‘The word is that Palmer was a used car dealer who was murdered twenty years ago. They’re trying to pin his death on you.’
‘The police were always trying to stitch me up for one crime or another, never succeeded. Why bother now? I’ve retired.’
‘Were you involved?’
‘If I were, I’d tell you, but I wasn’t, so that’s that. Anything else?’
‘I thought that if you were involved, I could help in any way I could,’ Armstrong said, purposely ignoring his boss’s denial.
‘Thanks, Gareth, but I’m not. Where did you find this out?’
‘The police have been around to where the man died, where he’s buried, not that there’d be much to see. His death was violent, so they say.’
‘Gareth, don’t be obtuse. How much do you know? Who’s feeding you this information?’
‘I’ve a contact, works with the police, an informer, although he doesn’t tell them anything they don’t already know. Sometimes he feeds them nonsense, gets paid for doing it.’
‘Whoever was involved, and it isn’t me, what were you told, in detail?’
Armstrong pulled up a seat. He wanted to loosen his tie as the conservatory was too warm, but he did not. He enjoyed the respectability that the position of butler at the mansion afforded him. For too many years, he had struggled, wanting to be honest, unable to be so as the cost of living was too high, the life of crime too easy. He knew, even though he was not a smart man, that the mention of Stephen Palmer had hit a raw nerve with his master. He would help regardless.
‘There are plain-clothes asking questions nearby to where this Stephen Palmer lived; who were his friends, who were his girlfriends. It seems the man used to put it about.’
‘What else?’
‘An Inspector Hill and a Sergeant Gladstone spoke to the man’s brother, met with a woman in Oxford.’
‘Sergeant Gladstone was here the other day.’
‘I know. I didn’t like her.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong, Gareth. You broke the law, and you know that. You were caught, you served your time. Personally, I don’t have anything against the police, bribed a few in my time, frightened a few others, helped a few out for favours received, but hate serves no purpose. Treat them with courtesy and respect; fight them when you have to.’
‘I still don’t like her.’
Gareth had read a few books while he’d been in prison; considered taking the opportunity to complete his schooling, most of which he had skipped, considering that it was basically a waste of time, and crime was easier. To him, breaking into a shop was better than working for a company that sold it the security alarm; selling drugs on the street was more sensible than becoming a chemist. And besides, at the age of fifteen, he was making more money than the headmaster of his school, a thriving business selling uppers and downers, cocaine and heroin. He had purchased them from a Trinidadian, dividing the drugs up into smaller quantities, more in the budget of his contemporaries. His places of choice for conducting his trade were at school or the local youth club, a barn-like warehouse fitted out with some chairs, a table tennis table, a few well-used bats and a shortage of ping pong balls, the place run by a zealous and overactive vicar who thought he was achieving something, but wasn’t.
One of the books that he’d read in the prison library talked of the criminal mind, not that he could understand it, too technical for him, but he had gained something from it, the types of personalities that commit acts of violence.
He wondered as he sat with his boss, not that it would change his respect for the man, what type of personality was Hamish. Was he a sociopath or a psychopath? He vaguely remembered the definitions for both traits; a sociopath had superficial charm and good intelligence, attributes that Hamish displayed in abundance. Also, the antisocial behaviour, but Hamish wasn’t like that, nor did he demonstrate poor judgement and a failure to learn by experience. Gareth ceased his evaluation of his boss; he hadn’t read the book thoroughly, and besides, what did it matter. And as for Hamish’s denial of involvement in the death of Stephen Palmer, he didn’t believe it for one minute.
***
Charles Stanford, previously interviewed as he was the owner of the house where Marcus Matthews had died, had been mainly discounted from the investigation. It was not wise to do so, Isaac knew that, but the man had no black marks against him, and he had been well regarded as a judge before he had prematurely resigned from the position. A check of the cases he had presided over, a detailed look at who he had represented as a barrister, showed no correlation between him and Matthews. But there had to be, Isaac knew that, and if not with the dead man, then with someone on the investigation’s periphery.
‘We’ve not been able to make the connection between Marcus Matthews and Charles Stanford,’ Isaac said as he sipped his coffee. It was early morning in the office, and outside on the street, the rain was pouring down and the temperature was unusually cold for the time of year. Wendy’s body ached, Larry’s stomach rumbled, but a lot less than it had a few days earlier. It was only Bridget and Isaac who had no reason to complain.
Life was good for Isaac. His marriage to Jenny went from strength to strength, and now their talk had got around to children, the time for the two of them to become three. He had to admit the idea excited him, and he knew his parents, retired back in Jamaica, would approve.
Bridget also felt that life was good, not that she had any intention of becoming a mother; that
