An Air That Kills

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An Air That Kills Page 27

by Andrew Taylor


  ‘I doubt it,’ Jill said. ‘I think the police will want you to stay here until they’ve sorted everything out.’

  Antonia’s murky brown eyes flickered in the mirror. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There’ll have to be an inquest on your father, I imagine. And then there’s the question of the burglary.’

  ‘Yes, I realise that. But it’s not as if Newport is the other end of the earth, is it? Besides, there’s my job to think about. They need me there.’

  Jill sat down on the bed. ‘You know that phone call?’

  ‘What phone call?’

  ‘As you and Charlotte were going upstairs. It was the police. Apparently someone’s been killed in Templefields.’

  Antonia’s shoulders rose and fell almost imperceptibly. She stared at herself in the mirror and rubbed her eyes.

  ‘The victim was someone from London,’ Jill went on. ‘The police are looking for a local man. Charlie Meague.’

  Antonia’s head snapped up. ‘Charlie? Don’t be stupid. He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  Jill chose her words with care: ‘They seem to think he’s smashed a man’s head in.’

  ‘It’s not true. He’s not like that at all. I used to know Charlie very well – when he worked for us. Just because he’s poor, people think he’s capable of anything.’

  ‘Charlie Meague was one of the men who found the bones at the Rose in Hand. Did you know that?’

  Antonia did not reply.

  ‘That’s the thing about Lydmouth,’ Jill observed. ‘Everything’s connected. Listen, I think you’d better tell me about the brooch.’

  Once again, Antonia’s eyes met Jill’s in the mirror. For a full moment, neither of them spoke. As the sixty seconds stretched towards eternity, Jill imagined the thoughts scurrying like terrified animals around Antonia’s mind, looking for a way out that did not exist.

  At last, Antonia said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You do. There was a brooch found with those baby’s bones.’ Jill watched Antonia wincing. ‘The brooch was in the shape of a true love’s knot. It was made of silver and it had a Victorian hallmark. I think we were meant to think that they belonged together, the brooch and the bones. That they were the sort of debris of an affair that went wrong. I think the hallmark and that piece of newspaper were designed to suggest a date for the bones. Nothing too crude or obvious. Just a hint, in case it was needed.’

  Jill stopped to give Antonia a chance to speak. Antonia was breathing heavily through her mouth. As Jill watched, she brushed a coil of ash from the dressing table to the carpet.

  ‘I actaully saw the brooch, you know,’ Jill went on. ‘Inspector Thornhill came round here on the evening they were found. He wanted Charlotte and Philip to help him identify the newspaper. And he showed us the brooch, too. He let us hold it. In one of those Kashmir photographs, your mother’s wearing an identical brooch. But you already know that, don’t you?’

  Antonia rummaged in her handbag and took out a fresh cigarette. ‘You can’t possibly be sure it’s the same. There were probably thousands of brooches like it.’

  ‘It’s a studio photograph, a professional job using a professional camera. You could blow up that brooch to life-size, or larger. Why was the photograph album in your room?’

  Antonia lit the cigarette. She stared at the wavering flame on the match. The flame burnt down to her fingers. With a squawk of pain, she dropped it in her makeshift ashtray.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I look at photographs of my parents?’

  ‘You hated your father, didn’t you?’

  Another silence filled the room. There was a distant clatter of plates from the dining room: Susan was laying the table for lunch.

  ‘It’s no crime to hate your father.’

  ‘No,’ Jill agreed. ‘Not if that’s as far as it goes. Why did you hate him so much?’

  Antonia had retreated into herself. Her head was wreathed with smoke. Her eyes were closed.

  Jill took a deep breath. ‘Was it because of the baby?’

  She watched Antonia’s face in the mirror. Nothing happened. Smoke curled upwards from the cigarette in the bowl. Antonia swallowed. Two tears slipped out between her reddened eyelids and trickled down her cheeks. Jill got up from the bed and put her arm round Antonia’s shoulders.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Antonia jerked herself away.

  Jill recoiled. She looked at Antonia in the mirror: her face was suffused with blood.

  ‘You had a baby.’ Jill pitched her tone midway between a question and a statement. ‘And your father took it away from you.’

  Antonia’s eyes opened into slits. ‘He said if people found out I’d go to prison.’ Her voice rose to a wail. ‘I was only fourteen – how could I know what to do? And he said it would be adopted and properly looked after. He would be adopted – it was a boy, I saw it.’

  ‘But surely people knew what was going on?’

  ‘As soon as he found out I was going to have a baby, he sent me away – to Aunt Maud. I told you about her, his sister, the nurse. This was just before she emigrated to South Africa – she used to have a house in London. I went there. She looked after me. And as soon as the baby was born, my father took him away. It was just after the war started, in November. Everything was very confused. He said it was a private adoption. But I went through all his papers yesterday – there’s no record of anything. He sacked Charlie and his mother, of course, while I was in London. He didn’t say why, not to me, he didn’t have to.’ Antonia’s face seemed to crumple inwards. ‘All these years I believed him. I thought my son would be growing up. Each birthday I’d think, today he’ll be so many years old. I thought of what he’d be doing, how tall he’d be, what he’d be wearing. I used to look at the children at school and try to work out what he’d be learning. But it was all a lie.’ She glanced angrily at Jill in the mirror. ‘But what do you know about it? Why should you care?’

  Jill turned away so that Antonia could not see her face. After a moment she said, ‘Did Charlie Meague know what happened?’

  ‘Charlie? He knew nothing at all. Can’t you understand? Why do people have to be so stupid?’

  Antonia covered her face with her hands and began to cry. The sobs wrenched her body. Jill reached out a hand towards her, but did not touch her. Suddenly she understood what Antonia had been trying to say. Sadness rose like a tide inside her. She sat down on the bed. Her eyes filled with tears. The tears were not for Antonia, but for the lost babies.

  A dull, rolling boom filled the house. Susan was beating the gong in the hall to announce that lunch was ready.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Kirby was the first inside the Bathurst Arms. He walked swiftly up to the crowded bar with Thornhill at his heels.

  Gloria arched her back and smiled at the two policemen. Her actions and her appearance were impersonal, Thornhill thought, like a pornographic photograph: designed to appeal to every man.

  ‘What can I get you, gentlemen?’

  ‘This is business, Gloria,’ Kirby said, slicking back his greasy yellow hair. ‘Is there somewhere we can have a word?’

  Gloria touched her cheek with a bright red fingernail. Her face was perfectly still, a flawless cosmetic mask. But the eyes were restless.

  ‘You’d better come through.’ She opened the flap of the bar for them. ‘I won’t be long,’ she said to her stepdaughter.

  Jane glanced at Kirby and Thornhill. ‘Shall I call Dad to help?’

  ‘No,’ Gloria said quickly. ‘Don’t bother.’

  With her hips swaying from side to side, she led them down a narrow hallway to a small room next to the kitchen. It was furnished as an office with a battered desk, a steel filing cabinet and four hard chairs. The room looked like a man’s and smelt like a woman’s. Thornhill noticed that the cigarette butts in the ashtray were rimmed with lipstick.

  ‘Someone back there was saying there’s been a murder in Templefields,’ she said, her manner ela
borately casual. ‘It’s not true, is it?’

  ‘There has been an incident.’ Thornhill said. ‘I am afraid we can’t tell you any more than that at present.’

  Gloria sat down behind the desk and waved them to chairs. ‘Now what can I do for you?’

  Thornhill was sure that she knew why they had come. She was too clever to seem wary, but her lack of surprise gave her away.

  Kirby leant forward, holding out his cigarette packet. ‘Smoke?’

  ‘I don’t mind if I do.’

  Kirby took one as well. He lit both cigarettes before continuing: ‘Nothing to worry about, Gloria – we’re interested in one of your customers.’

  She blew out smoke through her nostrils. ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Chap called Charlie Meague.’

  Gloria frowned. ‘I’m not sure I know who you mean.’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ Kirby said sharply. ‘He’s been in here the last couple of nights. I saw him myself. But maybe we should ask your husband. Perhaps he can tell us more.’

  Thornhill glanced at Kirby and realised with distaste that the sergeant was enjoying himself.

  ‘There’s no need to disturb Harold,’ Gloria said. ‘You mean Charlie, don’t you? I always think of him just as Charlie. That’s why when you said Meague it didn’t register straightaway.’

  ‘Funny, that,’ Kirby said, drawing deeply on his cigarette. ‘I understand you remembered his surname on Friday afternoon, and where he lived. Because you went to visit him, didn’t you?’

  Gloria’s face twisted. ‘Ma Halleran. That cow.’

  ‘Now, now, Gloria,’ Kirby murmured. ‘We understand that you and Charlie had one of those boy-and-girl romances. Long ago, when the world was young.’

  She shrugged. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

  ‘Tell us about it.’

  ‘There’s not much to say, is there? I knew him when we were kids. I hadn’t seen him for years until a couple of days ago. There was this bloke asking for him. Little chap with a beard.’

  ‘And did he find Charlie?’ Thornhill put in, knowing the answer but wanting to test Gloria’s attachment to truth.

  She nodded. Her eyes darted from Thornhill to Kirby and then to the cigarette in her hand. ‘Listen, what’s all this about?’

  ‘When did you last see Charlie?’

  ‘He was in last night. So were you, Mr Kirby.’

  ‘Have you seen him today? Or maybe your husband has?’

  ‘I told you, there’s no call to bring Harold into this. Charlie came round this morning just before opening time.’

  ‘What did he want?’

  She stabbed the remains of the cigarette into the ashtray. ‘This needn’t go further, need it?’

  ‘Put it this way, Gloria,’ Kirby smiled at her. ‘If we’re not satisfied with your answers, we’re going to have to talk to Harold. Is that what you want?’

  Gloria stared across the desk, not at Kirby but at Thornhill. ‘He wanted to borrow Harold’s car. He looked awful, Mr Thornhill – like he’d been sleeping rough.’

  ‘And did you let him have it?’ Thornhill asked.

  ‘Of course I didn’t. Harold would bloody murder me.’ Her eyes flickered. ‘Anyway – Charlie frightened me. He flashed all this money at me – at least a hundred quid. He wanted me to run off with him. Then and there. God, he was acting like we were kids again.’ She hesitated. ‘And there was blood on his hand.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Through the thin November air came the sound of St John’s clock striking the first quarter. Charlie thought it must be either a quarter past one or a quarter past two. It didn’t bloody matter.

  He sat in the little yard with his back against a wall and the whisky bottle between his legs. At this time of day, when the sunshine reached the court, it was warmer outside than in one of the tall, ruined buildings. Long ago, when they were young, he and Gloria would meet in this yard. Here she had let him make love to her for the one and only time: she had her back against the wall; both of them had been alert for approaching footsteps; and afterwards she had been furious because of the mess and the discomfort.

  Charlie had not made a conscious decision to take refuge in Templefields. He had not needed to think. Once there, he realised that he had nowhere else to go – or not until nightfall. He guessed that the police would be watching the roads and the railway by now. He wouldn’t have a chance of getting away. After dark, however, it might be different. Stealing a car offered him his best chance.

  He had gone through the contents of the sack and the kitbag concealed in the chimney. All that effort for next to nothing – the pathetically inadequate haul of items he had stolen from Masterman’s the jeweller’s, the King’s Head and Chandos Lodge. He was cold and hungry. The only thing that had any real value to him now was the bottle of whisky from Ma Halleran.

  He had known it would be stupid to have a drink. But he was so cold that his teeth rattled on the neck of the bottle. The whisky stung his swollen lips and warmed him down to his belly. He drank more of it. The more he drank, the more he needed to drink. It seemed to him that if only he could get enough whisky inside him, everything might be all right again. Jimmy Carn might stand up again, the back of his head as good as new. Gloria would smile and touch his hand. His mother would be back in the house in Minching Lane.

  He could not believe that he had killed Carn. Charlie thought of himself as an ordinary man. How then could he have killed someone? The very idea made him feel ill and unreal. He remembered Ma Halleran’s face when she had seen Carn’s body: how her mouth opened and nothing came out, not even a scream.

  He didn’t want to think about killing. He counted the money instead. You knew where you were with money. The first time he made the total a hundred and fifty-eight pounds. The second time it was a hundred and sixty-three pounds. The third time he gave up after he reached a hundred. He put the notes down on the flagstone beside him.

  The wind made the notes twitch like dead leaves. One of them half slid, half floated across the yard. Charlie drank more of the whisky. By now he had almost finished the bottle.

  Jesus, I’m getting as bad as old Harcutt. But it didn’t matter. He thought of poor ugly Tony and how she used to follow him around in the garden at Chandos Lodge; and he wondered why she’d been so stupid as to come home. You couldn’t go back. Charlie realised that now. He’d been a fool to let Gloria get under his skin again.

  The sky was bright blue, and floating overhead was a convoy of small, sunlit clouds. But the shadows were lengthening, crawling further and further along the flagstones. Charlie shifted his bottom along the cold stones to keep himself in the diminishing patch of sunlight.

  Soon the sunshine dwindled until it filled only one corner of the yard. He watched the banknotes skittering to and fro in the wind. He noticed with resignation that he’d finished the whisky. The church clock chimed again.

  Charlie heard footsteps coming down the alley from the direction of Minching Lane. He did not move. His eyes drifted in and out of focus. He shut them because he felt tired.

  When he opened his eyes there were four men standing in the archway which led from the yard to the alleyway. He blinked and the four men became two. The two policemen moved cautiously towards him.

  The older man – Thornhill? – said something which Charlie heard but did not understand. Charlie’s head fell forward on to his chest. He knew that Gloria must have told them where to find him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Williamson directed a hostile stare at Thornhill. The superintendent was standing by the window with his hands in his pockets. He was dressed for relaxation in a yellow tweed jacket over a bright green jersey; grey trousers and brown shoes added touches of sobriety to his off-duty plumage. There was a poppy in his lapel.

  ‘Where the hell were you?’ he said to Thornhill. ‘I wanted to see you as soon as I got here. Didn’t you get my message?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Thornhill shut the door of William
son’s office behind him. ‘But we were just on our way out. We’ve made an arrest.’

  ‘Have you, indeed? I’d prefer to have been consulted. Charlie Meague?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I just hope you haven’t jumped the gun. It’s a pity that Halleran woman didn’t actually see him do it. Murder charges can be tricky.’

  ‘We can take our time on that. We can hold him for burglary.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘When we found Meague, we also found things taken from the King’s Head, Masterman’s and Chandos Lodge.’

  Williamson sniffed in a way that implied disapproval, an odd reaction to what should have been good news. His eyes were bloodshot – perhaps he was still feeling the effects of the Masonic dinner at the Bull. Thornhill also remembered how sure the superintendent had been that Charlie Meague was not the type to take to burglary.

  ‘Is he talking?’ Williamson asked.

  ‘He’s sleeping. He’s drunk as a lord. Threw up in the patrol car, I’m afraid, mainly over Sergeant Kirby’s trousers. I don’t think we’ll get much out of him until he’s sobered up. Dr Bayswater’s having a look at him now.’

  ‘Has anyone remembered to tell Meague’s mother?’

  ‘The doctor says she died last night. Meague had only just heard the news. Maybe that’s what drove him over the edge.’

  Williamson grunted. ‘Then the odds are he won’t hang. Pity.’ He rummaged through the change in his trouser pocket. ‘Well – it could be worse,’ he went on. ‘There’s a murder, but at least the victim’s a man from London, and we’ve got the killer. And we’ve also wrapped up the burglary case.’ He stared blankly at the window. ‘Straightforward police work always gets results,’ he murmured. ‘Essentially it’s a team job – a matter of firm leadership, method and organisation. I must ring the chief constable.’

  Williamson paused. Thornhill guessed he was trying out phrases in his mind, phrases for the chief constable, phrases for the gentlemen of the press.

  ‘You seem to have – ah – kept on your toes, Thornhill. Good work. Of course, I’ll need to have a report on my desk as soon as possible.’ Williamson pulled out a pipe and toyed with it. ‘But that reminds me, I’m sorry to say that I had a complaint about you last night. It’s always painful to have to pass on something of this nature. I imagine you know what I’m referring to.’

 

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