For some moments I was dazed. My right hand, still frantically clutching the throwing knife, had been rasped painfully against the stone wall. I crouched, and edged my way round, bringing my knees up. What I’d tripped over had not been hard and metallic, it had been soft and yielding. With my left hand I explored, the breath hissing between my teeth. A jacket—I moved my hands—a lapel—higher—and a nose, which was resting on the tarmac surface. There it was, the identification: a roll-neck sweater, feeling greasy to the touch. I tried to shuffle sideways, but my foot touched something that clattered on the tarmac. I did not dare reach for it, but I knew what it was. This was probably his number two. I had found Frenchie.
Now that there was no longer any need to remain silent, I nevertheless stifled a whimper. My snatched-away hand was poised. I had to know. I reached forward again. There was only the palest glimmer of light reaching me, but the roll neck of the sweater was paler than the rest. I rested my fingers above it, on the neck, questing for the jugular. And found it. Nothing. Frenchie was dead.
It took several seconds for the implication to flood over me, which it eventually did like a dam-burst. I sprang to my feet. I’d killed him, killed again. Oh Christ! I nearly shouted out: I’ve killed a man, another one. No…not a man, an animal. Not even that—a creature, a beast. All the same, I had done it.
My right arm swept back, the throwing knife in it. Get rid of the weapon! Then I quelled the impulse. It wasn’t the murder weapon. It did not bear a spot of his blood. The true weapon lay there, beside his limp right hand. Get rid of that? But why? It would achieve nothing. Think, I urged myself, gulping for air. Don’t panic. It’d been self-defence. It could be called an accident. And the two toughies—hell, they’d be gone into the hills and far away.
Then the nausea overcame me, and I leaned over the wall, retching drily, the bitter gall in my throat. It didn’t matter what I did, that was the point. What mattered was that I’d killed again. Dear Lord, again. Self-justification hadn’t got anything to do with it at all.
But here my Gartree training came to my help. To hell with my conscience. They’d have laughed at me—even the warders.
I found myself out on the roadway, swaying, wondering which way was which. Then, I began to plod towards Sumbury, the throwing knife still firmly clutched in my right hand. Dimly, I realised, I needed to keep that. It was a weapon unsullied by blood. That was important. I didn’t know how, and decided to work that out later.
I had to bear in mind that the two heavies were still out there somewhere with the car. If they didn’t know Frenchie was dead, they would be heading back. This made the journey more difficult because I couldn’t keep to the smooth black trail of the tarmac. Every sign of a headlight, behind or before, had me diving for cover, and the moon had risen dangerously.
The road junction arrived, then I passed the phone box. Now there was more traffic, too much to justify panic reactions. Head down, I stumbled on, keeping my right shoulder well in any shadows available. When The George appeared, I skirted round to the rear. There was still the oppressive thought that I could be under observation. I gained the dark comfort of George’s back yard. For five minutes I stood amongst the beer crates and the empty metal barrels, still, waiting. Nothing moved. The window to my left was softly lit and heavily curtained. I knocked on the rear door.
Ada opened up to me. She might well have been immune to uncertainties, because she merely smiled thinly, and nodded back along the corridor.
“They’re in the snug.”
I walked stiffly ahead of her, hearing the bolts slamming home behind her. I pushed open the snug door and stood for a moment in the doorway, feet apart to assist the balance, the knife hanging down my thigh. George and Lucy were sitting at the table, playing crib.
“So there you are,” said George, hardly glancing at me and moving a matchstick along the board. “We expected you earlier.”
“I’ve lost your bike,” I told him, getting rid of one of my worries. “I had to leave it at Port Sumbury.”
“I’m surprised to hear you got it that far.” He raised his eyes, and they narrowed.
Lucy had turned, her trained eyes taking in every detail of my tattered appearance. There were no doubt fresh rents in my jeans, and I didn’t dare imagine what she could read in my face. Her expression did not change when her eyes roamed down my arm and reached the knife, only when they lifted again to my face. “Paul?” she whispered.
“I reckon you’d better take charge of this,” I told her, advancing to the table. My voice sounded thin and insecure. “It’s making me nervous.”
I put the knife down on the table under her eyes.
There was a moment of silence as they stared at it, then George slapped the cards together and put them away with the crib board.
“Tea, I think,” said Ada, and out she went.
Lucy was nodding to herself. She touched the point of the blade with her finger. “Did you leave anything else behind, apart from the bike?” She was speaking primly, trying to make light of it, but my brain thumped inside my skull.
I dropped down on to a chair. Exhaustion flooded over me, and I rubbed my face vigorously. I’d felt the blood draining from it and my head was swimming.
“It belongs—belonged—to a man called Douglas French. You’ll have him on record, because he was in Gartree with me. He’ll be registered as a knife expert.”
“We should’ve put you in custody,” she commented, her voice flat. “Are you telling me you took this one from him?”
“Not exactly. He threw it. That’s what it’s for—throwing. But he didn’t throw it at me. I hit him in the mouth, and probably I broke his upper denture. I don’t know. When he tried to get one of his other knives out I kicked him on the elbow. I think I hurt him, because I managed to get away.” There it was, without a stain of untruth.
Then Ada brought in the tea, and a thick slab of cheese and pickle sandwich for me. She joined us, and in between gulps of tea and swallows of sandwich, recovering second by second, I related all that had happened, not omitting the relevant fact that Frenchie had seen me talking to Carl Packer, and that I had to assume Packer had approached Frenchie on the same subject, which was the projected death of Philomena Wise. I made no mention of my subsequent discovery in the car-park.
At the end, Lucy nodded, her big eyes deep and thoughtful. “So…if we can contact him, we take him in?” she asked. “And we charge him with what?”
“Not the killing of Philomena. Strangling isn’t in his line at all.”
“Then we’d better have another charge if we’re going to take him into custody.”
I couldn’t tell her that it wasn’t going to come to that. “He assaulted me.”
“There’s not a mark on you.”
“That bloody knife was an inch up my nose.”
“It’s not bloody, that’s the point. And it sounds to me as though he was the one who was assaulted. Look at your knuckles!”
I thumped the table, not all the tension having drained away. “Oh, fine! Great! Just what I wanted, the law right behind me. I’m overwhelmed.” Which was a prime example of sick insincerity.
She stared at me with her face set and severe. Firstly, she was a policewoman. Only as a minor and secondary consideration was she at all willing to offer assistance to me. I recalled that I’d confided in her far too freely in the past. I had been naïve, sensing in her an empathy I’d been only too eager to welcome. I had been lulled by it. But I was now very much on my own, it seemed.
“I’ve got to remind you,” she said in her official voice, “that you came here quite voluntarily. Nobody’s really certain about you, Paul Manson. Now you tell me you’ve been involved in a fracas with an ex-convict acquaintance. What d’you expect me to make of that?”
She actually used that word: fracas. To me it had been a fight.
“Make what you like of it,” I said shortly.
“I’ll tell you what Inspector Greaves is going to mak
e of it. He’ll say it’s a carry-over from some disagreement in Gartree. He’ll assume you met by chance here, and it’s all boiled over. We don’t want your private squabbles in our town, thank you very much. We’ve got enough to handle as it is.”
I looked round at the faces, George nodding as though he quite agreed, as he’d have to if he wanted to keep the police on his side, Ada mastering her natural cheerfulness and wearing the baffled look of a person who hates tension. And there was tension in that room. I had brought it in with me, like a deadly disease.
I took a deep breath. “You couldn’t have been listening,” I said, keeping my voice low and even. “He as good as admitted he was here on a job for Carl Packer. Packer had sent him to kill Philomena Wise. Frenchie was here to do that, and she’s dead.”
Lucy lowered her eyes. When she looked up—how else could I explain what I saw in her eyes? It was fear.
“And you?” she asked quietly. “What does it tell us about you?”
“Is there anything you didn’t already know?”
She backed away from the challenge. “This Frenchie, as you call him…you’ve already said it was not his line, strangling. You said he always uses a knife.”
“He’s killed with it. Why d’you suppose he was inside Gartree?”
“So he wouldn’t have strangled her?”
I shrugged, not willing to go over and over it, and wearied now to the bones.
“All right! But now we hear you were in contact yourself with this unsavoury character Carl Packer, inside Gartree. Are we to be told the gist of that—or make the obvious assumption?”
“Assume what you like.” It came out sharp and curt.
“You see!” she cried in exasperation, her eyes blazing now. “But you…you tell us you took a knife from this Frenchie—”
“I levered it from the front door of—”
“All the same, you managed to avoid it, and inflicted your own damage. With your bare hands, damn it. What are you, Paul Manson? No—don’t tell me. Why don’t you get back to where you came from and leave us in peace!”
What was I? She’d hit on the exact point, and I wasn’t yet certain. This diversion, in which I’d become involved, was in no way part of a scholarly research leading to my Ph.D. I was still too involved with the high-pressure tension in Gartree, too much the predator, poised for violence. I had no reply, but fortunately George saved me from the embarrassment of silence. His hand slapped down on the table. “That’s enough, Lucy. He’s a guest in my house.”
“A paying guest,” I reminded him, trying to regain my composure.
He glanced at me. “You haven’t paid anything yet, so you’re my guest. I’m not having Lucy throwing her authority around in here.”
“Oh…damn you, George,” she said.
I lifted my head. I didn’t want to intrude between these two. Her authority carried the weight of the law, and I didn’t want either of them in trouble.
“Easy on. There’s no trouble here. Greaves said he wanted me to hang around—”
“Not to get into fights with killers!” Lucy snapped. “George, can you find me something to wrap this wretched thing in?” She gestured in distaste at the knife, still lying on the table.
Ada, uncertain and uneasy in the presence of discord, said, “I’ll get it,” and hurried out of the room. There was a short period of silence. I realised something was slipping away from me, but couldn’t put a name to it. Yet it seemed I still had George’s support.
Into the air I remarked, “I suppose I’d better give you prior notice. I’ll be out of town tomorrow. That’ll give you all a bit of peace.” This was pure bravado, tossing it in to watch the effect.
“I don’t know—” Lucy began.
I went straight on. “I want to clear up something in Killingham, but I’ll be back. Tell Greaves. He’ll have plenty on his mind, I reckon, but if he doesn’t like it he can chuck me in a cell.”
Then she was able to avoid my eyes by taking a bar napkin from Ada and carefully wrapping it round the knife. “We’ve got enough to justify taking you in for questioning, so don’t be flippant with me.
I knew that. I’d been waiting for it to happen, holding my breath. But Greaves was playing his own game, and I guessed he wasn’t going to show his hand at this stage. I got to my feet.
“I’ll walk you back to the station—or wherever,” I suggested.
“D’you think I can’t look after myself!” she flared.
I shrugged. “There’s some nasty types around.”
“Aren’t there!”
She was about to leave, but turned back at the door. The couple of seconds had given her time to retrieve her solemn expression.
“Tell me,” she said coolly, as though it was purely a matter of abstract interest. “A little point. Don’t you ever feel any regrets?”
“For what?”
“For killing your father,” she jerked out.
I could feel the stillness in the room as a tangible thing. It was a challenge, an offer. I was too tired to make the most of it.
“Well now, I suppose I do,” I admitted. “Mainly that I didn’t give myself time to think. I lost control…”
“How often,” she asked quietly, “does that happen?” She looked down at the bundle in her hands.
I couldn’t meet her eyes. Before I looked up the door slammed and I heard her tramping along the corridor, heard the bolts shoot back and the outer door to the yard slam. There was a clatter, and I heard her curse.
I turned, rubbing my face with my palms. “I’m sorry, I’m keeping you people up. It’s getting late.”
Six
In the morning I put on my slacks and jacket and caught the first bus out of town, at seven-thirty, the one George had advised. I needed to be away before they found Frenchie’s body, because it was quite certain I wouldn’t be able to move a finger after they had. I was tense, my eyes switching from the direction of the police station to the inland hill, from where the single-decker bus eventually came trundling, only five minutes late.
There were five of us waiting, two women, two men, and me. The women were clearly heading for a shopping spree. Of the two men, one was smartly dressed and carrying a folded Times, the other a sloppy youth with a morose expression. I sat where I could watch them. The smart one left the bus in the middle of nowhere. I considered the youth, speculating on the plausibility of his being a detective constable. You never can tell, these days.
The first part of the journey was tiring in its monotony, and in the regularity with which the bus kept stopping for no apparent reason and then hanging about. We seemed to cover the county in exhaustive detail, not missing any opportunity to dive down some inconvenient side lane, where the hedges brushed both sides at the same time and each corner offered new hazards.
I was relieved when the road we were on became more open and less obstructed, and we found ourselves between lines of houses and encountered more traffic. We were approaching my objective.
There were foot patrol officers in that town. I asked one of them where I might hire a car, and he directed me. The morose youth seemed to be following me. I took the direction indicated, and there he was again, outside the car-hire firm, watching as I made the necessary financial arrangements. My driving licence was still valid, my credit card worked its magic, and I drove out of the forecourt in a Ford Fiesta, pleasantly surprised that after four years I was still moving the controls in the recommended directions.
He was waiting as I paused at the exit, and put up his hand in a halt signal. The nerve of it! Rather than lose me, he was prepared to beg a lift. I wondered if he’d be discouraged if I drove over his foot, but I saw he was wearing soft loafers so I stopped and wound down the window.
“Thought you’d give me a lift,” he said.
“Perhaps. If you ask nicely.”
“Please.”
“Where’re you heading?” I asked, to catch him out.
“Same as you. Killingham, I reckon.
” And he grinned.
“Get in then.” I reached over for the door lock. At least he would be company, and we were still nearly two hundred miles from Killingham.
He ran round and slid in smoothly. A fast mover. Early twenties, I decided, and looking even younger. He had one of those naïve baby faces that can be very deceptive, looking unworn, pink, and shiny, with beneath it something resembling a brash hardness. He had a snub nose and black, curly hair. When he smiled, he’d be a devil with the women. His whole face glowed with the knowledge of this.
“Been following you,” he said as I got going. He didn’t expect me to resent it.
I couldn’t spare any sideways glances. In strange towns you have to be alert, searching for signs ahead, trying to sort information from too much data.
“I know,” I told him. “Saw you.”
That didn’t worry him, either. “You’re Paul Manson.”
I’d detected a touch of challenge in this. It compensated, no doubt, for his lack of bulk. “And you?”
“I’m Arthur Torrance. You can call me Art. Everybody does.”
I had to think about my attitude to him, but also had to decide whether I wanted Ring Road North or Ring Road East, this being difficult because I was told to get into the correct lane. There was no time to spare for Philomena’s ex-boyfriend, he of the silk scarf.
“There’s a map on that shelf in front of you,” I told him. “Make yourself useful and tell me where to go.”
“Sure thing. Can’t afford to run a car meself.”
“Rough.”
“I’m not supposed to leave Sumbury.”
“Nor me.”
“Think they’ll have a road-block?” he asked with keen anticipation.
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