‘I know he couldn’t have been.’
‘So how was it done? Go on, imagine you want to kill somebody, in a car — in a Volvo like the one behind you — and down this slope. How would you do it?’
I hadn’t really given the details much thought, but he’d thrown it out as a challenge.
‘Assume he’s unconscious,’ I said. ‘This person I’m going to kill. I’ve driven him here, so I drive it through the gateway and on to the slope, get out, shove him across or pull him across until he’s behind the wheel…’
‘Over the gear stick and the rest?’
‘Yes. Over it. All of it. Or I drag him out and shove him in on the driver’s side. You’re pecking at details.’
‘Details matter. It’d be a difficult job for a woman.’
‘Imagine I’m either sex, or both, or a neuter,’ I said with careful patience. ‘For the sake of argument.’
‘Not easy. But carry on.’
‘Right. So I get him behind the wheel, belt him in, and all I’ve got to do then is release the handbrake and jump clear.’
He said nothing. I glanced sideways. He seemed to sense that, because he pursed his lips.
‘Well?’ I said. ‘Say something.’
‘The weather’s been like this for the past fortnight. The surface in there’s all slippy. It might not have been feasible.’
‘Feasible! Feasible! It could’ve been done.’
‘Very well. But assume it looked difficult — too slippy. You wouldn’t dare try it…’
‘Nonsense.’
‘What else could you do, if you decided not to risk it?’
‘I wouldn’t decide that. It looks all right to me.’
‘Assume you did decide it was too risky. What other way would there be?’
‘I don’t know. Do it out here in the lane, I suppose.’
‘It being?’
‘Get him in behind the wheel…’
‘And take off the handbrake, and shove the car through the gateway?’
‘Yes. Why not? It’d roll—’
‘Would it? Look at the width of the lane. You couldn’t get a car this size round far enough to point it directly at the opening. It’d have to be from an angle.’
‘So you do it through the open window, steering it round with one hand and shoving with the other.’
‘Have you got that much strength, Philipa?’
I stared at him. He was laughing at me, somewhere behind his calm face and solemn eyes. ‘It doesn’t have to be only one person, and it doesn’t have to be a woman, and you know it. A big man. A big, powerful brute of a man, like you, Oliver. You could do it.’
He didn’t react. ‘Could I? Come on, let’s give it a try, then. Quite frankly, I don’t think we could get enough grip on the surface. Here, you get round the back and I’ll handle the wheel through the window.’
I walked away a few yards. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
But his tone halted me. ‘I’d like us to try it. Please?’
When I turned he was eyeing me gravely. This mattered to him.
‘You mean it?’
‘Yes.’
So I got behind it — checking first that he’d got the handbrake off and wasn’t tricking me — and Oliver got his arm through the open window to the wheel, and we pushed. It moved. It moved a clear foot. I swear it did. Then my feet went from under me and I fell face down on to the boot.
‘You’re not trying!’ I yelled.
‘Oh yes I am. But I can’t keep my feet.’
I dusted off my hands, though they were wet not dry. ‘Very well. It couldn’t have been done from out here. But from inside?’ I nodded to myself. ‘It could’ve been done from just inside.’
He grinned. ‘How far inside? I mean, you’re driving it, a dead or unconscious man beside you. How far would you dare to take it, before it began to slide away?’
‘You don’t know it’d do that.’
‘I believe it would.’
‘Believe, believe! That’s fine from a policeman. I believe he did it, Your Honour. Case dismissed. Ha!’
‘I believe it strongly enough to have ceased to believe it could be murder.’
‘I know it. If it was Graham…’
‘If? Doubts now?’
‘If it was Graham, it was murder.’
He sighed. ‘We’re getting nowhere. Come and look. Come on.’
I allowed him to take me back to the open gate. We stood again shoulder to shoulder. I was beginning not to like this any more. Why couldn’t he have left me with my instincts and intuitions, instead of sticking facts under my nose?
‘So what am I to say?’
‘Four feet inside,’ he pointed out, ‘half a car’s wheelbase inside, and the slope begins. It’s a twenty degree drop. Damn it all, you couldn’t even keep your feet on it, let alone a ton of car.’
‘Betcha!’
‘I don’t bet.’
‘Even on certainties?’
He turned to me and took my arm. ‘I’m not certain because I came up here yesterday, and didn’t dare to walk in through that gate and try it.’
‘My God, the defender of our peace, the breaker of riots, the arrester of armed villains — and you wouldn’t dare!’
‘Would you?’
‘You must be mad, Oliver Simpson.’
‘I have a rope.’
‘What!’
He turned and went back to the car, reached on to the rear seat, and came back with a large, heavy coil of blue nylon rope. ‘With this. I’d be the other end of it.’
I looked at him a long few moments. ‘You planned it like this, didn’t you?’ I demanded, getting ready, steadying my feet so that I could belt him one if he said yes.
‘I’m getting to know you. I came prepared, knowing you’d have to prove your point. So I’m playing safe. Covering all contingencies.’
I breathed out slowly. ‘Isn’t it a good idea we didn’t get married yesterday?’
‘Let’s not start another argument. Yes or no?’
‘Yes, damn you,’ I said quietly. ‘And by God Oliver, you’ll pay that rope out inch by inch…or I’ll…I’ll…’ I couldn’t think of anything appropriate.
He made a loop under my arms, knotted it, pulled against it, then arranged the rest in a neat coil at his feet. He took the rope in both hands, braced his right foot behind one of the gateposts and leaned back like a tug-of-war anchorman.
‘Ready when you are,’ he said.
At that moment I would have done anything to be able to retract with honour. I’m not averse to experiment, but I prefer not to be the centre of it. But he was eyeing me with a smile, blast him. I’d take that off his face…
I turned away from him and advanced slowly through the gateway. He’d said the actual fall of the slope began four feet inside, but it was less. At the second pace I felt a heel slip slightly. Clearly, I needed to take shorter paces. I advanced, therefore, at one foot paces, feeling ahead of me like a mountaineer in a dense fog. My reactions were poised on a knife edge. The pressure around my upper chest was reassuring, in fact he was overdoing it, preventing me from leaning forward when I realized my weight ought to be over my forward foot rather than my rearward.
In order to rectify this, I leaned forward a little, and my front foot, the right, went from under me. I was barely six feet from the gate. He could have steadied me, and I’d have recovered. But before that could happen the other foot went, and I came down on my rump, but sliding even as I fell.
‘Yoik!’ I yelled.
Then I was sweeping down that slope like a toboggan, except for the fact that I didn’t stay on my back. One moment on my face, the next my back, one moment feet first, then headfirst, and I could barely manage to keep breathing as the air was bounced out of me, not enough to get a full lungful in order to scream, ‘Oliver!’
And nothing happened in response to the feeble squeak. The rope did not tighten. I swirled down, twisting and turning, and if the rope was still th
ere I couldn’t detect it. There was nothing left for screams, only the terror as I went faster and faster down that two hundred yards of slimy, filthy slope, and every time I got brief flashes of that bare, naked edge it was closer, then too close. Until with a breath-snatching jar the rope caught me and I dangled there on my back with the edge four yards beyond my feet.
I lay and panted, until I realized the edge was receding from me, then I rolled over so that I could grip the rope and look upwards, could even make scrambling actions with knees and toes to help it all along, until I collapsed on hands and knees at his feet, head down and panting, while above me I could hear him gasping, ‘My God, Philipa! My God!’
I gave myself a minute or two to recover, by which time I realized I was one mass of reddish-green mud from head to toes. Slowly I got to my feet, straightening to face him.
‘You stinking, rotten bastard!’ I shouted into his face. ‘You did that on purpose.’
I threw a handful of mud at him, and while he was still blinking I kneed him in the groin. He gave a groan and went down on hands and knees. The rope lay at his feet. I grabbed a length of it and threw it over his head, then leaned back to get it beneath his chin. In those few seconds I could have killed him, would have killed him, with my knee in his back and my whole weight on the rope, but he got his hands round in time to slip fingers inside the loop, and with a quick jerk and a sudden duck of his shoulders he threw me clear over his head, to land flat on my back in the lane.
Then he pounced, flat on top of me, reaching for my wrists as my nails went for his eyes. He forced my arms back behind my head, panting above me, staring into my eyes.
‘Bitch!’ he said softly. ‘Wild mad cat of a bitch!’
I hissed at him. He bared his teeth in something that wasn’t a smile, then he bent closer and kissed me and held it till I relaxed. I admit that I pressed my body against him, but that was to make certain he got as much mud as I could transfer. Even, perhaps, I squirmed a little, but for the same purpose. But he must’ve misconstrued, because his kiss became soft and tender, and in a few more seconds I’d have been seduced in a mud bath, which at least would have been novel, but he drew away.
‘Pax?’ he asked.
‘My Latin’s lousy.’
‘It means can I trust you?’
I nodded. He got to his feet and reached down a hand, which I ignored. Without looking at each other we got back inside the car, which was going to need cleaning before he handed it over. We stared ahead out of the window. He scrambled around and found his mate’s cigarette pack.
‘You smoke?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘Have to keep in training for the karate, I suppose,’ he grumbled.
‘In New York, you need to learn a few things.’
‘Heaven help ’em.’ He lit up, drew in deeply, and coughed. ‘I gave it up. I’ve just ungiven it.’ Then, after another cough, ‘You scared the daylights out of me. D’you know that? The rope, it was too thin. It ran through my hands.’
He showed me his palms, burnt and grooved and bleeding. I looked away. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Then did.
‘I’m sorry, Oliver. I thought…thought you’d done it on purpose to give me a fright.’
‘No.’ He thought. ‘I just wanted you to accept something. In this case, it was that nobody — just nobody at all — could’ve driven that car on to the slope with a dead or unconscious passenger, and got out, and —’
‘Yes, yes, I agree. They could not.’
‘So it follows,’ he plodded on relentlessly, ‘that for the car to have got through that gate and down that slope, it must’ve been driven, Phil. Must have. By the dead man. It couldn’t have been murder. He did it himself. Suicide, or accident if you don’t like that.’
‘You had to prove it?’ I asked. ‘Fine. That you have now done.’
‘So will you — and believe me, it’s now much more difficult to say this — will you accept the inquest verdict, drop the whole thing, and go home to New York, where you’ll be so much safer? Will you? For me.’
I was feeling better. My heart had settled down, but there was a tight pain round my chest, where the rope had bitten into me. The laugh hurt, but I couldn’t hold it back.
‘Oh Oliver, you’re marvellous. Don’t you know what you’ve just proved? The dead man had to have driven the car through that gateway himself. You said that, and I agree. But Graham couldn’t have driven it, and you’re not going to budge me an inch on that. So it was not my Graham. So he’s still alive. And you expect me to turn round and slink away? You must be joking!’
He said nothing for a full minute, then he threw the cigarette from the open window, started the engine, and drove away. He would have to drive on to the old farm entrance in order to back round.
‘The rope,’ I said. ‘You’re leaving it.’
‘I might come back and hang myself,’ he told me. ‘Philipa, you’re a mess. You can’t possibly walk into The Carlton like that.’
‘You’re not a pretty sight yourself. And yes I can. What do I care what they think? Drive on, and don’t get us stuck out here. You can drive all right, I suppose?’
‘Yes.’ He glanced sideways. ‘Why?’
‘My knee.’
‘Oh yes. You have beautiful knees, Phil. It was a pleasure.’
We were, clearly, each annoyed with the other. We therefore continued silently. When I cleaned the mud from my watch and discovered it was still working, I saw that it was after ten-thirty.
‘Look at the time!’ I said. ‘Ten-thirty, and I’ve got to pick somebody up at Birmingham airport at one. My business partner, to save you asking.’
‘Plenty of time for that. It’s only a twenty mile run, and…’
‘I want to see my solicitor first, and get some lunch.’
‘Solicitor? You going to sue me?’
‘We shall probably discuss that, too. Mind your own business, Oliver.’
‘Sorry, I’m sure. Your best bet is to drop in at my place and get a shower and what not, and I’ll give you lunch, and then I’ll drive you to the airport in this.’
‘No!’ Then I softened it. ‘Thank you, but I want to pick him up myself. Why d’you think I hired the little Peugeot?’
We were coming into Penley. He slowed. ‘I’d never guess.’
‘He’s a great, gangling man, and he won’t like the car. I thought it’d persuade him to go back quicker.’
‘Good thinking.’ Then he considered this for a moment before he produced a short bark of laughter. ‘Back, I suppose, means New York?’
‘Yes. That’s where our office is.’
‘I see. I suppose he knows there’s money lurking in the background?’
I was distant with him. ‘We have no secrets.’
‘Remember what I said about vultures?’
‘Every word you say is treasured, Oliver.’
‘It must,’ he decided after a moment, ‘be very difficult to work as your partner. Never a smile, never a friendly word.’
I turned in my seat. ‘You know better than that, and I have to remind you that I’ve only recently had a nasty shock. And I’d like, very much, to get to my room as quickly as possible, if you don’t mind, because I can already feel the reaction coming on, and if I’m going to collapse in a sloppy mess I’d prefer to do it on my own bed and not in your strong arms, Oliver Simpson. Do I make myself clear?’
I noticed he’d stopped the car, and had turned in his seat to face me. ‘You don’t feel well?’
‘Please do it.’
He started again. Inside a hundred yards he had stopped in front of The Carlton.
‘Thank you…’
‘I’ll come in with you.’
‘Thank you…no.’
‘At your shoulder.’
‘Oh…damn you.’
I’d built myself up to facing it out, marching in with the mud drying on me and flaking off, as though it was a normal and acceptable condition for me. Two of us�
��it was taking it over the top. The mental image it must have evoked was obvious. I stalked in and straight to the reception desk.
‘Miss Lowe’s key, if you please,’ Oliver said past my shoulder.
‘Twenty-six,’ I told the young man. ‘Mrs Tonkin.’
There was a slim, dark woman registering. I hadn’t really noticed her, but she had paused with the pen raised, and now turned deliberately to confront me.
‘Mrs Tonkin?’ she asked. ‘Philipa Tonkin?’
I nodded, unsure of my reaction. I was tired, and suddenly feeling very stiff. To her credit, she had not allowed her eyes to roam, top to toe, to take in my battered presentation. Her eyes were steady, large dark eyes with a touch of humour in them, but now shining with friendliness. With, I thought, almost togetherness. She would have been in her early twenties, slim, smartly dressed and completely poised. There was no lack of confidence. She carried all before her.
She put out a hand, slim and beautiful, like the rest of her. ‘I did hope we would meet, but I didn’t expect to do so this soon. We must get together some time.’ Our hands touched. I was still feeling defensive. ‘I’m Catriona Steele.’ This was said on a downbeat, as though I ought to know her, even if we’d never met. ‘Is Anna here?’
‘Anna Treadgold? Not at the hotel, but…here…’
‘At the cottage?’ She nodded to herself. ‘Oh, isn’t this quite splendid! All of us together. Graham would’ve been amused.’ A shadow crossed her eyes. ‘His wife, his live-in woman, and now me. We must all get together.’
‘Of course,’ I murmured, in shock I suppose. ‘If you’ll excuse me…’
‘Yes. Sorry. Some other time.’
And with a smile that was almost dismissive she turned to the receptionist and began to discuss what newspaper she would like taken up with her boiled egg in the morning. I heard the Financial Times mentioned. Then she took up her key in one hand, her suitcase in the other, and marched, swaying gracefully even under its weight, towards the stairs.
‘Well!’
Oliver touched my elbow. ‘Catriona Steele,’ he whispered in my ear. ‘The complete set — wife, common-law wife, and now his mistress…lover…call her what you like.’
‘Mistress?’ I murmured from way down in my constricted throat.
Hung in the Balance (Simpson & Lowe Detective series Book 1) Page 8