A Place Of Safety

by Caroline Graham

  And then things started to get better as they always did. Whatever foul muck he’d been up to his oxters in during working hours, this was where it started to fall away. It was a strange process, not forgetfulness so much as a psychological cleansing, and he never quite understood it.

  It could have been the verdant sweetness of the garden (even in winter there was always something irresistibly beautiful to look at) or the familiar warmth of the solid, red-brick building where he had lived contentedly for over twenty years. But overwhelmingly, of course, it was Joyce. Wherever she was, he was happy to be.

  Barnaby never took this good fortune for granted. You didn’t, with a job like his. Anyway, complacency was an absolute magnet for disaster. He had heard the words, I never thought this would happen to me, almost more often than any others. He would never say them. Or believe that never doing anyone any harm was a talisman against disaster. Barnaby reached out and touched the walnut dashboard before getting out of the car.

  Cully’s Dyane, yellow and mermaid green with a huge sunflower painted on the boot, stood under the laburnum tree. Barnaby’s step, already eager, quickened. He had hardly put his key in the lock when she opened the door.

  ‘Dad! Something wonderful’s happened!’ She seized his hand. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Let me take my—’

  ‘No. You’ve got to come now.’

  The kitchen door was wide open. He could see Joyce smiling, Nicolas looking tremendously proud, golden-foiled bottles and champagne glasses. Public rejoicing. He looked down at his daughter’s shining face and knew what she was going to tell him. He put his arm round her and caught the sweet fragrance of her hair. His little girl.

  ‘Cully. Oh, darling, what can I say?’ Barnaby realised the backs of his eyes were prickling. So what? It wasn’t every day one became a grandfather. ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘It’s not me you have to congratulate, silly. It’s Nico.’

  ‘Nico?’ Barnaby rearranged his expression quickly but the disappointment sliced across his heart. They went into the kitchen together.

  ‘I’ve got into the National, Tom.’ Nicolas laughed, raising his glass, plainly not for the first time. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’

  ‘Wonderful.’ Barnaby formed the word through stiff lips. He said ‘Congratulations’ again.

  Cully poured him a glass of Veuve Clicquot and smiled at her mother. ‘Dad thought I’d got the shampoo commercial.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Joyce and caught her husband’s eye. Not that she had needed to.

  ‘I speet on shampoo commercials!’ cried Nico and started laughing again, draining his wine, throwing the glass into the air.

  ‘Do you know what you’re going to play?’ asked Barnaby, having long since learned the correct responses to any news of a theatrical nature.

  ‘As cast. But that could mean anything, anything. They’re doing Pinter, Antony and Cleopatra, Peter Pan!’ cried Nico.

  ‘And a new Terry Johnson comedy all about Sid James,’ said Cully.

  ‘Carry on Camping up the Cottesloe.’

  ‘It’s not called that surely,’ said Joyce.

  ‘You could play Barbara Windsor, darling.’ Cully blew her beloved a kiss.

  ‘Yes! I’d look brilliant in drag.’

  ‘One way to get the notices,’ said Joyce, dry as a bone. She knew the immodesty was merely a front; even so, Nico could be somewhat trying at times. ‘Have some more wine, darling.’ She reached out for her husband’s glass and he took her hand instead.

  ‘I’d rather have a sandwich.’

  ‘A sandwich?’ Nicolas treated them to his Lady Bracknell, sounding more like Tim Brooke-Taylor than Edith Evans while remaining better looking than both. But then, who wasn’t?

  ‘I speet on your sandwich! We’re going out to celebrate.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘The River Cafe.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Cool it, Dad.’

  ‘If you think—’ Barnaby stopped right there. If Cully had been pregnant they could have moved into the River Cafe bag and baggage and had breakfast, lunch and dinner there for a month. ‘Anyway, I’ve heard about that place. You can’t just turn up—’

  ‘Nico got a cancellation.’

  ‘It’s our treat,’ said Nicolas, sounding slightly truculent. ‘I sold my old banger yesterday.’

  ‘We decided it was stupid having two cars. Especially in London.’

  ‘So, what better way to blow three hundred pounds?’

  ‘Now, Tom,’ said Joyce, observing her husband’s reaction, ‘calm down.’

  ‘Out of the question. Anyway, I’m on the cabbage soup diet.’

  ‘He hasn’t heard,’ said Nicolas, winking at his wife.

  ‘Heard what?’ said Barnaby.

  ‘They’re famous for it,’ said Cully, passing to her mother.

  ‘It’s true, Tom,’ said Joyce. ‘I read only the other day. The River Cafe make the best cabbage soup in the world.’

  Chapter Ten

  It was the following morning and Barnaby was at his desk attempting to sort out his day and compose what few notes there were for the eight thirty briefing. He was finding it extremely hard to concentrate. This time yesterday, if someone had told him he would spend the best part of two hours that very evening giving his current case load barely a single consideration he would have thought they were mad. Yet such had been the case.

  They had been given a table by the window overlooking a smooth stretch of grass edged by paving slabs bordered by a low wall rising directly above the Thames. The surface of the water was burnished by the setting sun and lamps gleamed along the paved walkway.

  Even on an autumn evening the River Cafe was incredibly light and airy and packed with happy customers. Talking, laughing, eating, drinking. At one point a woman broke into song (‘Vissi d’Arte’) and no one seemed to take it amiss.

  The service was perfection. Friendly without being unctuous, visible the minute you needed it, absent when you did not. Suggestions tactfully made and no offence taken if they were ignored. No one endlessly re-filled your glass as if you were a toddler in a high chair. Nothing was off and what was on was utter heaven.

  The cooking went on behind a long steel counter where a great many thin people in long white aprons produced the sort of food that leads a great many fat people to the brink of despair.

  Barnaby ate tagliatelle fragrant with asparagus and herbs and Parmesan. This was followed by turbot, the flakes of which melted off his fork. Green salad with a bit of rocket. Some beautiful potatoes. And not a cabbage in sight. Everyone tasted everyone else’s food and, when this was noticed, extra forks appeared from nowhere. For pudding Barnaby had Chocolate Nemesis which very nearly proved to be his own. They drank Torre del Falco from Sicily. Nico bought Cully the recipe book, grandly inscribed, and also one for Joyce. Barnaby was apprehensive.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Cully to her dad as they walked, some little way behind the others, towards the taxi. ‘Mum’ll be fine. Nobody can burn pasta.’

  Barnaby had remained silent. To his mind a woman who can burn salad can burn anything.

  ‘You’re looking a bit more cheery this morning, chief.’ Sergeant Troy entered, interrupting this voluptuous reverie. He was looking less cheery himself. Rather pale and wan, in fact.

  ‘Went out celebrating last night,’ said Barnaby. ‘My son-in-law took us all up the Smoke to dinner. To the River Cafe.’

  ‘I’ve heard about it. By the river.’

  ‘That’s the place.’

  ‘Maureen saw it on the telly.’

  ‘Actually, he’s just got into the National, Nico.’

  ‘Brilliant,’ enthused Troy. National? National what?

  Barnaby put his papers in a bulldog clip then really clocked his sergeant for the first time.

  ‘You all right, Troy?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You look a bit peaky.’

  The fact was that Sergeant Troy had had a stra
nge and most disturbing dream. In the dream he had awoken, tried to rise and found himself unable to do anything other than roll his head heavily from side to side. His limbs felt extraordinary, flat and empty like an unstuffed rag doll’s. Then he saw, on the floor by the bed, a neat stack of bones and knew them to be his own. Gruesome or what? Troy blamed this nightmare on the visit to the hospital. And the churchyard next to the Rectory hadn’t helped matters.

  ‘I’m all right, chief.’ Cockeyed fancies, even involuntary ones, were best kept to oneself. The force didn’t go a bundle on neurotics. Sergeant Troy carried his trenchcoat over to the old-fashioned hat stand and rejoiced in the sensation of warm flesh on living bone. He said, ‘Have you contacted the hospital?’

  ‘Yes. They’ve done the brain scan and found a clot. They’re operating this morning.’

  ‘What about feedback from our man on the spot?’

  ‘Nothing doing,’ replied Barnaby. ‘Nobody in, nobody out. Not even the postman. Presumably Jackson’s still in the main house, “looking after Lionel”.’

  ‘What a sick scene. Talk about decadent.’ Troy was pleased to be able to make use of decadent. He’d got the word from the sleeve notes of Cabaret ages ago. It was surprising how difficult it was to drop it into general conversation when you considered how much of it there was about.

  ‘If we phrase it very carefully we can try a public appeal,’ said Barnaby. ‘Simply describe the stolen cycle, the time it was swiped and suggest the direction it may have been taking. Someone must have seen him.’

  ‘We could say what he was wearing.’

  ‘For God’s sake! First, we don’t know what he was wearing. Second, we keep any reference to Jackson, however oblique, absolutely out of it. Once he’s nailed, I want no accusations of pre-trial prejudice getting him off. Or the civil liberties mob breathing down our necks.’

  ‘The press’ll be on to it though. Nobody’s going to believe a public appeal over a missing push bike.’

  ‘So we’ll stonewall. Won’t be the first time.’ Barnaby slipped his notes into an envelope file, took his jacket from the back of his chair and put it on. Troy held the door open and the DCI strode away from his office. The working day proper had begun.

  That same morning Hetty Leathers arrived at the Old Rectory at her usual time of 9 a.m. but without Candy. The dog was coping much better now at being left alone and, as Mrs Lawrence was absent, Hetty felt she should perhaps ask the Reverend’s permission to bring Candy to work.

  She went in through the front door, carrying straight through to the kitchen. There she found Jackson wearing a pair of stained jeans and a sleeveless vest, scraping Marmite onto burned toast. His bare feet were up on the table. There was no sign of Lionel.

  Hetty turned round and walked straight out again. Out of the kitchen and out of the house. As she made to go down the drive, a movement through the library window caught her eye. She crossed over, rested her hands on the sill and peered in. She insisted afterwards to Pauline that she had no thought of spying and this was probably true. What was also true was that she very much wished she’d walked on by.

  The Reverend was crouching over Mrs Lawrence’s writing desk. Letters were strewn everywhere. As Hetty watched, he tore another envelope, already opened, practically apart in his eagerness to rip out its contents. A second to stare angrily at the piece of paper and it joined the others on the floor. He paused, panting for a moment, then started to tug furiously at a little drawer at the back of the desk that would not open.

  Hetty watched in shocked amazement. The Reverend’s face, distorted by a fear-filled hungriness that could hardly be contained and scarlet with effort, was barely recognisable. He put his foot against the leg of the desk and this time using both hands heaved on the drawer with all his might. Hetty ran away.

  As she did so, Jackson wandered into the library. Leaned against the door jamb, dark blue eyes gleaming with excitement, a happy smile barely disturbing his lips.

  ‘I hate to see you like this, Lionel.’

  Lionel, by now wailing with rage, looked fit to explode.

  ‘Wait.’ Jackson strolled across the room and rested a calming hand on Lionel’s arm. ‘If you must break into other people’s property—’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ shouted Lionel.

  Jackson turned his face from the gust of sour wine and reeking, unwashed skin. He was very fastidious about that sort of thing.

  ‘And stop shouting. You’ll have half the village out.’

  ‘It’s all right for you . . .’ Lionel attempted to soften his voice, with little success. ‘What’s going to happen to me? Where shall I go?’

  ‘You don’t even know Mrs L’s made a will.’ Jackson’s grip tightened slightly. ‘In which case, as her legal better half, you’ll be laughing.’

  Lionel gave a single piercing cry. ‘I thought I was safe here.’

  ‘Let go,’ said Jackson. He sounded patient, not unkind just weary, like a parent who’d had enough of a favourite child’s tantrums. ‘I’ll do it.’

  Lionel released the drawer and stood, arms swinging loose by his sides, staring. Jackson produced a knife from the pocket of his jeans. A click and the short, narrow blade sprang out, shining. He inserted it behind the lock, gave a sharp twist and the drawer sprang open. It was full of papers.

  Lionel seized them and started to read. Jackson could see the heading Friends Provident, the words separated by a blue rose. After a few minutes Lionel had shuffled through all the pages and flung them also to the floor.

  ‘All to do with her trust fund.’ He was very near to tears and struggling for breath. ‘She’s always been very tight with that, Jax. I wanted her to buy a little flat, give a temporary home to youngsters struggling to make a new life. People like yourself. But she was adamant. There’s so much selfishness in the world, meanness, don’t you find?’

  ‘I don’t like to hear you being disloyal, Lionel. I’ve always thought Mrs L basically a very sincere person.’ It was probably with her solicitor. Or the bank. ‘I think you need some breakfast. Cheer you up a bit.’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Plus a wash and brush-up. OK, I got “no change” from the hospital this morning but things could have altered by dinner time. What if you was allowed to visit this afternoon? You can’t go in looking like that. Come on.’ He took Lionel’s damp and unresisting hand. ‘Jax will make you a nice piece of toast.’

  ‘You’re so good to me.’

  ‘Richly deserved, to my mind, Lionel.’

  ‘You won’t go away?’

  ‘Try and make me.’

  Barnaby’s appointment with Richard Ainsley was for ten o’clock. They were shown straight into his office and offered tea which Barnaby declined. The bank manager’s face was grave as befitted the matter under discussion.

  ‘A most dreadful business. I can still hardly believe it.’ His distress was plainly genuine. A fact explained by his next words. ‘I have known the family thirty years. Ann, Mrs Lawrence, was seven when I first started handling her father’s affairs.’

  Barnaby had not been aware of that but rejoiced in the knowledge. One never knew what would be grist to the investigative mill.

  ‘Then I’m sure you will be doubly anxious to help us, sir.’

  ‘Of course I am. But how is it possible? A random, violent attack—’

  ‘We’re not sure that it was random.’

  ‘Oh.’ Ainsley’s expression changed then. Became immensely cautious and somewhat apprehensive. He sniffed and stared intensely at his visitors as if etheric traces of the crime might still be drifting about their persons.

  This reaction from the public was not uncommon. Barnaby smiled encouragingly and said, ‘I can assure you that anything divulged during this interview will be in complete confidence.’

  ‘Ah.’ Richard Ainsley looked warily at Troy sitting near the door, notebook balanced discreetly on his knee. ‘Well . . .’

  Barnaby jumped in at the deep end
. ‘We have reason to believe that Mrs Lawrence was being blackmailed.’

  ‘So that’s—’

  ‘That’s what?’

  But Ainsley withdrew immediately, like a limpet into its shell. ‘You must understand, Chief Inspector, my customer’s financial affairs—’

  ‘Mrs Lawrence is undergoing an emergency operation, Mr Ainsley, even as we’re sitting here. A positive outcome is far from certain. Now, I can go to a magistrate, get the relevant piece of paper and come back for the information you are withholding. But time is of the essence here. I urge you to co-operate.’

  ‘Yes. I do see. Oh - this is all so dreadful.’ He wrung his hands for a moment, then opened his desk diary, checked a date and started to speak.

  ‘Ann came in to see me on Saturday morning. August the twenty-second. She needed to borrow five thousand pounds against the security of the house. That was acceptable, of course. The Old Rectory is worth a great deal of money. But her income is a modest one and I was concerned about her ability to make regular repayments. When I mentioned this she became almost hysterical, which naturally made me more concerned then ever. She had already drawn a thousand pounds from her current account.’

  ‘When was this, sir?’

  Richard Ainsley had almost forgotten Sergeant Troy, quietly taking notes. He studied his diary again and replied, ‘Wednesday the nineteenth.’ Then, turning back to Barnaby, ‘I’d made a note of the date should it arise during my meeting with her.’

  ‘So it was six altogether?’

  ‘That’s right. And she insisted on cash both times. Extremely worrying. I was so relieved to hear yesterday that she was bringing it all back.’

  ‘What?’