Free Malice Aforethought by J. M. Gregson Page B

bulk of the man who ran this business, which centred upon the yard outside these modest office premises. Lambert and Hook had come through that yard to meet their man. It was a busy place, with heavy goods vehicles moving carefully in and out of the service bays in the hangar-like shed where they were checked and maintained. There was a dominant smell of hot oil and diesel, which seemed to permeate even into this room, despite the vase of golden chrysanthemums someone had set in front of the unused gas fire.
    Pitman listened to the sounds outside, even as he sat them down to talk and asked his secretary to bring them coffee, so that they divined immediately that he was hap-piest out there, with his finger on the pulse of that invisible but scarcely soundless body he controlled. A hands-on manager this, in the modern jargon, with firm ideas, tested in the hard commercial world beyond the small town where he was based. A man who was used to his own way and who did not take kindly to argument.
    He made no pretence of wondering why they had come, though he plainly planned to offer them very little. It’s about Ted, isn’t it? Well, I’m sorry he’s dead, and I hope you catch the bugger who did for him, but I don’t see how I can be of any help to you.’
    A Yorkshireman, by his accent, and no doubt proud of it and the bluntness which was supposed to accompany the breed. Bert Hook had bowled to some eminent cricketers but never to Boycott. He decided it must have been rather like questioning this man: he was all dour opposition, but ready to make you look silly if your concentration lapsed. Lambert, responding to this attitude in the man, said without preamble, ‘What did you think of your son-in-law, Mr Pitman?’
    Hook, still thinking of Boycott, saw him coming down quickly on this yorker. ‘Not much. Put him out of my mind as much as I could. That’s why I can’t help you now.’
    Lambert decided to behave as if the straight bat had given him a chance. ‘Ah! You didn’t much like Ted Giles, then.’
    Pitman looked at him suspiciously. ‘Course I didn’t. He made my girl miserable, didn’t he?’ He snorted contemptuously that they should query what was so obvious and looked around him as if he wanted to spit, which he might well have done in the yard outside. He didn’t dislike policemen, who had their place in the orderly world his business needed, but he preferred them in uniform; you knew where you were then, with ranks and functions. He was suspicious of anything he did not know, and he had little experience of CID men in their plain clothes.
    Lambert took his time. ‘We know their marriage broke up. Your daughter told us it finished years ago and—’
    ‘That’s right.’ A little too promptly, even interrupting; perhaps an automatic response, supporting his daughter.
    ‘And you blame Ted Giles rather than your daughter for the failure of that union?’
    ‘Course I do. He had it made with Sue, if he’d had the sense to see it.’
    Lambert let the seconds stretch, but Pitman didn’t enlarge upon the thought. He glared at them, breathing heavily, as if they had offered him a personal slight. Eventually Lambert said, ‘I’d like you to give us an account of the marriage as you saw it.’
    ‘Why should I? It’s bugger all to do with you.’
    ‘In ordinary circumstances, yes. In a murder inquiry, no. You’re not stupid: you will appreciate we are looking for the enemies of a man who was brutally murdered. From your attitude so far, you would appear to be one. You can’t expect us not to pursue that.’
    Pitman glared at him, then broke into an unexpected smile. ‘You’re a blunt man, Superintendent Lambert. In other circumstances, I might appreciate that. All right, I see your point. I didn’t like Ted Giles. Not much, even from the start, though I had to make the best of it when they were getting wed. My wife were still alive then, and she saw to that.’ For a moment, his face clouded, and they