Death of an Innocent (Richard and Amelia Patton)

by Roger Ormerod

  ‘Which she?’

  ‘Olivia! Olivia, damn you. Who the hell d’you think I mean? She insisted on having lunch, and then she gave me a tenner and bought most of the stickers I’d got, so that I wouldn’t lose from the loss of time.’ He groaned. It was forced out of him, from way down inside. ‘And so I didn’t see Nancy at all.’

  ‘And she, Olivia, didn’t mention an appointment?’

  ‘She just said she had something to attend to.’

  I glanced at Amelia who was looking pale and drawn. She reached for the door, but I shook my head. She made a gesture of despair. I turned back to Mark. He spoke as I turned, as though he’d been waiting for the chance to add something.

  ‘It was the last time I saw her.’ His voice was hollow.

  ‘Olivia didn’t arrange another meeting? Didn’t contact you?’ He stared, looking desperate. ‘No. No, she didn’t. I assumed she was leaving it to me.’

  ‘Didn’t even send you something like this?’ I asked.

  I reached inside my jacket and produced the yellow photo packet. I held it out. He stared at it.

  ‘Go on,’ I said. ‘Take it. Look inside.’

  His eyes lifted from it to my face, down again, then he wiped a hand down his trousers and reached for it warily. He opened it, and drew out the two photographs. I noticed they were shaking in his fingers.

  For a long while he stared at them, then suddenly he thrust them back at me. ‘I don’t...’

  ‘You know what these are?’

  ‘It’s Nancy, isn’t it? I don’t want to look at them. Nancy dead.’

  ‘But you’ve seen them before. Or copies of them.’

  ‘No,’ he whispered. He lifted his head. ‘No!’ he shouted.

  ‘Then why did you pay a man called Harvey Cole to steal these for you?’

  ‘It’s a lie. I don’t know him.’

  ‘He lives near Happisburgh.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him. Where is he? I’ll stuff these down his bleedin’ throat.’

  ‘He’s gone abroad.’

  ‘Y’ see. Where he’s safe. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now get out of this office. I’ve had enough. Sod off. Both of you.’

  I heard Amelia make a choking protest, and I flashed her a look of restraint. She had felt it safer to sit down. She was now staring at me appealingly, but I couldn’t leave it now.

  In a second I was facing Mark again, and was trying to take advantage of his anger.

  ‘You’re lying, and you know you’re lying. When I go to the police, they’ll know you’re lying.’

  ‘No. Please.’ The anger sagged from him.

  ‘Somebody sent you the copies of these. It was some sort of a threat.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus, no. It...it was a promise. A promise that was a threat, as well, if you want. But it was all crazy. She’d got it all wrong.’

  ‘Who had? In what way?’

  He put a hand over his mouth for a moment, restraining his anxious tongue, then he went on quietly. ‘Nancy died. We didn’t know she’d died, not till a week later. The police said about a week. I didn’t know where I was or what to think. Then...those...’ He pointed. ‘Copies of ‘em, anyway, they arrived. No note, no anything. But I knew. It was her. Olivia. Just like her. I didn’t know what it meant. Really I didn’t, Mr Patton. Then I saw the difference between the two.’

  ‘The yellow charity sticker?’

  ‘That’s it. Yes. Then I knew. She’d found the body, come across it — oh hell, for all I know she might’ve guessed Nancy was dead, if she didn’t turn up for that appointment. But however she did it, she’d found Nancy’s body, and she believed — thought — God, what fantasies that woman used to fling around! She must’ve thought I’d done it, though where she got that idea I can’t imagine. And those pictures, they were saying to me that she knew, and forgave me! Forgave, for all that’s holy! They were meant to tell me I was a naughty boy, and I mustn’t do it again, and mommy knows, but look what I did for you, you little terror! I’ve given you an alibi with the yellow sticker. I’ve made it look as though she died on the Saturday. And who can give you an alibi for that Saturday, you darling boy? Who but your adoring mommy? That was what she was telling me, for pity’s sake, and if I wasn’t a good boy...Haven’t I said enough yet? She’d got me. Trapped. She’d gone clean bonkers. I was going to have to behave, and that meant going along with her stupid fantasy that I was a little boy who’d got to be...’ He thrust his fingers through his hair and turned away. Then he whirled on me, furious with me because I’d listened to him.

  ‘And if you so much as smile, Mr Clever Patton, I’ll wipe it right off your face.’

  I didn’t feel like smiling. I gave it a few seconds, then I spoke evenly, so as not to disturb too much. ‘And you thought all that, just from the sight of two pictures?’

  ‘You don’t know her, mate!’ He glared at me with flat contempt.

  ‘And since then?’ I asked wearily.

  ‘I’d had enough. I couldn’t even face her again. It went...oh, months went by. She was waiting for me to make a move. But I was nervous, and I reckoned...if she had copies and I could get hold of ‘em, then she couldn’t touch me. I had to have a bit of peace. It was pounding through my head every minute of the day. Somebody in a pub put me on to Harvey Cole.’ He gestured to the envelope still in my hand. ‘The rotten bastard cheated me, letting you have ‘em. So help me, I’ll kill him if he ever comes back.’

  For a long while I stared at him. He looked as though he’d kill me if I didn’t go away. I turned to Amelia.

  ‘Let’s get out of here, shall we?’

  She had a handkerchief to her lips. She nodded. I opened the door for her and we went out into the cold, crisp night. The moon was well up now. We could see our way. We didn’t pause to say goodbye to Larry.

  13

  The windows misted up as soon as we got inside the car. I started the engine and put on the blower and the rear de-mister, and too impatient to get away from there I backed up the lane, more by instinct than ability, and out on to the road. Then I headed for our hotel.

  It was a long while before Amelia ventured a word. Then it was tentatively.

  ‘Did you believe him, Richard?’

  I wondered how to put it. It could have extended itself into a lecture: liars I have known.

  ‘I think it was mostly true. It’s a basic principle — tell the exact truth when it doesn’t hurt, then slip in the odd bit that’s a lie. But I think he stuck pretty rigidly to the truth, because he had complete control of himself and his emotions. The fact that Harvey had tricked him by selling me the pictures, that tripped him up. He’d have strangled Harvey there and then. But for the rest...’ I shrugged.

  ‘Then what do you think?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘That bit about thinking he might marry Nancy, and being so shocked when he heard his own father was also Nancy’s — that was nonsense. They’d been brought up as brother and sister, and that’s how he’d think of her. No, that was a cover-up, to make sense of why he didn’t explain the situation of as soon as he realized Olivia’s mistake.’

  ‘Hmm!’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘You don’t accept that?’

  ‘We can’t speculate about Mark’s feelings for Nancy.’

  ‘No. Perhaps not. But you can see the truth in Malcolm Ruston being Nancy’s father. He arranged the adoption before the birth, knowing he was the father. Olivia, career woman even then I’d guess, didn’t want to be lumbered with a child, and poor Angie, who’s probably known Malcolm since they were toddlers, and in love with him, had to live with the fact that he’d fathered an illegitimate child, and thought she might lose him if she refused to adopt the baby.’

  ‘The terrible things people do to each other!’ She thumped my knee. ‘Yes, that could be true.’

  ‘And that would explain Angie’s attitude to Nancy.’

  ‘Nancy didn’t stand a chance, poor child.’

  ‘Oh yes she
did. It might have made her nervous of facing people and angering them, but it toughened her up. She’d have gone far.’

  ‘Why must you keep talking about her like that?’

  ‘Not to upset you, my dear. But Nancy’s in the centre of it. I think that Mark, once he’d got over the shock of being welcomed as Olivia’s son, did some quick thinking and realized he was on to a good thing. There, he could see a lot of money around, and what he needed, craved for, was money. He’s got his father’s ambitions. He decided to carry on with the deception, and see what happened. All he’d have to do was keep Nancy well clear of Olivia. And he knew how to convince her, and what to tell her that would do the trick.’

  ‘Tell her she wasn’t wanted?’

  ‘As simple as that.’

  ‘But that would be vicious,’ she said disgustedly.

  ‘Wouldn’t it! But it left him clear to carry on with the deception of Olivia, and I’m quite convinced it went just as he’s described it. Olivia has always been emotional. You said that. And she writes books packed with strong emotions. That could have been a natural choice. But it would’ve broken her up if she’d let herself become too involved, and she’d soon realize that. So I’d say she set out to control her emotions when she was writing. Got a firm grip on them, and made it all a technique. But you can’t just change personalities by walking from one room to the other, and the one invaded the other, and Philip couldn’t help her there, from what I’ve seen of him.’

  ‘He’s a dear, sweet man, but he wouldn’t even realize there was any help required. I can see what you’re getting at, Richard. It’s my thinking entirely. Olivia got so that she didn’t know any more who she was, Olivia or Christobel or Lovella. And all the genuine emotion was locked away, just waiting for a chance to break out and flood all over somebody. It’d be typical of her. Then into that situation sailed Mark. Oh, he was quite correct there. She’d flow all over him like a tide.’

  ‘I don’t know who to be most sorry for,’ I admitted.

  ‘Don’t waste any on Mark. I agree with you. He pounced on it and couldn’t do enough to encourage her. He didn’t mind playing the part of mother’s darling boy, and I don’t care what he says. He’s so transparent. He said she gave him presents — oh, I can believe that. It’s just what she’d do. But I’d certainly like to see some of those. He hid them away, he said. I bet he had a job persuading himself not to accept a nice car or a racing yacht he could drool over. She can probably afford that sort of thing. But he’d accept something like a Rolex chronometer. Water resistant. I can imagine what pleasure that’d give her. She’s very generous. A diamond tie-pin or a gold-plated shaving set. You name it. But I’m sure he played up to her, and all the while it was leading up to some method he could use to feed money into the boatyard in an acceptable way to his father.’ She nodded to herself. That was it in a nutshell.

  I grunted, picking it up. ‘Then Nancy went to college, and that left Mark in charge of the office, and even when she got her degree he knew very well Nancy wouldn’t be coming back to it. It’d leave everything wide open for a neat bit of exploitation.’

  ‘And isn’t that a fine thing to contemplate!’ She turned in her seat, anger in her voice. ‘You can just imagine him agreeing — reluctantly, mind you — to allow Olivia to give him money. Perhaps that was started. But then, after nearly a year, when Mark must’ve thought he was in the clear, Nancy tossed a spanner in the whole scheme. She told him she’d written to Olivia.’ And, satisfied with this version of it, she twisted back and stared bleakly through the windscreen.

  I wasn’t so certain he was as black as she’d painted him, but I didn’t say so. I could feel the patches of the ice under the tyres, the abrupt changes in the feel through the steering wheel. But I was in a hurry, and pushed the car to the limits of its adhesion.

  ‘And we know Philip intercepted that,’ she reminded me, because I hadn’t answered.

  ‘But Mark didn’t know that.’ I corrected a slide. ‘At that stage, Nancy had become a distinct menace. If she met Olivia and the truth came out, not only would his scheme fail but there’d be all hell breaking out around him. So he reckoned he had to do something. He stationed himself with his collecting box at the bridge at Potter Heigham — and who turned up but Olivia! From her attitude he’d know she hadn’t yet met Nancy, and after lunch she said she had something to attend to. Maybe she had, but it wasn’t the business Mark thought it was. All the same, his last chance was to stay at the bridge and hope to intercept Nancy.’

  I was saying this to myself, really, to persuade me of its validity. But I was worried about Mark’s attitude at our recent meeting. I would have expected him to resist my questions, to wriggle and fight and oppose me all the way through. But he’d told us his story without too much pressure. It could have been that he realized I already knew too much, and only his eager self-justification could rescue him from doubt. If so, he’d been much subtle than I’d have expected. He’d handed it to me on a plate.

  We were nearing the coast now. Ahead, I could see the wink of the Cromer lighthouse, once every fifteen seconds.

  ‘So you think he managed to intercept her?’ she asked.

  ‘It seems certain. If he did, she’d be completely unsuspecting, and if he asked her to walk along the river path and talk it over, she wouldn’t raise any objection, always supposing she was early for her appointment with Philip. And if he got her to that boat-hire basin, and if it was deserted at that time...he’d only need to push her in and walk away.’

  ‘How you can say that!’ she burst out. ‘As though Nancy was a block of wood.’

  I’d been trying to get across the enormity of what had been done, and equate it with what we knew of Mark. ‘Policemen are like Olivia with her writing, my dear. We just couldn’t do the job unless we looked at it with detachment.’

  ‘You’re not a policeman now.’

  ‘It’s beginning to wear off. You’re a better tonic than Philip.’

  ‘Even that you say without feeling.’

  ‘I need both hands on the wheel. Bring it up again later.’

  ‘I will,’ she promised. Or threatened.

  Then there seemed no way to get back to the subject of Nancy, until I forced my mind into behaving.

  ‘What happened next has to be a wild guess,’ I said, breaking the silence. ‘We don’t know how Olivia came to find the body. In fact, we don’t know why she looked for it. And when she found it, I can see no reason why she would suspect Mark —’

  ‘No, no, Richard,’ she cut in positively. ‘It couldn’t possibly have been Olivia. You’re forgetting, she didn’t know Nancy was going to be there that Saturday. Heavens, Mark only ever made one mention of her to Olivia. As far as she was concerned, Nancy didn’t exist.’

  I lost it in a wild skid on an icy corner, spun twice, and ended up facing the wrong way. Amelia exclaimed violently, but I had my own cursing to do. She had, in those few words, destroyed my whole chain of reasoning, and my stab at the brake pedal had been a reaction of self-annoyance.

  I edged the car round and started again, more slowly.

  ‘It was Philip who knew Nancy was going to be there,’ she said, after she’d recovered her composure.

  ‘Yes.’ Philip?

  ‘It was Philip who was the photographer in their partnership, after all. Look at it now, and it seems obvious that Philip must’ve been the one who took the photos.’

  ‘Obvious?’ I risked a glance at her. ‘Let’s not do too much assuming.’

  ‘You’re always doing it.’

  I nodded. That was only too true. ‘Look at it like this —’

  ‘It was my idea, Richard,’

  ‘Then you look at it.’

  I concentrated on the road as she did her bit of looking, and then she admitted: ‘All right. Be fair. It might still have been Olivia who took the photos. Philip’s the photographer — he said that — but I bet he’s got more than one camera, and she could easily have borrowed one...�
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  ‘And borrowed the boat? Philip’s little boat with the outboard motor, Amelia.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had one.’

  ‘I must’ve forgotten to tell you. Sorry. But Olivia would be able to handle it as well as Philip, I’ve no doubt. She used to get away from her concerns for hours at a time. Why not on the waterways? What better way of easing the tension?’

  ‘You make a good case, I’ll say that for you, Richard.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘The difficulty’s in deciding what case it is. Are you now saying that Olivia or Philip took the photos?’

  ‘Either. It doesn’t really matter, as it’s turned out.’

  I drew to a halt on the road outside the hotel, and edged my door open a couple of inches to put on the interior light. I wanted to watch her face.

  ‘Doesn’t matter?’

  ‘Mark assumed the two photos had been sent to him by Olivia, as a warning and as a kind of trap. A lure, say. But if Philip sent them, they were intended as a definite threat. Mark’s assumption might have been wrong, but the same result has been achieved. It’s kept Mark away from Olivia. Olivia wouldn’t have wanted that, which seems to me to show that the meetings were more at Mark’s initiative than hers, which is not what he implied. But Philip most definitely did want it. He couldn’t face any more. Mark was invading their lives.’

  ‘That’s true enough. Why have you stopped out here?’

  ‘For a quick getaway.’ I smiled at her, a little bleakly I must admit. ‘You did say you couldn’t stand the idea of staying another night.’

  ‘But we can’t leave it now. We’re so close.’

  ‘Close to what? Think about it. Where are we heading? Huh?’

  Still arguing, we entered the lobby. The clock over the desk indicated it was close to the time for the bar to close. There was, as usual, nobody on the desk.

  ‘And Richard...have you thought of this — we don’t know Nancy looked like her mother.’

  ‘Umm?’ I was looking round for the manager.

  She tugged at my sleeve. ‘We’ve assumed Mark went really desperate when he thought Nancy was shortly going to meet her mother. He didn’t dare to allow it. Why not? Because Olivia would take one look, and at once recognize her own daughter! That’s what we believe. Is it not?’