Well, perhaps not.
Perhaps that early-morning row in the mists rising from the river — and it may not even have been as serious as a full-blown row — was no more than a minor, half-forgotten incident in the life of a busy, happy tennis star. Quite likely the secret of who brought that life to a sudden unthinkable end lies somewhere else altogether. Like in the mind of a woman at the school where Bubbles once was?
She put her foot down a little harder on the gas pedal.
At once a new thought came into her head. All right, over in Levenham there may be news that the weird telephone caller wanting the Firm Detective is something other than a run-of-the-mill compulsive confessor. It may be she’s ready to confess, in accurate terms. But who is it who’s going to be there in my office with that news? Anselm is.
And what’ll happen when I see him? Is it possible, really possible, that instead of saying coolly, Well, Mr Brent, what did you find out over there at Grainham Hall? I’ll rush up to him, wrap my arms round him, kiss him till my probing, loving tongue can go no further into him?
In one instant my whole career thrown away like — like that dirty scrap of paper with my signature and Join the Police which that boy got rid of so dismissively?
She found her foot had eased back on the gas.
Love. Bloody love, what a puzzle it is. Think. How can it be I have these feelings for Anselm, be-damned-to-everything feelings, and yet in bed at home with John, back on the nights when I’ve not been too exhausted, we made love. And it wasn’t at all any duty-bound coupling.
How was it, too, I felt not the slightest jolt of disloyalty to my feelings for Anselm then? That equally I never felt for an instant This is deceiving my husband even as we embrace?
Yes, the desk sergeant at Levenham said, DI Brent had come in. Just five minutes ago. He was in the Incident Room.
Harriet felt a lowering of relief. Surely in front of all the detectives busy at monitor screens or with ears clamped to telephones or perhaps sitting back with a coffee she would not give way completely. In the Incident Room, if anywhere, she could meet Anselm and contrive to behave as if the Hard Detective was merely asking DI Brent how his inquiry had gone.
But she still felt a tautening of all the muscles in her abdomen as she thrust open the door.
Anselm, DI Brent, thatch of untidy fair hair, flowerpot-ruddy face, four-square frame, everything that was at instant call in her mind, was standing there with a mug in his hand beside her own table at the top of the room. Handy Andy, DI Anderson, was sitting nearby, looking up at him with a broad grin.
‘Oh, come on, Saintie,’ she heard him say, ‘la Dipcock must have sent something down to your apparatus. She’s a hundred per cent come-on, despite the don’t-touch-me look.’
Saintie, she thought at once. So that’s what Handy Andy has taken to calling Anselm. Trust him to seize on that link with St Anselm’s Church to mock at someone who could be a competitor.
She walked up to them. With steps that she forced herself to make, not relaxed, but perfectly normal.
‘Well, DI,’ she said to Anselm, ‘any joy at Grainham Hall?’
Anselm gave her a plainly hangdog look.
Oh, God, she thought at once, he’s failed somehow.
It’ll be another pretty well useless affair like the Marseilles one. And I’ve stupidly made him own up to it bang in front of cocky Handy Andy. Oh, my poor Anselm.
Her first quick reaction proved right.
‘No, I’m sorry to say, ma’am, I just got nowhere over there.’ An exasperated sigh. ‘I’ve never met such a stuck-up, la-di-dah lot in all my born days. I dunno, but somehow they made me feel like — well, as if I was not fit to set foot indoors without wiping my boots.’
You got nowhere? Nowhere? The Hard Detective in her wanted to snap out. And the love-struck woman? God knows what she wanted to say. To offer comfort? To fold him in her arms?
But she said nothing. Waited.
‘I did get to find out who our caller is, all right,’ Anselm stumbled on. ‘But that was all. She’s a Miss Mackintosh. Miss Prudence Mackintosh. She was a sports teacher at the school till a few years ago. Still lives somewhere near, it came out. But when I asked for the address they just wouldn’t tell me. Oh, no, no, officer — just as if I was no more than a stupid constable — we can’t give out addresses just like that.’
Down at the nearby table she saw Handy Andy raise his dark eyebrows till it looked as if they would slide off the top of his head.
Oh, why, why did I let my Anselm in for this? I could have asked him to come up to my office. Most natural thing in the world.
But — But in there, with the door closed, what might I have done?
‘And you left it there, DI?’ she said, forcing herself at last to speak as she would to an inefficient probationer.
Anselm flushed, a sudden heated scarlet.
‘No. No, ma’am. ’Course not. I repeated to them that I was a police officer, Detective Inspector I said. Told them I was fully entitled to have that address. And — And they just looked at me. Lady who said she was the Bursar, something like that, and her assistant. I think we would need to speak with someone of more authority before we release confidential information.’
‘That’s bloody nonsense, DI.’
And then because she could not, with Handy Andy sitting there looking pleased, say anything that might seem to be letting Anselm down lightly she went on, ‘Bloody nonsense, and you know it.’
But this only made Anselm put himself in an even worse light.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said in a mutter, ‘I do know it. I did know it. But — But, well, I just couldn’t outface those two stuck-up cows, and there it is.’
And now Handy Andy, inadmissibly, put his oar in.
‘Like me to pop over there, ma’am? See if I can’t knock some sense into them?’
She knew she should round on him and put him firmly in his place. It was what she would have done in similar circumstances at any time. But would that be too obviously coming to the defence of her shorn lamb? No. No, a lamb treated as DI Brent had been treated by a fellow officer could rightly feel entitled to some defence.
But this isn’t DI Brent. It’s Anselm, the man I’m through and through in love with. And won’t Handy Andy, sex expert, be able to seize on even the smallest indication in the way I defend his fellow officer? Add it to other tiny signs he’s noticed? Be put within inches of my secret?
‘Yes, DI,’ she said, turning to him. ‘Yes, I think you might well do that. Get over to Grainham just as soon as you like.’
She turned and left the room.
*
Handy Andy returned from Grainham Hall just after six that evening. He brought with him, under arrest, Miss Prudence Mackintosh, aged seventy-two, former tennis teacher under whose guidance Bubbles Xingara, twelve, had quite suddenly become a potential Wimbledon winner.
‘Yes, boss,’ he said. ‘Piece of cake really. Bursar there at the school gave me her address, no trouble. Didn’t even have to say I was a DI. So then I went round there and the old duck treated me to a cup of tea, Darjeeling, and straight away coughed from here to kingdom come.’
Harriet could not but be bitterly conscious how much more effective Handy Andy had shown himself than socially overwhelmed Anselm. But she fought to conceal any glimpse of that feeling.
‘Very good, DI,’ she said. ‘So we’ll have her down to an interview room and get it all on to tape.’
She didn’t add, And then with any luck we’ll have resolved the case. Something prevented her. The last nail in Anselm’s coffin?
Instead, almost without thinking, she abruptly added one thing more.
‘I think I’ll have Mr Brent sitting in. He may have some useful input.’
Had Handy Andy challenged this, she would have been hard put to say what input Anselm could possibly have. After all, he had done no more than go over to the smart school where Bubbles had begun her upward flight, and there be turne
d away as a clodhopper not fit to talk to a former teacher, much less question her. He was hardly going to have anything worthwhile to say as Prudence Mackintosh’s formal confession to killing Bubbles Xingara was recorded.
But she had said he should be present, and Handy Andy had scarcely manifested a hinted disagreement.
Oh, God, she thought, he’s just filed away one more piece of evidence against me. Perhaps the last piece. Does he know for certain now that Harriet Martens, the Hard Detective, darling of the media, has absolutely blotted her copybook in falling absurdly in love with an absurdly naive and absurdly countrified subordinate?
*
Prudence Mackintosh was led in. An elderly stubby little woman, if still with something of sprightliness in her step. Square face untouched by any make-up, grey hair cut short and firmly brushed into order. Softly grey eyes, contriving to be watchful and — Harriet thought — open a little too wide, with surely a touch of wrought-up excitement in them. Mouth, however, held rigidly straight. White blouse, an amber necklace just showing at its neck, pleated grey skirt, ‘sensible’ shoes.
‘Please, sit down, Miss Mackintosh,’ she said. ‘I understand from Detective Inspector Anderson here that you wish to make a statement about the death of Miss Bubbles Xingara. But first I must ask you if you wish to have a solicitor present, your own or one we can find for you.’
‘What I have to say will be simple enough. I wish to con —’
‘No, Miss Mackintosh. I gather that the statement you want to make to us will be about a very serious matter that may affect your whole future. So, once again, may I suggest that you should have a solicitor.’
‘Unnecessary.’
Harriet sighed.
‘Very well. Now I am going to ask my colleague, Detective Inspector Brent, to state, for the benefit of these recording tapes, one of which will be sealed and handed to you or your representative, the time and place of this interview together with the names of the people present. Go ahead, DI.’
While Anselm was working his way through the preliminaries she asked herself why she had given him the task rather than Handy Andy. Is it as a mere sop to his pride? To give him some part in what’s going to be a competitor’s triumph? Or is it in fact to punish him? For failing to be the man I wanted him to be?
No telling. Love buggering up all rational thought.
She came to herself realizing Anselm’s voice — that slight burr that sent through her a trickle of beating joy — had fallen silent.
God, have they all been waiting for me to begin? No, perhaps only seconds have gone by, if that.
She leant forward across the table and looked Prudence Mackintosh full in the face.
‘Miss Mackintosh, what is it you have got to tell us about the death of Miss Bubbles Xingara?’
‘That I killed her.’
So here it is. The confession. The end of the case.
And, the thought sprang at once into her mind, the thought she should not have been having, it could be the end, too, of my — what will it have been? — my temporary acquaintance with this not very forceful detective, DI Brent. Oh, yes, magistrates’ court to come, the trial, too, in due course, probably in Birchester, bound to be noisy and nasty demonstrations outside, best place for it. But at those Anselm will be no more than a figure on the periphery. The man I have come to love. That I still love. Love despite shortcomings I would despise in myself. My Anselm. Anselm of the thick-skinned right palm.
Once more she brought herself to concentrate on the sturdy little woman with the square face and complacently resolute look.
‘Very well,’ she said to her, ‘you tell me you killed Bubbles Xingara. So, first of all, why? Why did you do it?’
Here was a question which, it was at once plain, Prudence Mackintosh had decided she was not going to answer. Mute of self-malice.
‘Look, Miss Mackintosh, it’s not enough for us, the police, to go to the Crown Prosecution Service, and say here’s a cast-iron case for bringing someone to court for murder. We have to show them we have something more than those three words you spoke just now, I killed her. All right, a jury cannot be asked to convict on evidence of motive and nothing else, and I shall shortly ask you for an account of what actually happened on the morning of June the twentieth last. But we need to back up such facts as emerge with a reason for you committing this act. This terrible, appalling act.’
Still the set expression. The stating, I’ve told you I killed her, that is all I have to tell.
Once more into battle then. To say the same thing, over and over again. Until she breaks.
But unexpectedly Handy Andy on the other side of her leant forward.
‘It was love,’ he said. ‘It was love, wasn’t it, Prue? You loved Bubbles when she was a schoolkid, and when she waltzed away from you that love of yours turned to plain and simple hate. Didn’t it? You can tell me. I know all about things like that.’
Yes, Harriet thought at once, you do, sexual expert, know about that sort of thing. You must have had dozens, scores, of girls hate you after you’d got what you wanted out of them. And no doubt you’re right about Prue.
Prue, how dare you call her that, you crude bastard?
But the crude bastard had got it right.
‘Yes, I loved her, she was the light of my life.’ It came pouring out now. ‘Why didn’t she stay at Grainham? She could have learnt just as much from me as from that beastly, stupid American coach she was given. Cacoyannis. What does some horrible Greek know about tennis? And he was sacked by Bubbles’ stepfather, wasn’t he? I’ve followed every word about my Bubbles. Of course I have. But that stepfather was no better. A man like that knows nothing about coaching. Nothing.’
‘All right.’
Harriet — Harriet in love, far now from being the Hard Detective — could bear it no longer. The twistedness of that shutter-straight mouth once that the key had been turned in the lock. The tears welling up into the soft grey eyes. Ready at any instant to tumble down the squared-off face, to splash on the worn and chipped surface of the table between them.
‘Miss Mackintosh, I’d like to come now to the actual circumstances.’
‘Yes, yes. All right, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you everything, every single thing that I did that morning. If it helps to bring justice down upon me. Yes.’
And the tears did now pour blubberingly out. And, yes, splash on to the table.
‘Do you want a break, Miss Mackintosh? Time to recover yourself a little.’
Safe to let her have some moments off the hook, now that those words I killed her were on the tapes. What was to follow would be no more than confirmatory evidence.
‘No, no. No, I must tell you now.’
‘If that’s what you truly want.’
‘Yes. Yes, you see, when I heard that Bubbles had bought Adam and Eve House, a place I once knew well — I used to go to tea there as a child, you know, and I love the romantic story of how it got its name — I decided the time had come to punish her. For leaving me when I loved her so much.’
She took in a deep breath, returned to the charge.
‘I had read in the Levenham paper that my Bubbles went running every morning as soon as it was light. So I went over there, to the other side of the Leven, and I watched and watched. It didn’t take me long to get to know that she — that she finished her run all on her own at the old boathouse. Oh, we used to have such fun in the old days when there were two boats in there and we played pirates.’
A silence.
‘But you did something more than play pirates on June the twentieth?’
‘Yes. Yes, that was the day I chose. I had prepared. I went over to the school and took away one of the javelins from the pavilion, a woman’s weight one. Then I got into my little car and I drove to the place on the road from Levenham that’s nearest to the river. You know, in the old days we teenagers used to walk out to that very place at dawn on St Valentine’s Day and make our way down the meadows to take part in a ce
remony that had been held year after year since the Middle Ages. I expect they’ve forgotten all about it now. All boys and girls want nowadays are those terrible sex-mad films and loud music.’
Yes, Harriet thought, she must have parked that car no more than a quarter of a mile from Adam and Eve House. And we didn’t get a single report about it. That’s what’s made this inquiry so difficult, the expanse of almost deserted farmland we’ve had to cover. And the car was on the opposite side of the Leven to Adam and Eve House, so maybe inquiries weren’t pursued as they might have been. On the other hand, a car there at that very early hour could quite easily not have been seen by a single soul.
Right, enough of days gone by. Some facts now that can be checked. Evidence.
‘Miss Mackintosh,’ she said, ‘what precisely did you do on the morning of June the twentieth last?’
‘I was telling you. I was telling you everything. You said you needed to know. I was telling you. I left my little car and I carried the javelin down to the river. I waited. At last I saw Bubbles coming back from her run. I waded straight across the river. I didn’t care. And then I said to her, You went. You left me. It was wrong. Wrong. Cruel, cruel. How could you? And I killed her. I had to. I had to, you know.’
‘Thank you, Miss Mackintosh.’
For a moment she sat in silence, looking at the tear-stained face of Bubbles’ murderer opposite her.
‘What happens now,’ she said eventually, ‘is that you’ll have to go down to what we call the Custody Suite, where, in front of the custody sergeant, Detective Inspector Anderson will formally charge you. Finally, in all probability, the custody sergeant will say you are to be detained until you are taken to the magistrates’ court tomorrow.’
It was not DI Anderson but DI Brent who spoke then.
‘No,’ he said.
Harriet turned to him sharply.
Christ, has he suddenly gone soft or what?
She almost clutched hold of his arm and said, Anselm.
A Detective in Love Page 12