The Bright Face of Danger

by Roger Ormerod

  He rallied. ‘I’d gotta do that. Be sure where she went.’

  ‘You knew where she’d go. You knew who she was. You work in the same offices.’

  ‘All right then, I knew.’

  ‘So why did you follow her?’

  ‘I don’t know why...He was dead. You’ve gotta...’

  ‘I’m asking you because there was blood on the back of your riding jacket. And the only way you’d get it was when you followed the red MGB right back to the car park at the Airport, and then, when she’d left it, you couldn’t resist sliding in behind the wheel, just to see what it felt like.’

  There was such a deep silence that I could hear a car’s door slam a couple of streets away and the thin wailing from the café.

  ‘He doesn’t have to answer this, Dave.’

  ‘Oh, but he does. If he wants to go on claiming the credit for killing Collis, let him justify it.’

  Andy’s face seemed to have shrunk. The sweat still stood on his face, like condensation on an iced cake. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  ‘I don’t...’ he croaked, ‘ ...don’t have to justify shooting something like Adrian Collis.’

  That drew a response. He had them again.

  ‘To me you do. To your friends who brought you here, you do. Let’s have a look at it, friend Andy. We’ve sketched over it so far. You followed the red car. Not the woman particularly. Not the man. Just followed whatever there was to follow.’

  ‘It wasn’t as simple as that.’

  ‘Because it didn’t mean much to you. These two people together — it wasn’t significant.’

  ‘I knew!’

  ‘Well of course you did. You’d seen them at the office, intimate. Nothing new to you. They had something going, Andy, hadn’t they?’

  He tried to grin. ‘I guess.’ His face was puckered like a monkey’s, looking aged.

  ‘You guess! You know, Andy. Collis and his sister-in-law. Oh, you knew it all right. Then can you tell me why a chap who’s having it off whenever he fancies should go chasing after young women?’

  ‘Everybody knows!’

  There was a general muttering, which grew gradually as confidence was restored. ‘Yeah, yeah!’ they shouted.

  I waited for it to die. To Andy, now, the stool was not a throne, but a torture instrument. I wouldn’t release him.

  ‘Very well. Leave that for now. Assume he was oversexed. We’ll accept that you still thought he’d killed your wife, in spite of an affair you knew about.’

  ‘He did it.’

  ‘So you waited for your time, and your weapon. There was my friend, here, chucking a perfectly good shotgun into a ditch. You saw that, did you?’

  ‘I saw it. Saw it all.’ He gained confidence. He was licking his lips and looking round for approval. He had to have this.

  ‘And this was the gun that you used to shoot Collis?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ He tried to elaborate. ‘Bang. Take that, you murdering bastard.’

  It raised another roar.

  ‘Just bang? Not: bang, bang?’

  ‘Now listen, Dave, I told you—’

  ‘And you be quiet, George. I know what I’m saying. There were two barrels of shot in Collis’s chest.’

  ‘Fired twice!’ Andy cried. ‘Yes, I fired twice.’

  ‘Then you took the gun away and put it back in the ditch?’

  ‘Well...I would.’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t. You’d dump it, the first chance.’

  He was almost in tears of entreaty. ‘But I did.’

  ‘Only the trouble is, that gun was only fired once.’

  They sighed and muttered. They coughed in embarrassment.

  ‘Blast you, Dave, you’re tricking him.’

  George clawed at my arm. I shook him off.

  Andy fought for it. His eyes burned.

  Desperation forced the correct words out. ‘I was crafty. Stuck another cartridge up one barrel.’

  There was a great heave of approval at my defeat.

  ‘And cleaned it first, Andy?’

  ‘I’d do that. Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When I got home.’

  ‘That was very clever thinking. You present a good case. Sergeant Williamson is making notes, over there by the door.’

  That was a slight error, nearly leading to the early demise of Williamson, but Andy rescued him. He laughed. Out of that haggard face it was hideous, but he laughed and said: ‘Let him. They can’t prove it.’

  And half a dozen men actually slapped Williamson on the back, because he couldn’t prove it, and had, in fact, only been looking amused.

  ‘As long as there’s no proof, that makes it fine, I suppose.’ He nodded, wary, trembling. ‘Because you’re convinced that Collis killed those three girls?’

  ‘The same as everybody else.’

  ‘Not the same as everybody else, Andy. What about the suitcases?’

  Behind me, George growled. He’d seen what I was getting at.

  ‘What suitcases?’ Andy asked weakly. There was a general sigh.

  ‘Tina’s cases, Andy. Reuben knew about them, because it was he who took them back to her house. Reuben knew, and he’s in hospital now.’

  ‘I didn’t know about any cases.’

  ‘Come on now. Reuben was trying to tell us. He tried to tell Mrs. Collis, because it was so important to her. Tina was leaving home. She’d have told your wife. You must have known.’

  Andy was baffled. ‘Yes, I knew. But not,’ he added quickly, ‘about the cases.’

  ‘Are you telling me that Reuben didn’t tell you. Almost his next door neighbour. Intimately involved. We can ask him...’

  ‘He said he took ‘em back to the house.’

  ‘So she did actually leave?’

  ‘Yes, yes. Let me alone.’

  ‘And left her cases on the road?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘You know! Reuben told you. He found them there. And why should she leave them there unless she got a lift? Why leave them if she got a lift?’

  ‘Tossed ‘em out,’ he shouted hoarsely.

  ‘And you really thought that, Andy? You knew her. You’d know that all she ever owned was probably in those cases, and yet you’d accept that she tossed them out of the car? Never. You’re a bright lad. You’d see that was not true. And you’d tell yourself that somehow it didn’t fit Collis, either. He knew her too. Why should he alarm her? So you’d be doubtful. What’s happened since to change your mind?’

  He stared at me, sweat trickling from his chin, his eyes hollow. ‘He did it,’ he croaked.

  ‘But you didn’t believe that!’ I shouted at him. ‘It was the cases that made you doubt it. Damn it all, even Reuben thought it was strange. Strange enough, anyway, to want to tell it to Mrs. Collis. Christ, man, were you all terrified of Jonas Fletcher?’

  ‘It wasn’t...not that...’ But he was too near to breakdown.

  The silence now took on a different texture. An idol falls further than its original base.

  ‘I’m sick of this,’ I said. ‘You and your games. You’d got no motive at all for killing Collis, and the only weapon you could’ve used wasn’t the one.’ For the first time I took a drink of my beer. It was flat. It matched my mood.

  Andy sagged on the stool.

  ‘So tell me, Andy, why Jonas Fletcher had to terrify you all, just because Tina left home. Tell me what frightened him.’

  And Andy, released now from his pose, knowing his guilt had melted away, poured it out with compressed anger.

  ‘Because she wasn’t sixteen, she was fifteen, and there’d be trouble, and the police askin’, if they knew she’d actually left home. Sweet Jesus! The bastard, the dirty, stinking bastard! She told my wife. He wouldn’t let her alone. She couldn’t sleep and didn’t dare rest. He was after her, and he’d...he’d...’ He covered his face with his hands.

  We had it. For that, Jonas Fletcher had so terrified the other two that none of them
had come forward with a minor point in Collis’s favour. It might not have saved him, but it would have helped.

  I would have said that it was impossible for such a throng to melt away without a sound.

  And yet, when I looked round, there was nobody there. Andy sat in the shadow of his triumph, and I had taken it away from him. It was very much later when I realised what I had really taken.

  ‘Get off home, son,’ said George wearily, and it was I who’d done all the work.

  Andy stirred. George put a hand to his arm. We watched him move out of the door. He seemed afraid to face the night.

  ‘That was good,’ said George. ‘You’re surpassing yourself tonight. I hope you had a good reason.’

  ‘Good enough. I wanted to prove he couldn’t have killed Collis.’

  He snorted in disgust. ‘Fancy ideas about the shotgun! I could take it to pieces, argument by...’

  ‘I’m sure you could.’

  ‘And that bit about the suitcases! I could give you several reasons why Collis’d dump ‘em there, even possibly on the way back.’

  ‘You could, George. A psychiatrist could. But not Andy. To Andy it was a valid point.’

  ‘It didn’t convince me.’

  ‘It didn’t have to. You didn’t know about them until tonight.’

  ‘So now we’re coming to it.’

  ‘And if you had — as you’ve just said — it wouldn’t convince you of Collis’s innocence.’

  ‘You chopped him to pieces — for me? I should be grateful.’

  ‘But you won’t be, I’m sure. Thwaites has got it all lined up, and he’s only one breath away from charging you. But it suited you fine to have Andy around, as good as a confessed murderer, because you knew he was safe. So I had to wipe him off the slate, and all we’ve got is a nice polished surface, with your fat face reflected in it. Oh yes, you can laugh. You’re there, mate, you and your motive, your means, and your opportunity.’

  ‘It’s interesting, I’ll give you that.’

  ‘You did not throw the gun away. You kept it in the back of your car until after the murder. You’d found out about the affair, George, and deliberately used it. You followed her, knowing who you were following, and you let her drop you at a convenient point for you to be able to get to the log house first. Before even Collis got there. Then you went and dumped the gun in the ditch, and phoned from a box close to there, before heading back to Filsby. You’d be capable of working things out like that.’

  ‘Under your nose, Dave? I’d be taking a big risk, with you so damned smart.’

  ‘Or you were a bit too clever. The gun was too subtle, that’s what really gets me. You didn’t flatter me much, assuming I’d miss the point about the gun.’

  ‘It doesn’t help, making me feel stupid. What point about the gun?’

  ‘The two barrels being discharged...and it’s no good arguing about it. The Medical Examiner says it was so, both barrels fired at Collis. It looked like one, superficially, because it was one after the other, in the same spot. Now, that could have happened normally, by accident, but only you, George, in a radius of fifty miles, would know that the Medical Examiner could prove two barrels were fired with only one entry wound. And only you could know how to take advantage of that.’

  You can say this for George, he was treating this with serious consideration, his eyes calm, his voice level.

  ‘I get your point.’

  ‘You could have fired two barrels from Fletcher’s gun, carefully into Collis’s chest, clean it up, re-load, and fire one again into the air. Then ditch the gun, knowing you could produce it as the possible murder weapon. And knowing — and this is the point — that the police would later say that this gun, the one associated with you, could not be the murder weapon because it had only been fired once.’

  ‘But there must be a snag, because I haven’t been arrested. A breath away, you said.’

  ‘One point. Thwaites wanted me to find out how the devil you knew where to go, when it was a secret meeting. And you’d need to know, to get there first.’

  ‘And you’d really expect me to tell you that?’ About as much as Thwaites expected me to go back and pass it on.’

  He finished my stale beer in one long gulp.

  ‘Well, that’s all right then.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I prowled our room, waiting for George. He had said he wanted to make a phone call. I waited, wondering how the hell I was going to knock it into his head. I had shown him — hell, I’d scrubbed my brain to the bone, working it out — I’d shown him that he was out there on his own as a suspect. But had he been impressed? Like hell he had!

  The door opened. I turned to face him, angry arguments at the ready. But when I saw his face I said nothing.

  His chin was down and his eyes were angry. ‘I phoned the hospital.’

  ‘Reuben?’

  ‘He died a few minutes ago.’

  I felt sick. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You coming, Dave, or do I do it on my own?’

  I knew what he intended. ‘There’s things we should discuss.’

  ‘Please yourself. Discuss ‘em in the car. We’ll take mine.’

  I held out my hand. ‘Give me your keys, George.’

  He stared at me.

  ‘You’re a rotten driver at the best of times.’

  ‘I’ll drive,’ he growled, and that was that.

  He took the Renault out of the pub’s car park in a spray of ashes. I managed to refrain from comment. He headed out of town.

  ‘You’re not stupid, George. You can’t help but see the sort of case they’ve got against you.’

  A patrol car in a lay-by flicked his heads in protest at our speed, but did not follow us.

  ‘You made your point.’

  ‘Then for heaven’s sake let’s do some thinking about it. If there’s one point you’ve missed, and Thwaites gets a sniff of it, one detail that’d show how you could’ve known where the meeting was to be, then you’d be nailed.’

  ‘Fletcher first.’ I caught the gleam of his teeth in the dashlights.

  ‘Then what? If we find this detail, what do we do then, Dave?’

  ‘We destroy it.’

  He took it fast, once we were out of the mist. The moon was down. The night sky was heavy again with the snow. The underside of the clouds reflected a glow.

  ‘What sort of detail? he asked, juggling with the gears. ‘What am I supposed to have missed? Or what am I supposed to have seen, and the rest of you’ve missed?’

  ‘Keep your mind on the road.’

  ‘The letter Amanda Greaves received?’ he persisted. ‘Am I supposed to have got a sight of that?’

  ‘Impossible. It wasn’t so much a letter as a package. Ten by eight. That strike a note, does it?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’ He had just taken a forty corner at sixty. ‘You worried about something?’

  ‘That glow in the sky.’

  I had thought at first that it was the reflection of a large town’s street lamps, but there was only the Chase out there. Nowhere closer than Lichfield. It grew and then subsided. Grew again. George’s fist was now almost permanently on the horn. He threw the Renault into those long, sweeping, rising bends.

  ‘It’s up on the top,’ I said.

  There was no doubt, now, that there was a fire. A forest fire at that time of the year was unlikely, and I knew of only one building up there. We charged past Goldwater’s place, the light dimly detectable half way up the long farm drive, screamed past Fletcher’s, his light on too, and on past Andy Partridge’s, which was dark. I did not recognise the spot where the gun had been ditched.

  ‘It’s Firbelow!’ I shouted.

  The engine took on a deep, throaty roar as the car went into the steeper part of the climb. The red glow was separated from the clouds now, reaching for them in broken tongues of flame. As we came round the last bend, the blazing house was fully visible.

 
That roof would go first, cedar shingles and tar-felt. The fact that the flames reached out through the roof did not mean that the whole building was lost. But through the front windows the blaze was rioting in every room, and the hall was an inferno. The gate was still open. George drove through it without even easing speed, and I felt the jolt as the swinging tail touched the gate post.

  Delia Collis was screaming on the front lawn. She was not aware of us. As we skidded to a halt behind her, she flung herself once more — her clothes were smoking — into the hall. But the heat threw her back. George caught her in his arms. He clutched her tightly to him because he might suppress the smouldering.

  From inside the house, somewhere at the back, came the frantic baying of Major.

  ‘Round the back,’ I shouted, and we ran, George a foot or two behind me.

  The curtains along the run of the wide windows were drawn, but even as I watched I saw flames flickering at their hems.

  George said: ‘Gimme your coat, Dave.’

  My poor old motoring coat! He flung it over his head. He could not have seen anything, but all he wanted to go was straight. You’re not supposed to let air into a burning room.

  George took in a complete set of double-glazing and ten feet of heavy curtain, but the flames that welcomed the air were neutralised when the complete bundle of George, coat and curtain rolled over on them. Tumbling, he disappeared into the black smoke, before the room burst with a sudden flush of new flame.

  He’d left me no cover, even had my coat. I bellowed: ‘George!’ But the roar of the flames took it away. My throat was hot when I drew in breath, and ashes rained on me.

  ‘George!’

  I plunged at the destroyed window, and Major chose the same moment to leap free. We are much the same weight, but he was moving faster. I had a brief impression of a huge grey shape with glaring eyes and terrible teeth, with the hunched grey jockey of the cat clinging to his back, and then he’d rolled me over and was bounding free.

  ‘You all right, Dave?’

  George picked me up and dusted me off. He had no eyebrows, and there was no sign of my motoring coat.

  ‘How long’ve you been lying there? he asked.

  My head ached. ‘The dog and the cat got out. We’d better tell Delia.’