She produced it with triumph from her shoulder bag. It was a four-inch brush caked solid with green paint.
‘Did he ever use a brush on his other cars?’
He shook his head. ‘Just the spray-gun. Maybe a fine brush for touching up.’
‘And I thought…perhaps after all this time…it might still wash out,’ she concluded in triumph.
‘Let’s have a go, then.’
He took it from her and crouched at the edge of the water. He hadn’t thought it through, but he could see she had something. So maybe she was giving an impression of coldness, all brains and no feelings, but at least she could use her brain. He dabbled it, he splashed it around, he sprayed himself with water, and slowly to the surface there rose a smear of green. He withdrew the brush, rose to his full height, and slapped the bristles on his palm. It was still a solid lump, but it left a green stain.
‘By heck,’ he said, ‘you were right.’ His face suddenly burst apart with a grin. ‘So what?’
She found, to her disgust, that she was almost dancing to the flood of light from his smile. Why could she not hide her emotions more secretly? ‘Did he…and think about this, Harry…did he say anything about the weather?’
‘Now you mention it.’
‘What?’
‘Hoped it wasn’t goin’ to rain.’
‘There you are, then. It would have washed off with the rain. But you see what it means, Harry. If he intended to drive home, which he wouldn’t do until he was certain he was in the clear, he wouldn’t have needed to go to such trouble, using water-washable paint and two separate colours. His spray-gun was waiting, and he could have changed the car to any colour he liked in his own time. He wouldn’t have needed to colour both sides, Harry, not if he intended to re-spray it. With a red car, he could have sprayed half of it green, and then when he got home changed the whole thing to brown. Or blue. Or black. But he painted both halves of the black Escort, by hand, in paint that would wash off…and what would he get by washing it off? A red and green car would become a black car in a few minutes. Not in hours, which it would take if he’d sprayed it red and green.’
She was watching his expression with her head tilted, and gradually the confidence had faded from her voice. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I know what you’re saying, that he didn’t intend to go back home.’
She nodded, her eyes anxious.
‘Well…why wouldn’t he plan on driving home, and hosing it down when he got there?’
‘If he planned on driving home, Harry, it would’ve been by way of the railway track, after he’d managed to get clear of police traps. He could have hidden out in the buildings here to be certain. And once home he’d know he had time for a complete respray, so he wouldn’t have needed to play around with water-based paint. He was an expert sprayer. He would have done a proper job on it, a two-colour spray not a hand painting. The only possible reason for using washable paint has to be time. He wanted something he could get rid of in minutes, and while he was a long way from his spray-gun.’
Harry considered what he recalled of Charlie. He’d had pride in his work. The two-colour job had been tatty and dull, he now remembered. Not Charlie’s style at all. ‘Maybe you’ve got something.’
‘Right. So look how he was fixed. A two-colour car, red and green. He’d only have to dodge into one of those places with a car wash, and he could drive it out black. That’s why he painted both halves, Harry. He wanted to switch to a car that had no trace of the colours red and green on it. A kind of completely fresh start. He had no intention of going home. He had the jewellery shop haul, which might or might not have been worth much, and his share of the bank robbery in due course.’
‘You sound sure of yourself.’
She nodded. ‘That was why I tried to reassure Cynthia, by saying he was surely intending to go home.’
He shook his head. ‘Feminine logic.’
‘It did no harm.’
‘But you’re sure he wasn’t?’ He jerked his eyes at her. ‘Off with another woman?’
‘Why not? And why couldn’t that other woman have been Angela?’
‘Oh bull…There’s no connection.’
‘No?’ She took the brush from his fingers and tossed it into the water. ‘Then how, do you suppose, did she manage to find the phone booth so quickly? Because she knew it was there, that’s why. She had used it before to phone Charlie, to tell him she was waiting. She knew that lay-by, Harry. Perhaps they’d used it for their meetings, there’s room for two cars.’
‘Stretchin’ it a bit.’
‘She phoned me, Harry, a month before it happened. All excited about this man she’d met. Wouldn’t give his name, but he was dishy, she said.’
‘Not Charlie then.’
‘And one strange point…she said he had a tinted fringe round his hair, and when you mentioned spraying…’
‘That’s Charlie! His woolly hat came down just above his ears.’
‘…I had a feeling. I knew.’
‘Intuition,’ he grunted, still not fully convinced. ‘It was a casual meet. She was parked there, outside the jeweller’s, and I got in.’
She took both his arms in her hard fingers, so that he had to face her. ‘But was it casual? Think about it. He was your friend, but he left you there, stranded. He didn’t want you in the Escort, because that was where it started getting dangerous. And also because he was going away and didn’t want you to know where. But he left you an escape route. Angela was right behind him, with her passenger’s door unlocked. It’s just the sort of thing she’d have loved. If you hadn’t pounced on that door, I’ll bet you she’d have pipped her horn and invited you in. Charlie was looking after you, Harry. Why d’you think she was so casual with you? She knew who you were, and that you wouldn’t harm her. What went wrong was that she expected to leave you in the lay-by, and you left her. She couldn’t help ribbing you, because she knew she was safe. Charlie would have told her all about you. But she took it too far, and you were annoyed.’
‘That I was.’
‘So you see. Don’t you see, Harry? Even at the last, he was thinking about your welfare, you big fool.’
She was surprised and confused at the pleasure it gave her to present him with this. Behind his attitude had been the constant thought that Charlie, the man he’d trusted, had left him standing in the doorway of the jeweller’s shop. But now she had given him new faith in Charlie. No…she had restored the old faith. And perhaps the reserve she felt between Harry and herself had been based on the loss, his fear of venturing into a new situation of trust. So perhaps that could now be swept away.
Judging by the irradiation of his face — it glowed, it flamed — she was correct. Judging by his sudden hoarse shout of laughter and joy, his natural trust was bursting free. And if his hands were anything to go by, clasping her one each side at the waist and swooping her high until he laughed up at her, kicking and screaming, his release was centred on her.
He put her down. ‘Idiot!’ she said, flustered and touching her hair.
‘Well, how about that!’ he said.
They walked back up to the car, her hand on his arm, matching him stride for stride, almost assuming a limp.
‘So Charlie was off and away,’ he said in wonder. ‘What d’you know! The devil.’
‘And with Angela, don’t forget that.’
‘It’s the only explanation,’ he agreed.
‘And then you took her car away from her.’
He grinned down at her. ‘No wonder she was mad at me.’
‘You split ’em up, Harry. They lost contact.’
He stood at the driver’s door of the Mercedes, looking at her across the hood. ‘So maybe I did that.’ He was abruptly more sober. ‘So she didn’t turn up at their meeting place.’
‘What is it you’re trying to say, Harry?’
‘It rained later,’ he said stolidly. ‘Not while we were doing the jeweller’s. That was around two o’clock.
But by four it was raining.’
‘Washed the car…’
‘Not that.’ He turned, and stared back at the way they’d driven in. ‘Look at that. We came in, doing a steady right turn round the buildings, then right again onto the old railway.’ No sign of his careless voice, she noticed. His words were carefully chosen. ‘So if you were coming to the quarry you’d do the same. Steady right round the factory, then a sharper right to the ramp down to the quarry. Just say…just say for the sake of argument…’
‘I don’t think so,’ she put in quickly, seeing what was coming.
‘…that Charlie dropped the police, and waited and waited at the meeting place because Angela — if he was meeting Angela — didn’t turn up.’
‘Because she was dead.’
‘And then all the life’d go out of it, and he’d maybe reckon he’d head for home, but it was rainin’ by then, and maybe the car was washin’ itself, but all the same he’d head for this back way in. But Charlie didn’t know it so well as me. Hardly ever used it. It was dark and it was rainin’, and maybe he bore just a bit too much to the right, and he wouldn’t see the ramp till he was right on it, and because it was rainin’ it’d be slimy so’s it’d be no good using the brakes…’
‘You’re not to think that!’
‘But if that’s what happened, he could be down there, and when you come to think of it, that means I’d have killed him. Wouldn’t that be a bloody laugh.’ He illustrated with a harsh sound in his throat. ‘It’d mean I killed him, not Angela, because I took off in her car.’ He thumped the car’s bonnet with his fist.
‘That’s just wild and stupid, Harry.’
‘No wilder than your ideas.’
‘It wasn’t you who took her out of circulation.’
Virginia felt that something they had found was draining away. With his faith restored in his past friendships, he could now explore self-criticism to the full.
‘I’m not having you blaming yourself,’ she said angrily. ‘If that happened…and I’m not accepting that, either…then the one to blame is the one who killed her.’
‘Easy to say.’ His shoulder was to her, his eyes on the motionless water.
‘We haven’t talked it through, Harry. If it was Angela he was going away with, then look what we’ve got.’ She was trying desperately to distract him. ‘She phoned the police. That would be a mistake, a throw-back to her instinct, and just the sort of thing she would do, if she was angry enough. She always lost all sense of reason when she lost her temper. But she also used the tenpence you gave her. Now…who would she call? Who…naturally? She’d been left by you in the lay-by. She should have been joining Charlie, somewhere. So she would try to contact him. At his home…his workshop. Their private means of contact.’
He jerked his head round, his jaw firm, its knobbles protruding. She couldn’t look into his eyes. ‘No!’ he said forcefully.
‘There’d be no other thing she could do. She might not have expected him to be there, but if the phone was answered she could leave a message.’
‘Such as what?’ he demanded.
‘Something that could mean nothing to anybody else but him. If he calls, tell him the lay-by. Something like that. But she would be saying that to Cynthia.’
‘Shut up, damn you.’ Now his voice was loud enough to reach the buildings and rebound, probe the quarry, and resound. Damn you…you…you…
Virginia was beginning to realize that Harry’s responses were in no way sophisticated. Especially when they involved emotions. She listened now to the echoes of his angry reaction, and knew she was treading a dangerous path. His joy at the revelation that Charlie might not, after all, have left him stranded, should have been a warning to her, not an encouragement. His affections and allegiances had been few. Heavens, Cynthia and Charlie could have been their sum total, and now she was forcing him into seeing that his confidence in Cynthia was to be undermined.
It was all she could do to go on with it, briskly because she had to demonstrate that the issue must be treated without passion. With Harry, everything had to be passionate. She was tossing a crackling firework from hand to hand.
‘Cynthia of the stiletto heels, Harry,’ she said. ‘And what, getting that message, would she do? She’d go to the lay-by, that’s what. She’d go to meet the woman she had had a suspicion existed, the woman who was causing such strange behaviour in Charlie.’
‘Angela wouldn’t have had this number,’ he tried desperately, trying to split her ridiculous logic apart. ‘He wouldn’t have dared give it her.’
‘Of course she’d have his number. But even if she hadn’t…’ Virginia put her arms on the hood of the car, mainly because her legs felt weak. She moistened her pale lips. Her mouth was dry. ‘Even if she hadn’t, there it’d be, facing her, in the phone booth. CB 259. A local number. It couldn’t have meant anybody but him. Oh Harry, it’s all so logical.’
He took two paces back, keeping a good distance from her cool logic. ‘That’s all I get from you,’ he said flatly, slapping his thighs. ‘Logic and reason. Y’r all so damned cold and un…unfeelin’. Like the rest of ’em. Oh, I’ve had some, don’t you worry. Seen it in action. Some poor bleeder goes to the police station, half broken-down with worry ’cause somethin’ terrible’s happened, and all he gets back is what’s y’r name, what’s y’r address? As much feelin’ as my ass. But I’ve got it reckoned out now.’
‘What are you saying, Harry?’ Oh God, she thought, and we came so close. I need him, need him to trust me. What can I say…do…think? ‘Harry, this is…’
‘And what’s Cynth to you? Tell me that. Nothin. A picture you’ve cut out from a photograph, a shape, nothin’ but a voice in a body. Y’ don’t know her. You talk about her killin’…’ He turned his head as though to spit, and changed his mind. ‘She couldn’t have done it. Never. In a fury, yeah, yeah. Could’ve. But not ten seconds later, when she’d cooled down. And it would’ve taken ten minutes to get to the lay-by. Words, yes. Nails and hair tearin’ and screamin’. But not kill. Not Cynth.’
‘All right, Harry.’
‘It’s not bloody well all right. Cynth! She’d give her right arm to help yerrout. Laugh with yer, joke with yer, an’ kick all hell outa y’r ankle if y’ pinched her bottom. Yeah, she had throwin’ tempers, but kill…no. She’d got mice, but she wouldn’t put down traps. Rats came down from the embankment, and she’d throw ’em bread, and watch ’em haulin’ it home. Kill? Not Cynth! Never! That’s bloody crazy.’
She hadn’t realized. They’d been closer than she’d thought. It should have been obvious. It was Harry who’d been proud of Cynthia, not Charlie. Charlie had taken his pride for granted, but to Harry it was a real and living thing. He’d beamed on Cynthia in his stupid pride, and gone no closer than a pinch of the bottom. Dear old-fashioned Harry with his unpossessive pride, because Charlie was his mate and Cynthia was his friend — his nearly-mate. She almost told him he was a fool, and that anybody was capable of killing, that Cynthia most of all was capable of it. But she didn’t.
‘Then we look deeper, Harry,’ she said quietly, luringly.
‘No we don’t.’ He flung out an arm in fury. ‘Not you an’ me. Because I’ve seen through you, Miss Bloody Virginia Brent. What is it — Inspector Brent? Woman Detective Inspector Soddin’ Brent. Oh, I see it now. It’s all bin a plot. An unsolved murder on the files. Wait till Harry Hodnutt comes out and he’ll help. He must know somethin’, so get close to him, con him, be friendly. Friendly! Hah! And that weasel Fletcher, what’s he? Detective Constable? Get him to set it up, me have a word with Sergeant Tranter, all innocent like. An’ next thing I knew, there’s you, all clever and crafty, but y’ didn’t quite pull it off. Y’ know why? ’cause you’re like all of ’em. Cold an’ empty, like a bloody shell. I saw y’ with Cynth, wanderin’ round lookin’ for clues, listenin’ for slips o’ the tongue, and if she’s unhappy an’ crying ’cause Charlie’s not come back, it’s oh my dear I’m sure he intended
to come back. Christ! An’ with a paintbrush you’d nicked, there in y’r bag! You make me sick. I’ve had enough.’
‘Get in the car, Harry.’
‘Go to hell.’
‘Get in the car, for God’s sake, and drive, and let me think.’
‘Drive it yourself.’
‘You’ve had your say, so give me time to think what to reply.’
‘More logic? No thanks. Just bugger off and let me be.’
She had lost him, and she knew it. All she could consider at the moment was how to get him back home. Home! Back to his damned barge. She walked round and climbed in behind the wheel. Started the engine.
‘Harry, I’ll drive you back to town.’
He stood, silently staring at her.
‘I promise you. Not a word, and I’ll drop you where you like.’
‘I wouldn’t want to soil the seats. What is it — a hired car for the job? What’s the budget for the Harry Hodnutt case?’
She engaged reverse, backed out, and swung the nose round. She was now parked beside him.
‘Get in the damned car,’ she said, her voice tight.
He thumped the bonnet. ‘On your way, Inspector.’
It was anger that jerked the car forward, kept it going until he was no longer a tiny figure in the rearview mirror. But slower then, because of the tears. It was with a feeling of intense loss that she set off for home.
Chapter Seven
Harry’s first impression was of a blank emptiness. His abrupt and violent anger that Cynth should have come under suspicion had been a safety valve for his growing tension. Now he was drained, even of the encroaching uneasiness that had been haunting him.
Moodily, he kicked a stone around in a circle, coming back to where he’d been and with nothing decided. His blasted tongue! Better, perhaps, where a woman was concerned, than his fist, but with his tongue he was less expert. An argument was best settled with violence. So often, after violence, it was arms across shoulders and another pint all round, and it would be over. But after words a wound was opened that didn’t easily heal.
The Second Jeopardy Page 7