Why Aren't They Screaming?

by Joan Smith

  To her relief, the casserole was coming clean; Loretta finished it off and put it on the draining-board with the other dishes. She went to the fridge, took out one of the fresh trout she’d bought in the covered market in Oxford, and began cleaning it. Bertie leapt down from the chair on which he’d been sleeping after demolishing half a can of Whiskas and started dancing round her feet. As she fended him off with her right foot, an idea came to her: why not pay a visit to the peace camp? It was a long shot, but there was just a chance that someone there would remember something about Peggy – her surname, or where in London she came from. Loretta paused; what would she do with this information if she got it? She recalled Tracey’s warning not to meddle and shrugged it off. What harm was there in trying to track down Peggy? Even if there wasn’t anything sinister about the girl’s disappearance, Loretta would like to be sure. Pleased that she’d thought of something constructive to do, she made herself a simple supper of trout and almonds with new potatoes, followed by some seedless grapes.

  It was around eight thirty when Loretta set off in her car for the peace camp. She parked and headed for the track that ran beside the fence, wishing she’d had the foresight to make the trip before it started to get dark. When she came to the clearing the fire was still smoking in its pit, this time with a kettle suspended over it from a crude device constructed of branches, but there was no one in sight. She looked around and decided her best bet was the old coach; she picked her way across the clearing and knocked hard on the closed door. It was opened almost at once by a woman she hadn’t seen before who gave her an unfriendly stare.

  ‘What d’you want?’

  Loretta paused. ‘I’ve been here before, I’m a friend of Clara Wolstonecroft, the woman who was killed last night. Can I talk to you for a moment?’

  ‘Yeah.’ The woman didn’t move.

  ‘Can we go inside? I think it’s starting to rain.’ Loretta could feel the first drops on her face.

  ‘You a cop?’

  ‘No. Honestly. Look, this is important. Can I come in? It’ll only take five minutes.’

  The woman moved backwards with obvious reluctance and Loretta climbed up the steps, pushing the door shut behind her. The seats had been removed from inside the coach to create a surprisingly large living area, and a curtain suspended from a piece of twine divided the space into two. A couple of women were sitting on orange boxes, drinking from mugs. Loretta recognized them from her earlier visits to the camp but there was no sign of the friendly Scot she’d talked to on Monday. The woman who’d opened the door resumed her seat on a pile of grubby cushions, and all three women stared at her expectantly. No one invited her to sit down.

  ‘Look, I –’ The hostile atmosphere was making Loretta nervous. She was also self-conscious, aware of the contrast between her own clean clothes and the generally down-at-heel air of the camp. ‘I was here two days ago, with Clara – the woman who’s been murdered. I was here when that man came, Peggy’s husband. There was a fight, remember?’

  One of the women nodded.

  ‘The thing is, I’m trying to find Peggy.’ She thought she saw a flicker in the eyes of the woman nearest to her, then another of them spoke.

  ‘We haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Not since Monday.’ The woman who’d answered the door joined in.

  ‘OK, OK.’ Loretta knew they didn’t trust her, and battled to break down their hostility. ‘I’m nothing to do with the police, really. I’m just worried about Peggy. She was supposed to be staying at Clara’s, but nobody’s seen her. I just want to make sure she’s all right.’ She looked at each woman in turn, a pleading expression on her face. ‘Won’t you help me?’

  ‘We can’t. Like Karen says, we haven’t seen her.’

  ‘Yes, but one of you might know her last name? Or where she comes from? Her address in London ...?’ She trailed off, seeing it was useless. ‘Is anyone else here? In the camp, I mean?’

  The woman called Karen shook her head. ‘They’ve gone to a meeting. At Greenham. They won’t be back for hours.’

  ‘When they get back, will you ask them? Tell them I’m trying to find her?’ Loretta was clutching at straws. She found a scrap of paper and a pen in her bag and wrote rapidly. Then she held out her hand; for a moment she thought no one was going to take what she’d written. But one of the women stood up, took the paper without looking at it, and pushed it deep into her jeans pocket.

  ‘That’s my name and address,’ Loretta said, dismayed by their lack of curiosity. ‘I’m not on the phone, but I’ll be there for the next few days. Thanks.’

  She hesitated; when no one spoke, she moved back towards the door of the coach and climbed down the steps. Once outside she closed the door behind her, thinking that the visit had been a waste of time. Even if one of the absent women happened to know Peggy’s surname, Loretta was sure they wouldn’t contact her. She made her way back to the car, wondering why the women were so hostile. Had the woman detective upset them the night before, or had frequent contact at demonstrations rendered them automatically suspicious of anything connected with the law? Not that there was any reason why they should think she, Loretta, was in league with the police ... It was a pity: another avenue closed. She drove thoughtfully back to the cottage.

  She passed a restless evening half-listening to Radio Four, flicking the pages of the Margaret Atwood, drifting from one room to another. She couldn’t resist looking at her watch every few minutes, indulging the fruitless game of what-was-I-doing-this-time-last-night? As a result, she ran the events before and after the murder as a series of vivid and distressing pictures in her mind. By eleven o’clock she’d had enough; she let out the cat, picked up the radio-cassette player, and went upstairs. She slipped into her night-shirt and began putting away the clothes that were beginning to mount up on a chair. As she folded the linen trousers she’d been wearing the previous evening, something fell out of a pocket; she picked it up and recognized the cassette tape she’d been handed by Chief Inspector Bailey the previous evening.

  It was a new-looking cassette, without its box; she turned it over to see if there was a hand-written note of its contents – it wasn’t one of the pre-recorded sort – but found no clue. She had brought a couple of clean tapes with her, in case she wanted to record something on the radio, but had they been this make? She didn’t think so. In fact, she was beginning to think the tape wasn’t hers after all; perhaps it belonged to Wayne and he’d dropped it on his way out?

  She went over to her cassette player, removed the tape of Turandot which was still inside it, and put in the mystery tape. Then she lay back on the bed and waited, wondering about Wayne’s taste in music. Country and western? Or perhaps he was an Elvis fan?

  A minute or so passed, then she heard a click. It was followed by voices, and she didn’t immediately recognize what she was hearing.

  ‘That, my lords, ladies and gentlemen, is the last will and testament of the late Herbert George Fellows.’

  ‘Good God – the man must have been out of his mind!’

  ‘I should remind you, my Lord, that you are speaking of my dearest friend.’

  ‘My brother was always penny-pinching but it did not occur to me that even he –’

  ‘God be thanked that his poor dear sister is not alive to hear such words.’

  ‘His own flesh and blood.’

  ‘Poor, poor Cousin Maude.’

  Loretta sat bolt upright, staring into space. These were the voices – the voices she had heard in the night. That meant – that meant there was a plot against Clara. Someone was so anxious to frighten her that they’d gone to the trouble of making this tape and rigging up the apparatus needed to play it. And yet – Bailey’s man had found the tape in the bathroom of Keeper’s Cottage. Why there? Why not somewhere in Baldwin’s? Loretta’s heart race as her mind tried to grapple with all these questions. Wait a minute – hadn’t Clara said she’d had a good look round the house without finding anything that might be the sourc
e of the disembodied voices? What if the tape player or whatever it was had been hidden not in Baldwin’s but in Keeper’s Cottage? Did that mean that Wayne was in on the trick? Suddenly Loretta remembered the two men who had fled from the cottage on Sunday night – the very day Wayne moved out. Perhaps they weren’t burglars at all but – who? The campaign against Clara was now beginning to look like a very professional job. Threatening letters, sinister phone calls, eerie voices – someone had been making a pretty systematic attempt to terrify Clara Wolstonecroft into evicting the peace camp. Or perhaps the aim had been to drive her away altogether, in the hope that her house and land would pass to a new owner with a more reliable attitude on the subject of anti-nuclear protesters. Either way they’d miscalculated. Clara wasn’t the sort of woman to be intimidated, and her determination to protect the peace camp had never wavered. Was that why it had been necessary to kill her?

  Aghast at the thought, Loretta got off the bed and walked the length of the room to the far window. She pulled up the blind and looked out on to the dark valley; dozens of brilliant stars were twinkling overhead. She realized the voices had ceased and went back to the tape player, pressing the rewind button briefly. Then she pressed play; at once she heard the voices again. She stopped the tape, took it out and examined it. It was a widely available make, and there were definitely no distinguishing marks. How had it been done? Even if a tape player had been concealed in the cottage rather than in Clara’s house, how had the voices been beamed across to the study? She cast her mind back to Saturday night: the voices hadn’t sounded as though they were coming from the direction of Keeper’s Cottage.

  Loretta sighed, frustrated by her lack of technical knowledge. A new thought occurred to her: if only she’d told Bailey about the voices last night. If she had, and he’d then produced his find, what a strong position she’d have been in. Presumably he or one of his men had listened to the tape and dismissed its contents as irrelevant. But, combined with her story...

  Loretta pulled off her night-shirt and began dressing clumsily. It wasn’t too late – even though she hadn’t mentioned the voices last night, this was evidence. Clutching the tape she ran down the spiral staircase, through the bathroom and into the kitchen. She pulled open the front door without bothering to turn on the light, then paused on the threshold. Beyond the hedge Baldwin’s stood silent and unlit, its windows dark blanks in a grey façade. The police had gone. Loretta hesitated, racked by indecision. She was desperate to present her evidence to Bailey, and yet she could not bring herself to step out into the shadowy garden. And unless she did, she was stranded without a phone. She took a pace forward, heard a rustle in the low bushes to her left, and jumped back. There was a plaintive cry, and Clara’s cat appeared. His yellow eyes glinted up at Loretta for a second, then he bolted past her into the kitchen.

  Loretta took a deep breath to control her pounding heart. What were the choices open to her? Even if she made her way to the house, it was unlikely that the police had left it unsecured. If she wanted to phone Bailey, she would have to get into her car and drive until she found a call box. A vision of herself pulling open a heavy red door in a dark country lane, visible to anyone who passed but unable herself to penetrate the darkness because of the faint light from over her head, made her shudder. These people are professionals, she told herself, retreating into the cottage as her stomach churned with fear. She closed the front door and stood with her back to it, peering across the moonlit kitchen as though she expected a burst of machine-gun fire to pepper the old stone walls at any moment. Intensely aware that she was alone, without a phone, only yards from where a murder had been committed, she turned and slammed home the shiny new bolt on the front door. Then she sped into the bathroom, checking that the door in there was securely fastened. A minute later, doors and windows as fast as she could make them, she began to climb the wrought-iron stairs, ready to spend the night in a state of siege.

  Chapter 6

  Loretta heaved open the door of the phone box and peered inside, wrinkling up her nose as the smell of stale urine assailed her. She was glad she hadn’t come on this errand the night before; the kiosk was in a lonely spot on the main road past the air base. Propping open the door with one foot so she could breathe fresh air, she looked to see what coins she needed. The box was an old-fashioned one – although she had several twenty-pence pieces and one fifty in her purse, the only slot that hadn’t been blocked up was for tens. Loretta had four of these, and hoped Bailey would be in his office. Or should she wait a little longer? She looked at her watch: nine fifteen. Surely he’d be there by now, she thought impatiently. He was in charge of a murder inquiry, after all. She decided to risk it.

  ‘Hello, can I speak to Chief Inspector Bailey?’

  She waited a moment while the switchboard operator tried an extension. A man’s voice answered.

  ‘Sergeant Gorringe.’

  ‘Is Chief Inspector Bailey there? It’s about the murder. The Wolstonecroft murder,’ she added, suddenly realizing Bailey might be dealing with more than one.

  ‘Mr Bailey’s in London today, miss. Can I help you?’

  ‘Oh.’ Loretta was crestfallen. During a restless night she had cheered herself up by imagining the expression on Bailey’s face as he listened to the tape recording which was at present sitting safely in her shoulder-bag. Now she had been robbed – if only temporarily – of her triumph. She wondered whether to explain the whole business to the sergeant, and decided against it.

  ‘No. Can I leave a message? That Dr Lawson would like to speak to him.’

  ‘OK, miss. Does he know where to contact him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Dr Lawson.’

  ‘I’m Dr Lawson.’

  ‘Oh, you’re –’ The sergeant’s voice was cut off by the pips. Loretta’s hand hovered over the coin slot, then drew back. Why waste her last couple of coins on this ridiculous conversation? She pressed down the rest, listened for the change in tone, and dialled a London number. After a couple of rings she heard a click.

  ‘Hi, this is John Tracey’s answering machine. I’m not here at the moment, so why not leave a message and I’ll call you back as soon as –’ The rest was cut off by the signal for more money. Exasperated, Loretta put the phone down. Then, having second thoughts, she picked it up again and dialled 100 for the operator. A man’s voice answered and she asked to make a transferred charge call to the Sunday Herald. When she got through, Tracey’s extension rang and rang without reply. Loretta was about to put the phone down when someone picked it up. To her relief, she heard Tracey’s voice.

  ‘Thank God! You can’t imagine the trouble I’m having with phones this morning –’

  ‘Well, you’re lucky to get me at all this time in the morning. I’m only in early ‘cause I’ve got to go through a pile of documents before I see someone for lunch. Where are you speaking from?’ Arriving early at the office obviously wasn’t good for Tracey’s temper.

  ‘Haven’t a clue,’ Loretta said quickly. ‘I’m on a country road near Clara’s house. Listen, have you got a moment?’

  ‘You’ll have to make it quick. I’ve got a stack of documents a mile high... Is it important?’

  ‘I think so.’ Making her account as concise as possible, Loretta told Tracey how the tape had come into her possession and she’d recognized its contents.

  ‘You all right, Loretta? You’re not making this up?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘OK, but it does sound a bit far-fetched. People are always ringing up with stories about their houses being burgled and their phones tapped, and the next thing you know they’re telling you it’s because they’re personal friends of Queen Victoria.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s very funny.’

  ‘It’s not –’ Tracey’s words became inaudible as two fighters roared overhead in close formation. ‘Christ, what was that?’

  ‘Planes from the base, F1-11s I should think. At least you know I haven’t made t
hem up!’

  ‘All right, but what d’you expect me to do? I’ve told you, you shouldn’t get involved. Why not take this tape to the police?’

  Loretta explained that Bailey was in London for the day. ‘And I can’t just do nothing. I thought you could make a few inquiries for me – you’ve got contacts with ‘those sort of people.’

  ‘What sort?’

  ‘You know, spies.’ Tracey had pulled off a considerable journalistic coup the year before when he’d exposed several Eastern bloc agents working in sensitive positions in West Germany. At that time, and since, he’d conveyed the impression he was really rather well connected in the intelligence world. ‘You could ask around for me, see whether anyone knows about the Americans doing this sort of thing.’

  ‘I thought you disapproved. You weren’t very complimentary about my story from Berlin last year.’

  ‘All right, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to find out what’s going on here. Please, John.’

  Tracey gave a deep sigh. ‘I’m not promising anything. The guys I know are Brits, not American. I can’t just ring up Five and ask if they know what covert ops the Yanks have been running near their own bases.’

  ‘Sorry, you’ve lost me. What’s Five? And what are ops?’ Loretta was irritated; Tracey habitually adopted this type of jargon when talking about his intelligence contacts.

  ‘Come on, Loretta.’ Tracey had dropped his voice and sounded ill at ease. ‘It doesn’t do to discuss these things over the phone.’

  ‘You just told me that people who think their phones are tapped are loonies.’

  ‘I didn’t mean my end – look, leave it with me and I’ll make a few inquiries. But I don’t hold out much hope. Even if you’re right and the Yanks are up to something, I very much doubt whether anyone’ll admit it.’

  ‘Thanks, John.’ In spite of his short temper, Tracey could usually be relied on. ‘When shall I call back? This afternoon?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in hell that I’ll know anything by then. But if you like. If it keeps you out of mischief.’