Desperate Measures: A Mystery

by Jo Bannister

  But of course, that wouldn’t work, either. “They’re not at Highfield Road, Gabriel. They went up to Chester a week ago, to see her mother.”

  Almost more than anything Hazel had said, that seemed finally to put the thing beyond doubt. To a man desperate to believe in his wife, everything else could have been the result of threats, misunderstandings, poor judgment. But that was a lie, and there was only one reason Cathy Ash might lie to Hazel Best. So far as Cathy could know, no one harbored any suspicions about her involvement, so it wasn’t her own whereabouts she was anxious to keep secret.

  Ash’s voice came out dead flat. “Her mother’s been dead for years.”

  Hazel had thought she knew everything that mattered. She was startled to find she didn’t. “Then we’ve no idea where she went when she left Norbold.”

  Ash sucked in a long, slow breath, considering. Looking for alternatives. Finding none. “Of course we have,” he said at last. “She’s gone to him. To Graves. She’s taken my sons and gone to meet the man she betrayed me for.”

  CHAPTER 29

  FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, Hazel talked to DI Gorman. She couldn’t be sure if he accepted her theory as gospel, but before she’d even finished he was on the phone to Philip Welbeck in the quieter part of Whitehall. Soon after that Welbeck called Laura Fry, and Laura went up to her attic to tell Ash he was a free man.

  But he wasn’t there.

  * * *

  Dave Gorman was famously even-tempered, for a detective inspector. He wasn’t exactly an intellectual—he still played rugby when he could, and he had the lowest hairline of anyone Hazel had ever seen not eating a banana—but he wasn’t a bully. He didn’t believe that suspects confessed sooner or constables worked better for being shouted at, and he was better at listening, and at thinking about what he’d heard, than many of his rank.

  So the sound of his voice coming through two closed doors and down the stairwell raised eyebrows at the coffee machine in the ground-floor corridor. Then someone mouthed the words Hazel Best, and everyone else nodded their understanding.

  “For an intelligent woman,” Gorman thundered, “you do a damn good impression of a bimbo sometimes!”

  Hazel winced. But she hardly felt able to argue. Once again, despite her good intentions, she’d made misjudgments you wouldn’t expect from someone on their first week out of police college, allowing a situation to develop that would have been prevented by one phone call to the right person at the right time. She might have thought she was helping her friend, but in reality she’d created an opportunity for a distressed and vulnerable man to cut himself off from all sources of help and go alone in pursuit of two dangerous people.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice. “It was stupid. I didn’t expect…”

  “What didn’t you expect?” demanded Gorman. “That Ash would be angry enough to do something crazy? Why wouldn’t you expect that? The man’s unhinged at the best of times! Did you think he’d behave more rationally when you told him his wife had only been pretending for the four years he’d thought she was dead?”

  “Of course not.” She didn’t dare raise her eyes yet. “I just didn’t expect him to do anything about it. I didn’t think there was anything he could do. He said he didn’t know where she’d gone.”

  “And you believed him?”

  “Yes! He was upset and hurt, and if Cathy had still been at Highfield Road, I’d have—I don’t know—sat on his head till he calmed down. But she wasn’t. She’d taken the boys and gone away, and she’d lied about where she’d gone to. And yes, I believed Gabriel when he said he didn’t know where she would go, except that she’d probably gone to Graves.” She risked a covert glance at the DI. “Well, CTC have been looking for him for a week and not found him. Why would Gabriel Ash know where to look?”

  “You think he’s just wandering about on spec, hoping to get lucky? Posting pictures in post office windows like his wife was a lost cat?”

  Hazel shook her head. “I’m guessing that after I left him, he sat up the rest of the night thinking about it, and finally he thought of something worth checking out. That doesn’t necessarily mean he was right,” she added hopefully. “If he checks it out and it was wrong, he’ll come home.”

  “And if he checks it out and it was right,” snarled Gorman, “he’s going toe-to-toe with a man who gets people killed. You’d better hope Ash is on a wild-goose chase. If he isn’t, the next time you’ll see him is on a slab.”

  * * *

  Gabriel Ash drove north in his mother’s car. Hazel had made him tax and insure it and send it for a service after they got back from Byrfield. He suspected she was making the point that if she’d wanted to be a taxi driver, she wouldn’t have joined the police. At the time he’d thought it a waste of money: a man who’d hardly left his house for four years didn’t need a car. Now he was glad she’d insisted. The more reputable hire firms object to dealing with dead men, and if he’d tried to steal one, doubtless he’d have been caught. He had no talent for lawbreaking.

  Fortunately, the senior Mrs. Ash had believed in putting her money into things that would last. So while the Volvo was of pensionable age, the freshly tuned engine was as keen as a retired racehorse gone hunting. Ash got onto the motorway, followed the arrows for the North—it would be hours before the signs got more specific—and let the old girl have her head.

  Even this early in the morning the motorway wasn’t empty. It was never empty. But it was much quieter than it would have been if he’d agonized just an hour longer about what he should do, and he slipped into a comfortable gap between a soft furnisher’s panel van and a big refrigerated trailer, and let them bear him along like surfing a tarmac wave. Decision making cut to a minimum, he was free to consider the situation in which he found himself: the things he had to do, the things he had already done.

  Of the latter, he felt worst about the way he’d treated Hazel. He hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t know where Cathy had gone; knowing had come later, stealing up by degrees along with the daylight as he sat alone in the attic room overlooking the park, hunched over, hugging himself like someone in pain. But he could have called her. Perhaps he shouldn’t have told her where he was going, but he could at least have told her not to worry, that he knew what he was doing. Although that would have been a lie.

  Briefly, before common sense intervened, he’d been tempted to ask her along. Her companionship would have shortened the miles, but he owed her better. In the months they’d known each other she’d made a massive difference to his life. Ash knew he’d made a massive difference to hers, too, but in a less positive way. She’d had a good career ahead of her before she met him. Conceivably she might have one again, but not if she was made once more an adjunct to mayhem. He had very little idea how matters would resolve once he reached the Lake District, but however many times he fed the available data into the computer between his ears, he couldn’t get an answer that didn’t involve bloodshed.

  The other reason he’d been tempted to ask Hazel to come was that he missed his dog. But he hadn’t succumbed to the whimperings of loneliness. He cared too much for both of them to knowingly take them into danger.

  As for the danger to himself, rather to his surprise—he had never counted himself a brave man—it barely figured in his thinking. He was aware that he was on his way to confront two people who would be dismayed to see him alive and could not be relied on to swallow their disappointment gracefully. Graves certainly owned a shotgun, and it seemed likely that a man in the arms business could access other weapons, too. Ash thought he had a Swiss army penknife under his dashboard somewhere.

  But then, what was between himself and Stephen Graves was never going to be settled by firepower; or if it was, Ash would lose. In a way, the outcome of the confrontation was less important to him than the fact that it should take place. He was in that desperate position where things could hardly get any worse. If he found them at the boat, Graves would certainly be armed,
and regardless of what Ash brought to the party, he wouldn’t be going home when the clock struck midnight. Then again, if that was what he found, he didn’t much care about going home.

  And if, somehow, he found Cathy alone, any kind of weaponry would be superfluous. He wasn’t going to hurt his wife. He loved his wife—even now, even knowing what she’d done to him, Gabriel Ash was stuck like a flawed record on the fact that he loved his wife. He had loved her, he did love her, he would always love her. The woman who had put him through hell was somehow apart from that. Some other Cathy, existing in a parallel universe, whose actions produced ripples in the space-time fabric that were capable of being felt in Ash’s world but not of affecting his feelings. Perhaps the woman he loved existed now only inside his own head. But that was real enough for Ash, and meant she would be forever safe from him.

  This wasn’t about vengeance. He wanted to know what had happened to make her behave as she had. To know, first, if she’d done what Hazel thought she’d done, and then why. He wanted to know what he’d done wrong.

  Even as he drove, Ash knew he might be wasting his time. Cathy might not be at the houseboat. It hadn’t been obvious, even to him, that she would go there. The idea had come to him only with the dawn, and the memory—there had been so many that night—of joyous weekends the couple had spent there in the first years of their marriage. It had belonged to an uncle of hers and had been used throughout his extended family. By now the uncle might be dead and the boat sold, and Cathy somewhere else entirely. He might be making this long drive for nothing. But he couldn’t think where else she might go. And the tenuous connection—the accommodating uncle not only didn’t share her married name but he didn’t even share her maiden name—might have added to the boat’s attractions as somewhere to evade attention for a while. Ash knew about it, but Cathy believed Ash to be dead. Possibly no one else in the world might think to look for her there.

  But if he was right, and that was where she had gone—and if Hazel was right, too, and Graves was there with her—what then? What was he expecting to happen? Graves had tried to kill him once: was there anything to stop him from trying again? Would Cathy want to stop him from trying again? Ash genuinely didn’t know. He still hoped—fiercely, if forlornly—that there was a reason for everything she’d done. But what if the reason was that she’d grown to hate him?

  He drove north, and the day grew bright, but Ash’s soul remained deep in shadow.

  * * *

  Gorman had calmed down by now. That didn’t mean Hazel was off the hook.

  “He must have said something,” insisted the DI. “Not necessarily last night. But you’ve known this man for four months. You know him better than his therapist. Think, Hazel. Think about all those casual conversations there was no particular reason to remember. Those ‘We went there on holiday once and it rained all week’ conversations. Think of places he’s mentioned. If he’s thought of somewhere Cathy might go, it’s because it meant something to him once; and if it meant something, he may have spoken about it. Maybe only in passing. A place name, an occasion—something. Think, girl!”

  “I am thinking!” protested Hazel. And she was; her brain felt like he’d put it through a wringer. “There’s nothing there. He never talked about things he and Cathy had done. Well, hardly ever. He thought she was dead, remember. He wouldn’t want to share his memories of her with me.”

  “Maybe not,” allowed Gorman, “but that doesn’t mean nothing ever slipped out. Where did they meet? Where did they go on honeymoon?”

  “They met at the University Boat Race.” Hazel sounded surprised that she knew that. “I don’t know where they went on honeymoon. I know they had a flat in Covent Garden, and that Cathy liked London better than Gabriel did.”

  “We know about the flat,” said Gorman dismissively. “She won’t go there. And if she’s gone to lose herself in London, we’ll never find her—but then, neither would Ash. He’s thought of somewhere she might go that he might find her. Our only chance of finding either of them is if he said something to you, about someplace that only the two of them knew about, and you can remember. Hazel—try to remember!”

  “I am trying,” she wailed. “There’s nothing there!”

  “All right.” Gorman knew he’d get nowhere by bullying her, that a change of subject was more likely to yield results. “Then tell me this. If he finds her, what do you think he’ll do?”

  Hazel felt as if she was being asked to reveal things about Ash that she’d been told in confidence. But she was not a private citizen; she was a police officer. Even more important, Ash’s life was at risk. If he found his wife with Stephen Graves, it was hard to imagine that all three of them were going to walk away unscathed.

  She took a deep breath, started at the sharp end. “He won’t be armed. To the best of my knowledge he doesn’t own a gun, has never owned a gun, wouldn’t know where to get a gun, and wouldn’t know how to use it if he did. Even at the peak of his career, he was no James Bond. He was an analyst—most of the time he worked at a desk, collating data.

  “And then, I’m not sure how much of what I was telling him he actually believed. I know he understood enough to resent it; and I think he accepted the logic behind it. Emotionally, though, I’m not sure he believed it. He felt there had to be another explanation. I think maybe that’s what he’s doing now—looking for an explanation from the only person who can give him one.”

  “Do you think he’s right? That Cathy Ash had a good reason for playing dead?”

  “No,” said Hazel. “But maybe I’m not the best one to ask. I like Gabriel, and I can’t say I felt the same way about his wife.”

  Gorman gave a somber smile. “Does that make her a villain?”

  “Of course not,” said Hazel briskly. “Taking their sons and disappearing with them, and letting him think they were all dead while she was living it up in Cambridge—that’s what makes her a villain.”

  They returned to the question of where Cathy Ash might be now. Still Hazel had no insights to share. “I could go to Gabriel’s house, have a root around, see if anything rings a bell.”

  “I have people conducting a search there right now.” Gorman sounded faintly displeased, as if she was suggesting he might have overlooked this obvious line of inquiry.

  “That’ll help if Cathy’s left a map marked with a big red X,” said Hazel a shade tartly. “It won’t help jog my memory.”

  “No,” agreed Gorman. “All right. DS Presley’s in charge. Tell him I sent you.”

  CHAPTER 30

  HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO SEARCH A HOUSE? That depends on who’s doing the searching. If it’s a man, he’ll devote ten minutes to the job before deciding that (a) he’s had burglars and the item he’s looking for is no longer on the premises, or (b) women are constitutionally better equipped for the task, so he should leave it to his wife. If it’s a woman doing the searching, it’ll take as long as it takes until she finds what she’s looking for.

  But if it’s a police team looking for evidence, as a rule of thumb it takes three days to thoroughly search a house. Detective Sergeant Tom Presley was two hours into the job of searching the Ash house at Highfield Road, and already he was mentally penning his resignation. Or possibly a suicide note.

  There was something desperately sad and depressing about the big old house. It had been a prestigious property once, but the glory days were long gone. Ash’s mother, widowed young, had lived here alone after he left for university, and she’d never had much incentive to keep it up-to-date. As she grew old, even necessary repairs had been skimped on.

  Then his world had fallen apart, and he’d come back here like a wounded animal seeking somewhere familiar to die. He’d done nothing to the place, either. There was no central heating, only a couple of open grates, seldom lit, and some two-bar electric fires. Cold radiated out of the walls, even in summer. The heavy plush curtains, designed to keep the drafts out, kept the sun out, too, and the variations-on-a-brown-theme wal
lpaper had been unfashionable when it went up twenty years ago. He’d brought nothing with him, made do with what his mother had left behind. Except for the wicker dog basket, squeezed into a tight space in the kitchen and never, as far as DS Presley could see, actually used. There was dog hair on the sofa, the rug, and upstairs on the single bed in the back room Ash had used—his wife had commandeered the front two bedrooms for the three and a half weeks she and her sons had stayed there—but none in the dog basket.

  “If anybody ever catches me living like this,” he observed, only half in jest, “will they please put me out of my misery?”

  The embarrassed silence was the only warning he got that Hazel Best was standing behind him. “Ah, Hazel…”

  She fixed him with a look that was closer to dislike than she could usually maintain for long. Then she said, with the kind of restraint that is the next best thing to hitting someone with an iron bar, “I’m going to say this just once more, and after that I expect everyone to remember it. Gabriel Ash is not an idiot. He isn’t deranged or mentally retarded. He is not a sandwich short of a picnic and his elevator serves all floors. He’s a highly intelligent man who’s endured more stress than any of us can comprehend, and if we found ourselves dealing with what he’s had to deal with, I don’t imagine any of us would make a better job of it. Some of us”—her glance flicked Tom Presley like a whip—“might make a worse one. So yes, maybe he’s let the decor slide a bit. That does not entitle any of you to treat him or speak of him or think of him with anything less than respect.”

  She walked past Presley and the rest of them and entered the drawing room with a degree of dignity that could almost be called hauteur, and the shocked silence lasted until after she’d shut the door.

  Then Detective Constable Rodgers observed cautiously, “Didn’t she used to be a teacher?”

  Presley cleared his throat. “I believe so, yes.”

  Rodgers nodded. “It shows.”