An Alibi Too Soon

by Roger Ormerod

  In the end, compliance would be the quickest. ‘Very well,’ I said tersely.

  We walked out into the pounding rain. Nothing of the mountains was visible, though their bulk was a tangible presence. A man was sitting in my driving seat.

  ‘In the official car, Mr Patton, please,’ said the Sergeant.

  ‘Nobody’s driving my car. I’ll follow you.’

  He laughed. I knew it was hopeless. I bent to the open door of the Stag. ‘You’ll need to double de-clutch on third to second,’ I told him. ‘And it pulls to the left on braking.’

  ‘I’ll remember that,’ said the young man.

  ‘And if you wreck my car I’ll have your teeth out.’

  ‘That too.’

  ‘And the roof leaks. I hope you get soaked.’

  He smiled, a friendly smile, showing all the teeth he wanted to keep. ‘I’ve already discovered about the hood, sir.’

  We walked over to the official Montego, me into the back with the Sergeant. We drove to Oswestry. I sat there, mentally urging the driver to greater efforts, and working out in detail what I would like to do to Chief Inspector Grayson.

  There were no formalities at the station, no pause at the duty desk to sign me in, not even a glance in that direction from the Sergeant. He didn’t have to persuade me to hurry. I couldn’t wait to get at Grayson.

  There was a small room, with two kitchen chairs, one each side of a plain wooden table. Grayson was already seated at one side of it, facing me. He looked up with a smile. He’d be enjoying this. Behind me the door closed. I glanced round. We were alone together. When I turned back, Grayson indicated the other chair.

  ‘Sit down. Smoke if you like.’

  So this was to be informal, with no third party to give evidence. I sat down. The impulse was to send him flying out of his chair and march out, but that would be playing into his hands. I wouldn’t get far, and he’d have a genuine charge to fling at me.

  Above all, I didn’t wish to allow him to see that any delay agitated me. He wasn’t going to get that satisfaction.

  ‘What the hell’s all this?’ I demanded.

  ‘We’re alone,’ he said. ‘This is unofficial. Just you and me.’ He made it sound as though that was a favour.

  ‘I want to know what you think you’re doing.’

  His eyes were bright. His fingers, on the table in front of me, were still. No nerves. ‘This is for you, Mr Patton. Shall we say I’ve become concerned about your activities around here.’

  ‘I’ve got a legitimate reason for being in this area. We’re interested in a mill…’

  ‘I know about the mill. I just think it’s time you made up your mind that it doesn’t suit you, and got off home. Devon, isn’t it? Far enough.’

  ‘There’s unsettled business.’

  ‘I don’t think so. I settled it ten years ago.’

  I stared at him, at my pipe in my hand, wondering whether to ram it down his throat. ‘If that’s all you’ve got to say, I’ll be off.’

  ‘Or I could make it official,’ he said softly.

  ‘Of all the nonsense…’

  ‘I could raise my voice, and have a man in here in two seconds, then I’d charge you, and we’d go on from there.’

  ‘Charge me with what?’ I managed to speak quietly. I began to fill my pipe, wishing my hands were as steady as his.

  ‘Obstructing an officer in…’

  ‘Your duties involve the death of Llewellyn Hughes.’

  ‘Those are the exact duties I’m referring to,’ he said placidly. Then he sat back and waited.

  I lit the pipe. I’m quite proud of that. I even managed to direct the smoke towards the ceiling instead of into his face, but while my eyes were following it he’d slipped his hand inside his jacket. When I looked down, he had half a dozen photographs spread on the table.

  ‘One of my hobbies,’ he explained. ‘I’m an amateur photographer. I developed the film and printed those myself. Take a look, Mr Patton. A close look.’

  I took a look. They were exactly as Davies had described them. I couldn’t understand why Grayson was showing them to me.

  ‘You’re admitting you stole these from Constable Davies’ station house?’ I asked, looking up. ‘So you must have seen him taking them.’

  He shook his head, sad at such a suggestion. ‘Whatever gave you that idea? No. I took them myself. I can produce them in court, and say that the day before I shot those there was no petrol can in that shed. I would also say that I had reason to believe—you being so emphatic that Llew’s death was not an accident—that you had planted the can there. I would explain that that was the reason I took the shots, to make a record of the facts.’

  ‘And then you took…’ I lost the sentence because he’d taken my breath away.

  ‘I would also say that the following day I returned there, and the petrol can had gone, you having thought better of it and realised your fingerprints might be on it.’

  ‘Where’s the close-up of the fingerprints?’

  ‘There wasn’t one. I didn’t think to do that. Silly of me.’

  ‘But you can’t…you can’t be such a fool. It’d be thrown out of court. And you’d have committed perjury.’

  For a moment his eyes narrowed, but all the same he managed to smile. ‘It needn’t get as far as a court.’

  ‘It would if I denied it. If you charged me and I demanded a solicitor, and took it all the way…’

  I stopped. That smile was still there, a little uncertain perhaps, but he knew he had me. I also realised that he was quite aware that Amelia was at the mill, and that he was keeping me from her. And that it was causing me distress.

  ‘I can’t believe you’d go this far,’ I said tensely. ‘For a paltry case, when you were only an inspector! You’re afraid of a challenge to your work.’

  ‘A reversed verdict would go against me.’ And he meant it. He didn’t mean simply his record, either. He meant himself. He existed on his self-confidence, which carried him on from success to success. But that confidence was insecure. The simple fact that he couldn’t allow himself to be challenged meant that he knew it. So that this single, simple early case—the reasoning of which he was very proud—meant a lot to him. Destroy his efforts there, and you’d destroy him, as a person.

  I leaned back, snatching a glance at my watch in the process. It was late, late.

  ‘I know your case was false,’ I told him. ‘Duncan Carter didn’t kill his uncle. I know who did, how…and possibly why. And you expect that to remain buried? Oh come on, Grayson, see sense.’

  His smile was hideous. ‘Can you prove it?’

  ‘Prove, no. Reason it through, yes.’

  ‘Not good enough. Look, I don’t want us to bang our heads together on this. Promise me you’ll go home. Tomorrow. Promise me that, and I’ll…’

  ‘What?’ I demanded.

  ‘I’ll let you go.’

  ‘Let me!’ I thrust back my chair with my legs, and bent over him. He came wearily to his feet, as though exasperated with my attitude. ‘Don’t force me into charging you, Mr Patton.’

  He knew Amelia was at the mill. He might not have known Davies was there, and he could be assuming she was alone and isolated. He was telling me that he was prepared to shut me away, and have me plead with him to fetch her back to the hotel. I saw all that, and knew it as a deliberate threat.

  I turned away to the door, but he’d taken advantage of my few seconds of thought and was already moving in that direction. He stood with his back to it.

  ‘I don’t want to call for assistance.’

  The rage was like a hot flame through my head, but I could see him clearly. Everything seemed to be taking a long while. The transference of my pipe from right hand to left hand appeared to be infinitely slow. It was giving me time to balance the operation. His eyes were naturally following my left hand, as I was about to leave both hands free.

  ‘Get out of my way,’ I said, but even that was very slow, coming ou
t as a growl.

  Then I hit him in the stomach with my right fist, watching it move, even having time to guide it. His eyes were still on my left hand in the moment before they rolled up, and the wind gusted out of his open mouth as he collapsed to the floor.

  In moments of high adrenalin flow, time becomes distorted. I reached down and swung him away from the door, and was through it, and had closed it behind me in a second. Then I walked steadily towards the entrance.

  They watched me leave. They actually watched as I walked past them. Their instructions had been to bring me in, not to keep me there. I cleared my throat. My voice was back to normal. Well…nearly.

  ‘I hope you left the keys in.’

  The young man who’d driven the Stag smiled and nodded. ‘Keys in. Gearbox in one piece.’

  I walked out into the throbbing downpour. The Stag was at the kerb. I slid on to a pool of water, turned the key, got gear in and engine going in the same second, and snaked the car out of the streaming gutter and along the black, empty street.

  I was heading in the wrong direction, so I took the first left, left again, and continued on until I could cut back to the road I needed. The rain had flushed away pedestrians and most of the cars. In half a mile I saw only one other vehicle, a van heading the opposite way, spray high from his wheels and a rainbow of bouncing mist caught in the streetlights from his roof.

  Grayson would know where I was heading. A minute on his radio, and he could have me headed off. I was gambling on the fact that he would not. He wouldn’t dare to expose his unofficial activities. But certainly he’d follow me himself. I’d handed him an ideal charge: assaulting a police officer in the performance of his duties. In a police station, too! Oh…lovely.

  I tried to put Grayson firmly out of my mind. The driving demanded it. As I drove up into the mountains the sky pressed down on me, and within a mile or two I was absorbed by the black clouds. My headlights were brilliant cones in a heavy, grey mist, but as I climbed I realised that the rain was easing. I was involved with its source.

  By now the hazards were the effects of the rain. Placid streams that had lined the lanes had burst their banks. I found myself driving, it seemed, along the courses of rivers, never certain where the outer edges of the hard surface might be, but unable to allow the revs to die below a certain level in case the engine stalled. Most of the time I was in second gear, driving hard, forcing on. The car bucked, and I fought the wheel. I held it on the road more by instinct than anything else.

  I met no other vehicles, saw no sign of movement at all, only that steady stream of rain driving into the searching cones of my lights.

  When I came out at the head of our valley there was nothing to be seen but a swirling bowl of mist below me. I was above the clouds, above the rain. I got up into third, and plunged down into it.

  Davies should have seen my approaching beams, as a lightening of the pall. I would have expected him to flash in response, as he would surely realise it was me. As I passed the cottages I could just detect the lights in their windows. I was only fifty yards from the farm entrance, and there had still been no sign from him. The curve in the road panned my headlight beam, which flashed briefly across drooping trees and outbuildings, just flicking over one corner of the police van, and giving me a brief impression of a tattered bundle lying against one of the barns, just inside the yard.

  I braked heavily and scrambled out of the car. I’d already driven on a few feet too far, so that my dipped heads were not focused on it. My shadow danced along the wall of the barn.

  Davies was lying in the lee of the wall. His cape flared around him, dabbling in the mud. He was face down, hands outstretched, fingers grasping for security. His head was on one side, his peaked cap lying beside it.

  I lifted his head carefully. ‘Davies!’ I crouched so that his head was on my knee. My hand came away sticky. He groaned. I slapped his cheek gently, twice, three times. ‘Davies! Come on!’ His eyes flickered.

  ‘Rich…’ he mumbled.

  I lowered his face into the mud again and got to my feet. The light from the farm window beckoned. I stumbled across wet cobbles, found the door, and pounded on it.

  The old chap who opened up looked startled. There was a shotgun leaning against the wall close to his right hand. He said something aggressive in Welsh. I turned, pointing back.

  ‘Constable Davies is lying by the barn. He’s been assaulted. Will you get him inside and look after him?’

  He turned his head and shouted: ‘Gwyneth!’ Then he was elbowing past me, still in shirt-sleeves, rolled beyond the elbow. ‘Show me,’ he said.

  We ran head down together. We bent over Davies. His eyes were open now, and he recognised me.

  ‘Richard…sorry.’

  ‘I’ve got to leave you,’ I said to him, and to the old man. I turned my head. ‘Will you phone for assistance?’

  ‘Don’t waste time talking,’ he said, and he began to speak to Davies in Welsh, which I had to assume was comforting.

  I ran for the Stag and clambered in. Even above its humming engine I could hear the stream fighting its way beneath the bridge. All was a grey, flat image. I took off in second gear, wheels spinning.

  ‘The surface of the drive up to the mill had been poor in the dry. Now it was a mush of slate chippings impounded into slimy mud. The Stag slithered and hesitated, sometimes with its nose pointing directly towards our brook, which was brimming its banks. I could no longer hear the engine because of the rush and swirl of the water, and had difficulty controlling the revs. The wheels spun. I juggled with the steering.

  It came out of the mist as a dark, angular shape. This side there was only the kitchen window, so that I did not expect to see light. On the final, steeper slope the tyre slip became so bad that I abandoned the car, scrambling along on foot and almost slipping on to my face once or twice.

  Parked just beyond the mill was the heavy shape of a car.

  I did not pause to investigate. The door of the mill was open an inch or two. I thrust it fully open and ran in, Amelia’s name on my lips, but not spoken aloud.

  The battery lamp was at her side on the floor, its glow now very meagre. It was sufficient to show me that she was sitting on the picnic chair and facing the millstone, clasping Cindy so closely to her that I was surprised the poor little devil could breathe. She hadn’t turned to face me, though she could not have failed to hear my tramping feet. Her eyes were fixed on the millstone. This was the reason she had the lamp in that position. She had to watch the millstone.

  She had watched it for too long.

  ‘Amelia!’ I whispered.

  A tiny jerk of her head indicated she had heard me, but it was the jolt of someone trying to fight clear of a nightmare, and not succeeding.

  I was aware of the sound, which had become part of the whole structure. Not the background rumble and roar of the racing water outside, but a harsh, hard sound of constrained power fighting for release, the jolt and groan, the pause, the jolt and groan again.

  I followed the direction of her eyes.

  The great millstone was moving. With its ponderous dignity of several tons, it moved an inch, two inches, six, then stopped. The throb of impact went down through my toes. Then the groan of release, and the stone rotated back, paused…then it began again. A giant hand was laid to it, yet it resisted. The hand persisted. I felt that if something didn’t give way the whole mill would be shaken loose, tossed away by the inevitable and unnerving force.

  I had to tell myself to look away. I crouched down in front of her, shielding her from the sight of it, and fumbled for her cold hands. It was a mercy I couldn’t see her eyes, sufficient that I felt the hypnotic fear that gripped her.

  ‘Amelia, it’s Richard. I’m here. Amelia…please…Amelia, love.’ I was rubbing her hands. She was shuddering, her head moving now, shaking backwards and forwards in rejection.

  ‘You didn’t…oh, Richard, I just couldn’t…’

  ‘It’s all right. Give y
ourself a few minutes, then we’ll get out of here.’ I still couldn’t understand why she was so upset.

  ‘But I can’t…’ She gulped. ‘Can’t go out.’

  ‘Can’t?’ I asked gently.

  She was now so close to tears that I could feel her need for them must be greater than mine for her lucidity. There was a terrible fear for her sanity, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the car outside.

  ‘Why can’t you?’ I asked.

  ‘It…it was worse than I expected,’ she said, her voice empty. ‘The rain. Much worse.’

  I nodded. ‘No thunder?’

  I’d said that to lighten the tension. Her lips flickered in response.

  ‘The noise of the stream outside…oh, I got used to that. But then I heard someone driving up, and I thought it was you. Why wasn’t it you, Richard? Why, why?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, but not now.’

  She seemed not to hear that. ‘And then…then I heard a grating sound and the wheel tried to move. I could feel it trying. Then there was a bang from down below, and the wheel did move. That terrible sound, grating and crunching, and it moved. Slowly, Richard, kind of rumbling, but I wanted it to stop.’

  ‘Of course you would.’

  ‘And then—it did stop, but oh dear Lord, it started that. What it’s doing now. A jerk, a stop, a sort of breath, another jerk, and I couldn’t get away from it. There was nowhere I could go…’

  ‘The farm.’

  ‘I didn’t dare go outside,’ she whispered, and she covered her face with her hands. The next words were mumbled through her fingers. ‘Because I knew something was stopping it, and I didn’t dare to see what it was.’

  At last she was sobbing. ‘I’ll look,’ I said. ‘I’ll look for you, love.’

  But, face buried in her hands, she was weeping her way clear of it. On her lap, Cindy whined softly.

  After a while I was able to get her to her feet, my arm round her, and I found she was so stiff that her legs would barely support her.

  ‘Get you into the car,’ I murmured.

  I took the lamp with us, for what good it was. We made it outside. I led her down, sliding and staggering, to the Stag and got her inside, Cindy on her lap again. I tossed the lamp on to the rear seat and reached past her for my torch in the map compartment.