‘Nothing like that.’
‘Nothing in the dustbin that you or Henry Burgess hadn’t put there yourselves?’
‘I don’t see how that could have happened.’
‘Did you ever find any milk-bottles, for example, that hadn’t been ordered either by you or Henry Burgess?’
Beamish saw the muscles in Primrose Toplady’s cheeks tighten momentarily. The item had startled her – but she regained her self-control at once.
‘No. I can’t say that I remember anything of that nature.’
‘Milk-bottles from a dairy in Ripon, Mrs Toplady. The Gledholt Dairy.’
‘What would they be doing there?’
‘I don’t know, but Mr Mosley has evidence that empty bottles from the Gledholt Dairy were put out one morning for the milkman to collect.’
‘Certainly that was nothing to do with me, and I never saw them. I can’t for the life of me think how it could have happened. The milkman must have made a mistake.’
‘Had Henry Burgess any connections with Ripon?’
‘None that I know of.’
‘If you recollect anything about these bottles, Mrs Toplady, you must let us know at once. And there is one more question to which I must have your clear answer. Why did you not tell the truth to Mr Mosley?’
‘I did not want to look silly, Mr Beamish.’
When Beamish walked back through the town centre, there was an unusual sense of hush about the Market Place. It was not lack of noise: a mountain of canned peas was being unloaded by fork-lift at the supermarket with wholly disproportionate clatter. But the customary knot of idlers had retreated from the centre of the square. And that was because they were keeping their distance from Miley Morrison, who was sitting on the edge of the horse-trough in intense conversation with Mosley.
Beamish too withdrew from sight and indulged in a round of casual window-shopping. That was how he first came to take an active interest in Veronique’s Boutique. There seemed to be an inordinate number of nubile females on the staff and, for a dress-shop, there was a remarkable traffic in and out of unaccompanied male customers.
Chapter Nine
When Mosley concluded his interview with Miles Morrison on the corner of the horse-trough, he walked away, paying no attention to those members of the leisured class who stood courteously aside for him to pass. Miley, on the other hand, remained sitting contemplatively, wearing the sort of smile that Leonardo da Vinci might have adorned him with if their paths had happened to cross.
Miley was disturbed by the way the dialogue had gone. Mosley had won every round on points, though Miley had flailed about himself with flamboyant abandon – and with righteousness. What put him in the Mona Lisa class was the smile he had had to assume to reassure his friends. He got up and walked with dignity to his command-spot, transmitting silent messages to a lieutenant here, a courier there, a fetcher of cigarettes over yonder.
Mosley had broken every police procedural rule that Miley knew about. Through a dense mesh of innuendo, he had made accusations for which he could not possibly possess proof: offences of which Miles was innocent. But Mosley had succeeded in conveying the meaning that he was a bastard who would stop at nothing if he was determined on a conviction. He claimed to know that Miley had handled wholesale quantities of canned pilchards in a layby. He knew of a liaison between Miley and a married woman on the Westlands Estate that he would happily bring to the notice of Miley’s wife. He knew that Miley was responsible for criminal damage to an allotment shed belonging to a man who had fallen behind in payment of a bet he had lost on the outcome of a council by-election. He had gone on to make unveiled threats. Either Miley co-operated, and told Mosley what had been going on at Garth, or he was on his way up the river.
Miley found it incredible that an officer of Mosley’s experience should leave himself so wide open to complaint. Not that Miley proposed laying any complaint: his imagination fell short of any pretext on which he might conceivably enter a police station of his own free will. Miley knew his rights and also reckoned to know his way about the new Police and Criminal Evidence Act. He tried to give Mosley a little elementary instruction in the same, but his efforts were feeble. They seemed feeble, even to himself. The only public image left to him was his enigmatic smile.
The Holgates lived in a red-brick villa up Buttergate Brow. Dickie had been able to purchase it (through Timothy John Fawcett) before it came officially on the market. Fawcett had in fact no great desire to be publicly associated with selling such a house. It was the sort of property that would have made a surveyor laugh, and that would have inspired little enthusiasm in the mortgage market. Any local government grant depended on so much fundamental work being done at the owner’s expense, that Holgate had not bothered to ask for one. Webs of dry-rot extended under floorboards, water climbed out of the fountains from untraceable sources, paper peeled from the walls within a week of application. But Holgate was a brave man in the Do It Yourself context, and, what was even more to the point, his wife Avril shared his outlook. Neither was easily ruffled, and both believed that the present had to be endured to equip the future. One day Green Eaves would be a dream-house, saleable at a life-giving profit. Holgate bought scaffolding as a job lot in a bankruptcy sale. When he was in funds he bought bricks and worked Trojan-like at weekends. He borrowed a cement-mixer when he needed one, persuaded a heating engineer to teach him how to bend pipes.
The Holgates lived with this work going on around them, and furnished the house on similar principles. Apart from their bed, Avril’s sewing machine and Dickie’s power drill, they looked upon little as their own. When they fancied any article that came into Dickie’s hands by way of trade, they lived with it until they tired of it, or until they heard of a potential buyer. On one occasion a man called Hodgkins came without an appointment to buy and take away a refectory table (oak, repro) on which Avril was in the act of serving their lunch of tinned ravioli. A Georgian mahogany bowfront sideboard might serve for a month as a store for stone-ginger bottles and pewter tankards. A Victorian walnut serpentine three-tier whatnot might find itself cheek by jowl with an old mangle. On Friday nights Dickie would look over his stock to see what might prove irresistible on tomorrow’s stall.
His stock was so miscellaneous, and in such a constant state of flux that he sometimes forgot what he owned. But today he was in the middle of a thorough stock-taking, going minutely over the shelves and through cupboards, comparing their contents with the police lists. By now he was actually hoping to find something iniquitous – something to take to Mosley with a spectacular display of frankness. Avril was in similar mood: she went upstairs and came back with a pair of brass candlesticks in the shape of Corinthian pillars, a framed print of a flower study by Van Husen and six silver coffee spoons in a case.
‘All bought from the same man,’ she said. ‘I trust you’re not going to protect him.’
‘Not on your life.’
‘Promise –’
‘No need to make me.’
Avril was attractive in an essentially negligee fashion. She tended to dress as she furnished her home. She never lacked boldly contrasting colours.
‘I’ve got to find him first,’ Dickie said.
‘Don’t try to take that on yourself. Go and see Inspector Mosley now. Don’t waste time.’
‘Give me ten minutes with the man. Somebody ought to try to talk some sense into him.’
Dickie took off his stubble with a three-headed Philishave destined for the stall at the weekend, discarded the sweatshirt he was wearing (Hi, Sexy-eyes!) and replaced it with one that proclaimed him an alumnus of Princeton.
He found Primrose Toplady at home, still limp from her encounter with Sergeant Beamish, and blinking out across her garden path as if she had no reason to expect pleasure from any caller. She recognized Dickie. She had seen him on the market – though she would certainly never have patronized his stall; you had to be either wealthier or poorer than the Topladys to do that.
‘It’s no use you coming here –’
She evidently thought he was buying junk from door to door.
‘If I might just have a moment of your time, Mrs Toplady – if you could tell me how I might get in touch with your Kevin –’
‘I shall tell you nothing of the kind.’
Dickie was not entirely at a loss to account for this vehemence. Kevin’s mother undoubtedly looked on general dealers as bad company. The door closed on him – and he lacked Sergeant Beamish’s skill with his foot. A woman watched him knowledgeably over a back-garden fence as he came away. He knew that if Avril had been with him she would have propelled him at once in the direction of the police station. He still wanted, however, to have a word with Kevin Toplady first.
Not all the pupils at St Christopher’s select private school at Bradburn were as scrubbed and exclusive as Janet Morrison and her friend Sarah Wainwright, who were as inseparable as was permitted by the ten awkward miles between their home villages. (Sarah lived at Upper Akehurst, a settlement so isolated that it was a standing joke in both Bradburn and Bagshawe.)
Some girls squashed their hats into their satchels or sports-bags within yards of leaving the school gates. There was a Ladies in the bus-station that lent itself ideally to the application of cosmetics – even in certain advanced cases to a change from school uniform to jeans: there were boys at a neighbouring comprehensive who were sensitive to the outward signs of social distinction. But for various reasons, not entirely straightforward, Janet and Sarah preferred to abide by the rules. They sat daily for an hour on a wooden bench in the bus-station.
‘God!’ Janet said. ‘She’s set sodding quadratics again.’
‘Christ Almighty!’
‘I can’t get the hang of those bloody factors. That means using the bloody formula. You do the odd buggers, and I’ll do the even bastards. That will save half the time.’
They were working with their exercise books balanced on their knees when a young woman came along, scanning the faces of St Christopher girls in the bus queues. She was a soiled brunette in her twenties, and had difficulty peering through a curtain of hair.
‘Does anyone know a girl called Janet Morrison?’
‘She’s looking for you, Janet.’
Some busybody from 4B pointed out where Janet was sitting.
‘Are you Janet Morrison?’
‘Who wants to know?’
‘From 28, Holland Row?’
‘What’s that got to do with you?’
‘I’ve a message from your Mum. She’s gone over to do for your Auntie Eunice, over in Hadley Dale. She’s had a funny turn.’
‘And what am I supposed to do about it?’
‘It’s what I’m supposed to do. Your Mum asked me to take you over to Hadley. Your uncle will run you both home when he comes in from work.’
‘Shit! And who are you?’
‘You wouldn’t know me. I’m staying with my sister in Lake Villas. Mrs Redfern.’
‘Never heard of her.’
‘Are you coming, then?’
Janet left Sarah applying the formula to odd and even problems alike.
Miley was at first irritable, then visibly nervous, then positively frightened. He left the house and went to the Market Place, which in the evening became a different kind of HQ: for young men doing wheelies on their Hondas. Miley went straight to the telephone-booth, where he rang the bus-station and had difficulty in making the nature of his enquiry clear. Even when he succeeded, they gave him no sort of useful answer. So he rang the Bradburn bus office, at the far end of the route – but gave up after five minutes of the ringing tone.
There was nothing for it, then, but to break the rule of a life-time and walk voluntarily into the police station, where he failed in his attempt to insist on dealing only with Mosley. A phlegmatic desk-sergeant eventually organized a statement from him – and then did contact Mosley on an internal line.
Chapter Ten
It was an evening of precarious domestic balance in at least three families in Bagshawe Broome. Miles Morrison was even uncertain about going out for his usual six pints, so unwilling was he to be away from home in case the scuffers had news for him. His wife was darning, and whatever fermentation might be going on inside her, she succeeded in maintaining a coolly controlled exterior. It riled her husband more than a session of nervous nagging would have done. He sought in vain for some rationalization for blaming her for their daughter’s disappearance but had to content himself with informing her that she did not care. This broke the dam and the flood-waters of years of suppression broke through. She told Miles truths about himself that no man of his quality could bear to hear, and for a tottering second it looked as if he was going to strike her. Instead, he strode out for the Lansdowne, ordering her, under threat of maiming, to come and fetch him if there were any messages.
Differences of opinion were not unknown in the Holgate household, but the sun rarely went down on them. Dickie and Avril were both too naturally easy-going to keep a quarrel up for long. The trouble tonight was that Avril had found out – pretty easily, because Dickie was fairly transparent – that he had not been to see Mosley yet.
‘You really think you’re going to deal with this on your own? Where are you going to start looking for him?’
‘He must be in the neighbourhood somewhere.’
‘And if you find him – what next?’
Dickie was not articulate about it. Did he in fact know?
‘I shall talk to him.’
‘Talk to him? What about?’
‘I don’t know. Find out what’s got into him. Try to persuade him to talk honestly to Mosley.’
‘Isn’t that his problem? You’ll have problems of your own if you start playing games with Mosley. What’s all this about, Dickie: some sort of schoolboy honour?’
‘I’ve known him since we were both nippers.’
‘And that puts you under an obligation? To risk your reputation and our living?’
‘It isn’t quite like that.’
‘What is it like, then? Kevin Toplady’s a criminal, and Mosley thinks you might be too.’
‘I haven’t said I’m not going to see Mosley.’
‘Go now, then. Give him a ring.’
‘It would be better to speak to him personally.’
‘Well – he isn’t here, is he?’
And then something in Avril Holgate fractured. Her outburst was like nothing that Dickie had ever witnessed from her before. Up to now he would have said that their relationship was as exemplary as a young marriage in the late twentieth century could be. Now it suddenly seemed as if she had been building up resentment since the first morning of their honeymoon.
‘You’re too soft. You’re too gutless. You haven’t even the staying power to hype a price up when you’ve something on your hands worth selling. What hold has Kevin Toplady got over you? When we were desperate to move in here, you kept giving them another day, another twelve hours. And that woman he had in tow: they thought they were the Bonnie and Clyde of Bagshawe Broome.’
They didn’t break into any banks. They didn’t kill anybody – but Dickie thought better of saying it.
‘Either,’ she said, ‘you go here and now and tell Inspector Mosley everything you know about that couple, or –’
‘Or what?’
But she hesitated to say it.
‘Or what?’ he dared to repeat.
‘Or we shall have to take a good look at how things are between us. I’m not going to live on the brink of this sort of thing. Either we are straight and are seen to be straight, or –’
‘Have I ever been otherwise?’
‘You’ve acted otherwise – whenever Kevin Toplady’s been concerned. That’s why I ask: what do you owe him?’
‘I suppose I’m sorry for him. He’s so inadequate.’
‘He’s had a better chance than many in Bagshawe to make himself adequate.’
‘There could be more than one o
pinion about that.’
‘So you’re still his protector? If you won’t go to see Mr Mosley, I shall.’
‘There’s no need for that. I’ll go now.’
‘We’ll both go.’
A similar decision was reached by a different thought-process in the Toplady home. The thought-processing was done by Primrose.
‘Father –’ she said, and when she called Kitchener father, he always knew there was something solemn and fateful in the offing.
‘Father, I’ve been thinking.’
Kitchener blinked, and wished that the impending scene was not going to take place, that some unforeseen caller at their door would postpone the palaver. But the door-bell remained unhelpfully silent.
‘About this business at Garth, and this Inspector Mosley –’
The use of this to qualify Mosley was in itself a subtle signal. It put Mosley at a short, artificially created distance, at the same time as acknowledging that he could not be entirely discounted.
‘About our Kevin, you mean?’
‘Who else would it be about, but our Kevin?’
Kitchener was moodily silent, weighing up the possibilities.
‘It needs a bit of thought,’ he said at last.
‘That’s the last thing on earth that it needs. We can go on being tight-lipped, but they’ll still get to know. That Inspector Mosley is like a cat watching a mousehole. He’ll stay there, twitching his tail day and night. And that young sergeant who came this morning was as sharp as a bee-sting, and twice as barbed.’
‘You know what it will mean,’ Kitchener said.
‘It will mean something worse if we go on like this. They’ll think we’ve something to hide.’
‘Well, we have, haven’t we?’
His wife looked at him with three times the barbs of Sergeant Beamish. It was no part of his role to make that kind of pronouncement, true though it might be.
What Me, Mr Mosley? Page 7