A Place Of Safety

by Caroline Graham

  ‘That’s right.’ Barnaby managed a bitter smile. ‘Call me Ahab.’

  ‘It’ll break sooner or later.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Try and—’

  ‘Joycey, I’m sorry. I’m going to be late.’

  If anything, he was twenty minutes early. Joyce followed her husband into the hall, helped him on with his overcoat. Took down a scarf.

  ‘I don’t want that.’

  ‘Just take it with you. It’s really chilly. There’s mist in the garden.’

  She watched him get into the car from the hall window. Heard the aggressive revving and the engine picking up speed, too early and too fast, as he drove off. Then the telephone called her away.

  Something terrible had happened to Val. Louise was so used to her brother getting up first that, on waking to a silent house, she simply assumed he was away doing his daily twenty-mile run.

  She flung on some warm trousers and a jersey, made some tea and took it outside. Barnaby had found the garden at Fainlights too rigidly austere for his taste. But it was precisely this constrained formality that appealed to Louise. Edges were straight, low barriers of yew were precisely angled, shrubs were shaped into unmoving elegance by skilful clipping, the dark water in the pool remained unruffled. Even overlaid as it was now by the rattle and roar of the approaching Causton and District Council’s refuse collection lorry, the scene was very peaceful.

  Louise wandered idly around, drinking her tea, stopping to admire a delightful sculpture of a hare and stroking its ears, rubbing a scented leaf between her fingers. Coming to the back wall, she noticed the key was missing from the garden door. It was a large iron key, always turned in the lock against intruders but never removed, Val’s theory being that anyone who could gain access to the thing would be in the garden already and if Louise started keeping it in a safe place it would soon get lost.

  Louise turned the handle and stepped out onto a narrow grass verge bordered by a ditch. On the other side of the ditch a long field of stubble bordered by hedges stretched away to the main road. The key was not on this side either. She would look for it after breakfast and buy a bolt and padlock in Causton if it could not be found.

  Moving away from the garden, she wandered round to the garage. Though the stack of bikes was there, the Alvis was missing. Then, to her surprise, Louise saw it in the road, parked neatly, close to the kerb. The refuse lorry pulled up. A man took the Fainlights’ wheelie-bin and hooked it onto the lifting apparatus. There was a loud thump as the contents were emptied and the bin was banged back onto the pavement. Louise pushed it into the garage.

  Returning to the house, she called her brother’s name and, receiving no response, went to his room. Val was sitting on a low chair very close to a window overlooking the village street and the Old Rectory drive. On his knees were a pair of field glasses from an earlier birdwatching phase. His fingers gripped the leather strap so tightly the white knuckles seemed to be almost cracking the skin. His car keys were on the floor by his feet.

  ‘Val?’ His utter stillness frightened her. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’

  It was as if he hadn’t heard. He didn’t even turn his head. Just swayed slightly as if slipping into sleep then jerked himself upright. He still wore his clothes from yesterday.

  ‘Have you been here all night?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Louise stared, bewildered, then realised he was answering her first question.

  ‘Are you ill? Val?’ She reached out and touched him then snatched her hand back. His arm was cold and heavy as a stone. ‘You’re frozen. I’ll get you a hot drink.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘How long have you been sitting here?’

  ‘Go away, Lou. No, wait! I need a pee.’ He handed her the glasses. Then, walking quickly away, ‘Don’t take your eyes off the house.’

  Louise waited for him to come back, not watching any house, with or without the glasses. When he did so he turned from her, once again staring out with feverish concentration, squinting and peering through the lenses.

  Louise waited a few moments, sensing she had been forgotten. She was unsure what to do next. Making a cup of tea, the universal English panacea for everything from a headache to fire, flood and pestilence, seemed rather a futile gesture. But he was so cold. And it was better than doing nothing. But then, as she began to move away, Val started to speak.

  ‘I can cope . . . that is, as long as I . . . I can cope . . . I’ll be able . . . to handle . . . only I’ve got to . . . then . . . tell me . . . ask him . . . ask him . . . torment . . . I can’t bear . . . not . . . not . . .’

  All this anguished mumbling was punctuated by sucked-in, painful wheezes. He sounded like someone having an asthma attack. Louise waited, devastated, for this wildness to run its course. There was small comfort in knowing that none of it was meant for her. Just before she left the room he brought the glasses up quickly with a little cry then, just as quickly, dropped them. His shoulders sagged with disappointment.

  Louise retreated to the kitchen. Making tea and wondering who on earth she could turn to in her dilemma brought her sharply up against the realisation that, now that Ann was not here, there was no one. She and Val had always been self-sufficient, each to the other, while living in Ferne Basset. Keeping yourself to yourself was all very fine until one of you became helpless. She considered ringing their GP then almost immediately abandoned the idea. What was the point? The man would hardly come out to see someone simply because they were utterly wretched and gabbling senselessly to themselves. And if he did, how might Val react? In this present, thoroughly unbalanced state he seemed quite capable of throwing the doctor down the stairs and himself straight after.

  What could have happened since they parted company the night before to have reduced him to this pitiful condition? That it was Jax’s doing she had no doubt. She wondered if she dared ask Val then quickly decided against it. Not because she feared his reaction but because she was afraid he might decide to tell her the truth.

  It wasn’t until she returned to his room with the tea and Val turned to her, his eyes vague and terrible, that she remembered that today was Charlie Leathers’ funeral.

  Straws had been drawn in the Red Lion to decide who should represent the hostelry where Charlie had spent so many miserable hours putting the jovial punters off their beer.

  The obvious choice, mine host, was not prepared to leave the pub and no one blamed him. That left five regulars who, for various reasons, were still around one minute after the suggestion had been mooted. Of these, one was in the Gents, two were playing bar billiards and so missed hearing the proposition. Another, a retired actor, was chatting up Colleen the barmaid, and the last, Harry (Ginger) Nuttings, had had a tin leg since the war and just couldn’t make it to the door on time. It was Harry who drew the short straw.

  He promised faithfully to turn up at St Thomas in Torment on the stroke of 11 a.m. cometh the day but never did. Explaining at lunchtime - after draining a double Whisky Mac in lieu of attendance money - he told the company that he had unbuckled his leg, as was his habit when taking a nap after breakfast, but on waking found it had rolled under the bed. By the time he had managed to fish it out, the hearse was drawing up level with the church gate and he didn’t want to shame them all by turning up late.

  ‘Must have been a small house then,’ said the retired actor.

  Louise thought so too as she stood, a discreet distance from the family and well away from that cold border of death, the edge of the grave. She was not wearing black, though her wardrobe was full of it, feeling such a gesture would be deeply inappropriate given her casual relationship to the deceased.

  Louise wished she had not come. She felt now that Hetty Leathers had only asked her out of politeness and was as surprised to see her as she herself was to be there. Also she worried about leaving Valentine. She had looked back, going through the lych gate, and had seen him staring fixedly through the glass, lonely a
nd abandoned in his retreat like a prisoner in a high tower.

  The Leathers family was bearing up bravely. Pauline, holding her mother’s hand, was on her left. Pauline’s husband, a burly man with cropped red hair, linked arms on the other side. Hetty did not give much evidence of needing their support and all three were concealing their grief well.

  Evadne Pleat stood next to them, her face tiny beneath a vast, gauzy meringue of a hat. While appearing to cast her eyes down gravely and respectfully at the coffin, she had actually noted Louise Fainlight’s appearance with some concern. She could only see Louise’s profile but noted the mouth, turned down as in a tragic mask. Also she was wearing what, for her, was an awful lot of make-up. She was screwing up her eyes and blinking. As if conscious of being watched, she tugged at the dark, satin fall of her hair, pulling it forwards, half concealing her face.

  Once Lionel Lawrence had registered that his wife, being no longer in any state to order him about, was unable to force him to do his ecclesiastical duty vis-à-vis their late employee, he had promptly abandoned the whole idea. The Reverend Theo Lightdown, as shocked as anyone by the dreadful news about Mrs Lawrence, understood straightaway that her husband could not leave her side and stepped promptly into the breach.

  Unfortunately he knew nothing of Charlie and had to build on the few comments Lionel gave him (rather garbled, actually, but who could blame the poor man?). So the address was not only brief but also somewhat inaccurate. The Reverend Lightdown seemed to sense as much as the five mourners stared at him, dry-eyed and somewhat bewildered. He touched on Adam the gardener, that heavenly forerunner in whose earthy footsteps Charlie had so honourably trod. His love of all growing things and the magic of his “green fingers”. His convivial friendships. A dearly loved father and grandad now at peace and waiting patiently for the day when his dear wife and helpmeet of many years would be joining him. At this a look of such horror and distress shadowed the widow Leathers’ countenance that the Reverend Lightdown decided to bring the eulogy to a close.

  Now, at the graveside, he closed the book of Common Prayer and pressed it gravely to his bosom. Hetty watched as the coffin was slowly and evenly lowered. If tears were gathering, it was at the sight of the beautiful wreath, so thoughtfully chosen by Ann with her sweet, rather childlike, writing on the black-edged card. There was a much more modest, rather ordinary one from Hetty and the family and a bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums from the Fainlights.

  The ropes strained and creaked against the varnished wood but the coffin did not tilt or tip one iota. As if all this carefulness mattered, thought Hetty. As if Charlie would care, one way or the other. Or about the floral tributes, come to that. Pauline released her mother’s hand and whispered in her ear.

  Hetty bent to pick up a handful of earth. She was surprised how dark and rich and crumbly it was. Just like Christmas cake. She threw it down into the grave. It fell on the inscribed brass plate, almost covering her husband’s name. He was reduced to C . ar . i . Lea . . . . . now.

  Hetty had seen this action done often in television dramas and now began to feel rather like an actress herself. Certainly, she felt no genuine sorrow. She just wanted to get back to the bungalow and see if the grandchildren and Candy were all right. And start serving the sliced ham and salad lunch with tinned salmon and cucumber sandwiches and Battenburg cake that Pauline and little Jenny had set out earlier.

  The tiny funeral party began to move away. There was an awkward moment when Louise held out her hand to Hetty and said how very sorry she was and Hetty wasn’t sure what the right thing to do was. But Pauline stepped in, simply asking Louise back to the house for a cup of tea if she’d like to come. But Louise said she had an appointment and hurried away.

  Evadne was coming back to the bungalow and was looking forward to it. She liked to see her friend in the bosom of her family and the grandchildren were delightful. Once they had negotiated the lych gate, she tucked Hetty’s arm in hers and they strolled in the bright autumn sunshine towards Tall Trees Lane, Pauline and Alan close behind.

  Hetty mentioned her strange continuous lack of feeling to Evadne who suggested Hetty had a word with her GP. Later in the week she did and Dr Mahoney diagnosed delayed shock. He warned Hetty that grief could not be permanently denied and that she must be sure to come to the surgery if she needed any sort of help. Finally he cautioned that, ‘Sorrow can come flooding in at the most unexpected moment.’

  But it never did.

  There were many things that Barnaby disliked about his work although, fortunately for him, they were outnumbered by things he liked. One of the things he disliked intensely, which almost drove him mad sometimes, was waiting. Waiting for feedback and for reports to be processed. Waiting for scene of crime and postmortem results. Waiting to see people who might or might not have some information regarding a case you were locked into and their first free space was Friday week. Waiting for faxes responding to your faxes, which never turned up, and waiting for photographs to be developed. Waiting for the next lot of perforated paper to come foaming out of the printer. Waiting for whatever lowlife chancer was facing you across the Formica-topped table in the interview room to open his mouth and say something, anything, if only ‘fuck off’.

  Right now Barnaby was waiting for a fingerprint match on the prints found in Carlotta’s place in Stepney with those in the attic at the Old Rectory. Presumably they’d be the same but one had to be certain. There had been two other sets of prints in the attic room, presumably Ann and Lionel Lawrence’s for Hetty Leathers had sworn she’d never set foot in there since Carlotta arrived. Lawrence had grudgingly agreed to come into the station at some point to have his taken for purposes of elimination. (More waiting.) Jackson’s, already on file, had been compared, with negative results.

  The blow-ups from the security camera film lay on Barnaby’s desk, mocking him. A man in black mounting a Peugeot cycle which had since vanished. So where could it have been hidden? If you wanted to hide a book, choose a library. But a bike? There were no Halfords in Ferne Basset to slip one machine in among dozens of others. And the clothes - even more important. If they could only find the Lycra shorts, prove the thread in the Humber boot belonged, and link them to Jackson. But if they couldn’t - and as time went by this was looking more and more likely - another way had to be found.

  As he struggled to perceive what this other way might be, Barnaby was overcome by the haunting fear that somewhere there was one question which, if put to the right person and answered truthfully, would hand him a loose end in the vast web of information he was caught up in. He would then be able to pull on the thread and gradually unravel the mystery. Perhaps he had already asked the question but of the wrong person. More likely, he did not yet understand what the question was.

  And how much clearer the way would be if he knew what to jettison. Experience told him that only a fraction of the information that had come flooding in would be of use. Yet only a small percentage could safely be discounted. Eventually (please God) he would know the truth and understand that all he had ever really needed was this simple fact from forensics, that slip of the tongue in an interview, a deliberately misleading conversation that only now could be fully understood.

  But for the moment all he could do was wait. Actively wait, that was, for inaction was unbearable to him. He decided to start reading through all the case information from the very beginning. There had not been time until now and reading piecemeal as things came in could never give a cohesive view. He would read slowly, carefully but with a sharp eye. He looked at the calendar. Thursday, 27 August. Over ten days since Carlotta ran away. Eight days since Charlie Leathers died. Maybe today would be his lucky day.

  Detective Sergeant Alec Bennet was getting bored. Or rather, more bored. He was bored when he started his surveillance, for nothing is more boring than knowing you are going to be sitting in a car hour after hour staring at a house in the vain hope that your quarry will rush out and drive off to somewhere incredibly g
lamorous and there start doing lots of very exciting things that were against the law.

  In fact what happened ninety-nine times out of a hundred was that either they never came out or, if they did come out, it was to nip round to the corner shop for some fags, a six-pack and a handful of Instants then go straight back in again.

  It struck Bennet that the Old Rectory could have been better placed. He could see the forecourt of the Red Lion in his left-hand wing mirror and would give a lot to be doing his lookout from a window seat in the lounge while getting to grips with a Ploughman’s and a half of lager. But it was not to be.

  His stomach told him it was one o’clock. He unwrapped his corned beef and Branston pickle sandwiches, put his jam turnover in its separate waxed paper to one side and spread a pretty flowered paper napkin on his knees. Julie was daintily thorough in all her wifely duties - well, nearly all.

  Still observing as he unscrewed his Thermos, the policeman became uncomfortably aware that he was himself observed. There was a prickly feeling on the skin of his face and neck and his hands became unpleasantly moist. He did not look up or round. Just drank his tea and ate his sandwich.

  Then he noticed, on the wall surrounding the Rectory, two discs of lemon sunlight dancing about. Field glasses. He got out of the car, made something of a show stretching his arms and legs then strolled off as if to take a turn round the Green.

  The watcher was at an upstairs window at that extraordinary building that looked as if it should be housing not human beings but a small rainforest. He was motionless, his gaze riveted on the Rectory. So, thought Bennet, sauntering back and climbing into the car, that makes two of us. He wondered if this little detail was worth ringing in but as the guy was well distanced, and so still he could well be in the throes of a near-death experience, Bennet decided not to bother.