Embarrassed, he attacked his steak vigorously. I chewed. I said: ‘You’re doing fine. Carry on.’
But he’d ventured into fields too wet and chilly for him. Shaking his head, he went on: ‘I met her in Aberdovey, you know. We were plodding over the dunes. I was there on a weekend break, testing out an Austin Healey I’d been tuning up. I walked her to where I’d parked it, and...phew, she couldn’t wait to climb in. For three days I met her — that’s all it took — and then she took me home. Strange...I’ve just thought...it’s never occurred to me that she must’ve driven sixty miles each way, and what for but to meet me? Harry, I...’ He stopped, his fork still, then he shook himself free of the thought. ‘She took me home. Her father seemed more amused with me than anything else. And somehow pleased. There’d been this Evan chap, you see. I never got to the bottom of that. Gledwyn seemed to blame himself for something. He was a great one for blaming himself — even...and you wouldn’t believe this...even for the fact that Angie didn’t get her degree, when it was obvious she didn’t come down from the University for him. She’d never have been able to stay away from her mother at that time. But he blamed himself. It amused him that I was a complete loon in their academic atmosphere. When we made up our minds, he said, “By heaven, a daughter of mine working a petrol pump — what have we come to?” Then a laugh, and some Latin tag or other.’
‘Mea culpa?’ I suggested.
‘You too!’ he said in disgust.
‘My motto. You were saying?’
‘I’ve forgotten now. I can see him now, though, walking into that big, long room of theirs, where Angie’s mother used to sit in her wheelchair, and him crying out, “What results I’m getting, my dear! My thesis is almost complete,” and in a kind of mocking whisper to me, “and what heights I might have reached, my boy. Ah...responsibilities!” And we’d all laugh, because Angie’s mother had been intended to hear, and I think we all knew the heights he was reaching. Am I making any sense at all?’
He knew he was. I could tell from his smile.
‘And he’d never accept that I felt easy with him,’ he went on. ‘He was suspicious of it, as though I was putting it on. He played a lot of chess. He’d challenge me, to see if I’d let him beat me. Did you know I play chess, Harry?’ It didn’t surprise me at all. ‘Not well,’ he said modestly, ‘but I tried as hard as I could. If he won — and he usually did — it was because he was the better player, and he realised that, I think. Appreciated it, that I’d done my best. Angie used to beat him time after time. It seemed easy for her. She said he liked her to beat him. He admired a better brain than his, she told me. But he liked to beat me, and I don’t remember any contempt for my brain. And I could always beat Angie. Can, even now. I think he didn’t really try, against Angie. It gave him a kind of satisfaction, allowing him to admire her.’
He was showing himself to be even more subtle than I’d imagined. Subtle and dangerous. I wondered why he was letting me see it, and tried not to let him realise I’d noticed.
‘But he’d be upset when you married her and took her away?’
‘I offered to try and sell up and move to the area, but she wouldn’t hear of it. Neither would he. And it turned out that you really had to be Welsh-speaking, even though they weren’t officially in Wales. And anyway, Gledwyn knew my operation was getting too big for the country. He almost insisted on us leaving. I wonder if I did right, taking her away. Do you think I did, Harry?’
‘I’m sure Gledwyn knew what he was doing. Every move.’
We were onto the coffee. Phil brightened, having unburdened himself. ‘Now...what did you want to see me about?’
‘You’ve said it all.’
‘Have I? Has it helped?’
I smiled at him. Good old crooked, double-dealing Phil, who’d probably cost me my job and had tried so hard to show me how clever he was. I smiled, wondering why the hell I should save his marriage when he’d destroyed mine. What was he up to? Keeping me out of circulation, was that it, when my presence in the Midlands might have done something to indicate my innocence?
‘Sold any good cars lately?’
‘You know how it is. You decide to slack off, but the business grows...’
‘Nice flat you’ve got, though.’
‘Did she tell you that?’ He seemed surprised. ‘She’s not really a flat person, is she?’ The play on words amused him. He emphasised the lack of good taste by slapping the table with his palm.
‘It’d help,’ I said, ‘if you’d come and stay at Viewlands for a while.’
‘Hell, I couldn’t leave things.’
‘Try.’
‘They’re pushing me, you know.’
‘They?’
‘Your lot. The police. Harry, I told them you’re a friend. Damn it all, would I trust my wife to anybody but a friend? The little Renault...Harry, you know that was just a sales trick, pushing it. You’d have brought it back. I told them that.’
‘That’s very good of you, Phil.’
‘Any time.’
‘But all the same, I could well need you at the house. We might have to carry her away, kicking and screaming.’
That wiped the smile from his face. ‘It’s as bad as that?’
‘I’m beginning to see something — a pattern. If I’m right, screaming could come into it.’
‘Bloody hell,’ he said.
Chapter Ten
It was later than I’d intended when I pointed the Rover’s bonnet towards Viewlands. From what Phil had told me, a clearer picture of Gledwyn Griffiths was emerging, but there was still a lot of detail missing. I didn’t know whether I dared to leave it unprobed.
By the time I was within two miles of Llanmawr I’d made up my mind. Late as it was, a diversion was clearly necessary. I spotted a phone box and tried to call Angie. There was no reply, but there was no reason she’d be sitting by the phone waiting for me to call.
I skirted the town, hunting for the Whitchurch road, and went to visit Lynne, on her own ground.
The address itself was intriguing, Wilmington Court, and the location a village four miles out of Llanmawr. When I found the place, it was as though somebody — probably a councillor called Wilmington — had had a spare six-storey council block doing nothing, and they’d hunted round for somewhere to drop it. Incongruously, they had chosen this village, and where they got enough council tenants to fill it I don’t know. They had recognised an environment problem and hidden the first storey in a belt of trees, but there it stood in the dark countryside, looming away with its banks of lights, a tiny portion of a large town miraculously in the country.
In town, the walls would have been covered with graffiti and the lifts out of order. They had their graffiti, but there were no lifts. Six storeys, and no lifts, and Lynne way up the top. Perhaps one to five were reserved for the elderly.
I had parked in front of the row of twelve lock-up garages, hidden away at the side. I’d walked cautiously into the darkened courtyard, and paused, getting my bearings. This bare expanse of tarmac was intended as a playground. A see-saw and a set of swings with no ropes loomed ahead. I stepped carefully around a pit of sand, from which a dog ran suspiciously. It was very quiet. About half of the windows of the flats that overlooked me were showing lights, but all, as they faced inwards, were curtained.
It was built in the form of a U, each floor delineated by a continuous balcony running around the full length of the three sides. There’d be a central entrance, with stairs, I decided, and headed that way. I was right. The lobby was gloomy and cold, the concrete stairs running upwards in both directions. I climbed slowly, the way lit on each landing by a tiny bulb trapped in a wire cage. Somewhere, echoing, a group of children were playing tag in the dark corners, but I caught no sight of them. I emerged on the fifth balcony. It ran past each front door. Communal living. Shadows moved at the far end, and there was a suppressed giggle.
I strolled the balcony looking for 69. Television sound rose and fell as I progressed
. A light was on, somewhere in the back of 69, but with no sound from behind its door. I pressed the bell-push.
She peered out suspiciously, then clicked a light switch. The other way round would have been more sensible. She did not seem surprised to see me.
‘If you wanted to see Neville,’ she said, lacklustre and with indifference, ‘he’s gone. Half an hour ago.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘what a pity.’ I hadn’t given him a thought. ‘But perhaps you can help me, Lynne.’
‘How can I?’
‘Can we try?’
She backed off. The door faced five feet of balcony walkway and a three foot iron rail to the drop. It opened directly into a kitchen to one side of it, and straight through into her living room. A tiny flat, a single person’s unit they’d call it. The rear, uncurtained window stared out over a few miles of fields. The door in one wall no doubt led to her bedroom, but the bathroom door I hadn’t seen.
She had it furnished sparsely but neatly, with conventional prints on the walls and a row of paperbacks along the top of her low sideboard. Several plants graced surfaces where there was space. She had a two-seater settee and an easy chair, not matching, and a small, very old television set, probably mono. I couldn’t see what I’d interrupted. No book lay face down; no knitting was tossed aside. I looked sideways at her, not making it obvious. Her hair was untidy and her eyes red. I saw what she’d been doing — she’d been crying.
She was flustered, gesturing in all directions. ‘I’m sure I don’t know...will you sit down?’
I tried the easy chair, which was not built for my width. She had not mentioned taking my motoring coat.
There was silence. I could hear the wind blustering against the window.
‘I wasn’t sure I’d see you again,’ I told her. ‘You’re not really working at Viewlands now.’
‘I call in...nothing else to do.’
‘You haven’t found another job?’ Pretty well hopeless, I’d have thought.
She had taken a seat on the settee, her knees spread, her voluminous skirt in a hammock between them, her hands balled together in it.
‘I haven’t really looked,’ she said. ‘Carla was talking about putting in a word for me at the council offices, but it’d be a long drive.’
‘You’d have to move.’
‘She said she could fix that up.’
But the necessity for employment hadn’t arisen until after Carla’s death.
‘You had a job, though, at that time.’ Her eyes were empty. ‘At Viewlands,’ I prompted.
‘I didn’t think Gledwyn needed me anymore.’
Now her eyes were wide, the eyebrows high, that square forehead puckered. I smiled, trying to lighten the mood.
‘But if he needed anybody, it was surely you, Lynne.’
‘You’d think he’d have told me, then,’ she said sharply.
This was a reflection of what Neville had said, Gledwyn using her as a dishcloth, showing no appreciation. Yet now I knew more about Gledwyn, who’d been all prickly sensitivity. She couldn’t mean it in the same way as Neville. If Gledwyn could’ve seen her now, he’d have winced. She looked dumpy and unattractive, sitting there like that, and lost.
‘I’m sure he realised how much you did for him,’ I said, as gently as I could.
‘No!’ she said defiantly. ‘He’d send me away. “Lynne,” he’d say, “what’re you doing here at this time?” As though time mattered.’
It’d mattered on the evening Carla had died. ‘You were too good to him.’
‘He was a great man,’ she burst out. ‘A wonderful man.’
‘But all the same, you were thinking of leaving him? Carla was helping you with that.’
‘But he’d have been lost!’ she cried. ‘How could I walk out on him?’
‘He’d have got somebody else.’
She bared her teeth, then suddenly flounced to her feet. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’ Women have a tendency to resort to the kettle.
‘It’s all right.’
‘No.’ And she marched into the kitchen.
I didn’t follow her, simply raised my voice.
‘Then it’s Carla who’d have been disappointed.’
Silence. Then she appeared in the doorway, a teapot in her hand. ‘It was only a suggestion — I was a bit low, and Gledwyn had been so difficult that day. I said to Carla I’d got half a mind to chuck it in. But she pounced on it. She was always so very forceful.’ She pouted. ‘Oh...once she got going, she walked right over you. Took charge. You know.’
And she disappeared again, and it was no good shouting over the rattling of cups. I waited. Carla kept coming into it; I couldn’t reject her. Then Lynne came back carrying a tray.
She was now more animated and the lines of her face were smooth. A woman always looks well, carrying in a tray. She was at once completely feminine, though if the slant of her eyes and the toss of her hair were anything like a recognition of my masculinity, I was sure it was subconscious.
‘It was what Carla wanted to discuss,’ she said, ‘on the evening she was killed. To tell you the truth...’ She gave a little pout and a pucker of her nose. ‘...that was one of the reasons I wasn’t in too much of a hurry to get away from Viewlands. That and the fact that I was worried about him — it was such a terrible night. And by that time the new job was all Carla’s idea, and I couldn’t — just couldn’t — tell her it’d only been a silly mood.’ She looked at me innocently. ‘Do you take sugar?’
Well...the minx! She’d told me so much in that casually thrown-out speech, and I couldn’t decide whether it was cold-bloodedly intended. I’d noticed she’d been worried about Gledwyn that night, and hadn’t referred to Neville. And while we were on the subject of that night...
‘You were worried about Gledwyn, but you didn’t see the Escort arrive?’
‘I was in my office,’ she reminded me, pouring tea.
‘Not in the lab? Anxious because they were late, and peering out of one of the windows?’ I took the cup from her, and she sat with hers, immediately asking: ‘Would you care for a biscuit?’
‘You didn’t actually see it arrive?’ I said it shaking my head.
‘No. No, it stands to reason. Otherwise I’d have seen Neville in the car and I’d have shouted to him.’ She nodded, satisfied with that. ‘The first I knew they were back was when Gledwyn came into the office and threw the keys at the wall.’
‘But then you’d know that Neville was outside,’ I pointed out.
‘I didn’t know how long Gledwyn had been in the house, did I?
‘Well clearly, with his house keys still in his hand, he must have walked straight through.’
‘Oh, you do go on about things,’ she said in exasperation. ‘He was angry. Upset and angry. I wasn’t thinking about Neville.’
‘No. Of course not.’ Poor Neville outside, hungry and tired and dying for a smoke. ‘So you didn’t actually see the Escort, out there in the drive?’
‘Haven’t we talked about this? He’d have put it away, and I didn’t hear him because I got on with the typing right away.’
‘But now I’ve got the idea it wasn’t put away at all.’
The tea remained untasted in her hands. ‘Why should you say that?’ She was suspicious.
‘No need to get worried. It was just something Neville told me, about the mood he was in. He might well have got out his Metro without you hearing, but I don’t think he put the Escort away.’
‘If that’s how you want it.’
‘And it took you an hour to do the typing, you said. The re-typing of Gledwyn’s speech.’
‘Yes.’
‘It was a long speech?’
‘I was a bit upset. He’d been so...abrupt.’
‘Yes. So the Escort stood out there for an hour.’
‘I just don’t understand what you’re trying to say,’ she appealed.
‘And Neville would have left the ignition key in.’
‘What is this?’
<
br /> She put the cup and saucer down on the cushion beside her. It had begun to vibrate alarmingly, tea in the saucer. I held up a palm.
‘It’s just that I like to get a clear picture. The car key wasn’t with Gledwyn’s house keys, you see. I’m guessing that, because of the way Neville described him walking away from the Escort with his keys in his hand.’
‘All right. So it wasn’t.’
‘And Gledwyn wouldn’t have put it away in the garage if you were there to do it. He didn’t even try to drive, you said.’
I’d been pushing on, trying to get to my point, before she broke down into tears or fury. It’s not a situation I enjoy.
But she was sitting up straight and prim, being very dignified and feminine, and she’d got a reserve I hadn’t guessed at.
‘I’m sure you’re trying to make a point,’ she told me. ‘So please will you make it.’
‘The Escort was sitting in the drive, with the ignition key in, for an hour. That’s all.’
‘It seems a lot of effort to decide that.’
‘But you didn’t see it when you drove out?’
‘I wouldn’t, would I! I backed straight out and down the drive, looking over my shoulder.’
‘Then who,’ I asked, ‘put it away later?’
‘Oh, you are exasperating.’
‘I mean, it wasn’t still in the drive when you drove up, the next morning — Sunday — all upset because of Carla’s death the previous evening, to take him to Blackpool.’
‘It wasn’t there. Why did you have to mention Carla’s...’
‘To make sure we know what evening we’re talking about. You didn’t answer my question.’
‘It wasn’t there,’ she said impatiently. ‘Gledwyn wasn’t helpless, you know. He could do that much.’
‘Thank you.’
She stared at me, expecting me to go on, but there was no more. ‘And that’s what you wanted to know?’ she demanded.
‘And to cadge a cup of tea. I was ready for it.’
Seeing Red Page 13