Death on the Eleventh Hole (16 page)

As if he divined that, Lambert said, Tut your assault was the main reason, it seems.’

‘I suppose so.’ It was all going wrong. The truth seemed to be coming out, because he found he couldn’t just parrot out the phrases Julie had prepared for him.

‘It was more than just a pass at a pretty girl, wasn’t it, Mr Cook?’

It was the very phrase Julie had told him to use, to make light of the incident. Yet he found he couldn’t bring himself to insist upon it, now. It was a phrase he had never used in his life, and he was sure that these watchful, experienced men would know that, would be amused by his clumsy attempts at deceit, if he came out with it here. He said lamely, ‘No. It was nothing much, really.’

‘It was more than nothing much, wasn’t it? A lot more, in fact.’

‘All right!’ The big fists clenched and unclenched in his anger, and this time he did make himself use one of the phrases they had agreed upon. ‘I misread the signals, that was all. Went a bit further than I should have done.’

‘Just the same as you did with Janice Brown in South London?’

He started forward on his upright chair as though he would hit his questioner, but Lambert did not move. Cook sank back again, looked at the carpet and muttered, ‘Trust the bloody pigs to bring that up. I was never bloody charged with that, you know.’

‘We do know, yes. We also know why. It was because the woman you raped lost her nerve and wouldn’t go into court to testify. Was that what happened with Kate Wharton, Mr Cook? Did she lose her nerve and—’

‘I didn’t rape Kate!’ He shouted the denial, his careful phrases flying out of his brain, his only aim to stop this man spewing his accusations. ‘I was nowhere near raping Kate!’

‘Interrupted, were you, Mr Cook? The girl’s mother came in before it could get any worse, did she?’

It was pure conjecture, but it struck home. It seemed to Roy Cook that Julie must have revealed more than she said she had, perhaps more than she believed she had, to these persistent, watchful men who were so much better with words than he was. He said, ‘It was a bit like that, I suppose. Julie came in when I — when we — were just—’

‘Kate’s mother came in just in time to stop you, didn’t she? When the girl was resisting, screaming probably, and you weren’t prepared to take no for an answer.’

‘Something like that.’ He felt relief rather than dismay that it was out at last, that he no longer had to play these word games he could not manage. He wondered if they would demand every sordid detail of a scene still vivid in his mind after this forced recollection.

But Lambert was satisfied with the admission. What Cook did not know was that this was primarily a softening-up process for what was to follow. ‘With your record, with time inside for assault upon a woman, I think you were very lucky to be interrupted when you were. You were also extraordinarily fortunate that Kate Wharton decided not to press charges of indecent assault at least.’

‘All right, all right! You’ve had what you want. There’s no need to rub my nose in it! It cost me enough at the time.’ Roy Cook was suddenly aware of what he had given away, of how far he had strayed from Julie’s careful briefing.

It was Bert Hook, looking up from his notebook, who said, as if merely seeking confirmation for the record, ‘So Kate Wharton left home as a result of this incident. And Julie Wharton threw you out of her house.’

It was so far from what he and Julie had agreed that he was reluctant to confirm it. But that secret had disappeared with the rest when he was unable to mouth the phrases they had agreed. He muttered, ‘Something like that, yes.’

‘I see.’ Hook made a careful note in his round hand, whilst the silence built in the small, sparsely furnished room. ‘And when did you next see Kate Wharton, Mr Cook?’

The bombshell was dropped so quietly that Roy Cook did not hear it for what it was at first. Before he realized that he was committing himself, he said gruffly, ‘That wasn’t for some time. Not until I’d got back with Julie. Not until I’d been back with Julie for over a year.’

His last statements were a desperate attempt to direct the exchanges back to safe ground, back to his relationship with Julie Wharton and away from her dead daughter.

But it was too late. Lambert came back in, taking up the thread of the dialogue from the sergeant, who looked so harmless, who had just trapped Roy Cook into the most damaging admission he could have made. ‘So how long after your assault upon Kate Wharton did you renew acquaintance with her?’

Roy hated that last phrase, hated being patronized by these men. But he was not stupid, despite his performance today. He realized now that if he tried to bandy words with this man he would come off worse, that his best policy was to say as little as possible. Whether they had known about his dealings with Kate Wharton before they came here was beside the point — they knew now, because of his own crassness. Therefore limit the damage: pretend to be honest, but give them as little as you can.

‘Probably eighteen months after she’d left home. Maybe as long as two years. I can’t be sure. I’d been back with Julie for well over a year, but I kept this place on. I stay the night often enough there, but—’

‘And why did you visit Kate?’

He was back on dangerous ground. But at least he wasn’t inhibited by those prearranged phrases, those notions framed in words he would never have used himself. He said cautiously, ‘She was on the game by then. I’d heard about it. Seen her myself, one night. We had unfinished business.’ That was the phrase Kate had used herself, the first time he had picked her up. He didn’t realize how chilling it seemed now, coming from his uncertain lips in this quiet room.

‘You visited Kate and paid her for sex?’

‘Yes.’ He’d assumed they’d known that. Now he wasn’t sure that he needed to have given the information away so easily.

‘And Kate Wharton didn’t object to that?’

From a man who’s almost raped her, they meant. And there had been a bit of difficulty, the first time, until he’d convinced her a tart had to take everyone’s money, without picking and choosing. ‘No. She was a tart, wasn’t she?’

‘Apparently she was, yes. So she took your money like everyone else’s. How often?’

‘Not that often. Half a dozen times, perhaps, over the last couple of years.’

‘And what does her mother think about these visits?’

Lambert had thrown in the unexpected question again, and caught him unprepared for it. Roy had assumed this was like other conversations between men, where the assumption was that the wife or partner didn’t know, and would never be told. ‘Julie doesn’t know,’ he stressed. ‘And you mustn’t bloody tell her!’

‘You’re hardly in a position to lay down the rules, are you, Mr Cook? If it affects a murder investigation, if we have any reason to suppose you’re holding things back, of course we shall need to question Mrs Wharton about this. If it doesn’t affect the outcome of the case, we don’t reveal confidential information, but there can be no guarantees.’

Roy saw how bad things must look, how appalled Julie would be if she knew. He couldn’t start to explain his sexual curiosity to these impassive men, couldn’t explain how he had gloried in the mother’s sexual voracity and wondered how the daughter might compare. He couldn’t even enlarge on the delights of young flesh to a man of his age: he hadn’t the words, and these men wouldn’t want to understand, if he had. He produced a word he never used in public. ‘I love Julie. I don’t want to lose her.’

He wanted to say that monogamy was an unnatural state for a highly sexed man like him, but he didn’t even know the word, wouldn’t have known how to frame the argument to these grave faces, if he had. He could have put the idea to sympathetic listeners in the pub, after a few pints, but not to these two.

Lambert said dryly, ‘Mrs Wharton seems very anxious to protect you. Even at the expense of her dead daughter. You might do well to bear that in mind, if you wish your relationship to continue. But that’s not our concern.’

‘No, it’s mine. I’m keeping out of trouble at work. I’m going to keep out of other women’s beds, from now on.’

There was no doubting his earnestness, at that moment. Lambert doubted if it would last for the rest of his life. ‘You put yourself in Kate’s power, didn’t you, visiting her like that?’ he questioned.

‘She could have told Julie, you mean? But tarts don’t, do they? Not when they’re on the game. They’d soon get cut up, if they started telling wives.’

‘Or brutally strangled with a cord, as in Kate Wharton’s case.’

Roy was aware that he had led himself into this, had set up Lambert’s comment, but he wasn’t quite sure how. He put it down to the fact that they were cleverer and more experienced in these word games than he was. He said dully, ‘I didn’t kill Kate. I don’t know who did.’

‘Really. But you agree that you had put yourself in a vulnerable position by visiting Kate and paying her for sex, without the knowledge of her mother. Did she ask you for money to keep her mouth shut?’

‘No. Blackmail, you mean? She wouldn’t do that, not Kate.’

Lambert wondered whether to tell him that she almost certainly had, and that he had just told them that he was a leading candidate to be her blackmail victim. Instead, he said, ‘Kate Wharton never demanded money from you for her silence? Never asked for more than the normal amount for her sexual favours?’

‘No. I said Julie mustn’t ever know, the very first time we did it.’

For a man who’d done time and wronged women in various ways, he still showed a touching trust in prostitutes. Lambert studied him for a moment, then asked, ‘Who do you think killed Kate, Mr Cook?’

‘I don’t know. Drugs people, I expect. She was a dealer, you know.’

‘Not at the time of her death, she wasn’t. Did she ever say anything about her dealing, to you?’

‘No. She offered me coke once, about a year ago, and I told her to get out while she still could.’

Lambert stood up, watched his man relax a little, then said, ‘Those woods where we came to see you on Friday. Dymock Forest, I believe they call that stretch. Work there regularly, do you?’

‘We move around, go where we’re sent. But I’ve been working in those woods for the last three months or so. Why?’

‘No real reason. Just that there’s a car park for people who walk in the forest, not more than a mile from where we saw you.’

He nodded. ‘On the lane to Kempley, that’s right. What of it?’

‘That car park is on the other side of the road from Ross golf course. Within fifty yards of the place where Kate’s body was found. It would be a very quiet and convenient place to take a vehicle, late at night. For someone who had to dispose of a body.’

They left him standing in the doorway, pondering on that thought.

Fifteen

Richard Ellacott was very different from Roy Cook in his attitude to the police. He had been used to meeting quite senior officers on equal terms, was a member of Rotary, a man used to dealing with words and with people.

The call he had expected came at two o’clock, whilst he was still at Oldford Golf Club. Detective Sergeant Hook from the CID was courteous and unexcited. He understood that Mr Ellacott had already spoken to uniformed men during their routine enquiries that were being made at all golf clubs in the area. This was another matter, still routine, but relating to him alone. It was, however, fairly urgent. Superintendent Lambert would come with DS Hook to see him at home, if he preferred it.

Richard said hastily that they could come to the golf club, as soon as they liked. He was only too anxious to help them. They could go into the Committee Room there and be undisturbed. He didn’t expect it would take very long. DS Hook didn’t respond to that.

Richard explained to the men he was drinking with at the club that the cares of office had struck again. The Captain was required to speak to the police about this murder they’d had up at the Ross-on-Wye club. Boring routine, no doubt, but at least the Captain could shelter his members against it. He would see the fuzz in the Committee Room and rejoin them later. Unless he was led away in handcuffs, of course, ha ha.

His companions had drunk more than he had. Their normally indulgent Captain had been careful this lunchtime, in anticipation of this. He had been drinking merely tonics for the last three rounds. When he brought them the news that he was about to see the CID, there was much noisy hilarity at Ellacott’s expense, many offers of prison visiting, of files smuggled in inside cakes. Golf club humour is nothing if not predictable.

Richard was waiting for them in the car park when they arrived in the police Mondeo. He took them into the deserted Committee Room and set them at one side of the big oval table, which could accommodate up to fifteen people when the full committee of the club met. He sat in the chair at the other side where he always sat as Captain, hoping that would increase his confi-dence.

‘We have to ask you some questions about Kate Wharton, Mr Ellacott,’ Lambert began.

Richard nodded. ‘The girl who was killed last week at Ross golf course.’

‘Yes. You know the Ross course, I expect.’

‘I do indeed. Not as well as I know this one, of course. I’ve played there, but not recently. Excellent course!’

‘Yes. It seems that whoever dumped the body had chosen his spot quite carefully.’

‘I spoke to your officers about that on Friday. They wanted to know if we had anyone in the club who might be a suspect. I’ve thought about it, and discussed it with some of our most experienced members over the weekend, as I promised them I would. But I haven’t come up with any likely names, I’m afraid.’

‘I see. Well, thank you for your efforts. We’re here today to talk to you about something more specific.’

‘Well, fire away! Always glad to be of whatever assistance I can to the arm of the law!’ Richard wondered if he was overdoing the bonhomie, if it was coming through as false. He found the way this tall man with the unblinking grey eyes stared at him quite unnerving. He realized now that he had only met senior policemen in social situations before, and this was very different.

‘Our Scenes of Crime team found a diary amongst the dead girl’s effects at her flat.’ Lambert paused for a moment to see what reaction that information might bring, and detected surprisingly little reaction in Ellacott, who was nodding slowly. ‘Unfortunately, Kate Wharton hadn’t kept a daily diary. Not many people do, in our experience. But she had recorded three names on a sheet at the back of this little book. One of them was Richard Ellacott.’

Richard found his heart pounding, even as he raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. ‘There are other Ellacotts, Superintendent.’

‘But only one other one in the Gloucester and District telephone directory. And he has no R in his initials.’

Richard glanced automatically at the door to make sure it was closed, then was furious with himself for the movement. He had already decided that there was only one way to play this, and nervousness wouldn’t improve his performance. He gave them what he thought of as his frankest smile, then said, ‘Look here, can I rely on your discretion?’

Lambert allowed himself the ghost of a smile at this question, which invariably prefaced a disclosure of some kind. ‘I think you know the answer to that, Mr Ellacott. We’re always as discreet as we can be about what we learn, but if it has a bearing on a serious crime, there can be no guarantees.’

‘Yes, I see that, of course. Well, I’ve more to lose than most, I suppose. I have an invalid wife at home, five people who work for me in my firm, and I’m the Captain of this golf club.’

They didn’t have any doubt that the last of these milieus was the one where he most feared exposure. He waited for some comforting reply, then realized that Lambert had said all he was going to offer in the way of reassurance.

Richard nodded two or three times to himself, then said, ‘I’ll rely on your discretion, then. I’m sure you won’t reveal anything you don’t have to, and hopefully when you arrest this girl’s killer all this will be decently buried.’ He licked his lips, waited again for a comment from either of the men, who listened to him so carefully, and found once more that none was forthcoming. ‘I expect you will know by now that Kate was a prostitute.’

‘Yes. We are following up as many of her clients as we can discover. Statistically, there’s a better than fifty per cent chance that one of them killed her.’ Lambert turned the screw a little further, his face inscrutable.

‘Really? Well, I suppose that would be so, up and down the country, when you think about it. Look, I’m not proud of this, but I have to tell you that I was one of Kate Wharton’s clients! Which is not to say that I killed her, of course!’ His laugh rang unnaturally loud around the big room, with its panels on the walls listing the names of the club’s trophy winners over the years.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Regular visitor to Miss Wharton, were you, Mr Ellacott?’

Richard wondered whether the frequency of his visits made him more or less likely to have killed her. They would probably give him the statistics of that, in a minute. ‘I suppose I was, yes, eventually.’

‘How often did you see her?’

‘Look, Superintendent, I said I wasn’t proud of this. You should know something about the circumstances. My wife has multiple sclerosis, which has been developing over the years. It’s reached the point where—’

Lambert held up his hand. ‘I’m sorry about that, but we really don’t need any details. We’re not here to arbitrate on morals, but to investigate a murder. People’s private lives are no business of ours, except where they have a bearing on that murder investigation.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course. It’s just that I’ve never had to admit to anything like this before, and it doesn’t come easy. Well, let me be completely frank. I picked Kate Wharton up on the street, the first two times. She was a very pretty girl, as you will know. A cut above most of the others who practise her trade. She made it clear she’d only do straight sex, but that was all right with me, that was all I wanted. Getting a bit long in the tooth to be swinging from the chandeliers!’ Richard realized as soon as the words were out that his attempt at humour had been ill-judged. But his laugh came again, automatic and brief, sounding in his ears as though it came from someone else, some buffoon outside the window.

‘How often were you seeing her, Mr Ellacott?’

‘I was coming to that. After the first two occasions, when I picked her up on the street and she took me back to her flat, I suggested that I would go straight to the flat, at a time convenient to both of us. That is what I did after that. She was a pleasant as well as a pretty girl, and not unintelligent. I like to think we became quite good friends, eventually.’

The familiar, pathetic claim of the ageing Lothario who paid for sex: it wasn’t just a commercial transaction, she had feelings for me. Lambert controlled a sigh and said impatiently, ‘How often, Mr Ellacott?’

‘Once a week, these last months. I told you, we became quite good friends.’ It was important for him to emphasize that, if they were going to raise what he thought they were.

‘I see. When did you last see her?’

‘On the Tuesday evening before she died.’

‘The first of May.’

‘Yes, that would be the date.’

‘Did you usually see her on Tuesdays?’

‘More often than not, yes. Sometimes it was in the afternoons, if I could make it then.’

Which would leave Kate Wharton free to ply her dubious trade in the evenings, if she chose. This man must have been one of her better customers, being both regular in his visits and accommodating about the times. Perhaps they had become friends of a sort, exchanged the odd confidence. Some prostitutes did well by being good listeners, though they rarely volunteered much about themselves. ‘I want you to consider that last meeting carefully. Did Miss Wharton seem to be upset or frightened about anything?’ Lambert asked.

Richard took his time, as he had been bidden. He could divert suspicion away from himself here, if he was careful. ‘Kate did seem a bit preoccupied, on that last Tuesday. I think I know why, too.’

‘Then you’d better give us all the information you can.’

‘She’d been a pusher for drugs. Do you know that?’

‘Yes. She’d been both a user — though never an addict — and a dealer.’

‘Well, you may know more than I do. But she was worried, the last time I saw her, and when I pressed her a little about it, she told me why. She’d told the man who supplied her that she wasn’t going to be a pusher any more, that she was getting out of the trade altogether.’ Richard tried unsuccessfully to look modest. ‘I’d been encouraging her to do that, when we had our little talks.’

And when she took your advice, she might have signed her death warrant, thought Lambert. But you couldn’t blame this well-meaning, slightly pathetic man for that. Cutting herself off from all contact with hard drugs had been the right thing for Kate Wharton to do. She had needed support and protection, that was all; this man could never have offered her either of those, and perhaps no one could have saved her, if her death was a result of her refusing to trade. ‘But you say that she seemed worried on that last Tuesday?’

‘Worried and apprehensive. She’d told her supplier that she was giving up dealing drugs on the previous evening, apparently, and she was frightened of what the consequences would be.’ This big, experienced man seemed suddenly on the verge of tears. ‘She was right about that, wasn’t she?’

‘Perhaps she was. We aren’t certain of that yet.’ But Ellacott was almost certainly telling the truth here. They knew that she had told Malcolm Flynn on the previous evening that she wasn’t accepting supplies from him anymore, that that was the time when she had announced that she was severing her ties with the trade. ‘Did she give you any names, mention whom she was scared of?’

‘No. She said it wasn’t my problem and she would deal with it herself.’

‘I see. Why do you think your name was recorded in her diary, Mr Ellacott?’

It was a sudden switch to the key area, and it almost caught Richard off guard. He tried not to show anything more than puzzlement in his face as he said, ‘I’ve no idea. Perhaps — well, perhaps she was just listing her best clients. Her most regular people, I mean.’ He had almost said ‘favourite’ then. But he mustn’t appear too sentimental, or they wouldn’t think he was objective.

‘We’ve already contacted the other two names. They didn’t visit her anything like as frequently as you did.’

Richard wondered whether the other two were in the same position as him, wondered for the first time whether he had not been the only one to be exploited. ‘In that case, I have no suggestions. I can’t think why my name should have been there, let alone theirs.’

‘There is a possible reason we have to explore. When we are investigating a murder, we have access to all kinds of information which would normally be private, as you probably know. So we have been studying Kate Wharton’s bank and building society accounts. A fortnight before she died, she made a deposit of one thousand pounds, which was additional to her normal deposits. Have you any idea how she might have come by a sum like that?’

Richard found he was surprisingly calm, now that the moment had come at last. ‘No. She didn’t mention anything of that sort to me.’

‘Mr Ellacott, all of the three names in the back of that diary are affluent men: certainly they must have seemed so to a girl like Kate Wharton. She might have thought that one or more of them were capable of paying her a little more than the standard rate she charged for her sexual services. In return, perhaps, for the sort of discretion we were talking about earlier.’

He looked suitably shocked. ‘Blackmail, you mean? A thousand pounds to keep her mouth shut about visits to a prostitute? No. I wouldn’t think Kate would ever be a blackmailer. And she certainly never asked me for money like that. I told you, we had become quite good friends.’ He was glad he had played that up now.

Lambert looked at him, assessing his reliability, making no attempt to disguise the fact. ‘That thousand pounds came from somewhere, Mr Ellacott.’