A Willing Victim

by Wilson, Laura

  Michael’s expression, though polite, was blank and incurious. Stratton began explaining, in his gentlest voice, about the death of Rosemary Aylett. Afterwards, he could remember none of the words he’d used; they’d slipped out of his head at the first opportunity, leaving his part in the proceedings a merciful blur, his clearest impression being that Michael, although he listened with calm, even kindly, courtesy, wasn’t really taking any of it in. Only when he got to the bit about Ballard’s visit to Mrs Curtin, and was giving a (considerably bowdlerised) version of what she’d told them about how her sister had come to give him away, as a baby, to a stranger, did Michael’s expression change. The boy narrowed his eyes as if weighing up the facts and, for a horrible moment, Stratton suspected that Michael thought he’d been summoned to Roth’s presence in order to pronounce judgement, like a modern-day infant Solomon.

  Stratton halted his narrative. ‘Do you understand what I’ve been telling you, Michael?’

  ‘I understand.’ Michael’s judicious expression didn’t alter.

  ‘Mrs Aylett gave away her baby son – you – to a lady who Mrs Curtin identified as your mother, Ananda.’ Here, a flicker of apprehension passed over the boy’s face, but he did not speak. ‘This happened in the summer of 1945, when you were six months old. Ananda wanted you very, very much, and she promised Mrs Aylett that she would look after you.’

  Michael looked uncertainly at Roth, as if, at his instigation, Stratton was setting him some sort of test. Roth gave him an encouraging nod and then turned his head back to gaze at the burning logs in the fireplace.

  ‘Mrs Aylett called you Billy,’ Stratton continued. ‘She was very sad to part with you, but she felt – and you will understand this better when you’re grown up – that she didn’t have any choice.’

  As Michael continued to stare at him, Stratton searched his face for signs of distress, but found none. Miss Banting had begun sobbing quietly, and Miss Kirkland had her eyes half-closed, as if in a trance. The boy, however, looked as if what was being talked about had nothing to do with him.

  ‘Are you quite sure you understand what I’ve been saying?’ asked Stratton.

  ‘It isn’t real,’ the boy said flatly.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ said Stratton, ‘that it is. Of course,’ he added hurriedly, ‘it doesn’t mean that your mother – Mrs Aylett, I mean – didn’t love you. She always loved you – she was coming here, to the Foundation, because she was trying to find you. She’d been trying for many years.’

  Michael frowned slightly, but continued to gaze at him, polite and unruffled. Beside him, Miss Banting continued to weep, bracelets clattering as she twisted her hands frantically in her lap.

  ‘Be still!’ Although clearly aimed at Miss Banting, Roth’s command, which cracked across the room, made them all jump. The woman’s hands ceased moving as, with a palpable effort, she clenched them together. Michael, however, seemed not to have registered it, and was continuing to stare at Stratton with an unnerving detached intensity.

  ‘None of it,’ he repeated, ‘is real.’

  ‘I’m very sorry,’ said Stratton, helplessly, glancing round at Ballard, who’d been standing slightly behind him, for support.

  ‘I think,’ said Ballard, coming forward to squat down beside Michael’s chair and patting him on the knee, ‘that it might be better if we give you a little time to think about what Inspector Stratton has said. I know it’s come as a bit of a shock—’

  ‘It hasn’t,’ said Michael, brushing away Ballard’s hand as though he were an importunate dog. ‘Because it isn’t true. It can’t be true.’ Sliding off the chair, he crossed the hearthrug and placed himself directly in front of Stratton, staring up at him with his perfect blue eyes. ‘You see, I’m only ten years old. Ten and three-quarters. My birthday,’ he added helpfully, ‘is the twenty-eighth of February, and I was born in 1946.’

  There was a gasp from Miss Banting, and Stratton saw that her face was split wide in a beam of radiant joy. Miss Kirkland, beside her, had her mouth pursed and her eyes pressed tightly shut, as if trying to contain herself by physical force. He stared at the pair of them, stupefied, until a rasping cough from Roth made him turn round.

  ‘You see, Inspector? Out of the mouths of babes …’ He took a last, deep puff on his cigarette, then threw his head back and expelled a triumphant cloud of smoke.

  ‘Stop playing games,’ snapped Stratton, ‘and tell me who his father is.’

  Roth looked at him with a face of leonine impassivity, then turned to Michael. ‘Who is your father?’

  ‘I have no father,’ said the child. He gazed at Stratton for a moment with an expression of pity and then, obviously feeling that the matter wasn’t worth any more of his attention, put his hands in his pockets and sauntered across the room to stare out of the window.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  ‘If that’s a completely different kid up there,’ said Ballard, as they clattered down the stairs, causing the students gathered over tea in the hall to stare at them reproachfully, ‘then what the bloody hell happened to Billy?’

  ‘Only one way to find out,’ said Stratton, whose mind was reeling. ‘Better get round to Tynan’s place straight away.’

  ‘If she’s still there. She must have known we’d find out sooner rather than later.’

  ‘Well, it’s our best hope.’

  ‘Explains Tynan’s puzzlement, anyway. He may not have known anything about Billy or Mrs Aylett, but he bloody well knew the dates didn’t fit.’

  ‘Doesn’t explain Miss Kirkland, though,’ said Stratton, as they exited the lobby and made for the car, ‘unless she’d never seen that birth certificate.’

  Struggling to fire the cold engine, he added, ‘If she had seen it, she’d have known that the dates didn’t fit, too.’

  ‘Perhaps she didn’t know what they were. I mean, whoever took it could have told her about it without mentioning any dates.’

  ‘I’d say it’s more likely,’ Stratton raised his voice over the spluttering motor, ‘that she found out from Roth after Tynan telephoned him last night.’

  ‘He doesn’t seem to have told any of the others, though.’

  ‘I suppose he thought they didn’t need to know,’ said Stratton, crunching the gears. ‘Bad for their spiritual development or something,’ he added bitterly.

  ‘Perhaps it was some sort of test of faith. I mean, Roth must have seen Miss Banting was het up when she walked into that room, so perhaps he guessed she’d found out what was going on – he knew damn well what was going to happen, and that’s why he asked her to stay.’

  ‘Wanted an audience, more like it, for his piece of theatre. Did you see that little bow he gave us as he left the room?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. Miss Banting didn’t cotton on, though, when you said about Mrs Aylett handing over Billy in the summer of 1945.’

  ‘Probably too upset to take notice of the date. Either that or she didn’t know how old Michael is. I’m no expert, but he definitely looks older than his age. Shit!’ Rounding a corner, Stratton braked sharply, just in time to avoid rear-ending a herd of cows ambling across the muddy lane.

  ‘Hardly surprising living in that place,’ said Ballard, as they waited for the creatures to pass, steaming and leaving splatters of khaki-coloured dung in their wake. ‘Poor little sod. Took it well though, didn’t he?’

  ‘Seemed to. God knows what he was thinking.’

  ‘Miss K. looked pretty stunned when we left.’

  ‘Probably all the excitement. All that stuff about Mary/Ananda must have given them a bit of a turn, but right now they’re probably all congratulating themselves on how much smarter they are than us – and they’re right, aren’t they?’

  ‘They obviously couldn’t give a toss about what happened to Billy,’ said Ballard.

  ‘Well, to them he’s just some kid, isn’t he? They’re only interested in Wonder Boy.’

  ‘Who presumably is Mary/Ananda’s son – that’s backed up by wha
t Mrs Curtin told us about thinking she was pregnant, remember? Unless she picked up some other child along the way.’

  ‘Don’t …’ Stratton groaned, then struck the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. ‘Christ! It’s unbelievable.’

  ‘Not to them up there, it’s not.’ Ballard jerked his head sideways, in the direction of the Foundation. ‘I think Tynan might have been a bit worried about Billy, though. I mean, he wasn’t anywhere near as sanguine as Roth, was he?’

  ‘Probably because he still retains a few of the instincts of a normal human being,’ said Stratton sardonically.

  Tynan was striding towards them before they’d had a chance to get out of the car. ‘I had a call from the Foundation,’ he said, leaning into the driver’s window, face as haggard as if someone had attached weights to it in the night. ‘I thought you’d turn up – but before you ask, Ananda’s gone. Took off in one of my cars first thing this morning.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  ‘I didn’t find out until later,’ said Tynan. ‘She didn’t come down for breakfast, and one of the staff told me.’

  ‘What time was this?’ asked Stratton.

  ‘About half past nine.’

  ‘What about when she left?’

  ‘They weren’t sure. Someone went out and found one of the cars gone. She wasn’t in her room when the girl went up this morning.’

  ‘Didn’t anybody hear the car?’

  Tynan shook his head. ‘The man who drives me lives over the garage, but I’d given him a few days off – a death in family – so he wasn’t there.’

  ‘What about the gates?’

  ‘Easy enough to open them – they’re not padlocked.’

  ‘And the keys to the car – how did she get hold of those?’

  ‘My man has his own set of keys to both cars, but there are duplicates kept in the kitchen corridor, in a box on the wall. All the keys are kept there. She would have known that – she’s used the car before, taking Michael for outings and so on.’

  ‘Why didn’t you telephone the station?’

  ‘I did, straight away. Spoke to a man called PC … Harman? Hardman? Something like that, anyway.’

  ‘PC Harwood?’ said Ballard.

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Harwood. I gave him the model and number of the car, and he said he’d pass on the message.’

  ‘Well, he didn’t.’ Turning to Ballard, Stratton said, ‘That must have been just after I’d left to meet you at the Foundation.’

  ‘Just wait till I get hold of him,’ muttered Ballard, shoving the car door open.

  Opening his door, Stratton said to Tynan, ‘May we come in, sir? We’re going to need another statement.’

  When they were settled in the sumptuous room with its collection of obsolete weaponry and smiling Buddha, bronze belly glowing in the weak afternoon sun, Stratton said, ‘When we were here last night, you must have realised that the child Mrs Milburn was talking about couldn’t have been Michael. Why didn’t you say anything?’

  Tynan, slumped on the sofa, rubbed a hand over his jowls. His eyes were bloodshot and, judging by the two clumps of white bristles Stratton could see on his chin, his shaving had been perfunctory. ‘Shock, I suppose. I had no idea she was capable of … well, of any of it. I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was all so incredible.’ Groaning, he leant forward and put his face in his hands.

  Stratton remained silent and after a moment Tynan looked up and said, ‘I needed to talk to Mr Roth about it first. I didn’t know what I should do.’

  ‘So you wanted Mr Roth to tell you?’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t realise at the time, but when I spoke to him … Mr Roth said to do nothing. He said no action was necessary. I was relieved. I felt … he’d taken it out of my hands.’

  ‘And you were happy about that?’

  ‘Not happy, but …’ Tynan gazed despairingly out of the window. ‘It was the best way. If you come under the discipline, you must accept—’

  ‘Accept what? That you’re going to hang up your common sense on a hook by the door?’

  Tynan swung his head round sharply. ‘Accept the direction of a wise man. “Common sense”, Inspector, is very often the reverse of what it seems. We become caught up in the illusion and we don’t always see what is in front of us.’

  ‘What is in front of you,’ snapped Stratton, ‘is a charge of obstructing the police in the course of their duty by withholding information, and I can assure you that that isn’t an illusion. But right now,’ he added, nodding to Ballard, who pulled a notebook and pen from his jacket, ‘we’ll take the necessary statements and then we’ll be off.’

  Tynan waited outside while his manservant and the maid gave their version of events surrounding Ananda’s departure, neither of which added to what he’d already told them. When he returned, Stratton took him through a brief summary of what had happened while they’d been there the previous evening, before asking, ‘And when we left?’

  ‘She went off to bed.’

  ‘You didn’t ask her what had happened to Billy?’

  ‘I tried, but she refused to tell me. She was furious – blazing. I’ve never seen her like that before. When I asked her about the boy – Billy – she slapped my face and called me a bastard. She said I hadn’t supported her and she’d never trust me again. Then she ran straight up to her room – Michael’s room – and locked the door. I followed her, but I didn’t want to make a scene – the staff – so I left it. To be honest, I didn’t want anything more to do with her. I was …’ he shook his head in disgust, ‘appalled by the whole business. I came back down here and had a drink, and then I telephoned Mr Roth.’

  ‘When you say you didn’t want any more to do with her,’ said Stratton, ‘are you implying that you’d previously had a liaison with Mrs Milburn – a sexual relationship?’

  ‘No.’ Tynan glared at him with burning eyes.

  Stratton raised his eyebrows as high as they would go. ‘Really, Mr Tynan? Mrs Milburn is a very attractive woman.’

  ‘No! Absolutely not. I’ve just told you so. There was nothing of that sort between us.’

  ‘He was lying about not having an affair with Mary/Ananda, wasn’t he?’ said Ballard as they were driving away.

  ‘Through his teeth, I’d say.’

  ‘Why, do you think? I mean, you’d just told him we were going to charge him with buggering us about.’

  ‘Two reasons. One, he wants to pretend it didn’t happen. I think he was pretty fond of her, and of course it was good for his ego, what with her being a smasher in the looks department, but now it’s been proved that she’s a liar and crazy and all the rest of it … Well, that’s not so good, is it? The other reason is Roth. We know he doesn’t approve of anything like that. Tynan’s like the others, under his thumb and desperate for his approval.’

  ‘Which presumably he wouldn’t have if Roth knew about it,’ concluded Ballard. ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it? He’s a grown man, rich, successful, obviously not stupid, and yet …’

  ‘I don’t think any of them are stupid,’ said Stratton. ‘Fuck!’ He slapped the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. ‘We’re back to square one, aren’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ballard, ‘we are. And when I find Harwood,’ he added savagely, ‘I’m going to kick his arse into the middle of next week.’

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  After a hasty and extremely late lunch of curling bread, limp lettuce and sulphurous boiled eggs at the George and Dragon, Stratton and Ballard took their indigestion back to the local station, where they found Harwood doggedly picking his nose behind the counter. ‘Message for you,’ he said.

  ‘We know,’ snarled Ballard. ‘Why didn’t you telephone it through to the Old Rectory?’

  Harwood crossed his arms and stared at him in amazement, as if this were not a question he could be reasonably expected to answer.

  ‘Well?’ said Ballard.

  ‘I was busy.’ Stratton looked around but was unabl
e to spot any sign of industry, apart from a single page torn from a notebook.

  ‘With what?’ snapped Ballard. ‘The contents of your nostrils?’

  ‘Don’t you want it, then?’ Harwood indicated the piece of paper.

  ‘Oh, give it here.’

  Scanning it over Ballard’s shoulder, Stratton read, Black Vauxhall Velox, BFY 183, Mrs Melbourne, left this morning.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Ballard. Harwood stood back and stared at them reproachfully as Stratton lifted the hatch and they made for the office at the back.

  ‘That wasn’t much of a bollocking,’ said Stratton, as they cleared a space on the single desk and sat down, one on either side. ‘What happened to his arse and the middle of next week?’

  ‘No point.’ Ballard pulled the telephone towards him. ‘He’ll be just as useless in the future as he is now. I’ll put out an alert for that car. Better check it first, though.’ He crossed his eyes horribly and made a lolling movement with his head.

  ‘Quite. And I’ll call Grove.’

  ‘There’s only the one line,’ said Ballard. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

  ‘Can Harwood make tea?’ asked Stratton. ‘Or will he burn the place down? I could do with something to get rid of the taste of that food.’

  ‘That’s just about the only thing he can do,’ said Ballard, dialling.

  ‘Right you are, then.’

  ‘Bad news and good news, old son,’ Grove’s phlegmy rumble came down the line. ‘We’ve done a search of Jeremy Lloyd’s belongings, and we didn’t turn up any birth certificate. But…’ Grove paused, and Stratton could hear him spluttering into his handkerchief, ‘we did find a slip of paper rolled up with the spills for lighting the gas fire – a bit torn, but it’s got half of Mrs Aylett’s name on it, and her address. Bit of a coincidence if that’s nothing to do with it, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Definitely. What’s the rest?’

  ‘I’ve been to see your Mrs Astley. She says the Milburn woman was there, all right. The maid confirms it. Says Mrs M. spent most of the time in bed and she was up and down like a whore’s drawers, carrying trays.’