Faithful unto Death Page 30

  Also pretty predictable was the postmortem report. Brenda had died from a subdural haemorrhage following the fracturing of her skull. She also had a broken tibia in her left leg, a fractured pelvis and three broken ribs. The accompanying SOCO report described the marks on her legs and dress as being made by Pirelli tyres identical to the ones fitted to the Audi convertible. The Heathrow team had already liaised with Causton Forensic and would be coming over to examine Hollingsworth’s car within the next two days.

  No luck with the letting agencies as far as discovering the hiding place for the kidnapped woman was concerned though the checking procedure had borne some rather unpleasant fruit. A two-bedroomed flat in Princes Risborough had been found to be in use for highly immoral purposes. And, nearer home, a lockup with dripping walls and no proper ventilation proved to be doubling as a sweat shop in which over twenty Asian women and young girls spent their days inhaling kapok while making soft toys.

  Barnaby drank some tea, a cold drink, more tea and tried not to dwell on the fact that it was now twelve days since Simone had taken the market bus to Causton and never returned. And almost eight since Alan Hollingsworth and Brenda Brockley had died. He reminded himself that all investigations moved at their own pace. That some, lacking witnesses perhaps or forensic detail, never got off the ground and others, like this one, could be submerged in such a wash of assorted information that any movement that was at all subtle could very easily be overlooked.

  He recalled the moment in the lift, not all that long ago, when he felt himself content to be submerged for a while in a “cloud of unknowing.” And tried to be unbothered by the fact that the cloud now seemed to have transformed itself into a sea of blind ignorance in which he was floating, rather more quickly than he would have liked, to a watery grave.

  The room was filling up. At 5 p.m. precisely the Chief Inspector got up to speak.

  “I’m afraid there’s been a disappointing development,” he began and went on to describe Sarah Lawson’s disappearance. “I’m now quite convinced that Lawson is seriously involved in this matter. She lied about where she was on the evening of Hollingsworth’s death. On the other hand, she appeared absolutely devastated when I told her that we were regarding it as suspicious.”

  “P’raps they were lovers, sir,” suggested Sergeant Beryl. “On the Q and T.”

  “More likely she was devastated on Gray Patterson’s behalf,” said Troy. “I reckon she knows something about his movements that really puts him in the frame.”

  “That level of concern implies some sort of genuine involvement. He led us to believe he was keen but getting nowhere.”

  “Men have been know to lie,” said a young red-haired girl. And immediately ducked down behind her VDU.

  Barnaby cut the jeering short. “The crucial thing now is to find her. The college will be open tomorrow at eight thirty. Talk to the staff and administration and get a photograph if they have one. And it’s the day her class meets so talk especially to her students. Find out everything you can about her background, especially any friendships or close relatives she may have spoken of. She might be staying with one of them. Ask the students their opinion of Simone Hollingsworth while you’re at it. She wasn’t on the course for long but it will be interesting to see what they thought.”

  “Will we be searching Sarah Lawson’s house, sir?” asked a fresh-faced young constable with an extraordinary moustache; very curly and totally out of control. “There might be some clue there as to her present whereabouts.”

  “Probably within the next day or so, Belling, yes.” Barnaby nodded, half smiled. They asked questions now, the youngsters. Were encouraged to do so which was quite right. Thirty years ago he would never have dared.

  “Unfortunately we can’t spare anyone to watch the cottage full time in case she returns but our man on the beat will keep an eye. Details of her car have already been circulated. It’s a red and white Quatre Chevaux. Far from unique but out of the ordinary enough perhaps to catch someone’s eye.”

  “Be well tucked away by now, sir, though, won’t it?” asked Sergeant Brierley. “Garaged somewhere.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Barnaby. “She may not realise we’re searching for her. It could be, of course, that her disappearance has nothing to do with my visit and we’re in a muck sweat over nothing.” He paused, looking round. The famous eyebrows lifted slightly evoking a response. It was plain from the expression on their faces that no one believed that. Barnaby didn’t blame them. He didn’t believe it himself.

  “Well,” he got up and stretched his legs. “Until eight o’clock tomorrow then. And that’s eight sharp.”

  “Yes, sir. I certainly will. I’ll be over there, on the spot, within the next half hour.”

  Trixie Perrot, keeping an eye on her youngest child who was just learning to feed himself, drying the hair of the oldest and trying to keep the dog from mangling her husband’s slippers, shouted across the room, “Tell him it’s your rest day.”

  “Sorry, Chief Inspector? No, no, that’s the television set. It’s a bit loud.”

  The Perrots had had a lovely afternoon. Trixie’s parents had brought around a bright blue plastic paddling pool. Colin had inflated it in the garden and filled it from the hose. Back from school the kids had laughed and screamed and splashed about while the grown ups sat in the shade and ate scones and freshly picked raspberries with Devon cream.

  In half an hour, when the children were upstairs, there would be chicken salad, an ice cold lager and Keith Floyd who Colin and his wife loved to watch. More for the tears before bedtime factor than the recipes if truth were told, the sense that any minute the whole boiling might well go up in smoke.

  “Daddy . . .”

  “What was all that about?”

  “Daddy!”

  “Sarah Lawson’s disappeared. They want me to keep an eye on the house.”

  “But you’re off duty.”

  “It’s my beat. There’s no one else.”

  That this was true in no way mitigated Trixie’s distress. “What are you supposed to do then? Sit on her doorstep in case she turns up?”

  “I suppose. Well, on and off.”

  “That’s ridiculous. And surely you don’t have to go this minute?”

  “Dadee, look.”

  “Good grief, Jamie.” Colin pulled out his handkerchief. His son’s face was covered in ice cream, as was his hair. There was even a certain amount up his nose. “Have you eaten any of that?”

  “Eaten all,” cried Jamie proudly.

  “At least stay until they’re in bed.” Trixie tried to keep the irritation out of her voice but she hated seeing him like this, so anxious to please running round in circles the minute that sneering lot at Causton blew the whistle.

  “Can I go and watch TV now?”

  “No.” She ran her fingers through the hair of the child on her lap. “You’re still damp.” Then, to her husband. “They won’t think any more of you.”

  “You know how things are, Trix. The mistakes I’ve made. I’ve already been threatened with a transfer.”

  “Well, they shouldn’t expect you to do CID work. That needs special training. You’re a village bobby. And the best there is.”

  “Don’t get upset.”

  “I’d like to see them come down here and do your job.”

  Constable Perrot stayed to see his sons to bed then got his Honda out and rode over to Fawcett Green. He parked outside Bay Tree Cottage, walked up and down the lane a bit and visited the Goat and Whistle for a quick half. Then he sat in the warm evening sun in Sarah Lawson’s back garden. The time passed very slowly. Next time, he decided, he would bring something to read.

  While Perrot kept his lonely vigil, Barnaby was enjoying the pleasure of his wife’s company and a chilled glass of Santara Chardonnay. He was suffering rather than enjoying a series of more or less painful pinpricks in his knees.

  “Those trousers’ll be ruined.”

  “Leave him alone.
He’s all right.”

  Eighteen months ago the Barnabys’ daughter and her husband, having signed up for a three-month European tour, had left behind their newest acquisition, a Russian Blue kitten, Kilmowski.

  Barnaby pointed out sourly that he thought the period wherein your offspring begs for a pet, promises to wash, groom, feed and exercise it to the end of its days then promptly dumps the whole procedure on to you drew to a natural close around the fifteenth year.

  Joyce, enchanted by the adorable little creature, told her husband he was an old grump. Barnaby, just as deeply disenchanted, soon had his worst fears realised. Food nicked off his plate while he wasn’t looking, his newspaper torn up then wee’d on. He counted the days to his daughter’s return.

  But by the time Cully and Nico got back, the kitten had seduced him utterly and it was not only Joyce who was unhappy at the thought of giving it back.

  However, as things turned out, Cully was barely unpacked before she had to leave for Manchester Royal Exchange and Hedda Gabler. Nicholas had a surprise chance to go to Stratford where an actor had broken his contract and taken a movie offer. They decided to let their flat for the next six months. By the time they had stopped vagabonding and had once more settled in London, Kilmowski, though still richly endowed with beauty, elegance and playfully winning ways, was plainly no longer a kitten. He had, as Cully put it with sorrowful wit, transmogrified. She and Nico both agreed that it would be not only selfish but cruel to whisk him away to a window-boxed flat when he had all of Arbury Crescent to roam around in. So Kiki, as he had been called almost from the day of his arrival, stayed put.

  “What time are they coming?”

  “Not they. It’s Cully on her own.”

  “Oh, we’re not starting all that again, are we?”

  “Of course not. Nice’s got to be at Pinewood by half past seven in the morning so he’s having an early night. I told you.”

  “You always say that.”

  “It’s always true.”

  “I meant to tell you,” Barnaby changed the subject, “I played your Amadeus rehearsal tape yesterday—”

  “Oh Tom, that’s really nice.”

  “Gavin thought you were Cecilia Bertoli.”

  “Perhaps I’ve misjudged that boy.”

  “No you haven’t.”

  “No, I haven’t.” Joyce laughed.

  The doorbell rang. She left to answer it. Barnaby put the cat down and went to the kitchen where he retrieved his gazpacho from the fridge and began to crack some ice.

  Cully entered (no other word would do), crossed centre left and gave him a kiss. She wore a very short plain white linen dress and black espadrilles, the laces cross-gartered almost to her richly bronzed knees. No make-up, hair tumbling every which way. Beauty unadorned.

  “Hullo, Pa.”

  “Hullo, darling. You’ve decided to watch this film then?”

  “Almost. I think. I wanted to see you and Mum, anyway.”

  Barnaby, ridiculously pleased, said casually, “Nice to see you, too.”

  “Yum yum.” She dipped her finger into the gazpacho and sucked it. “What else is there?”

  “Crab and rice salad and gooseberry—Don’t do that.”

  “We’re all family.”

  “Licking your fingers then sticking them back in the food, that’s not how we’ve brought you up.”

  Cully giggled. “Shall I go and stand in the corner?”

  “You can help your mother with the plates. And help yourself to some wine.”

  “You sure I’m old enough?”

  Barnaby got out three white soup bowls with a blue fish on the bottom. Souvenirs from Galicia. He set them in slightly larger bowls packed with crushed ice and poured in the soup. Put French bread on the tray and a dish of pale, unsalted butter from Brittany.

  “Shall I open another bottle?” said Joyce through the serving hatch.

  “I shouldn’t.” He had noticed Cully’s car keys, swinging from her little finger.

  The food was set out on a low coffee table in front of the television. The tape of The Blue Angel, set to Rewind, whizzed, hissed and finally clicked off. Joyce picked up the remote control and looked at her daughter.

  “Do I press Play?”

  “Sure. Why not?” Cully pushed an imaginary trilby to the back of her head with the edge of her thumb. “Let’s hear it for Marlene and the professor.”

  Barnaby, as far as he could remember, had never seen the film. This made the score two out of three. Joyce had caught it at the Hampstead Everyman “years and years ago.”

  Supposedly a new print, it was still pretty grainy. But nothing could mar that astonishingly flawless face. A face whose mysterious perfection no words could even begin to describe. Beautiful was hopelessly inadequate. And where could you go from there?

  Cully sighed deeply. She said, “I will never, ever again believe that cheekbones are merely deposits of calcium.”

  Watching the character played by Emil Jannings, twisting and turning in the fatal net, Barnaby thought how useless a weapon intelligence was against the inscrutable devouring onslaught of sexual passion. Here was a man fighting for his honour, his marriage, his very life even with no weapons but his mind. When physical obsession took over, it seemed that common sense and even sometimes sanity itself fled.

  Barnaby put the film on Pause and went to dish up the crab and rice salad. When he came back, his wife and daughter were discussing Dietrich, then and now.

  Cully was saying, “It’s impossible for us to react to the film, and especially to her, as people did in the thirties.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Because then she was simply a stunning looking woman at the start of her career. Now she’s an icon. And whatever else icons might be, they are not sexy. Isn’t that right, Dad?”

  “Hang on a sec.” He forked up some of the rice and tasted it. “Not enough nutmeg.”

  “Don’t put your fork back into that when it’s been in your mouth,” cried Joyce.

  Cully started giggling again but stopped when her father refused to refill her glass. There was a fairly brisk argument which ended with the youngest Barnaby deciding she had had enough of the film, the dinner and her parents, thanks very much and vanishing abruptly into the night.

  Chapter Ten

  The next morning Barnaby awoke with a vaguely depressed feeling that he could not shake off. It stuck with him all through his fruit-filled, fibre-rich, niacin-laced breakfast, any benefits from which were surely cancelled out by the long, self-fumigating crawl along the A412. He decided it would probably be quicker to jump out and swim to work in the Grand Union which was running along beside him.

  It was partially the previous evening’s disagreement, of course. He did not regret refusing Cully another drink. Or sticking to his guns when she started playing up. But he hated it when they had even a minor tiff. However his daughter, though a champion flouncer, was, thank God, not a sulker. She had rung up before he’d gone to bed to say he was right, she was wrong, she loved him and not to forget her mother’s birthday.

  Thinking of his wife reminded Barnaby that he had reluctantly promised to listen to a tape she had pressed upon him the other day. Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss. He’d argued that he only liked the popular classics. Joyce had said this was a popular classic and it was high time he broadened his mind. Knowing the only occasion he would sit and listen to something all the way through was in his car, she had slipped the cassette in the appropriate slot and taped over the opening a blank postcard on which she had drawn a large ear.

  Barnaby’s love of what he thought of as “musical music” went back a long way. As a little boy he would listen for hours with his father to heavy shellac records on a wind-up gramophone enclosed in a fumed oak cabinet. When the voices started to go all yawny and flat he would rush to turn the handle and speed them up so they would sing normally again. Sometimes, when the tips of the needles got all rough and scratchy, he was allowed to pu
t a new one in.

  A lot of the songs were performed by the Carl Rosa Opera Company. Gems from The Merry Widow, The Fledermaus, The Gipsy Baron. All great stuff. Wonderful tunes the heart could waltz to. Barnaby sighed and dutifully pressed the Play button.

  Joycey’s pupils seemed to want to perform the most extraordinary things. Occasionally Barnaby was at home when his wife was giving a lesson and, during any brief moments he was compelled to leave his study, could hardly believe his ears. It seemed incredible to him that people would actually pay good money to be taught how to squawk off key. No wonder the cat disappeared under the sofa.

  The glorious voice of Kiri te Kanawa poured out of the car. The man in the vehicle creeping along parallel to his own stared. Barnaby turned the sound down and closed his window. Ever since the advent of that opera-loving cop on the telly, he had had moments of feeling self-conscious, as if caught out in some affectation when idling musically in a queue or at the traffic lights.

  He was aware that this was nonsense. After all, no one knew he also was a Detective Chief Inspector in the CID. And even if they did, tant pis. If life could not occasionally imitate art, what was the world coming to?

  Arriving at the station, he pulled into his private parking space and switched off his tape. Nice enough, but not a patch on the Easter Hymn from Rusticana.

  The incident room was ominously quiet. All right, you could say it was barely eight o’clock. That the people manning it were just coming to the end of a long shift and that the great British public was too busy scraping the sleep out of its eyes to be on the blower feeding helpful information to its local nick. Even so, there was no escaping the sense that things were grinding slowly to a halt.

  The Chief Inspector poured himself some coffee from the hot plate. It had been stewing for some time and was quite bitter.

  The day dragged on. Barnaby, with little that was new to work on, recapped on the story so far. Read through all the Fawcett Green interviews, those at Penstemon and the Coalport and National and the one with Freddie Blakeley.