Just Desserts Page 21

  ‘I’d no evidence, had I? If he’d actually succeeded, there’d have been semen and wounds. I didn’t even have a scratch to show.’

  Lambert decided that he believed her story. But he asked the question any lawyer would have put. ‘You realize that we only have your word for this?’

  Michelle wanted to fly at him. Instead, she held on to her emotions, telling herself that she had always known that they would say something like this, that it was part of their job to do it. She said coolly, ‘It happened all right. Why should I make it up?’

  ‘There could be all sorts of reasons. For a start, it’s almost the worst possible thing you could say about a man you didn’t like. An effective way to blacken the memory of a dead man who can’t speak for himself.’

  ‘That’s what Mum would say! But she’ll believe me, when other things have come out, as they’re surely bound to do now.’

  ‘And you say you haven’t told anyone else?’

  ‘No. I didn’t want it getting back to Mum from anyone else, did I? I wanted to choose my moment to break it to her.’

  ‘You realize you’ve given yourself an excellent motive for killing Patrick Nayland?’

  She had feared this suggestion, when she rehearsed this interview before they came. But now that it was here, she found that she could take it in her stride. ‘I realize that perfectly well. Why do you think I concealed all this, when we talked last week?’

  ‘I don’t know. We spend a lot of our time trying to convince people that the truth is much the best policy in murder investigations. Did you kill Patrick Nayland?’

  ‘No. I felt like killing him, in the days after the rape attempt. I won’t pretend I’m not delighted that someone did it for me!’

  ‘And who was that someone?’

  She was taken aback by the sudden suggestion that she might know the killer, delivered as it was in this calm, matter-of-fact manner. ‘I don’t know. I’d tell you if I did.’ She knew that did not sound convincing, that it more or less contradicted what she had said in anger earlier, so she added, ‘I don’t approve of murder. But I’m certain the man who killed him will turn out to have had good reason.’

  Lambert gave her no reaction to this. Instead, he studied her for a few seconds and said, ‘Let’s see if you can help us now, then. You say that you saw Barry Hooper immediately before the murder was discovered. Who else went down there in the period immediately before Mrs Moss discovered the body?’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t be certain. I think the greenkeeper from the course – Alan Fitch, isn’t it? – went down there a minute or two before I did, but I couldn’t be certain.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘You surely can’t think she killed Patrick? I told you, she thought the sun shone out of him. She’d never—’

  ‘And if she discovered he was two-timing her? More than two-timing her? This looks very much like a crime of passion, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It wasn’t my mother.’ Michelle’s lips set in a stubborn line. ‘She didn’t go down to the basement in the period you’ve been talking about. The first time she saw the body was after Joanne Moss had found it, when Mum held Patrick in her arms and Chris Pearson had to detach her from him.’

  ‘And Chris Pearson?’

  ‘I think he came back into the restaurant a little while before I went down the stairs to the basement. I couldn’t say how long.’ She was conscious of the electric silence her words had created. ‘I didn’t mention that before because I can’t be absolutely certain of it. The same as with Mr Fitch. I wouldn’t like anyone to be accused of murder because I report something which isn’t much more than an impression.’

  ‘No one will be, don’t worry about that,’ said Lambert grimly. ‘You can imagine just what a defence lawyer would make of your vague impressions.’

  ‘Yes. I’m just trying to be as honest as I can. I’m sorry I tried to deceive you at our first meeting.’

  Neither of them commented on that. They left her with the instruction that she should go on thinking about that night at Soutters, that some significant fact might yet surface from her subconscious.

  They had listened to her so carefully, been in the main so sympathetic, that she was almost sorry when they had gone. She had a curious sense of deflation in the hour which followed. She wondered how their discussions with other people were going.

  They still didn’t seem to have found out about her meeting with Joanne Moss. She felt sure that lady would keep quiet about what she’d told her over lunch in the pub.

  Twenty

  Chris Pearson was feeling rather pleased with himself. Liza Nayland had rung to tell him the partnership plans were going ahead. He should have a draft from the company lawyers within two or three days, and then she and he could hammer out the details together. She was sure they would have no difficulty in reaching an amicable solution, one which would suit both of them.

  It had been a very friendly conversation and it left him feeling that his ambitions were after all to be realized. He decided to spend the morning of Friday, the twenty-second of December reassuring the staff at Camellia Park.

  The bitter weather had relented; the chances of a white Christmas had as usual receded as the big day approached. A watery sun climbed valiantly towards its midday zenith, the lowest of the year. There was even a little warmth in its rays, and the golf course filled with people as the morning wore on. The sky became increasingly blue behind the stark outlines of the leafless trees at the top of the course. Three miles away, May Hill looked green again, after the frost and north-east winds of the last week.

  Chris found Alan Fitch planting two rowan trees behind the fifth green. He watched the methodical turning of the spade as the greenkeeper dug a hole, measured it against the root bole of the rowan and then carefully lowered the new tree into place. Pearson picked up the bag of leaf mould which Fitch had brought with him on the tractor and emptied it carefully into the space around the roots. ‘You’ll be missing young Hooper for this sort of work,’ he said.

  ‘Quiet time of the year, this. There’s no mowing to do. I’ll manage until he gets back,’ said the taciturn Fitch.

  ‘Be some time, I should think. The lad’s smashed himself up quite badly, I hear.’

  ‘Daft young bugger!’ Fitch spat his disgust on to the roots of the rowan, then covered them quickly with compost.

  ‘According to Mrs Nayland, he seems to have taken the boss’s watch,’ said Pearson, watching for a reaction from the man who refused to lift his face from the task in hand.

  Fitch tamped down the soil around the rowan with the back of his spade. ‘He told me that, when we saw him in hospital. Daft young bugger! He won’t lose his job though, will he?’ He looked up at the man standing beside him, revealing for the first time his anxiety for his protégé.

  ‘Do you think he killed the boss?’

  ‘No. He’s a daft bugger, but not a killer, young Barry.’

  ‘It looks as if one of us did.’

  ‘Ay. One of us here, or one of his family. He were a randy sod, and randy sods get thumped.’

  ‘Or knifed, in this case.’

  ‘Ay. I wouldn’t have minded seeing the horny bugger getting a thumping, but I wouldn’t have wanted him killed.’ It was the first time Chris had heard the greenkeeper reveal such an open contempt for Patrick Nayland. Fitch’s eyes were on the ground again, as he levelled the earth around the thin trunk of the newly planted sapling.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned, Hooper will keep his job, if no serious criminal charges are brought against him.’

  ‘He’s a good worker, young Barry.’ It was the closest Alan Fitch would allow himself to come to openly stated affection. ‘But who knows what will happen now, with Mr Nayland gone?’

  ‘Things will go on much as before, if it’s left to me.’

  ‘And will it be?’

  For a moment, Chris was taken aback by the directness of this churlish worker. Then he told himself that Fi
tch was just not good with words, that he wouldn’t have known how to phrase his query more diplomatically. ‘I think it will, yes. I’ve talked to Mrs Nayland, and she doesn’t want to interfere with the way we do things.’ He wasn’t going to tell him about the partnership, of course. That could leak down to people like Fitch, in a month or two, when he began to implement the changes he planned. ‘I think you can be pretty certain that your job is safe, Alan. Assuming that you didn’t kill the boss, of course.’

  Alan Fitch looked up sharply at him on that. He wasn’t good at spotting whether people were joking or not.

  Joanne Moss seemed to be a little on edge when Chris Pearson went into the clubhouse.

  ‘I wish it was settled, all this business,’ she said. ‘I wish they’d put someone away for killing Patrick, and let us all get on with our lives.’

  ‘Do you think they’re getting near to an arrest?’ said Chris.

  ‘No idea. They were pretty cagey when they spoke to me on Wednesday. They clearly knew a lot more than they did when they’d seen me last week, but they weren’t letting on exactly what, or how much. I suppose that’s one of their techniques. I expect they sometimes pretend to know more than they do. They certainly got me on edge.’

  ‘Young Hooper stole Patrick’s watch,’ said Pearson.

  She looked at him sharply. ‘Did he, indeed? I’m disappointed in him. Do you see him killing Patrick, though?’

  ‘He might have. It might have been a mugging that went wrong. He might have panicked when Patrick resisted – lost his head and stabbed him. It looked to me like that sort of killing.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem the sort of lad to commit murder.’

  ‘He didn’t seem the sort of lad to steal watches,’ Pearson pointed out grimly. ‘And it seems he was on drugs. When they’re high, people do unpredictable things, behave out of character.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Chris said casually, ‘What did the CID people ask you about?’

  ‘Nothing very much. They made me go over the discovery of the body again, asked whom I saw around the spot just before I found him.’

  They were fencing with each other, testing the ground between them, trying unsuccessfully to pick up any clues as to whom the police suspected. Chris said, ‘I suppose it could have been Alan Fitch. He’s a dark horse, doesn’t say much. But he has violence in his past, and from what little he does say, I get the impression he didn’t like Patrick.’

  ‘I still find it difficult to believe that anyone who works here killed Pat. What about the family? Don’t they say that most murders are committed by people within the family? Do you think it might have been Liza Nayland?’

  ‘I suppose it might, if she’d—’ He stopped suddenly, not knowing how to go on with the thought.

  ‘If she’d found out about Pat and me?’ She gave him a bitter smile. ‘It’s all right, you can say it. The police were clearly thinking it was a possibility.’

  ‘It must be, I suppose.’ Chris looked bleakly past her at the array of neatly arranged kitchen utensils. It wouldn’t suit his book if they arrested Liza Nayland, not with his partnership in the balance. ‘And what about Michelle Nayland? I don’t know her well, but I know Patrick had lots of problems with her, in the early days of the marriage. She seems a resourceful young woman, very protective of her mother. If she found Patrick was straying, she’d have been furious on her mother’s account – furious with a man she already disliked and resented.’

  ‘I suppose it’s possible,’ said Joanne. ‘Somehow, I’ve never been able to see a woman killing Patrick like that.’

  Which leaves Alan Fitch, Barry Hooper and me in the frame, thought Chris Pearson ruefully. He said firmly, ‘I don’t think we can rule a woman out as a possible killer.’

  It was at that moment that the phone rang and DS Hook said they would like to see him for a third time during the afternoon.

  Chris Pearson wished in the end that they had come immediately after Hook’s call.

  His first reaction was that the three hours interval would allow him to prepare himself, to set out his stall as he wanted to present it to these shrewd, experienced investigators. But he had thought about his position so much that he could have done that in ten minutes. The extra time only seemed to make him more and more nervous as he speculated about what they were going to say and how he should react. Anxiety wasn’t a usual condition for him, and he had discovered over the last week that he wasn’t good at dealing with it.

  He set out his office at the back of the clubhouse to receive them, tidying his desk until its surface held only the picture of his wife and children and the bright brass ink and pen stand which he never used. He straightened the big pictures on the walls which showed the course at various stages of its development, from farmer’s fields, through the first brutal earth-shifts with the bulldozer, to finished course with its first few tender saplings and bunkers with pristine sand.

  Chris decided he must take some more pictures, showing how the trees had grown and the fairways matured from meadow grass to something much better in the last few years. He got out the blueprint for a full eighteen-hole course and studied it for a few minutes, planning a couple of minor amendments, diverting himself happily with the thoughts of how he would press forward once this unfortunate business was out of the way. They’d have a club professional, once they got the full eighteen holes going. There was ample room for the shop he would need at the end of the clubhouse building.

  He thought at first that he would sit behind his big desk to talk to the policemen, play the man at the helm dispensing lordly advice to his visitors, helping them where he could and being politely blank where he couldn’t. Twenty minutes later, he was shifting the furniture again, bringing an extra armchair in from the small members’ lounge outside so that they could sit more informally, equals discussing the regrettable death of the man who until last week had owned and controlled Camellia Park.

  He felt himself becoming palpably more anxious as the time they had arranged approached. He even went out and walked briskly around the course, waving to the taciturn Alan Fitch, exchanging pleasantries with one or two of the golfers he recognized. He couldn’t remember when he had last had time to kill, and he didn’t enjoy the feeling. And he found that all the time his eyes strayed towards the entrance to the car park from the main road.

  They came exactly as they had arranged, at three o’clock. He took them into the office he had so carefully prepared, seated them as he had planned, and said, ‘We can chat here without being disturbed. And no one can hear us. The walls are pretty soundproof anyway, but I’ve sent Joanne Moss home a little early. It’s Friday afternoon, after all, and she’s a good worker, and it’s only three days to Christmas.’ He felt himself talking too much, saying more than he needed to say, filling up space with words whilst words were still safe.

  Lambert said, ‘We know considerably more than when we last spoke to you, Mr Pearson.’ He contrived to make it sound like a threat.

  ‘That’s good. The investigation is progressing well, then?’

  ‘Some of our new information concerns you. There are things we feel you should have revealed to us during our previous meetings.’

  ‘Really? I can’t imagine what you are referring to, but I assure you that this must have been an oversight on my part rather than any deliberate wish to—’

  ‘What is your present position here?’

  ‘I am the General Manager. Chief Executive, if you like. I oversee all the activities at Camellia Park, both on the course and in the clubhouse. I reported to Patrick when he was alive, but in the new situation I shall—’

  ‘I understood that situation had already changed your position.’

  He made himself pause, telling himself that there was nothing to worry about here, that he could handle this easily enough. He nodded, forcing a smile. ‘I hadn’t planned to mention this, simply because I thought the information was still confidential. Obviously you have talked to Liz
a Nayland and she has told you that she proposes to offer me a partnership in the firm.’ He waited for confirmation from the two observant faces opposite him, received none, and went on more uncertainly, ‘It is very gratifying to me to have my commitment to the place and its development recognized in this way. Patrick was planning to offer me a partnership, and Liza has chosen to honour that commitment.’ He knew it sounded stuffy and formal, but that was probably the appropriate note to strike about this.

  ‘Have you anything in writing to prove that Mr Nayland intended you to become a partner in the firm?’

  Chris made himself smile as he shook his head. ‘We didn’t operate in that way. But there was an understanding from the early days that, provided things developed satisfactorily, I would become a partner in due course. It was his money which financed the whole thing, but my know-how which developed it. This place has been my whole life in the last ten years.’

  They caught the emotion in his last sentence, noted the quick, nervous smile with which he sought to mitigate that intensity. Then Lambert said, ‘You must have been devastated to learn that Camellia Park was to be taken over by European Fairways Limited.’

  Chris felt the blood pound in his temples, even as it seemed to be doing strange things like draining from his face. He knew his voice was uneven as he said, ‘You must be mistaken. There is no question of any takeover. Mrs Nayland and I agreed on Monday that I was to become a partner in the firm. She confirmed to me this morning that the lawyers have drawn up a formal agreement, which I think we shall both sign in the next few days.’

  ‘The representative of European Fairways spoke to us yesterday. We have checked out what he said with other senior members of his firm. We are confident that Mr Nayland had agreed to sell out to them, six days before his death.’

  Chris felt his world crashing about his ears. Just when things had been going so well, his brain kept repeating inconsequentially. He said, ‘I knew nothing of any such agreement. It must have been just a tentative one. Informal. Incomplete.’ He was groping for words. ‘This is the first I have heard of it.’