by Susan Moody
There was no one there. Not under the beds, nor in the closets. Not behind the sofas, nor squeezed into the tiny linen cupboard. There were none of the big ventilator shafts or heating ducts into which fugitives scramble when on the run in thriller movies. I even climbed up into the small roof-space and flashed a torch around. Inched around the water tank. No one was there, nor anywhere else. There was literally no hiding place. I checked that doors and windows were shut and locked.
Had the place been bugged? I’d bought a bug finder about three years ago, after suspecting that my computer had been hacked into. I got it out of my desk drawer now, and ran it swiftly over as much of the flat as I could, but found nothing. Eventually, I pretended to go about my normal bedtime routine, for the benefit of anyone keeping track of me – though I couldn’t imagine where they’d be hidden. I stripped down to my underwear and ran the shower, without stepping under the spray. I put on a black sweater and black jeans, stuffed a couple of cushions between the duvet and the bottom sheet in my bedroom, added a thick dark fleece rolled into a ball and tucked it among the pillows. It would fool an intruder for maybe forty seconds. Then I pulled an armchair across the room and set it behind the door. Took a spare duvet from the blanket-box at the end of my bed. Made myself comfortable, along with my truncheon and a torch, a lidless plastic bowl of table salt and a police whistle.
If there was some hiding place I had missed, and there was someone still in the flat, or about to break back into it, I would be more than ready to attack. In fact, I almost wished I’d left a door unlocked, to make it easier. Now, I waited. I had spent many days on stakeouts during my time in uniform. I knew how to wait. I recalled one of the oft-repeated mantras from my accelerated-course tutors: You will be expected to tackle danger head on while members of the public turn away. Right. I was ready to rock. Bring on the danger and let me tackle it.
I had no reason to believe that anyone would break in again, but now that I was back and in residence, lights on and car returned to its parking space, it was logical to assume that the intruder would try again. I don’t know why, but I felt certain he would be back again that evening. Whatever. Like Sam Willoughby, I was ready.
It must have been three hours later that I was woken from the lightest of dozes by stealthy sounds coming from the kitchen. The faintest of chinks. The brush of a jacket against the back of a chair. The crunch as the intruder trod in the sugar I had deliberately scattered on the floor.
I couldn’t understand how anyone could have got into the flat in the first place, let alone now, after I had checked doors and windows. Nor did I have the slightest idea what he/she/it was after. This couldn’t be a random break-in, especially since it was a repeat of something earlier in the day. And because of that, it seemed logical that I, not my possessions, was the target. Or something that I kept with me. This had to be connected in some way with either Helena or Amy Morrison – or both. Or did it? Maybe this intruder had nothing to do with them, was a legacy from my days on the force. Most villains are bloody stupid, with no brains and long memories. It could be someone I’d been instrumental in putting away, who’d only just got out and was now intent on punishing me for my temerity in building a case against him. Or even one of Jack’s cases. He’d busted a couple of local criminal gangs, one of which turned out to have international links. Perhaps this was payback time. It was a continuous threat, a hazard of being a police officer, one we all had to live with.
I waited. There was no sound at all, apart from the occasional shifting noises that all houses make, even the ones like mine, which have been heavily modernized, their function changed.
I listened for the creak of a floorboard, as the intruder mounted the stairs towards the upper floor. There was nothing. Hidden as I was behind the door, I couldn’t see a thing, though through the crack I could make out just the very faintest beam of light from a torch pen or something similar. It reached the landing, turned towards my bedroom. I gripped my salt and my truncheon. Salt is a most effective weapon, as indeed is pepper. A couple of handfuls thrown into the face of an attacker usually renders him temporarily helpless, especially if it lands in the eyes or the open mouth, with the added bonus that it doesn’t require a licence. There’s something extremely satisfying about watching some expletive-yelling yob receive a gobful of salt. Shuts them up pretty damn quick. Not that I should advertise the fact. Given the right (or wrong?) circumstances, it’s more than possible for salt to be classed as an offensive weapon.
I waited. Outside the open door, the tiny beam of light halted. Then moved with infinite deliberation towards the bed. Did I dare risk a small snore? Probably not. The intruder stepped carefully into the room. As soon as he was within striking distance, I was on him, blowing the police whistle, smashing the truncheon into the side of his head hard enough to make him stumble to one knee. I launched a handful of salt at his face and lifted the truncheon again, but he seized my wrist and bent it painfully back, so brutally that I was afraid it would snap. All the time I was blowing my whistle. He had turned his head away, so that most of the salt went over his shoulder. As he staggered to his feet, I lurched backwards, trying to release my arm from his grip. He aimed a kick at my thigh, so hard that it immediately went numb. Once more I threw salt at him, and this time got him. ‘Bitch!’ he choked. ‘Goddamn bitch.’ He let go of me and raised both hands to his face.
His torch had long since dropped to the floor and lay against the skirting board like a glow-worm, so I was pretty sure he couldn’t tell exactly where I was. I bent swiftly and picked it up, flashed it at him, saw only an indistinct figure, dressed in black leathers which creaked slightly as he moved. A balaclava. A black baseball cap.
The tiny torch-beam was lost in the shadows of the room and the impenetrability of his clothing. And then, as I raised my truncheon again, he turned and ran into the darkness of the hall and down the stairs towards my front door. I ran after him, grabbed him round the waist, brought him to the floor. He writhed in my grasp like a snake, this way and that, rammed a fist into my face, caught me painfully by my arms and pulled me as close as a lover, then twisted our entwined bodies this way and that until he was on top of me. I could dimly see his raised fist, ready to smash into my face again. I reached for his balls, always a good way to disable a man, if only temporarily. But the leather was slick and my fingers skidded across it, making it impossible to grab hold of him.
By now, the neighbours had been alerted by the sound of the whistle, and fists were pounding on the door, people were shouting.
‘Are you all right, Alex?’ someone called. I heard the front door open (how? I’d have to check that. Could I possibly have left it unlocked?) and someone else said, ‘Where’s the light switch?’ And then my would-be intruder-cum-burglar was on his feet, limber as a gymnast, grinding and shoving his way head down through the small crowd like a piston, running away down the passage, leaping down the two flights of communal stairs, and out through the entrance doors.
I recognized the first speaker as Miles Thomas, an architect with the County Council.
Another person followed him, the woman from across the passage, with mad hair the colour of a digestive biscuit. ‘What was all that whistle-blowing?’ she asked.
I got unsteadily to my feet and limped over to the window overlooking the parking area in front of the building. I saw someone racing out of the entrance doors and across the tarmac, throwing a leg over a powerful motorbike – a Harley-Davidson, as far as I could make out – revving up and roaring noisily down the short drive and off along the road beside the sea, the sound of the engine gradually dying away into the distance.
‘Are you all right, dear?’ Mrs Galloping Major from the floor below put an arm round my shoulders.
‘I think I hurt him more than he hurt me,’ I said shakily.
‘Here …’ It was the Galloping Major himself, in a magnificent crimson dressing gown. ‘Have a swig, m’dear.’ He held out a silver hip flask. ‘Learned years ago to
carry a reviving tincture about my person at all times. Never know when it’ll come in useful.’ I took a gulp. And another.
‘Very useful indeed.’ I handed the flask back. ‘Thank you.’
I surveyed them standing there, nice, decent people, and wished I had taken the trouble to get to know them better. ‘What I can’t understand is how he got in,’ I said. ‘I always lock up before I leave, and when I came back, I checked everything again, windows and doors.’
‘I just bet it’s the door from the kitchen onto the fire escape.’ That was Dave, our resident artist, a young American who’d moved in just after Jack moved out.
‘But I checked it.’
‘It’s got a faulty lock,’ Dave said. ‘The agent who sold you the place should have told you.’
A chorus arose. ‘Quite right.’ ‘Disgraceful.’ ‘Very careless.’ ‘Estate agents are scum, in my opinion.’ This last from a red-faced guy in striped pyjamas and a grey dressing gown with tartan facings. ‘Lower than tabloid journalists, and that’s saying something.’ In happier days, Jack and I had labelled him the Tabloid Journalist; I did a hasty mental revision.
‘I’ve lived here for several years,’ I said. ‘I’ve never noticed anything wrong.’
‘You obviously haven’t realized that the lock doesn’t catch properly,’ Miles said. ‘It’s a design fault. The bolt isn’t quite long enough to fit into its groove so it’s easy to push the door open from the outside, if you want to.’
More nodding from Mrs Digestive. ‘Most of us have had our locks replaced.’
‘Point is,’ said Dante, ‘you should get that fixed, pronto.’
‘And be sure to make the agency pay for it,’ said the Galloping Major.
‘I’m surprised your husband didn’t notice when he was still living here,’ said Mrs Digestive. ‘Supposed to be a policeman, wasn’t he?’
‘The police! Can’t trust them to see what’s right in front of their noses …’ was the general consensus. They began to regale each other with stories of police incompetence until Miles said he didn’t know about anyone else, but he needed to get back to bed.
‘Well, thank you all for your help,’ I said.
‘Will you be okay on your own?’ asked Dave.
‘Thank you, yes. I’ll go and block up that kitchen door before I go to bed.’
One by one they drifted away, back to their own flats.
The following day I sat staring at a beautiful reproduction of Carolus-Duran’s gorgeous portrait of his wife – The Lady With The Gloves – and wishing that I could paint. Though where would artists be without people like me to admire and envy their work? And, most importantly, buy it? But my mind wasn’t really on the picture. What had my intruder wanted last night? Wanted so badly that he had risked coming back a second time? Did he want to kill me? As an ex-copper, I don’t like questions to which I don’t know the answers.
From the kitchen came the sound of an electric drill as an estate agent-hired carpenter replaced the faulty lock on the outside door.
The phone rang. It was Mary Quick. ‘Hi, Ma,’ I said. ‘How’re things?’
‘Very good. I’m calling to tell you that your father and I are off to Paris tomorrow for a few days. Just to save you driving over and finding we aren’t here.’
‘Very thoughtful of you. And who’s feeding Stanley?’
‘Mrs Thing next door has promised to come and check on him.’
‘Good.’
‘So as I say, no need to come down. I’ll telephone when we get back.’
‘Any special reason for the trip?’
‘There are a couple of exhibitions that we want to see. And as so often, we want to have a wander round the Musée d’Orsay.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘One of the joys of being retired. You can take off at a moment’s notice. Are you well?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Good.’
‘Apart,’ I said, ‘from the fact that—’ But never one to waste time on niceties, she’d already hung up.
Leaving me to wonder just what was going on. I could safely say that my mother considered she had done her parental duty by raising and educating us. She did not then feel that our lives intersected after that. If she and my father wanted to go away – as they often did – they would do so, without reference to their children. So why was she so uncharacteristically informing me of their up-coming trip across the Channel? It sounded suspiciously as though she were warning me not to go to their house, even were I so minded. The thought had never crossed my mind – until she telephoned. Now I decided that as soon as I was back from France myself (only the previous day, I had booked a flight to Bergerac), I would drive on over to their place and see what was up. If anything.
FOURTEEN
It wasn’t hard to find the address I wanted, thanks to a swift visit to the gallery in New Bond Street which handled Ainslie Gordon’s work, coupled with my navy-blue skirt and jacket and the semi-official manner I was beginning to perfect.
After a short flight from Stansted Airport, I picked up my pre-booked hire car from the airport at Bergerac and, using the satnav provided, set off on the hour-long drive to La Tuilerie, Gordon’s place. In England, it was cold, wet and miserable, but although it was the middle of winter here in France, the sun shone, the sky was cloudlessly blue, and a balmy mildness hovered above the pantiled roofs of villages and farms. Through the open window I could smell warming earth and the promise of spring. All should have been right with the world – but wasn’t. The only personal comfort I had was that the police still had not discovered Helena’s whereabouts. Any more than I myself had. But thanks to her cryptic imok message, at least I felt fairly certain that she wasn’t shackled in some pervert’s soundproofed cellar.
On either side of the road the landscape of faded winter green rolled gently down wooded or pastured slopes to rise again to more hills. Glossy cows moved languidly through winter-depleted meadows of grass, and although I was there on a mission, I felt the same sense of letting go as I always did when I was in la France profonde, the silence gently pushing away the bombardment of noise which usually surrounded me: traffic, people, blaring horns, gunning engines, shouts and screams, music blasting from windows, shops, mobile phones, planes overhead. Not to mention raucous seagulls. Here there was nothing but birdsong, leaf-rustle, grass-whisper.
I drove along a main highway, then turned off onto a rutted chalk-strewn road which led between fallow vineyards and groves of bare-branched walnut trees, past stone farmhouses and restored barns. I had not forewarned Ainslie Gordon of my arrival. Fliss Fairlight had told me that Inspector Garside had contacted the French police, who had then arrived at Gordon’s place with sirens wailing and blue lights flashing. Plenty of notice for a fugitive such as Helena to hide herself, if she was there.
Reaching the hamlet, I drove very slowly past a low stone wall marking the boundary of a garden which would be charming when spring arrived. Stone steps led up and down to different levels of grass, flanked by lavender and rosemary and other small bushy shrubs whose name I didn’t know. Even in winter, they gave off a flowery scent. Along one side I could see a series of low buildings, most of them semi-derelict, lacking walls or floors. One was being used to house a battered old car and several bicycles; in another I could make out a shiny motorbike with a ruby-red thorax half-covered by a drab canvas wrapping. In front of a long L-shaped stone house, a wooden loggia sat beneath a leafless tree. In summer it would be covered in clematis and roses, but now it was occupied mainly – at first glance – by moss and spiders plus a marble carving of a voluptuous fertility goddess.
All the doors of the house stood open to the gentle heat of the day. Inside, I could see a huge table and on one end of it, a plaster reproduction of Jacob Epstein’s Deidre with a bowler hat perched on top of her flowing chalky hair.
Not wanting to attract the attention of the occupants, I continued on past the house and parked out of sight behind a churc
h around the corner. I pulled a summer hat over my hair and put on a pair of sunglasses in an attempt to partly disguise myself, in case anyone should be watching from a window as I returned to the opening in the stone wall and walked across stone flags towards the front door. Nearer the house, I could hear raised voices, both male, something like an enamel basin being hurled, clattering, to the ground before subsiding amid circles of metallic sound, a sudden tattoo of what might have been drumbeats, a voice shouting, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck and damnation!’ Then a man came bursting out of a side door at full tilt, before coming to a sudden halt when he caught sight of me.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked, then suddenly yelled the word ‘Strangers!’ over his shoulder. Somewhere in the back regions of the house, I heard the slam of a door. Then there was quiet.
‘I come in peace,’ I said. ‘I just want to know that she’s all right.’
He adopted a ridiculously over-the-top expression of bewilderment. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ he demanded. He spoke in short energetic bursts, the words exploding from his mouth as though shot from a cannon. He was wearing an artist’s smock of faded navy canvas, dirty beige combat trousers and espadrilles which might once have been yellow but now were just an indeterminate dirt colour. Looking at him dispassionately, I was absolutely certain I did not want to see his toenails. His head was liberally covered in Dylan Thomas-ish black curls turning grey, which flopped down and up again in time with the rapid gestures of his hands. Grubby but charismatic, I concluded. Definitely not a restful man.
‘Are you Ainslie Gordon?’ I said.
‘Who wants to know?’
‘I do. I am your number one fan.’ Sounding more like Kathy Bates in Misery than I wanted. I had learned over many years that there is nothing more mollifying than kind words and admiring comments. Besides, it’s difficult to maintain belligerence in the face of compliments.