Echoes of Silence

by Marjorie Eccles

  What was it about this man that attracted such protective instincts in women? Richmond had only ever seen the Reverend Peter from a distance, never met him, never wished to, but clearly an early meeting between them was becoming inevitable. And when they did meet, he couldn’t yet be sure that he would be able to comport himself with dignity and restraint, old-fashioned words which didn’t fit the way he felt. But he knew their paths had to cross, sooner or later.

  The outer office was calm and tidy again as he emerged from Mrs Marshall’s inner sanctum and Sophie gave him a sunny smile. ‘I’ve found it! I’d put it in the wrong file, that’s all.’

  ‘Good,’ he said absentmindedly, his mind already making the transition from what had just passed to the coming interview back at the station.

  ‘Filed it under C for conveyances instead of W for Williams.’

  ‘Logical, in its way.’

  ‘It’s not the sort of logic we use in this office,’ said Mrs Blackburn severely, over her specs, catching the remark. ‘It could have stayed there for ever.’

  If ever a man seemed conscience-free it was Eddie Nagle, occupying the hard plastic seat in the interview room as if it were the most comfortable chair in the world, and looking as though he was prepared to stay in it all night, just to be obliging.

  None of the questions he was asked fazed him for more than a moment. He had an answer for everything, though Richmond could have sworn the one regarding the presence of the dog hairs on Wyn Austwick’s carpet came as a distinct surprise, if not a shock. ‘You know how it is, Lady’s friendly with everyone. Must’ve brushed against her.’ He stretched his fleshy, Mick Jagger lips in what he must have imagined to be an ingratiating smile, which only made Richmond think what he might be capable of, with his fists like hams, square head as menacing as a battering ram, an undoubtedly mean disposition.

  ‘I thought you said your dog didn’t like Mrs Austwick?’

  ‘Well, it’s all relative, innit? I mean, she’s been trained up to be very polite, Lady has, she wouldn’t go for her nor nuffink. Tolerates all my friends, know what I mean?’

  ‘Oh, she was a friend, now, Mrs Austwick? Well, she would be, wouldn’t she, all the places you’ve been seen together. The word is you were a lot more than that, Nagle, never mind you said you hardly knew her.’

  ‘All right, I might’ve said that – you have to be discreet when you’re a married man an’ all.’ He smiled again, revealing magnificent, predatory teeth, his eyes cold as a lizard’s. He was sweating all the same, Richmond noticed, greasy beads of it pearling the shiny, hairless scalp.

  ‘So you were having an affair with her?’ he said softly, wondering how any woman on earth could ever fancy a man like this.

  ‘Wouldn’t go so far as that. Bit of a fling, more like. A bit of ’ow’s-your-farver now and then, nobody knows, nobody hurt. But we hadn’t been seeing each other for weeks – and I wasn’t wiv her that Friday night. Friday the fir’eenf no way! Superstitious I am, once had a dog that ran …’ He caught Richmond’s eye and halted his reminiscences. ‘I was right, it was dead unlucky, that Friday. We had a darts match, see, the Moorcock against the Black Bull, down in Rumsden, and we lost. Credit where credit’s due, though, they was the best side,’ he added magnanimously. ‘Stands to reason, wiv your PC Stalley playing for ’em. Real ’ot-shot, Dick is.’

  He sat back, enjoying his triumph.

  Richmond watched him coldly, refusing to let him see he’d hit his mark. ‘What time did this match start?’

  ‘Seven. And we didn’t leave till going on for eleven. So I couldn’t hardly have been there, and killing Wyn Austwick at the same time, could I?’

  On the face of it, no. The pathologist’s estimate could not be so exact, but there were the noises heard by the Macallans to fix the time precisely enough. The taxi she’d ordered had also been traced. The driver had knocked on the door at seven fifteen as ordered and, receiving no answer, had finally gone away, not best pleased.

  ‘You’re up a gum tree with that one, mate,’ Nagle added with a smirk.

  Richmond was very much afraid he might be. There was no justification for keeping him, the only chance was to have a go at his car, his clothes. He didn’t have much hope. He could not imagine Nagle laying himself open to a murder charge by not having got rid of every single item of clothing he’d worn, or by not cleaning his car within an inch of its life. And there remained the question of his being short of a motive …

  But who needed motive when passions were aroused? I don’t know what came over me - the sorriest, most abject phrase in the world.

  A violent man, Nagle. A thug. His records had been turned up and showed he’d been in trouble more than once. When he was in the Marines he’d nearly killed a man in a fight, served his time for it in a military prison, been court-martialled. A sudden spurt of blind rage against her, yes, you could believe that – but wasn’t he a man to use his fists in that case: a punch in the stomach, a slap around the mouth, hands round the throat? An assertion of male superiority, aggression personally expressed – in the worst kind of way.

  But … Violent as the attack had been, the use of a blunt instrument – which hadn’t yet turned up – didn’t suggest that kind of killing, it suggested a certain distancing, a wish to avoid close contact. Or the fear of it …

  But supposing Nagle had been the accomplice Freya Denshaw had needed ten years ago, supposing she’d paid him to get rid of Beth’s body when she was afraid Peter had killed her? And supposing Austwick had found this out?

  Blackmail, of the sort Austwick employed, presupposed the availability of money. It seemed unlikely Nagle would have access to anything like enough of it to satisfy her. But there were other angles. And on his own admission they hadn’t been seeing so much of each other. Susan Hoddinott, at the Moorcock, had seen them having words the night before she was murdered. It could easily have been a simple quarrel, gone too far.

  But Richmond went back to the question he’d asked Austwick the first time he’d met her – why had she been so keen to have the case reopened? And he remembered the pure spite he’d seen on her face then. Maybe revenge had been the name of her game. And maybe she was hoping to get it by having Nagle’s part in Beth’s murder exposed. It wasn’t something he found any difficulty in believing.

  But it still didn’t explain how Nagle could have been playing in a public darts match at the same time as Wyn Austwick was presumed to have died.

  12

  It was going well, they were through the industrial estate without having met any other vehicle – no suppliers making nighttime deliveries, nobody going home from late shift. In two seconds flat, Little Jimmy had opened the Yale and the three of them were through the door of the plumbers’ and builders’ merchants, no bolts and security locks on, no alarms ringing, just as the lad had said. He’d worked here, sweeping the floors and making the tea, for six weeks and swore the job would be a piece of cake.

  Going too bloody well, Skinner muttered under his breath, but nobody took any notice of him, he was always a right bucket of cold water. But sweating like a pig he was now, you could smell him a mile off, a rank, farmyard smell. Over and above that other smell that hit them as they stepped inside: the layers of stale cigarette smoke that the old bloke serving behind the counter had churned out for years, chain smoking and fugging the place up like a kipper factory.

  ‘Christ, it’s disgusting! You’d of thought they’d all’ve popped their clogs with lung cancer years since!’ That from Little Jimmy, still high on his last fix, jumping as if he had a hot wire coiled up inside him.

  He was tall and thin as a lath, half a head above Skinner, and that said something because Skinner was big. Trev, at five-ten, felt like a midget between the two of them. He groped inside the sports bag, reassured at the bulk and weight of the sawn-off sitting in there. Then nearly staggered as Jimmy nudged him and jerked his head, grinning like a Cheshire cat, to where there was a small display of home safes incongru
ously on show in the midst of all the gold bathroom fittings and pastel-coloured suites. This tickled him in view of what they were about to do and he began to laugh like a drain, lifting the counter flap for the others to pass through, inclining his head like a butler. ‘After you, me lord.’

  ‘Shut it, will you?’ Skinner said, but Jimmy only laughed more. Give him his due, he was the best peterman in the business, even stoned out of his mind he’d have that safe in the office cracked before you could say lovely lolly, but he was a right berk. A bloody liability and no mistake. The sooner they were out of here the better.

  They stepped through the opening behind the counter into the stock room and then into the glassed-in office where the safe was.

  Security was a laugh here. Jimmy twiddled about with the knobs and in about two seconds flat the door flew open. Even Skinner laughed as he scooped the contents – the day’s takings and whatever else there was – into the Head bag. After that they were off, ducking under the counter again and towards the door. As they reached it, all hell was let loose. Pressure pads under the floor, the lad hadn’t told them that. Burglar alarms coming at them from all sides.

  ‘Move it!’ Little Jimmy yelled, knocking against a display of heavy chrome fittings, sending them clattering into a porcelain washbasin with a thundering crash, tripping over a stack of facing bricks and knocking over a double-glazed patio window, which gave a crack like a pistol shot. Outside, into the Cortina. In less than two minutes they were on the main road.

  ‘Where you bloody going?’ yelled Skinner as Trev, breathing hard, but unfazed, slowed the car to a more sedate pace and turned into the parking lot of the pharmaceutical company offices.

  ‘Keep your mouth shut and just look as if we know what we’re doing!’

  Trev parked the car neatly in one of the dozens of vacant parking slots. Two police vehicles, sirens going, screamed past on the road, and Trev, the adrenalin still pumping, killed the engine of the Cortina. ‘You friggin’ mad, or what?’ Skinner shouted.

  ‘Have faith, have faith, I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Could’ve fooled me!’

  Faith was what Trev himself never had when anyone said nothing could go wrong, experience having taught him otherwise. The lad who’d told them there were no burglar alarms wasn’t too bright in Trev’s opinion and he’d sussed out the options himself, just in case. He’d found this place, plenty of parking after office hours and no barriers, no regular security patrols: they’d only be one out of all those cars coming and going all night. Who was to say their business wasn’t legit – until it was too late? By then they’d be long gone, car abandoned, loot in the sports bag. The all-night sports centre was just round the corner. Look cool, walk in, have a work-out maybe, a shower and a double hamburger and chips, with a chocolate fudge sundae after – God, he was ravenous! He began to have that feel good factor, not seeing any flaws in his reasoning. ‘What’s up with Jimmy?’ he said into the back seat.

  ‘Well out of it,’ Skinner replied disgustedly. He began to shake Jimmy, but already another car was turning in, followed by another, blue lights flashing. They hemmed in the Cortina and Trevor bitterly watched the story of his life unfold yet again as several lads in blue poured out.

  While Trev was sitting morosely in a police station interview room not a hundred miles away from Steynton, cursing the stupidity that had made him overlook the fact that security would consist of someone monitoring the premises on a television screen somewhere in the building, with direct communication to the police, and facing the prospect of yet another stretch inside, the Denshaw family were sitting on Freya’s tapestry-seated chairs, the embroidery glowing in the dingy splendour of the little-used dining-room at Low Rigg. Half-warmed by an unsuccessful fire, lit for the occasion, that kept belching out smoke, they were assembled there for a dinner called by Philip and cooked by Polly, since whatever desire Dot had ever had to cook had deserted her. She was sitting hunched over the fire, in the kitchen, as if she hadn’t a home of her own to go to, drinking endless cups of tea, while the family ate in the dining-room.

  Everyone was there – everyone except Elf, who’d made out she was too busy. Ginny and Leon, Peter and Sonia, Polly – and Philip himself. It was a subdued gathering and, apart from the wine, which Leon had brought, it was an undistinguished meal, based on pasta with bottled sauce from the supermarket. Polly could cook when she put her mind to it, and the salad was pretty good, but she, like Dot, couldn’t summon up the will to concentrate on food in the unsettled interval between her mother’s death and her funeral. Polly and Sonia cleared the plates from the main course and then Sonia surprised everyone by producing a chocolate cake she’d bought at the WI stall in the market. ‘I didn’t imagine you’d want to be bothered with making a pudding, Polly, and Peter does so love them.’

  ‘Bless you, you’re an angel!’ Sonia blushed.

  ‘Who else but Sonia would have thought of puddings at a time like this?’ Peter remarked ungratefully, but he didn’t refuse when a large slice was put in front of him.

  ‘Nobody,’ replied Leon, ‘and I for one will do it justice.’ He smiled at Sonia, whose eyes filled with tears at the unexpected kindnesses coming her way.

  By the time Ginny had made coffee, and Polly was wondering what the point of this gathering was, Philip was ready to enlighten them. ‘I dare say what I have to say will come as a shock to you,’ he began portentously. ‘How many years is it since I came to live here?’

  ‘You should know.’ Peter wasn’t used to wine with his meals, and he’d had three glasses of Leon’s excellent claret.

  ‘Let’s see,’ Ginny calculated, ‘it’s what – twenty-eight years? – since Father died. So it must be – ’

  ‘Twenty-five years – twelve months after your Aunt Joan died, to be exact.’

  During that year, he’d lived alone, a middle-aged widower, in the cold and sterile house on the other side of Steynton – detached, four bedrooms, two bathrooms and two garages, fitted carpets and toning floral curtains throughout – which his wife Joan had considered appropriate to one who’d been born a Brackenroyd. It had evidently been a year too long.

  ‘I’m sorry if this is going to be a shock,’ he repeated. ‘It was never my wish that it should be kept secret, but Freya insisted.’

  ‘That what should be kept secret?’ Peter was acting like an ill-mannered adolescent, but at least the wine had shaken him out of the morose silences he usually fell into at any family gathering.

  Philip went on as if he hadn’t heard. ‘I dare say you’ll all be as shocked as Freya was to learn that when your father died, he’d left her virtually without a penny, nothing except the house - his share of the family inheritance, as you know.’

  He had certainly succeeded in gaining their attention. Shock in various forms did indeed register on every face at the table, but no one spoke and he went on in his pedantic way. ‘It would have been unthinkable to allow Low Rigg to go out of the family – even supposing a buyer with a fortune to spend on doing it up could have been found. She managed for some time but it wasn’t easy. Eventually, we came to a somewhat unusual agreement, your mother and I: if she turned the deeds over to me, and allowed me to move in, I would make her a monthly allowance, adequate for her to live on. Knowing Freya and her extravagance, I knew better than to buy it outright. It will, of course, come to you children when I’m gone.’

  For a wild moment, Polly wondered if he and Freya had been lovers – that photo of the dashing young flight lieutenant! – and that other one, the solemn, rather humourless face of her father, an enigma to the end, seemingly. But no, that couldn’t be, she thought, while Peter, breaking through the shock, voiced harshly what they were all, in their various ways, thinking. ‘May I ask what was in it for you?’

  Sonia gave a little gasp of shocked reproach but Peter ignored her.

  ‘Me?’ Philip smiled gently and let his gaze linger lovingly on each of their faces in turn. ‘Why, I found myself someth
ing I thought I’d never be fortunate enough to have. I gained a family, didn’t I? All of you,’ he added with a tinge of sadness for the one who had elected not to be there.

  There was a small silence. Another eddy of smoke billowed out into the room and Sonia coughed. Then impulsively, Polly reached out her hand and put it over her uncle’s. She was surprised to find how cold his was, that it was trembling slightly. You forgot, sometimes, that he was an old man. To her, he’d always seemed ageless. It wasn’t so much, she thought, that he’d stayed young-looking, as that his years had caught up with the way he’d always looked to her: elderly, rather shapeless, slightly balding. Somewhere between the handsome young RAF officer he’d once been and her first recollections of him, what hair he possessed must already have turned from fair to white.

  She’d always thought of him as simply a pleasant, slightly ineffectual man who needed little except his music to keep him happy, and though she’d suspected he would have loved to have had children of his own, she hadn’t realised how much. It was salutary to think how lonely he must have been, and to realise that his reserved nature had masked a practical ability to deal with both his problem and Freya’s in a sensible and useful way, that for once in his life he hadn’t opted out.

  But Peter, at least, wasn’t seeing it that way, hearing only what he wanted to hear. ‘My mother did that? Gave away our inheritance?’

  ‘Your mother,’ Leon intervened coldly, looking suddenly very fed up with Peter, ‘your mother did much worse than that.’ And he proceeded, in a few crisp words, to inform Peter what had passed between his sisters and Freya on the night she died.

  Peter listened with mounting anger, which quite suddenly, inexplicably, drained away, leaving him looking defeated but not, Polly noticed, either surprised or shocked. He lowered his head and stared at the tablecloth, then raised it and turned his eyes from Ginny to Polly, and back again. ‘Why didn’t either of you see fit to tell me this?’ he asked at last, in what sounded very like despair. ‘After all, it concerns me more than either of you.’