This was Monday. I went for a walk in the afternoon, up the lane outside in the direction of Whitchurch, down it in the direction of the traffic signals. Nothing. Too early, I supposed. He’d said three days, after all. When I returned, she’d gone for a ride over the hills. The house seemed cold and empty. I settled into the caravan.
When she came back I asked if there was a spare side-door key. She seemed to understand, and produced it without comment. I’d need to be able to lock up from outside yet have access to the house. But something had changed in our relationship. I was now living fully in the caravan, she in the house, with no casual comings and goings. There was a cool familiarity about it, as though neither of us dared to venture too close, like neighbours who can chat over the frail, crumbling fence, but neither dares touch it in case it collapses.
The following morning, early, I used my key because I’d run out of milk. I put my head into the hall to listen for signs of movement, and noticed the post had arrived.
There was another of the threatening letters. It had been posted in Whitchurch the previous day, Monday. I slipped it into my pocket and left the rest — trash mail — in the hall. I locked up as I went out.
From then on, I went out each morning early enough to meet the postman at the gate. They came in a steady flow, becoming more vicious, promising more dire consequences. I didn’t think that Angie need know that Lynne, after all, had not been the one sending them.
We were not short of visitors. Evan was home until the end of the week, and dutifully called. He knew nothing of what had happened, and whether Angie told him I don’t know. But he remembered the jazz records Neville had mentioned, and took her on a search of the loft, where they found them. Angie phoned Neville, and he came to fetch them.
Lynne’s death seemed to have hit him hard. He was quiet and repressed, and though I searched my brain for memories of Duke Ellington, I couldn’t find enough comment to interest him and he soon left. The inquest was to be on the Thursday, and he said he’d see me there.
Timmis had called on the Tuesday to say I’d be needed, and did he have to subpoena me? He was Coroner’s Officer, it turned out. I said no, I’d be there, but I thought I saw in his set face the condemnation I was levelling at myself.
It was on that same Thursday that the two men appeared. There was nothing overtly threatening about them, and I’d not even have known they were there if it hadn’t been for one of my patrols up the lane.
The breakdown pick-up was parked two hundred yards from the drive entrance, two men sitting inside and drinking coffee from a flask. I recognised one of them.
I paused. ‘Clancy, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right, Mr Kyle. And this is my friend, Charley Boggis.’
I nodded. So that was how it was going to be, friendly pressure. We chatted a few moments, then I walked back. An hour later, I saw them drive away past the end of the drive.
I wondered why Phil had sent his men in such a vehicle when he’d got any number of cars available, in for repair or for sale. Then I realised there was a certain subtle logic in sending a wagon eighty miles with his name blazoned on the side: ROLLASON GARAGES. It declaimed his presence. His. And a pick-up! There was a crane on the back. They hook steel arms under the drive end of your car, then they can drive it away. Whether you want them to or not. Like the police. The hint was there. Harry Kyle had better clear out, or they’d take his car and dump it somewhere.
I wondered whether to have a new lock put in the garage door, but that afternoon I was busy. The inquest.
I had been dreading that inquest, though I should have trusted Timmis, who had his ear very close to the ground. These senior policemen in country districts have great influence and authority. A word from Timmis to the Coroner, who just happened to be Gledwyn’s solicitor, smoothed things along no end. I was asked only for the fact that I had spoken to Lynne just before she died, and said I’d be straight over, and that I’d detected the fact that she was distressed. No details were extracted. The verdict was: Suicide whilst the balance of her mind was disturbed.
Nobody asked who’d disturbed it.
When we got back from Llanmawr the breakdown pick-up was there again, but this time closer to the gateway. I said nothing about it, but for the next few days Angie’s routine comments became more and more terse, with undertones of despair. Evan had returned to his lab at Aberystwyth, so that Angie had been riding alone. She must have used that lane often, and seen the encroaching pick-up.
‘You’re still here then, Harry?’ she’d ask.
It got to the point where I’d just nod, but then there came the morning when the pick-up was visible at the end of the drive. It seemed to have been there all night.
Her comment changed. ‘You must go, Harry.’ She knew they’d have to do something about me before they could reach her.
I added a grunt to the nod. That morning’s threatening message had been desperate.
I went inside and phoned Neville. He was the only one I knew, apart from Timmis — whom I wanted to keep out of it — who’d know these sort of things.
‘The best chap round here for putting a new lock in the garage door, Neville,’ I asked him. He said he’d do what he could.
When I hung up and turned away, Angie was standing in the kitchen doorway, watching me. Her voice was close to hysteria.
‘You’re stubborn, aren’t you!’
‘It’s a new car.’
‘You make me mad!’ Then her voice softened. ‘I don’t want you here — if there’s trouble.’
‘There won’t be any trouble.’
I sat up that night in the darkened caravan, with all the windows uncurtained, waiting for it.
Chapter Fourteen
But of course you nod off. Unable to brew coffee to keep me alert, unable even to flick my lighter and light the pipe, I dozed on the seat beneath my rear window. The Rover was tucked away in the garage, but still without a lock to the door. I was recalling the last message.
I CAN’T WAIT ANY LONGER.
IT’S GOT TO END.
Nothing ambiguous, nothing wrongly spelt.
I jerked awake, and a ruddy glow was flickering on the roof surface above my head.
I ran to the door. I could see it through the lab windows opposite, flame mounting and smoke already seeping through the roof. I burst into the yard. The fire was extensive, I saw at once, and it would be fatal to fling open the doors to get at it. I couldn’t remember seeing any fire extinguishers in there, but I did remember with sudden fear the row of paint thinners and base under one of the benches.
Somebody was screaming, and then I realised it was the gelding. I ran to the corner of the house and raised my voice.
‘Angie! Angie! The lab’s on fire. Ring the fire brigade.’
She must have been lying awake, more successfully than me. I heard her cry out, then I turned and ran across to the stable. The top door was open. He was rearing about, nostrils flaring and eyes wild, and I didn’t think I dared to go in there amongst those flying hooves and the seeping smoke. I tried, but the hooves scared me into retreat, and I couldn’t reach his halter. Then she was there, in pyjamas, gasping for me to give her room. She ran in beneath him and I turned away because she’d got it in hand.
The roar of the flames was like blood pressing in my ears. I remembered the Rover. Already the flames were through the lab roof. The whole building was mainly wood, and was lost, I knew. I ran towards the garage at the end. If I was quick enough, I might get it out.
The heat reached me when I was still well clear of the up-and-over door. I flinched, but ran towards it. The impression could be deceptive. The door was solid metal, but fire could already be reaching inside there. The end doorway inside led directly into the lab, and I had the car parked tail in, so that the tank would be vulnerable. But I did run towards it, aware that flinging up the door would provide the gasp of air that the flames demanded.
Dully, from my left, I heard the explosion as the th
inners went up, a rumbling thump against the roar of the main fire. In the corner of my eye I caught the flare as a flame rose high, taking up with it sparks and dark shapes flying. I was ten feet from the door when the Rover’s petrol tank went.
The outrush of hot air and flame hit the door. If it had been locked, the pressure would have built up until it exploded in my face. But the lock wasn’t in operation. The door flew up in front of me, tore itself from its upper mounting, and the whole thing came out at me like a leaf torn from a tree by the wind. Tumbling over lazily, it spun over my head, and I heard it crash onto the cobbles behind me.
Following it there was a rush of hot air and a tongue of blue-red fire. The pressure of it had me over, but I rolled, unable to take my eyes from my lovely new car, enclosed in a ball of flame.
As I watched, a minor explosion inside the car sprayed flame from the side window. I had time to realise that that was my can of spray paint going up, then I became very busy, because my jacket was aflame — my hair also, I was told later.
It was not the first time I’d had a jacket on fire, as this is a pipe smoker’s hazard. You should never put a lighted pipe into your pocket. Once I walked all the way down a high street before an old lady stopped me. ‘Did you know your jacket’s on fire?’ I’d felt the warmth. I tore it off and stamped on it, but that was the end of a tweed jacket and a favourite pipe.
This was worse. This was actual flame, and though I struggled with it, still rolling, the damn jacket didn’t seem to want to come off.
Then somebody was saying: ‘Keep still, you bloody fool,’ and Clancy was plunging his hands into the living flame and creeping cinders of my jacket, and with a great effort, because panic was very close, I managed to keep still. The jacket came off. My head was rolled in a wet towel, I was thumped and slapped in the most tender spots, probably by Boggis, and at that point I think I passed out.
How long I was unconscious I don’t know, but the next thing I remember is sitting in the kitchen on one of the chairs, being held firmly upright while a doctor did something to my face, and somewhere Angie whimpering: ‘His eyes! His eyes!’ But they were all right. I could see her. The fastest moving things in your body are your eyelids, and mine had worked well. They no longer had lashes, but they’d done a good job. I turned my head. The hands on my shoulders were bandaged. Clancy bent forward.
‘I’ve seen some stupid things in my time...’
‘You bin’ lucky,’ said Boggis from behind a mug of tea.
If that sort of pain was luck, then I decided I’d be glad when I ran out of it. Then I closed my eyes again because my eyeballs felt tender, and the next thing was that I was in the bed in the long rear bedroom, with the bedside light on, and Angie sitting beside me, carefully picking the remains of my jacket to pieces.
‘Oh, you’re awake,’ she said calmly. ‘You gave us a turn, I can tell you.’
All was quiet. Some considerable time must have elapsed. There was no fire-glow, and no sound of operating fire appliances.
‘What time is it?’ My lips moved strangely.
‘Four,’ she said, ‘in the morning, and you’re to keep still and behave. You can have a drink. Would you like that?’
‘I’d love it.’ I tried to sit up, but needed her arm. ‘The lab?’ I asked, gulping. ‘The car?’
‘All gone. Stable, lab, car, garage, the lot. But they stopped it from spreading. Now...you must rest.’
‘Anybody else hurt?’ I croaked.
‘Clancy’s hands. But I got the horse clear. Nothing to worry about.’
Yet there had been a strange undertone to her voice. She had been sorting through the remnants of my jacket, salvaging what there was. On the bedside table I saw my wallet, my pipe, my tobacco pouch, all looking healthy, and a pile of slightly singed letters from the inside pocket.
She saw the direction of my eyes. ‘You’re not to worry about it now.’ But clearly she was doing enough for both.
‘Do I lie and worry, or do we talk about it?’
‘Talking must hurt your mouth,’ she observed.
‘And worrying makes my head ache.’
She frowned. ‘All these letters — you’ve been hiding them from me, Harry. That was very secretive of you.’
‘Sorry. But there was no point. When Lynne died, they should have stopped. Or so I thought.’
‘But...then...who?’
I shook my head. She bit her lip and got up to walk to the window. She came back.
‘And this?’ she asked, showing me the envelope on which Evan had drawn the genetic charts. ‘Whatever are you doing with this?’
‘That was Evan,’ I told her. ‘He was showing me that your children, if you had a son, would stand a fifty/fifty chance of being colour blind.’
‘And that mattered to you?’
‘If the father’s normal,’ I amplified.
‘Phil’s very normal. Knows just what colour to re-spray a car.’
I think I grinned. I tried for a grin, and got the appropriate pain. ‘We’d better get Evan to test him.’
‘There’s nothing funny about any of it,’ she said firmly. Then, not having forgotten it: ‘But if Lynne didn’t send those filthy threats...who did? Do you know who, Harry?’
I was suddenly very tired and couldn’t make the effort to think round it or stall. ‘Who d’you think? Who’s wanted to get you away from here? Who’s threatened and badgered and sent his men...’
‘He...wouldn’t. Not Phil.’
‘And set the fire,’ I murmured.
‘But that’s ridiculous. It was Clancy and Boggis who helped you.’
‘Perhaps,’ I suggested, ‘they weren’t told about the fire.’
‘Oh, you’re impossible!’
But she didn’t go away, just sat quietly, thinking about it. After a few moments I realised she was holding my hand. I was lying back, making the most of it, when she said: ‘I suppose that’s flattering. All that trouble, because he wants me...needs me.’
I opened one eye. Couldn’t resist putting a word in. Or maybe I was half asleep and thought I’d dreamed of saying it. What came out was: ‘Or needed your money, Angie. More like. Who knows how he’s fixed financially? Things could be rocky. With the sale of this place and the furniture...’
She reached over and put a finger to my lips. ‘Now who’s being naughty!’ She’d have allowed herself to be angry if I’d been stronger.
I moved clear of the finger. ‘But if I persuaded you to go home, Angie, peacefully and voluntarily, then you’d lend him your money?’
‘My husband — yes.’
‘But if he had to drag you from here?’
‘I’d have his eyes out!’
‘So that’s why he’s been so patient, and why he needed an expert persuader like me.’
I closed my eyes again, my last sight of her including her lower lip being severely bitten and worry in her eyes. But I was still awake when the hand crept back into mine. I’d been forgiven for such cynical words. Still awake, too, when she suddenly remembered.
‘And this?’
I opened my eyes. She’d found the knobbly lump of melted plastic that’d been a cigarette lighter.
‘It was a plastic lighter.’
‘But surely...was it as hot as that?’
‘It isn’t mine. I found it.’ I was dozing off. ‘Don’t throw it away,’ I whispered.
Then I drifted off to sleep, and woke to a dull dawn and a fine drizzle of rain, and the desire to get on my feet and become mobile.
They like to tell you how bad you feel and how helpless you must be. Women love nursing. But I knew how I felt — like hell. When I got as far as the bathroom I saw I looked worse. There was a great wad of cotton wool covering the left side of my face, no eyelashes or eyebrows, and a singed stubble of hair. My hands were red and painful.
I insisted on going down for lunch.
‘A right intrepid character I look,’ I said to Angie. By that time I was talking with more ease.<
br />
From the kitchen window I could get a good view of the damage. The stable and lab were an untidy pile of charred timber, still steaming in places. At the end, the Rover stood naked on its rims, all signs of the garage around it having disappeared. It had the general shape of a car, but that was all.
‘I hope you had it comprehensive,’ she said.
‘Fortunately. Where’s the caravan?’
‘They got it out onto the front drive.’
Something saved. I nodded. I wondered where she’d stabled the gelding. Probably with Morgan Rees.
‘I’ve been on the phone to Bryn Thomas, in town,’ she said. ‘The car sales.’
‘Have you?’
‘I’ve hired you a car.’
‘We’ll need to be mobile,’ I agreed.
‘It’s for you. A Range Rover, with a tow-bar. For your caravan.’ She looked uneasy. ‘As soon as you’re fit to drive, I want you to go, Harry.’
‘I’ll go when you do.’
‘You’re a fool,’ she said angrily. ‘What might it be next?’
I laughed. It took effort. ‘I’d be safer here. Anything that comes up — hell, I’d need you to protect me. You can’t send me away.’
‘I’ve got no patience...’
‘It’s all we’ve got between us.’
They delivered the Range Rover that afternoon. To test my ability I climbed into it and went a short run. It was agony, but the trip did show me that the pick-up was no longer around. A pity, that. I couldn’t remember thanking them.
Then I hitched it to the caravan, which I worked back into the same position it’d been before. Without the horse to snigger at me, I did it quite neatly. I was pleased. Stuck out there in the drive, it’d been a symbol of imminent departure.
‘Oh, you’re so damned stubborn!’ She slammed the door.
By that time, though we hadn’t discussed it, I was a fixture in the house and sleeping in her father’s room. But she was becoming increasingly annoyed with me, especially as I wouldn’t respond to her concern for my safety.
That evening she turned on me. ‘Don’t you see, you stubborn idiot! Whatever they did, they wouldn’t dare treat me with violence. They’d force me to go home and then...’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Then we’d see! But you, Harry, you’d try to intervene.’
Seeing Red Page 19