Learning Curve Page 7

  ‘Or whether it was even murder,’ mused Sloan. ‘People sometimes kill without having the intention of doing so. Think dangerous driving. And as it happens that could very well come into things here.’

  Superintendent Leeyes sat back in his office chair half an hour later and rewarded his subordinate with a glare. ‘Well, Sloan? Anything definite yet?’

  As far as Detective Inspector Sloan and Detective Constable Crosby were concerned, a cup of tea at the police station canteen had had to substitute for something more traditional at the wake for Derek Tridgell in the Lamb and Flag Inn at Friar’s Flensant.

  ‘Only what you might call a straw in the wind, sir. That’s all.’

  ‘No smoke without fire, Sloan,’ countered the superintendent, a man guaranteed to take an opposing view on almost any statement expressed. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘In my opinion, the son of the deceased made it quite clear to someone there at the funeral that he knew something that we didn’t. He definitely went in for some verbal finger-pointing but we couldn’t make out who he was pointing at. Not from where we were sitting at the back of the church.’

  ‘Pity that, Sloan.’ Superintendent Leeyes gave it as his considered opinion that not knowing the whole picture was never a desirable state for the police to be in.

  ‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ agreed Sloan.

  ‘So all you’ve got to go on so far is that the son – Paul, did you say his name was? – might or might not have killed someone at the wheel of a car …’

  ‘Or known who did.’

  ‘And a head of a sales division,’ swept on Leeyes, ignoring this caveat, ‘who might or might not have been pushed to his death over in his place of employment in Luston by someone whom the late Derek Tridgell knew …’

  Detective Inspector Sloan wondered if Derek Tridgell himself could in all the circumstances be absolved from any crime involved but he kept that thought to himself for the time being.

  ‘Seeing,’ went on the superintendent, unaware of this thought, ‘that he and his boss – what did you say his name was?’

  ‘Jonathon Sharp,’ supplied Sloan. The man was someone he had yet to talk to but he would still be at the wake now.

  ‘Seeing,’ said Leeyes, ‘that they were also in the building at the time and not exactly happy bunnies from all accounts. It’s not a lot to go on, Sloan.’

  ‘There was a window of time when the two men from Berebury weren’t together at Luston works and one of them is now dead.’ He really would have to talk to Jonathon Sharp soon. And Ralph Iddon, too. ‘But that’s not quite all, sir. There’s another death that keeps getting mentioned.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘There was a caving accident down the Hoath Pothole at Chislet Crags. You know, sir, where the limestone breaks out on the way to Calleford. There are a lot of caves over there.’

  ‘Of course I know where they are,’ he snapped, ‘although I’ve never known why anyone should want to go down them.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan momentarily toyed with saying that, like Mount Everest, it was because the caves were there but decided against it in the interests of his pension. Instead he said, ‘I suppose, sir, you could call it mountaineering in reverse.’

  ‘And just as dangerous,’ declared Leeyes.

  ‘So it would seem,’ said Sloan. For one unknown man anyway. No, not unknown. His name had been mentioned. The late Edmund Leaton, sometime husband of Amelia Thornycroft and father of a rather precocious little girl.

  ‘And as pointless,’ said Leeyes, traversing the twelfth hole at Berebury golf course being the nearest he got to dangerous physical activity. It had a steep climb up to the tee that usually had him puffing.

  Detective Inspector Sloan coughed. ‘I gather the deceased, that is the late Derek Tridgell, was part of a rescue job – a failed rescue job – quite a few years ago when a man died down in a cave there.’ Thinking back to the child in the church, he added, ‘At least six or seven years ago if not more.’

  ‘A crime is a crime whenever it happened,’ pronounced the superintendent magisterially. ‘Murder is not a price-elastic commodity.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Potatoes aren’t, strawberries are. Murder isn’t.’

  ‘Really, sir?’ said Sloan, baffled.

  ‘You don’t choose whether you buy potatoes. They’re a staple commodity and you need them. You only buy strawberries if the price is right and if you can afford them.’

  This, decided Sloan, must be a remnant of an ill-fated course on economics that the superintendent had attended until the lecturer reached the vexed matter of the abandoning of the Gold Standard in the last Depression but one. Since anything Gold Standard being all right with the superintendent he had stalked out of the course in high dudgeon.

  ‘I see, sir.’ Sloan’s own view of economics was simpler, based as it was on a combination of the parable of the six wise virgins and the six foolish ones and the dictum of a certain Mr Wilkins Micawber regarding the relationship between annual income and annual expenditure. He was unsure where murder came in. He tried again. ‘About the caves …’

  ‘I didn’t like the cheese, either,’ said the superintendent, a noted xenophobe, slapping his own notebook shut in the manner of one winding up an interview.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘In that cave in France that I went into over there. Roquefort it was called. I prefer Cheddar. There are caves there, too, aren’t there? In Somerset. English ones.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘Where to next, sir?’ asked Crosby, after they’d had the police equivalent of a funeral tea at the police station.

  Judging that Jonathon Sharp might still be at the wake at the Lamb and Flag Inn at Friar’s Flensant, Detective Inspector Sloan directed the constable to an address in the village of Larking instead. ‘And then, Crosby, you can look up that caving accident at Chislet Crags in the Calleshire Chronicle.’

  Crosby pulled a long face only just out of sight of the inspector.

  ‘Police work is dull most of the time,’ said Sloan, a man rather better than most at reading body language, ‘and a touch too exciting when it isn’t. Think Sergeant Gelven.’

  Detective Sergeant Gelven of ‘F’ Division had made the elementary mistake of arriving too early at an armed robbery and hadn’t been the same man since. And, according to the word at the station, wouldn’t ever be.

  Crosby steered the police car down the main street of the rural village of Larking, turning left where a poster proclaimed that the refurbished village hall was to be opened the following Saturday.

  ‘It’s that house over there, just beyond that car parked in the road,’ said Sloan presently, pointing. ‘The one with the little yew trees in the garden and the car outside it.’

  ‘It’s called Laguna House,’ said Crosby dubiously, looking at a name board hanging outside.

  ‘Just so,’ said Sloan, leading the way up a ramp to the front door and ringing the bell but refraining from mentioning lilies.

  A voice called out from inside the building. ‘I’m just coming. Don’t go away.’

  ‘The police never go away,’ hissed Detective Constable Crosby. ‘Doesn’t she know that?’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Sloan.

  Eventually the door was tugged open by a young woman in a wheelchair. At the same time a youngish man slipped out from behind her and went on his way with a valedictory wave in her direction. They heard his car drive off in the road as they went into the house.

  Sloan was not aware of having seen the man before but as usual made a conscious effort to remember his face. It was an automatic reaction that went with the territory, so to speak.

  ‘Miss Elizabeth Shelford?’ began Sloan.

  ‘That’s me,’ she said, groaning aloud when Sloan explained that they were policemen. ‘Not again! I’ve told everyone everything I remember about that awful accident, which is precisely nothing. I didn’t remember anything at all until I came round in a London hospital about a week after
wards.’ She twisted her lips into a sardonic grin. ‘Unfortunately I can remember far, far too much after that. None of it good.’

  Sloan asked if she was still in pain.

  ‘Pain,’ she echoed bitterly. ‘Pain’s the least of my problems, Inspector.’ She pointed to the rug that covered her lower limbs. ‘I can’t feel a thing below my waist, that’s the problem. Why do you think I’ve had those yew trees planted? Because I’m halfway to the churchyard already, that’s why. Literally.’

  ‘They should do well here,’ observed Sloan, a gardener himself, thinking of the new plants rather than the thought behind them.

  She gave him a bleak look. ‘More than I will now, although the ground floor here’s been adapted for a wreck like me. My parents have moved their sitting room upstairs to give me more space, although what I need space for these days, I’m sure I don’t know.’

  ‘Friends?’ asked Sloan, interested. ‘I’m sure you’ve still got friends except, presumably, whoever was at the wheel when you had the accident.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector, I’ve still got some friends left.’ Elizabeth Shelford, looking older than her years, was insistent that none of them could remember who it was who had been at the wheel of the car and they were all still friends. She tightened her lips and said listlessly, ‘What does it matter now anyway? I don’t know and I don’t much care. My boyfriend was killed and,’ she pointed to her legs, encased in the rug, ‘I’ll never walk again. The doctors say so.’

  ‘Do you remember who else was in the car when it crashed?’

  ‘Oh, yes, that’s quite different. I remember them all right. They’ve all been to see me since the accident except,’ she said, tears welling up in her eyes, ‘my Bill, of course. He only comes in my dreams.’

  ‘And they are?’ Detective Inspector Sloan had the names in his notebook but he wanted to hear her spell them out, being keen to note any inflexion or feeling that she might invest in detailing them.

  ‘Danny Saville, Paul Tridgell, Tim Cullen, Trevor Skewis,’ she said, rather as if she was reciting the song that included Uncle Tom Cobley and all, ‘and,’ she finished, still tearful, ‘my Bill, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Sloan. His friend, Inspector Harpe of Traffic Division, had handed over the results of the blood alcohol tests that had been done on all of those in the crash. It was immediately apparent that none of those in the vehicle had stuck to soft drinks that evening.

  ‘Six in a car built for five,’ observed Detective Constable Crosby censoriously.

  She grimaced. ‘I know, I know. We’ve all got to live with that but I have to exist after it, too, which is worse. At least we’re all still friends and they visit me, although,’ went on Elizabeth wryly, ‘they don’t like to come here if my mother’s around. That way they think she can’t blame any particular one of them. She’d like to.’

  ‘And,’ said Crosby to Sloan as the two policemen walked down the wheelchair ramp from the front door afterwards, ‘it looks from what Inspector Harpe told you, sir, that if any of the others do blame one of the others, they aren’t saying.’

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ said Sloan, almost to himself. Raising his voice a little, he said, ‘We’ll try Danny Saville next in the high street in Almstone first, since we’re out in the sticks already and he was in the car that crashed. It’s not far from here.’

  ‘I was so wasted I fell soft,’ said the young man who came to the door in answer to their knock. He was still limping quite badly. ‘Not soft enough to save me from this, though.’ He pointed to his left leg. ‘A comminuted fracture, they called it at the hospital.’ He shivered visibly at the memory. ‘Broken bones sticking through the skin and all that.’

  ‘So you can’t remember who was driving?’ said Crosby, quite forgetting all he had been taught about not asking leading questions.

  ‘I had the father and mother of a bump on my head – it came up like a chicken’s egg,’ said Danny Saville, ‘and I can’t remember anything at all except the noise of the air ambulance. Then I blacked out. Next thing I remember is coming round in the hospital in Calleford with a hell of a pain in my leg. They tell me there’s a load of titanium in it now, keeping it all together.’

  ‘I see,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan and thereafter maintained a stony silence.

  ‘All I can tell you,’ said Saville presently, provoked into speech by this well-known police technique of saying nothing, ‘is that it wasn’t Elizabeth’s squeeze, Bill. He was so blathered that the others wouldn’t let him get near the wheel. He could hardly stand, let alone drive. No head for drink, I suppose.’ Danny Saville said this in a tone of one sympathising with a congenital infirmity.

  ‘Or too much drink taken,’ suggested Sloan, using an old-fashioned phrase he had heard his mother use.

  ‘They were just having a Saturday night out,’ protested Saville sadly.

  ‘Didn’t you have a designated driver?’ asked Crosby, a man well used to nursing the statutory orange juice while his own mates enjoyed themselves.

  The young man shook his head. ‘Afraid not. I didn’t even know the others all that well then. I’d just hitched a lift with them because they were coming out this way. Saved me the cost of a taxi fare.’ He twisted his lips. ‘They told me at the hospital that it nearly cost me a leg.’

  ‘Not an arm and a leg,’ said Crosby wittily.

  The man gave him a considering look and then said, shuddering, ‘It was a very nasty crash. We’ve all had a dose of survivor guilt because of Bill dying and what happened to poor Elizabeth – that’s what they call it, isn’t it? Survivor guilt?’

  Detective Inspector Sloan nodded. They met quite a lot of that in police work too: especially parents who thought they should have died and not their children. People who escaped disasters that engulfed their friends were another large group. His thoughts strayed to the death in the caves – perhaps those who had survived that suffered from survivor guilt, too. Perhaps he should find out.

  Danny Saville was still talking. ‘It seems that Paul Tridgell had it the worst. Because of Bill dying, of course. He couldn’t bear to visit Elizabeth to begin with and then he decided it might help to go away for a while. He’s back at Friar’s Flensant again, though, because of his father dying. Actually,’ he glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece and said, ‘he must be at the funeral there just about now. The other two were going to go to it, too. They were Paul’s best mates, you see.’

  ‘Were they, indeed?’ said Sloan, making a mental note – this time of the names of Trevor Skewis and Tim Cullen before they left.

  ‘Just a few questions, Doctor, if we may,’ said Detective Inspector Sloan, plumping himself down in the chair usually occupied by the patient, whilst Crosby took a back seat and settled down on the one meant for the patient’s friend. ‘About a patient of yours – a deceased patient.’

  Sloan had entered the general practitioner’s consulting room with a certain unworthy feeling of satisfaction, irrationally pleased at having defeated the spirited attempts of the receptionist to defend her employer from any extra intrusion on his time. The inspector had turned down her offer of an appointment later with a sad shake of his head. The doctor’s patients might have to wait days for one such but not policemen on duty.

  Dr Angus Browne looked interrogatively at the two policemen. ‘Who?’

  ‘Derek Tridgell at Friar’s Flensant.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘How mentally competent was he?’

  ‘I would have said that until the painkillers really took hold he knew what was going on.’ He looked enquiringly at the two policemen. ‘Why?’

  ‘His wife has told us that he became very voluble as time went on,’ said Sloan.

  ‘That’s true.’ Dr Browne nodded. ‘He was usually rather a reserved man, you know, but he started babbling a bit once he was on the stronger analgesics.’ He pushed a stethoscope to one side and said, ‘I’m afraid that there wasn’t an awful lot I could do for him b
y that stage except keep the pain down and control any vomiting. Why do you ask?’

  ‘We have been told that he is said to have made certain allegations just before he died,’ said Sloan, ‘and we have a duty to investigate them.’

  The two bushy eyebrows on the doctor’s face were raised alarmingly. ‘About his care?’ he asked.

  ‘No, no,’ said Sloan hastily. ‘I understand the family are very happy with all the treatment your patient received.’

  The eyebrows sank back to their normal position on the doctor’s countenance. ‘So?’

  ‘We would like to know if he could have been hallucinating towards the end of his life.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Dr Browne. ‘Easily.’ He cast a shrewd look in Sloan’s direction and added, ‘But I don’t think he was.’

  ‘Why do you say that, Doctor?’

  ‘Because he was lucid and making sense until not very long before he died.’ The general practitioner sat back in his chair. ‘Remember that a dying man is rather like a guttering candle – moments of flickering darkness and then every now and then a sudden flaring of light.’

  Detective Inspector Sloan nodded his understanding of this. It was, of course, just that Derek Tridgell’s sudden flaring of light had led to complications, although he did not say so.

  ‘And sometimes,’ went on the doctor in a hortatory manner, ‘the patient is aware of angor animi …’

  Reminding himself that speaking in tongues – especially Latin ones – went with medical practice, Sloan deliberately raised his own eyebrows.

  Dr Browne readily translated. ‘It’s the sense of being in the act of dying, Inspector, which I may say is not the same as the fear of death or the desire for death.’

  All Sloan could think of was what a counsel – defence or prosecution – could make of this.

  A great deal.

  ‘Besides,’ went on the doctor, ‘the patient was a very rational man – a good scientist – before he became ill. In fact, I understand he was instrumental in bringing an important new product called Ameliorite to the market for his firm.’