The Fox in the Forest (19 page)

“When was that, Johnny?”

“School, o’ course. They did put I up on a table, and danced round I.”

The men opposite him were silent. Lambert had an awful vision of himself at five years old in a school playground at the end of the war, dancing round a boy with a head too big for his body and a tongue too big for his head, chanting horrible, unrepeatable things. And enjoying it. Enjoying being part of the mob, baiting that helpless, terrified child as part of an appalling collective pleasure. That image was vivid for him still. How much more vivid it must be for that boy in a man’s body on the other side of the table, who had suffered not once but many times, until it had become a part of his life.

Lambert said ineffectively, “That was a long time ago, Johnny. You’re a man now, not a boy.”

Pickering’s blue eyes widened. “No. Not a boy,” he repeated. They could not be sure at first whether that incomplete mind was pleased or depressed by the idea. “I live on my own now,” he said proudly. “Don’t need anyone to help I. I manage, see.” His lower lip stuck out, and they could see the stubbornness which had defeated the social worker who wanted to move him from his cottage.

There was a gentle knock at the door. For once during an interview, Lambert was glad of the interruption. He went to the door and took the shotgun which Williams handed in to him. He shut the door and put the weapon on the table between him and Pickering. “Do you know what this is, Johnny?”

“‘Course I do, Sergeant. It’s a gun.” At a nod from the Superintendent, he picked up the shotgun eagerly, examining it as gently as if it had been some small, vulnerable animal — a kitten perhaps. He ran his hands lovingly over the dark, shining barrels. Bert Hook was reminded by the angle of the bowed head in front of him of his own boys, as he had watched them a few days earlier cradling their long-waited Christmas toys.

Pickering held the shotgun like the men he had seen on stagecoaches in the Saturday morning film shows which were still the highlight of his life. “Bang!” he said experimentally. He put it for a moment upon his shoulder, like a soldier on the march. “Like Sergeant York,” he explained, recalling a long-dead film as though they would be immediately aware of it. Perhaps that was where his habit of calling all officers Sergeant came from.

Then, turning the barrels towards Lambert so that the dark holes at the muzzle pointed straight at his chest, he said more loudly, “Bang! Bang!” His face shone with pleasure.

Lambert said gently, “Load it, Johnny. Load it for me, can you?” He pushed a dummy cartridge across the table into the eager fingers.

The child’s face became a man’s again as it furrowed with concentration. The hands roved over wood and metal, searching for a solution to the puzzle they had been set. Finally, Pickering tried to push the dummy cylinder down the muzzle of the gun, looking interrogatively and hopefully at Lambert as he saw it disappear.

The two men opposite him were smiling with relief, and Johnny’s face lit up with pleasure at the thought that he had done something clever. As he had, in a way: the sharpest villain could not have given them so convincing a demonstration of his innocence of the shootings.

Lambert said, “Listen, Johnny. School was a long time ago, and you must forget about being teased. You’re a man now, and when you frighten girls and ladies it’s more serious than if you were a child.”

Pickering looked at them seriously for a long moment, then nodded vigorously. Hook thought that it was not the first time he had been told such things. Whether he understood them or was merely anxious to please was not clear.

Lambert took the shotgun gently from the man’s hands and said, “Listen, Johnny, you might be able to help us. You go into the woods sometimes, don’t you?”

Pickering looked at them carefully for a moment, as if he suspected he might be chastised if he admitted it. Eventually he said, “I do sometimes, yes. Not since The Fox, though.” He shivered suddenly, and they realized he was probably as frightened by the killings as anyone in the village. Lambert wondered which irresponsible resident had retailed the tabloid details to inflame his imagination; he was pretty sure Pickering could not have read them for himself.

Lambert said, “And have you seen anyone in the forest with one of these?”

Pickering thought again, his face once more as transparent as a child’s. After a while he nodded, though he still looked uncertain. “Not now.”

“No. A while ago. How long ago?” Lambert tried hard not to sound excited. Innocent people as well as murderers carried shotguns. And he knew he could never put up Johnny Pickering as a witness in court.

“I seen Tommy Farr. And Charlie Webb. And Joey Jenkins. And —”

“Yes, I see, Johnny. Good.” Pickering was counting carefully on his fingers; no doubt in due course he would list most of the owners of the shotguns the police had brought in for checking after the murders. The problem was to pinpoint particular times with a man, who had only the haziest sense of the passing weeks. Lambert leaned forward and said, “Do you remember the vicar, Mr Barton, Johnny?”

“Yes. Peter. He said I was to call him Peter.” Johnny’s face was suffused with pure pleasure for a moment. “He brought me food. Let me work at his house sometimes. He said I was to call him Peter, honest, Sergeant.” In the recollection of those golden hours, Pickering suddenly found his syntax and sounded some of his aitches, as though in homage to his patron. Some long-dead teacher was revived for an instant in the habit.

“Yes, I’m sure he did, Johnny. Do you remember what happened to Peter?”

The man’s revealing visage clouded as quickly as if someone had put up a new slide on a projector. “Fox got him. Shot him.”

The big, life-worn face became that of a child again, crumpling towards tears. Hook came in hastily to say, “Yes, he was shot, Johnny. With a gun like this one. That’s why you might be able to help us find the man who did it, you see. Can you remember seeing anyone with a shotgun at around the time when he was killed?” He just avoided the temptation of reminding the man that it was before Christmas. He had a searing vision of the kind of festive season Johnny had endured. Peter Barton might have alleviated that.

Pickering frowned. “Gummidge was here then. He had a gun.”

For a moment, Hook was at a loss, searching in his mind through a list of village names. Then his children came to his rescue again. “Worzel Gummidge? You mean the tramp?”

Johnny nodded, surprised his questioners should be in any doubt. “Gummidge. There for a while ‘e was, afore Christmas. ‘E’s moved on now. Don’t see ‘im, not no more.” Evidently he had not realized what had happened to Ian Sharpe.

Lambert said, “Did you talk with Gummidge much, Johnny.”

“No. He moved me on, didn’ ‘e, Sergeant? Didn’t want to talk with the likes of I.” Johnny said it without resentment, as though he considered rejection the most natural thing in the world.

“But you didn’t see Gummidge with a gun like this, did you?”

“Did, Sergeant. I saw ‘im.” Pickering’s lips set stubbornly, like a child’s when he knows he is going to be disbelieved. He folded his arms and rocked to and fro a little, resolutely refusing to meet the challenge of Lambert’s gaze. He had not once called Hook Sergeant, almost as if some perverse programming within him told him that he would be spoiling his effect by awarding the right rank.

Hook took over and tried to shake him, but he stuck to his view that he had seen the tramp with a shotgun, though they could not get any precise idea when. They thought he was probably mistaken, perhaps confusing Sharpe with one of the others he had seen with shotguns in the wood. Certainly no shotgun had been found anywhere near Sharpe’s body. Nor had the earlier search of the area, conducted whilst he was in custody after Barton’s murder, revealed any weapon near his camp.

Johnny was getting tired. His attention span was that of his mental age, not an adult’s. Lambert said, “Do you know there’s been a second killing in the woods since Peter Barton?”

Pickering nodded. “Fox got ‘im.”

“And have you seen anyone with a shotgun in the forest in the last few days, Johnny?”

Pickering looked automatically over his shoulder at the wall behind him before he spoke. “I seen the Sergeant with a gun.” He spoke with a knowing grin, as though this was a trick question which he had seen through with ease.

Lambert was defeated for a moment. Then he realized Pickering must have seen policemen with shotguns, collecting them from the village for examination. He said, “Sergeants, yes, I see Johnny. But did you see anyone else?”

Pickering looked a little disappointed, as though his answer should have had more praise. “Ain’t seen no one else. Well, I don’t go there much now, do I? Fox ain’t going to get I.”

Lambert pushed back his chair. “We’ll have to keep you here for a while, Johnny. You’ll be warm, and we’ll get you some good grub.”

“Want to go to my ‘ouse.” The lips set sullenly again and he stared straight ahead, refusing to rise from the table.

“Can’t let you, I’m afraid. Not yet, old lad.”

Pickering looked up at the Superintendent then, possibly recognizing the jollying tone he had met before in his strange life. His features took on a look of cunning complicity. “Can I ‘ave my Foxy back with me? I won’t be lonely with ‘im with me, see?”

Lambert nodded to Williams at the door. “Put the thing in his cell with him.” There was no chance of the press photographers who would love that picture getting in here. And the psychiatrist they needed might start from there. For once, he would be a welcome visitor to the cells. Johnny Pickering needed protection, not policing.

As he was led away, Lambert said, searching desperately for some consolation, “We’ll get the man who killed Peter Barton, Johnny. Don’t worry about that.”

Pickering turned in the narrow passage which led down to the cells. “I ‘ope you do, Sergeant. He was good to me, was Peter. He was the best.”

His tears gave him a dignity he had not been allowed for years.

27

The faxes on Ian Sharpe made interesting reading as they accumulated. With the assistance of the complete set of prints the fingerprint officer had taken from the man he had known as Douglas Robertson, a profile of the dead man emerged which was far more accurate than anything that had been achieved while he was alive.

Sharpe had operated under different names in various parts of the country. He was almost certainly the man wanted for questioning in connection with three deaths, all of them underworld killings. He was a hard man, and a clever man. It appeared from the manner of the deaths that he killed people he had not even spoken to, then disappeared from the area immediately. The victims were known villains, so that their deaths were considerably mitigated evils as far as the respective police forces were concerned.

Because he was ruthless and elusive, Sharpe had not even been questioned about these deaths, though he was still being sought under various names at the time of his death. No doubt his knowledge of police procedures from his own days in the force, and particularly his awareness of that old policing weakness, the geographic delineations between areas of jurisdiction, had been useful to him. His criminal profile had all the marks of that baleful transatlantic import, the contract killer.

This interesting but inconclusive information presented the team investigating the killings in Gloucestershire with as many problems as it removed. With the traditional mugs of steaming tea at hand, John Lambert mulled over the contents of the telex with the expectant Rushton and Hook. He said, “Let’s assume for the moment that the boys in London are right and Sharpe was a contract killer. What light does that throw on what’s happened here?”

Because Rushton still felt his inspector’s rank new upon him, even after two years, he felt ideas were expected from him, even as Bert Hook shook his head.

“Obviously he was lying low for a while, using his tramp’s character and his alias of Douglas Robertson. If he’d been taking money for gangland killings, he’d have had plenty of enemies. It’s possible some of those choice characters followed him down here and exterminated him.”

“Quite possible, Chris. Bit sophisticated for them to copy the method of a killing in the same place four days earlier, though. And if we assume you’re right, what is the connection with the murder of Peter Barton four days earlier? Country vicars are unlikely victims for underworld hit men.”

Hook said, “One of our greatest difficulties is that it’s difficult to see why anyone should want to kill Peter Barton. We’ve turned up a lot of people with the means and the opportunity, but almost no one so far who seems to benefit from his death. His wife and Michael Crawley are possibilities. I haven’t seen Crawley; you two have.”

Rushton said, “The hotel has confirmed that the two of them were there at the time of the murder, as they claimed. They certainly haven’t seen each other since the death, but then if they were sensible, they wouldn’t. They would have had to employ a third party to kill the husband who was in their way.” Rushton brightened as a few pieces of the jigsaw flashed a picture before him. “They could have brought in Sharpe to do the job, then eliminated him in turn, I suppose.”

Lambert said, “But don’t forget your own researches into Crawley, Chris. No sizeable outgoings from his bank account in the last few months. If you’re suggesting he got rid of Sharpe to avoid paying him, we know that contract killers invariably demand a sizeable advance payment. And Crawley appears to have been at home at the time when Sharpe was killed; certainly there were no sightings of him near the forest.”

Rushton nodded glumly. Then he said wryly, “I know we spend half our time telling our juniors not to be amateur psychiatrists, but I didn’t see Crawley as a man with the nerve to organize this, still less as a man with the bottle to seek out and shoot a professional killer in the forest.”

Lambert smiled. “Having seen both Crawley and Clare Barton, their affair doesn’t strike me as the kind of grand passion which leads to murder. But the problem is, as Bert says, that although that pair don’t seem convincing killers, we haven’t found a motive at all for anyone else.”

Rushton said, “You two have been around Woodford far more than I have during this investigation. Let me ask you, within the privacy of these walls: do you think there’s anything at all in this Fox business that the papers are playing for all it’s worth? At least it would explain the absence of a motive in Barton’s case. And Sharpe’s murder could then be just another random killing, unconnected with his previous career.”

Lambert was happy to prolong the discussion. It was useful enough in its own right, but he was pleased to see Rushton and Hook, who did not much like each other, exchanging views dispassionately like this. Rushton, because he was younger than Hook but now an inspector, seemed to regard Bert’s occasional insights and his relationship with Lambert as threatening, which they were patently not. Hook had refused promotion for his own reasons, knowing at the time that younger men would pass him by. But most of his CID colleagues knew that, and his scorning of the ladder most of them were earnestly attempting to scale made them vaguely resent him. Integrity has its own power, especially when it makes men question their individual moves.

Lambert’s own relationship with Rushton was brittle enough for him to welcome unforced exchanges. He realized now that the difficulties of this investigation were driving the three men closer together, fostering the teamwork which is nowadays the most important element in the investigation of serious crime. With luck, similar things were happening elsewhere among the sixty officers now involved in greater or lesser measure in the investigation of the murders in the forest.

Lambert said, “I don’t accept the idea of a maniac at large: I never have. If I’m wrong, we’re going to have another killing on our hands before we make much progress, because we haven’t found anyone in the area who remotely fits the profile. And we’ve checked out all the likely candidates with histories of violence over quite a wide area now.”

Rushton said, “In that case, it would be a good idea to go over the information we’ve acquired about the people who have connections with either of the dead men. Not that anyone so far has admitted to any dealings with Ian Sharpe; but we do know of several people who were at least in the vicinity at the time of his death.”

Lambert said, “Right. I have my own views on some of them, but let’s confine ourselves largely to facts, in case we have overlooked anything which is significant. Michael Crawley and Clare Barton we’ve already dealt with. I take it none of us thinks either of them would be acting alone in this? If they’re involved at all, they’re in it together. They’re the only ones so far with a motive for getting rid of the vicar, so we must keep them in the frame. Agreed?”

The others nodded. It was Hook who then said, “Tommy Farr is the person with the easiest access to the scenes of both killings. He lives near the forest, he admits he goes there regularly, even since the two murders happened, and he has a shotgun. He knows all the tracks in the woods, even the minor ones, because of his walks with Kelly.”

Rushton raised an interrogative eyebrow and Lambert said with a small smile, “Kelly’s his dog. A Doberman, and not to be trifled with when Tommy Farr’s around. Farr’s a candidate, undoubtedly. He carries an aura of latent violence about with him, and unlike most villagers he wasn’t particularly fond of Barton. He gives the impression that that was simply because he had no time for the Anglican Church, but that could be a useful front to hide some more personal hostility.”

Rushton looked at his file. “No confirmation of his whereabouts at the time of either of the killings.”

Hook said, “But he lives alone, of course. It’s quite natural that there should be no one to corroborate his account. Mind you, it’s true that both murders could have been committed when his store was closed, and that could well be significant. Village shops are open for a high proportion of the day.”

Rushton said, “What do you make of Charlie Webb?” and Lambert sensed Hook becoming defensive. Bert’s own Barnardo’s boy upbringing made him sympathetic to lads with backgrounds like Charlie’s; sometimes, but not often, it affected his judgement.

Lambert said quickly, “He had the opportunity, for both killings. He left his work, ostensibly to meet a girl, at around the time we know Barton died. We know he did in fact meet the girl, as he claimed, but he had time to get to the scene of the death and back before he saw her. He was used to taking the motorbike into the forest, and we found tyre tracks from it near Barton’s body. As far as we’ve been able to check, he’s the last person known to have seen Ian Sharpe alive. He has a shotgun, which he denies using at the time of either of the killings. But forensic say that it was fired at around the time of Sharpe’s death.”

He enumerated each of the points without emphasis, conscious of Hook’s discomfort on his left. Rather to his surprise, the Sergeant, who was staring hard at his notebook, said nothing. It was Rushton who said, “A strong candidate, but only if we assume he’s unbalanced in some way, perhaps. I can’t see what he’s gained by the deaths. We’d have to assume he had endured some real or imaginary insult from these two very different men.”

He was being consciously fair; Lambert knew that he now fancied Webb for their murderer. And he was right about the unbalance: mentally disturbed young men of Webb’s age were capable of the most absurd over-reactions to insults when their external behaviour seemed perfectly normal. It struck him for the first time that no one knew Charlie Webb really well, apart from his grandmother, whose own mind was faltering alarmingly.

Hook contented himself with saying, “There’s no previous history of violence.” Then, as if issuing a challenge of social class, he said, “What about Colonel Davidson and the other two people we’ve seen at the Old Vicarage?”

Lambert smiled. “Colonel Davidson appears to be in the clear for the murder of Peter Barton. He was at home at the time of the murder, on the evidence of other people as well as his wife. He could have hired Sharpe to kill Barton, as you suggested that Crawley and Clare Barton might have done. But he hasn’t any reason at all that we’ve been able to come up with for the murder of the vicar.”

Hook said obstinately, “But he was out in the car on his own at the time of Sharpe’s death. He says he was in Gloucester, but we haven’t been able to come up with any more sightings of him there, have we?”

He was looking inquiringly at Rushton, who now said, “No, but the place was crowded, as he said. We know he was there for part of the morning, at least. The gardening shop where he bought a propagator remembers selling it to him, but cannot be at all precise about time. It may be more significant in a negative way that we’ve thrown up no sightings of him around the forest at the time of Sharpe’s death.”

Lambert said, “There is at least one shotgun around at the Old Vicarage, but no evidence that it has been fired recently. But then if I’d committed a murder, I’d have made sure that if I was retaining the weapon it was thoroughly cleaned afterwards. Colonel Harry Davidson seems to have had the opportunity and the means to commit only one of the murders, and no discernible motive for either of them. Which is exactly the situation with several other of our candidates.”

“Including, as far as I can see, Mrs Davidson,” said Rushton heavily. “She is as clear as her husband as far as Barton’s murder goes — she was at home with her husband, and both Mrs Jenkins and the maid, Mary Cox, have vouched for that. At the time of the second murder, her husband was out and Mary Cox says she left the house for at least part of the morning. There is a good hour and a half unaccounted for, and we compute that she could have walked to the forest, killed Sharpe and been back in thirty to forty minutes. Why on earth she should wish to do such a thing, of course, is quite obscure, but as you say, sir, the same thing applies to most of our suspects.

I’m not sure we can even call them that the more I look at the evidence, the more I’m inclined to the idea of some person we aren’t even aware of yet.”

It was a melancholy, even a desperate thought, for a senior policeman aware of the work that had already gone into the case. Lambert said, “I still think we need a new way of interpreting the facts at our disposal. I don’t think we’re going to come up with many new ones. But we’ve got to connect the two deaths in some way. We still haven’t got satisfactory answers to two big questions: why on earth should anyone want to kill Peter Barton, and what is Ian Sharpe’s function in the whole business.”

No one felt like answering those questions. Rushton, thumbing through his file, eventually said, “One of the people who had opportunity to commit both murders, like Farr and Webb, seems to be Arthur Comstock, Davidson’s chauffeur-handyman. Barton had his phone number in the pocket of his anorak when he was killed. And he drove away and left Peter Barton to walk home alone through the forest in darkness. It must have struck you that we’ve only his word for it that it was Barton who invited him to do just that. I know we’ve checked that he did in fact pick up his sister in Cheltenham, but he could easily have returned to the woods by the time Barton was shot.”

Lambert looked at his watch. “Bert and I are going to see both Mrs Davidson and Comstock very shortly. We’ll see what his reaction is to that notion. He still isn’t cleared for Sharpe’s murder, is he?”

“No. He says he was in his service cottage at the time, busy with his own affairs, but there is no one to vouch for him at around the time of Barton’s death. Like Farr, he lives alone, so there’s really no reason why there should be. He’d have had to walk to the forest of course, but there was plenty of time for him to do that, as there was for Mrs Davidson. Come to think of it, he has a bicycle at the back of his cottage, which would have cut down the time still further. And the route from the Old Vicarage doesn’t pass other houses, so it’s unlikely either he or Rachel Davidson would have been seen.”