‘Can you guarantee that?’ Elizabeth Driver asked.
‘Any crime reporter worth his or her own salt surely knows that there’s no such thing as a guarantee in a criminal investigation,’ Marlowe said, in a tone which he hoped would be withering enough to finally shut the woman up.
‘I’m sorry,’ Elizabeth Driver said, looking deeply perplexed for the benefit of the camera. ‘I thought that I’d just heard you say quite clearly that the murderer will be caught.’
‘Well, of course, I sincerely believe that he will be,’ Marlowe said, feeling as if he were drowning.
‘So are you willing to stake your own reputation on the murderer being arrested?’ Elizabeth Driver asked.
‘Yes, I will stake my reputation on it,’ Marlowe promised.
After all, he thought, what else could he have said?
Bradley Pine’s office in Hawtrey-Pine Holdings had been so neat and efficient that it could have come straight from the Ideal Office Exhibition.
Woodend and Beresford had found no personal photographs there. Nor had there been any magazines – except those relating to the mattress trade. And the two policemen had failed entirely to discover any little notes that Pine might have written to himself about social engagements.
In short, there had been absolutely nothing of the man’s personality about the room at all.
His home was providing no clues, either.
It was a modest detached residence in a street of modest detached residences. Pine could easily have afforded a much larger house, but since he seemed to make so little use of the space he already had, why would he have bothered?
The chief inspector and the constable tramped from room to room, looking for insights into the man who had inspired so much hatred that his murderer had not been content to merely end his life, but had violated his corpse as well.
The kitchen had all the pots, pans and electrical equipment necessary to produce a banquet, but the fridge contained no more than a pint of milk and a couple of bottles of white wine.
The living room had perfectly co-ordinated soft furnishings, but they gave off the distinct impression of having been chosen by an interior designer, rather than by the man who would have to live with them.
The bedroom was almost spartan in aspect, and the bedding had been tucked under the mattress with neat hospital corners.
As the two men returned to the hallway at the end of their search, they were both feeling vaguely let down.
Woodend picked up the mail which had been lying on the door mat when they arrived. There was an electricity bill, a couple of circulars, and an invitation to address a Rotary Club lunch, none of which told him anything about the late Bradley Pine.
But that did not necessarily mean that Pine never received personal letters, the chief inspector thought.
‘When we get back to headquarters, remind me to get somebody to contact the Post Office,’ he said.
‘The Post Office?’ Beresford repeated.
‘Aye, I want any mail that Pine receives in the future to end up on my desk,’ Woodend explained. He glanced up and down the neutral hallway again. ‘So what do you make of all this, Constable?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Beresford admitted. ‘Mr Pine was either a very secretive man, or a very lonely one.’
‘Or both,’ Woodend said.
Perhaps it all sprung out of being an orphan. Perhaps the main lesson that you learned there was never to get attached to other people – or even to personal possessions – because you knew that they could be taken away from you at any moment. Perhaps you came to believe that the only way to survive the experience was to avoid anything at all which could make you vulnerable.
But then what do I know? the chief inspector asked himself.
How could a man who had been brought up in the bosom of a close, loving family even begin to conceive of what it was like to grow up in an institution, as Bradley Pine had?
‘Sooner or later, I’m goin’ to have to visit this orphanage,’ he told Beresford, ‘but today I think we’ll just settle for a visit to the Widow Hawtrey.’
When Monika Paniatowski had left the Drum and Monkey, she’d gone straight back to her flat.
Once inside the place which she sometimes saw as her refuge – and sometimes as her isolation cell – she made sure the door was locked securely behind her, and drew all the curtains. Then – and without even bothering to undress – she threw herself on to the bed.
She had been planning to go to sleep – partly because she was feeling exhausted, and partly because she hoped that sleep would offer her at least a temporary escape for all that haunted her. But the deep, forgetful oblivion that she craved for eluded her, and instead she found herself wrapped up in a disturbing and troublesome dream.
Fate had come calling on her.
He was tall and thin, and dressed in a monk’s habit. He stood at the top of a long staircase which was surrounded by a swirling mist. And she stood at the bottom, looking up at him.
Fate crooked his finger, to indicate she should join him, and though she didn’t want to, she knew that she had no choice in the matter.
She put her foot on the first step, and she was a small child again, fatherless, and travelling across war-torn Europe with her mother.
She advanced to the second step, which she found herself sharing with the stepfather who had abused her and the priest who had refused to listen to her cries for help.
Bob Rutter and his blind wife were waiting for her on the third step – and though she knew she should pass straight by them, she found herself stopping to give Bob a passionate kiss.
She pulled away, and advanced to the fourth step, but somehow Bob and Maria had got there before her. Maria was lying down, the wound in her head gushing bright red blood. Bob looked first at his dead wife with compassion, then at his ex-lover with contempt.
Monika rushed on to the next step, where poor DCI Baxter was waiting for her. But she didn’t want him. She needed him – but she didn’t want him.
‘Look at me,’ Fate boomed out from above her.
She raised her eyes reluctantly. She was close enough to see his face now – but there was no face to see, only a deep, black nothingness where a head should have been.
‘I have been playing games with you,’ Fate told her. ‘You exist to be the butt of my sick jokes. You have no other purpose.’
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve always known that.’
‘Another step, Monika!’ Fate ordered. ‘Take another step!’
‘I don’t want to!’
‘Take another step!’
She lifted her leg to mount the next stair, but it wasn’t there. The whole staircase had suddenly disappeared, and she was falling … falling … falling …
When she awoke, she was bathed in sweat and her whole body was trembling. With shaky hands she reached for the packet of cigarettes on her bedside table and lit one up.
She thought about her dream. It was comforting – in a way – to believe that everything was predetermined, and that, however miserable you were, there was nothing you could do about it.
It was comforting – but was it true?
There was a part of her which still believed that we make our own choices – and that most of the choices she had made had been disastrously wrong.
Worse yet, she had a growing conviction that she had known they were wrong when she’d made them, and had chosen them precisely because they were wrong.
It was almost as if she wished to punish herself – as if something inside her had decided she was unworthy of happiness.
She felt a gaping void in her life – and wondered if she would ever be able to find anything to fill it.
Fourteen
The brass plaque screwed into the gatepost had two fir trees etched on it, and the words ‘The Firs’ were engraved underneath. There was no number – though the house had obviously originally been designated one – but then neither was there a number on the
gateposts of any of the other houses that looked out on to Lawrence Street, Bankside.
Numbers, the owners of these houses seemed to be saying by this sin of omission, were intended for much meaner dwellings than these – terraces clinging desperately to steep hillsides; semi-detacheds which were owned by bank clerks, junior school teachers and others of that ilk. In Bankside, where every house was double-fronted and detached, it would have been the height of vulgarity to give a home a number.
Woodend and Beresford walked up the drive, and when Woodend rang the bell, they heard an elaborate chime reverberate down the hallway on the other side of the front door.
The door was opened by a woman who was in her mid thirties. Had she lived in one of those houses which had numbers, she would probably have been wearing an apron at that time of day, but the owner of The Firs – and, from her manner, that was obviously what she was – was dressed in a smart suit.
‘Can I help you?’ she asked, in an accent which wasn’t quite posh, but could have been with just a little more work.
She was a good looking woman as she was now, Woodend thought, his glance taking in her green eyes, pert nose and generous mouth. But when she was in her late teens and early twenties she must have been a real stunner – the sort of woman who turns every head in the street and causes drivers to crash into lamp posts.
He held out his warrant card for her to see.
‘Mrs Hawtrey?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘We’d like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.’
‘Is this about poor Bradley Pine?’
‘That’s right.’
The woman nodded. ‘Of course, it would be, wouldn’t it? I suppose that after what happened to him, I should have been expecting a call from you, but somehow the idea never did occur to me. Still, I’d be glad to help in any way I can. Won’t you come inside?’
The lounge of The Firs was as large as the ground floor and back yard of a terraced house combined. The furnishings were opulent, the fabrics lush, and Beresford – who had had fewer opportunities than Woodend to see how the affluent lived – was most impressed.
Mrs Hawtrey directed the two policemen to a leather sofa, offered them a drink – which Woodend politely refused for both of them – and then sat down in an armchair opposite.
‘Having offered you my help, I’m not sure there’s much I can tell you that would be of any use to your investigation,’ she said. ‘In all honesty, I’d have to say that Bradley Pine was no more to me than a business partner.’ She paused. ‘Actually, it’s not strictly accurate to say that he was even that.’
‘No?’ Woodend said, quizzically.
‘No,’ Mrs Hawtrey replied. ‘I’m entitled to slightly more than half the profits of Hawtrey-Pine Holdings – and my very sharp accountant makes damn sure that I get them – but, other than that, I have virtually nothing to do with the business at all.’
‘Virtually nothing?’ Woodend repeated. ‘That’s not quite the same as saying absolutely nothing, is it?’
‘No, I suppose it isn’t. But any contact I do have with the company is largely of a ceremonial nature.’ Mrs Hawtrey laughed lightly. ‘I’m a bit like the Queen, in that way.’
‘A bit like the Queen? You mean that it’s your job to declare things open?’ Woodend guessed.
‘Exactly, Chief Inspector! The company had a new workshop built last year – it needed it to meet increased demand for our mattresses – and I was asked to cut the ribbon at the grand opening. Which I dutifully did. Naturally, Bradley Pine, as the managing director, was there too.’
‘But other than on occasions like that, you didn’t see him at all?’
‘No, I can’t say that I did.’
‘Not even socially?’
‘I suppose it depends what you mean by socially. We have a number of friends and acquaintances in common, so we did sometimes run into each other at parties and weddings – and when that happened, we’d obviously exchange a few words.’
‘What kind of words?’
‘Superficial chit-chat, I suppose you’d call it. “How are you doing, Thelma?”; “I’m fine, Bradley. How are you? And, more to the point, where’s my profits cheque, ha, ha, ha?” You know – the sort of things that people say to each other when they haven’t really got much in common.’
‘So, all in all, you wouldn’t say that you regarded him as a friend?’ Woodend asked.
‘Not really, no. He was Alec’s friend – had been even before they went into business together – and after Alec died, well …’
She let her answer trail off.
‘So if Mr Pine had any enemies who’d be more than happy to see him dead, you wouldn’t know about them?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
Woodend leant forward slightly. ‘Can I be frank with you, Mrs Hawtrey?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’
‘It might be a little painful.’
‘Go on,’ Thelma Hawtrey said, though now there was a hint of caution in her voice.
‘I was wonderin’ if your husband’s death changed your attitude to Mr Pine in any way.’
‘What’s my attitude to Bradley got to do with his murder?’ Thelma Hawtrey asked sharply.
‘Probably nothin’ at all,’ Woodend lied. ‘But I’m tryin’ to build up a picture of Bradley Pine in my mind, you see, an’ it would help me to know how other people – all kinds of other people, includin’ yourself – felt about him.’
Thelma Hawtrey considered the matter for some moments.
‘If what you’re asking me is if I blamed Bradley for Alec’s death, then I suppose that, at first, I did,’ she admitted.
‘But not any more?’
Thelma Hawtrey shook her head. ‘No, not any more, Chief Inspector. I’ve come to accept that Alec was up on that mountainside because that was where he wanted to be. And – by all the accounts I’ve been given of that terrible, terrible day – Bradley did do everything he possibly could have, in the circumstances, to save Alec’s life.’
‘So you’ve no hard feelings towards him at all?’
‘Occasionally I do catch myself thinking that Bradley could have done more to try and persuade Alec not to go on the climb, but then I tell myself that I’m not being fair.’
‘Do you really?’ Woodend asked, sounding unconvinced.
Thelma Hawtrey gave him a look which would have turned a lesser man into a pile of smouldering cinders.
‘Yes, I do,’ she said emphatically. ‘Because if Bradley’s to blame, then I’m … I’m doubly to blame.’
‘You mustn’t let yourself get upset, Mrs Hawtrey,’ Beresford said, sympathetically.
But the warning had come too late, and tears were already beginning to stream down Thelma Hawtrey’s face.
‘I … I could have talked him out of making the climb just as easily as Bradley Pine could,’ she said, between sobs.
‘Mrs Hawtrey …’ Beresford said imploringly.
‘I could have talked him out of it more easily. I … I … wasn’t just his friend, as Bradley was, you see. I was his wife. And … and he was only doing it because of me.’
‘Because of you?’ Woodend asked.
‘Alec was … he was older than me, and sometimes that bothered him a little. He went climbing to prove to me that he was still as strong and vigorous as when we married. But he didn’t have to prove it. It didn’t bother me that he’d become middle-aged. I loved him just the way he was.’
‘Can we go now, sir?’ Beresford asked urgently.
‘Yes,’ Woodend replied. ‘I think we better had.’
‘Well, apart from reducing poor Mrs Hawtrey to a flood of tears, we didn’t achieve much in there, did we, sir?’ Beresford asked – with just a hint of reproach in his voice – when he and Woodend were out on Lawrence Road again.
‘So that’s what you think, is it?’ Woodend asked, inserting his key into the door lock of the Wolseley. ‘That we didn’t achieve much?’
&nb
sp; ‘Do you think we did?’ Beresford asked, shocked.
Woodend got into the car, and reached across to open the front passenger door.
‘Mrs Hawtrey was remarkably frank an’ open with us, wouldn’t you say?’ he asked, as Beresford climbed into the passenger seat.
‘Yes, sir, I would,’ the constable replied, closing his door. ‘It must have taken real guts to admit that there are times when she blames herself for her husband’s death.’
‘That could be it. Or perhaps, by doin’ that, she was just tryin’ to shift the spotlight,’ Woodend said.
‘I’m sorry, sir?’
‘Maybe she decided that her claim that she bore Bradley Pine no ill will for what had happened simply wouldn’t stand up to much more examination, so she started cryin’ as a way of switchin’ the focus on to herself.’
‘She did seem genuinely upset,’ Beresford pointed out.
‘So would I, if I thought the police were gettin’ dangerously close to suspectin’ me of murder,’ Woodend countered.
‘I think you’re wrong, sir,’ Beresford said.
‘An’ I’m convinced I’m right,’ Woodend said firmly, turning the key in the ignition. ‘I’m about to pull off, lad, an’ when I do, I want you to turn your head quickly and take a look at Mrs Hawtrey’s upstairs windows.’
‘Why would I do that?’ Beresford wondered.
‘Because I’m tellin’ you to.’
Woodend slid the Wolseley into gear, and pulled away from the kerb. Beresford turned quickly, as he’d been instructed.
‘Well?’ Woodend said, as they left The Firs behind them.
‘I saw the bedroom curtains twitch,’ Beresford admitted.
‘Did you, now?’ Woodend asked. ‘So, far from lyin’ on her bed wracked in sobs – as you might have expected her to be – the Widow Hawtrey was, in fact, watchin’ to make sure that we were really leavin’.’
‘I don’t see that proves anything,’ Beresford said stubbornly.
Woodend sighed. ‘When you’ve been in this game as long as I have, lad, you develop an instinct for knowin’ when the person you’re questionin’ is either lyin’ or tryin’ to hide somethin’ from you. An’ Mrs Hawtrey – for all her tears – was doin’ both.’
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