A Place Of Safety Page 11

  She pushed open the back door and called, ‘Hello?’ There was no reply. Louise wondered if Ann had simply forgotten her invitation and gone out, leaving the door unlocked. She often did this, to Louise’s city-bred incredulity.

  But although Ann proved to be in the kitchen, it was plain she had indeed forgotten the invitation. When Louise put her head round the door, Ann stared blankly across the room as if at a complete stranger - only for a fraction of a second but long enough for Louise to recognise that this was not going to be the person to whom she could unburden her heart. Driven by need, she must have been fantasising earlier, investing what she saw now was merely a pleasantly amiable acquaintance with qualities it did not have. Louise, even while recognising how unfair this was to Ann, was surprised by how disappointed she felt.

  ‘Louise! Oh, I’m sorry. I quite - Oh dear . . .’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Of course it does. Please, sit down.’

  Ann, surely more distressed, it seemed to Louise, than the occasion warranted, started to hurry about, collecting the cafetière, washing out the grounds, finding some deep yellow breakfast cups. And all with a flurried unhappy air of determination that seemed further to demonstrate just how unwelcome the interruption actually was.

  ‘Look,’ said Louise, who had not sat down, ‘we can do this another time.’

  ‘No, no. You must stay.’

  ‘Could we just have tea then?’ She pulled out a ladder-back chair. ‘A bag in a mug would be fine.’

  Ann immediately abandoned the coffee-making preparations and switched on the electric kettle which straightaway switched itself off. She stared at Louise. ‘I don’t know. This morning everything seems . . .’ The rest of the sentence was lost to her.

  ‘Let me.’ Louise got up and filled the kettle. The sink was full of dirty dishes. She looked around for tea bags and made the drinks while at the same time keeping an eye on Ann, now sitting at the table, pale-faced and trembling slightly from head to foot.

  Louise took the tea over, sat down and took Ann’s hand. It was dry and cold. They sat silently for quite a long time. Comfortable at first, Louise eventually began to feel awkward in the continuing silence.

  ‘What is it, Ann? Are you ill?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re shaking.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Ann began to contradict herself. ‘I think it’s the flu. A cold. Something like that.’

  Whatever it was, it was nothing like that. Louise wondered if there had been some sad family news. A death, maybe. But then remembered that Ann had no close living relatives. Or friends, except in the village. Could it be a delayed reaction to Charlie Leathers’ murder? It seemed unlikely. Like everyone else, she had not liked the man.

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ She released the hand.

  Ann lifted her head and looked at Louise. Then stared vacantly at the mugs of tea, the stale toast crumbs, the branches of purple berberis in a jug. Did she want to talk about it? God, yes. Sometimes she wanted to talk about it so desperately she feared she would not be able to control herself. That she would be driven, like the poor wandering rejects from mental hospitals, to seize a total stranger in the street and force on him her dreadful secret.

  But could she trust Louise? How well did she really know her? Ann thought she would probably be safer with the passerby. They would simply assume she was mad and that would be an end to it.

  What had happened was this. Earlier that morning, just before ten thirty to be precise, Ann found a second letter lying in the little cage behind the front door. Strangely, considering she was still reeling from the shock of receiving the first, she did not immediately recognise it for what it was.

  The post proper had been delivered half an hour earlier and had proved as boringly innocuous as ever. Most of it was junk and Ann threw it into the bin. Lionel, running around gathering his wits and his papers in readiness for a working lunch with the Caritas Trust Committee, pushed what was left into his briefcase.

  After breakfast Ann helped Lionel on with his coat, found him a light Paisley muffler to protect his chest and left him still dithering over his papers to see how Mrs Leathers and Candy were keeping. On the way back she called at Brian’s Emporium for some fresh bread and oranges and bought stamps at the post office. Altogether she was away from the house for probably half an hour.

  During that time anyone in the village could have seen her and quite a few probably had. The thought of one of them watching and waiting until the house was empty and she had safely turned into Hetty’s lane or joined the post office queue then slipping their poisonous message through her letter box was chilling, to put it mildly.

  Her name was printed in full on the envelope. The words inside, once more cut and pasted, looked different. This time they were all from newspaper headlines. Ann stared at the large black threatening capitals: ‘FIVE GRAND THIS TIME MURDERER SAME PLACE SAME TIME TOMORROW’.

  She had walked unseeingly to the kitchen, dropped the letter and envelope into the Aga then sat bolt upright at the table. Where could she possibly find five thousand pounds in the next twenty-four hours? Even if she sold all her mother’s jewellery, so very dear to her, it would not raise so much.

  Of course, she owned the house. Compared to what the Old Rectory was worth, even in its present shabby state, a few thousand was a drop in the ocean. She had no doubt the bank would lend against such sterling security. But then what? Interest would be charged straightaway. She would have to repay this and the loan which she could only do by cashing in some of her securities, thus reducing the only income she had. It was already barely sufficient for two people to live on. And what if another demand turned up?

  She had just reached this wretched stage in her reasonings when Louise appeared. She was concerned, kind. Made some tea. And was now asking if she, Ann, wanted to talk about it.

  The temptation was terrible. Ann could feel her mouth filling up with words. Explanations, excuses. How the whole terrible business with Carlotta had flared into life and run wild - totally out of her control. The first sentence ‘it wasn’t my fault’ was on her lips, just about to spill over and run when the telephone rang.

  It was only a message for Lionel but afterwards Ann saw the interruption as miraculously timely. What a fool she had been even to contemplate confiding in Louise. How well did she really know the woman? The Fainlights’ house almost overlooked the Rectory. Louise would be in a perfect position to see just when she went out, leaving the coast clear. How easy to run over, deliver the letter, watch for the victim’s return then come round to gloat. Look how sneakily she had entered the house, not even ringing the front door bell.

  Ann stared suspiciously across the table, quite forgetting that she herself had invited Louise. Now Louise was withdrawing, preparing to leave. Just as well. From this moment Ann would keep a very sharp curb on her tongue. And trust absolutely no one.

  The 9 p.m. briefing was just that, brief. And as disheartening as Barnaby feared it would be. There were no leads at all. The house-to-house, now concluded, had come up with virtually nothing they didn’t know already. There seemed to be no dark secrets in Charlie Leathers’ past. He was born and raised in the village and everyone knew everything about him. His life was an open, if not very pleasant, book.

  The DCI left the incident room and its wall of hideous blow-ups for the much more pleasant surroundings of the press office where he was due to record a television appeal for information, to be shown at ten thirty at the end of the local evening news summary.

  He sat stoically being powdered against shine - a procedure he loathed - while wondering how Nicolas could stand putting the muck all over his face two afternoons and six nights a week. Having done his stuff and washed his face he was on the point of leaving the building when Sergeant Troy put his head round the door to say there was someone waiting to see him in reception.

  ‘I’m really sorry to come so late.’ It was Hetty Leathers’ daughter. ‘Te
ll the truth, I thought you might be gone.’

  ‘Not at all, Mrs Grantham.’ Barnaby led the way to a couple of worn leather seats at the far end of the reception area.

  ‘It won’t take a minute.’

  Actually Pauline was now in rather a different frame of mind from when she had first heard about Charlie’s ‘scrapbook’ from her mother. Coming so close to the discovery of the murder, it had appeared extremely significant. Then, gradually, its possible significance had faded and now she sat with her carrier bag full of chopped about newspaper feeling a bit of a fool. In fact she had almost chucked the stuff back in the bin and forgotten the whole idea.

  Hurriedly she explained all this to Barnaby, adding several flurried apologies for wasting his time. But he seemed grateful that she had come in. Far from taking the bag with a quick thank you, he questioned her closely as to what had led up to the discovery.

  ‘Well, it was when you asked if Dad had done anything out of the ordinary in the last couple of days.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘Apparently the night before he . . . it happened he went into the front room with the paper and some scissors. He was in there ages. When Mum went to see if he wanted a cup of tea he flew at her.’

  ‘What made your mother think he was compiling a scrapbook?’

  ‘He was cutting things out. And there was a pot of glue on the table. And another funny thing, Pauline continued hastily as Barnaby seemed about to speak, ‘he cleared up after himself. And that’s not just a first, it’s a bloody miracle.’

  ‘And these sheets are what was left?’

  ‘Yes - trimmings, everything. He put them in the dustbin. Lucky it was Tuesday not Monday or the bin men would have had it.’

  Back in his office Barnaby pulled some chopped-about sheets of The People from the KwikSave plastic bag. The front page - ‘Massacre of the Innocents’ - was dated Sunday, 16 August. Troy, still hanging about and welcoming the overtime, handled the sheets in some bewilderment.

  ‘Don’t see how making a scrapbook can get a man knocked off.’

  ‘He wasn’t making a scrapbook.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Use your brains.’

  Troy flirted with that one for a moment, tucking his eyebrows into a serious pleat and looking intense. He was about to give up when something occurred to him.

  ‘Whatever Leathers cut out, he did it for a reason. So we won’t find the missing pieces in here.’

  ‘They’ll be in the original. Take this to the incident room before you go and get somebody from the night shift on to it. Then we can compare.’

  ‘Ah. Nice one, chief.’

  It seemed so obvious when pointed out. So why couldn’t he, Troy, just once come up with something startling and original and perceptive. See a link that everyone else had overlooked. Place a piece of evidence in just the right position to shed a light over the whole case and bring it to a successful conclusion. Once was all he asked. A chance to pip the DCI to the post before he retired. Dream on, sunshine. Dream on.

  Chapter Seven

  Barnaby took the lift down to the incident room the following morning metaphorically crossing his fingers for a lucky break. Few things were more frustrating than an absolutely static case with not a single apparent weakness that could be leaned on and worried into revelation. Perhaps Charlie’s ‘scrapbook’ would prove to be that weakness. If so, it would transform Barnaby’s temper, well to the bad after a sharp exchange with Joyce during breakfast.

  ‘You’re not going to the station, Tom.’ He had got up from the table, picked up his jacket and was craftily easing his way towards the door.

  ‘Tom!’

  ‘Uh huh?’

  ‘It’s your rest day.’

  ‘Something really important turned up as I was leaving yesterday.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I thought you’d rather I handled it today than spend half last night chasing things up.’

  ‘Can’t someone else “handle it” and phone through?’

  ‘I’d rather do it my—’

  ‘When you’ve got your teeth into something you’re like a dog with a bone. Frightened to death someone else is going to get a bite.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Barnaby fumbled for his car keys and wondered if it was true. ‘Anyway, I’m home all day tomorrow.’

  ‘You know the Gavestons are coming for dinner?’

  He had quite forgotten. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Half past six, latest.’

  ‘Yes!’ shouted Barnaby then was sorry and attempted a conciliatory kiss.

  Joyce turned her cheek away and slammed the kitchen door. Barnaby slammed the front door. He got into his Astra and slammed that door then drove aggressively to the station, which was quite unlike him. At the station he strode first to the lift and then to his office where, just to make the numbers even, he slammed that door as well.

  He hoped this latest set-to didn’t mean his wife and daughter would be ganging up on him, as they were wont to do from time to time, urging early retirement. Not that he hadn’t occasionally longed for an easier life himself. In spite of the team spirit and boozy, post-shift camaraderie, the sometimes umbilically close connections and protecting of each other’s backs, the fact remained that, at least in its upper echelons, the force was a pool of sharks. Great powerful beasts swimming around, jaws snapping, tails athwack. Egoistic, fiercely competitive individuals determined to strive ahead. To divide and rule.

  And old sharks had better beware. No wonder so many of these sad, exhausted creatures ended up, long before it was strictly necessary, sheltered from the fighting behind a desk at headquarters. But not this one. Too many years at the sharp end had spoiled DCI Barnaby for such cushy, toothless repose.

  Emerging from the lift, the chief inspector ran into his sergeant coming out of the Gents and reeking of high tar nicotine.

  ‘Still testing your resistance, Troy?’

  ‘It’s all very well for you, sir. An addiction can be really . . .’

  ‘Addictive?’

  ‘Yeah. Nobody ever praises you, do they?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘People who’ve never smoked. Maureen, for example. They don’t know what it’s like.’

  Barnaby was in no mood for such whingeing. He strode ahead to the incident room, slapped a near-empty folder of notes onto his desk and stared at his dejected-looking team. It was not only dejected but somewhat depleted. He stared fiercely round the room.

  ‘Where’s WPC Mitchell?’

  ‘On her way,’ said Inspector Carter. ‘She’s been working—’

  ‘She shouldn’t be on her bloody way! She should be here. You.’ He jabbed a finger at a constable perched on a table. ‘Go and—’

  But at that moment Katie Mitchell rushed in. All smiles, all excitement.

  ‘Sir! I’ve—’

  ‘You’re late.’

  ‘The courier didn’t bring the original till half five this morning. And there were so many shreds and bits, assembling it took for ever.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Barnaby. ‘I see.’

  ‘And after all that there were only six words.’

  Barnaby held out his hand. WPC Mitchell came forward and placed a sheet of A4 paper in it.

  ‘I’ve stuck them on in the only order that makes sense, sir.’

  ‘So you have,’ said Barnaby, taking the ‘only order’ in. And his heart sang.

  ‘I saw you push her in.’

  Barnaby read out the words aloud again into the silence. He could see and feel the whole room becoming charged with interest and vitality. Lethargy and disappointment were wiped out in this one single moment of revelation.

  The anonymous telephone call, it now seemed, was not a hoax. The strong likelihood was that someone actually had fallen or been pushed into the Misbourne at some period shortly before 10.32 p.m. on Sunday, 16 August.

  ‘Does anyone have any ideas,’ asked Barnaby, ‘as to how this breakthrough might put us on fast forward?’<
br />
  Sergeant Troy did not hesitate. Although his thoughts and opinions were rarely canvassed, nevertheless he kept his mind in good trim. He could not bear to be found wanting.

  ‘Leathers saw someone being shoved into the river and tried a spot of financial arm-twisting. Instead of paying up, whoever it was gave him a nice wire collar. Also, as one of Lionel Lawrence’s bleeding hearts disappeared at roughly the same time, I’d say the two incidents were definitely connected.’ Troy paused, suddenly feeling very exposed, and stared hard at the nearest computer screen. The analysis seemed pretty sound to him but he knew the gaffer. Barnaby had a way of slicing through a presentation, finding the weak link and snapping it back hard under your nose, like a rubber band with a pebble in it.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Sir.’ Troy received this with a certain amount of caution. He’d been here before. Something nice then a sting from the scorpion’s tail - e.g. good - for someone with three per cent of a dead amoeba’s single brain cell.

  ‘Although . . .’

  Here we go.

  ‘The idea that this,’ Barnaby waved the paper, ‘is the first step to blackmail, though extremely likely, must be only supposition at this stage.’

  He smiled happily around at his officers, lifted right out of his previous mood of despondency. ‘Anyone else? Yes, Inspector Carter.’

  ‘This nine-nine-nine call, sir. Maybe it was made by whoever did the pushing. They might have panicked. Had second thoughts.’

  ‘A rescue would hardly be in their interest,’ said Sergeant Brierley. ‘They could end up being accused of assault, or worse.’

  ‘Whoever it was could have fallen in accidentally,’ suggested Troy. ‘During a fight, say.’

  ‘That’s no lever for blackmail.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Got it.’ I’m not saying another word during this briefing. Not a bloody word.

  ‘Right,’ said Barnaby. ‘Now, I want the tape of this anonymous call from force headquarters, so somebody get on to Kidlington. Also a copy of the report submitted by the investigation team who were called out to the river. Then we’ll start yet another house-to-house at Ferne Basset - leave out the Old Rectory, I’ll be calling there myself - plus the other two villages in the triangle, Swan Myrren and Martyr Bunting. Check on any sounds of disturbance heard between the hours of nine o’clock, say, and midnight. Bear in mind that could be anywhere - not necessarily on or near the river. Arguments travel.