoke. He forced himself to raise his eyes from the table to this troubled woman before he said, ‘Another one of our seven sacraments still has a great deal to offer you, my child. That is the sacrament of penance. You may be absolved from any sin you have committed, however grave it might be, provided that you are truly repentant. And the secrets of the confessional remain with the priest. There is no power on earth which can force him to divulge them. I urge you to give some thought to that, my child.’

  The shabby, ageing figure acquired a strange dignity with his determined recital of dogma. It was only when she had shown him out of her house that Alison realized that Father Driscoll seemed to have decided that she had murdered her husband.

  Sixteen

  Ben Paddon found a morning spent working in the laboratories surprisingly therapeutic. He had feared going in there after Tuesday night’s murder. He had thought that everyone’s eyes would be upon him, that it would only be a matter of time before his position as an All God’s Creatures infiltrator and enemy of Richard Cullis would be exposed. After that, his arrest could surely only be a matter of time.

  Instead, he found that other people as well as him were responding to the rhythms of work, to the triumph of routine over outlandish speculation. Most people in the labs were not golfers and had thus not been at the Belmont dinner where their boss had died. But there were others who had sat down to that fatal meal: Jason Dimmock and Debbie Young and Priscilla Godwin were all questioned excitedly by those who had not been there. The other thr
ee all seemed calmer than him about the excitement they met among their colleagues, but their coolness was in itself a help to Ben, who found himself taking his cue from the composure of the other three.

  All four had made brief statements to the police about what they had seen and heard at Belmont on Tuesday night. Ben had kept his replies non-committal and the junior police officer who had taken the statement had merely recorded them, not pressed him for detail as he had expected. It was likely that more senior officers would need to question him in due course, the young woman explained, and Ben had nodded sagely, as if he took part in murder inquiries every month.

  So far, these more senior officers had not appeared. Ben wondered whom they were questioning and what they were discovering about him. The factory wasn’t buzzing with CID activity as he had expected. He waited, watched his colleagues, and speculated about what they were thinking. This was the period of the phoney war, when you waited for the real hostilities to begin.

  He knew that Jason Dimmock had talked to the man in charge of the case immediately after Cullis’s death. At coffee break, Jason announced that he thought the police were probably talking to his wife at that very moment: he seemed unnaturally relaxed about it, to Ben’s mind, behaving as if the whole thing was rather a joke. Ben got nothing out of Priscilla Godwin, who replied to people mainly in monosyllables; she seemed preoccupied but calm. Debbie Young, on the other hand, was as talkative as ever, and positively cheerful about the demise of their chief. The behaviour of the other three helped to clear Ben’s mind, as did the mundane but demanding piece of research he was conducting.

  This involved the recording of detailed figures about the behaviour at different temperatures and over several hours of a new chemical compound. It wasn’t difficult, because he knew exactly what he was doing and how to do it. But the task required his full concentration, which he soon decided was a good thing.

  He noted down his final figures at midday, then found tension building within him as he waited for people to go to lunch. They departed in ones and twos, and seemed to him to take a very long time over it. It was twenty to one before he was left on his own and could slip into the little office at the end of the long, low laboratory room. He knew the number, but he still checked it nervously in his diary before he made the call.

  Ben hardly recognized Scott Kennedy’s voice at first: it was high-pitched because of his nervousness. ‘They said I could go to prison,’ he said.

  Ben didn’t want to know about that, didn’t really care what happened to Kennedy. But he said, ‘I expect they were trying to scare you. To get all the information they could out of you. They work like that, the police. Was Tim Cohen there?’

  ‘Yes. He helped me, I suppose. They must have been more careful, when they saw I had a lawyer with me. It didn’t seem like that at the time, though.’

  Ben was suddenly impatient with this brash, rather silly, young man. He had always thought that kidnapping Cullis was an act of bravado which couldn’t bring any real benefits to animal rights. Kennedy had wanted the publicity and the personal glory, without any consideration of the implications of his actions for others who were pursuing more subtle paths. This was the man who had had been foolish enough to brag to Cullis that All God’s Creatures had a man in his laboratories. Ben said, ‘Did they ask you anything about this place?’

  ‘They asked me about us having someone under cover. I told them I didn’t know anything about that and they didn’t pursue it.’

  That was contradicting his original boast, but he was probably speaking the truth. The police would have been round here double quick if Ben’s cover had been blown. He said, ‘All right. If they come back to you, don’t give them anything you don’t have to. In fact, don’t give them anything at all.’

  ‘You’re safe with me, Mr Paddon. Don’t worry about that.’

  It was the first time Kennedy, who was only three or four years younger than Ben, had ever called him ‘Mister’. Perhaps he thought he was giving the respect due to a murderer.

  Ben had no time to think about that. He had scarcely put the phone down when it rang again, making him jump with the shock. The calm female voice on the other end of the line told him that Chief Superintendent Lambert would like to see him as soon as possible.

  Paul Young said, ‘I’ve a job interview tomorrow. I don’t expect to be out of work for long. Not at all, if things go well. I’m still serving notice at Gloucester Chemicals, but they’ve said I needn’t go in for the last few days, to enable me to secure other employment.’

  He wondered why he was telling the two men in plain clothes this. Was it just nervousness, or was he anxious to emphasize the severance of his ties with the place where Richard Cullis had worked?

  John Lambert, however, saw the chance to go straight for an area he wanted to explore. They were sitting in the big, well-fitted kitchen of the Youngs’ modem house; he thought the man looked apprehensive. ‘I gathered from the employee files that you were leaving the company. Was that your own decision?’

  ‘I thought those files were confidential.’ The words were out before he could check them: it had shaken him to know that they had been studying such things.

  Lambert gave him the reassuring smile he normally retained for the anxious elderly. ‘They are, in the normal way of things, Mr Young. Murder opens doors which would in other circumstances remain firmly shut. We shan’t reveal any of the personal information involved.’

  Paul Young tried to lighten the atmosphere with an exaggerated grin of his own. ‘That’s all right, then. No, I didn’t leave of my own accord. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was sacked. I was told very politely that my work wasn’t up to scratch and that I must be on my way.’

  ‘I see. I’m sorry about that. I also noticed in your file that you are very well qualified.’

  Paul wondered if they were trying to mollify him. ‘I have a 2.1 degree in chemistry, if that’s what you mean. I’ve never used it directly in my working life. Perhaps I should have done. My wife’s done well enough as a research scientist.’ It came out almost as if he were jealous of Debbie, which he had never intended.

  ‘You didn’t work in the laboratories at Gloucester Chemicals?’

  ‘No. I was a sales rep. They thought when I was appointed that my technical knowledge of the products would be an advantage in sales, but it didn’t work out that way.’

  ‘Who took the decision to get rid of you?’

  It was direct, even aggressive. But they’d already indicated to him that they didn’t pull punches in a murder investigation. No use trying to disguise things, then. ‘It was Richard Cullis. Oh, he said it was a joint decision, that he was sorry things hadn’t worked out, but I’m quite sure he was the motivating force.’

  It was the shorter, burlier man with the weather-beaten face, who had been introduced as Detective Sergeant Hook, who now spoke unexpectedly. ‘You must have resented that, Mr Young.’

  ‘It was a bit of a shock at the time. But to be perfectly honest, it’s a relief, now that I’ve got used to the idea. I don’t think I have the qualities to be a good salesman. I’m not applying for sales posts now.’

  He half-hoped they would ask him about what sort of work he was now pursuing and thus allow a diversion from the event which had brought them here. Instead, Hook nodded thoughtfully, apparently accepting what he had said. ‘No bitterness against Mr Cullis, then.’ Paul frowned. ‘I’m trying to be as honest as I can. I knew Richard fairly well, because my wife was working at Gloucester Chemicals before he was put in charge of research. We’ve known him for years: he may even have helped to get me appointed to the sales job. I’m not sure about that, but I can’t say I ever liked the man or that we were ever very close. We were different types, with different interests.’

  ‘Apart from golf.’

  ‘Apart from golf, yes. But we’ve never even played a lot of that together. I’m not really much of a golfer - I almost didn’t play on Tuesday, as a matter of fact. Bu
t Debbie thought I should show the flag, not hide away because I’d been made redundant.’

  ‘I see. For the last few years, your wife has worked in the laboratories at Gloucester Chemicals under Mr Cullis’s direction, hasn’t she?’

  This harmless-looking figure had zoomed in on to the very subject he had been determined to avoid. ‘She has, yes.’

  ‘And how did she get on with Mr Cullis?’

  Paul made himself pause before he replied. This needed careful handling. He wondered exactly how much his wife’s file would have told them about her career. ‘I never saw them actually working together, so I couldn’t tell you much about their working relationship. Socially, I think Debbie felt as I did about Richard. No open hostility, but she didn’t approve of the way he treated his wife and she wasn’t particularly close to the man.’ Paul tried to develop this in an innocent way. ‘You must understand that we have two boisterous children who occupy much of our lives. Richard - well, he had a very different lifestyle.’

  Lambert said drily, ‘So we have been informed. But you surprise me when you say you don’t know much about your wife’s working relationship with Mr Cullis. Surely she must have talked at home about her working day? Particularly as you have the scientific background to follow any of the issues involved.’

  Paul felt himself reddening. ‘We don’t discuss work much at home. We’re both happy to switch off - me in particular, since work hasn’t been going very well over the last year or two. And we have the children to keep us busy. We really don’t have much time to talk about work.’

  It was too much talk to cover a trivial omission. Lambert made a mental note to explore the matter with the lady in question in due course. ‘I see. You have a chemistry degree. How much do you know about poisons?’

  ‘Enough. More than the average layman. Less than the people who work all day in the research and development of drugs.’ It was the answer he had prepared and he delivered it easily enough.