Once Too Often

by Dorothy Simpson

  ‘It’s true that if we interview him again before we search, he might have the opportunity to get rid of the evidence if there is any . . .’ Thanet made up his mind. ‘You’re right, Mike. We’ll go for it.’ He stood up. ‘Ring the Magistrates’ Clerk and tell him we’ll be over at 10.30. But before we do anything else today I absolutely must go and get my hair cut.’ He ran his hand over the back of his neck. ‘I don’t like taking time off during working hours but I really can’t turn up at the wedding looking like an old English sheepdog.’

  ‘I’ll do that right away.’ Lineham glanced at his overflowing in-tray. Since Tuesday night routine work had been pushed aside. ‘Then I’ll do a bit of catching up while you’re gone.’

  ‘Right.’ Thanet hurried out and set off for the barber’s at a brisk pace, hoping that there wouldn’t be too much of a queue. As he turned into the High Street he ran into Mallard, almost knocking him over.

  ‘Whoa!’ said the little doctor. ‘Ease up.’

  ‘Sorry! I’m in a bit of a rush.’

  ‘I can see that!’

  ‘I’ve sneaked out to get my hair cut for tomorrow. If I don’t make it I’ll be in real trouble at home.’

  ‘I’ve been wanting a word,’ said Mallard. ‘And we never seem to get a chance to talk nowadays. I’ll walk with you.’

  They fell into step.

  Mallard gave him an assessing look. ‘If you could take your mind off work for two minutes . . . I was just wondering if you felt happier now, about Alexander.’

  Unconsciously, Thanet’s pace slowed. Apart from Joan, the Mallards were the only people to whom he had ever confessed his reservations about Alexander. He remembered an evening not long after the two young people had first started going out together when Mallard had taken him to task about this, accusing him of being prejudiced against every boyfriend that Bridget brought home simply because he didn’t want to lose her. And there had been a measure of truth in that – still was, for that matter, he thought uncomfortably, remembering his thoughts last night. Mallard had also accused him of wanting someone perfect for Bridget and had pointed out that no one ever was, that such expectations were completely unrealistic. Thanet had been left to face the uncomfortable fact that his reservations arose chiefly from his own feelings of inadequacy in the face of Alexander’s superior education, earning power and upper-middle-class background.

  Now he felt ill at ease as he said, ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘But you’re still not sure.’

  ‘I just feel that if he could hurt her once . . . Last time she had no warning, you know. He simply dropped her, out of the blue, just like that.’ Thanet snapped his fingers. ‘You know how upset she was. It took her ages even to begin to get over it. In fact, she never really did.’

  ‘All the more reason, surely, to be thankful that he changed his mind and came back?’

  Thanet shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But you must see that it makes me a bit wary of him.’

  ‘On the principle that if he did it once he can do it again.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘But as I recall, Luke, the reason he gave for breaking it off on that occasion was that he felt he wasn’t ready for the commitment. Leaving Bridget’s feelings aside for the moment, wouldn’t you regard that as a pretty responsible decision to take? Surely you’d prefer him to be sure of his feelings before marrying her, rather than rush into marriage without proper thought, like so many youngsters nowadays – as the soaring divorce rate demonstrates only too clearly?’

  How can I leave Bridget’s feelings aside? ‘That’s what Joan says.’

  ‘Sensible woman, your wife!’

  Some oranges had fallen off the display in front of a greengrocer’s shop and were rolling across the pavement. They stooped to pick them up.

  ‘Thanks,’ said the shop assistant as they handed them back. ‘Cheers.’

  Thanet had been thinking over what Mallard had said. ‘It wasn’t so much the fact that he broke it off,’ he said as they moved on, ‘as the way he did it. It was so abrupt, such a shock for her. There’d been no warning at all.’

  ‘According to her.’

  Thanet stopped. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Just that there may well have been signs, but that she may not have wanted to read them. You know perfectly well that we often see only what we want to see and that love, as they say, is blind. A cliché, maybe, but none the less true.’

  ‘I never thought of it like that,’ said Thanet. They resumed their walk, which had slowed down to a snail’s pace as they neared their destination. ‘It’s true that she was head over heels. Still is, for that matter, as I said.’

  ‘Which is just as it should be. And in my opinion, so is he. If you ask me, Bridget is a very lucky girl.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Oh come on, Luke! It’s not very often one comes across a young man who has all of Alexander’s qualities. He’s hardworking, honest, sincere, likeable, very able, he’s earning a good living and, to cap it all, has a sense of humour. Truthfully, now, what more could you ask?’

  Thanet gave a sheepish grin. ‘Not much, I suppose.’

  They came to a halt beneath the barber’s striped pole. Peering in, Thanet was relieved to see that there were only two people waiting.

  ‘I tell you this,’ said the little doctor. ‘I’ve never had any children, as you know, more’s the pity, but if I had had a daughter I would have been very happy to see her married to Alexander.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘I swear it! And it’s not often I go out on a limb like this, as you know.’

  That was true. Thanet was touched by the fact that Mallard had gone out of his way to try and reassure him – and had succeeded in doing so. Somehow he felt easier in his mind. He trusted Mallard’s judgement; he always had. ‘Thanks, Doc, I appreciate this.’

  Expressions of gratitude had always embarrassed Mallard. ‘See you at the church,’ he said gruffly, and with a wave of his hand, was gone.

  By the time Thanet got back to the office it was twenty past ten. They hurried across to the Magistrates’ Court and had a brief discussion with Graham Ticeman, the Magistrates’ Clerk, who satisfied himself that all the conditions pertaining to a Section 8 warrant applied. The magistrates had been alerted to the fact that an application was to be made and had agreed to hear it at the end of the current case. Meanwhile, Thanet and Lineham slipped into the courtroom and sat at the back as usual. Thanet was pleased to see that the chairman today was Felicity Merridew, a magistrate of long standing with a reputation for sound judgement and impartiality. She was a tiny woman in her sixties with neatly cropped silver hair and a remarkable air of authority for one so small of stature. They didn’t have long to wait as the case was just finishing and in a matter of minutes they were taken into the retiring room to present their application.

  The other two magistrates were male and towered over their chairman as they came in. She greeted Thanet and Lineham with a smile and said, ‘Right, Inspector Thanet. Let’s proceed.’

  Thanet took the oath and then laid forth his arguments for the application. All three magistrates listened carefully. When he had finished Mrs Merridew glanced at the Clerk. ‘Are you happy about this, Mr Ticeman? You’ve satisfied yourself that the conditions have all been met?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Is there any advice you wish to give?’

  He shook his head.

  She consulted her fellow magistrates with raised eyebrows. They too shook their heads. ‘Very well, Inspector. Your application is granted.’

  ‘Great!’ said Lineham, outside.

  ‘All right, Mike. No need to say “I told you so.’ ” But Thanet, too, was pleased that it had gone so smoothly.

  A quarter of an hour later they were knocking yet again at the Barcombes’ now familiar front door. No reply. They knocked again; waited. Still no answer.

  He and Lineham exchanged glances of dismay. They were all geared up
to search, eager to find out if their guess was going to pay off. Thanet had no intention of forcing an entry. Perhaps she had gone shopping.

  He took a step backwards to peer up at the façade of the house and felt the slipstream tug at him as a lorry passed close behind.

  Lineham grabbed his arm. ‘Careful, sir.’

  ‘There’s something different about the house. It’s the curtains. The net curtains have been taken down. Knowing her, she probably washes them once a week.’ Thanet stepped close to the window and shielded his eyes with his hand as he peered inside, but there was nothing of interest to see. The front room looked as sterile and uninviting as ever. ‘Try again, Mike. Knock harder.’

  Lineham did as he was asked and they both strained their ears to catch any sound of movement from within. Nothing. They were about to turn away when Lineham put his hand on Thanet’s arm. ‘Just a sec.’

  Sure enough, a moment later the door opened. Mrs Barcombe, surprisingly, didn’t look as unwelcoming as Thanet had expected. Perhaps she felt grateful to them for precipitating Kevin’s outburst last night. It must be a great relief to her to know at last that there was no danger of losing him to the woman who had given him away at birth. Her attitude would change, no doubt, when she heard why they had come.

  ‘Have you been waiting long? I was in the garden, hanging out my nets.’ As usual she was wearing a crossover apron, a different one this time. With her standards of hygiene Thanet wouldn’t be surprised if she had a different one for each day of the week. Her hands, he noticed, looked red and raw. Not surprising, considering the punishing routine to which she no doubt subjected them.

  ‘We’ve only been here a few minutes,’ he said. ‘May we come in?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  Into the barren sitting room again, looking curiously denuded without its curtains.

  ‘Actually, it’s Kevin’s room we’ve come to take a look at,’ he said.

  Her expression became hostile in a flash. Her only chick had been threatened. She shook her head vehemently. ‘You’ve got no right to do that. You’d better go.’ She turned to open the door, gestured them out.

  ‘We have a search warrant, Mrs Barcombe,’ said Thanet. He sympathised with her need to protect the child she loved, but there was nothing he could do about that. In a murder case it was inevitable that innocent people got hurt along the way and sadly it was often he who had to inflict the pain. Over the years he had had to resign himself to the fact that this was unavoidable but unlike some policemen he had never been able to anaesthetise himself against it.

  She stared at him. It was clear that she had been completely unprepared for this and had no idea what to do. ‘But why?’ she said at last.

  ‘Because we need to look at Kevin’s room and we knew that you probably wouldn’t allow us to do so without one.’

  She shook her head. ‘I didn’t mean that. Last night, I was more interested in what Kev was telling me than why you were here. I tried to get him to explain, after, but he wouldn’t. Just said it was all a mistake. But here you are again and now you want to search his room. I just don’t understand what Kev has to do with that Jessica Dander.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Thanet. And he meant it. If they were right, she had more shocks coming to her. ‘You’ll have to ask Kevin to explain.’

  ‘But he won’t! I told you! Please, Inspector!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Thanet repeated. ‘I’m afraid I can’t do that. And now we’d like to see Kevin’s room, please.’

  Defeated, she turned to lead the way upstairs.

  ‘Just tell us where it is, Mrs Barcombe. We’d prefer you to remain downstairs.’ With her obsessive tidiness he didn’t want her breathing down their necks, clicking her tongue over every move they made.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s rather untidy,’ she said. ‘Kevin only lets me clean up once in a blue moon.’

  And it was true that he needn’t have worried. Her indulgence towards Kevin evidently extended even to allowing him to make as much of a mess of his room as he liked.

  ‘I’m amazed she lets him get away with this,’ said Lineham, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the stale, unwashed odour as they picked their way through the dirty discarded pants, socks, shirts and jeans dropped, presumably where he took them off, all over the floor. The bedside table was cluttered with empty cans and dirty mugs with mould growing over the bottom. Motoring and fashion magazines were scattered across the unmade bed and the wastepaper basket nearby was overflowing with empty crisp packets and the wrappers of chocolate bars and biscuits.

  ‘The power of love,’ said Thanet, looking around. ‘Just think what it must cost her, with her obsession for cleanliness, to leave things in this state. I have heard that adoptive parents find it harder to discipline an adopted child than one of their own, on the grounds that criticism may be taken as rejection.’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t put up with this mess from one of ours, I can tell you! Where do we start?’

  ‘Let’s kick all this stuff into a corner, to begin with.’ Thanet had no intention of picking up Kevin’s dirty clothes with his bare hands, but all this clutter was distracting.

  That done, they set to, beginning conventionally with chest of drawers, wardrobe and bed. They examined the posters on the walls, dismantled the few framed photographs of family holidays and then moved on to a close examination of the fitted carpet, which proved to be professionally fixed with gripper rods.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lineham gloomily, sitting back on his heels. ‘Looks as though we were wrong. There’s not one single thing here to connect him to Jessica.’

  Thanet glanced at the hatch in the ceiling. He could think of more than one case where a loft had yielded up interesting secrets. ‘If there is anything incriminating, he wouldn’t have put it where his mother was likely to come across it on one of her occasional cleans.’

  Lineham followed his gaze and they scrambled to their feet.

  ‘Wonder if there’s a loft ladder,’ said Lineham. The hatch was just too high for him to reach but there was a wooden chair in the corner piled with dirty jeans and T-shirts and Lineham tipped them off and positioned it below the hatch. This was hinged on one side and as he lowered it a ladder swung sweetly down. ‘Great!’ he said.

  ‘If there is anything hidden up there it won’t be too far in,’ said Thanet. ‘He wouldn’t have wanted to go clumping about in the loft and making his parents ask questions about what he was up to.’

  By now Lineham was three-quarters of the way up the ladder, standing with head and shoulders in the opening. ‘There’s a light,’ he said, and switched it on.

  ‘Well?’ said Thanet impatiently. He longed to be up there himself, but the sergeant had been too quick off the mark.

  ‘The floor is boarded for a few yards around the hatch,’ said Lineham. ‘And there’s the usual sort of junk, boxes and bits of leftover carpet and so on.’

  There was a series of scraping sounds as he moved things about. ‘Hang on,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a loose section of board here.’

  A rattling sound, and then, ‘Aaah.’

  ‘“Ah” what?’ said Thanet, by now in a frenzy of suspense and impatience.

  ‘Eureka, I think!’ said Lineham.

  He switched off the light and began to descend.

  FOURTEEN

  As Lineham came down the last few rungs he handed his find to Thanet. It consisted of two items, a blue hard-covered scrapbook with thick pages, of the type readily bought in any large newsagent’s, and an orange folder. When he had stowed away the ladder and closed the hatch they both sat down on the edge of the bed to take a closer look.

  ‘Bingo!’ breathed Lineham.

  And here it was, the proof they needed of Kevin’s obsession with Jessica Manifest, which had begun, it seemed, some six months ago. The scrapbook opened with an article written about her last Easter on the occasion of her winning an award. Then came many more, this
time written by her and obviously clipped from the Kent Messenger. All were dated. Interspersed with these were photograph after photograph, taken in various public places. Many of them had been cut so that only Jessica remained.

  ‘She was right, wasn’t she?’ said Thanet. ‘He had been following her, and for some time. He obviously took these photographs himself, mostly on Sundays, I imagine. Her husband was probably with her, that’s why they’ve been cut.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lineham. ‘That one was taken at the County Show, don’t you think?’

  Thanet agreed. ‘And this is in the white garden at Sissinghurst. Last June, by the look of it. The rose pergola is in full bloom.’

  ‘And I recognise that pub too. Yes, it’s the Three Chimneys at Biddenden.’

  Thanet opened the folder. Here were two more articles clipped from the KM, both of recent date and obviously waiting to be pasted in.

  ‘I wonder if there’s any undeveloped film in his camera?’ said Lineham. This was hanging over one of the knobs on the headboard of the bed. He unhooked it, opened the case and examined it. ‘It’s on number 16 of a 24-exposure film,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘With any luck there’ll be more of her in here.’

  ‘Good thinking, Mike. Write out a receipt for the camera, to give to his mother.’ Thanet stood up. ‘I think we’ve got enough to pull him in, don’t you?’

  Mrs Barcombe was standing at the bottom of the stairs looking anxiously up as they emerged from Kevin’s room. She looked even more worried when she saw what they were carrying. ‘That’s Kevin’s camera!’ she cried. ‘You can’t have that!’