Skeleton Plot by J.M. Gregson

Author:J.M. Gregson [Gregson, J.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: urn:ean:9780727885104
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2015-04-12T23:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Michael Wallington told himself that it was good that he was meeting the CID in his own office. He would be in control here, much less nervous than if he had been on their ground at Oldford police station, the alternative venue they had suggested. He told himself that repeatedly.

They came precisely at half past ten, the time they had specified. A tall, watchful man with a slight stoop who identified himself as Chief Superintendent John Lambert and a shorter but more powerful man who looked much less threatening, introduced as Detective Sergeant Hook.

‘Your reputation goes before you,’ said Michael effusively. ‘I’m sure everyone in the town hall has heard of the achievements of John Lambert. Coffee, please, Mrs Barrett! And a few biscuits, if your skill and influence can conjure them up for us.’ He turned his automatic beam on his PA and dispatched her to the task he had already agreed with her half an hour earlier. Then he seated his visitors in the chairs he had carefully positioned for them before they arrived and sat down opposite them. ‘This is quite intriguing. I can’t think what help the education department can offer to you, but it goes without saying that we are willing to offer whatever assistance we can.’

Lambert gave him a grim smile, watched Mrs Barrett set the coffee tray down on the table beside him and said, ‘It is not your department but you personally who will be able to help us this morning, Mr Wallington.’

The PA was studiously calm and inscrutable, but her boss was not. He did not like this being said in the hearing of Mrs Barrett, but it was hardly specific enough for him to object to it on the grounds of confidentiality. It was, as Wallington suspected, carefully calculated on Lambert’s part to counter the urbanity of his reception here, and it succeeded in that. The man who ruled here was discomfited, in spite of his determination before they arrived to remain calm and in control of things.

Michael waited until the PA withdrew and then said with a forced grin, ‘That only makes this more intriguing. Please elucidate for me.’

That was a phrase he used with junior employees and sometimes with town councillors. The four-syllabled word often intimidated them. It did not intimidate this man. The unsmiling Lambert was only too willing to elucidate. ‘I can be quite specific for you, Mr Wallington. Indeed, I am anxious to be so, in the hope that such precision will prompt your accurate recall of events now twenty years behind us.’

‘I was told when this meeting was arranged that it was in connection with your investigation into the discovery of this skeleton which was unearthed near Hereford last weekend. I can’t think how—’

‘We wish to know everything we can discover about events which took place at seventeen Fairfax Street, Gloucester, in the spring and summer of 1995.’

Lambert’s grey, unblinking eyes held those of Wallington as unerringly as a mesmerist’s, though Michael was conscious of Hook turning unhurriedly to a new page of his notebook on the left of his peripheral vision.

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