She was relieved when Peach eventually smiled and spoke. ‘We have great hopes of you, Ms Derkson. As James O’Connor’s personal assistant, you can probably tell us more about him than anyone we have seen so far.’
‘I doubt that. I understand that you have already seen his widow.’
‘And how do you know that, Ms Derkson?’
‘I’m Mrs Derkson and I have no objection to your calling me that. I would prefer it, in fact. And I had occasion to be in touch with Mrs O’Connor yesterday, about a business decision. I imagine there will be many other such occasions in the weeks to come.’
Her voice faltered a fraction on that last thought, but then she was instantly her business self again. Her watchful, intelligent grey eyes were exactly the colour of her straight skirt. The paleness of her cheeks was accentuated by the whiteness of the perfectly laundered blouse beneath them. The heels on her black shoes were precisely the right height to combine elegance with efficient movement. Yet Peach noted that she was clearly uneasy. Perhaps she was unused to sitting in an armchair in this room, where she had deposited so many people who had come here to see her employer. Or perhaps some deeper malaise was troubling her.
The DCI spoke slowly and soberly, as if respecting the place where they sat. ‘You know more about James O’Connor’s business dealings than anyone else we are going to speak to. You were also on the top table, the host’s table, at Claughton Towers on Monday night. That implies that you were regarded as a friend as well as a trusted employee. We need both information and opinions from you, Mrs Derkson.’
‘And you are welcome to both, in so far as it is in my powers to offer them. I shall be as open as I can be, but I fear you will be disappointed. James O’Connor was rather a private man, in his business dealings as well as in his family life. I made appointments for him, typed whatever letters he thought appropriate. I fear I know less of the various businesses which have their headquarters here than you would like me to.’
‘Your employer played things close to his chest?’
They caught the tiniest smile on the wide mouth. ‘That is one way of putting it, yes. He committed as little as possible to paper. He once told me that you could be more flexible that way. People couldn’t quote back at you from what you’d written in different circumstances months earlier.’
‘Do you know that he was under police investigation?’
She frowned. But she took plenty of time over her reply and took care not to let any annoyance show. ‘No, I didn’t know that. I’m surprised to hear it.’
‘How surprised?’
She crossed her legs, made a deliberate attempt to appear more relaxed than she had seemed hitherto. ‘Mr O’Connor was a good employer to me. He never treated me any way but fairly. I wouldn’t trust some of the people I’ve seen in here at times, but it wasn’t my business to pronounce upon them. When I think about it, I can accept your view that my employer “played it close to his chest”. I know quite a lot about some of his work and nothing at all about large chunks of it.’
‘It is those sections which interest us, for obvious reasons. We need every scrap of information you can give us. We’re not Fraud Squad or Drug Squad; we’re interested only in solving a murder case.’
‘You’ve already taken away my files and my computer. I fear you won’t find much of interest.’
‘In that case, what you are able to tell us now will be even more important. We know that he was heavily involved in casinos and betting shops. These are lucrative enterprises in their own right; they are also often used as means of laundering money brought in by illegal trafficking.’
‘Drugs?’
‘Principally drugs, yes. We have learned since James O’Connor died that he was moving to take over a large portion of the illegal drugs market in north-west England. It is a lucrative trade as well as a highly dangerous one. When people move into new areas, powerful interests are affected. He chose to make enemies of some very nasty people. People who may have decided it was time to be rid of him.’
‘You shock me. I have to accept what you say, but I had no idea that Mr O’Connor was involved in anything like this.’
Despite what she said, she didn’t look very shocked. The death had plainly upset her, but Peach was pretty sure that she had at least suspected the nature of James O’Connor’s interests. Jan Derkson was far too intelligent not to have wondered exactly where all this money was coming from. She was measuring this interview, trying to find how much they knew, how much she could safely conceal. He said abruptly, ‘You know more than you’re telling us. If you obstruct our enquiries, we shall take whatever action is appropriate.’
This time she was shaken. His sudden loss of patience and change of tack disturbed her, despite her attempt to remain calm. ‘I’m sorry that you feel I’m being obstructive. I’ll answer whatever questions you care to put to me as honestly as I can.’
The snag with that was that he didn’t feel he knew enough yet to ask the penetrating questions he needed. He’d never felt so little in touch with an investigation he was supposed to be directing. There was a huge field of suspects and Tommy Bloody Tucker had cocked up the vital first stage of the enquiry. He looked hard at the white-faced, watchful woman in front of him. ‘Did you compile the invitation list for Monday night’s function?’
‘I suppose I did, under Mr O’Connor’s direction. The family guest list was pretty obvious from previous occasions; I merely duplicated that, with one or two small changes. My employer gave me the names of the business people he wanted to see there.’
‘I’m in your hands here, Mrs Derkson. My team is doing routine checks on everyone who attended on Monday night. I want to see the most significant ones myself. Business rivals of the host perhaps. Anyone outside the family whom you were surprised to see included on your list.’
He wondered if she would insist on going into the outer office to retrieve the full list of those to whom she’d sent letters of invitation. It would have given her time to think, to decide just what information she was prepared to volunteer. But she obviously had that information already in her mind; the difficulty for him was going to be in deciding exactly how frank she was being. Her fingers flicked briefly to her lips, but otherwise she was quite still. Percy wondered if she was a former smoker who had given up the awful habit, as he had. She eventually said very distinctly, ‘There were two people I was surprised to include on the list, because I knew they’d been rivals of his in the fairly recent past.’
‘Did you query their inclusion?’
She allowed herself a wry smile, which showed what an attractive woman she would be in a different context. ‘You didn’t query things with James O’Connor. He knew his own mind. If those names were on the list, they were there for a purpose.’
‘But you don’t know what that purpose was?’
She pursed her lips, looked down at her right foot in concentration. ‘I don’t know. I can speculate. My guess would be that they were former rivals whom he no longer felt were threats to him. I don’t know, but I suspect he’d taken over enterprises which were once theirs. I think perhaps their presence on Monday night was intended as a conciliatory gesture. But I should stress again that I don’t know that; I’m merely trying to be as helpful as I can, as you encouraged me to be.’
‘I appreciate that. And we’d better have these names.’
‘Joseph Lane and Linda Coleman.’
Clyde Northcott made a careful note of the names, but neither of the CID men gave her any clue as to whether they recognised either of them. Instead, the tall black man said, ‘Do you remember which table these people sat at, Mrs Derkson?’
‘They were both on table two, but they weren’t sitting together. I was sitting within a few yards of both of them.’