‘The interesting point,’ I went on, ‘is that Neville should have gone out and bought himself a second gun, when he already owned one. It wasn’t the matter of the number of shots he’d have available. He knew well enough how to re-load. No, there had to be another reason. That was where Karen stepped in, and produced another reason for me to look at. Lovejoy had been talking with Karen, and people who get talked to by Karen have a habit of saying things.’ I smiled at her, but got nothing back. ‘They say things they shouldn’t. And Karen found out there was a direct contact back from Lovejoy to Drover, and then to Andy Paterson.’
Myra was moving her head backwards and forwards in stubborn rejection. But I wasn’t going to leave it alone.
‘The inference was obvious. It was that Neville wanted the warning to get back to Paterson. Paterson was the one huge stumbling block that’d got to be climbed over.’
Myra spoke softly. ‘That’s hardly a true picture.’
‘Oh, come on,’ I scoffed. ‘You’d been having it off with this Paterson gigolo…’
She gasped. My tone had been exactly right. ‘How dare you!’
‘Well, what else?’ I demanded. ‘Neville had been watching things. He saw that this great oaf of a farmer with his neighing laugh and his slapping of shoulders had got something special for you. He’d seen what you did when Paterson got near you, went all soft and flabby…’
‘You’re lying,’ she snapped.
‘It’s how it seems to me.’
‘Then you haven’t looked very far.’
‘I can only go by evidence.’
‘Andy was a friend.’
I turned my head away in disgust.
‘A friend,’ she shouted. ‘You know that very well. He was attentive, he gave me things that Neville never considered I… Are you listening?’
I tossed it at her. ‘I’m listening.’
‘He gave me courtesy and deference and… and attention. He was a gentleman.’
‘He was a heathen.’ I might as well have slapped her with the word—Neville’s word.
‘You’re not to say that,’ she whispered.
‘But I do, because he was. Andy Paterson was a heathen, and you know it, and you’d got no feelings for him at all.’
She made an angry movement. Karen’s voice came over the back of the settee. ‘Mother, please!’ Karen was trying.
I said quickly: ‘You’re a woman of sensibilities, Myra. You’re emotional and you’re intense. You and Andy Paterson! You told Crowshaw you loved him. Nonsense.’
I was Neville again, not believing and not accepting. ‘Neville,’ I said, ‘would never have believed it.’
‘But he did,’ she claimed, almost pleading.
‘Never. You could have thrown Paterson at him till Doomsday, and Neville would simply have ignored it.’
‘He believed. Oh yes, he did. In the end.’
‘You got him round to it, did you?’
There was a hint of a smile of triumph on her lips. ‘Well… he did go to Mr Lovejoy and buy that gun.’
‘Ah yes, Lovejoy’s gun. Neville’s gesture. Here was Neville Gaines, the artist, the poor lost soul in the wilderness, who couldn’t stand up to anything… here he was, having to consider an unimaginative and boorish clod like Paterson. And he went out and made a gesture! A gesture? Ask yourself. What could he have expected from that? Nothing but one of Paterson’s neighing laughs. Don’t give me that rubbish. Neville wasn’t making gestures to Paterson. Now, was he?’
Finn leaned forward and made a croaking sound.
‘It’s gone far enough,’ said Karen hopelessly.
‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Let’s hear from Myra. Myra Gaines and her unmovable husband. What about it, Myra?’
She raised her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t making gestures to Andy. It was for me.’
‘Now we’re coming to it. It was for you, Myra, he was making gestures. What was it supposed to prove, assuming the news got back to you by way of Paterson?’
Somewhere beneath the surface I’d stirred up a surge of memory, of contempt. ‘That he wasn’t a coward.’
‘Did he have to prove it?’
‘He had to,’ she said. ‘He had to prove something. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it, sitting around and letting everything flow past him, not noticing…’ She faltered.
‘Not noticing you?’ I asked.
‘Not noticing.’ The anger held her. She had quite forgotten the gun on her lap. ‘I never loved Andy. You’re right about that. How could I? But it had to be somebody like that, somebody rough and overbearing. Neville was locked away inside his own shell. I couldn’t live with a man like that. Just couldn’t. You understand? He’d got to come alive, do something, show me…’ She tossed her head. ‘I told him about Andy, but he wouldn’t listen. I showed him Andy, and he pretended he couldn’t see. In the end I think he saw, but he was afraid. Neville was a coward. He couldn’t face Andy. Not to go up to him and say look here I’ve had enough of this, or whatever men say. He was afraid.’
With her hands flying in over-emphasis, she angrily demanded my acceptance. I looked at her with the stony disbelief I thought Neville would have used. It worked. Her eyes were wild.
‘I’d shout it in his face. “Neville, you’re a coward.” And he wouldn’t blink. You could slap him, and he’d turn away. A rank coward. He’d just got to do something. I couldn’t have gone on unless he’d done something. I think he saw that in the end. It was making me ill—the scenes.’
She stopped. She looked around. I’m not sure she knew where she was.
‘Scenes?’ I prompted.
‘At the end, that was. He was stubborn, sullen. He’d sit for hours: not speaking, looking at me, and you could scream in his face: coward, coward. And it was like shouting at a wall. He had to do something. You must see that. Something for me. Not for Andy. That gesture was for me!’
Somehow Finn managed to force words between those lips. ‘For you, Myra.’ I looked at him. He’d have liked his fingers at my throat.
‘Mother,’ pleaded Karen feebly. ‘You mustn’t get upset.’
‘I don’t believe her,’ I said angrily. ‘Go on, Myra. Wave that silly gun. I don’t believe you. Myra and her dramatics! Everything had to be for you. I can see you, shouting in his face: you’re a coward. Feeble Neville, the useless nothing. So he went to all the trouble of finding Lovejoy in Birmingham, buying a gun, making clever conversation so that it got back to Myra! No, I don’t believe it.’
Myra flashed at me: ‘It was for me.’
‘He’d got another gun, ‘I reminded her. ‘It was his own. He’d had it for years. So if he wanted to make gestures to you, Myra, why didn’t he dig it out and wave it under your nose? Why didn’t he do something like that?’
The triumph came out as a twisted, condescending smile. ‘Because I’d got it hidden away.’
It had been a tiresome business getting to it, but now it was in the open. ‘You’d hidden it away.’ I sighed.
There was silence in the room. She raised her head. ‘I wasn’t going to make it too easy for him. Oh no. He’d got to go out and do something. Show me. Anybody can wave a gun. He’d got to do something.’
‘But he searched?’ I asked wearily, thinking of this great house we were at the moment sitting in.
Her laugh was so brittle that the hair on my neck tingled. ‘The poor idiot. All over the house. Not letting me notice. Still pretending he wasn’t caring. But I knew. It was the first sign I was getting through to him. Fumbling through drawers, upstairs and downstairs. It really was idiotic. You’d have laughed.’
So all right, I’d have laughed. The dull throb she gave in illustration had all the humour of a falling guillotine.
‘It was for you,’ I agreed. ‘And that was what Karen tried so hard to hide. Sometime I was going to wonder why he’d go for another gun when he already had one. She didn’t want me to think too deeply, so she gave me an answer she hoped would rest my
mind—a gesture for Andy Paterson.’
Karen’s face had sunken into hollows of despair.
‘But of course,’ I said, ‘once he’d gone out and done something—bought himself another gun—there’d be no reason to go on hiding the first one. Let him have a real go at it. There were two guns used up at that farm. Ten shots were fired. The one he bought from Lovejoy was found in the yard, empty, and his own in the cow byre with three fired. But which was used first? That’s the point. The three-shot gun hadn’t jammed, so you’d think he emptied Lovejoy’s first, then carried on with his own, fired three from that, and threw it down. But where did he throw it. Into the cow byre? He could have tossed it in through the doorway. But from his own statement he emptied Lovejoy’s gun into Paterson, there outside the doorway, threw it down, and then ran off. It was found there.’
Finn croaked something. I ignored it.
‘And it sounds so real. It’s just what he would do. He went on squeezing the trigger after the gun was empty. That sounds very true. So what does that leave us? That he’d been using his own gun earlier, and discarded it after three shots? But why? It hadn’t jammed. And anyway, it was found in the cow byre, and the chase didn’t go that way—it finished there. So we’ve got to come to the conclusion that Lovejoy’s gun was emptied first, and Neville’s own gun was fired afterwards.’
Myra’s eyes were like steel.
‘But there was a letter from Paul Hutchinson’s father,’ I told them. ‘It was stolen because it said something about the place the gun was found—yet in fact that was not the significant point in that letter. The important thing was that Hutchinson mentioned he’d found three shell cases in the cow byre. Inside, mind you. Now… Neville could, conceivably, have tossed the gun into the byre. But he couldn’t have tossed the shell cases. Quite simply, it means that those three shots, the three shots that must have been fired after Neville emptied Lovejoy’s gun, were fired from inside the byre, where the shell cases were ejected. Are you going to say that Neville, having exhausted one gun out there in the yard, would scramble over Paterson’s wounded body in order to fire three more from inside?’
It was a quarter to two, and I was very tired. Nobody said anything. I kept hammering at Myra.
‘I don’t think he ever found his own gun, Myra. You’d hidden it away, and I don’t reckon you’d have made a poor job of it. In the end he was on the borders of insanity. He went out with the gun he’d got from Lovejoy. You’d finally driven him to something definite. But don’t tell me you’d watch him leave, and not want to see him finish it. You hated Paterson by that time. You had to see it end. So you followed Neville to the farm, and you took along Neville’s own gun, just in case it didn’t end satisfactorily. You watched the hunt from the shadows, and when it got close you hid in the byre. So you were there when Neville emptied Lovejoy’s gun and ran off. Then three more shots were fired. Why, Myra? Because Neville was a lousy shot, and Paterson wasn’t dead?’
Myra said heavily: ‘It became very heavy. I was wet and cold and tired.’
So she was cold and tired! ‘And so immersed in yourself and your bloody rotten feud with Neville that you forgot Karen,’ I said. Forgot her? Damn it all, this was the first time she’d given her a thought. I saw the horror come to Myra’s eyes. ‘Karen was here in the house. She was a child, and she’d watched it happening in front of her. Do you think she didn’t see her father storm out of the house with that gun he’d got from Lovejoy? Don’t you imagine she’d have watched while you found the gun you’d so carefully hidden? And then what? Her little scared face at the window as you drove after her father, that’s what. So she knew. All this time she may have said nothing, but she’s known damn well who killed Andy Paterson. It’s a nice thing she’s lived with, that and her father’s hanging. I wonder if she’s really loved you, Myra! Maybe she’s just been tied to you by the shared secret.’
I watched while they turned their heads slowly to face each other. I don’t know what it cost them. Then Karen collapsed, her hands over her face, and I felt like hell.
I had to look at Finn, because I didn’t fancy the sight of Myra. ‘You knew?’
He moved his tattered lips. It could have been yes.
‘But you couldn’t leave it alone, could you? You couldn’t just sign me off and send me away.’ He gobbled something. ‘All right, you did what you could for Myra.’
I looked at her. She seemed numb, reaching back to Neville. I flapped at my pockets, as though seeking a cigarette, got up casually and opened the box on his desk, and on the way back scooped the gun from Myra’s lap. She looked up at me. I think she was asking me for something, so I told her why I wasn’t going to deliver.
‘There was a time when I thought you were working for Neville, keeping quiet about the fact that he owned a gun. But of course it was Myra you were thinking about, wasn’t it, Myra? But Neville must have known. As soon as there was mention of a second gun, he knew, because it had to be the one you’d hidden. He fought hard for himself, but for you too Myra. There came a point when he could have saved himself with a few minutes of conversation with Crowshaw. But he kept silent. And you say he was a coward! You should count yourself as proud to have known him.’
It was the dull end of the night. I shrugged firmer into my jacket.
‘And now… if you’ll excuse me.’
They all looked at me. I said: ‘I’m getting married in a few hours, and there’s a lot to clear up.’ Then I picked up the phone and called Freer. Nobody moved. I laid the gun down on the table beside me.
‘Mallin,’ I said.
‘Don’t you ever sleep?’
‘I’m hoping to,’ I assured him. ‘You’ll have to get dressed. This matters.’
‘It’s broken?’
‘Wide open. Can you come to The Beeches? Get over here as fast as you can.’
He was alert. ‘Important?’
‘Yes. You’ll need some men and a couple of women officers. And a wagon. There’ll be three arrests.’
‘Three?’
‘When you’ve heard it all. Oh, and Freer…’
‘Yes?’
‘As a favour, make it fast, will you. I’m getting married in six hours’ time.’
As he hung up he gave a laugh I didn’t like. Finn was making croaking noises of protest.
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Three. Don’t think you’re getting out of it. There’s Troy down there in the car. You ordered that, Finn. You probably did it yourself, while the others held him. No, don’t say anything. He was the one who knew where the other Rover’s gone, and he was the one who tipped Karen about Lovejoy. But that wasn’t the worst. Oh no. He laid his hand on you, didn’t he?’
God, I was tired. And there was half an hour before Freer could be expected to arrive. I filled the time by helping Finn a little. I helped him tell me where his cheque book lived. I helped him grab hold of a ball-point.
‘Two hundred,’ I said, ‘should cover it. Two suits ruined, and a hell of a lot of mileage. Yes, two hundred.’
They’re quite legal, I find, cheques with blood dripped on them. There could have been a tear on there, too. When Freer burst in, I was just through phoning Elsa.
‘David?’
‘It’s me, Elsa. Aren’t you in bed?’
‘Are you all right?’
‘It’s all over, love. You can rest now.’
‘But are you all right?’
‘I may not look too good, but I’m whole. Elsa, I’ve got to ring off. I’ll see you later.’
‘David, I love you,’ she said.
‘You too,’ I mumbled, because three pairs of eyes were fastened on me, and they’d not want to hear about love.
Freer did his best for me, but we couldn’t do it all at The Beeches. Nothing would do but all of us over at HQ, where I dictated a very long statement and had to sit for an eternity while somebody pecked it out on a typewriter in the back. Nobody was going to let me go on a honeymoon until it was all down on paper.
> I signed my name a number of times, shook hands with Freer, who hoped I’d be very happy, and got out of there in broad daylight. I was a hell of a way from my place.
I made it in time for a bath, with my left arm in the air, and a shave and a scramble into the clothes I’d put out, just as Ted arrived with the taxi and my buttonhole in his fist.
‘My God, you look rough,’ he said. Ted’s not as big as I am, but he makes up for it in intelligence. ‘Didn’t you get any sleep at all?’
I told him I hadn’t. ‘I’ll make up for it tonight.’
‘Good Lord!’ He looked at me, appalled. ‘We never did get time for that little chat, did we?’
If you enjoyed Full Fury you might be interested in The Night She Died by Roger Ormerod, also published by Endeavour Press.
Extract from The Night She Died by Roger Ormerod
CHAPTER ONE
That morning I had taken our two boxers for a walk along the lane that fronts the house. It was early November, and too cold to allow them their more usual plunge into the Severn. But in any event, for ages there had been no otters around for them to play with. I blame it on pollution, surely a criminal act. But what could I do about it? Nothing.
Wrapped in these thoughts, I plodded along. Ours is the only house along that lane, which eventually terminates at a derelict farmhouse, so that I had not anticipated strangers in the district. Friends would have phoned to warn us of their intention. But clearly, on our return, something had been registered by the dogs’ squat noses or floppy ears, as they ran ahead, pausing from time to time to look back and bark, and check that I was still there.
The house is called The Beeches, from the row of splendid trees that runs past our drive and along the lane. I call it a drive, but in fact it is simply a large area of lightly gravelled earth. Nothing more than a parking patch, really. And now, as I turned into the gateless entrance, I saw that it was justifying its description, because a car was parked there, a Volkswagen Beetle. Black. And the visitor must have been inside the house, because there was nobody in the driver’s seat. At the sight of it, my memory stirred.
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