Harry didn’t work it out logically to that conclusion. He felt it. It had been in some way relaxing to take Virginia Brent at face value, but experience had nudged him, and logic — her damned logic — had warned him that she could not be what she claimed. And yet…he could not forget her delight when she’d shown him that Charlie, after all, might not have left him carrying the can. That had been real and genuine.
Hell, he thought, me an’ my big mouth.
So now what did he do? Back to Cynth’s? In spite of her initial welcome (discounting the shotgun) he could not be certain of another. Her situation had changed. Charlie was no longer there, between them. The safety was no longer there, to offer restraint to something that might not have been available or even valid without it.
This was something else that Harry felt rather than rationalized.
Besides, he knew that two miles limping over that hardcore would cripple his ankles, and by the time he’d walked back to the crossroads he had made up his mind. Turn right there, instead of left to Cynth’s, and it would be five miles to Porchester, where he could get a bus to town. Then to the barge, and everything would be back to normal.
Well…almost.
He stopped in town for fish and chips, and a pint at the Mournful Parson, so that the light was going when he reached Hanger Lane, and completely gone on the wharf. But Harry knew his shadows and was sure-footed, knew and recognized the shadow-shape of his home, and realized that something was different about it. Somebody was sitting on the stern, which meant facing him.
Virginia? His steps quickened, firmed.
The figure stirred and lifted a head. A cigarette end was flicked, and sparked an arc into the canal.
‘Harry, I bin waiting.’
It was Vic Fletcher. Because it was not Virginia, Harry was angry. His voice held danger. ‘Get off my bleedin’ property.’
Fletcher got to his feet. Harry had one foot on the deck. They were three feet apart.
‘Language, Harry! Not so fast. I bin guardin’ it for you.’
‘You couldn’t guard a kennel!’
Harry was able to detect that Fletcher smiled, could see his hand moving inside the breast of his anorak. There was no doubt that the hand, when it emerged, held a pistol.
‘Guarding it with this.’
It was not a large pistol, as pistols went, and seemed to be a revolver. But Harry didn’t need light to detect that it was real. It moved with an impression of weight, and Harry knew how difficult that would be to fake with a plastic toy. He’d done it.
‘So what do I do?’ he asked, his voice flat. ‘Say ta very much before I sling you and the ironwork into the water?’
Fletcher laughed. He tried to produce delight, but there was a waver to it. In the dark, two conversing shadows could convey meanings only in sound. Fletcher came through as determined but scared. Slowly he lowered himself to his seat on the stern. Harry watched the stars appearing as Fletcher’s head dropped below his own level.
There was no possibility that Fletcher would be invited inside. They both knew that. Harry stood with his back to the cabin, until he realized what a target his silhouette presented. He allowed himself to slip down, leaning back against the cabin wall and revealing huge expanses of lighter western sky.
‘We’ve gotta talk, Harry.’
‘I’ve got nothin’ to say to you.’
‘You’ve bin making a big fool of yerself. I thought I better warn you.’
Harry rubbed his face with his palms. It was true, he had. The rasping sound held its own warning. Harry knew the glib, apologetic voice that Fletcher used, as a barrier to aggression. It was the tone he’d employed when regretting that Harry would have to die. Harry was no longer impressed. He had to bear in mind that this could be Detective Constable Fletcher, still well into his act. Virginia would have had time to prime him and instruct him. But the pistol was confusing. Harry, like everyone who’d ever operated on the wrong side of the law, knew exactly the situations under which weapons were issued to police officers. He did not feel he met those requirements. Expectations of armed opposition, that was it. Since when had Harry gained that reputation? he wondered.
‘Warn away,’ he said, ‘but make it quick. Two minutes, and you’re in the drink.’
‘That woman y’re workin’ with,’ said Fletcher. ‘You wanna be careful.’
‘You know her?’
‘Heard. An interfering bitch, that one. Get yer in trouble, that one will.’
The cabin wall creaked as Harry moved his shoulders. ‘What did you hear?’ His voice was gentle, the words carefully pronounced.
‘She’s got friends in the fuzz. Dad’s some high up. She plays at it, Harry. Bored outa her pants, and plays coppers on her own. A detective marnkee, they call it.’
‘Detective what?’
‘French for frustrated.’
‘Where’d y’ pick that up, Fletcher?’
‘You’re ignorant, Harry. An ignorant slob…’ Fletcher detected movement. The metallic click was clear in the night. Harry knew that sound — a revolver being cocked. ‘Gently, Harry. Don’t be more stupid than y’ can help. I couldn’t miss.’
Harry’s voice grated. ‘Say it, and sod off.’
‘You’re playing outa y’r league, Harry. It’s known as slummin’. Gives ’em a kick to see how the poor, stupid oafs like you live. Don’t let her make a fool outa you.’
‘Had some, Fletcher? That it, is it?’ The deep rumble of Harry’s voice should have been a warning.
‘Watch yerself…’
‘Angela an’ you, Fletcher. Slummin’. She couldn’t get lower down in the gutters. I got no time for you, you an’ your threats.’ He produced a fair imitation of Fletcher’s whine. ‘Y’ can see I gotta take the law in me own hands, Harry! Don’t make me laugh! You wasn’t her husband. A girl like that — she’d no more marry a creep like you…’
‘Who said marry?’
‘You did. Said she was your wife.’
Fletcher suddenly laughed, tossing it at Harry’s hot anger like a spray of foam. ‘Harry, Harry! You weird old-fashioned lad, you! That’s for the religious nuts. Do you take this woman…a loada crap. What’s it to them? A girl an’ a feller want to get together, so whose business is that except theirs?’
‘A contract. Kind of a contract, Fletcher.’
‘Who needs contracts? When they got yer into that warehouse job, where was yer contract? Did you get it on paper, Harry? Nah. Stuck a gun in yer hand and said they’d pick you up. Contract! This Angela an’ me, we met in a pub, see, and that was it. We decided to shack up together, so we did. It’s called a common-law wife. An’ that’s legal words. Common-law wife. Makes it legal, Harry. Six months we was together…Angie an’ me, an’ you know somethin’? A bit more of her argie-bargin’ and I might’ve made it to that registry place. Not her husband? Y’ wanta test it out, Harry? All you gotta do is tell me you did her in at the lay-by. Won’t go any further. Just that they’ll dig yer outa the canal with a bullet in your big bloody thick head.’
It was not so much the sincerity of this speech that struck Harry, as the fact that in the dark he was no longer facing the Fletcher he knew. The voice held firmness and confidence. There was attack in it. Of course, Harry had to allow for the fact that Fletcher was holding in his hands two pounds of metal that had a reputation for inspiring self-confidence.
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘Y’ got somebody else lined up for it?’
‘No. But…’
‘Then you see, Harry, I can give yer a bit more time…not much, ’cause this thing gets heavy to carry around. A few days, mebbe. Then, Harry…well, you do see what I gotta do?’
There was no sound as Fletcher’s feet moved on the deck surface, as he was wearing joggers, but at one side of his head a star appeared, and two the other side disappeared. The old and familiar Fletcher voice had returned, the voice that had made it easy for Harry to accept that Angela would never have associated
with such a person. But he’d met a harder and more commanding Fletcher, a man who knew what he wanted, and such a man could well attract a young woman with an eye to adventure and excitement, and with rejection of society’s morals in her heart.
‘Wait!’ said Harry.
Fletcher continued to move, until he was standing on the wharf.
‘Y’ got somethin’ to say?’
‘Who did the bank job, Fletcher?’
‘What bank job?’
‘The day she died. The bank job. Y’ know what I mean.’ Harry got to his feet, stretching with his hands reaching high. ‘Y’r a sharp lad, Vic…’ He didn’t realize he’d slipped back to Christian names. ‘Nose t’ the gutter, you’d sniff out anythin’ smelly. And that job stank. Stank of somebody big behind it, who’s laundered the money…and you’d know.’
‘Come off it.’ There was uneasiness in Fletcher’s voice. He ought really to have walked away, but he hesitated. ‘What y’rafter?’
‘I want to meet him — the guy who set it up.’
‘You do that and you’ve had it, Harry. Y’ know how it is — nobody’s left alive to tell. And you’re mine, Harry.’ The snigger was a soft comment.
‘So you know?’
‘I know nothin, I never said nothin’. Forget it, Harry, you’re handlin’ red-hot iron.’
‘I only want to speak to him.’
Fletcher laughed and turned away. ‘Stay alive, Harry, stay alive.’
Harry stood on the deck of his home. He made no move to go below to his quarters, but stood without moving for a long time. Thoughts always took a while to sort themselves out with Harry. He stood until the light completely faded away, so that Sergeant Tranter, in the sunken doorway that Virginia had favoured, could no longer detect whether he was still there.
Then Tranter left, but Harry remained almost motionless in the darkness for a full hour after that.
***
The house was three miles out of town, beyond the industrial development that had threatened to spread and envelop it, until the intervention of the recession. In anticipation of the expected invasion, the stately and weathered homes in that district, formerly treasured in their two acres of ground, had been allowed to deteriorate, until the weathering had progressed to the stage of dilapidation. But dilapidation was an inverted snobbery with their owners, a gesture, like jeans and casual shirts, that told the world you had money that was doing better things.
In the Victorian, solid house called The Chestnuts, ACC Oliver Brent failed to notice the trend, so that his home was in full repair, painted when necessary, gutters replaced, bathrooms refurbished, kitchen modernized. He was unaware of any social solecism, as he would have been unaware of the industrial encroachment, had it occurred. Brent was a self-contained man, introverted and dedicated. He lived only for his interests, on which he completely concentrated his attention to the total exclusion of all other matters. Three interests: law and order, his roses, and his daughter, Virginia.
After forty years of dedication to the police force, he believed he knew something about police work. On roses, he believed himself to be an expert. But thirty years of living with Virginia had taught him only one thing: that he didn’t understand one aspect of her. Sympathize, yes, he could do that, which was a form of understanding, but this was a selfish sympathy because in so many ways she was a reflection of himself. Wasn’t he just as independent? He had to admit it. But he hadn’t thrown it at people as she did. Had he? That she could lock herself away in her thoughts and completely exclude him, he could understand. He’d been accused of it himself. But…was it, from him, so hurtful? Had he so wilfully rejected all offers of assistance as she did? No wonder he was feared, if that were the case. Feared for his fierce dogmatism, he knew that. And yet, was that really no more than dedication to his duties?
Yet Virginia had no duties. She almost scorned her inherited role of housekeeper. Her mother had died at her birth, so that she had grown up as the natural lady of the house. And rejected it. She had insisted on a professional housekeeper, whom they still kept after fifteen years, and who could not, now, have been driven away with whips. Ada Harcourt loved Virginia as she did her father, though perhaps with less pain and anxiety.
He had begged Virginia to join the force. She was a natural for it. He had weaned her on tales of the police, stories of his cases, fables of the force. She was physically fit, with the brain for detail and patience that the force required. But she had scorned it. Oh, he knew what she balked at, though she never explained. She could never have accepted the discipline. Virginia was herself, unto herself, and in it she was alone, if not lonely.
But hadn’t he, too, been completely selfish where his loves were involved?
Of the three, his greatest love was Virginia. Sometimes, seeing her quietly pacing the paths of the rose garden in the failing light, something would catch in his throat. Two of his beauties complementing each other. Sometimes, catching that light in her eyes when she saw through and beyond a problem, his pride nearly choked him. And when, in her moods of almost manic joy, she would throw her arms around him, for no other reason than that he was there, he could find himself unable to reply to her question: isn’t it marvellous, daddy? Whatever it might be. She was sufficiently secretive to fail to mention that detail, assuming he was sharing it. As he was…sharing her joy if not her reason.
And now they rarely discussed his work, which she seemed to scorn since it had become mainly administrative.
She had returned home that evening too late for dinner, so that he’d dined alone, worried but not showing it. She had said she’d eaten out, but didn’t seem to remember where or when. The Mercedes was covered with dust, and seemed depleted with effort. She had driven 180 miles, most of them fast, and her eyes held the blank, unfocused look of a person who has seen nothing but the road for a long while.
‘Join me for coffee?’ he said.
‘Yes.’ She stared at him blankly. ‘Oh…yes.’
She led the way into the drawing room, the long, high room that overlooked the valley, with the hills beyond. Tara was at her heels. Brent observed the drooped tail and the misery in Tara’s eyes, and knew from the dog more than he could observe from Virginia’s impassive face.
The sun had already set behind the hills, but there was still a glowing orange in the sky. He deliberately did not put on any lights, but crossed to his favourite chair by the tall windows and waited until Ada had been in with the tray. Virginia stood looking out at the view she had watched through thirty summers. Her back he saw was straight, held in her defiant stance. Tara appealed with his eyes.
‘Father,’ she said, ‘I need your help.’
He raised his eyebrows. His pipe was taking a long time to prepare. When she called him father it meant they were speaking formally
‘Delighted,’ he murmured, not meaning he’d be delighted to comply, but delighted she’d asked.
‘Can you get a team out to Porchester, and have a quarry dragged?’
The match burnt away to his fingers before he shook it out. ‘I’d need a damn good reason.’
‘I believe there’s a car in there, probably with a man in it.’
‘Believe? That’s hardly strong enough. Where did you acquire this belief?’
She knew he was tossing her formality back. ‘It was Harry’s idea. It seems valid. The circumstances seem to fit the possibility.’
‘It’s not enough. A big job, that would be, and expensive.’
She made an impatient gesture.
‘This Harry,’ he said. ‘Would this be the tough character you wanted to meet…’
‘Yes.’
‘The backstreet thug you thought might help you with Angela’s…’
‘Yes!’ Now the monosyllable was crisp.
‘Then I’m not sure I’d trust his mental processes.’ He cocked his head on one side as he drew on his pipe. The glow from it was bright in the half light. ‘More brawn than brains, probably.’
&nbs
p; She turned to face him, and though he couldn’t see it he sensed her grimace of impatience. ‘He’s a big man with a heavy brain. But when he stirs it into action it can work as fast as his body.’
‘You’ve seen this?’ he murmured. ‘This fast action?’
‘Daddy, I think he saved my life today.’
He paused, drawing on his pipe to inhale the shock. ‘Then you must bring him here, and I’ll thank him.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You’re ashamed of your father?’
Her tongue clicked. ‘We had words.’
‘Ah.’
‘I as good as accused a friend of his of murder. Angela’s murder.’
‘Man friend or woman friend?’
‘Woman.’
‘Then that explains it.’
‘Daddy, when you’re in this mood…what d’you mean by that?’
‘It would make it difficult for you to apologize.’
‘I have…had no intention of apologizing.’
‘I wouldn’t expect it of you. It takes strength of character.’
She was so long in replying that he feared he’d alienated her. When she did finally speak she surprised him, her voice was so soft, so loaded with affection.
‘I know you don’t want me to go on with this, daddy, and I know I was late getting home, and you were worried. I drove and I drove. Leave it at that. But when you try to rattle me and force my hand, I know you’re a little bit more than worried. You’re trying to make me drop this, and it will not work. You know it and I know it. I will not apologize to Harry, because he’s a stubborn idiot, and because my theory was valid. He’ll see that…’
She stopped. He was chuckling. The pipe was bobbing up and down.
‘Oh damn you, daddy, you’re such a blasted fraud!’
‘I have to be pretty crafty to keep up with you, my dear. This Harry person…you clearly admire him. No, let me finish, please. You won’t be able to think straight until you’ve apologized…’
The Second Jeopardy Page 8