A Place Of Safety

by Caroline Graham

  Evadne rocked Hetty backwards and forwards for a moment. ‘Hetty, would you like to say a prayer for her?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It may help.’

  Hetty seemed uncertain. And no wonder, thought Evadne. Her life had hardly been one to engender gratitude.

  ‘Well . . . if you really think so.’ Hetty made an awkward movement, about to get out of her chair, but Evadne eased her gently down again.

  ‘No, no. It’s not necessary to kneel down. God doesn’t care about that - a sincere heart is all that matters.’

  ‘I won’t know what to say.’

  ‘No need to say anything. Just picture Ann surrounded by divine light. And hold fast.’

  Quietly Evadne began to pray. Hetty tried to imagine Ann surrounded by divine light. She came up with a sort of halo, like the Bible illustrations in her Sunday school class years ago. As for brightness, the most dazzling source she could think of was the halogen light in the garden of the Old Rectory which seemed somehow appropriate.

  Around the room six pale heaps of fur sat or lay in complete silence. There was not even a scratch or a yawn. Evadne’s Pekes were used to moments like this and knew exactly what was required of them.

  By six thirty in the evening Barnaby had been shut up in his office for nearly two hours. The incident room managed to appear both noisy and hectic even when nothing much was happening and he needed to be reasonably quiet. To be alone and think. Sergeant Troy came in from time to time with information and the occasional slug of strong Colombian.

  Half an hour ago he had brought in an extremely satisfactory forensic report on the Lawrences’ Humber. A tiny filament of shiny black acetate had been caught on the worn piece of carpet lining the boot. And some fragments of grit had also been present. These were coated with white material which, on closer examination, proved to be garden lime. Nothing remarkable in that, no doubt Ann Lawrence had frequently carted such stuff back from the garden centre, but if it matched precisely grit found in the cyclist’s shoes, then they were really on to something.

  Problem was, they didn’t have the cyclist’s shoes. Or his gear. Or his bike. The search for this had, so far, been fruitless. Yet the time factor meant it must have been abandoned very near the village.

  As soon as reports of the black-clad figure started to come in, two officers had been sent to Jackson’s flat to search for the clothes and Ann Lawrence’s handbag. They had found neither. Which meant he had either taken other stuff to wear - hence the rucksack - or stashed a change of clothing where he planned to leave the bike. The handbag couldn’t have just vanished. Shortly after the men left, Lionel Lawrence rang the station, rather incoherently complaining of police harassment.

  Having reached this one step forward two steps back point in his reflections, the chief inspector was rather pleased by the distraction of a door opening and his side-kick’s appearing this time with a steaming mug of strong Typhoo and a packet of biscuits. Fortunately they were Rich Tea, a dull morsel at the best of times. Hardly rich at all in any appreciable sense of the word.

  ‘You know I’m watching the calories, Sergeant.’

  ‘Yes, chief. It’s just, only a salad at lunch. I thought . . .’

  Barnaby grandly waved the brightly coloured packet away and asked if anything new had turned up.

  ‘Our man’s report’s in from Ferne Basset. Apparently Jackson’s still not put his nose outside the house. DS Bennet’s taken over the shift. How long are they going to let you run this for, chief?’

  ‘Results in thirty-six hours or else. That’s the latest.’

  ‘D’you think Jackson’s spotted him?’

  ‘What, through the Rectory walls?’

  ‘I wouldn’t put anything past that scumbag. Oh, and the film’s arrived from the Top Gear shop.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say so?’

  ‘I am saying so.’

  Sergeant Troy flattened himself against the door as Barnaby, grasping his mug, hurried from the room. There was no need for him to get wound up, though Troy hadn’t the heart to point this out. They had already run the film through once downstairs so there’d be no hiccup when the boss came to view, and it was pretty useless. Blink and you’d miss the bugger.

  ‘Go on then.’ Barnaby, having seated himself, leaned forward eagerly, hands on knees, gazing at the VDU. The film began. Grey-blue figures laden with bags or shopping trolleys shuffled apathetically along the pavement, two girls walked past arm in arm, giggling. A toddler was carried by on his father’s shoulders. No one seemed to be aware of the camera. There was a dark flash across the screen.

  ‘What was that?’ asked Barnaby.

  ‘Our man,’ said Troy.

  ‘Ah, shit.’ The chief inspector’s shoulders slumped. ‘All right, run back and freeze.’

  They studied the slim figure, gripping the handlebars of the stolen machine. The bike was half on the pavement, half on the road as the cyclist prepared to jump into the saddle. Even on hold and seen only from the back the gathering of muscular energy appeared formidable.

  ‘Same height as Jackson, same build,’ said Inspector Carter.

  ‘Of course it’s the same height and build!’ Angrily Barnaby pushed back his chair. ‘It’s the same bloody man.’

  ‘Shall we blow the picture up, chief?’ asked Sergeant Brierley.

  ‘Might as well, though I can’t see anything coming of it.’

  ‘If only he’d been facing the other way,’ said DS Griggs. Adding, ‘That bastard’s got the luck of the devil.’

  ‘It’ll run out sooner or later,’ said Barnaby. ‘Everybody’s does. Even the devil’s.’

  Louise had not mentioned the hospital visit to her brother. She had not intended deliberately to conceal this but remembered that, during their earlier conversation, the subject of Ann’s attack had immediately led to an eruption of anger quickly followed by a diatribe against the police for their continual persecution of Jax. Now the time when she could have naturally mentioned it (she had arrived home eight hours ago) had long passed.

  She had answered the lunchtime news appeal, though. Rung the number given from a box outside the post office in the Market Square and described the cyclist without saying that she recognised who he was. She couldn’t bring herself to do that, even anonymously. And as she was not prepared to follow up and identify him personally - partially out of fear for her own safety but mainly because of the pain it would cause Val - any such admission would be pointless. She was rather ashamed of this, her memory of the time spent in the intensive care unit was raw and painful, and Louise knew that if Ann died she would speak out whatever the cost. But of course what she really longed for was for Ann to recover and be able to tell the police herself who had attacked her.

  This understanding led to an anxious few moments when Louise wondered if Jax might make his way to the hospital to make sure Ann did not recover. There seemed to be nothing to stop him. No guard outside her door, no member of staff inside. All very well to say, as the staff nurse had, that someone was nearly always there. It only needed a moment, when the someone was not there, for vital plugs to be snatched from their sockets and Ann’s life to drain helplessly away. And, as the police presumably thought her the victim of a random attack, they would see no need for protection. Louise told herself she was being melodramatic. Too many movies - a scene from The Godfather came to mind - but the image would not fade.

  She rang the hospital. She had intended to do so anyway to hear how the operation had gone but there was little for her comfort. The operation had been straightforward. Mrs Lawrence had not come round yet from the anaesthetic. There had been no visitors.

  A sudden coolness in the air rather than any sound told her the front door had opened and been closed. Her brother came slowly into the room. He nodded silently then threw himself down in a scarlet velvet armchair shaped like a vast shell.

  Louise was used to seeing him return from the garage flat wearing a mingled expression of joy and pai
n and walking as though half his bones had been mangled. It was a relief to see him looking pretty much as normal. Or as normal as he ever looked these days.

  ‘How are things over there?’

  ‘Jax has moved into the Rectory pro tem.’ The disappointment had been keen. He had not been able even to touch the boy. ‘He’s taking care of Lionel.’

  Louise felt a sudden deep pang of apprehension. She knew she ought to stop there. Say ‘how kind’ and not attempt to delve deeper. But a terrible curiosity drew her on. She longed to know why Lionel had not visited his wife. Or even contacted the hospital.

  ‘He must be pretty upset. Lionel, I mean.’

  ‘Distraught, poor chap. Doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going.’

  ‘Has he been to see her?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They went this morning.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Sorry. I just thought . . . Ann being so . . . usually more than one visitor . . .’

  As her tongue floundered over the words, Louise’s heart beat a little faster. By asking a question to which she already knew the answer, she had taken the single step from honesty to trickery. She stared at her brother with dismay. They had never played these sorts of games. He stared back, his glance at first speculative then thickening into suspicion.

  ‘Someone has to drive Lionel. That’s all I meant by “they”.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Sorry. I didn’t think.’

  ‘What’s behind all this?’

  ‘Nothing. Just making conversation.’

  ‘No you’re not.’ He was on the verge of becoming angry. Louise tried to work out how best to extricate herself. Perhaps if she said she was tired and going to bed, he’d simply shrug and let go. With the old Val, there would have been no problem. But this new, damaged Val was so volatile, so ready to strike out blindly at real or imagined slights. And in this case he was right. She was not being straight with him and the suspicion was deserved. Wouldn’t it be better simply to tell him the truth?

  ‘I went to see Ann today.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Around lunchtime.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I couldn’t. It was so awful, Val. Tubes and drips and machinery . . . and poor Ann hardly there at all.’

  ‘Oh God, Lou.’

  ‘She’s dying, I know she is.’ Louise burst into a flood of tears. Val climbed out of the armchair, came over and put his arms round her as he had when she was a little girl. For a moment Louise allowed herself the comforting conceit that things were once more as they used to be. But then the longing for veracity, to have everything absolutely straight between them, drove her on.

  ‘They said . . .’ She was crying so much she could hardly speak. ‘He hadn’t been to see her at all . . .’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Lionel.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Or even rung up.’

  ‘You talked to the wrong person. Reception changes all the time at these big places.’

  ‘This was the nurse at intensive care.’

  Val withdrew then. First physically, the warm muscly flesh of his arms hardening until Louise felt she was being embraced by two curved planks of wood. Then disengaging his emotions.

  ‘I thought you’d stopped all this.’ Val’s voice was cold. He got up and moved away.

  ‘Val - don’t go!’

  ‘I thought you’d changed. That you’d begun to understand.’

  ‘I do,’ cried Louise.

  ‘Now you’re calling him a liar.’ He looked down at her with a detachment that was not entirely without sympathy. ‘I’ve asked Jax to come and live here, Louise. Whether you move out or not. You’ll just have to accept it.’

  ‘How can I accept something that makes you so unhappy?’

  ‘It’s not about being happy. It’s about being glad to be alive.’

  After his sister had gone to bed and cried herself to sleep, Val sat near the window of his own room, gazing out at the great cedar tree in the driveway of the house opposite. Louise had wept so violently and for so long, he had thought she might make herself ill. Yet he did not go to her for he was unable to say what she longed to hear and knew his presence could only torment her further.

  It was true what he had said about being glad to be alive. Equally true that, for a great deal of the time, he now experienced pain and fright. But the moment was long gone when he could have walked away. No question now of weighing distress against satisfaction and trying to decide if the game was worth the candle.

  Dante had got it right. And von Aschenbach. Look, lust after, love and worship youth and beauty. Just don’t touch. But what about the ‘strife below the hipbones’, as he had somewhere read the sexual urge memorably described. It seemed to Val the more frequently his longing for Jax was satisfied, the more powerful it became. Tonight, sitting awkwardly in the untidy sitting room of the Old Rectory asking after Lawrence’s wife, Val had felt he was on fire.

  Jax and Lionel sat facing him on a sofa that was splashed with red stains. Jax was drinking Coke, his tongue darting in and out of the glass like a fish. Each time he reached out for his glass, the dragonfly tattoo passed through a fall of light from a standard lamp and sprang to iridescent life. Lionel sat as in a waking dream: calm, smiling and looking at nothing and no one in particular.

  Val did not stay long. He couldn’t bear having Jax within arm’s reach and not be able to touch him. The boy’s blazing blue eyes shone with sexual invitation. The flickering tongue, nothing but a sensual wind-up, was already driving Val mad. He prayed that Jax would offer to see him to the door, perhaps even come outside for a moment and stand close to him in the darkness. But Jax did not move. Just waved an ironical goodbye, lifting his glass.

  Val had no illusions about what his life would be like when the boy moved in. Though his love for Jax was immensely powerful it was also powerless. He would give and give until it hurt. Until not only his bank balance but his heart was bled white. Jax would take, physically, emotionally and fiscally, as much as he liked for as long as it suited him. Then he would be off. He would not grow to love Mozart or Palestrina. Nor would he ever be persuaded to read a grown-up newspaper, let alone Austen or Balzac. Such Pygmalion longings Val now recognised as hopelessly foolish. Yet they were not ignoble and he could not laugh at them as he could easily have done had they been held by someone else.

  This bleak clairvoyance, showing no ray of light or comfort at all, did not unduly depress Val. He liked the thought that he was prepared for anything and believed he would be able to cope when the end came even though the thought filled him with despair.

  There was no one to talk to about all this. Val had several good friends, straight as well as gay, but there was not one who could possibly understand. Bruno, yes, perhaps, but he was now a cloud of dust blowing across the Quantocks where they had loved to walk. And Val, who, scattering the ashes, had thought he would die any minute, torn apart by utter loneliness, now spent every waking moment of his life longing for someone else.

  He got up stiffly - Louise was quiet at last - and rubbed the muscles of his calves. He had woken that morning with a blinding headache and had not cycled either on the road or on the runners in the garage, the first time he had missed for months and his legs knew about it.

  The halogen light came on in the Rectory garden. The tortoiseshell cat from the Red Lion sauntered across the grass then stopped and crouched, quite motionless. Val was on the point of turning away when he noticed the blue door was only half visible. A tall wedge of dark shadow stood in for the missing section. The door was standing open.

  His heart exploding with sudden joy, Val ran out of the house across the moonlit road and up the narrow carpeted stairs. Into the darkest moments of his life.

  Chapter Eleven

  Detective Chief Inspector Barnaby stirred his chopped banana and muesli. Gave a moody sigh. Put his spoon down.

  ‘Is th
ere any more coffee?’

  ‘Doesn’t look like it,’ said Joyce, directing her attention to the empty cafetière. ‘And I’m not making any more. You drink far too much of that stuff as it is. Have you cut down at work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You promised.’

  ‘Yes.’ Barnaby pushed his bowl aside. ‘For heaven’s sake.’

  ‘What was the matter last night?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  He had had fragmentary dreams, vivid little cuttings and snippets all relating to what was overwhelmingly on his mind but juxtaposed in ridiculous combinations that made not the slightest sense. Valentine Fainlight cycling furiously on Ferne Basset village green but never moving from the spot, with Vivienne Calthrop hovering just above the ground behind him like a sequinned barrage balloon. Louise Fainlight in a wetsuit made of crocodile skin, fishing with a billhook in the weeds of a fast-flowing river and catching it on the frame of an old pushchair. Ann Lawrence, young and beautiful, wearing a flowered dress, climbing into an open red car. Straightaway a transparent canopy festooned with tubes and jars fell over her and the car turned into a hospital bed. Lionel Lawrence, in a room like yet unlike Carlotta’s, threw ornaments and books around and tore up posters while Tanya, this time an angel in truth with huge feathered wings, perched on top of a bookshelf and shoved two fingers at him, grinning.

  Finally there was Jackson floating up from Barnaby’s subconscious in the shape of a monstrous rocking sailor doll. It was laughing, a clockwork cackle, and the more it was pushed, the more it laughed and bounced back. Beaten and thumped and pushed and beaten, the mechanical laughter became louder and louder, finally distorting into one long scream. This was when Barnaby awoke and knew it was himself that screamed.

  Joyce reached out across the table and took his hand. ‘You’ll have to let go of this, Tom.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You always say—’

  ‘I know what I always say. This one’s different.’

  ‘You’re like that man with the whale.’