A Talent For Destruction Read online

  The time was nine-thirty-two, the date was 29 July. Of the four people who stood in the Rectory drive and watched Garrity cross the road, three would never see him alive again.

  Part 3 – this spring

  Chapter Twenty Three

  For the best part of a month after Athol Garrity’s remains were buried, Chief Inspector Quantrill kept a discreet eye on the activities of the Rector and his wife. He observed that their tensions seemed to increase rather than diminish with the passage of time, but he learned nothing new about them. Old Henry Bowers made no more excursions to the Boot, so there was no opportunity for conversation with him. Regretfully, Quantrill began to put Garrity’s death out of his mind; he had crimes enough to investigate, without inventing others.

  On Monday 3 April, a morning of bright sun after a wet weekend, he was forty miles away from Breckham investigating a country-house burglary. It was Detective Constable Ian Wigby, minding the office, who took the telephone message that the body of a man had been found by a security guard behind one of the many empty factories on the industrial estate. Wigby radioed the news to the Chief Inspector, received instructions, and was on the scene within ten minutes. By the time Quantrill arrived, the police surgeon had certified the man dead, the photographer was making a record of the area, and the divisional scene-of-crime officer was measuring and marking off the footprints that had been left round the body on the damp sandy ground.

  There was no doubt about the dead man’s identity. Wigby knew him well; they were both regulars at the Boot.

  ‘One of the Bedingfields,’ he reported. ‘Kevin, Reggie’s youngest. Died some time yesterday, the Doc estimates, probably as a result of cracking his head open when he fell. He certainly went a cropper.’

  Kevin Bedingfield’s body – rain-sodden, open-eyed, open-mouthed – was lying sprawled on its back, the head on some of the broken bricks that lay scattered on the waste ground behind the abandoned factory. He was a young man, not much more than twenty, swarthy and well built. The bricks beneath his dark wet head, and the weeds and the sandy earth below the bricks, were rusted with trickles of blood.

  ‘Dr Thomson thinks there’s a bruise on the side of the jaw that could be consistent with a heavy blow,’ went on Wigby, ‘but he’s not committing himself.’

  ‘Understandably,’ said Quantrill, knowing the police surgeon’s reluctance to trespass on pathologists’territory, ‘but we’ll know for sure after the post-mortem. How does it look to you, Keith?’

  ‘Beautiful,’ said the young civilian scene-of-crime officer. He was too short to join the force but full of compensatory, blinkered enthusiasm for his specialized work. ‘The footprints couldn’t be clearer. Eliminating the victim’s and the security guard’s, there’s just one set. The man you want to interview wears leather size tens, so he’s tall, and as the prints aren’t deep he’s probably thin-to-medium in build. It looks as though he and the victim arrived here separately, and then had a short scuffle.’

  ‘During which it would seem that he knocked Kevin down … and that’s odd,’ said Quantrill. ‘The boy’s big enough to have held his own, and the Bedingfields are a tough family.’

  Wigby shook his head. ‘Kevin’s always been a bit of a softy. He’s been in trouble, like the rest of the family, but he’s gone straight for the past couple of years, poor sod.’ The phrase was careless, almost callous, but it was Wigby’s way of expressing compassion for a fellow drinker and darts player. ‘He wouldn’t have gone out looking for aggro, I’m sure of that. He got married last September, and he’s been full of talk about the baby his wife’s expecting.’

  ‘This’ll go extra hard with her, then,’ said Quantrill. He heard a car stop at the front of the building and saw that it contained his colleague from the county scene-of-crime squad. ‘I want to know everything you can tell me about Kevin Bedingfield, Ian, but we can talk later over a bite to eat. I’ll brief Inspector Colman now, while you go and tell Kevin’s family and see if you can find out what he was up to when he came here.’

  ‘Reggie Bedingfield cried when I told him,’ said Wigby. ‘Sentimental old git. Considering the number of times we’ve done him for assault … Mind you, I found him in the Jolly Butchers, so I reckon his tears were all of 83 degrees proof.’

  He looked unappreciatively at his cup of canteen coffee. He had anticipated that the Chief Inspector would buy him a pie and a pint while they talked in the comfort of a pub, but Quantrill, whose wife had sent him out that morning with a packet of crusty ham sandwiches to sustain him during his investigation of the country-house burglary, had elected to economize by lunching off them in his office.

  ‘So what did you find out from Reggie?’ Quantrill asked.

  ‘Nothing useful. But his wife’s tougher, and she talked. The baby’s arrived, by the way – their umpteenth grandchild. Kevin called to tell his mother yesterday evening, somewhere round seven o’clock. He was over the moon about having a son. He’d been at the maternity home all day, and though he wasn’t on speaking terms with most of the family he couldn’t resist telling them the news.’

  ‘Why wasn’t he speaking to them?’

  ‘He moved out when he decided to go straight, and went to live with his old Granny in Duck End. She’s dead now, died last winter. And he didn’t make himself popular with the family by marrying a Londoner – Bedingfields always marry Fairweathers or Catchpoles or Jermys. But his mother was pleased about the baby, and she gave him a cup of tea. He left about seven-thirty. He said he was going to meet somebody, but he didn’t tell her who or where.’

  ‘Where did he and his wife live?’

  ‘They rented one of the houses on the new estate. It’s about seven minutes’walk from the factory where his body was found. And that was where he used to work. Breckham Plastics, the firm was called. He was made redundant when the firm folded, and he’s been unemployed ever since.’

  ‘Short of money, then. And with a baby due … I know you said he was going straight, but a quiet meeting-place like that suggests that he was up to no good. Go and talk to his mates, Ian. I’ll have a word with his wife as soon as she’s recovered from the birth. WPC Hopkins has been to tell her parents, and they’ll be fetching her from the maternity home and keeping her with them for the time being.’

  ‘I expect she’ll be discharged tonight,’ said Wigby. ‘My wife was sent out with our youngest within twenty-four hours. They run that maternity home like a production line, one in and two out, as fast as they can go.’

  ‘Well, we’ll find out as much as possible before we bother the girl with questions. I think we’ll try the full weight of publicity on this one. Get Kevin Bedingfield’s wedding photograph from his mother-in-law, and we’ll do a press release for the front page of tomorrow’s local paper, with an appeal for information from anyone who saw him after seven-thirty last night. And we’ll emphasize the baby. That’ll stir up public sympathy, and it should bring out people who might otherwise be reluctant to talk to us.’

  Wigby swallowed his last mouthful of canteen sausage-roll and made for the door, but the internal telephone rang and Quantrill beckoned him back. A radio message had come in from Inspector Colman at the old Breckham Plastics factory. His search team had discovered a single bi-focal spectacle lens, lying near the place where Kevin Bedingfield had scuffled with his assailant.

  ‘We’ve as good as got him, then,’ Quantrill told Wigby with satisfaction. ‘There’s not much chance of two people wearing bi-focals with exactly the same prescription. John Colman is having the prescription analysed, and then you can start the leg-work, visiting all the opticians in the area and asking them to check their records. If we draw a blank there, we’ll put an official notice in the opticians’journal. It may take a bit of time, but we’ll get him for sure. And meanwhile, we’ve learned something else about him. We know he’s tall and medium to thin; now we know that he wears glasses, and because they’re bi-focals he’s almost certainly over forty-five.’

  ‘Doe
sn’t sound much like any of Kevin Bedingfield’s mates,’ said Wigby. ‘Doesn’t sound like anybody who’d want to knock him down.’

  Chater Twenty Four

  The following morning at ten-thirty a tall thin man, wearing single lens horn-rimmed glasses and carrying a briefcase and a copy of the East Anglian Daily Press, walked into Breckham Market divisional police headquarters and asked to see the officer in charge of the Kevin Bedingfield enquiry.

  Quantrill knew instantly, when DC Wigby brought the man into his office, that he had seen him somewhere before. He looked about fifty, well-tailored and well-brushed; a professional man, but a worried one.

  ‘Could I have your name, sir?’

  ‘Reynolds, Alec Reynolds.’ The man’s grip on his newspaper tightened, but he spoke evenly and precisely. ‘I have to tell you that I am the person you are looking for in connection with the death of the young man whose photograph is in this morning’s paper. I met him by arrangement on Sunday evening, we had an argument, and I lost my temper. I struck him. It was a stupid act, which I can explain but not excuse by saying that I’d been drinking. He fell back heavily. I thought he was concussed, and I’m afraid I hurried off without checking whether he was injured. I was appalled to read this morning of the consequences of my act, and I’ve come to give myself up.’

  Wigby, sitting near the door behind Reynolds, gave a triumphant thumbs-up sign. The Chief Inspector was more circumspect: ‘I see, sir.’

  Quantrill leaned back in his chair and looked at the man with thoughtful affability. ‘Tell me, are those the glasses you usually wear?’

  Reynolds blinked. ‘No. No, they’re an old pair. Mine are broken.’

  ‘Bi-focals?’

  Reynolds gave him a startled, respectful look. ‘As a matter of fact, they are.’ He produced a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles from his briefcase. One bi-focal lens was missing. ‘I had a slight scuffle with the young man, during which he knocked off my glasses. I think that was what made me lose my temper and hit him so hard. I had difficulty in finding them after he fell, and I was so anxious to get away that I didn’t realize they were broken until I reached my car. Fortunately I keep this old pair in the car, so I was able to drive home.’

  ‘We’ve already found the lens,’ said Quantrill. ‘We were about to start tracing you through the prescription, so you’ve saved us some work.’

  Reynolds grimaced, evidently relieved that he had had the courage to give himself up. He looked round the Chief Inspector’s untidy, functional office, as though by doing so he could familiarize himself with custodial surroundings. ‘I expect you want me to make a statement?’

  ‘Plenty of time for that, Mr Reynolds. I’d like a chat first.’

  Quantrill began by asking Reynolds’s address and occupation. He had recognized him, seconds after his entry, as the man who had accompanied Gillian Ainger at Athol Garrity’s funeral. He wondered whether there was some link between the two deaths, and he wanted to see whether Reynolds would try to conceal his connection with the Aingers.

  ‘And what brought you from Yarchester to Breckham Market?’

  But the man was astute. He’d seen the detectives at Garrity’s funeral, and so he would know that they recognized him. ‘I’m a friend of the Rector and his wife,’ he said. ‘I quite often come over to see them on Sunday afternoons, and stay for Evensong as a matter of courtesy.’

  ‘Ah, yes. But Kevin Bedingfield was no churchgoer, and I doubt he was a friend of the Aingers. How did you meet him?’

  Reynolds hesitated. Then he admitted, ‘I drink, and the Aingers don’t. I usually call at the Coney and Thistle after I leave the Rectory. I happened to mention a week or two ago that I needed someone to do a few odd jobs, repairing the fence and digging the garden and so on, and one of the other customers said that he knew a young man who might be interested.’

  DC Wigby, behind Reynolds, closed his eyes and blew out his cheeks and shook his head to indicate that Kevin Bedingfield’s least favourite or competent activities would have been fence-mending and gardening.

  ‘I see,’ said Quantrill. ‘And did this man you met in the pub give you Kevin’s name?’

  ‘No. He took my telephone number, and the young man rang me to arrange a meeting last Sunday.’

  ‘Behind the old Breckham Plastics factory on the industrial estate?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Quantrill looked at him. Reynolds’s expression remained composed, but a tic developed in his right cheek. Presently he added, ‘It made sense. If he was drawing unemployment benefit and didn’t intend to declare what he earned from me, he’d want to keep our meeting secret.’

  ‘And you were prepared to condone the illegality?’

  ‘I’ve come here to admit that I caused a man’s death,’ said Reynolds edgily. ‘In the circumstances, it seems inappropriate for me to make moral judgements.’

  His story leaked like a perished hosepipe, but Quantrill encouraged him to continue with it. ‘So you met him as arranged. But then you had an argument with him – about what?’

  Reynolds’s tic persisted. ‘About terms. He wanted more than I was prepared to pay.’

  ‘And so you hit him? You, a civilized, well-educated man, a senior –’

  The internal telephone rang. Quantrill snatched up the receiver: ‘Yes?’

  ‘Sorry to bother you, sir,’ stammered the young probationary constable at the desk in the front office, jumping at the Chief Inspector’s bark, ‘but there’s a gentleman to see you. He won’t give his name, but he asked for you personally and he says it’s important.’

  ‘Ask him to wait. I’m busy.’ Quantrill thumped the receiver down. ‘Are you really trying to tell me,’ he continued, glaring at Reynolds, ‘that you were so incensed by a dispute over the price a man wanted for doing some odd jobs that you hit him so hard that you killed him?’

  For the first time, the blood rose in Reynolds’s cheeks. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him! For God’s sake, you must realize that. I’m horrified by what’s happened. That’s why I had to come here and tell you.’

  ‘Then let’s have the whole truth while we’re at it, Mr Reynolds. Because when Kevin Bedingfield’s body was searched, a blank envelope containing a hundred pounds was found in one of his pockets. So I don’t believe your story about the man in the pub and the odd jobs. I think that when Kevin contacted you, you agreed to meet him in that deserted place because you were making some kind of pay-off. I think he was blackmailing you, and I want to know why.’

  But Reynolds had regained his composure. ‘I’ve told you as much as I intend to tell you,’ he said. ‘I’m prepared to make a statement on the lines of what I said when I first came into this office, but that’s all.’

  Quantrill’s jaw tightened. ‘Do you know what I think? I suspect that this crime you admit to, this unlawful killing, has some connection with the death of Athol Garrity, whose funeral we both attended some weeks ago. Has it?’

  Reynolds said nothing.

  Quantrill eased himself back into his chair and lit a small cigar. ‘Let me tell you why I think this,’ he said conversationally. ‘Blackmail is a crime, and a nasty one. A blackmailer usually has a cruel – sometimes downright evil – streak in his or her makeup. Now, I never had occasion to meet young Kevin Bedingfield, but Detective Constable Wigby knew him quite well. Tell Mr Reynolds about Kevin, Wigby.’

  Ian Wigby moved forward and gave the man an engaging smile. ‘A nice young feller, Kevin,’ he said. ‘Not your sort, of course, Mr Reynolds – but then, he didn’t have your advantages.’

  Quantrill watched Reynolds impassively as the Detective Constable acknowledged Kevin Bedingfield’s failings, and praised his attempts to break away from his family’s influence and go straight. ‘So you see, he wasn’t the sneaky vicious type who spies and preys on people’s weaknesses. But he was short of money, there’s no doubt about that. Times are hard, Mr Reynolds, for people who aren’t in safe civil-service jobs. So I reckon it’s possible that i
f he got wind of something really criminal that somebody was trying to hide, he just might have been tempted to make a few quid out of it. Especially with the baby on the way.’

  The muscle in Reynolds’s cheek jumped again.

  ‘Was that what happened?’ asked Quantrill. ‘Was Kevin trying to blackmail you because he had connected you with Athol Garrity’s death last summer?’

  Reynolds said nothing.

  Quantrill slapped the flat of his hand on his desk. ‘I want an answer. You’ve already admitted one involuntary killing. You’ve told us that you drink, you’ve told us that you can lose your temper, you’ve told us that in those circumstances you can hit out, and hit hard. Did you, last summer, for whatever reason, strike Athol Garrity and voluntarily or involuntarily cause his death?’

  ‘No.’ Reynolds sat very straight in his chair, his eyes behind his horn-rimmed glasses burning with indignation. ‘No I did not strike Athol Garrity. No I did not in any way cause or contribute to his death. I have confessed to what I did on Sunday, and there is nothing else on my conscience.’

  It was Quantrill’s turn to sit silent. ‘Then who was responsible for Garrity’s death?’ he pleaded at last.

  Reynolds closed his briefcase and became briskly business-like. ‘I’d like to make a short statement as soon as possible about the events on Sunday evening. Apart from that, I intend to say nothing. And now I propose to exercise my right of telephoning my solicitor. I shall tell him exactly what I’ve told you, but I want him because I believe that he can arrange for me to be bailed. I’ll accept whatever punishment the courts eventually decide –’ he closed his eyes and swallowed hard, contemplating publicity, disgrace, imprisonment, ‘– but I’d prefer not to see the inside of a cell before I have to.’

  Kevin Bedingfield’s parents-in-law lived in a council maisonette in Pine Tree Walk, one of the network of new residential roads that spread bricks and cement over the fields that had once surrounded the old town. When Quantrill, accompanied by WPC Patsy Hopkins, called at number 237, he was turned away by a trim, pink-haired forty-year-old dragon with a voice so vigorously Cockney that he thought for a moment that she was Australian.