The Fox in the Forest (14 page)

19

A serial killer was at work. The press, not the police, decided that. From the point of view of the CID, this dead time of year between Christmas and New Year is the worst possible time for brutal murders to occur. International wranglings take their only break of the year at this season; Parliament is not in session; even the incessant din of political exchange is blessedly stilled.

So the tabloids fell upon the forest deaths like famished hounds upon a succulent quarry. They transformed kind Peter Barton into a modern Francis of Assisi, ‘beloved by the birds and animals of the countryside he loved to walk’. The mysterious tramp who had been the second victim became ‘Old Dougie’, a harmless recluse, living at peace with the wild creatures of the forest, until his pastoral idyll was so brutally terminated by a twelve-bore cartridge.

The police, of course, were baffled, anxious, or looking desperately for any kind of lead, as tradition again demanded. As the inquiry’s net spread wider and more and more men had leave cancelled to join the inquiry, the papers began to talk of police complacency in the face of the danger to innocent citizens.

The columns told of woods eerily deserted, of villages blanketed in fear, where every family locked its doors at dusk and the elderly were too fearful to venture forth at all. Pictures of parents collecting their children from Christmas parties were used as illustrations of the terror gripping the heart of every mother in the Forest of Fear.

Once the crime reporters had decided a maniac was in the woods, they had to give him a name. An animal was favourite, but most of the best ones —the panthers and the leopards —had already been used for previous psychopaths. There were badger setts in plenty around the places where the victims had fallen, but the badger has an appearance and a folk-tale history which is too unthreatening for the purpose. The beast of the woods became The Fox of the Forest: within three days of its first, tentative appearance all the nationals had adopted the name.

It had not the fierce, flesh-tearing associations of more exotic foreign predators, but at least the ideas of random wanton killing, of carnage spread ruthlessly merely for the pleasure it afforded the killer, could now be exploited.

And foxes, of course, were cunning; everyone knew that. As the days drifted by, the headlines became more scornful about PC Plod and the way The Fox was so much more subtle, ingenious and successful than those engaged in his pursuit. Soon, if he was not unmasked, the killer would acquire the charnel-house glamour of the mass murderer. And sick young men in different parts of the country would begin books of cuttings about his progress.

Lambert had been through it before. He was irritated and sometimes more than that, but he had to pretend to the team he led that he was unruffled, that the kind of publicity their work was getting was no more than a routine accompaniment to murder. He spoke to journalists at a press conference on New Year’s Eve — television had for the moment left the murders alone, except for a routine report and a few pictures of the area. Presumably camera crews like many others had used holiday allocations to bridge Christmas and New Year into a ten-day break.

He fed the reporters enough detail of the vigour with which the case was being investigated, of the murder, of officers engaged and the number of people being questioned about their movements, to allay rumours of police complacency, but even as he spoke he could see that the hardened men in front of him were not interested in such detail They had already published their routine pictures of men fanning out in a ground-search for evidence around the place where Robertson had fallen, and they were not here to act as public relations officers for the police.

Lambert said rather desperately that he was not yet convinced they were dealing with a maniac. It might be difficult to see reasons for the killing of the Reverend Peter Barton, but the CID thought the second killing was clearly motivated. But when he refused to be drawn on what the motive was, or to release any detail of the direction their inquiries were taking, he could feel the cynicism abroad in the room. He pointed out a little desperately that two killings scarcely constituted a series. Then he offered the thought that he had not yet ruled out the possibility of a woman as killer, either directly or as an agent.

But the gentlemen of the press — there were no ladies yet to leaven this male monopoly — refused to take the carrot. Sex was always an attractive angle, but the whiff of it which Lambert had offered them was too faint to divert them from the beast they had created. The Fox held sway still in their columns, moving quietly about the forest, patiently awaiting the chance to savage his next innocent victim in what they were now pleased to call the valley of fear.

***

When the pressmen had disappeared, Lambert journeyed thirty miles to a suburb of Bristol to interview Clare Barton’s lover. He took DI Rushton with him; Bert Hook was on a four-day break in Cornwall between his Open University courses. Lambert, knowing the University year began in January and that Bert had not been away from home for two years, was reluctant to recall him. He was scarcely prepared to acknowledge to himself the memory of those years long ago when his own marriage had nearly foundered on the rocks of his commitment to his work before all else. Bert Hook was a different, in some ways a sounder, man. But there was no need to test how far his wife could take the strain.

Michael Crawley met them in his office at a deserted factory, at his own request. “We’ve closed down until January 2nd,” he said. “It’s not worth running the machinery, you see, for what we could produce with a skeleton staff.” His nervousness, like that of many others before him, took refuge in irrelevant explanations, and for a moment or two they let it run its course without comment.

Crawley stood and looked down into the car park, with its sixty spaces marked off by stark white lines. Only his own Jaguar and Lambert’s old Vauxhall were there today: the bleak expanses of tarmac made him feel very lonely. He said, “I’m sure I could rustle up some coffee and biscuits, if you could give me a few minutes.” He looked uncertainly towards the deserted outer office; like many male executives, he was helpless in a working environment without his secretary.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Lambert. His sternness made it sound as though Crawley had offered an improper suggestion. He looked round the office, and was pleased to find it so characterless: that suited his purpose. It had a swivel chair behind the broad teak-topped desk, two armchairs where the detectives now disposed themselves, an empty wastepaper basket, a small cupboard by the single window which probably contained drinks for those deemed to merit them. The only picture on the wall was a print of the ramshackle shed which had been the firm’s original works.

This office was not so very different from the interview room where Rushton and he had spent many an hour of interrogation. It was bigger, admittedly, and sumptuously carpeted. And it had not the stark grey-green walls which induced useful feelings of claustrophobia, even panic, in those assisting police with their inquiries. But the room was almost as characterless as those small cubicles which were deliberately devised to be so.

They pulled the armchairs close to the desk, so that although Crawley in his swivel chair sat slightly above them, their faces were not far from his. From behind them, the wan sunlight of late December fell upon the anxious features of the man they had come here to question.

Crawley said, “My wife thinks I’ve come in here today to attend to business matters. It won’t be necessary for her to know anything about our meeting, will it?”

Rushton said, “We can give you no guarantees, Mr Crawley.”

“But I understood —”

“Then you understood wrong. This is a murder inquiry.” His voice cut like a whip across Crawley’s uncertainty. He had smelled fear on the man, and fear was weakness. And weakness was there to be exploited. Lambert, recognizing the situation, decided to give the younger man his head. Good CID men were always intelligent opportunists. He saw some of himself in Rushton now, even if he did not much like it.

Crawley opened his mouth, but found no more words. It was a weak mouth, curiously in contrast to the firm chin beneath it. He must have been about the same age as Rushton, but against the confident vigour of the Inspector, he suddenly seemed older. He was finding it difficult to keep still. He folded his arms but then immediately let them drop to his sides again. In another moment, the hands were kneading each other nervously below the cuffs of his cashmere sweater.

Rushton was in no hurry. He watched his man impassively, carefully concealing the contempt which was building within him. Eventually he said, “You know why we’re here?”

“I understood it was in connection with the death of poor Peter Barton. Though what I could tell you about that I can’t —”

“I understand you are conducting an affair with the dead man’s wife, Clare Barton.”

“Was, inspector, was.” Crawley tried to shrug the matter away, but his smile was that of a febrile child. “I made it quite clear to Clare on the phone that our affair was over.” In the silence which followed this assertion, he ran his hand through his wavy hair, then pinched the greying strands beneath his right temple briefly between finger and thumb, in what was clearly a habitual, unconscious gesture.

Lambert said quietly, “Mrs Barton also made it quite clear to me some days ago that it was her intention to end the affair.” He was anxious to prevent Rushton following false trails, but this came out as though he were trying to defend the woman he had interviewed on Christmas morning. He could see her now, her pretty, doll-like face smeared with her grief beneath her blonde hair, her resolution to end the infidelity which could no longer hurt her husband giving her a strange sort of dignity.

Rushton said, “At any rate, you were lovers at the time of Barton’s death. Indeed, it seems that Mrs Barton spent the night of her husband’s death in bed with you. That she left you to go home on the day that his body was discovered.”

Crawley wished he had a glass of water. He gripped the edge of his desk hard as he said hoarsely, “We didn’t know that. If we’d known he was going to be killed, neither of us…” Words failed him and he lifted his palms hopelessly. He had hoped to find them men of the world, perhaps even prepared to enjoy a male snigger and a little envy of his bit on the side. But these men were not here to offer him help or understanding.

Rushton said, “How long had Mrs Barton been your mistress?”

Crawley had scarcely thought of pretty, vulnerable Clare in so serious a context. He had spotted her as a blue-eyed blonde with that brittle gaiety which springs so often from an unhappy marriage. Her inexperience had been an invitation to a man like him; the excitement of the affair had come from the sexual education he had been able to initiate in her. He said, feeling as though the line was required of him in a bad play, “I can’t see how all this can be of any interest to —”

“I’ll tell you how, if you wish, sir. Barton was a good man, according to people who knew him better than you. So good that we’ve found it difficult to find anyone to suggest a motive for blowing him apart. But you have one.” He had not bothered to keep the contempt out of his voice this time. Lambert realized for the first time that his deputy was probably an old-fashioned Puritan in sexual matters.

“You mean that I that we…”

“I mean that sex is a factor in many violent killings. The commonest of all, along with money. So don’t pretend to me that you’ve nothing to explain.”

“But you’ve said yourself that I was with Clare at the moment when Peter was murdered. Surely —”

“I haven’t mentioned the time of Barton’s death. It’s interesting that you should be so certain of exactly when it happened.”

It was a cheap point, which a moment’s thought would have answered. But it broke Crawley’s frail resistance, because it convinced him of their hostility. He looked at the middle of his desk and said sullenly, “I might be a bit of a womanizer, but I’m not a murderer.”

Rushton, dark eyes narrowed, studied the weakness of his man unashamedly for a moment before he said, “Where were you between six and ten p.m. on December 22nd, Mr Crawley?”

Crawley did not even look up as he said quietly, “I was here until about half past six. From seven onwards, I was in the Crossed Keys Hotel with Clare Barton.”

“Witnesses?”

He looked up, angry for a moment, with the desperation of the cornered animal. “Clare herself. No one else. We were being discreet, you see.” His voice was bitter with the irony of it.

“Pity. Means that each of you only has the other to corroborate your story. So far.”

Michael Crawley said wearily, “I suppose the hotel could confirm at least our arrival there. We put the ‘Do not disturb’ sign on our door. I suppose you’ll say we could have —”

“Could have, yes, sir. That’s all. If you didn’t leave the hotel, it will probably be fairly easy for us to establish that.”

“In that case —”

“There are of course other methods of killing an inconvenient husband than doing it yourself. Well-documented methods, often involving shootings.”

“You mean that we might have got someone else to —”

“I mean that contract killings are becoming much more common in Britain. Unfortunately for those of us who have to investigate them. Professional killers are more difficult to pin down, you see. But we get them, in the end. Usually by finding out the details of their hiring.”