The words rang like a threat in Tom Ogden’s mind through the evening which followed.
SEVENTEEN
There is a popular misconception that the team never takes time off during a murder investigation. A moment’s consideration exposes this as the myth it is. Investigations often last for weeks or months, and officers would remain fresh in neither body nor mind if they worked incessantly on them. Indeed, there have been some high-profile failures when senior officers became so obsessed with a case that it took over their lives. Judgements are then impaired, and attention to detail becomes worse, not better, when people drive themselves too hard.
Detectives were too close to the cases and the suspects involved to spot the obvious in two of the most notorious cases of recent years. Peter Sutcliffe, the notorious Yorkshire Ripper, eventually found guilty of thirteen murders and seven attempted murders, was interviewed and released several times by the police in the course of that enquiry. The awful Fred West, who buried several young female victims beneath the concrete of his house and its surrounding area in Gloucester, was a known petty criminal who was deemed to be incapable of such monstrous crimes.
John Lambert had often come near to obsession in his early CID days, to the extent that his preoccupation with detection had endangered the marriage which most of his juniors now saw as a model alliance in a difficult profession. He was aware of the dangers now, and he watched for the signs of fixation in those around him as well as himself.
Sunday morning was not a good time for interviews or any other kind of progress in a case like this one. Lambert made a move which he would once never have made. He arranged that Hook and he would present themselves bright and early on Sunday morning at Ross-on-Wye Golf Club and find themselves a game. Golf would blow away the cobwebs, he assured Bert conventionally. His DS was not convinced. Lambert had played the game for thirty years and more; he played to a handicap of eight and kept his temper on the course. Hook, who had taken up the game only three years previously at his chief’s insistence, was not persuaded that Sunday-morning golf would provide him with the healthy release his senior confidently predicted.
The possibilities of disaster were increased by the opposition John Lambert secured for them. He lined them up against the only scratch player in the club, Tom Bowles. ‘Only a friendly. A chance for us to watch and learn,’ he assured a fearful Bert Hook. Tom had moved to the London area now, but he was down for the weekend with a friend of his who played off four at his new club at Sunningdale. Bert, fearing the slice which made even his modest handicap of sixteen optimistic, was filled with sporting apprehension.
In the event, things worked out pretty well. Bert Hook disappeared into the woods on two holes, but elsewhere produced some sensible and occasionally outstanding golf to take advantage of his handicap strokes. John Lambert was his usual steady self and the pair fitted their scores together to stay alongside the experts to the very end of the game. On the eighteenth hole, with the match all square, Tom Bowles followed an excellent drive with a seven-iron to eight feet. He then directed a curling putt into the heart of the hole, to secure a splendid win for the young tigers and an honourable defeat for the CID pair.
Tom Bowles’s partner made his excuses and left, casting a longing eye at the drinks Lambert was carrying from the bar for the others. He explained that he had to go and eat a dutiful Sunday lunch with his aunt and uncle, who lived in Monmouth. He made them sound ancient; Lambert reflected that they were probably in their fifties and about the age of Christine and himself.
Tom Bowles took an appreciative pull at his pint and said, ‘I expect you’ve cracked the case of the murdered vineyard owner by now.’
Lambert gave him the quiet, unrevealing smile of long practice and prepared to change the subject. But before he could speak, Bowles added reflectively, ‘I played a match in the first round of the knockout against someone from there — Jason Knight, who runs the restaurant. He put it across me on the eighteenth, rather as I did to you two today.’
‘I played Jason last year. He beat me very comfortably,’ said Bert Hook. He didn’t even need to look at John Lambert. Both of them knew the rules here without even thinking about it. If anyone asked you about the case, you gave them nothing, politely putting up the confidential shutters. If, on the other hand, anyone chose to speak to you about people involved in the case, you let him talk. Nine times out of ten it was no more than extraneous gossip; on the tenth you picked up something useful.
Bowles nodded. ‘He’s done wonders for the place. I’ve eaten there a couple of times, and the food’s very good. Jason was telling me they’ve trebled the number of tables since he started there. I wonder how the death of the owner is going to affect him.’ He took another swallow of his bitter, whilst Lambert and Hook remained reflectively silent. ‘Perhaps he’ll be able to get the say in policy he wants, now that Martin Beaumont’s gone.’
‘Too early to say yet what’s going to happen to Abbey Vineyards,’ said Lambert. ‘Not our problem, I’m happy to say.’
‘No, I suppose not. Jason will be anxious to know, though. He’s ambitious, as well as being an excellent chef. I wouldn’t mind betting that he’ll be having a big influence on the future of Abbey Vineyards.’
‘I expect you’re right there,’ said Bert Hook, studiously non-committal. He sensed that murder was as usual exercising its ghoulish glamour. This pleasant young man, whether he was conscious of it or not, didn’t want to relinquish the subject and his tenuous connection with it.
Tom said, ‘Jason wouldn’t have got very far whilst Beaumont controlled things, as far as I could see. I told him that.’
‘You did?’
Tom Bowles nodded, moving into the anecdote he realized now that he had always been anxious to offer them. ‘I’m an industrial lawyer. Pretty dull stuff, as far as most people are concerned. But Jason was anxious to pick my brains after our match was over. He said he was asking for advice on behalf of a friend, but I suspect both of us knew perfectly well that it was his own situation he was talking about.’
‘We have the same problems as policemen, sometimes,’ said Lambert gnomically. ‘People tend to think we’re experts on all aspects of the law, when we’re often as ignorant as they are. At least you had the benefit of having professional knowledge to draw upon.’
‘Yes. I couldn’t offer much hope to Jason Knight, though. As a key member of the team at the vineyards, he was anxious to get more power for himself, to have a greater share in policy. I told him that he could perhaps buy his way in, but he hadn’t the capital for that. And from what he said, Martin Beaumont had control of the business neatly tied up — I couldn’t see how Jason was going to get the say in things he wanted, unless his employer was willing to give it to him.’
‘Which people tell us he wasn’t,’ said Bert Hook, taking a drink and shaking his head sadly over the obstinacy of autocrats.
‘No. I wonder what Jason would have done about that. He was certainly pretty keen to get more of a say in things. Perhaps he’ll get what he wanted without needing to do anything, now. Another drink, gentlemen?’
‘Sorry, I think we need to be on our way,’ said John Lambert quickly.
Even in this ancient part of England, there are not many thatched cottages left. This one had been little altered externally since it was built in the seventeenth century. Inside, its nooks and crannies retained the essence of its quaintness, but accommodated the fittings now considered essential for modern living.