‘It’s just what I’m not telling you,’ she said. ‘It was an area on the passenger’s side he treated. Neville can explain all this, because it’s Neville who’s been taking him out in the Escort. At first, it was with daddy wearing his special spectacles, and then, because they were such a success, it was with daddy in the passenger’s seat of the Escort, looking to see the effect of the small patch.’
I thought a lot before I took it on to the next point. Her father had been found in the driver’s seat of that car. Argue how she might, to me that proved no more nor less than the fact that he’d been driving it. But if he’d had some success with his vacuum-spraying process, and he’d gone out driving that night, surely he’d have worn the spectacles. Take it further, and you could even imagine that he’d had enough of being driven by Neville, and thought it time he gave the spectacles a genuine driver’s test. Surely that must be reasonable, even to the intense young woman who was at that moment poised for me to speak like a chess master waiting for me to commit my bishop.
‘And was he wearing his special glasses?’ I asked gently.
‘They were found lying on the roadway, broken. It seems like he was wearing them.’
‘Then surely you can see...’ I leaned forward, pointing the pipe stem at her. ‘Surely it’s obvious that he was driving, because he must have put them on with the intention of driving. As a passenger, he wouldn’t have needed them. You’ve thought this out. It must be quite clear it has to be an ordinary driving accident.’
‘Oh heavens,’ she said, ‘is this how they use logic in the police? If daddy was wearing his spectacles, then why should he have made a mistake about the traffic signal? It surely shows — if he really was driving — that he’d driven out just in order to test the effect of those specific traffic lights. How could he possibly have confused them, and been driving fast, into the bargain?’
I saw then that I wasn’t going to win, whichever way I turned. There seemed very little to be discovered about the accident that wasn’t already known, and anything new that turned up, Angie would simply reject. I felt let down, depressed. But I’d taken it too far simply to withdraw.
The truth was that she was on a nostalgia trip, back here at her old home. Perhaps life wasn’t too marvellous with Phil. She was using the manner of her father’s death as no more than an excuse for prolonging the stay. But only prolonging, surely, unless I was over-simplifying the difficulty, which I could well be doing if Phil’s attitude was anything to go by.
He’d been too morose for the problem to have been no more than an extended stay. He had trapped me, no getting round that, and come to consider it, so had she. Even before the background had been laid out she had made me her guest — as good as — to be released only when I produced a happy solution. Offhand, I couldn’t think of any correct etiquette for simply rejecting the invitation and driving away.
‘Ideas,’ I said morosely. ‘Thoughts and feelings and intuitions. That’s all we’ve got.’ It was a mistake, the ‘we’ instead of ‘you’. She was on it in a flash, her eyes glowing, but I hurried on before she could take me up on it. ‘There’s no way of extracting anything remotely resembling proof from what you say. No way of slipping a wedge in.’
‘But you’ll try, Harry?’
I shrugged, looking away. Damn it, she could easily have charmed some sort of promise from me. I glanced back. She was leaning forward, hands clasped around her knee, two spots of high colour on her cheeks and her lips moist. A lock of dark hair had strayed across one eye. She tossed her head. She had the damnedest way of tossing her head.
‘We could give it a try,’ I growled grudgingly, and thought she was about to throw herself on me with kisses of thanks, and...oh, what the hell!
I could understand now why Phil Rollason was so mad to get her back. I’d never have guessed he possessed the sensibility, the Phil I knew being customarily arrayed in black stained overalls with greasy hands and a sly, oily smile. There was money behind him — had to be, seeing he owned five or six garages — but its evidence never showed. They even lived in a poky flat over one of his repair shops. But he was sharp, and as thick-skinned as you’ll ever meet. Well...I ask you — he’d been the cause of my suspension, yet he’d still meet me with a friendly slap on the shoulder. ‘Heh there, Harry, what can I sell you?’ That sort of thing. Phil Rollason I would have liked to strangle, if I hadn’t had enough trouble already.
‘I’d better back-in the caravan,’ I said. ‘Tuck it in neat.’
There’d been too much silence, and I was beginning to get uneasy.
‘I’ll help you.’
Chapter Three
I’d had rudimentary advice on backing a caravan when I bought it. You steer the opposite way to the one you wish to go. As simple as that. They don’t tell you that you can’t see what the hell the back end’s doing until it’s too late. They don’t warn you about excitable young women jumping around in front of the bonnet and shouting ‘left hand down’ and ‘easy does it’, and generally confusing the issue.
In the end, I got the Rover stuck at one angle and the twelve-foot caravan at another, and couldn’t see any way in or out, so we unhooked it and ran up the little wheel at the front, and manhandled it into the back corner of the yard, with a little shove here and there from the gelding who thought it was great fun.
That gelding though! Come to think of it, she’d bought him since she’d arrived there, so there was every indication that she wasn’t even considering going back to the flat. So what the devil was I doing there?
We went inside for a relaxing cup of tea over which I told her all about backing techniques, but Angie was only amused.
It was time I got myself somewhere I could think straight. I looked at my watch and said I’d take a run into town. She was at once on her feet.
‘Alone,’ I told her, and she pouted. ‘A drink with the men,’ I explained, but plainly she was disappointed. Bored with herself, I decided, but you have to be firm.
I drove down into the town. It wasn’t quite in Wales, but close enough to the border to have a Welsh name — Llanmawr. I’d said I was going for a drink, but there was more to it than that, because the route naturally took me past the scene of the accident to Gledwyn Griffiths.
The rain had eased, or rather had settled into separate heavy drops, at least improving the visibility. The market would be over and most of the visitors retired to their far-flung farms. The road was quiet. I wondered how quiet it had been on the night he’d driven to his death. Perhaps there had been witnesses. If so, I’d heard nothing about them.
It was now dark, with the dead, solid blackness of the countryside under heavy cloud. Coming down from the hills beyond Viewlands I could see Llanmawr spread in front of me, an insignificant handful of tossed lights on a black velvet background. Also, from quite a distance, the traffic signal at the roadworks was visible. As I approached, I watched the light change from red to green half a dozen times, and no car lights ran through in either direction.
I drew the Rover into the lay-by we’d used earlier for turning, left the parking lights on in case, and got out to have a look, taking a torch with me. The warning signs started early. Roadworks. Traffic Signals Ahead. Road Narrows. A sign indicated that the narrowing was from the right. This meant that from my direction, the downhill one, the single lane was on the natural driving side, and thus should not have presented a problem. Nevertheless, red and white plastic cones stood sentry at two feet spacing for a full fifty yards, leading to the dangerous drop on the right.
The old road had been tricky. There was a long, sweeping curve, suddenly reversing direction, and a whole quarter of a mile was in the form of a switchback, with several rises and falls in that distance, one of them to negotiate a hump-back bridge spanning a stream. All this was going to be smoothed out by the new roadworks. Straight and level, they were, so that a new tarmac surface would appear on your right for fifty yards, then on your left; for a few seconds six feet above your
eye level, then six feet beneath your wheels. Where there was a drop the cones were reinforced by iron uprights driven into the road verge, with a chain linking them. They would not have withstood a car at any speed. Apparently they had not done so.
There was no obvious reason why a vehicle, even rushing a red light, should not have driven through safely, unless he’d met someone coming the other way. But there’d been no mention of another vehicle. I walked back to the Rover and drove into town, looking for somebody who might tell me more.
Llanmawr had never been more than a small market town, sitting there in medieval times with the same purpose and probably undisturbed when black Welshmen poured down the hills on marauding expeditions. Celts and Saxons would meet here to trade and barter. Battles would flow past the town. Even now, market days would sing with the lilt of the Welsh tongue, and auctioneers would use a gabble that was neither one language nor the other.
But more recently there had been a half-hearted attempt to introduce small industry. As I drove into the outskirts I saw a sprawl of buildings enclosing a half-acre of regimentally aligned tractors, and following that a corrugated iron structure with a gateway sign indicating that preserving and canning were carried out. A large, now dark, garage seemed to specialise in agricultural machinery repair. Ahead of me was the first of the streetlamps.
It was large enough to boast orange streetlights along its main road, a Woolworth’s and a Boots’, two cafés and four public houses, and a bingo hall. The central square was large, cobbled, with a clock tower at one end of it. The stock pens were still there, but now hosed down, canvas flapping around the tubular steel supports, and leaving vast empty expanses of pungent parking space. Hardly a soul moved in the streets. It was either too early for the night life to have awakened, or the town already slept.
I got out of the car. Somewhere a motorcycle burst into life, but the sound disappeared away from me. One of the cafés was blasting out rock, but the glitter of the sound was sad in the wet and bedraggled streets. The clock in the tower began its run-up to the hourly warning of our diminishing lives, and I stepped out, looking for the nearest pub.
At least there was warmth and a hum of voices, deep eyes resting on me for a moment before passing on, no smile, but equally no scowl, and the beer was probably brewed locally from water that began life halfway up a Welsh mountain.
I located Sergeant Timmis in the third pub I visited, the Mitre. He was at a corner table, in civvies now, chatting to four youths and a very old man. I caught his eye and he nodded, then bent his head to the conversation again, so I turned back to the bar.
‘Nice town you’ve got here,’ I said as my glass was pushed over.
The barman nodded. ‘It suits.’
‘A good brew. Local, is it?’
‘Just out of town. You’ll see it on the hillside, next door to the tweed mill. Some say they share the water. You can taste the tweed.’
I swallowed. Nodded. ‘Nice pattern.’
Then Timmis was at my shoulder, ordering for his table. ‘Care to join us?’
‘I don’t speak Welsh.’
‘We’re talking English.’
I grinned at him. ‘I wouldn’t have guessed. I’d rather hoped for a quiet word with you.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘So she’s been telling you the tale.’
‘I’ll go and sit over there. Just a few minutes of your time, if you can afford it.’
He stared at me, working it out, wondering what trouble I might bring to his town. ‘I’m off duty, so the time’s free. I’ll be with you.’
He managed it with circumspection, after a few minutes slipping over to my table, bringing with him his nearly-full pint glass.
‘She’s been talking to you about murder,’ he declared affably. ‘I can see it in your eyes.’
‘I think I’d better give you the background. Her husband owns a few garages in Birmingham...’
‘I know. Straight, is he?’
‘You guess. I haven’t been able to prove otherwise.’
‘So you’re in the police.’
‘Detective Sergeant. Sort of.’ I stared at him through my glass. ‘The name’s Harry Kyle.’
He smiled, daring me to avoid his eyes.
‘Trouble?’
‘I’m on suspension.’
‘Naughty.’
‘Bribery.’
‘True?’
I shook my head.
He eased himself in his chair. Timmis was a big man, topping me by a good four inches, and generally unsmiling. But now he smiled, like a slat lifting in a venetian blind. ‘So now you’re filling in time. On my patch, too.’
‘Helping out a friend.’
‘Rollason? A friend?’ One bushy eyebrow was raised. ‘Or did I understand you wrong?’
Sometimes I can’t hold back a laugh, which with me comes out like a dog barking. Heads turned. I leaned forward. ‘You’re too quick, Sergeant. Yes, it was Rollason who was involved, and no, I didn’t take a thing from him.’
‘But you’re helping him?’
‘Helping his wife, I’d rather say.’
‘Ah.’
There was a short silence. I probed into it.
‘You met him?’
‘He came here — like you. We talked about things — same as now.’
‘What did you make of him?’
‘Rollason? Is that what we’re talking about?’
‘For now.’
‘Then I’ll tell you I didn’t like your friend. Too smooth. We don’t take kindly to subtlety round here, Mr Kyle. I think he was trying to bribe me into running Angela out of town.’
Lot of chance he’d have. I smiled. ‘I just want to help her. Thought you’d point me in the right direction.’
He had a strong jaw and a wide, expressive mouth. He allowed it to indicate a slight satisfaction as his eyes scanned me. ‘I think maybe you’re already in the right direction.’
‘Not that I can see.’
‘Rollason wasn’t interested in helping anybody but himself.’
I nodded and said nothing. That described Phil.
‘I was supposed to give her a good old talking-to,’ he went on. ‘Fatherly, you know, heavy, because I was a friend of her father. But I’m not much good at that, Mr Kyle. Besides, it might not have been a good idea. Tell her not to be a silly girl and pack her off home! D’you think that would fit the case? You’re talking about helping her. Was that what you had in mind? Is that what you want from me, ammunition to use for shooting down her arguments? I’ve got plenty, if you need it.’
I’ve learned to use my pipe for all sorts of purposes other than smoking. You can watch your fingers filling it and have a good old think. I was thinking that this Sergeant Timmis was not a man it was safe to upset. He spoke quietly, and his angers would be quiet. He’d lean on you gently until you backed as far as you could go, and smile silently while he squashed you.
I looked up. He was waiting patiently, huge hands clasped round his glass. ‘Get you another?’ I tried.
‘Keep to the point.’
I skirted it gently. ‘I’ve known her for an hour or two. Not long enough to form an opinion. She seems to me to be a determined young woman who’s got herself an obsession. She thinks her father was murdered. She said she does. Now I’m not certain.’
‘Not certain it was murder?’
‘No. Not certain she’s told me her real obsession. I’m not even certain she recognises it herself. She’s been alone in that house for a long while now, letting the atmosphere soak into her bones. I once put away a classical pianist. Hit and run. He’d kept going because he’d been terrified he’d drawn blood. Anyway, he was inside for manslaughter for two years. No piano. No music except pop. I’d have done him a favour if I’d blown out his brains. I went to see him when he came out. His wife said he’d been shut away with his records for a solid week, soaking it up, in tears half the time, but letting it soak into his bones. He wouldn’t touch his piano, afraid h
e’d lost it all.’
‘And now?’
‘He conducts. He composes. But something died in that two years, Sergeant.’
He nodded. ‘Angie’s been soaking it in, you say?’
‘I don’t think it’s a good thing. I never met her at the time I was dealing with Rollason, so I don’t know how she might have changed. But she’ll go back to him when she’s convinced she knows exactly what happened to her father. I think she will. I don’t know. We don’t want another performer finishing up with no more than a baton, now do we!’
‘I know what happened to her father, Mr Kyle. I’ve told it to her in detail. Do you think you’ll find anything I missed?’
There’d been challenge in his voice. I sighed. ‘Tell me, if you will.’
He rubbed his face with his big, beefy hands, said ‘I’ll get ’em’, and was up and away to the bar before I could say a word. When he came back he’d made up his mind, judging by the force with which he banged down the glasses.
‘A Friday night,’ he said. ‘He’d come home earlier than expected, as he was due back on the Saturday. He’d been at a Convention in Blackpool the past week. Oculists, or whatever they call themselves. Lynne — his secretary — she’d driven there to pick him up in her Fiesta. She said he was quiet and depressed. He’d read a paper and it hadn’t been well received. Or so I found out. She drove him up to Viewlands and dropped him at the gate. They must’ve had words, judging by the fact that she didn’t go in with him, look after him, put his kettle on. She always fussed over him. So she left him there. The Escort would’ve been locked away in the garage. It was around ten-thirty at the time. Dark. Raining, like tonight. The visibility wasn’t bad, she told me, but that stretch with the traffic signal is always greasy with clay.’
‘She’d have driven this way, into town, to get home?’
Seeing Red Page 3